Changeling - Players Guide.pdf

Organization
Once upon a time, an eshu asked a sluagh of his acquaintance,
"So, how do you of the shadow-dwellers arrange yourself?
1 wish to find the greatest of the sluagh, and tell my tales to her,
and would have you tell me where she can be found."
The sluagh laughed, and sipped her tea, and pointed to a
spider web that stretched proudly across the face of her grandfather
clock. "You see that spider web, friend eshu? Each strand
touching many others, all connected to the whole? Gossamer
thin we are, yet set one of us a-quiver and we all know."
But the eshu did not understand, and went seeking another
who could help him find the greatest of the kith. And
each sluagh he found greeted him in all courtesy, and asked how
he had fared with all the sluagh he had visited before, and
named them all by name.
Thus, did one eshu come to understand the ways of the sluagh.
There is noGrand High Keeper of Secrets, no aged loremaster
sitting on a flowstone throne deep in the heart of a chimerical
cave. There are only individual sluagh, meeting in twos and
threes to exchanged whispered secrets over cups of thin tea or
glasses of watery wine. Many sluagh laugh over the delusions
maintained by other kith that the shadow-dwellers have secret,
orgiastic rituals in vast caverns beneath the earth. Such noise and
bright light, the sluagh point out, would inevitably be more pain
than the sociability would be worth. Furthermore, since no
sluagh can speak above a whisper, the whole affair would be
pointless since every secret uttered would be drowned in the
general din. Still, many sluagh enjoy playing up these rumors
simply for the fear they inspire in gullible Kithain.
While highly private beings, sluagh are still attracted to the
trappings of the formal. When sluagh meet sluagh, all of the
proprieties must be observed to the letter, else the visiting sluagh is
disgraced and is likely to receive, as punishment, a great deal of
company in the immediate future. As sluagh are bound by their own
codes to be polite to those who are polite to them, an endless wave
of well-behaved company is pure anathema to them. Other kith
visiting the lair of a sluagh are advised to be as courteous as possible,
else they will suddenly will be transformed from tolerated guests to
intruders, with disturbing consequences.
While high tea is not exactly an official methodology for meeting
among sluagh, it serves as well as any other. Any sluagh seeking
company extends formal invitations wrapped in spiders' silk to any
other sluagh whose company they desire. The invitees are bound by
custom to attend, and over weak tea or curiously sweet wine, share the
secrets they have learned since the last time tea was convened. The
sluagh in attendance are not bound to tell all that they know, or even
to say anything, but to remain silent is considered rude. Stories are told
in order of age, with the oldest grump speaking first. Secrets are then
told in sequence down to the most callow childling, who, no matter
what, will be expected to contribute to the conversation.
Unlike most of the Kithain, sluagh tend to be monogamous.
On the rare occasions that a sluagh takes a mate, the match generally
is lifelong. Still, it is so rare for a sluagh to find another with whom
she feels comfortable dwelling that weddings among the kith are
rare. As for more momentary attachments, certain satyrs swear that
there's nothing like a hot (or cold) date with a sluagh, but most
Kithain shy away from even touching one, let alone anything more.
Courts
Introduction
Surprisingly enough, the sluagh began as a Seelie kith. While
they may have been born of fear, from the time that they achieved
consciousness of their purpose, they were dedicated to punishing
those who did wrong. They may have been a bit overenthusiastic
in their pursuit of wicked children and dishonest merchants, but
their rigid respect for tradition and single-minded focus on punishing
wrongdoing made them accepted, if not welcome, in the
Seelie Court. The fact that the sluagh encountered the trolls first
of all the other kith, as they pushed into Scandinavia and the
Baltic states relatively early in their existence, may well have
helped steer them, at least temporarily, toward a Seelie existence.
Long before the Sundering, however, the sluagh as a kith had
turned from the Seelie Court to a more studied neutrality- Accused
of punishing indiscriminately, the misunderstood and feared sluagh
severely limited their discourse with the Seelie Court. They essentially
removed themselves from its province, preferring solitude to
unpleasant company. While technically still Seelie faeries, most
sluagh consider themselves such simply because they find the
Unseelie's disrespect for formality disturbing. There is little of good
or evil in the sluagh's choice to remain neutral; merely a desire to
observe rather than to be observed.
Seelie
Seelie sluagh tend to have positions as bookstore owners,
librarians or antiquarian shopkeepers. Well over half are female,
and their chimera are usually animal-like as opposed to
inanimate objects. This is not to say that those chimera are cute;
most tend to be large crystalline spiders, shimmering gold
centipedes and the like. Indeed, the entire kith has a fascination
with spider webs, and an intact, dew-spangled spider web is
something that most sluagh will pay a great deal for.
The vast majority of Seelie sluagh absent themselves from
court as much as possible, though if they come across information of
great import they will often send it along by messenger. Usually there
is one knight at any given court who has earned the sluagh's trust, and
this fae will become an information conduit to be reckoned with.
Unseelie
Unseelie sluagh are an entirely different kettle offish (as well
as worms, snakes and other unpleasant animals). Heavily weighted
to the male side, the roster of Unseelie sluagh contains most of the
more active members of the kith. These are the spies, the hidden
messengers and the saboteurs of the Shadow Court. They strike
from shadows rather than watching from them, and give the kith
much of the bad name it has acquired among the sidhe.