The Three
From Changeling Venue
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Contents |
Overview
Merry, laughing child-sprites, dancing among flowers, straight out of the dreams of the Victorians...
Regal, haughty elven lords, ruling over a stern manor of stone and ice...
Graceful courtiers...
Savage, brutish fighters...
Silent, mouthless beings with wide, pale eyes, always watching, for hours on end, never blinking...
...the mysterious Fae known only as the Three have been all of these, and more.
All Gentry are capricious and unpredictable, judged by human standards. The Three (if they have names of their own, none - not even the other True Fae - seem to know what they are) are capricious and unpredictable judged by the Gentry's standards. The only constant is that there are always three of them. Everything else - their appearance, their demeanor, even their gender - is mutable.
Their only goal seems to be avoiding boredom - although, like everything else, the definition of what bores them can change by the week, the day, or the hour. To that end, the Changelings they collect tend to be those that they think will keep them entertained - whatever that means to them at the time. One was taken for her beauty. Another for her stories and songs. Both learned that neither could hold their attention all the time... and woe to the Changeling in their care when the Three become bored. Or creative.
In any guise, they seem to have a love for games, although the games vary with the different demeanors they adopt. As thoughtlessly cruel as they are fickle, many of the "games" they devise double as psychological or emotional torture for those caught up in them, forced to play without ever knowing all the rules - or even whether the Three will be more amused today by winning or by losing.
Among other Fae, the Three have a certain appealing reputation. To those jaded beings who can control everything in their immediate domain, the idea of dinner guests who may be beautiful and charming, with exquisite manners... or who may tell dirty jokes with their mouths open... or speak only in rhymes and riddles until the dessert course... to purposefully subject oneself to something so whimsical and erratic, well, it's just shocking enough to be fashionable. In certain circles, at least. And besides, they always bring such amusing toys with them.
Stories
- At one point in time, in an exceptionally playful mode, the Three decided that one of their abductees, the girl Holly, would look better with pink horns on her head. They spent weeks "helping" her grow them, molding and shaping them, with no thought to the pain caused, until they were just to their liking. The moment they had them just right, they clapped their hands in glee... and instantly changed. Tall and regal and supercilious now, they decided in one voice that the horns looked ridiculous... and, instead of removing them, spent the better part of a year telling Holly how stupid she was for having grown them in the first place.
- She became their little “briar rose”. Sickening, really. Two of the Three fawned over her, deepening her color here, shaping her slender stems and leaves there. They soon grew bored when she no longer needed their ministrations, when she was ‘perfect’, and soon moved on to other things. But the Third never failed. As part of their decision that Briar should always be, it meant that she always bloomed, which meant that she always grew. Every night. New leaves, new stems, new blossoms. And every morning, the Third came in, pruning shears in hand; came long after the other Two had ceased to be interested in 'their briar'. Unfortunately, as a living, breathing thing, the pruning was tantamount to cutting off her fingers, hands, toes, legs. It hurt like hell every day. But the Third loved Their pretty prize.
Rumors
- All groups of Gentry traditionally found in groups of three - the Brothers Three, the Troika - are all really the Three in disguise
