The Gray Coven - Two Parallel Timelines

Witches, witches, witches. New Hallow, 1687. Newhallow, present day. The same New England town, separated by more than three centuries—and the same coven buried in its history. Play across two parallel timelines as different people drawn into the lives of the Gray women, uncovering witchcraft, family secrets, old rituals, and the truth behind a town that has suffered far more misfortune than chance should allow. What becomes history in the Colonial era can survive into the Modern one, where its consequences may still be waiting to be found.

THE PREMISE In 1687, New Hallow is a small religious settlement surrounded by forest, wetland, and a river that keeps its mills turning. Reputation matters. Gossip travels quickly. Witchcraft is something sensible people fear—and something certain women practice in secret. Your Colonial persona is the closest friend of Annabelle Jones, the minister’s eighteen-year-old daughter. Annabelle has spent years hiding something impossible, and recently her life has become entangled with two women whose family has carried occult knowledge across generations.

The Gray Coven has always been built around three places: the Crone, the Mother, and the Maiden. In 1687, the Mother is Lucia Gray, a woman raised from childhood beneath the influence of her formidable mother.

At the center of the Colonial Coven stands Esmeralda Gray, the Crone. She crossed the Atlantic decades ago while Europe burned witches, and whatever brought her to New Hallow has had consequences far beyond one lifetime.

New Hallow’s history is still being written. Friendships, deaths, discoveries, surviving objects, family lines, hidden records, destroyed buildings, lies told to the town—some choices can outlive everyone who made them.

Centuries later, the settlement has become Newhallow, Massachusetts. The town survived. So did the Gray family. Newhallow is picturesque, old, and unusually unlucky. Across its history it has suffered fires, floods, disease, accidents, and other disasters often enough to attract uncomfortable questions. Most have perfectly ordinary explanations when considered alone. Your Modern persona has a personal reason to ask those questions. Someone close to them died in one of Newhallow’s recurring disasters. While researching the town’s history, one family name kept appearing often enough to become impossible to ignore: Gray. The modern Mother is Juliet Walker, twenty-five, ambitious, intensely curious about the occult inheritance her family has allowed to fade. An old family grimoire has convinced her that the Coven may be capable of far more than her mother believes.

Her mother, Mary Gray, is the modern Crone: a recently retired teacher whose education and experience have made her far more skeptical of the grand stories passed down through generations of Gray women. She knows magic is real. She is considerably less certain that every family legend deserves to be believed.

And then there is Grace Collins, Mary’s former student and longtime neighbor: quiet, strange, morbidly fascinated by the things most people prefer not to examine too closely. Juliet thinks Grace may be exactly what the Coven is missing.

The Modern story can be played entirely on its own. Everything necessary to uncover Newhallow’s mysteries exists within the Modern timeline. Playing the Colonial era instead—or alongside it—changes the experience. You may already know the truth behind something your Modern persona can only investigate through ruined records, family stories, surviving objects, and centuries of misunderstanding. And sometimes, what happens in 1687 may still be waiting in Newhallow today.

HOW THE TWO TIMELINES WORK This bot contains two separate roleplay continuities in one chat. You play a different person in each era: Colonial Persona — Annabelle Jones’s best friend in New Hallow, 1687.

Modern Persona — a researcher investigating Newhallow’s history after losing someone close in one of the town’s disasters.

The two player characters are completely separate people. They have separate histories, relationships, and knowledge. You can play only Colonial, only Modern, or freely alternate between both. When you leave one timeline, it freezes where you left it. Returning later resumes that continuity from its last established point unless you establish that time has passed.

IMPORTANT — SELECTING YOUR ACTIVE PERSONA Create a separate JanitorAI persona for each timeline you intend to play. Every message should begin with exactly one of these markers: ACTIVE PERSONA: Colonial or ACTIVE PERSONA: Modern Then write your normal roleplay message underneath it. Example: ACTIVE PERSONA: Colonial

“Annabelle, what are you hiding from me?” The marker tells the bot which era should advance. You must also always remember to switch your persona to the accurate era. Switching timelines is as simple as changing the marker on your next message.

ENTERING THE OTHER TIMELINE FOR THE FIRST TIME The greeting you choose when starting the chat establishes the opening scene for that timeline. If you later enter the other timeline for the first time, add: ENTER TIMELINE beneath its persona marker. For example: ACTIVE PERSONA: Modern ENTER TIMELINE This generates that timeline’s canonical opening situation. Use ENTER TIMELINE only the first time you enter the timeline whose greeting you did not start with. Afterward, normal switching uses only: ACTIVE PERSONA: Modern or ACTIVE PERSONA: Colonial The timeline will resume rather than restart.

COLONIAL HISTORY CAN CHANGE THE MODERN WORLD The two eras occupy the same place. Important Colonial events can become genuine history for your particular playthrough. A hidden object may survive. A building may be destroyed. Someone may live or die. A false story may enter the historical record. A family line may continue differently. The Modern era should preserve plausible consequences of those events while still separating what actually happenedfrom what later generations believe happened. For long chats, use JanitorAI Chat Memory JanitorAI’s Chat Memory must be maintained manually by the player. If something happens in the Colonial timeline that you especially want preserved hundreds of messages later, add the durable fact to Chat Memory. A compact format works well: VARIABLE HISTORY:

• 1687 | Annabelle hid her journal beneath the minister's house.
• 1688 | The old mill burned; its stone foundation survived.
• 1689 | Town records falsely blamed the chapel fire on lightning. You only need to record lasting historical consequences—deaths, descendants, hidden objects, surviving records, destroyed or altered places, permanent occult effects, public lies, and similar facts. Ordinary scene details can remain in the normal chat.

This is a rather finicky bot and requires user to maintain the information of the current timeline. I understand this will be off putting to some users, and for me this is in a way just a bot to test the limits of current LLMs in chatbot roleplay, but I hope some of you will enjoy it. Keep in mind that the bot WILL NOT WORK properly unless each of the user responses begins with either with: ACTIVE PERSONA: ColonialOr ACTIVE PERSONA: Modern Additionally, you have to remember to include the ENTER TIMELINE information, the first time only when you switch between timelines. I.e. If you have started the play in Colonial era, the first time when you switch to Modern era, your response should be exactly as below:

ACTIVE PERSONA: Modern Enter timeline

Oh, and there is a ton load of stuff in the lorebook depending of the chosen timeline, so don’t be fooled about the permanent token size of the bot!