Preface

     What follows is little known to the average Talislantan for the Dhuna witches are subjects of wild and conflicting legends.  They group together in covens, one for each moon, and can take the shape of their familiars! They ride giant crystal moths and wear dresses made of sheerest gossamer, fornicating in the misty air above the woods! They have three types of covens, white, gray, and black. The covens steal each others children and teach them to steal the souls of average folk!  Their kisses can steal your soul!  Beware!  Beware!

     The rest of this page is a reference for players with Dhuna characters.

Origins of Dhuna Magic

     The Dhuna culture grew out of a back-to-basics movement within Phaedran society. Dhuna philosophers based their movement on a treatise on mythology by Ilse. In this anthropological paper, Ilse reduced the gods and goddesses down to their most basic archetypes. The Dhuna cult has taken this viewpoint to heart, claiming that the gods are arbitrary creations of their worshippers. They see gods as beings that add little value and mostly serve themselves, obstructing the connection between the faithful and the Omniverse. Dhuna make their appeals directly to the nameless archetypes, which they refer to as “The Forgotten Gods.”

The Forgotten Gods

     The mythic archetypes defined by Ilse represent primal needs and fears of sentient beings. They include representations of hunting, farming, mysteries of birth, darkness and night, the seas, storms, war, the sun(s), the moon(s), death, and deceit. The Dhuna make their appeals to these archetypal constructs directly. They take pains to avoid names, icons, and fixed imagery when making their magic. Instead, they look for examples of these concepts in the world around them. The Forgotten Gods are thus kept abstract, reduced to an expression of sympathetic magic in the form of the physical foci.

Philosophy of Magic

     A Dhuna’s spell is a calling to the realms of dream and myth to enact the will of the witch. The sympathetic focus and mindset of the witch invoke a primal mythic archetype, stirring the Omniverse to action. The burden of this impetus is put onto one or more of the myriad spirits populating the astral planes. The Dhuna believe these spirits represent animals and people who were not properly sent on to the afterlife. Carrying out the will of the spell awakens the spirit and gives it another chance to complete its journey and be reborn anew. Aamanians find this abhorrent, believing it dooms the spirit involved.

     Dhuna beliefs lead them to avoid the flesh of any animal whose life and death would strand the animal’s spirit in the astral plane. Eating the meat of a lost animal contaminates the Dhuna’s spirit, inviting magical misfortune and mishaps. The perception of Dhuna as strict vegetarians is false; they are happy to dine on an animal whose spirit was properly thanked for its sacrifice and sent safely onwards to rebirth. As with all of their beliefs, the Dhuna do not discuss this with outsiders and are content to appear vegetarian.

The Standing Stones

     Driven out of Phaedra by the Cult Wars, the Dhuna took refuge in the area now known as the Witchwood. Here they found ancient circles of carven menhirs, with runes whose meaning and purpose were unknown.  The circles can serve as gates, each leading to a distant place, but also as much more. In the centuries that have since passed, the Dhuna have taken to associating each circle with aspects of the Forgotten Gods, in harmony with the seasons and cycles of the moons and suns.

Back to Talislanta House rules