Cunning Folk, sometimes also known as witches, are magicians (especially sorcerers) that practice magical arts of authentically rural, folkloric or Indigenous traditions, rather than newer or more urban practices. Usually, this is done in order to protect or aid the communities from which the Cunning Folk's practices spring, but such magicians also exist in diasporic groups around the world.
Overview[]
Cunning Folk exist around the world and permeate many traditional artisan communities, especially medical practitioners such as albularyos and sangomas (though Cunning Folk movements more divorced from well-known mundane practices certainly exist, such as the Shih). Although most people in these groups make use of purely mundane practices to achieve their goals within their communities, a select few carry the torch of arts genuinely unexplainable by modern science, passed down from teacher to student for centuries, if not millennia.
Most non-Awakened Cunning Folk are solitary or operate in small, local groups of their kin, dedicated to a single small area. Those that do join or form large groups often do so with a large number of caveats and tenuous relationships with their higher-ups. Fans of law and order, and orthodoxy (especially of a religious kind), they are not.
Common Abilites[]
Although the staggeringly diverse range of sources from which lineages of Cunning Folk may arise leads to them having very little in common with one another in terms of actual magical methods, their adversarial relationship with the 'status quo' of those who achieve the same goal through more 'modern' methods has led to certain effects being more commonly utilized than others.
Cunning Folk know a variety of blessings and curses, which tend to require ritual preparation in advance. These rituals channel power into a talisman, amulet, or other material token carried by them. The accumulated spiritual power can hocus machinery: every additional token borne after the first subtracts one die from any roll by a Cunning Folk using technology (including firearms).
A substantial number of Cunning Folk are also beast whisperers: Not unlike the vampiric Discipline of Animalism, 'Animalist' Cunning Folk use their often-possessed animal familiars to observe others, skimming through the night as a bird or prowling as a rat or cat. These Cunning Folk are known work as spies, observing and reporting back from places no normal mortal would dare tread.
Hunter: The Reckoning[]
Sorcerous Cunning Folk have served alongside more mundane Hunters in the great crusade against the monstrous for millennia, putting their Endowments to use against the much more harmful creatures of the night, even if it may estrange them from their insular and paranoid communities. Straddling the line between a creed and an org (but being found throughout both categories), practitioners of these ancient traditions remain throughout the world, more common than many would care to admit.
Many more Cunning Folk are independent lone wolves than located in orgs or even cells: practitioners of this sort of magic don’t tend to be team players. (The general exception: Scottish and Appalachian Cunning Folk often serve in their respective nations' military.) They’re strongly individualistic, and in many cases the desire to rid the world of monsters is their only common ground with the likes of orgs.
Cunning Folk, where they maintain strong presences, are often the main form of pushback against the ascendancy of orgs as the 'mainline' form of monster hunting, which has only become more true since the onset of the Reckoning. Most orgs are representations or aspects (or even direct agents) of governments and movements that for centuries have sought to eradicate both the Cunning Folk and the mundane practitioners that they work alongside, and several orgs actively continue to do so in their pursuit of hegemony.[1] In many countries, attacks on their beliefs and practices by the authorities have made Cunning Folk unwilling to work with the forces that have long been at the forefront of their repression, locking away a potentially valuable source of allies and Edges to these especially hardline orgs, such as the notoriously zealous BOES.
When jobbers do work with Cunning Folk, the relationship is often at arms’ length by mutual agreement. These practitioners work as consultants, assisting where needed but not slotting directly into a UTR team. There are exceptions, of course. Some Cunning Folk are patriotic, or just thoroughly modern and desirous of a career path with a good salary and benefits, but they’re far from the norm.
Mage: The Ascension[]
While the stereotype of the average Cunning Folk is that of a solitary witch living miles from civilization, practitioners of such magic are generally more willing to join affiliations and Traditions than most other groups, though those who do remain the minority. Among the Awakened, the most obvious Tradition to join are the Kha'vadi, with their diverse shamanistic paradigms being almost synonymous with the Cunning Folk on paper, though much less so in practice (many Cunning Folk would consider a comparison to techno-shamans or revivalists to be an insult). The Verbena and Sahajiya also exist as secondary sources for both Awakened and hedge Cunning Folk.
References[]
- VTM: Second Inquisition, p. 37-38
- MTAs: 20th Anniversary Edition Core Book
- ↑ HTR: 5th Edition Core Book, p. 246-248