Once Niklaus’ history with the Sluagh had formed in my head, I knew he needed a Sluagh companion. As I had turned the usual expectations of Redcaps on their head with Niklaus, I thought I would go with something similar here. I also wanted a childling in this Oathcircle, so a rather cute and precocious child of a friend serves as a bit of an inspiration for the rather disturbing Sluagh Maggie Pie.
I found the form fillable two page Sheets, and linked to them below, but I won’t repeat too much on the sheet that is going into the words below in the Character Notes.
Design Notes
Maggie Pie is definitely another Social character, though in a different way than Niklaus was last week. A SLuagh Childling can be a creepy bug obsessed little scamp, or maybe a beauty pageant perennial runner up who is just a little … off for the judges. Sometimes, it is more fun to find what the core concept is and work out from there instead of overly focusing on the immediate appearance. Sluagh are obsessed with secrets and knowledge, and so this is a gossip who collects knowledge a bit differently. Sluagh and amazingly flexible and can Squirm into nearly any space while also possessing sharpened senses. They are cursed to not be able to speak louder than a whisper and while they are assumed to be Unseelie, they for the most part don’t have a great care one way or the other.
The wise child trope is a trope, but for a reason. Combining the Sluagh’s preoccupation with Secrets & knowledge with the need for a dour downer at times, her Unseelie Legacy is the Fatalist. Conversely, her Seelie Legacy, when she can move beyond the future or lack thereof she sees, is Sage. As a Childling, the most imaginative of us all, Maggie Pie starts with 5 Glamour, 2 WIllpower, and 1 Banality.
With Social as her primary, Maggie Pie easily has a 3,3, 4 starting attribute spread. Even though she is a Sluagh, I want that 4 to be in Appearance because far too often the Sluagh were assumed to be unattractive. It may bother or confuse you later, but especially as a childling and for the mundanes, she is a terribly cute little kiddo. With Mental Attributes as secondary, I start Maggie Pie off with a 2 Perception, 2 Intelligence, and 3 Wits. WIth a Tertiary Physical Attribute selection, she is limited but a Childling ballerina with a 1 Strength, 3 Dexterity, and 2 Stamina works well.
Looking through my initial notes, Maggie Pie’s Primary Abilities are going to be in Talents (13) with Skills as Secondary (9). I am beginning to worry that I may have made a bunch of characters without knowledges above Tertiary (5) which is terribly against my type. For Talents, we have a starting maximum rating of 3 for Alertness, Dodge, and Persuasion. A pair of ranks each in Athletics, Kenning to be able to easily detect and perceive Glamour, and Subterfuge round out our Talent list. Skills have a premium for Performance to reflect her dancing with STealth also getting high marks because Sluagh are sneaky little fae. A single dot each in Crafts, Melee, and Survival move us to the Tertiary Knowledges of Computer, Enigmas, Greymare, and Investigation. Small children these days seem to be quite naturally tuned into technology and the rest support her slightly nosy nature. .
For backgrounds, a Rank of Holdings to reflect the Freehold that is basis of this Oathchircle, but I think I will also give her a rank each of Mentor and Retinue. Her Retinue is one of her parents, harried but loving, who drives their lovely daughter to and from all the pageants thinking the Oathcircle is a form of finishing school for pageants. The Mentor is the Sluagh who sent her with Niklaus. The reason she has such an attention is the Two Ranks of Remembrance I will give her.
What Arts for Maggie Pie from the Core Rule Book lead me to Lederdemain and Chicanery – the two sneaky and underhanded Arts. As Niklaus already shows more Chicanery, I’ll load Maggie Pie with Two Ranks of Legerdemain to start and a single Chicanery rank. This lets her cloud the minds of those watching if she has appropriate realms, use little telekinetic like abilities, and otherwise be underfoot and cause problems. For Realms, or what these Arts may target in a Cantrip, I focus on Prop with 3 Ranks there so that Maggie Pie can affect clothes, tools, or even mechanical objects that don’t need fuel with her Legerdemain and then a single rank of Actor and Time. She may set a few seconds delay sometimes and try to look cute but everybody knows she was the troublemaker.
Finally, we get to Freebie Points, Merits, and Flaws. Freebie Points let you customize your character beyond what we’ve done already. Merits are other bonuses or traits that don’t fit elsewhere and cost Freebie points while Flaws are the inverse providing a handful more Freebie points to spend. I want to increase her Intelligence to 3 which evens out her Mental Attributes and then to further her beauty pageant ways I will increase her Performance to 5 and her Persuasion to 4. That is 11 of the 15 Freebie Points so far. One particular flaw caught my eye in the Sluagh Kithbook – Knows Too Much. This 5 point flaw means that Maggie Pie would not be terribly enthused or move with purpose for others plans … because she Knows Too Much. This Flaw means that Maggie Pie knows that there is no more reincarnation for Changelings – the Endless Winter IS coming and this is the final dance of the Dreaming. Additionally, I will add Past Lives as a 2 Point Merit to further this deeper connection to the Dreaming where some of her previous lives will sometimes intrude on her current life. I’ll take Echoes at 2 points which has traditional faerie mythos affect Maggie Pie, such as salt over the shoulder. That means that I’ve got another 11 Freebie points to spend. I’ll increase Remembrance to 3 Ranks and look at my last 10. I’ll add two more ranks of Subterfuge, an additional Rank of Actor, and increase her Retinue to 2. I didn’t take the Child flaw, so for whatever reason she isn’t usually burdened the way other children would be with things like adult oversight and skeptical doormen.
Character Notes
Even Sluagh don’t know what to do with Maggie Pie. Margaret is a strange child to the Sluagh and the time spent gathering secrets. A rather vibrant and precocious child, Maggie Pie’s Chrysalis formed at a beauty pageant where she saw the secrets take root before the very judging panel itself.
Margaret became Maggie Pie in that instant and has been enamoured of the dreams and deep hopes so many put on pageants since then. She found out, however, that she would be the last of the line – the end of this Sluagh story. She saw and sensed that the Endless Winter was coming and there would be no reincarnation for her fae self. That’s okay, though, because there are still secrets to ferret out among the humans and the fae.
Nobody knew what to do with her, though. Her own parents were completely lost as their little angel fell deeper into her dreams, but once they became Enchanted that all stopped. Now, they see the world as Maggie Pie sees it, and they take Margaret around to her pageants knowing it is Maggie Pie all along. Accepting, and indeed loving, their little fae daughter and the world that she found. Of course as humans stuck between two worlds and trying to protect Maggie Pie from Margaret’s own banal existence hasn’t always been the easiest of tasks.
The Sluagh, by contrast, were not used to the outgoing Maggie Pie who wouldn’t sit still for anything, much less tea! She knew this was all just wasting time, so she intended to have her fun and to steal what secrets she could. Tea was not the way she. Would. Spend. Her. Time.
A Seelie Redcap offered a rare opportunity to fix this. Niklaus owed the Sluagh for the Secrets and the time he shared with high tea … and had a remarkable sense of etiquette and propriety. He would do nicely, and would serve to protect this Childling who had begun to demonstrate a remembrance of the past beyond other Sluagh. The price was agreed upon and Niklaus became the nanny to Maggie Pie when her enchanted parents would not do.
Baron Gottfried was … less than plussed to have this commoner childling …. Sluagh around his court but little could be done. Even Baron Gottfried wouldn’t throw a childling out of the Freehold, even one who kept whispering the secrets of the Court at the most inopportune times. Niklaus’s attempts to teach Maggie Pie etiquette were so often rejoined with “ but you know that they don’t like you even when you use the right fork?” that his perseverance was annoying to Maggie Pie. She went with him, though, when a new Freehold was discovered. Baron Gottfried got rid of her with Niklaus, but she knew there was something more to be found in the Vale. Denys may only tolerate her, but it’s beginning to look like she knows more than the rest of them about the Vale. If only she cared enough to tell them before Winter swallows them all.
Maggie Pie – Childling Sluagh Problemmaker Character Sheet
Changeling: The Dreaming & The Uncovered Vale Overview Here.
Character Sheet from Mr. Gone’s Character Sheets.
World of Darkness, Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Dark Ages, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, Wraith: The Oblivion, Changeling: The Dreaming, Hunter: The Reckoning, Demon: The Fallen, Mummy: The Resurrection, Orpheus, Exalted, Chronicles of Darkness, White Wolf, and their respective logos, icons and symbols are trademarks or registered trademarks of White Wolf Entertainment. ©2018 White Wolf Entertainment AB, Västgötagatan 5, SE-118 27 Stockholm, Sweden. Seize the GM is a fan work and is not affiliated with White Wolf Entertainment. This work is made as criticism and review of the published work – no claim of ownership is intended or implied. Please visit https://www.white-wolf.com/ or http://theonyxpath.com/category/worlds/classicworldofdarkness/ for more information.
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