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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Nothing But Time

The game changing nature of powerful healing at accelerated rates presented two factors upon which the differences were built. The first was the change in risk aversion factors. The second was the effect on the time scale. The shortened time makes for altered pacing. In the fantasy setting this is especially true because of the otherwise limited state of medicine and lack of pain medication. While quickening the plot pacing changes the game or the story one way, shifting things in the other direction has alternate effects. Longevity has its own way of changing the game in a setting. Long lives, immortality, and the changes caused by continued healing and durability are one possibility. The other is less fantastical but no less powerful and involves controlled cross-generation planning.

Many fantasy settings have long lived elves and other inhuman beings. They have immortal wizards both of the perpetual living and living dead kinds. The same is true of settings with vampires of enough intelligence to keep a lower profile and out live generation upon generation of mortals. It is not often enough that the immensity of possibilities this creates is touched upon. These beings can achieve singularly what others cannot. They can plan according to the long view of things, adapting as they go, patiently manipulating events in tiny increments over a vastly extended time. This affords them a lot of power. Beyond that it allows them to cultivate great experience and with it wisdom. This experience and wisdom is stronger for being first hand.

Magic, supernatural biology, or the science and futuristic equivalents of those, are not strictly necessary to take advantage of this game-changing element. Family groups, organisations, secret societies and sects, and some tightly focused societies can do so as well. For them it requires more discipline due to the larger number of members required. It also requires all parties being able to understand the plan not only to fulfill their parts of it, but also to the greater degree of being able to pass on the knowledge and impart the importance of the actions that go into it. If any later generation fails in understanding or implementation, even in gradual degrees from one generation to the next, then the plans and their benefits diminish, fail, or outright disappear.

Mood: fluid.

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