Witches

**Witches** are the only Humans able to use magic without magical items. Their huge powers make them the most powerful beings of the Shrinking Woods, making them almost impossible to beat without fitting equipment, preparation, and luck.

Often seen as demonic beings because of their powers and often actually troublesome, Witches are excluded from society and have no rights among other Humans. This is why these magical beings mostly live in the woods and mountains, alone or inside small Witches communities. Because of the ban against them, the Knights use to hunt down witches inside the Human communities, and sometimes in the woods although Witches rule there. When a knight is able to (shrink and) catch a witch, their absence of rights makes their captor free to use them as pets, totems, or just sell them in Caerville.

Though when they are free, Witches are everything but helpless. Although they aren't all aggressive, the chances are high for a convoy of iron or anybody wandering around the woods without an escort to get shrunk, robbed or kidnapped. They are what makes the woods dangerous for other humans, as well as for themselves since some witches don't bother catching other witches.

Although a few *male witches* do exist, these magic users are most of the time females. Witchcraft is also not really hereditary, as regular Villagers or Knights can give birth to a witch without any identifiable cause. Furthermore, the parents can't know that their daughter is a witch before she's around 18 years old, since powers only appear around this age. There are rumors that girls born with an unusual hair color are more likely to become witches, though it has not been proved.

## Life of a witch

**Birth** : The parents of a witch can be from any social class, meaning that they're often not witches themselves. Although Witches have higher chances to give birth to witches than other Humans, their lack of males and social interactions causes most of the new witches to be born from Knights and Villagers parents. Preventing Witches from reproducing is also one of the reasons of their exclusion.

**Childhood** : However once she is born, there's no easy way to know that a girl is a witch before she is around 18 years old. Some magic already flows inside the girl's body before this age, though there's no external sign of it. Thus most witches live a regular childhood in Caerville till their powers start to show up. The statement that girls with original hair colors (green, pink, blue, etc) will become witches can often be heard, though it isn't based on any evidence and almost all witches have a common hair color. However it is proved that the life of the future witch affects the witch kind she will get. A farmer girl has chances to become a Light Witch or a Fairish Witch, when a theft orphan girl will probably be a Shapeshifter Witch, et cetera.

**Magical maturity** : When a witch reaches her magical maturity around 18 years old, only a few months elapse between the first expression of her powers and their maturation. However these powers are not fully under control yet, and the young witch may unwillingly activate them in unexpected situations. The lack of control over new powers is especially a problem when most witches try to hide their magic from their family. For example, many Shapeshifter Witches have been revealed after they unwillingly shrunk down somebody with a simple eye contact. In addition, mastering magical powers is almost impossible without much training, something hiding witches can't afford while they mustn't be caught using magic. Consequently almost all the young witches eventually end up fleeing from Caerville before they get arrested by the Knights, taking refuge in the woods.

**Settlement** : Leaving her hometown is often the most difficult part of a witch's life. She abruptly needs to learn to live in the woods on her own, and to alternately avoid the Knights and ill-intentioned witches she may meet there. The luckiest young witches only receive some support from the rare parents who dare to brave social and legal pressures to bring some food to their children on their first weeks out there. After some time, if the departing witch hasn't been caught, it's time for her to settle somewhere in the forest. She usually picks a place meeting these 3 conditions : abundance of food and water, possibility to shelter, and absence of knights and other witches.

**Adulthood** : Once the witch was able to get herself in a stable condition, there's no more standard life path. She sometimes only wishes to live in peace hidden in her shelter, sometimes dreams of revenge upon the Villagers and Knights, and sometimes embraces her powers to make the others bow to her. Based on her past education and experience, each witch might be forgotten or become the worst nightmare of Caerville. She may also remain alone or eventually get together with other Witches in more or less big communities in the woods.

## Witches powers

Although they are all considered as the same by the Villagers and Knights, a quite wide diversity of magical powers exists among Witches. In addition of several little powers shared by all of them, most of the powers of the *Shrinking Woods* Witches are specific to their Witch kind.

### Common to all witches

#### Various

* **Wind** : Witches can make little blows of wind around themselves, just enough to give the creep in the woods by night, blow out a torch, or boost a fire with fresh oxygen.
* **Telekinesis** : Witches can manipulate the items around them, on the condition that the item is less than 1/20 of the size of the witch. For example when she is normal size, a witch can lock a door.
* **Healing** : Witches can easily heal the superficial wounds of other people. With some more effort they can accelerate the healing pace of heavier injuries. Though their power over a mortal injury is only to keep the victim alive with a regular care, till a Healer Witch can be found. A Genie cursed Witch can also make a wish to fix mortal injuries, though the following recover time is multiple weeks long. Additionally, magical transformations keep injuries.
* **Botanic knowledge** : Without exactly knowing how, witches can sense that some of the plants they encounter in the woods have interesting properties. Though they often need to do a few experiments before discovering the possible uses of a plant, discouraging many of them from searching.
* **Magic sensing on a map** : A witch of whatever size can locate on a map another witch picked randomly and determine their kind of powers (Shapeshifter, Mirror Witch, etc). It can be useful to a witch hunter, though the witch who performs the sensing needs to be well fed and rested to make it work. This witch also ends up so worn out that she needs to rest for the whole day to completely recover. Furthermore, the location is only in the witch's mind, allowing her to not tell the truth about where it actually is.
* **Totem witches** : Other humans can use shrunk witches as totems to get magical powers.

#### Creatures

An important common Witch power is to be able to create two living creatures from inanimate materials :

* **Living scarecrows** are the weakest creature of the *Shrinking Woods*, and so the easiest to make and to break. They consist of an enchanted scarecrow or a thin wooden mannequin, that moves and attacks whoever its owner wants, by hopping.
* **Iron golems** in contrast are almost unstoppable, although being made of iron makes it extremely expensive for witches who often lack this type of metal. Once the metal is enchanted though, a golem is directly controlled by its owner and can endure several hits from town defences before being destroyed. Fairish Witches can however not use iron golems because of their weakness to metal.

### Specific to witch kinds

Each witch has a kind, coming with its own powers and weaknesses :

Main kinds of Witches
 Light Witch | Yes on others
 Genie cursed Witch | Yes on others
 Mirror Witch | o On others using portals
 Sphinx Witch | o Shrinks others when they can't answer a riddle, can grow herself
 Tamer Witch | o Shrinks people bitten by her animals

Secondary kinds of Witches, rarer and harder to roleplay
 Healer Witch | o Shrinks injured people
 Enhancer Witch | o Size transfer (she can only give size)

### Size limits of powers (Golden rule of Witches powers)

The same way as all witches have common powers, they also have common weakness that their powers are proportional to their size. It means that a witch the size of a tree is around 100 times more powerful than a 100 times tinier witch the size of a mouse. One consequence of this rule is the golden rule of witch powers :

**The powers of a single witch cannot affect a person or an object bigger than this witch**.

For the same reason, a witch cannot grow anything (including herself) to a bigger size than hers. However these size limits can be bypassed when multiple witches join powers, allowing them to cast a single spell to something bigger than all of them though using all their energy.

For example a Shapeshifter Witch can transform herself into a crow, though she can't turn into a giant oak tree since giant oaks are bigger than her. If she wants to turn into that giant oak tree, she first needs her human form to be grown. Assuming that a giant oak is 10 times bigger than her, she needs a group of 10 (including herself) witches of any kinds to make herself grow to the size of the giant tree. Though after it's done, none of these 10 witches will be able to use magic again before some recovering time.

Another example could be the one of a Tamer Witch. That witch couldn't use her taming power on a grizzly while being her original size, since the grizzly is bigger than her. Though she can use her power on a spider since it's smaller. Then when the spider bites another normal sized person, that person is shrunk despite the fact that they are bigger than the spider. Now if the witch is shrunk to the size of her spider, she will still be able to tame spiders, though biting a normal sized person won't have any more effects since the other person is now bigger than the witch. Only the current size of the witch counts for size limits.