The Jack-of-Crows Székely Károly (Hungarian names are ordered surname then personal), The Patchwork King of Autumn (former), The Iscariot, The Prince of Knives, Jack Scarlet, Mr. Sutcliffe
Background: Sometimes, a man becomes a monster. Whether by means of some blood-soaked transformation or a simple application of a flensing knife or snub-nosed pistol, a human being passes beyond the pale, becoming a monster. It’s rather unnervingly easy, as a matter of fact. It is difficult, much more difficult, for a monster to become a man. But the soulless mannequin that is the Jack-of-Crows will make the attempt all the same.
The Jack-of-Crow’s story begins early in the spring of 1885, when a young, Hungarian-born apprentice surgeon named Székely Károly kidnapped, sedated, and then vivisected a young woman from the streets of Limehouse. He carved exquisite patterns into her skin, replaced her bones with stout wood and used silken cords to turn her into a puppet of inhuman grace and beauty. And when he was done, the Puppeteer came out of the shadows, and pinned Károly to his own work-table with a dozen giant needles. Then the Puppeteer built a fetch from bits of human bone and broken-off Thorns and silk string from Arcadia, and he made the fetch perfect. Then he took the mad surgeon with him, and left the fetch behind.
Thus, the fetch's first living act was to conceal the grotesque murder that the other one – the real one – had committed. Calmly, unhurriedly, the false-man gathered Károly’s notes and occult books, concealed the body in a trunk, and deposited it in the Thames. Then it slipped seamlessly into the psychopathic surgeon’s life. It was simple, really. It is not very difficult to imitate a monster.
It was no challenge to pick up Károly’s surgical apprenticeship, or carry on the student’s casual affair with his landlady. Even vivisecting the occasional ‘Covent Garden Nun’ was hardly worth the effort. But the false-man kept going, all the while aware that something was missing, some vital spark. The real Székely Károly had been a sociopath and a murderer, but he had lived life to the fullest, enjoying every moment even as he had danced at the edge of the abyss that eventually swallowed him. The fetch was merely going through the motions, living his life by rote. It was a fake and a fraud, and it knew this.
Perhaps if Károly had not himself already been interested in the occult, that was where matters would have ended. But rather than slide into its casual, depersonalized oblivion, the fetch decided to take matters into its own hands. It would become a man, not a monster. It moved into the occult society of fin-de-sičcle London, and while it failed to truly rouse something in the depths of its wooden heart, it began to identify the problem more clearly. As a false being, it had no soul. Without a soul, feeling, true love or joy or grief, were simply not possible. But the problem, once recognized, proved to be difficult in the extreme to solve. Moreover, the lack of a soul was an advantage as well. The false-man could do anything, witness any act, however grotesque or mind-rending, and feel little. Over the latter years of the 19th century, the fetch delved into some of the blackest lore known, rites that would have shattered a more responsive psyche. But it was worth the attempt, as ultimately, it managed to make contact with the Puppeteer.
What exactly happened in that garret room in Whitechapel is unknown, but the fetch made a pact that night. Not long after that, it left London. Over the course of the early 20th century, the false-man traveled across Europe, furthering its occult researches. Much of that time was spent in the Balkans, especially in Romania and Austria-Hungary. When the Great War erupted, the fetch crossed the length and breadth of Europe, harvesting the necrotic bounties made available by the death and darkness all around it. He was in Galicia after the Brusilov offensive [The Lucifer Principle]. After the War, it made its way back to London, where it remained until the late 1930s. All the while, the fetch searched for the answer to one question. How does a monster become a man?
Not finding the answers in London, the fetch vanished just on the eve of the Second World War. When the false-man reappeared, it was in Austria in the early 1960s. It was still searching, but now it was a different creature in many ways. More grandiose, certainly much more powerful, but in many ways still the same. It was still a false thing, and though by now it knew the nature of reality intimately, it itself was still not real. It was still just a soulless reflection of Székely Károly.
It flitted through Central Europe, and it was in these days that it first began to pretend to be one of the Lost. Perhaps among its fellow faerie-ravaged victims, it would find the meaning, the emotion it had so long searched. There were a few false starts, but it practiced its deception throughout the Balkans and in Germany, gaining knowledge, experience, and following certain events in the Black Forest, the allegiance of the Winter Courtier Frau Heinzelmaul. Then when it was ready, the false-man returned to London as the Jack-of-Crows. Not to participate in Lost society, but to rule it.
The Jack-of-Crows took power on December 28th, 1974, assassinating the previous Autumn-King (who was found in his Hollow, strung up by his heels and pierced with 27 knives). It was able to rule because it was the strongest and most terrifying creature in the freehold, because no one managed to overthrow it. To be truthful, no one seriously tried since the mid-80s, when the Stonebones revolutionary Tom of the Mountain was found dead in Soho. And in Mayfair. And floating in the Thames. Rumor held that the Jack still had a few bits of Tom left over, in case the Autumn King ever needed to send a message. The fetch secured its reputation forever in 1996, when it destroyed a manifestation of the Wild Hunt in an aerial duel over the skies of London. While an enormous murder of crows destroyed the True Fae's hounds, the fetch and the Hunter flitted across the midnight sky, an event that culminated when false-man slit the Hunter's throat with a cold-iron knife. The True Fae had challenged the fetch's control over the city, and it had responded with lethal force. It killed its second True Fae some ten years later, when it lured an avatar or exemplar of the Puppeteer into an ambush using a fetch-child's blood and a fetch-spawn's immunity to the Wyrd [Beverly's Death]. The fetch is far from certain that this is the last it's seen of the Puppeteer, but so far, the expected repercussions have yet to happen. And vengeance against the thing that had created it was sweet.
In 2005, the Jack-of-Crows stepped down from the monarchical throne [Dreaming of Stars]. Thirty years of ruling had failed to answer that central question of its existence. It was still a false thing, for all the fame and glory it had earned, for all the fear it caused, it still knew that it was only a fraud, and this knowledge gnawed at it constantly. Though the false-man continues to pull a great many strings from behind the scenes, sovereignty over London no longer interested it. In more recent years, the fetch has once more turned to esoteric lore, looking for the book or scroll, secret or spell that will get it what it so desperately wants.
That, and looking after the two proteges it acquired in recent years. The first, the present Winter King, Todd White, who amused the false-man with his casual insouciance towards life, and prompted the fetch to see how far it stretched. The other is Martin the Lion, a very young changeling who began as a kind of occult experiment into the effects of a very early Durance on the fetch's part. But the two of them have grown on the fetch, and it treats them as its 'sons' for all intents purposes, and is a protective, if rather difficult, parent. It may not have a soul, but it has seen enough of humanity to know how it should act. It has seen enough monsters. It will be a man.
Of course, the cosmic irony is that the fetch has been wrong all along. The problem has never been that it was a soulless reflection. The Jack-of-Crows is one of the most active, driven, and effective fetches alive, a richer personality than many humans, and richer than the changeling it is based on. The problem is that the original Székely Károly was a psychopathic killer, and the fetch was an exceptionally good copy, but without the same neurological 'switches' as Károly. To put it another way, Károly is a psychopath. The fetch merely thinks it is. Both the fetch's periodic sadism and its protective care for Martin and Todd would be impossible for a true psychopath such as Károly. Such lapses are born either out of the fetch's inattention, or out of misunderstanding as to what it actually means to be without a soul. The false-man remains unaware of this because it is also not nearly as good as it thinks it is at understanding how other people feel and emote, a problem compounded by its own fearsome aspect, which tends to provoke extreme responses.
Add half (Wyrd) rounding up to your defense, applies against both melee and ranged attacks, but otherwise is identical to standard defense (goes down for multiple opponents, etc).
This is a greatly empowered version of Mimic Contract. So long as the Jack of Crows and his changeling original are both within line-of-sight of a mirror (or any suitable reflective surface), then the Jack-of-Crows can borrow his original's Contracts, without paying the preliminary glamour cost.
By expending glamour, the Jack-of-Crows is able to create 'shade-crows', semi-real simulacrums composed of shadow in the shape of ravens or crows. For a single point of glamour, he is able to create a single such crow, or else he may expend multiple points of glamour to create a swarm of crows with a radius in yards equal to the glamour expended (up to a theoretical maximum of a thirty-yard radius). Shade-Crows may last indefinitely, but so long as they are in existence, the Jack's maximum glamour is reduced by the number of Shade-Crows or Shade-Crow Murders he has in existence (thus, two individual Shade-Crows and a 4-yard radius swarm would reduce his maximum glamour by 6).
Shade-Crows are not sentient, but are highly intelligent by the standards of animals (even more so than normal crows) and maintain an emphatic link with the Jack-of-Crows. They can send him messages (consisting of either an emotion or a basic thought/concept such as 'Danger!') regardless of the intervening distance, or if one is in the mortal world and the other is in the Hedge. Further, the Jack, by spend 1 WP, may shift his consciousness into that of a Shade-Crow, borrowing its senses. He sees what the familiar sees, hears what it hears, and so on. He is oblivious to his own surroundings while viewing through his familiar, but still possesses tactile sensation (thus he is aware of any damage or physical sensation to his own body). Ending this viewing is a reflexive action and requires no roll.
Shade-Crows are immune to most weapons, being composed of semi-living shadow. Normal guns, claws, or the like deal no damage. Fire, however, deals aggravated damage, and certain magical powers (such as the Death 2 Gift: Ghost Knife) enable them to be hurt as well. They avoid bright lights and sunlight, but are not damaged by them.
A Murder of Crows Contracts: Artifice ●●●●, Communion (Corpses) ●●●, Communion (Soil) ●●●●●, Darkness ●●, Dream ●●●, Eternal Autumn ●●●●, Fang & Talon (Corvids) ●●●, Fang & Talon (Rodents) ●●●, Fleeting Autumn ●●●, Goblin (Mantle Mask 1, Diviner's Madness 2, Fair Entrance 2, Seven-Year's Gift 2, Mirror, Mirror 3, Sleepwalker 5), Moon ●●●●●, Smoke ●●●, Spellbound Autumn ●●●●, Thorns & Brambles ●●●●● Glamour: 30/8 (usually reduced to a maximum of 23 or 24 by use of Shade-Crows) Pledges:
Autumn Harvest Type: Corporal, Courtly Emblem (Autumn) Tasks:
[Erin] - Medial Alliance (-2)
[Jack of Crows] - Endeavor; Plant the wretched Tree (-2) Boons:
[Erin] - Medial Blessing; Friend (Heather) (+2)
[Jack of Crows] - Medial Blessing; Fame (+2) Duration: Decade (+3) Sanction: Poisoning of the Boon [Exceptions] The pledge is not broken and the curse is not triggered if a clause is broken or unfulfilled for any of the following reasons:
-Refusal to betray another friend or ally.
-Either party is rendered physically or mentally incapable of fulfilling the pledge, either by external or internal conditions.
-Either party is forced to break the pledge by supernatural means or mind control.
-Either party was unaware their course of action or inaction would violate the pledge.
Mordred's Loyalty Type: Corporal, Courtly Emblem (Winter) Tasks:
[Todd White] - Medial Alliance (-2)
[Jack of Crows] - Greater Endeavor; You Shall Be King (-3) Boons:
[Todd White] - Blessing: Allies (Medical) (+2)
[Jack of Crows] - Adroitness: Investigation, Expression, Animal Ken (+3) Duration: Decade (+3) Sanction: Pishogue (Lurking Insanity (-3) [Exceptions] The pledge is not broken and the curse is not triggered if a clause is broken or unfulfilled for any of the following reasons:
-Refusal to betray another friend or ally.
-Either party is rendered physically or mentally incapable of fulfilling the pledge, either by external or internal conditions.
-Either party is forced to break the pledge by supernatural means or mind control.
-Either party was unaware their course of action or inaction would violate the pledge.
Hidden Heart Type: Corporal, Title Emblem (The Knighthood of Utmost Silence) Tasks:
[Heinzelmaul] - Greater Alliance (-3), Medial Forbiddance: Keep the Jack's Secrets (-2)
[Jack of Crows] - Medial Alliance (-2), Medial Forbiddance: Keep Heinzelmaul's Secrets (-2), Greater Endeavor: In the Past (-3) Boons:
[Heinzelmaul] - TBD (+5)
[Jack of Crows] - Medial Blessing; Secrecy (+3), Adroitness; Stealth, Subterfuge, Intimidation, Weaponry (+4) Duration: Lifelong (+3) Sanction: Pishogue: Lurking Insanity (-3) [Exceptions] The pledge is not broken and the curse is not triggered if a clause is broken or unfulfilled for any of the following reasons:
-Refusal to betray another friend or ally.
-Either party is rendered physically or mentally incapable of fulfilling the pledge, either by external or internal conditions.
-Either party is forced to break the pledge by supernatural means or mind control.
-Either party was unaware their course of action or inaction would violate the pledge.
Hidden Heart Type: Vow Tasks:
[Martin the Lion] - None
[Jack of Crows] - Greater Alliance (-3) Boons:
[Martin the Lion] - None
[Jack of Crows] - Medial Blessing; Resources (+3) Duration: Lifelong (+3) Sanction: Death (-3) [Exceptions] The pledge is not broken and the curse is not triggered if a clause is broken or unfulfilled for any of the following reasons:
-Refusal to betray another friend or ally.
-Either party is rendered physically or mentally incapable of fulfilling the pledge, either by external or internal conditions.
-Either party is forced to break the pledge by supernatural means or mind control.
-Either party was unaware their course of action or inaction would violate the pledge.
Attacks..................................Damage.....Dice Pool.....Special
Razorhand..................................... 3(L).......... 13/21..............1 glamour to create for 1 scene, Blessing of Perfection, Glimpse of Fortune’s Favor
Brother to the Ague...................... 0(B).........8………..............1 glamour, Minus Stamina, inflicts a -4 penalty to all rolls.
Unmaker’s Destructive Gaze……… N/A……..13……………………Disables a mechanical object
Creeping Dread…………………..……… N/A……..12……………………1G or 2G&1WP, Minus Resolve, target(s) suffer -8 to all Resolve or Composure rolls to resist fear
Lurking Insanity…………………………..N/A……..13……………………3G&1WP, Target develops a derangement of the Jack’s tailoring
Concept: The Noble Lion Type: Changeling Court: Dawn Seeming Beast Kith: Truefriend
Virtue: Hope: There's no real problem that can't be solved if people just work together. People can do anything with enough teamwork, understanding, and good will. Vice: Sloth: Martin's not lazy (hyperactive kitten is a more accurate description), but he is given to despair. When something goes wrong, it's never someone else's fault, it's always Martin's fault.
Background: Martin Scrivener has had a very odd life, and most of it has to do with crows. His earliest memories are peaceful enough, certainly. He remembers playing ball in the fields, watching puppet plays with the Young Master, being taught the history and mathematics by the Elderly Tutor, even chasing his own tail beneath the ochre sun. He doesn’t remember quite a few other things, certainly. He doesn’t remember his parents, or all of his first lessons, or entire weeks have all vanished from his memories. They occasionally show up in his nightmares, though.
Martin’s next memories involve thorns, and pain, and the impossible desire to escape. He remembers coming out of a maze in a cathedral near Nottingham when he was eight or nine years old. He remembers being found by crows, and then by the police, and going to a fondling hospital and then a foster home. Two foster homes, actually, the first one ended rather sharply when dear Mr. Bolles died of a heart attack in the middle of the night. He’d hit Martin a few times, but Martin figured he deserved it. Apparently the crows disagreed.
His second foster family was a bit nicer, but Martin never really forgot that he was different. He had a tail, for starters, and he could see things that other people couldn’t (crows, mostly). It was at this time that Martin met Uncle Jack, who wore a black coat and a black hat, and always had some crows sitting on his shoulders. Uncle Jack was his only family (the foster family was always a little scared of him, since Mr. Bolles’s death included quite a lot of screaming before the heart attack). But Uncle Jack was fun, if very strange, and his jokes strange too.
When he was eleven, Uncle Jack came and informed the foster family that Martin was going abroad. He was going to Providence, Tennessee, and the Forsythe Academy there, to stay there year round. Uncle Jack, it seemed, had money. The Forsythe Academy was a place for the rich and influential children of the American South, and if they occasionally cast odd glances at Martin, they accepted him. Anyone with a British accent like that, and a terrifying uncle like that, had to be ‘their people’.
At school, Martin flourished. By his fifth year, he was captain of the football team, and in his senior year he was class president. The fact of the matter was that Martin was nice. He certainly wasn’t the smartest student, and he wasn’t the best athlete ever (though he was quite good). But he was nice, and what he lacked in cleverness he made up in leadership ability. He was popular, and he was lucky, and he had the slight advantage that the crows were always there. Bullies tended to receive very firm instructions to stay away from the handsome, popular kid.
There were odd bits, of course. The dreams were the worst, dreams of drowning, or burning, or being beaten with birch rods by people he loved, dreams bad enough that there were days when Martin just stayed in bed at the infirmary, twitching helplessly. There were other dreams, not so hideous, which taught Martin that he was different – he had a tail, which Martin was always rather perplexed about – and how he could control those differences. Martin could turn into a lion, or talk to housecats, or jump and play better than ever. Sometimes these dreams bled into reality, and Martin holds all the track and field records at Forsythe Academy. All of them.
Still, all good things come to an end, and so did Martin’s time at the Forsythe Academy. His old school chums dispersed back to the four corners of the world, to study at Oxford and Harvard or run departments of their family’s multinationals in Brazil or China. Martin, though, knew where he was going from the start. It was back to London, and to whatever Uncle Jack and the crows had in mind next.
Martin Scrivener (not his real name, but rather the name the British foster system provided for him) was taken by a Gentry known as the Young Master of Tears when he was about four years old. His role was to be that of pet, playmate, and periodic whipping boy for his Keeper’s plays of perpetual childhood. Like many of the worst kinds of Durances, it wasn’t constant torment and torture, but mental destruction interspersed with seemingly genuine kindness and caring. The Young Master seemed to genuinely like his ‘Kitten’, and there were frolics and pranks and all manner of things that two rambunctious seven-year olds can get up to.
There were also brutal beatings when the Young Master misbehaved, but could not be punished for by virtue of his noble blood. There were wretched meals and worse living conditions, the abuse of the other servants, and the fact that some of the Young Master’s pleasanter entertainments included setting Martin’s tail on fire or holding his head underneath the duck pond. All of this was done to an eager-to-please young boy, and all followed by explanations of how the Young Master really did like Martin, but Martin kept bringing this upon himself by being a wet blanket.
When Martin finally crawled his way out of the Thorns, driven past human endurance, he came to the attention of the Jack-of-Crows. Quite frankly, at first the Jack took protective watch over the young lion mostly out of a sense of occult curiosity. What might happen? But as he soon discovered, it was impossible to watch over the cub without feeling emotionally attached, and in short order the Jack was as proud and possessive a parent as anyone could want.
Over the years, the Jack-of-Crows has watched out for Martin however he could. Gotten him into a good school, ensured his advancement in life, and generally protected him however possible. Owing in no small part to the Jack’s own severe insecurities as a parent (and soulless monster), anyone who harms Martin is rapidly introduced to the meaning of the phrase ‘Disproportionate Retribution’.
The Jack-of-Crows has also taken upon himself the task of returning Martin to some semblance of sanity. Unfortunately, the Jack-of-Crows is very good at making people in-sane, but less so at making them sane. He’s used dream therapy, and he’s used his own black magic to force Martin to repress his more traumatic memories. Arcadia for Martin was a vaguely unhappy place, unpleasant in ways he has difficulty defining. This method has had a few unfortunate side-effects, such as Martin’s terrifying nightmares, but the Jack-of-Crows doesn’t know that the alternatives would have been any better. Because of the Jack’s own uncertainties, he tends to be very sensitive about the matter, and anyone bringing up the idea that Martin has a right to his own (traumatic) experiences is quickly offered some trauma of their own, to see what it feels like.
Lastly, the Jack-of-Crows has, by means of corvine intermediaries and dreams, taught Martin how to use his supernatural powers – some of them, at least. Martin still has a tendency to activate his contracts ‘instinctively’, when under stress.
Martin is an idealist, very friendly, and an all around nice guy. He’s the kind of person who believes that we can all just get along, and that there’s no reason why we should fight, and if everyone just works together, it would be awesome and life would be wonderful. So let’s go out there and win that game! In short, he’s someone who believes in the inherent goodness of mankind, and that there is no problem that can’t be solved with the proper application of teamwork and good nature. Admittedly, some problems (say, World Hunger) would require a lot of teamwork and good nature, but the Martin insists that the theory is sound.
It helps that any group with Martin in it actually does seem to do better. He’s easy to talk to, and while he doesn’t always know the right thing to say, it’s impossible to doubt his earnestness. He wants to help you, and if you don’t let him, then he is going to pull that ‘huge kitten’ routine until you do. He’s a very persistent sort when it comes to cheering people up.
Of course, the dark side to this is that Martin suffers from crushing insecurity. If everyone else does things for the best of motives, and lacks only a bit of a push to make things work out, then Martin invariably blames any failures on himself. If something goes wrong, it’s Martin’s fault, and he will beat himself up about till he’s a melancholy wreck.
This is one of the memories of Arcadia. The other is that occasional, terrifying nightmares that wrack Martin’s sleep, or other moments when his guard is down. Martin has… Views about people mistreating other people or animals, as a result. The kind of views that lead one to realize that while Martin may be a giant kitten, he is also a former football captain, stands at about six-foot-four, and has a punch like a train engine.
Martin is aware of the supernatural, but only in an extremely general sense of ‘there are weird things’. He knows that he has supernatural abilities and that most people can’t turn into lions, jump several yards, or pretend to be teachers despite obviously not being teachers. He knows that this is a result of his time with the Young Master in ‘faerieland’, but he hasn’t made the logical connection that there might be other supernatural entities like him, or indeed, entire supernatural societies. Martin treats the supernatural on a case-by-case basis, and the only two cases he has so far are himself and Uncle Jack.
Academically, Martin is interested in the fields of international relations, economics, and diplomacy. He’s not sure what he wants to do with his life yet, but the idea of joining the Foreign Office and helping governments get along with one another, smoothing over problems, has a definite appeal.
Note: The physical stats in parentheses are for when Martin transforms into a lion.
Cost: 1 Glamour Dice Pool: Wyrd + Animal Ken Action: Instant Catch: The changeling gives the animal a new name.
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The character angers or scares the animal he tries to approach and cannot use this clause for one full scene. Failure: No communication occurs. Success: The changeling can speak to all animals of the specified type for the next scene. Exceptional Success: The animal feels affection and loyalty toward the character. The animal is actively helpful and volunteers information unasked if it considers that information important (so far as its intelligence allows).
Cost: 2 Glamour
[b]Dice Pool:[b] Wits + Wyrd Action: Instant Catch: The changeling sees or touches an animal of the type being imitated.
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The character’s senses become slightly muddied and confused. The character experiences a –1 die penalty to all Perception rolls for the next scene. Failure: The Contract fails, and the character’s senses are unaffected. Success: The character gains a +2 dice bonus to all Wits rolls relating to perception for the next full scene. In addition, he gains the chosen animal’s most notable sensory ability — a wolf or dog’s sense of smell, including the ability to identify people and track by scent, an owl or cat’s night vision and so on. If the character’s particular animal has no significant exceptional sense (such as a goat or monkey) , he instead gains a +4 dice bonus to all Wits rolls relating to perception. These bonuses last for the next full scene. Exceptional Success: The character gains an additional +1 die to all Perception rolls for the scene.
Cost: 2 Glamour Dice Pool: Wyrd + Animal Ken Action: Instant Catch: The changeling asks the animal to guard or watch the changeling’s dwelling.
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The animal either attacks the character or completely misunderstands the instructions and does the exact opposite of what he commands it to do. Failure: The character cannot communicate with or command the animal. Success: The animal can both understand the character’s wishes and obeys the character’s orders to the best of its abilities. Exceptional Success: The character retains an empathic bond with the animal, allowing him to roughly sense its location and emotional and physical condition. For the next full day, the character can spend one point of Glamour to communicate for one scene with the animal at any distance.
Suggested Modifiers
+1 -- The changeling offers the animal appropriate foodstuffs.
–1 -- The animal is frightened or injured.
Cost: 2 Glamour Dice Pool: Dexterity + Wyrd Action: Instant Catch: The character is touching an animal of the correct type.
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The Contract fails. The character suffers a –1 die penalty to Speed for the scene. Failure: The Contract fails, and the character is unaffected. Success: The character gains the movement capabilities of the animal. Swift runners such as horses or dogs allow the changeling to double her Speed. Aquatic animals allow the changeling to swim as rapidly and as easily as she can walk or run and hold her breath 10 times as long (including any modifiers from the Strong Lungs Merit). Flying, gliding or jumping animals allow the changeling to quadruple her jumping distance and fall any distance without harm. Climbing animals such as monkeys allow the changeling to gain +5 to all climbing rolls and climb at five times normal speed. This enhanced movement lasts for one full scene. Exceptional Success: The character’s enhanced movement lasts until the sun next sets or rises, whichever comes first.
Suggested Modifiers
+1 -- The changeling wears a mask of the animal or a large garment made from its skin.
–1 -- The clause is invoked someplace the animal is never naturally found.
Cost: 4 Glamour Dice Pool: Manipulation + Wyrd Action: Instant Catch: The changeling is in the natural habitat of his associated animal and touching or within touching distance of at least one of these animals.
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The character partially transforms, becoming a clumsy half-human being who suffers a –2 dice penalty to all Strength and Dexterity pools and a –2 dice penalty to Defense and Speed. The botched transformation lasts until the character can take two consecutive turns to shift back. Failure: The Contract fails, and the character cannot transform. Success: The character successfully transforms into the correct animal. The character can remain transformed for up to a scene or can choose to revert to her normal form at any time. Transforming back into the normal form requires one turn, and ends the clause’s effects. The character’s Health alters if her Size and Stamina change. In animal form, the character automatically gains animal senses, exactly as if she had performed the eagle’s gleaming eyes clause. The creature’s Physical Attributes replace the changeling’s, but she retains her Social and Mental Attributes. Her Skills also remain the same. The changeling gains some measure of the animal’s instinctual drives and motor control, so she can run, fly or swim normally. While in animal form, the character can speak all human languages she knows, and can also communicate normally with animals of the species she has become. Exceptional Success: The character can remain transformed until the sun next rises. If she has taken the form of an animal with a smaller Size than her own, she retains her full Health as if her Size had not changed.
Suggested Modifiers
+1 -- In the animal’s natural habitat
–1 -- Inside a well-lit building closed off from the outside world
Cost: 1 Glamour Dice Pool: Strength + Wyrd Action: Reflexive Catch: The character fights multiple opponents simultaneously with his bare hands, not using weapons or tools of any sort.
Roll Results Dramatic Failure: The character strains his muscles and suffers a –2 dice penalty to his next action involving Strength. Failure: The changeling’s Strength is unaffected. Success: The changeling adds a number of additional dots to his Strength for this action equal to the number of successes rolled. Exceptional Success: The changeling also gains the 8-again quality for the next action he takes using a Strength-based dice pool.
Suggested Modifiers
+1 -- The character yells, grunts or boasts loudly about her great strength.
–1 -- The character acts calm, restrained and sedate.
Virtue: Fortitude - Work work work work work. Obstacle, fatigue, or mortal danger is no deterrence to Form. She doesn't stop doing what needs to be done. Vice: Greed - Form is always saving for a rainy day, but no situation is ever bad enough for her to decide using her stored resources is necessary. Her hoarded supplies languish and go to waste, unused, as crisis after crisis passes them by.
Background: Success is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. So Form's parents always told her, because, to be honest, the poor girl didn't have much else going for her. Her family were second generation immigrants, who had fully embraced the London way of life. Her father ran a small pharmaceutical business, and they were decently well off. They were moderately faithful Muslims - no alcohol or pork, though they tended to slack off on the midday prayers. Form's early life blends together in a long montage of mediocrity. She was always the background filler at school - not ostracized, but not well liked. Everyone knew her, but no one knew her well. She had no particular brilliance, no athletic prowess, and no stand-out personality traits other than being studious. Her hobbies were mostly casual sports and computers, back when computers involved DOS. Her opinions mostly followed whatever the majority was. But she worked hard, and that was the key to success, so her teachers and parents told her. It meant she had a very clean room, did well enough in school to get into a good University, and had very happy parents. It also meant that when the librarian stepped out for a smoke break, Form was the only person left in the school library, when the sun set on the Autumn Equinox. The Mistress took her.
Her Durance continued much as her life before had. It was filled with far more terror and deprivation and pain, but it was mostly more work. Form survived the same as she had in school, by becoming background filler among the other Library girls. She was diligent and studious, and didn't get tired easily, and was older than many of the other girls, which gave her an edge in her chores. She was also old enough to be mostly through with oily skin and pimples, which spared her much of the Mistress' creative alterations.
It would be wrong to say she hasn't suffered from the neglect, however. Even at her most ignored, her parents would always love and support her. In the Castle, however, the attention of the Mistress is what everyone fears most, and yet the Mistress' compliments are what they crave most. Where other girls were both terribly punished and occasionally praised, Form's best work is taken for granted, and any less is punished. Even her name was no reward, simply given because the Mistress had tired of calling her "you", and the Mistress ensured she knew that. The constant dismissal of even her most earnest efforts, even when she goes above and beyond what would be expected of anyone else, has destroyed her confidence just as surely as the twisted love/hate games that the Mistress plays with others.
Personality: Form doesn't put a lot of philosophical thought into her every day life. She's more interested on things like how to get from point A to point B than, say, the why of getting to point A to point B. She will think of the future, certainly, and plan for it, but she isn't typically bogged down by existential thoughts or despair. She certainly seems to have weathered her Durance well, on the surface, because she is eminently practical. Of course, like all her fellows in the Castle, she's a complete emotional trainwreck. She's avoided the worst the Mistress had to offer by being unremarkable and thus unnoticeable, but she still holds an extreme love/hate relationship with her Keeper, and takes pride in the work she's accomplished, not in anything that lies inside her personality. It's simply that she lacks the self-awareness to notice it or dwell on it.
Form's a hoarder. Every time she received something from the Mistress, usually food, she'd stuff it under her bed for a rainy day. It occasionally proved impractical, such if the food was not prone to store well, or if someone else tried to snatch it away - still, it proved a blessing more often than not. As such, Form has a certain bit of callousness in her, when it comes to her possessions. She is perfectly willing to intimidate other girls into leaving her stuff alone, and she doesn't like to share.
Like all the Mistress' girls, she is very proper, polite, soft-spoken, and yielding to authority, though that is starting to shift. Due to a pledge she made with Martin Scrivener, she has become a bit more sociable. She has also become far more fussy over her looks, dabbling in makeup and mascara. Therapy is helping with her feelings of Stockholm Syndrome, but is slowly replacing it with anger. Of all the girls, Form holds the deepest resentment over what was done to her. Glow disliked her family, and Bat had already lost them, but somewhere out there is a copy of Form living her life. It is a very frustrated feeling - the Mistress is untouchable, the Fetch protected by London Freehold law, and little Erin is Form's sole source of housing and employment. Her unrequited crush on Martin and her competition with Glow do not do her inferiority complex any favors.
Merits: Mantle (Summer) 1, Strong Back 1, Iron Stamina 2, Resources 3*, Striking Looks 2*, Membership (Harbingers) 1, New ID (Tarsa Black) 1, Court Goodwill (Winter) 1
Willpower: 6 Clarity: ??
Initiative: 5 Defense: 2 Health: 9 Speed: 10
Wyrd: ••• Contracts: Den •••••, Stone •••, Punishing Summer • Glamour: 12/3
Pledge: Skin Deep
Type: Vow
Blessing: Medial Blessing (Striking Looks 2) [+2]; Adroitness (Persuasion, Socialize) [+2]
Task: Medial Endeavor (Go out and meet new people in a public place like a club, for one hour, thrice per week) [-2]; Medial Forbiddance (Alcohol, recreational drugs, vampire bites, etc) [-2]
Duration: Moon [+2]
Sanction: Medial Pishogue (F&T 3: Telecats decide Form's room is the best place) [-2]
The Motley Pledge
(Bat, Form, Glow, Martin, Nigel, Mary)
Type: Vow
Task: Medial Alliance (Come to the aid of any motley mate in danger) [-2]
Blessing: Medial Blessing (Resources +2, Form) [-2]
Duration: Year and a Day [+3]
Sanction: Poisoning of the Boon [-3]
Virtue: Faith - Souls exist. Life exists after death. The ghosts whisper to Bat, telling her about their lives and stories. There is so much meaning in all of them. Vice: Gluttony - The dead are hungry, and so is Bat. So hungry, for food, for offerings, for life, for sweet glamour.
Background: No one ever listened to Bat. She told her parents she didn't like that manor house. She told them she didn't like the people there. She told them they'd done something to her brother, and he wasn't right any more. She told her Dad that mum had been taken away, and they should run while they still can. But they didn't listen, and Bat was too frightened to run on her own. They'd been blowing her off like they always did, attributing her fears to her scared and paranoid personality. Most the times, they'd been right. But this time, they went wrong, and then vanished one by one, leaving Bat all alone. And then the Mistress took her.
Bat didn't take to her Durance well. The darkness of the library terrified her, but the Mistress terrified her more, and every time she was sent in she emerged a jittering mess. She was easy to terrify, which made her a huge target to the Mistress, and some of the crueler changelings. It was just too easy to pick on her, and watch her stammering reactions. She was a total wreck within a few months, and many wondered how she hadn't been taken by the darkness. Sometimes she would cower in the library for hours, too afraid to move, too afraid to leave without the book she'd been told to fetch. The others would help her, when they weren't too inconvenienced by it.
It was down deep in the Library that she found her first Ghost, an ancient spirit bound to one of the Mistress' stolen grimoires. Terrified, desperate, Bat made a covenant with them, irreversibly opening her eyes to the world beyond. The ghosts were rare in Arcadia, but the ones there aided her. They guided her through the darkness, they spoke to her and told her their life stories. They made her feel safe. They helped ease her fear of death. After all, she knew now that they had lived on afterward. Now, she had faith that she would as well, one way or another.
Personality: Bat is a scaredy-bat. She's squeaky, she's excitable, and she's easily frightened. Unfortunately, she's a natural follower, and doesn't like being alone. In other words, no matter how many times she says something looks like a bad idea, she'll go along anyway, because leaving by herself is even more frightening. She's easy to fluster, which makes her a huge target to people who enjoy provoking reactions in others. The Mistress has forced politeness and proper manner into Bat's mind on pain of death, and it keeps her surface demeanor relatively normal. But she's perpetually watchful, prone to nervous glances, and often softspoken.
The ghosts calm her down. Their mere existence fills Bat with a feeling of meaning. Ghosts remain behind for a reason, and it's neat to her. It gives her faith that the world works. She doesn't like to talk about this to others, though.
Bat's Durance left her with a deep hunger of sorts. It's more than just the need for good food after being deprived of it (though that is certainly also the case). There's a feeling of hollowness inside her - not quite emptiness, but it wants to be filled. Food fills it, but glamour proves much more effective. And Bat, perhaps borrowing some nature from her ghostly friends, or perhaps having some hint of a vampire bat in her mien, has found ways to suck glamour from other changelings. She knows she shouldn't, but it's so so good, and like the cannibals that eat others to gain their strength, it seems to impart some measure of the stolen emotion to her. Whether this is actually the case, or Bat projecting, is unknown.
Type Changeling Seeming: Darkling Kith: Lurkglider/Leechfinger
Merits: Direction Sense 1, Fast Reflexes 1, Glamour Thief 4, Dual Kith 2, Ritual Area (Ghosts), Mantle (Autumn) 1, Membership (Harbingers) 1, New ID (Cara Bat Tien) 1
The Motley Pledge
(Bat, Form, Glow, Martin, Nigel, Mary)
Type: Vow
Task: Medial Alliance (Come to the aid of any motley mate in danger) [-2]
Blessing: Medial Blessing (Ritual Area [Ghosts], Bat) [-2]
Duration: Year and a Day [+3]
Sanction: Poisoning of the Boon [-3]
Type: Changeling Court: Spring Seeming Fairest Kith: Bright One/Ask-wee-da-eed
Virtue: Hope - Glow is the eternal optimist, the ever present beam of sunshine in people's day. No matter what happens, no matter how awful things are, nothing dampens Glow's inner spirit. Vice: Lust - Glow acts on whatever impulse carries her. Why care about the consequences?
Background: Some people always seem cheerful, no matter what happens. In the case of the girl known as Glow, she had every reason to be cheerful. She was born to a rather wealthy family, and had anything money could ever buy a child. Yes, perhaps she lost her father to a slow, painful disease. Yes, her mother immediately used her team of lawyers to steal Glow's inheritance, and take control of her daughter's life, tearing her from her sisters and sending her to one strict boarding school after another. Yes, she lost one of her sisters to the same disease as her father. But she had a grand house and had expensive toys, and that made her lucky. So everyone said, so it had to be true. And Glow made it true. No matter how out of control her life could get, Glow always kept her sparkling and upbeat attitude.
That must have been what attracted the Mistress, in the end. Boggled by the strange and hopeful creature, the Mistress dragged Glow back to her castle. Of course, the Mistress has very little to do with such a bright soul except try to break it. Glow was thrown into the living darkness of the Library like the other new girls, and the Mistress forgot about her, for a bit. But the Mistress was soon shocked to find how Glow had adapted. She was still cheerful as ever, and now she glowed on the outside as well as inside. She'd adapted to the darkness by emitting her own light.
This was not conducive to the Mistress' desired environment, for when the girls went into the Library, Glow would come with them, and they would no longer feel afraid of the dark. So the Mistress 'promoted' Glow to be a dancer and entertainer, and occasional playtoy. Glow adapted well to that as well, being naturally pleasant and talkative. The Mistress, it seemed, eventually got tired of trying to break the girl without resorting to blatantly unfair measures - which, to the Mistress, would be counted as a loss in any event. Or perhaps she realized she'd broken the girl, just in other ways. Thus Glow faded into the background, being called on to perform when wanted and ignored at all other times. At least, until one day she encountered some runaways and followed on a lark...
Personality: Glow lives up to her name, inside and out. She is the eternal optimist, always bright and ready to face the day. Some people wonder if it isn't an affectation, for even normal, everyday people find plenty of things to be down about. Surely no one could live through what she had and still keep their soul intact? But everything seems to point to Glow being sincere. Happiness is contagious, and Glow does her best to spread it wherever she goes. Polite, and yet elegant and cheery, it's hard not to crack a smile around her.
Of course, the most well known fact about optimists is that pessimists hate them. Glow isn't perfect by any means. Her biggest issue is that she never stops being happy, even when other people would really like her to. Certainly she can be more subdued, and she's not heartless towards people having a rougher time than herself. But people who are grieving rarely like seeing other people remaining cheerful, even when they offer you their sincerest condolences. To make it worse, Glow says whatever's on her mind, and sometimes these things are bluntly insensitive.
The other issue is that Glow does whatever she feels like, whenever she feels like, and merely offers a shrug at the consequences. To most, this seems like both like flagrant irresponsibility and blatant callousness towards anyone she may have hurt with her actions. Other, more psychologically savvy souls might correctly recognize this as a sign of severe emotional damage. Glow's decisions and choices have never had an effect on what happened to her - her father and sister died while she watched helplessly, her mother dominated her life, and then the Mistress afterward. Saying "no" never mattered to anyone, she was forced to do whatever it was regardless. The utter loss of control has left her disaffected, and uncaring toward the decisions she makes. It doesn't matter whether she does or doesn't do anything, so she may as well just do whatever she wants.
Glow is enjoying her new freedom by spending all her money on whatever whim takes her. She knows perfectly well Erin will be there to bail her out if things get dire, and she's in no danger of starving. Glow survived in the Castle off the patronage of others, and she's perfectly content with the matter of affairs.
On the rarest of occasions, people around Glow get smited down with some of the bad luck that's plagued her all her life, but she doesn't seem to be consciously aware of having anything to do with it.
Type Changeling Seeming: Fairest Kith: Bright One/Ask-wee-da-eed
Wyrd: ••• Contracts: Separation ••••, Elements (Lightning) ••, Elements (Fire) ••, Vainglory •••, Hearth • Glamour: 12/3
The Motley Pledge
(Bat, Form, Glow, Martin, Nigel, Mary)
Type: Vow
Task: Medial Alliance (Come to the aid of any motley mate in danger) [-2]
Blessing: Medial Blessing (Luxury 2, Glow) [-2]
Duration: Year and a Day [+3]
Sanction: Poisoning of the Boon [-3]
Virtue: Justice Heather is a straightforward soul. She will not take your guff. If you need punching, you are to be punched. If you need protecting, you are to be protected. Everyone clear? Vice: Lust Heather is a wild child, the odd woman out in her quiet, sedate family. She likes to live life on the edge, and she's jumped into the supernatural world with more enthusiasm than good sense, perhaps. Heather does not do 'half-throttle'.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Erin's Notes
Rakesh's Investigation
Heather Drayton, born in 1980 to Charles and Amanda Drayton of Mayfair. She has a younger brother, Arthur, who was born in 1984. Heather attended some very good prep schools, and this along with some family connections managed to get her into the University of Nottingham, where she majored in art history. (The University of Nottingham, for the record, is a seriously good university.)
Rakesh got copies of all her transcripts. Heather's academic career is... speckled. Basically, Heather is very bright and very clever, but she has the attention span of a squirrel. She sort of squeaked out with a degree in 2003. The only places where Heather does excel in is sports. She's was a cheerleader in secondary school, and has been doing gymnastics at a competitive level for a while now. She's also dabbled, at various levels of competence and commitment, in soccer, water polo, women's rugby, and an Okinawan martial art with a really long name. Since graduation, she's been working as an assistant researcher at her mother's policy NGO (nepotism) and is actually proving to be reasonably good at it. Basically her job involves sorting through archives, interviewing people, and other such research-related tasks. She does lots of surveys. She currently lives in an apartment in Marylebone (which is a rather affluent inner-city part of Westminster, in London), along with a pair of absolutely huge English Sheepdogs.
Financially she's got a fair number of loans to pay off, parents are helping with those.
She's got a bit of a criminal record. Nothing too dramatic, but she was busted at a couple of very wild parties at Nottingham. Rakesh also dug up a now-dropped academic disciplinary action wherein Heather was basically accused of beating the living daylights out of a boy. The charges got dropped due to a bit of uncertainty about what the boy was doing to deserve getting punched in the stomach repeatedly.
Medical records (don't ask how Rakesh got those) show that Heather is something of a medical oddity. Heather suffers from diabetes mellitus, something she got diagnosed with around age 6 (which is odd, but the family has a genetic predisposition for it, so not that bizarre). She actually got into the exercise business as a way of managing her diabetes originally. The strangest aspect of the disease is that it does a number on her pain-nerves. Heather isn't completely unfeeling of pain. But she can shove needles into her finger with only a vague tingle. She'd probably be a physical wreck if she also wasn't healthy as a horse otherwise, and very quick-healing. As is, the doctors sort of scratch their head, think that she should be worse off than she is, but since Heather's doing well, they try not to worry about it - though there's quite a few nasty things coming down the road, (decreased neural functioning, kidney failure), so they have her on medications anyway. Heather's parents alternate between being terrified/worried sick, and secretly relieved that Heather is as happy and healthy as she is.
Heather also spent a bit of time in counseling and with psychiatrists when she was in secondary school (she saw a psychiatrist for about two years following the "beat up the boy so bad that he keeled over" incident). Rakesh also got those psych reports. Which describe Heather as being very outgoing, very cheerful, but with a distinct anger-management problem and a rather peculiar case of monophobia. Basically, Heather gets very anxious and unhappy if she's alone, to the point of panic attacks in extreme situations. She's also taking medication for that, attends monthly meetings with a psychiatrist, and generally tries to avoid situations where she's alone. The dogs sort of help with that. As far as temper goes, Heather tends to run hot-and-cold. She'll be cheerful and pleasant till something finally gets her ticked off enough, at which point she will yell at you for a while. She's usually really sorry about it afterward. Generally speaking, when she blows up at people they deserve it, but she does tend to be strident in her opinions.
Some other snooping around and chatting up spirits reveals that Heather is a very social person , and has a swarm of different friends all over. She has something of a talent for attracting unusual friends, with her best friend since college being Harata Bijarati, a Pakistani woman who is also a practicing Muslim, and who works at a law office in London. Despite that, Heather also has a slight reputation for going through boyfriends like tissue paper (the combination of endless energy and a temper makes her hard to live with sometimes, and she has a somewhat domineering personality), and is at present between SOs, due to getting into a screaming fight with her last boyfriend about a month ago and kicking him out.
Erin's Occult
From the sounds of it, the Mistress was not really quite as careful as she could've been when making Heather. By fetch-standards, Heather is sort of middle-of-the-pack. She doesn't seem to have any horrific, glaring flaws (she's not a sociopath), but the diabetes is apparently some kind of screwy Echo that Heather doesn't know how to turn off. The monophobia is quite likely a result of Heather's personality being a bit unfinished as well. She has a hard time knowing how to act unless there's someone around to take cues from.
Talking to Heather
Heather is mildly supernaturally aware. Someone, by the name of Mr. Sutcliffe, met her in a coffee shop and then showed up in her dreams. He taught her some occult, how pledges work and how to Skien-walk. He's also likely responsible for the Dream Golem we encountered. However, he leaves a good amount of information out. She recognizes dream visitors, but doesn't identify them as Fey. She doesn't know why she should be afraid of someone taking her place, only that she has been warned it could happen. All signs point to that she doesn't realize she's a Fetch. She does seem to recognize she is nothing like her family, personality-wise. All things considered, she seems rather aware of her flaws, though she very much took the appearance of a random coffee-shop man in her dreams in stride.
-It seems that "Mr. Sutcliffe" may be the Jack-of-Crows himself. It certainly makes sense.
Since falling in with Erin's gang, Heather's life has gotten significantly more exciting. Despite significant efforts at convincing her otherwise, Heather has yet to see a downside to being a supernatural being, and most of the severe mental trauma others go through (Lost especially) just bounces off her. She is not an introspective person. Further, her own faerie-fetch nature seems to ensure that Heather is all but immune to most difficulties, given that she feels no pain and is incredibly difficult to kill. So far, her high point of existence was when she punched one of the Sibitti (Underworld-dwelling Banished Fae) so hard that she killed it. [Ghosts in the Machine, Part XI]
These days, Heather continues to work among the various NGOs headquartered in London, though her upward progress has ground to a halt as she spends entirely too much time at the Cat's Cradle. She's in a long-term relationship with Sasha Zmeyevich, and everyone around them considers it only a matter of time before they get married.
Heather is wholly unaware that she is a Fetch, and indeed, courtesy of Erin's Tokens and numerous, numerous lies, thinks that she's some weird variety of faerie. She's an accepted part of the Seelie Court, appearing as an Ishtar-esque beast there, and is a respected member of the Seelie's 'military', mostly for her enthusiasm and skill at punching the living daylights out of things. As mentioned, Heather is not a deep personality. But she enjoys life.
Merits: Ambidextrous 3, Charmed Life 2, Direction Sense 1, Fighting Style (
• Body Blow If successes on single Brawl attack are greater than target's size, target loses next action
•• Iron Skin Has Armor of 1 against Bashing attacks
• Flow
When running negate terrain penalties equal to dots, gauge jump distance reflexively
•• Cat Leap
When using Dex+Ath to reduce falling damage gain one success, and add dots to max damage reduction possible
••• Wall Run
Use Athletics to climb at 10ft+5ft/dot as Instant Action, at a penalty of -1/10ft after the first 10ft
So vibrant and so alive, petty predators (those with Morality or morality equivalents between 4 and 6) find Heather unduly fascinating. Anyone in that morality range feels compelled to follow, watch or interact with Heather. Their own emotions and personality influences how they act (a petty thug might hit on her, a corrupt bureaucrat might be suspicious of her). This aura isn’t strong enough to compel player-controlled characters in that morality range to take any particular action, but they still notice Heather. In any case, Heather winds up with a small entourage of sleazy people following her in short order.
Animals love Heather. Wild animals come out to watch her, while domesticated animals get underfoot, demand pettings, cause noise, and generally get in the way.
This Echo only works in the presence of the fetch’s changeling counterpart. The fetch spends one point of Glamour. On the following turn, the fetch can use any Contract that the changeling possesses.
Add half (Wyrd) rounding up to your defense, applies against both melee and ranged attacks, but otherwise is identical to standard defense (goes down for multiple opponents, etc).
The fetch becomes a sinkhole for Glamour, creating a small zone in which no Contracts are honored and no magic (of any sort) can function. The Storyteller spends 10 points of Glamour and rolls Resolve + Wyrd (obviously, this Echo takes several turns to enact due to the Glamour expenditure). If the roll succeeds, no magics function within a 50-foot radius and all beings that can hold Glamour, including the fetch itself, lose one point per turn. The changeling weakness to iron, however, also ceases to function during this time, so this power can be of some small benefit. This Echo lasts for one turn per success.
By spending a point of Glamour and making eye contact with its target, the fetch can attempt to intimidate that person into following its instructions. The fetch rolls Presence + Intimidation + Wyrd versus the target’s Resolve + Composure + Wyrd. If the fetch gains more successes than its target, the fetch may give the target a short command (no more than one sentence) that the target must obey, unless the command is suicidal in nature.
By unravelling mystic 'knots' in the shadow of a target, Heather can break curses, enchantments, wards, and any other non-instantaneous spells. To do this, Heather must be able to reach the target's shadow (a person's shadow, an object's shadow, the shadow of an enchanted building, the shadow of a tree within an enchanted glade, etc), and spends 1WP, rolling Manipulation+Wyrd as an instant action (Heather may take longer than this for a bonus to her dice pool, +2 if she takes 10 minutes, +4 if she takes an hour, +6 if she spends eight hours; she may further augment her roll by taking 1B damage per +1 -- damage doesn't start to heal till she finishes working the spell). If she exceeds the original successes of the spell, she breaks it. If she exceeds the original successes by 5 or more, she may instead "re-tie" the spell, altering the parameters however she likes. A ward that inflicted fiery curses upon intruders may now affect its vampiric owner instead, say, and leave Heather and her friends untouched.
Heather is too alive to die, simple as that. When she is killed (her health boxes full of aggravated damage), she falls into a sort of suspended animation that is, for all intents and purposes, identical to death. She begins to regenerate aggravated damage, at a rate determined by the type of wounds she suffered that led to her death or were inflicted post-mortem -- straightforward wounds such as being shot in the heart and left alone, 1Agg per 15 minutes; more severe damage such as decapitation or being burned down to the bone heals at the rate 1Agg per hour; truly outrageous damage such as being dropped in lava or swallowed whole by a dragon requires 1Agg per day as the Wyrd figures out how to reconstitute Heather's body. The exception to this is wounds inflicted by cold iron, which if used to inflict the death-blow cannot be recovered from.
Heather has the option of waking up at any point after her first aggravated wound is healed instead of waiting til she is fully healed, but this ceases the healing-death, and Heather will need to heal any remaining aggravated damage the old fashioned way.
Virtue: Charity: Do him a good turn, and he'll do you one in return - and maybe another two, or three, or four. Vice: Pride: You're just a little mouse in his paws.
It's hard to know anything about Othello when he changes himself every two days. His name is whatever takes his fancy at the moment, his features likewise. He might be a black man with white hair, or dark hair, or a sandy-skinned man with hooked features and bright green eyes, or an Irishman with a trimmed russet goatee. Among the changelings he is notoriously difficult to recognize, and you might easily talk to him for five minutes, only to walk across the room and talk to him again without realizing it.
He does seem to like the name Othello, despite or because of the irony inherent in it, and if you try hard enough you can pick up a few things. The first is that he's a cunning, canny, clever beast, and if you ever think you're getting the better of him, you'd better check your pockets when he's gone. He has a few "tells", though you can't count on them - he has a cats ears, eyes, and tail... most of the time. He's usually handsome, but generally short; he likes fine shoes, has old fashion sense, won't eat his vegetables and has a heavy craving for chocolate. He likes to keep songbirds, caged up in delicate little cages, though one or two might vanish every now and again. He also likes to play games, and he rarely loses. He's a fickle critter, and his attention rarely lasts for long, but you'll know when it's on you; he can raise you to the top in a month, or completely destroy you in a day. And most of the time you'll have unwittingly helped him do it.
Those he does help, he tends to confuse or annoy on the way - though his solutions are often some of the best for everyone involved, they often irritate those who don't share his sense of whimsy. But be warned if he seems too helpful, or if you think you've got the better of him... it means he's playing with you.
There are whispers in the goblin marts that he even tricked one of the True Fey out of something, but that seems a little too ridiculous for even the Changelings to believe - or want to believe. After all, the cheated Gentry might come knocking. Othello certainly isn't talking. Indeed, you could talk to him for hours on end only to walk away and realize he'd said absolutely nothing of import. Othello doesn't see the need to share information about himself.
He certainly doesn't talk about his daughter. He doesn't think people need to know about her.
Othello is the very definition of a trickster, right down to his soul, and he's good at it. He long ago figured out that the rules of the world only apply if someone enforces them, and that with the right words you can change reality. He's a deeply cunning, intelligent man who's always thinking on his feet, able to turn setbacks around so fast that it seems he might have planned it all along. He's vain, and in a way, power hungry. Tricking people gives him power over them, and feeds his pride. He rarely gives a straight answer, dancing around questions with theatrics and wit, leaving those he manipulates in the dark. He's the center of attention when he wishes to be, and invisible in the crowd when he doesn't. He's a veritable fountain of culture and eloquence, parading his intellect in front of everyone. And he has the annoying habit of being one step ahead, and almost always right. Othello is a charming man, but there are really only two ways people react to him - love or hatred.
Like the tale of Puss in Boots, however, his trickery manifests in the form of strange charity. Othello very rarely seeks to take advantage of others for his own gain. To those he likes, he is indeed a true friend, who would win you a kingdom in return for a pair of shoes. He's generous and loyal, in his own way, never asking for anything meaningful in return. Of course, he's so confusing or irritating that many would never consider the fact they owe him at all. In a way, that's how Othello likes it. He wants nothing so crass as money - what he wants is the thrill of deception, the glee of knowing a secret no one else does. He wants the grand reward of shocking everyone with some amazing deed or grandiose gift. Most of all, he wants to have fun while doing it.
Beware to those who truly catch his ire. Certainly, he may trample over evildoers when helping someone else, but it takes a good deal to catch Othello's real bad side. Bad mouthing or disliking the cat won't do it; indeed, Othello seems to enjoy being disliked, in some cases. It takes a very specific grade of callous evil, cruelty, and abusive power to make Othello angry. Slavers of any sort are the worst, slavers who trap people through chains, or contracts, or money. Othello might restrain himself to simple pranks and annoyances, but has an impulsive temper, and if he sees a golden opportunity, he takes it. He can tear down everything a person has, and usually trick them into doing it for him.
Othello has a finger in every pie. He seems to know everyone in London, and he was somehow involved in putting Aurora on the Seelie Throne. It's certainly widely known that he loathed the previous Seelie Queen, Alexandra Merill, and the final faux-wedding between Todd White and Aurora took place in his roving hollow. But no one really knows the truth of that. [Dreaming of Stars] What is known is that Othello these days is perhaps the single most powerful Seelie Courtier. He has the limitless good graces of the Seelie Queen, who will forgive him anything and values his advice deeply, and he is in close contact with several other prominent Seelie courtiers, most notably the Queen Consort and Red Victor, Dana the Tall, and Erin Lamothe, owner of the Cat's Cradle and Joyeux.
More recently, and more publically, Othello was involved in a grand dispute with the werewolf known as Cinder. While the details of this are obscure to much of the Freehold of New Jerusalem, it is known that Erin and Underwood travelled into the very heart of Faerie and brought back four of the Lost with them. There are rumors that Cinder is in fact Othello's daughter, though how this happened, or what the two think of it, is less known. Those in the know, of course, know that Othello is frightened half-to-death and half-sick with guilt towards his ferocious daughter, and at the same time is hardly his daughter's favorite person. [Wonderland]
Quote:
Originally Posted by Erin Lamothe, to Cinder, Othello's Daughter
“Do you know why your father is what he is? Do you understand why changelings are changelings?” Erin began to speak, quiet words that nonetheless had magic behind them. “The Masters take us, because we are pretty or skilled or for no reason at all. The Mistress takes you away, and she decides, you aren’t good enough, you would look better with ears like a cat. So they take you away and slice your ears from your face, and give you new ones, and you are not even allowed to scream. And you must hold back the tears, because you’ve seen what happens to the ones that cry. She takes out their eyes, then, because they’re ugly when they cry. And the ones who talk back to her, well, she fixes their minds. You are not allowed anything without her permission, not even a name. She takes away everything you have, slices it to ribbons. You are her slave. You perform your little jokes and plays for the Mistress, and if you are boring, or ugly, or if she thinks it would be funnier to hurt you, you are punished. She tells you every day how worthless you are. She points out every flaw in everything you do. And you know it is true, because she is perfect. She is the most perfect, beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. But it’s worth it, after all, because when she tells you you have done well, you know you have earned it.”
“And she takes you to be her lover and toy, sometimes, and her fingers are like knives, and she enjoys slicing you, flaying you, and you have to be put back together when she’s done with you, and she never asked you if you were even willing. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Because she is perfect. Who couldn’t love someone like her? Who could turn away such a privilege, such a sign of favor? Trash like you should bow down at her feet and be grateful for any word, any glance, any favor she pays upon your personage. Only eventually you begin to finally… finally accept, to realize, that there’s no course of action to take, that will stop you from being hurt. There are no rules you can follow, that will keep you safe. There is nothing you can do that will make her love you back. Because eventually she will become bored, or you will misstep, or her tastes will change with no warning. You finally realize… she is killing you. Bit by bit. You have to get away. It kills you inside, because you love her. But one day, on an impulse, you run.”
“And when you get out you realize… slowly, or quickly, that you’re not worthless. You’re not trash. You find things worth living for. And one day, you have a little girl who is the most precious thing in the world to you. But you’re frightened. What if something happens to her? What if something like the Mistress comes back and takes her? The Mistress took everything you ever had, and you know she’s still out there, searching… What if she finds out? What if she sees your baby? You want to make it so your child, your little girl, never has to suffer like you did. You’ll make her strong, and special, and she’ll never have to be afraid like you were, or have to let someone tell her she’s trash. You’ll never, ever, let her feel as powerless as you were.”
“Can you understand?”
Court Spring Entitlement Bodhisattva of the Broken Cage Seeming Beast Kith:
When spending WP to boost Persuasion or Subterfuge, gain +5
Gain a +3 to any social challenge involving making someone thwart social mores, break out of established patterns, or just try new things. This increases to +5 if Othello has previously used Cupid's Eye to determine that this is something the subject truly desires.
Bone Comb) 1 Hollow: The Marquis de Carabas Travelling Emporium of Wonders; Size 2, Library (Faerie Magic, Vampires) 2, Mobile 3, Security 1
Shadow Cult Merits
This is only the dots which Othello gains from the Harbingers. To them he contributes his Allies (Goblin Market), Court Goodwill (Autumn), and Friend (Mary) dots
Bloody Harvest Type: Oath, Courtly Emblem (Autumn) Tasks:
[Othello] - Ensorcellment (-2)
[Mary] - Medial Alliance (-2) Boons:
[Othello] - Medial Blessing; Friend (Mary) (+3)
[Mary] - Ensorcellment (+2), Adroitness: Brawl (+1) Duration: Season (+2) Sanction: Poisoning of the Boon (-3)
[Exceptions] The pledge is not broken and the curse is not triggered if a clause is broken or unfulfilled for any of the following reasons:
-Refusal to betray another friend or ally.
-Either party is rendered physically or mentally incapable of fulfilling the pledge, either by external or internal conditions.
-Either party is forced to break the pledge by supernatural means or mind control.
-Either party was unaware their course of action or inaction would violate the pledge.
A Beast gains the benefit of the 8 again rule when using the Animal Ken Skill, and receives a free Specialty for the one animal that most reflects the Beast’s seeming. That same wild nature gives a Beast a powerful personal magnetism. A Beast’s player can spend points of Glamour to add to dice pools involving Presence and Composure. Each point of Glamour spent adds one die to one dice pool.
Virtue: Hope Being good-looking and suave helps, but the secret to Todd's success is that he's a romantic. He falls in love, even if it's only a little, with every girl he meets. Vice: Lust He's as fickle as a fox though, and falls out of love just as easily. After all, now that Todd is free, of his Keeper and of his past, no reason not to sample all that life can offer.
Born: Sean Gillespie was born to an upper-class family in London, the youngest of two children. His father was a lawyer at a major firm, his mother a vice president of marketing with a global pharmaceutical, and they hated one another. They weren't divorced, his parents, but by all accounts they should have been. Sean and his sister were raised in an atmosphere of accusations and cutting remarks, and Sean was left trying to navigate arguments he barely understood.
His sister Coreen rebelled, becoming steadily more involved in dubious circles, but Sean was always the 'good boy'. Eager to please, conscientious and hard-working, Sean excelled at school and at sports, and grew ever more adept at mediating and calming his endlessly quarrelsome parents. By the summer before his sixteenth birthday, Sean was in the top five percent of his class, was captain of the tennis team, and was always smiling. If that smile had an occasionally somewhat manic edge to it, and if Sean's workaholic nature seemed to keep him away from home for fourteen hours at a time, no one mentioned it.
The Gentry took Sean on the night of his sixteenth birthday. There had been a party, but it had disintegrated into an argument over how well his father had arranged for the catering, and by nightfall Sean was in the backyard adjoining an old forest, sitting in the grass, and miserable as could be. He saw a fox, a glorious russet animal with eyes that burned, and in a feminine voice as clear as a bell, it asked him why he was crying. And so, Sean said how hard he tried, and how nothing ever worked out. The fox offered him another possibility, a world where no one would ever argue or quarrel or raise their voice, and in that moment of depression, Sean took it.
The fox spoke truly, and in his whole Durance, Sean never heard a word spoken in anger or a single criticism, however faint. He was a pampered pet, kept on a leash and fed tidbits from the table, and even when he was punished with the lash or the knife, his Keeper never stopped telling him how much she loved him and what a wonderful pet he was. Afterward the beautiful woman with the brilliant, russet hair would care for him, tending to his wounds and taking him to her bower.
Had this continued for long enough, it's likely that Sean would have been reduced in time to a quivering bundle of eager-to-please masochism. But his Keeper grew bored, and Sean's psyche proved unusually resilient, and the pet was left alone for ever longer periods of time. It was during one of those trips that Sean escaped, running through the Thorns until he emerged, bloodied and half-mad, by the same old forest where he had been taken from.
The first thing Sean did was decide that no matter what else, his life would be his own now. He'd spent sixteen years trying to please his parents, and five more trying to please his Keeper. Never again. He took a new name, to fit his new life, and thus was Todd White born. The second thing Todd did was find his Fetch, studying business at the London School of Economics, and slice it open from stomach to throat with a knife, watching the dead leaves and small animal bones fall out. The third thing he did, though this wasn't exactly intentional, was catch the eye of the Jack-of-Crows.
Now, trying to understand just what attracts the Patchwork King of Autumn is an exercise in futility. Did the Jack admire Todd's bloody-minded will to live his own life? Did he see in the white-haired changeling a creature which he could control? Or was Jack just looking for an heir and Todd was the first changeling he saw on that particular Tuesday? Todd understands the Jack-of-Crows better than anyone else, quite likely, and he still has no idea.
These days, Todd White lives however he likes, for the first time in his life. He dropped out of the LSE, which ended up putting paid to his parent's marriage now that their one apparent success (raising their son) turned to failure. Todd couldn't care less by now. He doesn't have a job and he doesn't have a home, but between charming his way into the hearts – and beds – of interested women and the income he gets as the Winter King, Todd gets along. He gets along rather nicely.
Of course, Todd never expected to be King. He didn't mind the idea though, even if it's proven rather more stressful than he might've liked. But Todd's ambitious, and in some ways, he's proven to be a very good Winter King. He's got a flair for secrecy and a talent for managing his court's subtle desires that would do justice to any Spring Courtier. And whenever people grumble, the Jack-of-Crows is always nearby, and he's made it exquisitely clear that he expects everyone to fully support his chosen heir.
Unfortunately for Todd, all his greatest problems stem from the Jack-of-Crows. In the first case, there's the very open question of who actually rules the Unseelie. Todd White is the formal Unseelie King, and he runs the Court. But the Jack is still a constant presence, like some hideous blood-stain on the wall that no one can quite forget, however much they try to ignore it. Half the Freehold thinks that the Jack-of-Crows is still pulling the strings. One his worse days, the ones where the stress gets to him, Todd agrees with them. He'd love to strike a more independent line, but doing this without alienating his chief political patron and the most powerful faerie in London is going to be an exercise in delicacy.
The situation isn't helped by the fact that Todd still keeps up a few of the Jack's old laws, in particular what is popularly known as the Fetch-Law. Stated plainly, it means that none may kill a Fetch in London without express monarchical permission, which is only granted if the Fetch is somehow violent or dangerous. Todd keeps the law up, and so far he's been able to persuade Aurora to uphold it during the months when the Seelie rule. But telling every changeling in London that they can never go home, that they have to stand by as some Gentry-made thing lives their lives is not a popular move, especially among the Summer Court (John Henry has been a vocal opponent of the Fetch-Law). That Todd himself slew his own Fetch puts him in an even more complicated position... but Todd knows, better than nearly anyone else, that the Jack will not allow the Fetch-Law to lapse, Freehold opinion be damned. So far the situation is stable mostly because Todd is a good enough politician to distract people from the topic or help them work around it, and because there's still a good deal of residual terror of the Jack, but as time goes on and memory of the Jack recedes, pressure against the Fetch-Law continues to build.
In person, Todd is subtle and sly, by equal turns charming and conceited, melancholy and mercurial. He's hardly a typical Winter courtier, too outgoing and flamboyant, but he has his Court's love of secrets and mystery, and he can easily slide into a half-depressed sulk when things don't go his way. He's also a very handsome man, and since his earlier relationship with the vampiress Rose lapsed after she went back to America, he's cut quite a swathe among the ladies of the Freehold. He's just a little bit emo.
Court Winter Seeming:
A Beast gains the benefit of the 8 again rule when using the Animal Ken Skill, and receives a free Specialty for the one animal that most reflects the Beast’s seeming. That same wild nature gives a Beast a powerful personal magnetism. A Beast’s player can spend points of Glamour to add to dice pools involving Presence and Composure. Each point of Glamour spent adds one die to one dice pool.
5, Fatebound (Fair Prince) 3, Mantle (Winter) 4, Resources 2, Status (Unseelie Court; The Unseelie King) 4, Striking Looks 2, Hollow: The Greenwich Park Den; Size 1, Secrecy 4 Hollow: The Backrooms of Guy's Hospital; Size 3, Security 2 Hollow: The Ebon Engine; Size 4, Security 5, Doors (Guy's Hospital Hollow; Blackheath, The Croydon Clocktower, Victoria Station, The Wallace Collection, The Monument) 4, Mobile 5, Library (The Lost of New Jerusalem, The London Hedge, Individual True Fae, Fae Magic) 4, Ritual Area (Contracts of Fleeting Winter) 2, Ritual Area (Contracts of Animation) 2, Workshop (Engineering, Decorative Arts) 2
Mordred's Loyalty Type: Corporal, Courtly Emblem (Winter) Tasks:
[Todd White] - Medial Alliance (-2)
[Jack of Crows] - Greater Endeavor; You Shall Be King (-3) Boons:
[Todd White] - Adroitness: Persuasion, Subterfuge (+2)
[Jack of Crows] - Adroitness: Investigation, Expression, Animal Ken (+3) Duration: Decade (+3) Sanction: Pishogue (Lurking Insanity (-3) [Exceptions] The pledge is not broken and the curse is not triggered if a clause is broken or unfulfilled for any of the following reasons:
-Refusal to betray another friend or ally.
-Either party is rendered physically or mentally incapable of fulfilling the pledge, either by external or internal conditions.
-Either party is forced to break the pledge by supernatural means or mind control.
-Either party was unaware their course of action or inaction would violate the pledge.
The Foundation of the Heart Type: Oath, The Name of a Higher Power Tasks:
[Todd White & Aurora] - Medial Alliance (-2), Medial Forbiddance: May never betray their alliance by word or deed (-2), Lesser Forbiddance: May never sleep with one another (-1) Boons:
[Todd White] - Blessing: Allies (Medical) (+3), Blessing: Contacts (~Old Lovers~) (+3)
[Aurora] - TBD (+6) Duration: Lifelong (+3) Sanction: Flaw: Nightmares (-2), Flaw: Mute (-2) [Exceptions] The pledge is not broken and the curse is not triggered if a clause is broken or unfulfilled for any of the following reasons:
-Refusal to betray another friend or ally.
-Either party is rendered physically or mentally incapable of fulfilling the pledge, either by external or internal conditions.
-Either party is forced to break the pledge by supernatural means or mind control.
-Either party was unaware their course of action or inaction would violate the pledge.
Type: Changeling Court: Spring Seeming: Fairest Kith: Flowering Born: 1986
Virtue: Prudence Aurora's careful and tries very hard not to upset anyone... Vice: Wrath ...but sometimes, she just snaps, and when she does, everyone else had better duck for cover.
Background: Lexi was the popular girl. She was pretty, she was sweet, she was smart, she was the minister's daughter of the small English town she grew up in. Everyone loved her, and Lexi did her hardest to please everyone in turn, whether it was her parents, her church, her teachers, or her friends. Even those people jealous of her success found it hard to hate someone who worked in the family's soup kitchen every day after school. Lexi kept her secret anxieties, her self-doubt, her guilt about her sexuality, her burgeoning depression to herself. Some parts of the Church of England would have looked tolerantly upon Lexi's sexuality. Her father's did not.
When Lexi started getting letters from a 'Secret Admirer', she was nervous. When the 'Secret Admirer' proved to be another woman, she freaked out. And... nothing happened. When the panic attacks subsided, and her parents remained blissfully unaware, Lexi started to write back. The letters were daring, enticing, and soon they planned to meet. Lexi bought tickets, stepped off the bus in her best dress, and walked up to the decrepit old house in a forgotten corner of the Home Counties. In retrospect, the repeated use of the phrase 'growing into your potential' should've been a warning sign.
Arcadia preyed on Lexi's mind. She was a flower in a garden of lost souls, all confused, anxious, conflicted. Her Keeper largely ignored her, only to come and trim at her limbs, snipping away what she disliked with fingers made of scissors and shears. The rest of the time she was forgotten... but somehow, instead of breaking altogether, Lexi snapped. She was tired of it. She got mad. And when one evening she overheard her mistress discussing the fading blooms of her flowers, Lexi had had enough. The next morning, she broke free of her soil, marched through the castle of unimaginable size, screamed at the guards to let her through, and bluffed and lied and bullied her way back home. It was a cosmic temper tantrum.
At some point, exhaustion caught up with her, and when Lexi emerged from Arcadia after but a single year, she found she had no life left to go back to. Her fetch, not so strong as she was, had hung herself from an oak tree within a year. Alone in the world, with no idea of how to care for herself, Lexi went to London with her last few pennies. There she met Alexandra Merill, and found herself in a new form of slavery. For a time, Lexi -- Aurora now, among the Lost -- tolerated it. But when a marriage was contracted, and she would be separated from her new love, Dana the Tall, Aurora snapped again. She got in touch with Othello, and the rest, as they say, is history.
These days, Aurora finds herself trying to manage the Seelie Court of London, a nigh-impossible undertaking after the havoc that Alexandra Merill had wrought on the city. Alexandra had liked to own things -- clubs, theaters, mansions, people -- and she'd left much of that property (technically owned by the Seelie) to Aurora, most notably the estate of Greenwich House on the riverfront, the formal Seelie Court headquarters of the Menier Chocolate Factory theater/restaurant/gallery, and the little informal court of the candy store Home, Sweet Home. Moreover, Alexandra's conspiratorial tactics had left a Seelie Court that was demoralized and divided, and it was with only considerable effort that Aurora's managed to keep the Seelie as unified and together as they are. Even now, there's still some old resentments, and they run deep.
Virtue: Justice Dana lives by a code of chivalry. Protect the weak, defend your honor, tell the truth... Vice: Lust She loves not wisely but too well.
Background: Clarissa was born in London, the daughter of Kikuyu immigrants from Kenya. A kind-hearted girl, Clarissa grew up working in her uncle's restaurant, waiting tables and cooking for an endless stream of construction workers and day laborers in the East End of London. In the evenings, she read books, an endless stream of faerie tales and mythology from all over the world. By the time she was twenty, Clarissa's biggest issues seemed to be how to pay for culinary school, and how to explain to her small pack of Kikuyu grandmothers and aunts that she was singularly uninterested in the prospective husbands they kept showing her.
Then she met the Sunset Princess of Stolen Desire. The True Fae didn't seem to terrible at first. Just a pretty red-haired girl crying at the restaurant due to a brute of a boyfriend. Clarissa, a hearty young woman and not entirely oblivious to how pretty the other girl was, agreed to give her ex-boyfriend what-for. When she stepped out of the bleak corridor and into the Other World, she found that the 'boyfriend' was a real ogre, and not a metaphorical one.
Somehow, Clarissa survived that fight. Just like she survived the next one, and the one after that, all against opponents larger than her, opponents who forced her to grow (sometimes literally) and train herself to the utmost to win the favor of the Sunset Princess. She slew dragons and fought in tourneys, wrote poetry and sang songs, all to be the perfect gallant... and it was rarely enough. But when it was, life was heavenly. Only when the Sunset Princess's attention waned did Clarissa find the strength to break free and fight her way out of Arcadia, after four years of captivity.
In the mortal world, she found her once promising life in shambles. Her fetch, lacking some rebellious spark, had given up her hopes of advancement or freedom, and still worked at her uncles' restaurant, married to a quiet young man who was never quite comfortable with his dull-eyed and uninterested wife. Clarissa joined the Freehold then, changing her name so as to protect the mortal clan she left behind, and became a loyal knight of Summer.
She fell in love with Aurora, another far-away princess, delicate and frail, but this time Clarissa (now Dana) won her beloved's heart, and kept it. And if Dana the Tall sometimes feels her Keeper's lips when she kisses Aurora, or imagines the Spring Queen's locks as russet instead of raven dark, she keeps it to herself.
Dana is the highest ranking Seelie Courtier of Summer and is often called the Summer Queen, though this is not precisely her title. Rather, she is the Red Victor, the champion of the Seelie and their greatest warrior (by tradition, and possibly by fact). She does not lead or administer the warriors of Summer, delegating that task to her adjutant John Henry, but she inspires them and leads them in battle.
