Showing posts with label Witches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Witches. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Creating Banes – Inventing New Horrors

When we began working to create the Accursed setting, the creative team quickly came to the decision that we needed to have a lot of horrific elements. Part of that was because we knew that the Witches were going to be extraordinarily powerful beings that wouldn't be a good fit for routine opponents. Another justification was simply due to the fact that we needed things that would give a prototypical monster pause. After all, a Dhampir, a Mummy, or a Revenant is unlikely to find even a force of mundane humans threatening. Our solution was to expand the scope of what the Witches had done.

Friday, September 6, 2013

The Morrigan - Keeper of Undead

In appearance, the Morrigan’s form is quite memorable—her hair is a dark, earthy brown in color, her eyes a gleaming ice-blue. Her complexion is flawless, and her willowy form is considered quite beautiful, if somewhat ethereal. Her attitude did not change much between her guise as “Lady Macha” and assuming her mantle as the Morrigan. She is quick to anger, slow to forgive, and coldly intelligent. She is the complete mistress of all cauldron-born, and even the most willful of undead bow their heads to her commands. Only the Revenants have broken free from her dominance, and as a whole, they have sworn to oppose her with every ember of their being.

Monday, August 19, 2013

All Must Change - The Chimera

The Chimera makes her home in a massive, spired fortress known as Turris Atra. Unlike other fortresses, however, the Chimera’s home does not long remain in any one place. With each dawn, the inhabitants of Morden discover Turris Atra and its surroundings in a new locale. Though it only stays until the following midnight, the Witch’s fortress invariably spreads sorrow and grievous loss before it departs. The Chimera is the tower's mistress. Whenever she visits a new site, she promptly abandons her completed experiments and begins gathering up the living components to begin anew. Any nearby life could potentially be drawn into her next project—to their eternal dismay.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

The Mold From Which All Others Were Struck - The Crone

The Crone is the first Witch, Mistress of the Grand Coven, and oldest among her sisters. Legends say that at the dawn of time, she was the first mortal woman to take on the mantle of the Immortal Witch. If this is true, she is the mold from which all other Witches are struck. It was the Crone who brought such disparate and stong-willed individuals as the Djinn and the Morrigan and the witch now known as Baba Yaga together to form the Grand Coven. It was she who laid the plans for the invasion of Morden. Through the sheer force of her will, she directed the advance of the squabbling, largely incompatible Witch Armies.

Friday, July 19, 2013

Sanguinara, the Blood Witch



In appearance, the Blood Witch looks quite human… on the surface, at least. Her form is overall quite pleasing to the eye, seductively beautiful in a manner that makes most viewers instinctively feel both attracted and repelled in a manner they cannot explain. Her skin is incredibly pale—the color of milk—and her long, lustrous hair is a dark, coal black that seems to absorb the light. Her lips and eyes are a dark crimson—the hue of freshly-spilled blood. Her teeth—although perfect and gleaming—feature a prominent pair of fangs.

Monday, July 15, 2013

The Djinn - Granter of Wishes

The Djinn's current status remains one of the greatest mysteries of Morden. When King Auberon's blade pierced her flesh, she vanished, taking much of her army, the forces of the Alliance, and even the Summerlands with her in a cataclysmic magical explosion. No human scholars know her ultimate fate, and even the Witches seemed unnerved by this dramatic turn of events. Though the Witch armies had essentially won the war, many of them left Morden with their armies, crossing the Darkfall Peaks to their homes that lay beyond.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

You Shall Know Them by the Trail of the Dead - The Witch Armies

They came through the Outlands, boiling over the Darkwall Peaks in their multitude. Huge throngs of undead things and living creatures twisted beyond recognition by dark magics. Rank upon rank of hired soldiers from across the great sea bolstered their numbers. In the van were the Accursed–shambling Mongrels, plodding Golems, loping, gibbering Vargr, lithesome Damphyre, along with their fellows. At their head strode the great usurpers, the Witches of the Grand Coven. Cunning Baba Yaga, mighty Sanguinara, the twisted Chimera, and their sisters led their varied armies over the Darkwall Peaks and into the unsuspecting lands of Morden quick as lightning, taking the unprepared mortals completely unawares and easily sweeping aside the initial, hastily assembled resistance. The Witch armies spread out and the heroes of the Alliance gathered their armies to oppose them. The entrenched forces settled in for a savage war of attrition that would grind on for decades and only really end with the Great Betrayal, when the Grand Coven was broken and the Witch armies scattered to the winds.

Friday, June 28, 2013

On Witchcraft



Spells, curses, charms, chants, or hexes – all of these are part and parcel of witchcraft as it is known on Morden. Witchcraft is the manipulation of magic to achieve specific goals – and it is the most powerful tool of the Witches that have conquered Morden. However, it is not the Witches alone who can wield witchcraft and channel it into charms or spells. Many banes and some humans can learn to harness the supernatural forces of witchcraft. This magic can accomplish tasks both small and large, from cleansing the dirt out of a hovel to collapsing a mountain pass. There is an astonishing variety of uses for witchcraft, and the use of this magic in itself is neither particularly good nor evil. Those who perform witchcraft as agents of the Witches are known as warlocks, while those who seek to use witchcraft instead for the common good or to aid in the resistance against the Witches’ dark influence are often called “white witches.”

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

In a Hut on Bird Legs - Baba Yaga


She comes in a clamor – clap of thunder, flash of lightning, howling wind – and all peace is at an end. Stepping forth from another world on spindly bird's legs, a house appears in the tumult at the edge of a great forest. Animals flee, flowers wilt, grass blackens, trees lean away as if to escape, even the land itself groans and shudders. The house settles, tucking its legs beneath it. It's a shabby, run-down, moss covered hovel of stone and sod with blank, leering windows and a rotten door half ajar. Dirt clotted bones of long-dead men and animals rise from the ground to form a ghastly fence about the house, with a gate thrown wide in welcome. Baba Yaga has come to her people once again.