by Gavin Bennett (Changeling: The Dreaming | Resources)
Somewhere between the closing of the day, and the rising of the moon, they live. Somewhere between the first glimmers of night�s end and the dawning of the day, they dance. They are the wild ones, the beautiful ones, the mad children of some forgotten time.Their time is long past, but echoes still linger.
They are the fey, the faerie Changelings.
Introduction
Welcome to the "the Fey" an alternate view of Changeling: The Dreaming. This will be a series of optional revisions for Changeling, to add a modicum of darkness to your Changeling game. Why another alternate, you ask? There is already an excellent revision, Changeling: the Celtic Cycle. This is a very good question. However, to define the faerie folk is like trying to catch starlight. They do not make excuses, and they do not fit under nice comfortable labels. What is true for one, is not true for all.
There is of course, a second, and far more valid reason, which may benefit your game. Players can, just as you, the Storyteller can, read this website, and read Changeling: The Celtic Cycle and read all of the published White Wolf sourcebooks. But, the more options you have, of background, of rules, of magic, of setting, the less they know, and in truth, the less they know, the stronger the game will be. The game lines of the World of Darkness are awash with mystery.
For the third reason, as the Changeling Developer here at Ex Libris Nocturnis, I want a view of the Fey that I am comfortable with.
This shall be a three part series. Part one, which you are now reading, will discuss an alternate set of Kiths for Changeling. It will include details of setting, as well as adding to the storyline, The Northern Lights, you will see developing on ELN over the coming months. Part two, which will follow next month, will detail an alternate, and more detailed magic system for Changeling, as well as notes on how to integrate magic from Mage: The Ascension, Changeling: The Dreaming, Changeling: The Celtic Cycle, and the system detailed here. Part Three will take up the rear, detailing new rules for "chimerical" creatures, as well as a short view of such other familiar Changeling: The Dreaming groups as the Hsien, and the Inanimae. A Lexicon, full "Splat" write-ups and a more complete guide to the (slightly) altered society of the Changelings will also appear.
And yes, we will find a better name for the Satyrs. Elucenes will do for now. Empusae, or Seleni maybe?
Argument
In 1347, at the height of the Shattering, a Magus of House Merinita of the Order of Hermes, Ziva Vucinovic, compiled the "Book of Hosts," a guide to the politics and passions of Fae-Rie. She was a Magus of the Transylvania Tribunal, born in what is now modern day Croatia. She realised that there were too many aspects of the Fey to summarise, or to categorise, and while his fairy kin were helpful, he knew that they prized their secrets. In the end, he compromised, and divided the fey into "hosts" along the lines used by the Seelie court in some parts of Europe. He categorised the fey by their associations, by their habits and by their magics.
A small fragment of his text was discovered in 1996.
Some scholars of the "Circle of the Merinita" have compiled this short list, working from the fragment.
The Host of the Shadows: The Host of the Shadows are the faeries of the Seelie court who practice dark magic and have powers over shadows and darkness. They are the fewest of the Hosts, and the least trusted. They are typically of Nightgaunt and Dwarrow stock, and dwell in the deep places. The Changeling group, the Sluagh are kin to these. Also called Umbrae.
The Host of the Stones: The Host of the Stones are the dwellers in the deep places of the World and Arcadia. They are the workers of masonry and metal. They are the Dwarves and the Trolls, the Nockers and the Boggans of Arcadia. Their home is a beautiful and cold place, deep beneath the sunlit fields. Also called the Nidavellim, for that is one of the names for their world.
The Host of the Waves: The Host of the Waves are the water dwellers and the mermen and the merrows, the spirit of rain and ponds and rivers. They dwell in the realm called Atlantium, the watery paradise of Faerie, and in the deeps of the Oceans of the World, where magic and dreams still dwell. They are also called the Aquae, the people of the waters.
The Host of the Skies: The host of the skies dwell in the winds and the starry vault beneath Heaven. They are the spirits of starlight and gusts and storms. They are amongst the strangest and most beautiful of the fay, and it is said that the blood of the Angels still flows through them. They are also called the Celestials, for they are like the stars in mystery and glamour.
The Host of Dreams: These are the fae of dreams and fire. They are the dragons and the Nightmares of legend; they are spirits of fire, like the Salamander, and they are kin to Gods. To mortals eyes their hair is flame-coloured and subtle strength shines from them. They walk through the Dreaming and the fairylands and the oneiras, where they may speak with dreamers and changelings. Sometimes they seem as Chimeras, or monsters from the world of dreams, but they are true, and number amongst themselves many things extinct from the world. They are also called Oneiriae, for they have power over dreams. They are the rarest of the fay, in these Autumnal days. The Dreaming once had a king, and they served him, but he has long ago departed, and the Oneirae have faded since then.
The Hosts of the Wilds: They dwell in the wildwoods and the Wilderness where mortals fear to thread. They are the Satyrs and the Unicorns, the Redcaps, the Clurachauns, the Leshii, and, perhaps, the Nunnehi. They dwell in the few last woods in the World and in the vast wilderness of Arcadia. It is said that the Garou and the others of the Changing Breed are of their blood, and many Garou, Gurahl, Bastet and Corax dwell amongst this host. Their masters call them the Arboreals, but they claim no name for themselves.
The Host of Destiny: The Hosts of Destiny are the farseers and those who can see the futures. They are the Eshu and the Fates, the Norns and the doomsayers; they dwell apart from the others, even in Arcadia, either wandering or living in their distant homes. They are valued as advisors in the Court of the Sun, but their truths are dangerous things. Only rarely have they kin in the mortal lands, save the Eshu Changelings, but their eyes have the depths of centuries in them, and they can see secrets that the future holds. Some call them Fatae, and these strange fairies were the first people of Arcadia to walk amongst mortals.
The Host of Beauty: The Beautiful ones, with their seductive eyes and their lovely forms, are spirits of love and lust, and they dwell in the wilderness, and the seas, and sometimes in the world amongst the models and actors and fashionable people. It was of these that Keats spoke of in the poem "La Belle Dame Sans Merci." Sometimes they steal souls, and sometimes they lead mortals to their doom, not knowing, not caring. Tragedy is their only constant bedmate, but they know many things that are secret. Their children are mostly female, but male children have been known; they are darkly beautiful, catching the eyes and the hearts of male and female. Classical mythology called these spirits Nymphae.
The Noble Host: These are the rulers of the fay of Arcadia, who serve the King and Queen of the Seelie. They are the Knights and Princes and Dukes of the once proud lands of Arcadia. They are named High Sidhe, Manitou and Alvar. They plot and counterplot and indulge in foolish games, playing their fiddles while the world burns, but some are true, and they are leaders. It is these that the scholar named Tolkien called Elves. They are powerful and graceful, kin to gods and Angels. The Wild Elves are common faeries, and they belong to all the Hosts, but it is from their numbers that the rulers of the fay are drawn.
The Book of Hosts ends with the following message. "Into these Nine Hosts, all the Seelie Faeries of Arcadia belong. It must be remembered, though, that Faeries are wild and divergent and numerous. They are called the Moonshadows, but they are also called the Wild Ones, and that describes them well. Faeries are so called because they are touched with the light of Arcadia, and Dreams. If a mortal were to find his way to the Perilous Land, he would be most likely changed, and touched by faerie powers for ever after. If a mortal is but to read of them, he is equally imperilled."
The Worlds of the Fey: A World of Darkness
The world is getting old. Once, when the world was in its Spring, newly made, everything was new, and magic flickered across the sunrise, and across the night sky. But Summer came, and then it too, passed, and age chilled the bones of the Earth. Winter is coming, soon, blown in on hard bitter winds, and broken promises.
Here comes the night. Here comes the flood.
Alone, in the inky void, sits a small doomed world, spinning in infinity around a dying sun.
It won�t be long now.
The end is coming.
You can feel it in the sudden chill of the winter night, in pallor of the moon, in the deep, unreal, shadows of the night. You can feel it in the wind, whispering through the trees, and in the violence of the fall storms.
It was never like this before, you think, and then correct yourself for your foolishness. But it is not foolishness. You are right. It was never like this before. The end is coming, and all the signs are there, whispering to us, and disturbing our sleep. Night is coming. But this night is different. No dawn will break after it. The sun will die, never to rise again.
In the darkness, things are stirring. In the dank, humid, starless night, old things move, and plan. In the scattershot amber strobe of the city streetlights, you can catch the sudden moments of violence and pain and blood.
These are mere skirmishes, skirmishes before the battle begins, before the war starts. As the world draws to a close, forces from out of dream and memory prepare to do battle.
In a few scattered warm places within the cities, on lonely haunted crags in the mountains, on rocky grottos by the oceans, the Fae gather, and prepare for war. They have few allies, now, few remember them, but they do not care. They are descendants of a beautiful and fell race. When they die, music and dream and magic will die with them. They cannot hope to win. But ah, it will be a glorious fight, and bards would sing of that battle, were there any left to sing of it. In the darkness, things stir. Beneath the earth, the sleepers are wakening, and when they wake, the very earth and sky will be rent apart. In the dark corrupt places beneath the world, ancient evils turn their eyes to the distant light of the blood red moon, with hunger in their eyes. Terrible storms tear across the lands of the dead. Ghosts walk the living streets. Their time is coming, soon. They are unopposed, save by a scattered few. Time is running out.
Night is falling.
Shadows pour down through the streets like rainwater, and the dank air gets colder. The streetlights stain the sky now, coughing into flickering existence, casting light the colour of rotting fruit down the street.
It�s late autumn, and its getting cold; you can feel the hard breath of winter on the damp November air. You hurry home through the gathering twilight, your Metro stop a few minutes walk away. It�s not a good area of town, but it�s a shortcut.
You hear it, there, for less than a heartbeat, yes, there. It�s a sound, a sound you have known since childhood when your uncle, with the wild eyes told you about hell, where bad children go to scream in fire and agony for eternity. That sound. It�s the sound of the damned crying out.
Somewhere inside, you know what that means. You never believed in God before, or magic, or angels, or the supernatural, but you know. You know that the gates of hell just opened.
The smell catches you next; first a gentle kiss of incense, and then the acrid, sweet aroma of napalmed children. Your stomach turns. You walk faster, down past the cathedral-shells of the empty office buildings. The street children, dirty and pathetic, look at you with knowing heroin eyes. Then, they too catch the scent. They do not show fear; they calmly, so calmly walk away. They know.
It�s the secret that everyone pretends to forget.
Hell is real; it is close, and Heaven�. Heaven is not for the likes of us.
Fear makes you forget the time; everything exists in the now, the opium-clouded moment of horror. You dare not look back, walking down to the strip, down to where its light and there is people, and you are hoping that there, surely there you will be safe.
But even as you bask in the glow of the fake lights, you know, you know, that there is nowhere safe. Here, out of the darkness, amidst the noise and the press of humanity, the clubs and the bars, here the smell is worse. They are not behind you. They are everywhere.
And then�
Behind you.
You look, against all sense, all reason, you look. He looks so normal. Just some young guy, dressed like a student. So normal, so banal, just some guy. The devil wears many guises. He smiles, reaches out towards you. Instinct drives you back, shrinking away. His kind laid claim to the world before even the Dinosaurs. He is smiling now, drinking your fear, your horror.
There is a terrible, terrible light, and your skin burns. You close your eyes, but you cannot stop seeing. Something happens to him. Something made of fire and terror and anger.
�Oh god, oh god,� you gasp, kneeling down, entranced by the light burning in front of you. The light hears you; it turns and speaks with a voice made of music, you look again, it�s a young man, not much older than your self, with old, old, wise eyes.
You cannot remember what he says. It is something old, and sad and lonely, it sounds like a lament for a world about to die. You touch your face, and it is wet with tears. You look up at him, he waves. And then he is gone.
You know what you just saw. You saw a Devil of Hell or some other place, and something else. He was beautiful and terrible, with a wild, mad laughter. You do not know which scares you more.
You have never been the same since. You know what the world is truly like now. They think you are mad. Perhaps you are. Not that it changes anything.
The world of Changeling is not our own. It is a dark, old, warped, cracked mirror being held up to our own, a caricature, and a falsehood where truths might hide. It is a fiction, a satire, and a horror. It is a world where the ravings of the paranoid, and the broken voices of children�s nightmares are true, all true. It is a world where the worst excesses of the millenialist fundamentalists are justified. It is a world broken every morning by an endless futureshock, a howl down the winds of eternity, break the fake sheen of reality each morning. The end draws nigh. Welcome to the World of Darkness.
Think of a world where much of sub-Saharan Africa will be depopulated by AIDS and famine by 2020. Think of a world where a ten-thousand mile "ethnic faultline" runs through Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, a faultline marked by dozens of forgotten wars, genocide, and internecine hatred. Think of a world where the ozone hole has opened over both poles, and the icecap is melting, steadily, steadily. Think of a world where wars started 1000 years ago still rage, even though all the participants have long forgotten why. Think of a world where money can buy anything, silence, honesty, innocence and the fate of nations. Think of a world where toy companies decide what children will play. Think of a world where soldiers who fought in the Persian Gulf are dying of a mysterious illness, and their government calls them liars and cowards, and denies all evidence to the contrary. Think of a world where, in the last century alone, a quarter of a billion people were murdered in the name of politics.
That is not the World of Darkness. That is not the fiction. That is the real world. The world of darkness is worse, and it is worse for one reason. In the world of darkness, our nightmares are real.
In the World of Darkness, a brooding, angry god cursed all creation, and doomed it to destruction and war. In the World of Darkness, a man named Caine defied God and was cursed to become a terrible monster, whose children still roam the world. In the world of darkness, forgotten angels were the form of animals and give way to terrible rage, to kill and destroy an enemy they cannot reach. In the world of darkness, foolish mortals control the fate of nations, and the destiny of creation as a philosophical exercise, and know not what price they must pay. In the world of Darkness, the dead roam, forgotten shades, denied Heaven, or even the sanctity of Hell, living in an empire built on slaved souls, awaiting the touch of oblivion and darkness.
"There are 6 Billion people on the planet right now. By the time that this sentence is finished, 6 more people will have been born, and 2 will have died of hunger. 6 Billion human lives, being born, growing up, playing or working or hurting, procreating, getting old, dying, and on and on, endlessly.
Six billion ignorant human lives.
Six billion living, breathing mortal souls.
But how many of them are different, how many of them are no longer quite mortal?
This question is more important than you can possibly imagine.
Some say the figure is 10 million. 10 million pretenders, masked ones, inhuman, unnatural, touched by powers beyond knowledge, waiting.
Waiting until the red star flickered into life in the sky.
Waiting for the black sun to rise.
Waiting for the blood red moon to bleed into creation."
-The Fey scholar, Chretienne Anouille.
The World of Darkness and Changeling
This Chapter outlines the setting of Changeling. It is the stage on which this terrible passion play is performed. It is the cinematic, noir-thriller chiaroscuro place inside our heads where we make this game, this story come to life. It is but a reflection. But it is a reflection of many things indeed.
The greatest, most obvious difference between our world and this one, the game world, is that angels and devils and werewolves and vampires and other things are real. They play out their wars, their horrors against a background of an ultraviolent, sadistic, post-modern environment. It is a painful juxtaposition of post-millenialist fear, of Old Testament vengeance, and casual inhumanity. But this game, or those games like it, is not about evil. They are about finding goodness within yourself and others, even when everything is at its bleakest, at its most banal, and most evil. Do not forget. Evil is banal, pointless, boring, petty. It appears sexy, powerful, alive, but that is all surface. Good is too small a word for the opposite of evil, but it will suffice.
And this world is at its most banal, its bleakest and most evil.
You have to look even harder. That�s the essential challenge of these games.
Arcadia�s warriors have been fighting this war since the beginning of time. They are trapped between the light of Heaven, and the darkness of the eternal night. They are forever young, forever beautiful echoes of the youth of the world, which they ruled once. They have not forgotten. But, time and death have taken their toll. The elders amongst them have grown cold and, indeed, monstrous. They play out their ancient schemes, which reach across worlds, playing games of war and death whose stakes seem infinitesimal. But still they play.
The ancients grow old, but it is the young, the newborn Changelings, who must bear the brunt of their manipulations and intrigues. While the elders play their fiddles while the world burns, young Fae are dying. They have unearthly power, and the fire of ancient days in their veins, but they are weak, mere footsoldiers. Their unearthly power is fading away now, so very, very fast.
Like the terrified boys at the Battles of the Somme and Ypres, they are expected to follow the dictates of distant rulers, whose decadent intrigues leave the way clear for the final destruction of all things, and charge heedlessly into certain death.
And death does await them.
The enemy grows strong. The demons rule the night now, they simply have not announced the fact yet. They too recruit mortals, because they can, because it amuses them to do so. The demons claim to be rebels, fighting the dominion of Heaven. Perhaps they are. But it is undeniable that the demons are just that � devils of the Pit, monsters of the shadow, seducing, corrupting, and evil. They feed on innocence and trade in souls. They are creatures of dark, uncaring, sadism, of random violence, and sick, depraved, destruction.
Some say they are creatures of ultimate freedom, other that they are creatures who seek only to enslave and control. Only they, themselves, know.
They tempt and corrupt and enslave. New souls, they claim, remaking the chosen into creatures of nightmare and pain, soldiers and agents and terrorists of their great rebellion.
These are the players of the epic struggle of Changeling. This is their world, their stage. This is the Gothic Punk world. Where the story goes now is ultimately up to you, the Storyteller, and your troupe of players. Experiencing this world is a shared experience. It will be as deep, or as shallow an experience as you can make it.
Gothic Punk & the Fey
The term gothic punk means many, many things. It means more than those who coined the term ever intended. It has many resonances, connections, and twists. It invites you to think of many things. Gothic makes us think of 80s music, of Heavy metal, of black clothes and white, white face. It makes us think of the claustrophobic drama of the novels by Bronte, Shelley, Lovecraft, LeFanu and Stoker. It makes us think of the great architecture of medieval Europe. Punk invites us to think of the sheer energy of the music of the late 70s, the aggressive stance, the disharmonious patterns. We think of Sid Vicious and Kurt Cobain�s inglorious ends. We think of the philosophy of tear down and destroy, of anarchy and violence. We think of the science-fiction literature and attitude of writers like Gibson and Sterling and Cadigan. Somewhere between all these disparate concepts lies the essence of the World of Darkness. Somewhere between all these ideas lies the essence of your World of Darkness. These games merely provide raw material. We give you an empty canvas and some paints.
Gothic, in these games, refers to the atmosphere, the surface of this world. In this world, the Bauhaus buildings of the 1920s and the art-deco skyscrapers of the 1930s did not give way to glass polygons of today�s cities. The ancient tenements and poorhouses were not torn down. These things lingered, and indeed, infected the growth of the cities. Huge buttressed buildings loom on the skyline, like blasphemous cathedrals. Gargoyles sneer from each corner. Rainclouds loom angrily overhead, showering the cities in a light, endless drizzle, even in the grey daylight, and pours down endlessly during the dank, greasy nights.
The state is controlled by vast, labyrinthine, almost Kafkaesque beauracracies, corrupt and endless. They dance citizens to a tune of bribery, red tape and corruption. The streets are clogged with the homeless, with criminal gangs, with the destitute.
You cannot see the stars. The clouds, and the colour of the streetlights, and the pollution ensures that. The buildings loom over you, black with pollution, bigger than imagination, bigger than nightmare. The cities are haunted, haunted by madness and broken dreams, and vile miasmas.
The church is powerful here. There never was a "Vatican 2." They never made their new churches from warehouses, or made friendly, modern buildings, with folk masses, and picture made by the good children. No these Churches are serious houses, on serious earth, deep, shadowy buildings where the pale sunlight shows but little, flickering through stained glass portrayals of the tortures of the martyrs, the sufferings of Christ and the war in Heaven. Services are in Latin. The priests preach a dictatorial lesson of purity, denial, suffering and acceptance, while altar boys hope that tonight; the priest will not be as cruel.
It is a baroque, medievalist, and ritualistic world.
Punk, in these games, is about the attitude, the balance to the looming baroque shade. It is about pointless, futile rebellion that all too often burns itself into frustration and violence. It is about the mood of the shadowed streets below. It is about the lives and dreams of the petty criminals, the Mafioso, the illegal immigrants, the street kids who never learned to read; trapped in a cycle of violence and loss. The police are utterly corrupt, or draconian. Pollution pours into the rivers, and when the sun comes out in the hot, choking summer, the cities reek of death, or excrement, and of chemical sickness.
In an endless series of underground clubs, drug fuelled dancers and musicians scream that it is better to burn out than to fade away. Their currency is hard electronic music, punk rock and the stirrings of a second coming of grunge. Others sing of decadence and the romance of the doomed. Still others embrace nihilistic indulgence. Forget tomorrow, their songs whisper. Live for yourself, and live for today, no one else matters.
There is no hope here, but chemical escape. There are no dreams here, save that of survival. Death, sudden, random, violent death, is ever present. The murder rates in cities like New York never went down.
In this world we are food for the gods. But, as they say, it is better to burn out than to fade away.
Amidst all the pain and suffering, amongst the filth and the squalor of the cities, and amongst the vast wastelands of the wilderness, the Fae, the Wild Ones walk again. They come, not as wild tricksters, but brittle echoes of what was before. They are wrong things, memories of a time long faded, some that has lain sleeping in the blood of humanity for centuries. But something happened, and an ancient prophecy was fulfilled, and slowly, that which was sleeping has woken up.
And although the world is old, although everything is fading, although doom seems nigh, they will not go gentle into that good night. Never again. Never, ever again.
The Faeries, The Changelings of Ireland, and the Celtic Lands
Once, the island was covered in the wildwoods, huge swathes of oak, ash, rowan and beach forest, as far as the eye could see, and as deep as the human heart. It was only over the granite mounds of the coastal hills that the forests let go of their dominion. It was here the first people came to Ireland, and made their homes.
These first people were mortals, a megalithic people from the Iberian Peninsula, or Continental Europe. They came to the warm, temperate country, and made their homes. They made small settlements, rarely venturing into the forests.
They had good reason not to.
The forest, and the island belonged to the old ones. They were not human; they were not mortal. They had been there for a very long time indeed. And, at night, when the wind blew in from the west; they could hear voices and songs drifting down, unsettling their sleep, touching their dreams.
Who were they?
Were they once angels, fallen from grace onto the earth, or were they old, old ghosts walking again on the world, or were they children of the goddess of the night and the dark and blood and violence and beauty? None knew.
What mattered was the lord of the wildwoods, children of the moon and the stars, ruled the night, ruled the distant places, and ruled the land. The people knew that they were merely guests on the ancient�s lands. It was an unspoken compact, as true as a child�s love, as immortal as the heart. The old ones ruled the lands of the dead, they knew; they were kin to stars, and sleeping dreams. It was unwise to offend them.
But things changed. The old ones became colder, crueller. Little slights by the people magnified by inhuman patience and malignancy, led to death, fire, and warfare.
Then the Tuatha DeDannan came. They came fleeing far off flood and peril. They landed on Ireland�s western shores, in the cold, stony lands beyond the forest. There came a time of fire and war to the wildwoods, and rumours of terrible battles in the west. When the battles were done, the Tuatha DeDannan ruled Ireland.
There is no need to recount the tales of those times; they are recounted elsewhere. Night draws in, and time grows short, there may be time for such tales later, when all that lies before us is done.
Their rule did not last. In the end, they gave way to the coming of the FirBolgs. The Danu made castles and mansions and hidden glens in the hills, and in the forests, claiming kingdoms away from the sight of mankind. The Children of Dana, as they were called; children of the Goddess (for they were but children of Gods, not Gods themselves), still ruled over the night and the stars and the hearts of those who loved them. But already they had withdrawn. There was no real violence, not after the initial battles with the FirBolgs, the Danu were not defeated. But their time had passed, and many fell into endless sleep, drifting away from the world itself. Others, tired of their burdens of rule, slipped away, into the night, to wander the vastness of the world, and the land of shadows.
In time, the lordship of these hidden glens and secret fortresses passed on, to those we now know as the Sidhe. The Sidhe of the line of the Danu, but they were something of a lesser breed; they were petty, flighty, and dishonourable at time. They had the nobility of their grandsires, but none of the puissance, or the grace, or the godlike features. The fairy queens and kings were smaller, somehow, diminished. It was this gentle fading that gave way to conflict, as lords fought others for control, for dominance, for mastery; as if being named "king" or "prince" could somehow reverse the passing of years.
In the fields and valleys of Ireland, forest gave way to tillage, as the Celts came, and absorbed the older peoples. The Celts told the forgotten stories of the Tuatha DeDannan, now long past their time of the world, as songs and poems, and tales told around the fire. The Druidic priesthood did not worship gods, and they did not worship the Tuatha DeDannan, but they paid homage to the former masters of this island, nonetheless. The remaining Danu lords influenced the Celts, revealed certain secrets to them, and helped them in their wars.
It was then that the seeds of the ultimate tragedy were sown.
Certain of the Children of the Danu, and the people of the land fell in love. The consequences of this can still be felt today.
It is from these matings that those we call Changelings were born. It is also from these lineages that such heroes as Fionn MacCumhail, Cuchulain, and Oscar, son of Uisin, were born. But the roots were there, for the ultimate undoing of the Fae, of the coming of the dying days and the Shattering.
Cuchulain, grandchild of the DeDannan, suffered his heritage with geasa and doom. He was marked by the Morrigan, the dark lady of warfare and seduction. He died, some say, faerie maddened, fighting the very waves of the sea; others that he died, alone, broken, by a standing stone, using his spilled entrails to tie himself upright. His terrible visage, even in death forced his enemies to retreat, until at last, one of the Morrigan�s ravens alighted on his shoulder, to proclaim that the man was dead.
It was a family of these children, who were of both the earth and sky, who were placed under a curse by their evil Stepmother, and made live out their lives as swans on the tides, in the wind and the rain for eternity.
The beginnings of the shattering came a long way before the Black Plague. Rather, the days of the Fae dominion of Ireland, and indeed, the world ended on the night Christ was born. On that night, no demon, no devil, no witch, no spirit, no warlock, no vampire, who was not protected, survived the terrible onslaught of the divine. Those who saw it first hand, did not live to tell the tale. Others do not speak of it, save in euphemism: the Quietening. That night, the Fae were no longer rulers of the world, and the wildwoods. They withdrew still further, crossing the oceans on the shimmering reflections of moonlight; building their fortresses and hidden places further from mortal eyes. Their time was passing, they knew.
As the years passed, the Druids gave way to the Culdees, and the St. Patrick, with his harsh Roman laws. The Anathema had other faces; church bells and the sound of prayer. The people turned their backs on the Fae, and the Fae turned their backs on the people. The Fae had old enmities with the Divine, after all. The Divine brooked no competition. At first, the missionaries and monks actively sought out the lords of the sunset and sky, taking their lives and souls into peril to glimpse the wonder of the Children of Dana in their glory. But time passed, and even that, rare as it was, practice stopped.
There are stories of some of the Wild Ones entering monasteries and convents, but these tales are few, and typically exaggerated. The Celtic Church was a breath of cold wind, however, compared to what was to come. The Pope gave dominion of Ireland to the British crown, and forces loyal to the British crown invaded. Forget any patriotic notions you may have; this was a land grab, a geopolitical manipulation by the Crown of England and the Roman Church. The Celtic Church was swept away.
The 13th Century saw the remnants of the Faerie powers pushed further and further into the shadows, until they were not on earth any more. Little by little, the Sidhe took ship and sailed across the moon to distant ports, little by little, the wars amongst the wizards destroyed Fae realms, little by little, and Ireland gave way utterly, to the power of the Church.
Then the Shattering came. The plague spread but little to Ireland. The main port cities were affected and hideously so, but once outside the cities, the disease faltered, until at last, it died. The disease reached its high water mark, and fell away, in Ireland. In its wake, though, the world had changed. Empires had fallen, millions were dead. The bindings between Earth and the Fairylands twisted and broke.
It was over.
A few scattered, wandering fae, broken princes of kingdoms long dead, walked the world as minstrels and knights errant, merchants and pirates. They captained ships of exploration; they fought and died in the wars of England and France. Some died, some lived, and others married mortals, and had families, and then, faded out of view.
