To Lady Juliet, Royal Witch of Calatini
Royal Palace
Ormas
Merrilea

Dear Lady Juliet,

Thank you for your kind offer to help break a curse, but I have no curse you can help break. I simply asked about curses because when thinking about love spells, I realized they could often be a curse, and I began to wonder how true curses worked. I apologize for worrying you.

You mentioned seers in your letter. How are the classes of witches determined? Can anyone became a special class, like a seer, if given proper training, or do witches inherit their type of powers?

Thanks again,

Mordred Thyme
Upper Warden
Oakmoor

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To Mordred Thyme
Upper Warden
Oakmoor

Dear Mr. Thyme,

I am most relieved you are not suffering under a curse. I have enjoyed our letters, and would be upset if ill befell you.

As for type of powers, training doesn’t change witches’ classes, although better trained witches have more skills for and better mastery of their powers. Classes of witches are determined by both ancestry and personality. Witches from one of the special witch classes are more likely to bear offspring that share their type of powers, but they don’t always, and they can even have children without magic. (And those without magic can bear offspring that are witches.)

In addition, any witch can be born as any of the special witch classes (regardless of lineage) except for soul healers. Because the Goddess transformed the Spring Queen into a soul healer, only the Spring Queen’s female descendants are soul healers, even though not all her female descendants are (but those that aren’t and male descendants can still have female descendants that are soul healers.)

(Side note, ancestry and personality determine power strength as well. For instance, although most Rhiannon descendants are more powerful than other witches, sometimes they aren’t, and there have been powerful witches born outside Rhiannon-descendant families.)

Around half of witches are ordinary witches rather than one of the special witch classes. However, ordinary witches should never feel less than the special classes of witches. The influential witches of the past have been just as likely to have been ordinary witches rather than one of the special witch classes. Special classes just have certain skills, methods, and types of magic they excel at, but they also have vulnerabilities, difficulties, and needs that ordinary witches don’t.

Sincerely,

Lady Juliet, Royal Witch of Calatini
Royal Palace
Ormas
Merrilea