Changeling/Theme/Gentry

Local Gentry

The Brackish King

Fae Titles: His Gracious Highness; King of the Deep

Description: The Brackish King looks something like a massive octopus, and something like a mind-bending horror.

Methods and Madness: Literally everything in his realm was once human: every tree, every wave, every statue, every fish. His obsession with only crafting using what he has stolen or bought infuses every decision the King makes.

Arcadian Realm: The Brackish King’s realm resembles the a twisted estuary, and a strange garden within it. He chooses those who are already outsiders for one reason or another, and crafts them into exhibits for his garden, guards to keep his garden safe, workers to buff the statues. A Lost taken by the Brackish King might be one of his treasured mermaids, kept close to amuse him, or sent on border patrols to prevent anyone from escaping. That Lost might have been instead crafted into a tree, growing in the half-salt, half-fresh water. Perhaps instead a statue, gazing forever at his magnificence. A Wizened to craft beautiful new buildings or to serve his every whim. Darklings live as shadows in the water. Water Elementals are kept in marble reflecting pools. Most who have escaped from his realm come back with strange eating habits — some go entirely vegan, some become totally carnivorous. Others report having overcome cannibalistic urges. The Arcadian version of the shoreline estuaries where the Pine Barrens meet the sea, and the small beach where only his most treasured creations are allowed to occasionally play as a very special treat? Food sources are limited. Either you learn to eat very strange plant life, or you turn on each other.

Huntsmen: No Huntsmen have been seen from The Brackish King for a very long time.

Fetches: His captives almost invariably come back to find a fake in place; their lives are sometimes well-maintained and sometimes thrown into chaos. Former Denizens:

Le General Taire

Fae Titles: Master of Verdun; His Silent Majesty

Description: Le General Taire is never seen except as a distant shadowy figure, directing troops. Messages come to combatants in a genre-appropriate way: crackling radios filled with distant voices and horrified screams, the far off howl of another wolf pack, a carefully folded message smuggled in the heel of someone’s shoe. Those who return often have strange superstitions about sending or receiving messages.

Methods and Madness: Le General Taire not only

Arcadian Realm: The actual name is unknown, but the nickname - Verdun - was given by a French WWI vet that was also an escapee, and fits rather well with a Realm of eternal war. The Realm is carved into dozens of pockets, each filled with endless war games. One realm is filled with Beasts, hunters and hunted; another filled with trenches and mustard gas and twisted war machines; yet another is modern urban warfare. The only constant is conflict. Just about any Seeming or Kith can fit within Verdun, as long as they fit within the concept of war: medic, warrior, perpetual innocent bystander.

Huntsmen: Le General creates Huntsmen much more than any other locally-known Keeper and is often obsessed with reclaiming those who have escaped Verdun. His Huntsman was responsible for the death of Michael Zloof, the Winter Crown prior to Marjorie. If a Title has been passed to any of those Huntsmen, it is not yet known.

Fetches: Approximately half of the time, Le General does not leave a Fetch behind when someone is abducted. Oftentimes, those Fetches which are left find themselves meeting bad ends, destroying utterly the lives left behind, leaving a metaphorically blasted hellscape in their wake.

Former Denizens: Teagan

Sweetness

Fae Titles: Her Gracious Majesty; Queen Of Sugar

Description: An exaggerated creature built of sugar, spice, and everything not so nice, Sweetness seems all sweetness and light until seen up close. She can be by turns perfection in all her forms and a horrifyingly petulant tyrant; she can be truly overwhelming in her unpredictable wroth, or sweet as... well. You know.

Methods and Madness: Sweetness almost invariably buys her subjects at the Goblin Market; they are often humans who accidentally stumbled into the Hedge rather than captured by her Huntsmen. She's been known to discard Lost who no longer intrigue her, simply letting them go, if she doesn't kill them by neglect.

Arcadian Realm: Sweetness' Realm is -- predictably -- made of spun sugar, gingerbread, candy... and it all rots. Her creations when in favor are stuffed full with all the good things they could possibly want: food, intoxicants, the company of other Lost, and when out of favor, left to wander the outer reaches of her Realm, scrounging for moldy cookies from last week's rebuilding. She constantly smashes everything she builds and starts again, and when she's in one of her rages, no one is safe.

Huntsmen: Does she even have any? Could she bear to give up any of her power, and would she even care enough to get back someone she'd discarded?

Fetches: Invariably, fetches are left, and the lives into which they are inserted are perfectly maintained, putting a beautiful vision of what could have been in front of those who manage to return.

Former Denizens:

Non-Local Gentry

The Queen of Mirrors

Fae Titles:The Eternal City , The Viridian Beacon of Unity

Description: The Queen is more often a presence than a physical being, the sensation of being watched from every angle writ large. When She does deign to take material form it often takes the shape of a regal female figure whose apparent ethnicity shifts on a whim, a crown of reflective glass ever-present on Her head and a soft green glow that trails in Her wake.

Methods and Madness: There is little rhyme or reason to those taken in by this particular Keeper, at least to those who end up in its clutches. People of all sorts and backgrounds end up on the streets of the Eternal City, filling various roles as the Queen deems fit and kept placid (for the most part) by the Beacon whose light shines throughout most of the Realm. Those that the Queen finds most interesting or useful are often tasked to serve as Her eyes and ears in the City, the brand marking their position allowing for Her to observe the realm through their perspective.

Arcadian Realm: The Eternal City is just that: a collection of brightly-lit buildings and dim alleyways that stretches on forever, the roads running through it looping back in on themselves until you eventually end up right back at the city center, awash in the green glow of the Beacon that calls all of the city's residents back into its chrome-covered embrace. The aesthetic is a mishmash of cyberpunk fantasy and strict brutalism, with mechanical enhancements regularly accompanying the changes wrought by the Wyrd itself upon its inhabitants. The mark of the Queen of Mirrors makes itself known in the ubiquitous modes of observation - cameras, reflections in glass windows, and through the physical brands placed upon Her direct servants who comb the city streets to find those who plot to leave Her realm. This leads those rebels to find places outside of Her emerald-tinted gaze to plot and plan, carving out places of refuge in the dark ruins of buildings buried under the weight of the ever-growing metropolis.

Huntsmen: While rarely seen in the Philadelphia area, the Huntsmen from this realm tend to carry the Title of the Viridian Beacon, taking the form of mostly-humanoid beings of light or, when on the Ironside, men and women dressed in tidy black suits with sunglasses to match that cover the brilliant green eyes that show the mark of the Title upon them.

Fetches: The Queen almost always leave behind a fetch when laying claim to a new citizen of the City, although the quality of the programming in these often-robotic replicas can vary depending on the time put into observation beforehand. Those who She has had Her eye on for some time can barely be told apart from their original, while others go cold and uncaring like the machines they are.

Former Denizens: Asbolus

The Stone Haunter

Fae Titles: Duke of Ten Thousand Urges; Viscount of Victims & Villainy; He Who Walks Between

Description: The Stone Haunter is less seen and more felt- a presence within His domain, the Den of Ten Thousand Urges. His is a sort of artful architecture that sees the changes he wants arranged organically as his captives work His desired changes on each other.

Methods and Madness: Originally seen as a deterrent against permanent settlement in an area of New England, The Stone Haunter primarily takes people from alleys and dark places in His territory in New England. He seems to favor two types of people that are completely inimical to one another: the innocent and the criminal. Often prone to taking children, the locals native to his territory are often set on edge when a sudden emergence of disappearances shoot up around their homes. The reason for this is part of a game He plays with His victims: murderers, rapists, violent thugs and others have returned seeing the error in their ways... but the reverse is true of the innocent — they tend to come back with an insatiable urge for chaos. People taken by the Stone Haunter have to be of particularly hardy stock in order to survive after escaping from the Den of Ten Thousand Urges. This particular Keeper is known to have changed with the times, possibly due to influence from European settlement, or a personal fixation on the urban.

Arcadian Realm: The Stone Haunter's realm is unrelentingly urban. It possesses islands of apparent safety, though these are, in truth, simply honeypots to lure new victims into the clutches of the residents. There are endless twisting sewers and catacombs; unending alleys and fire escapes that never reach their roofs; twisting hallways leading from offices to hospitals to schools. Adults taken inexorably find themselves in their own preferred hunting grounds, only to discover their prey is hunting them.

Huntsmen: As The Stone Haunter is not local, the frequency of His Huntsmen isn't known. Only his escapees know anything about how frequently they're run to ground.

Fetches: The Stone Haunter rarely leaves a Fetch behind. He prefers for his escapees to return to lives ruined by their own crimes- or to families completely unprepared to handle the hellions sent back to them. The chaos surrounding his younger victims makes it easier to track them down, as does the media uproar surrounding the apprehension of his reformed criminal captives- and makes it unsurprising when they vanish, either apparently to escape punishment, or as what seems like further expression of their new rebellion. Either way, His purposes are served by not leaving doubles behind to serve time or soften the emotional tension of a missing family member.

Former Denizens: Vorpal