Please be advised that due to recent increases in Changeling Labor Organization, many of the Gentry consider songs regarding those topics offensive and will deal with those offensives.
This advisory comes after an incident where a student band singing The Internationale sparked reprisals from Gentry supporting and Gentry debted students and creatures.
However, if you are part of the Changeling Rights club, the Blacksmithing Club has officially opened it’s forges to you.
Why are Caleb and Beau the only ones without masks (aside from obvious reasons). What is their role as "Truthseekers"?
Obvious reasons, they’re humans in Fantasy world, so I incorporate them as maskless for now in this AU. Their role as “Truthseekers” derives from their need to uncover the truth/secrets on their own. They won’t accept any conclusions to an investigation until they uncover it themselves.
I offer you a tarnished coin, gleaming silver with the midnight moon. It has been flipped into the cold air at the crossroads of all. A life was made and a life was lost. I offer you a silver Denarius, traded from one to another in malice and love.
I met a Student who clad himself in arrogance and iron. He came to Elsewhere because Elsewhere took what he had.
He says he had, no, has a Sister. The Damned Fey, always the Damned Fey never The Gentry, took her and he came to take her home. He wears an ever shifting name of folklore, girding himself in old stories and arming himself with lore. A fiddle lies strung over his back and he looks all in the eyes. Aviators stained with Silver Nitrite sit on his face as he peers past what we are meant to know.
He tells stories to any who listen. Tam Lin to those who have fallen in love, Solidarity Forever to those who stand in the Changeling Union, He sings of Silver and Steel to the Knights who watch him with worry. He sings of the Fiddler and the Fairy Queen in the late of night, taunting and daring any to come find him. He breaks all the rules and yet, he has not been taken.
Some say this is because the Gentry are afraid of him, afraid of human arrogance and wit put to a single task, but this is false. Some say they know what he wants and are doing their best to keep it from him, this is more true, but also false. In whispers and silent tales, in the corners of libraries and haze of weed smoke, they say he’s been here before. In ‘87, in '45, when before the University was opened and before even that. They say it’s a story, a trap, a loop, a curse. A man stuck fighting for what he wants, unable to ever get it. That’s why they say he knows the tales, the lore, the legend. They say because he lived it.
I don’t know the truth, but when I was eating lunch, he saddled up to my table with a knife smile that reached his eyes. “Gotta story to tell you, lass” he said, “If you’ll listen of course.” I knew the Rules and so shied away, but he pressed on. “Stories are powerful things, the Damned Fey know that of course, that’s why they took my sister. She beat them once, turned emotion into music and beat the Queen at her own game. Smoke and Ash and Darkness are nothing compared to love and life and joy.” He never dropped the knife smile, showing more teeth than happiness, “They have a name for her. It’s written in the stories and in the songs, etched into the world as her last act. I chase those stories and those songs, bringing them together so she may find her way home.”
He stood up, stole my brownie and walked into the University Green we shouldn’t look at. He walked right up to the statue of the fiddler in the middle, all celtic gown and joyful eye’d, and placed it at her feet as an offering.
“To tell you the truth,” he calls out, Fey Things and Cats scattering at the sudden noise, “Almost forgot what she looked like till you came along. Good luck on your studies, Granddaughter, I hear Music Theory is a pain.”
A Treaties On The Importance of Metal And Metal-Like Musical Genres At Elsewhere University
It is always interesting when the Gentry meet their first punk rocker and metalhead.
You can always tell it’s their first and some of the more cunning knights have used this to their advantage.
For the Gentry to imagine a musician as cunning words, lilting ballads and simple chord progressions meeting the sheer humanity of Metal and Punk. Music that, at it’s core, is antithetical to all which the Courts stand for.
Roaring music and harsh lyrics of rage, violence and rebellion sung out with force, will and passion rousing every soul to scream and causing the blood to rush through one’s veins, the false fictions the Gentry declare themselves as cannot truly understand.
Changelings, called between two worlds and pulled between the moral and the very much not find solace in the company of these rockers and knights of sound and fury. Many a time a Changeling has picked their side to the sound of We’re Not Gonna Take It, Bad Reputation, and Uprising.
Many have asked why this is. Perhaps it is the psychological matter and magic of the refusal of the powers that be. Perhaps it is the words inside and the iron woven into the very name of the genre. Perhaps it is merely because Rockerboys, Metalheads and Punks enjoy spitting in the eye of the powerful and laughing as they are beaten down, hands outstretched and single digits raised. Perhaps it is simply because the Courtly Ones are beings of stagnation and rules and the new songs of riot and rage came after they have formed.
All that is known is thus, if you are trapped by bargains and deals, backed into a corner at a party without silver and iron, fearing for your Name and Humanity, sing loud and proud, embrace which makes us Mortal, put on some AC/DC, the Dead Kennedys or Rammerstein and rock the fuck out!
Do you play games, creature? Of course you do. It is in your nature.
I play games as well, games of fun and chance, games of community and wit, games of skill and cunning.
You play games with the Souls and Names of those who fall into your wake.
I spite you with my breath. I call your bluff and raise the stakes. I barter my Name… against yours.
But you don’t have a Name, do you. Just a collection of half truths and lives set spinning around a vague understanding and physics turned to knives. I see you, all of you.
I want it. I’ll bet for it and bet on it. Stack all I am against all you are.
How valid is the headcanon that Beau and Jester both have individual, annotated copies of the Anarchist's Cookbook? And that Caleb found Beau's copy once and wrote corrections and improvements for the Alchemist's Fire recipe inside?
I don’t actually know what Anarchist’s Cookbook is, but I can talk about the personality. In campaign, Jester is not a big fan of complicated, wordy books, so she’s like that in this AU too. As for Beau, she’ll definitely read anything that can outwit her opposition or finding references for any given cases. Caleb might do that.