Changeling - Players Guide.pdf

they alone, who can fashion new pieces of the Dreaming for
the rest of the Kithain. A team of 10 nockers, pooling their
Glamour, sweat, tears and blood, forged the mighty blade
Caliburn, which is wielded by the High King.
Attitudes
Nockers are drawn to the cutting edge
of technological and artistic innovation.
Although their dour natures and
sharp tongues make it hard for them
to be taught, once they learn the
techniques of the newest craft,
they quickly hecome known as
eccentric geniuses in their fields,
daring many brave souls to
weather the scathing wit of a
nocker simply to be able to
witness their creations. Most
do not last long under the barrage
and leave the maestro alone
again, perhaps hurting the sensitive
soul that is a nocker's greatest
secret, and which fuels their endeavors.
For nockers, people are a mystery.
Unlike wood, stone or steel,
people are mercurial and have such
brittle feelings. Nockers claim they
have no use for the wild shifts of
emotion and clouded judgment that
seem endemic to the rest of the
fae, and would rather simply
have a chisel and a block of
wood, or a wrench and a stubborn
nut. The truth is that
nockers, for all their bluster,
have souls as poetic as those
of any other Kithain. One of
their failings is that it seems
the only way for nockers to
express that fact is through
their work.
Older and wiser fae can
see that a nocker's masterpiece
is a pure striving for a
perfect thing; a striving
marred by the eternal tragedy
of the nocker character, for the
nocker can never reach that perfection.
Nocker sages disagree on why this
is so. Some feel it is due to having been partly spawned by the
dark side of creativity; others wonder if it is due to the fact that
nockers cannot stop shaving those last few flecks of wood or
crosswiring that last junction, which tends to push the object
past the pinnacle of perfection. In any case, most nockers
prefer to work on their chosen projects than take the time to
be civil to those who would try to be their friends.
Having decided to eschew the common bonds of politeness,
the nockers developed a complex ritual of insults
and disparagements that constitute greetings and
familiarity. Between nockers this is as natural
as two businessmen shaking hands. It
would not be so notable if not for the
unfortunate tendency of nockers to take
this habit out into the rest of the
world with them. A nocker will
greet an acquaintance with a
simple "Good morning,
horseface," and be honestly
baffled why the person in
question has taken offense.
Nockers find themselves at
the mercy of the Art of Sovereign
an awful lot.
Most of these ridiculing
comments are good-natured,
but when a nocker is upset,
given that they have a much
wider vocabulary to choose
from, it's not uncommon to hear
a nocker cursing for minutes at
a stretch. If more people understood
the reasons behind
the creative cursing of
nockers, they would be welcomed
into many more social
circles then they are now.
Having been present at
many major technological
paradigm shifts, nockers
have somewhat of a reputation
among the spirits
and Inanimae of the machine
world. Knowing
what a nocker is capable of
doing to a recalcitrant
machine with nothing
more than a pencil and a
socket wrench is enough to
scare most machines into behaving.
The fact that nockers like to use their
Arts to frighten their machines and equipment
with inventive, gear-chilling and usually
quite graphic threats, does nothing to alleviate the
situation. As a result, nocker machinery is the most reliable,
safe and terrified equipment a person can own. Machinery