Earth-9: From Darkness to Champions II: Faerie

Tao of Hypertime Home > Original Works > Earth-9 > From Darkness to Champions

From Darkness to Champions II: Faerie

Once upon a time, the dreams of mankind gave birth to wondrous children.

These beings were creatures of pure possibility given form, beauty and fantasy made flesh, magick itself given the breath of life. Most were beautiful and noble. Some were beautiful and terrible. All were beautiful and powerful. They rewove the world around them with an awesome, terrible ease that only the mightiest human mages could equal. Though only the sidhe -- the true "fair folk" of their kind -- counted many masters of Glamour magick among their kind, every kith of these fantastic beings had some special gift, and any could learn to alter the fabric of the universe with an ease that humans could but envy. It was by no means simple even for them, but being Glamour incarnate, these "mythic" folk had an innate advantage.

Humanity, however, had an advantage of its own. The world of flesh and stone has rules, after all, and coming to our world meant that some rules must bind the lords of the Dreaming. Men with minds of gears and hearts of flint were anathema to the faerie, for they ground down not only their own possibilities but also those of others. Their dreams were -- and are -- cold, empty things, and they devour the very essence of the Dreaming. Worse, they found a way to give their gray, lifeless ideals form, in crude and blunt creations wrought from the iron that was otherwise a source of so much hope.

Not all humans hated and feared the mythics, of course. The Seelie Code gave form to the formless, and an ideal of elegance and beauty became their guiding star. Arcadia was founded on this facet of the Dreaming, a vision of ultimate peace, beauty and justice that formed its Heart. Alas, infinite possibility means birthing horrors as well as glories, and some few mocked the Seelie Code. Even now, some humans who love tales of the Fair Folk mock the stories that depict them as sweet, loving, or innocent, for other legends mark them as distant and terrible beings, as if there could not be faerie of all types. Still, there is no denying the existence of the Unseelie, whose depths were literally only limited by human imagination.

Though the Seelie kept these fiends firmly in check, fear of the faerie spread. In time, truth be told, the mythics changed, for as beings of story and imagination, our own dark fears began to change them. While those born in the early times could retain their own wills and natures, more recent beings would shift as the tides. As morality became more fluid, recognizing that in a complex world good and evil were rarely absolute, the Seelie and Unseelie factions became less absolute as well.

Finally, the Dreaming suffered a terrible blow when the Order of Reason and the Society of Aeons allied, taking the Kindred under their wing and creating the Masquerade. Other beings could easily hide from the Masses, but stories and beliefs were as milk and bread to the mythic ones. So they did the only thing they could: they became changelings.

Changelings were, until then, humans who had taken on (or been given) a faerie nature, transforming them into beings of two worlds. They were able to wield a wondrous hybrid magick, survive cold iron better than true mythics, and serve as a conduit between the two worlds. When the mythics fled to Arcadia, those who would not or could not leave either became changelings or died. Eventually, the difference between those changelings who were once human and those who were faerie was lost. Though still powerful, they were much less than they had been, and were arguably the most vulnerable of Earth-9's supernaturals.

Most of their struggles were internal after that, save for courageous efforts to restore the fantastic to the world. In this, they found allies among the Traditions, but even together they could not overcome the Masquerade, and the alliance was fraught with difficulties. A final sundering took place during the terrible supremacy of the so-called Technocracy. A true tragedy; who knows what the 1960s might have been otherwise?

Nevertheless, the coming of the Champions has brought about a renaissance undreamt of for generations. The changelings yet exist, but many have transformed into Mythic Exalted, entirely new beings, yet like unto those of old. The Mythic Exalted need no belief to exist, for they are tied to the Glamour within Essence itself. Empowered by this new form of an ancient force, Mythic Exalted play by certain rules of reality, which give them great potential even as they make the mythics part of the reality they now inhabit. While the mythics of old do still exist, they must now take on either a changeling or Exalted form when they enter Earth-9. Most choose the latter.

While changelings are not as powerful as their Exalted cousins, they have still been strengthened greatly by the sudden, tremendous increase in Glamour in the world. No longer fearful for their very existence, they wonder what to do next with their gifts as Concordia becomes (secretly, irony of ironies) a global power. Their Arts remain largely unchanged, though they more easily affect the physical world now.

Mythic Exalted can also use such Arts with even more power than the changelings, but they tend to use a more classic, direct Glamour magick that recreates the world around them by altering the possibilities themselves. Ironically, while few beyond the Mythics are capable of this, the most famous Mythic uses an Art to legendary effect (Orchid) while the world's best known enchanted wields a magick very much like Mythic Glamour as a sort of super-magic (Solitaire).

Tao of Hypertime Home | Original material | Links | Professional site / portfolio | Site search