"Forever Autumn"

Well, maybe not forever, but this is a world of Autumn. A world of darkness. For what is the light of glamour and dreaming without the shade?

London will be the setting for the Changeling Chronicles(s?) I run. A city I'm somewhat less unfamiliar with, as a Brit, than the cities one usually associates with these games (because most of them are made in the US, I guess). For some, probably weird, reason I won't use a city I'm more familiar with. Everyone speaks like a farmer and it just feels weird playing right on your doorstep. Don't know how I'd feel were I actually a Londoner, and not a cosplay cockerney!

In the Tower of London the Ravens guard a special prisoner that the Autumn World has long forgotten about. She is the Merry Maid, the Snow Princess. Daughter of King Caliburn of Old. The One True King of the Lands of the Young. She has been kept there, restive and asleep, for breaking her betrothal. She was promised to Prince Basil, son of the Duchess of Sorrows. A marriage intended to seal a breach. The Duchess is a powerful witch; a Sidhe of immense power. 

The Princess' heart though was taken by another, a Changeling known as the Handsome Prince. In truth a commoner who merely sought to stand up for others oppressed by the Houses. Needless to say the Duchess was furious. Her revenge has been a storm of banality on the city and the imprisonment of the Snow Princess for hundreds of years. She stole the fae soul of the Prince, leaving but an aging mortal shell, kept alive by her cruelty. Her palace, Castle Darkhearth, is the true heart of the City. Deep within a corporate enclave she controls in her mortal guise as Cordelia Winters. A true corporate witch. She is rarely seen without a bodyguard who is in truth her seneschal; a fearsome troll named Boulder.

Yet the dreams of the Merry Maid sometimes touch the outside world. The Dreaming carries these like bottled messages, but ones that are rarely coherent. They are dangerous; they can inspire mortals, even invoke Chrysalis, but ever they bring the threat of madness. These are accompanied by the sound (as reported) of an old music box. This chimerical relic is the key to her imprisonment, kept under her bed in the tower. It is powered by the heart of a Mandrake and it's sound is a dagger to the mind.

The key to understanding this power lies with a Changeling  almost lost to the Autumn called Coleman King. He now resides in a nursing home, a pharmacologically retired rockstar, leader of the band Eaglebreeze scarred by drugs and banality. Unfortunately this place is run by the notorious Hook family. It is located in Mad Town; an unfortunate location appropriately named, but that is a song for another time.

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