Happy Samhain! Last Year I did a blog on a villain from Changeling: The Lost. Last Beltaine, the holiday for rejoicing in the fey I did a guide to Changeling the Dreaming, the Old World of Darkness game playing as a fey and protecting fey wonders. So now for Samhain, a time of fear of the Gentry, it only felt to make a guide on its New World of Darkness counterpart, a game on fearing the fae and their horrors. In 2004 White Wolf rebooted the World of Darkness RPG with a completely different take on each monster. Perhaps none were better received then Changeling: The Lost so this is how to be OP in the Changeling the Lost-verse.
Wall Tier:
So I just wanna start by saying that stats for characters in this series are all over the place as things of Fae nature are infinite in diversity. A Lost at character generation can if they invest all their contract dots into it can get a power that would release megatons of TNT worth of energy. You could reduce every tier with Lost to one tier if you wanted. But that would be a really weird and dishonest way to scale for reasons I will get to. While there are numerous metrics that are important when assessing how powerful a Lost is, I think the most central is Wyrd. Wyrd represents the connection a Lost has to Fae and to Fae Magic, and is rated from 1-10. This Tier roughly contains Lost that are Wyrd 1-3 as well as enemies that are around them in power.
The Lost in general have comparable physical stats to humans which in the World of Darkness vary from human level to wall level from dramatic exaggeration. They also have numerous feats of such. The Hedge contains many hobgoblins which are strange versions of real world animals with likely similar physical capacities reaching wall level in power. Cobbler Cormorants are birds of the Hedge that use steel beaks to break apart stones looking for treasures. At the boundary of Arcadia are Bladelings, levitating flaming swords that keep Changelings from escaping which all PCs had to in some way as part of their background. A strange section of Kith and Kin suggests the Lost can survive being on the other planets of the Solar System (but would be marooned there), the pressure of some planets requiring wall level durability to not be crushed. Brightest One Fairests can passively illuminate a 15' x 15' x 10' size room with a soft pale light and can expend glamour to temporarily increase it to blinding levels, a feat that would take passive kilojoules emanation. If you think Lost should be able to withstand the passive output of High Wyrd Lost, it is stated that High Wyrd Elemental Lost raise or lower the temperature of a room they're in passively, up to 10 Degrees F and High Wyrd Trolls can shake a house just by taking a step. Both of these would easily be in the kilojoules if not the megajoules as passive output with these Low Wyrd Lost likely be able to survive. In the Hedge, Fallen Stars are living entities, small rocks that fall from the sky and try to grant the wishes they are given. Despite being seemingly fairly weak, they are stones that fell from the sky, a feat that if were equated to a similar sized stone entering Earth's atmosphere from space would carry megajoules, though being in the Hedge it's very likely the physics are different. Still that could potentially upgrade the tier;s physicals to small building level, the level of the magic of the tier.
Lost are Magic Users and for the Lost on this tier, their magic is definitely on a higher lever their physical stats. In the Hedge expending even a single point. Collapse the Entrance is a Contract Ability determined by Wyrd that collapses an area of the ground. At 1 Wyrd it collapses an area of 7.3 meters squared, a wall level feat. At 3it collapses 65.67 meters squared, actually a small building feat. A mere point of Fae glamour imprints on the Hedge for 50 yards (457.2 meters) y in every direction. per glamour. influencing the surface with their mind. Lost engage in Hedge duels there, their minds warping the Hedge and attacking each other with things like lightning bolts, lightning bolts containing 1-5 gigajoules. While these Lost could have Contracts at any level, 2 Dot Clauses should be reasonably common including Ulf's Heart, a Clause that causes the Lost to shine like the Summer Noonday Sun illuminating 200 yards (~1.8 kilometers) in any direction, a feat that would involve an output of hundreds of megajoules per second. Or Touch of Winter which instantly freezes a room including an entire swimming pool, a feat that would likely take many gigajoules of energy. Thus Characters in this Tier are Human to Wall Level, Possibly Small Building Level Physically, with some having Small Building+ level attack potency with their magic
In terms of speed, there's much less, but Lost have comparable speed to humans usually with humans in World of Darkness reaching subsonic speed via dramatic exaggeration. This is consistent with a few feats for this tier. The Hedge has altered strange versions of many animals, with numerous types of birds reaching subsonic speeds and even Runnerswift Beasts are the speedsters of the Lost and are said to most like the wind with wind regularly reaching subsonic speeds.
The protagonists are the Lost. Changelings are people who were stolen away by the True Fae to the mad realm of Arcadia and were consequently warped. Those Changeling who escaped from the True Fae are the Lost, hiding away to not be captured by their former Keeper. Traumatized and afraid, the Lost band together for support and use stealth to avoid capture. Most Changelings are on this tier. While they vary dramatically, there are some assets common to all them. All Lost have a Mask, a "near-perfect" illusion that they are still a normal human that fools the five senses. Even supernatural senses have trouble penetrating the Mask. The Lost can expend glamour to drop the Mask or strengthen it or can ensorcel humans to let them see through the mask as the Lost do to their true form, their fae mien. When strengthened the Mask even hides them from other Lost, though their shadow always shows their true self. In contract Lost have high perceptions in general and can use a skill called Kenning to sense the supernatural in the area. Changelings absorb glamour, the energy they use for their magic from high emotionality from non fae sources. It is said that age, infirmity, and sickness affect Changeling less, they have a level of resistance to the supernatural powers through their connection to the Wyrd, they are for some mysterious reason complete to Death Mage, and they have the benefit of a human soul which even the True Fae find had to break. Prophetic Dreams are common to the Lost and they can enter the dreams of others at will, and usually have some skill at manipulating dreams like a lucid dreamer. Lost can also turn any access point like a doorway, archway, or reflective surface into an entrance into the Hedge, an infinite realm that is the boundary between Earth and Arcadia. The Hedge is less actualized then Earth and one's emotions and psyche shift it, something the Lost are adept at using to warp similar to dreams or spin items out of the Hedge itself.
The Lost have a few more dramatic measures as well. The Lost are accomplished in pledgecrafting, the act of making promises to reality in exchange for power, using clever wording to get what they need. The Lost make contracts with concepts of reality itself to gain their magical powers. These contracts can be used wherever their concept is, can't be nullified so long as the Lost holds up their end of the bargain, and can affect even conceptual enemies. The Lost are also learned in fairy tales and the art of Talecrafting, of nudging fate itself by doing things in a narratively correct way, like gambling on the number 3 or 7. They avoid overdoing this though as Fate doesn't like being played with and is prone to giving them exactly what they want in the worst possible way like winning a Vegas jackpot only for the mob to come after them for suspected cheating. Changeings who kill their own Fetch also gain slight fate manipulation from being masters of their own fate. Some Changelings learn the art of Hedge Sorcery, a limited form of sociery drawing on their fae ancestry, and many Changelings have goblin items, the strange items from the Hedge. This most commonly includes Goblin Fruits which is healing, but can include any number of bizarre equipment that sickens enemies, twists fate, curses them and more.
Lost are divided by Seeming and Court. Of the 6 Seemings, 5 are here t Wyrd 1-3. The First is Beasts, for Changelings who were used as or turned into animals by their Keepers. Beasts have an affinity and closeness for animals but have difficulty with higher cerebral thought like humans. Their various Kith are the types of animals they were changed into giving them an additional bonus depending on the animal. Their contract with Fang and Talon allows them to communicate with and command a particular type of animal or turn into it. Their contract with Den allows them to create an animal abode that is a safe place for them. Their Contract with the Wild allows them to ask nature to aid their efforts or impede their enemies, even changing the weather in dramatic ways. Finally their Contract with Steed allows them to travel like a beast or hide their tracks.
Darklings are the Lost Seeming for Kith kept in fear, confusion, and darkness. They are good at hiding themselves and cunning. But the light weakens them and can frighten them. Their various Kith give them an additional bonus depending on which kind of dark place or task was given to them by their Keeper. Their contract with Darkness lets them create darkness and the emotions associated with it like fear or drowsiness. Their Contract with Shade and Spirit allows communication and barter with spirits, and even opening a gateway to the Underworld. The Contract with Mirrors allows them to disguise themselves and perceive things clearly.
Elementals are the Lost Seeming for Kith changed into parts of the scenery or elemental forces. Not having vulnerable fleshy bodies their benefit is being hard to conventionally damage, not full elemental intangibility but a semi elemental body. Their downside is socialization is difficult for them having rather lost the touch being literally an object or a place. Their various Kith represent different type of elemental forces they may have affinity for such as fire or snow, lightning or sand, etc. Like beasts they have a Contract with The Wild. Beyond that however they have a Contract with their Element obviously. This allows them to summon it, form an armor around it and at the highest level become the element itself again, truly gaining elemental intangibility. They have a contract with Communion which allows them to commune with the elements and even give it a form as an elemental avatar. Finally they have a contract with Sword allows the Lost to attack the opponent in unconventional ways like draining their strength or draining their sanity.
Fairests are the Lost taken to be a source o beauty or fulfill a social role. They are supernaturally beautiful, shaped to be perfect. However their sanity is the most fragile, most needing things to be perfect as they were trained to be. Their various Kith represent type of beauty they were supposed to provide and gives them an additional benefit. Their contract with Vainglory allows the Fairest to captivate an audience. Their contract with Separation weaponizes their separation from reality by allowing them to ignore physical things like locked doors, gravity, or incoming attacks becoming intangible. Their contract with Reflections allows them to manipulate reflective surface including entering a reflective surface and out another or pull something out of a mirror. Finally their contract with Crown gives them subtle mental manipulation.
Wizened are the Lost who who was given a mind numbing repetitive task which diminished their bodies from endlessly drudgery. They are incredible dexterous and nimble but are reduced physically and have a weak presence. Their various Kith are the types of drudgery they were subject to which gives them an additional skill. Their contract with Artifice allows them to repair or build objects. Their contract with Animation lets them bring objects to life and ask for their help. The Contract with Force gives the ability to reshape low level matter matter manipulation, at its height allowing create a gateway to previously visited places in the Hedge. Their contract with Jewels allows them to manipulate an object's fate causing strange effects like de-aging or rapidly aging it, blessing it, making it invisible or more.
Outside their Seemings Lost are divided by Court, the Four Seasonal Courts representing the stages of grief.
The Spring Court represents Denial and believes in living life to its fullest in defiance to the cruel Keepers who hurt them. With their Contracts with Spring they can heal, bless, cause growth, command plants, call the rain, and manipulate desire.
The Summer Court represent Anger and are an army that wants to prepare to battle and kill the Fae when they appear. While most are in the next tier, the non combat roles of the Summer Court like Tacticians and Suppliers would be here. With their Contracts with Summer they can create fire, focus the Sun's fury like a deadly laser, shine bright lights to blind their enemy, incite wrath and anger in others, make objects burning hot and generally manipulate literal and emotionally heat.
The Autumn Court represent Bargaining. They are magicians and fear masters who seek to steal the Fae's magic to use against them, and inspire terror in others to keep them aware. Their contracts with Autumn gives many ways of inducing fear, can command the last Harvest of Autumn, turn into multi colored leaves drifting on the wind, imbue enemies with sickness, common hobgoblins, and discern things about an object.
The Winter Court represents Depression. They are stealth-masters who believe in lives of complete secrecy to avoid the True Fae finding them again. Their contracts with Winter gives them manipulation of the snowfall and cold, ways of manipulating sorrow, ignore physical damage or terror through sorrow-laden apathy, and hide themselves.
There are also two rarer Courts presented in a supplement that represent finishing the cycle of Grief in different ways.
The Dusk Court represents Acceptance. They believe in Fatalism and Nihilism, that it's all Fated that it's pointless to fight the True Fae, but they are going to do so anyway because that's what they were always going to do, it's who they are. Their contract with Entropy allows them to cause things to break down.
The Dawn Court represent Hope. They believe that the world is dark, but that it can be made better. They believe with hard work and personal sacrifice the Lost really can make a difference against the True Fae. Their contract with Potential allows to increase willpower in dark times and induce positive change.
Outside of all these there's a lot of other random Contracts that a Lost might have. Contracts with Time to manipulation Time, Goblin Contracts that require sacrifice for great effect, Shadow Contract for Stealth, Moon Contract for Madness, Omen Contract to see the future, Dreams Contract for dream shaping, and many others including the most scary one, call the Hunt, a contract that allows the Lost to summon the True Fae's attention themselves. There are other many other Kith that don't believe to a Seeming. Any mundane skill or minor ability, there is a Kith for that.
Outside the Lost, the other highly diverse group of creatures are the Hobgoblin, the term for creatures of the Hedge, either creatures spawned there from Wyrd or normal things that wandered there and mutated. If Arcadia is the realm of Madness, the Hedge is the realm of Imagination and its inhabitants are as varied as imagination. This includes strange versions of normal animals like Briarwolves which are Wolves made of the Hedge or Shadow Wolves, wolves made of shadow the alpha of a pack being able to possess people. Animmaculates are clockwork mechanical versions of mundane animals made in the Hedge being another replication of real world animals. Lacuna Moths are shapes made of negative space, the blank space in art. Sylphids are small sprites that drift between stars and can teach a Goblin contract that allows for cosmic travel for comically marooned Lost. Shimmerlings are pieces of souls turned into insects that feed off the energy of people in swarms. Hedge Ghosts are spirits who became lost in the Labyrinthian Hedge and warped to something... else no longer the person they used to be, and resistant to all ghost manipulating abilities. Bloodsuckers are plants that drink plant and can regen from being reduced to a sliver. depending on conditions. Songwraiths disguise themselves as a loved one can sing a hypnotic song. Pattern Eaters are spiders that consume one's fate draining one's willpower from having no destiny until they commit suicide. Fallen Stars are little rocks which pretend to be unalive but try to grant any wish they hear as best they can. And there's dozens more. This is a brief summary but The Hedge is filled with strange deceptive creatures that pretend to be normal. Cats may talk and fly. A plant may pretend got be a person trapped down a ditch before eating a rescuer like a Venus flytrap. The land may secretly be alive. Even the space is warped with Master Mages of Space Magic not able to easily escape the Labyrinthian Hedge where space is warped and time is bendable and reality shifts according to emotion. Many of these Hobgoblins are sentient and have non-physical interaction up to the conceptual. They run Goblin Markets where one can sell and buy anything, including dreams, good fortune, curses in a bottle, one's firstborn, twists of fate, contracts with conceptual entities, and other metaphysical things alongside physical things.
Outside Changelings and the Hobgoblins there are a few more creatures on this tier. Bladelings are flying flaming swords that guard the boundary to Arcadia. When Changeling enter Dreams they encounter sentient Dreams/Nightmares which are literally dreams and who sometimes go to Goblin Market. Most notably are Fetches. Fetches are the copies of a person a True Fae leaves behind. Though they act completely normally, they lack a soul and True Fae believe lack any awareness being basically a biological machine that looks like them though some supernatural senses like a Werewolves' scent knows they aren't their associated Changeling. While Fetches by default are normal people, when their associated Changeling returns, they can gain strange powers that are symbolic of their role as the Changeling's opponent, such as eating shadows. A Fetch that kills and eats their Changeling is called a Devourer and can become extremely powerful, enough to threaten Goblin Markets and True Fae that are outside Arcadia.
So how to counter this tier? Well while the Lost have many potent offenses, they're actually considered one of the weakest splats for direct combat for the opposite reason: lack of defenses. Changeling: The Lost is in essence a stealth game of hiding from the True Fae and other threats. In a direct fight they're one of the few Splat that would generally just die if shot. Anticlimactically for a Splat with a wall of abilities honestly the best tactic against the Lost in general is just to overwhelm them with raw force. While the tier can get up to wall level and can get up to subsonic, both are rarer, with most of the Lost having human stats. Even the characters who do get up to wall level and subsonic on this tier don't usually get very high into. Meaning a character who's consistently faster then the eye and upper wall level would be an unstoppable juggernaut physically. The Lost passively only have some esoteric haxes, Elementals being semi-elemental, healing from the Goblin Fruits and the Spring Court, and if given time to think an extremely rare few with 5 Dots can turn intangible or into elements. With prep time they could protect themselves with fate manipulation but just dropped into a fight is the Lost's worst scenario.
The Lost in general specialize in hiding and ambushing an unsuspecting enemy. This is similar to the creatures of Hedge. Almost everything on this tier fits the same niche in ecology that an ambush predator does. In real life ambush predators are stopped by special sensory capacities or herd behavior that increases chances of perception. The latter is a possible strategy, usage of duplication or minions or the like but the former is better as a counter, using special senses. Even the Mask is only a "near-perfect" illusions and while supernatural senses detect through it with some difficulty, they still can. While many of the Hedge are deceptive, they often don't do that great a job seeming innocent giving a creepy quality, or are not even really trying to deceive but are just different then expected. Special senses like danger sense, aura-reading, or mind-reading would all be really useful.
Of course the biggest limiter for the tier is the prevalence of metaphysical enemies. Basically in the Hege is at least partly imaginary with creatures made of shadows and dreams and negative space and warped ghosts running around. For a Wall Level character that's a pretty hard but I was resigned to do it until I realized you could use the trick the Lost themselves do. The Lost can control Dreams in the manner a Lucid Dreamer does, by asserting their reality over it. In both Dreams and the Hedge, the world naturally shifts to the emotions of the people inside it. The stronger the emotions, the more it shifts. The more control one has over their mind and emotions, the more they have control over this. It would have to be very high in both levels, but a character with both very powerful emotions and very powerful control over it, should be able to control dreams and the hedge as though reality-warping, basically imagining it how they want. Even on a low level this could judge be forming weapons from the Hedge as the Lost do which can hurt the imaginary Hedge creatures normally. Not only is this much easier to find, it's also WAY more in line with what the series' themes are. Even better if they explicitly have dream awareness and dream manipulation.
So bizarrely enough the first counter you could use is
Lois Lane from DC Comics
Lois Lane has received Martial Arts training from Batman as well as her father General Lane and her husband Superman. She was able to draw blood from Lex Luthor, who has trained with Amazons and who withstood multiple blows from Krisma who right before was able to toss around a helicopter. Lex also scales to bullet timing as all Amazons train in deflecting bullets at close range, with Lex being trained by Amazons and Lois scaling to Lex.
So DC has similar exaggerated humans to World of Darkness that Lois should scale to. That by itself however might seem like not itself. After all the same could be said for a Hunter and an unarmed Hunter would likely lose to one of the Lost, let alone groups of them or the variety of the Hedge. However Lois Lane has actually learned Torquasm Vo and Torquasm Rao, the Kryptonian Martial Arts. Torquasm Rao is the Kryptonian Martial Art that makes them extremely sensitive to information and instinct, basically giving them an instinctive awareness of the world around them. This combined with Lois' genius level intellect as an investigative journalist in the DC Universe and the first human to learn the Kryptonian Martial Artists should allow Lois to see through most of the tricks on this tier which combined with her stats and skill from the physical side of the Martial Arts would likely let beat her down most wall level opponents of this tier. Torquasm Rao also purifies the body and mind of foreign influences would protect Lois from any mind hax or mutations of the Hedge and its astral projection would allow her to project her soul into the Hedge to fight from a safe distance.
Beyond that Lois has Torquasm Vo, a Mental Discipline that allows Kryptonians to fight on the mental plane even warping the battlefield. If she was in the Hedge or Dreams she could use this power to warp the area around her. After all these places are dependent on the emotions of the person and Lois has an incredibly strong emotion that being her love for Superman. On numerous instances it has been shown to be outright superhuman such as Lois undoing a demonic transformation just by looking at a ring Superman gave her, or Superman and Lois' love holding off the shadows of Hell. Using Torquasm Vo, Lois could utilize this feeling to warp the Hedge.
That said outside the Hedge Lois would be bereft of any long range weapons so if she starts at long range against a Lois, that would possibly catch her at disadvantage. Another character you could use is
Lili Zanotto from Psychonauts
Lili comes from a cartoony world where despite being 10 years old has physical feats that would be on the upper end of wall level such as tanking an exploding torpedo at close range, and should be similar in speed to her boyfriend Raz who is able to dodge close range tank shells, cannonballs, and sound waves, as well as probably not too much slower then Psychonaut Millia Vodello who dodged close range machine gun fire. This means Lili should have a broad physical stat advantage over anyone in this tier. In terms of general attack potency, Lili should also be able to surpass the magic of the Lost of this tier with her psychic power. Lili despite being relatively physically weak as a child and inexperienced, is one of the most powerful psychics in the series due to being the daughter of the Grand Head of the Psychonauts, scaling to the destruction of Thorny Tower and the psychic izzie raising large walls of ice to block off a flood calculated as taking hundreds of tons of tnt. This means Lili would genuinely have a power that while in the same tier as the strongest Lost abilities in this tier, she would have a broad power advantage. To use an easy comparison, the Lost on this tier can freeze a swimming pool, Lili has stronger psychic power then a psychic who can raise a large ice wall that holds back a flood.
Lili has gotten every merit badge at the Psychonaut Training Camp and it's a major part of her character that she was highly bored with the camp activities, having clearly mastered them, before Raz showed up. As such it's definitely fair to say she should ahve every psychic ability seen in the series. This includes mind reading, speaking to animals and plants, and seeing through the eyes of others which would easily allow to see through any fae trick that she comes across. She could avoid attacks with the high degree of mobility given by levitation or invisibility which while it wouldn't fool Lost kenning would fool most hobgoblins. Offensively she can attack with telekinesis or her preferred pyrokinesis. Its a common trick for psychic kids to set peoples heads on fire or outright explode them telekinetically. Or she could confuse them to make them turn against each other.
In dreams of the Hedge she'd grow only stronger. Psychonauts are masters of mental combat who can warp their surroundings, doing something without even intending too. Lili has a very strong psychic energy reflected in her strong emotions yet also is complete control of them as shown by her immediate excitement and interest in Raz, but playing tsundere with him. It's very likely Lili would find the Hedge something she can warp, especially as she has a particular affinity for plants and the Hedge which is implied to be semi sentient would likely communicate with her.
The only thing that could endanger Lili is groups of enemies as if Lili doesn't defeat them quickly they can use more esoteric powers against her like fate manipulation or disease manipulation, and she has a limited stamina from a normal human body. For the best counter to this tier I would suggest
Harry Dresden from the Dresden Files
Harry has regularly physically fought monsters that can destroy walls and throw cars with their bare strength. He has also blocked bullets and electric charge moving at supersonic speeds after they had been fired at him. This gives him relative to superior physical stats to the tier. His magic is regularly in the same tier as the magic of the Lost on this tier with his shield able to hold back an explosion that would destroy a large cavern or him being able to collapse a tower and the top of a hill. This means Harry would be on the upper normal range for the tier.
Harry is a Supernatural Investigator and he's basically just designed to be a threat in the tier. He has a vast arsensal of magic as wide as the tier giving him the means to use the weakness of every Lost and Hobgoblin he comes across. And he would know too. Harry has a lot of forms of extrasensory perception able to read auras, sense magic, see the true nature of someone's soul in their eyes and much more, which would let him see through the Mask or any Hobgoblin's attempt at decision. Not only does Harry have a resistance to general magic but also resistance to many of the most common used abilities in the tier including mind manipulation, illusions, and can counter the tier's own fate manipulation with his own which is strong enough to fate someone to die alone by scaling.
Harry's magic works on the spiritual plane and includes many ways of affecting the magic of others such as linking himself with someone else so any magic used on him affects them, canceling out spells, or absorbing magic used against him. The first and his general attack reflection would run havoc on a tier of magic glass cannons. Even in a dream or the Hedge Harry could canonically warp their reality as all Dresden Files-verse wizards can control dreams including their own and Harry should be able to do the same to the Hedge by the same mechanism.
Even if they tried to fight him multiple at a time, Harry has better secondary stats then the tier in general. He is a supernatural investigator who has rooted out traitors in the White Circle ruling Magicians, outwitted Lara Raith and outwit and outbattled enemies with millennia of experience and is able to remain active for several days straight. His weakness normally, his unwillingness to use lethal methods on humans wouldn't be much of a problem since literally not a single character on this tier is fully human, even the Lost are only half humans something Harry has been willing to fight before and even if he fights defensively against the Lost, his attack reflection and magic absorption combined with high physical stats and regeneration should make Harry practically unbeatable.
Building Tier:
Changeling the Lost is more of a stealth game then a combat game, but it does have builds more geared towards combat. This Tier contains Changelings from Wyrd 4-6 (the middle ranks of Wyrd), Changeling builds that are more combat oriented such as Ogres and most of the Summer Court, and the enemies are a threat to them.
Characters in this tier are broadly between Small Building Level to Large Building Level, the megajoule range to the gigajoule range. This comes from multiple sources. Characters here can physically battle enemies that can withstand Changeling contracts, the same magic from the prior tier that these Changeling can also use. Ogres are the most physically formidable of the Seemings. Stonebone Ogres are described as being as tough as cliffsides. Bert is an Ogre enamored with his Fairest companion Damiana. When she was kidnapped, Bert destroyed four city blocks and killed five mages in a rage to save her. Summer Court Lost are an army, the Warriors of which should be in this tier and are implied to be able to fight the Uratha, Werewolves who regularly have to stop building level spirits. In the Hedge, these Lost can create or control a Hollow, a safe space in the Hedge that can be the size of a building which automatically changes to reflect their ruler. The Hedge will naturally form a castle around a Goblin Queen. Selvans are creatures of the Hedge which are living places which would be here from sheer size. The Curator is a hobgoblin who maintains and controls an entire museum. Finally Larger Huntsmen are explicitly said to be grow as large as single story buildings.
In terms of speed, they should be higher into subsonic. Not only are they trained warriors some of whom mechanically have a notable if low chance to dodge close range bullets, but they are probably comparable to Vampires with one dot of Celerity which allows for bullet-timing.
Some of the threats from last tier remain here. All the prior Changeling Types have stronger equivalents at Wyrd 4-6, as is true for Hobgoblins and Devourers. Outside that however are the Combat Seeming an Court broadly. The Summer Court mentioned prior are here in greater numbers, being a military that seeks to fight the True Fae, training Changelings of any Seeming or starting physical disposition to be a warrior.
Ogres are the Lost Seeming for those who underwent brutality by their Keeper's hands, physical abuse that turned big and strong and monstrous. They have the benefit of titanic strength and enhanced intimidation. However treated like nothing but a monster, Ogres are easy to anger and often lonely souls. Their various Kith represent different types of monsters they had to be to survive and give an additional benefit. Their Contract with Oath and Punishment gives them advantages in chasing down oathbreakers and a resistance to having their sanity eroded. Their Contract with Stone grants Ogres additional strength and resistance to damage. The Oath of Shield allows an Ogre to protect their Changeling brethren from being spot, from physical damage, from damage to their sanity, and more.
There is also mention of a Lost known as William the Warrior who was made to fight as a gladiator and escaped after somehow beating his Keeper, a True Fae itself in the arena. This would be an absolutely insane skill feat, one of the craziest I've ever heard given the sheer gap in power, though given how incomprehensible the True Fae are, it may have been operating under rules that limited itself for a fair fight or something to the effect. There MIGHT be a Lost with S Tier fighting skill though.
There are also stronger Hobgoblins on the tier. Gloomdrakes are a type of dragon made of shadow that will regenerate into multiple Gloomdrakes if their brain or heart isn't destroyed. Goblin Queens are those that couldn't pay back a dept to the Goblin Market and are taken themselves as payment, becoming a leader of the smaller goblin creatures with significant sway over the Hedge. Nemesis are the Enforcers of Fate. If one defies fate, a Nemesis is sent to kill them. If the Nemesis is killed another appears to hunt them down and every year this goes on, the number of Nemeses increases by 1. Stories are tole of a Lost who held out for 36 years only to be mobbed by 36 Nemeses.
The Curator is a special Hobgoblin who maintains a museum of the soul who's exhibits show the secrets of whoever is visiting and show visions of their supposed future. The Curator is a powerful telepath who not only maintains the building psychically but can read the minds and past of others. He uses this to try and convince him that he can also see the future and trying to fight him will lead to their death. However it's a bluff, he can't see the future.
Finally this tier probably contains most Huntsmen. Huntsmen are natives of Arcadia. They are shapeshifting creatures but with two distinctive traits that never change. The True Fae remove their heart to control them and make them merciless, commanding them to hunt down and recover their escaped slaves. Creatures of rules, if strange rules, Huntsmen will always announce their presence and the hunt being on to a Lost they are hunting. From there it's a measure of surviving or escaping them. Their forms are variable obviously but they are powerful and difficult to escape as they are apex hunters. Even if a powerful Changeling kills them, so long as the True Fae has their heart, they can regenerate the Huntsmen to continue the Hunt. The only way for a Lost to stop them is to find the heart and either destroy it or return it to them.
So the Tier doesn't have quite the weaknesses of the last tier. With physical stats on the same level as magic and on the higher end of their tier, you can't reliably overwhelm the tier with raw stats. However as Wyrd increases along with the increase of Fae power, the Changelings begin to act more and more alien, more fairy like and with more vulnerable sanities and become increasingly addicted to glamour. However the Trolls and Summer Soldiers will only sometimes be affected as some will be here even with lower Wyrd.
Summer Court Soldiers and Ogres both share the weakness that they are prone to anger and Lost at 4-6 Wyrd, especially 6 where they gain a major fragility, are also psychologically vulnerable which suggests a manipulation based strategy might work. However Kenning is the detection of magic and seeing through the mask. Plus Wyrd gives resistance to supernatural abilities. Therefore a character who is a psychological manipulator and whose abilities are not supernatural: either they're biological or technological or a learned skill could have a lot of wiggle room to manipulate hte verse, particularly if they can make themselves look non threatening.
That would deal with the Lost part. There are still Hobgoblins and the Huntsmen. Shadow Drakes, Nemesis, and Huntsmen all have defensive haxes so some kind of offensive hax that don't require killing them such as mind control or sealing or something like that would be very helpful though that might be hard if they're not supernatural. That's really the combo we're looking for though, a non threatening seeming character with very good manipulation as well some form of non-supernatural offensive hax. So the first counter I would suggest is
Sakura Kaede from Kampfer.
Sakura physically is one of the strongest fighters of the verse nad should be around as strong as Shizuku casually just deleted a wall, pulverizing it or more, with a rough calc putting the pulverization at 111 megajoules, a small building level feat lowballed. Bullet timing feats are also common in the verse with Sakura being one of the fastest characters rarely getting tagged. This means Sakura would be within the tier, if on the lower side for raw power and on the faster side for speed, a fairly normal speed based fighter. More notable is her mental stats. She has the intelligence of an advanced alien race called the Moderators with which she built a high tech lab to preserve the Kampfers, with some of the highest combat skill and definitely the highest manipulation of the verse, deceiving Natsuru the entire time she was his childhood friend Sakura, as well as using her natural beauty to deceive people. Sakura's normal strategy of pretending to be an innocent powerless schoolgirl and getting people to help her would get anyone in the tier to either help her or at least underestimate her.
This is because Sakura's powers are not magic, they are the product of the Moderates advanced technology. She has access to all three Kampfer disciplines of sword, gun, and elemental projection and can use all three to a masterful level which is helpful enough. Her elemental is lightning projection which might be able to kill a Gloomdrake if need be given how electricity and darkkness interact. She has also has the unique ability of her hypnotic gaze. Because it's not supernatural no one in the tier would outright resist it.
With that said, Sakura does have a few weaknesses. Her raw power would be substantially lower then a raging troll though they would be particularly liable to being taken in by the beautiful kind girl giving them attention. The Curator however with his mind reading would see through her act and is more powerful, though she has the advantage of being faster and having mind control which should let her win. Also Sakura is a misandrist who seeks to recruit girls to her cause and defeat men. There are a small group of Lost called Boddhisvatas who can change genders and would likely be able to throw her off the same way Natsuru did. Still a safer pick would be
A Mudshaper Gilman from the Universal Horror Franchise
More then any other people wanted to add the Creature from the Black Lagoon to the World of Darkness officially so what if we did. Creature was able to withstand an explosion that affected the entire Black Lagoon, a city block sized area, and threatened to capsize a 40-50 ton boat. Weathershaper Gillmen as per their name can affect the weather system and Mudshapers in particular can harden stone into buildings. In terms of speed even an elderly Mudshaper could swim ocean-spanning distances in less then a day with two passengers. This means a Mudshaper would likely have similar stats to one of the Trolls. While their land speed is much slower, given they are psychic entities, their reaction speed is likely more important in combat, which would not be dulled on land. While Creature would have an intelligence deficient, he was still considered closer to human intelligence then any other animal, and he was mentally degenerated with most Gilmen likely being comparable or superior to humans.
Gilmen already seem well adapted to the Hedge. Gilmen have an ability to adapt at a rate equivalent to the rate the Hedge shifts meaning that they can adapt to whatever environment is in it, combined with tough scales that would resist its thorns, claws that could clear it, and psychic power that could likely shape it. Defensively Gilmen have the benefit of telekinetic shields, tough scales, and regen. This would protect against most physical threats on the tier. However his more potent defense is the fact that despite his appearance he could very well seem like a normal creature of the Hedge. All the Mudshaper's abilities are biological and so would neither be stopped by supernatural resistance or be sensed via Kenning. The Mudshaper himself has mind reading which would allow him to sense if anyone means him harm and what they're going to do and how to manipulate them. This mind reading along with similar raw power is basically the entire strategy of the Curator, except Gilmen can actually back it up with more offensive powers.
The Mudshaper not only has energy draining that could drawn in the energy from any enemy here, including likely the Gloomdrake bypassing its shadowy defense, but can control up to 30 people at once, bypassing the regeneration of Nemesis or Huntsmen and forming a small army around himself. And once again because it's not supernatural no one here could resist it. Mudshapers also have the particular ability to manipulate earth. Trolls are often connected to Earth with one of their major contracts being Contract with Stone and many of them being literally made of stone, meaning he could likely reduce their bodies to mud or puppet them outright.
With that said there is one particularly big threat to a Gilmen. They are weak to being dried out and Summer Court Lost manipulate fire and heat. a Mudshaper can likely protect via stealth, protective mud layering and one-shot haxes of their own, but is is a threat especially against a large number of Summer Court Lost at once. For the best counter you could use
Yui from Sword Art Online Abridged
Yui one shot the Grim Reaper who casually beat aside Kirito and Asuna in one blow, Kirito being one of the top tier players of Sword Art Online the game, who could the giant ice dragon by himself and was able to match Kayaba in a fight, Kayaba able to blitz an early Kirito who could blitz weaker Sword Art Online Players from a distance. From all the upscaling Yui should be comparable to the powerful characters of the tier.
Yui is a digital entity made to be a psychological aid therapist AI. As a digital entity none of her abilities would count as supernatural or magic and while characters here could definitely affect her since Contracts and Goblins can affect conceptual entities, most of their haxes would not work. Her haxes on the other hand, definitely would. Yui was able to kill "the personification of death itself" with one blow and can alter the code of the game for limited reality warping such as spawning in a flaming sword or erasing someone's face, this digital reality-warping something no one in the tier would have any resistance to.
Not that Yui would need to. Yui normally acts like a normal if very smart little girl. With no magic to sense, that's just what people would assume she is despite the fact that she is a superhuman AI intellect especially in the fields of psychology meaning manipulating everyone in the tier would be fairly easy. Against regenerating enemies like Nemesis or Huntsmen she should have Kayaba's ability to manually paralyze enemies, even entire groups, and she has sensory abilities like sensing two other players heart rates increasing 22%, which would let her see through stealth attempts. Against a Gloomdrake she could just flaming sword slice it like she did Death itself, vaporizing it. Even if damaged, she should have the same regen Kirito also has, which was enough that multiple people slicing him with swords and cutting him did no damage because he literally healed faster then they could damage him.
City Tier:
This is the tier of the strongest of Changelings (Wyrd 7-10) as well as enemies on their tier, who broadly scale from town to city level. Several Contracts can affect the weather with even a 2 Dot Clause able to summon rain with 5 Dot able to create a snowstorm. While the Changeling would normally not scale to this according to legend the first King of the Summer Court Sam Noblood formed it by hunting down the concept of Summer and defeating it making it form the Summer Contracts which if true means the strongest Changeling should physically scale to the strongest contracts since Summer could use its own powers against Sam Noblood who only had physical capacities basically. It is explicitly the Mightiest contracts can level mountains. The Current King of Summer Grandfather Thunder was stabbed through during the great Miami Hurricane with a lightning bolt by a giant, and when he returned it is said the storm lived in him and he lived in the storm. This is shown with his ability to summon a thunderstorm at will. Similarly it is said the Queen of Summer's wrath would "shatter mountains." In the Hedge the Sleeping is a sentient forest, the Castle Draconic is a living castle that stretches to both horizons with miles of empty rooms, and the Owlsback is a living mountain. A True Fae when they enter the human realm, Darken the Moon, doing so visibly to the human eye being a passive feat of negative kilotons of tnt worth of energy. It is believed a True Fae caused the Great Miami Hurricane by the Lost. The True Fae are stronger then their former slaves, this is said constantly even for the most powerful Changeling, but it's also explicitly said that they're not so much stronger then numerous very strong Changelings don't pose a threat to them in the human world.
Speed is complex. They should be at least as fast as the prior tier, and it seems like they're around them regardless. There are two things that might suggest they might be faster. there is a single unclear line about Meteor Herders, which are presumably some form of Hobgoblin that herd meteors which travel through space at hypersonic to massively hypersonic speeds. However how they do this and if it scales to anyone is unclear. It is also stated that at Wyrd 9 some Changeling's mien is "a being of pure light and darkness", which presumably means they would move at lightspeed. You can choose for yourself if you think those are enough for a speed upgrade, but for the sake of not cheating and giving myself more options than I should have, I will be conservative and keep it to subsonic to supersonic for prior mentioned bullet-timing.
At the higher levels of Wyrd (7-9) a Lost becomes increasingly alien and fae and powerful, their Mien shifting to being more and more inhuman. Any of the seeming at this level of Wyrd can rise to this tier. At 10 Wyrd a transformation takes place. A Lost's sanity depletes and they become determined to return to Arcadia. If they succeed they truly become lost forever as they transform into a True Fae themselves, It is widely speculated that this whole cycle of kidnap, trauma, transformation is the reproductive cycle of the sterile True Fae.
The Rulers of the Lost are the Kings and Queens of the Courts, who maintain a high level of Wyrd and Clarity. They have the powers of their Court broadly but to the highest level. It is said the first Summer King got the title by hunting down and defeating the very concept of Summer, while the first Winter King got the title by successfully hiding from the very concept of Winter. The Four Monarchs it seems are likely conceptually good in their domain: The Spring Monarch a conceptual healer and source of rejuvenation, the Summer Monarch a conceptually skilled warrior, the Autumn Monarch a conceptually terrifying lord of shadows, and the Winter Monarch a conceptually hidden mystery skilled at stealth on the abstract level.
This is the level of the strongest Hobgoblins. There are sentient mountains and forests in the Hedge. Goblin Markets are known to enforce their rules of non-violence among patrons even to the strongest Changelings and True Fae themselves. There are reference to Meteor Herders and during the great Miami hurricane Grandfather Thunder, Monarch of Summer battled a giant that seemed to represent the storm itself.
But all of this pales in comparison to the major antagonist of the series, the True Fae themselves. Even while vastly weaker on Earth or in the Hedge, the True Fae are repeatedly described to be the strongest thing the Lost are aware of. Charlatans are True Fae exiled from Arcadia, weaker then other True Fae, drained of strength by their exile and often without memories. Despite that it is stated that the Weakest of Charlatans is equivalent to the Strongest Changelings. True Fae and Arcadia passively cause people to go mad around them and memories of them to be spotty. They are literally made of Wyrd and bashing damage does nothing to them, though they can only remain on Earth for a manner of hours at a time.
True Fae have many abilities but they are broadly the manipulation of four categories: Fate, Time, Nature, and Emotions. They can control all of these at will, and are harder to affect with any as they have strange relations to them. They have the same contracts the Lost have, but can use them to a greater extent and can make a new contract with a thought with any concept in reality giving them any power they need if they are willing to put a name of theirs on the line for breaking their word. They can also suck the soul right out of a person, though notably find it very hard to to damage it in anyway.
In terms of weaknesses, the tier has a number. Every Fae has particular weaknesses related to their story and as Lost approach one of the True Fae so too do they warp to be like them. Madness Manipulation could mentally break a Lost, making them retreat to Arcadia to become a True Fae, so long as it can get past the supernatural resistance a High Wyrd gives.
The True Fae are famously weak to cold iron. It bypasses all their defenses and immediately kills them, described as perhaps the Lost's best weapon against them. The most common explanation being that one of their kind broke a contract to Iron long ago. Beyond that however the True Fae are physically and mentally sterile, they cannot create new things. Their body is just made of Wyrd, pure fairy magic, and they lack the human soul that allows for creative thoughts. A True Fae related to temptation may know literally every way possible to tempt someone and all the stories of temptation to ever exist, but it will literally never conceptualize that someone might resist temptation. Personally I think this is why the Lost's stealth tends to work so well against them, because they can't think creatively on where their escaped slaves are. It is also noted that the blood of Fetch Children can hurt the True Fae because "by their own power can they be undone" and that they can only spend limited amounts of time on Earth at once.
Some other possibly weaknesses: Most the characters in this tier are glass cannons. While the Sylvans and Owlsback Mountain are just physically their level from sheer size, most of the Lost and True Fae on this tier have durability more on par with one of the two prior tiers. This means in general being stealthy and ambushing them is a good idea as they cannot take the same power they throw around, though good luck in finding the Winter Monarch at least one of which was conceptually stealthy. Anti-Magic would be very strong as both the Lost and True Fae using magic for all their abilities basically just leaving the Hobgoblins. Finally Manipulation would be very potent as the Court Monarchs are heavily connected to their Season's associated emotion and all True Fae and High Wyrd-Lost, especially the former, are bound to their word.
So one counter you could use is
Appelai from Chaotic
Appelai's own raw power while low by Chaotic standards would still scale to the weaker attack Air Slash which cut the top of a mountain making it it considerable here. His speed would be either around the tier or substantially faster though still within the same speed "tier" as Ninren is stated to be as fast lightning at a speed of 150 while Appelai has a speed of 35. If you think that the speed is linear and use a Mach 300 value for lightning, this means Appelai would have a speed of Mach 70. On the other hand if you think it's exponential and that humans have score around 10-15 then an exponential curve would put Appelai more in line with the tier.
Appelak is a Conjurer, a particular type of Mipedian Muge known for summoning giant creatures made of pure fantasy, solid illusions that could never exist biologically. These War Beasts are vastly stronger then the Conjurer and fast enough to blitz anyone here with elemental power on the scale of natural disasters and speeds like.. well if Ninren is to be seen, like lightning. More particularly Appelai has a particular ability that he absorbs magic power that is attempted to be used against Warbeasts he summons meaning that if any of the Lost or True Fae tried to use magic against one of his Warbeasts, Appelai would absorb the power and get stronger.
The only way someone here could stop him is by targeting him instead of the Warbeast but with the Beast's speed that's easier said then done. Plus Appeklai is no slouch himself, not only does he likely have either somewhat relative stats or somewhat relative power and much faster speed, but as a Mipedian he has his Tribe's ability to turn invisible, this ambush strategy particularly useful against the Lost. Like a lot of Muges, he also has a high wisdom which not only is good for manipulation but allows him to do wisdom attacks that damage the opponent's psyche including draining their sanity, which would be especially strong against the Lost who at High Wyrd are vulnerable to having their sanity eroded, something they'd have no resistance to as wisdom attacks are not magic. He's also likely have access to powerful Mipedian mugic that can do things like power null his opponents with Trills of Diminution or giving himself magic resistance with with Song of Shelter. .
With that said Appelaimight have trouble against the Winter Monarch. Mipedians don't tend to do well in snow y envionrments being cold blooded and leaving tracks in the snow and Appelai don't have particular anti-stealth abilities. If he summons the Warbeast to engage an opponent and didn't know he was there, the Winter Monarch can sneak up on him and hit him. Also I consider supersonic and hypersonic the same speed category but not everyone does. For another counter you could use
Marchosias from Dungeon Builder: The Demon King's Labyrinth is a Modern City
Marchosias is superior to the demon Ruhe who was able to create a storm even before Marchosias' rebirth. After the Rebirth Marchodias power grew massively and she should easily be comparable to the characteres here. Marchosias was also faster then the tier even before the rebirth with characters moving three times sound speed being slow compared to her and getting faster after her rebirth.
Marchosias' most notable quality here is her post-resurrection power to completely nullify all magic. This would essentially be a power nullification vs all of the Lost and against the True Fae who bodies are literally made of the stuff it would erase them outright. Even if they tried to manipulate Fate from a distance it simply wouldn't work as not only is that still a magic power but Marchosias has the highest degree of luck to the point of being a passive fate hax in her own favor. If they wanted to fight Marchosias they'd have to go through her dungeon like any normal adventurer.
Marchosias is a Demon Lord who controls her own dungeon. While powerful Lost would probably be able to get past all the normal monsters and traps, the problem is this is based in their emotions. Marchosias can absorb the emotional energy of those in her dungeons to boost her own power. Given High Wyrd Lost especially the Seasonal Monarchs are especially driven by their associated emotion, Marchosias would get a massive power boost if they tried to fight her conventionally, along with her own abilities to bolster her own power. If they were to reach her dungeon end, not only would she have massively higher stats from the boosts, but her passive luck would allow her to likely hit the Winter and Summer Monarchs despite their stealth and skill.
And on top of all that Marchosias has a few other tricks. When she kills someone, like any Demon Lord she can absorb their soul giving her their powers. She has precog that would allow her to see through any attempt to trick her and can resist attempts to manipulate her mind. However she does have one weakness. She's a pretty straight forward character, who's intelligence is not that high for a Demon Lord, not that she's dumb but her intelligence is still fairly within the human range. The Tier's best chance is the Autumn Monarch being so scary that despite the fact that she would absolutely win given she would passively nullify all his magic, that she just runs away. For a character that would absolutely not run away though you could use
Esmeralda "Granny" Weatherwax from Discworld
Granny Weatherwax rarely relies on raw flashy displays of power, and to be honest, she does not need it here. But for the record she is probably is the same general stats tier as the characters of this tier. Witches have no hierarchy and Granny is at the top of the hierarchy being arguably the most powerful with only Gytha Ogg being possibly higher (though she's much lazier then Granny.) This should scale her to the wizards of the great Mage Wars who created vast storms and spells of mass destruction that boiled the seas and deformed the Disc. This wasn't done individually but dividing by how many mages existed would put Granny Weatherwax in the same tier of magic as the characters in the tier. She would absolutely have a 10 in Wyrd (and somehow a 12 in Clarity.) Rincewind is a relatively low tier Wizard and a complete coward who has shown the ability to travel at supersonic speeds...while running away. Granny should obviously scale above Rincewind.
In Discworld there are a race of Elves that are actually eldritch horrors who warp the perspectives of people in all sorts of ways, a race of powerful magic users stronger then human wizards. They are essentially the True Fae. Esme's presence by itself kept the Elves away from the Disc. Granny has a lot of experience dealing with things like the Fae and would resist any of their passive haxes, even ignoring that Witches passively resist magic. She also has the ability to progress time forward by 15 years in 2 minutes across an entire kingdom. The True Fae can only withstand being in the human world for a timespan of HOURS before they start burning as if hit by cold iron, meaning this would erase any Title they sent there and it could hit any of them in a kingdom sized area at once.
What about vs the Lost? Well magic is actually Esme's weaker ability. Esme's greater ability and what she usually uses is what she calls Headology. Esme is considered maybe the greatest manipulator in all of Fantasy Literature. Despite her ordinary human stature, she is able to mentally break down anyone she comes across even without reading minds which she doesn't like doing though easily can, her magic is considered lesser in threat to her psychology, and can do things like convince people they are actually frogs without using any magic. If she came across a head case like the Seasonal Monarchs, Granny would break them in one sentence. If she ran across the Goblin Markets she would convince them a common pinecone is a worthy trade for their finest wares.
Fate is one of the most powerful forces in the Disk much like it in Changeling the Lost, but it is weaker then the three greatest forces of Life, Belief, and Narrative. Granny Weatherwax is skilled at manipulating the latter two. She has a level of plot hax from manipulation of the narrative that would override any fate hax used against her. Everything in this tier is Narrative it's Fae who are their stories, it's Lost losing themselves to their Story, it's the strongest Hobgoblins being living archetypes. Granny Weatherwax is genre savy and knows how to manipulate characters in the story based on who they are, which is thematically the strongest power in Changeling the Lost
Metaconceptual Tier:
The infinite Hedge where reality and imagination is but a pale reflection of the realm of Arcadia, a realm literally made of infinite potential. That realm is shaped and at times is the Old Gods, the Gentry, the Others....The TRUE Fae. They divided it into infinite sized realms and made it their realm of madness, befitting the inscrutable True Fae. But even this is not the limit of their power. Existence, Life, is the first Contract all True Fae make, accepting limitations so they might come into existence, defined by what they are not, the limitations they accepted. As such their power in Arcadia, under my tiering standards, would be "Metaconceptual" beyond conceptual existence as they had to define their own boundaries while coming into existence.
The True Fae obviously have all the abilities their Titles do when they go to Earth, but they have far more in their abode. Arcadia is a realm of pure potential, of which The Hedge an infinite eternal realm of imagination is only a pale reflection, the True Fae's realm being the realm of madness.
The first contrast every True Fae makes is the one of existence where they accept limitations so that duality might apply to them, and they will themselves into existence by the duality of them and not them. As such even destroying a True Fae does not destroy them as they can will themselves into existence. They make contracts with existence as well as concepts like Fate and Time to gain their abilities.
In their domain of Arcadia the True Fae create reality and the laws of reality by negotiation and conflict with each other. The True Fae in their own realm are so powerful that it's a part of their narrative they form narrative conflicts with each other called Legends because to fight is to establish limits and keep each other alive. In the mad world of the Fae conflict is survival, killing is giving life, hate and love, war and partnership are the same. In these battles they manipulate both form and story. Their realms have their own myth-cycles, guiding narratives as the law of Arcadia is not natural law but the law of Dreams and Stories.
The True Fae have anywhere between 1-5 titles, conceptual persona. These persona can take the form of actor (a person), prop (object), wisp (a large collection of things), or realm (the area itself.) To lose a title is painful like losing a limb, but it would draw the ire of the Fae's other titles. To kill the Fae itself requires the destruction of the true name, a transdual thing existing as pure Wyrd.
Outside the True Fae, this verse has all the concepts the True Fae have made deals with. All the forces of nature are Concepts that can be bartered with and all can mess with the True Fae. The most substantial are the four the True Fae made their original contracts with (Fate, Time, Nature, and Emotions), Wyrd itself which is the concept of Fairy and Fae Magic, and Iron which at least according to one account accursed all things of Wyrd.
In terms of how to counter this tier, one needs to be able to destroy reality on a conceptual level to destroy the concepts. Beyond that though one obviously needs to be able to defeat the Mad Lords of Fairy. And while incredibly powerful so much that almost nothing in Chronicles of Darkness can mess with them, they are very not used to fighting things on their level. They have all the weaknesses of their titles on Earth: things of cold iron bypasses all their defenses and kills them, anti-magic can nullify them, and they are physically and creatively sterile to the point Fairies can't rhyme unless it's a rhyme they already know because they can't think of a word that rhymes unless they already know it does. Fae also have personalized weaknesses central to the story, though it's implied a lot of these are lies the True Fae perpetuate themselves to make themselves seem more vulnerable then they are.
Against other people as strong as them True Fae also have the weakness that they are used to fighting other True Fae and not characters that don't work on narrative logic they do and if they are BFRed from Arcadia they drop down to the power level of the prior tier. Also, if they swear on a title and break it without realizing then they lose the title. If they do so with their true name, it sacrifices their true name and permanently destroys them.
For the first counter you could use
Shadow Destroyer from Champions Online.
The Shadow Destroyer is one of the most powerful villains in the Champions Multiverse. After draining the power of the Qlipothic Realm, a realm that was the dark equivalent of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life Shadow Destroyer ascended to the level of a King of Edom, a transdual metaconceptual entity that is the inverse of the Sefirot, realms of the tree of life surpassing things like the concept of power. This means the Shadow Destroyer has a similar statue to the True Fae itself. That said the Shadow Destroyer lacks any of the True's Fae major weaknesses.
Shadow Destroyer lacks any weakness to iron for instance, and in fact his shadow destroyer armor is an arcane armor made with iron. Upon being the Shadow Destroyer he became "Destruction itself" and is not bound to any realm. Should he destroy Arcadia itself the True Fae would be depowered. He can also do worse as the Shadow Destroyer is known for his ability to corrupt magic making it Qliphotic and chaotically unstable. Even normally he could do this on a planetary scale and as the Shadow Destroyer can draw further on the pure Qliphotic energy of the Qliphothic Realm itself that he absorbed. This would not only let him negate magic they try to use against him, it could let him corrupt the True Fae themselves as they are made of fairy magic, bypassing their resurrection by changing their being. They also can't just drive him mad as Shadow Destroyer even before ascending could tank being inside the Qliphotic Realm which warps bodies and minds to corrupt them, more rapidly then Arcadia does. Shadow Destroyer can also destroy reality on a conceptual level as he is ascended to be like the Kings of Edom with it being consistent if they were sealed they would destroy reality or corrupt it beyond recognition and he should be stronger then Therakiel the Nephillim who nearly did destroy all of creation.
Shadow Destroyer's weakness primarily is that he is violently antisocial with a psychological compulsion to kill and corrupt, being the only Master Villain to have literally no allies. Because of the simple consistent rules of his psychology, it's possible one of the True Fae that focus on manipulating pure evil type villains could manipulate him. This is relatively unlikely as Shadow Destroyer is a Type 4 Supergenius that built his base power armor that already made him one of the strongest villains in the setting. Still if you want a character the True Fae would absolutely not be able to predict you could use
Delirium of the Endless
Delirium is the youngest sister but she is still an Endless, a metaconceptual entity with infinite conceptual bodies, as opposed to the True Fae having up to five, just one of hers, when she was sad at a funeral, made the whole of creation rainbow colored to express her feelings. While metaconceptual power is unquantifiable, if either is stronger it's probably Delirium as the DC Creation has an infinite conceptual realm below two metafictional layers, this being one of infinite creations in the Void with the Endless scope reaching to the other creations.
Delirium is a metaconcept representing madness and separations from reality. The realm of Arcadia is already like her realm, a realm of madness stretching for conceptually infinite distances and is incomprehensible to human minds that can threaten to trap and drive mad even her elder brother Dream of the Endless. The True Fae could potentially destroy one of her bodies, but another would just show up because she is madness itself. The True Fae can't destroy the madness of themselves or their realm as it constitutes who they are, and because they are far weaker outside Arcadia they also can't destroy reality where she also is. Delirium would appear in Arcadia wanting to play and if they tried to kill her for her title, another her would just show up eager to keep playing.
Offensively Delirium can amplify the madness of the True Fae and their realm or if she wanted to destroy them she could BFR them. Delirium is noted to occasionally wander into Mother Night's domain, something even Dream struggles to, Mother Night being the void that precedes everything where even the True Fae would likely not be able to persist. In World of Darkness's terms Mother Night is basically Grand Maw and while True Fae are from New World of Darkness, I don't think they would be able to survive Grand Maw. They would also have no way of predicting her in order to manipulate because Delirium is infamously impossible to understand. She regularly treats defies the laws of the reality she's in by complete accident and this includes when she's in her brother Dream's realm, which is the realm of dreams and stories meaning she could simply forget to follow the rules of Arcadia were she there.
The only thing that might stop Delirium is her getting distracted. She tends to get distracted from things. If this was something something she seriously wanted she can briefly and with pain pull herself together and think straight and if she does that she can just destroy Arcadia outright and thus kill the True Fae. That said if she is not motivated to fight particularly it's possible it would take her forever to destroy the Fae as she might keep forgetting what she's doing. For the best counter I would suggest
Shirley from the Nickelodeon Multiverse
Shirley absorbed and gained the powers of Timmy's Fairies Cosmo and Wanda. Fairies in Fairly Odd Parents can manipulate the concept of math giving them arbitrarily high stats. This would allow Shirley to match the True Fae stats who can also essentially choose what level of power they want to be.
The Fairies from Fairly Oddparents are similarly powerful cosmic reality-warping fairies but with their own weaknesses. They have similarly potent reality-warping, the ability to alter the plot as shown by entering stories and changing the plot much as the True Fae can become and affect myth-cycles. The True Fae's contracts can be sorted into four categories: Fate, Time, Nature, and Emotion. Against their Fate Manipulation Shirley can use Fairy Magic to alter causality and luck like when Cosmo and Wanda made everything Timmy say come true. Against their Time Manipulation, Shirley can use the Fairies own time manipulation which can control the entire timestream to freeze time or go to any point in time. Against Nature, the Fairies have shown arguably greater feats of manipulating elemental forces. Emotional Manipulation would likely be most effective at first, but only have Fairies shown the ability to alter the emotions of everyone in the entire universe, but Shirley's adaptation has shown the ability to adapt emotionally to protect him as well.
The Fairies actually also have some advantages over the True Fae. As opposed to duplicating into five, they have shown duplication into dozens and very likely could infinitely given their math manipulation, something Shirley could also do. While True Fae can resurrect even if completely destroyed, Fairies can enter the realm of people who never existed and still interact with and threaten entities there suggesting Shirley could destroy someone past nothingess and keep the True Fae from ever regenerating. They can also just make themselves immune to magic as Tom Sawyer did when he stole Cosmo's wand. Now the Fairies have a lot of weaknesses as well, but Shirley... doesn't have them. He's not bound by the rules, doesn't need a wand, and while the Fairies are often depicted as quite foolish, Shirley also stole the intelligence of the Multiverse's greatest scientist Jimmy Neutron giving him access to Type 5 intelligence. With no limiting factor to his fairy magic he could attack Arcadia without any exploitable weakness. Shirley also has another advantage. It's an in character default tactic of his to create his own dimension and suck thing from other dimensions into it slowly destroy them. While Arcadia is a conceptual realm made from pure Wyrd, fairy magic, given the haxes he possesses it's likely he could do this to Arcadia, drawing the True Fae into a void where they would be far weakened, going from their home turn to his
You may wonder, can't the True Fae manipulate or hax Shirley when he first enters Arcadia and doesn't know what's going on. And the answer is no. The True Fae are bound by hospitality. As part of their contract with Existence a story with no challenge at all is not a true story. They cannot create a world that they automatically win or it is not truly a story. They have to provide some way for anyone entering to win no matter how BS unfair or impossible to figure out. This is where Shirley's most famous ability comes in. Shirley's signature is adaptation, adapting passively to any situation. While he starts without much resistances, because the True Fae can't automatically win they have to always give him some chance to adaptation and they have nothing in their arsenal his Adaptation can't make him immune to. Jimmy and Timmy accidentally bestowed Shirley with the endless creativity and adaptability of the soul, the thing even the True Fae don't know how to extinguish, the thing that allows the Lost the chance to escape from and persevere against the Gentry. Shirley would walk into an Arcadian realm and they would throw every fairy trick they have at stopping the intruder only for him to adapt to each one in turn and suck them into his realm where they are weaker even then his human friends, turning the tables on the ones who abducted humans to their realm and made them feel small.
And that's how to be OP in Changeling: The Lost
No comments:
Post a Comment