Which Witch is Which?

I’ve got some explaining to do!

So in my recent anthology – 31 Short Stories About Witches – I made mention of a few different ‘kinds’ of Witch.

Specifically, in Story 29 – Massive – Tarlisha the Vortex Witch urgently demands that Kayla contact every Witch: “Every Coven. Every Candy-Coated Witch, Every Faedric Witch, Every Witch of the Green, Every Ancient Witch, Every Pacted Witch.”

Seems all well and good, right? After all, all of those descriptors are perfectly clear and have come up in all of my previous writing, right?

Turns out… Nope! I’ve literally never mentioned any of those things and the definitions for them only really exist in my head. So in order to rectify this, I thought I should go on record and talk a bit about the different types of Witches in my head, as well as how and why I separate them so.

Categorization

In my head I separate Witches based on three criteria:

1. The foundation of their power – where their raw Magical power comes from.
2. Physical stability and how they maintain it.
3. The extent of their mortality/immortality.

 

Faedric Witches

Faedric Witches are the ones that the majority of my readers are familiar with from the PsyEn Project. Witches like Hushpuppy or Meverastethin who have devoured Fae and Blossomed into something more, allowing them to utilize Magic as an enforcement of their Desires upon reality, without suffering the side effects of Magirradiation

1. Faedric Witches become by eating a living Fae and winning a battle of Soul and Substance during the subsequent Blossoming.
2. Faedric Witches start out with high physical stability, but this erodes with time and consumption of additional Fae – the only thing that can truly sustain them – and unless they offset the ever expanding amount of Soul they are taking in, their physical forms will fall apart.
3. Faedric Witches are ageless so long as they continue to occasionally feed upon Fae creatures. They are also functionally unkillable, although they share the Fae’s weakness to Meteoric Iron.

 

Candy-Coated Witches

Candy-Coated Witches are ex-Magical Girls who utilize alien Magic from a distant galaxy in order to empower themselves and enforce their Desires upon reality. The Magic they wield utilizes the fusion and fission of two omnipresent resources called Magi-Sweet and Magi-Salt in order to warp reality to their whim. They too are effectively immune to all but the highest doses Magirradiation from Magi-Sweet of the component parts of the Magic they wield. These are the Witches that the ‘Now’ sections of HyperpopApocalypse are about.

1. Candy-Coated Witches gain access to their Magic through the Magical Seedling implanted in their Souls. The original Magical Girls were given their seeds by aliens known as the Magusi; later Candy-Coated Witches were bequeathed their Magical Seedling from the Witches who came before them.
2. Candy-Coated Witches are physically stable and do not deteriorate, as there is no overabundance of Soul. However their bodies may acquire various malformations due to interactions with excess Magi-Sweet and high doses of Magirradiation.
3. Candy-Coated Witches typically age more slowly as long as they are responsible with their Magic use, however, excessive use of their Magic can result in erratic loss of life span. They are uniformly significantly more durable than even the sturdiest of Humans, but are far from unkillable.

 

Witches of the Green

Witches of the Green are those who draw their power from a tie to the land and the world itself. These are more traditional Witches in the vein of traditional Celtic, Appalachian, and other Eurasian Myths. Their Magic is in many ways far more mystical, spiritual, and abstract than other Witches, but no less powerful. They utilize Desire, Concept, Totems, and other physical apparatuses in equal measure to carry out their Magic. I’ve not yet written about any of these Witches outside of the Short Story anthology, as executing on that properly requires a lot more research that I’m currently able to put in. Some day.

1. The foundation of their power is both knowledge and something akin to a pact with the very Land itself. The knowledge itself can be passed down, but the nature of their power is unique to the Soul that wields it.
2. Witches of the Green are physically stable and do not deteriorate, as there is no overabundance of Soul.
3. Witches of the Green typically age more slowly and tend to be a slightly hardier than your average Human, but are neither immortal nor unkillable. However, within the lines they draw in the Land that they guard – within their Domains – they are utterly untouchable by conventional means.

 

Pacted Witches

Pacted Witches are exactly what they sound like: A Witch whose gains tremendous Magical power due to a Pact with a Higher being. Be it a Demon, or a Dragon, or a Fairy, or an Old or New God, or something Worse, they are not unlike the Warlocks you might encounter in D&D or other high fantasy settings. Thus far the only Pacted Witches I’ve written about are in the short story anthology, but I think more will come up in other stories outside of the PsyEn Project, as they are conceptually fairly malleable.

1. Pacted Witches gain their power through service or alliance with a Patron. What this service looks like differs between Patrons, as well as between Witches who serve the same Patron.
2. The physical stability of Pacted Witches varies between Patrons.
3. The Pacted Witch’s mortality is dependent on both the nature of the Patron and the nature of the Pact they have with said Patron. Although it does not typically behoove an ageless being to have a transient servant. Pacted Witches are far more durable than the sturdiest of Humans, but the degree to Witch they are able sustain damage is again determined by their Patron.

 

Ancient Witches

Ancient Witches are something of a convergent evolution of the various Witches that ends up being a class of their own because of how differently they function from any and everything leading up to them. These Witches are similar to deities in the PsyEn Project in that they have lived for so long, gained so much knowledge, and acquired so much power that they are able to wrap themselves within the definition of a concept. The ability to entangle yourself with an idea is a sort of apotheosis or secondary Blossoming that demonstrates a true mastery over – or perhaps disregard for – reality and conventional rules. This is what Kaz’bek attempted to do with the concept of ‘Fire’ and what The Lonely Witch did with the concept of ‘Isolation’.

1. Raw General and Specialized Magical Mastery in tandem with taking ‘ownership’ of a concept is the Foundation of the Ancient Witch.
2. Ancient Witches are physically stable and suffer no additional mutations or malformations once they reach this point.
3. Ancient Witches are no more or less immortal than a Faedric Witch, but due to their mastery and self-sustainability, are nearly impossible to kill from a practical standpoint.

 

And that about sums it up. There are of course going to be the occasional Witch that defies traditional categorization, but past here lies only impatience. I’ve now put it all in writing and now I can add all of this to my World Building notes in an official capacity!

 

-JT