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Log In with Facebook. Log In I am new here. Remember me. Error: No match for email address or password. Password forgotten? Click here. Advanced Search. Goblin Markets. From White Wolf. Selected Option:. Average Rating 63 ratings. Let the buyer beware Every freehold knows of at least one. Bundles containing this product:. Winter Masques. Victorian Lost.
Customers Who Bought this Title also Purchased. Reviews 9. Please log in to add or reply to comments. For the most part. The Huntsmen are not in it and there might be a few minor rules adjustments.
Christopher M. The core rulebook mentions Goblin Markets briefly. I was always very intrigued but also very confused how they worked.
This PDF only supplement fills in the blanks of not only how to create your own Goblin Market, it also gives explicit instructions on [ Adam I. While the content is excellent, this product fails to render properly in Apple Preview, to the point of illegibility seriously, it ends up as dark grey on black. This, for me, is a major failing, necessitating a work-around to simply read. Not good [ Niklas F. Exactly what I needed for my campain right now.
A good book with lost of stuff to turn your own. Adrian S. Whilst this is too small to be a sourcebook but perhaps act as a chapter or two in a book this suits PDF publishing perfectly. The Goblin Markets [ Enough have seen her — more specifically, enough have survived her attacks over the years — to have formed nascent cults dedicated to venerating the big beastie. Two things, though. First, that means if someone can actually fill her Health boxes up with lethal damage in a single attack, it might be enough to put her down.
Second, she suffers two major vulnerabilities: extreme heat and extreme cold. Either of those done as an attack a jet of fire or a token sword whose blade turns to ice upon striking perform aggravated damage that does not heal. Of course, how do the characters learn these vulnerabilities? Alternatively, they can do a little research. By spending a Glamour point and succeeding on a Wyrd roll, Argemone can sidle up next to the Thorn flora anywhere in the Hedge and merge with it, regardless of size restrictions.
Success allows the character to glimpse parts of Argemone in the Hedge wall: yellow eyes, a hoof covered over in lichen or a briary coil, perhaps even a puff of gamy breath. Mostly eaten. Big glory awaits those who will go out and bring back the head of the thing that ate up those changelings. Then again, with all those changelings dead, the freehold is now home to a noticeable power vacuum — that, too, represents opportunity, does it not?
Or the alternative story is that someone — a local changeling, most likely — has tamed the Beast that Hunts the Hedge. The leash which is heavy enough that it probably needs to be carried by two or three people is out there, somewhere, and it supposedly has magical properties: any beast leashed with the relic becomes pliable and docile to the one who leashes it.
This is true for a wild lion, true for a rampaging rhinoceros and true for the hobgoblin known as Argemone. Especially true for her, given that this is literally the leash her Keeper once had connected to her collar.
Perhaps a local sovereign or individual of significance and wealth asks the characters to go out and obtain the leash for him, a task that will take them to wild parts of the world and the Hedge. Of course, there will be competition. Others want it and will do what they must to get it.
Any seeking the leash will have to contend with swift competition and a rampaging hobgoblin. She pops out of the Hedge in the many strange wildernesses of this world, and characters may follow her to exotic and dangerous locales… places they might not go otherwise.
Background Alexandra Bower believed she had the perfect life before she was taken in She stayed home while her husband, Damon, worked as a senior engineer for the local government. Their house was always immaculate, and Ally was forever cooking or having friends over for coffee and gossip sessions. The Bowers were active in their local community and church groups as well, with Ally signing them up for just about every event that went on.
In particular, Ally doted on their year-old daughter, Cindy, and was constantly pushing her to excel in all aspects of her life. Ally had not had many opportunities as a child, and she was determined that her daughter was going to do all the things she herself had wanted to do but had never managed. Ally usually ended up in tears, doing her best to make Cindy feel guilty for not appreciating everything that was being done for her. All that changed on October 23, Ally met a man calling himself Raul Escobane, who said he was a talent scout for an acting agency in Hollywood.
He had seen Ally cheering on her daughter and thought she was the one who should have been competing in the pageant instead. Ally, full of pride, explained she had taught Cindy everything she knew and had even made her dress for the pageant.
That was all the false Escobane wanted to know. Dropping his Mask, he whisked Ally away through the Hedge to his domain and put her to work in his household. All that kept her going was the thought of her husband and daughter. She often begged Escobane to just let her see them again, and he would tease her by releasing bits of memories of them into her dreams, so she could at least remember their faces for a while.
But those moments were few and far between, almost like a drug to Ally. She kept doing everything she was told in the belief that Escobane actually cared about her well-being.
Eventually, the desire to be with her family became so strong she managed to find a gateway into the Hedge. Whilst picking witherpears for the evening meal, she spotted an opening she was sure had not been there previously. She slipped away quietly, leaving a few clues to indicate she had been taken by some hobgoblin, rather than escaping of her own volition. All the time, she just kept believing she was going to see her family again soon.
When she eventually emerged from the Hedge into the mortal world, she had a rude shock. The world had moved on 32 years, even though she felt she had only been gone for two. She barely recognized the world around her and quickly sank into a deep depression. Unfortunately, even that small hope was soon ripped away from her.
She learned that her fetch and her husband had died in a plane crash in in Mexico. Ally was nearly suicidal with grief. Every night she cried herself to sleep, trying to find a way to forgive herself for not being there for her daughter. If only she had escaped sooner and found a way home, she could have helped Cindy through her battle with cancer.
She was almost inconsolable for weeks, and it took the intervention of the local Spring Court to bring her back to something resembling sanity. Ally never forgot the assistance those changelings had given her and adopted the freehold as her new family. She does everything she can to make life easier for others — she helps arrange functions, cleans houses, offers a compassionate shoulder to cry on, or whatever anyone needs.
She spends plenty of time with mortals, too. She helps other people there, using her experiences as a way to help them through their own suffering. Description To mortal eyes, Ally looks pretty much like your average housewife.
She appears to be in her late 30s, and in good physical shape. She has long brown hair, which she usually keeps tied back with either a ribbon or a headscarf.
Ally is a little shorter than average, The Smothering Mother Figure: Auntie Ally 17 with a slightly longer nose than normal and gently pointed ears, but still has strong, straight limbs and a perfectly erect posture.
Ally normally puts on an air of exuberance about everything she does. She also fusses after everyone she looks after, constantly asking them if they need anything or if there is anything more she can do for them. Ally is very insistent and always seems to be around. Unless someone is calling on her to do something for them, she feels depressed. When she stops working, the guilty feelings about not being there for her husband and daughter come back.
She seeks to keep those feelings at bay by staying busy all the time, no matter how annoying she becomes to those around her. Secrets So desperate is Ally to make sure that people need her, she occasionally takes drastic action. Once they fall victim to the poison, Ally is there to tend to them, nursing them back to health; at least until she feeds them the next dose of the poison, which just puts them right back where they started. She even cultivates several varieties of poisonous fruits in her private Hollow.
She is prone to poisoning people who have rejected her assistance in the past, knowing if they really had a problem, they would call on her for help again. She often feels bad about doing it. She also tries to repress the feelings by busying herself with helping still more people. Dreams terrify Ally, especially her own.
Her Keeper messed around with her subconscious mind so much that even the memories of her family are now tainted and often appear before turning into some nightmare creature — including her Keeper.
Although she is grateful for the dreamscaping done by the Spring Court after she found out her family was dead, Ally is fiercely protectively of her privacy and refuses to let anyone help her with the symbols of her subconscious mind. Ally also knows that if someone were to start messing around in her dreams, they would recognize the symbols of guilt there.
When she is forced to sleep, through sheer exhaustion, she doses herself up with sleeping pills or special goblin fruits see below and only sleeps in her secret Hollow.
In order to get some privacy, she maintains a secret Hollow in the Hedge. Ally keeps it this way as it reminds her of the living conditions of her durance, and she finds it comforting. Even though she was effectively a slave, she was happier then, because there was always someone who needed her. The Hollow is also a shrine to her dead family. Every night, Ally lights candles there and studies the lines on their faces, hoping to replace some of the memories of them that were taken from her by her Keeper.
Alas, she cannot remember most of their times together and usually cries herself to sleep as a result. Her Hollow is also a place where she cultivates several types of goblin fruits see below. One type she grows because she likes to eat them herself, but there are two other varieties she uses for her secret projects.
Ally makes sure no one else ever finds her secret hiding place. A friend of mine met her at a church function a couple of weeks ago, and he said she had a weird facial tic thing happening. She said it was nothing, but later that evening, she apparently had an epileptic seizure. She came good after a couple of minutes and a lie-down, but he said it was still freaky to see.
The stress of living in Arcadia and the repeated removal of her memories by her Keeper have left real physiological symptoms. I was talking with Alfonse, one of the hobs there, and he said someone from the freehold had been asking strange questions about how to have a fetch made. Not of themselves, mind you, but of a little girl.
Why would she want a fetch of a little girl? The problem is that having one made involves making a deal with the True Fae. She gave me one, and damn it was good. The sour berries appear only in clumps of five or six, with each branch of the vine only producing fruit at one spot.
When eaten raw, the berries cause drowsiness; if eaten just before sleeping, they will cause a character who eats them to fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. If the berries are boiled and the liquid drunk as a tea, it will cause vivid nightmares, usually involving the character suffering immense pain or physical torture.
Bloodbane: This pale yellow lichen tends to grow in moist areas, and needs to be scraped off using a sharp knife. The single dose can cause gut cramps or minor bleeding into the lungs and the effects wear off after a day and a night.
If consumption is stopped, the character will eventually recover, although they will be sick for some time. Bloodbane is Toxicity 3 with one dose, but rises to Toxicity 6 if taken more than once in a month.
Fuguespores: These brown spores come from a type of fungus that grows on the briars of the Hedge. When ingested, they tend to lodge in the intestines, growing slowly through the gut wall and releasing toxins into the bloodstream. These toxins, over time, can cause hallucinations or dizzy spells.
When the fungus matures inside the body, more spores can be released into the bloodstream to grow in other parts of the body. In extreme cases, it can put the character in a coma or cause permanent brain damage. Fuguespores are Toxicity 5. Ally is in the middle, doing whatever she can to help people. The symptoms look like an allergic reaction to something in the food, but some there also get sick although they are not allergic to any of the ingredients. The Free Market Dragon: Baron Fairweather Of course, you understand that openin g one of our location s in your community will help that community thrive.
First and foremost, we offer jobs with competitive pay and excellent benefits. Our arran gements with our suppliers guarantee that the savin gs we pas s on to you result in the lowest-cost alternative available. Ignore the non sen se spouted by the liberal media. All we want from you is acceptance in your community and the chance to make it a better place. Do you accept us? Aliases: The Cloistered Baron of Impossible Dreams, Baron Fairweather, the New Robber Baron media nickname Background There are entities alien to this world that lurk on the edges of reality, invading our dreams and kidnapping humans, adult and child alike, to act as their playthings and slaves.
They are ancient creatures, unknowable because they remain utterly mutable. These entities act as gods over their many mad realms, reforming them to their will and lording over all who enter. They do battle with one another over these realms, bizarre wars of words, ideas and deeds steeped in arcane traditions and human legendry. And one has chosen our world to be its new conquest. The Limited Infinite The entities known by some as the Others crave incessant competition, strife and struggle.
They feed from these, as mortals feed on food, and glut on them as mortals drink alcohol. Within their own realms, however, they are the ultimate authority, lord and master over every facet of their surrounding reality. True conflict is impossible within their demesnes, so they reach out, striking at one another and at humanity.
To do so, they purposefully limit themselves, binding up some part of their potential within a single title and granting it a physical form. The Cloistered Baron of Impossible Dreams is just such a title given form. The otherworldly entity that possesses that title distilled some small portion of its essence into the figure now known to the mortal world as Keith Fairweather.
Fairweather serves as a distorted reflection of his true form, a being of mad hunger and inhuman greed given a shape that can only be described as beautiful. Unlike a hand, Fairweather possesses significant free will, even if that will was formed specifically by his master from the whole cloth of the cosmos, and he acts largely independently. At some point in the distant past, the powerful entity that claims the Cloistered Baron of Impossible Dreams as one of its many titles swore to take the mortal world as its own.
It would lay claim to the title of Dominus of the Living World, a title coveted among its kind, placing that mantle upon its nigh infinite form, a final jewel for its crown. It is in the nature of these entities, however, that they can only take power they earn through conflict, and thus they must form actors and props from their greater spirit to mount any form of campaign.
It chose to invest a portion of its essence into the Cloistered Baron title, knowing full well the extent of the impractical ambitions of the mortal populace. It is also in the nature of these beings that they are bound to operate within the context of the innumerable narrowly defined rules born of the many compacts they made with reality.
One of these timeless pacts marked the mortal world as the sole possession of those who dwell there. None of the Others could claim it in one of their games of epic wordplay and storycraft; nor could they claim it through a campaign of war or terror. Any Other that wished to claim the mortal world had to claim it through the rules in place in that world, and one of those rules was that the world must be given to an Other before an Other can claim it.
Thus, the being now known as Keith Fairweather came into existence. He has watched as generations have grown old and died and has forgotten easily as much as he now knows.
He forgets exactly when he came to the mortal world, since he still has some difficulty understanding the human conception of time as a linear constant, but knows that in that time the hunger that drew him to the mortal world paid off in the discovery of the New World, a world driven by the very passions and dreams that Fairweather considers his personal dominion. He does not know whether or not he influenced the formation of the American Dream, the selfserving capitalist philosophy of Ben Franklin, the greedy expansion of Manifest Destiny or the greed-as-a-virtue objectivism of Ayn Rand, but each development has granted the Baron more power.
The Baron Fairweather has remained in the shadows for over half a millennium, manipulating men of power toward his own ends. He has taken numerous names and identities over that time, though those he has discarded are, indeed, behind him. He remembers few of the discarded identities, and the most recent identity he knows with any surety that he pretended to was an oil baron during the early 20th century. In some ways, his mutability arises from his nature as an avatar of one of the Others.
In another, it stems from his own nature as a devourer; he consumes lives, and once he has taken what nutrients he needs from them, he discards the remnants The Free Market Dragon: Baron Fairweather 21 as so much excrement, leaving numerous broken hearts and ruined fortunes in his wake. But much of his tendency to capriciously reject his own past experiences is conscious; by rejecting his past experiences and acting solely on his current passions, he maintains his connection to the Others and avoids the danger of losing himself in the rules of mortals, a fate that would mean the end of him.
Fairweather has toyed and flirted over the last three centuries with several different methods of leading mortals to selfenslavement. None of them was his idea and he is smart enough to recognize the irony that humans are ceaselessly capable of offering up tools for their own subjugation.
His favorites, at least until now, were indentured servitude and slavery. While the former offered immediate gratification as the mortals gave up their free will from the start, the latter offered a more potent sweetness when each individual slave broke down and gave in to his lot. Those who struggled against Fairweather — who took the form alternatively of a slaver, an auctioneer and a plantation owner at different times — only provided him with the delicious conflict he craved.
MaxMart The rise of large corporations that handily skirt antitrust law provided the Baron Fairweather with his most lucrative and farranging method of mortal self-subjugation yet. Noting the success of early entrants into the box-store phenomenon, he resolved to attach himself to an up-and-coming business called MaxMart.
His position allowed him a great deal of influence over the development of the business, while keeping him out of the public limelight resulting from any of the many scandals the business has weathered as a result of its often less-than-ethical practices. Fairweather guides the company, utilizing similar business practices to other big-box stores: MaxMart offers a wide selection of goods at prices lower than any independent grocery or department stores.
Everywhere they set up shop, they undercut local businesses, driving them into decline and dissolution. Recently the company has expanded into the hypermarket business, developing stores that contain not only the stock of a full discount department store but also a full grocery store, including produce and a delicatessen. The company has expanded into the international market, with subsidiaries in Mexico MexMart and Japan Akiyama.
In comparison to its competitors, MaxMart is still quite small but growing rapidly. The expert leadership of the Baron assists it in manipulating its customer base and drawing consumers from the other larger companies.
It promises to grow even more rapidly in years to come. There is no question that it tends to drive smaller establishments out of business, often becoming a central hub both for employment and consump- 22 Night Horrors: Grim Fears tion by the local populace.
Unlike its competitors, which tend to focus their attention on middle-class suburban neighborhoods, MaxMart given its supernaturally bolstered bottom line tends to target the lower class, establishing locations in decaying urban neighborhoods. The location attracts local jobseekers and consumers alike, and when other businesses falter, the two become one and the same. The result is an economy in which MaxMart is providing money to the neighborhood, which is ultimately coming back to it.
The culture of the neighborhoods is curiously pro-MaxMart, however, and initiatives have been put in place to guide the rising youth into service of the corporation at a young age. MaxMart is currently considering initiatives that would allow it to provide other services to customers, including providing gasoline, dental care and video rental.
Attempts to enter the banking market have been repeatedly rebuffed by federal banking regulatory agencies. Fairweather always seems thrilled to have had the opportunity to speak with an individual, even if the visitor did nothing but threaten and bluster. His movements are slow and graceful, carefully measured and utterly confident.
Fairweather is never rushed. In any given situation, he controls the rate of conversation subtly by slowly answering questions in a calm, controlled manner. Fairweather remains polite to allies and enemies alike.
The Baron Fairweather is strikingly handsome. His dark, lustrous hair is always carefully styled, and his bronzed skin envelops chiseled features and a taut musculature. His teeth are almost shockingly white, though his eyeteeth are slightly more pronounced than usual, granting him a hungry, predatory appearance.
He dresses exclusively in expensive suits, often with some small tells to his true nature, such as alligator-skin shoes or a tie tack that depicts a dragon or flame. His skin is flawless in appearance, if a bit too smooth to the touch. Fairweather always accents his appearance with bits of gold, whether a gold band on his finger, a gold earring or a simple pair of gold cufflinks.
His lair, a high-rise apartment in a major metropolitan area, is similarly though less tastefully appointed. Every facet of each piece of furniture or decor is gilded with gold or precious jewelry.
The beautiful women he entices to join him at social affairs are mere jewels themselves, draped in layers of clothing, necklaces, rings and other finery. Under the Mask, Fairweather is visibly a dangerous thing to cross. His skin becomes visible for its true nature, a hide of tiny scales of deep bronze. He fights with a long dagger, as well as his elongated fangs and claws.
Fairweather was created as a creature of pure craving, and every aspect of his true form emphasizes this. His claws are designed for grasping prey as his fangs were crafted to rend flesh from bone.
His eyes smolder with the intense hunger of flame, and a corona of fire occasionally envelops him. Those few who have harmed him significantly have reported that he is capable of manifesting as a pillar of flame or a leaping, diving serpent of fire. Fairweather tends to avoid conflict. If he can offer someone something that will convince her to leave him be, he does so.
Unless the client has the forethought to entangle Fairweather in a pledge, however, he uses the time he garners through his promises to learn more about his enemies and arrange for their destruction in a manner that does not implicate himself. Secrets Baron Fairweather desperately covets the success of the mortal-founded corporations that serve as his competition. He loathes that the lesser beings that live such fleeting lives came to the concept before he did, and that it took him so long to recognize its potential.
He has not forgiven himself for being late off the starting line, and is sure that had he seen the value of bigbox business earlier, he would already dominate the market, possibly even the world. He has made overtures to the larger corporations before and likely will again, but the older companies continue to rebuff him, to his confusion and consternation.
He has become convinced that the other corporations are controlled by entities that know his true nature, possibly even other Others. He would give almost anything to insert himself into one of the more successful businesses or, failing that, learn the reason why he has been so often snubbed. Meanwhile, Baron Fairweather treads a fine line, keeping secret his interest in and involvement with other companies from his closest allies among the leadership of MaxMart. The Wyrd plagues the old Other with several demands for his continued youth and power.
He keeps these frailties closely guarded secrets. Fairweather must spend a Willpower point each turn to remain in physical contact with ice or to sleep for an evening without some item of gold under his pillow. Contact with spoiled milk causes Fairweather intense pain and inflicts one health level of bashing damage each turn.
Finally, Fairweather cannot refuse a gift offered freely, and must retain any such gift for an entire day. If someone were to uncover this plot, Fairweather would spare no expense or effort in buying the character off or, failing that, hunting the offending creature down and destroying it.
People always going back there, like some kind of addiction. There are no compulsions or substances, supernatural or otherwise, at work in the willingness of MaxMart customers to return to the store. Unless, of course, the Storyteller wants there to be. Something like a discount and no questions asked for weapons, so long as the Summer King stays out of his business.
The Summer Court to have access to a fucking arsenal with no paper trail. He even fulfills the deals he makes, at least until he finds a way to solve the problem posed by a blustering interloper in a more permanent fashion.
I swear, I always knew that guy gave me the creeps, but even Rotting Kev stays the hell away from the leeches. Fairweather does a lot of traveling, given his nature, and tries to keep much of it sub rosa. On the other hand, Fairweather has a great deal in common with the vampires, and they tend to find him urbane and genteel, so it is not unlikely that he has made deals with a few of them on an individual level.
He has no wholesale connections to any vampire government, however. Even his agreements with individual vampires tend to be short-lived; they find his fiery persona somewhat discomforting after prolonged exposure. Bashing damage does not affect Fairweather at all, unless delivered by a cold iron bludgeon. Cold-forged iron causes aggravated damage, should someone be skilled enough to strike him with such.
For him, passion is a virtue, and denial of such an affectation. His supernaturally amoral nature is reflected in an inverted ability to regain Willpower. Fairweather regains one Willpower point from indulging his Virtue, but refreshes his whole pool when satiating his Vice.
This preternatural beauty is more than skin deep, however, and infuses his every movement and turn of phrase. Fairweather may spend Glamour points to increase dice pools that include Presence, Manipulation and Persuasion.
Each point spent increases the pool by a single die. The effect lasts for one roll. Brawl attacks made by Fairweather inflict lethal damage and add a single die to the pool already factored in above. He typically uses this power to inspire fear in his enemies or greed in his allies or others he is doing business with.
If the roll is successful, the targets are consumed by the emotion for the remainder of the scene, acting in ways that are driven by the emotion rather than rational thought. Details on the powers can be found on p. He cannot be harmed by fire, can sheath himself in it inflicts 4 lethal upon those who come into contact with him and provides one point of Armor against attacks , can summon it forth and control it, and can transform himself into a dragon of flame.
He can speak with all reptiles, call them to him, gain their keen senses typically a sense of smell from a forked tongue and transform into any natural reptile. Fairweather can change his shape, giving himself utterly different features, changing his height and weight and even transforming into inanimate objects. Assume that each ability costs 2 Glamour to activate while the strongest powers also require the expenditure of a Willpower point. Aside from tying said individuals to him, this has the added effect of making parties on both ends of the pledges more powerful, granting increased abilities, influence and wealth on all sides.
Assume that Fairweather has an additional eight dots in Social Merits mostly Allies and Contacts and that the members of the board of directors of MaxMart are surprisingly potent adversaries though none has supernatural powers, at least not as a result of a pledge with Fairweather. The details of the pledges are left to the Storyteller, but may include things like leaving a carrot on the back porch each evening or never harming a lizard.
This may be a neighborhood they live in or claim as their personal domain, but it may instead be the neighborhood of an ally, retainer or family member. If the characters live in a large city, other MaxMarts may well exist and Fairweather may be known to them by reputation, if not personally.
How do the characters react to the developing business, and what are the consequences of ignoring it? The rival is using his influence in the area to block the invader, so Fairweather needs several socially and politically astute individuals to help smooth things out and ease him into the neighborhood. What does Fairweather offer the characters? Can he be trusted to keep up his end of the bargain? Can the characters help him without drawing the attention of their rival?
And what are the consequences of success? Fairweather enlists the aid of the characters without revealing any hint of his true nature, if possible to infiltrate the company and unearth its dirty secrets. How do the characters infiltrate the company? What practices do they uncover? What dark supernatural secrets are hidden within its corporate offices? What do they do with the information? When they inevitably realize the danger Fairweather has put them in, how do they react?
Can he offer them enough to turn aside their anger? Or do they ally with him against the threat posed by the company they infiltrated? Mommy, can I keep it? Background The legend of the bunyip originated from the stories told by the Aborigines of Australia. According to Aboriginal myth, the bunyip was a spirit of the water from the Dreamtime that was hostile to humans, attacking anyone who ignored its bellowing warnings and approached its watery home.
Along with a few other spirits, the bunyip survived the end of the Dreamtime and continued to haunt the lakes and rivers of Australia, eating unwary fishermen and sometimes crawling from the waters at night to hunt women and children.
Like most legends, the story of the bunyip contains elements of truth that have been buried under centuries of superstition. Long, long ago, the creatures identified as bunyips escaped from the Hedge and adapted to life outside the Thorns. At first, bunyips hid from mankind in swamps and lakes, using their fae magic to frighten off humans and larger predators.
Over time, the bunyips learned to draw power from the terror they caused, drinking in the Glamour formed by the human emotion of fear. As civilizations advanced and became less fearful of loud noises, bunyips found the imaginations of children were the most fertile ground for sowing and reaping fear. Leaving the waters of their lakes and rivers behind, the bunyips adapted once more and learned how to take on shapes that delight children, enticing kids to come close enough for the bunyips to attack.
Bunyips also learned to use the Glamour they drained from children to open gates in the Hedge, and in this way they spread throughout the world. Proof that Darwinism has some effect even on unnatural creatures, the bunyips that waited until children were asleep to feast on their fears were the most successful and least likely to be discovered and killed.
The surviving bunyips perfected their tactics of luring children to take them home, then slowly draining the child of Glamour. Of course, the nightly harvesting of fear came with a steep price for the children. Perhaps because the imagination of a child is much more part and parcel of the whole being than is the case in adults, or simply because young bodies and minds are more susceptible to fae magic, a child who fell into the clutches of a bunyip rarely survived longer than a month. Bunyips drained the life energies of children along with Glamour, and soon enough, the creatures began to hunger for both.
Description One of the powers of the bunyip is to take on whatever form it determines a child will find most appealing. The lovable mongrel pup with one floppy ear, a kitten that totters unsteadily on short, stubby legs or a hamster that stuffs its cheeks full of food are all popular forms. Like changelings, the bunyip has a Mask that hides its less-than-cuddly true form from both view and touch.
Viewed in its rarely seen true form, the modern bunyip is about the size of a large housecat. It has a doglike face with protruding fangs and is covered in shaggy brown or black fur. Its four legs end in three-toed feet, which are clawed and resemble the feet of a lizard. Though rarely called upon to use it these days, the bunyip is capable of producing bawling yaps, almost like that of a seal, which are loud enough to startle and scare off potential predators.
The traditional environment of the bunyip is water and the creatures still have an affinity for swimming. Bunyips require food and water just like other animals and have a preference for raw meat. Unlike natural animals, bunyips can live for extended periods without sustenance, especially when they are feeding on the Glamour and life-force of a child.
Bunyips feed on the Glamour created by fear in the same way as changelings, but, unlike changelings, bunyips can only feed on children. Once a bunyip has been taken home by a child, the creature waits until the child is asleep, then uses its fae magic to shape the dreams of the child into nightmares. Bunyips may only harvest Glamour from the same child once a night.
The side effect of this process causes damage to the body of a child, slowly draining living energies. For each point of Glamour harvested, the child suffers one point of bashing damage. When the damage wraps into actual lethal damage, the child begins to manifest flulike symptoms of a high fever, runny nose and nausea.
It is at this point that most bunyips use their store of Glamour to open a gate into the Hedge and disappear from the home. In the days following their initial escape from the Hedge, bunyips were the size of a wolf and fought tooth and nail to defend their territory. The creatures were predators that hunted the swamps, rivers and lakes for fresh meat. Nowadays, bunyips will flee from a fight if able, opening gates into the Hedge that are too small for most opponents to follow them through.
If backed into a corner, the bunyip shows its true form and attacks with its poisoned fangs, hoping to frighten an aggressor with its loud bellows. If at any point during a fight, a bunyip sees an opportunity to escape, it will take it rather than continuing to struggle. If no escape is possible, bunyips will fight to the death. Bunyips are solitary predators that mark their territory to warn off others of their kind.
It seems likely that bunyips reproduce in some manner, though no one has ever seen them at it or claimed to have seen a bunyip cub. The current theory among changelings or those humans who dabble in occult knowledge is that bunyips mate in the Hedge, burrowing in among the thorns. After birth, the cubs are cared for by one parent until they are fully grown, and then all the creatures abandon the den. Bunyips seem to live for between 10 and 15 years, and if they meet with a natural death, can apparently sense their coming mortality and make their way back to the Hedge to die.
One popular changeling myth about bunyips is that somewhere in the Hedge is a bunyip graveyard, filled with the bones of every bunyip that returned to the Hedge to die. Secrets Bunyips have developed a self-defense mechanism that allows them to sense the presence of other fae creatures, including changelings.
Unlike mortals, changelings can see through whatever Mask the creatures throw up and identify a bunyip for the fae beast it really is. At least as intelligent as wolves, bunyips attempt to avoid places where changelings gather and will not enter any building in which they sense a changeling.
Many fae creatures have a weakness or a prohibition against certain types of activity that can be exploited to kill them or drive them off. For the True Fae, this weakness is cold-forged iron, against which they have no defense.
Bunyips have two frailties as a result of their fae natures; one can ward them from a home, the other can be used to fight them. No one really understands why these things affect bunyips, only that they do.
A bunyip can only enter houses or any dwelling place through a doorway or through a window that has been left open for at least a week. Hanging a horseshoe, cross or any other protective symbol over a doorway or window bars a bunyip from entering through that portal. Attempting to force a bunyip through a portal that is protected causes physical harm to the creature and it will fight to escape the torment. For each turn the bunyip is forced into the threshold of a protected entrance even through force, a bunyip is still barred from entry , the bunyip takes one point of lethal damage, which appears in the form of scorch marks on their furry hides.
Their animal instincts recognize the presence of a predator. In the wild, the poisonous bite and loud cries of a bunyip are usually enough to defend against would-be predators or other aggressive animals. Family pets are a different story. Most older books are in scanned image format because original digital layout files never existed or were no longer available from the publisher.
The result of this OCR process is placed invisibly behind the picture of each scanned page, to allow for text searching. However, any text in a given book set on a graphical background or in handwritten fonts would most likely not be picked up by the OCR software, and is therefore not searchable. Also, a few larger books may be resampled to fit into the system, and may not have this searchable text background. For printed books, we have performed high-resolution scans of an original hardcopy of the book.
We essentially digitally re-master the book. Unfortunately, the resulting quality of these books is not as high. It's the problem of making a copy of a copy. We mark clearly which print titles come from scanned image books so that you can make an informed purchase decision about the quality of what you will receive.
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