Friday, April 12, 2013

True Fae Locale: The Red Queen

This article focuses on an aspect of a True Fae from the Changeling: the Lost universe.  In this world, locations within Arcadia can actually be part of strange entities known as True Fae.  Titles given life through wood and stone and plant where the captive humans are slowly mutated into otherworldly entities known as Changelings.  If you'd like to learn more, you can read about it over here.
 
Locale: The Palatial Gardens of Unearthly Delights

The Palatial Gardens of Unearthly Delights is a series of walled gardens containing a variety of European themes and styles that surround a palace of balconies, ball rooms and internal gardens with a strong theme of gold gilding, roses and rubies.  Each room is filled with the scent of roses and contains plenty of sofas, cushions, silken tapestries, and heavy velvet curtains designed to appear utterly sumptuous.  Gold bowls, plates, rose-tinted wine glasses and serving trays are mysteriously re-filled with food and fine wine whenever a person leaves the room.  The warm breezes seem to sigh through the many open windows.

The palace slowly re-fills with Changelings after the Night of the Red Gala and these Changelings are alternately indulged and commanded to complete certain tasks to ensure that everything is prepared for the next gala.  There are also the occasional soirees which all must attend and show their loving fealty to the Red Queen who might occasionally sample the suitors that she shall present to her daughter.

The serving staff are comprised of wisps and they are the main individuals in the palace who continue from Red Gala to Red Gala, other than the occasional Changeling that hides from the purges that sweep the palace following that night or those Changelings who are a part of the garden.  Such Changelings might either remain in hiding forever more or may choose to re-enter the Red Gala time after time.

The entrance to this Locale is a small courtyard lined with sentient roses (ancient Flowering Changelings that have lost their humanity) who threaten interlopers with poisoned thorns and whisper promises of pain to visitors and guests straying too close to the rose archway that leads to the outside world.  Such shrubs have only a few statistics worth mentioning:

Devolved Flowering

It appears to be a rose, perhaps a climber or a creeper or a bush, whose twigs and branches are covered in human skin.  The center of several of the roses contain an eye or a mouth and each of the branches are covered with poisoned thorn tokens that have been embedded within them.  They are utterly mad, completely loyal, and incapable of rescue as not only is it impossible for the mask to cover their alterations but their sheer existence is only possible in Arcadia.

Seeming: Fairest
Kith: Flowering

Intelligence: 1
Wits: 3
Resolve: 3

Strength: 2
Dexterity: 4
Stamine: 4

Presence: 1
Manipulation: 1
Composure: 1

Health: 7 - 11
Size: 3 - 7
Speed: 0
Initiative: 7
Wyrd: 5

Brawl: 4 (Grapple)
Weaponry: 5 (Thorns)

Merits:
Lethal Mien (**)
Iron Stamina (***)
Fast Reflexes (**)
Fighting Finesse (**)

Weapons:
Poisoned Thorn Tokens 1L (10 dice) Toxicity 3
Thorns may be used with Fighting Finesse or with a Grapple if embedded into the skin.

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