"No. Listen. I know you're scared. I know you're hurting. You clawed your way back home from that... place kicking and screaming and now the face you see in the mirror isn't quite the one you used to know. Your memories are all fucked up and you don't know what's real anymore, and you're scared that if you try to tell anyone, they'll think you're batshit crazy. But we know. All of us do. We know what you've been through. We know what happened to you. We've been through the same. You're terrified, and you're alone, but you don't have to be either. We can face this together, if you just trust me for a second."
- Tim Hollow-Bones, Searce of the Spring Court
So Changeling: The Lost is a roleplaying game in the (new) World of Darkness, a game world that I'm deeply in love with - and which is published by White Wolf, a subsidiary of our lords and masters CCP Games. Changeling happens to be one of my favourite settings within nWoD. If perhaps not the most well-written setting, it's certainly the most compellingly written setting, and that's because it tells a very emotionally-charged story. It's a story about suffering, abuse and the struggle for identity in situations far beyond the scope of what the human mind was built to tolerate. It's a story about pursuit and flight - metaphorical and literal. It's a story about monsters - human and inhuman. It's a story about the power of trust and the pain of betrayal. It's simultaneously the bleakest and most hopeful story ever told in the World of Darkness product line. It's a story about...
... goblins, faeries and elves.
Wait? Why are you looking at me like that? No, really! It's totally hardcore and grimdark! Come back!
The story of Changeling: The Lost is simple at first glance but hides a great deal of nuance. You, a blissfully oblivious human, were snatched from the life you know by one of the Fae - capricious, immortal, soulless creatures from a place far beyond the Earth. Dragged back to that place, Arcadia, you were changed - into a servant, into a slave, into a tool, or into something even less definable. What few memories you have of that awful place are fragmented and plague both your waking hours and your dreams. For a time - maybe days, maybe months, maybe years - you suffered at the alien whims of the creature that took you, but your memories of your former life were the key to escaping. Following those memories, you clawed your way back through the Thorns that seperate our world from theirs, and returned to Earth. But you brought the changes wrought upon you with you, and you can't go back to the way things were.
The game itself is a complex affair - there's a lot of concerns the average changeling will have to concern themselves with. There are the same day-to-day matters of general survival normal humans have, complicated by the fact that you may have been gone from your life for years of Earth time - and worse, a false thing may have been living it in your place. Then there are the far more specific concerns of fae life: the Seasonal Courts, feuding political structures into which changelings arrange themselves. The Hedge, a mysterious, labyrinthine place beyond the mortal realm that can open many doors to a changeling - and present many, many dangers. The Contracts, agreements with aspects of reality itself that allow you to reshape the world around you. There are always a thousand things to concern yourself with, lest you be buried under them - including the nagging sensation that you can't trust your own perceptions anymore.
And always, always, close behind you is the looming shadow of your Keeper, looking to regain his property.
So I was thinking that if enough of you were interested, we could run a Changeling chronicle right here on the forums. I'm very familiar with the setting and I already have a few story ideas in mind, but I wanted to sound it out with you guys before committing to any serious work.
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Topic: A Forum RPG Session - Changeling: The Lost (Read 4609 times)