'Sorcery said to have been used by the old snow witch. Releases a cold mist before the caster. This sorcery can be cast while in motion. Charging enhances range of the mist. The snowy crone taught the young Ranni to fear the cold. Ranni was so unaccustomed to being afraid that she found the feeling addictive, and the snow witch's lessons were her cherished memory.' The Snow Witch is the canon's most carefully unnamed character. She is the original teacher of every cold sorcery the Tarnished can learn, Frozen Armament, Freezing Mist, Mass of Cold, Glintstone Icecrag, and the lore on each spell credits her by epithet only : 'the snowy crone,' 'the old snow witch.' She lived alone in the Mountaintops or in the Consecrated Snowfield, and at some point in Ranni's childhood she took the young Carian princess as a pupil, taught her the cold, and taught her to like fearing it.

Renna, Ranni's later traveling persona, is named after her teacher in deliberate sealed homage. The questline of the Carian Dark Moon is the questline of a student becoming her master's god : Ranni's coronation as Lord of the Frostmoon is the canonical promotion of the Snow Witch's craft from a hermitage to a cosmology. The witch herself is gone before the Tarnished arrives. There is no boss-fight. There is no remembrance. Only her sorceries, scattered across the world, each carrying the same single sentence about a girl who learned to be afraid and to love the fear because the lesson was given by hands that loved her back.