by Gavin Bennett (Changeling: The Dreaming | Resources)
"And I believe in the future- Paul Simon, "The Cool, Cool, River"
Introduction:
This is a short interlude story, that can be placed anywhere within your Changeling chronicle. It does vaguely follow on from Ex Libris Nocturnis� "Northern Lights" Chronicle, but only in the vaguest sense. It is a sequel, a rejoinder, if you will, to the somewhat� odd� storyline in White Wolf�s Werewolf books, of Samuel Haight. Fear not, this story does not feature Haight, but rather, it focuses on one of the consequences of his actions.
See the classic Werewolf supplement: Rage Across the Amazon, for more details.
This is a short, one session story, that involves both role-playing, and lots of violence. It offers the characters a chance to "let rip" with all they fae power and nature. It also means that their enemies are similarly unfettered.
Note for Northern Lights players: The last episode left the characters defeated and in disgrace. Their enemies have won an important part of the conflict. The characters have very little credibility at home, or in the Kingdom of Northern Ice.
Chapter One: The Dreams of the City
Prelude:
For several days, the characters dream of a city, a golden city deep in the jungle. It seems to be an odd combination; of Hollywood fantasy and something else, something� other.
Each time they have this dream, the view become clearer.
Until finally, on the last night, a figure emerges from the city and says:
"I am inviting you to bear witness to a miracle."
Also, Boggans and Sluagh characters will hear weird rumours about a strange light that keeps arcing across the sky every night, a light only visible, it seems to the fey. It is a light that comes from the south, and carries with it a warm, balmy wind. The characters do not experience this, nor do they know anyone who does, but second and third hand stories tell of it.
Scene One: Start
The characters are home; wherever home is. They have gone back to their normal lives. (They are not particularly well regarded amongst Fae society, if you have been playing Northern Lights, but things are, either way, quiet.) The dreams are somewhat irritating, but that is all.
The one morning, one of the characters receives a phone call; from a voice they can�t quite place. The voice, which belongs to a man, asks them to come and meet him at a certain place. (The place is local parkland, somewhere where the characters know well, but where nothing remarkable happens.) He wishes to meet them on the coming Friday night, at sundown.
If they agree: Go to Scene Two.
If they do not agree: the dreams will continue, and the dreams will spread. Eventually, they will be called before the Duke. The Duke doesn�t know what is going on, but all his subjects have gotten very disturbed over these dreams. He would like to know the source of it. They are geased to go find out. Then go to Scene Two. It�s a heavy-handed way of doing things, but it is effective. However, it all depends on your gaming group. If the dreams and the odd phone call don�t quite get their attention, use something more personal. Perhaps a friend, or a ward, or even an enemy of the characters disappears while searching for more information.
Scene Two: The Park, and the Light.
If the characters arrive for the appointment:
They arrive on the Friday, at sundown. They look up just in time to see a blue-green light blaze across the sky, arcing up from the south, and settling in the park (or whatever), like a rainbow. A figure appears, in the light, and then the light fades. He gestures towards them. He is still somewhat distant. He starts walking towards the characters. As they approach, as they almost get close enough to see the man clearly, a shot rings out.
The man staggers backwards, and falls. He is dead. Three men in dark overcoats and shades stride over to the man�s corpse.
If the characters intervene:
The men will do their best to stop the characters interfering. The men are Technocratic mages, from the New World Order. Use the "Technocratic Badass" stats from the Changeling rulebook. They are armed with handguns, but with bullets that do double damage to Changelings. If the characters flee, the men will let them live. But make it clear to the players in the first few rounds of the fight, which the characters are well out of their depth. The men reek of Banality.
They will not use any blatant forms of magic, or super technology, but rather they will use quiet, subtle tricks, such as shooting a little faster than the characters, or hitting a little harder, or not being precisely where the characters aim that powerhouse punch.
Almost invariably, they will close in on the stranger�s corpse, and then do something with it. The corpse bursts into flames, and then is gone, as if it never was.
The men will then walk away. One will turn to the characters and say: "This is none of your concern. Stay out of it."
If the characters do not intervene:
The men will watch them, and take photographs of them. Unfortunately for the characters, the cameras the men use are not normal cameras. They are cameras, which take pictures of the characters true selves. That means they may very well have mugshots of our heroes, sporting blue skin and horns.
They will then go and burn the body.
When the men leave, everything is normal in the park. Utterly normal.
Except for one thing. Visible only to Changelings, not far from where the man died, lies an envelope.
If the characters do not arrive for the appointment, but investigate later.
They will find, rain sodden and stained, a small white envelope. Nothing else remains. However, the characters may get the feeling that they are being watched.
Scene Three: Letters.
Inside the envelope is a short note.
Friends �
My name is Juan De Salamanca. That is not my true name, but it is a name I have gone by these past 500 years.
I am of your kind, but my family�s names do not appear in any book of the ancient ones. In truth, that is how we wish it. We are the lords of the jungles and of the high places along the ancient river. Before the humans, before the Jaguar-men, we were there.
But our realm is fading; our time has gone, run out.
My people intend to pass from this world, into the land of memory and shadow.
But we will not die in vain.
We will use our blood, our dreams, our magic, and our very life to recreate something that is lost.
My friends, I beseech you, I wish you to come to that nation the mortals call Brazil, and find the secret falls above the mighty Amazon, and bear witness to our passing.
Please do not let us die in vain. Please come, so that we shall be remembered, even though, we were never truly known.
Juan De Salamanca.
There is a small mark in some ancient writing. A character who makes an Intelligence + Enigmas roll against a difficulty of 8, recognises the mark as a glyph, a word in an obscure variant of Enochian.
On the reverse side of the letter is a series of numbers. An Intelligence + Survival roll against a difficulty of 6 reveals that this is a GPS co-ordinate.
If any characters consult any maps of the Amazon, the co-ordinates mark a place, which is still deep jungle, in Western Brazil, in the foothills of the Andes, but no waterfall, or anything interesting is marked there.
Chapter Two: The City of Dreams
"Some stories are magical, meant to be sung
Song from the mouth of the river
When the world was young
And all of these spirit voices rule the night"
- Paul Simon, "Spirit Voices"
Scene One: Meeting the Lorekeepers.
How do the characters get to Brazil?
Well they have several options. They can fly by commercial airline to Rio. They can charter a plane to Rio, or some other Brazilian city, or if they have super resources get a plane that will fly them directly to the area. The nearest airstrip is about 20 miles away from their co-ordinates. The cheapest way would be to fly to Rio, commercially, and pay for passage for a boat going up the river, and dropping off near the co-ordinates.
Either way, the characters are going to end up standing on the banks of the Amazon, in sweltering heat, in the middle of a thunderstorm, soaked to the skin.
Allow them to stand around and complain for a little while. Then, they start seeing movement in the waters. At first it appears to be a Dolphin. But then, as the moving shape gets closer, it turns out to be a man, swimming, naked, under the brown, muddy water. He climbs out of the river and walks to them. His skin is unusually pale and almost pink. He is incredibly beautiful, and seductive, and turns the heads of both male and female.
"You are the ones Juan sent for?" he asks, oh so nicely, oh so seductively. Have a few of the characters make a willpower roll, or start blushing. The newcomer plays this seductiveness up for all it is worth.
His name, he will tell them, is Rodriguez, but again, it is not his true name. If anyone asks him something stupid like "what kith does he belong to?" he will look at them blankly, walk up to them, kiss them full on the lips and then start laughing.
Follow me, he will say, eventually, and then start walking, still naked, into the jungle.
Note:
Yes, Rodriguez belongs to a new, as yet undetailed Kith. And no, you can�t have the stats for it. Yet. Unless you beg me a lot. The Kith concept is based on a local legend of the Amazonian jungle� that the dolphins in the river must be killed, or they take human shape, and seduce your husbands or wives.
The walk through the forest seems to take hours, but canny characters will note that the light in the sky never changes.
Then, as if by magic, they emerge into a sunlit glade. There, waiting for them, naked save for robes made of the beautiful feather of some unknown bird, wait seven Sidhe-like fey. They do not speak, but a small, dark skinned young woman walks towards them, and introduces herself, and the others.
Up close, the woman is quite beautiful, nothing like the silent people behind her, but rather pretty nonetheless. She is a woman of Amazonian Indian stock, but there are other bloodlines in there too. She is small, and slender and graceful. But something about her eyes� there is something inhuman about them.
"Welcome," she says, "We have been waiting for you, witnesses."
Scene Two: Stories from the Youth of the world.
In the glade, the woman will sit down, and motion them to sit down too. Strange, shadowy people will run in and give the characters fruits, cushions, and anything else they may need. The people look like humans, but you cannot focus on them. They sound like humans. They leave no smell.
"Those are the ghost people," the woman will begin. "They are people who did not heed the old men�s warnings about certain parts of the forest." She will smile then. "My name is Aranta. That is the name my people gave me, at my birth. My people are the remembering people. As long as there has been life, we have been remembering. I have to share with you a little of those memories. My people wish me to witness what is to come this night, but your people must witness it to."
She will not reveal much more, but she will talk to the characters, if they so desire. She is very good at misdirection, and all conversations will be utterly circular. The characters will not learn anything more than she decides to tell them. She is, by the way, one of the Mokele. She will not tell the characters this.
"Once upon a time," she begins. "There was a war in the dawn of the world. There was a war, and certain of these warriors did not side with either army, and were thus exiled from their home. Or so they say. These exiles travelled the newborn world, like innocent children. They came to rule the newborn world, for a time, before man came. This is the story. Our people have no memory of these things. Perhaps they happened. Perhaps they did not.
In the deep forests, in the high mountain peaks, and under the deep ocean waves, they ruled the longest. They ruled this forest since my people came here. That much is true. It is written forever in memory. They built cities here, under the moon, in the wildness of the forest, cities in the trees, cities of gold and silver, cities of things now lost to the world.
But man came, and they withdrew, until there was but one city left. Then a mortal man grew jealous of their city, and he made war, with his magics, with secrets stolen from the people. He took their city, and ruled over it. The people fled into the forests, and lived amongst the humans, or in the high mountain places, or under the river itself, with the Dolphins.
The man who stole their power grew wise as the years passed, and grew old. The Spanish came to this place, and they raped and they killed and they brought the cross, and the sound of the bells, and the words that were so hateful to the people of these old cities. He, like the people before him, withdrew himself and those he protected, deeper and deeper into the heart of the forest.
Nations rose and fell. The hidden city of El Dorado, the magic man, came at last to its doom. A mortal man who dreamed of challenging the very heavens killed him, and stole his power.
That was six years ago.
The man who stole El Dorado�s power died in some war. The people emerged from hiding, what few of them are left, and began to prepare. They can make the city come back - no� not the city� "
One of the heretofore-silent people speaks.
"We are not interested in rebuilding the city. That is long past. We cannot even save the forest. But we can work a magic. We can work a magic to save the magic of the forest, so that it will not perish, and that perhaps it will grow, even though the world grows old."
The speaker is female. The robe she wears is made from the feather of a bird, which does not exist, its plumage the brightest of all colours. The woman�s skin is the colour of honey, and her hair is the colour of shadows. She has big, sad eyes. She does not introduce herself.
There are 4 female fey, and 3 male fey. There was another, but he is now dead.
The characters have several hours to waste, while the people prepare the ritual. If the characters explore, they realise that they are no longer only a few miles away from the river, but rather they are far, far away from it, deep, deep into the jungle. They keep hearing several small brooks close to the glade, but they cannot get close enough to see them.
Aranta is genuinely friendly. She tells them that she has studied in Rio de Janeiro and Madrid and Buenos Aires. She speaks perfect English, and speaks many different dialects of Spanish, as well as other tribal languages. She does not fully understand what the fey are doing, but she knows it will mean the end of them. She is utterly in love with the fey of the forest - that is the best way of describing her relationship to them.
They do not return her devotion. If the characters press her on this, she admits that she dreams of being with them, being like them, and fantasises that they love her back.
The dolphin man will return, and start attempting to seduce one or more of the characters. He thinks this is one huge joke, but he does it anyway.
Eventually, though, the sky will darken. It is time for the ceremony to begin.
Chapter Three: The ceremony of innocence is drowned
Scene One: Rituals.
The characters are asked to remove their clothing, and instead wear robes of the amazingly bright bird feathers. The robes are incredibly comfortable. They are front opening, and hang from the shoulders. They are infused with magical glamour energy. Just wearing them makes the characters feel good, and increases their glamour pool by two.
The 7 "Sidhe" fold their robes, and hand them to Aranta, then arrange themselves in a circle in the centre of the glade. Each one then slices a long cut down their torsos from their throat to their crotches. They begin to bleed, at first slowly, then profusely. Each is in great pain. Their blood is blue coloured. It stains the ground as it falls. The stain on the ground gets bigger and bigger.
It seems as if they can hear the world�s heartbeat growing louder and louder. The fey in the circle groan with pain, but they hold on.
Finally, Aranta will come to each of the characters and ask them for a token. By this she means a magical thing � something small, but something magical.
Note: this is something merely to annoy the players. It has no real relevance to anything, other than: do they piss off Aranta or not�? As a storyteller, do you want the characters to have an angry, hurt, Mokele as an enemy for the characters?
Then, suddenly, there is a scream, and the dolphin-boy will run into the clearing, missing an arm, bleeding from everywhere, yelling: they are coming!
Out of the darkness steps eight men in dark suits, dark shades and armed with strange looking guns.
Scene Two: The Technocracy Arrives.
The characters have a little while, perhaps as much as five minutes while the technocratic agents try to work out what is going on. The characters won�t know this, but the technocracy are firmly on hostile territory, and as powerful as they are, the energies in the clearing are more powerful still.
Eventually though, they will be ready.
Roll initiative for the two groups. Assumably the characters will want to get their clothes, get their weapons (if any!) and get ready to fight. If the characters lose, then they will still be in the process of getting their act together when the technomancers start moving in.
Considering the fight:
There are at least 8 technocratic mages. If your characters are a particularly scary bunch of combat monster twinks� then you can double that amount.
Let rip.
Give the characters the opportunity to break away from the fight and heroically prevent the technomancers from disrupting the ritual.
If the characters do not stop the mages, Aranta will� and will do so rather ruthlessly. Unless the characters have a really good excuse, then she will hate them forever, for endangering the last chance of the people she loves.
Eventually, though, the fight should draw to a close.
The characters should be in a very bad way, but hopefully, they will have won.
Scene Three: Epilogues.
The heartbeat sounds gets louder, and then, one by one, the "Sidhe" fall down, into the circle, dead. Their bodies flicker and burn, and disappear. As the last one falls, the woman who spoke to them, they hear a voice saying: thank you.
The heartbeat stops. The forest seems to rise up, clawing at the prone forms of the mages, and the roots reach out, and stab into the Mages bodies. Any still alive will scream for a little while. The roots grow and grow until there is nothing left of the humans.
Then, there is silence. It is very dark, and all around is carnage. The dead Sidhe, the dying form of the dolphin boy, the spreading bloodstain, the character�s wounds.
"Have you witnessed?" Aranta asks them before the sun rises.
As the sun rises, they see, where the bloodstain was, a small patch of a strange white flower. It is a lower unlike any they have ever seen before. Its petals are white, but they shine platinum in the moonlight.
They shimmer with glamour.
"When these reach maturity, they will keep magic inside them." Aranta says. She has a full-bloomed flower in her hand.
"Make a wish," she says. Then everything goes black.
The characters awake, at home, in their own beds.
Their wounds seem to have gone; almost nothing remains of their adventure,
save one thing. In the park, and in some other places� tiny little white flower
appear, growing very slowly, but growing, nonetheless.
Consequences:
