Hecate heads the Sisters, and lives at the Sisters' farm outside Silverthorn.1 Hazel grew up there in her keeping and calls her Headmistress.1

Description

Appearance

A human woman who appears to be in her late sixties, with stark white hair.1 She dresses in practical wool against the cold, with nothing ostentatious or ritual about it, and leans on a twisted and gnarled staff of ash wood.1

Her familiar keeps a raven’s shape when it takes the form of a bird, and she herself often takes the form of a white raven.1 Hecate turned into a white raven in front of the party and flew back to the farm.2

Personality

Hecate is unhurried and hard to deflect. When Hazel brought her a Light Warden’s lantern and the Warden who had carried it, she asked Hazel again and again what she was telling her, let Iva and Rhysaene answer on Hazel’s behalf, and went back to Hazel after each of them.1 Hazel has seen her angry, and knows it as something cold and stewing rather than loud.1

Hecate is exact about rank and about debt. She told the party which of them she could command and which she could only ask.1 She refused to be called “my lady”, saying it is a title of nobility that does not extend that far from the city, and settled on “ma’am”.1 Told that a scarf was too much trouble to make overnight, she answered that the coven pays its debts so that balance holds.2

Hecate is direct about failure, including her own. She told Hazel she had failed the test she was set, and in the same conversation called that failure a fault in her own teaching.2 After sentencing Hazel to sleep in the barn, she made sure Hazel understood it was a joke.2

Biography

Session 4

Hecate sent word to Calypso that the Sorrow was worsening and that the ritual reagents Hazel had been sent for were needed as soon as possible.3

Session 6

Hazel found her in the backyard of the farm on the evening of 27 Coldrise, 1714 PSF, going over the ritual with Circe. Handed three of the four reagents, and told that Hazel had not found an item blessed by the Silver Flame, Hecate said they would have to do the ritual without it.1

She asked Rhysaene whether she was a centaur, said she had understood that most of the fair folk of her kin left the valley some years ago, and called it an honor to have her at the farm. Addressed as “my lady”, she asked Rhysaene not to use it, on the grounds that it is a title of nobility that does not extend that far from the city, and settled on “ma’am”.1

When Hazel came back from the barn with a Light Warden’s lantern and named Iva as a former Warden, Hecate asked her again and again what she was telling her. She let Iva and Rhysaene speak on Hazel’s behalf and turned back to Hazel each time. Hazel read the exchange as a test rather than an accusation. Hecate thanked her for her answer, said they would talk about it later, took the black salt, the wormwood and the powdered silver, and told Hazel to hold on to the lantern.1

Hecate welcomed Anthusa Toguri to stay as long as she needed, so long as she was willing to help with the work, and gave her a room in the house. Told that Anthusa practices a little hedge wizardry, she answered that it put her in the same amount of danger either way.1

She explained the ritual to the party. At the edge of the protection granted by the essence of the dead god, she said, the protection is weaker, always has been, and seems to weaken year over year. The Sisters ward the area against the Sorrow, their wards have deteriorated, and re-securing them would draw afflicted creatures. The work takes three sisters, and she named herself, Circe and Freya. It had to be worked by moonlight, and the sooner the better, because the deeper the teeth of the Sorrow sink in the harder they are to pull out.1

The ritual halted when the Standing Stone cracked. Hecate stumbled as though she had been knocked back, put her raven into the air, and after a minute said she sensed a concentration of corruption still in the woods that would not let her finish. She healed the whole party with a single spell, sent the raven ahead as a guide, and asked them to hunt down whatever was holding the corruption there. The sisters stayed at the stone, since leaving would have lost the work already done.1

Session 7

Hecate finished the warding ritual at the Standing Stone once the party destroyed the corruption in the woods. She said it had bought the area protection, and that where such a ritual would once have held for a decade she thought this one might last a year at best.2

She told the party what the coven teaches: that nothing comes from nothing, that everything has a price, and that balance means seeing prices paid whether or not they were stated. She offered each of them anything within her power to grant.2 She wiped clean any debt Iva or Anthusa Toguri owed the coven and put Anthusa under the coven’s full protection. She agreed to make Luma a large hat and Rhysaene a scarf overnight. When Temerity refused a reward and then named one anvil, Hecate said she understood that Temerity was trying to avoid being repaid, and handed her a single copper coin.2

Alone with Hazel in the hayloft, she said the fourth reagent had been a test and that Hazel failed it. The item blessed by the Silver Flame was never a requirement for the ritual. All Hazel had to do was find a believer and ask for something blessed, and trust another person’s faith in something she does not understand. Hecate called the failure a fault in her own teaching, since she had not instilled in Hazel the importance of relying on others, and noted that Iva had volunteered the lantern without being asked.2

She granted Hazel’s request to continue her work in Argentum, saying the time there could only aid her training. She told Hazel she is one of the more skilled witches she has taught at her age, that she had impressed her that night, and that what stands between her and becoming a full sister is her ability to make bonds with others and depend on them.2 She put a hand on Hazel’s cheek, told her she would be a full witch of the coven by their next meeting, tapped her twice on the head and left.2

Session 8

Hecate came to the barn on the morning of 28 Coldrise, 1714 PSF, with Rhysaene’s Scarf of Many Fashions and Luma’s Hat of Witchery.4 She confirmed that Anthusa Toguri had the coven’s full protection and told Temerity that her anvil had already been paid.4 She told Hazel again that what they had discussed was not entirely Hazel’s fault and was in part Hecate’s own, that the party had helped the coven do something it could not have done alone and let it go on living in as much peace as possible this close to the edge of the Sorrow, and that she expected Hazel to do greater things. She sent her off with “may the Shattered Mother watch over you”.4

Session 9

Hazel told the party that Hecate, like Circe, can take the form of a bird.5 Hecate had never spoken to Hazel about the Elder Exodus.5 The words “always fits perfectly” are written in her hand inside the Hat of Witchery.5

Session 10

Hazel remembered that Hecate had once spoken of creatures that coat themselves in iron, which Hazel had taken for an elaborate joke until she met the rust monsters.6

Session 11

Hazel told the party on 30 Coldrise, 1714 PSF, that Hecate has said she has been outside the Silver Vale, something Hazel had kept from them.7 Hazel also remembered asking Hecate whether anyone else worshipped the moon the way the coven does. Hecate grew wistful describing a city beyond the Vale where the moon was seen as protection and beauty, now a haunted remnant where only ghosts dwell, and she has made it very clear to Hazel that what lies beyond the Vale is not for the faint of heart.7 Hazel called her the greatest, most powerful person she knows.7 Luma asked Hazel to take her to talk to Hecate, and Hazel agreed.7 When Temerity found that the platinum dragons Luma had paid her had turned to copper, she thought of Hecate.7

Session 12

When Luma tried to share Syndicate money with Temerity on the Vigil of Remembrance, 1714 PSF, Temerity showed her a copper platinum dragon and said she thought it was the work of Hecate.8 Hazel said the headmistress’s curses are rarely pointlessly cruel, and that there is usually a reason behind them.8

Session 13

Hazel recalled Hecate’s teaching that the moon had phases before the Starfall, and that the impact left it permanently lit.9

Session 14

Luma thought of asking Hecate about the grove in Eliath Drace’s letter on 1 Nightdeep, 1714 PSF.10 Hazel worried that if Hecate saw Beepo flying toward the farm unannounced, he would be no more.10 Her mistress’s form, Hazel said, is not bound to the one she often chooses.10

Session 15

Had the party told Hecate that the three Light Wardens were in the forest, the Wardens would never have made it back to Argentum.11

Relationships

Quotations

Appearances and Mentions

References

Footnotes

  1. Session 6 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13 ↩14 ↩15 ↩16 ↩17 ↩18 ↩19

  2. Session 7 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12

  3. Session 4 ↩ ↩2

  4. Session 8 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  5. Session 9 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Session 10 ↩

  7. Session 11 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  8. Session 12 ↩ ↩2

  9. Session 13 ↩

  10. Session 14 ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  11. Session 15 ↩