Page 310 - Hunter - The Vigil

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and picking your pocket with the other. crazy, criminal, or otherwise in some gutter or another.
They’ve servants, too, “fetches” who live their ordinary At tier two, changelings gather together in what they
lives while the Changelings celebrate strange festivals and call “freeholds,” groups who work to protect themselves. They
accomplish their inscrutable work. Who are these things, re- form small, militant bands or roving packs of dream-stealers.
built, released and unleashed upon the unsuspecting world? It’s less about ideology here and more about getting what they
They don’t know, and hunters shouldn’t presume to. want or protecting themselves from worse creatures.
At the third tier, they seem to form what might be consid-
Powers of Dreams ered Courts — some based on the seasons, some based on direc-
and Nightmares tions or other temporal distinctions (night, day, moons, months).
All changelings are bound to one particular emotion, and They submit to the will of strange fairy lords and carve out little
they can gain Willpower from prominent displays of that emotion kingdoms of madness and beauty. These kingdoms seem to con-
(and a “display” necessitates some kind of action, not just a vocal nect to kingdoms of other cities, forming a broad global “mon-
expression). Roll the changeling’s Wits + Resolve to determine archy” of sorts…but one wonders, does that mean a great Fairy
how many Willpower points can be gained (one success equals King or Queen lords over all the changelings of the world? What
one Willpower point). This can be done once per day. could such a figure of alluring horror want with this world?

Changelings can also invade the dreams of mortals: sim-
ply by spending a Willpower point and touching the sleeper, Plucking Their Wings
the changeling can do damn near anything with a dream: turn Changelings seem to be human and seem to die like hu-
it to a nightmare, infuse it with meaningful (or meaningless) mans, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy to deal with. They’re
prophecy, convey messages, make it lusty, or anything her slippery. Clever. They know how to hide, how to make deals,
mind can concoct. how to get others to protect them. Changelings have a weak-
Common Dread Powers include (but are not limited to) ness: iron. Iron doesn’t cause them more damage than any-
Ecstasy, Dement, New Face, Strange Form, Unholy Attribute thing else, but it bypasses all Defense and armor (both mysti-
(Dexterity, Manipulation, Wits). cal and mundane).
That said, some changelings seem to have bans like de-
Inside Track mons. Changelings with Willpower scores of 8 to 10 take one
Changelings do have otherworldly “masters,” but their Ban (Ban of task, Ban of torment, as under “Demons” above)
relationships with these regents are convoluted, at best. per dot of Willpower (to a maximum of three, one at 8, one at
Most changelings claim to have escaped or been freed, but 9, one at 10). These bans are often tied to some kind of folk-
the mighty Fairies don’t really seem the type to lose track of lore about fairies: cannot abide the sound of bells, must do the
either. Get a changeling talking and things get even more bidding of someone who says their name backward, cannot
confusing. If the Fairy Kings are as omnipotent as they seem, cross a door marked with an iron horseshoe, etc.
why the abductions or the vanguards? Is the entire changeling
phenomenon a front for something more bizarre? Certainly a Shakes
lot of what they describe sounds more than a little like alien Quote: You want to share a butt, hear a story?
abductions. Changelings might even be the free agents they Background: Shakes runs the register at the Food Lion.
claim...making them among the most unpredictable and dan- Allegedly, anyway. Co-workers cover for her a lot — about
gerous foes a hunter can face. half as often as they gossip about her.
Some are hunting each other, others are mobilizing Everybody knows there’s something wrong with Shakes.
armies...and exactly who’s going to end up skewered on those That’s why they call her that. She shakes all the time, even
fairy-spears changes from sentence to sentence and season to when she’s turkey-bowling with the night stockers. Like
season. There’s a good chance that the glitter-junkies are the there’s just this chill she can’t get rid of, or like something
first wave of an ultra-terrestrial invasion force...and it’s almost unseen keeps tickling the back of her neck. Maybe it’s that

impossible to tell whether they know it or not. little cigarette burn there. Some of her co-workers think she’s
Even though they look human, most changelings exhibit a junkie. Others fi gure she has some bad shit back home. She
off-kilter traits: some exude feral musks, some are large and doesn’t talk about it, and she always seems just a little too
brutish like ogres, others still seem to attract flies or have fragile to ask. Who’d want to make Shakes cry?

madness in their gazes. Glimpse them sideways and you might Every so often, though, someone does ask. They don’t show
see the maggots for eyes, the bristling fur at the nape of the up for work the next day. They don’t show up for work again ever.
neck, the green hands big enough to palm and crush a hunt- And if you catch her at the right moment, you’ll fi nd Shakes
er’s head. smoking a cigarette by the meat freezers, crying until it’s a little
At tier one, changelings are a largely unique phenome- stub and she stamps it out on her arm. Just to feel warm.
non. They don’t really work together. They’re either monsters Shakes — Camilla Lucille Freeman — is one of those miss-
masquerading as their old human selves or they’re instead try- ing girls who’ll never be found. At 12 years old, she was taken to
ing to reclaim some semblance of a lost life, like a ghost that another world by an angel made of icicles and hoarfrost, and she
grows restless with hopes unfulfilled. They tend to fall to the spent fi ve long years studying at his frozen feet and learning his

bottom of the barrel, at this tier, though: homeless, addicted, strange sorceries. They were all meaningless rhymes, at least to her.
Every day, the angel threatened to crack the icy floor beneath her,

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