Ordo Velum Mundi · Historical Archives Division
The Codex
The world has rules. The supernatural operates according to documented principles: belief-based power systems, Progenitor lineages, the seven societies, and the mechanisms the Velum Institute has spent seven hundred years mapping.
Selected records have been cleared for external distribution. Additional documentation remains classified pending mandatory review cycles.
Bestiary: Witch / Sorcerer (11)
Baba Cloanța
An elderly woman with exaggerated hag-features that intensify as the practitioner ages and deepens their transgression: increasingly long, claw-like nails, yellow or red-tinted eyes, dry papery skin with an unusual capacity for facial contortion. The Baba Cloanța moves with deceiving agility for her apparent age.
Baba Yaga
The iconic image: a very old woman, bony-legged (her name has been variously interpreted as relating to bone or to forest), with iron teeth or a long sharp nose, living in a hut on chicken legs in the deep forest, travelling in a mortar and pestle. The chicken-legged hut and mortar travel are not merely metaphor: Baba Yaga-type practitioners in the World...
Bokor
No consistent physical template. The Bokor is often indistinguishable from an oungan or mambo (the standard Vodou priests) by appearance: the distinction is in practice and in the willingness to engage the darker Lwa, not in any physical marker.
Boszorkány
Hungarian witches in folk tradition are depicted across a wide physical range. The Boszorkány is not primarily defined by appearance but by behaviour: the capacity to project illness, affect the weather and livestock, enter a trance state, and transform into animals. In human form, they are often unremarkable or even respected community members, and a...
Dame Blanche
A woman of striking beauty in white clothing, encountered at bridge crossings, narrow passes, or threshold locations. Some accounts describe a quality of translucence or an unusual perfection to the white garments. The Dame Blanche is not a ghost (Restless Spirit lineage) though she is often confused with one: she is a living practitioner whose power and...
Garabonciás
A young man (the tradition specifies youth, and in the World this is because the Garabonciás transgression point tends to be crossed early, during the period of intense scholarly acquisition) with an unusual intensity to his eyes and a permanent quality of barely restrained energy. He travels with an aged, mysterious book and is often accompanied by a black...
Koschei the Deathless
Gaunt to the point of apparent skeletal reduction, but with a lean physical power that belies the wizened frame. The eyes carry the quality common to all long-lived practitioners: they look, from behind an old face, like something not especially old at all. Koschei-type practitioners in the World are not literally undead: their bodies have aged, but the...
Ragana
The Baltic witch tradition carries a particularly strong association with animal transformation: the Ragana is most frequently described as appearing in human form but capable of transforming into any animal, with the black cat, raven, and frog being especially traditional. In full human form, she is often associated with crossroads and forest-edge...
Shtriga
In human form, the Shtriga appears as a woman of middle or advanced age, often described as having pale, colourless eyes (the "white eyes" of Albanian tradition), a crooked or hook nose, and a manner that is simultaneously too attentive and too knowing. The Shtriga's physical appearance is not necessarily ugly: some accounts describe them as handsome in a...
Strega
No single consistent physical template. Italian witches in folk tradition ranged from beautiful seductresses (particularly the Janara of Naples, associated with night-riding and sexual predation) to terrifying hags. The actual Strega practitioner tends toward the seductive template at the beginning of their practice and the hag template as the power costs...
Wiedźma
The Polish witch tradition provides no single physical template. What it does provide is a highly detailed behavioural and social profile: the Wiedźma is typically identified not by appearance but by their isolation from normal community reciprocity. A woman who gives nothing, shares nothing, and whose misfortune is always someone else's misfortune: that is...