The Witch

"The priest knocks on heaven’s door. The wizard opens a book. The witch leaves milk beneath the thorn-tree and waits for something older to answer."
— Old Rhonadral saying

Introduction

You were shaped by forbidden rites, whispered bargains, and the old terror of magic practiced outside temple, tower, and law. As a Witch, you learned that power does not always arrive through prayer or study. Sometimes it comes through a black goat that watches too closely, a grandmother’s book sewn in human-hide leather, a voice from beneath the floorboards, or a coven that meets where the road forks beneath a moonless sky.

Witches in Aetheris are not members of a single worldwide order. They belong to covens, bloodlines, solitary traditions, or cursed apprenticeships. Many serve the evil gods. Others bargain with the Old Gods, primordial powers, buried spirits, forgotten things, or divine remnants that predate civilized worship. Whatever the source, witchcraft changes the one who practices it. It may grant sight, beauty, healing, vengeance, or command over curse and charm, but it always leaves a mark.

Description

Witches occupy a feared and ambiguous place in Aetheris. They are curse-workers, midwives, poisoners, healers, omen-readers, bone-speakers, spirit-binders, and keepers of old rites. A village may spit at the witch’s door by daylight, then beg for her help when fever takes a child, wolves gather at the fence, or a bride wakes speaking in a dead woman’s voice.

Unlike clerics, witches rarely serve through public doctrine or sanctioned temples. Unlike wizards, they do not depend solely on formal arcane study. Their power is intimate, ritualistic, and transactional. A witch knows which herbs ease pain and which ones make a confession spill from a noble’s mouth. She knows how to sour milk, bless a birth, call a familiar, bind a wound, ruin a harvest, and make a name hurt when spoken aloud.

Most witches are women, though men may also walk the crooked path. Male witches often bear regional names such as witch-men, thorn-priests, cursefathers, blacksons, marrow-speakers, or hag-sworn. Regardless of sex, all witches live under suspicion. Some are true servants of monstrous powers. Others are protectors whose methods terrify the very people they defend. Many are both.

Background Ability Bonuses

Choose one of the following ability score increases:

• Wisdom +2 and Charisma +1
• Intelligence +2 and Wisdom +1
• Charisma +2 and Wisdom +1
• Wisdom +1, Intelligence +1, and Charisma +1

Suggested default: Wisdom +2 and Charisma +1.

Wisdom reflects your intuition, omen-reading, folk medicine, and ability to sense unseen influences. Charisma reflects the force of your presence, your talent for bargains, and the unsettling authority that makes others lean closer even when afraid.

Witch Experience

Roll a d10 or choose one.

d10	Witch Experience
1	You were raised by a coven that vanished after a failed rite.
2	You learned your first charm from a dying grandmother who warned you never to say her true name.
3	A familiar found you as a child and has never truly left.
4	You saved a village with forbidden magic, and they feared you more afterward.
5	You uncovered a grimoire hidden inside a wall, coffin, well, or cradle.
6	You made a bargain with an evil god’s servant and still owe the price.
7	An Old God spoke to you in a dream, beneath ice, roots, stone, ash, or deep water.
8	You were accused of witchcraft before you ever practiced it, then became what they feared.
9	You broke from your coven after learning what they planned to sacrifice.
10	You carry a curse meant for someone else, and it has begun teaching you things.

 

Using the Witch Background

This background is ideal for Warlocks, Druids, Sorcerers, Wizards, Clerics of dark or forbidden powers, Bards of unsettling traditions, Rogues with occult ties, Rangers who walk cursed wilds, or Blood Hunters whose knowledge came from the very darkness they now oppose.

A Witch character does not need to be evil. Some witches are protectors, healers, curse-breakers, or rebels against cruel temples and tyrants. However, witchcraft in Aetheris is never clean. Its power is rooted in bargains, old rites, corruption, and contact with beings that often see mortals as tools, vessels, or offerings.

Good-aligned witches should feel morally tense rather than sanitized. They may heal the sick, but with a charm learned from a cannibal saint. They may protect a village, but only because something beneath the well demands one night of silence each year. They may hate their patron, fear their coven, or seek redemption from rites they once performed willingly.

"Call me healer when the fever breaks. Call me monster when the grave opens. I have been both, and the night answered me all the same."
— Veyra Thrice-Knotted, witch of the Blackroot Road

Ability Scores: Choose one of the following ability score increases:

• Wisdom +2 and Charisma +1
• Intelligence +2 and Wisdom +1
• Charisma +2 and Wisdom +1
• Wisdom +1, Intelligence +1, and Charisma +1

Suggested default: Wisdom +2 and Charisma +1.

Wisdom reflects your intuition, omen-reading, folk medicine, and ability to sense unseen influences. Charisma reflects the force of your presence, your talent for bargains, and the unsettling authority that makes others lean closer even when afraid.

Feat: The Witch background is suitable for characters whose powers come from forbidden rites, occult study, spiritual bargains, or ritual inheritance.

Choose the following feats, with DM approval:

• Magic Initiate
• Skilled
• Alert
• Healer
• Shadow Touched
• Fey Touched
• Poisoner

If using Magic Initiate, suggested spell lists include Druid, Warlock, Wizard, or Cleric. Suitable cantrips include Guidance, Thaumaturgy, Druidcraft, Minor Illusion, Chill Touch, Mage Hand, or Message. Suitable 1st-level spells include Find Familiar, Hex, Charm Person, Disguise Self, Detect Magic, Bane, or Cure Wounds.

Skill Proficiencies: You gain proficiency in the following skills:

• Arcana
• Deception
• Insight
• Medicine
• Nature
• Religion
• Survival

Tool Proficiencies: You gain proficiency with the following tools:

• Herbalism Kit
• Alchemist’s Supplies
• Poisoner’s Kit
• Cook’s Utensils
• Calligrapher’s Supplies
• Weaver’s Tools

Languages: You gain two languages of your choice. Suggested languages include:

• Abyssal
• Infernal
• Primordial
• Sylvan
• Deep Speech
• Celestial
• Draconic
• Undercommon

Equipment:

• You start with the following equipment:

  • A set of common clothes, travel-stained and marked with hidden charms
  • A dark cloak, shawl, hood, or mantle suitable for ritual work
  • An herbalism kit
  • One additional tool with which you are proficient
  • A small ritual knife, bone needle, iron nail, or carved charm
  • A pouch of dried herbs, grave salt, red thread, candle stubs, and strange seeds
  • A handwritten charm-book, family grimoire, or coded journal
  • A token from your coven, mentor, patron, or first curse
  • A pouch containing 15 gp

  Optional, with DM approval: a harmless familiar-like animal companion such as a black cat, raven, toad, rat, moth, snake, hare, or pale-eyed dog. This creature does not gain the benefits of the Find Familiar spell unless you have that spell or another feature granting it.

Suggested Characteristics

Witches come from a variety of backgrounds, each shaping their personalities, motivations, and values. Consider the following traits when developing your character:

d6	Personality Trait
1	I speak softly because I know how dangerous words can be.
2	I collect bones, herbs, buttons, teeth, hair, candle wax, and other useful little truths.
3	I never enter a home without noticing the hearth, threshold, windows, and exits.
4	I treat promises as living things and become uneasy when others make them carelessly.
5	I am kind to the desperate, because desperation is where witchcraft most often begins.
6	I smile when people call me wicked. It is easier than explaining the difference between wickedness and necessity.

d6	Ideal
1	Power. No one will ever make me helpless again.
2	Protection. If the world fears my methods, so be it. The innocent still need someone willing to stand in the dark.
3	Vengeance. A wrong unanswered becomes a wound in the world.
4	Tradition. The old rites survived because they work.
5	Freedom. No temple, crown, coven, or patron owns my soul.
6	Knowledge. Every curse is a lesson, every omen a door, every monster a scripture written badly.

d6	Bond
1	My coven is scattered, dead, hidden, or hunting me.
2	I owe my life to a familiar, spirit, fiend, fey, or forgotten power.
3	I protect a village, family, graveyard, shrine, road, or ancient tree that others do not understand.
4	I carry the grimoire, bones, mask, or charm of the witch who taught me.
5	I made a bargain to save someone I loved, and the debt still breathes.
6	I am searching for the true name of the power behind my magic.

d6	Flaw
1	I believe every kindness hides a bargain.
2	I sometimes curse people in anger and regret it only after the magic listens.
3	I keep secrets even when sharing them would save lives.
4	I am drawn to forbidden rites, especially when warned away from them.
5	I struggle to tell the difference between justice and revenge.
6	Part of me enjoys being feared.

Contacts

Witches do not answer to a global organization, but almost every witch has a web of dangerous connections. Your contacts may include a former coven-sister, a hedge-priest who trades in grave dirt and relics, a midwife who knows which children were born under ill omens, a smuggler who carries forbidden books, a village elder who publicly condemns you but privately seeks your help, a witch hunter who spared your life, or a familiar that reports to something other than you.

These contacts are rarely simple allies. A witch’s network is built on favors, secrets, old debts, curses, and half-kept promises. When you seek information about local superstitions, curses, strange births, missing children, forbidden shrines, dark gods, Old God cults, or suspicious deaths, you may know someone who knows more than they should.