Weather Witches

[dragonmagitech]

The weather witches are an organization based out of the Gladeveins, dedicated to magical weather control for the benefit of all dragonkind. Though they originated in Nature, they have smaller outposts in most flights, and take all those who wish to learn.

A dragon whose native magic is not naturally suited to weather control may be trained in Water, or may learn to adapt their existing skills to a new purpose. Dragons without any magical aptitude do occasionally join the order, as there is always a need for recordkeepers and negotiators. Some of the weather witches can be a bit…prickly.

Though the order’s original mission is specifically one of aid, the actual execution varies, especially in outposts further away from the main base. Some weather witches have been known to leave the order and use their training for more selfish purposes; the order prefers to mete out justice for this offense themselves.

Generally speaking, weather witches can be hired for a small fee either individually or as a group, to irrigate crops, drive a dangerous storm away from a flimsy settlement, move a becalmed ship—almost anything you might need. Despite the nature of this work they do not take kindly to being called mercenaries. For reasons unknown, despite the amount of work they do, the weather witches are not very well-known outside their flight of origin, and flights without an outpost tend to be wholly ignorant of them.

Occasionally a weather witch will leave the order, not for selfish reasons, but because of misgivings about how the mission is being handled. Exorbitant rates, accepting payment to control weather in a harmful manner, and neglect are all cited at various times. While many disgruntled witches have brought such things to the attention of the higher-ups, corruption runs deep and the witches of Nature don’t usually have the resources to root it out. Witches who have left the order for this reason tend to travel, offering their services wherever they are needed for small amounts of money or food; working exclusively for one dragon or clan runs counter to their principles.

Comments

[dragonmagitech]

I had this on my journal but since it's a more general thing I thought it would make more sense here. But uh. If it shouldn't be here I'll delete it, of course.

[hologramdragons]

Nope, this is definitely the kind of thing this comm is for! It's tagged right, too - clanlore is for stories about specific characters, worldbuilding is general concepts + headcanon.

[hologramdragons]

Okay I'm more awake now and holy heck I love this. If you assume that the deities/pillarbits have a strong effect on local climate and that's why you have such...weird temperature zones in Sornieth, it scans even better, because you're going to have all kinds of bizarre weather patterns that need outside influence to keep them from getting out of hand.

I might refer to them in my lore at some point. What does their presence in the Ashfall Waste look like?

[dragonmagitech]

I will admit to not having thought about it much before but I imagine that'd be one of their larger outposts, since volcanic soil is really good for farming but there's the "huge hovering ash cloud" problem. I want to say the distribution of magic among them might lean more Ice/Fire than other regions because of temperature control issues [maybe Wind too, but like, this is also all heavily dependent on specific headcanons about how each flight's magic works—and there's probably a lot of mixed-element collaborative casting going on, anyway] but that might not make as much sense as I think it does.

[harkmm]

ooh I love this! in flights like Nature where witches are more well-known how are they perceived? are they like a fairytale or ?? approximately how many witches are there total?

[dragonmagitech]

They do tend to cultivate a certain mystique by hanging out in isolated areas [gotta keep the witches-in-training from creating a natural disaster, you know how it is] and frequently taking payment in food/spell components/building materials etc instead of money, so...maybe a little fairytale-esque, yeah. The Nature witches don't have a history of antagonistic magic use, since it's easy for the order to make sure witches in their home flight are staying true to the mission, but they are known by outsiders for having a somewhat vengeful nature given the way they pursue witches who misuse their powers. I guess that puts the overall perception somewhere around "generally benevolent if antisocial, but probably don't get on their bad side". I feel like this doesn't really answer the question.

I hesitate to make a population projection because it sort of depends on what you think the total population of each flight is, but I'd say their numbers tend to be small in proportion to the number of dragons in a given flight since they attract powerful magic-users to start with and do a lot of collaborative casting which also increases the output of a small number of dragons. Also this is only kind of related but [and I'm saying "probably" a lot because, you know, do what you want with these ideas] they probably don't have outposts in Plague [counter to the overall flight philosophy] or Arcane [pouring more magic in there is not going to help matters].

[meridokrising]

I've loved this weatherwitch thing since the first time I saw you post about it, I'm p sure. Still rad. :D Would love to see even more of them! (And those comment replies are v interesting.)

I was thinking - have you had any thoughts about dragons or groups who might be very opposed to the work the weatherwitches do? On philosophical or political grounds or what-have-you. I could totally see there being some particular sorts like some members of Marezan who are like "you are messing with the Natural Order and that is Bad".