REALMS of the WITCHES

 


THE SEASONAL REALMS
        In time before time, the Old Ones, also known as the Pure Ones and the True Wyck, had established meeting-points for their gatherings; though they were solitary and self-sufficient, they were known to meet at the solstices and equinoxes to share their wisdom and celebrate the Cycle with their brothers and sisters.  The places they chose were powerful Nodes, scattered throughout the world but easily reached by walking the Paths of the Wyck (see below), or even the less-direct ley-lines and spider-paths that in those times criss-crossed the world.  As the power of Reason began to wax millennia later, and the Gauntlet grew thick to separate the accepted realities from those that were unacceptable, these powerful Nodes retreated a bit from the world, and grew difficult to find.  When the Order of Reason launched its final and direct attacks on the mystics of the world, these Seasonal Nodes were among their primary targets, and were each eventually overcome...the tale of the Roman invasion of the Druidic stronghold on Anglesey in A.D. 61 was the account of the fall of the first of these Nodes, but the other three were mostly shunted out of consensual reality between the12th and 16th centuries (though the Spring Cottage held out till the late 1800s).  It is said that the Old One known as Lillith -- yes, the proud and sorcerous first wife of the mythical Adam -- was responsible for the "rescue" of at least one of the Nodes, placing it near Luna on the Horizon.

VIOUVRE ("THE WINTER CASTLE")
        A treacherous and icy mountain land that was once part of the French Alps, there are tales of a great dragon who has appeared a few times in the realm, a monstrous being whose intents and desires are unknown; he could be an ancient protector who serves the Pure Ones, a Mythic Bygone seeking shelter, or a greedy monster plotting to capture the realm.  White animals roam, winter roses twine in mazes through the rocks under a half-ruined castle, and a dark forest blankets the mountains, the ice and snow on its branches glowing silver in the moonlight.  An ancient, crimson oak sits gnarled and huge in the castle's courtyard.

AN GHIBLIN COILLE ("THE SPRING COTTAGE")
        This roughly forested and hilly Realm remained a Node in the depths of the Catskills in New York until the late 1800s, when it finally was mapped into nonexistance by the Technocratic Union and became part of an ancient and primordial Forest-Realm.  Petals fall from the flowered trees and bushes that surround the little structure, which has an appearance reminiscent of native lodges.  The animal population is large, and their actions are a constant reminder of the fertility of spring.  A natural well lies at the edge of where the forest gets unimaginably thick -- an old goddess-pool whose deeps and darks are disturbing and uncertain at best; the water lies far below ground-level in a rough and lightless hole.  Stay away from this place unless you want to face the darkest part of your Self.

THE SUMMER GROVE
        Once a part of "Prester John's" fabled kingdom in Ethiopa, which the Technocracy attacked, destroyed, and then reported to have never existed.  The Summer Grove is a large grove of ancient oaks, with a vast clearing in their middle; in the center of this clearing is a tree so massive as to be nearly beyond belief.  The path in and out of the grove is marked by standing-stones, and another path that follows a small creek leads into a nearby valley, where the ruins of goddess-temples built of limestone dot the sides of hills and plateaus over which thunderclouds gather darkly.  One of the many other paths is said to lead across wide and grassy plains to the fabled kingdom of Prester John, but none have ever found the right path; all who have tried have wound up trapped in the vast oak forest for days at best, weeks or months even...some have never returned.  There are some faeries in the oaken woods, beings who lived in these woods when they were of the earth, and never left.  Some say that the Great Summer Tree is alive, and can speak to those who know how to listen.  This realm has always held a great part in the myths of the Sacrificed God.

ANGLESEY ("THE AUTUMN CIRCLE")


FAERIE (THE TWILIGHT WORLD)

HY-BREASIL ("ATLANTIS")
        The mythical lost continent where the Pure Ones were said to have built their utopian civilization before it was brought down by treachery, pride, or mere accident, depending on what legend you listen to.  This Underwater Realm is now the province of the Faeries, who will often admit that a race of great beings once ruled a golden kingdom here before the land sank under the sea, which has led some to believe that both the Faeries and the primal Wyck mages descended from the same stock: that of the Pure Ones.

AVALON
        This Island Realm, a massive hill rising up from a silvery lake, has borne many names -- the Isle of Glass, Tir nam Beo, Eden...under the name of Glastonbury Tor, this Realm is the remnant of the hill where the Pure One known as Cerridwen, the Hag, watched over the powerful talisman known as the Black Cauldron, which she used to reincarnate the pagan souls the Horned Faerie King Arawn brought her on Samhuine every year.  A gate to the Faerie Realm of Annywn (see below) is said to lie on this isle, but was closed when the mages of the Celestial Chorus battled with the Faerie King, summoning one of their champions to banish him so that they could claim this hill as a Node.  When the Order of Reason drove them out a few centuries later, the place mysteriously withdrew from reality, and the faeries now tell of gates guarded by angels with flaming swords that block them from entering their old home.  The Celestial Chorus now refers to this Realm as Eden or Shehaqim, and claims that their utopian Ascended City (Jerusalem, or whatever) is hidden there.

ANNWYN
        A Faerie realm of tunnels and caverns, with a great and glittering city called Antrum nestled in its dark bosom.  This is the easiest Faerie Realm to find, and might exist only half within Faerie and half in some sort of Faerie "Penumbra".  Within Annwyn can be found the legendary River of Blood, and this Realm is ruled by the rage-filled Horned King Arawn, also known as Gwynn ap Nudd, the horned quicksilver dragon.  Trapped in his cavern-realm, he thrashes and rages, emerging only on the rare Samhuine night when certain witch-mages make use of the thinned Gauntlet to give him one night to return to his Wild Hunt, collecting the souls of the virtuous pagans and saving them from the Astral Hells to which they would otherwise wander.


THE PATHS OF THE WYCK (NULL ZONE)
        What most mages call "the Null Zone" is actually the complex and mysterious system of sub-dimensional pathways established by the Pure Ones, a sort of framework for the ley-lines and airts of earth.  No magicks will work here, nor any static sorcery, spirit-Gifts, or bloody Disciplines.  These Paths of the Wyck can get a knowledgeable traveler across thousands of miles in seconds, or lose an ignorant one in eternally shifting empty halls.  These paths are sometimes called "the backstage at the theater of reality", and they seem to have little to do with reality as we know it; time and space are not a concern in the paths, and they seem to all spread out from a central point, a strangely calm and hollow set of tunnels that weave throughout the roots of a massive tree...


MIDREALM (THE WORLD TREE)