Since it appears that no one has time to write in-depth Changeling plot summaries, but it seems that people want to know about our nifty cool plot anyway, I give you these two-second session recaps. Enjoy.
Session One: Althea, Annabelle, Ayla, Erin, and Nina meet in a Los Angeles bar called Spiderwebs before being summoned by Lady Stavroula, who offers them money, Glamour, and fame in exchange for finding some way to keep a movie called “The Amethyst Key” from becoming yet another source of Banality in the world. On their way out, they get attacked by a sluagh kid and some trolls who say the Duke of L.A. sent them. They turn the trolls over to Lady Stavroula and invite the kid (Stuart) to join their motley. Nina uses her fame as a musician to get a role in the movie, and the others get jobs on the crew. Ayla starts dating a guy named Thomas, who Annabelle just wants to eat and Nina learns has some sort of big destiny in store.
Session Two: On the set of “The Amethyst Key,” the motley meets a nocker named Seana who works in the special effects department and learns that the child star of the movie is almost ready to undergo his Chrysalis. Nina starts pursing Spencer, the director of the movie, hoping to muse him and make his film not suck. Meanwhile, Annabelle goes hunting humans and runs into a kid named Drew who turns out to be a vampire. Annabelle fends off the vampires (or the hallucinogenic contents of her blood do, anyway) and Drew takes her to meet his “mommy”—Mischa, the Malkavian prince of L.A. Mischa gives Annabelle access to her hunting grounds, and Annabelle agrees to become her ally.
Session Three: The motley saves the movie set from a marauding chimerical spider/octopus that had been spinning a web in Seana’s studio. At Spiderwebs, Althea’s ward Jerry disappears and returns with nasty bites on his neck. The motley learns that the culprit is a vampire named Emily. To complicate matters even more, Jerry claims to be in love with Emily.
Session Four: A pot of soup with a human hand in it reveals to the entire motley that Annabelle is addicted to human flesh. She saves some face by putting Althea in contact with Mischa, who confirms that Jerry has been ghouled by Emily and offers to help resolve the problem. Some vampires try to make off with Stuart, but Nina’s bungled attempt to catch them inadvertently saves him. Emily and her lackeys attack the freehold, but Drew’s scary mind powers drive them away. Lady Stavroula criticized the motley for not doing what she hired them to do. Then, the motley is summoned to meet with the Duke.
Session Five: Erin begins trying to help Ryan through his Chrysalis. On a visit to Yosemite, Ayla inadvertently stumbles across the reclusive author of “The Amethyst Key” and convinces the rest of the motley to go there and meet her. Mischa enlists the help of a friend to break Jerry’s blood bond to Emily, in exchange for Althea drinking two glasses of her blood. The motley meets with Duke Uriel, gets on his bad side, learns that Lady Stavroula is completely insane, and is ordered to leave L.A. forever as soon as the movie is finished. Emily comes to the movie set posing as Mary Eleanor Teasdale.
Session Six: Annabelle says a tearful farewell to Drew, who is leaving L.A. with Mischa, who has been ousted from power. The motley goes to visit Mary Eleanor Teasdale and convinces her to come to the set and sort things out. After receiving a phone call from Spencer that makes them think he’s in danger, the motley rushes to his house to save him from the clutches of Emily, who Mary Eleanor then geases against harming them anymore. Ryan undergoes his Chrysalis as a troll, and Seana agrees to become his mentor. The executive producer of the movie, an Autumn Fae, gives the motley a map that points to hidden treasure. After finishing the movie, they decide to stick together and follow it.
Session Seven: The motley celebrates the fae holiday of Highsummer Eve, also known as Pranksgiving, with an ongoing stream of practical jokes. They hit the road in a Winnebago dubbed the “Cani-Mobile.” In Arizona, they accept a challenge from another group of changelings that entails a game of Capture the Flag set inside a gated community and played with chimerical paintball guns. Chaos and hilarity ensue. The motley emerges victorious with a magic item known as Darkstar’s Wand of Flaming Chaotic Death as their reward.
Session Eight: After a lengthy detour to go antiquing and build sandcastles, the Cani-Mobile has a literal run-in with El Chupacabras which forces them to stay in a tiny Arizona village while their RV gets repaired. Annabelle comes to believe El Chupacabras has a message for her; unfortunately, she has to contend with the well-intentioned but problematic intervention of FBI agents Carter and Lindsay. Ultimately, the FBI is thwarted and Annabelle learns that Drew needs her help in Mexico.
Session Nine: The motley goes south of the border and finally finds Drew in Ciudad Juárez. Humiliated by her failure, Mischa has been talked into accepting a suicide mission to take down a rival vampire, and Drew wants the motley’s help in talking her out of it. The motley agrees and makes its way to Mexico City. In Guanajuato, one of Mischa’s enemies figures out what they’re up to and tries to dispatch them with reanimated mummies. The motley kicks the mummies’ asses and, in the process, accidentally smacks Stuart with some weird holy light from the Wand.
Session Ten: In Mexico City, the motley finally finds Mischa but can’t dissuade her from carrying out her mission. She gets staked for her troubles, so Nina takes the offending vampire out with one lucky shot from the Wand. The next night, the motley breaches the defenses of the vampires’ sanctuary, unstakes Mischa, and accepts a favor from her in payment. They say goodbye to Mischa and Drew again and make their way back to the U.S.
Session Eleven: After increasing their knowledge of fae magic at a large festival in southern Texas, the motley decides to head for Roswell. On the way, they’re distracted by a freehold that’s been taken over by a group of nunnehi who capture the motley as well. Their leader, Jonathan, takes an interest in Erin; he says she has a nunnehi soul, and that she’s fated to marry him. The motley serve as mediators and help the nunnehi create their own freehold, and Erin agrees to explore her heritage and, more importantly, to give Jonathan a chance.
Session Twelve: The motley arrives in Roswell just in time for its annual festival, where they once again run into Carter and Lindsay, who are tracking Annabelle by the path of mutilated corpses she’s been leaving in her wake. Meanwhile, another group of changelings enlists the help of the motley to save their leader, Lady Rebecca, from the evil chimera who have taken over their freehold (and who suspiciously resemble creatures from the “Alien” movies). After their victory, the motley has an intervention for Annabelle’s addiction to human flesh, and she agrees to try to fix things somehow.
Session Fourteen: In Albuquerque, the motley meets a young girl named Nadia who gives them a magic key and tells them they have to collect four more like it to fulfill the quest they accepted when they started following the map. She also manages to talk Tai, a sidhe with an overdeveloped sense of social justice, into joining the group. But with new opportunities come new dangers, as the motley learns when they battle some scary new chimera known as onyx men.
Session Fifteen: The motley finally makes it to the Grand Canyon, where Nina and Spencer give in to their overwhelming sexual tension and get it on. Their happiness is short-lived, however, as a mysterious house nearby turns out not only to be really creepy, but the home of Spencer’s ex-wife. Soon, Spencer and some cave explorers are lost inside it, and the motley sallys forth to search for them. Much danger, drama, and angst ensues inside of the world’s creepiest metaphor for love.
Session Sixteen: The motley decides to take some time off to recover from their ordeal inside the house. Nina makes amends with Spencer’s ex-wife. Darkstar goes on a date with Althea, who grudgingly admits she actually does like him, just a little. Then, everyone gets stinking drunk together.
Session Seventeen: Ayla drags the motley to Yellowstone, where they visit her mom, catch up with her werewolf friend Richard, and accidentally organize and perform a benefit concert for the oppressed aboriginal peoples of Australia. But things turn darker when the motley finds a nearby freehold destroyed and vows to track down and punish the people responsible.
Session Eighteen: The motley picks up Meaghan, a piskey hitchhiker who appears to possess one of the other four keys. However, not only will Meaghan not tell them where to find the key, she’s being pursued by her evil brother Mort, from whom she stole it. Eventually, negotiation and running away fail, and the motley kicks the crap out of Mort and his allied chimera and gets Meaghan to give them the key in gratitude. Then, following a lead given to them by Mort, they head for New Orleans.
Session Nineteen: Ayla decides to leave the motley to be with Thomas and her mother. Everyone else continues on to New Orleans, where they discover another destroyed freehold, a lot of changelings pointing fingers at one another, and a great big mystery. The motley decides to stick around and lend a hand trying to figure out exactly what’s going on. They also meet Kat, a troll who has the third key and gets sucked into the motley because of it.
Session Twenty: The motley continues to play detective and try to solve the mysteries of New Orleans. There are some notable successes, but mostly a lot of dead ends. Stuart starts dating a nice sidhe girl named Zyah. Tristan saves Tai from a big group of onyx men, and the two of them begin making googly eyes at each other from opposite sides of the sidhe freehold. Meanwhile, the plot contines to thicken.
Session Twenty-One: The motley’s ongoing investigation leads them to look into the sordid pasts of the many Accordance War veterans in New Orleans, and they learn they’re surrounded by a bunch of war criminals. At the Pennons tournament, Rhea defeats Kat and is crowned champion, and a bunch of onyx men beat up Jeremy (the prime suspect in the freehold’s destruction) in the girls’ locker room afterwards. The plot now has the consistency of goulash.
Session Twenty-Two: Erin’s visions finally culminate to reveal that the keys, when used together, will unlock a huge chimerical ship of some sort. A lead from Aramis, the motley’s staunchest ally in New Orleans, reveals that the freehold was destroyed by Thistle Delacroix, commoner extremist, member of the Shadow Court, and pillar of the community. A chaotic Samhain night interferes with the motley’s efforts to capture her, and she narrowly eludes their clutches. Afterwards, the motley hits the road again, this time to raise an army capable of combating their new Big Nasty.
Session Twenty-Three: The motley stops in Mississippi to stay at Zyah’s old freehold and plan their next move. Of course, her dark past comes back to bite her in the ass in the form of the arranged marriage she’d run away from. Stuart’s many clashes with Johnny, Zyah’s fiance, finally culminate in a duel. Stuart wins, but afterwards Johnny stabs him to death with a cold iron dagger. Kat lops Johnny’s head off for his trouble. Zyah goes off to raise an army, and the motley hurries back to L.A. after learning that Lady Stavroula has killed Uriel, herself, and most of the other fae in the city by bombing the freehold.
Session Twenty-Four: In L.A., the motley helps Seana and Ryan to pick up the pieces before attending the premiere of “The Amethyst Key.” Such an event, of course, could never be uneventful, and Emily tries to exact her revenge on the motley by stealing the film and embarrassing them. Nina recovers the film just in time, Tai cuts Emily’s head off, and Kat messily dispatches her ghouls. Angst ensues. The movie is a resounding success. A premonition calls the motley to Illinois, where the huge surge of Glamour produced by the movie has allowed Crysania, the heir to the throne of Arcadia, to enter the physical world in order to bring back one person killed by cold iron and thus begin healing the wounds caused by the Accordance War. The motley agrees to protect her as she journeys through the Dreaming to complete her quest.
Session Twenty-Five: In the Dreaming, the motley has various and sundry adventures which include fighting a giant armadillo, having bites taken out of them by gnomes, and managing to talk a dragon out of eating them. After all that, they arrive in the Realm of the Forgotten, where Crysania deliberates over who to bring back and the motley has even more angst. Finally, they talk her into choosing Stuart, and everyone returns triumphant to raise an army and defeat Thistle once and for all.
Session Twenty-Six: The motley spends eight days gathering an army and faces down Thistle’s forces in the desert to the north of Los Angeles. Outnumbered three to one and faced with overwhelming odds, the motley attempts a desperate charge into the midst of Thistle’s army. Things seem hopeless, even after Kat neutralizes the onyx men by killing Thistle, but Zyah’s army arrives just in time and ensures an eventual victory for the forces of good. The motley receives high honors from the Queen, then settles down to continue the hard work of uniting commoners and sidhe, marry their respective significant others, and entrust the tale of their amazing victory to the memory of future generations.