#the changeling chronicles

[the-hedge-has-thorns]

Stars in the Night Sky

He reeked of gin and olives, and of another woman's perfume.

I was at the door with a dirty martini in hand, the purple dress he'd always favored, and dinner on the table. The model wife.

I kissed his cheek and guided him to the dinner table where he could drink his martini while I served his food.

He loosened his tie, returned the kiss to my cheek, and I felt his lips burn with the memory of another woman. I served. His food. As his audience. As a soundtrack to a one-sided conversation.

"Daisy?" he called, snapping his fingers.

I blinked, taking in his cleaned plate and empty glass. He appeared to be waiting for something, but I had lost track of the conversation. It wasn't hard to do, he rarely spoke of anything that held real importance. I sipped the one glass of wine he allowed me with dinner to gather my thoughts. "Whatever you think is best, dear."

He seemed pleased with my response. Not unusual - he preferred when I deferred to him rather than voice any of my thoughts. I stood and picked up a dish to offer it in his direction. "Seconds, dear?"

*****

I sat on the edge of the bed, still in my dress and heels, wearing the diamond necklace he'd gifted me for our 10th anniversary. It matched my engagement ring, and the diamond earrings for our 5th anniversary. I'd always liked pearls better, but he liked the way the lights struck the diamonds when we were out.

The noise of him in the bathroom drifted away as I looked out our window, to the neighbor. With just the right angle I could peer down into a corner of their living room. They were dancing. More in love than I had ever felt.

"Daisy."

I pulled away from the fantasy.

His mouth crushed over my own before I could speak, crushing the words from my mouth. His tongue forced in, scraping out the syllables. "I missed you. I need this." Minty words breathed into my lungs.

Of course he did. I was a creature born to satiate.

A mother's need to love something in a marriage falling apart. A father's need to love something unstained. A husband's need for the perfect image, and a complacent thing to fuck.

His fingers circled my nipple through the dress, hardening at the touch. He liked me in purple. I preferred red. Purple was a compromise for a good mood.

"Turn around," he commanded.

I stood and turned, catching a glimpse of his nakedness. At the start, I had been attracted to him. Someone that was outside of the world my family was entangled with. I'd never have to worry about scrubbing blood out of his clothes, or mending bullet holes. Or be worried the next phone call was going to be from prison collect.

Over the years, as he collected lipstick colors and new perfumes, I'd grown repulsed. Sickened at the grip of his fingers on my hips, and the slap of his skin on mine. It'd turned my stomach.

Now... well, it didn't matter anymore. I was perfect. Untouchable. Unattainable. The stars in the night sky.

"Can you shut the lights off?" The darkness helped. Made things softer, and easier to imagine things were different.

He didn't move. He shoved my legs apart and I stumbled as he hiked up my skirt to feel my wetness. "Always ready for me," he murmured against the back of my neck.

My thoughts slipped, clattered down the rungs of sin until it was another man's hands drawing down the zipper of my dress so it puddled around my heels. Another man's hands unhooking my garters and cupping my breasts as he bent me over the bed. Another man filling me.

I was grateful I'd snuck several pulls from the bottle of wine when he'd left me to clean the kitchen. The soft, low buzz made the imagining easier. I'd long since stopped trying to guide for any of my own pleasure, but I dreamed.

The other man didn't have a face, or a name. But that was fine. Less disappointment when even the dreams inevitably began to fade and lost their luster.

He moaned, his pace picking up.

I couldn't feel him inside me though.

Tonight, I didn't feel anything at all.

He finished quickly. I realized too little, too late, he hadn't used a condom when I felt the heat dripping down my thighs. My stomach bucked as I straightened, turned to kiss his cheek, and make my way to the bathroom.

It still smelled. I flicked the fan on, the hum and the sound of the water drowning out the small noise that left me. A whimper. I wet a rag and cleaned myself and tried not to think of the consequences of his decision.

I slipped on my nightgown, stripped the makeup from my face and padded back out into the bedroom where he was in bed already. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I felt him move behind me.

"I think we're going to have to cut the wine out. It looks like you might have put on a few pounds." He spoke the words casually. "Now let's go to bed. I have an early morning and probably a late night at the office again."

"Of course, dear." Shifting, I laid down next to him, feeling the bed shift again as he rolled to face away from me. It was the only thing I felt as the stars glittered through my window, out of reach.

[not-a-very-good-dungeon-master]

[lilmissbelljar]

Etherelle, the jazz singer, dream weaver & psychic star…

a commission I had done by the lovely @norrtam of my Changeling the Lost character 💜

[awakenedsalamander]

This is gonna be a long walk. But I’ll get there. I promise.

In a lot of Chronicles of Darkness games, there are “minor templates” for players to take for their characters. These are basically lesser types of supernatural beings— undeniably marked by magic, but not transformed by it like the main templates are. So instead of being a werewolf, you might be a Wolf-Blooded, i.e., not the monster your stronger cousins are, but still recognizably having a connection to that world.

Again, a bunch of games have these. Mage has Sleepwalkers (and Proximi), Vampire has ghouls, Geist has the Absent, Demon has stigmatics, etc.

In Changeling: The Lost, there are the Fae-Touched. We’ll get to them in a bit. First, more on Lost.

In Lost, like many stories about faeries, oaths and vows are very important. They are, in the form of magical Contracts, the source of many fae powers. Changeling have a neat ability to make any spoken promise binding, invoking the force of the Wyrd to force even minor vows to be taken seriously. And many changelings are taken by the True Fae by getting ensnared in some kind of oath.

See, if you didn’t know, Changeling: The Lost is about humans taken to the home of the True Fae, and then transformed into changelings as the True Fae torment them. The game is very much about the way trauma changes a person, and how even recovering from trauma still doesn’t bring you back to the way you were— you’re healed, but you’re not the same.

And much like trauma changes a person, it isolates them too. Lost represents this in the fiction with fetches— the faerie-forged simulacra left behind in the stolen person’s wake, acting the roles of parent, sibling, friend, and so on while the original person is actually suffering with no escape.

But the Fae-Touched won’t stand for that.

Because while Changeling: The Lost recognizes that many promises aren’t serious, that when people swear, “I’ll always be there for you,” they don’t always live up to that, it also recognizes that some promises are different.

The Fae-Touched are the mortals who remember the words they swore, and will not ignore them. They can tell, in their dreams, through the nagging impulses they get in their waking moments, that the person they promised to help needs them now more than ever. They are lead by the Wyrd into the land of faerie to live up to that promise, and they follow it gladly.

A Fae-Touched is the father who knows the smiling fetch who claims to be his daughter isn’t the real thing, and that somewhere the girl he swore to protect is in mortal danger— and so he delves into a world of dreams and nightmares to bring her back.

A Fae-Touched is the woman who fights off briar wolves in a mad, twisting forest so she can find her wife, because when she said “I will never abandon you,” she meant it.

A Fae-Touched is the young man staring down a Lord of the True Fae and refusing to yield. He and his brother went through hell together years ago when their parents died, and they promised one another then that they’d always stand by each other, and some monster in a crown can’t change that.

Not every changeling is helped by a Fae-Touched, and not all of the Fae-Touched succeed. Sometimes you have to claw your own way back home. But God, what a beautiful concept.

I know that Changeling: The Lost is very dark, and the reason I love the Fae-Touched isn’t really because they’re the light to that darkness— I think that simplifies it too much.

I like the Fae-Touched not because they take away the darkness, but because they remind me we don’t always have to face the darkness alone.

Sometimes, when you think there’s no point going on, when you think it will just be the pain and the fear again and again and again… it’s not true. Because sometimes, maybe even more often than we think, there’s someone out there who knows you need help. And they ready themselves, they set out into the darkness, saying only,

“This is gonna be a long walk. But I’ll get there. I promise.”

[just-sg-art]

New Chronicles of Darkness OC. Her name is Lyra and she's a Fairest Changeling.

[bl0rbohandbag]

– some vampire the masquerade x changeling the lost concepts that will not leave me alone.

"but vtm and ctl are from different settings–" shhhhhh :)

— part 2.

before i begin: i have been dabbling in vampire the masquerade and changeling the lost content for a while, i am not a fan of changeling the dreaming and vampire the requiem is unfamiliar to me. anyway! buckle up, enjoy the ride, this is kind of long.

trigger warning for abuse/unhealthy parental relationships because vamps i guess.

first of all: i recently read vtm: bloodstained love. while it focus on the more romantic and sexual aspects of kindred relationships with a lot of references to obsessive/posessive behavior and grotesque acts of love, it also made me wonder how those would translate to platonic or familial relationships. add some changeling shenanigans to that and we have some interesting concepts to play with! and with that being said...

– you're a changeling. kidnapped into arcadia and trapped there for who knows how long. in your durance, you dream of going back home, of reuniting with your friends and family, escaping your keeper to finally, finally enjoy freedom in the world you were born in.

– and one day, you do escape. back into your world, never feeling completely safe with your keeper looking to get you back and huntsmen being a very real threat, but you're ready to rebuild your life and enjoy your newfound freedom.

– there are various mentions throughout the ctl books on how unsuspecting or heedless changelings might have their freedom stolen again, this time by kindred. so, as it turns out, you'll have to deal with creatures other than the true fae who are more than willing to keep you caged!

the angst potential in a changeling reuniting with ther parent(s) only to find out they've become something inhuman, and not all that different from their keeper is unmatched.

maybe you watch them from a distance first. maybe you excitedly seek them out. maybe you just randomly bump into your parent by complete chance, after presuming them dead or deciding to abandon your old life. maybe they find you.

but the point is: they're kindred. so different from when you last saw them, as a teenager, as a child, before you were taken. as if having huntsmen and your keeper after you wasn't trying enough, a vampire parent comes (back) into your life to make it even more complicated.

a ventrue dad will make his ghouls your bodyguards, following you day and night. it makes you insanely uncomfortable, as you liken them to changelings serving true fae back in arcadia. he says it's because of his own dangerous kindred affairs that might affect you, but after an unplesant encounter with the huntsmen he might just decide you shouldn't be out and about at all.

your parent is either a neonate or an ancilla by the time your return from arcadia. your fetch is dead for whatever reason, expired, after living a life in your stead, automatically making the vampire believe their child is dead– now imagine their surprise and confusion when they see you– real you, living and breathing. and maybe you're distraught, too, seeing that they haven't aged a day or should, depeding on how long you've been gone, be most definetly dead.

(this is absolutely NOT going to send the vampire parent into a mental breakdown and spiral into obsession upon discovering the child they have lost and buried was literally a soulless copy of their real child who got kidnapped by faeries. a clone made out of twigs and a cat's eyes that stole their child's place and they never noticed. everything is just fine. it does not them affect them mentally at all :3)

(bonus points if the fetch was killed by the vampire parent's enemies after being entagled in their mess. they feel like they are getting a second chance and will absolutely not screw it up! cue you, poor changeling, being locked away or put under heavy surveillance.)

on the other hand, a kindred parent who currently has a living fetch of their child just being EXTREMELY distraught when they keep spotting someone who looks exactly like their kid at random places they definetly shouldn't be at is very funny and kind of unsettling!

(a vampire mom just feeding on mortals at the club, socializing with other kindred, perhaps dealing with some unresolved issues with her sire, etc. Then she spots you, her real kid, unbeknownst to her, just chilling, among all those dangerous vampires, when you're supposed to be in your dorm room at least a thousand miles from there. she calls the fetch's phone, expecting you to pick up and start explaining yourself. your fetch answers the phone, talks to her, sleep-drunk and confused as to why she's calling so late, but the person she's looking at has made no motion at all. they're not talking. they have not picked up the phone. but that's her kid's face, she's sure. what the fuck?)

for low-humanity ancillae/elder kindred, having their child back might bring about long-forgotten mortal feelings of genuine parental love, although they might express in the very unorthodox way kindred would. they simply do not understand why their child does not want to be around them. they just want to bond with you and keep you safe where kindred and fae can't get to you, make up for lost time. what do you mean they're "just like your keeeper"?

i think a lot of kindred parents will leave you be, mostly brujah or gangrel, knowing you'll be safer if they keep you away from their world. provided there was no fetch to replace you, they think it's amazing enough you were found alive and well after years of being a missing person. you don't like talking about what happened in your... "durance"... fine, they'll keep the investigators off your back, too. they might not even know you're no longer human. but they are going to check on you once in a while, or keep tabs on you, or even have some of their people watch you from a distance. just to make sure.

(just don't let them catch wind of all the changeling shenanigans or huntsmen attacks on your person. that might just change their mind...)

kindred parents might believe you're safer away from their world, yes, but they can just as easily bring you into the mess of kindred society without a second thought.

not very fun being a fairest when your toreador mother insists you show your mien to impress her fellow clan mates and other kindred with your overwhelming beauty. she's always been a pageant mom, so this shouldn't surprise you. there's several layers of wrongness to this, from having your changeling identity exposed to multiple vampires to further your mother's social status to this very situation bringing back so many unpleasant memories from your durance, and it's bound to end badly.

(the toreador pageant mom could very easily be a nosferatu pageant mom, a cleopatra now living vicariously through your fae-given beauty.)

(she will realize how terrible a mistake that was when vampires start really paying attention to you. or not. who knows.)

(gifts that could easily have come from a true fae lord start pouring in. letters written in excessive passion, bouquets of bloody roses, dresses made out of human skin, all delivered by equally dazed-looking ghouls. perhaps your mother will know, then, she fucked up severely. or maybe she'll just tell you to be grateful for those wonderful gifts.)

on another hand, a nosferatu parent taking one look at their fairest child's mien and deciding "oh. no kindred can see you like. ever. stay away from toreador specifically". you don't know what a toreador is, but you'll try to heed the advice.

your ancilla mother meets your motley and proceeds to show them baby pictures of you, taken in the 1870s shortly before your abduction to Faerie. they are very well preserved and you look most proper in your little sailor outfit.

you have a beast/ogre seeming and your gangrel parent thinks you're pretty rad :) you go hunting together.

your tzimisce dad has living furniture made out of human skin, but it's nothing you haven't seen in arcadia before. he's a little disappointed by your lack of enthusiasm, and very offended when you tell him your keeper had better taste in couches. trying to evade a tzimisce dad after he's been made aware of your existence is a difficult task, and you will get caught and held captive at one point (for your safety, of course!). if there is a fetch currently living your life, they will be immediately killed or horribly tortured (read: vicissitude) for the crime of decieving the tzimisce and impersonating you, regardless of you already having decided to leave said fetch alone.

(tzimisce dad thinks you should be thankful. he dealt with the imposter. shouldn't you be happy?)

(if he’s got cash and has some land within his domain to spare, he might let you build a little home not too far from his own to give you a semblance of independence to try and settle you down. might.)

(on the other hand, you have the chance to become a really good escape artist. take your time in captivity with your tzimisce dad to practice your escaping and running away skills, after all, every good changeling needs it! you also get the bonus of reliving your childhood/teenagehood with all the sneaking out.)

(quick intermission: all of these concepts might result in low-clarity for the changeling?? i'm not too sure how clarity damage works yet.

update: it absolutely might!)

your malkavian mother thinks she's plagued with visions of her missing child, glimpses of what they might look nowadays, wherever they are. this is actually you, visiting her in her dreams through oneiromancy.

(everyone thought, back then, that it was just a scare. you wandered into the forest and for ten hours people searched for you, only to find you safe and sound, without a scratch in your body or a speck of dirt in your shoes hours later. but she knew better. she knew that wasn't really you. it haunted her for the rest of her life, and it haunts her unlife even now. she never made it to the hedge.)

you can't take your tremere parent ANYWHERE. you give in after endless nagging and take them to a goblin market, but their arrogance will get them roped into terrible deals if you don't keep your eyes on them full time. you do take this as an opportunity to show off your changeling capabilities. you're in your element.

(you also drop life-altering bits of Faerie lore at random or inappropriate times. it sends them spiraling. you just hope they won't share it with anyone...)

darkling changeling just chilling with their nosferatu dad in the sewers, sharing rats.

and that's all for today, folks.

[guildwuff2]

s'more changeling!mu doodles

[paragonrobits]

Talk to the people that fight the monsters in the dark, skulking in the alleys no one remembers and hiding behind suits and smiling faces in the expensive buildings, they'll tell you stories. They say there's a city block that doesn't belong to the city anymore.

Don't make trouble for the people there. The unspoken statement is that the people there aren't... exactly human anymore. They used to be. But there's worse things in the dark then men with the hearts of wolves or undying monsters that drink the blood of the living; worse than patchwork men that spread disaster in their wake and don't understand why. Sometimes, a terrible mystery ensnares someone, trapping them in promises and story and lies, and drags them away.

What comes back isn't human anymore. It's still a person, though. They reason and understand things, same as the humans they were, once. You leave them alone, the local Union rep says. They're no harm to no one, as long as you don't bring trouble to them.

Don't rat to them, you get warned. If someone who looks too good to be true comes around sniffing for their addresses, you just smile and nod and say you never heard a damn thing. Don't rat them out. Because the people in that place will know, and they'll find you, and your family. You try to throw them back into hell, they'll return the favor three times over.

But it goes both ways; if you watch out for them, mind your business and keep their secrets, they'll help you out.

The Union rep tells you a short little story; he says that most of the time, the people in that city block look the same as you or me. There might be a few signs; a girl with teeth unnaturally sharp and pointy, or a man who knocks on wood and it makes a noise like HE'S made of wood. But if things are going normal, you won't see what they really look like, just a kind of magical mask that hides them. But they got their fancy tricks, and they know all about escaping bad situations.

So if you do your part in the deal, they'll help you out. Pretty much anything; a single mother went down to them after some bad business with her ex came up and her kids went missing. Well, she talked to Pop Hammerfist, the big ol' dude that looks like someone carved a tree into a man. Her ex was on the news in the hospital a few days after, yelling about the trees following him, and her kids were back home safe and sound, and with the ex having already signed a few agreements to pay his damn alimony already.

Or a little boy with a missing cat came up to them and asked for help. If any of the real hunters or Union folk had heard about it, they would have stopped him, but the people in the city block didn't turn him away. They nodded, and listened, a few hours later came back with the little boy's cat, safe and purring up a storm. You help them out, they help you out; I hear that kid tells 'em stuff he heard. 'Spose there's a lesson in that. We're all in this together, long as we don't tear the boat down with us in it.

Reminds me of a story about the lady who brought the cat in, in fact. A big lady; has to go to special shops to get clothes that fit. Weird shiny teeth, too, with the weirdest damn braces I ever saw, if those are braces. You hear some funny stories about her, that when she comes knocking the whole floor shakes, but she couldn't be a sweeter lady. Nice to kids, loves cats, always help out. If she's got the weird habit of speaking in rhyme before she says anything else, well, we all got our promises, I guess.

Well, a while back, we had a Slasher. Yeah; the thing that happens when a Hunter goes bad, or someone just gets too much of a taste for murder. Killing opens up a soul, and some part of us leaks out, or something else gets in. This particular fellow liked to call himself a real genius; a real nasty piece of work that liked making elaborate death traps and leaving people to die. Well, we worked out he was there when they started finding the bodies, and by that point he'd already gotten the Big Lady.

...Yeah, that's the name of that lady I mentioned. Long story.

Well, we found what was left of him, and his death traps. The whole place was smashed to pieces by something big. Big and helliciously strong, I'd say. It was like the set of those torture horror movies got hit by a storm. And they found the guy, or. What was left of him. Looked like a wild animal had bit him up, or a jaguar.

Well, from what we heard, he got her all right. But she might have been a bit more than he bargained for. I'm not sure exactly what she did to him, but they were cleaning his blood and bone off the wall for weeks. They said his skull looked like something real strong had just slugged him, so hard he sorta splashed. Don't make me draw you a picture, pal.

But, yeah. Funny thing is, they said the fist mark was so big you'd need a person the size of an elephant to throw that kind of punch. And we kept seeing cats around the area. Really, really big cats.

..You remember about promises. You keep 'em with the city block folk, because they got all kinds of things keeping promises to them.

What happened to the Big Lady, you ask? Oh, she's still around. Helps out the local Union cell now and then. Good hand if you need brute force.

She don't much like having to handle anything that's got too much iron in it; steel is fine, but not real iron. She saws its an allergy.

...Yeah, I know how it sounds. But we got our funny ways, and she keeps her promises, so keep your nose out of it, yeah?

[trannytheophage]

Chronicles propaganda

[suminotomi]

Wata, the Thyrsus mage.

[the-hedge-has-thorns]

Near the Beginning of the End

"I'm just sorry you had to find out this way." He speaks to me with an expression that is weary and appropriately apologetic. Like he had practiced it in the mirror night after night in preparation for the day it all came tumbling out.

Robert and I had been married for 9 years and he had just told me he had been cheating for the past 7. It was like he had dropped a bomb on our marriage, detonating wedding lace and diamonds into shrapnel that scored a direct hit.

I had suspected, but it wasn't until I had found the torn pantyhose stuffed under the seat in the car when I had gone out to clean it, that I knew for sure. It certainly wasn't mine - Robert had never been adventurous with me.

"You mean you're sorry I found out at all," I snapped, shoving the ruined hose at his chest. It knocked him back a step on our stoop, nearly down the steps.

He glanced around, his expression darkening as he looked back to me. "I didn't want to hurt you -"

"Hurt me?" I cut him off, the prickle of heat behind my eyes beginning to burn. I refused to cry though. To give him any of my tears. To let him tell me I was being hysterical when really, I was feeling downright murderous.

"No, I didn't. I made a mistake, Daisy. A big one." His words didn't line up with his demeanor. They didn't line up with his actions, but that one was a given. "Now let me in before the neighbors see or hear. They don't need to be a part of our little spat."

"Stay out there." I hissed. "Go sleep at her place since you like to go there so much." I slammed the door shut. Or…. tried. His fingers curled around the edge of it, forcing it open and me back. This time, I stumbled, nearly twisting my ankle because my heel wobbled.

He caught me before I fell, his fingertips digging into my arm with a possessive bite. "You deserve so much better…I'm so sorry Daisy." He pushed me to the couch and forced me to sit. "You deserve so much better."

I head his voice crack and I felt the hesitation in my chest. He knelt in front of me, his arms wrapping around my waist so he could press his head against my chest. "But I just can't let you go."

I shivered. Maybe he mistook it. His hands crept up my skirt, sliding past the hose and to the garters, unclipping them to trace the edge of my panties.

The urge to squeeze my knees shut was overwhelming, pressing in on his ribs as I grabbed at his hands. "I don't want you touching me. Not after all the women you've touched." The words came out like lava, hurled like boulders while my heart beat frantically in my chest.

Then there was heat flaring over my cheek, a sting of pain turning my vision blurry. My familiar living room with its floral curtains, the beige carpet, the ugly dark baseboard bubbled in and out of focus as I sucked in a sharp breath. The tears spilled despite myself, cold terror scraping at my ribs as I pushed myself up from having fallen onto my side. Hardly processing what had just happened.

Hard fingers in my jaw shoved me back down. "You're my wife. If I want to apologize this way, you'll take my apology, Daisy." Robert's voice had gone low, a serpentine hiss in my ear.

My mind was still scrambling and I didn't realize he'd dropped his slacks until he was pushing into me.

Never once I had ever thought this would be a situation I was in. Robert had always been the perfect gentleman. I always thought I'd have been stronger than what I was.

"You're so…" He was breathless. In. Out. In. Out. In and out. "You feel so good, Daisy."

I always thought I would have fought tooth and nail. Except I was frozen for the whole three minutes it took. And the five minutes after it took for him to fix himself, no remorse in his eyes.

I don't know how long I stayed on that couch, my skirts hiked up around my hips. It wasn't until I heard noise that I stirred. "Daisy! Where's dinner?"

I was to blame.

I let people take advantage of me.

I was in the wrong.

I was just something to be used, and he had reminded me.

[inkbeanjo]

blorbo's decided to have a blood feud with a faerie

[awakenedsalamander]

By the way it’s crazy to me that there’s an online culture that seems to promote a strong niche market for stories about trauma, myth and fantasy, and the wonders and perils of personal identity, AND YET Changeling: The Lost isn’t a smash hit.

Like obviously it’s one of the more popular Chronicles of Darkness games but it should take the world by storm. It’s not even my favorite and I think it should be the most popular, just cause the premise is that appealing.

(If you’re wondering, yes, my blog is largely gonna consist of me being like “Aren’t CofD games good?” for awhile, it’s the mood I’m in.)

[lillylunala]

A death metal/EDM fusion singer, Kevin often plays DJ in the Spring Court's main bar, turning into hot people to feed on other's desires. Spring also hires him for minor espionage missions, but he tends to fumble them. Secretly suffers a hunger for human flesh, which he abides by buying from both fae and mundane black markets.

Finally introducing my silly guy!

[omegafallon]

doggirl hearing about Changeling the Lost for the first time: "they replace you with a WHAT?!"

[bl0rbohandbag]

– more vampire the masquerade x changeling the lost concepts that will not leave me alone. (part 2)

continuation of this post: part 1. "but vtm and ctl are from different settings–" shhhhhh :) if you've seen this post before no you didn't

before i begin: i have been dabbling in vampire the masquerade and changeling the lost content for a while, i am not a fan of changeling the dreaming and vampire the requiem is unfamiliar to me. anyway! buckle up, enjoy the ride, this is another long post!!

trigger warning for obsessive behavior, abuse/unhealthy relationships because vamps again, i guess.

– you're a changeling. kidnapped into arcadia and trapped there for who knows how long. in your durance, you dream of going back home, of reuniting with your friends and family, escaping your keeper to finally, finally enjoy freedom in the world you were born in.

– and one day, you do escape. back into your world, never feeling completely safe with your keeper looking to get you back and huntsmen being a very real threat, but you're ready to rebuild your life and enjoy your newfound freedom.

– except...

after a series of events, you have been forcibly/begrudingly assimilated into a coterie. perhaps a tremere found out about your changeling nature and took great interest in the faerie magic you can wield, deeming it useful for their interests, or maybe a friend or relative of yours turn out to be kindred and are now dragging you into their messes.

(this is particularly annoying if you're more of a diurnal faerie, rising with the sun and going to sleep as soon as it goes down. your circadian rhythm sucks [no pun intended] now that you're up until 3 am running around with a bunch energetic vamps.)

(bonus points if the other members of the coterie don't know what you are, initially mistaking you for a random human and being confused as to why you're there.)

you're not very familiar with kindred, but at this point you're not as wary of them as you should be, either. after all, you've dealt with the treachery and cruelty of the fae, traversed goblin markets, escaped the hedge - you think you can handle yourself pretty well.

(... that's why you see no problem in making a pledge with that mysterious fanged gentleman, offering your blood in exchange for whatever you might need in return. when the pledge is over and they're no longer needed, you ghost them, unknowingly leaving behing a vampire who is now addicted to changeling blood, your changeling blood, and the rush of human emotions brought by being in contact with glamour, no matter how terrible the withdrawal feels.)

on another hand, purposefully letting a vampire drink your blood to torment them might be a fun little prank >:)

(note/context: there is a bit of a contradiction regarding how kindred reacts to changeling blood. some books mention that it doesn't do anything different than a human's, but tastes heavenly and causes no damage to the vampire consuming it, and it might even resurface human feelings or emotions long forgotten. however, changeling the lost: rites of spring, though establishing that changeling blood isn't directly harmful to kindred, still has a hallucinatory effect on them. it is said that the vampire suffers -1 penalty to perception rolls every vitae worth of changeling's blood they consume, because they suffer misleading visions that also plague the Lost of low Clarity, a.k.a it causes one hell of a bad trip ["faces sprout in the environment and babble nonsense rhymes, colors shift and bleed, the outlines of objects warp and shudder."] that lasts until the vampire sleeps it off, and even then they might be plagued with vivid nightmares. so i guess whatever works best.)

a kindred parent who has dedicated their life to finding their missing child after witnessing their kidnapping by an otherworldy, inhuman creature. it might very well be the reason they sought out the embrace, in the first place, after learning their child might still be alive even after centuries have passed, and to be strong enough to protect them from whoever tries to take them back.

using oneiromancy on your malkavian mother to give her beautiful, pleasant, peaceful dreams. perhaps she dreams of you, and picnics with food she can taste under a summer's day sky, and the sun on her skin doesn't burn or frighten her. and it feels so real, so much so that she is filled with a sense of warmth and longing she can never shake off. you do what you can to take care of her. from a distance.

traditionalist ancilla parent who naturally turns to you when they are experiencing issues with technology or anything related to the modern world because you are their child and therefore should know about this stuff, but they forget you were stuck in Arcadia for like three hundred years and you have no idea how to operate an IPhone.

if anyone remembers the ventrue dad using his ghouls as his changeling child's bodyguards, let me expand on that: you are an absolute MENACE to the ghouls babysitting you. if you have been isolated from the world, that means they're basically your social circle, so you talk their ears off and trick them for fun quite often. not only that, but they're the ones that have to run around to retrieve you when they notice you have succesfully escaped again.

(this might evolve into the ghouls becoming your sorta kinda motley. they figure that taking you out during the day won't hurt when you're under their supervision, as long as it means you'll stop running away. you end up dragging them into all sorts of changeling shenanigans, from seasonal court drama to trips to the goblin market, pledges gone awry and etc. they become quite involved in the whole changeling thing. and you STILL prank them when you're bored.)

now the dynamic between the changeling child and their parent's revenants far more removed from humanity might be... interesting.

alternatively, a fetch-maker changeling making a fetch of themselves in order to escape their captor, be it their parent, a partner or a just a kindred who got too interested in them.

(alternatively again, a fetchmaker changeling will continuously make fetches of themselves to throw off/escape their vampire, and said vampire just keeps noticing the differences every single time. it might take them a while, but they notice!)

a vampire who wants you but cannot have you going after your fetch and seducing them instead, maybe even in a conscious attempt to disturb you.

(drinking the fetch's blood will make them immediately regret it, though. fetch blood is just... Not A Fun Time).

a tzimisce's vicissitude is an all too familiar horror.

ancilla toreador who enjoys toying with emotions and sire their lovers just to abandon them after x centuries-old, manipulative fairest who spent their long durance in arcadia being revered for their beauty and talent = potentially the most toxic interaction to ever exist, so nuclear people grow extra limbs just from existing within their vicinity.

(tldr: toreador x fairest cunt off who wins)

"nice is different than good" is a lesson you thought you learned after years of dealing with all sorts of fae creatures, be it the gentry, hobgoblins or even your own changeling peers. but you're not in arcadia anymore, and isn't learning how to trust again a part of healing? ... and somehow that means ignoring the red flags your newly-acquired partner is exhibiting. point is: you didn't exactly sign up for a vampire making your strange life even stranger, but now they're becoming more and more attached to you. not that you're aware of this, or the fact that they're kindred, but you'll find out. oh, you'll find out.

(eventually, their vampire antics are bound to catch up to you. eventually, your changeling antics are bound to catch up to them. it's just a matter of which one will happen first.)

(unhealthy kindred relationship tendencies aside, it's not absurd a vampire lover or secret admirer would become obsessed with a changeling, without even knowing the changeling's true nature. there's just something about them. becoming the subject of obsessive behavior is possible, romantic, platonic or otherwise, born out of a spark of curiosity or a grudge. look at rose gonzalez and roddy van bastelaar, for example.

and if they are aware of what you are, it's all the better. you're like a fairy-tale come to life! but changelings can be a little too similar to their keepers sometimes, and it sometimes backfires. add an obsessed or scorned vampire into the mix and you'll have a recipe for disaster.)

alternatively, a good, healthy (as it can be) relationship with a vampire that absolutely embraces the whole changeling lifestyle. anarchs? camarilla? no. a nosferatu or hecata girlfriend would feel right at home at the moon court's freehold. a tremere boyfriend would love nothing more than to sit with their autumn court changeling partner and read through piles and piles of old books on fairy magic.

a spring courtier changeling helping a vampire acquire necessary information using memory of trees.

(vampire: so you're telling me that you know that one scripture i've been looking for over twenty years is buried underneath the chapel because a fucking tree told you about it?

spring courtier changeling: yes? :3)

when a malkavian surprises you with a cryptic prophetic vision about your life, surprise them back! tell them about the cryptic prophetic vision you had about them, and try to rope them into a pledge by telling them you can alter their fate with simple little spell :) for a price, of course :)

in true fairy-tale fashion, you return home to find that not only your parent has been embraced in your time away, but they have found a lover as undead as they are. maybe it's their sire, maybe someone they met after becoming kinred. but while your parent is overjoyed with your miraculous return, your new evil step-parent just sees you as a nuisance.

(there are so many ways this dynamic can be expanded upon!

not being aware of your parents and their partner's vampirism, but still feeling that something is fundamentally off whenever you're at their new fancy mansion/penthouse [maybe your live there. maybe you drop by for a visit, after they get you settled in a nice house or apartment close by]. your new stepfather is insufferable, eccentric and treats you coldly, perhaps outright shitty when your parent is not around, but your parent seems happy enough - or not, but they won't hear a word of concern from you.

and if you are aware, then... well. they'll just take it as an opportunity to further terrify you.)