Work

Work is a witch's ability to use their additional vocal cords to supernaturally create change in the world through their voice. They utilize “seeds” or “seed sounds,” which are sixty-one sacred noises tied to the Earth. These sounds can be layered together to create desired supernatural effects for both martial and practical uses.

Canon work describes work approved for use by the US military. Some workings are forbidden, such as the Spree's use of it to enact mass killings; other workings are strongly discouraged due to being outside of traditional military witch canon, such as Willa Collar and her daughter Raelle's use of the "Christo-pagan" fixing work.

Despite this, learning to recognize and resist "Off-Canon Work" is taught at War College by Magda Verger, as it is felt it is important the cadets know about it, as their enemies will not hesitate to use it. Additionally, some cultures, such as those witches from the Tarim sect, keep their unique seeds and songs a secret from other witches out of scorn toward those such as General Sarah Alder and those like her who took their sacred gifts and weaponized them.

By the time of Abigail Bellweather, Tally Craven and Raelle Collar's entry into the Army, new work is considered exceedingly rare.

Known Seed Sound[]

#3, The Seed of Binding

#5, The Seed of Truth and Intuition

#14, The Seed of Interrogation (Binding Clear Truth) - This version of the Interrogation working is a combination of Seed #3 (binding) and Seed #5 (truth, intuition) in parallel, followed by Seed #47 (clarity). It is often used to extract information.

#26, The Seed of Discord - An atonal, quivering seed sound that can be particularly taxing for a witch to sustain over time. Vocalizing this seed for over a minute caused Abigail Bellweather to cough up blood for some time afterwards, a punishment and a lesson toward her unit sister Raelle about endurance.

#32, The Seed of Reversal - A lower register seed sound known to be difficult to master. The recruits were shown accessing this seed chorally.

#37, The Seed of Revealing - A seed below the range of human hearing used for scrying.

#41, The Seed of Haste and Accumulation - An upper register seed sound just north of audible range used in windshears.

#46, The Seed of Anamnesis - A seed sound that is used to open up a death current.

#47, The Seed of Clarity

#48 - A seed sound used in "The Balkan Composition" to disable vocalization.

#57 - A seed sound used in "The Balkan Composition" to disable vocalization.

#59, The Seed of Restoration - A seed sound that is used to open up a death current.

Types of work[]

Detection - Witches can detect the residue of other witch's works. They use various implements like tuning forks to assist them in detecting residual work and seed sounds.

Farspeech / Farspeak - Witches are capable of communicating to one another over long distances via farspeak. When used, it sounds similar to sounds carried over radio. Circumstances can make farspeak break in and out or sound garbled.

Geokinesis - The Tarim have rare songs that allow them to manipulate earth. Among the work they can accomplish include building solid walls of rock, cutting clean through stone, and demolishing an entire building in a matter of seconds.

Geogenesis & Geo-Vanishing - The Tarim's earth-based work can even create earth out of nothing or make earth vanish.

Golem - Witches can create lifelike fascimiles of humans known as golems. A golem of President Wade was created and quickly substituted to her place during the assassination attempt on her life to make it appear like she had died in the explosion. After a certain period, the golem began to deteriorate and dry out.

Invisibility - Adil, a witch from the Tarim ethnic group bordering Russia and China, cloaked himself and his ailing sister he was carrying as they crossed the desert until they reached an American military outpost.

Levitation - With the use of salva, a witch can levitate several feet off the ground. This work allows witches to safely perform combat drops. Larger doses of salva was used by Raelle to fly for brief periods of time.

Linking - Foundational work for fixing and an essential combat skill. At its basic manifestation, it allows witches to sync breaths and heartbeats. Links between witches are able to cross warding circles, allowing coordinated work to cross as long as there is one active participant on each side.

Telepathy - Advanced Linking allows witches to see into the mind and memories of their target. Raelle unknowingly created an advanced link with Porter when she tried to fix him, temporarily taking in his last memories. Anacostia used a more controlled version to probe Scylla's mind for information about the Spree.
- Telepathic Firewall - Nicte defended herself from mental probing with this working that engulfs her and the prober in flames similar to those she uses for shapeshifting. While Nicte was left unharmed by the fires, her prober was burned to ashes.
Healing - "Fixing" refers to a witch's ability to heal the injuries of others. By conceiving body functions like breathing as music, witches can become attuned to their target's life force, blood flow, organ function, cellular composition, among others. Fixing appears to be a specialty of people who make up the Chippewa Cession.
- Injury & Illness Transference - By reciting verses from the Bible along with the person she heals, like Raelle and her mother (Willa) are able to heal others by absorbing the injuries and illnesses from the subject to themselves. When a witch absorbs the injury, they will bear it for a certain amount of time before their body heals itself. Certain illnesses such as witchplague are so severe that the average witch who absorbs it will not recover.
  - Age Transference - General Alder maintains her youth using a variation of injury transference that she acquired from Chippewa witches in exchange for the creation of the Chippewa Cession. Special young witches known as Biddies are selected to take on a certain number of decades of Alder's life and physically grow old as part of the process. The Biddies not only take on Alder's age but also any injuries she sustains as well as her need to eat and sleep. When the Biddy passes away, her body returns to its actual age while the years and aging she has taken on return to Alder until a new candidate is found and linked to her.
Sympathetic Attacks - Similar to how witches can transfer injuries into themselves in order to heal a subject, witches can also act as living voodoo dolls. Using linking work, injuries and pain inflicted on one witch can be mirrored onto another. Unlike the healing work used by Raelle where the injury leaves one body and manifests on another, the witch who initially receives the injuries in this working retains them.

Liquification: The user is capable of melting items and turning them liquid as shown when Penelope was singing in church and the windows melted.

Motion Sensing Traps - Objects such as coins can be set up to fall when it detects significant movement such as a person passing by. These traps can alert the witch who set them up.

Necro Work - Necros are witches who manipulate the energies of life and death. One application of this work is the ability to speed up the development of fungi like death cap mushrooms growing on a recently deceased creature.

Death Current - Necro witches use a combination of seed sounds empowered by the energies of Beltane and a canary to open a death current where they can glean information known to a recently deceased individual.
Song of Grief - 300 hundred years ago, General Alder used a "song of grief" while mourning the murder of her entire coven that turned their bodies into the Mother Mycelium.
Just woken dead- General alder mentioned this working and it is assumed to resurrect the dead into zombie like creatures

Nullification - Drill Sergeant Quartermaine and other higher-ranking witches used a high screeching seed sound to counteract the maelstrom that Abigail, Tally, and Raelle created when they performed The Seed of Reversal in one harmonics session.

The Balkan Composition - Using seed sounds 48 and 57, this work creates extensive disabling of vocalization through high levels of sonic dampening. According to Petra Bellweather, this can be beaten by a superior witch, though how this is accomplished remains a mystery.
Counter-Disruption - By observing the work-disrupting frequencies used by the Camarilla, Tally was able to improvise a high-pitched sound that counters the disruptor's effects and causes the devices to short-circuit.

Pain Induction - A witch can quietly cause powerful pain and discomfort on a target, as Sergeant Quartermaine did with Scylla in hopes the young witch would relent on negatively influencing Raelle.

Pushing - Pushing work allows witches to manipulate the actions of others. This work can be used on humans and animals to perform simple tasks such as delivering items as well as manipulating emotions. It can also be abused by witches to cause individuals to hallucinate, attack others, and kill themselves. At least some of this work involves a vocal fry-like seed sound.

Puppeting - General Alder and the Biddies performed a work that allowed them to remotely control the actions of President Wade over 400 miles away, making the president repeat General Alder's speech and facial expressions. This work is forbidden by The Hague.
Emotional Manipulation - Witch pushing can amplify existing emotions such as fear, doubt, insecurity, judgment, and anger. It can be used to amplify the judgments people have towards each other in hopes of causing infighting or separation.
Mass Pushing - Pushing work can be contained within containers of air such as balloons. When the air is released, it compels everyone who hears it to carry out the orders in the work.
"Morrigan's Whisper" - Certain witches trained through The Spree can channel their pushing work through animals that can vocalize such as bats and birds. Channeling work can take up a lot of a witch's concentration and energy, preventing them from using other work until they stop. Scylla refers to this working as "Morrigan's Whisper."
Lethal Hallucinations - Some witches can push powerfully compelling hallucinations in their victim, making the victim hallucinate being attacked when in reality they are hurting themselves. This hallucinogenic work can be paired with mass pushing technology to create The Spree's suicide bombs.

Pyro-Shapeshifting - By holding a fire to their faces, Spree members can burn away their current appearance and "burn on" a new one. This ability affects the entire body, allowing a witch to alter their hair, height, physical build, and other characteristics as desired. In "Citydrop," a Spree member's shapeshifted to look like Scylla but reverted to her true form and appearance after being knocked out/killed by Raelle. This work can also be used to temporarily swap appearances with another.

Scrying - With the use of a reflective surface to project the images to, a witch can remotely see in places outside their typical field of vision. Witches proficient in scrying and other related works are known as "Knowers." This work has been used by witches in command centers to maintain visual contact with deployed witch units. "Scry" is also the term for an object manufactured specifically for this purpose.

Clairvoyance - In the episode "Citydrop," Tally has demonstrated the ability to see and detect individuals and situations outside of her sight without the need for a scry. She has demonstrated being able to see individuals obscured by things like metal walls and dust storms. She can also detect individuals made invisible by witch work. Her clairvoyance also allows her to feel the emotions of the subjects of her ability, such as when she felt the emotions of the hostages inside a container.
Mirror Communication - Visual images like messages drawn into fogged-up sections of mirrors can be sent from one mirror to another. This is one of the methods of communication used by The Spree.
Remote Viewing - Using a scrying implement and a link with another witch, a witch is able to project on the scry's surface what the other is seeing. This work requires the witch receiver to exhale an fog onto the scrying implement's surface first before putting her hand on the implement. General Clary linked with her daughter to view the ambush on the Spree.
Sonic Sight (Audio-Visual Synesthesia) - Tally has demonstrated the ability to visually perceive certain sounds such as those from witch work. In the "Dollhouse" training, she was able to see the work as golden streams of light similar to an aurora emanating from a source. This is an uncommon enough ability that it piqued the interest of Major Madga Verger.

Sensory Tracking - Adil has used this work to track where his people were hiding in the Altai Mountains.

Blood Compass - Certain witch from the Tarim are capable of creating a compass using a sample of a person's blood and a smooth circular stone. The blood sample is dropped into the center and will send out little streams of blood on the stone's surface to point to where the sample's body is located. If the body is in pieces, it will create several streams on the surface with each stream's size somewhat proportional to the mass of the body parts it is pointing to.

Sigils - Symbols witches can draw or trace for a variety of effects.

Lock Maniplation - Witches can close and open locks by tracing a sigil on it.
Memory - Witches can relive the memories and emotions tied to the writings of another witch by tracing a sigil on the paper the writings are on.
Warding Circles - Using a white powder (probably salt), witches can create a warding circle that prevents most work from crossing. While useful in protecting people inside from being attacked from the outside, it does not prevent work from being performed inside. Linking and sympathetic work can also be channeled across warding circles as long as the witches establish their link prior to one crossing into the ward.

Sleep Induction - Witches can make others fall asleep. Subjects who wake up too quickly from induced sleep may experience nausea. Raelle was able to accidentally sleep everyone in her class when her anger interacted with her fixing incantation.

Thermal Manipulation - Different seeds can be used to increase or decrease temperatures.

Transmutation - The Tarim have particularly destructive sounds that can cause instantaneous transformations. The work is lethal when used on living beings. During the attack on the Camarilla compound, Adil employed a form that turned the target's body soft. When the Camarilla attacked Adil, Khalida generated a deep seed sound that immediately turned her target's body into molten rock.

Weather Manipulation - Witches can create meteorological phenomena such as cyclones and localized lightning storms. Witches proficient in this work are known as "blasters." If weather is manipulated to high degrees it can cause side effects to the natural world, such as plagues, floods, and other catastrophic phenomena.

Freezing - A Spree member caused the water at a swimming pool to freeze, causing the people inside and around the pool to freeze as well.
Lightning Strike - Blasting that involves using lightning against an enemy. Bridey went up against this type of work in the Andes.
Lightning Storm - Abigael and Raelle's fighting during a training season early in their basic training unintentionally caused a lightning storm, summoning strong winds and dark clouds as well as electrical activity that shorted out the lights of the gymnasium.
Rain - Several witches summoned rain to fall during the opening lacrosse game of the trio’s first Beltane.
Razor Hail - Blasting involving hail so sharp it can cut. Bridey went up against this in the Andes.
Snow Devil - Blasting involving snow. Bridey went up against this the Andes.
Tornadoes - Columns of tornadoes are a common form of weather phenomena used by American blasters. This work has been demonstrated multiple times by witches training at Fort Salem.
Wind Storm - The witch generals at Charvel Bellweather's wedding combined their voices to create a powerful storm of wind to blast back the Spree's balloons.

Windburn - Windburn is a work or effect mentioned in "Citydrop." It presumably involves abrasions on the skin from using work like windstrike.

Windchill - Windchill at varying degrees can be used to keep objects cool or to freeze areas in a matter of seconds.

Windshear - This early-taught work is a site-specific, rapid conjuration, impact-absorbing shield made from the air around a witch.

Windstrike - These propulsive bursts of air can be used defensively and offensively. Particularly strong windstrike has been demonstrated to exert over 1600 lbs of pressure per square foot, shown when Abigail, Raelle, and Tally blast a hole through solid metal. Using windstrike is sometimes called "throwing air" at a subject.

Hydrokinesis: The user is capable of manipulating water to their use as shown by Penelope during her testing and at the summit.

Witch Specializations By Work[]

Blasters - Witches skilled at conjuring tornadoes and other meteorological phenomena. These storms can cut through metal and stone, clear paths in dense areas by destroying and blowing away materials, and decimate enemy troops.

Fixers - Witches proficient at healing others. One method of healing involves transferring the injuries of others on to their bodies.

Knowers - Witches who have a talent for scrying and other modes of gathering knowledge. They can “see around corners and know what to do and when to do it.”

Necros - Witches with the skills to direct and manipulate the magnetism and resonances tied to death. They can gather intelligence by using the bodies of the dead and can occasionally open a "death current" to interrogate a recently deceased body.

Matrimonialists - These military matchmakers oversee Beltane festivals and wedding ceremonies.

Media[]

Workings from season 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dMvrQ6yWTnLE2ly-8e0z2fuvQ41nnoJr/view?usp=sharing