Ogres are the seeming, the Kiths are a more in depth type that grants a bonus blessing
The story goes that there was once a troll, a beast who
dined on human flesh and carved knife-handles out of the
bones. Business was good, and the troll decided that he
needed assistance in his workshop. One night, he stole into
a village and took away three sons of a shoemaker. The ogre
worked the three boys in his workshop, on the drill and
lathe and chisel and awl for long hours. Every day, at dawn,
he beat them, and he fed them on scraps of raw flesh. One
night, the eldest boy took one of the knives he had made
for the troll and crept in upon him while he was sleeping.
But the knife shrieked out loud and would
not kill the troll, and the troll awoke and
cooked the boy in a pie and forced each
of his brothers to eat a slice, before he
beat them so hard that they were
all bruises. The second son made
a pick so that he could open the
lock on the door of the troll’s
workshop, and at night he crept
to the door and picked the lock.
But the troll was waiting behind
the door, and he chopped the boy
up and cooked him in a stew, and
fed it to the youngest son before
beating him so hard that his teeth
were all broken and his mouth was all
blood. The third boy worked so hard and
so well in the workshop that the monster could
find fewer and fewer reasons to beat him, and the knives
the boy made were beautifully carved, and the troll found
that he could sell them for more gold than he ever had before.
One day, the troll came into the workshop, and he leaned
over the boy’s shoulder as the boy carved the knife handle,
and the boy pointed out a detail of the carving, and the troll
craned closer to look, and quick as lightning the boy turned
his hand and stabbed the troll in the eye. And that was the
end of the troll. The boy wanted to run away, but he turned
back and saw that the workshop was now empty. And he
didn’t leave. He ate the troll’s food and slept in the troll’s bed.
And now he dines on human flesh, and carves knife handles
from the bones. And business is good. One day soon, he will
need assistance.
The changelings who, for the want of a better term,
are called Ogres understand this story, for it informs who
they are. They know that abuse sometimes creates abusers,
that the victims of brutality can sometimes become brutal
themselves. By definition, the Ogres are those changelings
who have been shaped by unthinking violence, and brutishness
defines them.
This is not to say that Ogres can’t be gentle or honorable,
or possessed of restraint. It’s just harder for them.
They believe that their journey through the Hedge was the
hardest of all the changelings because they had to escape
from vicious, brutal captors, through locked doors, from
chains and manacles, from regular beatings and the
fear of beatings. To escape from that, every
Ogre inevitably had to become hardened
to the violence, and in Faerie, to become
hardened to something is often
to become that thing. Just as
the shoemaker’s youngest son,
some changelings defeat their
captors only to become them.
Most folklore traditions have
stories of trolls, hags, giants and
flesh-eaters, and the changeling
Ogres reflect those, to a certain extent.
Their tragedy is often that as
they try to escape the violence that
made them, they perpetrate it.
A big man, Cyclopean in stature,
one eye missing and covered by a patch,
works as a traveling salesman. Sometimes, when
he thinks that no one’s watching, he makes a meal of
lonely people he meets on the road. The Court that uses
him as a courier doesn’t know this. A Gristlegrinder hag
with teeth like iron and skin like green leather is the matron
of a children’s home. The kids are scared stiff she’ll
make good on threats to eat them up. She wouldn’t, but the
children she terrifies unknowingly gain a respect for the
things of Faerie that might one day save them from ending
up like the matron. Another Gristlegrinder, a tiger-jawed,
wide-eyed Indian raksha, works as a police community support
officer. The frequency of racist abuse and attacks has
plummeted since he’s been on the job. Partly, this is because
of the rumors of the terrible things that happen to
people who stray onto his turf. How long can it last? One
of the more organized racist groups is thinking of retaliating.
A Farwalker, a farmer, keeps kids away from the Deep
Dark Wood at the edge of his land (and the gap in the Hedge in the middle of it) with tales of the orange-eyed,
black-tongued, sharp-toothed creature that hunts there.
The farmer wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he really looks the
part. A Gargantuan oni demon, a tusked, scarlet-skinned
brute, makes a living as a construction worker. If his Court
wants something (or someone) buried, something placed in
the fabric of the building, or something sabotaged, they’ll
come to him, although they won’t expect subtlety. A craggy-
chinned Stonebones climbs in the Rockies. He’s been
caught in avalanches and rockfalls, but somehow he never
seems to be badly hurt. He knows the mountains like he
knows his own back garden, and he’s a superlative guide. A
Water-Dweller works for the Coast Guard. He amazes his
colleagues — and even himself — with the acts of heroism
he engages in, and the feats of strength he sometimes manages
to perform in service of his craft. What his colleagues
don’t know is that sometimes the Court would prefer that
some boats stay sunk, that some crews drowned and sometimes
the aspiring lifesaver finds his loyalties sorely tested.
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.
Appearance: Ogres are always brutish in some way.
Some have bestial features (and a very few might even be
confused with Beasts). Many are tall and broad, although
by no means all. There are several short Ogres and almost
as many skinny Ogres.
The Hag Matron has hair like wire and deeply wrinkled,
leathery dark green skin, covered with warts and pustules.
Her teeth are made of steel and catch the light when
she bares them. As a human, she looks older than she is,
and has an intimidating cast of feature. The raksha policeman
has jaws like a tiger, and skin of the deepest blue. In
his mortal guise, his eyes are incredibly compelling, and
sometimes frightening. The Farwalker bogeyman is hairy,
with shaggy black hair covering his body, an elongated
snout with tusk, short spines covering his back and blazing
orange eyes. In real life he’s pretty scary-looking, too, the
epitome of the intimidating land-worker. The Cyclopean
salesman’s one eye appears in the center of his forehead
in his fae seeming. The Stonebones mountaineer has skin
made of rocks, and eyes that peer out from beetling brows.
Even as a human, he’s craggy and weather-beaten. The
Water-Dwelling Coast Guard member has tusks and green,
scaly skin. The oni construction worker is bright scarlet,
with the wild hair and grimacing mouth of the creature
he resembles, wild hair and ugly features that persist to a
degree when his seeming is invisible.
Background: 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 whom they choose to abuse and brutalize: more that the
Ogres are the ones who managed both 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 inborn streak
of stubbornness that makes them faithful (if sometimes annoying)
companions and terrible enemies.
Durance: Ogres’ memories of their time in Faerie are
often clearer than those of other changelings. Kidnapped
by monsters, the Ogres became monsters. Some were forced
to subsist on raw flesh. Some were chained to the hearth
and forced to cook for awful masters. Some scrubbed floors
until their knees grew scales. Some were made to fight.
Some were chained up in dungeons and fattened up for the
pot. All were abused in some way, and Ogres sometimes
have flashbacks of verbal and physical abuse, brief painful
moments where they relive in their heads the impact of a
fist or foot, or the sting of a verbal barb.
Character Creation: Nearly all Ogres concentrate on
Physical Attributes and Skills, almost to the exclusion of all
else. Presence is a popular buy for Ogres who seem larger and
more intimidating than their actual physical stature would
imply. Physical Merits are also common, particularly the Giant
Merit. Many Ogres take Wrath or Gluttony as Vices.
Blessing: Ogres are mostly big, often ugly and always
capable of frightening displays of brute force. The player
can spend points of Glamour to improve dice pools involving
Strength, Brawl and Intimidate. Each point of Glamour
spent adds one die to one dice pool.
Curse: Not all Ogres are necessarily stupid, but most
are fairly gullible, weak-willed and prone to impulsive,
thoughtless actions. An Ogre doesn’t get the benefit of the
10 again rule on dice pools using Composure (with the exception
of Perception rolls using Wits + Composure, which
suffer no penalty). The character also suffers a –1 die penalty
to Composure when using it as a Defense Trait (that is,
when subtracting it from another character’s dice pool).
Seeming Contracts: Stone
Concepts: Working-class Red Cap hard-man, arrogant
giant CEO, shrill political activist, gung-ho Marine grunt,
nightclub bouncer, understanding but non-nonsense bar
manager, Bigfoot hunter, belligerent redneck, prizefighter,
long-distance truck driver, deep sea fisherman.
Kiths
Cyclopean — The Cyclopeans are like the ancient
hunters and herdsmen of legend who sought men for their
cooking pots: changelings who resemble Cyclops of Archaic
Greece, the one-legged Fachan of Scots legend, the
three-eyed oni of Japan, the elephant-eared rakshas of India
or the wind-borne footless Wendigo of North America.
Although many are crippled in some way, they have profound
senses to make up for it. The Cyclopeans can Smell
the Blood: the character gains the benefit of the 8 again
rule on Wits-based Perception rolls. He can smell things
that can’t normally be smelled, meaning that even if some
of his senses are deficient, his sense of smell makes up for
it. Many Cyclopeans have Physical Flaws such as One Eye,
Lame, One Arm or Hard of Hearing.
Farwalker — Changelings who resemble the abominable
men of mystery, the possibly savage hairy creatures
of the wilds whose existence straddles the divide between
folklore and cryptozoology: the Sasquatch, the yeti, the
Russian Alma, the Australian yowie and dozens of other
wild men. Farwalkers have The Elusive Gift: the character
gains the benefit of the 9 again rule on Stealth and
Survival dice pools. Also, the player can spend a point of
Glamour to retake a failed Stealth or Survival roll.
Gargantuan — Captured by giants, these changelings
had to grow to a greater stature, perhaps being stretched
on racks or forced to drink noxious potions. As humans,
they appear less freakish, though many purchase the Giant
Merit. Their blessing is Spurious Stature: once a day, the
changeling can grow to colossal size. The player
spends a point of Glamour, and adds the changeling’s
Wyrd score to her size for the rest of the scene. This supplies
temporary Health dots (see the World of Darkness
Rulebook, p. 175). Returning to normal size is painful, as
if the changeling’s skin is unable to contain the character’s
stature, and when she regains her normal height, the
character takes one point of lethal damage.
Gristlegrinder — Man-eaters and gluttons, taking their
cue from the English Black Annis, Scottish Red Caps or the
rakshas of India, but also sometimes resembling more modern
Ogres, such as the masked unstoppable lunatics of slash-andstalk
horror movies. Every Gristlegrinder has Terrible Teeth
in his terrible jaws: the character’s bite is a two lethal attack,
though it does require him to grapple the opponent first.
Stonebones — Changelings who resemble the rocky
giants of folklore, Nordic trolls, Native American mountain
spirits and the like. The Stonebones are blessed with
Obdurate Skin: once per day as an instant action, the
player can spend one point of Glamour to harden the
character’s skin, making it like rock. The character uses
his Wyrd as his armor rating
for the rest of the scene. The
character’s rocky carapace
does mean, however, that
the character isn’t as nim-
The story goes that there was once a troll, a beast who
dined on human flesh and carved knife-handles out of the
bones. Business was good, and the troll decided that he
needed assistance in his workshop. One night, he stole into
a village and took away three sons of a shoemaker. The ogre
worked the three boys in his workshop, on the drill and
lathe and chisel and awl for long hours. Every day, at dawn,
he beat them, and he fed them on scraps of raw flesh. One
night, the eldest boy took one of the knives he had made
for the troll and crept in upon him while he was sleeping.
But the knife shrieked out loud and would
not kill the troll, and the troll awoke and
cooked the boy in a pie and forced each
of his brothers to eat a slice, before he
beat them so hard that they were
all bruises. The second son made
a pick so that he could open the
lock on the door of the troll’s
workshop, and at night he crept
to the door and picked the lock.
But the troll was waiting behind
the door, and he chopped the boy
up and cooked him in a stew, and
fed it to the youngest son before
beating him so hard that his teeth
were all broken and his mouth was all
blood. The third boy worked so hard and
so well in the workshop that the monster could
find fewer and fewer reasons to beat him, and the knives
the boy made were beautifully carved, and the troll found
that he could sell them for more gold than he ever had before.
One day, the troll came into the workshop, and he leaned
over the boy’s shoulder as the boy carved the knife handle,
and the boy pointed out a detail of the carving, and the troll
craned closer to look, and quick as lightning the boy turned
his hand and stabbed the troll in the eye. And that was the
end of the troll. The boy wanted to run away, but he turned
back and saw that the workshop was now empty. And he
didn’t leave. He ate the troll’s food and slept in the troll’s bed.
And now he dines on human flesh, and carves knife handles
from the bones. And business is good. One day soon, he will
need assistance.
The changelings who, for the want of a better term,
are called Ogres understand this story, for it informs who
they are. They know that abuse sometimes creates abusers,
that the victims of brutality can sometimes become brutal
themselves. By definition, the Ogres are those changelings
who have been shaped by unthinking violence, and brutishness
defines them.
This is not to say that Ogres can’t be gentle or honorable,
or possessed of restraint. It’s just harder for them.
They believe that their journey through the Hedge was the
hardest of all the changelings because they had to escape
from vicious, brutal captors, through locked doors, from
chains and manacles, from regular beatings and the
fear of beatings. To escape from that, every
Ogre inevitably had to become hardened
to the violence, and in Faerie, to become
hardened to something is often
to become that thing. Just as
the shoemaker’s youngest son,
some changelings defeat their
captors only to become them.
Most folklore traditions have
stories of trolls, hags, giants and
flesh-eaters, and the changeling
Ogres reflect those, to a certain extent.
Their tragedy is often that as
they try to escape the violence that
made them, they perpetrate it.
A big man, Cyclopean in stature,
one eye missing and covered by a patch,
works as a traveling salesman. Sometimes, when
he thinks that no one’s watching, he makes a meal of
lonely people he meets on the road. The Court that uses
him as a courier doesn’t know this. A Gristlegrinder hag
with teeth like iron and skin like green leather is the matron
of a children’s home. The kids are scared stiff she’ll
make good on threats to eat them up. She wouldn’t, but the
children she terrifies unknowingly gain a respect for the
things of Faerie that might one day save them from ending
up like the matron. Another Gristlegrinder, a tiger-jawed,
wide-eyed Indian raksha, works as a police community support
officer. The frequency of racist abuse and attacks has
plummeted since he’s been on the job. Partly, this is because
of the rumors of the terrible things that happen to
people who stray onto his turf. How long can it last? One
of the more organized racist groups is thinking of retaliating.
A Farwalker, a farmer, keeps kids away from the Deep
Dark Wood at the edge of his land (and the gap in the Hedge in the middle of it) with tales of the orange-eyed,
black-tongued, sharp-toothed creature that hunts there.
The farmer wouldn’t hurt a fly, but he really looks the
part. A Gargantuan oni demon, a tusked, scarlet-skinned
brute, makes a living as a construction worker. If his Court
wants something (or someone) buried, something placed in
the fabric of the building, or something sabotaged, they’ll
come to him, although they won’t expect subtlety. A craggy-
chinned Stonebones climbs in the Rockies. He’s been
caught in avalanches and rockfalls, but somehow he never
seems to be badly hurt. He knows the mountains like he
knows his own back garden, and he’s a superlative guide. A
Water-Dweller works for the Coast Guard. He amazes his
colleagues — and even himself — with the acts of heroism
he engages in, and the feats of strength he sometimes manages
to perform in service of his craft. What his colleagues
don’t know is that sometimes the Court would prefer that
some boats stay sunk, that some crews drowned and sometimes
the aspiring lifesaver finds his loyalties sorely tested.
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.
Appearance: Ogres are always brutish in some way.
Some have bestial features (and a very few might even be
confused with Beasts). Many are tall and broad, although
by no means all. There are several short Ogres and almost
as many skinny Ogres.
The Hag Matron has hair like wire and deeply wrinkled,
leathery dark green skin, covered with warts and pustules.
Her teeth are made of steel and catch the light when
she bares them. As a human, she looks older than she is,
and has an intimidating cast of feature. The raksha policeman
has jaws like a tiger, and skin of the deepest blue. In
his mortal guise, his eyes are incredibly compelling, and
sometimes frightening. The Farwalker bogeyman is hairy,
with shaggy black hair covering his body, an elongated
snout with tusk, short spines covering his back and blazing
orange eyes. In real life he’s pretty scary-looking, too, the
epitome of the intimidating land-worker. The Cyclopean
salesman’s one eye appears in the center of his forehead
in his fae seeming. The Stonebones mountaineer has skin
made of rocks, and eyes that peer out from beetling brows.
Even as a human, he’s craggy and weather-beaten. The
Water-Dwelling Coast Guard member has tusks and green,
scaly skin. The oni construction worker is bright scarlet,
with the wild hair and grimacing mouth of the creature
he resembles, wild hair and ugly features that persist to a
degree when his seeming is invisible.
Background: 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 whom they choose to abuse and brutalize: more that the
Ogres are the ones who managed both 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 inborn streak
of stubbornness that makes them faithful (if sometimes annoying)
companions and terrible enemies.
Durance: Ogres’ memories of their time in Faerie are
often clearer than those of other changelings. Kidnapped
by monsters, the Ogres became monsters. Some were forced
to subsist on raw flesh. Some were chained to the hearth
and forced to cook for awful masters. Some scrubbed floors
until their knees grew scales. Some were made to fight.
Some were chained up in dungeons and fattened up for the
pot. All were abused in some way, and Ogres sometimes
have flashbacks of verbal and physical abuse, brief painful
moments where they relive in their heads the impact of a
fist or foot, or the sting of a verbal barb.
Character Creation: Nearly all Ogres concentrate on
Physical Attributes and Skills, almost to the exclusion of all
else. Presence is a popular buy for Ogres who seem larger and
more intimidating than their actual physical stature would
imply. Physical Merits are also common, particularly the Giant
Merit. Many Ogres take Wrath or Gluttony as Vices.
Blessing: Ogres are mostly big, often ugly and always
capable of frightening displays of brute force. The player
can spend points of Glamour to improve dice pools involving
Strength, Brawl and Intimidate. Each point of Glamour
spent adds one die to one dice pool.
Curse: Not all Ogres are necessarily stupid, but most
are fairly gullible, weak-willed and prone to impulsive,
thoughtless actions. An Ogre doesn’t get the benefit of the
10 again rule on dice pools using Composure (with the exception
of Perception rolls using Wits + Composure, which
suffer no penalty). The character also suffers a –1 die penalty
to Composure when using it as a Defense Trait (that is,
when subtracting it from another character’s dice pool).
Seeming Contracts: Stone
Concepts: Working-class Red Cap hard-man, arrogant
giant CEO, shrill political activist, gung-ho Marine grunt,
nightclub bouncer, understanding but non-nonsense bar
manager, Bigfoot hunter, belligerent redneck, prizefighter,
long-distance truck driver, deep sea fisherman.
Kiths
Cyclopean — The Cyclopeans are like the ancient
hunters and herdsmen of legend who sought men for their
cooking pots: changelings who resemble Cyclops of Archaic
Greece, the one-legged Fachan of Scots legend, the
three-eyed oni of Japan, the elephant-eared rakshas of India
or the wind-borne footless Wendigo of North America.
Although many are crippled in some way, they have profound
senses to make up for it. The Cyclopeans can Smell
the Blood: the character gains the benefit of the 8 again
rule on Wits-based Perception rolls. He can smell things
that can’t normally be smelled, meaning that even if some
of his senses are deficient, his sense of smell makes up for
it. Many Cyclopeans have Physical Flaws such as One Eye,
Lame, One Arm or Hard of Hearing.
Farwalker — Changelings who resemble the abominable
men of mystery, the possibly savage hairy creatures
of the wilds whose existence straddles the divide between
folklore and cryptozoology: the Sasquatch, the yeti, the
Russian Alma, the Australian yowie and dozens of other
wild men. Farwalkers have The Elusive Gift: the character
gains the benefit of the 9 again rule on Stealth and
Survival dice pools. Also, the player can spend a point of
Glamour to retake a failed Stealth or Survival roll.
Gargantuan — Captured by giants, these changelings
had to grow to a greater stature, perhaps being stretched
on racks or forced to drink noxious potions. As humans,
they appear less freakish, though many purchase the Giant
Merit. Their blessing is Spurious Stature: once a day, the
changeling can grow to colossal size. The player
spends a point of Glamour, and adds the changeling’s
Wyrd score to her size for the rest of the scene. This supplies
temporary Health dots (see the World of Darkness
Rulebook, p. 175). Returning to normal size is painful, as
if the changeling’s skin is unable to contain the character’s
stature, and when she regains her normal height, the
character takes one point of lethal damage.
Gristlegrinder — Man-eaters and gluttons, taking their
cue from the English Black Annis, Scottish Red Caps or the
rakshas of India, but also sometimes resembling more modern
Ogres, such as the masked unstoppable lunatics of slash-andstalk
horror movies. Every Gristlegrinder has Terrible Teeth
in his terrible jaws: the character’s bite is a two lethal attack,
though it does require him to grapple the opponent first.
Stonebones — Changelings who resemble the rocky
giants of folklore, Nordic trolls, Native American mountain
spirits and the like. The Stonebones are blessed with
Obdurate Skin: once per day as an instant action, the
player can spend one point of Glamour to harden the
character’s skin, making it like rock. The character uses
his Wyrd as his armor rating
for the rest of the scene. The
character’s rocky carapace
does mean, however, that
the character isn’t as nim-
