Beneath the Hollow Hills
...I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast,
Up close, Daria Lunardon is even more beautiful, if possible, to the point of seeming almost... well, unearthly. She beckons you and your companion closer, and you sit down at her table. Without even being bidden, a waiter brings you wine as dark as hers. She removes her tinted glasses, and looks at you with eyes of a startlingly intense violet. No human eyes were ever that colour, and you find yourself shivering, a strange blend of awe and terror warring within you. "This one has a touch of the Sight, I think," she says to your companion. And then, to you: "Would you care to see me, and this place, as we truly are?" You are still trying to formulate a suitable answer as she takes up your wine glass and gazes into its depths, then slowly breathes over the surface of the wine. She hands it back to you, and you feel a slight tingling, almost like a mild electric shock as you take the glass. Still apprehensive, you raise it to your lips and drink -- and your vision blurs, the world disappearing in a swirl of colour. You blink several times, and your vision begins to clarify. You are reluctant to look directly at Daria, fearing what you might see. But gazing back the way you came from is almost as unsettling. The plain black-painted walls of the night club now appear as dark stone, the dim house lights replaced by flickering torches in sconces on the wall. The tables are of heavy wood, ornately carved. The whole thing resembles nothing so much as the dining hall of an ancient Celtic king -- or queen. At the front, a set of broad stone steps lead up to a doorway flanked by pillars covered in knotwork carvings. And by the pillars stand two of the strangest-looking people -- if people is even an appropriate term -- you have ever seen. One is a blue-skinned, white-haired man clad in leather and furs, a huge axe hanging at his side. His head -- his horned head -- nearly touches the ceiling; he must be something like eight feet tall! His appearance reminds you of an ice giant from Nordic myth. He seems quite calm, and you're glad of that -- his great axe looks like it would be too heavy for a human to lift, but you're quite sure he would have no trouble swinging it. You can just barely recognize him as the blond bouncer you passed on the way in. The other is a creature out of nightmare -- short, squat, densely muscled, with mottled grey skin, unnaturally red hair, and a face like a grotesque caricature of humanity, with bulging, bloodshot eyes, a skeletal nose opening and an impossibly large mouth full of entirely too many jagged yellow teeth. If these two are the security, you can see why even werewolves and vampires would think twice before making trouble. And they aren't the only strange-looking creatures here. Most of the crowd are human -- or at least look human -- but sprinkled here and there throughout, among both the customers and staff, are other, equally outlandish-looking beings. The waiter who brought your wine is horned like the bouncer, but of normal height, and with goatlike legs like Pan from the ancient myths. The black woman on the dance floor has no unnatural features, but has grown more ethereal and otherworldly-looking by far, and her eyes shine a sapphire blue as intense as Daria's purple. To your right you see a young man who appears to be more raven than human, with dark feathers for hair, a beaklike, pointed face, and a mischievous grin. He seems to be enjoying your bewilderment. To your left, you catch a glimpse of a pale, skeletally thin young woman in diaphanous black robes who looks to be everything the Goth crowd are aspiring to -- squared. She catches you looking and disappears immediately into the shadows. Unnerved, you turn back to your hostess to ask what all these strange people are -- and are left speechless. Before you is a vision -- the unearthly beauty which had held you in awe before is now intensified to a point that is almost unbearable. You can scarcely look upon her -- but you could no more look away than tear your own heart out. Her suit has been replaced by a mediaeval-style gown of red and black silk with a plunging neckline, and her midnight-black hair is caught up in an elaborate style wound about with delicate silver chains, revealing a pair of distinctly pointed ears. Between that and her impossible beauty, you do not need to ask what she is. You've read enough folklore to recall the tales of the Sídhe -- the faerie folk of Ireland. A fragment of poetry by Yeats drifts through your head -- "The unappeasable host is comelier than the candles at Mother Mary's feet..." The unappeasable host... you shiver again. The creature before you is as far from the prettily insipid pixies of Victorian imagination as she is from humanity. You try to recall the legends... legends of a powerful, inhumanly beautiful race who could destroy a human, or drive one to madness, with a mere glance. All the euphemisms -- the fair folk, the good people, the gentry -- came about not because people saw the fae as inherently good or benevolent, but because they didn't want to risk offending them by saying their names. Faeries were scary. You start as the Sídhe Lady reaches across the table to touch your hand. "Now you see," she says. You nod dumbly. "Many of the people you see around you are changelings -- part fae, part mortal. We all walk in two worlds, with two identities. As a mortal, I am known as Daria Lunardon, owner of a trendy nightclub on Queen Street. But as a Sídhe, I am Countess Daria Darkstar, of House Eilunedd, ruler of the demesne that extends from the downtown core west to High Park, north to Bloor Street, and south to the lake. Jen over there," she nods to the horrific-looking woman at the door, "is a bouncer here at the club in her mortal seeming, but as a Redcap, she is the commander of my militia. She was instrumental in driving the Sabbat vampires out of this part of the city, and in the process discovered that eating vampire flesh confers many of the advantages drinking their blood does, and without the Banality that can induce. So if you see Clarence," she indicates the young artist, "looking nervous when she's near, that's why. Then again, there's very little that doesn't make poor Clarence nervous -- courage is simply not his strong point. "But enough of my musings. You are here to learn about our ways, are you not? It might surprise you to know, given how many of our kind consider computers to be instruments of banality, that there are more web sites about changelings than any other creature in the World of Darkness except for vampires. Here are a few that I've discovered...."
"Unfortunately," she adds, "while the vampires have dozens upon dozens of clan pages, there are really very few pages devoted to specific kith of changelings. Although there is a rather nice one called The Nexus, which has a section dealing specifically with the Unseelie Court -- of which I count myself a proud member -- as well as various other creatures deemed to be 'undesirables' by the majority." She smiles. The young man with the raven-like features appears by your elbow. "There aren't any about Pookas!" he says happily. "Oh, but of course," says the Countess, "How could I forget? The Pookas have not one but two kith pages of their own..." You are confused. "But didn't he just say there weren't any?" "Exactly!" says the young man. "To be precise, there aren't two of them. And neither of them are very good." "Davydd here is a Pooka, of course," adds the Countess. "They have... shall I say, a unique approach to communication? Telling the literal truth is not their forte. What he means to say is that there are two, and they're both quite good. Isn't that right, my dear?" "Wrong!" he says, nodding his head in agreement. "One of them is called There are no Pookas here! and it isn't the best, so I don't think you should visit it first or anything like that. The jokes aren't funny at all. The other is the Pooka Home Page, and it's pretty bad as well, so don't go there next. There's also A Redcap's Home Page, which is a truly excellent, professionally designed work of art, with no spelling mistakes at all. It looks quite finished, and one can only hope it won't get any better with time." "Shaddup!" snarls Jen, storming over to the table. "Maybe us Redcaps got more important things on our minds than fucking around with computers -- like eating obnoxious little twits like you!" Davydd dives under the table with a raven-croak of fright. The pale, emaciated young woman you glimpsed earlier takes advantage of the distraction to sidle up close to you and whisper in your ear "Don't tell anyone I told you, but there's a Sluagh kith page under development. It will be located right here, but it will probably be a couple of months before it's finished. The Storyteller has a lot of other work to do right now." Before you can ask her what a Sluagh is, or who this strange personage called "the Storyteller" might be, she melts away into the darkness. "At any rate," continues Countess Daria, "there are also a few worthwhile resources on the Web regarding faerie lore in general. The Faerie Encyclopedia is well worth checking out; some of its sources are less reliable than others, but it's really quite fascinating nonetheless. And Faerie Lore and Literature is absolutely wonderful. But enough talk. I can see you're eager to move on and talk to some of the patrons. Please don't let me detain you." "Who would you like to talk to now?" asks your travelling companion.
If you would like to link to or bookmark this site, please use the following URL: http://www.spidersilk.net/visions/ rather than linking directly to this page. The story flows better that way...
This page created and maintained by Lynna Landstreet If you for some reason have a desperate need to see more of my work, All game titles, terms and concepts used herein are
|