Strangeling

These are faerie beasts with an incongruent appearance that would make an Innocent observer notice them. Some practitioners, such as strangeling spymasters, specialize in them.

Ablities

They can take a large variety of jobs but they're best known as betrayers. Using the glamour they sometimes wield they can construct weirdings to entrap families then sell them off to Dark Fall markets, using a form of Establishment that slowly pushes the targets outside of reality into the clutches of the fae.<ref name="w">The common Strangeling bag of tricks include weirdings that disrupt reality and convention, creating ominous signs, odd disruptions in reality, and causes for confusion or suspicion. This could include a crack in the wall that regularly lets birds find their way indoors, grass growing out between floorboards, whispering sounds in the night, antique and old fashioned items being found with increasing frequency, and/or details in pictures on the wall changing. The weirdings themselves aren’t as important as the broader alteration they help cultivate. By setting up weirdings, testing and teasing innocence, raising suspicion and having it dismissed, they set a precedent. The trap draws closed around the family, who have been nudged into crisis or confusion, separated from their employment (but perhaps kept around by the ‘fortuitious find of a gold watch that can be sold, left by the Strangeling), distant from friends.

It is then that the Strangeling may simply unlock the door and let their partners in: Dark Fall Faerie who answered when the Strangeling put feelers out. With things prepared as they are, the weirdings can be spent for a burst of display, taking over the surroundings and making the moment a culmination, while also allowing Others that would normally be driven away from civilization to enter and act freely.

In effect, the family is a package, neatly wrapped, prepared, and ready for delivery.

While this is the common playbook, and the underlying expectation from Fae and practitioners both, not all Strangelings do this. Others may become enablers to bad children, finding some kindness from the child while imparting some mischief, or they may simply be foraging. - STRANGELING</ref>

Formation

How they come into being is unknown but they are also under a bit of selection pressure, forced to become adroit at what they do. As in the successful Strangelings are able to keep operating while the unsuccessful ones are stamped out.

Behavior

Can be of any moral stripe just like the fae they interact with.<ref name=":0">STRANGELING</ref>

They can also steal children or disguise themselves as household pets, acting as rogues or scoundrels. Their often used to located lost or stolen items, using their abilities to break into houses and their skills at theft<ref>Strangelings were like a lower-case-f fairy or a capital-F Fae’s changelings, where they swapped out actual babies for fairy or Fae babies, except they replaced household pets. Scoundrels. Rogues. Mercenaries. Fae and fairies couldn’t really get into or at households, so a strangeling sometimes handled opening the doors. Or if a Fae lost something and a human picked it up and took it into their house, sometimes the strangeling would handle tracking the object down, infiltrating the house, getting the item.- Excerpt from Let Slip 20.3</ref>

Variations

Changelings

Substitute themselves for human infants.

Oaflings

Related more to summer courts with a focus on combat with attendant advantages.<ref name="oaf">Oaflings are like Changelings, but brutish and more related to the summer courts. They lack finesse, glamour, but often have special rules or auras to them. - STRANGELING</ref> Squirrels may be a possibility.<ref>“Me Neh. I like a good scrap. I’d rather go to the deep woods and find some squirrel headed fairy shitter that walks around with a sword and shield and show ’em how a real fight’s done. Rub their face in the dirt and make them question their life choices.”

“There are squirrel knights out there?” Avery asked.

“There’s almost everything if you look long enough. Those spirit-infused animals are total losers. Sniffing their own shit pellets and thinking it smells like roses and adventure. Making tea with acorns? Fuck you, little squirrel nerd. Makes me mad just thinking about your stupid tea.” - Excerpt from Back Away 5.4</ref> They lack the suitability and glamour of strangelings and other Fae.

Notable examples

• Schaff Household
  • Blankshanks (Graymalkin/Grimalkin Strangelings)
  • Spades (Graymalkin/Grimalkin Strangelings)<ref>Let Slip 20.4</ref>
• Ridget Fallbranch (Oafling?)

References

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