In Homeline, the western world was ravaged by accusations of witchcraft throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. On the world known as Coven, these fears were entirely correct; the Devil himself empowered witches across Christendom, seeking to overthrow the established order of the world. Coven most clearly diverges from Homeline in 1692, when the Salem witch trials began; in Coven, Martha Carrier and most of the people who would be accused of witchcraft in Homeline’s past instead fled New England, disappearing into the mountains of Appalachia. Surprisingly (or perhaps not, depending on your perspective), the witch trials happened regardless, with a new batch of victims targeted.
Martha Carrier rallied an army of witches, Indians and other outcasts in the forests on the outskirts of New England. With the power of witchcraft, she and her coven established what they called the Devil’s Republic in the hinterlands of New England. The colonial government raised an army in an attempt to defeat the witches but with the assistance of the Indians (and surreptitious help from French Canada) the witches managed to fend them off.
Ezekiel Dubois was fourteen when the Devil came to him. The product of an illicit liaison between a French-Canadian fur trader and an English colonist, Dubois lived on the outskirts of Salem Town with his parents. Life was hard; his heritage made him suspect and his mother had a reputation for being a scold and a gossip--serious sins for the time. Sometimes he dreamed of running off and becoming a sailor or joining with the Indians. The year the devil came to him was a particularly harsh winter; the Devil promised Ezekiel enough firewood to last the year if he would only hear his offer and Ezekiel readily accepted. Soon, he joined Carrier in the woods, becoming an early citizen of her Republic of witches.
The gifts the devil gave would seem insignificant to anyone from Homeline: a new dress, a pet bird, the payment of debts. But to a colonial New Englander these were luxuries just within the reach of imagination. And soon the Devil’s gifts grew; he taught them magic, as long as they would let him place his mark upon them and sign their names in his book. The Devil’s plan, they all learned, was to make all men equal and to relieve the suffering they were sentenced to on Earth.
Though Carrier called herself the Queen of Hell, the government she ran was far more egalitarian and meritocratic than her title suggested. Ezekiel rose through the ranks quickly; his apprenticeship under his father to be a tracker made him a useful officer in Carrier’s armies and he took to the Devil’s gifts with natural skill. By the time he was nineteen he was nearly her right hand man (not so unusual at the time for someone so young) and was part of her own coven.
But this was not to last. The English had dismissed reports of the Devil’s Republic as the result of overzealous colonists but as King William’s War ended the Crown was baffled by the continuing battles in New England. Soldiers were at last sent to assist the colony and upon finding that the Devil’s Republic was very much real began a campaign of scorched earth warfare. Abandoned by their French allies, the Republic was crushed by the English army, who burnt much of the land where they had established themselves to the ground.
In the flames, Johnson prepared himself for death; but the Devil came to him in the shape of a woman dressed in men’s clothing. She took his hand and led him through the fire, through a door in the very world itself. And there she revealed the truth to him: she was not the Devil. She was from another world and she offered him an opportunity like the one the Devil had offered him five years ago--join her and live.
