Beautiful Decay: A Changeling: The Lost game

Game Master Communist

Attributes:
Intelligence: o
Wits: ooo
Resolve: oo

Strength: oo
Dexterity: oo
Stamina: ooo

Presence: ooo
Manipulation: ooo
Composure: oo

Misc:
Health: 8/8
Willpower: 4/4
Glamour: 5/11
Wyrd: 2
Clarity: 6

Size: 5
Defense: 2
Initiative Mod: 4
Speed: 9
Armor:
Experience: 5

Skills:
Academics: o
Crafts: oooo (Painting)
Medicine: oo

Athletics: o
Brawl: oo (Grappling)
Survival: o

Animal Ken: o (Rodents)
Empathy: oo
Persuasion: oooo (Seduction)
Socialize: o
Streetwise: o
Subterfuge: oo

Merits:
Spring Mantle: ooo
Mentor: ooo (Greg, the Ogre)
New Identity: o
Resources: o

Iron Stamina: o
Allies (Party Scene/Drug Dealers): oo
Contacts(Artistic Community): o

Contracts:
Fleeting Spring
Cupid's Eye (o)
Growth of the Ivy (oo)
Wyrd-Faced Stranger (ooo)

Eternal Spring
Gift of Warm Breath (o)
New Lover's Kiss (oo)

Seeming Blessing:
A Beast gains the benefit of the 8 again
rule when using the Animal Ken Skill, and receives a free Specialty for the one animal that most reflects the Beast’s seeming.

A Beast’s player can spend points of Glamour to add to dice pools involving Presence and Composure. Each point of Glamour spent adds one die to one dice pool

Seeming Curse:
A Beast’s player suffers a –4 dice untrained penalty when trying to use a Mental skill in which the character has no dots.

A Beast’s player doesn’t re-roll 10s when using a dice pool involving Intelligence.

It was this talent that would bring about his downfall. Leon had made it through Junior High and into High School proper, when one day he was distracted from his work by a sense of being watched. He made to bolt, but halted immediately when he spotted the source of the gaze he'd felt; an unearthly beautiful girl, perhaps a few years older than the 15 year old. Though he had a girlfriend he didn't hesitate to approach her, and when she smiled... He followed her into the park, the trees thickening, crowding together around him, and he was gone from this world to the land of Faerie.

His time there is something of a blur, full of sweet pain and terrible ecstasy, nights of passion and terror, of painting vast, incredible vistas where his brush was made of the quills and fur that began to grow from his back, and the paint was mixed from his own blood... He was her plaything, and he both loved and hated her, craved and feared her. His escape remains unclear, what prompted it, and how he fled her realm he remembers not, but he recalls thrashing through the hedge, years older than when he had entered, a man now in his prime, but wracked with confusion and uncertainty.

When he finally stumbled from the thorny hedge he fled to the only place he could think of. It's safety may be dubious but return home he did, only to find not his parents, but a strange woman in her mid twenties, heavily pregnant. His confusion only grew, but as he watched her he realized he knew this woman... it was his girlfriend from before he was abducted! Clear thought fled him, and when it returned he found himself standing over her prone form, hands covered in blood; her blood. Her still cooling skin he had covered with intricate patterns and designs, all in her own blood and... it was beautiful. He fled in terror from the scene, at what he done, at what he wanted to do.

It was a few weeks later that things finally started to clear, at least a little... He was discovered by a member of the spring court, a kindly Ogre who brought him to Detroit and helped him understand what had happened. He had been gone almost ten years from the mortal realm, though his body was but 4 years older; he had been replaced by a fetch, and that fetch and his highschool girlfriend had become sweethearts. The old family house had been a wedding present from his parents, and now after what he had done, his fetch was being sought by the police.

The past months he has spent learning the ways of Spring, a philosophy he has heartily embraced, though it is yet an escape more than a true motivation, but given time... Greg, the Ogre who rescued him has been more than kind, helping Leon to establish a new identity (albeit a rather flimsy one), and find him work. With a grin he had suggested Leon give tattooing a try, and the suggestion seemed to click into place like it was the last missing piece of a puzzle. He found again that wonder of creating art on the canvas of flesh, but without the mind-shattering horror of taking a life...

Mien: See picture

Health: 7 Willpower: 5/5 Glamour: 5/11 Wyrd: 2 Clarity: 7 Size: 5 Defense: 2 Initiative Mod: 5 Speed: 10

Name: Morris Ashad
Concept: Rebelious young man with his ear to the streets
Virtue: Charity
Vice: Sloth
Seeming: Darkling
Kith: Gravewight
Court: Courtless(Margrave of the Brim)
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Attributes:
Intelligence: ooo
Wits: ooo
Resolve: oo

Strength: ooo
Dexterity: oo
Stamina: oo

Presence: o
Manipulation: oo
Composure: ooo

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Misc:
Health: 7/7
Willpower: 5/5
Glamour: 5/11
Wyrd: 2
Clarity: 7

Size: 5
Defense: 2
Initiative Mod: 5
Speed: 9
Armor:
Experience:
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Skills:
Academics: o
Computer: oo
Crafts: o
Investigation: oo
Occult: o
Politics: oooo (Courts)

Athletics: o
Brawl: ooo
Stealth: oo
Weaponry: o

Streetwise: ooo
Subterfuge: o

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Merits:
Danger Sense: (oo)
Boxing: (oo)
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Contracts:
Smoke (oooo)
Hearth (o)

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Blessing

The Darkling Seeming's Blessing is an Eye for Secrets – the Darkling gains 8-again on all Wits rolls and may spend glamour to add dice to Wits rolls, and gains 8-again whenever they Push themselves on a Finesse roll (a roll involving Dexterity, Savvy, or Wits).

Curse

The Darkling Seeming's Curse is an Aversion to Light – the Darkling loses 10-again from all rolls while in bright light, or while in any amount of sunlight.

Morris hadn’t done much in the past 3 months. Most of it was just spent trying to piece together what the hell happened. What went wrong? The man….the thing that took him, spoke as if he’d broken some rule; some incomprehensible, ancient rule which made little sense to the teenage son of two Syrian immigrants from the Detroit suburbs. The kind of rule which only makes sense to these strange beings, some call ‘The Others’. One of the others, this being known as the Duke of 13, snatched Morris up with his long skeletal hands and put him to work in a tower made of human bones. He spent 9 months in this spiraling fortress in a land near devoid of light. The place reeked of decay and his only company were the cries of the dead and the strange spider-people who crawled the walls. Slowly he seemed to join the ranks of these dead. Parts of his flesh rotted and fell off. His eyes became sunken; he became imbued with the dust and rot of the tower as he did his chores, which consisted of cleaning dust which never seemed to go away as well as moving and keeping track of the numerous dead and those who might as well have been dead. How he escaped was hazy, but he remembers he fought his way out tooth and nail when he snapped out of his slowly fading into the ranks of the dead, with faded memories and he arrived in rags on the streets of Detroit with a machete in his hand and bruises on his fists and the sound of the inhuman laughter of the skeletal abomination that kept him there.
When he got out he hitched a ride back to the suburbs, and tracked down his old home. To his surprise and disgust, he found a carbon copy of himself living HIS life. Writing for his school newspaper, reading his copy of The Communist Manifesto, awkwardly conversing with the protester girl he likes, getting in fights with his friends. If anything, the copy was a lot more emotional than he was. But it was all fake somehow. After a couple weeks of stalking the copy and living as a transient, occasionally finding part time work at the pawn shop, the copy seemed a little spooked for some reason. Like it got the feeling something was watching him. Since then, Morris backed off, but he knew some of them would have to make a move. Meanwhile he learned of the courts, he learned the area and the people in it. When he sought their aid, he was unsatisfied with the results and disliked many of the people in it. There he learned of the Margrave of the Brim. This was his way to escape their politics, while still remaining in the loop. If he was going to survive this existence, it was apparent he would need to exploit his skill at gathering information on what was happening with the people who had the influence and following the various trails. They guarded the area outside of Detroit, while the courts wasted their time squabbling and power-grabbing. Morris signed up. After all the Margraves told him what’s what. They even gave him free boxing lessons and a biography of Muhammed Ali, which he reads religiously The Winter Court didn’t do s#~~ but discourage him when it came to his fetch problems. The court wasn’t there for him, but that didn’t keep him from keeping his eyes on all the goings on. Since then he kept his ear to the streets while staying out of the actual court politics as possible, and keeping his eyes out for any nasties that might crawl through the hedge.

In his Mien, it’s hard to tell what age Morris is as most of his skin has either fallen off or rotted and turned a sickly green. His eyes sunken into a skull-like face and his mouth is oversized and full of pointy, crooked teeth. His flesh seems to cling to his skeletal body like something out of a zombie movie. He’s wiry, covered in ropey rotten looking muscle. His hair and face are covered in industrial looking rust colored ashes. When he coughs, dust seemed to come out of lungs.
In his mask he looks like a really worn down olive skinned teenager. His clothes are cheap, but utilitarian; consisting of worn looking sports clothes and torn up jeans and t-shirts, though he does have a suit that looks like hand-me-down, which he wears on some formal occasions even though it makes him look like something out of the Adams Family.

He still won't go near Merovic unless somebody makes him however...

Attributes:
Intelligence: ooo
Wits: oo
Resolve: ooo

Strength: o
Dexterity: ooo
Stamina: oo

Presence: oo
Manipulation: o
Composure: oooo

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Misc:
Health: 7/7
Willpower: 7/7
Glamour: 5/10
Wyrd: 1
Clarity: 7

Size: 5
Defense: 2
Initiative Mod: 7
Speed: 9
Armor:
Experience:
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Skills:
Academics: ooo (Philosophy)
Computer: oo (Hacking)
Crafts: o (Computer)
Investigation: oo
Occult: o
Science: o

Athletics: o (Long distance running)
Drive: o
Stealth: oo

Empathy: oo
Expression: oo
Intimidation: o
Socialize: o
Subterfuge: o

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Merits:
Winter Mantle: (oo)
Encyclopedic Knowledge (oooo)
Resources: (oo)
Harvest:(o)
Token: (oo) (Hedgespun raiment: armor.) The mien of this lightly woven garment is of a gown made entirely from spider silk, but from some beastly spider, for the strands look metallic and glint in the light. The mask disguises this as a bright white fencing uniform, though it's protective power is much greater
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Contracts:
Fleeting Winter (ooo)
Hearth (oo)

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Seeming Blessing:
Spend one point of Glamor to benefit from the 9 again rule on Dexterity rolls.
Spend 1 point of glamor to add Wyrd to dodge pool.

Seeming Curse:
No 10 again on any roll with Presence.

-2 Untrained penalty on Social skills instead of -1.

My "Keeper" took me when I was about 17. The contract required a first born child, and I was said child. He was nice enough. Used my knowledge about human Philosophy and other odds and ends I have stored up in my mind to entertain himself. He found my information amusing. He thought the way Physics works in the human realm was bizarre, and I still think the same of Faerie.

I spent four long years in Faerie, or at least that's what I can deduce from the newspapers and such. That would make me 21 now. I missed my 18th AND 21st birthday in Faerie... Best... Parents... Ever... I still can't believe my Keeper just let me go. There must be something else at work here... Something more for his amusement... He already made me look different than before. If I look at myself just right here I can still see it; I'm shorter with incredibly pale skin, it looks just like paper. My eyes are darker, too, more forest green than the original pale hue they had before. My hair almost looks as if its dripping ink, jet black ink. I guess he thought it would be funny to make me look like the books I'm always reading. Even worse, it seems like there is always a chill around me and sometimes I can even see snowflakes... But that cant be right! Now that I'm back, it should be gone! Four years in Faerie... It felt much longer, like I was there for an eternity. When I finally got my senses together, I went to find my parents. They were sitting pretty in a big house in Detroit with all the money they could handle... I can't believe they sold me out to get more of what they already had! Well, at least they left me a small inheritance for if I ever got out... Thanks mom and dad, you're too kind...

Strength: oo
Dexterity: oooo
Stamina: oo

Presence: o
Manipulation: oo
Composure: ooo
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Misc:
Health: 7/7
Willpower: 5/5
Glamour: 5/10
Wyrd: 1
Clarity: 6
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Size: 5
Defense: 3
Initiative Mod: 9
Speed: 11
Armor:
Experience: 1
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Skills:
Academics oo
Computer (data retrieval) oo
Investigation oo
Politics o

Larceny (breaking in) ooo
Stealth (crowds, moving in darkness) ooooo
Survival o
Weaponry o

Streetwise ooo
Subterfuge o
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Merits:
Winter Mantle ooo
Resources oo
Hollow oo (size 1, wards 1)
Direction Sense o
Fast Reflexes oo
Language (American Sign Language) oo
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Contracts:
Smoke
The Wrong Foot (o)
Nevertread (oo)
Shadowpatch (ooo)

Darkness
Creeping Dread (o)
Night's Subtle Distractions (oo)
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Seeming Blessing:
A Darkling can spend spend Glamour to increase dice pools that include Wits, Subterfuge, and Stealth - each point of Glamour increases one dice pool by one point.

A Darkling gains the benefit of the 9 again rule on Stealth dice pools.
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Seeming Curse:
Darklings suffer a -1 die penalty to all rolls to enact Contracts during daylight hours. The penalty increases to -2 dice if the sun is directly visible to them.

During his seven years in Faerie, Terrence learned much about the powers of shadow and became truly talented. His keeper/mentor seemed kind initially, but Terrence slowly began to realize that he was much worse than any mundane criminal. Worried about what would come, he made plans to escape back into the mundane world. After much planning, that's exactly what happened. ;-)

Now, Terrence lives a quiet life - occasionally stealing things for Winter courtiers, but mostly serving his own interests. He adores books and has a small collection of rare volumes (stolen of course) that he's always looking to expand. While he's quite happy where he's at, the fantasy he reads often reminds him of the wonders of Faerie, and he wonders what more he could have learned if he'd stayed....

Mien: Terrence becomes even blander-looking - if that's even possible. As he interacts with someone, his facial features gradually begin to morph into theirs. The change is so slow as to be unnoticeable, and it's never a perfect match, but those who interact with him usually leave feeling like they were talking with themselves. "Or was he even there? Am I seeing things?"

Jack's Keeper called itself the Grand Wyrm, and it was massive beyond belief. It told Jack that it sensed in him a kindred spirit, and transformed him into a dragon like something out of the works of Tolkien. He never saw his Keeper again after that. Jack comforts himself by saying that his Keeper changed his mind into that of a dragon, just like it changed his body, but he wonders if it is true. For years he behaved as might be expected, exhulting in flight, terrorizing the populace and enjoying the songs of the fair young maidens that were left to him in sacrifice. There was even a village built on wooden planks in the middle of a lake for him to attack. One day, he was attacking the village when an arrow fired by one of the town's defenders struck an unexpectedly vital spot, causing paralysis. As a result, Jack plunged into the depths of the lake, where he drowned. He remained conscious for every agonizing moment of his suffocation, and then, strangely, for the next several years of painful nonexistance. One day, he awoke to find himself alive again, for no apparent reason. This cycle repeated numerous times, for what seemed like thousands of years, with his time spent dead being roughly equal, though far less pleasant, than the time he spent alive.

One day, he awoke from his death and he was struck with a strong desire to flee. Instead of attacking the populace, he took flight and headed the other way. He flew as high and as far as he could, past the point where Arcadia dissolved into the Hedge, where his body began to morph again into a more humanoid form. When he reached the ground, he made the rest of the trip on foot, back to the real world. When he stepped out of the hedge, he found himself walking away. He confronted the doppelganger, who was shocked to see the resemblance in the odd looking man accosting him, but knew nothing else of what was going on. Later, after encountering other Changelings, Marshall discovered that the man he'd confronted was his fetch, and decided to adopt a new identity, leaving his fetch to take the blame, if there was any to be had, for his improper conduct in making arrests. He also set about building a life for himself, as a private investigator, but stayed out of Changeling politics for a time. Over time, memories of his durance began coming back in his dreams. He remembers being a dragon, sleeping on a massive pile of treasure, setting fire to those who opposed him, and he began to regret. He remembers nothing of his death, or the painful nonexistance that he endured, the only negative aspect that occurs to him is that he wonders if the townspeople he terrorized were simply props in the game, or if they were also Changelings, other victims of the Grand Wyrm. Because of that, he is very hesitant to talk about his time in Faerie. After his memories began to return, he found himself joining the Winter Court, as it fit well with the sorrow he felt, not at being taken, but at returning.

Mein: In truth, Jack looks very much like his mask, except for being covered in numerous small marks that, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves to be scales. Also, his breath always produces frost, regardless of the ambient temperature.

The hollow's entrance is the door to Jack's walk in closet in his one bedroom apartment. Because of his paranoia, it likely requires a two part key to enter, an object and phrase, something that no one else should know about. I'm still thinking about this, but probably the object would be something he used to incriminate someone, and the phrase would be a description of how he did it, for example, holding up a key and saying 'This is the key to a locker full of coke that I planted on Billy Grace.' In that case, the object wouldn't necessarily have to be the actual object, so long as it was a key.

Jef Harrington is his current name, but he wasn't always the creature that embodies Cernunnos. He was once a simple student, many years ago. Like many students right out of high school, the young man was easily distracted by the fairer sex. He studied at one of Detroit's institutes of higher learning, but was never truly focused on one course of study.

It was the sophmore year of college that he met a pretty blonde in his public speaking course. He knew he had to see more of her, and so he made a couple changes to his schedule and ended up in the same world mythology course as her. Unlike what he had expected, a college mythology course was not the breeze it would have been in high school, and his distracted state did not go unnoticed by the professor. For his lack of focus and his very presence being disruptive, he was given the difficult assignment of a research paper on the Horned Man and all cultures involving him.

Considering his low grades, he knew that getting a good grade on this paper was necessary for him to stay at the college and pursue this girl further, so one long evening was spent at the library. Feeling full of frustration, he was surprised when he was approached by one of the librarians he had never met before. After several minutes of discussion on his frustrations and what research materials he was looking for, the older, bent woman explained they'd have to go to the basement for the materials, as no one had needed them in many months and they were taking up valuable space there.

And so he was led down, farther and farther. It was only after the young man looked down and saw the traditional linoleum had changed to worn and dirty carved stone block that he knew he was in trouble. The old woman expressed her concern and the twisted, crooked smile on her lips was the last he saw of anything resembling mortal before his vision turned black.

The next he knew, there was soft grass under his back and a heady aroma of honeysuckle. The groan he let out was not something so usual, as he was a city boy, and no city boy ever expected to wake up in Detroit and smell honeysuckle. When his eyes opened, he knew something was wrong, and the old crone sitting on the stump across from him was exactly the problem. She had taken him, and wherever he was...well, it wasn't Kansas, Detroit, or anywhere he ever knew, what with it's twilight purple sky and forests as far as the eye could see, except for the small clearing he was in now.

This would be his home, she said, and he would become the world's next Cernunnos. He would be her tool, her hunter of knowledge and flesh, and he would never know boredom again. And true to her word, he never did know boredom, for she taught him constantly, and then, after many bruised knuckles (and bones all over) for failure in lessons, he was sent out into the forests, to steal secrets from the various denizens there. Sometimes it was a battle of wits, sometimes a battle of force, and rarely there was the battle of magic, but never was the battle easy.

For what seemed like years, this was Jef's life, and it was only when he was forced to kill one of the few denizens he had stolen from multiple times (and who he had begun to actually befriend, in some strange way), that he felt the resolute desire to leave. The look of glassy emptiness in the eyes of the chimera Resorae were enough to make any heart know its mortality, and so Jef swore that he would escape, with the blood of his friend still fresh on his palms.

Every moment, from then on, he stole knowledge of the realm from his opponents, in addition to what he was asked to steal by the crone, and once he had enough knowledge to find the entrance, he stole one last thing: the Unknowable Riddle. He had heard many in the forests speak of it, and he knew he had to get it. Even now, Jef doesn't know where it was, what it was, or what he had to do to get it, but he does remember that it was an actual object. After his long search for the item, he gave it to the crone, and ran while she was experiencing its unknown abilities, hearing her screams and curses at him as he ran.

It was only a few months later that Jef, ragged and worn, made his way to Detroit, a ward of the Autumn court in the beginning, but now a solid member of the Court. He knows now that the proper knowledge can defeat anything; that the proper offense can be a defense; and vice-versa as well.

Jef appears as a messy brown haired young man of 23, a perpetual pale skin, even in the height of summer, although he has yet to burn even in the worst heat. He tends to wear very comfortable clothes in muted colors and keep a backpack on his back with a few essentials and new age bits and bobbles that only he seems to find a use for. His eyes have grown darker, a deep forest green.

Jef speaks in a slow rumbling tone, one that almost ripples the air with unspoken power. His skin is covered by a fine pale fur and his eyes are pale and otherworldly. A pair of slender antlers jut from his head, and his movements are measured, even as people see that his joints match more with an animal than a human. A slight flutter of cool air surrounds him, dead leaves, lightly touched with autumn frost brush past his hair and stick against his antlers for just a moment before melting into the smell of honeysuckle and harvest night air.