Changeling - Players Guide.pdf

History
Let the sidhe and the trolls snipe about which came first;
both are lying bastards. We were the first kith, lads, and we
alone remember the Great Dark Age, before Bronze or Silver
or Gold, before the mortals and the bloodsuckers and the
wolfen, and even the fae.
Let the sidhe and the trolls speak of pedigree and
birthright, about their lairdship over the Dreaming. We were
the first rulers, and the land we ruled was the true Dreaming,
the Tir-na-Nog, the Fimbulwinter Country, though now the
sidhe have blasphemed it with the name Nightmare Realms.
Don't listen to the others, who speak of the Nightmare
Realms as an oh-so-horrid bugaboo. True nightmares, mind
you, are the grandest, most potent dreams of all. When your
blood turns to ice water and your nerves become cold,
crawling spider webs... aye, when're you more alive, lads?
When you watch His Imperial Highness the Grand Marquis
of Euffloria turn to a sniveling jelly before your tender
mercies... what's tastier than that, eh?
Well, except eating him afterward, of course.
Speaking of which... I hunger and thirst. Pass me that
bottle of MacAllen 25 Year and the duke's—er, ex-duke's—
legbone, laddie.
Ah, much better. Marinade's my own recipe, and you'll
have to best me in battle before I'll reveal my 13 secret herbs
and spices. Anyhow, lads, in the beginning, before fire and
beauty and lies, when the only dreams were of fear and gristle
and blood, all was a dark and roiling tempest — a whirling
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.
— H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature
Give me the finger, will ya? Fine, I'll just take it — and
yer other nine fer good measure!
— Jenny Greenteeth, Moregei terrorist
maelstrom of delectable terror. Primordial monsters and halfformed
night-beasts dreamed in the great dark, and their
dreams burbled and congealed like a great blood pudding.
And out of the dreams of that inchoate world came the first
redcaps. Soon the wild things hailed us as their kings. And
this was as it should be, and as it shall be again.
But one day (the first day of the world) a bitter, hateful
light dawned, and from the light strode the Tuatha De
Danaan, the usurpers. And though the meatless beanpoles
could not best us in battle, they crept like maggots among the
world's creatures and taught them new, sickly-sweet, cottoncandyish
dreams — dreams of fire, dreams of beauty, dreams
of lies innumerable. And, empowered by these new dreams,
they cast an evil radiance upon the world and wove hateful
magics to deprive us of our demesne.
We fought, of course, as only Nightmare's warriors can,
and many a pretty elf-lord found his way into our maws. But
the sidhe called forth their cousins the trolls and used their
magics to enslave the creatures born from the new dreams.
Pissant boggans, shifty eshu, sour nockers... aye, the nobles
deployed all their puppets against us, not that it did 'em any
good. We called up our nightmares, and wove 'em into our
faces, and to this day none of the Seelie's timid chimera can
look on us without quailing.
But then the sidhe played their cunningest, most treacherous
trick: the conjuring of a great ball of celestial Glamour
that blasted the very Dreaming. Aye, they lit the sun, lads,
and thus the usurpers call themselves "Seelie," for in the sun's
aura the majesty of our nightmares was reduced to puppetry
and shadow-shows.