Seemings

To survive is to carry scars. Traumas, both physical and psychological, can heal. The pain they cause can go Seemings away, but they’ll always leave something behind. It’s true of physical wounds, and it’s true of psychological wounds, too. Sometimes the scars we carry disfigure us both literally and psychologically, but survival implies recovery. As someone once said, that which does not kill us makes us stranger as well as stronger, and the changes wrought upon us by the traumas we have suffered leave a mark that is both a reminder of pain and a badge of honor, the proof of survival, the ability to truly understand the sufferings of others.

• Kiths: The Kith of a Changeling character can be seen as an extension of their Seeming: they describe the specific physical form that the Changeling has as their faerie nature, and each grants the Changeling a single additional power. Different combinations of Seeming and Kith can yield different results, allowing the player to tailor the character to her own specific vision. Players are not required to select a Kith for their characters, but they are useful for individualizing the character and for their added game mechanics.

Beast

Beasts believe that they have taken the most difficult road back through the Hedge, for they have had to claw back their minds as well as their souls. For a Beast to return, he has to turn his back on the lush sensory life of the animal, and think, if only long enough to burrow, chew and wriggle through the thorny barrier and back to the human realm. No matter what animal he holds an affinity with, a Beast lives in a state of paradox, a conscious, moral person infused with the unconscious, amoral power of the animal kingdom. A Beast's behavior and the place she creates for herself in the world depends a great deal on the kind of animal she reflects. Some stand apart from human society. Some throw themselves into the human world, revealing the wildness and the world of sensation at the heart of human interaction. Some express their connection to the world of sensation in their own, uniquely primal ways. Of all the changelings, the Beasts are the most difficult to categorize. They're as varied in form and behavior as the animals whose essence they share. All of them, however, exist as interstitial figures, living on a threshold between human and animal, civilization and wilderness.

• Appearance: A Beast always has some feature belonging to the animal she reflects. It's important to note that the Beast reflects the idea of the animal rather than the animal itself. She might reflect more than one animal. She might reflect (like the archetypal Beast from the folk-tale) a category of animals that don't even exist. They're always very physical and solid, whatever form they take, and many Beasts have a strong odor of some kind.
• Contracts: Beasts gain an affinity with the Fang and Talon Contracts, allowing them to take on qualities of animals. They can also specialize in Den Contracts and Wild Contracts, which grant them a special connection to their territory.
• Blessing: The wildness that infuses a Beast gives her a supernatural affinity with animals and a powerful personal magnetism.
• Curse: Although the Beasts regained their consciousness when they came through the Hedge, their time as beings of thoughtless instinct has taken its toll on each of them, and most find it very hard to make use of academic or trained skills.

Beast Kiths

Broadback • Chimera • Cleareyes • Coldscale • Coyote • Hunterheart • Nix • Riddleseeker • Roteater • Runnerswift • Skitterskulk • Steepscrambler • Swimmerskin • Truefriend • Venombite • Windwing

Darkling

Changelings know that their deeds have consequences, but few feel those consequences so keenly as the changelings who are called Darklings. Many were stolen away as the consequence of attracting the attention of the Fae. Their obsessive clinging to the solace of the night is the consequence of having been imbued with shadows. Their love of quiet is the consequence of having lived in a world where all was whispering, all was rustling and snapping twigs and creeping fear. The Darklings believe that they found it hardest to escape from the lands of the Fae, because their way back was hidden from them. Of all the changelings, they were lost in an alien landscape, with no reference point to return to, with all paths shrouded in shadow. To escape, they had to be the ones who could survive in the shadows, to thrive there with creeping things and dark things and dead things that move. Having come back, they are the changelings who wait in the shadows. The Darklings' memories of their time in Faerie are awash with shadowy fears. Vague, hulking forces loomed from the corner of the room. Small skittering things crawled across faces or became momentarily tangled in hair before dissolving. Wet, slithering things moved around in the background. Trap doors and boarded windows with something behind them figure heavily in dreams of Faerie. Being sent on errands with no point, being forced to copy ancient codices of lore that made no sense while outside things shrieked and fluttered, being made to enter a cellar and being eaten, over and over again, being lost in mazes, all of these things feature heavily in Darkling dreams of faerie. The dark places of the human world don't remotely compare.

• Appearance: Darklings tend to appear somehow less solid, less substantial than other changelings. It's not that they're transparent or anything. They just feel less solid somehow. Many (but not all) are thin, in their fae miens unnaturally so. Many are tall, and the ones who aren't are only shorter than normal because they're hunched over. Some have pointed ears and noses. Some have straight, lank hair. Skin runs the gamut from deathly white to transparent, shadowy black or blue. Their eyes are almost always dark, like deep pits that reveal nothing. Sometimes, in their fae miens, they have freakish features, like tiny horns or fangs, extra eyes and the like.
• Contracts: Darklings gain an affinity with the Darkness Contracts, allowing them to use darkness as a thing of distraction and fear.
• Blessing: Just as the shadows that infect them, the Darklings are as ephemeral and flighty as the dark itself.
• Curse: Darkness and twilight so define these changelings that their magic falters somewhat when the sun is in the sky

Darkling Kiths

Antiquarian • Gravewight • Illes • Leechfinger • Lurkglider • Mirrorskin • Moonborn • Nightsinger • Palewraith • Pishacha • Razorhand • Skogsra • Tunnelgrub • Whisperwisp

Elemental

While other changelings reflect creatures who, at least on some level, represent human dreams (beauties, horrors, tricksters, animals), the Elemental psyche is influenced by the desires of objects and forces. The Elementals believe that their journey back through the Hedge was harder for them than it was for any of the changelings because they had less reason to escape. Their humanity had been more damaged by what they had endured in the Fae realm. Their memories of Faerie are often difficult to understand. Some know that once, they understood what it was to be a tree, or a stone, or a mound of earth. Some remember being lost to enchantment, becoming a clockwork doll or a lover made of ice. Others recall being lost in an environment now alien to them, perhaps serving as a manservant or maidservant in a flying city of glass or a blazing city made all of brass. Still others found their way into the Hedge on their own, and bear the marks of whatever thorny wasteland they wandered in before being taken to Faerie. Often seen as alien and inhuman, the Elementals are as much a mystery to the other changelings as they are to the humans around them.

• Appearance: Every Elemental has something of their element about them. Mostly, that connection shows itself through the texture and color of the skin, through something in the eyes.
• Contracts: Elementals gain an affinity with the Elements Contracts, allowing them to manipulate and control the element they embody.
• Blessing: Elementals, touched as they are by the stuff of the world, are able to channel the forces and materials that define them into their bodies, giving them an uncanny ability to shrug off punishment.
• Curse: The Elementals are further removed from humanity than other changelings, and find humans harder to understand and to influence.

Elemental Kiths

Airtouched • Apsaras • Ask-wee-da-eed • Blightbent • Di-cang • Earthbones • Fireheart • Levenquick • Manikin • Metalflesh • Sandharrowed • Snowskin • Waterborn • Woodblood

Fairest

Ogres

Most folklore traditions have stories of trolls, hags, giants and flesh-eaters, and the changeling Ogres more often than not reflect those. Their tragedy is often that as they try to escape the violence that made them, they perpetrate it. Whatever place an Ogre finds in the world, she’ll find that the only way to rise above the brutality that made her what she is to accept it and use it. Of course, there’s a fine line between accepting something and embracing it, a line too many Ogres cross. The Ogres who make it back through the Hedge have to be, more than any other changeling, exceptional people. Not that the Fae are necessarily picky in who they choose to abuse and brutalize: rather, the Ogres are those who managed to survive without being eaten, crippled, or beaten to death and to avoid becoming so much like the monsters that took them that they wouldn’t want to leave. They don’t have to be particularly smart or cunning, but they are the kind of people who know their own mind. Most Ogres have an in-born streak of stubbornness that makes them faithful (if sometimes annoying) companions and terrible enemies.

• Appearance: Ogres are always brutish in some way. Some have bestial features (and a few might even be confused with Beasts at first), and many are tall and broad, although by no means all; there are several short Ogres and almost as many skinny ones.
• Contracts: Ogres gain an affinity with the Stone Contracts, granting them potent strength and a measure of hardiness.
• Blessing: Ogres are mostly big, often ugly and always capable of frightening displays of brute force.
• Curse: Not all Ogres are necessarily stupid, but most are fairly gullible, weak-willed and prone to impulsive, thoughtless actions.

Ogre Kiths

Bloodbrute • Corpsegrinder • Cyclopean • Daitya • Farwalker • Gargantuan • Gristlegrinder • Oni • Render • Stonebones • Troll • Water-Dweller • Witchtooth

Wizened

The Wizened may well be the most unfortunate of changelings, for the Wizened could be anyone at all. Many were taken for no reason and through no fault of their own, simply finding themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Unluckier still are those who came to the Others' attention because they encountered one who appeared to be in trouble – like the man who found a little person under a rock and set him free, only to be hounded to death for his presumption that the Fae might need his help. Despite their seeming haplessness, it takes someone as cunning and ingenious as the Fae themselves to escape from the Little People, and so Wizened changelings who return are most often those people who were already nimble of hand and quick of wit. The Wizened bring back disjointed memories of random cruelties, of being the butt of tricks and experiments that seemed hilarious to the Fae, even if they couldn't appeal to any human sense of humor. Many dimly recall trying to escape over and over again, each time being outwitted by their spiteful captors, perhaps at times being allowed to think they had escaped before the fact that they were still in Faerie all along was revealed.

• Appearance: While every one of the Wizened is, in some way, smaller than she was when she was taken, they bear the features of the "Little People" in all their infinite variety. Being small often means being short — but not always. Some Wizened are tall and impossibly thin. Some aren't physically smaller than anyone else, but somehow seem smaller, as if they are insubstantial or somehow not quite there. Wizened captured in the West often have pointed ears, deeply lined faces, strangely-shaped noses and gimlet eyes. Often, a Wizened changeling's skin is richly colored, being bright green, red or blue, or the deep rich color and texture of polished mahogany. Their fingers are nimble and bony, and their fingernails are long and sometimes twisted. Some have hunch backs and prominent warts. Some have animal feet. Even to those who can't perceive their Seemings, the Wizened still seem small; that look of somehow not always being present stays with them.
• Contracts: The Wizened gain an affinity with the Artifice Contracts, allowing them to repair, improve, and wreck crafted works.
• Blessing: The Wizened are extraordinarily nimble.
• Curse: Spite infects the Wizened. It comes out in their appearance, and in their manner.

Wizened Kiths

Artist • Author • Brewer • Chatelaine • Chirurgeon • Drudge • Gameplayer • Gremlin • Miner • Oracle (Kith) • Pamarindo • Smith • Soldier (Kith) • Thusser • Woodwalker