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Wilder is one of the Seemings of Changelings and are the youth of Kithain society. 13 to 25 years of the age, they are the most numerous of the Fae.

Overview[]

Wilders are usually rebellious, devious, and hedonistic. Being the most numerous of the fae, they often try to be the leaders of both the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. I mean, after all, the Childlings are too young and the Grumps just don't have the energy or attitude. How they suffer for the good of society.

Lifestyle[]

Satyr53

While these kithain have lost the naiveté they had as childlings they still have not fallen into the cynicism of the graybeards. While they tend to be arrogant and full of themselves, they are daring and adventurous and love to be young. Mortals and mortal culture fascinate them, especially the artists and other creative parts. Their perspective on creativity becomes keener and the Glamour of any new artistic endeavor, whether art or music or film, draws them like moths to a flame. When the passion of creativity consumes them they know what it is to be truly alive.

That fire of creativity can be too bright at times, however, and the greatest fear of these youth is burnout. They don't want to miss any moment of their lives because they know age brings Banality and eventually Undoing. Some of the more extreme of these faeries would rather die than lose their memory of what it means to be young and fae.

With a life on the edge, Wilders follow their ambitions and are propelled into positions of responsibility without authority. Becoming rebels is often an act of desperation and a natural response. The ones who hold on to their mortal lives often feel an all-encompassing need to escape. Those who don't can be consumed by their passion. Whichever path they live, they live lives of constant energy and motion. Chaos and adventure fuel them.

Summer[]

If childlings represent a changeling’s time of innocence and play, then wilders represent the time of action. Wilders always seem to be doing something, unable to sit still and always looking out for a new challenge or opportunity. These changelings are the wild growth of Summer. They also hold passion within their hearts, and wilders are the changelings most given to romantic liaisons and grand, tragic affairs that become the subjects of song and story.

Infused with the energy and vitality of their youth, wilders have passed from the true innocence of childlings into a place where they think they know it all. They’ve learned from the mistakes and successes of their childhood and now they’re ready to take on the world with their vision and drive. The grumps just shake their heads and grumble at the wilders’ belief in their own infallibility. They know that these striplings all have to learn for themselves that things can’t always be accomplished with nothing more than a ready hand and a willing heart.

The Fior-Righ[]

For more information on this rite of passage, see the article Fior-Righ.

Quests[]

A favorite occupation for wilder changelings is to take on quests. Wilders hunger for adventure, and they often go out looking for it rather than letting it come to them.  For more info, see the article Quests (CTD).

Politics[]

Troll47

Wilders are considered by most of changeling society (which is to say, by themselves) to be the movers and shakers of the Kithain courts and of changeling nobility. This, like many things about the Kithain, is both true and false.

Wilders are full of the energy and vigor that makes dynamic leaders, and many wilder nobles are quite effective and influential. High King David is himself a wilder, an ideal that other wilder nobles look up to as an example of the young, dashing hero-king. Wilder nobles are active leaders and passionate about their politics.

However, wilders rarely have the kind of patience and tact required for the great game of politics. They may be very successful generals and heroic figureheads. Some even have a knack for diplomacy and the intricacies of court intrigue, but most prefer the “fun” parts of being a leader over the mundane (read: dull) tasks of keeping records, listening to disputes, and handling the day-to-day affairs of the people of a fief, most of which are anything but exciting.

The wilders are the fire in Kithain politics; they are the agitators, the passionate speechmakers, the military commanders, and the flamboyant heroes. Without them, the courts of the nobility would not be half so interesting and Kithain society would not be nearly so dynamic.

On the other hand, the wilders must be reined in and tempered by the wisdom and experience of the grumps, or else they would turn changeling society into a chaotic combination of party, debating match, and running war. The boundless energy of the wilders is like the summer fire itself; useful, powerful, and bright, but capable of consuming and destroying heedlessly if it is not carefully bounded.

War[]

Kinain08

One of the things wilders are best at is making war. Most of the great warriors and soldiers of the Accordance War were wilders at the time, and they are considered the best warriors of the Kithain. Most childlings do not have the skill or killer instinct to make capable warriors, and fewer still have the authority needed to lead others into battle. Some grumps are amazingly skilled, but most of them lack the fire and passion that drives the warrior’s spirit. Most grumps have also seen enough conflict to be less enamored of the idea of bashing someone’s head in or cleaving them in two with a sword.

Fortunately for the Kithain, wars among their kind are rare indeed. The only recent great war of kith against kith was the Accordance War of the early 1970s. Before that, nothing that could be considered more than a skirmish occurred between changelings. There are legends of a war in Arcadia, perhaps one that resulted in the exile of the sidhe houses on Earth, but little is known about that apart from rumor and speculation.

Sometimes there are conflicts with chimera, especially nervosa or nocnitsa, that require the skills of changeling warriors, and the Dauntain are often fought by the paladins of the noble courts, but these conflicts are always short-lived battles, not true wars. Most changeling battles are fought against the forces of Banality, and that is a war of a very different kind. Banality cannot be fought directly with sword and skill; it must be confronted indirectly with the powers of Glamour and imagination. The most important changeling war is ongoing, and the greatest warriors of that conflict are the muses, artists, dreamers, and bards.

Still, the arts of war are a major pursuit for many wilders, especially wilder sidhe and trolls. Nobles and their retainers still train in the old ways of honorable combat in their freeholds, learning to use chimerical blades and bows. Trolls especially retain a strong martial philosophy that calls for every troll to be trained as a warrior and ready for battle with the forces of Banality or anything else that would harm their charges. Commoner wilders are less often trained in the arts of battle. While most would prefer talk or trickery over a fight, they are still handy with such at-hand items as brooms, frying pans, or the occasional pipe-wrench.

The best commoner fighters are without question the redcaps. These fae have a talent for brawling and fighting that seems bred into them. Many of them augment their natural aggressiveness by learning how to fight in their mortal seemings. They learn combat in street gangs and back-alley rumbles where the elegance and grace of courtly combat are as far apart as dreams from nightmares. Redcaps learn to fight for real, and they rarely do so with any grace or honor. To them, the purpose of fighting in winning to survive another day, and having a little of their idea of fun along the way.

Romance[]

Kinain Satyr

Although any changeling can feel the stirrings of love and romance, the time of courtly love belongs to the wilders in many ways. The wilders have learned dome things about love that are not told to childlings, and they lack much of the cynicism about affairs of the heart so common to grumps. Many wilders feel the thrill of passion and hear the call of romance.

Wilders live up to their name with their romantic pursuits. They live the ideals of courtly love to the fullest; wining, dining, and serenading their heart’s desire. Quests are undertaken and great deeds accomplished in the name of love, and many a wilder is made a fool for the sake of a kind word or a gentle glance from the object of their affection.

Betrothal & Marriage[]

One of the results of all this romance is marriage, with which most wilders generally don’t concern themselves. It is not the goal, but the chase that is important in the world of romance. Marriage is a sign of the kind of settling down that wilders like to avoid.

More common among wilder sweethearts is a betrothal, a commitment to each other that is less binding than a formal marriage. Oaths are often exchanged for a betrothal, usually ones that are only binding for a short time. Traditionally, a betrothal lasts for a year and a day, and the is either renewed or not, depending  on the feelings of the couple at that time.

Initial Temper Scores[]

References[]

  1. CTD. Changeling: The Dreaming Second Edition, pp. 86-87.
  2. CTD. The Enchanted, pp. 52-53, 56-58.
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