Danny Tongs

Danny Tongs

Autumn's Courtier Autumn Mantle •••

Freehold Status •

Wizened Smith, Artist

Played by Kazakin

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Mask

Danny is 6'9, but extreme thin and stretched looking, as if he were a large man who had lost a lot of weight suddenly. Extremely pallid, he is bald and carries a cane, which gives him the impression of a cancer sufferer. His dark eyes are hooded, and peer out at the world with a scrutinising, hungry gaze. He tends to dress in dark colours, favouring heavy coats as if he is desperate for warmth.

Mein

Danny is even more slender and hunched, and his skin is bone white. His ears are pointed, and his mouth is a gash in a face that has the impression of a skull. His fingers have extra joints, making their movements disturbing. He has pointed teeth, and casts a strange shadow. Despite his thinness, Danny moves rapidly and deceptively easily.

History

Danny Tongs doesn't remember his name from before. That's the one thing he never managed to hold onto- the names of anyone from his past. He remembers faces, vaguely, and that he was a student of art. He remembers he had a girlfriend, and a cat that used to piss him off by yowling in his face when he tried to sleep in. He remembers, most of all, that he always used to have nightmares that something was watching him, out of the corner of his eyes, in the mirror.

He remembers he eventually went into therapy for it, where he was diagnosed with a general anxiety disorder, and given medication. Even with the medicine, though, his looming dread only faded when he worked at his sculpting. He was always soothed by that. People said he was gonna be famous- that he'd be an artist everyone remembered.

And then, one day, as he was walking past the mirror in the hallway of his student apartment, the glass swung open, and candles lit the way down a dripping stone passage. He felt a beckoning hand, and an overwhelming sense of love, and rightness. So Danny stepped through the mirror, and his reflection stepped out, and continued his day to day life, with no indication that anything had changed.

Danny, on the other hand, walked down the dripping stone passageway, watching the gleaming lights dancing ahead of him, until he emerged in a great stone cavern, as far as his eyes could see. Goblins toiled around him, mining precious metals and gemstones from the walls. Forges blazed, and over it all, a King and Queen sat on iron thrones, watching their servants.

As Danny emerged, two of the largest seized him, bound him in chains, and dragged him to the King and Queen of the Shining Caverns. The King set eyes on him and demanded he be killed, but the Queen took a strange liking to Danny, and asked him what he could do. When he stuttered that he was an artist, she demanded that he produce art for her, in exchange for his life.

Danny obeyed, and began to toil in the precious metals, transforming them into jewellery and sculptures for the Queen of the Shining Caverns. Over time, her delight grew, and she became transfixed by his art, and the King became more bitter and jealous that his wife was spending all her time with the new artist. In the meantime, Danny was transformed by Arcadia. He had been an ordinary young man, of average height and build, but he was stretched out, and made thinner, his hands becoming strange and multi-jointed as his work transformed him. With each change, the Queen seemed to become more interested and delighted in him, and eventually wooed him into her bed.

The King found out immediately, and would have slain Danny on the spot if the Queen had not pleaded for his life. Thinking to be cruel, the King set Danny three impossible challenges. First, he demanded that Danny create him a crown that would cause all to bow before him, no matter who they were.

But Danny had become wise in Fae Magic, and he bound pledges into the crown as he made it, and when the King placed it on his head, all the Goblins fell to their knees in wonder.

Then the King demanded that Danny make for him a breastplate that no blade could pierce.

And Danny forged the plate, and when weapons came against it, they broke as if they were made of ice.

Enraged, the King demanded that Danny forge an unbeatable sword, meaning to slay him with it.

And Danny forged the sword, and drew it by the hilt, and instead of presenting it to the King, struck him in the head with it.

As the King's head rolled onto the floor, the Queen offered Danny a place at her side. He would have agreed- would have climbed onto the throne right then and there if he hadn't remembered, on some level, a story that his mother had told him as a child, even though he could not remember her name. So he demurred, and politely asked for the time to create an appropriate gift for his bride to be.

The Queen was delighted. Danny set to the forges again, and created a fine, interlinking chain, binding it in all the pledges he knew. He knelt before the Queen and clasped it around her wrist, and the arm of the throne.

Then he turned and fled, with her shrieks of rage still echoing down the stone corridors behind him, as the chain of the bracelet bound her to the throne.

He had remembered the story of travelers who were wooed by the Queen of the Fairies, and so when he emerged, it was not a surprise to him that he emerged in a strange city, with no sense of place or time or purpose. He was just thankful that he didn't immediately transform into dust when he found out it was 2002. The date had no meaning to him- he couldn't remember the time before clearly, only the stories. For all he knew, he could have come from 202, or 20002 BC.

He tried to rejoin mortal society at first, but he felt estranged. The lure of magic sang to him, and outside of Arcadia, and the power of the Shining Cavern, Danny couldn't forge as powerfully as he used to. Denying it did him nothing. So he sought out others like him, and joined the Autumn Court, finding that others knew the touch of fear, and of magic as he did.

Now Danny travels from Freehold to Freehold, seeking places to sell his art and metalwork. He longs to find somewhere that appreciates his craft, where he might hone it more deeply, almost as much as part of him will always long to return, to the cavern where he fears, the Queen is still chained to her throne, waiting for her Smith to come back to her.