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Dramatic Systems: The Gentry

The Fair Folk are perhaps the most important NPCs in any game of Changeling the Lost. They are foes to be faced, monsters to be opposed, and threats to be dealt with. Sometimes you can face them with an iron will and an iron blade, but other times its important to understand the enigma that they understand and even deal with them when that's the safest course. None of these options is any safer than the others. The Gentry are deadly in combat, maddening puzzles and frightfully cunning manipulators.

Predicting the Others

 Dice Pool: Manipulation + Occult
 Action: Instant
 Specialties: The Others, My Keeper.
 Notes: Harvest (Hedge Bounty) can modify this system.

The Gentry are enigmas given flesh, maddening to understand but not impossible to predict - up to a point. A Changeling that does something wrong knows that punishment is coming, and might be able to speculate as to what form it might take. Over the long period of their service to the Fair Folk, the Lost come to understand more and more about their Keepers, and those that escape likely knew their Lords and Ladies better than most - given that they were able to escape from them. Sometimes this knowledge serves them even in the world, for these Lost can understand likely reactions by the Others and use these predictions to better evade or fight them.

As a general rule, the Gentry cannot be precisely predicted. They simply don't meet up to our experiences of behavior. On anything except an exceptional result, you get a general gist of the Others likely actions or reactions, rather than a detailed idea of what it will do. I.e., if you hide a Child that the Gentry is taken with, a successful result will give you an answer like "It will lose interest after 15 minutes or so," or "It will become more angry at you than interested in the child." Only an exceptional success gets anything more specific. Lastly, the Storyteller might very well have the Gentry do something other than predicted (but not completely opposed to the prediction).

Roll Results

• Dramatic Failure: You get it wrong, and make a prediction that is very much opposed to the Others' likely reaction.
• Failure: You simply aren't sure, but can probably safely default to "It won't be pretty."
• Success: You have a general idea of what the Gentry will most likely do in this situation.
• Exceptional Success: You have a very specific, and pretty much correct, view of the actions the Gentry is likely to undertake.

Suggested Modifiers: The Gentry is your Keeper (+2), You are predicting the Gentry's reaction to something it dislikes or will find displeasing (+1 or +2), you are predicting the Gentry's reaction to something that it likes or finds pleasing (-1 to -3), You little or no experience with this specific Other (-1 or -2). Lastly, the Storyteller should roll 2d10 as a measure of how alien the Other is feeling right now. Of the two results, pick the one that is either Odd or the Higher Number. If this final value is even, add half of that value to the dice pool as a bonus. If the final value is instead odd, subtract half of the value (round up) from the dice pool as a penalty.