Witch

A witch is a female magic user which is a common archetype in most fantasy settings and old myths. They can be grouped into two broad groups; either being sizzling seductive beauties that will kill you as much as kiss you (the sexy option) or hunched, crackling old cronies who are like your grandma except the insane kind who might use you in a soup (the scary option). There is rarely a middle ground between the two, the old myths and even modern perceptions tending to either group sexy and power together or keep them separate.

Witches are usually aligned with the dark forces, summoning demons, making curses and hexes, etc. They can be mysterious and wise and have familiars from cats and snakes to lesser demons. They also tend to fly around on broomsticks (God knows why) and harbour their magic instead of using it to live the cushy life (again, only God knows why).

Traditional gaming has allowed witches to flourish anew in a variety of new forms and identities, examples of which are given below:

Warhammer Fantasy

There is a whole host of witches within Warhammer fantasy, scattered over all the different races of the Warhammer world. Mostly the term seems to apply to any sorcerer or mage who hasn’t had formal training, being a rustic magic user or in the terms given above for old crackling hags or dark seductresses. The most famous ‘witch’ in this setting is the Witch-King Malekith of the Dark Elves, although his mother is the more the perfect example of the archetype….

Warhammer 40,000

Witch in the 40,000 universe is mostly heard when an Imperial preacher or Inquisitor shouts ‘it’s a witch!’ to explain any unexplainable events caused by a person, even if they are completely blameless. The Imperium almost uses it like a swearword to label any psyker regardless of race as such. Chaos magicians and psykers are almost always called witches when the Imperium sees them and these fun loonies seem to have no trouble accepting the term.

The Dark Eldar have ‘wyches’, although these are not female magic users. These wyches are barely clothed (except for leather straps), gorgeous gladiators that fight for the amusement of the audience and to get a kick out of dominating men by removing their body parts a piece at a time (so basically the sexy witch version minus the magic). To counter the sexism accusations in the most recent Dark Eldar codex it is mentioned there are male wyches but they are kept as breeding stock. So yeah, why to shoot yourself in the foot GW.