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virovac · 3 years

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Nature of Ghouls

Lovecraftian Xenology #3: Ghouls [by Leila Hann Before continuing with Carter and the Pussycats, I'm going to be taking a closer look at the creatures that made their debut in "Pickman's Model" before receiving their official name here in "Dream-Quest." This is going to be a tricky one. Reading "Pickman's Model" in isolation gives you a very strong impression of the ghouls, what they are, and where they come from. However, reading it alongside the other, earlier Dreamlands tales - particularly "Celephais" and "The Festival" - one walks away with a completely different interpretation. As for their reappearance in "Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," well. On one hand "Dream-Quest" does silly things with other stories' continuities and perhaps should be best ignored. On the other, in the case of the ghouls, "Dream-Quest" not only expands on them in much greater detail than their debut story ever did, but is also the source of their official name. As such, I'm going to be taking the continuity approach, and looking at the ghouls within the framework of the Dreamlands series as a whole. The funny thing about "Pickman's Model" is that while the narrator is probably reliable, he's mostly relaying information that he learned from Richard Pickman, who seems to be much less so. As I noted while reading that story, there's a very obvious disconnect between the actions that Pickman depicted the ghouls performing in his art - particularly the "Subway Accident" piece - and what they could have possibly really done. Throughout his presentation, Pickman comes across as very much a showman, trying to create fear and horror in his audience and reveling mean-spiritedly in his success. Then, there's the detail of him interacting with the ghoul who tried to walk in on him and the narrator in the same way that a circus animal-tamer would with an unruly beast; not at all what you'd expect from a man who's trying to talk down a sapient, malevolent, possibly transhuman demon. As such, I think we need to take Pickman's art with a hefty grain of salt when it comes to inferring things about his models. This is supported by the ghouls' appearance in "Dream-Quest." They are described as hideous, frightening, and generally unpleasant, but they don't seem to be all that dangerous (unlike the zoogs, who are said to be dangerous to MOST people besides Carter, the ghouls don't even get an aside to this effect). Other than their antisocial habit of eating bodies from cemeteries that the deceased's friends and families would probably rather stay in their coffins, they really don't seem so bad. As far as the stories have reliably communicated, the ghouls are thieves and desecrators, but not the murderers and causers of disaster and misfortune that Pickman would want us to believe in. In fact, everything about the ghouls, from their appearance to their diet to their penchant for tombstones, scary noises, and dark, underground spaces, says that they aren't a force of destruction so much as one of horror. And, looking at "Pickman's Model" from that angle, we can definitely see how Pickman was helping them grow stronger in their element. Camel Spiders and Harnessed Horrors There's an animal called a solifugid, also called a pseudoscorpion or a camel-spider, that came to the western public's attention some time ago. Its a scary-looking arachnid, and one that you could easily believe was deadly if you saw it. Solifugids are mostly nocturnal, and so when they're forced to venture out of their lairs during the day they prefer to stick to the shadows...including the shadows of people, which they will chase after for that purpose. They're fast enough to keep up with a running human, and the rubbing of their legs when they move creates a squealing noise that could easily be mistaken for an aggressive vocalization. They also are always on the lookout for soft fibers to line their nests with; they got the name "camel spider" by being seen climbing on the bodies of dead or sleeping camels to cut off bits of their hair. In some cultures, this association was so great that people came to believe that the solifugids had actually killed the camels themselves. Less commonly, solifugids will crawl up onto the head of a sleeping human for similar hair-stealing operations. More than one American soldier sleeping in a tent in Iraq or Saudi Arabia has been woken up by a six inch specimen crawling across their face to see it opening its deadly-looking mouthparts just below their hairline. The solifugid is also completely harmless. In fact, its one of the only members of the arachnid class to have no venom whatsoever. It can even be a beneficial creature to have around, as it preys heavily on other arachnids including spiders and scorpions that actually are dangerous. During the early to mid 2000's, there was a rash of hoaxes about solifugids growing to lobster-size, being venomous, and even using a fictitious numbing agent to paralyze sleeping humans so they can slowly disembowel them alive. Someone was finding a misanthropic delight in taking this creature, which seems to have been practically designed by nature for this purpose with its appearance and habits, and crafting it into an instrument of irrational fear. This fear didn't come from nowhere, mind. The legend of the camel-spider harnesses the very rational human fears of venomous insects and being threatened in your sleep. But it takes those abstract rational fears and uses them to prop up a concrete figurehead of horror that is, itself, irrational. I'm an amateur horror writer myself, and I fell in love with the solifugids the instant I learned about them. I even had the pleasure of meeting a few during my time in the Arava Desert. I don't think that my soft spot for these arthropods and my choice of genres is a coincidence. In the Dreamlands, the cruel realities of the universe seem to be embodied in the Outer Gods, and anthropomorphized in their soul and messenger Nyarlathotep. If the ghouls are, as Pickman's art implied, meant to be like the witches of Puritan superstition, responsible for everything that goes wrong for humanity at the whims of a universe beyond our control, then it would make sense for them to be minions of Nyarlathotep. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Lovecraft to cast them as such in "Dream-Quest" if that was really his intent; the story already calls for Nyarlathotep's agents to appear in numerous scenes, and the ghouls could have been among them. But they aren't. Instead, Carter meets the ghouls back on Dreamlands Earth, in entirely friendly circumstances, with them as the loyal servants of Carter's (trans)human friend Pickman. The ghouls are creatures of the relatable and imaginative Gods of Earth, not the apathetic and inhuman Gods of Space. Rather than being a cause or manifestation of our problems, the ghouls might even be one of our defenses against them. The witch was created so that we would have some kind of enemy to hunt down and revenge ourselves on when we suffer a tragedy caused by impersonal forces of nature such as disease or weather. The boogeyman in the closet exists because the darkness it hides in is so much worse, and putting a FACE on the unknown lets us believe that we can deal with it in a form we understand. The ghouls are indeed connected to the nightmarish witch superstitions that Pickman referenced, but it is a metafictional connection: they are the legend of the witch and boogeyman, and an embodiment of the psychology that leads to the birth of those legends. They harness the rational fears of human powerlessness, victimhood, and mortality, and embody them as an irrational archetype-creature, and in this form - as Carter just demonstrated in the latest episode of "Dream-Quest" - our fears can be useful tools. Even if the purpose of that tool is just confronting other people with their fears for fun and (in the case of Lovecraft, King, etc) profit. At several points in both "Pickman's Model" and "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath," Lovecraft described the ghouls as being "gargoyle-like." They even look a lot like Gothic gargoyles, with their doglike faces, hoofed feet, and (in the case of at least one or two specimens that Lovecraft described) devilish horns. The purpose of the gargoyles in the European cathedrals wasn't to honor or appease the Devil; it was to mock him, and thereby rob him of some of his power. Ghoul-Changelings and Pickman's Transformation Given that Earth's Dreamlands are shaped by metaphors and symbolism taken from the subconscious of human dreamers (at least in part), its hard to say what is and isn't "literally" true about its inhabitants. Unlike most Dreamlands creatures, however, the ghouls are quite active in the waking world as well if only for brief periods at a time. As such, there are some objective observations that can be made. 1) Ghouls inhabit a network of caves in the Dreamlands' deep underground that contains portals to various urban dungeons and necropoli in the waking world, particularly in the New England area where the dream-sorcerers may have interacted with or even deliberately summoned them. 2) Ghouls eat the corpses of humans and other sapient creatures that they recover from both the waking world and the Dreamlands, but seem to be less interested in live prey. They also collect old tombstones and grave-goods. 3) After they've finished eating, the ghouls toss the bones into the chasm beneath their cave complex, which over time has become positively covered in bones, and attracted giant worm scavengers. 4) Richard Upton Pickman turned into a ghoul. The former three points are fairly self explanatory. The fourth, however, raises a lot of questions. In Pickman's art, he portrayed ghouls exchanging their own young with human babies in the classic fairy changeling mould, with both the changelings and the stolen babies eventually becoming ghouls themselves. Pickman also portrayed a Puritan-era changeling that bore a great physical resemblance to himself. Some readers have taken this to mean that rather than simply being a descendant of the Native American dream-sorcerers like Carter, Pickman was the descendant of a ghoul changeling, and the character he depicted in that painting was one of his own ancestors. Others, that Pickman was himself just one of many changelings from throughout history, and that he identified himself with an earlier New England instance out of whimsy. However, I find it a bit conspicuous that while Carter identified the fully transformed ghoul-Pickman and specified that he had once been human, he never mentions the possibility of any of the other ghouls being the same. Thus, its possible that what happened to Pickman is actually unique, or at least very rare, and that the changeling scenario depicted in his art was purely symbolic of the horror-artist's role as a devil's advocate to the rest of humanity and an ambassador to the dark forces of the universe. Pickman's transformation. I'm inclined to believe that what caused Pickman's transformation was not him being a ghoul pup switched with a human at birth, but a product of him being both a) an almost obsessive devotee of horror, and b) a powerful dreamer with access to the Dreamlands, perhaps helped along in accessing them by some recovered magic from his oneiromancer ancestors just like Carter was. It could even be that rather than his art depicting something that had or could have already happened with the ghoul-transformation, Pickman's acts of imagining and drawing a transformation were what CREATED THE POSSIBILITY for such a transformation to actually happen. An idea of his was made real through the power of his dreaming, warping his own flesh into one of his ghouls in a similar - but more visceral - manner as Kyle being transformed into Kuranes. Another question about Pickman's transformation pertains to him having mostly forgotten how to speak English by the time Carter met him again in the Dreamlands. Did his transformation rob him of his English, or did he just forget it after spending so long in the Dreamlands interacting only with other ghouls? For that matter, how long HAD Pickman been a ghoul by the time Carter stumbled into the bone pit? Months? Years? Centuries? Time in the Dreamlands seems to work in arbitrary ways, as evidenced by how Carter can be timelooped in the waking world while living through consecutive centuries as an explorer in the Dreamlands. In "The Silver Key," we learned that the Dreamlands (or at least, Dreamlands related artifacts) can even send you BACK in time. Origins? Since time in the Dreamlands interacts in very unpredictable ways with the waking world's timeline, its very difficult to say when and where the ghouls first came into existence. Since Pickman's art is also of questionable waking world veracity, we can't really tell if the ghouls have actually been popping up in the New England witch tunnels since the 1700's, and - even if they have - they could have been born in the Dreamlands from an event that had not yet happened in the waking world's timeline and popped out of those tunnels earlier in history as we waking earthlings perceive it. Another interesting fact to point out here is that Randolph Carter, Dreamlands explorer extraordinaire, only knew about the ghouls BECAUSE he met Pickman during his waking life. Its possible that the ghouls are a manifestation of some core archetype within the human collective unconscious. The Horror, the Boogeyman, the terrifying friend to artists and writers who delight in confronting their fellow humans with humanity's frailties and fears. The creatures that appeared in the dreams of H.R. Giger and caused him to wake up in heart-stopping terror on so many different nights, and yet that he adopted and came to love. Even if his own fear of them never diminished, it became HIS fear, and they became HIS monsters, and he began to feel possessive of them and delight in sharing their terror with others who lacked his mastery over them. The creatures that appeared in the dreams of Stephen King and inspired him to turn the anxieties of the modern United States against it, while cackling about keeping the hearts of fictitious young children in his study. The creatures that haunted the dreams of H.P. Lovecraft, and inspired him to write stories like "Pickman's Model," delighting in his own ability to scare Weird Tales' readers just as Pickman delighted in scaring the narrator. There is a moment in "Pickman's Model" when the ghoul walks in on them and Pickman has to go make it leave, when PICKMAN HIMSELF is described as looking terrified. And yet, despite that, he was able to reassert control over the ghoul and command it to leave him alone until he wanted it to return. I suspect that if Pickman ever stopped being afraid of the ghouls himself, they would have abandoned him and sought a fresh artist to inspire. Such is the relationship between the horrorist and the monster. There is another possibility, though. And that is that rather than being a universal manifestation of horror that serve as muses to numerous masters of the craft, the ghouls are the specific nightmare-turned-minion of one specific master of horror. Kyle/Kuranes dreamed Celephais and its people into existence, and then abandoned the waking world entirely to rule them for all time. What might another instance of this look like, if the dreamer in question was less of a sensitive too-good-for-this-world melancholic, and more of an angry misanthrope with a fixation with his Salem ancestry and an almost monomaniacal obsession with showing us fear in a handful of grave-dust? Perhaps it was just Richard Upton Pickman who loved his own, personal, imaginary monsters so much. And, through the power of the Dreamlands, they were able to love him back.

So ghouls are a combination of guardians, Halloweentown, and irreverance of 4chan.

A more benevolent take than my past one.

#dreamlands #ghouls #lovecraft

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qm-vox · 5 years

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So You Want To Play A Wizened

(Artwork depicting the fuckmothering Rook provided by cantankerousAquarius, character provided by me. Meet him in New Avalon.)

Previous article: So You Want To Play A Beast.

Chaos reigns in the kingdoms of Man, and the kingdoms of Arcadia are no different. There is an inherent unfairness in trauma and abuse, and in the depredations of evil. They can happen to anyone at all, for any reason, for no reason. It’s not the victims’ fault, and not in the victims’ control, and sadly of the vast collection of Anyone At All it can happen to, Not Many can call themselves survivors.

The Lost know the Not Many, and call them the Wizened. They did nothing to deserve this, not even by the arcane laws of the Fae and the twisting treacheries of the Wyrd, but it happened to them, and they became one of the rare few to survive and see their Homecoming. It’s rarely the joyous moment they were looking for. The Wizened that comes back is not the Anyone At All who left.

This article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost, as well as Winter Masques and Swords at Dawn. It discusses some content from Rites of Spring. It requires Content Warnings for depictions of torture, maiming, and abuse.

The Invisible People - Wizened Overview

Wizened is the very last Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost, and joins Beast as one of the most commonly represented in the writing and worldbuilding, if not necessarily in terms of characters with statistics (but check out Auntie Ally and Jack o’ the Lantern in Night Horrors: Grim Fears). The Wizened were taken for spite, tormented for spite’s sake, and turned loose to rebuild something like a life when spite grew cold - and the legacy of that spite has made them twisted and small. More than many other Lost, to be Wizened is to know that you suffered a great loss, that you have been robbed and cheated of some piece of your humanity, and to try and live a life that can compensate for that loss. For almost all of them, the trades and skills that became their salvation first from torment, and then from Arcadia, become part of who they are and one of the bright and shining points in their lives. It cuts both ways: in identifying so strongly with their functions, all too many Wizened are reduced to those functions by their fellow Lost.

Jack and Jill Went Up The Hill - Homecoming As A Wizened

Far, far more people will experience the opening stages of their transformation into Wizened than will survive those transformations, and more will change than will make it home. The fact that Wizened tend to be intelligent, clever, good with their hands, and fast on the draw is less about what kind of people become Wizened - anyone could become Wizened, for no reason at all - and more about the qualities needed to survive and outwit the captivity to which Wizened are subjected. The grim truth of it is, those who are too slow, too incurious, or too afraid of pain and death die, and they never make it home.

The Durance of a Wizened can generally be divided into two stages: torture and apprenticeship. Those who will one day be Wizened are subject to the terrible, unfurled glory of Fae malice and Fae cruelty without limit or relief. The things done to them beggar belief: in one Domain, human captives are crucified to trees of moonsilver that leech out their living blood and replace it with boiling acid. In caverns beneath the tainted earth, kidnapped children flee screaming from spider-wolves that lay their eggs in the warm and living bodies of humans, humans that do not die when the filthy things erupt in a shower of gore and broken bone. Long-limbed Greys perform surgeries with advanced machines and not a drop of painkiller, sustaining their victims with magic as they are turned from something human into something like the Greys themselves; a sinister Whistling Witch maintains an elaborate diorama of her domain, using the poppets that represent her slaves to wrack their living bodies with a million kinds of agony. Fae magic sustains the would-be Wizened far past human limits when normally their bodies would give them the mercy of unconsciousness or the peace of death. Some never leave this stage - they are discarded into worse, permanent tortures meant to serve as decorations or warnings - and others are killed when they grow boring to their abusers. But some survive.

Those who, by chance or by the intervention of their fellow captives, escape the tortures they are condemned to are put to work in the Domain of their Keeper. This is only rarely in a trade the person knew before being kidnapped (and when that does happen it’s likely complete coincidence); the Fae decides they need someone to clean floors, cook food, crack the whip against their other slaves, build the bodies of Fetches, construct elaborate golems of stained glass, or whatever else their Keeper can think of. The Wizened are only rarely directly trained in this new skill by their Keepers, instead being left to the management of their fellow slaves and goblin taskmasters. After a living eternity of torture and trauma, even glass-tipped whips are almost mild by comparison, and the Wizened learn to do their jobs, keep their heads down, and excel without being noticed. Their trade becomes how they relate to Arcadia, encouraging the Wizened to pay attention to their environment, to learn more about their physical space and its properties, to see the beauty and wonder amidst the horror and fear. There are worse coping mechanisms; this focus on their work and the way their work can help them relate to the world around them isn’t just the key to a Wizened’s escape, it’s the instinct that helps them find beauty in hidden places and utility in disregarded things back in the Iron Lands.

Wizened generally don’t have a problem with wanting to escape. After enduring the unendurable and then being consigned to slave labor, rare is the formerly mortal person whose first and brightest desire is not to be Anywhere But Here. The escapes themselves can be elaborate and dramatic, and the tail end of a Wizened’s tattered recollections of Arcadia can be full of memories of crashing space ships, revolutions in cities of chrome towers, or riding roughshod over hobgoblin soldiers from the back of the wolf-spiders that once tormented her. Wizened are among those Lost most likely to collaborate with their fellow captives to escape, either because their clever plans require it or because someone else’s clever plan requires the Wizened. Memories of the friends and allies that helped them make it to their Homecoming fade along with everything else when the Wizened get back home, but for those who acquire such memories again as their Wyrd rises reconnecting with their former fellows can be a powerful event.

A lot of Wizened were in the wrong place at the wrong time when they were Taken. No one (least of all the Wizened themselves) likes to talk about it, but many of those who achieve their Homecoming were isolated before they were Taken, existing a half-step out of their own social circles with few friends. Memories of those friendships and those special places in the new Wizened’s life can be enough to call them home, but what happens after isn’t always a joyous reunion. Wizened are among those Lost with a high incidence of abandoning the traces of their former mortal life entirely, either because the idea of trying to fit in with mortals whose respect they crave is too terrifying, or because hindsight has made them realize that those connections were not what they once thought they were. Left to their own devices, some Wizened associate exclusively with other Lost, and they can be overlooked enough for others to just let that happen. In healthier Freeholds, though, their friends (or monarchs, if need be) drag the Wizened out and about to at least some public events, often those that match the Wizened’s hobbies and trades.

Every Man Jack - Wizened Kiths

The magical bonds which Wizened have in common show a curious contrast between being very subtle and very obvious. Wizened can’t ‘flare’ the way many other Seemings can; there are no skills or attributes which they can spend Glamour on, but all Wizened can enhance their Dexterity for great lengths of time for only a single point of Glamour - they offer up a token shard of power and become faster, more nimble, more agile, for anything such grace can buy them. When it comes to dipping out of a bad scene there’s few that can match the Wizened for sheer “fuck this shit I’m out”, and those same talents are also great in a kitchen, on the operating table, or when picking locks and solving puzzles. Their ability to enhance their Dodge is similar in nature, though not in execution thanks to the vicissitudes of how World of Darkness handles its combat.

On the flip side, the curse of the Wizened is quite obvious. Their lack of Presence and their penalty to untrained social skills manifests as a sort of diminishing. Some of it is magical, but much of it is a reaction to trauma. Too often, Wizened associate attention with pain, fear, and torture, so they do their best not to draw that attention - they keep their heads down, speak softly or not at all, wear neutral colors, lose themselves in their work. Physical touches, eye contact, and invasions of the Wizened’s personal space are often too emotionally ‘loud’ for them, sparking a fearful response that might turn violent if they can’t retreat or the person bothering them won’t back off. To put it bluntly, Wizened suffer from many of the classic outward symptoms of autism, PTSD, or both, symptoms that may not have been part of their life before their Durance. The fallout is far-reaching; society is not always or even often kind to the ways Wizened try to feel comfortable or manage their fears.

The end result is that at times Wizened look like they have much more of their shit together than they actually do because they structure their day (and their life, for that matter) to carefully husband their spoons. Those who catch a Wizened standing in a corner at a formal event like the Spring Revel didn’t get to see him working up the courage to go in the first place at home, carefully leaving at the optimal time to avoid traffic and crowds as best he could, stagger into the bathroom to change clothes (and steal a nip of whiskey to settle his nerves), pray for the peace of death in front of the mirror and then finally arrive. Even when Wizened deliberately seek attention - such as when they’re trying to intimidate someone, or make their voice heard - the fear and discomfort shine through, stealing the thunder from their words, cracking their voices, making their bodies shake like leaves. Quite a few Wizened end up joining Summer or Winter not because they can’t live without the structures those Courts provide, but because those structures and the strict rules involved let them be part of a society on their own terms, without having to constantly try to leave their comfort zones only to be derided as being stupid, callous, or unpleasant.

As already alluded to, Wizened Kiths and their function are the same. It can be easy to surmise that this means that a Wizened’s Kith is not part of their nature the way a Beast’s or Elemental’s is, but that line of thinking is wrong; for weal or for woe, a Wizened’s trade is bound to them not just by education or by joy, but by the Wyrd. It is forged into their fate. As a result, Wizened tend to be defined by their Kiths almost as much as by Seeming; Kithless Wizened are rare (and should be nonexistent since Drudge got printed in Winter Masques, y’all got no excuse).

Some expanded thoughts on individual Wizened Kiths follow.

Artist - The big swinging dick of Wizened Kiths and the one that several other Kiths are arguably “this, but worse”. It’s not just the fact that World of Darkness has a relationship to the Craft skill that is strange at best (strictly speaking dots in Crafts can be applied to all kinds of crafting at all times, something you’d think the writers might not have been aware of if they didn’t explicitly talk about this being why Freeholds are so fucking erect for Artists in Swords at Dawn), though that’s certainly a factor, it’s that Kiths like Smith and Brewer that are also supposed to be about the act of creation are so much better represented here. Artist’s Blessing can take some creativity to use as a PC, but with how broad it is and how many concept it’s applicable to you might as well consider it for any given Wizened character you’re intending to make. Dual Kith may be your friend here if you feel the need to focus down further.

Brewer - Speak of the devil. Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gee, I’d like to be a Venombite, but I’d also like to eat shit and die every time I try to use my Kith Blessing. How can I do that?” Then Brewer might be for you! For the rest of us this is honestly one of the game’s most frustrating Kiths, especially after Winter Masques gave it hints of alchemical themeing that it’s just not capable of following through on. It gets somewhat better at higher Wyrd, but Brewer never stops being incredibly niche and gated at multiple points of failure. Grit your teeth and make an Artist.

Chatelaine - The social Wizened Kith. No, really. No, really. Wizened represent servants and laborers to the Fae, and in that context, Chatelaines are the butlers and key-keepers, the creepy manservants, and the enforcers of social etiquette. This Kith is notably different from its closest peer (Riddleseeker Beasts) in that it’s genuinely potent in its social role in a broad variety of situations; Chatelaines can genuinely compete with Fairest and Beasts in matters of protocol, formality, and the gatherings that consider those important. Additionally, they can boost their Presence and Manipulation dice pools, making them capable of attempting firm social interaction even outside of that context. Wanna play a loyal second-in-command or an evil vizier? Enjoy super dramatic parties? Consider this Kith.

Chirurgeon - Voted Most Likely To Not Be Recognized By Your Spellcheck ten years running, Chirurgeons are a prized skill set that can, in themselves, shift Freehold politics by the bare fact of existing. Lost often have to turn to street doctors (where and when they exist, that is) to get lifesaving treatment or even normal medical care, but a sawbones with Hedge scars doesn’t just understand the supernatural injuries the Lost can bring home, they won’t feel obligated to report gunshots or stabbings to the police. Having the loyalty of such a doctor can make for a powerful tool for whichever Court she chooses to call home, and she’ll rarely lack for work. In terms of the aesthetic, while Chirurgeons trend towards the ‘alien abductions’ end of the Lost experience, there’s some strong arguments to be made for Igor-like figures, spindly goblin cutters with gimlet eyes, or even slasher-like figures who slipped through the shadows of murderous Fae, stealing the organs they needed to survive just one more day.

Oracle - Common Sense is a god-awful Merit, which is a shame because the concept of Oracles is both classically Wizened and a powerful archetype in itself. Oracles, as noted in Winter Masques, are rarely made on purpose: they steal, learn, or trade for the power of panomancy and utilize it to escape. Unfortunately I can’t really suggest this in good conscience. Invest in Hearth and Omen and play a Drudge.

Smith - Our second “this is Artist” Kith. Smith’s blessing is, well, it’s bad. It’s not Brewer bad, but it has a significant cost in time and Resources (since it can only be used three times ever on something you end up cycling through things) and eats up your Kith slot without really paying back what those things cost. The imagery of the Kith is cool, but ultimately “makes things with their hands” is what Artist is and Smith can’t compete in that niche.

Soldier - In some ways Soldier is the opposite of Smith and the brother to Chatelaine; made into the faceless ranks of Fae armies, soldiers embody the trauma of battle, the madness of war, and the long road home that does not end simply because one has arrived where home is. Unfortunately their Blessing, Blade Lore, is both lackluster and strangely counterinuitive; Blade Lore doesn’t stack with any other specialization, which means that Soldiers are penalized for investing in Weaponry in a way that others aren’t. Blade Lore lets them use unusual weapons without penalty, but unusual weapons also mean unusual attention. Talk to your Storyteller about the Soldier blessing and see if you can’t work it in another direction (personally, I feel like this Kith could have been Wizened’s Truefriend or Playmate).

Woodwalker - Compared to its closest peers (Woodblood and Farwalker), Woodwalker’s Blessing is niche and harder to make dramatically relevant, but when you need to roll Survival you’re probably going to succeed - and anyone who’s watched The Princess Bride has at least some ideas on how to make use of being immune to plant-based poisons. The broader issue is that while Woodwalkers sorta represent gardeners and wood-dwelling hermits in a way Artist struggles to, their niche is done a lot better by those same peers, and as a result Woodwalker concepts can feel awkward and overshadowed.

Author - Though on the weaker end of Kith blessings, Authors have the distinction of clarifying the skill used for writing endeavors and also for being surprisingly good at in-demand skills such as the creation or decoding of ciphers and translating mortal languages. An Author’s mere existence might get them the attention of the Winter Court and offers of work (and/or bribes and threats to stay out of Winter’s business), and in a roundabout way they can serve as an indirect translator and interpreter for the Freehold as well, presuming their clients know how to read and write.

Drudge - The reason Kithless Wizened no longer exist; Drudges are Wizened sentenced to menial labor who do not learn a fairy trade. In terms of folklore, they inherit the place of brownies, domovoi, and the like, and in the game they’re sorta “Wizened does Darkling”. Drudge is somewhat redundant, since the Brownie’s Boon merit exists, but the 9-again on Stealth (especially if you can combine it with the Wizened blessing to get down to 8-again) is real nice, and saving the dots on Brownie’s Boon might be worth it for another Merit that fits your concept better. Drudge is a Kith I have a lot of personal fondness for, and in a way its nature makes it the quintessential Wizened experience.

Gameplayer - My absolute favorite Wizened Kith, Gameplayers are people who, you know, play games. Its Blessing, the Grandmaster’s Strategem, is highly situational but incredibly potent in that context. The sheer aesthetics of being a game piece or a grandmaster player are amazing, and thematically they’re great in a lot of places; Wizened as odd loners, Wizened as schemers and manipulators, even Wizened as sorcerers (their Blessing ties directly into Contracts of the Board in a really useful way). Just keep in mind that you’re going to have to be pro-active about that Blessing if you wanna see it do its work.

Miner - Wizened does Whisperwisp. Miner is kinda in the same boat as Gameplayer in that their Blessing is situational but handy in that situation, and the sheer range on it is amazing. Still, though, you can probably represent this with Drudge and call it a day.

Cut-Price Magic And Bargain Bin Deals - Wizened Contracts

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Hey Vox, why didn’t Beast have a Contracts section?” I’ll tell you why: Wizened got fucked twice with no lube before White Wolf finally, three supplements in, gave them a real god damn Contract (Contracts of the Forge, in Rites of Spring, one of the coolest and most thematic Contracts ever printed for Lost) so now we have to talk about this.

The associated Contracts for Wizened are Artifice, Animation, and Forge. Forge is great and we’re not gonna talk about it because it’s not the problem here. Artifice can be taken down to about three dot (Blessing of Perfection) but two dots is going to be more common; it has high costs, high time requirements, and deeply niche applications. You could leave that as it stands and just only dip into it if you want to use it, or, you can remove Artifice as a Contract entirely and reassign the Contract of Hours to the Wizened as an affinity Contract in its place. Hours does the same things that Artifice’s early Clauses do (but better, since they’re appropriately costed) while having strong links to the thematics of Wizened both as craftspeople and in folklore.

Animation’s issues are more endemic and the Contract itself is essentially useless. Chuck this entirely and instead, share Contracts of Communion with Elementals (similar to how Wild is shared between Elementals and Beasts). Communion fills Animation’s niche entirely. To drive home the thematic difference, give your Wizened odd “elements” for Communion; instead of something like, say, Communion (Wood), try Communion (Portals) - your Wizened can talk to doors and windows. Evoke some of that “sorcerer’s apprentice” feeling.

Find Your Calling - Wizened in the Courts

Wizened define themselves by the professions they’ve become supernaturally skilled at, and those same skills make them resources to their Courts. Controlling access to the skills of an Artist or Chirurgeon can, at times, be the cause of a Hedgefire War (Swords at Dawn), to say nothing of more specific cases like Autumn’s desire to court prophets or Winter’s need to ensure that Authors are not used against them. The skills that a Wizened bring to the table are often essential, especially in the context of the damaged access that the Lost can have to medical care, financial aid, home repair, and proper tools. Who makes the adjustments the Spring Court needs to their bar? Probably a Wizened. Who sweeps and scrubs down the Freehold Commons and decorates it for every event? Probably Wizened. Who builds the flintlocks, repairs the crossbows, sharpens the swords, forges the armor? Wizened do. Every Wizened that can fill an internal role in this way is a service the Freehold doesn’t have to acquire illegally, and thus at risk to themselves or in competition with other, potentially violently criminal, elements.

Though Wizened are valued in these roles, they aren’t often appreciated. Their Seeming Curse can make them come off as rude and unlikable, making interactions with their clients tense and stressful at best for both sides. The nature of Wizened work is that it’s noticed most when it stops, and that can be a frustrating and uneven relationship to have in a Wizened’s life, especially given their great difficulty in asserting themselves and speaking up for themselves. Sometimes, a Wizened ends up in a Court with self-aware leadership, or with the friendship of someone in a position to mitigate these problems, but that’s not all Freeholds or all Wizened, and the resulting trend is notable enough to color how the Wizened are seen, and see their peers in turn.

The Wizened, like Beasts, tend to engage with their Courts on practical terms, though the relationship is not identical. It’s not that Wizened don’t or can’t have an appreciation for the high ideology of their Courts (and with time to calm down and start to come to grips with their new lives, many Wizened will begin to engage on that ideology), but rather that finding their own functions was one of the first positive transformative experiences in the Wizened’s life as one of the Lost. Finding their function was relief from unspeakable torment, and it shapes a function-first worldview that follows the Wizened into the political and religious society that are the Courts. When Summer says “we’re for protecting the Freehold” and Winter says “we’re for making the money” the Wizened take those Courts at their word.

For somewhat obvious reasons, Wizened leaders and officers tend to be rare, though they’re not unheard of, especially in Summer and Winter where the internal culture can de-emphasize sheer Presence in favor of protocol, set social standards, and a chain of command. More commonly, Wizened solve logistics or money problems for their Courts, with a strong side of work in breaking-and-entering, security, and the odd assassination depending on the Court and the Wizened in question. In the overall Freehold, Wizened are often among the first to volunteer as secondary combatants when they aren’t members of Summer and the first to leap to the common defense, as well as participate in rituals such as the Ashen Hunt. For too many, Arcadia was a place of unending pain, and the need to feel as if they will never go back is strong.

Spring - Wizened are not natural joiners of Spring, and almost never join it as their first Court. Spring’s anarchic nature, combined with its strong emphasis on social skills, dramatic expression, and bombastic personalities is a perfect storm of “things Wizened often do not fucking like”. For those that do join, generally after some time to calm their shit in another Court, it’s for Spring’s promise of renewal and growth; Wizened might never quite be movers and shakers in the Emerald Court, rare exceptions aside, but in Spring many can find the peace they’ve been seeking.

Summer - The Court of Wrath offers a lot to the Wizened, and for many it may be their first Court or their second (Wizened, like many freshly escaped Lost, are often early Winter joiners). Its clearly defined chain of command, stated culture of brotherhood, and clarity of purpose - a purpose that helps soothe the fears of recapture that haunt many Wizened - have a powerful appeal, and it isn’t like Summer’s lust for people to handle logistics, draw up tactics, build defensive fortifications, and practice sorcery isn’t equally powerful. Summer is also the Court most likely to initiate violence over access to a Wizened’s talents, which can lead to awkward situations all around, to say nothing of the potential body counts.

Autumn - Autumn is the strident exception to the general rule that Wizened join Courts for practical reasons and relate to them practically, and that can be put down entirely to the promise of Autumn: the power to make peace with your own fears. So much of what the Wizened are and what they do is defined by fears, not just of going back to the Fairest of Lands (but yes, oh yes, very much that), but the fears of the things they remember and so many more they don’t; rare is the Wizened without questions like “why do I break down crying when cats come close to me?” or “why can’t I listen to violin music any more?”. Autumn understands. Autumn has the power to help. And for Wizened with powerful, all-defining fears, the promise of relief from their own terror can be stronger than politics, friendship, or even healing.

Winter - Many Lost dally with Winter for a few months or even a year or two when they first have their Homecoming, and Wizened are hardly an exception. Scared and often not inclined to direct confrontation, Wizened find Winter’s MO and ideals appealing. Why court trouble? Why get involved in breaking shit and making a mess? Though many Lost will leave the Coldest Court, Wizened are among the most likely to stay, in part because their talents are useful in Winter but in main because Winter’s culture is very comfortable and comforting to them. Those among the Wizened who seek to move up in its halls of power do eventually need to learn to cope with social situations and interface with their fellow Courtiers, but even then that’s easier in Winter than it might be elsewhere. Chances are if you find a Wizened with a crown on her head, she belongs to the Silent Arrow.

Broken And Betrayed - Wizened And Changeling’s Themes

In some ways it could be said that Wizened are The Lost Experience, Just More. Ogres are shaped by violence; Wizened, too, are the victims of violence. The Wizened being forced into a trade mirrors how Fairest are made to feel complicit in their own captivity. Darklings lie, sneak, or manipulate as first instincts; so too do Wizened strive to avoid notice and maintain control over their own feelings. Elementals often can’t understand why the people around them do what they do and feel what they feel, and Wizened often can’t articulate their own comprehension of these topics. Even Beasts see themselves reflected in the invisible ranks, as these two Seemings share the quality of being Anyone At All. Everyone sees unsettling reminders of their own Durance in the Wizened, and this constant, uncomfortable presence informs some of the prejudice that Wizened can face when they return to the mortal world and try to build their new lives.

More than other Seemings, Wizened tend to embody shattering, violent traumas for which there can never truly be closure. They may not have known who their Keeper was or why they were taken (if indeed there was any reason at all). Their traumas may not even really have anything to do with their Keeper so much as the horrific systems perpetuated in whatever Domain twisted them and made them small. The hunched-over survivor of a factory the size of a world doesn’t know about its owner; she knows about machines oiled in blood, assembly lines that churn out cursed Tokens and twisted pledges, the horrible agony of dying, mangled, in a mechanism only to come back to life again and again until you are found. Why was she taken? Does it matter?

It doesn’t. Wizened are the victims of faceless, oppressive systems which serve the Fae, strongly mirroring those whose lives are destroyed by similar faceless, oppressive systems in society, with some of the metaphors being so thin that they’re essentially not metaphors at all. The only real difference between a Soldier who comes home with balefire burns and a quicksilver prosthetic and a young man in real life who goes to war to pay for college only to return too broken to cope is the fact that one of them is fictional and the other is probably someone you know. An Artist with needles thrust through her skin and sewn patches of cloth used to replace flesh that’s been flayed away doesn’t know how to sleep properly any more; her bursts of creativity and long bouts of depression and insomnia mirror workers driven to the edge by a need to take on longer hours and accept inconsistent schedules just to survive. The horrific burn scars that mar a Brewer’s flesh might be misunderstood by mortals as an accident with cooking oil, boiling water, or even welding equipment. Wizened stand in for the innocent people whose blood oils the mechanisms of oppressive systems and unjust economics.

Much of Wizened as a seeming is heavily autistic-coded and/or anxiety-coded; they have great difficulty in social situations, shy away from emotional contact, have trouble coping with overstimulation and physical proximity. This can make them very attractive for portraying an autistic character, but Wizened as a Seeming lacks a certain fundamental trait of the autistic experience: they, generally speaking, have an idea of Why People Do The Thing. Does this mean you can’t or shouldn’t use Wizened to represent an autistic character? Not necessarily, but given how well Elemental’s mechanics mirror the experience (more on them in their own article) that might be a better option for you. What Wizened go through in-setting emphasizes skills like Empathy that are used to survive their circumstances, and on awareness of the people around them.

Wizened are excellent for representing the consequences of extended abuse that makes someone anxious and inclined to retreat, back down, and question themselves. They tend to be among the most self-aware of the Lost; Wizened know what they’re afraid of and why, what their triggers are, and embody the unfortunate truth that self-awareness is not a cure. The flashbacks still come, the shakes and sweats, the dreams of mechanical trees, and knowing why won’t fix that. Wizened can very easily embody the conflict between a desire to be part of society, to have intimate friendships and a sense of belonging, versus the fears that can be triggered by those same desires.

I Owe, I Owe, It’s Off To Work I Go - Coping As A Wizened

The push-pull at the heart of life as a Wizened is finding a way to participate in society without having constant anxiety attacks and nervous breakdowns. Even the most sullen and withdrawn Wizened who genuinely dislikes all other people has a trade they enjoy practicing, after all, and such a trade requires customers - either those willing to come to you in your home, or those willing to come to you at a place of business - to say nothing of needing to semi-regularly travel to and from Freehold gatherings.

A Wizened, then works to structure his life in a way that helps service these needs. The first and most important consideration is the right place to live; Wizened join Fairest in being some of the Lost most likely to live with other people in the same space (such as with roommates, or in a group setting such as an apartment building), but a Wizened needs a safe place to retreat to. The sanctity of a Wizened’s workshop or especially bedroom is absolutely paramount, and they may react poorly, even violently, to those who do not respect that space. The location of the Wizened’s home is also important; is it in a crowded or loud neighborhood, or one with a high influx of strangers or tourists? What’s its distance from the non-home places the Wizened will go to regularly, and what are the travel options to do that? Is it defensible, easily escaped from, or both? Wizened are among those Lost most inclined to dig in and settle long-term, so quite a lot of thought will go into these decisions; it’s not necessarily uncommon to find Wizened living in Winter’s housing for some time, paying appropriate rents while they deliberate and plan.

Once one of the Wizened has established their own space, they tend to maintain control over it. Some of that is just daily ritual; activities keeping their room clean and neat, polishing and maintaining their tools, organizing their entertainments, pre-preparing meals or elements of meals, and decorating can be soothing, especially during times of stress, because they form concrete actions that establish control over one’s own space. Safety and fear factor into it as well - a controlled and organized environment is easier to keep track of, and if something is amiss it’s easier to get ready for whatever is coming. That same tight-ship operation generally extends to the workplace, where the Wizened does their job with exacting standards that they expect out of their peers as well.

Beyond control over their personal environment, Wizened tend to establish routines, again carefully crafted to help husband their spoons and lessen emotional stress. Though most know too well that habits can get a man killed, those same habits also enable them to live their lives at all. Disturbances in those routines can be highly stressful, or even misinterpreted as signs of a threat (or correctly interpreted as signs of a threat...) but in main it’s a positive reaction. Wizened know they can’t control a chaotic world, but they can control themselves, and taking those extra steps can help them as they integrate into their new society. They can’t make what happened to them unhappen, but they can come to terms.

Sample Wizened - Dancin’ Danny Daniels, Winter Miner

Page “Dancin’” Danny Daniels is a youngblood scion of Winter, barely a year into his new life but already promising to go places in the Coldest Court. The magic of his Tappingspeak sees a lot of messenger work pushed Danny’s way, but so do his skills in digging and construction; secret basements, cellar expansions, and clandestine passageways all serve Winter’s interests, and though he can’t always personally supervise the projects (Winter must keep its secrets), his Court pays him well for advice and consultation.

Danny got his nickname from the way he breaks into nervous dancing whenever he hears loud, snapping sounds - gunshots, firecrackers, backed-up cars, it goes off and there Danny goes, feet tapping, breaking out in sweat, terror in his eyes. He can be hard to get a hold of during holiday seasons known for their fireworks (and this public knowledge of his vulnerability is a soft mark on his record in the eyes of Winter), though that’s not the thing people gossip about. No, the talk of the Freehold when it comes to Dancin’ Danny Daniels is this: if he’s so afraid of guns, why does Winter’s up-and-comer carry around a vintage revolver with “D.D” carved into the grip?

As with all of my articles, I welcome questions, comments, discussion, feedback, and criticisms. Please, feel free to reblog if you’re feelin’ it!

Next up: Elementals

#Changeling: the Lost #Seemings #RPG #Wizened #abuse #trauma #torture #autism

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zenosanalytic · 6 years

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The Paradox of Oceans

I liked The Shape of Water, but my reaction to it was more thoughtful that ecstatic. It’s more than a Good Film; it is a Beautiful Film, in Every Respect.

It’s not the movie I thought it would be, it is only partially the movie it was marketed as, and I understand how this could get in the way of either seeing what the film is doing, or appreciating it. One of the things del Toro is best at as a director is taking what people typically consider schlock(especially horror), and turning it into deeply sensitive examinations of emotions and the human condition. To Wit: a big deal has been made of TSoW being a “monster-fucking” movie; about del Toro’s interest in a movie where “the monster gets the girl”. Eliza and the Amphibian Man certainly DO get naked for some all-but-filmed sexytimes(Twice no less owo), but it doesn’t end up being the interspecies love-film it was sold as. That’s unfortunate in that I continue to want to see that movie, but irrelevant(to me) in that the movie it IS, is still Excellent. Fundamentally, The Shape of Water is a movie about companionship, and the monster-fucking and romance, such that it is, only works to serve that theme alongside other examples and examinations of intimacy, connection, and feeling. The Shape of Water is, most centrally, about the search and desire for Companionship and Acknowledgement; not JUST to have someone, but to See and Be Seen, to Hear and Be Heard, to Touch and to Be Touched. To be Accepted rather than Denied and Rejected.

Eliza feels the world refuses to see her instead of her disability; that she lives in its shadow. The Amphibian Man is homeless, friendless, surrounded by incomprehensible enemies who refuse to acknowledge him or communicate, who torment him physically and care nothing for his feelings, in the charge of a man who reviles him as an offense precisely because of his difference from him, and revels in the pain and anguish he causes “The Asset”(he is, quite literally, commodified!). Giles feels abandoned and rejected by the one person he thought he had a true connection with -his old lover, a person(I got the sense) he had dedicated years and possibly decades to, but who is determined to remain in the closet, and who asked him to quit his old job at their ad agency to preserve that closeting- clinging to him by the end of a thin, slippery line, desperate to keep that connection alive in a dangerous world now turned upside down where he understands nothing, has no-one(but Eliza) and where anyone, no matter how fair their smile, could secretly revile him for his love. Zelda is locked in a dying marriage with a man who has shut himself off from her, and from all those human connections that are the sinew of any vibrant relationship, because he has given up on himself. Dimitri has left home out of patriotism and idealism to live as someone he is not, with his only lifeline back to his true Self and true Ideals a pair of brutish, criminal fools who care about as little for those things as they do for his safety. All these people are alone. All these people desperately don’t want to be; want a real, reciprocal connection. All these people are reaching out in what variously pitiable ways they have available to them. The Shape of Water is a film that asks you to empathize. It is a film that asks you to reach back. It is a film that asks you to be human.

Which is its central, and powerful, irony, I think, because it’s also a film where the main protagonist, the most humane of them, is very likely not human in the biological sense, though this is only possibly confirmed at the very end. At the opening of the movie we see that Eliza has six “scratches” on her neck, three to each side, that look like nothing so much as gills. This lays down a marker that slowly, very slowly, pays out through the film, as Eliza’s growing connection with AM opens up her life and unlocks her true nature. The film is skillfully cagey about it though; Eliza is associated with water from the opening scenes, starts to show a preternatural affinity for water as the story proceeds(she knows exactly when the rainy season will start, and controls drops of rain on a bus window), but the nature of the film makes you question the reality of any of this. There’s a whimsicality to the film(Eliza’s dancing, the old music, the set design, Eliza’s daily routine montages) which makes the experience of watching it rather Amelie-esque. As a result, I found myself wondering if this was real magical realism, or just the imaginative, quirky, not-really-magical kind so common in movies from the early 00s. But she DOES call when the rains will arrive; she DOES fill a whole bathroom, implausibly, with water in an apartment with rickety walls, flyapart doors, and floors that you can see light through. At the same time(quite literally :p), AM displays truly magical abilities, establishing miracles are possible in this world, and in doing so suggesting yet another connection between Eliza and him. There’s one particular fantasy sequence where the movie suddenly becomes one of Eliza’s dancing musicals for a moment, a part I found kind of jarring and didn’t really like until writing about the film, just now, made sense of it :p :p This isn’t done in such a way that you feel wrong drawing your own conclusions before the end, but the reality of the magic and the unreality of Eliza’s fantasies are kept in such a (non-stressful)tension that it truly remains up in the air until the very end(and even the end is somewhat ambiguous).

Rather than being an interspecies romance, I saw this as a modern child-theft fairy-tale in reverse; a story NOT about the human-child taken by a Witch or the Fairies, but of the “changeling” left-behind(though in this film I’d say there was more of a “separated” or “taken” feel) and their recovery. The typical taken child is forced into a life of drudgery, is insulted and mistreated, denied emotional fulfillment and acknowledgement, finds a way to fulfill these needs with small, similarly oppressed allies, and finally finds her way home through her own pluck and wisdom, the immeasurable help of the seemingly powerless, and sometimes the love of a mysterious male hero of her own age, and from her own world. Eliza walks this same path, but rather than being taken back to the world of humanity, she is taken from it back to the waters she was found in. Eliza not only attains equal acknowledgement and romantic fulfillment in AM, she is “brought home” by him; quite literally healed of the injuries -emotional, social and physical- her forced sojourn among the humans caused her[1]. There are a thousand ways she could have come to be “lost” among the humans, but that she is “found” through her journey with AM and brought to a place and belonging she recognizes as “home” was, to me at least, unmistakable.

And it is equally unmistakable, given the central position of Companionship and Connection, why the villain is who he is, and why that person is considered the true “monster” by it. Strickland(as wonderfully named as he is played by Michael Shannon) is a man who has built his life around rejecting others, and any attempt at real connection they make. He is the classic “1950s Man”: obsessed with Male Will and emotionally dead by choice through its application; valuing only those relationships which can advance his career or ego; taking pleasure only in the practice and display of power, and the ability of that to humiliate others. Strickland is a man who can never truly be home because he rejects the idea of home, of belonging, of ever being so “weak” as to care for or need another person. And this emotional deadness -which the movie aptly shows is a choice, done by his own hand(there’s even a scene of him reading The Power of Positive Thinking which is not only a wonderful skewering of the character’s type and his era, but also of the US’s current president; Donald grew up in the church of the vile conman who wrote that book)- is just as aptly shown to be his REAL weakness and true undoing. He never suspects that Eliza and Zelda, mere “piss-wipers”, could have had anything to do with AM’s escape, instead chasing the fantasy of a Soviet Strike-Team; he focuses so much on his career and gratification, and is so willfully oblivious to his own body(scarfing his pain-pills just as greedily as his candy), that he doesn’t notice that two of his fingers -recently bitten off by AM and surgically reattached- are going gangrenous. The audience sitting in the theater watches them redden, turn purple, turn black, but he doesn’t take notice until almost the end of the film. There’s a particularly symbolic scene involving them where he tears the fingers off solely for effect, for no better purpose than to frighten and intimidate, driving home absolutely how self-destructive, and ultimately disdainful of self and life, this man and his inhumane philosophy are.

TSoW was also a rather religious movie, thematically, which surprised me since none of the reviews and reactions to it that I’ve read brought this up. The Bible is a thin but strong line within this film; the Old Testament textually, and the New more in theme and by reference. The story of Sampson and Delilah is brought up twice at important moments. The film closes on a reference(I’m pretty sure) to the Song of Songs(though maybe it’s Psalms). Strickland’s hatred of AM is driven by the conviction that humans are made in god’s image and AM is not, making him an “affront”(to what Strickland doesn’t say, but I would argue to himself, which is the only “god” Strickland cares about). The obvious idolatry of this, the transformation of the human form into the divine(and the philosophical relation of that thinking to Olympian philosophies, it should be said), is totally missed by Strickland, as it tends to be by Christians; the movie is openly disdainful of his position. AM can heal injury, rise from the dead, and(possibly, depending on how you read the ending) resurrect others; actions clearly analogous to Joshua’s miracles. Strickland sneeringly mentions that the humans who lived with AM “worshiped him as some kind of god”, as evidenced by their leaving such “divine sacrifices” as... food to eat, and plants and stones that he found beautiful near the lagoon they pulled him from. I found myself wondering if he felt beatified by being invited to a neighbor’s weekend grillup. At the end of the film, seeing AM rise from the dead, Strickland, in horror, says “you really ARE a God!” right before AM kills him, which ought to tell us how serious his earlier professions to Christianity truly were. AM never claims to be god, of course, or even A god, and neither do any of those who help him ever see anything other than a being who can think, understand, and feel just as well as they do. It’s a notable point: the only “Pious” people in the film -the only ones who make a point of publicizing their faith and god and identifying themselves through it- are all the bad guys; quibbling over profanity as they carry out the most profane actions. The protagonists never bring religion and god up, until Giles’ narration at the end.

They are, I suppose, content to merely live a message of love, and to journey to, and in, and with love, rather than shouting their profession from the street-corners.

OK: that’s a pretty religiojudgemental way to end this, especially for an atheist, but it was just too good a line for me to resist X| Hope this review was entertaining/edifying ^u^ ^u^

[1]Two other potentially constructive analogies/critical avenues: 1)Tarzan. Eliza is stranded in Civilization by accident as a baby, grows within that strange world, mastering its ways as best her unsuited abilities allow her, then “saved” from it, and brought back to the “wild” of the Sea by one of her kind also brought there by his own tragedy. 2) The Little Mermaid. Eliza grows up, voiceless on land, denied love; one day she finds a Prince from the Sea on Land, taken there against his will; she decides to befriend him, and he returns her acknowledgement; she discovers a plot against his life and, out of friendship, saves him; a romance blossoms from this; in the end, she is “redeemed” and healed, body and soul, when he returns her to the ocean where she belongs.

#The Shape of Water #The Shape of Water Spoilers #zA's Outside Viewing #Movie Reviews #Empathy #Companionship #Abrahimic #Morality

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qm-vox · 5 years

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So You Want To Play A Beast

(Meme version of Queen Ramona Rabbit provided by cantankerousAquarius, character by me. Catch her in New Avalon.)

Here I am, back on my bullshit again. As I mentioned in So You Want To Run A Spring Court, a series of Seeming articles are starting up next. Unlike Courts, Seemings are not political or religious bodies, and are only loosely social identities; rather, one’s Seeming is part of who and what one is. Lost develop a Seeming because of the abuse they have survived, the labors they were forced to undergo, and what they did to survive both. It can be a complicated and hurtful subject for Changelings, but also a source of pride; the things you learned to become a Beast, a Darkling, an Ogre, are also the things that ultimately helped you to escape.

At this point you may be wondering why I started with the Courts when Seemings are more fundamental to an individual character, as well as less optional (you can have no Court, but it’s hard to have no Seeming). I’m gonna be real with you, it’s because there’s six of these damn things and each of them is about to be as complex, if not more, as the Court articles.

The following article draws primarily on Changeling: the Lost core and Winter Masques, with additional information drawn from Swords at Dawn (that last book has come up a lot because it deals with the Lost in change and conflict). Other books, where used, will be cited. And so, without further ado:

A Miserable Menagerie - Beast Overview

Beast is the first Seeming presented in Changeling: the Lost, and is well-represented in the published material and the fanbase alike, being one of the most popular and therefore most common. Stripped of their human reasons, Beasts had to remember how to think like human beings again before they could escape and seize their Homecoming. It’s never exactly a complete reversion. Aside from this common loss of reason, and a certain surprising sociability (more on both of these later), few experiences unite Beast to Beast, a reality that can make their fellow Lost mistakenly think that their Beast peers lack common strengths and common bonds. It’s true that many Beasts have strong similarities to Lost of other Seemings that share similar functions (a Truefriend kept as a loyal and loving hound has a lot in common with a Playmate forced to serve as an ornamental factotum and the Chateline condemned to maintain her Keeper’s house), but it’s also true that any Beast has more in common with their fellow Beasts than with the troubles of their non-Beast peers.

Release the Hounds - Homecoming as a Beast

Compared to Beasts, only the wretched Wizened have a higher disparity between those who are taken by the Fae and those who manage to return. Anyone at all might become a Beast; the process of transformation is a sort of corruption, one a mortal prisoner might catch from being forced to live among animals, from being treated as subhuman, by deliberate malice, alchemical transformation, or even deliberate pact - but not anyone who becomes a Beast can manage to achieve their Homecoming. The first and most difficult step is to find their reason again, some powerful trigger or memory that reminds the Beast that they were once human and that the Fairest of Lands (Arcadia) is not their home. Though not all Beasts degrade in intelligence in the same way or to the same degree (one might be seemingly wholly feral, condemned to live as a rabbit or a rat, while another has memories of being a hunter-gatherer among a pack of others, with axe and bow to hand and no thought but the kill and feast), no Beast can escape without remembering what it was like to be mortal. It’s more than just a matter of cunning or intelligence; indeed, the actual physical act of escape is often shockingly simple. It’s that without human intellect, human memory, the Beast cannot yearn to return home, and thus cannot escape the Fairest of Lands.

The second obstacle is having something to come back to, and believing that you deserve to have your Homecoming. This is easier, in some ways, than regaining your mind, but infinitely more insidious. All Lost need mortal memories to make their way home, of course, but for Beasts they need something to focus on that keeps their reason anchored while they’re still trapped in the lands of unreason. It can be all-too-easy to slide back into the animal’s mind, especially if your moment of clarity and your opportunity to escape don’t coincide. The hound knows how to survive the mad lands when the man might not.

Memories of loved ones to come back to help, but for many Beasts the light that guides them home are distinctly human places, places where they felt that they belonged and which in some way belonged to them. The library where a Beast spent her childhood, full of her fond memories and imagination, can help her cling to her human half long enough to get home, as might the memory of the funeral home where her father’s wake was held, or even the stadium where she was cheered on by adoring fans. These human places hold significance that can be understood on some level by the animal (safety and contentment, loss and sorrow, joy and thrill), but require human reason, human perspective, to be wholly understood. That reason, and the shining light of the mortal world, draws the Beast back home.

Beasts are among those Seemings least likely to escape with someone else’s help. It’s not that they’re asocial or incapable of cooperation, but rather that need to find human reason. Most of the time if someone is making their own Homecoming and stops to rescue their Keeper’s favorite catgirl, that catgirl’s mind isn’t her own. Maybe on the way home something shocks her memory back into place, but all too often that doesn’t happen and you end up with a hob or a catatonic victim rather than a free Lost. On the other hand, Beasts freed by their Keeper can make almost ideal Loyalists; their ability to produce great Composure on demand, and the general prejudice of other Lost against them, mean that a Beast still enslaved to her Keeper can often go years without being detected, if she ever is. For an example of such a Beast, check out Maya Sharptongue in Night Horrors: Grim Fears.

All Creatures Great And Small - Beast Kiths

The magical bonds that unite Beasts as a Seeming are subtle and often overlooked. All Beasts can spend Glamour to flare their Presence and Composure, a capability that makes them second only to the Fairest for sheer sociability even if the Beast in question shares the essence of a decidedly non-social animal. Additionally, all Beasts have an affinity for all animals (that 8-again with Animal Ken though) which, while seemingly limited in modern application, has a lot of impact on their day-to-day life. A Beast will rarely have, say, rats in her home unless she prefers those rats be present; her pets will be well-trained and well-behaved (and likely well-loved) and her ability to just walk up to and befriend any given animal is not to be underestimated.

Psychologically, Beasts regardless of Kith tend to be territorial, a fact many Lost don’t think about a lot despite it being somewhat odd on its face. After all, not all animals are particularly territorial, and yet a swan-like Windwing, a lupine Hunterheart, and a Swimmerskin mermaid all display a similar concern over their spaces, their places. This is the Beast’s human nature at work; just as the places of human connection draw them home from Arcadia, so too do they stake claims over such places in their new lives, creating spaces where they can feel safe and in control, and able to indulge in both their animal instincts and their human desires and sorrows. For those Beasts with an especial affinity for their physical environment, Contracts of the Den and Contracts of the Wild (the latter being shared with the Elemental Seeming) can go a long way to creating and safeguarding their personal places of power.

And then there’s the back end. Beasts genuinely struggle with their Intelligence; compared to a human whose Intelligence attribute is equal, a Beast will always achieve worse results, and can’t benefit from the flashes of inspiration and intuition that sometimes characterize human thought. They struggle more with unfamiliar intellectual processes, though putting in the time to learn can solve that problem. The end result is that Beasts, regardless of Kith, tend to be some of the smartest dumbasses their friends know, who provide better results when they have to think at speed or under pressure than they do outside of the moment. Still, this perception of stupidity haunts Beasts, and in all too many Freeholds they can find themselves gently shunted away from power or complex duties or responsibilities that others believe they’re incapable of handling.

When it comes to Kiths, Beasts present an odd combination of being greatly defined by their Kith (in much the same way that Elementals or Wizened are) and their Kiths having very little relation to the folkloric archetypes that inspire Beasts. The overwhelming majority of the options for your Beast character concern themselves solely with the physical properties of one or more animals, which is great for the fantasy of playing an animal-person and completely fucking useless for the fantasy of a fae animal-person. More than most other Seemings, a Beast character meant to invoke a figure from folklore might want to consider the Dual Kith merit, with an eye towards Fairest and Ogre Kiths to snag most of what you might want.

Some expanded thoughts on the individual Beast Kiths follow.

Hunterheart - Arguably the quintessential Beast, Hunterhearts are infused with a predatory nature expressed through deadly fangs and claws. They tend to be reshaped in the vein of mighty wolf-men, cunning cat-people, or as archetypes of Beasthood or the hunt - mighty Hunters with racks of stag’s antlers, or even near-Ogrish beings like the Beast of French legend, whose price for a stolen rose was a bride to soothe his burning heart. Almost any predator might lend its nature to a Hunterheart though; a tarantula, for instance, is more appropriate here than as a Venombite, and Summer’s smallest and most surprising berserker may well be a Hunterheart with the soul of a shrew and an unshakeable lust for blood. Hunterhearts tend to be very physical people, who have a lot in common with Darklings - including an inability to escalate violent confrontation in an appropriate manner. Among the more thematic of the Beast Kiths, Hunterhearts might benefit from a Dual Kith into Flowering or Whisperwisp if you’re looking to embody a predatory trickster figure.

Windwing - Perhaps the poster child for Kiths that deal solely with the physical attributes of an animal, Windwing is a prime candidate for the other half of a Dual Kith concept if you’re after a more folkloric concept rather than looking to explore a more straight mixture of human and animal. A graceful Swan Maiden might look towards Dancer or perhaps Artist, while a Mothman type might lean towards Shadowsoul (a wise owl, on the other hand, might be an Antiquarian on the back end). Most carrion birds will also be Roteaters, but especially corvids of all stripes. Regardless of their nature, a Windwing is an incredible asset for a Freehold, and can expect to be courted aggressively for their abilities as a messenger, guard, spy, and scout.

Skitterskulk - I have no god damn idea what the writers were thinking on this one. Skitterskulk is, in theory, supposed to represent hard-to-exterminate vermin such as mice, flies, cockroaches, or mosquitoes; things that move fast and bother people with their filth, thievery, and pestilence. Unfortunately not only does their blessing of Impossible Counterpoise have almost nothing to do with this (and almost nothing to do with the perception of Skitterskulks as spies presented in Winter Masques), it is shamefully fucking useless. If you find yourself looking at Skitterskulk for the animal natures it’s associated with, consider some combination of Roteater, Windwing, Truefriend, Venombite, and/or Runnerswift instead. Don’t use this Kith.

Roteater - Speaking of, meet what is probably my favorite Beast Kith. Roteaters embody those animals that scrape, scavenge, and feed on carrion or refuse. Crows and vultures are obvious candidates (and probably Dual Kith’d with Windwing), but Roteater is also great for Beasts in the vein of Rat Kings (fleeing from the gnawed halls of a Sugarplum Fairy), raccoons (whether sly thieves or powerful tricksters) and even for social insects such as ants when used in combination with Truefriend. Roteater strikes a very good balance of the physical properties of its animals and their folkloric qualities, with the power of the Beast Seeming itself filling in the back end. Given that Lost tend to struggle both with money and with legal access to certain goods, the propensity of a Roteater to scavenge, salvage, and scrape can be a godsend to their Freehold and especially their Motley, if they can put in at least a minimal effort to clean themselves up.

Truefriend - Truefriends have a lot in common with Fairest; as “beloved” pets, they had a lot of their Keepers’ personal attention, and their memories of Arcadia may be cut through with the bloody consequences of the kindness and discipline of the True Fae. Regardless of what kind of animal they are (and they can be most of them; Truefriend is rife for thematic Dual Kith opportunities inside of the Beast Seeming), they tend to be, well, friend-shaped; Truefriends are often well-groomed, sleek, colorful (or with an interesting color pattern in their fur or scales) and might even be cute or drawn from a twisted branch of pop culture as embodiments of more ‘modern’ takes on Beasthood such as catgirls or animal mascots. Like Fairest, Truefriends may take to manipulating others in order to feel in control of their own life, and given the lack of suspicion that attends to Beasts they may get away with it for a whole lot longer.

Broadbacks - In a Seeming marked by a tendency to be kinda dumb motherfuckers, Broadbacks are the guys that make dumb ideas work by outlasting their consequences. Their bonus to Stamina rolls is most famous for satyr-like partying, but it also means that they can guard a door for hours on end without so much as a bathroom break, run marathons long after even the Runnerswifts have keeled over to beg for the sweet release of death, and brave hazards or traps in the Hedge that might force back other Lost. Aside from the (again rather famously represented) satyrs and fauns, Broadbacks might also take after minotaurs, be infused with the essence of camels or llamas, or even Dual Kith into Swimmerskin (as mighty whales) or Windwing (with Contracts of Hearth or of Omen, embodying the albatross).

Swimmerskin - The lines between Beasts and Elementals blur with Swimmerskins, especially those who take after mermaids, selkies, and nixies; Elements (Water) is a popular enough buy that it can be hard to tell the difference. Mechanically, Swimmerskin is a case of a Kith that sorta has to be about the physical properties of its animal nature; it’d be a strange sort of mermaid who couldn’t swim. Consider investing in magical Merits such as Siren’s Voice, specific Contracts (Elements was already mentioned, but Omen for a powerful sea-witch or Wild for a storm-brewing sea dragon can be equally striking), or investing in the Dual Kith merit to bring out further specific animalistic or folkloric traits, such as Hunterheart for a sharp-toothed shark, Tunnelgrub for octopi and other escape artists, or Farwalker for an ambush predator or a Thing From The Deep, emerging to prey on the ignorant and innocent.

Steepscrambler - The opposite of Swimmerskin in some ways; Steepscramblers are all about the physical act of climbing, but they really did not have to be and as a result they’re a big whiff on the folkloric elements of the animals they embody, including and especially the specific ones spoken of Winter Masques. Still, in a lot of ways Steepscramblers have the same practical uses as Windwings, especially in highly urban environments, so for concepts that are looking to invoke those folkloric trickster elements, eat the Dual Kith into Whisperwisp, Drudge, Farwalker, or Flowering and live ya best life. If you’re more interested in direct physical animals but are looking into something like a spider, fly, or beetle, consider Dual Kithing inside the Beast seeming to pick up the other aspects of your animal.

Runnerswift - For when you absolutely, positively have to GO FAST, there exists the Runnerswift. Though most famously associated with prey animals such as rabbits and deer (which are also common fertility symbols, go fucking figure), consider Runnerswift for more predatory concepts as well; as hunting hounds, cheetahs, or man-eating horses straight out of Greek legend, Runnerswifts can make terrifying pursuers and hunters. Though it can be tempting to Dual Kith in the latter case, it pays to keep in mind that the human side of your Beast definitely remembers how guns and baseball bats work, and those are probably going to be a better option than fang and claw if you’re already in a situation where you feel comfortable running down your frightened prey. Like quite a few Beasts, Runnerswifts skew towards being tricksters in much the same way as Hunterhearts, though in this case the prey animal often comes out on top rather than being made out as the villain.

Venombite - A cool concept with a bad case of being a late bloomer; Venombite’s Blessing is nearly useless until you start punching up into high Wyrd, at which point you are a POWERFUL MAGICIAN who can also fang people to death if they get too close or you can catch them unawares. Still, Venombite can be quite attractive for many concepts, especially spiders, deadly nagas, and treacherous scorpions. Their tendency to be associated with small and easily overlooked animals make Venombites surprising brokers of information and dealers of death; it might be awhile before your own poison can kill the human, but the brown recluses that obey your commands can kill one now.

Cleareyes - What if you had Contracts of Fang and Talon 2 but all the time? Cleareyes is an odd Kith; mechanically they’re solid, but also redundant with one of the game’s more attractive Clauses in one of its most attractive Contracts. There’s a few ways to split this difference, though I tend to suggest either making that Clause and/or their Blessing free if they have both (similar to how Gravewights get a discount on Contracts of Shade and Spirit) or permitting Fang and Talon 2 to give them a different sense the animal is known for (a cat-eyed Cleareyes able to see in the dark might invoke her Clause to also gain cat-like balance or perhaps a cat’s sensitive hearing). Thematically, Cleareyes is great for a lot of concepts and can hold down a lot of the same niches as Roteater and Runnerswift in a different way. It Dual Kiths well with almost any other Beast Kith if you want to double down on animalistic aspects, but as a task-driven Kith it also goes surprisingly well with those outside of Beast; Draconic (feral drake guardsmen, or perhaps a ‘failed’ Fairest), Antiquarian (wise owls in a different vein from Windwing), Oracle (a churchyard grim, or a cat kept as the familiar of a terrible witch), and Farwalker (straight-up werewolves or, with Contracts of Mirror and a nasty disposition, vicious rakshasas) are just some of the potential combinations on the table.

Coldscales - Not the flashiest, but they get the job done; Coldscales (typically but not necessarily reptilian in nature) benefit from a further bonus to Composure that makes them unusually hard to manipulate, a boon not to be underestimated given just how much fae magic attacks people emotionally. Though this Kith is intended to represent cold-blooded reptiles, consider it as well for animals famous for their sloth and endurance; a sleepy Bear Prince who can’t be bothered might display the calm endurance of a Coldscales, as might a terrible wyrm that must be roused to wrath (perhaps Dual Kith’d with Fireheart or Draconic), or even a big cat, deadly only if hungry or disturbed and otherwise content to feed on the carrion left behind by those who flee before him.

Riddleseeker - The Kith, the myth, the legend; Riddleseeker is the closest you get to a Mental-focused Beast (for, ah, obvious reasons) and is introduced in Night Horrors: Grim Fears. Its sample character, the loyalist Maya Sharptongue, has a sphinx-like aspect to her but Riddleseeker is also a great choice for ravens and crows (perhaps clutching fragments of lore stolen from their Keepers that their human minds could understand when their beast ones could not), legends of oracular serpents, and tricksters like the fox who made Mighty Miko a king. Riddleseeker holds down thematics on its own, but if you’re looking for the physical aspects it doesn’t do on its own it Dual Kiths inside of Beast pretty easily.

The Animal Kingdoms - Beasts in the Courts

As alluded to earlier, Beasts are often the backbone of the Freehold. Wizened do the thankless jobs that everyone relies on, but often it’s Beasts that fill in the miscellaneous roles. Messages and packages need carried? You’re probably calling a Beast. Loyalist needs his shit kicked in? Beasts are ready. Need to connect with a lonely mortal and see if their dreams are poisoned? Whistle up a Beast. Obviously not every single job a Freehold wants or needs will be filled by a Beast even if in theory it could be, but given how diverse the Seeming is and their combination of on-demand sociability and poise, they’re attractive for many duties. After all, even the most standoffish Venombite or Coldscales can put on a charm face with the best of them if you can keep a steady supply of Glamour on the table.

Given their difficulties with abstract reasoning, Beasts tend to relate to the ideals of their Court on a practical level, which can make them either sorta-kinda bad at being Courtiers on a formal level or paragons of their Court’s ideals, without a whole lot of in-between. Both perspectives are valuable; there’s not a whole lot of point in constantly debating the ideals of, say, Fear, if no one is going to go out and spread fear. For those Beasts who place great faith in the ideals of their Court, their commitment can serve as an inspiration and example to others, and a living reminder that sometimes living up to high ideals means making choices that aren’t easy for you personally or politically.

Beasts are surprisingly common in leadership positions, especially in Summer (where their physical focus and access to talented officers can carry them far) and Spring (where their instant sociability and diverse spread of talents can help them catch the eye of the Court). Unlike Fairest (who have a steadier and stronger social focus), Beasts aren’t prone to losing their entire goddamn minds in singular, shattering moments, which can make them more stable officers, nobles, and Crowns than their more glorious peers. They can also make surprising spymasters and even money-makers. Depending on the Court, though, a Beast in a leadership position may require an assistant to help with the paperwork (or the math), or else be prepared to work a lot of overtime patiently making and decoding ciphers on her own.

Like Elementals, Beasts can be somewhat more sensitive to the physical temperament of the Seasons than other Lost, to the point where it may be surprising to find, say, a snake-like Beast bundled up in layers beneath her Winter Mantle (gently muttering ‘fuck snow’ under her breath every so often). Those who choose to endure such discomfort are often some of their Court’s most avid members, and known as such.

Spring - Insofar as any Lost are natural joiners of Spring (typically a Lost’s second or even third Court), Beasts make for natural Spring Courtiers. They’re sociable, hard to visibly ruffle even if they’re screaming internally, often physically striking, and talented at living in the moment. Unfortunately that same talent can feed into a Beast’s difficulties balancing their human and animal aspects and leave them stuck in the middle between healthy and toxic even worse than Spring generally gets stuck. Despite this, Beasts can go quite far in Spring and often end up as movers and shakers who influence opinions.

Summer - Most people think of predators as Summer’s Beasts, but herd animals are much more common. Sure, every now and again you get a canine Beast who goes far, or a would-be King of Cats that remembers the twisting alleys of his Durance and the silver nets of Arcadia’s animal control enforcement, but Summer’s brotherhood and focus on physical defense is much more appealing to Beasts whose natures are shaped by animals such as deer, oxen, and dolphins. Those Beasts whose Durance was defined by fear and flight also sometimes flock to Summer, seeking the strength the Iron Spear offers to ensure that they will never again be Arcadia’s prey.

Autumn - Where most of the predators actually end up; human nature turns an animal’s innocent hunger and instinct into cruelty and schadenfreude in places, giving rise to Beasts that take after vicious werewolves or treacherous serpents. Though they can have a hard time fitting into the scholarly aspects of Autumn, Beasts go quite far in the Leaden Mirror through practical applications of sorcery and being quick on the draw. They may not necessarily understand the nature of their power, but Beasts definitely know how to hammer it home.

Winter - The Coldest Court is as pragmatic about its Beasts as it is about everything else; Winter tends to recruit Beasts by openly asking them to serve in jobs the Court believes they’re suited for, and paying them for that work. Summer might be content to make, say, a Runnerswift into a mighty Knight, but Winter is going to ask them to run (and, at times, to hide). The ability Beasts have to crank their Composure on demand can make the talented and discreet candidates for Winter’s higher-level social positions, and as the keepers of important information or Tokens.

Until Proven Guilty - Beasts and Changeling’s Themes

Beast is in an awkward spot compared to the other Seemings. In a game that is very explicitly about abuse, trauma, and recovery, Beast lacks a clear connection to those themes. Core introduces the idea that Beasts are united by a sort of innocence, a refutation of corruption that protects them from Arcadia on some level, but literally none of the rest of the game did anything with that theme. Their other primary theme - the mix of literal or folkloric animal instincts with human ones - is engaging and interesting, but disconnected from that central aspect of the game in a way the other Seemings aren’t.

You don’t necessarily have to address this. If you aren’t looking to deep dive into the nature of your Seeming, or your Chronicle doesn’t have a strong emphasis on those themes of abuse you can probably just let it ride. If you are looking to focus on those themes, one idea that’s gotten me personally a lot of mileage is to look at how your Beast relates to Seemings that had similar functions and asking yourself why are are not that Seeming, exploring your Beast’s trauma through comparison and contrasts.

From life experience though, there might be something to that dropped ‘innocence’ theme. That idea of an innocent, damaged and transformed by circumstances beyond their control, trying to build a new life in a world they weren’t prepared to live in has some strong similarities to children raised in cults or by survivalists and conspiracy theorists. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve connected with someone only to watch their entire worldview fall apart as they realized the world they’d been raised to live in doesn’t exist, and that everything they know how to do only works in the context of that fictional world. Fairest can also be strong candidates for depicting this kind of abuse, but I’d still encourage you to consider Beast if you’re interested in engaging on this concept directly.

We Don’t Bite People, And Other Lies We Tell Children - Coping With Beasthood

To be a Beast is to be caught between worlds twice over (three times, for Swimmerskins and Windwings, which, y’know. Sucks to be you guys); like all Lost they are influenced by both fae and mortal nature, but Beasts are also caught between instinct and reason. The animal within is entirely comfortable in the now in a way humans just aren’t, but their human half treasures things the animal can never understand. In the heat of the moment, though, when it comes down to instinct or reason, instinct often wins - sometimes to the Beast’s benefit, and sometimes to their great sorrow.

This balancing act defines the Beast’s life, and generally starts at home. Beasts usually live alone if they can, even if they’re otherwise sociable, so that they have a space in which they can entirely be themselves and decide who is welcome, when. Rarely does this influence stop in the physical bounds of a Beast’s house, apartment, or sewer drain though; any place the Beast thinks of as their turf (the broader neighborhood or apartment building, their office in the Freehold’s Commons, even their job if they have enough pull to get away with it) is going to be shaped to let them express some part of both sides of themselves. How that comes out varies from Beast to Beast. An affable satyr might become the neighborhood darling, doing favors and bringing food to their neighbors in unspoken payment for letting odd behavior slide, while a spidery Venombite might be more likely to trade on passive intimidation or even adopt a performative identity (it’s strange if a pastor’s wife is creepy, but no one thinks twice about a goth gal that’s spooky). Having those safe and/or welcoming spaces available is vital for a Beast’s ongoing mental health, and without them a nervous breakdown is only a matter of time.

Outside of the matter of their home and places of power, Beasts have a tendency for straightforwardness that has little to do with their particular animal (though it might) and everything to do with the fact that as a Seeming, Presence is their strongest source of social prowess. Dealing openly, for good or ill, plays to their strengths and has the added advantage of keeping their social life relatively straightforward, even if it’ll never quite be simple.

Stability, ultimately, has to be the goal of a Beast looking to build a new life after their Durance. They need to find a way to live their life that acknowledges and nurtures all parts of their divided nature; even those Beasts dumb enough to favor one side over the other can’t do it for long without losing their entire god damn minds. Few Freeholds are without stories of would-be Cat Kings (Autumn Nightmares) or Riddleseekers who turned into crows one day and just never turned back. Having escaped Arcadia only by finding their minds again, Beasts tend to be among those Lost most cognizant of what their issues are, and most willing to face those issues on direct terms. They did it once already, after all; the hard part is showing up to do it again every day.

Sample Beast - The Toy Taker, Autumn Riddleseeker/Windwing

Margaret Bellman is called Maggie by her Freehold and the Toy Taker by an increasingly mystified local media. Her memories of Arcadia are more like a gap than the usual splintered and fractured recollections of the Lost; one minute she was a teenage girl staring in fascination at the twisting figure in a mirror, and the next she was a grown-ass woman with crow’s feathers for hair and tiny, somehow functional wings, staggering through that same mirror and bleeding all over the place.

It didn’t take long for Maggie to swear herself to Autumn, though she’s an odd bird for the Leaden Mirror. Though she adores and practices magic, Maggie’s primary profession and hobby is theft. She steals things the Freehold needs stolen and sometimes robs homes for money, crimes the media has yet to connect to her other persona.

For Maggie also steals toys.

It’s never often. When her life is at a low point and spiraling out of control, Maggie slips into a child’s bedroom and takes one of their toys. She rips the shiny bits from it to add to her collection at home (displayed this way and that in her room, in shadowboxes, on strings, glued to the walls, dangling from coat hangers), crucifies the remainder, and leaves it on the kid’s door. Though the Winter Court disapproves of her methods, her hobby sows Fear and Sorrow in equal measure and her dedication to it has earned her some small formal appreciation from the Coldest Court.

As with all of my articles, I welcome questions, comments, discussion, feedback, and criticisms. Please, feel free to reblog if you’re feelin’ it!

Next up: Wizened

#Changeling: the Lost #Seemings #RPG #Beast Seeming #abuse #trauma

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