The Modern Witch Conspiracy

The surface has been brushed for period piece settings and stories with evil satanic witches. What though of the modern day? Has the ghastly horror witch gone the way of the dodo? The answer is a resounding no. They are certainly about and still practicing their nefarious ways. They do have their work cut out for them in some fashion though. Their brand of wickedness pales in comparison to the likes of serial killers, mass genocide in foreign lands--though honestly those kinds of atrocities have always gone on, if not as efficiently bloody as now--and the general moral slide of society with a total disregard for the value of courtesy, freedom, humanity and life not seen in centuries. Where then is the place for witch when the Adversary seems to be doing fine without lifting an apparent finger?

As with everything that slides into the present and looks to the future the ways and the wants of the witch have become more complex. Things are subtler now than ever. Part of it has as much to do with the witch hunters as it does the witches and their master. Staying covert went from a matter of privacy to one of downright survival. As would prove later to be beyond prescient the greatest lie the Devil ever told was that he did not exist. Thus too was it for his witches. The witch scare died down, past some unknown point, but likely earlier than now expected, the bulk of the victims of the stake were left to the innocent and the witches' own chosen scapegoats. Beyond that need for discretion was the need to find ever new, ingenious, and complicated ways to waylay and corrupt a populace that was continually growing savvier and more educated by the decade.

That formerly mentioned moral slide may have occurred all on its own, but the levels that it reaches and the ways that people are led, or driven, to act on the worst impulses that it represent can, and is, tweaked by the slyest of witches. There is a new, more ambitious, agenda at work. It is hard to nail down what it is precisely, but it is insidious, widespread, and broken down into a vast array of cogs that work as a monumental mechanism of evil the likes of which hasn't been seen before. Trying to chip away at those cogs is hard work and there are multiple redundancies. There are whispers and innuendo in certain circles about the nature of the witches' endeavours. The most frightening hypothesis put forward about this Machiavellian project is that even the attempts to derail it at every turn are pushing it toward its nefarious goal.

Mood: sly.

Music: Everything Louder Than Everything Else by Meat Loaf and Pure Evil by Iced Earth.

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Anatomy of a Horror Setting #4: Espers and the Psi-Cold War

The power of a single government with psychic agents would be destabilizing to the world's structure to say the least. By agents I mean spies, soldiers--not front line troops, that would be way outside the scope of a horror setting--and policing officers on up to currently non-existing branches of the courts and government itself. As to destabilisation, it would start with a mad scramble by other governments to try to somehow catch up--creating their own psychics, finding them within the general population, or stealing them--and if they couldn't do that then they would somehow do away with the espers of the government that had them. This in and of itself could be the form of a Psi-Cold War. Or it could just be the tip of the iceberg.

The Psi-Cold War would heat up very quickly if several powerful governments at odds with each other were to acquire psychic agents on the scale of which has been discussed. There is that necessity of groups at odds for any of these scenarios to work, though such odds might come about as a matter of the existence of the psychics in the first place. That it can be a conflict of groups is also important. It need not be governments at all; it can be smaller groups. The governmental scale is a nice choice because at that level there are the proper resources that can be put toward the effort, as well as resources needed to make up for any necessities not covered by the psychics' powers alone. This ties back to the types and degrees of powers that these psychics have at their disposal both individually and in groups.

A mix of groups with different amounts of finances and clout, and divergent and opposing agendas serves to make for a varied and textured landscape upon which to build plots. Parallel motives, cross-purposes, direct conflicts, consorting with the enemy, double-crosses, double and triple agents, manipulations, and conspiracies are all excellent elements in these kinds of stories. They are present in the regular non-psychic, non-horror undertakings of these types of narratives. They are just as much the bread and butter of the story lines when the additional elements are layered underneath, throughout, and on top. Next time will be the clash, and mash up of psychics and technology.

Mood: thrilled.
Music: I Love It Loud by Kiss and Louder Than Hell by Motley Crue.

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