Fey Witches

Those who wield ritual and cyclical fey magic.

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Czarownica

Type: Mother

A witch of the Tradition.

Czarownici are witches found in the regions of Aeslaw and Wybrezu, currently part of Paurek, where they adhere to ancient rituals and rites that are dictated by the Tradition of the fey. This magic is a set of formulae and rules that require they keep to a specific routine to maintain their magic, but grants them with an enormous catalogue of spells to wield. Their magic is often the magic of magic, magic that enhances, alters, prevents, or otherwise affects the magic of others, but sometimes it has other effects.

As witches, they are a major part of the local community. Sometimes they are friendly and helpful, providing healing, protections, and advice; other times, they require steep payments for their magic; and other times, they are aloof and dangerous. They garner reputations and rumors about themselves, and these stories feed into their power. The more stories told about them locally, the more magic they gain.

Some potential spells they might have include the following (the player will choose six to start with):

• Enhance spell: they can cast a spell on another spell to make it stronger or better.
• Enchanting charm: they can charm an object to infuse a spell into it.
• Alter spell: they can alter the effects or alignment of an existing spell.
• Magical shield: they can create a shield around themselves or another to block magical attacks.
• Circle of power: they can create a circle of energy around themselves to keep magic out or enhance magic within.
• Sense magic: the player will choose whether their witch senses it via sight, smell, hearing, touch, or taste.
• Dispelling charm: they can cast a charm that dispells an existing effect.
• Counterspell: they can cast a spell that instantly knocks a spell actively being cast out.
• Doublecasting: they can grant someone the ability to use two magicks at once.

They will also work with the GM to come up with up to five magical abilities or spells that are derived from the stories told about them. Some common ones include the following:

• Transforming spell: if it is said about them that they have turned someone into a toad or pig, for example.
• Flying object: if it is said they can fly on a broom, cauldron, mortar and pestle, or other object.
• Hidden hut: if it is said about them that their home is only found by those they wish to find it.
• Protective ward: if it is said about them that they give out protections against very specific things, such as fire, cold, lightning, disease, or pregnancy.
• Summoning spell: if it is said about them that they can call upon spirits or monsters.
• Divinatory spell: they can use various divining methods.
• Improbable feast: a feast of horse’s hooves, egg shells, and other improbable things under skulls gives them immunities to various kinds of harm, such as poison.
• Tincture of desire: they can create a “love potion” or other tincture that causes someone temporarily to desire another.
• Familiar: they may have a black cat or other local animal as a familiar.
• Enchanted utensil: they may have common household utensils with magical properties that let them work for them, such as a spoon that stirs on its own or a pot that cooks without fire.

They need not choose from this list, but the stories told about them should evoke fairytale witches.

Czarownici dwell mostly in the mountains, and once a year, they gather for a mass ceremony. During the ceremony they feast under the light of the moons, eating improbable foods like horse hooves and egg shells, and they dance with powerful fey spirits. They leave as the roosters crow, taking up magical objects and flying off on brooms. This gathering is where they recruit, learn, and seal their magic via the Tradition.

PRO -1 ATH +1 STR -1 AWA +2 WIL +2 PRS -1 STH / ESS +2

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Nõid

Type: Crone

A witch whose power comes from stories of legendary witches.

There are many legends of witches in the world. In Surva, there are very ancient tales, tales of powerful witches who had powers of prophecy, flight, control of weather, soulflight, animal control or transformations, curses and hexes, and so on. Nõidi live up to these legends, drawing directly from them by replicating them in appearance and behavior.

Nõidi honor three legends:

• Anisja the Sharp-Toothed: though horror stories claim she ate mortal flesh, in truth she simply had ragged teeth and a preference for soft mutton. In her old age, she kept sheep and goats in the hills and made complex spells that protected her flocks. She spoke to the fey spirits that dwelt nearby and knew their secrets. Her magic was very domestic.
• Paaive the Mad: demonized for being “mad”, she was in fact known to talk to the invisible spirits around her, being friend to the fey and a reader of dreams. A powerful diviner and image-caster, she created a maze of strange visions to protect herself.
• Ulmi the Hag: though many claims were made about her, the truth was she was someone who welcomed the fey into the natural realm, living as she did near an underground river that connected this world with the next. Her power was associated with secret places.

Nõidi learn these legends and seek to emulate them. They either sharpen their teeth and herd sheep and goats, learn to speak to spirits and create images, or dwell near the edges of reality and use fey magic to find hidden places. Fostering this reputation, they begin to gain the magic of those legends they resemble.

Anisja’s magic includes the following:

• Herding ward: a protective spell for sheep or goats that keeps them from wandering and warns them of approaching predators.
• Flying broom: exactly as you would expect.
• Animate kitchen: a spell to make the kitchen do its work for you.
• Cleansing spell: a spell to clean a house, person, object, or living thing instantly.
• Shearing spell: a spell to shear sheep quickly, but also to cut anything.

Paaive’s magic includes the following:

• Spiritspeech: speaking to invisible fey spirits if they are present.
• Dream reading: reading the dreams of those sleeping nearby.
• Imaging charm: drawing images from nearby dreams to create illusions.
• Divination spell: using various methods, taking a divinatory glimpse into the future.
• Wandering maze: creating an illusory maze around one’s domicile.

Ulmi’s magic includes the following:

• Rumbling birch: slapping the ground with a birch stick to make nearby waters roil and boil.
• Sinkhole tithe: dropping a coin into a hole in the ground in order to keep it from becoming a sinkhole, or in order to encourage it to be.
• Wandering forest/fleeing lake: making people think the nearest forest or lake has wandered away via a form of mind-altering delusion spell.
• Waterbreathing: the ability to breathe underwater.
• Lendva: a spell that causes disease in those who have offended the witch.

A player choosing to be a nõidi will pick which of the above witches they emulate and thus start with spells from.

PRO +1 ATH +1 STR -2 AWA +2 WIL +2 PRS -1 STH / ESS +2

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Ragana

Type: Crone

Raganas are witches of Kardis and Paurek who draw their magic from the Lore. They are extremely powerful, wielding the legends told of them, and they are feared by other mortals.

To become a ragana, one must be recruited by an older ragana. One must be a woman or non-man of mature age who has been outcast by society, and one must find oneself on the fringes of the community. One must be taken in, spend years as a servant, and then be accepted by the ragana as trustworthy. Then, one must learn the Lore, spending many years doing so, taking no shortcuts, and accept the strange rituals and rites the ragana uses to infuse them with the magic.

They will one winter solstice be taken to the deepest and most frozen lake, shown how to cut a hole in it, and then be bid to dive in. If they are unworthy, they will one day awaken with no memory of their time with the ragana, finding themselves in some remote location. If they are worthy, they will be untouched by the cold and rise up a powerful witch.

A ragana has many powers, drawn from the ever-changing Lore, and may select from the following which ones she starts with:

• Divination spell: they can use various methods to see small glimpses of the future.
• Animal form: a ragana may take many animal forms, including cat, horse, hare, magpie, or toad, but while in this form, they will keep any wound they take even after they return to their original form.
• Farmer’s hex: they may cast a hex on a farm, blighting their fields, curdling their milk, unchurning their butter, fallowing a specific plant, or causing some other harm.
• Nightvision: they can see in the dark of night.
• Reaper’s reward: they can invoke this spell upon someone who owes them a debt, making them give her part of the yield of their farm or other craft.
• Swirling heavens: they can alter the night sky to terrify those nearby.
• Drawing the storm: they may summon a storm at night.
• Flying branch: they may take a fallen branch, rotting stump pulled from the ground, or bent stick to fly upon as other witches might use brooms.
• Twisting spell: they may twist a person into a tree, an animal, or a stone.
• Evil eye: they may cause bad luck in someone with a glare.
• Crescent horn: they may grow a curved horn from their head to harm others with.
• Turmoil spell: they may cast a spell that causes turmoil in an area, altering events to chaos.
• Clairvoyance: they can know what is going on in other places.
• Cosmic farsight: they can stare into space and see what orbital bodies are doing.
• Subtle form: they may make themselves subtle and hard to notice.
• Rite of rebirth: twice they may be reborn if they die outside the winter’s solstice, but they start life over.

All raganas are weak to iron and fire.

Every winter’s solstice, raganas gather on the hilltops, fly through the night, and initiate new raganas at frozen lakes. As part of the price for their magic, their bodies are often weakened, leaving them stooped, but their eyes are always keen. They keep homes near the edges of communities, between field and forest.

PRO +1 ATH +1 STR -1 AWA +3 WIL +3 PRS -1 STH / ESS +2

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Vedma

Type: Witch

Vedma (or for men, vedmak) are wtches whose magic allows them to alter the stories around them.

Vedma are seen as both good and evil by local communities, and they often find themselves garnering both reputations. They find their magic from being unpredictable and altering their own stories via a series of rumors, gossips, and rituals.

To become a vedma, one is usually recruited by older vedma who wish to have a successor. They are taught the arts of witchcraft, the rites and rituals, and the ways of tending the people and animals of the community. They are taught to be helpful but to demand respect or fear. And they are taught to control what is said about them, but to always change the story when they tell it.

Eventually, they are brought to the deep wilderness for a special ritual in which they must give up a part of themselves - a piece of body, mind, heart, and soul - in order to delve into the deep magic of the vedma. From this, they gain the fey magicks of change:

• Alter health: they can alter the health of a person or animal, causing injury or illness, or repairing them, with a spell.
• Shifting harvest: they may alter the results of a local harvest for good or ill.
• Shapechange: they may turn themselves into any mundane object or anima of equal size or smaller temporarily.
• Spiritspeech: they can speak to invisible spirits.
• Unnoticed change: they may tweak the story of someone with a powerful rite that makes a small but unnoticed change, but eventually snowballs into something more severe.

Vedma are subject to local disrespect, especially from imperials, and thus their reputation is unpleasant.

PRO / ATH +1 STR -1 AWA +2 WIL +2 PRS / STH / ESS +2

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Vjeshtica

Type: Daughter

Vjeshtici are witches born with a caul. Because there is a superstition about this, their mothers often try to prevent them from becoming witches by cutting the caul on a dogfood trough and then throwing it away. If they do this, the vjeshtica becomes bitter towards her family.

Whether bitter to her family or not, the vjeshtica is a powerful witch with innate magic. This innate magic may be ignored and will wither when they grow up, or it may be fostered (by themselves or others) and make them a very potent witch with fey magicks.

Their magic is from the fey mark on their souls, which is something that happened before they were born. There are many ways this may happen, ranging from a fey cursing or enchanting their parent(s) to some deal made generations ago to some whim of a fey with no rhyme or reason. Regardless, it is a power they are born with.

If they do not foster it, it will be passed on to one of their children if they have any. If they do foster it, it will be up to them if they pass it on.

The magicks they gain depend on their species, birth circumstances (date, time, place, and the actions of their parents - how soon was the umbilical cut? were they swaddled in cotton or silk or straw? did their mother kiss them first or their father? and so on), as well as their childhood and decisions growing up. When they come of age, they may change the magicks they have gained only via rituals and intentional methods.

Some of the spells they may have include the following:

• Soulsight: they can see the magical essence of others.
• Soul warding: they can put a mark on someone's soul to protect them.
• Hex: they can cast a hex that specifically gives someone low die on a specific stat.
• Disconnective spell: they can cast a spell to break a bond to a person they know.
• Soulflight: they can let their soul fly from their bodies and observe the world, but their body is at risk.

They use many rituals, charms, wards, and tricks of the Lore and the Tradition. Consult the GM for those abilities that come from their backstory.

PRO / ATH +1 STR -1 AWA +3 WIL +3 PRS -1 STH / ESS +4