Parting the Mists

A Thallain Corinthian

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Sun, 27 Nov 2022 10:51:00 -0600

I'm going to start moving my structured #CtD threads over from Twitter. This is a Twitter thread, that's been lightly copy edited for readability, but otherwise left in its original format.

Let's talk about some Changeling: The Dreaming media fodder. I want to talk about the Corinthian and the Thallain. The thread will contain light spoilers from The Kindly Ones for those who care. I'm thinking of doing a series of threads on media inspiration for Dreaming. #faemily

So first let's start of with the obvious. The Corinthian is absolutely perfect Thallain inspiration at the beginning of Sandman, both the comic and the Netflix series. He's pure distilled predator, but he's also a brilliant example of how nightmares can very easily be Seelie.

Before you @ me hear me out. The Corinthian is a vicious killer, but he's also legitimately affectionate towards those he cares for, even passingly. He wields a predatory charm, but looks to inspire and create, and build something enduring in the world.

He is a creature who "gives" to the world to use the old definitions. He gifts horrors to the depraved, but we still never see him Ravage. Only Reverie the worst of humanity.

I don't mean to imply that he's in any way a good guy. I only want to point out how meaningful C20's introduction of Seelie legacies to the Thallain can truly be. Mixing a deeply predatory Nightmare legacy with a deeply romantic Seelie legacy has profound horror potential.

Contrast this with the reborn Corinthian from the Kindly Ones. Still predatory, but fiercely loyal to Morpheus. We see his devotion to children in acute focus (which highlights how meaningful the expansion of his story is in Netflix Sandman). He wishes to fulfill his roll.

If you stop and think about the real difference between these two Corinthians one is nightmare in service to freedom and the other is nightmare in service to order and control. Think about how you react to that elevator pitch as opposed to how you react to those characters.

How does this help in CtD? I think the most obvious way it helps is it shows how we need to slow our roll on edgy Thallain. I'll admit I've mostly used full on fair tale villain Thallain, but the more I think about the Corinthian the more I think that's a waste of potential.

It also opens up some fun potential around reincarnation. What if instead of Seelie vs Unseelie Thallain we thought of original Corinthian as Thallain and Kindly Ones Corinthian as Nightmare Kithain. The way our "Redcap" Corinthian connects with his Thallain past is telling.

I could easily see this being a PCs "Dark Secret", and having huge fallout for a Redcap or Sluagh if it's discovered. It would also deeply challenge the Sidhe line on how to deal with the Thallain. What if the whole "They're of the Fomorians!!!" is propaganda.

If you pull in the First Edition LARP Bright Path material you open up major reshaping of a fae soul between lives. A whole chronicle could easily be built around parting the mists that surround such a secret, and who would want a secret like that leaked.

My whole goal here was just to post a story idea that goes outside the normal canon, along with some media inspiration to help part some of the narrative abstraction. Would anyone be interested in more of these?

Alternate Seemings: Seasons

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Tue, 1 May 2018 13:07:00 -0500

Hello fellow former Arcadians!

Pushing Simon's house rules for interregnum seemings out the door. These rules extend tentacles into a lot of different parts of the game -- a big part of this deals with the more open Kith system that our game uses. I think I managed to include explanations of every place these alternate seemings invoke another house-ruled concept, but my usual editor was busy.

As always, comments and criticism are welcome.

Alternate Seemings: Seasons.

The Autumn and Arcadian Courts

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 14:32:00 -0500

The Autumn and Arcadian Courts

This is a short (at least as far as I do "short") piece. It's mostly narrative flavor from the perspective of a bitter old Brownie who rejects the Concordian narrative.
What follows is a brief discussion about the Seleighe and unSeleighe Courts, why they seem like a giant mess, and what that might mean for the meta-narrative of your Changeling: the Dreaming games -- with some examples of how one might tie real world history from the Interregnum in to Changeling's courtly philosophies and shadowy politicking.
Finally there is an introduction for the nearly forgotten Courtless (or Solstice if one prefers the Dark Ages: Fae terminology) changelings and an associated merit.
As always, feel free to take what you feel improves your game and throw away or modify anything that doesn't.
- Simon

First People Revelires

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Sat, 20 Jan 2018 17:07:00 -0600

C20/Expanded Epiphany System First People Revelries

C20 added “Revelry”, a kith-specific method for recovering Glamour to the game but did not give this ability to the Nunnehi (and by extension the Menehune). This is likely because C20 retconned away the Nunnehi’s ability to draw power from human inspiration and emotion altogether, doubling down on the “being disconnected from the Dreaming makes them something different” narrative.

It should be obvious by now what we think of that narrative but in case it isn’t: it’s a terrible choice to encode a disadvantage for the only explored nonwhite groups into the game’s core mechanics. Particularly one that is contradicted by white group’s history (the Kithain did not lose the ability to muse during the interregnum, despite being completely cut off from the Dreaming as the Nunnehi are now). While there are interpretations of the animist feeding dynamic that aren't centered on coping with colonial violence, this is how the system is framed in the canon. We think this was done carelessly, rather than maliciously, but like all cultural mis-steps in popular culture, that doesn’t make it any better.

Part of how we handle this issue is a more open approach to Epiphanies detailed in the recent Origins and Epiphanies post. If you are running with the Revelry system from C20 this still gives Changelings with the "Hero" origin a significant advantage in the form of Revelry. So we wanted to develop suggested Revelries for the Nunnehi and Menehune to make them somewhat more equal players in the C20 feeding dynamics. Our suggestion is to allow any changeling to partake in Revelry, regardless of their origin when using the Origins and Epiphanies system.

The majority of this text was written by Victor, but Simon suggested changes to, and completely rewrote a few of the first draft Revelries. Some of these Revelries are more rooted in the game writeups of these groups, but in many cases they are based on external research we did and reflect an attempt to bring some more of the group's origins to bear on their play experience. The Kokua specifically stand out to me as an example of this. When researching the origins of "Kokua" I discovered it is the Hawi'ian name for assistance or aid. Having a warrior kith with a blood rage frailty given a name rooted in communal nurturing left me at a loss for quite a while. I am still somewhat uncertain of my attempt to reconcile this dissonant naming, but I must admit the idea of any Kithain, or other foolish creature daring to go up against a group of Kokua lead by a powerful Ali'i with the Revelry I gave the Ali'i makes me very happy, so for now I'm leaving these as they are.

Simon and Victor are presenting these Revelries as a suggested starting point. We are ultimately a couple of white dudes trying to put together less problematic content than the original game, and as much research as we did, including a couple conversations with friends who are members of first nations cultures, this approach is limited, and we are aware we may well have screwed some of this up.

We are open to and encourage criticism of this work, and depending on what feedback we get we may revise and update this text in the future.

Origins and Epiphanies

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 15:26:00 -0600

Origins and Epiphanies: House Rules for C20

Here are Simon's house rules surrounding changelings' feeding habits.

The goal of these rules is to make the Epiphany system less restrictive, allowing players the freedom to make European changelings who engage with animism and First People changelings who feed from inspiration. Included is a brief discussion about renaming certain elements of the game to make the system itself more inclusive of world views that might be held by the Gallain, as well laying the framework to begin bringing the Hsien into the Dreaming. Also introduced in this set of house rules are Epiphanies for feeding from worship and Epiphanies that allow changelings to feed from the dead. I hope that these new Epiphany styles add character creation opportunities and narrative diversity for pure Changeling: the Dreaming games, and create space for interesting ~~competition~~ interaction with certain Prodigal groups in cross-over games.

The rules as written reflect the way we've been playing at our table for our Interregnum game, and may require some tweaking to make appropriate for other time periods and play-styles. A later iteration of these ideas may include allowing player-characters to have multiple Origins (and therefore multiple Epiphany styles), as well as clarification for what happens when changelings with different Origins target the same (or very similar) victims for their Epiphanies, and some specific use cases for Thallain, Dauntain, and Dark Kin. All of these are cases I anticipate coming up, but we haven't played with them at all at our table yet. In the case of the NPC groups I'm a lot more concerned about the squish feeling right than with there being a solid system behind it.

"But what happened to Rhapsody and Rapture?" I hear someone somewhere saying. I'm super uncomfortable with Rhapsody as a player ability, so I left it off. Assume Rhapsody works as written in whichever version of Changeling you're using. Rapture, on the other hand, is going to be the center of a later post about changelings doing spiritual quests as part of character improvement.

Finally, think there should be more Epiphanies and Origins? Think I wrote something badly? You're probably right! While the Folk Hero and Animist Epiphanies are mostly a refinement of the extant systems from the game (the Kithain Epiphanies and the Nunnehi/Menehune Epiphanies respectively), the Mystic and Psychopomp Epiphanies are original work trying to fill in holes in the game. First attempts are never perfect (and sometimes quite bad). Feel free to take this as a starting point to make something even better for your own game (and then tell me how it turned out).

Thanks to Victor for providing a sounding board and significant information about Wraith: the Oblivion. Thanks to my players for reading earlier versions of this and dealing with me being confused about which version we were playing.

The Order of the Whitesmiths

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Fri, 22 Dec 2017 13:07:00 -0600

Why the Whitesmiths?

Honestly, because I was a metalsmithing major in college, which drew me to the original writeup of House Dougal. I also appreciated the tragedy of the Arcadian Sidhe of House Dougal who stayed behind and died over the years (what can I say, I’m a sucker for a good tragedy). I love the new makerspace Dougal, I think they hold a very vital place in a 20teens story, but I wanted the Smiths of Dougal to have a significant place in the house identity. That place was absent for me in the C20 writeup, and really the Whitesmiths are more a metaphorical expression of my feelings on how these changes were handled, as opposed to a real headcanon. There are a couple references to Smiths in the Dougal writeup in C20, so the following text requires cleaning that up, and tripling down on the implications of the Dougal exile text. That said, I think this creates a very interesting story space, and ties Dougal to modern fine art Whitesmithing, which seems very VERY Changeling to me. I hope some of you find some useful hooks in this writeup.

Order of the Whitesmiths

House Dougal is old. We were smiths in the mythic age, shaping the world itself into form and elegance. In the early days we shaped tools of war, swords, shields, and armor. As time went on we honed our craft, building deep legends among Dreamer and Fair Folk alike. One of the most powerful Dougal Sidhe claims it was our founder Lord Dougal who first reach into the world and shaped the Wyrd. I have spoken with the Baron of our house who makes this claim and as with all ramblings of deep Bedlam I cannot help but wonder if his affliction is just the terrible cost of prying truth from the clutches of the Dreaming.

For most of our history House Dougal has been as hard as the edge of a newly tempered steel blade, and no Dougal past their saining had not heard of the invention of steel, or the price our founder paid to awaken a new Spring after the Winter of Iron. For decades after the Resurgence that story was like the falling of a hammer on a red hot billet. It shaped the wonder and pride of Dougal Sidhe, and reminded the commoners who kept our Balefires burning during the Interregnum of our sacrifice, and why no matter what they accomplished or endured during the Long Winter, it was time for them to step aside.

Then something strange happened. We began to change. The first time I saw a Dougal with a forged mechanical leg I didn’t think anything of it. Our House is often afflicted with failings of the body, and it made sense that upon losing some part of one’s self a Dougal would re-craft their form in the fires of the Dreaming. The mechanical nature of the work was odd, but even we have always had progressives within our ranks. Then I began to see more and more members of my house with numerous chimerical bits holding their bodies together. Soon it wasn’t a hand or a leg, but eyes made of gears and glass, then ears of elegantly folded fabric and wire. When I finally met a Dougal who’s heart and mind was made of delicately clicking bits of brass I knew the House of my memory was slipping from the world.

The irony of this change is that many of our oldest members still remember the secrets of our earliest wars. We understand what so few of the Fae do about what happens when the Shining Ones go to war. We do not fight for pride, or honor, or territory. When the children of the Tuatha battle we fight over the nature of reality. We fight for our very names, forge our truths, and occasionally the truths of our enemies to our whim. So when such a dramatic change happened within our midst those of us who understood such things did not see evolution, but saining magic being shaped against us. We know now that was little more than paranoia, but we responded as though we were at war.

Our transformation was drawing us into a modern world that the Arcadian Sidhe among us were not equipped to survive. Beyond the risks of banality, as we changed, many of our rank were slipping into their unseleighe natures with alarming frequency. While we were away in Arcadia the commoners reshaped the courts that defined our kind for millennia. What had once been a court forged to rule over the darkest winter nights was now a court of change, and transformation, and House Dougal is a house of smiths. Our oldest names and oaths are defined by the striking of hammer to ingot, the shaping of potential into something more than what it is. We cannot be anything other than a house of change, but we refuse to be a house of nightmares. The Whitesmiths were born from this struggle.

An Oath Not Taken Lightly

When the leaders of House Dougal realized what was taking place they called a conference of the most powerful members of House Dougal in order to fight whatever was reshaping us. The first several days of the conference were filled with fear and warmongering, strategizing had to be suspended several times to fight the nervosa spawning from the intensity of our collective anxiety.

At the end of the 3rd day Duchess Siobahn Ó hAodha ap Dougal gave voice to the fear gnawing away inside all the assembled. No one was waging a shaping war on House Dougal, the Autumn World was just forgetting what we were, and we were being trapped in other stories. There is no fear that strikes deep into the heart of a Sidhe like being forgotten and in that moment the Dreaming burst open and a Cold Iron Nervosa was born from the welling banality and terror caused by that proposition. The beast nearly filled the great hall within the Dreaming where the Lords and Ladies of Dougal gathered, and felled three of our company before any could rally arms against it.

It looked like the heart of Dougal’s leadership would be destroyed by the manifestation of their own terror, but Lady Siobahn found her hammer and drew deep into the Dreaming, unleashing old magics and spoke the name of the nervosa that assaulted her kin in the ancient language of the Sidhe. As the name rang through the air she called on her brethren to unleash into the heart of themselves and reforge their fear. It would be an epic tale to tell of all of greatest nobles of House Dougal calling on the Dreaming in unison, but that tale befits the honor of a Puca. Few of the assembled nobles were able to muster the will to reach into their own terror and reforge it, but those who joined Lady Ó hAodha became the founding members of the Order of Whitesmiths.

The Sidhe who failed to raise their arms against the cold iron beast stood in shame. Siobahn stepped forward and ripped each of their memories from them and cast them into the heart of the Dreaming. Such a failing cannot truly be forgotten, and it will stalk them for all time, but she gave them some hope of respite, at least for a season.

The remaining Sidhe assembled had seen into the heart of their House’s affliction, and committed to a course of action any other House of Sidhe would see as abomination. They followed the creature forged from the names of their own dearest fears into the heart of the Dreaming, and in that place rewove the true name of Dougal. By the time the questing Sidhe returned from the Dreaming, years were lost and the magics worked a thousand loves, tragedies, and haunted nights past the valley of mists were already writ into the names of the rest of their House.

Mechanical, rather than smithing inclinations were now pervasive throughout Dougal, but the slip towards our unseleighe natures had stopped, or at least it appeared so at first. It quickly became apparent that something else entirely was happening. Where other Sidhe shift between legacies, Sidhe of House Dougal no longer held either court. We embodied our seleighe and unseleighe natures simultaneously. For some, this meant being a manifestation of the most noble pursuits of progress, being driven by a need to craft a better world from wire and plastic. Others would lose themselves in the obsession of their work, embodying the most selfish tendencies of the unseleighe, while living a life of structure and discipline that defied any unseleighe legacy. We were transformed more radically than any of Ó hAodha’s motley thought possible.

What no one expected is the old myths of our House had vanished. The stories of Dougal’s triumph over Iron were buried somewhere deep within the mists. Only Ó hAodha’s motley could remember the tale, and when we tried to tell others of Dougal’s great deeds our lips cracked and our mouths dried, and the words would twist and wither before their birth. Yet, we were not graced with the gift the mists bestow on our brethren, we remember the truth with terrible perfection, but we cannot speak it to others.

The Whitesmiths and Tradition

Thus the Order of the Whitesmiths was born. We tried to reclaim the name of Blacksmith, but that name rejected us as surely as the old stories, and so with great effort we named ourselves the Whitesmiths. Even the secret title we hold for each other is a slander we must bear.

The Whitesmiths gather once a year on Imbolg and speak our true history. We also take this time to initiate new members to the order. We thought for years it would be impossible to extend our numbers, and so eventually the old stories would die with us. Then 3 years ago on Imbolg night Queen Mary Elizabeth strode into the Candlemas light and cast a Geas upon all of the Whitesmiths to reveal their secrets to her. The Dreaming recoiled and twisted back upon itself. A Gaes that cannot be fulfilled will fail, and the magics cast out by the errant Sidhe Queen quite nearly snapped under the burden of our curse. Just as we thought her magics would fail, a trod opened before us that lead into the darkest depths of the Dreaming, and the shape of the Geas burned itself into our minds.

We could not tell the old myths to a Sidhe who had not reshaped themselves in the heart of Dougal’s greatest hopes and fears, and so Ó hAodha stepped forward and lead her Majesty Mary Elizabeth along the paths we walked through the Dreaming years before. Unlike the first quest, Ó hAodha and her ward returned just as the Candlemas fires faltered. Our Lady walked into our ritual expecting to disrupt a group of dangerous conspirators within her House, instead she was shown the extent of our vulnerability in the face of the coming Winter.

Her Majesty now plays a delicate political game, keeping us hidden from the eyes of High Lord Donovan. She fears what will happen to the name of Dougal if all the Whitesmiths fall. Even if the rest of our House believes that we are creatures of the gear and microcircuit, some small part of our House remains rooted in the traditional crafts of our history. If that is lost, we may well lose everything we are.

Whitesmiths in the Modern World

While we are steeped in more tradition than the rest of our House, we are more creatures of the modern world than other seleighe Sidhe. We understand that we must fight to control our names, but we also must bend to the realities of the world around us enough to remain relevant to our Dreamers. The Whitesmiths tend to find this place in the art world. Peter Antor (https://lillstreetgallery.com/exhibitions/featured-jewelry-artist-peter-antor), and Hiroshi Suzuki (http://www.modernsilver.com/goldsmithsmarch/hiroshisuzuki.htm) are both Dreamers of the Whitesmiths.

In these times, our close ties with the fine arts has also entangled the Whitesmiths in academia. There are more than a few Whitesmiths working in metalsmithing departments at prominent art schools, and who have inspired, and been inspired by millennial sensibilities. Unlike other Sidhe who have locked themselves away from the world, Dougal Sidhe of all stripes recognize the rise in the intentional use of saining by budding millennials. For nearly all of human history the battles of narrative, name and shape that the Fae define themselves by were only understood by a handful of mortals. Now the world is rife with blogs redefining stories and names, genders and traditions.

While the Sidhe of the other houses who have noticed this change feel the casual wielding of naming magics by the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve to be an abomination, members of House Dougal, along with a few more radical members of House Scathach see this as a sign of a coming spring. Even those who are convinced that this shift in mortal society portends a coming spring cannot decide if it will be a return of Fomorian or Tuathan dreams.

Of Curses and Boons

Members of the Whitesmith bear the curse of our founder, not the creeping chimerical blight of our younger brethren. So we must repair our bodies as we did in the ages before the change. If we do not craft chimerical pieces to replace our failings quickly, other members of our House may notice. We are also unable to forge steel, for the Dreaming sees that act of crafting as too close to the stories we must not tell. If a Whitesmith attempts to wield a blacksmith’s hammer, the work they create will be twisted and corrupt, embodying the most destructive impulses of their nightmares. So we work with the lighter touch of a Whitesmith and forge our bodies out of brass, silver and more delicate materials. This gives Whitesmiths an air of elegance that the rest of our House is not known for, ironically helping us to fit in with other Sidhe, even as members of our own often distrust us for reasons they can never quite identify.

The ‘delicacy’ of the materials we work does not impart any physical disadvantage as even chimerical silver forged by a Whitesmith has the strength of tempered steel, but it does give us an air of elegance. It also allows us to spot each other almost instantly, and our suspicions are often confirmed with a simple exchange of looks. As our enhancements are constructed, and do not spawn directly from the Dreaming we must also maintain them when they are damaged. The conclusion of combat is often when a Whitesmith is most likely to be noticed as other Dougal’s mechanical bits heal as dynamically as they develop, where ours do not.

Off the Silver Path: Of Street Lights and Boogie Men

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Sun, 3 Dec 2017 11:01:00 -0600

So this isn't exactly what this blog is normally used for, and for those of you coming around to find game tidbits I'm sorry. This was my first exposure to shaping combat (not that I understood that at the time), and serves as a perfect example of how you can fight the Dreaming and her children without resorting to Banality.

This is a story my mother told me when I was very young. She wrote the story out for me several years ago, and it's been tickling my mind recently, so I decided it was time to dig it up. The images are intended to be child like, but I know they're a bit awkward. They're an old project I did with this story and I've been thinking about my mother and Changeling a lot recently so I wanted to get this out there in all of its rough around the edges glory. There are a lot of stories out there about Changeling children raised by parents who don't understand them, who are all too often Autumn People. I know Changeling is fundamentally a tragic story, but sometimes a Fae child is fortunate enough to have a Kinain parent, and this is in honor of all of those parents, and the lift they do for their children.

The Boogie Man by Bernadette Robinson Kinzer

When I was little I came home from school one day filled with strange horror stories told to me at school about the Boogie Man.

I asked my mother about them and she told me all about the Boogie Man, about his ugly face and dark scary shadow.

She told me how he liked to come out at night to scare little children, but she told something else as well . . .

She told me the Boogie Man’s secret.

Victor changed into his warm pajamas and his mother pulled the blanket down on his bed.
Before climbing into bed Victor stopped, “Mommy, is there a real Boogie Man?”

Victor’s mother didn’t answer at first. Then she asked, “Who told you about the Boogie Man?”

Victor closed his eyes and bowed his head, “Some kids at school. They told me the Boogie Man would follow me home from school, and he would get me tonight.”

Victor’s mother sat on the bed and said, “I see. Well. . . perhaps the Boogie Man did follow you home from school, but I am sure he will not get you tonight, or any other night. You are too big for the Boogie Man.”

“HUH?”, said Victor.

“Oh it’s true,” said his mother, “You see the Boogie Man is terribly ugly, just like everyone says. But what no one tells you is - he’s only this big.”

Victor’s mother held up two fingers to show Victor how tiny the Boogie Man is.

“For Real?” asked Victor,

“For Real,” said Victor’s mom.

“You see, the reason the Boogie man only comes out at night is he’s afraid to move around in the daylight. Everyone would see how tiny he is.”

Victor’s mom pulled the curtain to his window to one side, “But at night, it’s dark and hard to see him, and the Boogie Man only walks in front of street lights. See how long the shadows from the street lights are?”

Victor looked out his bedroom window at the long street lamp shadows.

“Everyone thinks the Boogie Man is big and scary because his shadow is so long, but only his shadow is big.”

“If the Boogie man does squeeze under the front door he could never reach you in your tall bed,” said Victor’s mother.

Victor smiled a big smile, “For real mom?”

“For Real Victor, but I don’t think the Boogie man will come to your room. I think he’s afraid of you.” said Victor’s Mom.

She turned out the light and kissed Victor on the head. Victor got into bed and fell fast asleep.

The Boogie Man stayed outdoors all night, under the street light.

Nightmare Incursions

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 13:00:00 -0600

What Is This?

The Nightmare Incursion system is meant to make the threat of accumulating nightmare points immediate and thematic. Written mostly before C20 was available, this system was originally an expansion of the 2nd edition Nightmare rules. While C20 went in a different direction with what nightmare does to a changeling the system they wrote is not very threatening in short or one-shot games.

Nightmare incursions provide the possibility of nightmare accumulation, even in one-shots, having serious ramifications for characters. In longer games, nightmare incursions give the storyteller (and players) another tool for developing the stories they’re telling. As we’ve played with the system and refined it from its original form we’ve found that some of our best sessions revolved not around our characters’ dreams, but their unresolved nightmares and baggage. Unexpected deep dives into a changeling’s shadow can build some amazing stories.
All that said, these rules aren’t for every table. Putting your characters through nightmare incursions without being an asshole to your players relies on proactively interrogating and establishing boundaries around what is acceptable play. Part of being proactive about establishing boundaries is revisiting the process while the game is in motion. No one should feel like they can’t call a time-out if they need it. Changeling is a storytelling game, and even though some stories are sad or scary, the storyteller and players should never leave the table at the end of the game feeling hurt or numb. Your players should never feel like their characters’ grief or trauma was their trauma or that the storyteller was trying to humiliate them in front of their friends.

When dealing with potentially heavy things like grief, terror, personal trauma (even of characters in a game) always follow the Silver Rule: Don’t be a dick.

Nightmare Incursions

As changelings build up nightmare energy their dice pools for cantrips and unleashings become tainted with nightmare dice. Every time your character activates a cantrip the player must replace a number of dice equal to the current nightmare total in their casting pool with differently colored or clearly marked nightmare dice. When a character unleashes, part of their pool is made up of nightmare dice. In both cases these behave exactly as normal dice in the casting pool until they roll a 10 or a 1. When a 10 or a 1 is rolled on a nightmare die the nightmare energy the changeling has been struggling with overwhelms them and takes control of their chimerical reality. In the case of the player having multiple nightmare dice involved in a casting, only activated (1 or 10 result) nightmare dice contribute to the nightmare incursion. If and when the changeling survives the nightmare event the player removes one point of nightmare per activated nightmare die from their total.

At low levels, nightmare incursions only produce nervosa (chimera that are only experienced by the changeling who invoked them unless they are produced within the Dreaming). At higher levels, the nightmare incursion takes shape in chimerical reality as manifestations, which can be perceived by all beings present with chimerical senses. Nightmare incursions draw on the fears and insecurities of the changeling who invoked them, creating as hallucinations and chimera that draw the changeling into dangerous situations. Particularly devious storytellers should mine their characters’ pasts for unresolved psychological traumas (especially those causing friction between their mundane and chimerical lives) and plan a number of nightmare incursions for each character ahead of time. As always, nightmare incursions should serve the story and the players’ enjoyment of it, not detract from it.

Nightmare Activation	Incursion
1	Nightmare Magic Cantrip behaves as a berserk unleashing (but doesn’t generate more nightmare) Changeling develops a noticeable echo (chilling the room they’re in, rotting the things they touch, voice sounds like little bells) for the duration of the scene. For the rest of the day the changeling experiences minor hallucinations (text they’re reading shifts when they blink, hearing whispers that aren’t there, objects are half an inch farther away than they appear) in any scene that they use magic.
2	Nightmare Perceptions Caster summons/creates a nervosa who torments them for the duration of the scene. These torments are irritating, but not dangerous.
3	Beta Incursion Caster summons/creates several nervosa who torment them with gusto. Their pranks will not cause direct physical harm, but might lead the changeling into dangerous behavior or environments (the nervosa might use redes to hide oncoming traffic from the changeling). Caster summons/creates a single manifestation that will torment them (possibly quite subtly) for one scene in the future.
4	Delta Incursion Caster summons/creates a troupe of manifestations who coordinate their activities over the next day (or completely dominating a single scene) and work to subtly or overtly make the changeling’s insecurities real and apparent to all present -- always with the goal of punishing the character (though the manifestations may not view it as such).
5	Zeta Incursion The caster’s nightmare energy blurs the divide between the chimerical world and the Dreaming. The caster and all present in the scene are drawn into a dark, chimerical, version of the scene coloured by the caster’s fears and secret desires. Leaving the immediate vicinity draws characters into a malebolge in the Dreaming created entirely from the caster’s subconscious insecurities, populated by a plethora of nervosa and manifestations and other dark creatures from the Dreaming. Zeta Incursions end when either the caster’s deiform is overwhelmed (chimerical death), when the victim resolves the insecurity that generated the incursion, or at another point the storyteller decides is appropriate.
>5	The Distant Ones Draw Near The caster becomes a beacon of nightmare and dark glamour. All changelings present acquire a point of nightmare and a point of glamour. One of any of the lower tier incursions will occur during this or the next scene. Additionally, the Thallain, Adhene, and/or Shadow Court take note of the caster and will either approach the changeling or draw them into their domain soon.

Nervosa

“Don’t stand there looking so smug! You’re the worst person in this room!

You come here and you enjoy spilling their blood and listening to them cry out.

You feel excited when you step on them and snuff out their lives.”

“Are you talking about the monsters?”

“Monsters…? They look like monsters to you?”

Vincent & Heather, Silent Hill 3

Nervosa are chimera who stalk changelings through the darker corners of the Dreaming and sometimes find ingress into waking chimerical reality. The few unSeleighe fae who study such things have lively debate among themselves about whether changelings create nervosa or if nervosa are a special type of chimera who have the capacity to tailor their forms to changelings’ suppressed desires and fears. In the end the difference is purely academic and most changelings plagued by nervosa find no solace in interrogating the question.

Storytellers should consider nervosa to be personal dark chimera -- chimera that exist to haunt and torment specific beings. While tailor making them to perfectly reflect the character’s psyche is tempting, leaving little hints that they’re not exactly the thing the character thinks they are can create more drama than simply creating monstrous adversaries. After all, nervosa aren’t always around the changeling they’re stalking; what do they do when they’re not manifest? Do they do anything? Do they exist for themselves or just for the character? Inviting some doubt about whether or not the nervosa are monsters turns the screws a little harder than just playing them as things that can be dispatched without remorse.

Like light chimera, nervosa can be animate or inanimate. Most inanimate nervosa are overlays on objects or people in the autumn world -- a person’s clothing appears torn and bloodsoaked, or perhaps the notebook they’re carrying appears to be a scalpel, or a perfectly clean room is littered with opened and spilled narcotics bottles. Anything a changeling finds distressing might find form as an inanimate nervosa.

Identical to proper chimera in every other way, nervosa lack the substance to affect chimerical reality broadly and can only affect the being that summoned (or inanimate chimerical objects if no one else is present) them while outside of the Dreaming. While this often results in nervosa being directly antagonistic to their changeling, sometimes it does not. A few nervosa wait in the wings for the right moment to give the changeling a shove over the edge of some precipice, whether real or psychological. Others become aware that they are summoned again and again by a nightmare-prone changeling’s unconscious mind, and play recurring roles -- tormenting the changeling just enough to keep the shameful desire or fear that summoned them alive without completely breaking or killing the changeling. If a changeling retreats from reality into the Dreaming (or was in the Dreaming when their nightmare incursion began), nervosa are treated as manifestations.

Unlike nervosa, manifestations have reality -- at least as far as chimerical reality is concerned. Capable of being perceived by and interacted with by all beings with kenning, manifestations are more vulnerable than their incomplete compatriots and are often much more subtle. Some pretend to be light chimera in order to get closer to their victims. Others insinuate themselves into freehold society, playing vicious pranks on their changeling while waiting for the right moment to strike in earnest. Still others go after their changeling indirectly -- driving mortals or prodigals in the changeling’s life mad in order to divide their changeling’s attention, making them less able to deal with stressors in healthy ways and more likely to take on more nightmare energy. The manifestations who prey on those in the changeling’s periphery often inspire their tangential victims to create situations that contribute to the manifestation’s well-being. In this way some nervosa may spread like a psychic virus through a freehold.

The existence of the Wolpertingers has unnerving implications for the possible futures of cunning manifestations.

Malebolge

I'd love to take you home with me and tuck you into bed

I'd love to see what makes you tick inside your pretty head

I wish that I could keep you in a precious Chinese box

On Sundays I would pray for you so it would never stop

I'd love to hear you laugh tonight, I'd love to hear you weep

I'd love to listen to you while you're screaming in your sleep

Insanity, Oingo Boingo

The most frightening effects of nightmare incursions is the creation of a malebolge -- a pocket realm in the Far Dreaming that changelings can blunder into from the real world. Malebolge take their form from the changeling who invoked the nightmare backlash. Not just made from fears and hates, but also suppressed trauma, illicit desires, and unconscious longing, malebolge are populated by a host of nervosa and other dark chimera who act out the changeling’s suffering on each other and any who enter in (including the changeling who created them). This shadow play need not be one of physical violence, though it often is. Even when the inhabitants of a malebolge act in violent ways, they are always in keeping with the theme of the malebolge.

Cantrips and other powers that would normally allow those trapped in a malebolge to locate a silver path or open portals inevitably lead characters deeper into the malebolge’s hellscape. The adage that “the only way out is through” is true for malebolge. Short of chimerical or mortal death there is no shortcut out of one. In the case of attempting to locate the silver path, changelings are drawn along a path to the malebolge’s heart. At the heart of the malebolge is a dark glamour font that bathes the malebolge’s realm in the nightmare energy the changeling’s backlash released. The font can take many forms, even that of nervosa or manifestations, but most often takes the form of a dark balefire. Extinguishing the malebolge’s font collapses the nightmare realm and returns all of the beings trapped in it to the autumn world.

System: A malebolge’s font has a number of health levels equal to the nightmare activation that created it. Extinguishing it can be achieved by pouring glamour into it (negating one health level per point of glamour spent), killing it (in the case of nervosa or manifestation fonts), or by resolving the trauma that linked the changeling to the font in the first place.

Changelings can draw nightmare glamour from a malebolge’s font by reaping it (difficulty 9; thallain make this roll at normal reaping difficulty) and draw an equal number of points of glamour and nightmare from any attempt. Each success gained in this fashion inflicts one health level of damage on the font.

Planning Nightmare Incursions

An unexpected nightmare incursion can completely derail an entire evening of gaming, or it can provide an opportunity for the player who invoked the nightmare to develop their character through engaging with their changeling’s suppressed emotions and trauma. To get the most out of the higher intensity nightmare incursions, storytellers and players should both establish boundaries around what is acceptable nightmare fodder for the table and openly discuss what the players would like their characters’ struggles to revolve around.

Angel’s character, Agatha, has a fear of diminishing. This triggers nightmare incursions on the theme of aging and dying. Her low intensity incursions litter her chimerical reality with implements one might find in a hospital or psychiatric ward, or cause her glamour to create phantom nurse pages over public address systems, or make people in completely normal clothes appear to be doctors and nurses. Throughout her high-intensity incursions Agatha is stalked by nervosa hospital staff who attempt to restrain her “for her and other patients’ safety” and discuss her failing health, game leg, and obvious insanity with clinical coldness. If others try to help Agatha, the nervosa draw them into the delusional reality -- they become other patients of the institute and must be “helped”. Agatha’s zeta incursions alternate between creating hellish scenes of people who look like her having their limbs amputated or being lobotomized and confusing disjunctions between the previous scene and Agatha walking into a sterile doctor’s office for “evaluation”. Often one type of zeta incursion bleeds into the other, creating a “is this really happening?” sort of doubt for Agatha and anyone unfortunate enough to be dragged into the malebolge with her.

Erika’s character Charlie, on the other hand, is intensely afraid of being useless -- partly due to their family life. Charlie’s low-intensity incursions replace the words in newspapers about events that Charlie was instrumental in with stories that do not mention them at all, erase photographs of Charlie, and even cause people to overlook them when it would be better for Charlie to be seen. Moderate to high intensity incursions summon nervosa who take the form of disapproving family members who both sabotage Charlie’s efforts in the arena they’re currently in and undermine Charlie’s self-confidence (convincing them not to bother trying because nothing they do comes out right anyway). Charlie’s zeta incursions draw them again and again to the scene of their aunt Nancy’s deathbed, where she reprimanded them in front of the whole family for being a waste of space, and to events where people are drowning or otherwise being smothered.

Planning zeta incursions and malebolge should be viewed in the same way as planning a side-quest in another game. Zeta incursions are the functional peak of nightmare activations and are complete and possibly self-sustaining chimerical ecosystems built around a changeling’s psychic dysfunction. Malebolge should have a troupe of NPCs, mostly nervosa or manifestations, acting out the changeling’s conflicted nature. In Agatha’s case, her malebolge might be filled mostly with monstrous doctors and nurses, but a few of them might be innocuous or even helpful light ephemera generated by Agatha’s history as a spiritual leader and nurturer for her reservation. Generally, light ephemera are rare and weak in a malebolge and reflect only the changeling’s conscious mind’s major drives. Each malebolge might have as few as five scenes and as many as is reasonably necessary to drive the point home that mistakes have been made. It may be helpful to think of a zeta incursion as the Dreaming putting a changeling in the corner and forcing them to confront their repressed, shadowy, mind.

Manifestation [Variable Flaw]

A special sort of nightmare incursion, the Manifestation flaw marks your character as permanently haunted by a manifestation of their nightmare potential. Manifestations generated by this flaw are chimerical beings that maintain their reality through means unknown, but live to torment their changeling. They aren’t usually always near their changeling, but their influence is felt during moments of high stress or trauma. Beings that can interact with chimerical reality may perceive and interact with and even kill the manifestation, but until the changeling resolves the trauma that generated the manifestation (and buys off the flaw with XP) it always reforms when the changeling experiences an epiphany or gains a point of nightmare (whichever happens first).

Build the manifestation as if it were a chimerical ally utilizing the chimera creation rules to determine its point value as a flaw.

Unleashing

Below is a slight elaboration and refinement of the C20 Unleashing rules that allows changelings to wrangle out of control unleashings to a manageable state at great cost.

Unleashing Results

1s> Successes

Stymied Unleashing: The changeling fails to channel the Dreaming’s wyld energy farther into the autumn world than themself. In the case of something that had been intended to affect something or someone other than the changeling only affects the caster; creating a poetic punishment for the changeling’s hubris. In the case of an unleashing that was meant to affect only the caster the effect goes wild and carries the changeling well away from the intended outcome. In either case, the changeling takes an additional nightmare point per one rolled.
No successes, but no 1s

Failed Unleashing: The character is unable to invoke the Dreaming. Gain one temporary banality and the character cannot use that Art for the remainder of the scene.

Successes <= character's Art rating

Successful Unleashing: Character successfully invokes and controls the Dreaming. The character's fae mein becomes wyrd and visible, the character's intent is fulfilled via the Unleashed Art.

Successes > Art rating

Berserk Unleashing: The character invokes the Dreaming but loses control. The character's intent is fulfilled but in a twisted or unintended way that adds complications or puts everyone nearby at risk.

If an unleashing is determined to be berserk, a player can opt to invoke autumn to cancel their own excess successes. To invoke autumn to control a berserk unleashing the player declares that they’re invoking autumn before the storyteller begins to explain the outcome of the unleashing. Then the character takes one point of temporary banality per success they wish to be negated.

The Sessile Ones: A Refinement of Form

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Wed, 1 Nov 2017 13:00:00 -0500

The Inanimae are among the strangest, most ineffable creatures of the dreaming. Inanimae: The Secret Way is one of my favorite original Changeling texts, but to be honest most of the systems were difficult to understand and often thematically odd. Changeling the Dreaming 20th did a lot to revise the Inanimae, and introduced some concepts that fixed a lot of the old problems with them, but as I’ve read through the chapter a few times I’ve run into some brand new thematic problems and contradictions, and some of the quirkier rules from the original text were included in C20. I have put together a few house rules for my home game to make the Inanimae a bit more approachable, while working to retain the goals that the C20 developers. As I am not one of the C20 devs I might miss the mark and may have misinterpreted the reasons for some of these rules, but I hope my take on these are useful for some of you out there adventuring in the deepest kingdoms of the Dreaming. Simon will be posting some more dramatic modifications to the Inanime very soon for players and storytellers who would rather integrate them more completely with mainstream Kithain playstyle.

House Rule 1 Somnolence/Slumber

Original Rule: When an Inanimae has a Banality rating that exceeds her Glamour rating, she runs the risk of falling into Somnolence. For some this is a good thing, as it cleanses them and renews their spirits before waking again.

Current System: Roll Glamour every time an Inanimae with a higher Permanent Banality than Permanent Glamour gains a point of temporary banality (difficulty of Banality + 2, maximum 9). If the roll fails, the Inanimae is slammed back to her Anchor and falls into a deep slumber. This sleep lasts for one year for every dot by which her Banality exceeds her Glamour. Once that time passes, her Banality rating drops two dots below her Glamour, and she removes all temporary Banality. If the roll is botched, or if the character’s Banality rating ever reaches 10, the inanimae is Undone.

My wording above is a mixture of the original text and the C20 text. C20 didn’t really change this rule, but it did lose some important descriptors from the writeup in The Secret Way. This rule gives you a place to anchor remembrance on, saying that an Inanimae doesn’t lose memory from the mists when it changes husks, but is hit by the mists during Somnolence.

What I Feel Needs to be Changed: This creates a dynamic where the higher your glamour, the less banality you are able to purge. This is thematically strange for several reasons. Especially if you use Somnolence to trigger remembrance then this event would basically equate to character death in most cases, and setting the rule up so that when you drop enough banality you just wake up misses a lot of thematic potential in terms of what actually triggers the Inanimae to reawaken. This also doesn’t align with the description of what awakened the Inanimae from the long Solomnence after the Shattering. Given that even Changelings in temporary chimerical death need a jolt of glamour to reawaken this seems like an ideal opportunity to create parallels, and eliminate the scenario where the more glamorous you are, the more banality you will necessarily retain.

Proposed House Rule: System: Roll Glamour every time an Inanimae with a higher permanent Banality than Permanent Glamour gains a point of temporary banality (difficulty of Banality + 2, maximum 10). If the roll fails, the Inanimae is slammed back to her Anchor and falls into a deep slumber. Every year the Inanimae sleeps they lose one permanent banality. When their permanent banality drops below their Permanent Glamour-2 they have a chance of reawakening any time their anchor is exposed to a strong jolt of glamour. That jolt could be a dreamer being inspired in their presence, or perhaps a Changeling experiencing Chrysalis, or summoning particularly powerful magics (any unleashing or a cantrip with 5 or more successes) in their anchor’s presence. When this happens the Changeling rolls their permanent glamour against a difficulty of their permanent banality. The number of successes required to awaken depends on the intensity of the glamour they are exposed to. An artist being inspired while resting on a Glome’s boulder, or under a Sylph’s canopy may require 3-4 successes. A Changeling calling on the Wyld to complete a great quest may only require 1 success. The number of required successes is ultimately up to the storyteller. Should the Inanimae succeed they will reawaken, but with no husk. A Changeling or Kinnain may make a Kenning role to see the Inanimae, but until they go through the process of building a new husk they will not be visible to humans, or even most other Fae.

This system will very rarely be used as written, because going to sleep for multiple years puts a character in a place where they are probably just being written out of a story until the right moment to re-introduce them. There are a few cases where I can see this roll (or the roll from the original system) being used, and I think this evokes potential narrative hooks for storytellers in a way the original system didn’t.

House Rule 2 Sessile Magic

In The Secret Way the Inanimae had special arts called Slivers. These arts functioned very much how regular Changeling arts do, they had a special set of realms they used to pair with the slivers. This gave the Inanimae a bit of distinctness from the Kithain, but most of their powers were duplicative, not only with the Kithain arts, but often with other Slivers. Several of the Slivers didn’t map well to more than one or two of the Sessile realms, and the act of using the Slivers was not described as including bunks. Without bunks most of the difficulty dynamics of cantrips fall apart, and for Inanimae with low husk ratings exposing themselves to the dream comes with rather profound banality risks, so this made sense, but overall the system didn’t feel particularly coherent.

C20 tackled these issues by setting up the Slivers as broad domains of magic that could only be used for unleashing. The narrative explanation for this is that the Inanimae are more primal than the Kithain and meat Gallain and therefore are not good at the more structured magic associated with the arts. This creates a distinct play experience, and avoids the duplication of the previous Inanimae magic systems. Mannequins can learn Kithain arts, though it is more difficult for them, represented by the fact that they do not receive any automatic points in arts or realms, and must develop both the same way Kithain do before they can make use of Kithain cantrips.

Problems with the new system: The primary thematic issue with only allowing the Inanimae to unleash is that unleashing always causes Nightmare. While Kithain can do extensive magic without ever risking Nightmare the Inanimae are hindered by the fact that everything they do causes Nightmare. Especially if they want to develop a new sliver they risk large amounts of Nightmare while their mastery is very low. While having relatively modest control over their magic makes sense for the wildness of the elements, the accelerated path towards Bedlam makes them difficult to play long term. The Inanimae also gain a nightmare for every success on their equivalent of Ravaging, so their ability to mitigate Bedlam Imbalance is somewhat compromised compared to Meat changelings.

The other problem is that Sliver unleashing has a sentence at the end that says “When in the Autumn Realm, effects are chimerical, and only count as Wyrd if the caster invokes the Wyrd”. The problem with this is Unleashing invokes the Wyrd for a number of minutes equal to the successes on the Unleashing roll on a normal success, or for the entire scene if they lose control. So the scenario described at the end of the Sliver writeup would never happen. If the sentence is saying that Slivers never invoke the Wyrd then the Inanimae are in effect getting far less benefit for the nightmare points they are taking than a Kithain. As unleashing always costs glamour, Inanimae are also struck with considerably greater costs to creating subtle effects than their meat relatives.

Given the above, the goal of this house rule is to introduce the risk/benefit decision making that a Changeling navigates to the Inanimae, leave them with a path to Nightmare and bedlam, while eliminating that dynamic as a requisite of all magic use. I also want to give the Inanimae a sustainable mechanism to act in a completely chimerical/hidden form similar to how they are depicted in The Secret Way. This is accomplished by bringing back a concept from the leaked Unleashing rules from the Changeling Kickstarter, and tweaking them for the Slivers.

Proposed House Rule: When unleashing a Sliver the player decides if they want to coax or command the powers of the Dreaming. Coaxed Slivers do not call on the Wyrd, and therefore cannot impact the Autumn world in any direct way. This includes creating any effect that can be directly seen by mortals. While it is possible to dance close to this line with effects similar to Dream Logic, or Confounding Coils (Parosemes are especially fond of dancing across a battlefield with the lightness of wind, just within the bounds of what could be “expert but believable agility”) the line to truly visible magic cannot be crossed if an Unleashing is coaxed. If an unleashing is coaxed, and the Inanimae rolls more successes than their level in the Sliver they are unleashing then the effect becomes Wyrd for a number of turns equal to their successes, they automatically spend 1 glamour and gain 1 Nightmare. When a coaxed unleashing is successfully controlled the effect costs no Glamour, and produces no Nightmare.

When a coaxed unleashing fails the effect does not happen and the Changeling gains no Nightmare. When a coaxed unleashing is botched the Changeling gains 1 nightmare.

When an unleashed Sliver is commanded the effect is treated per the normal unleashing rules C20.

House Rule 2 Seasonal Magic

In The Secret Way one of the sections talks about how each of the seasonal holidays is observed by the Inanimae. Each group of Sessiles were tied to one of the equinoxes or solstices. As an alternative to the above rules, or in addition to the above rules you can allow the Inanimae to purchase the seasonal arts connected to the seasonal feasts their Phyla observes. The writeup on these observations is on page 47-48 of Inanimae The Secret Way

Autumn Equinox is jointly hosted by the Parosemes and Ondines.

The Winter Solstice is hosted by the Glomes

The Spring Equinox is hosted by the Kubera

The Summer Solstice is hosted by the Solimonds (though the celebration is a farce of its previous grandeur)

The Mannekins do not have a seasonal art that they are associated with but they can learn all Kithain arts with appropriate effort.

It is recommended that learning the more structured seasonal arts be treated in the same manner as Mannekins learning Arts. It is possible, though not the default mechanism the Inanimae use to perform their magic, so they gain no automatic dots in their associated Art or in the Realms necessary to fuel them.

Inanimae: Playing at Hearts

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Wed, 1 Nov 2017 13:00:00 -0500

Hi all, Simon here!
At its heart, Inanimae: the Secret Way is a story about our relationship with the world around us. The inanimae are spirits who watch the mortal world and fashion human-like bodies in order to interact with both the world and us.
As things that play at being human the inanimae add a compelling outsider's perspective to the world of Changeling: the Dreaming. The inanimae allow us to examine ourselves and our relationships with the world around us in a way that the vanilla kiths do not. All of the material in this document is meant to highlight and reinforce that motif and, where possible, make mixed Inanimae/meat-changeling games a little easier to navigate.
Here is my collection of golden rules, system tweaks, and setting fillout/changes: Inanimae: Playing at Hearts. Enjoy! And don't forget to comment.

Regional Nunnehi Family: Nigigwayaan

ciggychan@gmail.com (Simon Teagardin and Victor Kinzer) — Tue, 24 Oct 2017 13:00:00 -0500

Author's notes: I am not a speaker of Ojibwe and I apologize for mangling things. Corrections are welcomed.

Nigigwayaan

Regional Family of Yunwi Amai’yine’hi

A small, but wide ranging, family of Nunnehi, the Nigigwayaan live along the shore, islands, and rivers of Lake Superior. Those born Nigigwayaan are the river otter children of the woman-who-had-enough-of-people. These children manifest their first Gift, the power to take off their skin and become a human. Like the Selkies and the Yunwi Amai’yine’hi they have a powerful affinity for the sea -- specifically the great lake and its system of rivers and lakes.

In the time since the Nigigwayaan were created some have passed their otter skins on to humans, creating a second sort of otters who were born human but became Nigigwayaan later in life. These are often groomed for their Nigigwayaan “parent”’s gift of the skin, bringing them into very close contact with the manidoo-aki, the Ojibwe Dreaming. The “parent” giving up the skin slowly loses their memories of their life as a changeling, slipping gently into the mists until they are indistinguishable from any other mortal.

Appearance

The human forms of Nigigwayaan resemble the woman they get their affinity for humanity from. As they get their humanity from their grandmother, all otter-born Nigigwayaaan are women. In the hundreds of years since they first appeared in the world some of them have passed their skins onto male children, though male Nigigwayaan are still rare.

In their deiform Nigigwayaan are an athletic people with broad noses and often beautiful dark hair. Creatures of the European Dreaming may mistake them for Redcaps on seeing their teeth. Many have noticeable webbing between their fingers and toes.

As otters Nigigwayaan are indistinguishable from the animal to human senses. Kenning an otter (difficulty 8) produces a vague feeling of familiarity -- similar to the feeling mortals have when they recognize an acquaintance in a crowd but cannot remember any details about them.

Lifestyle

Athletic, playful, and sometimes cruel, Nigigwayaan live close to the water and tend to carry occupations related to the lakes and rivers they come from. Traditionally fishermen and sometimes ricers, approaching the modern era they sometimes become tour-guides, triathlon organizers, and water protection organizers. No small number of Nigigwayaan move into fields of advocacy for women generally and Native women specifically.

In 2017 a contingent of the Nigigwayaan made their way to their Dakota cousins at Standing Rock. Some stayed, integrating with the Dakota and creating a second protectorate at the Missouri River and its tributaries.

Revelry

Driven in a way their Yunwi Amai’yine’hi and Selkie cousins are not, Nigigwayaan experience revelry when an effort they had a role in significantly improves the state of either their home waters or Native American women.

Unleashing

The sound of running or crashing water and an intense urge to play accompany Nigigwayaan Unleashings. Sometimes smooth river stones or beach-glass are left behind in the wake of otter magic.

Birthrights

Skin Changer (Otter)

A Nigigwayaan can assume the form of a human by removing her otter skin -- this display is intimate and though she does not have to be alone to do this most prefer to be alone. Returning to otter form involves stretching the skin out and putting it on again.

The Land Where Food Grows on the Water

These Nunnehi have the unique talent to inspire the water to give up its bounty, whether that is wild rice, fish, cranberries or any other primarily aquatic food source. The Nigigwayaan rolls her Wits + Occult (or another more appropriate skill) difficulty 6. Each success produces enough of an appropriate and easily located harvestable river or lake provided food source to feed one person.

Frailty

Particular Taste (Fish)

Nigigwayaan are unable to resist indulging their appetite for fish and shellfish. Whenever these Nunnehi are confronted with an untended supply of fish or is invited to share in a seafood feast, she must spend a point of Willpower to resist immediately casting aside any reservations and responsibilities and eat until she is full.

Favored Realm

Scene

Common Totems

Mishipeshu, White Deer Woman

Backstory

Sophie speaks,

I know that story. Auntie Cat told it to me. It’s a little sad.

Once, long ago, when white people just started coming here there was a young woman. A beautiful woman. A clever woman. A kind woman. A woman with a wish lodged deep in her heart. She left her family and traveled deep into the Dreaming. There walked with White Deer Woman. What they did is a secret.

The kind woman came back to her family with White Deer Woman’s Medicine. She brought blessing to the fishermen and ricers’ boats and did great healing for any who approached her. The people rarely approached her because her time in the Dreaming had made her strange, but any who approached her -- Ojibwe, Dakota, Cree, even white -- had their illnesses and injuries cured. Her fame spread.

Eventually a big ship of white explorers came and set anchor just outside Onigamiinsing, where she lived. The ship sent out a little boat with the captain’s first mate, who came to the woman who walked with White Deer Woman. He told her a story about a terrible illness that had struck the his brother, who would surely die without her help. The beautiful woman did not quite trust the way the man looked at her, but she could not refuse to aid anyone who came to her.

The kind woman traveled back to the ship with them. Too late she learned that the tale about the brother was a lie. What the men did with her we do not say.

They did not let her out onto the deck until the ship was very far from the shore. The beautiful woman surprised her captors by immediately throwing herself off the ship and swimming away. The men sent out their little boat to catch her and bring her back. In desperation she cried out to anyone who could hear her for help. Mishipeshu came up from under her and threw an otter skin over her. By now the wish lodged in the powerful woman’s heart had changed. She no longer wished to be a healer -- she wished to be done with humanity. She drew Mishipeshu’s protection around herself and became the otter.

Safe at last, the woman who had enough of people lived the rest of her life as one of Mishipeshu’s children. She stayed close to Onigamiinsing but never took off her skin to resume her humanity.