Lee is a MEDICINE WOMAN WITCH with PHYSICAL HEALING/HARM powers.
Chooli has been called a lot of things during her life. The least insulting of them is obstinate. From the moment she could walk, she either went her own way or refused to go another step. Fortunately, her talent for good medicine–health regained, curses lifted, balance restored–outweighed the frustration she otherwise caused her family and the rest of their band. They nurtured dreams of a powerful future for her as wife and mother and eventual elder, but Chooli always had a strong sense of bad things coming. She saw a darkness like a thunderhead on the horizon, and damned if she was going to stand still waiting for it. When her family refused to listen, she saddled up with a man who did: Jesus Santiago Solares, traveling east from California and looking to spend his mined gold on land and cattle. He wasn’t looking for a wife, but he did believe in the kind of magic that would bring the right woman walking out of the desert and into his arms. She was only seventeen when Jesus bought the land that would soon become the Double Six. Years later, when the Long Walk took her band, she was hundreds of miles away and safe in the arms of the family that she and Jesus had built together.
That family, and the ranch that sustains it, has grown into the love of her life. No matter the shortcomings of her children–and their children–she will defend them ferociously. Losing Jesus and gaining full ownership of the Double Six has only sharpened her resolve.
Chooli “Lee” Solares
Ofelia Aguilar
Ofelia is a PURITAN WITCH with ILLUSION powers.
Ofelia would never admit that she struggles to pay attention, especially when she’s meant to be working the forge. She’d rather her family chide her for being self-centered and lazy than confess to her frequent absent-mindedness. Time just seems to slip through her fingers, minute by minute and hour by hour, until suddenly she looks up and the sun is setting…or the fire has burned out, or the horse she was meant to be shoeing has grown bored and wandered away. Her saving grace is her magic, which has always come easily, no matter how her mind might wander or her focus might waver. Her natural talent pleases her mother, and the strength of their bond creates a helpful buffer between Ofelia and the exasperation of the rest of her family.
Boone Duning
Boone is a MEDICINE MAN WITCH.
Boone straddles Never’s two worlds with a quiet intensity. A sheriff’s deputy, he is known for his stoic demeanor, keen tracking skills, and an unsettling ability to “hear the dead wind” — a supernatural talent passed down through his mother’s bloodline. Though he keeps his craft hidden from most, whispers of Boone’s eerie intuition and uncanny luck haunt the town’s saloons and prayer circles alike. His most valuable possession is a charred silver pocket watch that once belonged to his late mentor. The watch ticks only in the presence of lies, and sometimes, when Boone holds it, it speaks with the voice of the dead man who gave it to him.
Ada Blaesy, aka Kitty
Ada is a NAGUAL WITCH.
Ada Blaesy, known as Kitty at the Pearl, is a vision of beauty in the heart of Never’s wealthiest and most exclusive gambling hall. With a face and figure that seem to belong to the painted canvases of the world’s finest artists, Ada captivates every man who crosses her path. But what they don’t know is that behind the delicate features and soft-spoken charm lies a sharp mind, a practical heart, and a will of steel.
A cunning strategist in a world where appearances are everything, Ada plays her part with precision. Kitty is exactly who she needs to be to thrive in the Pearl’s high-stakes, high-society game. Her magic is as fluid and adaptable as the persona she wears. Her particular gift lies in shape-changing, a skill she has honed over the years to perfection. With a thought, she can become someone else entirely: Someone more suited to the whims of a client, someone who can slip through the cracks when danger looms, or someone who can disappear into the shadows when she wishes.
Though she wears the mask of a sultry courtesan, Ada knows the rules of Never’s dark underbelly all too well. She has learned to manipulate those around her without them ever realizing it, shifting her form and her intentions as easily as the moon shifts the tide. In a town where things are never quite what they seem, Ada keeps her secrets close. After all, it’s better to be a mystery than a pawn, and Kitty might be the perfect mask, but Ada Blaesy is the one who holds all the cards.
Imelda Salazar
Imelda is a MEDICINE WOMAN WITCH with PHYSICAL HEALING/HARM powers.
Imelda “Madrita” Salazar would deny that she moved to Never to flee her own heart, but her total reluctance to discuss her prior life might suggest otherwise. Unable to prevent her physician husband’s death at the hands of a group of bandits, she accepted her sister Gloria’s invitation to join her and her family in Never, and now stubbornly applies all of her time and energy into healing others. She charges little when she charges at all, and refuses to lose patients to even the most dire of wounds or maladies. She hopes that in some way, she can thus make up for the most important life she could not save.
Aracely Solares
Aracely is a NAGUAL WITCH.
Aracely thinks she might be cursed. Animals have shied away from her for as long as she can remember; milk sours if she looks at it sideways for more than a second or two; fires won’t light in the stove or the hearth unless she leaves the room. Her mother, sunshine incarnate, says it’s just the magic in her blood working itself out. Her grandmother says she needs a good dose of balance. Aracely just wants the people in town to quit crossing to the opposite side of the street when they see her coming. If they knew about the visions of disaster that she’s started seeing in her dreams, they would like her even less.
Sophie Grey
Sophie is a PURITAN WITCH with ILLUSION common powers.
Sophie Grey is the daughter of Never’s polished and calculating mayor, Samuel Grey — A young woman of poise, beauty, and a mind sharper than any silver-plated revolver. Nearing adulthood, she moves through the town like a specter of her father’s influence, knowing exactly when to charm, when to disarm, and when to simply watch. She has always understood that power isn’t just about control, but rather perception. And lately, perception has become her playground.
Unaware of her father’s true demon nature but taught secretly at her witch mother’s side from an early age, she is finally coming into her full powers. The illusions she weaves — Innocuous at first, little shifts in light and shadow, whispers mistaken for the wind — are growing stronger. Now, she can make people see things that aren’t there, or worse, fail to see things that are. Faces blur when she wishes them to. Locks seem to open of their own accord. And sometimes, when she looks in the mirror, her reflection does not move quite in time with her.
Nando Aguilar
Nando is a PURITAN WITCH with ELEMENTAL powers.
Iron is notoriously difficult to enchant. Its resistance to magic is the kernel of truth in a thousand fairytales. So when Gloria Aguilar found her second son in a corner of the forge, wrist-deep in a puddle of molten metal, her blind panic gave way first to disbelief and then to a kind of ferocious delight. Nando was the first of their children to show any magical talent, and at such a young age, he reveled in the chance to show off something that came so easily and earned him so much praise. As he grew, so did his skill, and the wonders he can work in metallurgy have won the praise not only of the residents of Never, but of the wider world beyond his hometown.
If all those accolades have gone just a bit to his head and led to a certain flashiness of personality–and a habit of putting the opinions of others above his own comfort–that’s just the necessary price of excellence.
Rosa Grey
Rosa Grey is the enigmatic and graceful wife of Never’s mayor, Samuel Grey — A woman of quiet strength, deliberate words, and a gaze that lingers just a little too long. To the townsfolk, she is the perfect image of a mayor’s wife: poised, elegant, and ever watchful. But beneath the silk and lace lies something far older, far sharper. Rosa is no ordinary woman, but rather a witch of illusions, a master of veils both seen and unseen.
She was not always Rosa Grey. Once, long ago, she was a frightened girl with no name worth keeping, trapped in a house where love was a myth and cruelty was law. Desperation led her to a crossroads, where she met a man who was not a man at all. Samuel Grey offered her a bargain: Safety, power, and a new name in exchange for something she did not yet understand. She accepted without hesitation.
Decades later, her illusions have shaped more than just fleeting tricks of the eye — They have shaped a town, a family, and a legacy that walks the line between salvation and damnation. She has woven her children in shadows of protection, hiding the truth from them as long as she can. But illusions are fragile things, and Rosa knows better than anyone that sooner or later, all veils must fall.