Hail and well met, WITCH! If it’s our first time making a virtual acquaintance, I’m Keridwen, the high witch of wit and wordsmithery at Crypto Coven. We are “an immersive, narrative-driven experiment in world-building, architected on top of decentralized technologies.” If that sounds magical, intriguing, and yet deeply confusing to you, our latest drop is a tangible example of what that work can look like.
Our second collection invites you into the home of our world’s NARRATOR. Inside her HUT are five magical objects, or ARTIFACTS, previously owned by powerful WITCHES. Each is accompanied by a story of their past.
The five stories are fully narrated, voice acted, and sound designed (an absolute dream come true for me as a writer, but I digress). They’re also completely free to experience. You don’t need to pay or hold a WITCH NFT to visit the NARRATOR and learn a bit more about our world, the weird wilds.
One of our goals as a project is to serve as a peculiar yet warm welcome to the crypto space for the uninitiated. This world, woven by words, art, code, and magic, is not exclusive or gated. We want you to be a part of it. We’re laying out a welcome mat and hot cup of virtual tea.
When I wrote these stories, I knew I wanted to show how witchcraft in our world looks and feels. What are the exhilarations and limitations of power? What does it mean to forge or sunder bonds with the powerful? What kind of genius might a friendly neighborhood omniscient narrative device find crawling on her stoop?
I also wanted to demonstrate how characters, both WITCH and unattuned, exist in the wilds in a concrete way. Our goal is to collaborate with you to build these people and places. Part of that is establishing locations like THE HALLOWED HALLS or THE DEMON MARKET and telling you more about the WITCHES who founded them.
Before I dive into some of my inspirations behind each story, you can experience them in the HUT on our website.
If you don’t have an Ethereum wallet, you can experience just the audio version of the stories on Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcasts. If you’re interested in getting one to experience the HUT in all its audiovisual glory, we have a handy guide for beginners here.
The Stories
AVISA AND CYPRESS
AVISA AND CYPRESS was the first story to find shape, and in many ways the most akin to a traditional tragedy or epic. I knew I wanted to tell the story of THE ORACLE, a near-deity at the center of a vast desert, and the dark secrets of its power.
The idea of SEERS as pirates came from these sick eyepatches Nyx and Aletheia drew into the first collection. Of course WITCHES with the ability to see the future would make the best seafarers and maruaders! Who better to predict the movements of the ocean and the treasures of its guests?
SEERS’ power over time itself makes them both terrifyingly powerful and terrifyingly vulnerable. Several of these stories explore that exchange and its dangers. THE ORACLE, ultimate knower and dispenser of wisdom, is not exempt from laws demanding unbound sacrifice in exchange for power. In contrast, the work of a NECROMANCER can be inherently grounding. The entrance of CYPRESS helped me explore that.
While writing, I spoke often with the NECROMANCERS in our Discord about how the archetype could manifest as patient, kind, steady, and balancing. To face spirits, to calm them, to bring them peace, is the work of someone generous with those who need it most. I was inspired by these conversations and the community entries to our ECHO TREE to represent that kind of death magic practitioner.
I’ve also always been excited by stories of disability and magic, or fantastical worlds that incorporate a wide range of experiences. It was fun to think about how a NECROMANCER so used to speaking to spirits might communicate differently with the living, and how languages like sign might find new contexts among the fantastical.
NULL AND RIJHA
The next story, NULL AND RIJHA, is just the beginning of what we have to share about the relationship between OCCULTISTS and DEMONS. Their pactmaking was a recurring idea in the articulations of the WITCHES and community discussion of THE DEMON MARKET map location.
Where do DEMONS come from? What kind of WITCH was the first to make such a deal and how? What kind of rad extra limbs and organs did they have because of it? Asked and answered. We know OCCULTISTS are the kind of WITCH to seek out sacrifice and deception… but what about ENCHANTRESSES?
ENCHANTRESSES are beguiling, power hungry, principled, driven by ideals and execution. How far might one go to achieve her goals? What might she sacrifice? I’ll admit this story only hints at these answers as a way to set up our future work in THE CITY OF MIRRORS.
Aside from the plot itself, this story also exemplifies our interest in representing a diverse set of experiences in a fictional universe. Null (in addition to Cypress) is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns while Rijha’s name evokes south Asia. As I was drafting, high witch Xuannu expressed a desire for cultural touchpoints in the wilds that would build on the choices we’d made in the first collection, for example, her own WITCH name derived from a Chinese goddess rather than conforming to a more Western approach to witchcraft and fantasy. The goal of these stories was not only to show WITCHES in action and conversation, but also to introduce the range of people and places that populate the wilds.
IONA AND THE UNATTUNED
One of the core principles the team wanted to communicate was that our kind of magic is not exclusionary. Our stories are not of gifted vs ungifted, but rather of spirit, building, and becoming. While no one may own a WITCH, anyone can become one.
While this is most intuitive with MAGES, it’s not limited to only their archetype. IONA was the first HAG to shape herself through stubbornness and WILL. She protected the earth not because it was her birthright but because it was her lived experience.
As an archetype, HAGS are in tune with nature. That extends beyond an immediate relationship with plants or animals to one of balance on a large scale. HAGS are protectors, architects, and guardians. They correct the natural order of things. IONA points out the unsustainability and disrespect of the BEAST’s actions rather than best it in combat. While we have emphasized the soft, floral cottagecore aesthetic of the archetype in the past, this story expands on HAGS as active arbiters of equilibrium.
We also meet our first BEAST, an amorphous kind of creature oft the enemy of WITCHES. Unlike DEMONS whose powers and behaviors have been loosely mapped, BEASTS are wide-ranging and highly unpredictable. Their origin and motives are yet to be known, if such knowledge is even up for the knowing…
DOVE AND THE ASYLUM
DOVE’s story is a fable, one that made its way to the NARRATOR through lineages of storytelling. DOVE is the only WITCH the NARRATOR herself has not beheld in some form. She is lost to time the way her wards, WITCHES who ruptured the limitations of magic, are LOST.
Approaching the story this way evokes some of our aesthetic inspirations—oral histories and folktales. The wilds’ history finds texture in the contrast between stories immediately recollected and those that have been smoothed by many tellers. THE ASYLUM is something of legend, a relic of the past whose true nature is unknowable to all except the most in need. It is as much haven as it is mystery, a call to the adventurous and determined.
THE ASYLUM is a location Aradia introduced when naming the WITCHES, an origin that appears only for OCCULTISTS and SEERS. It’s fun to see the roots of our ideas for the world planted in each of our contributions to the original collection as we expand on them.
We wanted to create a location at odds with the modern understanding of the word and closer to its original one: a place of solace and safety for those most in need. DOVE’s story follows her as she negotiates with the keepers of such a place: the snow monkeys of THE ASYLUM. Its setting and keepers are inspired by the onsen monkeys of Japan’s Nagano Prefecture. It ends with perhaps the most direct call to action to the reader, or “player” of the narrative experience. Will you be the WITCH to cure the LOST?
SPINOR AND THE DESIGN
Lastly, SPINOR! MAGES are a particular favorite of mine and the archetype I personally identify with. Xuannu and I have racked up many a Discord log chatting about magic that is learned, precise, and innovatively threatening to existing systems. This story is the most “recent” to the narrative timeline of the wilds, as MAGES are the newest archetype of WITCH. Their work, mechanical and strange, has a momentum that thrusts the world into an unknown new era.
Here we see the most of the NARRATOR herself, and experience the liveliest story, one that is present and punctuated by snappy dialogue. I wanted the form of each story to mirror its age. While AVISA AND CYPRESS has the rolling prose and epithets of epic poetry, SPINOR AND THE DESIGN is grounded and immediate. After all, it happened only a few dozen years ago.
Part of what makes SPINOR fascinating and dear to me is how feral she is. Crypto Coven is deeply interested in varied interpretations of femininity and feminine power. A WITCH can be an austere goth, a nonbinary conartist, a scientist who crawls around on all fours observing lizards in nature and attempting to trap them in the claws of her manicure. MAGES have a sharpness to them because of how they experience the world—through tearing it apart.
One of the most distinct visual cues for MAGES are their glowing tattoos and rings, shown here on both a WITCH and their ARTIFACT. SPINOR’s story follows the moment of their invention—the feral scientist who redrew her own limits unlike any before.
SPINOR declares that she will teach her new art at a school of her invention: THE HALLOWED HALLS. The HALLS are a map location home to professors and students, dissertations and expertise on even the most niche subjects. You can find much more information on these studies in the articulations, names, and visages of MAGES. The story behind each WITCH’s tattoos and MAGE rings are yours to tell.
The Future of the Wilds
These stories are the beginning of our expansion, built on the foundation of all the love and detail poured into our original WITCH collection. Through the winter solstice, you can mint ARTIFACTS that contain the audio recordings of each story to take with you on your travels.
There are both attuned and unattuned varieties, either adorably canon or customized to your WITCH if you have one. I am not at all biased towards the spectacular MONKEY CHARMS because they have my voice in them…
It’s been an absolute honor to have these stories out in the world swaddled in such gorgeous art and seamless, tireless code. Thank you for reading and being a part of this adventure.
Narrative is at the heart of what we do, and this is far from the last time you’ll hear from me. In fact, I have three new stories on the ECHO TREE as part of our latest writing contest. If you’ve made it this far, you’re exactly the kind of magic-maker—dare I say, WITCH—we want to build and experience this world with us. We want to live inside your stories, gush over your art, be challenged by your game design, find delight and strangeness in the recesses of your mind you may have to brush the dust off of.
We would love to welcome you to THE NARRATOR’S HUT as well as our Discord and fluttering sphere of socials. Reach out, hang out, we’re waiting by the crow’s nest for your transmission.