#dweomer cap

 While not your typical flask and vial alchemist, witches are nevertheless commonly associated with all manner of mystical brews. Not all of which are benevolent in nature.

For every healing potion and curse-breaking concoction, there are foul potions with harmful effects, and sometimes outright poisons of a mundane or mystical nature.

We’ve covered the veneficus witch in the past, with their alchemical mastery and ability to directly hex with poison, but today we’re covering a toxin-themed witch that specializes in milking natural poisons from their familiar and in infusing themselves with the same.

These venom siphoners may have less of a supernatural poison edge, but they can be quite effective nevertheless.

 Every familiar of these witches are venomous, even those that are not naturally so, their patron granting poisonous fangs, claws, or spittle to those that do not. However, those that are naturally venomous find their natural toxins are more potent and faster-acting.

The bond between familiar and witch also means they can milk this venom with relative ease.

Over time, the patron also alters the witch to be toxic too, their blood carrying the same poison as their familiar, making striking them at close range a dangerous prospect.

What’s more, they also can channel some of their venom into their spells that target the body, adding the poison to the spells already debilitating effects.

The witch spell list has its fair share of poison-based spells, so it should be no problem to create a witch focused on targeting their foes’ fortitude above all else, particularly singular targets to take advantage of adding their poison to the mix. While not able to improve poisons the way other archetypes can, their mundane poisons can be useful as well, but don’t forget to also diversify into other spells that target other saves, affect groups, and peform healing or utility purposes as well. While there is no specifically poison-themed patron, plenty deal in natural forms of debilitation.

 Whether they deal only in poisons, or also in healing magic, these mystics can certainly reward their enemies with a bad time. Naturally venomous familiars are a natural choice due to the buff, but the supernatural nature of normally non-toxic creatures may appeal to some.

  Old Magera is well-known for her potions, but also her cantankerous sickly-looking cat that has an odd smell to it. She dotes on the beast, however, and those that cross them often end up terribly ill.

 An assassin of necromancers, Nodd the duskwalker utilizes her magics and her poisonous pet spider to give a poignant reminder of mortality to those who would seek to escape it through lichdom or other foul arts.

A common theme with the witch class is the idea that, similar to a deity granting power to a divine caster, a witch is gifted with their craft when, at a low point in their life their call for succor is answered by an otherworldly being.

Benevolent patrons may seek to uplift such would-be practitioners, healing their hearts and helping them use their power to grow into a stronger person (and perhaps deliver some needed justice to those who wronged them).

Less benevolent patrons, however, woo their prospective witches with the promises of vengeance and power, twisting the bitterness within them into a malignant rot.

For the patron/witch relationships of putrefactors, that rot is much more literal, their bond with their patron causing their bodies to become vessels of disease, rot, and infesting vermin, their bodies only functioning due to the magic infused in them.

As you can imagine, this archetype is not for the sensitive of stomach, though I imagine that fans of gross-out aesthetic as well as the Nurgle sub-faction of Chaos in Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 will get a nice kick out of it.

 The only patrons that grant this power are those associated with animals, death, disease, and rot, and the link that these witches establish with their patron takes the form of the very vermin crawling and burrowing under their flesh, though they also have one specific creature that serves as a true familiar.

Said familiar is always some manner of vermin, be it a spider, centipede, or drawing from a broader definition with rats and amphibians. Regardless, the familiar normally dwells alongside the other creatures within the putrefactor’s body, but can be disgorged and re-consumed fairly easily.

As their powers develop, the vermin within begin to substitute themselves for the various bodily functions of the organs they consume to make room for themselves, and that means that foes attacking such a witch may find themselves immediately set upon by a small swarm of biting things upon causing them harm at close range, the more powerful the putrefactor, the more vicious and deadly the creatures. Normally, however, such a discharge of vermin can happen only once every few seconds.

Eventually, there becomes increasingly less of the witch’s original organs present to be injured, making potentially lethal blows not quite so dangerous, though such strikes that are so less effective always release another cloud of vermin from deep within.

Finally, these witches can command all the vermin within them to be disgorged, swarming to attack foes at their command. However, doing those severely weakens the mage while they are away, given their symbiotic connection to them, though they recover if the swarm returns to them quickly enough.

Looking for an excuse to throw all of your favorite swarm and vermin-themed spells on the witch spell list into a single character, and also want to dial up the creep factor? This archetype could prove quite fun. Additionally, consider taking various mind-affecting area debuffs as well, as your swarms will mostly be unaffected while foes succumb.

 This archetype is a perfect for playing the classic role of the “vermin lord”, commanding swarms of insects and other small, simple creatures, although it clearly cleaves closer to the horror side of that broad concept, with the individual being consumed from within by their “pets”. I imagine at some point they stop being the person they were, and instead become a consciousness made up of the crawling things within. As such, I can imagine many putrefactors rising as worms that walk upon death, assuming they were powerful enough to do so.

  There exist rumors of a slight variant of putrefactor witch out there, tied to patrons of a more fungal nature. These witches are riddled with fungal hyphae, and sprout mushrooms from their back, channeling clouds of spores and keeping small fungal familiars, such as dweomer caps, and gaining various mind-altering spells.

 Local yokai hunters think they have Tsumimi, a local heiress and suspected jiang shi, cornered, and ready their undead-slaying tools. Alas, while the disguised kitsune is indeed literally rotten on the inside, she is not undead, belching forth a bile-coated swarm of spiders to deal with the hunters. Taking down this insidious infiltrator will require more research and more diverse tactics, lest more hunters be lost.