Happy Early Beltaine! How to be OP in the Changeling the Dreaming-verse
Changeling the Dreaming is part of a broader universe called the World of Darkness. However one way the World of Darkness books are different from many other RPGs is that they are written from an-universe perspective much like some forms of Horror are written as journal entries or found as found footage. Numerous accounts exist some of which partially or fully contradict each other or have a tilted perspective. As such even more then doing a strategy guide on a specific comic series within DC/Marvel for instance, doing a strategy guide on a particular line from World of Darkness makes a lot of sense as it's essentially the internal world and perspective of that Splat. Thus is the a Strat Guide for the world of the Fae in Changeling the Dreaming
Despite being more specific, this will still be extremely difficult. Changeling the Dreaming has more content for it then any of the other World of Darkness lines outside the big 3 (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage.) It has an infamously esoteric magic system that is complicated to explain and it is infamous for the sheer amount of Kiths that were added to represent the sheer complexity and diversity of Fae, having around 100 different Kith, representing types of Fae, most explored only briefly. It also like the rest of the World of Darkness is based on the Storyteller RPG system which focuses on a narrative approach over a more mechanical pseudo-scientific approach where you know exactly how much weight a character can lift or how fast they can run, instead speaking in more narrative terms, along with the other esotericisms of the World of Darkness-verse. And of course Changeling is ESPECIALLY so as Fae work traditionally on a symbolic logic. That said I have a fondness for this underappreciated game and so wanted to do my best to powerscale it.
Wall Tier:
While all the Kithain have have supernatural abilities, many of them have physical capabilities comparable to the Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve, the Kithain name of normal humans. This is because the Autumn World, what the Kithain call the world of mortals is filled with Banality, their weakness, and so are highly weakened. However World of Darkness humans have potential beyond that of our world. Not only do all of them in small part subconsciously contribute to the Consensus Reality, the nature of reality as understood, however humans in particular are imbued with a special potential. This is shown in Hunter the Reckoning where Hunters with heavy difficulty are able to fight supernatural beings, and low level ones often having wall level feats. There are 9 attributes, of which three are physical. These attributes are rated 1 to 10, where up to five is the "human" range and 2 is average. On this scale the example for 3 is breaking down a wooden door, and 5 is break down a metal door, a wall level feat. As such it's fair to say that mortals and by extension Fae without any "superhuman" capabilities would range from Human Level to Wall Level.
This is consistent with numerous feats from Changeling itself for the common fae. Redcaps, even Childling Redcaps are known for their unique birthright that they can eat literally anything, with examples being biting metal safes in two, and eating cars and while Redcaps are probably the second strongest Kithain, most Fae should be comparable to a Redcap Childling freshly awoken from Chrysalis. Pooka which are viewed as the silly jokesters of the Kithain are known for their birthright to turn into animals including such animals as elephants, though Pooka ARE implied to be more dangerous then they seem. They also escaped the Sundering by burrowing into the Near Dreaming in small realms called dream-burrows. These Burrows ranged in sizes from small havens to whole forests, though as the number of the Pooka doing this and the time they did it is unknown it's hard to quantify this. Solimonds, the Fae of Fire often live within Volcanos and Russian Fae called Domovoi with their saliva can make a salve that allows one to bathe in magma. Merfolks and Morganed are an Aquatic Kith that can survive the pressures of the depths of the oceans. While the Arts a Kithain may know can vary dramatically it should be fair to say that these Kithain and comparable characters can scale to 1 Dot Arts, as these are the most basic of the Arts on the 1 to 5 scale. Gimmix, 1 Dot Cantrip in the Art of Ledgermain has the potential to destroy walls telekinetically. Hopscotch, a 1 Dot Cantrip in the Art of Wayfare allows one to jump on top of buildings which would broadly require wall level power at least. Scene is a Realm that allows you to affect a wide area with a cantrip and a single Dot in Scene allows a Cantrip to affect an entire room, which would likely be upper wall level. The Hsien, Eastern cousins of the Kithain have elemental magic called the Wu Tan, and a single extra success in a roll of such can affect a boulder which would likely be wall level. Finally in 1938 when War of the Worlds was broadcast on radio, there was a surge of Chimerical Tripods sprung from people's imaginations, these Tripods being roughly wall to small building level and which the Kithain had to protect people from. And these Kithain were weak, this was prior to the 1969 resurgence in Dreaming and the return of the Sidhe.
In terms of speed, once again the Kithain on this tier are roughly as fast as humans, though the faster characters here are superhuman by real world standards reaching subsonic. 5 Dots in Dodge Skill are stated in numerous books as being able to "nearly sidestep bullets." Pooka can change into animals including animals that can reach subsonic speeds. They are also likely not slower then the tier right above them, at least by a substantial amount and Redcaps have swatted arrows out of the air with their spears. Wind Inanimae also exist on this tier and said Fairies of the wind seem to be able to travel along it with their flight, with the wind regularly reaching subsonic speeds. As such the power of characters in this tier ranges from human level to at least wall level, and speed ranges from human speed to at least subsonic. This is consistent as well with downscaling from the prior tier, with it not being implied that Normal Kithain are that much weaker then Elite Kithain. In War in Concordia that goes into large scale battles, a normal Kithain comprises 10% of a unit while an Elite Kithain like the next tier up comprises 20% of a unit, suggesting that an Elite Kithain is an even fight with two normal Kithain.
So who actually populates this tier? Well a REAL lot of strange characters, items, and places. I'm just warning you pre-emptively, this is going to be a long one. When something is imagined or believed in with enough fervor it becomes a Chimera, a mental plane thing made of imagination. Normally invisible to humans these imaginary things nonetheless are very real, and include most urban legends, tall tales, cryptids, neighborhood boogeymen, and imaginary friends. Once the Autumn World and the Dreaming were as one, where myth and belief were reality. But they grew apart as man replaced wonder for cynicism, dreams for reason. Some of the Fae left behind in order to survive in a world that was antithetical to their being created a new form of being, having their fae soul reincarnated in mortal bodies. This was the creation of the Protagonists of Changeling the Dreaming: Changelings.
Changelings are Fae Souls in Human Bodies. They are semi-immortal as they are creative imagination personified as said at the start of the very First Changeling the Dreaming Book, stories come to life. Whenever a new story is born, so too is another Fae, and when they perish they are reincarnated and will someday awaken to their real identity. They empower their Changeling side by finding Glamour, the substance of Dreaming, the energy of wonder. They exist at once in the Autumn World and the Chimerical Plane. They see the creatures humanity has blinded themselves to and protect the world from them. Two children fighting with sticks might really be Fae Knights fighting with Magic Swords. A strange man dismissed as crazy might fight a thankless war to protect his town from invisible creatures. An Eccentric Artist might truly have the magic touch as she inspires others to dream with her art. Changelings very dramatically in their powers, but some things are common to all them. They can all sense Glamour with an art called Kenning and can fight on the mental plane in something called Chimerical Combat. In fact, it is the norm for Changelings to fight in imaginary battles instead of physical battles so as to not harm each other. Changelings can absorb powerful emotional energies from mortals as Glamour, with unscrupulous Changelings doing so forcefully and burning them out emotionally. They have powerful dreams that can foretell the future and have greater resistance then normal to powers of Faerie as they themselves are Fae. The Newest Edition buffed Changelings notably. It gave all Changelings the ability to use up some of their Glamour to Call upon the Wyrd, briefly bringing the local Dreaming into their surroundings, causing all Chimera to become fully real and his Faerie side to be visible. Also all Changelings benefit from the mixed blessing of the Mist, a supernatural effect that causes non-Fae to forget or recontextualize anything Fae that they have seen recently making it impossible to show the world who they really are, but helpful for disguising their presence, though they can briefly cause someone to awaken to the Chimerical World by infusing their Glamour into them, called "Enchanting." The newest edition also grants a new power called Unleashing, where a focus a lot of Glamour into an art to create a powerful but chaotic effect, a last resort type move for the Changeling.
The most common usage of Glamour other then maintaining one's fairy side is to cast fae magic called Cantrips. This is based on a complex system involving Arts (the type of effect), Realms (the area it affects), and Bunks (the method by which it is is cast.) The most important for this are the Arts. There are 27 listed ones, though most are rare or specific to a Kith, and most Kithain will only know a few. The 5 Common ones are Chicanery, Legerdemain, Primal, Soothsay, and Wayfare. Chicanery involves illusions, memory manipulation and emotion manipulation. Legerdemain involves telekinesis, object copying, and creating temporary Chimera. Primal involves speaking to or manipulating the elements and ordinary objects. Soothsay involves divination of the future. Wayfare allows superleaping/flight, speed enhancement, and portal creation/teleportation. There are also some Rarer Arts including four ancient arts connected to the Four Seasons and manipulate the elements of that season and the emotions associated with it. Pyretics, Kryos, and Skyscraft are elemental arts that allow for the manipulation of Heat/Fire, Cold/Ice, and Wind/Weather respectively. Metamorphosis is another Rare Art available to all Commoner Fae that allows them to shapeshift, even at full mastery taking the form of mythical beasts. Also unrelated to any particular Art in Isle of the Mighty, a crossover book with Mage it also suggests that Changelings and Mages of similar "power" can counteract each others' magic with their own, showing counterspells.
While Cantrips require Glamour to use, each Kith, or Type, of Fae have two unique powers called Birthrights based on what type of Dream gave them birth, what type of Fairy they are. While there are many, MANY types of Changeling shown in Changeling the Dreaming, the game started with the 9 Kith which form the core of the story, each of whom have an entire book written about them (or in the case of the Sidhe, numerous books.) Changeling the Dreaming takes place primarily in the Kingdom of Concordia, known to Mortals as North America. Founded by people with dreams of Freedom and a better life for their kin, Concordia has a stronger connection to the Dreaming then elsewhere, a place where dreams still hold some sway over the mortal world. There are 9 Kith, collectively the Kithain, common in this place, mostly from the European Continent originally but gathered in in Concordia. 7 of these 9 are in this tier broadly.
Boggans are a short and friendly Kith both of dreams of home and hearth, Boggans were the house fairies and gnomes who did domestic duties in their homelands known for honest work and good company. When unobserved Boggans can perform domestic duties in 1/3rd their normal time and have keen insight into social dynamics. Some particular Boggans include Ragger the Pickpocket and Densloe Maddingsley, the Information Broker. Charles Fizzwigg is an old Boggan Knight and Finney Fallon are an Old Mob Boss Boggan. Saffron is a Boggan Farmgirl who's a secret revolutionary, and Margaret Murphey is the Boggan who founded the Sons of Liberty.
Eshu are the wandering tale-telling Kith born of dreams of travel. They once resided in North Africa and the Middle East. Many were taken against their will in the days of Slavery and so are known the champions of Freedom. They can take spirit pathways to travel to places wherever they are needed fast and have a unique Art called Talecraft allows them to weave their stories into a Chimerical reality. Of the notable Eshu there is Dion of the Shadow Court and Wilmaron Greenlancer, Noble of Albion's Shadow Court. There is Akuko and Hazir the King's fastest messengers. There is Europa the Exotic Beauty, James Spencer the Sage, and Nikki Moore the Starving Artist. Sir Blade runs the Oakland People's Front, Nahome runs a tiki bar in Hawaii, and little Layla made friends with the monster under the bed. Mailanka traveled deep in the dreaming, Hanna "Dark Tide" Alawe is a famous pirate queen, and Valmont is considered of the Eshu.
Nockers are the inventors of the Kith, some say born of mountain roots, born of dreams of invention and craft. They are the Dwarves and Gremlins, irritable and grouchy but fascinated with craftsmanship and the inventors of the Fae. They can build bizarre chimerical objects that shouldn't work but do and can literally intimidate machines into working. Their unique Art, Infusion, focuses on building and rebuilding Chimera. Cracker the Punk and Georgia the Taxi Driver are oddly potent Nockers. Lorna Barnes the tone-deaf bard and Miles Leighton who founded the Scalawags Circus Troupe are among their numbers. Hugh Calhoun is an unpleasant sort who runs a pub with his werewolf girlfriend and the Wire Man is a scary Nocker who kills enemies with wire traps. Felix Kurtzweiler is the Toymaker of Germany for the good boys and girls, and ol Toad who doesn't seem to be much is actually the great weaponmaker Waylon fallen under bad times and vengeful plot.
Pooka are the playful tricksters of the Changelings, born of dreams of animals and shapeshifting. They have perhaps suffered more then any other Kith, yet are among the most light of spirit, looked down on as jokers when they may be one of the most dangerous. Each one has an associated animal they can change into and back, and are particularly good at disarming people of ill intent with their antics. Derwyn ap Allyn is a Fox Pooka Firefighter while Moss Delgado is a shady Coyote Pooka with a cult of personality. Rasputin is the Mad Rabbit Pooka while Linden Silvercrown is a Wolf Pooka who thinks she is a werewolf. Cocoa Jones is a Polar Bear Pooka of the far north, Ocyrus Pristis is a Sea Bass Pooka who threatens humans in the marshes while Billy is a Goat Pooka who is a tour guide to the supernatural world. Mary Widowe is a Black Widow Pooka Seductress and Jezebel is a mysterious Butterfly Pooka who holds the secrets of Pooka kind it is believed while Runcible Shaw is the Rabbit Pooka Chronicler and Balthasar the Raccoon Pooka is the world's cuddliest politician. The Loch Lads are Pooka that keep the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster alive while Autocylus and John McKroan are Weasel and Fox Pooka freedom fighters of the Sons of Liberty. Squirrel, Seagull, Camel, Porcupine, Raven, Robin, Kitten, and Wolfhound, the variety of Pooka are seemingly never-ending.
Satyrs are the Kith born of dreams of revelry and passion. Friendly, Festive, and surprisingly Wise, the Satyrs are that Classical Greek mix of High Art/Philosophy and Base Carnality. They have enhanced endurance and stamina, as well as the Gift of Pan which lets them use art like their famed music to induce people into Carnal fits. It is also mentioned that they have the gift of prophecy but hate using it. They have a unique art called Aphrodesia, the art of inspiring passions. Many Satyrs such as Malacar and Yordana are Seers or like Clovis and Marina are Loremasters/Advisors or both with Melizein being the advisor and bard for King David himself. The Goats are known for their indulgence with Gamine Larouche, Red Charlotte, and Madam Varvana working in the pleasures of flesh, or in wine with JZ being Winery Security and Stewart MacDonough being a poison expert. King Jasper the Wicked is a Satyr Child groomed by the shadow court to be an assassin, Dennis Peyton is an infamous Satyr Outlaw, and Rapid Frank is a reformed criminal who used to scare people in the dead of night but has turned a new leaf.
Sluagh are the Creepy Goth Kith born of dreams of such things as the underground and the murky. They are scary enough to scare mortals literally to death, though many of them are actually pleasant if you get to know them. They are the keepers of secrets, caretakers of the hated animals like spiders and serpents. They have enhanced senses and can contort their bodies to escape almost any binding. Their number include Amie Randall advisor to King David and Eleanor Dell, the messenger of Commoner Forces in the Accordance War. Kiraven is the abused runaway, Charity the Invisible is known for her stealth, and Daniel the Darkling sticks to the darkness. Riel is a Spymaster-Assassin and Old Boris is a hermit who is said to bind the souls of those who get on his property to the grounds forever.
Finally there are the Sidhe, that Kith who claim royal birthright rulership over all Kith, much to the others disdain. There are several books going over the many royal houses of the Sidhe and more then any other Kith their members vary based on Court and House. They are born of dreams of royalty. When the Dreaming and Autumn World separated, most fled to the Dreaming, for which they are to this day scorned by the Commoner Kith as cowards. Perhaps in time they will be forgiven. The Sidhe are supernaturally beautiful or terrifying and can sway people to their side just by their appearance, with an aura of being better. They are harder to affect for most Fae Magic. There are numerous unique Arts known only to them that were lost by the Commoners in the days since the shattering. Sovereign is the Noble Art of controlling Commoner Fae and Lesser Nobles. Dreamcraft is the Noble Art of shaping the Dreaming itself and the dreams of others. The Dragon's Ire is a Noble Art that channels the elemental power of the Dragons into a Sidhe's melee capabilities. Chronos is a Noble Art that allows for manipulation of Time ranging from causing a person's perception of the order of events of to become muddled to reversing time for the last few minutes. Finally the most powerful of all Kith Arts, Naming is the Noble Art of manipulating the True Name of others. At its maximum this allows the Noble to retroactively change anything about a person by altering their True Name. With 14 Houses of Sidhe, the number of Sidhe of note is too numerous to list.
Many of the other Kith are seen more rarely. The Gallain include close relatives of the Kithain, but simply rarer though still found in Concordia. The Clurichaun are an Irish Kith often called Leprechauns by Mortals. Their birthrights let them disappear into thin air if people are not watching them and to smooth talk people. The Ghille Dhu are the Treelike Kith of Wales who can gain Glamour from Nature and take on treelike capabilities depending on their Age. The Korred are a French Kith that are the scholars and masters of lore of the Kith, who have secret knowledge and heightened awareness. The Nomadic Piskies are childlike tricksters known for their nimble fingers and their tendency towards low level theft. The Swan Maidens of Italy and elsewhere, are a Graceful Kith who rises in power if fighting for true love. The Wichtel are a German Kith known for Mining that can sense precious minerals and have superhuman stamina. Another German Kith is the Wolpertinger, also from Sweden. These are Hybrid Creatures like the Jackalope with heightened prey awareness. Merfolk and Morganed are Aquatic Kith who have an enchanting song and can enjoy the depths of the ocean without difficulty and have knowledge of Aphrodesia. Their Northern Relatives are the Selkies, another Aquatic Kith who enchant with their beauty when they come ashore and can take the form of seals.
The Kith of other Regions are seen more rarely but referenced at times. The Kith from Africa, mostly from the territories that had less contact with the Europeans are an example. The Eloko have special skills based on their communities' values and a nature instinct that boosts their reflexes. Djedi pose as mundane magicians and have magic skills that can mirror normal magician tricks. Kuino have enhanced awareness due to a second mystical pair of eyes and are especially skilled at manipulation. Obambo have a danger sense that warns them of traps and tricks, as well as having psychometry to feel out the aura of an object or land. Okubili have the best remembrance of their past lives and have supernatural composure. Finally the Oba are to the Eshu what the Sidhe are to the European Kiths and have a similar supernatural presence and charisma.
The South American Kith include the Alicanto have a supernatural awareness of valuable objects and are skilled at creating treasures and items of value. Borano are the Warriors of Nature, gaining power and endurance so long as they are touching bare soil. Encantado have a hypnotic gaze and supernatural party-throwing skills. Llorona, the Weeping Women appear in times of death and feed on the glamour of despair, can foretell the future, and see spirits normally.
The Middle Eastern Kith called Jinn include the Lilin who are supernatural manipulators, the Qareen are Academics with perfect memories and telepathic communication, and the Shaytan can naturally discern the weak points of opponents and exploit them.
The Changelings of Australia are called Spirit Beings. Dulklorrkelorrkeng can change into large flying foxes and cast cantrips without using glamour if they are granting a wish for a companion. The Mimi are Happy Spirits that can spread Joy and can landscape to shape the flow of Glamour. Rainmakers can call down water from the Heavens and turn into serpents. The Menehune are the Changelings of Polynesia including the Hana who can build at superhuman speeds if not observed similar to Boggans and the Kahuna who can speak with spirits and have special permission to break normal Fae Taboos occasionally to do what must be done that other Fae can't.
The Changelings also have dark counterparts called the Thallians with darker versions of their powers born of the nightmare version of the dreams. For instance The Sevartal are the Thallian Sidhe, born of nightmares of tyranny and subjugation who force people to their will, Nasties are the Thallian version of Satyrs being born of nightmares of perversion, obnoxious drunks and perverts who inspire frenzy, and Beasties are Thallian Pooka who turn into monstrous animals that cause people to hallucinate about what attacked them.
There are Fae who did not undergo the Changeling way who survive in the Autumn World in different way. The first of these shown are the Inanimae, Fae born from the natural glamour occurring in the elements. They create very temporary humanoid bodies called Husks to walk amongst the Autumn World without being crushed by banality. Originally there were Inanimae of Fire, Earth, Water, Wind, and Plants (Solimonds, Glomes, Ondines, Parosemes, and Kuberas) with corresponding Arts called Silvers of manipulating these elements. There are also Mannikins, the newest Inanimae made from humanoid artificial creations like dolls, puppets, statues, etc. Some associated elements are also known. Glomes are stated to include metals, Ondines other liquids, Parosemes other gases and odors, and Solimonds ambient energy and lightning. It also suggests the existence of the Empire of Flickers, who take bodies of artificial light including film, television broadcasts, and computer transmissions existing in technology.
Lycians are sentient Chimera born from objects infused with enough Glamour to give them sentience and the ability to create physical form. Bucolics are made from naturally occurring objects and Oppidians are made from artificially made objects. Quixotics are made from intangible things like events, a memory, a website, a story etc. while Maieutics are born from ideas and memes, philosophies, and such.
The Adhene are spirits from the Dreaming that possess human bodies. These Fae were not allies of the Tuatha but of the Fomorians and banished along with their Dark Masters during the Tuatha-Fomorian war. Acheri are the masters of corruption, physical and spiritual, creating Chimerical diseases and plagues. The Aonides are seducers who steal Glamour via sexual contact and inspire artistic heights. The Fuath are animalistic Adhene that can speak to animals and mimic their abilities. Keremet are Dead Human Spirits enchanted at the moment of their death and kept animated by glamour, who can enter the spiritual plane, and have a superhuman willpower and pain resistance. The Moirae are the servants of the Fates and can see the fates of others as well as cause misfortune to those that bar their way.
The Unseelie Fae, Thallians, and Adhene also have access to the Dark Arts, forbidden Magics. The Autumn Way creates backdoor entrances from the Dreaming into the Autumn World. Contempt undermines authority and trust. Delusion involves memory and perception manipulation to deceive people. Discord involves making chaos and being hard to pin down. Oneiromancy involves manipulation of dreams to the point of even turning mortals into Chimera.
Outside the Fae, this tier also includes mortals. Kinain are Mortal Relatives of Changelings and sometimes can perform the lower levels of one or two Changeling Arts. However not all Mortals are so accommodating. The Autumn People are the enemies of all Fae, for they are mortals who's Banality is so high that is is stifling and lethal to the Fae. They seek to stifle out the wonder of the world. In a world of constantly fighting the literal nightmares of humanity, the thing the Fae fear most are these normal people who refuse to believe, who's very presence is anathema to their magic and threaten to render them mere mortals. Archetypes of these are said to include such things as overprotective mothers that smother adventure from children, restrictive librarians who stifle all fun and hijinxs, Minutia Mavens who have painfully boring mundane topics they will bore a Changeling to death talking about, Crashing Bores who are big ignorant oafs who disdain fanciful talk, and Suits who care about business and efficacy and not whimsical dreams. These are genuinely just normal people but their Banality is so high it is actually dangerous to a Changeling and may cause their fairy side to die in this lifetime.
Their leaders are often the most dangerous of the Autumn People, the Dauntain, Changelings who refused to awaken to their true nature, and instead betrayed their Fellow Fae so they could metaphorically live in the safety of the matrix. Lost are those Dauntain who have fully forgotten their Fae Side. The Cursed are those Fae who have become so vengeance obsessed that they have embraced banality to fully kill another Fae. The Black Magicians are Changelings who have embraced Banality as a route to power over other Fae. The Nihilists are Changelings who have given up Hope in Glamour returning and let Banality into their Soul. The Apostates are crazed Changelings who believe that Banality destroying the world will lead to the return of the Dreaming and Arcadia. Typhoids are those Changelings who have been overcome by Banality either by Autumn People or through other means such as being fed on by a Vampire.
While the Dauntain can still use Cantrips, they also use the three Agendas, the flipside of Arts, using Banality instead of Glamour. Burnout is the Agenda of stifling creativity and artistic love, making the target feel no joy from their normal passions, giving them obsessions with practical activities, collecting mundane objects, or painfully boring hobbies. Stultify is the Agenda of Changing Worldview to the Boring and Practical, causing them to think about and do boring mundane tasks with mind-numbing repetition and take joy from soulless activities. Webcraft is the Agenda of Conformity and Social Shame. It can turn objects and areas painfully boring, giving boring lectures so dull they cause pain, becoming semi-invisible from becoming so boring people stop paying attention to them, and summoning a spirit of pure order and coherence.
So with all that, how do you counter the tier? Well the Fae have a number of weaknesses. Every Kith has their own weakness, called a Fraility such as the Boggan's inability to resist a person in need, a Pooka's difficulty telling the truth, or a Sluagh's inability to speak above a whisper and general difficulty socializing. However these are so unique that it's difficult to get a general rule from them. However all Fae have some weaknesses. Using most of the their magic requires Bunks or specific casting conditions such as wriggling one's ears, doing a dance, or speaking in rhyme. Much of their magic requires glamour, a very finite resource in the Modern World, and/or willpower. More seriously is the Fae's famous weakness, Cold Iron. There are numerous theories why but for some reason Fae Magic simply doesn't work on Cold Iron. Cold Iron is anathema to the Fae and for most Fae even touching or being around the material can pain them. Some rare Fae have better resistance then most, most notably House Balor of the Sidhe, who can actually wield Cold Iron weapons. However Cold Iron does aggravated, the most severe damage, damage that doesn't heal normally, to all the Fae. If a Fae is slain by Cold Iron, it not only kills them but permanently kills them, keeping them from ever reincarnating.
Beyond this, the Fae suffer from one of the biggest weakness of any Splat in the Old World of Darkness: Banality. Banality is inverse of Glamour. It represents cold, boring reality, stifling in mundanity. It threatens constantly to snuff out anything Fae. Doing their Taxes, Doing a Normal Mundane Job, Listening to People go on and on about their coin collection, these things are actual threats to Changelings as it threatens to stifle the Fae in them forever. The More Banality is in an area, the harder it is for a Fae to use their magic or even to survive there. Changelings strive to inspire wonder in the world whether they be good or not. A counter with a high enough Banality can limit all nearby Fae's influence. Even Nightmarish Reality-Warping Thallian Nightmares are rendered impotent if the person just refuses to believe in them. This is fundamentally what Autumn People do already, and it's why they are considered the most dangerous enemy of the Kithain. Beyond this some things are especially hard to interact for Fae Magic based on symbolism. The hardest are Complete Strangers (Requires Actor 5), Complex Machines (Prop 5), Large Natural Phenomena (Nature 5), and Pure Magic/Glamour. (Fae 5)
This isn't a full counter as even then Tier still has numbers and stats. As mentioned for Physical Stats 5 Strength is enough to break down a metal door, and 5 Dots in Dodge Skill allow you to "nearly sidestep gunshots." Things get similarly exaggerated in mental stats and social stats with 5 in Intelligence for intelligence being compared to a supercomputer. Thus there are superhuman physical threats, superhuman geniuses, and superhuman manipulators. Also while cantrips are negated by Banality, Agendas are not as they are caused by Banality, and furthermore Birthrights remain no matter what as they are given to the Fae by right of birth into being who they are. The Tier has a LOT of mind hax be it superhuman manipulation, superhuman charisma from Sidhe, Oba, and Selkie, Mind Control from Mermaids/Morganed's song, the Encantadora's hypnotic gaze, and the Dauntain's Agendas, the Satyr's inducing lust with their art, and the Maieutics inducing their meme/idea onto people. There's also just a lot of trickery in general with stuff like characters being able to disappear into thin air, change into various animals, becoming so boring one becomes invisible etc.
So some ideas would be robots or other characters using a lot of technology. Complex Artificial Objects are among the hardest things for Fae to affect with Birthrights or Magic, they tend to have superhuman stats to compete with the tier, don't get tired against numbers, and most importantly are HIGHLY banal usually, representing the scientific mechanical world that is Anathema to Fae. The Undead could do similarly to a lesser extent as Kith are warned of interacting with Kindred (Vampires) because of their aura of banality, and they similarly often have superhuman stats and a lack of physical stamina. If they have cold iron, all the better. Outside that it's tricky given the sheer diversity of powers in the verse. Skill is pretty rare on this tier as most of the combat Kiths are on the next tier up besides the Borato's who's power is dependent on contact with the ground but retain their warrior skill. This means that outside against Boratos things like high mobility and skill would make it hard to hit the counter. While the birthrights are still very formidable put together, most motley of Changelings would not comprise a fraction of their abilities. While numerous Kith have superhuman awareness and a potent offense, only the Moirae have both meaning without teamwork the combination of stealth and a potent defensive ability would shut down most combination of Fae. Finally the more Banality around, the worse the impact on a Changeling, so someone who can draw the fight into an area of normal civilians, especially Banal civilians can further the Banality weakness of the Changelings, even if the counter doesn't have it themselves. So that leads to my first counter
Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh! (Anime Canon)
In terms of physical stats, Kaiba like a lot of Yugioh humans has exaggerated stats for a human including blitzing Marik's henchmen, blocking a bullet with a briefcase before jumping down a story and grabbing onto a cliff, pulling himself up with one hand, breaking an elevator control panel with a one-handed strike, casually throwing Mokuba onto an airship steps as it's taking off before jumping on himself etc. Kaiba would probably have 4s in his physical stats, which would be very high for non-combat kith, let alone his reaction speed which scales to laser timing. This means hilariously enough Kaiba could probably beat up most non combat oriented kith in a physical fight. Kaiba also is a supergenius intellect. a 5 in intelligence being the intelligence of a supercomputer yet in Battle City while training Kaiba easily beats the dueling super computer who couldn't analyze Kaiba's tactics, as well as numerous higher intelligence feats. Given he also seems to have a mild extrasensory perception from his dueling ability such as knowing he would draw Obelisk next and knowing Yugi hadn't put Osiris into his deck, Kaiba would pretty easily be able to see through most Kith tricks.
The First thing to know about Kaiba is that he is almost the embodiment of banality, even the weird part where science is counted as anathema to glamour. Kaiba has numerous times been shown supernatural powers and mystical visions for extended periods and simply refuses to believe in the power of magic. When dueling Ishizu who could see the future and foresaw he could win, Kaiba proclaimed that he would instead seize the light of the future himself and somehow defied her precognition. There are plenty of seers in the verse but Kaiba would just defy what they wanted to do, and his presence would be anathema to any kind of cantrip being used against him. Kaiba carries a duel disk which not only can do things like conjure large amounts of light that can blind a lot of opponents at once but possibly contains iron components?
Kaiba can travel by jetpack giving him enhanced mobility and has shown the skill to blow sword strikes with his duel disk from warriors as well as jam a gun by throwing a card into it, which means he would be able to maneuver around the tier fairly easily. He's also very liable to take fights into crowded areas due to his Egotistic nature and desire to be recognized, which means the amount of banality in the area would be even higher. Even if the Kith are able to Call Upon the Wyrd, dragging an area into the dreaming itself, Kaiba has the spirit of his patron monster, Blue-Eyes White Dragon around him at all times which would likely be summoned too, and Blue-Eyes is a Monster more powerful then not just any Kith in this tier, but through scaling stronger then even the godlike Kith of the ancient days. With all that said Kaiba lacks any kind of notable defensive ability and if he was fighting a lot of Kith at once, he could get overwhelmed. For an even better counter you could use
Juri Kuran from Vampire Knight
Juri is a Pureblood Vampire, a Class A, making her the highest classification of Vampire when even C Class Vampires have demonstrated strength feats like destroying walls and pillars and have moved faster then the eye just appearing next to people. The gap in Classes means Juri is highly unlikely to get overwhelmed by the Kith, as most of them in this tier would be comparable to C or at most B Class VK Vampires, with the gap between each class being enough that Juri's son, another A Class Vampire, able to easily kill an entire council of B Class Vampire Aristocrats at once.
Juri is a Vampire giving her an immortality and regeneration that for a Pureblood is enough to return from decapitation or being blown to pieces. While the Kith have plenty of interactions with Vampires, they would not know how to counter this. Most of the Kith believe Vampires are weird offshoot fae with a common being that they are warped redcaps and even the ones who know their weakness would have the problem Juri is far less vulnerable to Vampire Weaknesses then most World of Darkness Vampires, being uninjured and only mildly irritated by sunlight. The only way to kill a VK Vampire is stabbing their heart or cutting off their head with an anti-vampire weapon, which would be an extreme rarity for this tier. Beyond that however, Juri as a Vampire would have a massive aura of banality around her that would essentially completely remove any Kith's nearby ability to use cantrips, and probably harm the fae soul just from her presence. Juri herself uses the Artemis, a weapon made to kill other Vampires, however given the weapon is seemingly millennia old, it's very likely to have iron within it and work just as well against fae.
Juri has many common vampire abilities including summoning animal familiars who's presence would may increase the banality in the area as they are treated as thinking entities, enhanced senses that can protect from stealth (with vampires regularly smelling blood from a large distance), and the ability to turn others into vampires, adding them to their roster. While what Juri herself specifically can do isn't heavily explored, she was noted to excel at magic, and could potentially have access to abilities to telekinesis, elemental control, and memory manipulation the latter of which can be highly useful to make a Kith forget their fae side. Juri's magical capability was strong enough that she was able to seal off a vampire's vampire side, though admittingly this required her to give her life so it's plausible she'd have these lesser magical abilities.
With that said, without as much information on Juri as wanted, it's unknown how smart or tactical she would be with her abilities and it's possible that some of the more tricky fae could do things like trick her into the Near-Dreaming where there isn't any blood and she would eventually starve. For the best counter to the tier I would suggest
Agents from the Matrix
Agents from the Matrix even before their upgrade were able to shatter walls violently calced at nearly 1.9 Megajoules, on the upper end of this tier, and are likely even stronger after the upgrades in Reloaded. They are also part of some of the most famous bullet timing feats in fiction, giving them high end subsonic speed which means they're also fast enough to blitz basically everyone here.
The Agents are computer programs which would be one of the most difficult things imaginable for Fae to affect even normally. However the Agents would also have an aura of the thickest possible banality. This is because their entire purpose is to maintain the illusion of the Matrix, that reality is what it appears to be with nothing underlying. They are in Changeling terms essentially the enforcers of banality who would have strong a banality and a control of reality from their banality that the Dauntain do, mixed with top tier stats. They have a low level reality-warping due to being connected to the Matrix itself which is probably strong enough to create Cold Iron if they figured out their opponents.
And they would, Agents are in constant communication with each other and have a knowledge of the working of the Matrix itself. If a Fae was inside it, they would be able to very easily get any relevant information about it to exploit their weaknesses, mixed with superhuman agility and skill with it being stated that no human had ever beaten one in melee before. It would be absolute child's play for one of them in a fight with most Kithain to avoid their attacks and acculumating information on their opponents shoot them with bullets that have been turned to cold iron. All while Extreme Banality is keeping the Kithain from even using magic in response.
Beyond that Agents naturally are good at blending in with their environments and keeping fights in crowded areas meaning they will have not only potent stealth but also even more banality from the area. And even if "killed", an Agent can always hop into the body of anyone still plugged into the Matrix meaning that the only one for Kithain to permanently kill them, even if the Kithian is not plugged in, is to somehow kill literally every other human. The only ways around this would require Cantrips which they can't use because the Agents are basically Banality incarnate. Agents seem tailor made to be the worst nightmare of the Kith.
Building Tier:
The characters in this tier scale mostly to the Megajoules/Small Building Range, with a few reaching Gigajoules/Large Building Range with their Cantrips. Elite Kithain in wide military battles are considered as having twice the value as Normal Kithain which includes both Combat Trained members of the Prior Kith and the Kith that are designed for combat. During the Accordance War, a Troll shot off a cantrip powerful enough to knock down a barn but the Redcap Toren thrust his spear into the spell and caused it to fizzle. In earlier times, Redcaps were roving bands of mercenary monster hunters and first found teamwork as while a single of them couldn't kill gigantic monsters like Dragons or Tarrasques, bands of them could. Numuzo'ho are a Native American Family of Fae who can create windstorms, avalanches and earthquakes felt slightly at fives miles away meaning likely a Magnitude 2 or 3 Earthquake, requiring anywhere from 63 Megajoules to 2 Gigajoules of energy. The Yunwi Amai'yine'hi are another which create whirlpools in otherwise still lakes. The Kachina can create rain for miles which may be kiloton level though probably doesn't scale directly The South American Kith the Sachamama have the ability to occasionally turn into a "50-foot tall snake" which obviously would. The Australian Yawkyawk can summon storms that can destroy ships (the storm creation would be a higher value but may not scale to their normal attacks though the ship destruction would apply and is in this tier.) The Fabled Mach One was a powerful old Parosene, a Fae of the Wind, who would mess with entire airplanes with his winds. 5 Dots in Skycraft Art can summon down a lightning bolt to strike an enemy. 2 Dots in Scene Realm can cause a Cantrip to affect a house, while 3 Dots in Scene can allow it to affect a city block or a flat expanse extending to the horizon like a road while 3 Extra Successes in the Elemental Arts of Wu Tan can affect a street, a hillock, or a stream. The Kithain War Machines which have 5x the battlefield value of a common Kith, and 2.5x that of an Elite Kith, include things from Medieval Siege Weapons to advanced Nocker creations like Moving Towers of Destruction or Airships with futuristic weaponry. The Kithain have Five Titles with the lowest being Knights and the second lowest being Baron/Baroness who contain spaces that can include palaces and surrounding lands or small towns. Titled Kithain influence their Dominion with their person and emotions, doing things like altering the flora/fauna, causing weather effects, and more, even mildly influencing the prior lands being likely small and large building level respectively. It is said that in their dominion, their word is law and if they go mad and enter Bedlam can reality-warp it to whatever they choose. A Knight controls the smallest dominion, usually roughly equivalent to a building. And in places where the pull of Banality is weak, Changelings can regain their true Fae Mien, their true forms and gain more of the power of Glamour. This is most clear when they enter the Near-Dreaming as they often do, the part of the Dreaming closest to the mortal world, shaped by the dreams of the recent years and decades, or a Freehold, places existing in the Autumn World and Near Dreaming at once. Also the Oba of the Eshu are stated to have "eyes that gleam like they have the trapped essences of the Sun and their posture suggests the strength of mountains and the grace of rivers" though I'm pretty sure this is hyperbole given what else is described as having the strength of mountains in this series.
The Garou, Werewolves, are Gaia's children and chosen protectors, who fight powerful monsters regularly and considered the strongest splat in terms of physical combat with Kithain told to be afraid of any of the Garou, especially if angry, and House Balor describing them as "bad motherf*ckers" in a fight. Yet there is implication the strongest of the Kithain can fight some of the Garou on even grounds with even the Get of Fenris, the Berserkers even among Garou having respect for the strength of Nunnehi and Trolls. Trolls are described as fighting alongside Garou and Sluagh have made smirking reference to a Get Pack being defeated by a War Band of Nunnehi. The Nunnehi in turn are described as having only "almost" the power of Trolls. All this means the strongest of Kith should scale to the impressive physical feats of the Garou as well, or at least some of them. There is also scaling to the various Chimera the Kithain regularly interact with and have to fight with. While they vary dramatically in power. Wyverns were an important part of the Nobles side in the Accordance War and one of the first examples given of Chimera given is Flying Castles showing the size of some Chimera. Similarly Scherezade's circle is a building infused with so much glamour from her tales, that it became a flying shapeshifting building. Also Urban Legends are Chimera which would include large creatures such as Nessie and entities like Mothman who is traditionally considered to have potentially caused a bridge collapse. Finally in the Near Dreaming, Solimonds are said to live in a palace in the Sun. The Heat of the Sun on a humanoid form would be gigajoules to even terajoules depending on how close to the center, showcasing the shift in scale from them living in Volcanos in the Autumn World.
In terms of speed, the tier mostly has the same speed as last tier, slightly upscaling from them as the warriors of the Kith compared to their civilians. A few more subsonic feats are added though. Kithain Airships can travel as fast as 230 mph. (about Mach 0.3) Mach One was an Old Powerful Parosene who as mentioned messed with whole planes, keeping speed with them, and the story being a reference to the way that people used to think it was impossible for humans to break the sound barrier. These Kith should scale at least somewhere in the speed as the Kindred, Vampires, who with even the basics of the Discipline Celerity, can avoid gunfire. There are more highballed speed scaling one could say. Lightning Inanimae are a subset of Solimonds associated with Lightning and the "Kingdom of Flickers" is suggested as a Kingdom of Inanimae who exist in flickers of light playing things like movies and other technologies. However while they are very similar to Elemental Spirits, Inanimae are still Elemental Fae and not pure Elemental Spirits, so may not scale to the speed of the element they live within. In the Accordance War the Nobles were said to move with lightninglike speed and precision though they may be hyperbole. There is also the low cost cantrip Quicksilver which is stated to let one move at the speed of light, though again this may be a hyperbole and the description was changed in newer editions.
This tier has basically every ability from the prior tiers. All of the Common Kithain have Elite and Titled Members that would be here, all of whom have dominion at their own Balefire, the seats of their power where even the High King would hypothetically have to listen to them. There are other Elites outside the Nobles. Some Powerful Boggans include Seumas of Clann Wrath and Gilda Hazlitt who are both humble but deceivingly powerful as well as Garvey and Seuma, aids to powerful Royals. Of the Eshu there is Seif Raushan who holds Caliburn in King David's absence, the legendary Scherezade of a thousand tales, Eileen MacNamara an Irish Freedom Fighter descended from Egyptian Royalty, Larana the musician ravager, and Jack the Whistler, a troubadour. Of the Nockers the is Zachary Tapp the founder of Goblin Town and possibly the greatest inventor, alongside Isaac Glass, Master Builder of Goblin Town and Cranad the Renegade of House Dougal. Twyla the Cat Pooka is a Playful Royal, and Fredrick the Brave is a Mouse Pooka who was the Hero of the Accordance War. Rene Devereaux and Sammie are a friendly Crocodile Pooka running a Good Time Sanctuary in the Bayou and a Monkey Pooka who escaped into the wilds of Hawaii, and Johnathan Edward Stanton is a German Shepard Pooka who is trusted aide to Duchess Aiobhell Reeve. Eta Sunbeam is a Satyr known as the Monsterslayer for her accolades and Gladys Hazlitt is a Satyr with ownership of Pandora's Box. LittleJohn is the street name for that trickster Satyr of long ago, Henri Remillard is the famous philosopher and Nestor Evans is a Sage. Of the Sluagh Aleksei of the 13 Toes is the Master Terrifyer of the Sluagh, the scariest of all and Todd the Gray is one of their greatest assassins. Doctor Coma is the seer of Goblin Town, Ignatz the watcher of Greymere Glen and Anna the Monster Maker makes many scary Chimera.
However there are also stronger Kith in this tier that are more focused around combat. This includes two of the Common Kith of Concordia. Redcaps are those Kith born of the freezing north, of desperate hunger and the winds that seem to eat at you. Redcaps are born with the ability to eat anything from steel to human flesh to toxic waste to Chimera themselves, things made of dreams. They also have a supernatural ability to intimidate, even able to scare away Chimera. Vicious creatures they have shown value elsewhere such as when they were the monster hunters of the earlier eras, with almost no Kith wanting to fight a Redcap. River Hags though they seem like a distinct Kith are actually an evolution of Redcaps designed to hunt and patrol rivers..
Pretty much any Redcap is a threat but there are some more notable ones. Ratbreath is an ugly ratlike one ingrained with the Seelie. while Sam the Clam is a surprisingly cute one resembling Mr. Hooper. Moregei is a Cannibalistic Witch worshipping an ancient Celtic Goddess in Druidic Fashion, Captain Wrack is a Scythe Wielding Kith who's one of the most feared in Concordia, and Hans Heydrich the Black Angel was an infamous Redcap Nazi Officer in World War II. On the other hand Squid Desmond is an Honorable Warrior and Mug is a powerful warrior who's a sweet romantic to his Squirrel Pooka girlfriend. Calvert is the bodyguard of Duke Florian, Moya is the head of black ops for House Balor, and Wadsworth is a Demolitions Expert. Etienne duBois the Monsterous looking leader of the Shadow Court who seek to depose the Sidhe. But the most important Redcap of all is likely Aelfric, the legendary monster slayer that created modern Redcap Society.
However there is an even stronger Kith, the stoic honorbound defenders of Faekind since times immemorial, the Trolls. In ancient days they were as walking mountains, unshakeable. They are the Warrior Kiths, whose birthrights include superhuman power, fortitude, and willpower so long as they act in the name of their duty. They are the strongest Kith and representations of power among the Kith, with other Kith complimented for even nearing the power of the Trolls. It is said that the Garou, Gaia's Children, the Werewolves can be bested by Nunnehi, but that they, even the Get of Fenris, respect the Trolls for their fighting ability and their honor.
Every Troll is a notable warrior by their Birthright but some notable ones include General Lyros leader of the Resistance to the Nobles and Lord Coruisk, prior leader of the Shadow Court. Peter Oslo is a big an strong Troll even for their kind, compared to the Norse Jotunn, Alyss the Norn is the most powerful Seeress in Concordia, an Lord Grodolf is the commander of House Balor's armies. More then any of them though is Ottmar Oceanheart, a legendary troll who was the strongest of the fairies after the Tuatha themselves.
There are Warrior Kith from other lands as well, outside the elites of the Kith mentioned prior. As mentioned when exposed to the ground beneath their feet the South American Boraro becomes much stronger and from the same region the Sachamama are a Snakelike Kith who not only has keen awareness but the ability to change into a serpent and on rare instances into a huge serpent the size of a building ("up to fifty feet long"). The Ifrit are the Warrior Kith of the Middle East with supernatural strength and a resistance to heat and flame. In Australia the Yawkyawk are the daughters of the Rainbow Serpent and guardians of the waters, able to not just shapeshift but call down storms that can destroy ships. The Kokua are the Warrior Kith of the Polynesian Kith (Menehune), who are granted supernatural swiftness and their leaders the Ali'l have the supernatural charisma of the Sidhe but the ability to absorb the glamour given by their allies to power themselves up.
However there are two categories of Kith that are stronger as a group rather then having select Kith that are stronger. First are the Nunnehi, the native Fae of North America. Their section of the Dreaming called Higher Hunting Ground was destroyed alongside the dreams of their peoples. This caused them to become aggressive and focused on getting stronger. The Nunnehi are considered vastly powerful to the Kith, with almost as much power as the Trolls, particularly their Braves. They can gain glamour, which they call Medicine from natural surroundings and can enter the spiritual plane. The Nunnehi are divided into fourteen of what they call families, the equivalent of the Kiths of Europe.
Rock Giants of the Iroquois are a large Rock family who have superhuman strength and armor as well as immunity to any damage from stone and their western cousins the Numuzo'ho of the Washo, Kalispel, etc. are also giants who can rouse the elements creating windstorms, avalanches, and minor earthquakes. The Canotili are a Hunter Family of the Great Lake Tribes such as Lakota, Cheyenne etc. who also have physical enhancements as well as the ability to blend into natural environments, while the Yunwi Tsundsi of the Cherokee are little people who are pranksters and helpful and are also stealthy due to their small size as well as excellent crafters. The Surem of the Southwest have social enhancements and can cause an air of serenity around them while the Nanehi of the Southeast are supernatural entertainers who can shapeshift into other people. The Cherokee Yunwi Amai'yine'hi and the Inua of the Inuit can both shapeshift into animals with the former also able to control the water and the latter also able make magic amulets. Speaking of water, the Water Babies of the Shoshoni and Nez Perces are a water dwelling family that save children from drowning due to their ability to grant water breathing and get supernatural strength when fighting in vengeance. The Tunghat of the Great Plains and the May-May-Gway-Shi of the Algonquin can both summon animals with the former also able to create illusions disguising themselves as animals and the latter having the power to pass through solid stone. The Hideous Pu'gwis of the Far North have a hypnotic song and the ability to manipulate memories while the Thoughtcrafters of the West can restore creativity and glamour, and have enhanced physical and mental finesse. Finally the Kachinas of the Hopi and Zuni can bring rain and plant growth for miles in the harsh desert and can shift into forms made of clouds.
Even more divergent are the other category however the Hsien of East Asia. The Kith consider them distant cousins but the Hsien themselves believe themselves an entirely different class of beings, a race of lesser deities in the Celestial Bureaucracy who were exiled for rebelling against their position and made to live as mortals. With spirituality more alive in East Asia, the Hsien are considered stronger in general then Fae elsewhere, though their powers work differently. As opposed to glamor and banality, a Hsien gains the power from Faith and in particular the faith they inspire in mortals by granting their prayers. They use a different system of spellcasting called the Wu Tan focused around the 5 Chinese Elements (Water, Fire, Wood, Earth, Metal) and instead of Cold Iron they are hurt by Jade, long since used in East Asia to ward off spirits. They can at any time assume their Wani Form, their true magical form, which is awe-inspiring and terrifying though draws the eye of evil upon them. The Kith believe the Hsien are the odd Fae of East Asia, shaped by the different local beliefs and they came out in a Changeling book, though they require different tactics to fight. They are divided into 10 Kwannon-Jin, the Hsien equivalent to the Kiths of the Kithain.
The First Five are the Commoner ones, each associated with an animal they can transform into. Heng Po can change into fish and have the ability to find lost things. Nyan can change into cats and have social enhancement powers. Fu Hsi can change into snakes and are masters of lore. Hanumen can change into monkeys and have a supernatural humor that can calm the greatest angers. Tanuki can change into badgers and have a supernatural willpower. Their leaders are the five royal Kwannon-Jin, representing the five elements. Suijen control water and move much faster and more gracefully in it. Chu Jung control fire and have supernatural sight. Hou Chi can control plants and can remove pain. Komuko control earth and can sense imbalance in others. Chu-ih-yu can control metal and can sense lies.
Outside the Changelings, this tier also has most of the stronger Chimera. mental plane entities born from the dreaming. All the classic fantasy monsters, dragons and griffins, goblins and faeries are among their number. There are also Fae versions of normal animals like enchanted fairy steeds and large black dogs that prowl the night. The most dangerous of all are called the Nervosa and the Nocnitsa.
Nervosa are Chimera born of the insane, and their disordered views of reality. They regularly demonstrate a chaotic tendency to break the rules of reality. Various types can cause sickness or hallucinations, can become a duplicate of your loved ones to assume their identity, or assume the identity of your worst fears. The Nocnitsa are those creatures born from nightmares. An example is a giant spider creature born of an arachnophobe's fear of spiders. However more potent then individual dreams are collective dreams. The Nocnitsa born of collective fears are called Urban Legends and are the modern equivalents of the great monsters of old. Mothman, Chupacabra, The Loch Ness Monster, Sewer Alligators, Slendermen and Ape Men living in the forest, usually having the abilities attributed to them. 1938 was perhaps the most dangerous year of the Fae's existence as in a glamour starved time, a series of radio broadcasts of the novel War of the Worlds were misinterpreted as a real broadcast of an alien invasion and a wave of Chimera Martian Invaders resembling the book's swept through Concordia with the Fae having to fight desperately to stop them.
So how to counter this tier? Some of the strategies of the last tier won't help as much. Banality and Cold Iron will help against a lot of the fae, but they explicitly don't affect the Hsien who have different weaknesses (primarily Jade.) Likewise lack of combat skill is not a thing this tier, as this is the tier for the Fae who actually ARE geared for combat. Not only do you have all the threats of last tier, but more including armies of mental plane monsters of all kinds.
Well one thing is if you have top tier stats that will definitely help a lot. The Maximum for this tier are around the speed of sound and large building level (gigajoules), that said most of the tier is subsonic, with some being slower down to human speed, and most of the tier is small building level (megajoules.) While these characters belong in the same tier in Changeling, having top tier stats will be thousands of times most characters, comparable to the strongest Trolls and Chimeras with speeds that can blitz all but the fastest characters like Old and Powerful Parosemes.
The Second is a strategy that is generally really strong in World of Darkness's low tiers in general, being a spiritual plane entity. This isn't cheating, as there are characters in this tier that can affect spirits The Nunnehi can enter the spiritual plane with the help of their Spirit Totems, the Kith and Adhene can use the very dangerous paths of Balor to enter into the Umbra, though without much control, and the Hsien can if they get a Jade Key. However outside the Nunnehi it is treated either as very dangerous and/or hard to do. The Nunnehi are basically the only ones who can do that and it still involves them actively entering the Umbra first. A spiritual plane entity by default is going to be invisible and intangible to almost everyone in this tier, with only things like Sluagh being able to see and communicate with spirits, and no one able to directly affect them. Spirit type entities like Wraiths in World of Darkness are a bit infamous gameplay wise for the fact that people who specialize in fighting them hard counter them and everyone else can't do anything to them.
Another strategy you could use is using the verse's own strength against it. As mentioned a series of radio broadcasts pushed the Fae to the limit in 1938 by swarming the near dreaming with a Chimerical Swarm of Martian Invaders. Potent Enough Fear Hax and/or Widescale Social Influencing can allow a potent invader to create an invasion of their own Chimera.
Finally anti-fae abilities remain viable tactics. Cold Iron and Banality works on most things in this tier even if it doesn't on Hsien and while Changelings get stronger in the Near Dreaming, if they are BFRed or removed from the Dreaming, they return to their normal power level. So one counter you could use
Rakshasa Kshatra from Heroes of Might and Magic V
Rakshasa Kshatra are Death Spirits from the Fringes of Ashan that were learned to be summoned by powerful Wizards. As a Tier 6 Unit, they are the penultimate creatures of the Academy faction. Even Tier 4 units like Sky Daughters of Stronghold can attack with natural lightning bolts which regularly have the energy of 1-10 gigajoules, while Tier 6 Units like Savage Treats of the Sylvan Faction are said to attack with the force of a landslide which would likely be in the building level range. Beyond that they likely downscale from the Tier 7 Storm Titan of Academy which can create storm across the battlefield, which would put the Rakshasa Kshatra well beyond almost the entire tier if downscaled from kilotons. In terms of speed, even very fast tier 2 units like the Blood Maidens of Dungeons and the Blade Dangers of Sylvan are said to move faster then the eye and to strike enemies across the battlefield before returning, which would likely be subsonic. While they are the fastest Tier 2, Rakshasa as a not particularly slow Tier 6 should easily upscale, putting them at the upper end of the tier in speed as well.
Rakshasa Kshatra are Spirits and as such would be invisible and intangible to most of the Kith much like a creature from the Umbra would be. While the Sluagh would be able to perceive them, it would be almost impossible for most people in this tier to attack the Rakshasa. Beyond that Rakshasa would also have the legendary fear they create. A Rakshasa would go around creating devastation like a Naraka and inspiring urban legends of the horrific spirit beast monster creating Chimerical Copies that the Kith would be hounded by.
There are a few characters though that can enter the spiritual plane, in particular the Nunnehi. The Sluagh and Nunnehi have little contact but if the Sluagh tell the Nunnehi what's going on, or they find out another way and the Braves left to go fight the spirit beast in the Umbra, how well would they do? Well the Rakshasa does have a broad power advantage over most being akin to the Numuzo'ho at least, and possibly much stronger if you downscale them from Storm Titans. It's also faster then most of them by a decent margin, meaning it would be a physically overpowering threat. Beyond that it's nature as a death spirit may cause it to be something of a force of banality. However that's more questionable, and it's possible a good number of the Braves could overwhelm the Rakshasa together. Another counter you could use is
Michael Myers from Halloween
This is specifically the Thorn Timeline Michael Myers allowing for the secondary canon materials. He'd also be strong with just primary canon materials, but it does help round out his threats here to add the possibly canon novelization and comics and they don't change his capabilities that much. The Thorn Timeline Michael is widely considered the most powerful in terms of physical capabilities. In Halloween 2 he was able to withstand a gas explosion that destroyed a section of a hospital, broadly calced as being several megajoules of energy, consistent with multiple feats of surviving within exploding buildings in the comics, putting him pretty consistently in that small building level range. In terms of speed, Michael has numerous feats above Mach 0.1 including catching up to a truck speeding down the highway, dodging a shot from Loomis' handgun, killing every officer in the Police Station so fast no one could even call for backup, and in the novelization was able to disappear in the blink of an eye Batman style which suggest he's overall subsonic. All of this would suggest Michael would have stats fairly relative to the Warriors of the Kith.
Michael Myers is the Shape, an infamous Urban Legend Killer where people project their fears and the darkest parts of their own psychologies onto. He has a powerful corrupting fear presence, such that in the novelization he practically ran the Sanatorium even as a child from his fear presence, and in Halloween 4 he was able to corrupt Jaime a child with his evil. It's really clear that if he was in the world of Changeling the Dreaming he would create his own wave of Chimerical Imposters, especially if his evil infects children who are more likely to create Chimera. This would make it hard just natively for the Kith to find the source of the killings. But even if they did they would have numerous problems.
Michael would likely have an extremely high banality to him. This is because what glamour is fundamentally is story, narrative with it being stated that when a new story is born, a new fae is born with it and the glamour is imagination personified. The Shape is deliberately the absence of narrative, the blank mask people can't understand. People's projections onto the Shape are all fundamentally misguided and on some level Michael would narratively act like a void sucking up Glamour. He also wields a kitchen knife which would likely has some level of iron in it, even if not the maximal amount. Both of these mean in a straight up fight his presence would be painful and damaging to nearby Kith and he'd be able to resist their magic.
Michael has some other advantages. He is an extreme master of stealth such that even he can escape the detection of even sensors, can just seem to appear from nowhere, making him inhumanly stealth to both sight and sound etc. He combines this with a regen that allows him to regen from having eyes shot out, having fatal wounds to his torso, and being engulfed in a fiery explosion. With only the Moirae having both sensory abilities and an ability to bypass durability as birthrights, without usage of cantrips his banality would stop, most Fae would struggle to deal with his stealth AND regen, with things like Trolls not having any way of detecting him beforehand, while the Inua can sense him via animal senses but have no way of bypassing his regen. More then this Michael is bound to a curse that will revive him every Halloween even from death. While the limits of this ability are not known, it would likely be FAR stronger in Changeling the Dreaming as Halloween is actually Samhain, an event with narrative power from the Dreaming as the time the Unseelie traditionally take rulership for half of the year, with the power of Samhain getting stronger and stronger with the coming of Endless Winter, meaning the old Celtic Curse on Michael Myers would actually be getting stronger as time grows on. To actually kill him would require destruction of the original Curse which while not impossible for the tier would be quite difficult and another layer of defense. In the novelization it was even suggesting the curse might be used offensively on those who crossed Michael. People who crossed Michael would have "incidents", unfortunate things that happened to them mysterious like rashes, accidents that break bones, and the power mysteriously going out, though their nature is left ambiguous. If these truly were caused by him, then these two would only get stronger via Samhain's narrative power.
However the only weak point for Michael is that he is a physical entity with stats that are only really on par with the tier and not much particular combat skill. While the Kith would be undone by his relative stats and banality alongside his other skills, if he were to find himself in East Asia perhaps pursuing a family member, then he would run across the strange possible cousins of the Kith, the Hsien who, while not easy can create gigajoule level manipulation of the 5 Chinese Elements with advanced Wu Tan. Chu Jung who have supernatural sight can create fires on the scale of forest fires, Komuko can sense imbalance such as the extreme imbalance of evil in Michael and can manipulate earth on the scale of tremors and so forth. Michael would still have the advantages of his regeneration, curse, and at least similar physical stats, but it's possible they could at least temporarily incapacitate him. For the ultimate counter basically combining the two above strategies you could use
Demons from Bastard!!
Demons are the same classification as Devils but with a power level below 1,000 with most being around 500-600. This is around the level of the Generals of Kal Su including MacPain being smashed through a skyscraper calced high into the Large Building Range. They would also be at least somewhat relative to Kai Harn dodging a supersonic attack at literally point blank range along with other feats around the speed of sound, meaning they would be in the same "tier" as the strongest characters in this tier, except much higher into it in both power and speed and an order of magnitude more powerful and fast then most of the tier.
Demons are beings that exist on the physical, astral, and spiritual plane at once and to completely destroy requires the destruction of every atom on all three planes at once. I don't know if that's possible for the tier even if the Demon did absolutely nothing particularly given its other passive defenses including being really really strong. Hax offenses wouldn't work as at this tier they are all magic and Angels and Demons in Bastard!! have an innate resistance to magic. And if that isn't enough Bastard!! demons can both phase intangible and often shapeshift their bodies into having technological parts like machine gun arms making them banal and hard to manipulate for most Cantrips.
Offensively, Demons not only use technological weapons but all Black Magic in Bastard!! is just a copy of Demon abilities including Crowbar a dark sealing spell that can obliterate an enemy much weaker then the caster, along with magic of poison and acid that destroys on the cellular level of which create hellfire, magic that would destroy anyone in the tier even keeping them from regenerating with Crowbar. More then that however, Demons in ancient days appeared before mortals and inspired horrific cults worshipping them, with supernatural intelligence and charisma they used to inspire unholy terror, something that would absolutely create a Chimerical invasion. The Elemental Spirits and Pagan Gods were worshipped once but were supplanted by the Angels and Demons and that would be almost identical to what a Demon would do to the "Little Gods", the Kith and Hsien.
City Tier:
Kith of Higher Titles include Counts/Countesses who's dominion includes towns and small cities, and Dukes/Duchesses who's dominion size range from large cities to small nations. Influencing them lightly would lightly require kilotons and megatons of power respectively. Yet above them are still the Kith of the Far Dreaming, where Banality fades into memory and the Kith regain the power they once had that the Modern Kith can't imagine, that made them be worshipped as gods. The Trolls were born with the strength of the mountains and the patience of the Earth. Modern Trolls have a Merit called Stone Skin that is "calling back to Rock Giants and Moving Mountains." Ottmar Oakstrong was a Troll of the time that was stated to be "as tall as the sky and as strong as the sea." Redcaps in those days killed Wurms large enough that it could wrap around a hill seven times. Boggans in those days were in charge of keeping humanity alive and sane in a world wracked by earthquakes, fires and floods that "literally reshaped the world." A Sluagh named Owain ap Gwyn as part of terrifying a naughty boy summoned a storm commanding the lightning. Ancient Inanimae can make rivers and forests match to war and in Time of Judgement it is said that "Watching Elder Glomes awaken the Rocky Mountains to rise up and do battle with a nightmarish serpent the size of a hurricane is impressive, sure..." With the Wu Tan, the Hsien can affect mountains with seven successes. With as high as 12 successes, they can affect oceans. There are numerous ways to affect the weather even in the modern day. The Mikado can demand an Earthquake or a Typhoon and the Hsien are obligated to provide. Strong Members of the Ministry can by themselves create rain. For the Western Kith, 4-5 Dots in Scene can affect a Forest or a Hill and then a Mountain while 4-5 Dots in Nature Art can affect "weather, volcanic eruptions, and geothermal activity." With good fortune a Firbholg can create a large storm over a clear sky. In the Mythic Age the Dragon Kung Kung flooded the world but the Hsien working together preserved life, and the Yama Kings created more Suns in the Sky to immolate life but the Hsien worked together to create cataclysmic storms to block out the sunlight. On the other hand in the 13th century when the Seelie and Unseelie courts warred, their powers only starting to drain from the Mythic Age they caused the Little Ice that mildly cooled the entire Northern Hemisphere and devastated Europe. The Green Man is a mysterious entity as old as the Earth itself, and with the strength of a mountain. Graymere Lake was able to reality warp the town of Dudley Town into a malignant and sinister place. The prior High King Dafyll while literally dying released a curse that could destroy the Freehold of Goblin Town. Not only does Goblin Town stretch to cover a wide portion of the New York underground, but Freeholds are possibly the source of city-wide calm and stability in the chaotic Near-Dreaming.
Speedwise while the Mundane Kith when in the Autumn World have similar speeds to the prior tiers, the Fae of the Far Dreaming and of the Pre-Shattering days had vastly faster speeds. Lightning Solimonds would likely have been the speed of lightning, and Wind Inanimae were noted to be able to search the world, seemingly quickly, at likely Massively Hypersonic to Relativistic Speeds. More explicitly, a Sidehe of those days named Hermes explicitly moved at Lightspeed. His name is borne on the 2 Charm Hermes Fleetness that gives one enhanced speed, and presumably in the Far Dreaming would grant the level of speed Hermes did have based on the name. As such Titled Kith would likely be Town to City Level, while the Fae of the Far Dreaming and of the Pre-Shattering Days should be MHS to Lightspeed City+ Level, possibly as high as Continental AP via specific Cantrips or combining their power.
Beyond the Near Dreaming, the Dreaming of recent years and decades, the dreams of individual persons, is the Far Dreaming. The Far Dreaming is the dreams of those things centuries or millennia old, the dreams of nations, religions, and historical ages. In this place all Fae undergo the Augmen. While in the Autumn World, the Fae are more limited by banality, more human and physical, as they travel deeper into the Dreaming the opposite happens. They become more conceptual, more their fae self, more powerful, more otherworldly. Trolls become Mythological Giants, Pooka become more Animal, Sidhe become terror and awe inspiringly beautiful etc. Back in the ancient days before the shattering the Dreaming and the Autumn World were together and the Fae had powers like that of the gods and these ancient fae would be in this tier broadly. As such this tier includes every single Fae from prior tiers if they are brought to the Far Dreaming.
There are some Fae who have a taste of that power even in the Autumn World. Some Fae bear Titles and have dominion over Freeholds, bastions of Glamour in the Autumn World. When a Freeholder is in their Freehold, their rule is ironclad with even the High King having to obey their rules in their home. The power of these Freeholds are strong enough to create city-wide pockets of stability in the Near-Dreaming, implied to create floating islands, and even make time stand still. These are not controlled however conciously by the Titled Fae but instead reflect their personality and emotions. If they are joyous, the weather is calm and sweet sounds and sights can be found across their domains, while if they are angry and conflicted, storms grows over their domain. If their associated color is Green, then Green is more common there, or if they are associated with wolves, then wolf populations thrive. Their power is at the ultimate at the Balefire, the heart of a Homestead where Glamour flows from the Dreaming into the Autumn World.
However beyond these are the likely pinnacles of Fae Power, the Siochains. The Siochains are the Fae of Legends who managed to do the impossible, find balance between their Fae and Human Sides, between glamour and banality. There are only three known to exist: Megan, Prya, and Dice. As part of being a Siochain they are highly resistant if not immune to banality able to use the highest level of Fae ability even in the Autumn World and they have gained "True Immortality." No stats are given for them as they are considered purely Storyteller plot device and it is said that they can use EVERY Fairy Art and Realm to Maximum or Near Maximum capacity if need be. There are many, but I will list some of the most post abilities of them. By far their most feared is with Naming 5 they can discern and manipulate the true names of other entities, retroactively changing them in any way on a conceptual level. With Soothsay 5 they can not just discern the future but determine events that will happen in some way having a form of Fate Manipulation and with Wayfare 5 they can teleport anywhere in the world or Dreaming. With Sovereign 5 they can produce Geas and Bans that everyone must follow, with Chronos 5 they can reverse time several minutes, and with Dream-Craft 5 they can use the art of Dream-Weaving literally shaping the dreaming and giving them reality-warping when inside it. With Metamorphosis 5 they can turn things or themselves into any Mythical Creature and with Oneiromancy 5 they can turn physical people or things into Chimera, mental plane entities. With Spirit Link 5 they can summon an army of ghosts and spirits to attack their enemies and with Talecraft they can tell stories that take Life and Form. And with Realms such as Scene 5 any of these can affect up to an entire kingdom and with Time 5 can be set to re-occur at an important event.
There is also one non-fae in this tier, Greymere Lake. In the Kingdom of Concordia is the State of Connecticut believed by many to be the most Banal land in Concordia, all insurance agencies and defense firms and schools. However the land holds a secret dark glamour in its history, the land where the Witch Trials were held. The abandoned town of Dudleytown. Once a thriving colony, Dudleytown lays next to Greymere Lake. Greymere Lake is feared and honored by all fae in the area, for it is in reality, some sort of ancient and malignant entity, leaking dark glamour into the area. It warped Dudleytown, corrupted it, made it full of gloom and despair. It caused all the people living there to go insane or die. It causes strange beasts to wander the town. Should anyone try to enter it on a day other then one of the holidays of the Fae, it is said that are dragged below the surface never to be seen again. The arguably most frightening thing about Greymere Lake though is that while glamour seems to be slowly dying out and banality is rising, for some reason Greymere Lake only seems to be growing stronger.
So how to counter this tier?
You can try to use the weaknesses of the prior tiers. The Augment while it increases the Fae Strengths it also increases the Fae Weaknesses. Having become more conceptual in nature, the Kith's birthrights grow stronger but so too do their frailties such as the Redcap's hunger becoming ever more ravenous or the Pooka's difficulty telling the truth becoming much harder. With less of a Human Mien to guard their Fae Soul, these Kith are hypothetically more vulnerable to Banality, and cold iron if it was brought into the Dreaming would nuke a city-sized section of it. However not only are these less useful on the Siochain and Graymere Lake but the Dreaming itself fights someone who tries to bring Cold Iron or Banality into it, barring the way against Cold Iron and warping the memories and perceptions of banal individuals while in the Dreaming and if need be shifting to try and destroy the invading force of banality.
Graymere Lake and the Titled Fae, while they have raw attack potency similar on the level of the Godlike Fae also lack the physical stats of them and in a conventional vs match are liable to get blitzed and one-shot by characters who are the max stats for this tier. Another thing that's quite useful for this tier is BFR, at least of sufficient strength. Both the Titled Fae and the Fae in the Far Dreaming are really using the power of the area they're in to become as strong as they are, and BFR-ing them outside that area would return them to the level of power of the past two tiers. However this would have to be extremely strong BFR to work on the latter, enough to eject them from the Far Dreaming itself. Beyond that however is the biggest problem of the tier, the Siochains. Not only can they use Wayfare 5 to return the Dreaming at any time (though they usually don't teleport directly between Autumn World and Dreaming), but to be honest they're not much weakened from being in the Autumn World. Being in the Dreaming makes them more metaphysical in nature, gives them more stamina, and lets them use Dream-Weaving to reality-warp. That said they retain all their Arts and Realms regardless of location and their frailties are less in the Autumn World, so they're barely less of a threat there.
It's pretty clear that the Siochain are going to be the biggest threats here, so the question is how to counter them? Well there is one power that counters the vast majority of the verse that came up briefly last tier, that being antimagic. Almost all of the abilities of the Fae are magic and resisting magic would absolutely cripple offensive moves they could take to basically their stats, summoning, and shapeshifting. It may or may not protect against the powers of the Greymere Lake but otherwise a strong enough magic resistance would be an immunity to almost every power here. Beyond this while the tier has extremely potent offenses its defenses are actually fairly middling, usually relying on supernatural but non-hax stealth and endurance, counterspells against enemy magic-users, and predicting an enemy's actions before they use them. While the verse has very formidable emotional and mental hax with things such as the Sovereign Art, these things are considered highly broken even in verse and there is almost no resistance to similar haxes. Having even a modest speed advantage combined with some kind of offensive hax like mind control would be a strong tactic just to hit them first. As a final note, Sidhe, Oba, and Ali'l all have their supernatural beauty and charisma enhanced to the point of inspiring awe and terror upon just seeing them which is a passive hax that it's best to have some counter to. As such having a high degree of willpower to resist may be helpful. So who can use? Well the first counter I'd suggest is
Nico Di Angelo from the Riordan-verse.
Nico as son of one of the Big Three is one of the most powerful Demigods and even early on without knowledge of his power opened a chasm all the way to the Underworld calced as requiring 7.3 megatons of energy. As a son of Hades after mastering his powers he should be in the same range as Jason Grace, son of Jupiter who could create a powerful Storm and Percy Jackson, son of Poseidon, who withstood the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens, both of which would require upper megatons of power. Demigods have also shown bullet-timing and lightning-timing feats, with Nico able to somewhat contend with Nyx the Goddess, the Gods have several FTL feats as well as being comparable to Percy Jackson avoiding a light based attack from Hyperion.
Nico's very presence in the Dreaming cause horrific devastation. Nico would likely have an aura of banality and darkness about him, not necessarily due to his disbelieving personality, but for a similar reason as a powerful Vampire. Nico's presence already causes things like grass to wilt as he walks past, an affect that would grow vastly in the dreaming. Nico possess an immense willpower and has his own form of supernatural charisma in the form of a fear aura he got from his dad that made Kronos' mindless monsters flee, and would do similar to any random chimera. This would be similar to the aura of dark glamour the Unseelie Sidhe have, except Nico could likely resist the charisma of others. The Dreaming would try to stop him by using the Mists to wipe his memories... except the Mists are also a thing in the Riordan-verse wiping the memories of mortals who see supernatural things, and Demigods naturally tank it and can even sometimes manipulate it themselves.
In a direct fight, Nico would be an absolute terror against anyone on this tier. All Demigods naturally have a level of magic resistance that would make him hard to affect. Combined with his own ability to teleport to anywhere that casts shadow with Shadow Travel and his ability to sense power from his opponents protecting him from BFR and Deception as well as the passive weakening effects of his Fear Hax and Banality, and Nico would be an impenetrable wall. Like all Demigods he'd also have an instinctive knowledge on how to fight his opponents through his innate combat sense.
Offensively he can use his usual Earth Manipulation and Darkness Manipulation, such elemental powers potentially being stronger in the Dreaming. However he also has more hax options. Nico carries a blade of Stygian Iron, which would essentially be Cold Iron but WORSE. Not only does it likely have close enough properties to Cold Iron to nullify Fae abilities, but Stygian Iron absorbs the souls and lifeforce of those it hits allowing it to permanently kill Chimera and Fae even otherwise. Nico also has the ability to summon an army of spirits to his command, something that would by itself be almost impossible for the tier to stop outside using Spirit Link 5 to try and control them themselves. However as son of Hades, Nico can exert authority over spirits, even ones that would be controlled by others, meaning that if they tried to use Spirit Link 5, Nico can just override it and use the spirits for himself. Nico also has the ability to banish souls and spirits at will as well as banish anyone who has cheated death to go to the Underworld immediately. The unifying factor of what becoming a Siochain means is to gain ageless immortality and essentially cheat death forever, with Nico able to banish them to the Underworld.
If Nico entered the tier, it'd be like the Grim Reaper entered into the World of Dreams, Death and Darkness and Spirits ending the glamour and whimsy of fae dreams. However speed scaling for Demigods from the Riordan-verse is a little controversial and he may be slower then the tier in which case he'd have to rely on his passive defenses. His powers can also be stamina draining and if he runs out of stamina he'd also have to rely on his passive defenses to protect him. While I think he could do it, for another counter you could use
Emperor Belos from The Owl House
The Green Thumb Gauntlet is an ancient relic who's plant manipulation is calced at 11 megatons. Lilith considers said gauntlet to be a decrepit relic beneath her yet she was merely an underling to Emperor Belos, considered the top tier of the Boiling Isles. In terms of speed even the normal civilians of the Boiling Isles have light timing feats where high tiers can somewhat keep up with the Collector, an interstellar traveler, something Belos himself actually did. This means Belos would have similar power to the Siochains and a speed advantage to some level.
Emperor Belos is a witch hunter and would almost certainly have knowledge of fae lore knowing that they are weak to cold iron. Belos would assuredly have Witch's Wool, a material in The Owl House that allows resistance from magic, and developed his own artificial form of magic that bypasses such meaning he would have resistance to basically any magic he came across while being able to affect them despite that with his own magic. More then that however, Belos is a semi logia slime creature possibly due to his creation of artificial magic which he sustains by consuming the magic/lifeforce from others both to survive and strength himself. This would be a really strong offensive ability in Changeling as, assuming it can work on Fae like it does Palismans, it basically he can eat their lifeforce and magic at anytime.
Even outside that Belos is a master of magic and should be able to use the schools of magic in his verse. He naturally tends to use telekinesis and teleportation in combat in a way that would allow him to prevent a Fae from using bunks that require movement and avoiding attacks. Things like using Chicanery to deceive him or the subtle influence of Greymere lake wouldn't work as he has telepathic sensing on the range of his castle as well as Oracle Magic that gives magical sensing. He can also petrify enemies or manipulate their consciousness directly, abilities without clear analogies in the Fae Arts. This means he has numerous forms of one-shots as well as much higher speed to blitz and use them on and even if tagged he has the magic resistance to protect from it along with a few more defenses like relatively high durability and logia.
However all of this assumes the worst case which is that he is found out and fought directly. Emperor Belos is known for his mental capabilities having essentially turned the world of witches against magic, manipulated them into making him their Emperor, and studied the arcane to learn how to kill it for decades. He would very quickly learn how to turn the fae's very pronounced fragilities against them and how to use cold iron as well as manipulate them into turning against each other as the fae world is full of internal conflicts such as the seelie vs unseelie, the nobles vs the commoners, the kith vs the nunnehi etc. He would very likely be able to manipulate all these groups against each other while remaining himself unmoved as not only does he have a very strong willpower and a hatred for fae but even Luz, who is known for her incredible ability to befriend and make peace with people, was unable to sway Belos. Belos manipulated her even in the past when he was presumably less mentally capable. And even if he was found out he would again be almost impossible to kill.
The one problem with this strategy is that Belos himself doesn't have any kind of native form of interdimensional teleportation to the point that his attempt to build a way back to the human world is a major plot point. I think he'd get by okay as there are paths from the Dreaming to the Autumn World he could learn about via study of the fae, but it is possible for him to get trapped for a good while into a remote part of the dreaming. For the best counter however I would suggest
Ethon Panjilcuttra of the Lords of Dusk from Dungeons and Dragons
The Lords of Dusk are an ancient conspiracy of powerful Rakshasa who battle dragons and couatls. Even the least of their members have to be strong enough to battle Powerful Dragons directly, these Dragons treated often as the apex of natural power able to create powerful weather effectives for miles all around them, consistent with their Palace having a violent sandstorm surrounding it constantly. Ethon as one of the named Lords of Dusk is likely even stronger and approaching the power of Imix the Elemental Prince of Fire who's heat can create a desert over miles. Light-Timing feats are also something even the lesser Rakshasa could do with the Lords of Dusk higher to some unknown but potentially large degree. With that said, even the Siochain would likely have stats comparable to normal Lords of Dusk and Ethon should outscale these high tiers, if only by a bit made worse by D&D Spellcasters having many ways to amp their stats temporarily if need be.
Rakshasa are the immortal embodiments of Nightmares. The Dreaming doesn't allow for Mundane Magic but the Rakshasa would be treated as a Thallian and not only would be able to use their powers, but would likely grow stronger as the Far Dreaming invigorates their Nightmare with greater potency as per the Augmen. Like the Fae they will eventually reincarnate if their body dies, though they have the advantage of existing in multiple planes of reality at once, making them particularly hard to dispatch. Defensively the Rakshasa have an extreme magic resistance with most spells simply not affecting them and moreover have a resistance to weapons not of a "good" nature. Such treasures do exist among the Fae but rarely, with the most famous example being Caliburn the sword of the High King David.... except the plot of Changeling the Dreaming is that David has gone missing and his sword is no longer in use. This means doing any kind of damage to Ethon would be extremely difficult, revolving around a Siochain wielding one of a few holy treasures. The Lords of Dusk are a society filled of supernatural charismatic manipulators like the Sidhe and regularly resist each other charms so that wouldn't do much to him and Greymere Glen is unlikely to be able to corrupt, kill, or drive mad a supernaturally evil, immortal monster of immense will like a Rakshasa. In a direct fight he would be immune to almost any of the attacks of the tier. Though that suggests they would even be able to find out Ethon.
The Lords of Dusk are a secret society that have manipulated the world since the Age of Demons. They use prophecies and manipulation over thousands and tens of thousands of years to manipulate events to their bidding including meddling in the lives of otherwise ordinary people to butterfly effect the changing of kingdoms. This is a level of Soothsay and manipulation completely unknown to the tier. And their primary tactic is to bring about corruption including of entire civilizations and abstract concepts of good like Angels. It is extremely in character of them to manipulate the various factions of the fae into internal strife to gain power. This would be especially easy as they possess the Cloaks of Khyber that hide their true self from all detection, even magical, and Masks of Misplaced Aura to disguise themselves as whomever they choose including things their magical aura. Combine this with the Rakshasa being a race of powerful spellcasters who know such magical abilities as invisibility, illusions strong enough to create illusory palaces, subtle mental influence with Suggestion, and a passive telepathic aura that lets them read the minds of those nearby and make themselves seem non-threatening, and Ethon would be impossible to find and able to sway anyone to what he wants.
Even if found out however, he would be an absolute nightmare, pun intended. Not only would he be immune to almost any kind of attack and able to read minds as mentioned but he has many other offensive advantages. He would have likely Dreaming-Amplified Magic but the Lords of Dusk are also superhumanly skilled warriors and would be able to match or even surpass the Trolls in combat skill given his immense experience. The Rakshasa exceed at mind affecting mind in direct combat including directly controlling people or inducing supernatural fear and they also have a lifeforce siphoning vampiric touch that can drain the lifeforce from people, likely able to fully kill even a Fae. They are naturally invaders from the Outer Planes and have access to spells like Plane Shift allowing teleportation of self and others even across planes, which is arguably superior even to Wayfare 5 meaning he can teleport himself and an opponent outside the Dreaming and outside their Freeholds weakening them. And Ethon specifically is the Master Artificer of the Lords of Dust, who creates powerful technology that would be extremely difficult for the Fae to affect as with both extremely complex magic and complex technology it would likely require high levels of both Prop and Fae Realms. As Fae in D&D are also weak to cold iron, he would presumably know to make them of cold iron when he finds out his opponents fae.
Moon Tier:
The characters in this tier are the strongest of the Kith including the Founders of the Kith ranging from Continent to Moon Level. The highest rank of the Kith in the Autumn World is King/Queen, Kith who control Large Nations or entire continents. The Great Dragon Kung Kung flooded the world and after the Yama Kings superheated the world by creating 9 more Suns and they were shot down by Yi the Archer, Kung Kung redeemed himself to humanity by cooling the world with global rain. The Orisha are said by the Eshu to be spirits that in the Mythic age created the various Kith. They include the Orisha Day and Night who can circle the world and make it Spin or halt it entirely to make one half burn in the Sunlight and the other freeze in darkness with the Earth's rotational kinetic energy being 2.1e29 Joules or more then 50 Exatons. Another Orisha Obatala is said to have fashioned the World, though the timeframe is unknown. However the Greatest Fae are the Fae with no trace of Banality within them. Beyond the Far Dreaming exists a realm further still, a realm that even the Kith rarely travel to, the Deep Dreaming, made of the dreams millions or billions of years old, predating humanity entirely, the dreams of the trees and the clouds, the first love, hate, hunger, and fear ever dreamed. In the Otherplace, great devouring things move through a colorless landscape where they battle spiderlike entities the size of Moons. Yet these are not the top tiers of the Dreaming. At the heart of the Dreaming lies Arcadia and the True Fae within, removed entirely from banality. During the War of the Trees the Tuatha and their allies the Arcadians did war against the Fomorians and their allies in the Denizens. They caused chaotic storms across the Dreaming that turned oceans to fire and tore a Moon from the sky over Kureksarra. Wielding the nightmare energies from the Fomorians, Firbholg Monarchs became the embodiments of these storms. To foretell the coming of the Fomorians in the modern day, a red light like a Star shall shine in the Chimerical Plane called the Eye of Balor and upon the time of Judgement will grow to the size of a small moon. As such the power level for this tier is Continent to Moon Level.
It's possible they may be even stronger if you think they can actually match the Tuatha or Fomorians. The Arcadians DID take up arms against the Fomorians back during the War of the Trees. It is said that a very powerful Fae could maybe slow or injure a Fomorian but not kill one and the Tuatha are unstoppable to all but the eldest changelings suggesting they might not be totally outside their domain. Similarly Conchobhair, founder of House Daireann was able to kill Fomorians and when the Tuatha Scathach met the Fomorian known as the Winter King in his domain for combat, the strongest of Fae Sorcerers supported Scathach and ending up sealing the Winter King. Given the amount of material suggesting the Fomorians and Tuatha are a league beyond, I think the only plausible explanations is that this is from hax spellcraft that ignored conventional power, or that the Tuatha and Fomorians are at a range of power and that the weakest of them is more along the lines of the strongest normal Fae, or both. Each has some support. There's other arguments that characters might be stronger such as the fact that the Beginning and End of the Universe is perpetually existing in the Deep Dreaming as time doesn't exist and beginnings and ends become one and the same, or the existence of Astrological Chimera, or treasures like a mirror that contains a hundred worlds, though it's unclear who scales to this as most of these are mentioned in passing reference and without much detail.
In terms of speed while the Changeling Kings in the Autumn World do not have particularly higher speed, the Fae of the Deep Dreaming should be able to match or exceed the Sidhe Hermes who moved at lightspeed, making them FTL. However the Deep Dreaming is outside mortal constraints of space and time and the inhabitants can react to and tag the Tuatha and Fomorians, giving them infinite reaction/attack speed.
The deepest realm of the Dreaming is the Deep Dreaming. The relationship between the Dreaming and Umbra can be vague but some part of the Dreaming extends into the Umbra and so that would include the Deep Dreaming. The Umbra is the main cosmological structure of the Tellurian, the fulness of the World of Darkness Multiverse, comprised of many layers of spiritual and conceptual reality. Those beings of the Deep Dreaming are thus spiritual or conceptual entities with all mortal magic failing and physical things wiped away or changed into the strange warped reality of the dreaming at such an alien world. Any of the Fae here undergo an even further level of Augmen, their birthrights and failings and cantrips becoming even more fundamental and bare, their human part reduced to the smallest as they become their Kith archetype. Time does not exist in this realm and the start and beginning of the universe are constantly happening. Any of the Fae of the prior Tier would reach this tier when in the Deep Dreaming. Back in the Pre-Shattering Days, the greatest of Fae were likely in this tier, including the legendary founders of the 14 Houses of the Sidhe.
6 of these Noble Houses are the Seelie Houses, the Summer Courts, the Heroes of Fairy Tales. Jalendrel the Prophet Knight founded the House Beaumayn, a house known for their gift of prophecy, foresworn to their duty to cold destiny. Dougal was the finest smith Arcadia ever produced and founded House Dougal, a house of those who are proud craftsmen who imbue their will into every bit of blood and sweat. Lady Eilund born sickly and misshapen did become one of the foremost masters of magic and secrets, founding House Eilund for those seek to be wise to the ways of magic and night. Lady Fiona was a lover as much as a warrior, who's radiant love was betrayed and cursed her, and founded House Fiona, the House of love and bravery most beloved by the commoners for the grace and compassion given to them. Gwydion the Grey was a Bandit Fae, greatest of all Fae save the Tuatha themselves, but was humbled into years long servitude by the Tuatha and reformed himself as he found the greatest strength was virtue, founding the House Gwydion, a house priding itself on Honor and Justice. Finally Lord Liam is the exiled lord, hated by all is he and his house for their love of the mortals as equals to fae. Though they remain oathbreakers to most, House Liam are those Fae with the best connection to their true love: humanity whom they guard devotedly.
6 of these Noble Houses are the Unseelie Houses, the Winter Courts, the Villains of Fairy Tales in temporarily alliance with the Seelie Houses to preserve Faekind. House Aesin claims founding from the Norse Gods, and these Norse Kith known for their berserkers and skalds with greater connection to nature strain themselves to prevent Ragnarok. Ailil, brother of misshapen Eilund, was in contrast beautiful and strong, creating House Aili, the house of puppetmasters and spies. The infamous Lugh of the Long Arm, grandson and slayer of the Fomorian Balor formed House Balor, the house of the deformed and monstrous who trace their lineage to the Fomorians rather then the Tuatha and have greater resilience to cold iron. House Daireann is a house of bloodthirsty warriors who's founder was actually the poisonmaker Daireann though they are most associated with her son the warrior Conchobhair, his mother's avenger, who's battle rage was enough to kill even Fomorians. Free spirited Leanhaun who in her innocence did commit a monstrous act and was cursed by her lover the lady Finella founded House Leanhaun, who still follow the ancient curse, to age supernaturally fast unless they continually drain the dreams of others, making them a House of Psychic Vampires. Lord Varich was a Russian Fae born of the Sun and Moon who's heart was spurned by Love and founded House Varich, who's members are far-seeing and proud but whose hearts know not love.
There are two other houses. House Scathach's founder was Scathach the Tuatha who fought the Winter King of the Fomorians himself accompanied by many powerful seelie fae. They alone stayed on Earth when the Sundering happened, devoted not to power or politics or personal wants, but only to the final defeat of the Faes' ancient enemies no matter what.
Beyond them are the True Fae of Arcadia, Fae without any sliver of humanity or banality, who left the world during the Shattering. They reside at the heart of Deep Dreaming in Arcadia. These Fae are known to exceed the power level of the Changelings, though what else they can do is somewhat vague. Their leaders are the mysterious 14th house, House Danaan, direct stewards to the Tuatha themselves, rulers of Arcadia.
The Dreaming is host to other Creatures of terrifying power, spiderlike monsters the size of moons and great devouring things. Land of Eight Million Dreams, the Changeling Book focused on the Hsien tells of greater members of the Celestial Hierarchy above the Hsien including Dragons and Phoenixes, representations of the forces of Yang and Yin including such ones as can cool the Earth with rain.
The Eshu also speak of the Spirits called Orisha who they believe they created the world and founded each type of Kith, being something like an archetypal spirit for their Kith along with some other Orisha. If they exist then they are amongst the most powerful entities in Changeling the Dreaming Lore. Elegbra Eshu is their founder in legend, the Messenger Orisha of Olorun, who may be the God of all. The other terms they use for the other Kith mostly refer to the Orisha that supposedly founded them including Orisha-Oko of the Hearth (Boggans), Olokuta of Stone (Nockers), Ijapa (Pookas), Oshosi of the Hunt (Redcaps), Olu-Igbo of the Wilds (Satyrs), Itiyere (Sidhe), Sonponno of Diseases (Sluagh), and Jakuta (Trolls.) Taiyewo and Kehinde are twin Orisha of Life and Vitalitywho are said to have founded Clurichaun and Piskies respectively. Olokun of the Waters is the founder of the Aquatic Kith, and Ogun of Iron is said to be the founder of the Dauntain.
Outside of them there are several more Orisha of note. Olorun had two sons Orunmilla the Diviner and Obatala the Crafter, the latter of whom made the world which is at least the planet and possibly the universe. Ojo and Iku, the Eshu equivalents of seelie and unseelie are the literal day and night who stopped the world from spinning once. Shango is also mentioned, the Orisha of Lightning
All of this is contained in the infinite ocean of light and twilight called the Sea of Silver, the all-encompassing ocean of the Deep Dreaming, with a different name to every heart. It is the ultimate trod, the culmination of every Silver Path, a conceptually infinite sea of the meaning of every journey. There in lies ancient and forgotten dreams as well as the locales of the Deep Dreaming from Beautiful Arcadia to nightmarish Wasteland. The Sea of Silver contains many entities even more powerful then the Fae, most of which are probably in the tier. In those oceans are the most ancient of Inanimae, the Oceanids, spirits of the primal ocean, said to be almost infinitely secretive and mysterious. To master the Sea of Silver, navigate it, requires Mastery of the Silver Riddle: That the whole of the Sea of Silver is contained in the heart, that the small somehow contains the large.
So how to counter this tier? Some of the tactics from last tier apply not because they're helpful but because they're now necessary. The ability to fight spiritual and conceptual entities is a necessity given how that's the entirety of the tier. Trying to exploit fae weaknesses in the Far Dreaming is very hard, but the Deep Dreaming would make such things impossible. Mortal Magic is useless here, physical reality is warped, and every Changeling threat from last tier including the Siochain powers are present with such abilities being far more common with the likes of Arcadia and the legendary clan founders. It is true that because of the Augmen, a Fae's weaknesses would be at their most extreme here, bound entirely to their concept, to their story, their Kith's frailty taken to an extreme. However the weaknesses are so disparate with no clear pattern that it's hard to exploit this outside of saying a character with very high intelligence might be able to manipulate them. That might be a strategy given the lack of supergenius intellects in the tier, though given the number of supernatural sensing abilities, it's nowhere close to good enough on its own.
A tactic from a prior tier that WOULD likely still be helpful is BFR. It would have to be extremely strong to affect one of the entities of the Deep Dreaming, let alone to send someone out of the Deep Dreaming but outside the Deep Dreaming, any of the Fae would be akin to the prior tiers. This wouldn't help with the Orishas, Dragons, or Phoenixes, but it would be helpful.
There is something that is consistently treated as the ultimate force in the verse and that is destiny. While I will get into it more in the final tier, there are numerous characters and groups who's entire focus is on the divination of destiny and prophecies are treated as the most serious affair of the Fae, possibly because in such a state they are so bound to their stories, that trying to defy destiny is almost unthinkable, even if it can be interpreted generously.
There is another strategy that is both specific to Changeling and also general to the entire World of Darkness which is manipulating the nature of reality as Hermetic. The entirety of the Dreaming is the collection of all dreams and could hypothetically be controlled by someone who controlled all dreams. In World of Darkness it is shown that a normal human awakening to their potential can become a Mage and potentially one of the most powerful things in the setting as they realize their godlike control over reality. This level of potential is alluded to in the Silver Riddle, that in the human heart is the entirety of the Sea of Silver. Strong enough Mind Hax to control the world, or individually potent enough to tap into the power of the Heart, could give godlike reality-warping enough to threaten the Dreaming. The Firbolg claim they were the once the strongest Kith because humanity dreamed they were the strongest but were deposed by the Tuatha. What's best is that this could be done from outside the Dreaming entirely, with any Fae who wants to challenge the attacker having to weaken themselves by entering the Autumn World.
A strategy related to all three of the prior involves the Metaplot of Changeling the Dreaming, that the world is moving towards the apocalypse known as Endless Winter. Fae suggest that this may be when glamour and the Dreaming itself dies, perhaps forever. Soothsaying fails to predict anything past the point of Eternal Winter and with no glamour at all, all things fae would become powerless and quickly die forever. While the Fae are currently struggling on what can be done about it, powerful enough time hax to affect conceptual entities and send them into the future of Endless Winter could instantly kill any fae entity especially as the time manipulation of the tier is honestly not that impressive by time manipulation standards (Chronos 5 allows for returning a few minutes in time.) A truly cruel invader with potent enough abilities may be able to trigger Endless Winter bringing about the fae apocalypse, though it's considered in question whether the Dreaming itself will die or just completely separate from the Autumn World (though this itself may be seen as essentially sealing away everyone in the Dreaming.)
So who could you use against the tier? Someone you could summon is...
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice... Beetlejuice!
Beetlejuice, specifically the animated version's stats can be a bit hard to assess. Beetlejuice casually sucked up Lake Eerie to spit out as an attack, which due to the rate could be as high as 2 petatons of energy. He was able to withstand a strike from a Star, with Stars like the Sun having an energy output per second of over 90 petatons. His powers have also been shown to turn him into a Moon and to affect a Moon though their size was wonky. This suggests at least power wise he should somewhere in this tier of Power being Continental to Moon Level, at least by my interpretation. He was also able to travel a distance he claimed to be over 4 trillion feet high in a timeframe or 10 seconds, a speed of over 400c. This means he should likely be faster in movement speed then anyone in the tier, enough to blitz the ones that are not in the Dreaming, though the stronger characters have infinite reaction speeds so he definitely can't blitz them. Overall he'd physically fit into the tier well.
In the Autumn World, Beetlejuice would be able to match almost any of the conventional fae abilities. Chicanery 5 can change peoples' beliefs but Beetlejuice can just outright mind control people and on a Realm 5 scale to given he controlled an entire town at once. Legerdeman 5 can summon monsters and Primal 5 can control large natural events like the weather, both of which are things he can easily do. Soothsay 5 can divine and speed up the future and Wayfare 5 allows for dimensional travel even into the mental plane, but Beetlejuice has shown precog, more advantage time manipulation, and the ability to enter the mental plane naturally. The difference is that Beetlejuice isn't a fairy... he's a GHOST! The mists won't stop his magic and he can just control people on a wide scale to affect the Consensus and grant himself more power and given enough time to affect the dreaming. As a ghost, he is immune to a lot of Fae abilities naturally in the Autumn World with only the Sluagh easily seeing him ala Lydia (not even taking into account stealth capabilities to sneak past many ghosts who can see him naturally). There's a lot of forms of mind hax in this tier, and with Realm 5 they could affect an entire kingdom... but Beetlejuice actually resisted mind that could entire the entire Netherworld from... a fairy of all things. The Orisha are some powerful spirits, but they are far less versatile then him, and Beetlejuice can duplicate to the point he can match their numbers, once filling an entire orchestra with just him and can likely outwit him with the best mental stats of anyone in the tier. He is smart enough to create a potion that can completely reverse someone's personality, built a sentient robot as just a teenager, and beat three witches of similar magical power to him at once. As the equivalent of a Wraith with access to 5 Dots in basically every Fae Realm and Art the ghost with the most would be a true nightmare on the Autumn World.
But what if found himself in the Deep Dreaming, the world of the most ancient dreams, where everything are archetypal spirits and concepts and he'd have to fight more conventionally? Well this is where his most potent offensive abilities would come into play. Beetlejuice has access to a suite of metafictional abilities. Beetlejuice has full metafictional awareness and can summon pencils which can metafictionally draw and erase things. Drawing monsters would essentially be creating the equivalent of Chimera for the Deep Dreaming Fae, creating monsters even they aren't used to fighting and his metafictional destruction can even permanently kill a True Fae. Pure Glamour, magic and story incarnate might be infinitely mysterious and a conceptual force, but it's still written on the page as a word that can be erased. Even more then this Beetlejuice has the very targeted powers of metafictional space and time manipulation, able to exit the fictional reality he inhabits, pull up flashbacks, or pull panels in a comic directly. More then that dimensional BFR is one of his particularly characteristic tactics. It's very in character and plausible when fighting a fae in the Deep Dreaming to pull them into the Netherworld where their powers would likely be highly inhibited. Or if he was being particularly mean, he could use his temporal hax potent enough to send people to the dinosaur era to send the fae forward to the era of Endless Winter. In general his ability to travel metafictionally as well as through mirrors like the treasure containing 100 words means that though the dreaming is conceptually infinite and hard to navigate, he should be able to get around pretty easily and determine the battlefield against any opponent which is key to fighting the tier.
Even outside that, Beetlejuice has a number of good defenses to the tactics of the tier. His mental hax resistance would still protect from most of the many forms of mental manipulation. Manipulation of his form is unlikely to help as Beetlejuice's most used ability is his shapeshifting that he can use to take basically any conceivable form. Sidhe are supernaturally charismatic as in the Deep Dreaming can make anyone who sees them obsessive over them, but given Beetlejuice's perverse way of acting towards people he loves, this would be not helpful against him. Similar with the Satyr and Mermaids' ability to induce lust. Redcaps can eat anything but at melee range like that Beetlejuice can just possess them and Trolls can grow big and strong enough to be reach the sky, but Beetlejuice can grow his arms large enough to wrap around the Earth and regen from even ash. This goes on and on. Beyond that and a very strange counter, but everything is said to be far more intense in the dreaming going more extreme as you go further into it. Meaning becomes more beautiful and senses are increases to be more vibrant. However Beetlejuice naturally emits a painfully bad odor so strong it makes monsters flee and can induce a coma. In the Deep Dreaming this effect would be compounded to the point of likely causing a coma or death to any in olfactory range. This in addition to the advantages mentioned in last tier like duplication and supergenius intelligence.
Beetlejuice could likely only be stopped by his own weaknesses. Beetlejuice can be overconfident, is afraid of sandworms, and can't use his magic if his head detached from his body. More then any other is his most famous one. Beetlejuice can be sealed in the Netherworld if his name is said thrice, and can only be unsealed by saying his name thrice again. This is a problem as the rare Naming Art is capable at 4 Dots of discerning someone's true name, and at 5 of changing their True Name, conceptually rewriting them. If Beetlejuice messes around against someone with high naming, they could not only find out and use his real name to seal him, but change it to be something impossible to pronounce to permanently seal him. I don't think is likely but for another counter you could use
Irene Belserion, the Scarlet Despair from Fairy Tail
Both in terms of physical and mental stats Irene would fit right in this tier, at least in her base form. Her assistants Juliet and Heine made from Irene's power were able to fight Mira, withstand blows that vaporized a sea. Irene has multiple casual continental feats, scaling far above her daughter Erza who sliced a meteor with continental level power and maintaining spatial warping over an entire continent until she died. This is consistent with being a dozen over times the power of an Etherion Cannon that can wipe out entire countries. While the main cast got stronger come the sequel, as one of the strongest characters from the War Arc she likely downscales from most of the cast in the 100 Years Quest, where they have to battle Dragons that casually wipe out planets and move around the Moon, with even casual scaling potentially putting Irene's full power in that Moon Level Range, fitting the Continent to Moon Level Power of the Tier. In terms of Speed, Irene is a Dragon Slayer, and one of the strongest in the original likely scaling substantially higher beyond earlier Sting and Rogue who wield light and darkness as their attacks as well as people who can avoid their attacks, alongside other light-timing feats. Mentally Irene is an over 400 year old superhumanly skilled mage, able to match her daughter in a magic and melee duel, with Erza defeating superhumanly skilled fighters like Ikaruga who can sever someone's nervous system without cutting their skin or clothing and invented numerous types of magic including the legendary Dragon Slayer Magic. This means she would likely have mental stats comparable to the Legendary Fae who founded the various Noble Sidhe houses, if not maybe superior as she would be a mental top tier in numerous domains rather then just one.
Irene would do amazingly against the local fae, even in her base form. If she wants to brawl directly Deus Eques can give her a physical boost above them and Deus Corona she can raise her defenses and resistances to get protection against elements, poisons, and status effects which is the vast majority of fairy offenses. Against the modern top tier fae like High King David who rely on the Balefire for their power, Irene can use Universe One, a continental spatial shifting ability to deposit every fairy lord in a kingdom outside their domains at once to depower them or use Deus Zero to simply cancel out the enchantment on the Balefire itself, ridding the area of magic and depowering the fairies relying on it. Even if fighting one of the Legendary Fairies of the Ancient Past, Irene can use Separation Enchantment which stole the Fairy Heart power from Mavis and can steal someone's magic entirely to instantly depower any of the tier's opponents and add their power to her own. Conchobhair was the most fearsome of the Fae in combat, who in his fearsome battle rage could kill even a Fomorian, yet if he was to enter that physical state Irene could likely just steal his body with Personality Enchant.
Against the other Autumn World Top Tiers, Irene would do great. Against the Orisha Irene is a master of the usage of Suspira, the Spiritual Arts and should be able to fight them directly and as a Grant High Enchanter can enchant forces of nature like day and night to render them weaker. The Phoenixes powers can broadly be protected by Deus Corona and the Dragons... well Irene literally created Dragon Slayer Magic. She also has two much more broken tactics she could use. She could turn into her true Dragon Form massively enhancing her physical stats such that only Battle Frenzy Conchobhair would surpass her and making her immune to magic meaning that Conchohbair's battle rage would be the only threat, and again she can deal with him one v one in any number of ways. She can also use in that form the highest form of Enchantment of Master Enchanting to affect celestial bodies. Celestial bodies control destiny in the World of Darkness as they are the physical expressions of the Celestines, the rulers over the Tellurian, giving Irene destiny manipulation. While it'd be a NLF probably to suggest she could control something as big as one of the major Celestine's bodies, she is definitely in the right range by feats given the meteor she controlled to control the Eye of Balor, the small Moon that not only messes with the minds and magic of the world on a planetary scale but brings about Endless Winter, meaning she could at any time just start the fairy apocalypse, depowering the fairies on Earth and sealing away or destroying the Dreaming.
If Irene entered into the Dreaming she'd still be able to use her abilities. Not only is Suspira not magic, but the Dreaming only messes up the magic of mortals. Irene isn't actually a human, she is a Dragon who looks like a human due to Zeref's intervention, meaning she could still use all her magic normally. She could take her Dragon Form and potentially would naturally be in her Dragon Form in the Deep Dreaming, making her immune to the magic of the tier's defenders. Meanwhile her magic can work on the conceptual level with Conceptual Enchantment meaning she should be able to fight then naturally, in particular draining their magic and adding it to her own. In particular Irene is the Sage Dragon Slayer with Sage since ancient times being an herb considered a purifying herb that can dispel fairies curses. This means in the Deep Dreaming, in the Umbra shaped by humanity consciousness, Irene might be able to use her Sage abilities to fend off Fairy Magic even in her base state.
The biggest threat to Irene would be her own overconfidence. The verse has plenty of powerful manipulators. Irene's Dragon Form might protect against the Sidhe's birthright, but not her base state and the strongest Sidhe are superhumanly charismatic even without the usage of magic. Irene famously defeated herself, killing herself to keep herself from killing Erza. It's possible someone like Alil might be able to manipulate her into surrendering out of guilt for what she did to her daughter. While I think that's broadly unlikely for someone who that strategy absolutely would NOT work against, you could use the best counter for the tier
Kuromi from Sanrio.
Kuromi's raw physical power is not especially impressive for a Sanrio character, however most of the Sanrio cast have strength and durability would be on the upper end of this tier, with numerous of them pedaling able to charge up a cannon that could fling the mech Block Warrior outside the world, Block Warrior being stated to be a threat to the planet and able to turn it into a cube. This Moon level scaling has plenty of consistency with Kuromi in her music videos able to grow to the size of being nearly the size of a planet, using black notes where 100 of them would be able to create a world threatening nightmare, and scaling to feats from other verses in official crossover media. There are higher ends for Kuromi in the Planetary, Stellar, and Universal ranges which mirror the higher ends for the tier pretty exactly and support that Kuromi would be on the upper end of power for this tier regardless of interpretation. In terms of speed Kuromi actually is faster then normal for Sanrio able to move fast enough to be a blur to most of them, with most of them scaling to light-timing. This is consistent with how her music videos depict her flying a flying heart to another planet in seconds and potential scaling to the Pac-Man ghosts who flew from a cosmic ghost pirate ship to Earth in minutes. Kuromi would likely fit physically well into the verse, especially as Kuromi is from Mariland, and is a dream entity herself, meaning she would adapt to the Dreaming very easily, and would be not treated as an alien entity by it. What Kuromi would have over the tier is her mental stats. She scales in skill above Melody's grandma who beat an archery contest by hitting every target at once and is smart enough to remake a time machine from scratch, showing a level of mental stats that would be above the tier.
Kuromi has the most hax of the Sanrio cast and offensively would be a complete nightmare for the verse. Kuromi regularly demonstrates metafictional powers and awareness. During her multiversal adventure in Kuromi's Pretty Journey, she teleported into a universe that was actually a Comic Book and just popped out of it, meaning she absolutely can't be trapped anywhere by anyone and can absolutely physically interact with the Umbra spirits just as she does with things like other characters thought bubbles or the lines of a series. Kuromi also has metafictional BFR able to zap people into her favorite show or out of it, meaning she can turn off basically anyone in the verse's powers by teleporting them into a place without any glamour like the abandoned dimension Dark Kuromi is from. She can even do this when she is in a completely different metafictional reality meaning she can hit people in the Deep Dreaming from the Autumn World at will. Metafictional powers are unlike pretty much anything in Changeling the Dreaming and Kuromi has the most advanced ones in Sanrio. During KPJ she went to a world where that world's Kuromi was a tragic princess but Kuromi didn't like that story so she simple created a new caption box with a new title card and new plot that she then physically broke. This plot manipulation is essentially metafictional destiny manipulation which she can not only use offensively against anyone here but would be completely impossible to even detect without metafictional awareness. Even passively Kuromi would be a massive threat to the tier. Kuromi is known for her objective to "Kuromify the world," meaning spreading love for Kuromi and belief in self-determination and following your own rules. In her music videos these are shown quickly engulfing worlds and in KPJ it is stated to be influenced the entire MULTIVERSE. This level of social influencing is on a level beyond the Tuatha or anything I know of in the entire Tellurian and could potentially give Kuromi godlike power.
Could the Sidhe manipulate her in turn? No. Kuromi is the self proclaimed rival to My Melody, who has the highest social influencing in Sanrio, able to affect even inanimate objects into helping her. This works on everyone... except Kuromi who regularly tanks it. No one is charming her. Beyond that Kuromi's other defenses would be similar OP. In the finale of KPJ Kuromi fights Dark Kuromi who was a reality-warper on a planetary level and seemingly even reality warping nearby planets to orbit Darkness World, with higher power and magic then Kuromi. Despite this, she resorted to trying to just overpower Kuromi and clearly couldn't just reality-warp her away, showing Kuromi's level of resistances above her own abilities. The Fairies have plenty of mind warping magic but Kuromi not only in Onegai My Melody can't be mind controlled by the spirit of Dark Power that can affect entire planets mentally, but she was able to tank being inside Darkness World for an entire year, the same world that originally drove Dark Kuromi mad, even saying "anyone else would be really miserable living here by now" while relaxing. Trolls and Sidhe who know the battle frenzy like Conchobhair can have very high physical stats, but Kuromi is only mildly inconvenienced being turned into a ghost, can likely match Trolls with her mech, and can passively charm those in a battle frenzy into no longer being violent as she did with the zombie versions of her friends when she went to Zombie World who immediately stopped trying to eat her and befriend her instead. Naming Art is considered probably the most powerful Art of the Fairy as it conceptually shapes one's identity, but not only can Kuromi can counter with metafictional plot manipulation declaring she doesn't like that story just like she didn't like Lady Kuromi being tragic princess, but Naming Art relies first on discerning the true name of the person and clearly can only be used on one person at a time. This is a problem because Kuromi in KPJ to defeat Dark Kuromi summoned EVERY version of her from across the Multiverse, including plush toys and fictional versions of her from within comics and every version she had met. It's unknown how many versions of her there are in the infinite Sanrio multiverse, but this would include at least billions of her, including Dark Kuromi, all of whom would need to be individually targeted by Naming Art.
Beyond all this Kuromi would have a metafictional awareness of where she is at all times as not only can she predict the future with her magic but she and all her friends have a metafictional awareness of what episode they're in, how long it has left, and commenting about doing things in a different episode to save time. This means that even in the infinite Dreaming she'd be able to navigate and go anywhere she wants or needs via metafictional travel. As a dream entity herself she'd likely undergo the same Augmen as the Fairies, meaning her traits including her powers would all be exaggerated as she becomes more conceptual going deeper into the Dreaming. You might ask if that means her weaknesses would be exaggerated too, or if indeed her personality weaknesses would get the best of her in general as Kuromi's weaknesses are her numerous personality faults that cause her schemes to backfire on her a lot. However surprisingly the answer is no.
Kuromi is a particular type of toonforce-y villain who's success and flaws are contingent on their role in the story. While as an antagonist she can't win, she was able to succeed when helping to save the world against Dar-chan in Onegai My Melody or against Dark Kuromi in Kuromi's Pretty Journey, similar to Coyote in Death Battle. In the World of Darkness, even an antagonist from Sanrio is easily one of the brightest things in the verse. Kuromi would see the slowly dying dreaming in Changeling the Dreaming and strive to reinvigorate people's belief in them, Kuromify-ing the world. And because that is striving to save the world, she would absolutely succeed narratively.
Multiversal Tier:
The strongest entities in the Changeling world are the Tuatha and their enemies the Fomorians. They are regularly stated to be far beyond the other Fae. It is said they are power made flesh, and that nothing was beyond their ken, that a Tuatha could easily achieve what might take an army of Fae, that no Changeling could kill a Fomorian, that they were as all of the Kithain combined and more, totally unaffected by Banality. It is said the Tuatha's magical capabilities are limitless as they draw their glamour from the Dreaming itself, that they are immortal for their bodies are made of glamour and they have an inexhaustible supply of it. Mortal concepts such as space and time do not apply to them, that their war with the Fomorians affected dimensions uncountable, and that the Fomorians return should lead "up to battles that shake the foundations of the mortal and Chimerical realms." The Deep Dreaming contains realms that are infinite in size and despite this not only do the Tuatha and Fomorians control their own realms in the Deep Dreaming, but the Tuatha created the Silver Path, the only safe route through the Dreaming that takes one wherever they need go should they stay on it. As such the Tuatha and Fomorians should have infinite power and speed.
There are two groups of entities primarily in this tier. The First are are the Strongest of all Fairies, the Tuatha. They were the Celtic Gods who are said to have settled Ireland and are the exemplars of the series. They are considered the parents of all Faekind for their perhaps most impressive and important feat, giving humanity the ability to dream, beginning the fairies. The Tuatha are gone now for reasons unknown, but every reference to them is about how incredible they were. They were unstoppable to all but the Eldest Changeling and can easily accomplish what it would take an army of them to do, and these are the lower statements suggesting any relativity. It is stated they were power made flesh, that they were as all of the Kithain combined and more, suggesting they ability scale to every Kithain ability prior.
Of the powers more particular to them, they are giant or can be giant with it suggested the Sun and Moon are Tuatha. Mortal Concepts such as Time and Space do not apply to them and neither does Banality entirely. They gave humans the ability to dream, likely connected to humans' subconscious reality-warping. They are said to have limitless magical capacities as they draw their glamour from the Dreaming itself. They have Low-Godly Regen and Immortality as their bodies are made of glamour and they can draw more from the infinite Dreaming. They enacted the Silver Ban preventing any of the Fomorians' forces from Earth, showing a level of law manipulation on a planetary+ level. They also have likely similar Supernatural Charisma to Sidhe as they are described with similar terms in terms of unearthly beauty to the Sidhe and High Mental Capabilities.
There are 20 named Tuatha and a good number are vague only describing them as a Seer, Warrior, or Beauty for instance. Dazboga and Miesiac are the Sun and the Moon respectively. Nuada is their King and particularly strong for them while Manannan Mac Lir is the Overlord of the Sea. Math Mathonwy is Great Sorcerer of the Tuatha. Pretty much all the Celtic Gods seem to include in the Tuatha with three standing out. The Dagda is the father patron god of masculinity, strength, fertility who controls life, death, and the seasons. Morrigan the Phantom Queen is the Goddess of Magic, Battle, and Ecstacy who majorly changed the battle against the Firbolg. Lugh of the Long Arm is the child of the Fomorians but of the Tuatha, and the greatest warrior among them skilled in all the Tuatha's arts and a terrifying transformation in battle. The greatest female warrior however was Scathach, founder of the Sidhe House Scathach. Like the Sidhe of her house, Scathach was known for her total silence in combat and her humility, modestly protecting her people without seeking recognition, the founder of the House of Silent Modesty.
Even the Tuatha have their enemies: lords of the denizens, the elders, the Fomorians. The Fomorians are described as "the sum total of all that is dark and murderous in the human heart" and the cause of much of the evil, directly or indirectly, of much of the darkness in the World of Darkness. They are described as "nigh-omnipotent" by the denizens. Their war with their Tuatha disrupted countless dimensions and their return would signal a war that would shake the foundations of the mortal and chimerical realms, the infinite physical and mental planes of being in other words. They are heralded by freak winter storms, swarms of vermin and insects, and rampant fear and madness. They warp and rend reality with their mere presence and it is stated that while a very powerful fairy can injure them, it is impossible for any of the Changelings to kill them showing a resistance to being killed by any power the Changelings have including Naming Art for instance.
The Fomorians are divided into three courts. The White Court is a Court of deception and lies, tricksters and experimenters who perform cruel torture on the lesser races. They are the weakest of them but still have all the normal Fomorian abilities. It is said that in their slumber they formed the Dreaming location known as the Forest of Lies from their dreams. The Forest of Lies is a corrupting forest in the Far and Deep Dreaming that constantly shows things that are not true, powers the White Court should obviously have themselves having formed the Forest from their Dreams.
The Red Court are stronger, a court of brutal barbaric warriors who delight in fire and chaos and destruction. They are a Warrior court that sews destruction in flame wherever they go and fought the Tuatha directly and seemingly evenly. They lack the honor of the Tuatha though and doesn't mind using poisoned weapons and dirty tactics to further spread chaos.
However by far the strongest the Green Court, alien in the extreme. The Green Court are eldritch horrors who are stated to be as powerful to other Fomorians and the Tuatha as they are to mortals. The priests of the Green Court declare that their dreams actually formed the entirety of the Dreaming and if true they would scale to every ability prior. During the Tuatha/Fomorian War, the Green Court never once lost a battle. They simply won and won until at one point they mysterious stopped and exiled themselves into the Sea of Silver. No one knows why, or if they will return.
Only a dozen Fomorians are named, and most of whom have no particular information about them. Marena the queen of the White Court is said to be Winter herself. Octriallach was a particularly notable Fomorian who sought vengeance for his slain father at the hands of the Morrigan and engaged in a legendary battle with Scathach and the strongest of the Fae at her side. Balor was a legendary king of the Fomorians who's gaze instantly killed whoever he looked upon until he was slain by his grandson Lugh. Also the Fomorians have the most powerful treasure in the verse called the Triumph Casque of Sorrows which rains fire and poison down on one's enemy. It is said that no defense works against this and in Time of Judgement it is considered the plot device capable of killing the Fomorians and preventing Endless Winter.
There are some other entities in the Deep Dreaming who's power is unknown because there is so little known about them but they're likely above everyone in the prior tiers as they called gods. There are three goddess of fate known as the Fates or the Norns. There is the Constellar Court of Astrological Chimera, the various patterns mortal sees in the stars. Ryujin the Dragon King resides in his palace under the waves. In the Sea of Silver resides great and powerful Ocean Giants. Some say they are the Titans or the Tuatha themselves. Other think they are faces of the Greater Dreamers called Oneroi and each one carries an entire Dreaming withinside themselves. The Oneroi are the Great Dreamers mentioned in a single line who may create entire Dreamings and if they exist are stronger then anything else prior save maybe the Green Fomorians if they Green Fomorians dreamt the Dreaming. All of these outside the triple goddess are hard to talk about because there is only a few lines mentioning them.
However the strongest thing in Changeling has a bit more to talk about though it may not be a person. For ages philosophers have questioned on the relationship between destiny and free will, whether such can exist together. The Celts believed they found the answer in Dán. The Dán is fate but not as is normally understood, but the way who a person is shapes their choices, the collective accumulation of all persons' nature forming destiny, not through barring free will but formed through it. It is a complex philosophical idea that is the wheel on which all things fae turn. And it is possibly embodied by a person. The Tuatha de Danann are of House Danann born of the Goddess Danu, they are children of Fate itself, needed to exist, this Goddess said by the Garou to be as aspect of Gaia herself, potentially one of the strongest things in all of World of Darkness. However whether I need to counter this is unclear. Dán is not a person and while Danu is, if she is Gaia then Gaia is more overall associated with Werewolf then Changeling.
So what possible counter strategies could be used?
So the Tuatha while they are extraordinarily powerful, are also an extremely proud warrior race who engage in very conventional fights with weapons and direct magic. Also they have the fae weakness to iron but to such an extreme degree that it is almost comical. The Tuatha lived in early Ireland but a people called the Milesians came over with their new invention of iron. The Milesians were completely normal humans otherwise but when the Tuatha engaged them in battle, they lose and fled the island because the Milesians had iron, the Milesians becoming the Celtic/Irish people. Iron is an extremely potent Kryptonite for the Tuatha. This is compounded by the fact that while both they and the Red Court Fomorians are warriors, the Tuatha are different in that they are proud and honorable. They probably could have taken vengeance on the Milesians indirectly but they engage in combat genuinely like they are a pre-modern army of humans, mixed with some very direct usage of magic. They are vulnerable to indirect strategies which is what the weaker White Court of Fomorians uses to try and beat them.
Dealing with the Fomorians is harder because they don't have any particular weakness though they were all sealed away before (albeit the Green Court sealed themselves away), albeit from extremely powerful Fae so that suggests powerful sealing might work on them, powerful enough to work on conceptual entities like them. The more minor characters the biggest thing to worry about is the destiny manipulation of the Fates and possibly Danu. An interesting thing based on how the Dán works is that it's fate as understood as formed by the nature of all things leading to their choices, so characters with multiple natures, characters with multiple souls or minds or concepts have a higher resistance to it naturally which might be an interesting counter strategy.
Some other things that might be helpful. While the characters in this tier have infinite physical and mental power as they can shake and disrupt the mortal and chimerical realms, conceptually infinite power is beyond most of them save possibly the Green Court Fomorians, The Oneroi, and Danu. This means that if fought in the Dreaming itself a character with conceptually infinite power could actually overpower them, though if the Dreaming isn't destroyed the Tuatha would regenerate from it. Alternatively sufficiently strong Dream Manipulation could actually control the Dreaming to mess with the same characters. Magic Resistance of sufficiently strong power would still protect from pretty much any power from the Dreaming with only the Green Court and Oneroi's powers not really apply. The ones who these powers are less likely to work on are the Green Court Fomorians, The Oneroi, and Danu who are all the high power characters here. The limited information about these entities makes it hard to know about how to fight them. The Latter two at least are seen so little that they haven't shown any resistances and strong enough haxes should be able to hax them. The Green Court Fomorians are known to have never lost a battle against the Tuatha which means they likely resist most of what even the Tuatha can do though it's possible the Tuatha would avoid some tactics.
Finally one thing that would likely help is advanced enough Cosmic Awareness and Range. Nobody in this tier save Danu seems to have any awareness of things going outside their realm, let alone from as far as the Dreaming to the Autumn World. In the Time of Judgement Scenario, the Tuatha and the Fomorians didn't seem to know what going on in the Autumn World and more then that they've actually lose their Treasures and had them stolen before. Someone who can attack from them way outside their awareness can hit them without them knowing what's going at first.
The first counter you could use is
Nyx from Greek Mythology
Nyx is the Goddess and Concept of Night in Greek Mythology. In Greek Mythology Zeus is the big name by far, with the characters that can scale to his power being able to be counted on one hand... but Nyx is one of them. It is stated that Hypnos can act unrestrained by Zeus' will as Zeus is in awe of the power of Hypnos' Mother Nyx, Zeus scales above his enforcer Kratos, the embodiment of power itself, giving conceptually infinite power, a level of power that only possibly the Green Court Fomorians and vague characters such as the Oneroi and Danu can reach. Nyx would broadly have a power advantage over basically everyone.
Nyx is noted on many occasions to be able to flood the world with darkness and send all creatures to sleep. She also controls the two gates of dreams, able to control the flow of dreams. With this she can gain dominion over the Autumn World and its dreams, influencing the Dreaming. Nyx can also control the stars which would also give a level of control as the stars, bodies of celestines have an immense influence on the Umbra. She can do this seemingly because she is the mother of these concepts along with many other Theoi, literally creating them. She may be able to use the powers of her other children, likely can, though either way she can summon them at will to gain access to their powers.
Against the Tuatha, Nyx literally created the concept of Apate (Deceit), Eris (Strife), and Momus (Blame) to defeat them without ever needing to engage them by making them in-fight. For similar reasons she should find it easy to see through the White Court's forest of lies. Against the Fomorians, she created the concept of Nemesis as well as the Furies (Vengeance) to avenge their dark acts. Against both groups she created Hecate (Magic) and could likely conceptually remove their magic as well as creating the Moirai (Fate) and Moros (Doom) to control their Dan. The Green Court Fomorians are described as dreaming and it's likely she could lock them in their sleeping state with the powers of her son Hypnos (Sleep) and the Oneroi (Dreams) She also offensively created Thanatos (Death) and Ker (Destruction) which give a conceptual hax that can get around the regeneration of much of the Tier. Outside of her children, Nyx has like many of the Greek Gods shown the ability to seal entities in Tartarus, even other gods, which is a form of potent sealing.
Defensively Nyx is immortal like all the Theoi and also like the others can turn into things like liquid or vapor and reform meaning direct applications of force even from those relative to her would do little. As mentioned she has her own access to many of the strongest haxes in the verse and can counter them via her own, particularly through fighting indirectly, through her children or shapeshifting, something common to the Theoi. This is aided by her cosmic awareness, as well as the fortune telling of her daughter Hecate, and the ability to know the fates of others from the Moirai.
The only thing that could stop her is her own lack of known passive hax defenses and in particular the rather unorthodox strategy of her being charmed by the Fomorians supernatural charisma (Nyx has loved other Theoi before)) at which point one could hypothetically use Naming Art at the highest level to conceptually rewrite Nyx. This is highly unlikely I'd think but for another counter you could use
The Anti-Spirals from Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann
The Anti-Spirals were able to create and control an entire imaginary multiverse of infinite realities, showing a level of mental infinite power similar to the level of power demonstrate by the Tuatha and Fomorians in their war, suggesting similar power in both the Autumn World and the Dreaming.
The Anti-Spirals are the thoughts and information of the entire Anti-Spiral race manifesting in reality from their own reality. They are a Type 5 civilization amalgamated as a single will with a cosmic awareness that allows them to sense things in other similar realities and affect them from there meaning that they would be able to attack the Tuatha and Fomorians from higher dimensional space without retaliation. They were able to prevent Team Dai-Gurren from entering their reality at will, and should be able to do the same to the tier, but even if they made it in, the Anti-Spirals have completely control over their reality and could fill it with iron or derive it of any spark of glamour to completely depower any of the tier's attackers all while indirectly manipulating or attacking things inside the Autumn World or Dreaming without being noticed.
Even if the Anti-Spirals suited up in their mech the Granzeboma and fought the Tuatha/Fomorians directly, they would be an absolute menace. They are much vaster then the Tuatha with the Tuatha only being the size of celestial bodies at most while Anti-Spirals could grow to incomprehensibly large and with a similar regen, the Tuatha able to regen from the Dreaming an the Anti-Spirals regening from their information in their own reality meaning the Tuatha would be unable to do any physical damage even if they have relative stats as their microscopic blows would instantly regen. More then that while the silly banality of humans is irrelevant to the Tuatha, the Anti-Spirals are different representing a permanent statis and anti-evolutionary force that can apply on a multiversal scale, a level of pure Banality that could counteract the Dreaming itself. If the Granzeboma appeared in the Dreaming, it would likely emanate an aura gradually erasing the Dreaming itself and making them immune to the powers of the Dreaming's inhabitants. They can also absorb information directly with the Umbra as expressed in Mage having an information component, meaning they could likely absorb parts of the Dreaming like attacks or enemies they come across, stealing the verse's powers just as they did to mimic Tengan Toppa Gurren Lagann's attack.
What about Destiny Manipulation? Well first off the Anti-Spirals are an entire Type 5 civilization condescend into a single will and would have their own immense influence on Dán, shown in how they almost perfectly matched Team Dai-Gurren who broke through cause, effect, and fate itself. Their attacks can also directly attack probabilities, causing things to have 100 or 0% probability, which could also counteract any direct Fate manipulation used against them. Against the Tuatha something like Spiral Nemesis, an illusion that can show an entire universe inside someone's mind would be extremely effective, and even the White Court Fomorians haven't shown trickery abilities like that. Even more potent however is the Multiversal Labyrinth, an ability in which they trap an opponent in a series of infinite mental realities, a form of mental sealing that would work on anyone in the tier and ignore their regeneration or power outright.
With that said the Anti-Spirals don't have conceptually infinite power so it's possible that in the Umbra they could be just overpowered by the more highballed Green Court Fomorians and Oneroi. In a direct fight it is possible they could just overpower them and seal them when they mean to regenerate. While that is unlikely to happen given their infinitely higher awareness, range, and intelligence, along with haxes for the ultimate counter you could use
Doctor Fate from DC Comics
Doctor Fate at his peak has surpassed the power of Nabu alone, being a fusion of Nabu and all past wielders in his Triumvirate Fate form. Nabu is the strongest of the Lords of Order and was able to fight Spectre, with Doctor Fate being shown as comparable on numerous occasions, Spectre being able to freeze all of Hell, an infinite conceptual realm, with the Lords of Order and Chaos defining order and chaos across the multiverse also likely in the same range. This would be infinite conceptual power, on the upper end of the tier along with entities like Danu and possibly the Green Court Fomorians.
Doctor Fate is the bearer of the Helm of Fate which gives him multiversal awareness, the ability to peer past space and time into the Godsphere, and see such thing a person's Ba, the nature of their soul. This means he would have full awareness and range on everyone save possibly Danu and would know how to manipulate them. This is aided by the Amulet of Anubis which makes him imperceptible to detection from magical means and illusory powers capable of creating entire illusory battlefields to deceive opponents, tactics that would be especially potent against the Tuatha, even if Doctor Fate doesn't just instantly conjure iron from seeing their Ba and knowing who they and their weakness. If the White Court tries to corrupt him with the Forest of Lies he can also create mental shields and dispel illusory tactics. Fate would also have the advantage is that his powers come from exerting his will upon reality. In the Umbra and in particular Deep Dreaming, reality is particularly malleable based on one's will, and so Fate's powers would actually work better then normal there.
What about against cosmic conceptual reality-warpers like the Oneroi and the Green Court Fomorians? Doctor Fate has a particular form of reality-warping resistance where he channels the spirit of everyone on Earth to protect him. This is important because both DC and Old World of Darkness run on the principle of Hermeticism where common beliefs are things that protect. The Lords of Order specifically exploit this for their power and protection, used to protect against similar reality warpers in the Lords of Chaos. This would give a similar power up and resistance that protects him from the Lords of Chaos and possibly empower him further by taking advantage of the Consensus Reality. He's also just have a lot of general resistances to what the tier could do as he regularly fights Lords of Chaos on a similar level of reality-warping to Fate without being defeated. Defensively Fate would be protected but offensively he'd be similarly strong. He has numerous sealing abilities such as sealing power in the Orb of Anubis or in the Cloak of Destiny, and as True Fate his ultimate attack is a form of sealing that worked on a Multiversal Lord of Order and Chaos at once, which should work identically on something like a Fomorian. Fate is also known for draining the magic and energy from his opponents to power himself up or to create a perpetual siphon of their powers, creating a power-draining loop that would keep them trapped.
Even against Danu herself, should she show herself somehow, Fate would be protected from her destiny manipulation. This is because Fate is not one, but the accumulated souls of every Helmet of Fate wielder who can fight together, meaning that they'd have a huge sway on the Dán, bolstered by ability to channel the spirits of everyone on Earth. Offensively he can call on the powers of every God he knows at once to fight Danu, who is the leader of the Celtic Pantheon in a sense, but Fate knows at least the Egyptian Pantheon and likely far more. Beyond that he is able to invoke the power of Jesus Christ, and in history as well as both DC and World of Darkness, the Celtic religion was eventually replaced in Ireland by Christianity, something that would give that power essentially a type advantage in the Deep Dreaming focused on symbolism and the movement of powers beliefs about the world. Even if all the threats mentioned before tried to gang up on him, there's only a few dozen named characters in this tier and Doctor Fate can duplicate himself into a thousand of him.
Doctor Fate can enter the conceptual Deep Dreaming as part conceptual being of order Nabu, and seal or drain the magic from anyone he comes across, remaining imperceptible and invulnerable due to the protection of the spirits of everyone on Earth and the supernatural Umbra-warping will of the ancient Lord of Order and the many superheroes he's joined with while able to both summon comparable or duplicate himself orders of magnitude more then the named characters on this tier.
And that's how to be OP in Changeling: The Dreaming
