From Changeling the Dreaming First Edition/Changeling Character Creation PagesSluagh-These are the Goth faeries. They often love the darker things in life, and in fact, because of their heightened senses, can't stand bright light, especially sunlight. They are unable to
speak above a whisper, no matter how hard they try. However, they do have the ability to contort their bodies into all sorts of disturbing shapes, and given enough time, can even escape from a
locked room by squeezing themselves through the space between the door and the floor. They are able to see and hear ghosts, and they are known for their underground palaces, Victorian
mansions, and other disturbing homes.
from Changeling the Dreaming Second Edition CoreSluagh — Secretive and sly, these odd changelings prefer darkness and hidden places. Able to speak only in whispers,
sluagh collect information with a passion and disseminate it only for a price.
From The Changeling the Dreaming Introductory KitSlaugh (SLOO-ah)
Called the underfolk by many, the sluagh are considered pariah, even among other
fae. Though rumors persist of underground sluagh lairs, most of these Kithain prefer crumbling Victorian mansions to dank sewers. Dark and forgotten places attract them. Those who intrude upon their inner
sanctums leave with nightmares. Just as the sluagh value secrets and mysteries, they treasure privacy.
Despite this foul reputation, adventurous sluagh visit the surface courts, cultivate friendships, and enter oathbonds with outsiders. Strange as they are, sluagh often go out of their way to aid or protect others who are kind to them. These good deeds are frequently misinterpreted by suspicious changelings, so such relationships are usually brief. Even sluagh who find a clique that they can trust need to have secret places to which they can retreat.
The underfolk collect secrets and sometimes sell them to interested parties. To sluagh, revelation is joy; the more unsettling the revelation, the greater the joy. While Seelie use their knowledge for noble ends, Unseelie can make a crooked living through blackmail. Secrets are but one commodity to them. Broken toys, strange knickknacks and anything resonant with nostalgia makes for an excellent item of trade. Outsiders are mystified by the value sluagh place on these items, but then again, perversity is the sluagh’s trademark.
Aptitude: +1 to stealth. Any time a sluagh attempts to move without being seen or attempts any other stealthy action, one die is added to Physical Trait rolls.
Birthright: Squirm. Dislocating body parts is a popular amusement for these creatures. Confining them is almost impossible. Although they cannot change their shapes or mass, underfolk can contort into disquieting shapes with unnatural ease. This requires a few minutes of concentration and a Physical roll; the difficulty ranges from 4 (escaping from ropes) to 8 (worming
through the bars of a locked cell). The only substance that can imprison sluagh completely is cold iron.
Frailty: Curse of Silence. Sluagh cannot speak above a whisper, no matter how hard they strain to be heard. Since they
dislike social situations and hold to very odd rules of etiquette, add one to the difficulties of all of their Social rolls.
from the Player's Guide"Let me tell you a story. Don't ask me where I heard it, as the answer would only disturb you. Don't tell others where you heard it; they would be upset. Just listen close, little childling, and know that every word is true. Especially the ones that scare you." - Agnes MacDubh, sluagh of Providence, Rhode Island
To be a sluagh is to be alternately mistrusted, feared, taunted and ignored. It is to be accused of orgies beneath the
earth and eating babies in obscene rituals. It is to be a pariah among those who are pariahs themselves. It is also not to care a whit for any of these things. We dwell, as we always dwell, in the shadows, watching the other actors in the great play scurry to and fro. We listen to the secrets of the dead and learn those of the living, and then, like civilized beings, we share those secrets over tea. You have much to unlearn about the sluagh, I see. You had best start now, little boy, or you will discover that not all of the rumors about us are false. Remember: once upon a time, we were the faeries who took the bad children...away.
History
Humanity has always been afraid of ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties, but most of all of things that go bump in the night. Even worse than those that bump, however, are the things that scratch at windowpanes and vanish, or skitter across rooftops and inside the walls. The delicious nightmares of things that are almost, but not quite human, of triple-jointed skulkers who can fit themselves into impossible places — these
are the dreams that fed what became the sluagh. Literally, sluagh were born of the fear of the unknown and the dark, and
existed to feed that fear. Though the sluagh of today are centuries and worlds removed from the isolated villages that
birthed them, something of this amoral, primeval darkness still lurks within them. Born from fear, they still treasure it.
The sluagh were initially imagined as the spirits behind the creakings and groanings peasant huts made as they settled down
for cold Russian nights. Slithery black things at first, the predecessors of the sluagh were pictured as scuttling, spiderlike beings who lived under floors and behind fireplaces. Every time a floorboard creaked, every time the stone of the hearth settled with a granite
groan, credit was given to those things that became the sluagh.
As generations passed, the boneless proto-sluagh were given more and more credit, and grew more and more like the sluagh of
today. Initially mindless shambling things, they were slowly attributed with a subtle malice. Every eerie noise and mysterious sound was laid at their feet, and grandmothers told their little ones
that the sluagh were making the noises to frighten them. Soon enough, of course, they were, and armed with a primitive intelligence, the newly dreamed sluagh took to toppling piles of dishes, making noises in impossible places, and scratching at doors (or roofs or floors) at night. The sounds of terror within were meat and drink to the sluagh, who would then dance, pale and glistening, in the graveyards and darkest dells of the primordial forests. Their revels, fueled by the heady wine of fear, were sometimes spied by particularly brave or foolish mortals. These often were mistaken for the dances of ghosts come back to haunt the living, and the sluagh were linked with the Restless Dead as well.
Like all good dreams of terror, though, these were soon corrupted with a moral. Those same grandmothers, not content merely to frighten their childrens' children, got the idea into their heads that the sluagh were everywhere, watching for bad children.
Through the knotholes on the floor and peering upside down out of the chimney, the sluagh kept an eye out for children who misbehaved, because those they were allowed to take for their very own. Once told that they could take bad children, the sluagh did. Leaving them tied to the earth in spiders' silk, or trapped underneath the floorboards of their houses, the sluagh took fiendish delight in punishing those they were permitted. Always, though, their object was instilling terror, not causing pain. Far more delicious to them, too, was the fear of the good children, the ones upon whom they could not lay a single clammy finger. Even these children, the safe ones, feared, and that was enough for the sluagh.
Inevitably, the terrors of lone cottages and small villages paled. Towns grew along rivers, and the sluagh crept slowly westward to infest them. By this time they appeared as they do today, long and thin and pale. Dressed in black rags and tattered furs, they found their way into attics and wine cellars. Armed with their mandate to spy on and take the wicked, they expanded the targets of their surveillance to include crooked innkeepers, slothful monks, dishonest merchants and others who through their own actions, allowed themselves to become the sluagh's prey. Where once there were tales of bad children's suppers heing devoured by invisible things, now there came legends of kegs of watered wine mysteriously emptied, fat abbots being pinched and tormented by things that seemed to live in the walls, and horse feed mixed with sand being fed to the stableboys who had crafted the mixture.
Centuries spent fattening on such poor fodder had its effect on the sluagh, who now underwent their final metamorphosis. They grew used to, then accustomed to, then pleased by their watered-down wine and slightly spoiled food. Instead of simply dwelling in darkness, they took new, active pleasure in lurking there where they could see others but no others could see them. Where once they wore rags
and tatters, now finery almost worthy of its name (all liberated from dishonest merchants, of course) adorned their personages. Most important of all, where once the sluagh had been known for only spying upon and tormenting thewicked, they were perceived as indiscriminate in their attentions. This was the humans' fault, of course — some of those crooked souls whom the sluagh dealt with, despite being utterly despicable, managed to convince their peers that they had been unfairly persecuted by malicious spirits. The effect on the perception of the sluagh was both profound and immediate. Within decades, they became the creatures that the Kithain of today would recognize: morally neutral, intensely private observers in the shadows, more interested in savoring fear than in punishing the wicked, and above all, always watching.
Birthrights and Frailties
The Sluagh Birthrights are ideally suited to a race of beings spawned in narrow spaces in the dark. However, certain of the gifts have faded with the centuries. Once the sluagh could ooze through cracks mere inches across. Time passed, though, and slowly the underfolk were ascribed hands (for reaching out of dark corners), legs (for scuttling across rooftops at night) and other large, irreducibly
human-esque physical structures. Now they are reduced to contorting themselves into impossible shapes. Still, this is a great
deal more than any other kith is capable of, and it is best to bind a sluagh with magic instead of rope. When using the Birthright of Squirm, a sluagh is capable of redistributing her body mass within her skin any way she pleases, so long as there is no deviation from the basic humanoid figure. She may choose to manifest as a grotesquely swollen head attached to a shrunken doll's body, or to dislocate her shoulders and roll them so far behind her back that they meet.
Sluagh also possess sharper senses than any other Kithain. This comes naturally from ages of peering through knotholes and
listening to whispers. As taletellers gave the sluagh knowledge of secrets and the status of omnipresent lurkers, they developed the tools with which to lurk effectively and garner as many secrets
as possible. It is even believed by certain more superstitious nockers and boggans that sluagh grumps' senses are so acute that they can hear thoughts as well as spoken words.
This is, in all probability, a canard.
However, there is no doubting the supernatural acuity of sluagh eyesight. All sluagh, should they make the effort (Perception + Alertness, difficulty 7) are capable of seeing lurking ghosts. With the expenditure of a point of Glamour, sluagh can speak (and listen to) any wraiths they discover. The underfolk and the Restless Dead have long been linked, and many sluagh find that wraiths are excellent sources of information who ask easily granted favors in return. On rare occasions, sluagh will even invite ghosts to high tea.
A whisper is almost always far more terrifying than a shout. Whispers in darkness are heard only by those for whom they were intended; others tend to dismiss so-called voices in the night that they did not hear. Thus the voice of the sluagh is that of the hissing lurker in shadows.
Indeed, they are no longer even capable of shouts or bellows, though there is nothing in their anatomies that would prevent such utterances. It is believed that the ban against speaking above a whisper is more
psychological than physical, but it is very real to the sluagh nonetheless, and they do not take kindly to having their Frailties prodded by outsiders.
Organization
Once upon a time, an eshu asked a sluagh of his acquaintance, "So, how do you of the shadow-dwellers arrange yourself? I wish to find the greatest of the sluagh, and tell my tales to her, and would have you tell me where she can be found."
The sluagh laughed, and sipped her tea, and pointed to a spider web that stretched proudly across the face of her grandfather clock. "You see that spider web, friend eshu? Each strand touching many others, all connected to the whole? Gossamer thin we are, yet set one of us a-quiver and we all know."
But the eshu did not understand, and went seeking another who could help him find the greatest of the kith. And each sluagh he found greeted him in all courtesy, and asked how he had fared with all the sluagh he had visited before, and named them all by name. Thus, did one eshu come to understand the ways of the sluagh.
There is no Grand High Keeper of Secrets, no aged loremaster sitting on a flowstone throne deep in the heart of a chimerical
cave. There are only individual sluagh, meeting in twos and threes to exchanged whispered secrets over cups of thin tea or
glasses of watery wine. Many sluagh laugh over the delusions maintained by other kith that the shadow-dwellers have secret,
orgiastic rituals in vast caverns beneath the earth. Such noise and bright light, the sluagh point out, would inevitably be more pain than the sociability would be worth. Furthermore, since no sluagh can speak above a whisper, the whole affair would be pointless since every secret uttered would be drowned in the general din. Still, many sluagh enjoy playing up these rumors simply for the fear they inspire in gullible Kithain.
While highly private beings, sluagh are still attracted to the trappings of the formal. When sluagh meet sluagh, all of the proprieties must be observed to the letter, else the visiting sluagh is disgraced and is likely to receive, as punishment, a great deal of company in the immediate future. As sluagh are bound by their own codes to be polite to those who are polite to them, an endless wave of well-behaved company is pure anathema to them. Other kith visiting the lair of a sluagh are advised to be as courteous as possible, else they will suddenly will be transformed from tolerated guests to
intruders, with disturbing consequences.
While high tea is not exactly an official methodology for meeting among sluagh, it serves as well as any other. Any sluagh seeking company extends formal invitations wrapped in spiders' silk to any other sluagh whose company they desire. The invitees are bound by custom to attend, and over weak tea or curiously sweet wine, share the secrets they have learned since the last time tea was convened. The sluagh in attendance are not bound to tell all that they know, or even to say anything, but to remain silent is considered rude. Stories are told in order of age, with the oldest grump speaking first. Secrets are then told in sequence down to the most callow childling, who, no matter what, will be expected to contribute to the conversation.
Unlike most of the Kithain, sluagh tend to be monogamous. On the rare occasions that a sluagh takes a mate, the match generally
is lifelong. Still, it is so rare for a sluagh to find another with whom she feels comfortable dwelling that weddings among the kith are rare. As for more momentary attachments, certain satyrs swear that
there's nothing like a hot (or cold) date with a sluagh, but most Kithain shy away from even touching one, let alone anything more.
Courts
Introduction
Surprisingly enough, the sluagh began as a Seelie kith. While they may have been born of fear, from the time that they achieved
consciousness of their purpose, they were dedicated to punishing those who did wrong. They may have been a bit overenthusiastic in their pursuit of wicked children and dishonest merchants, but their rigid respect for tradition and single-minded focus on punishing wrongdoing made them accepted, if not welcome, in the Seelie Court. The fact that the sluagh encountered the trolls first of all the other kith, as they pushed into Scandinavia and the Baltic states relatively early in their existence, may well have helped steer them, at least temporarily, toward a Seelie existence.
Long before the Sundering, however, the sluagh as a kith had turned from the Seelie Court to a more studied neutrality- Accused of punishing indiscriminately, the misunderstood and feared sluagh severely limited their discourse with the Seelie Court. They essentially removed themselves from its province, preferring solitude to
unpleasant company. While technically still Seelie faeries, most sluagh consider themselves such simply because they find the Unseelie's disrespect for formality disturbing. There is little of good or evil in the sluagh's choice to remain neutral; merely a desire to observe rather than to be observed.
Seelie
Seelie sluagh tend to have positions as bookstore owners, librarians or antiquarian shopkeepers. Well over half are female, and their chimera are usually animal-like as opposed to inanimate objects. This is not to say that those chimera are cute; most tend to be large crystalline spiders, shimmering gold centipedes and the like. Indeed, the entire kith has a fascination with spider webs, and an intact, dew-spangled spider web is something that most sluagh will pay a great deal for.
The vast majority of Seelie sluagh absent themselves from court as much as possible, though if they come across information of
great import they will often send it along by messenger. Usually there is one knight at any given court who has earned the sluagh's trust, and this fae will become an information conduit to be reckoned with.
Unseelie
Unseelie sluagh are an entirely different kettle of fish (as well as worms, snakes and other unpleasant animals). Heavily weighted to the male side, the roster of Unseelie sluagh contains most of the more active members of the kith. These are the spies, the hidden messengers and the saboteurs of the Shadow Court. They strike
from shadows rather than watching from them, and give the kith much of the bad name it has acquired among the sidhe.
Stereotypes
Boggan
Seelie Sluagh: Marry a complete lack of ambition to an utter failure to comprehend concepts more complicated than that of "cleaning house," and you have an archetypal boggan. They do good works, it is true. However, in their own sanctimonious way, even the best keep track of how many they've done and for whom, and they positively wriggle for praise when they think no one is watching. They forget that we always are.
Unseelie Sluagh: One might as well call them gnomes. They're anal-retentive to the max. Never, ever accept a favor from one. You'll be hearing about it every time you see them until you pay them off, and the payment itself will be at least three times what the original favor was worth.
Eshu
Seelie Sluagh: Eshu are perhaps our second best source of useful information. Our best is, of course, ourselves, but our information is a cold thing, dragged from sewers and graves. The eshu's stories live, and the sun of the lands they've seen is still in their words. It is almost
enough for which to envy them. Trade tales with them, and do not seek to steal their stories. More will be learned from those freely given.
Unseelie Sluagh: Oh, they will haggle over the prices of their tales, but tug at the strings of their vanity, and soon enough everything they know comes tumbling out at your feet. Puff up one's pride and
then tell him, "Well, I heard that pooka tell a similar story." He'll give
away all he has to trade, just to prove that he's a better storyteller than
a mythical rabbit. One might almost call them... suckers.
Nockers
Seelie Sluagh: Their works are extremely impressive. They will be the first to tell you so, and expect you to echo them instantly. Praise one and you will have a friend for life — or at least until you say something uncomplimentary about their
work. Be less than extravagant in your compliments, and your ears will melt from their response. Most of their work does deserve some praise. Just not as much as the nockers themselves think.
Unseelie Sluagh: How many nockers does it take to change a light bulb? One, if you want a bulb that will play you "The Star-Spangled Banner" and change color. I've never seen one actually build anything useful, and rarely even something that works. The best you can hope for when
dealing with them is to leam a new piece of profanity or two.
Pooka
Seelie Sluagh: Confusing one of their stories with the truth is much like those tales one hears of people mowing off their own feet.
It would seem impossible, but occasionally it happens, and everyone else sits around making sympathetic noises while trying to hide their giggles. Pooka are wonderful if one needs entertaining company, and has no wish to get a word in edgewise for a week or three, but I have houseplants that are better sources of information.
Unseelie Sluagh: Perhaps no other kith works itself so easily into a frenzy over our games. A little noise here, a little
shadow there, and suddenly their pink and fuzzy noses are twitching in terror. Infinitely fun to torment when they get
nosy, most are irredeemably dull otherwise. They have absolutely no concept of how boring they are in conversation.
Redcaps
Seelie Sluagh: I understand many of the other kith have deep-rooted misunderstandings about us. Knowing how ridiculous most of the commonly believed rumors are, I should be willing to grant
redcaps the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are merely
misunderstood. I will not. I have known too many, and loathed all but a handful. They are obscenities who understand terror, not fear.
Unseelie Sluagh: Attack dogs, pure and simple. Wind them up, point them in the right direction, and let them go.
It's like watching a bad cartoon. They deserve precisely as much respect as a Cuisinart, but redcaps really are quite good for making julienne fries out of people who annoy you.
Satyrs
Seelie Sluagh: Some satyrs regard us as a delicacy, to be sampled on occasion to refresh their jaded sexual palates. These
are to be disappointed. Others have a certain wisdom born of excessive experience, and these should be cultivated. The worst rarely have much of malice about them, and the best still can't concentrate on anything but their own pleasure for long.
Unseelie Sluagh: Great for getting dirt on who's doing whom, what they're doing with them, and where they bought the equipment. Other than that, they're worthless.
Sidhe
Seelie Sluagh: I choose my words carefully when discussing the sidhe. I do this not out of fear of them, but out of a fear of telling you more than you might want to hear. The words I choose to describe
them at this time include, but are not limited to: arrogant, bloody, self-blinded, delusional, genocidal fossils. Need more be said?
Unseelie Sluagh: Santayana once said that to knock down something cocked at an arrogant angle is a deep delight of the
blood. He was talking about humiliating sidhe.
Trolls
Seelie Sluagh: The boggans shackle themselves with details, the trolls with honor. We know their past, and we know
their fate, and in the meantime treat them with due respect.
You will learn nothing from them, save by watching their examples. They, of all the other kith, know the value of silence.
Unseelie Sluagh: They're bright enough to know when they're being fooled, but not bright enough to shed their vaunted honor long enough to do something about it. The
word "long-suffering" was coined for these poor idiots.
from the Slaugh KithbookThe Wickedest Boy in the World, or How the Slaugh Came to Whisper
Chapter One: A Night's Worth of History (History of Sluagh)
Chapter Two: And Who are we? (Description of Slaugh)
Chapter Five: Secrets Told After Midnight (Slaugh-specific Merits & Flaws)
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