Kithain history of Boston
[Before June, 1998 Game]
There were other problems to come. Many of the Kithain, commoners all who to greater or lesser degrees remembered their abandonment by the nobility after the Shattering, were ideologically disposed to support the fledgeling American nation's bid for Independence, but some Changelings found themselves on the opposite side. Once again the Kithain were fighting their own kind, although by far the majority supported the rebels. It is even said among the Pookas that Paul Revere's horse was one of their number, but of course no one believes them.
The 1800's were a time of rising science and Banality but also of creativity among Bostonian mortals; many found Reverie frequenting the Old Corner Bookstore in downtown Boston, where such noted authors as Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne, and Oliver Wendell Holmes often gathered. The growing number of colleges and universities also helped supply a steady stream of Glamour. Throughout most of the century, the few Kithain who chose to make permanent homes in Boston were fairly well-off, and settled disputes among themselves by referring them to an elective council of seven, one of each Kith excluding, of course, the Sidhe but also the Redcaps, who were with greater or lesser degrees of politeness or violence kept from staying long in the city by a concerted effort of Seelie Trolls. There were some complaints among the Unseelie about this unfair and high-handed treatment, although since no one really likes a Redcap they were generally not sincere enough to provoke open conflict. Naturally there were still some Redcaps in Boston and the surrounding areas, but they lay low and did not necessarily even reveal to each other what they were. For the most part, 19th-century Boston was a relatively happy place for Changelings, and they were largely unaffected by the turmoils of Civil War and the like (although some few Kithain were conscripted for the war, and many Eshu of non-white racial stock found mortal society not very welcoming). Those who did not enjoy life in the area went West as many mortals were doing--finding adventure, excitement, and really wild things, like angry Nunnehi whose tribes had not yet been destroyed by the White Man.
He might have been Undone among the horrors of a Nazi prison camp, except a German officer, a Dauntain sworn to the Reich, had felt Sam's Chrysalis and realized that Sam was Fae. He arranged to have Sam transferred to a special Stalag where the few supernatural creatures the Nazis had captured were kept and studied. Towards the end of the war the place was attacked by Garou who were rescuing one of their own tribe and in the confusion Sam escaped. Eventually he was able to find an Allied unit, and by the time he was considered fit for active duty again the war was over.
But the damage had been done. When Sam returned to Boston he discovered the Kithain there, attempting to rebuild their society, but could not really fit in among them. His mind was too damaged with the horror and Banality of war. He was taken in by the Unseelie Trolls of the Bridge. By the end of the decade, Sam had become Chief Ogre of the small Motley through virtue of his physical prowess and, eventually, as he sought a new purpose for his life, his burning fanaticism for their goals. He gathered the disaffected Redcaps of the area, and, in a stroke of luck, discovered that Ouchytooth the Dragon had reformed and returned to the Waking World. Having befriended this powerful chimera and controlling her by means of certain Treasures, he led his small army against the Seelie. Because many of the wisest of the old Council of Seven had been Undone in the 30's and since the new members constantly fell to bickering among themselves, it was a simple matter for him to seize the Place of Meeting, the largest and strongest Freehold in the area, and begin his 22-year reign of terror. No longer really human in his outlook, he dropped his mortal name and was simply known as the Ogre.
Life under the Ogre was often unbearable for the Kithain. He demanded large tithes of Chimera, dross, and treasures, and was ever on the verge of raging fits of anger and madness. His time in Europe had turned him into a killer, and he openly disdained the use of chimerical weapons in combat. Anyone who disobeyed or seemed in any way resistant to his rule was killed. Even some of his old comrades of the Troll Bridge Motley thought he had gone over the edge, and when he discovered that, he had them killed, too, with a homemade mundane bomb filled with cold iron shrapnel. (This, sadly, seems to have led to the loss of the Troll Bridge Freehold; some say it fled into the Dreaming at the last moment.) He claimed ownership of all (remaining) Freeholds, of which in the days before the Resurgence there were even fewer than today, and there was none to oppose him; he doled these out as gifts to his most loyal and lethal servants. Ravaging was the rule, not the exception; many Enchanted servants were often employed to spy on Changelings in Boston to see where they were getting their Glamour--once these sources were known to the Ogre, it was only a matter of days before they were Ravaged clean. For over twenty years the Ogre held the Kithain of a large part of eastern Massachusetts in his power. For the commoner Kithain of Boston, the return of the noble Sidhe after the Resurgence was seen more as a chance for salvation that the return of their ancient oppressors.
The Ogre panicked, realizing that he no longer had the strength to hold out against the Sidhe. He turned, however, not to clever strategies but to raving paranoia; even his most loyal servants he suspected of being Sidhe or even Nunnehi spies, and his last weeks in power were spent removing these "threats." When the Sidhe host led by Duke Asterlan and his brother Count Brendan arrived at the outskirts of Medfield, those few Changelings who had survived were more than happy to receive them as liberators. Completely friendless, the Ogre had no props to his regime, save the dragon. Still, he was a Troll, willing neither to surrender nor flee, and when Duke Asterlan entered the throne room in the palace (the old Place of Meeting, now a squalid ogre lair littered with bones and garbage) he found the Ogre waiting there alone. The machine-gun traps the Ogre had set throughout the palace had considerably reduced the number of Sidhe accompanying Asterlan; his final trick, a door rigged to explode outwards, killed a few more and left none, not even the Duke, unwounded.
"Your Grace," said the Troll, seated next to a beautiful human woman at a long low table set with the finest silver and crystal. "I welcome thee and thy brave companions. Please, join us in our repast." He gestured toward a bench, and then uncovered the main course, garnished with parsley and the insignia of a ducal herald. "Voici, Blanquette d'Elfe. I think the cloves and the lemon cream sauce add a certain je ne sais quoi to the taste of Sidhe flesh, don't you?"
The Duke managed not to react. "Surrender, Worm, for no other name will I permit thee."
The Ogre felt the wash of Glamour and chuckled. "Didn't work, elfboy. Anyway, someone else I know is better suited to that name."
"I think he means me," said the woman. "I can't imagine why."
"We know what you are," said Count Brendan, breaking his silence. "This need not concern you. Begone to the Nightmare Realms of your spawning."
"'Begone to the Nightmare Realms of my spawning'?" said Ouchytooth (for so it was). "Who is this guy?"
With that, Ouchytooth assumed her true form, while the Ogre jumped up, pushing the table over and out of his way, screaming his pent-up rage as he charged the Duke with a halberd of cold iron that he had been holding in his lap. The Duke drew his sword, the fabled Wickedsharp, and his brother Brendan likewise unsheathed his own fair blade, and long did they battle the fell beasts, until the moon and the sun and the stars in the sky cowered from the din, until the earth shook and the seas and rivers broke loose from their places, and until the neighbors complained. At last the Duke, who was unwilling simply to kill his opponent, had inflicted enough chimerical damage on the Ogre to shock him into his mortal seeming. The dragon, as surprised as anyone, winked out of existence in the Waking World at that very moment. The unconscious Troll was then bound with cold iron chains and given over to his former subjects for justice. A cunning but perhaps cruel Sluagh woman, Lilith Sian, counseled that he simply be turned over to mortal authorities as a mass murderer, knowing that once in their custody they would attempt to "cure" him of his delusions. That Asterlan accepted her proposal is the only blemish on his heroic reputation that has come down to us.