Witches

*See Also: Witch Queens*

**Languages:** Common, Latin, and Enochian.

Witches live on the Pantook Mountain away from the rest of humanity; they separate themselves on purpose, wanting to distance themselves from the petty concerns of humans. They believe themselves to be a step above those who live below the mountains and have had little to no dealings with them until recently.

There are currently only two clans left, The Acoma Clan and Caddo Castle, where the royal family lives.

They are a secretive group of humanoids who are extremely tall and beautiful. It is completely unheard of for a witch to be any less than six feet tall. They also often have pointed ears, though some witches carry this trait more strongly than others. They are always born as twins which cannot stand to be separated for very long, any longer than three months at a time will spiral them into a depression that will eventually become debilitating.

They can live to be 120 years old and are extremely healthy, rarely taking ill, but if one twin dies, the other always dies soon after it. They remain looking young and healthy until the last year of their life, when their body ages very rapidly.

Male witches can be called either witches or warlocks, with witch being both the general term for their race as well as specifically the female gender. Twins can be of either gender and can look identical or completely different.

Even though they live for such a long time and are always born as twins, they have not overpopulated their mountain due to the fertility difficulties of their kind.

## Government

Their government is a matriarchy ruled by two witch twin queens from the Moon family. The queens are chosen by the coven which is made up of five representatives from the Acoma Clan. The coven is in charge of most of the day to day governing of the witches, while the queens concentrate more on the big picture. They hold the right to veto any decision made by the coven, but it is the coven who create the legislature for governing the witches.

## Currency

The witches have no currency. They operate on a barter system.

## History

In the beginning, only the Nephilim lived on Atlantis, but it wasn’t long before humans found their way there as well. The humans were few and far between and the Nephilim paid them no heed. Thanks to the goddess Gaia they gave birth to twice as many babies as most human mothers and they covered most of the mountains, save the still active volcano. Each Mountain was home to a clan:

They were the: Acer, Consistorium, Operior, and Amplus clans.

They hid their presence through powerful wards and spells, kept in place by crystals filled with magical energy. When the dragons attacked, many of these crystals were broken, spilling magical energy down the mountains into the valley below. It sank into the soil, affecting everything that grew there as well as creatures eating the vegetation. Thus, the Black Woods was born.

Many of the wards hiding the Nephilim from the humans down below failed, and the Nephilim who survived abandoned many of their cities, migrating to the one mountain which still offered protection.

When Gaia brought her fallen daughter to them to give them Líf and Lífþrasir it was on this mountain, and they built her a temple on the very top of the mountain and Líf and Lífþrasir resided just below the temple, forming the Cado Clan.

It was around this time that their fertility seemed to dissipate, though they still bore twins. Líf and Lífþrasir had twin girls (Lilly and Rose), but were unable to conceive after that. The twin sisters ruled after their parents’ death and their main focus was on the sudden infertility of their people. Women had always been revered in their society, but their status became even greater after this. Couples began praying for at least one girl in every twin set in order to keep the population from dying out. Only ten sets of twins were born in a five year period. The practice of monogamy went out of style fairly quickly and marriage was soon abolished.

It was not enough however, and Lilly and Rose noted the way the humans seemed to be multiplying exponentially. They ordered that humans be adbucted and brought to the mountain to see if mixing with their genes would make them more fertile again. The women who were abducted, bore only human children without a twin and were sent away, back to their human lands. The female nephilim who were impregnated by human men bore twins and their children were considered nephilim.

The humans who went back to their lands told stories about witches up on the mountain and so the nephilim became the witches.

Lilly and Rose had many lovers, and both bore children, but it was unknown which of their consorts fathered them, and lineage was thus decreed to be passed down by the mother.

Lilly gave birth to Sol and Selene, while Rose gave birth to Ross and Diana. Having born one male and one female each, they decided that along with lineage, also went the right to rule, and the two females became the next two queens.

Selene bore twin daughters, named Cereus and Primrose, while Rose’s daughter Diana, bore two sons, Theron and Lance. Cereus and Primrose became the queens, while Theron and Lance became the captains of the guard. Primrose gave birth to Primola and Prima. Wanting to ensure her daughters’ the crowns, Primrose murdered her sister, killing herself in the process, leaving her twin daughters to rule. That act nearly cost them the throne however and the clans elected a representative from each of all five of them to represent their clan’s interests and choose the next successor in the event of multiple female births in the royal line.

Now that all five clans were together on one mountain and monogamy was a thing of the past, the clans began to intermingle and as there became fewer and fewer of them, they combined themselves into one clan, the Acoma Clan, taking the first letter of each clan’s original name to form a word, meaning 'sky castle'. Echoing the sacred number five, Cado then became Caddo, and so there were only two clans on the mountain.

The royal family lived in the palace, the males as well as the females and eventually, with the injection of human genes, their numbers swelled slightly and the queens no longer focused on having heirs. The coven chose the successors from any females in the royal family and some of them, took it upon themselves, to create the next queens once they themselves had been passed over for the title.