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Description
Mirror Mirror, what's behind you?
Save me from the things I see
I can keep it from the world
Why won't you let me hide from me?

I've been on-and-off obsessed with a LARP game called Changeling: the Lost ever since I heard about it. Basically, you play humans who were kidnapped by the Fair Folk (who in this context can take the form of anything from cute little fairies to incomprehensible Lovecraftian horrors) and brought to the realm of Arcadia, where they were warped and twisted according to their captors' whims before somehow managing to escape. The whole game centers around seeking to reclaim your lost humanity or embracing your newfound powers, all the while desperately trying to avoid recapture.

And it gives me EMOTIONS. SO MANY EMOTIONS.

I dunno I just--the whole concept is just so cool to me. I love stories with terrible, insane, unknowable antagonist forces like the Fae, and I love stories about what it means to be a thinking, feeling human being. It's just so cool *_* And so of course I'd end up imagining characters of my own for the setting, even if I don't actually get the chance to write/RP them. This particular Changeling's name was lost in her flight from Arcadia, so she's simply known as Faun. I'm not entirely sure what Seeming/Kith she'd have: either a Beast Steepscrambler or a Wizened Woodwalker. She was transformed in order to better navigate the twisted forests and steep crags of her master's realm, but was never fully animal, physically or mentally. The creepy mofo in the back is her former Keeper, whose name/title I don't really known yet, but he was most definitely not a nice guy, even by Fae standards.

(All the below is just flavor text and backstory rambling, read at own risk )

Faun remembers very little of her life before her abduction, but she recalls the fateful day itself vividly. She knows that it was nineteen-forty-something when she tried to take her usual shortcut through the woods between her house and a friend's, and found herself wandering down a bramble-covered path she had never seen before. No matter how she tried to get her bearings, the very trees seemed to be shifting around her and the ground changing underfoot. It was only when she was well and truly lost that a hulking black form stepped from the shadows and sank unseen talons into her arm, pulling her through thorns that tore not just at her skin, but at her very soul. She emerged in a seemingly-endless forest of massive, gnarled pines, overshadowed by a cloud-scraping mountain topped by a keep of black stone.

Her new task, she was informed, was to collect the goblin fruits and alienesque herbs that grew within the forest, as well as the squirming, sharp-toothed specimens that wriggled in the mud, and bring them to the keep as he ordered. She tried to fight, to run, to defy the monster that had stolen her, but the sovereign Fae's patience was infinite, as was his capacity for cruelty. He would often leave her to fend for herself in the hobgoblin-infested forest, or let her shiver and freeze on the mountainside as it was racked by snowstorms, only bringing her into the paltry warmth of the keep when she was too exhausted to fight back. Even then, there was little safety to be found, as he would take the opportunity to further warp her broken body to his own design. Under her fur, Faun's skin still bears faded scars where he stretched and bent her legs, fused her feet into cloven hooves, and grafted horns onto her skull. The once-vibrant girl became mute and withdrawn, spending her days either combing the labyrinthine forest for the alchemic ingredients her Keeper demanded, trekking up and down the mountainside to deliver them, or huddled in a corner trying to snatch a precious few minutes of rest before he sent her off again. What he did with the things she collected, she was never quite sure, but there were times when the keep's towers echoed with the screams and wails of unknown victims, quite possibly other captured humans being mutated as she had been.

The girl seemed well and truly broken, but a spark of hope and humanity still lurked deep within, unknown even to her. Through her years of servitude, she came to known the habits and moods of the forest and its monstrous denizens quite well. She learned the game-trails and secret paths utilized by the creatures of the wild, and how to follow them without their noticing, or at the very least without their caring. In that way, she came to find the paths they used to leave the forest, as well as enter. Her escape was hideously anticlimactic, but to her it may as well have been an act of divine intervention.

However, escaping her Keeper's realm was only the first of her challenges--she still had to contend with the Hedge itself, the constantly-shifting, thorn-covered landscape that separates Arcadia from reality. Even her knowledge of Faerie-forest barely helped, as the Hedge played by an entirely different set of rules. She might have wandered for the rest of her short life if she hadn't met a travelling goblin merchant, who claimed to trade in memories rather than material goods. She offered the changeling a deal that she claimed was just what she needed: the memory of a way out of the Hedge in exchange for one teeny-tiny, insignificant little memory of her own: her name. It was a painful bargain to strike, but she didn't really have a choice. Reluctantly, she gave up her name and followed the memory to a tiny, hidden, tunnel, emerging into a world that had gone on without her for more than seventy years. The realization of this nearly broke the newly-nameless girl all over again, and she's not sure what would have happened if a fellow changeling, investigating the disturbance Faun's bolt-hole had created, hadn't found her huddled there. She was brought into the safety and security of the local Freehold, but the withdrawn, fearful changeling has yet to find her feet in its ranks. Like many there, she struggles to come to terms with what she has undergone and what she has become, and lives in constant fear that her Keep will decide to come after her for daring to defy him.

Description
Mirror Mirror, what's behind you?
Save me from the things I see
I can keep it from the world
Why won't you let me hide from me?

I've been on-and-off obsessed with a LARP game called Changeling: the Lost ever since I heard about it. Basically, you play humans who were kidnapped by the Fair Folk (who in this context can take the form of anything from cute little fairies to incomprehensible Lovecraftian horrors) and brought to the realm of Arcadia, where they were warped and twisted according to their captors' whims before somehow managing to escape. The whole game centers around seeking to reclaim your lost humanity or embracing your newfound powers, all the while desperately trying to avoid recapture.

And it gives me EMOTIONS. SO MANY EMOTIONS.

I dunno I just--the whole concept is just so cool to me. I love stories with terrible, insane, unknowable antagonist forces like the Fae, and I love stories about what it means to be a thinking, feeling human being. It's just so cool *_* And so of course I'd end up imagining characters of my own for the setting, even if I don't actually get the chance to write/RP them. This particular Changeling's name was lost in her flight from Arcadia, so she's simply known as Faun. I'm not entirely sure what Seeming/Kith she'd have: either a Beast Steepscrambler or a Wizened Woodwalker. She was transformed in order to better navigate the twisted forests and steep crags of her master's realm, but was never fully animal, physically or mentally. The creepy mofo in the back is her former Keeper, whose name/title I don't really known yet, but he was most definitely not a nice guy, even by Fae standards.

(All the below is just flavor text and backstory rambling, read at own risk )

Faun remembers very little of her life before her abduction, but she recalls the fateful day itself vividly. She knows that it was nineteen-forty-something when she tried to take her usual shortcut through the woods between her house and a friend's, and found herself wandering down a bramble-covered path she had never seen before. No matter how she tried to get her bearings, the very trees seemed to be shifting around her and the ground changing underfoot. It was only when she was well and truly lost that a hulking black form stepped from the shadows and sank unseen talons into her arm, pulling her through thorns that tore not just at her skin, but at her very soul. She emerged in a seemingly-endless forest of massive, gnarled pines, overshadowed by a cloud-scraping mountain topped by a keep of black stone.

Her new task, she was informed, was to collect the goblin fruits and alienesque herbs that grew within the forest, as well as the squirming, sharp-toothed specimens that wriggled in the mud, and bring them to the keep as he ordered. She tried to fight, to run, to defy the monster that had stolen her, but the sovereign Fae's patience was infinite, as was his capacity for cruelty. He would often leave her to fend for herself in the hobgoblin-infested forest, or let her shiver and freeze on the mountainside as it was racked by snowstorms, only bringing her into the paltry warmth of the keep when she was too exhausted to fight back. Even then, there was little safety to be found, as he would take the opportunity to further warp her broken body to his own design. Under her fur, Faun's skin still bears faded scars where he stretched and bent her legs, fused her feet into cloven hooves, and grafted horns onto her skull. The once-vibrant girl became mute and withdrawn, spending her days either combing the labyrinthine forest for the alchemic ingredients her Keeper demanded, trekking up and down the mountainside to deliver them, or huddled in a corner trying to snatch a precious few minutes of rest before he sent her off again. What he did with the things she collected, she was never quite sure, but there were times when the keep's towers echoed with the screams and wails of unknown victims, quite possibly other captured humans being mutated as she had been.

The girl seemed well and truly broken, but a spark of hope and humanity still lurked deep within, unknown even to her. Through her years of servitude, she came to known the habits and moods of the forest and its monstrous denizens quite well. She learned the game-trails and secret paths utilized by the creatures of the wild, and how to follow them without their noticing, or at the very least without their caring. In that way, she came to find the paths they used to leave the forest, as well as enter. Her escape was hideously anticlimactic, but to her it may as well have been an act of divine intervention.

However, escaping her Keeper's realm was only the first of her challenges--she still had to contend with the Hedge itself, the constantly-shifting, thorn-covered landscape that separates Arcadia from reality. Even her knowledge of Faerie-forest barely helped, as the Hedge played by an entirely different set of rules. She might have wandered for the rest of her short life if she hadn't met a travelling goblin merchant, who claimed to trade in memories rather than material goods. She offered the changeling a deal that she claimed was just what she needed: the memory of a way out of the Hedge in exchange for one teeny-tiny, insignificant little memory of her own: her name. It was a painful bargain to strike, but she didn't really have a choice. Reluctantly, she gave up her name and followed the memory to a tiny, hidden, tunnel, emerging into a world that had gone on without her for more than seventy years. The realization of this nearly broke the newly-nameless girl all over again, and she's not sure what would have happened if a fellow changeling, investigating the disturbance Faun's bolt-hole had created, hadn't found her huddled there. She was brought into the safety and security of the local Freehold, but the withdrawn, fearful changeling has yet to find her feet in its ranks. Like many there, she struggles to come to terms with what she has undergone and what she has become, and lives in constant fear that her Keep will decide to come after her for daring to defy him.