Darkling
“Yet each man kills the thing he
loves.
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword”
―
Oscar Wilde, The Ballad Of Reading Gaol
You know the
old joke: “Hey! Where are you going with my shoes?” “Shits going down. I can’t
outrun the Gentry but now I can sure as hell outrun you…” Hilarious. Everybody
laughs…except the Darkling sitting in the corner. She carries a broken heart,
either shards of her own or someone else’s. Her curiosity and obsession with
‘knowing’ brought her to the darkest realms of Faerie, and not everyone made it
back…
Once, she
chose the shadows over the light and it saved her, and that’s a choice and
result she can never totally shake. A Darkling is never really among friends; a
Darkling is always waiting for the light to chase the shadows, and her, away.
The righteous path, the “good guy” way of doing things, left her to suffer
horrors at the hands of her Keeper, and she will never again let the right way
of doing things stop her from doing what needs to be done. Darkness is not, and
never has been about good and evil, and the Darkling is a living embodiment of
that.
Once upon a time: Before being drawn in by a Keeper,
many Darklings were powerfully dedicated people. Dedicated to a job, to a family,
to a friend, or to a secret lover. While few Darklings were what one would call
universally ethical, they stood steadfast about that one important thing. Darklings
may have been old school company men, or dedicated wives who stayed even
through all the affairs. She believed in the things she believed in, and steadfast
clung to her ideals: It made her strong. It also made her a pushover. At some
point along the way, the thing she believed in most betrayed her in a very real
or powerfully imagined way. So powerful that the Darkling was driven to the
brink needing a confession…needing the ‘truth’. It was this first betrayal that
sent the Darkling-to-be, and more often than not her supposed betrayer, fleeing to the Hedge or into
her Keeper’s arms. She walked into the Hedge, already bleeding, and more than
wolves can smell that kind of blood in the air.
Here’s the
thing: Walt Disney Lied! You didn’t spend your time at your Keepers pleasure
with talking animals, sing-along songs and glorious Technicolor dreams. What
you endured were the things reserved for the darkest dregs of the human psyche,
shapeless nameless things impossible to recall but burned onto the imagination
forever - the so called “hyperarousal”… according to clueless armchair
academics. To survive you had to fade out of sight, out of memory, even out of
existence to evade the eldritch and arcane horror of Faerie. From the shadows
you observed hollow mysteries and forbidden fantasies. You wore many masks,
made from the memories and emotions and sometimes things more… physical; to hide as those you followed
silently. Knowing with each weary step you became more like the unspeakable
horrors you evaded.
The Escape: Frequently, as it is with many
Changelings, the Darkling-to-be was not alone in her Durance, with others like
her suffering alongside. Her turning point, then, is when she watched a hero
walk away. When she watched another Changeling make a choice escape, and in
effect left her behind. Real or imagined, first, the Darkling felt abandoned,
and then, she knew that no one was going to save her. And so, she did what she
had to do to escape. In her mind, or in reality, that meant screwing someone
else over. It meant leaving someone or something important to her behind. It
meant taking advantage of the situation and making the hard choice not the
right choice. In that decision, she let shadows in; she accepted it in and
abandoned the light and righteous path. She decided, in that key moment, that
the righteous are fools or liars, and she would be neither. But it broke her
heart into a thousand shards, glinting in the shadows around her.
Now: You are
shunned, you are despised: you are a monster. All these thoughts, these ‘tells’
you see on all those you pass might be imagined but you couldn’t care less to
find out. You know all the hidden paths both physically and metaphysically…and
you go where you please. You wear a mask of a thousand faces and can be all men
to all people but you’ll never again be the coward your Keeper made you. You
spy and thieve on your own terms, and demand whatever you want in return –
because they all know you could just take it if they refuse. You may be often
overlooked, though honestly you prefer it that way, but you true friends know
that for all you seem shy and hesitant, you’re the one who’s always heard the
right whisper…and the one prepared to act on it…
Nicknames: the
Bewitched, Mountebanks, Wisps
Regalia: Mirrors
Blessing:
Gain an additional dot of one Finesse Attribute at character
creation.
If you spend a point of willpower, your character may touch
something insubstantial and become part of it for three consecutive turns,
transubstantiating into smoke, shadow, a sunbeam – whatever’s handy. This
ability also costs a point of Glamour if anyone is looking directly at her at
the time.
Curse:
In addition to your character’s other breaking points, she
risks Clarity damage with a dice pool equal to half her Wyrd (rounded up)
whenever a secret or important piece of information she knows turns out to be
false.
Tales
She’s visits the children first in
dreams, playing games with them there and coaxing them out of their shells. She
then starts visiting them in the flesh, careful never to let their families or
other grownups see her. The parents think she is an imaginary friend, and she
lets the fiction persist. The children don’t care no one else knows she’s real
– they’re happy just to have a companion who understands them…
He’s killed, more than once, in the
service of his country, and it feels like there’s always blood on his hands. He
sleeps well every night, though, because he’ll put down the bad guys, because
no one else will.
Necromancy, demonology, fetishism and
the homunculus crafting? They’re lost, forbidden, but why? What makes them
evil, what makes them dangerous, and who uses them despite the taboo? She means
to find out, and if she must fight fire with fire, she will…
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