Talk:Neirin

Cheatsheet

Contracts

Animation

1: Crafts + Wyrd; 1 glam or owner bids you examine; learn object's construction & gain bonuses per succ to repair or damage.

2: Wits + Wyrd; 1 glam or converse with tool for 10m; gain temp skill spec in tool's use.

3: Empathy + Wyrd; 1 glam or in disuse for a year; share memories of an object's uses and users.

Artifice

1: Crafts + Wyrd; 1 glam or not yours; repair a device for a day, using minute scraps, in half the normal time.

Entropy

1: Intelligence + Expression - Resolve; 1 glam or write name & tear up; prevent another from communicating

Fleeting Winter

1: Wyrd + Empathy - Composure; 1 glam or look into eyes; determine source of current sorrow. (+1 if obvs sad)

2: Mantle + Manipulation + Subterfuge - Resolve; 1 glam or gave them sommat in last 24h; force to leggo sorrow min per succ (hour excep)

Eternal Summer

1: Wyrd + Survival; 1 glam or spit on cig end; stay at comfy temp; 1 WP to make whole room comfy temp

Lost 5

1: Wyrd + Investigation; 1 glam or doing it pro bono; find thing.

2: Wyrd + Wits; 1 Glamour +1 per 50 mi, or in public w/ 3 others; call pieces of thing together up to Wyrd at a time.

3: Wyrd + Subterfuge /ext ?/5; 1 glam 1 WP or share untold secret with thing; conceal target object from mortal ken for Wyrd x 3 days.

4: Wyrd + Dexterity; 2 glam or thing got from someone else; one scene of hammerspace (one day on exceptional).

5: Wyrd + Composure - (highest) Resolve; 2 glam +1wp for mult targets or spin until dizzy anticlock; get 'em lost for wyrd x 5 min.

Shade

1: Wyrd + Presence; 1 Glam or knew in life; the changeling sees, hears and can speak to ghosts in Twilight. (excep: also nearest person)

2: Wyrd + Manipulation; 1 Glam or blood to forehead of everyone there; the changeling gives one ghost the ability to interact with the living via a single specified sense for one scene. (excep: sight also, or if sight already, then touch.)

Separation

1: 1 glam or nice shoes, dex + wyrd, weightless walking & falling damage turns to bashing

2: 1 glam or unjustly imprisoned, larceny + wyrd, slip bondage or imprisonment

Sorrow-Frozen Heart

1: 1 glam or thin needle, Mantle + Resolve + Occult; ignore pain per success

2: 1 glam or empty hands, Mantle + Composure + Expression; ignore Wyrd supernatural fear negs

Gobbo Contracts

Sight of Truth and Lies (•)

Wyrd + Subterfuge; 1 glam or official function

Don't you dare lie.

The Blessing of Forgetfulness (•••)

Wyrd + Manipulation - Composure; 2 glam + 1 WP

Effect: Allows the user to erase any one memory from the target's mind.

Drawback: Curses the user to suffer a dramatic failure on the next Subterfuge roll to get someone to believe a necessary lie.

Catch: Used to make the target forget about an event in which the user betrayed the target.

The Fatal Clause (•••••)

Wyrd + Occult - Wyrd; 2 glam + 1 WP

Effect: Block a Contract as it is being activated.

Drawback: Pay the cost of the Clause you are attempting to block.

Catch: The Changeling has been a target of a Contract cast by the subject in the past 24 hours.

Seeming/Kith Bonuses

• Wizened -- Animation (WM 52), Artifice (CtL 134), Forge (RoS 99)
  • Spend 1 Glamour to gain /9 on Dexterity rolls for one scene; Spend 1 Glamour to add Wyrd to Dodge
  • /0 on Presence rolls; -2 Untrained Penalty for Social skills
• Author
  • /9 on rolls involving the written word (whether reading or writing).
  • Understand any written text for the duration of the scene. Does not apply to spoken languages.
• Thusser
  • /9 on all rolls to perform music.
  • Roll Wits + Expression + Wyrd vs Resolve + Wyrd; listeners who fail the roll subtract Thusser's Wyrd from all rolls to notice their surroundings, are unable to take any combat actions and will follow wherever Thusser leads. Usable once per scene.
• Smith
  • /9 to all craft rolls when working on objects made primarily of metal.
  • Make extended Dexterity + Crafts roll to improve a primarily metal object to give it a +1 equipment bonus.

Merits

• PT 5: Blacksmith (/9 Crafts, /9 Academics /9 Weaponry); /9 gets /rote added for 1 WP
• Brownie's Boon: 1 glamour to halve time on unwatched mundane task, +1 glamour for each additional halving thereafter
• Good Time Management: halve time on tasks
• Eidetic Memory (1 WP to remember a scene word-for-word action-for-action)
• Derangement: Claustrophobe
• Striking Voice (Tenor): +2 on singing rolls

Common Complicated Rolls

Smithing

+roll/8/rote/extended=?/10 strength + craft.smi + 3=job ?? (spend WP per roll for rote)

Luthier

+roll/8/extended=?/9 dex + craft.lut + 3=job ?? (spend glam per roll for /8 bc dex, /9 bc PT)

Songwriting

+roll/9/extended=?/10 wits + exp.song

Performing (singing, no +2 if instrumental)

+roll/9=wits or int + exp.perf + 2

Writing

+roll/9/extended=?/10 wits or int + exp.wri

Research

+roll/9/extended=?/8 int + aca.res=job ??

Specs

Academics: Historical Weaponry........ Academics: Research...................
Brawl: Adroitness..................... Crafts: Luthier.......................
Crafts: Smithing...................... Empathy: Reading Emotions.............
Expression: Performance............... Expression: Songwriting...............
Occult: Adroitness.................... Persuasion: Adroitness................
Socialize: Liberal Arts Nerds......... Stealth: Sneaking Away................
Expression: Writing...................

Background

• What is your character's mortal name? Is there a reason behind it?

Robin James Collier. It's just the name he was given when he was born.

• Where/when were you born?

Colchester, Essex, UK; 16 Feb 1968.

• How was your childhood/young adulthood? What were you like?

He has a sister about ten years older than he is-- she was expected; he was not. His mother was a Traveller who did the unthinkable and hooked up with a cop, and that was a point of contention in their house all along. His father wasn't just a cop, though, he was in Special Investigations and did serial killer profiling.

Robin's childhood was primarily spent at his serial-killer-investigating father's elbow and/or in carparks behind pubs waiting for said father to emerge. His parents split before he was ten, and his sister was old enough to live on her own (and did), so whenever Robin got tired of his father's growing madness, he went to stay with his sister. His mother was already mad, everyone said including himself, and it wasn't a sort with which he was particularly good at coping: she paid more attention to the fairies than to her children. His sister wasn't /actually/ mad, but she was a spiritualist and a thaumaturge and the young Robin didn't think much of her getting possessed or sacrificing cats-- but it was still better than serial murder bedtime stories, neglect, and careless self-destruction.

Adolescence hit, and he joined the music scene with the overlap of the drug scene, keeping his other major hobby -- that strange mixture of linguistics, mythology, history, and folk music that a great number of people who fancy themselves 'bards' enjoy -- completely secret from his punker drug rock friends and his family; he spent most of his visible time in and out of terrible bands, doing mildly-to-somewhat-more illegal things, getting in trouble, doing increasingly stupid drugs, and getting in fights with his parents. Somehow he managed to get his A-levels, and his sister had a friend at Oxford who would be willing to take him under his wing, considering his scores and the interests his sister OF COURSE found out that Robin had, as long as he ditched the illegal shit...

But one morning in August 1987 he got in a fight with his mother; she didn't believe in university and also hated everything he was doing and also told him he needed to stay away from London for the next few weeks because the fairies were going to be abducting musicians. So of course he stormed out. She was still expecting him to come back later; she stayed out waiting for him, and was thus perfectly situated to get herself shot and killed in the Hungerford spree killing.

He didn't much feel like university after that. Or making music, or writing, or much of anything really. He couldn't face his sister, or his father.

Music scene friends of his said, during the investigation into his disappearance, that they'd seen him a few days after Hungerford; he'd sold his guitar for heroin after he quit his current band after a show, and was shooting up in the green room. Nobody saw him after that, but no body ever turned up, either.

• What is your profession? How do you feel about it?

Ha ha, pick one. No really: there are Robin's fallback skills, the things he was good at even as a teenager -- music and writing -- and he still does those, professionally: writing and composing and performing songs, writing essays, articles, research papers, opinion columns, and lately, horror novels; stringed-instrument making and repair. And then there's blacksmithing, which he picked up post-Arcadia and trained for back when he was still Summer. He still does it because it's useful and lucrative amongst the Lost (and the SCA), and because it's infinitely more productive than taking his temper out on the wall versus his fist, which always seems to lose.

• What are your hobbies? What do you do for fun? Taxidermist by day, gamer geek by night?

Linguistics! Insular mythology and the Matter of Britain! Kipling! Child Ballads! Traditional music, 80s alt music (punk, goth, ska, new romantic, blah blah), being an on-and-off SCAdian himself, history history history, translations of medieval and old Welsh and Cornish documents... jesus christ so many hobbies, so nerdy, help.

• BEFORE you got involved with the world of faerie, did you have any brushes with magic/the supernatural? What happened? How do you feel about this?

Well NOW he figures his mother was fae-touched or enchanted or something and maybe yes mad but not hallucinating or lying. And then there's his thaumaturge hedge-witch psychic weirdo sister. But that's about it.

• What is your new name, now that you are a Changeling? Did you manage to be one of the lucky few and keep your old?

He kept his old! Robin James Collier! He's got a pen name and a stage name used for various things -- and Neirin is both a stage name /and/ the one used for recording Lost history.

• How were you Taken?

He'd been half-planning on ODing in the green room of the club he'd just played in, or at least getting fucked up and staying that way for a while-- but there was a Privateer back there; his mother hadn't been lying /or/ mistaken -- and the Privateer convinced him that he was a huge fan and the cops were coming in to bust the place and got him to run. And then things started chasing them that weren't cops, and the Privateer tricked him into an Amber Demijohn.%r%tHe was in that fucking thing for ten years, carted around as a steady and reliable glamour source by the privateer's group until he couldn't produce the kind of emotional reactions they needed anymore -- or else was too far different from mortal to be any use that way; they didn't care. He was still a good musician and a wonderful writer, and the Privateer was friends with a Loyalist belonging to the Tuatha de Danann-- who were looking for bards. He was 'released' on a Fairy Hill near Exeter, and ran straight into the trap.

• How long did you stay in Arcadia?

Ten years. So that's ten years in an Amber Demijohn and ten years in Arcadia and an eidetic memory (not for the Arcadia part but STILL).

• Who was your Keeper? What were they like?

A Lord of the Tuatha de Danann took a particular liking to his way with words and tunes, as well as being quite pleased with his extant knowledge of lore. He put Robin to work crafting epics to aggrandize him, and grew in power and stature with every retelling; he wasn't deliberately cruel, because after all, Robin was talented and valuable and didn't seem to care much about anything but creating song for him. That didn't mean he necessarily noticed when Robin stayed awake for days, writing, composing-- or when his fingers bled from cracked dry calluses, or when the ink was mixed with blood to make sure there was enough of it.

• What was your Durance like? How did it shape you into the Seeming/Kith you have today?

Honestly it was initially almost a relief after the Amber Demijohn, and it was all mythology with which Robin was already familiar; it was something he could ground himself in since it followed rules that he knew about. He never noticed when he became fae and more fae himself; he was always, to himself, the mortal taken by the faeries to live under the hill and create things for them, treated reasonably well, given captive audiences which he could charm or horrify or cause the greatest of griefs or joys. He loved his work. It wasn't until he saw the privateer who had held him captive in the audience, one night, carrying a mortal infant, that he flipped a shit and remembered that no: this was not how things should be.

• How did you escape? Which memory did you follow through the Hedge, and where did you end up when you got back to our world because of said memory?

Robin first found a younger minstrel he'd been training-- his best apprentice-- and worked his ass off to make his most brilliant composition yet, spending a fortnight on the words and a fortnight on the polyphony and instrumentals, and a month training the minstrels and choir to perform it flawlessly, so that they could play it on the Rade on All Hallows' Eve-- and then got the apprentice to sign his name to the work. The Gentry themselves, then, on their horses described just as in Tam Lin, rode with their bells and their procession into the mortal world, and the other musicians or played them along their way, and the Gentry were too pleased by half. His apprentice loved the life and did not want to leave, so was more than happy to take his place as the High Court's bard. Robin himself slipped away in the festivities, on foot since his place on horseback had been taken by his apprentice, and vanished into the night--

--and instead of finding himself on the road somewhere in the countryside, he found himself on a Hedge path. Obviously he was confused-- but his memories were all tied in with the land, his land, and its unsullied mythology, and the person who first got him interested in them. His sister. He walked and walked, and eventually came out in Brixton by his sister's old flat. There weren't any payphones. He had no money. But, well, it wasn't the first time he'd ever called her from a police station.

• What do you remember of it? You are unlikely to recall overmuch about it until you are reaching Wyrd 6+. Flashes and glimpses and nightmare images.

Mostly writing epic ballads and beautiful compositions, and performing them for the High Court until his voice was raw and his fingers bled, to riveted audiences of Gentry and Lost alike.

• What has your life been like since your escape?

Initially picked up by a Freehold in Brixton after his sister helped him back to some semblance of sanity, Robin spent a few years there reacquainting himself with the world, as different as it'd become between 1987 and 2007-- like my god there's a new Doctor Who what is this, and jesus god /smartphones what/-- and getting his feet back under him. After that, he started travelling, looking for stories that needed telling, and writing and making music and finding out what lore was true and what was not; he crawled his way on the Clarity scale from like 3 back up to 7, and he took up blacksmithing when he found out how incredibly useful cold iron actually was. That took a lot of physical effort he was absolutely not used to, but he was determined, and eventually the Wyrd noticed and gave him a hand. He has mixed feelings about that. He also joined the SCA because a) useful to his varied interests, and b) yesssss like-minded nerds who don't care if he's as sociable as a swamp hermit sometimes.

• Do you have a Fetch? If yes, what are your intentions toward it?

No. Robin never had a fetch, as the Gentry didn't get him until he was already missing for ten years.

• Are you in a Court? If yes, which, and why? What do you do for your Court?

Yes, Winter. Because behind all the temper tantrums is unrelenting grief. He does more for freeholds in general than his season, as he'll make cold iron weapons -- or even hand-forged, for the right price (which is occasionally only a pledge to kill a Privateer with something he makes) -- for anyone sworn, or at least telling him in front of Sight of Truth and Lies that they're neither Loyalist nor Privateer. Or Hunter.

• Do you have an Entitlement? If yes, which, why, and what did you do to earn the privilege?

Yes: the Eternal Echoes. It was perfect for someone who loved and studied and translated the works of Aneirin, ancient Brittonic bard, who recorded the battles of the Britons and the deeds of their heroes. While in Europe, he went along on a battle campaign in the Hedge with the warriors of a Freehold there and composed a beautiful and grief-striking ballad of the story of the battle and the victories and losses of their company, and was approached a month later by a member of the Entitlement.

Dumb Shit

====-> >> Neirin to Here << <-================================================
    Rolled 2 Successes 
    < 2 3 3 3 5 5 7 7 7 8 10 >
===============-> >> Intelligence + Expression.Songwriting [9-Again] << <-====

<OOC> Neirin says, "... a ditty :|"
====-> >> Neirin to Here << <-================================================
    Rolled 1 Success 
    < 1 2 2 3 5 5 5 6 6 7 10 >
===============-> >> Intelligence + Expression.Songwriting [9-Again] << <-====

<OOC> Neirin says, "... a television jingle D:"
====-> >> Neirin to Here << <-================================================
    Rolled 4 Successes 
    < 2 2 3 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 9 >
===============-> >> Intelligence + Expression.Songwriting [9-Again] << <-====

<OOC> Neirin says, "a pop hit i want to shoot myself for"
====-> >> Neirin to Here << <-================================================
Extended Roll
Rolls: 3
Successes: 12
Exceptional Successes: 2
You succeeded at meeting the Target Number
===============-> >> Intelligence + Expression.Songwriting [9-Again] << <-====

<OOC> Neirin says, "there. a moving ballad it took me all night to write and arrange."