Witch Queen: <ahem!> “Okay, I hope that you don’t think that I’m going to give you all my secrets, but here goes.
“First of all, while it may not seem like it, but there IS such a thing as too many covens. Yeah, I know, I have covens all over New Jersey, in southern New York, and southeast Pennsylvania, so who am I to talk? Well, the reason why I have all these covens spread all over the place is that when you have too many witches in one area, things get nasty.
“First of all, an area will only support so many witches, like an area can support only so many of any one kind of predator. If you have too many witches concentrated in one area. People start noticing weird things and call the cops- or worse, superheroes. Magical resources start getting thin. And worse, when you have that many witches in one area, they start to fight. Like Spiders.
“Second, witches operating tend to create, for want of a better word, ‘magical waste’; weird things start happening, nasty critters start crawling out of the woodwork, cows start giving sour milk, people start having bad dreams, fonts of essence start getting wonky, and like that. Hey, a few years ago, there was this weird streak of really wild weather, and there were reports of entire colonies of bees just upping and dying. I don’t even wanna think about what was going on there. Now, I can just hear some snotty-ass New Yorkers saying ‘Hey, it’s New Jersey! Who’d notice?’ Who’d notice? The very last people I want noticing, that’s who.
“Third, the women that I recruit for my Witch Cult tend to not be sweet, gentle, nurturing caregivers. No, we let those types join Wiccan cults and other New Age sissiness. No, My Girls are way more dynamic and aggressive and downright mean, than that. Which is great for breaking out of the petit bourgeois suburban traps that they’ve built for themselves. But it also means that they’re not satisfied with being at the bottom of any pecking order. Now, I’m the Witch Queen, I’m the source of all their magical power, I’ve got a more magical power and lore and talismans than they could even dream of having, and I’ve got squads of heavily armed, magically-charged enforcers who’re loyal to ME. So, taking me out is way beyond most of them. That makes their loyal coven leaders the most likely targets. Think about PTA politics- with Dark Magic. Now take a break and check your underwear.
“As a result of this, while lots of my covens are very tight, and have been operating for years, there’s also a far amount of turnover, with members leaving or being ejected for one reason or another, or the covens break up with small groups leaving the coven to form their own. As a matter of fact, that splintering is the main reason why my Witch Cult is so wide-spread. I mean, they’re not going to start up their new coven in the same town, and why go through all the tsuris of picking up and moving, just to relocate in the next town, 20 miles over? I even have a couple of covens over in California, but they’re real isolated, and they can’t rely on my armed support in anything like tactically efficient time, so they keep a real LOW profile. So most of them stay in Jersey, or east Pennsy; some of the ones that have done really well moved up into Westchester and the better parts of Long Island.
“When a Coven member comes to me, asking to found a new coven- and YES, they DO have to ask my permission!- I have to carefully consider several things:
• First of all, I have to consider the track record of the woman who’s trying to found the new coven. How capable is she? How personally powerful is she? What’s her personal style? Why did she leave her old coven? It does happen that a coven member will leave simply because she wants to strike out on her own, with her coven leader’s blessing and everything. Just nowhere as often as I’d personally like. Okay, obviously she’s ambitious. How ambitious? Are her eyes too big for her stomach? Or is she too hungry for her coven leader to keep around. Saying ‘Yes’ to members looking to found a coven is easy; it’s the saying ‘No’ that gets messy.
• Secondly, I have to consider the woman’s agenda. What does she want to do with her coven? If she just wants to bolster her business and live the Good Life, well, Goddess bless her! Unfortunately, a lot of them have ulterior motives. And on my list of Least Favorite Things To Do, ‘Cleaning up the mess made by a broad who never got over the fact that she wasn’t voted Prom Queen’ is somewhere between ‘Root Canal Surgery’ and ‘Testifying At Senate Subcommittees’. Hey, I used to do the ‘Summon Demons, Raise the Dead, and Subjugate Entire Communities’ thing. Now I have better things to do.
• Third, you have to consider the Community that she’s offering to move into. Can it really support a coven? I try to avoid setting up covens in big cities or in rural areas and really small towns. Big cities tend to have superheroes and supervillains and really tight organized crime families. And the bit about everyone in rural areas and small towns knowing everyone else’s business and being suspicious of newcomers is all-too real. I prefer suburbs and mid-sized towns, which have much of the lower pressure of the countryside, and most of the casual anonymity of large cities. Besides, My Girls understand suburban politics. And, most importantly, you can operate quietly in a suburb. That’s very important, being able to do business without the Media making a huge screaming crisis that <ominous roll of drums> The Witch Cult is operating in our fair city! Yeah, I know; I’m a supervillain, and I make headlines just by showing up in my war suit. So why am I so amped about My Girls keeping a low profile?
Well, to be honest, when you get rid of the circus costume and the silly name, I’m really a Mob Boss. I run rackets- magical rackets, but still, rackets. My bread and butter doesn’t come from the big heists that I make, or even from the dues the Rank and File pay; my regular payoff is the rake-off from a small handful of regular scams that the girls pull, and from selling materials to the Rank and File, so they can cast the spells they need to work whatever personal or coven-level rackets they have going. But if the News and the Do-Gooders and the Cops and the Churches all have their gums in an uproar about the ‘Evil Witches in our midst’, then the girls have to really lay low and keep it as surgically clean. Which means they’re not making money, which means that I’m not making money. Also, I’m smart enough to learn from History. What we learn from Al Capone (and Lucky Luciano and John Gotti) is that a famous Mob Boss is soon a jailed Mob Boss. As a matter of fact, a major reason why I pull big splashy heists as the Witch Queen with my Witch Knights and all the hoo-hah, is so that people will think of the Witch Queen as a ‘Supervillain’ and not a Mob Boss.
• Fourth, I have to consider the rackets they’re going to be running. While I may claim New Jersey as my turf, I’m hardly the only one running magical rackets in the Garden State. And while I’ve driven off more than one rival group, and absorbed a couple, there are groups I don’t even think about going up against. Fortunately, they’re mostly in the cities, and I can get around them simply by calling a meeting and simply agreeing on boundaries, like civilized people. Well, the fact that I can offer supply deals on various hard-to-come by materials at reasonable rates helps a lot. Also, there’s the fact that anyone who’s sophisticated enough to be a threat to me doesn’t want a magical turf war any more than I do. And if they’re not reasonable? Well, not to brag, but I DO know how to get into touch with at least one magical superhero… But still, it doesn’t help negotiations to start cutting in on the other party’s turf without giving them a chance to come to a reasonable agreement. And yes, I have nixed more than one potentially profitable expansion because it would mean crossing the wrong people.
“The traditional coven is twelve witches, but far various, a lot of covens are smaller. A lot of newly branched-off covens are only three or four women. If a prospective coven leader can’t talk at least two other members into leaving with her, then why should I bother with her? But on the upside, my covens don’t have to worry about many of the recruiting hassles that other clandestine organizations do. My Guide for the Coven Leader (available from your local Witch Cult provider, for only $49.99!) has spells for finding good prospects, gauging their character, contacting them in the right way, creating a binding magical contract that binds them to the Coven, and if absolutely necessary, to confuse her memories of all the pertinent details of the Coven in such a way that she’ll discredit herself.
When a new coven is founded, I invest a small but material additional amount of my Witchfire in the new coven leader, and she creates a connection to the new recruits, giving them a limited ability to work magic. When the altar of the coven is consecrated, I make a personal appearance to give my blessing to the new altar and those members who haven’t been presented yet. Usually this involves a larger donation of Witchfire, and balancing spark of the Aryan Exaltation to the new recruits and taking more binding oaths directly to me. Oh, and a lot of schmoozing and drinking, and coffee cake too.
Topic Author
