Game: Changeling: The Dreaming (first edition – White Wolf, 1995)
My Experience: Of the big five World of Darkness games, I’ve admittedly spent the least time with Changeling. It just never clicked with me. I built a few characters, sat at a table a time or two, but it was always too whimsical and Technicolor for me to be comfortable with it.
The irony does not escape me now.
Gökhan Karga/Silver Mhachkay, Goth Bard
Most people find Gökhan Karga deeply unsettling. He’s quietly handsome and seemingly unaware of it, stylish in an unaffected, casual way, and always smells like the best parts of his parents’ moderately-successful kebab restaurant. But there’s something in his eyes that says he knows things he neither should know nor particularly wants to know, and once he finishes tuning his guitar and starts singing, no one else in the room will be able to unhear or unlearn those things. It may be why, despite all his talent, he’s managed to completely elude any degree of success outside the local goth scene.
Then again, it may be that Silver Mhachkay, eshu songsmith of the Unseelie Court, knows exactly what too much success would cost his faerie soul, and has been going to great lengths to avoid it. His uncanniness isn’t entirely artifice – some of it is a natural consequence of who and what he is – but a great deal of it is cultivated, just like his regular audience. They know what they’re going to get from him every time he takes the stage, and their cold little hearts trill in anticipation of whatever eldritch terrors his lyrics will conjure. And the local court does so appreciate the emotional banquet Silver Mhachkay evokes from his loyal fans.
Of course, inspiring mortal dreamers to their own works of art (and Glamour) requires constant infusions of new material. Neither Gökhan nor Silver Mhachkay is much for library time. In either guise, he’d much rather take up the challenge of tracking down stories of the world’s dark places and finding the kernels of power and truth that spawned them. It’s dangerous to go alone, though – much better to be accompanied by boon companions, or suckers willing to take some of the risks. Whichever’s easier.
Traits
Court: Unseelie
Seelie Legacy: Sage
Unseelie Legacy: Riddler
Seeming: Wilder
Kith: Eshu
Attributes
Physical: Strength ••, Dexterity •••, Stamina •••
Social: Charisma •••, Manipulation (bullshit flows like honey and sticks twice as well) ••••, Appearance (darkly exotic) ••••
Mental: Perception ••, Intelligence ••, Wits ••
Abilities
Talents: Alertness ••, Brawl •, Dodge •, Empathy •••, Streetwise •••, Subterfuge •••
Skills: Etiquette ••, Leadership •, Melee ••, Performance (goth folk rock) ••••, Stealth •
Knowledges: Enigmas •, Linguistics (Turkish) •, Mythlore ••, Occult •••
Advantages
Backgrounds: Dreamers •••, Greymayre •, Resources •
Arts: Chicanery •••
Realms: Actor •••, Scene ••
Glamour: ••••
Willpower: ••••
Banality: •••
Equipment
guitar, lacquered in a purple so deep it’s black, with ornate Turkish writing on the body that translates to “Know Fear”
gothtastic wardrobe
hot carryout kebabs and fresh baklava for whoever’s hungry
leatherbound journal/songbook and onyx fountain pen
chrome switchblade
dented and rusty Subaru Outback that elicits the rest of the PCs to break out their wallets and provide gas money out of pity
Notes and Afterthoughts
I was absolutely stuck on a Changeling character concept worth writing up. The Girl and I were having a side conversation in which this vintage tweet came up:
… and I immediately knew I had to do something with “necromancer bard.” Of the WoD PCs I’ve written up so far, this one definitely leans the hardest into the setting’s goth origins.
A mhachkay, as per Wikipedia, is a Turkic variation on the vampire legend that involves someone born with two hearts and two souls. If that doesn’t perfectly fit Changeling (in a particularly grim and twisted way), I don’t know what does.