Changeling: The Dreaming

Musing and Ravaging may seem clearly divided along Seelie and Unseelie lines, but the truth isn’t quite that simple. There are Unseelie fae who’ve mastered using the chaos and directness to inspire Dreamers to their own unconventional forms of Musing, while some Seelie changelings try to put a pleasant face on activities that are definitely still Ravaging at heart. Christine Beard wrote this wonderfully twisted section, and while you’ll have to wait for the book to check out the Unseeling Musing, here are some deliciously wicked Seelie Ravaging options.

Ravaging relies primarily on building someone up just to tear them down. While the Seelie Court usually condemns Ravaging, a number of them are guilty of it. Some may not even think of it as Ravaging, but simply asserting a natural order, or setting things as they should be, but stifling others to empower yourself is only fulfilling for one of you.

Comforting Lie: Sometimes the best thing you can do to reassure or comfort someone is to lie straight to their face. Of course, when these lies are easy to see through, they usually leave the other feeling hollow and worse than before. Even if it takes a moment, when the truth hits, it pains the heart in a way few other things can. Because of the apparent nature of most Comforting Lies, using this Ravaging Threshold will only imbue Banality on a botch, but only ever provides one point of Glamour, no matter how many successes the player rolls.

Dash Hope: Practicality is at the heart of your being, and you refuse to entertain unlikely odds. Whenever someone expresses interest in a difficult prospect or proposes an unlikely answer to an obvious question, you assert the transparent truth of the matter and refuse to entertain other options, cowing them to the “right” way of things. While the dribs of Glamour from their suggestions makes it lucrative, lowering the difficulty of harvesting it by 1, squashing more imaginative ideas can be punishing; Banality penalties for failure are doubled.

Impose Order: You cannot stand chaos or submit to someone overstepping their bounds, and you revel in the ability to put someone in their place. Whether silencing a room with a barked command or establishing dominance with a withering glare, you cement yourself as the authority in the room and leave no room for anyone else. The difficulty to harvest the Glamour itself is increased by 2 as you let them entertain their fantasy, but each success yields two points of Glamour.

Silence Dissent: Dashing hope is about watching the light drain from someone’s eyes; silencing dissent is watching them lose faith in their own ideals. Whether you’ve built up something together only to turn around and condemn your creation or joined into an existing movement waiting for your moment to twist their aims to your purpose, you’ll entertain no other opinions once you’ve revealed your true thoughts, and will beat down anyone who disagrees until they begin to question their own conviction. The player rolls (10 – Banality) dice at difficulty 6, but any dice that fail subtract from the amount of Glamour gained from successes. A negative result means the character gains a point of Banality.