Indrid Cold

From Changeling Venue

1 Appearance
2 Personality
3 The Map of Time
4 Durance
5 Those Who Have Escaped
- 5.1 Contact

Name: Indrid Cold
Titles and Aliases: The Faceless Stranger, the Mothman, the Dreamwalker, the Farseer

Appearance

This creature changes shape as others change shoes. His eyes have been said to glow a dull red that widens until it engulfs you, and his shape can be that of a tall, handsome stranger whose face you can never remember, or that of a winged beast of incredible height. Or perhaps those wings were merely the shapes of shadows that follow him everywhere... all that is known is that your skin reacts as if to great cold when he's around, even though the temperature does not drop one bit.

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Personality

Seizing a name for himself that may or may not be his own... a name that he might have taken from a small incident in a small town in West Virginia, a name that might have been made up by a mortal hoaxer. Still, Indrid Cold is no stranger to hoaxes, although he is known to deal only in the truth. This is where he is most dangerous.

Indrid Cold is said to be under an ancient curse that requires him always to know the future. Unfortunately, the true way of the future is forbidden to him, and he has no native means of discovering it. Thus, he has made ancient and secret pacts with Dream, and now wanders through the dreams of mortals and changelings, forcing upon them prophetic dreams which he then reads and analyzes, placing within his gigantic Map of Time. He has no known domain in Arcadia, except for a section of the land of Dreams that he is said to have cordoned off for his own personal use. However, he does not remain there long, always wandering further and further through the dreams of mortals, changelings, and other beings, forcing them to the edge of insanity, finding others to whom he teaches the ways of Dream in order that they may assist him forcibly in his mad quest to finish his Map.

His favorite thing to do is to feed people bits of dangerous truths, either things that are true now, or were true in the past, or will be true in the future. Sometimes he makes someone's possible future a certainty simply by prophesying it to them. His ability to shape and create dreams allows him to bring the prophecies of others to light within a person's dream as a false prophecy. He manages to trick many mortals into his grasp by leading them on such a merry chase.

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The Map of Time

Wings spread, his red and hypnotic gaze forward, Indrid Cold lives for many amusements, but only one serious endeavor: the Map of Time. Housed somewhere in his domain in Dreams, he constantly visits it, following each of the branches of possibility, sealing off exits and entrances as his obsession to know the future unfolds itself. Whenever he gets too close to the tips of the branches of the current Map of Time, Cold suffers from lacerations to his body which may actually injure him or might only be an aesthetic conceit. Either way, he must remain a certain number of steps ahead of the present in the current incarnation of the Map to avoid this wounded visage. Through Cold's power, the Map has become something of a living entity, demanding constantly to be fed in the form of prophecy.

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Durance

Those who have spent some time with Indrid Cold have usually been tricked into accepting him into their dreams in one way or another. Once having done so, they become creatures of dream, or else are kept locked as servants to the Map of Time. As a result, those who have served Indrid Cold and managed to escape come away with knowledge of the ways of Oneiromancy, or talents in foreseeing the future, or both. The nightmares they have suffered through Cold's dreamweaving, however, are more than a high price to pay for such abilities.

There are other reasons he might have captured a mortal--in order to serve as a victim of any number of experiments or amusements, to work as security for the Map or his Dream domain, etc. Each one of these experiences would involve horrible nightmares at the least, but the changes undergone by such changelings would be more specific to that Durance.

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