Gumdrop Shaman
300 years ago lived a witch known to humans as the Sugar Hag. She had an obsession with confectioneries, mixing up delicacies of such sweetness human teeth would fall out after biting into one. So delicious were they that many sources say people didn’t even mind, guzzling down whatever sweets they could get their hands on even as the sheer sugar content killed them.
At first, she tolerated this, because these sweets would only lure a few humans that she could eat, but soon she was drawing unwanted attention. She was attacked by soldiers attempting to remove this killer, and increasing numbers of desperately hungry pilgrims would come to rob her of pieces of her candy house. And so, her oven began pumping out a new candy; candy that could defend itself.
Clad in a shell of steel-hard peanut brittle, these soft folk were quiet, but wise. They had a natural connection with sun magic, casting powerful elemental spells to defend themselves. They quickly overthrew her when they realized she had only given them their defensive capacity so that she might eat them. Her blood was not dry before they were turning to her cookbooks and creating themselves kin.
Now, the Gumdrop Shamans are the leading religious caste of an entire small nation of candy folk. They rule over a land of warlike, defending Gingerbread Knights, hard-working Peppermint Peasants, and slow but well-meaning Molasses Lords. They are the only ones who know how to create new members of their kingdom, seeing cooking as a ritual to summon souls into the mortal realm. They also serve as the judges of their realm; other races are free to pass through, but not permitted to stay, as sooner or later, nearly everybody tries to take a bite… and then the Shamans must punish them.
Hansel and Gretel would’ve been a very different story in this universe. Anyway my theory that witches are stupid continues to gather more evidence, this time in the form of a witch that made food that was smart enough to fear death and strong enough to not die. Speaking of which, can they die of old age? Do they melt at higher temperatures? Do they have organs that you can destory to kill them? Or do they only die if consumed?
I’m gonna say their lifespans depend on what kind of candy they are. They survive until they finally begin to decay, which for most hard candies takes a while. As for melting, yes, and organs, yes again. They have a jelly heart and will die if it is stabbed.