Danny Darling

From Changeling Venue

NPC

Seeming	Wizened Oracle
Court	No Court
Freehold	House of Cards
Player	Christopher Freeman

General - Danny Darling is a kind, helpful, protective, insightful, productive member of his Freehold. That being said, is Freehold is Som i'Seely of the Fen of Brambles, where morally black is that absence of all morality and white is a really tinge of gray, all things being skewed to the vortex of moral ambiguity. He wants nothing more than to help the members of His community to flourish and prosper in the way that life and the Wyrd have lead them. He is the City's Changeling Civil Servant, in touch with the Wyrd of Tampa in a way that none other could understand.

Mask - Danny looks like a regular Joe, even a little Leave-it-to-Beaver with is cleanly parted hair and clean shaven face. His clothing is always calm and understated, and casually professional. His hair is auburn, slowly turning brown, his eyes are dull green, his skin is pale, not from a lack of sun, its just because he's that white.

Mein - Danny looks like he has been through a lot, his skin seems touched with frost in places while burned in others. His eyes have scars around them like having been cut upon, or even removed. The lower middle of his forehead seems to also have been carved in the shape of an eye with symbols in it. Upon close inspection of his scars, if you know what Scandinavian Runes look like, you would see them in his scars. Beneath his clothing there are yet more scars, mostly cris-crossing his flat, well formed stomach, as if he has been opened up and closed again. His skin is paler in his mein, looks like he had been kept in dark places and poorly fed. His eyes always seem as if he knows the most painful secrets of the past and those to come. His eyes look very pale green, as if slowly being drained of color.

First life - Danny was that "good boy" in his community when growing up in the generic 1950's aftermath of the 60's and early 70's. He helped kids cross the street, old women take out the trash, and walked the dogs of those that were too busy and had a paper route. He worked hard for the people in his family and his community. He had a bright future a head of him. His parents could not have asked for a more perfect child. His life was the very model of the Happy All-American boy, even Wally and the Beave looked sinful in Danny's wake.

Durance - Then one day he helped to wrong old man. The Oldman was a Slave Trader among the Gentry of Arcadia. The Oldman was a greedy, miserly goblin that came off a lot like a used car salesman. When he placed Danny on the auction block his opening line signed the poor boy's fate, "This specimen has a strong back, big lungs, bright hair, full teeth, and divines the future!" He was purchased by a giant pillar of living fire with a cow who's milk was blood from one utter and water from the other. The Giant Pillar of Living Fire collected him and brought Danny back to his home in a land of eternal ice and cold. There Danny was kept in a cave and was prodded with sticks of fire and told to produce visions for the coming battle. Danny insisted that he merchant was lying and that he did not have the power to see into the future. The Giant Pillar of Living Fire took him to a castle that floated on an island in a great void. A rainbow bridge was called for by a great horn and the Giant Pillar of Living Fire dragged the poor frost bitten boy up to the castle. The Giant Pillar of Living Fire brought Danny before a dark queen upon a black throne.

Her face was split in half, one side was no more than the ivory skull beneath the flesh that was the other half. Her flesh was the darkness of the blackest night sky, her eyes like cold fire diamonds, stars among the void. The Queen of the Darkness Unknown took the poor boy into her back garden and hung him from a tree by one leg and call for her servants with their knives and carving tools.

First she asked the Giant Pillar of Living Fire what he had tried to do. It responded with it actions of prodding the boy with rods of burning fire. She asked Danny if this brought him any visions on the battles to come. Danny replied that he could not see visions. That the slave merchant was lying.

Unsatisfied with this answer the Queen of the Darkness Unknown tried to see if his entrails could divine the future and instructed her elves to cut open his gut. His innards fell out upon his own face. Danny screamed and cried and could see nothing in them. After a time of repeatedly being asked if he saw anything about the coming battle and repeatedly screaming and crying that he did not the Queen of the Darkness Unknown had her elves place is innards back within him and sew his stomach back up with Runes place inside.

She then thought that within Danny's heart might lie the answers they sought after. She instructed her elves to cut upon the boy's flesh Runes to open his heart. The pain was numbing and the blood ran until he was cold, but still he could not answer their questions.

Perhaps his power lays within his toe bones she announced. The Queen of Darkness Unknown instructed her elves to cut off the boys toes and cast them below him. With every clip at his tinder flesh Danny twitched and jolted and when it was done his ten toes lay in the snow below his face and when asked Danny could not yet answer their questions.

It would make since that his back would be a map. She called her elves to bring forth her scourge and cast the tails upon his back. Again the pain made his scream, having never lost his voice, and still the blood ran until he again became cold. After seven and one hundred lashes the Queen of the Darkness Unknown called for her elves that were artists and they sat in the number of six and tried to make what they could from the blood and cuts and bones and muscles what could have been a map. When these were shown to Danny the boy insisted they were insane and that the slave merchant was a liar. Danny could not see anything of battle to come.

One of the elves that was among her artists insisted that his visions came to him through his hands. This gave her the idea to cut at the boy's hands and fingers and when she did, Danny no longer felt the pain enough to scream. The Queen of the Darkness Unknown instructed Danny to look upon his hands and see what he could see. Danny could not lie and told him that he saw nothing of an upcoming battle within the blood and scars of his own hands.

She called for three elves that lived within her libraries and asked their wisdom on invoking the visions in the boy who could have none. The first and youngest of these said that she had read of those that did not see visions but spoke of the future, their power not within the eyes, but within the tongue. The Queen of the Darkness Unknown instructed her elves to cut upon Danny's tongue to make it speak. When she asked Danny to speak of the battle to come he could only shake his head.

The second, also middle in age said that perhaps his eyes received the visions but did not tell Danny of them. The Queen of the Darkness Unknown called upon her elves to cut his eyes and removed them. Danny could now look back at himself from the ground below and at the scarring as the wounds inflicted on him healed quickly after they had been made and seen not to be effective. When asked what he saw he responded with the fact that he could see himself hanging from the tree, the scares and pain that his body has taken, but nothing more.

The Queen of the Darkness Unknown looked to the third and final scholarly elf, the eldest and most haggish. She spoke softly and told her Queen that perhaps this was a step in the right direction, but his Eye of Visions needed yet to be opened. The crone showed the other elves where this was. The Queen of the Darkness Unknown told her elves once more to replace the boy's eyes and to carve upon the Eye of Visions to relieve it's power and to carve upon it the Runes. They did as instructed and in Danny's mind's eye darkness began to lift, and he did see a battle yet to come...

There are goblins and pirates, a fortress in a bramble. There is a great warrior lost and a Warrior Queen gained. There is a smith of great renown among the opposition, and a subtle bright cold wind that obscures many that have only half a soul. A spider whom devours his own soul. A warrior king from the East stand next to the Warrior Queen, though they are not each unto another. Great demons come from the waters and the skies and many of the Half Souls are killed. The fortress's doors swing open and the Half Souls run for shelter inside. Just as they all make it in a dark one, a half soul like the rest is lost outside the fortress, and there I am, I bring in the dark one, for I remember seeing him this day.

The rope that bound Danny to the great dead tree broke and he fell to the ground below. The Great Pillar of Living Fire and the Queen of the Darkness Unknown exchanged words and in frustration that he had not told them anything of the battles the expected to come she instructed the elves to cast the boy off the edge of her floating island castle into the great void below.

Return - When Danny came out of the Hedge he was disoriented and confused. Everything looked and smelled different than it did when he had gone in. Broken and sore he stumbled through the streets and found a news paper bin for the St. Petersburg Times; The date read August 21st, 2003. It couldn't be, he could remember the day he helped the Oldman was in March of 1976. He found a mirror and he saw the scares on his face. He looked aged by pain but still felt 14, still looked 14 under all the pain. The place that he had fallen into was not familiar to him. He can't remember what would have been familiar to him, but he thought that he might have been in Russia. Happy that the cold war ended with the Americans taking Russia and making them an English speaking country, he thought it would be colder. Danny wonder the streets again and found a door into the Hedge. Curiously he approached and touched the thornes reaching back for him. Instantly his vision flashed before his eyes and he started running through the Hedge and found himself on the edge of a battlefield. Monsters of the most horrific beauty plucked off, killed or collected those he felt a kinship too, the Half Souls. Danny started running again, this time to push the Half Souls out of danger's way as he saw the battle mere seconds before it happened. Everything was so clear. Then the doors opened. Goblins poured forth with baubles and trinkets leaving behind the fortress. There was a great call from a man with claws and teeth like a great predator, the great warrior that will disappear. The Dragon warrior called out for his troops to seek out shelter within the walls of the fortress. Danny ran with them and just as the doors started closing behind him Danny reached back and stopped the doors. He darted out and reached into the shadows to save the Shadow With Red Eyes.

Aftermath - For a week they stayed within the walls of the Fortress tending to the wounded, reswearing the Oath of Common Bonds and establishing the new freehold. Danny took to what he did naturally, cleaning and lending his broken hands where ever their was need for them. He picked out the leaders from his vision and had them set to making laws and codifying the ways of the freehold while making suggestions of his own based on his sense and his vision. Some of the older, more established Changelings, as he soon learned to call himself, explained his condition to him and got him established and into school. Danny started high-school, having to learn computers and the new sciences, not to mention history of the past three decades. Between school, holding down a job and working with the Changelings of the Fen of Brambles in Som i'Seely, Danny was a very busy boy. The changelings became his family, Tampa became his community. He doesn't always like or agree with those he has become so attached to, but he realized early on that no one else was going to love him, no one else was going to protect them, and they had to stick together.

Play Start Danny has just graduated from high school in Tampa and has enrolled in USF, he wants to be a scientist and work the the city of Tampa, to protect it. Danny has come to understand that the world is not a perfect place like he dreams about in the time before the Tree in the Cold Place with the Great Pillar of Living Fire, the Queen of the Darkness Unknown and her elves with their knives. The world can be just as cold and painful, but this is his world. The world is more complex than Good or Evil, for, as Changelings, they are subject to laws that mortal men are not, and as Changelings, can, to an extent, live outside the laws of mortal men because of it. There are more sides to the coin than Lawful and Unlawful, for among the Lawful are the corrupt and among the Unlawful are the honorable. Danny is aware of all this, and he understands that the Wyrd has a plan, he understands this because, on occasion, the Wyrd will whisper bits of this plan in his dreams.

Today Danny has been fired from his possision as Royal Vizier, and has moved to Orlando to live with Toi Breaker at the 52

Rumors

With Danny having made the exit he did there should be plenty of rumors about him floating around. Feel free to create and add your own.

Danny sold his soul to Thomas Thorn in exchange for protection.

Danny is being taught how to torture people by Toi Breaker while he's living at the 52 Pick Up after his exile.

Danny is training the two kittens Jack Lennon gave to Toi Breaker how to kill people.

Danny is actually very happy in Orlando and glad to be away from Tampa. He's going back to school and living a very normal life.

Ouside Opinions

• "No, sir, I am not trying to change your mind, I am just trying to inform you that your perseption of the situation is wrong." Danny Darling talking to one of his professors.

• "The kid's all right, but weird, like all Wizened. Somehow, he's rude, he's offensive, he acts like he's got twenty better things to be doing when he's talking to you, and he's always fussy, compulsive, and impatient, but he always does all these things in a way that's not only super polite, but kind of funny. It's like a fluffy kitten scratching your hand...you want to smack it across the room, but it's just so fuckin' cute how ferocious it thinks it is that you let it slide. If he could use his Magic 8-ball ability to predict the Cash-3 Lotto numbers for me, he'd be my favorite Wizened ever." - Dzxoxian Brokehorn

• "On paper I'm Danny's Foster Mother, but really, he's so self sufficient I think all I've ever had to do was give him a place to crash and make sure he got driven to soccer practice. He's got a better handle on things than most Lost I've met and has never really needed me invovled in his life. It's not that I don't care, But to tell the truth we're just such different people that all I really feel I can do is just keep a loose eye on him and be there incase something happens." -Kalen Blazenheart

• " He is always very kind to me and I appreciate that. However, it is always appreciated when someone is kind to you simply because they feel the need to be, regurdless of your court or any other sort stereotypes that may surround you. I only wish that others would take note of this and follow Danny's example." -Rose White