“miracle” or the intervention of some deity, rather than realizing that the true power lies within.
Celtic Witches
These witches come mainly from the southwestern regions of Ireland, sometimes known as the Emerald Isle because of its lush green grasslands, a consequence of even heavier rainfall than the County endures. It is a mysterious land, often shrouded in mist.
Little is known about these Celtic witches other than they worship the Old God called the Morrigan and operate alone (they do not belong to clans). They also form temporary alliances with the goat mages of that region, who sometimes use them as assassins to kill their enemies.
Lamia Witches
The first Lamia was a powerful enchantress of great beauty. She loved Zeus, the leader of the Old Gods, who was already married to the goddess Hera. Unwisely, Lamia then bore Zeus children. On discovering this, the jealous Hera slayed all but one of these unfortunate infants. Driven insane by grief, Lamia began to kill children wherever she found them, so that streams and rivers ran red with their blood and the air trembled with the cries of distraught parents. At last the gods punished her by shifting her shape so that her lower body became sinuous and scaled like that of a serpent.
Thus changed, she now turned her attentions to young men. She would call to them from a forest glade, only her beautiful head and shoulders visible above the undergrowth. Once she had lured her victim close, she wrapped her lower body around him tightly, squeezing the breath from his helpless body as her mouth fastened upon his neck until the very last drop of blood was drained.
Lamia later had a lover called Chaemog, a spider thing that dwelled in the deepest caverns of the earth. She bore him triplets, all female, and these were the first lamia witches. On their thirteenth birthday, they quarreled with their mother and, after a terrible fight, tore off her limbs and ripped her body to pieces. They fed every bit of her, including her heart, to a herd of wild boars.
Chaemog
The three lamia witches reached adulthood and became feared throughout the land. They were long-lived creatures and, by the process of parthenogenesis (needing no father), each gave birth to several children. Over centuries the race of lamia witches began to evolve and breeding patterns changed. Those who consorted with men took on human characteristics and sometimes bore hybrids; those who shunned human companionship retained their original forms and continued to give birth to fatherless children.
Lamia witches can now be classified as either feral or domestic. The former retain the shape of the originals—the triplets who emerged from Lamia’s womb. In their feral form, the majority scuttle about on all fours, have sharp claws, and drink the blood of humans and animals. They use blood magic and can summon victims to their presence and hold them in thrall just as a stoat transfixes a rabbit. Their homeland is Greece, but they often range far be-yond that nation’s boundaries and have been found in the County.
Those classified as domestic are human in appearance, but for a line of green and yellow scales that runs the length of the spine. They also use blood magic but augment this with bone magic; some even use familiars (see Witch Powers, page 120).
A Feral Lamia
Lamia witches are slow shape shifters. Those who associate with humans gradually take on the human female form. The opposite is also true. Bound in a pit, or somehow cut off from communication with humans, a domestic lamia witch gradually reverts to her feral form.
Some feral lamias, called vaengir,7 also have wings and can fly short distances, attacking victims from the air. These are relatively rare and seem doomed to extinction.
Hybrid lamias take many forms. Those born of human fathers are never totally human or totally lamia.
A Vaengir
MEG SKELTON8
One of the natural enemies of a spook is a witch, so it pains me to confess that the love of my life was the witch Meg Skelton. As a young man, I rescued her from a tower where she had been imprisoned by an abhuman who had been terrorizing the district, a fierce creature that I slew with my staff.
Finding Meg bound with a silver chain, I released her, and such was her powerful allure that I fell in love with her there and then. But when the morning came, I saw the line of green and yellow scales running the length of her spine and knew that Meg was