The Witch and the Wile (GLoGtober 2024)

This is for the two complimentary monsters challenge in GLoGtober 2024.

So your town has pissed off a local witch. These sorts of things happen with an uncomfortable frequency in the Starklands, so what was it this time?

 

Justin Gerard

What did your village do this time?

1. Someone cut down the witch's favorite tree and it was very explicitly marked with sigils and craft. No one will fess up. 

2. A drunk stumbled from the tavern into the woods and threw up in the sacred spring. The naiads called in a favor from the witch.

3. Patricians from the nearest city are going around trying to stifle witchcraft and require locals see doctors in the city. The witch has taken offense that her cures are insufficient. 

4. There's been a spree of cat killings throughout the village and the witch has had enough of it.

5. An oppressive religious sect has taken up residence in the village and is spreading rumors about the witch's terrible powers. They aren't fully wrong. 

6. Sulfur mine expansions have destroyed a precious foraging spot for rare mushrooms. It was the last one for miles.

Consequences and the Wile

Lusy_sama

When a Witch is ready to begin her mischief, making the town rue the day they brought her anger upon them or at least until they right their wrong, a Wile comes into her service. Sometimes a ritual is done, but more often than not Wiles have a sense about these sort of things and find their way to where they are needed. Whatever the witch does, the Wile is there to amplify and sow discord amongst the townsfolk. Their relationship is not exactly mutual- many a Witch's grimoire warns of the dangers of Wiles left unchecked.

Wiles have no shape or form of their own, instead adapting whatever suits their fancy- but a careful observer will notice their shapeshifting is never quite perfect. They aren't said to be strictly speaking intelligent- possessing more of a feral trickster level of intelligence and a sharp sense of where to twist a knife and mimic sharp words as like a malicious mockingbird. Their touch rusts new metal and gnarls wooden craft- wherever they've been one is sure to find twisted roots sprouted up from the ground where it walked.

Without any prompting by the Witch, the Wile amplifies her hexes and curses. If she brings a storm onto the village then the Wile is there howling in the night, shaking windows and doors, and calling in the voice of loved ones from just outside. If the Witch invokes a pustule pox then the Wile is there, a faceless familiar villager in the back of the crowds jeering and riling the town up. 

Though Wiles are more than happy to raise trouble for the fun of it, they also tend to take things from unsuspecting villagers. Precious jewelry, mementos, diaries, spices and the like are all up for the taking by the creature which will usually lair in a hollow tree nearby and revel in its ill gotten gains. 

Jonathan Gregory Bick

Many charms and counters are said to work against Wiles. Sometimes a Wile gets carried away and goes too far, taking a child, killing a herd, and the Witch herself may turn against it and expel it. Like all beasts of the wood it shirks from fire, though salt has no effect on it. A clever village may be able to catch and trap one by locking eyes with one another standing in a circle- ensuring someone will recognize and point out a lurking Wile in their midst. 

By the time a town has appeased the Witch and she ends her torments the Wile will have moved on, oftentimes lazily lairing in its hollow tree nearby and pulling tricks on unwary travelers until another Witch has need. 

Old myth and legend tells of the first Wile to walk the lands as a curse upon witches. They tell of the time when a Witch first acted in rash anger against a village that had offended, and the Wile leapt up from the ground and began their mischief. They amplified the Witch's fury and soon had goaded the Witch into wholesale destruction. While storm and root tore the town open the Wile stalked from home to home, eyes glowing bright, cackling laughter of parents and children, claws dripping red and rending villagers limb from limb. When the fury cleared the Witch's vision she saw what she had wrought- and what she had let stoke and feed on her rage- and lamented.