The Fear-Maker's Promise.pdf

“Death in itself is nothing; but we fear

To be we know not what, we know not where.”

— John Dryden, Aurengzebe. Act iv. Sc. 1.

A Story for Changeling: The Lost using the Storytelling Adventure System

Written by Chuck Wendig Development and Book Design by Will Hindmarch Illustrations by Andrew Hepworth and Pat Loboyko

STORYTELLING ADVENTURE SYSTEM

SCENES

XP LEVEL

0-34

Mountain East Business Center

2075 West Park Place Boulevard

Suite G

Stone Mountain, GA 30087

MENTAL OOOO

PHYSICAL OOOOO

SOCIAL OOOOO

“Death in itself is nothing; but we fear

To be we know not what, we know not where.”

— John Dryden, Aurengzebe. Act iv. Sc. 1.

A Story for Changeling: The Lost using the Storytelling Adventure System

Written by Chuck Wendig Development and Book Design by Will Hindmarch Illustrations by Andrew Hepworth and Pat Loboyko

STORYTELLING ADVENTURE SYSTEM

SCENES

XP LEVEL

0-34

© 2007 CCP, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and for blank character sheets, which may be reproduced for personal use only. White Wolf, Vampire and World of Darkness are registered trademarks of CCP, Inc. All rights reserved. Vampire the

Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Promethean the Created, Changeling the Lost, Storytelling System and The Fear-Makerʼs Promise are trademarks of CCP, Inc. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP, Inc. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a

challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are ﬁction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised.

Check out White Wolf online at http://www.white-wolf.com

MENTAL OOOOO

PHYSICAL OOOOO

SOCIAL OOOOO

“So the Bluebirds have contracted, have they, for a house?

And a next is under way for little Mr. Wren?”

“Hush, dear, hush! Be quiet, dear! quiet as a mouse.

These are weighty secrets, and we must whisper them.”

— Susan Coolidge , Secrets

These are weighty secrets, and we must whisper them.”

— Susan Coolidge , Secrets

A t twilight, a young boy chases a rabbit into

Introduction

The cruel reality is this: the True Fae like to steal children

from the world. Why is this? Hard to say, and it’s not like

the Others are particularly clear about their motivations. Do

they milk the humanity out of such younglings, drinking their

Glamour (or their blood)? Could it be that, if taken at an early

enough age, a child can grow up to “become” one of the Fae?

Or are their purposes so alien that no human mind can come

to comprehend them?

This story centers on a ritual performed within the local

freehold with members of all the local Courts in attendance.

The purpose of this ritual is to forge a new ceremonial con-

tract with the city itself — the invocation of this so-called

Children’s Contract ends the True Fae’s ability to steal

children from this city for one year and one day.

This adventure kit provides something of a moral mystery

for the characters. Can they navigate a tense social situ-

ation and a moral conundrum in time to see the truth of

things? Can they muster the strength to combat the physi-

cal elements that stand in their path? This kit can be used

as a stand-alone story comprising one or two sessions, or

it can be folded into your current Changeling: The Lost

chronicle.

At midnight, a mother hears the sudden cry of her

newborn girl on the baby monitor... and when she

enters the room to check on her, the child is gone,

the crib is overturned, and the room is filled with

red moths.

Toward morning, twelve-year-old twins finally

decide to confront the monster that lurks in their

closet, and in doing so, are snatched away by a pair

of hands sticky with silk spun by greasy worms.

Perhaps it’s time to put an end to these abductions.

But is the cost of stopping these abductions too high?

Is there cold comfort to be found in the sacrifice?

“So the Bluebirds have contracted, have they, for a house?

And a next is under way for little Mr. Wren?”

a thicket and is never seen again.

At midnight, a mother hears the sudden cry of her

newborn girl on the baby monitor...

newborn girl on the baby monitor and when she

enters the room to check on her, the child is gone,

the crib is overturned, and the room is filled with

red moths.

Toward morning, twelve-year-old twins finally

decide to confront the monster that lurks in their

closet, and in doing so, are snatched away by a pair

of hands sticky with silk spun by greasy worms.

What is Inside

In lieu of a traditional table of contents, this product uses bookmarks

to help you turn immediately to the page you’re after. Most PDF readers

list a file’s bookmark links in an easy-to-access part of the interface, but

check your program’s documentation for more on bookmarks.

This story kit breaks down into three basic parts:

The Introduction , which you’re reading now, gives you the gist of

the story, the rundown on Storyteller characters and lots of history and

back-story to help you bring the setting and the characters to life.

The Scenes are the heart of story. They detail the core actions of

the tale, and help you improvise in the midst of your story.

The Scene Cards mark the beginning of in-play resources designed

for easy printing. If you can’t print this whole kit, just print pages 48-

55 for the bare-bones you need to tell this story.

Treatment

In “The Fear-Maker’s Promise,” an outsider to the freehold called

Red Wren has offered up a promise to the local Lost: with a certain

ritual that she has performed elsewhere, she can ensure that no chil-

dren under the age of fifteen years will be abducted by the True Fae

for one year and one day. The invocation of this Children’s Contract

is not pleasant, however, and forces the changelings of the freehold

into a moral dilemma. The dilemma? The ritual demands that physical

harm and mental trauma be brought against a single child — acting as

a scapegoat, and a focus of the ritual.

The fear of the sacrificial boy is the catalyst for the ritual. His fear is

enough to keep all the local children sufficiently afraid of that which

they do not know (the Others) and the True Fae at bay.

The Children’s Contract, performed on the Autumnal Equinox

(on or around the 22nd or 23rd of February), therefore falls under the

governance of the Court of Fear. Given that Red Wren belongs to the

Autumn Court, it’s not surprising that the court decides to go ahead

with the ritual.

The adventure itself begins the night of the Children’s Contract

enactment, around sundown. Once the ritual begins, it must be com-

pleted by sunrise of the following day for its mystic effect to be invoked.

Fail to complete the ritual by then, and it doesn’t “take” — meaning

children can continue to be abducted by the Others.

If only it were so simple. Early in the invocation of the ritual, an

unseen figure absconds with the child and disappears into the Hedge,

leaving behind a set of strange footprints. Those Lost in attendance

remain torn as to what to do; some present claim to have second

thoughts, and wonder if maybe the so-called “kidnapper” might not

have the right idea, planning not to harm the child but instead to

take the child somewhere safe. Other Lost feel that the child must be

recovered — who knows what will happen to him in the Hedge? And

isn’t the minor harm that will be brought against this child worth it if

it keeps all the children of the city safe?

The players must decide where their characters stand in this moral

dilemma. If they choose to go after the thief and the child, they must

enter the Hedge and descend deep within the tangle of Thorns to

reclaim the stolen boy. If they remain with the other Lost, they must

navigate an escalating social conflict that threatens to see violence

between the Courts, driven on by their individual views.

About the Storytelling Adventure System

If this is your ﬁ rst Storytelling Adventure System (SAS)

product, you’ve chosen a ﬁ ne place to start. To keep this story kit

lean and focused, though, we haven’t included a lot of the core

Storyteller advice that’s at the heart of the SAS. Whether you’re

a new Storyteller, or a leathery vet, be sure to read the free SAS

User’s Guide , found at the SAS website:

www.white-wolf.com/sas

The gist of the SAS format is this: The actions described in the

World of Darkness Rulebook are archetypal, but by no means

exhaustive. The “Foot Chase” action on p. 65 of that book, for

example, describes foot chases in general. It gives you a place to

start. The action in an SAS scene describe one speciﬁ c event, one

instance of action. So while the World of Darkness Rulebook

gives you mechanics for a foot chase, an SAS product gives you

game mechanics for this one foot chase.

This gives your story’s actions more color and detail, and adds

mileage to every Skill on the players’ character sheets. No two foot

chases — or whatever other action they’re taking — are alike.

Likewise, the scenes in this story are not mandates. This kit

doesn’t describe how the story must go, but rather creates conﬂ icts

and circumstances from which it can begin.

What’s worse, one of the Others, bent on disrupting this ritual, shows

his nightmarish face.

If the child is recovered, and the characters choose to go through

with the ritual, and all threats are appropriately obviated, the ritual

is impeded by a final wrinkle: the child is autistic, and does not scare

easily. Morning approaches. Will the characters aid in this, too, by

terrorizing an innocent boy?

Some of the scenes of this story are linear, whereas others happen

only according to certain triggers. All scenes, however, can be reorga-

nized as is necessary according to your story’s needs and in reaction to

the characters’ actions and motivations. Remember that the troupe’s

characters are the protagonists — not Joey, not Red Wren, not any-

one else. If the protagonists do not undertake a particular action, and

a particular scene doesn’t actually take place in your version of the

story, so be it. That only means the relevant scenes can receive more

attention in your tale.

A Chapter

In Your Chronicle

This story plays well on its own as a singular gameplay experience,

or as part of a larger Changeling: The Lost chronicle.

When played as part of a larger series of stories, the characters

presumably already have allies and enemies within and outside of

the four Courts. They have their own preconceptions (and fears)

regarding things like fetches, Keepers, and the Hedge. “The Fear-

Maker’s Promise” works as one chapter in this overarching story.

The Storyteller characters provided in this kit can easily be swapped

out for characters that already exist in your chronicle. It’s even

possible that, in your chronicle’s city, the practice of this ritual

has been going on for years, and during this time has been keeping

the children of the city safe from the thieving hands of the Others.

In which case, things change or stay the same depending on the

decisions made by the players’ characters.

As part of an ongoing chronicle, once the story is complete the char-

acters will have made choices that affect not just one child, not just the

freehold, but a city’s worth of children. What are the repercussions?

Do they act against their own Court’s interests? Have they alienated

themselves from their allies? This story is meant to have far-reaching

repercussions both socially and morally for your troupe’s characters.

A Story by Itself

Alternately, “The Fear-Maker’s Promise” plays well as a stand-alone

story (though it may well take more than a single session of play).

You might tell this tale as a singular, experimental play experience.

Maybe you’ve just gotten your copy of Changeling: The Lost and you

want to try out the game, or maybe you’re looking for a self-contained

follow-up tale to the Changeling demo, “Dwelling in Darkness.” This

story is a fine way to begin a new chronicle, too.

While this adventure cannot possibly provide game statistics or

details on every persona of every Court in the freehold, it does pro-

vide a few of the lynchpin characters. From here, you may choose

to expand or revise the cast of characters according to your future

plans for the chronicle, or use these quick impressions of Storyteller

characters to create the illusion of a whole lived-in freehold existing

in the background, behind the players’ characters.

Acts and Scenes

Drama is about tension, and tension is about escalation.

In this story, things are “off” or “bad” to begin with — people have

gathered to watch the torment of a young boy. Every scene after that

needs to escalate that uneasy feeling, with the risks rising along the

way. If you feel that a scene is dragging, or suddenly deflates for some

reason, either insert some new conflict, or cut to the quick and push

to the next scene — provided the players are ready for some resolu-

tion. Just as you shouldn’t let a scene linger when it’s finished, you

shouldn’t rush through a scene that hasn’t done its part yet unless it’s

clear that the scene is getting in the way of tension going up or the

story going forward.

Tension and conflict can draw a lot of negativity to the characters,

but that’s not to say that successes shouldn’t be rewarded. Players

should be made to feel good when their characters resolve something

or manage a small success. But if the adventure isn’t over, then such

successes should only be breathers — the tension should return soon,

more taut than it was before, urging the characters forward.

Dramatic Tension

Dramatic tension runs behind each scene, between the scenes, no

matter what scenes are played, no matter how they turn out. Dramatic

tension is what turns a conversational scene into a pivotal moment

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