Elemntal is the seeming or character type, the kith is a more in depth type that grants an extra blessing.
This is a story about a Rusalka: a girl was taken by a cruel
faerie who lived in the river, who forced her to become his bride.
She stayed for a while, for a few years, no more, and in that time,
he enchanted her and changed her, and she became a Rusalka,
who lured the innocent into the river and gave them to her husband
to eat. One day, she escaped her cruel husband and returns
to her hometown by the river, to see her family and her sweetheart.
But oh, the Rusalka had changed so much. Her hair was
green now, and her skin was cold, and the rushing of the river
was in her voice. And oh, when her cruel husband took her, he
was cunning, and he left behind a false girl, who sickened
and died in her place, and so her family did not
recognize her, for they thought that she was
dead. And oh, her sweetheart had married
someone else and had forgotten her
for another’s caresses. So the Rusalka
walked through the streets of her
hometown, and could see that there
was nothing for her there. And
so she returned to the river, telling
herself that her cruel husband
would take her back.
And a day later, the pieces of
a girl’s dismembered corpse were
washed up on the river bank at the
edge of the town, one by one, and because
no one knew who she was, they
buried her in an unmarked grave. And
there was no one to mourn.
You can never go back. Not really. Sure, a
changeling can fight his way out through the Hedge
and return to Earth, but it’s never the same. The stuff of Faerie
has worked its way into the changeling’s blood. The changelings
whose time in the land of the Fae caused them to embody the
material aspects of nature feel this all the more painfully, because
they have changed the most. The Elementals, as other changelings
call them, believe that their journey back through the Hedge was
harder for them than it was for any of the changelings, because
the Elementals had changed the most. They had less reason to
escape. Their humanity had been more damaged by what they had
endured in the Fae realm. Similar to the poor Rusalka, the Elementals
find themselves in a world that doesn’t know them anymore; of
course, the moral of her story is that you can’t go back to the Fae,
either, for they do not forgive.
Other changelings find the Elementals the hardest to understand.
They’re alien. The other changelings have taken the
faerie side of their nature from creatures who, at least on some
level, represent human dreams: beauties, horrors, tricksters and
even animals represent something of ourselves. But the Elemental
psyche is influenced by the desires of objects and forces.
A Woodblood Green Man runs a hotel in southern England,
built around a Tudor inn at the corner of a forest. There’s
a live gallows oak tree in the back garden, and in its higher
branches is the entry to a powerful trod. If members of the local
Court come to him with the right price and his mood swings
the right way, he’ll bring out the ladder and show them where to
climb. An Airtouched Djinn lives in an Indian community as an
imam. The power of the words he uses in the mosque matches the
wind in his hair and the tornado in his soul. Several members of
his congregation are enchanted, and do the work of the Summer
Court as much as the work of Allah. A Fireheart with
the reptilian skin of a Salamander does much the
same with a Baptist congregation in the Southern
United States. He preaches hellfire and
brimstone, sowing fear on behalf of the
Autumn Court, spicing up private conversations
with a few, select parishioners
with a miracle or two. Another
Fireheart, a member of the Summer
Court, takes the form of an Ifrit,
brazen-skinned and vicious. He
runs a protection racket; he’s adept
at burning places down without it
looking like arson. Sometimes he
does jobs for less orthodox clients. A
Winter Court Fireheart, meanwhile, a
full-blood Kwakiutl, works as an electrician.
When he’s needed, he calls down the
power of Brother Lightning on the enemies
of his people and his Court. A Manikin girl with
a clockwork heart and a new identity dances in Paris.
No one dances Coppelia like her; her timing is without compare,
and once a month, she dances for the Court. A coldly beautiful
Snowskin Princess teaches third grade. She scares the children
with stories that they’ll never forget, driving shards of ice into every
little heart that passes through her class. She gains a certain
pleasure from making children cry and giving children nightmares,
even while she knows that the truths they learn from her
dark, sad, terrible fairy stories might one day protect them from
the same fate she once suffered. A Waterborn with an Hellenic
beauty works as a male prostitute in a waterfront area, barely
keeping body and soul together, but when his Court needs him,
he gladly runs messages back and forth across the bay, faster than
any boat. An Earthbones with the lumpen body of a Paracelsian
Gnome works as a gravedigger. He buries more bodies than his
job might demand.
Appearance: All Elementals have something of their element
about them. Mostly, that connection shows itself through
the texture and color of the skin, through something in the eyes.
The Ifrit is huge and muscular. His skin is metallic, like brass, and hot to the touch. His eyes blaze so brightly, it’s difficult to
look directly at them. The preacher, on the other hand, although
also a Fireheart, has white skin and hair that blazes like the blue
flame of a gas burner, while the Lightning-Brother has skin as
gray and cloudy as a gathering storm-cloud; electricity arcs and
crackles across his skin and hair, and fills his eyes. The Snow
Princess is beautiful but cold, with hair as white as the snow and
bluish skin that glitters in the light with frost, her fingernails
bright and sharp on cold, delicate fingers. Her eyes are colorless,
like blank spheres of clouded ice. Her voice freezes the blood.
The Djinn is vast and loud, like every bearded genie of legend.
His beard is wild and full. His skin is the deep blue of the Uttar
Pradesh sky in Summer. The Hellenic nymph looks like a slim,
pale beautiful boy with the features of an ancient Greek boy. His
slim, lithe frame is damp and cold to the touch; his hair is woven
with sea shells and weed. His eyes are the deepest green. The
gravedigger is broad and squat of frame, and his skin is made
of hard, rough earth, speckled in places with patches of lichen
and moss. His own eyes are so deeply set, they’re lost in shadow.
The Green Man has skin like Autumn and evergreen leaves for
hair. The clockwork ballerina looks like an exquisite doll, made
of porcelain and metal.
Some of this carries over into an Elemental’s human appearance.
The Snow Princess is a delicate, icily beautiful blonde
with pale blues eyes and cold hands. The gravedigger is broad,
rough-skinned and heavy-browed. The preacher is tall and thin
and twitchy, like a flame that leaps from place to place, while the
Ifrit is big and overpowering of manner. The Djinn imam is huge
and bombastic. The Hellenic male prostitute has the look of a
green-eyed, debauched Ganymede. The ballerina is precise and
somewhat impassive. The Lightning-Brother’s wild eyes and quick
temper cause hair to stand on end.
Background: The Elementals were often those whom the
Fae desired in some way, those whom they sought out and went to
some effort to kidnap. Most Elementals were already exceptional
in some way. Perhaps the changeling was beautiful enough to excite
a Fae’s desire. Perhaps they needed a guard or a servant of some
kind. A musician or dancer could become the prize of a Fae who
fancied himself a doyen of the arts. When Elementals come back,
they still possess those talents that attracted the Fae to them in
the first place, but now their element alters it in many ways, some
subtle, some less so. Some, however, wandered into the Hedge on
their own, in some ways bearing the marks of whatever thorny
wasteland they wandered in before being taken to Faerie.
Durance: While most other Lost became the way they did
through simply living in a Faerie’s home and eating Faerie food
and doing Faerie work, the Elementals were often deliberately
changed, transformed into slaves of some kind or another, or features
of the land until one day, they awoke to themselves and
realized they had to escape. 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 the changeling served as a manservant
in a flying city of glass or a blazing city made all of brass.
Character Creation: The variation between Elementals of
even the same kith is vast, making it impossible to draw hard
and fast rules. Elementals can focus on any Attributes or Skills,
really, depending on what their element is and how it manifests
itself. For example, the Fireheart preacher’s fire manifests itself
in the heat of his sermons — he has an emphasis on Social Attributes
and Skills. On the other hand, the Ifrit’s fire is all too
physical, and his Attributes and Skills are both primarily Physical.
A Snowskin changeling could just as easily be a bruiser with
shoulders like a glacier as a delicate but cruel lady with ice in her
eyes and her heart. A Woodblood changeling could be as strong
as an oak, or as delicate and graceful as a Victorian flower fairy.
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. Once per day, the player can spend one point of
Glamour to add the character’s Wyrd rating to his Health dots
for the rest of the scene. These follow the normal rules for temporary
Health dots (see the World of Darkness Rulebook, p. 173).
Curse: The Elementals are further removed from humanity
than other changelings, and find humans harder to understand
and to influence. An Elemental doesn’t get the benefit of the 10
again rule on any dice pools involving the Manipulation Attribute
and the Skills Empathy, Expression, Persuasion or Socialize.
Seeming Contracts: Elements
Concepts: Secretly incompetent firefighter, landscape
gardener, logging saboteur, clockwork secretary, workaholic
steelworker, tornado chaser, model with flawless skin, allweather
surfer, competitive mountaineer, deep-sea diver, extreme
sports fanatic.
Kiths
Airtouched — The Elementals of wind, cloud, smoke and sky,
who can be as healthy as a fresh breeze or as pestilent as the miasma
that surrounds the dead. Their blessing is Velocity of the Zephyr:
the player can spend one point of Glamour to add the character’s
Wyrd to her Speed or Initiative (player’s choice) for the rest of the
scene. This blessing can be invoked once for each Trait per scene.
Earthbones — Changelings who have the mark of earth
and stone: lumpen Paracelsian Gnomes, sand spirits, dour men
of peat and dwarfs made of mountain granite. Their blessing is
Terrestrial Might: the Earthbones has shoulders that could bear
the world. The player can spend Glamour to add to non-combat
Strength-based dice pools, on a one for one basis (one point of
Glamour adds one die to one dice pool, two points add two dice
to the dice pool and so on).
Fireheart — Elementals marked with fire, heat or electricity.
Their blessing is Flickering Acumen: like a flame, the Fireheart’s
faculties are bright and constantly on the move. The player can
spend points of Glamour to add to Wits-based dice pools, on a
one for one basis.
Manikin — Changelings who have the character of humanmade
objects, such as caryatids, mannequins and other, stranger
things, such as enchanted beings powered by clockwork or steam
or living bodies made of mercury or glass. The Manikins’ talent is
the Artificer’s Enchantment: the Manikin can learn Contracts
of Artifice for (new dots x5 experience points) rather than the
usual cost. The Manikin also may make untrained Crafts rolls at
a –1 die penalty rather than the standard –3 dice.
Snowskin — The children of the cold, who can be as powerful
as the Arctic ice or as delicate as a snowflake. The Snowmarked’s
blessing is The Voice of Ice: the changeling can imbue
her voice with terrible cold, inspiring terror in those who hear.
She is also a master at concealing her own emotions and goals
under a cool veneer. The Elemental gains the benefit of the 9
again rule on Intimidation and Subterfuge rolls, and can spend a
point of Glamour to re-roll a failed Intimidation roll.
Waterborn — Changelings who are imbued with the nature
of the waters, soft and brutal, gentle and mighty: undines
and nymphs, man-eating river demons, water babies, ladies of
the lake. Their blessing is The Gift of Water: the player can
spend one point of Glamour to allow the changeling to
breathe underwater and swim at a terrific rate (equal
to twice the character’s Speed rating) for the rest
of the scene. The catch is that the changeling
cannot leave the water or breathe air until the
power wears off or until he spends another
Glamour point to cancel the blessing. The
changeling has to hold his breath if he sticks his
head out of the water (see the World of Darkness Rulebook, p.
49). If the changeling is made to leave the water completely before
the scene is over, he begins to drown, automatically taking
one point of lethal damage each turn until he is either returned
to the water or he dies.
Woodblood — The children of plants: Green Men, flower
fairies, spirits of mandrake, rose, thorns and all manner of medicinal
herbs, fair and foul. The Woodbloods’ blessing is the ability
to Fade into the Foliage: in any outdoors area where there
are plants growing from the earth (in a garden, for example,
but not in a concrete yard with a couple of shrubs in pots), the
character gains the benefit of the 9 again rule on dice pools
involving Stealth and Survival. The player can also
spend a point of Glamour to hide in a place where
he couldn’t normally hide, making a Stealth roll
as usual. There has to be a reasonable amount
of foliage there. The character couldn’t hide
using a small patch of moss or a single dandelion,
but could use a flowerbed, a lawn or
a sapling
This is a story about a Rusalka: a girl was taken by a cruel
faerie who lived in the river, who forced her to become his bride.
She stayed for a while, for a few years, no more, and in that time,
he enchanted her and changed her, and she became a Rusalka,
who lured the innocent into the river and gave them to her husband
to eat. One day, she escaped her cruel husband and returns
to her hometown by the river, to see her family and her sweetheart.
But oh, the Rusalka had changed so much. Her hair was
green now, and her skin was cold, and the rushing of the river
was in her voice. And oh, when her cruel husband took her, he
was cunning, and he left behind a false girl, who sickened
and died in her place, and so her family did not
recognize her, for they thought that she was
dead. And oh, her sweetheart had married
someone else and had forgotten her
for another’s caresses. So the Rusalka
walked through the streets of her
hometown, and could see that there
was nothing for her there. And
so she returned to the river, telling
herself that her cruel husband
would take her back.
And a day later, the pieces of
a girl’s dismembered corpse were
washed up on the river bank at the
edge of the town, one by one, and because
no one knew who she was, they
buried her in an unmarked grave. And
there was no one to mourn.
You can never go back. Not really. Sure, a
changeling can fight his way out through the Hedge
and return to Earth, but it’s never the same. The stuff of Faerie
has worked its way into the changeling’s blood. The changelings
whose time in the land of the Fae caused them to embody the
material aspects of nature feel this all the more painfully, because
they have changed the most. The Elementals, as other changelings
call them, believe that their journey back through the Hedge was
harder for them than it was for any of the changelings, because
the Elementals had changed the most. They had less reason to
escape. Their humanity had been more damaged by what they had
endured in the Fae realm. Similar to the poor Rusalka, the Elementals
find themselves in a world that doesn’t know them anymore; of
course, the moral of her story is that you can’t go back to the Fae,
either, for they do not forgive.
Other changelings find the Elementals the hardest to understand.
They’re alien. The other changelings have taken the
faerie side of their nature from creatures who, at least on some
level, represent human dreams: beauties, horrors, tricksters and
even animals represent something of ourselves. But the Elemental
psyche is influenced by the desires of objects and forces.
A Woodblood Green Man runs a hotel in southern England,
built around a Tudor inn at the corner of a forest. There’s
a live gallows oak tree in the back garden, and in its higher
branches is the entry to a powerful trod. If members of the local
Court come to him with the right price and his mood swings
the right way, he’ll bring out the ladder and show them where to
climb. An Airtouched Djinn lives in an Indian community as an
imam. The power of the words he uses in the mosque matches the
wind in his hair and the tornado in his soul. Several members of
his congregation are enchanted, and do the work of the Summer
Court as much as the work of Allah. A Fireheart with
the reptilian skin of a Salamander does much the
same with a Baptist congregation in the Southern
United States. He preaches hellfire and
brimstone, sowing fear on behalf of the
Autumn Court, spicing up private conversations
with a few, select parishioners
with a miracle or two. Another
Fireheart, a member of the Summer
Court, takes the form of an Ifrit,
brazen-skinned and vicious. He
runs a protection racket; he’s adept
at burning places down without it
looking like arson. Sometimes he
does jobs for less orthodox clients. A
Winter Court Fireheart, meanwhile, a
full-blood Kwakiutl, works as an electrician.
When he’s needed, he calls down the
power of Brother Lightning on the enemies
of his people and his Court. A Manikin girl with
a clockwork heart and a new identity dances in Paris.
No one dances Coppelia like her; her timing is without compare,
and once a month, she dances for the Court. A coldly beautiful
Snowskin Princess teaches third grade. She scares the children
with stories that they’ll never forget, driving shards of ice into every
little heart that passes through her class. She gains a certain
pleasure from making children cry and giving children nightmares,
even while she knows that the truths they learn from her
dark, sad, terrible fairy stories might one day protect them from
the same fate she once suffered. A Waterborn with an Hellenic
beauty works as a male prostitute in a waterfront area, barely
keeping body and soul together, but when his Court needs him,
he gladly runs messages back and forth across the bay, faster than
any boat. An Earthbones with the lumpen body of a Paracelsian
Gnome works as a gravedigger. He buries more bodies than his
job might demand.
Appearance: All Elementals have something of their element
about them. Mostly, that connection shows itself through
the texture and color of the skin, through something in the eyes.
The Ifrit is huge and muscular. His skin is metallic, like brass, and hot to the touch. His eyes blaze so brightly, it’s difficult to
look directly at them. The preacher, on the other hand, although
also a Fireheart, has white skin and hair that blazes like the blue
flame of a gas burner, while the Lightning-Brother has skin as
gray and cloudy as a gathering storm-cloud; electricity arcs and
crackles across his skin and hair, and fills his eyes. The Snow
Princess is beautiful but cold, with hair as white as the snow and
bluish skin that glitters in the light with frost, her fingernails
bright and sharp on cold, delicate fingers. Her eyes are colorless,
like blank spheres of clouded ice. Her voice freezes the blood.
The Djinn is vast and loud, like every bearded genie of legend.
His beard is wild and full. His skin is the deep blue of the Uttar
Pradesh sky in Summer. The Hellenic nymph looks like a slim,
pale beautiful boy with the features of an ancient Greek boy. His
slim, lithe frame is damp and cold to the touch; his hair is woven
with sea shells and weed. His eyes are the deepest green. The
gravedigger is broad and squat of frame, and his skin is made
of hard, rough earth, speckled in places with patches of lichen
and moss. His own eyes are so deeply set, they’re lost in shadow.
The Green Man has skin like Autumn and evergreen leaves for
hair. The clockwork ballerina looks like an exquisite doll, made
of porcelain and metal.
Some of this carries over into an Elemental’s human appearance.
The Snow Princess is a delicate, icily beautiful blonde
with pale blues eyes and cold hands. The gravedigger is broad,
rough-skinned and heavy-browed. The preacher is tall and thin
and twitchy, like a flame that leaps from place to place, while the
Ifrit is big and overpowering of manner. The Djinn imam is huge
and bombastic. The Hellenic male prostitute has the look of a
green-eyed, debauched Ganymede. The ballerina is precise and
somewhat impassive. The Lightning-Brother’s wild eyes and quick
temper cause hair to stand on end.
Background: The Elementals were often those whom the
Fae desired in some way, those whom they sought out and went to
some effort to kidnap. Most Elementals were already exceptional
in some way. Perhaps the changeling was beautiful enough to excite
a Fae’s desire. Perhaps they needed a guard or a servant of some
kind. A musician or dancer could become the prize of a Fae who
fancied himself a doyen of the arts. When Elementals come back,
they still possess those talents that attracted the Fae to them in
the first place, but now their element alters it in many ways, some
subtle, some less so. Some, however, wandered into the Hedge on
their own, in some ways bearing the marks of whatever thorny
wasteland they wandered in before being taken to Faerie.
Durance: While most other Lost became the way they did
through simply living in a Faerie’s home and eating Faerie food
and doing Faerie work, the Elementals were often deliberately
changed, transformed into slaves of some kind or another, or features
of the land until one day, they awoke to themselves and
realized they had to escape. 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 the changeling served as a manservant
in a flying city of glass or a blazing city made all of brass.
Character Creation: The variation between Elementals of
even the same kith is vast, making it impossible to draw hard
and fast rules. Elementals can focus on any Attributes or Skills,
really, depending on what their element is and how it manifests
itself. For example, the Fireheart preacher’s fire manifests itself
in the heat of his sermons — he has an emphasis on Social Attributes
and Skills. On the other hand, the Ifrit’s fire is all too
physical, and his Attributes and Skills are both primarily Physical.
A Snowskin changeling could just as easily be a bruiser with
shoulders like a glacier as a delicate but cruel lady with ice in her
eyes and her heart. A Woodblood changeling could be as strong
as an oak, or as delicate and graceful as a Victorian flower fairy.
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. Once per day, the player can spend one point of
Glamour to add the character’s Wyrd rating to his Health dots
for the rest of the scene. These follow the normal rules for temporary
Health dots (see the World of Darkness Rulebook, p. 173).
Curse: The Elementals are further removed from humanity
than other changelings, and find humans harder to understand
and to influence. An Elemental doesn’t get the benefit of the 10
again rule on any dice pools involving the Manipulation Attribute
and the Skills Empathy, Expression, Persuasion or Socialize.
Seeming Contracts: Elements
Concepts: Secretly incompetent firefighter, landscape
gardener, logging saboteur, clockwork secretary, workaholic
steelworker, tornado chaser, model with flawless skin, allweather
surfer, competitive mountaineer, deep-sea diver, extreme
sports fanatic.
Kiths
Airtouched — The Elementals of wind, cloud, smoke and sky,
who can be as healthy as a fresh breeze or as pestilent as the miasma
that surrounds the dead. Their blessing is Velocity of the Zephyr:
the player can spend one point of Glamour to add the character’s
Wyrd to her Speed or Initiative (player’s choice) for the rest of the
scene. This blessing can be invoked once for each Trait per scene.
Earthbones — Changelings who have the mark of earth
and stone: lumpen Paracelsian Gnomes, sand spirits, dour men
of peat and dwarfs made of mountain granite. Their blessing is
Terrestrial Might: the Earthbones has shoulders that could bear
the world. The player can spend Glamour to add to non-combat
Strength-based dice pools, on a one for one basis (one point of
Glamour adds one die to one dice pool, two points add two dice
to the dice pool and so on).
Fireheart — Elementals marked with fire, heat or electricity.
Their blessing is Flickering Acumen: like a flame, the Fireheart’s
faculties are bright and constantly on the move. The player can
spend points of Glamour to add to Wits-based dice pools, on a
one for one basis.
Manikin — Changelings who have the character of humanmade
objects, such as caryatids, mannequins and other, stranger
things, such as enchanted beings powered by clockwork or steam
or living bodies made of mercury or glass. The Manikins’ talent is
the Artificer’s Enchantment: the Manikin can learn Contracts
of Artifice for (new dots x5 experience points) rather than the
usual cost. The Manikin also may make untrained Crafts rolls at
a –1 die penalty rather than the standard –3 dice.
Snowskin — The children of the cold, who can be as powerful
as the Arctic ice or as delicate as a snowflake. The Snowmarked’s
blessing is The Voice of Ice: the changeling can imbue
her voice with terrible cold, inspiring terror in those who hear.
She is also a master at concealing her own emotions and goals
under a cool veneer. The Elemental gains the benefit of the 9
again rule on Intimidation and Subterfuge rolls, and can spend a
point of Glamour to re-roll a failed Intimidation roll.
Waterborn — Changelings who are imbued with the nature
of the waters, soft and brutal, gentle and mighty: undines
and nymphs, man-eating river demons, water babies, ladies of
the lake. Their blessing is The Gift of Water: the player can
spend one point of Glamour to allow the changeling to
breathe underwater and swim at a terrific rate (equal
to twice the character’s Speed rating) for the rest
of the scene. The catch is that the changeling
cannot leave the water or breathe air until the
power wears off or until he spends another
Glamour point to cancel the blessing. The
changeling has to hold his breath if he sticks his
head out of the water (see the World of Darkness Rulebook, p.
49). If the changeling is made to leave the water completely before
the scene is over, he begins to drown, automatically taking
one point of lethal damage each turn until he is either returned
to the water or he dies.
Woodblood — The children of plants: Green Men, flower
fairies, spirits of mandrake, rose, thorns and all manner of medicinal
herbs, fair and foul. The Woodbloods’ blessing is the ability
to Fade into the Foliage: in any outdoors area where there
are plants growing from the earth (in a garden, for example,
but not in a concrete yard with a couple of shrubs in pots), the
character gains the benefit of the 9 again rule on dice pools
involving Stealth and Survival. The player can also
spend a point of Glamour to hide in a place where
he couldn’t normally hide, making a Stealth roll
as usual. There has to be a reasonable amount
of foliage there. The character couldn’t hide
using a small patch of moss or a single dandelion,
but could use a flowerbed, a lawn or
a sapling
