Mörderin

Her hate is most human, but is not limited by any human quality.

Written by Francesco Lanza

Three Witches Rise...

Mörderin is a Witch, one of three dark entities capable of completing a Ritual that would shatter the world as we know it. These particular Coven Models are never Summoned and cannot be put in play voluntarily. In fact, it goes against the Coven's interests: the Witch Hunters are tasked with their destruction. The Witches of Hexerei are not historical, human figures, they are more like an embodiment of the ills of an era, and in this case Mörderin is war.
For some people war is glorious, for others it's a business opportunity. Or maybe a chance for advancement in a stifling social order where is more important to be the child of somebody than your own person. These kinds don't really live a life that -- from our own postmodern point of view -- is any less dangerous from a rank and file pikeman, but are given a lot of very good incentives and are one of the main reasons the Thirty Year War would become eponymous in its length. Mörderin will come for them too, but she is not their demon. Mörderin is the spectre of war for everybody else. She is misery, and mud, and blood. She is the ravaging, the pillaging, the rotting corpses. She is ransacked, burning farms. She is pitiless, and thankless, but accepts service from anyone.
Mörderin is arguably the worse of the Three, in that she is instantly recognizable (on a very deep level) as Europe's oldest companion. She can also beat the daylights out of any human being, and she will be a deadly challenge for the Hunters no matter when she is tracked down.

Portrait

by Igor Krstic

by Alessandro Depaoli

Imperium

A Witch's power surely comes from the Devil's grace, but maybe instead it spawns from the conviction of her followers. If Hunters die, it seems to please the Witch greatly, and probably is tantamount to unholy human sacrifice. And thus she waxes all the greater in her devilry.
Mörderin can, well, murder any Hunter on the gaming board. It's a chance, but the Coven's player will definitely take it, and it gets worse later in the game.

Tactics

A Coven Model is always frightening and useful in a fight.

Armoured

we found that the hourglass-like shape of garments in Early Modern Europe was endearingly consistent for both genders AND for armor. So yeah, this Witch has a dented, blood-stained armored doublet and bodice. And she won't suffer Critical Results.

Critical Hit

Not one for subtlety when going "mano a mano", she will kill you dead more efficiently than average.

The Betrayal

Wilfried came awake, disturbed by his sister’s lantern. It was still night. Eloise made him understand with silent gesturing to meet her behind the stable, so as not to wake their parents. They were good at this: since Wilfried stopped talking a long time ago, they did it all the time. He was already half dressed and slightly more than half awake when he remembered that his sister had married two years ago, and didn’t live with the family anymore. What was she doing here?

He found Eloise where promised. She took a good look at him, and then they hugged. “Oh, Willie,” she whispered. “I could always count on you.” She made him look her in the eyes, her palms cold against his cheeks. “Willie, you must help me. Do you remember how often you helped me out when we were children?”

Wilfried nodded. He didn’t remember how being able to talk felt like, nor why he stopped doing it, but he remembered the beatings he took for Eloise’s sake. He was always there for her. She was easily tired, after all. And even when small she was always busy with all her friends, doing… stuff he didn’t really know anything about. Only Wilfried’s help had granted her a happy childhood. Not that Mother and Father were cruel, they were good parents. They just didn’t understand Eloise.

“Come with me, Willie. I found a special church a little way away from the village, and I just need to pray there. I must! Don’t worry, though, we’ll be back really soon.”

Wilfried raised both hands, shaking his head. But Eloise implored, explained, ordered and had her way. She prevented him from going back to get his coat, and said he would get warm by walking. The road took them far away. Eloise today didn’t limit herself to orders and handsigns. She talked and talked, she told him all about her husband. He described him as mild, sour, cold, distant, clingy, jealous, unfaithful, easy to manipulate, insidious, threatening, foolish. Wilfried didn’t really know the man, but her detailed account was vivid: he surely was horrible, hiding inside such a host of remarkable sins. Meanwhile, the world beyond the farm was getting more and more astonishing. He saw columns of black smoke right in front of them, and they found many abandoned wagons.

“Oh, it’s just the war, Willie. Don’t worry,” said Eloise, not interested in the slightest. Yet they found an entire caravan after a while, derelict as the first wagons. Mounds of clothes were strewn all around. Wilfried blinked and took it in: they weren’t just old rags laying about, they were bodies. He ran to see them better. Since when he was little, he delighted in watching dead people. He had listened to the priests and knew they were in fact gone to a better place, so he tried as often as he could to find some sign of beatitude in their faces. Once, when he was really young, he told his mother he looked forward to being dead. She beat him for that. Was that the reason he stopped talking? No, he did not think so.

This dead people were not like those awaiting for burial. They were dishevelled and bloodied. Still, they were resting in peace now, right? Wilfried puzzled over the quaint smirk of a livid man, his eyed glazed. Eloise finally dragged him away. Wilfried kept pointing at the dead. “Come away, Willie.” she said. “It’s only the war. Just don’t look.”

Eloise was always right, but she wasn’t easy to obey. He had never seen so much new people in his life, and they were all unmoving. But then again, wasn’t it all good? They were in Heaven. They came upon an unknown village. It belonged solely to the dead. Eloise walked steadily on, as if she were anxious to arrive, finding her way cautiosly but relentlessly around the mounds of cadavers. If this was all normal and good for her, so it was for Wilfried. When they stumbled upon the town square, he understood why the road was muddy, even if it hadn’t rained for weeks. It was all the blood. Most of the village’s population had died here, in front of the church, whose spire rose in the choking, dirty smoke of burning hovels.

His sister laughed. “I came running to this church, just like they did!” Eloise spread her arms wide, as if she wanted to dance among the corpses, right in front of the blood-splattered church door. “I dreamed all of this, Willie!”

Wilfried saw bodies everywhere he looked, and didn’t find a single glimpse of Paradise. They were strewn about like hens the morning after the fox had come calling. And then a musket barked its sharp report, really close. Somebody started yelling and then screaming from inside the church. And from its portal a woman came outside. She stepped out like his mother did from the chicken coop, stooping, then rasing once free of the little door; except this portal was as tall as a man astride a horse. Wilfried was not sure about trusting his own eyes. This newcomer was dressed like a lady, her long gown puffy and embroidered, the trailing hem carelessy dragged through the muddy blood, her slim doublet no doublet at all, really, but a cuirass, fashioned from dull steel. Searching for a countenance, Wilfried met only the serene regard of a metal mask. The screaming continued, coming from a man in armor, a full grown Reiter looking grotesquely undersized, dragged by a foot like a recalcitrant child. He was hurled among the dead with an undignified yelp. He tried to rise, but the woman, the Witch, stepped and smashed his leg with a blow from the flail she wielded. She then began a methodical work, grasping the chain almost daintily, circling it in the air in arcs, crashing its metal head against the Reiter’s limbs. Pulping him alive. Wilfried could scarcely divert his eyes: it seemed to last forevermore, the screaming endless, falling way short of any Heavenly peace.

When silence finally fell, Eloise shattered it at once. “Mistress!” she said, unsheathing a long knife. “I heed your call! I dreamt of today. I am ready to betray anything to come with you. The voices in the night told me I must shatter the bonds of blood, and this is my tribute, my sacrifice: this one is my dumb, foolish brother!”

Wilfried felt the Witch’s gaze insisting on him. Eloise smiled, the special little sweet smile she reserved just for him, for when he did something for her. She came to him with her knife. He grasped her wrist with one hand, then crushed her thoat with the other, robbing her of that smile forever. He had seen the Witch killing that Reiter in slow, agonizing minutes, and now Wilfried did not believe that dead people were lucky. He was still quite sure Eloise was always right, though: his new Mistress was ready to accept those that betrayed everything. Wilfred was willing to slaughter each and every inhabitant of his little world to please her and avoid dying in terror. And when he led her to his village, so he did.