Ink and watercolour plate of a vanished witch's belongings: an open iron-bound chest with a lock of four elemental stones, bottled fire, lightning and frost, a folding pocket knife and dried herbs.

Character

The Witch of the Warren

A clever witch without a wizard's gift, whose warren in the Primeweald became the stranger's refuge in the Dark Times.

  • Dark Times

Description

She was a witch who did not share the wizard's gift, yet found other ways to bend the elements to her will. Her treasure chests, some sealed with elemental locks, held curios of every kind: bottled elements behind an elemental lock, a humble pocket knife and stranger things besides.

Historical context

By the Dark Times the witch was gone, but her warren, a proper sanctum that Umbra-touched darklings cannot enter, sheltered the stranger and Aurelius, and a minstrel besides. Aurelius wished he could pick her brain about the magic of the Primeweald. A troll of the swamps spoke of an old arcane-witch who once lived in a clearing uphill, until a bitter elf came down from the mountain; whether she was the same woman, the chronicle cannot say.