The time came. The evil witch, Kim Cordial, decided to make her move. Unable to ruin her sister’s family, and unsatisfied with the parade of men marching through her bedroom, she decided her next step was power: followed by corruption. She needed an ally, however, because the “good” witch, Bella Donna — who can’t be that good, Kim knew, because look how badly Kim’s life went under Bella’s watch — had a vampire for a lover, and that could be trouble. (I took this as the sign that Bella had lost her way: she actually married Lisa, but against my intention, Bella Donna became Bella Raymond. Clearly, she is no longer the Lady of Belladonna Cove, right? Right. Dazzled and distracted by a pale blonde beauty.)

 

But as Fortune would have it, there was a perfect candidate right under Kim’s roof: her teenaged daughter, Hecate. Kim turned Hecate to the Dark Side, and Hecate took right to it. Soon she was spending all night at her spellbook studying the dark arts, or stirring her cauldron; any exhaustion or discomfort could be removed simply by sitting in her mother’s evil throne (which fills a dark witch’s bars up to max). Taking another cue from her mother, she started bringing home boys, one after another, and dating them until they had a crush on her or even fell in love; there’s something about green women, obviously, that drives Sim-men wild. Two sets of twins, one brother after another — first the Patels, a nice, normal family with too many children because the mother had a wish to have ten babies, and I shrugged and said, “You got it,” (They’re up to seven, at the moment — but more on the Patels later.) and then the Contender boys.

Meanwhile, Kim went back into politics, which Bella Donna had left, choosing to follow the Adventurer track to try to alleviate her immortal ennui; and when Kim was at least elected mayor (I have no doubt there was magic and corruption both involved), she made her move. I had tested the Tabula Rasa spell on another Sim — who asked for it; because one day when Kim was out on the town with a casual social group, another of my Sims jumped her. Literally. And I honestly don’t know why: I assume the angry Sim’s husband had whistled at Kim, and might have been Attracted to Kim while she was singing karaoke, but I’m not sure why Isabel Attacked Kim as soon as Kim finished her song. But attacking an evil witch is a mistake: so I had Kim give her a Tabula Rasa, followed by an Invisible Servant attack. The Tabula Rasa spell does just what it did on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which made me enormously happy: it made Isabel forget all of her memories — ending her marriage as a consequence. The Invisible Servant gave her a beating, and then just for the hell of it, Kim turned her into an evil witch. So Kim knew her arsenal, and she made use: she called Bella and invited her over, and then the second the good witch arrived, Kim hit her with Tabula Rasa. Boom: in my storyline, Bella forgot all about her duty to her Cove; and in the Sim world, all of Bella’s relationship scores went to 0.

 

Which, it turned out, was a mistake. Because my next step was to have Kim and Hecate move in with Bella and her vampire lover, Lisa Raymond, and then take over their palatial home, which has to be the estate of The Lady of the Cove. But Bella didn’t like Kim any more, because of the Tabula Rasa; and since Bella is still a good witch and Kim is an evil witch, they hated each other instinctively: all of their conversations went badly, and any positive relationship moves got maybe half the points. Getting them to the point where Bella — obviously under Kim’s magical control — invited Kim to move in was a serious pain.

But it happened. Kim and Hecate moved in. And immediately went to work: they glassed in the top-floor balcony, and made Countess Lisa first Bite and infect Bella, and then make her way up to the greenhouse-walled balcony, followed by Bella.

 

My original intent was to have them suffer in the sunlight for eternity; but it turns out that vampires — which I haven’t played very much in the Sims, and so don’t know all the ins and outs of — actually die in the sunlight. And I didn’t want Bella dead: I wanted her captive. So I backed out without saving, and then had Kim mix up a Vampicillin potion, which cures vampirism. Bella drank it — though the sunlight had already burned her to nearly empty on Hunger, Bladder, Hygiene, and Energy — and turned human, immediately collapsing into sleep. Which meant that she missed watching her wife Lisa die.

(I have video captures of all of this, but the file type is archaic. I will try to convert them.)

Oh — why did Lisa have to die? Because while Hecate was out on one of her many dates, Countess Lisa showed up there at random — and out of the blue, I noticed her face appear in Hecate’s queue: and when I hovered over it, it said “Bite neck!” I canceled it immediately, not wanting Hecate to get vamped — though I wish I hadn’t, because that would have fit the story perfectly, with Lisa coming after the Cordials as part of this feud — but clearly, Lisa was plotting against them, and had to be removed. So she was.

And now Hecate is my Wormtongue, twisting all of the families of Belladonna cove, while Kim crouches atop the hill and gloats in the face of her enemy. She has been kind enough to give Bella a refrigerator, so Bella doesn’t starve; Bella also gave up all of the magical reagents she had in her Inventory, which earned her a chair and a table. Then she drank Witch Begone, losing all of her power (Necessary because otherwise she could teleport out of her prison.), and that earned her a sink and a plastic lounge chair to sleep in. Then she had quite a bit of trouble, because the ashes of the former Countess Lisa were still in there on the floor, and Bella has an 8 in Neat: so she kept sweeping up the ashes, and then just dropping them again, because she had no garbage can to put them in. This was very funny for a surprisingly long time. Finally I caved and gave her a garbage chute. So now she is a self-sufficient prisoner, who can Freestyle when she is bored, wash her hands in her sink, make herself bologna sandwiches, and then nap in her plastic lounger. What a life.

And then there are the ghosts: the house came with three of them, who were annoying at first to Bella and Lisa; but witches can cast spells on ghosts — Expello Simae makes them go away quite nicely, and they’ve been resting peacefully for a while. Once Kim moved in and Lisa died, there was a new ghost, and she was pissed: Countess Lisa. Countess Lisa actually killed Bella when I wasn’t looking — because ghosts jump out and scare Sims, and if the Sims are too low on needs at that moment, they have a heart attack. I had to back out without saving, because I wasn’t done with Bella; but then I had to deal with Lisa. So I had Kim resurrect her as a zombie. So the vampire became a ghost, and then a vampire-zombie — still a vampire, because she burns in the sunlight, but now she shuffles around and groans like a zombie.

Flush with success, I had Kim repeat the feat with the other three ghosts. (Pro tip: witches need to have Gold Aspiration mood before they can successfully raise the dead. Otherwise nothing happens. I got Kim to gold by having her WooHoo. I like it: the evil witch uses sex to power her necromancy. Seems fitting. If only I could have her sacrifice her lovers to her evil gods. Maybe in the Sims 4 . . .) So now there are four zombies, two witches, a tormented prisoner, and a cat living in the house.

Ladies and gentlemen, my new Witch Queen and her household.

 

And while on a date with Hecate (Totally out of my control — but obvious evidence that the Sim universe wants me to keep doing this), her date, Cassius Contender, got bit by a new vampire in town.

The evil is spreading.