Pooka (CTD)

Pranksters and comedians, Pooka are well-loved by kithain and mortal alike, but few who know them will ever trust them completely: they are incapable of telling the whole truth. Each is able to take on the form of a specific animal, most often one with a tie to human stories of mischief.

Evolution
Pooka face the Winter of their existence. As Banality sends chills to their hearts and stiffens their creativity, they struggle to survive. Some frantically hoard the Glamour that feeds them and which will carry them through the Long Winter. Others prepare their burrows for hibernation, in the hopes that when Spring returns, they will awaken and rise again to continue the cycle.

Some will die. Will any endure? The Pleistocene Ice Age destroyed innumerable fantastic creatures. Many mortal historians blame this cold, dark time for the extinction of some of the most glorious species to ever walk the earth. This time, the advancing glaciers threaten more insidiously and malevolently. Will anyone survive?

Origins
It is important to remember that the history of the pooka we know comes from them and their tales. One should take everything you read in this section with a grain of salt... if not the whole saltcellar.

Pooka02.pngnt History
As early as the Paleolithic Age humans passed down lore to their young and reasoned out explanations for the world’s mysteries. They also produced the first art and the first dreams. Deep in caves, hidden and protected, they painted animals, hoping to gain some magical control over the beasts they hunted. Their hopes and dreams produced the pooka.

In the foothills of the Pyrénées, in a cavern called Les Trois Frères, a cave painting shows a controversial figure. This figure, a man dressed in the skin of a horse or a wolf with the antlers of a deer, is said to be a prehistoric shaman. Changeling scholars, on the other hand, say this is the first record of a pooka among human society. They state that the painting, called “The Sorcerer,” is in actuality a representation of a pooka, shown as half-man and half-stag.

By the Neolithic Age, people developed agriculture and domesticated certain animals. Agricultural surplus, using ox-drawn plows, allowed humans the leisure time to dream and to aspire to more. It also freed members of the community to become artists and craftsmen instead of hunters and farmers. Many of these early civilizations, like their ancestors, developed myths and stories of magic. Most of these myths featured animals. The pooka claim to have sprung from those myths, though they were not like the pooka we know today. Vibrant, primitive creatures, they instilled fear and awe in humans. Their elusive nature makes it very difficult today to know their actual characteristics. No pooka known has ever retained remembrance of those days and pooka are notoriously bad about keeping records or journals. Sumerian mythology, however, depicts animals as demons and monsters to be conquered; Pooka had not yet evolved to a place of reverence among these ancient peoples. Their predatory natures made them humankind’s enemy. It wasn’t until much later that their dreams began to shift into something more positive and less primitive.

Egypt
One of the most famous pooka ever to walk among humankind was Horus. A falcon pooka, Horus lived among the ancient Egyptians serving as advisor to their greatest king, Osiris. Prior to Horus’ emergence, pooka had maintained a combative relationship with mortals. Horus introduced a revolutionary concept to pooka: that of working with humans to train them to nurture their dreams and respect all the creatures of the world. Other pooka joined Horus, forming a movement that not only supported him in his attempt to mold human civilization, but took his philosophy a bit farther. They guided Egyptian religion; instilling a reverence of animals, teaching of an afterlife in which animal-gods judged the dead and reminding people of the careful balance of nature. Making public appearances, like ancient televangelists, they preached a morality of dreams and respect to the people living along the Nile. They staged rituals and had artists depict them as judging souls. Even at that time, pooka were skilled manipulators.

One of those recruited to the cause was a jackal pooka named Anubis. Although Egyptians originally killed jackals for disturbing graves, they eventually named him the protector of the dead. Because the Egyptians feared and revered Anubis, they treated all jackals with greater respect and ceased killing them for fear of angering him. He, along with Horus and Thoth (an ibis pooka called the god of wisdom and learning), publicly weighed the hearts of the deceased. Natural showmen, they dressed in godly attire and made a dramatic spectacle of the ritual. Others pooka-gods include Apis the bull-god, Khnum the ram god, Hathor the cow goddess and Sebek the crocodile god.

Their religion was tested when a pharaoh named Akhenaten came to power. Akhenaten neither liked nor trusted the pooka-gods who had guided prior pharaohs with a dominating hand. He and his queen, Nefertiti, rebelled against the pooka, spreading a monotheistic philosophy that proclaimed all other Egyptian gods and goddesses to be frauds and forbade their worship. Fortunately, Akhenaten made mistakes. His reigned only 17 years, but during that time, he had himself portrayed by artists as a mortal man rather than a god. This hurt, rather than helped, his reputation, bringing him down off the royal pedestal to the level of the people. His doctrine of monotheism never quite impressed the Egyptians either, who saw his religion as a threat to their own chances for immortality. When he died, his religion died with him.

Akhenaten’s failure showed Horus and the other pooka-gods that their work in Egypt was complete. Their doctrines had withstood direct challenge and the people had rallied behind the old beliefs rather than rushing to embrace the new religion. Hearing reports of other areas in crisis, they decided to travel and spread their philosophies to more of the ancient world. They left Egypt and split apart, taking their preaching to any they could find. More pooka joined them and soon animal cults developed strong followings throughout the world.

Of Names & Shapes
The word “pooka” is a Gaelic corruption of the word for “changing fae” that originated in Arcadia. Originally, pooka were creatures in Arcadia, much like the unicorns and the pegasi. They inhabited the wilder areas, the forests, rivers and seas. During the Paleolithic Age, pooka underwent an evolution; as mortal dreamers began to assign them reasoning capabilities as well as the ability to dream for themselves, they acquired the ability to shapechange. Many humans depicted their gods as half-human, half-animal. Whole religions developed around animal-gods. The Celts perceived them as dangerous tricksters whom it was best to propitiate and avoid.

Australia
The native people of Australia have a creation myth which claims that, at one time, the earth was a bare plane without features. During the “Eternal Dreamtime,” many supernatural beings awoke and rose from their slumber beneath the surface of this plane. These beings had animal forms, but could also change into humans at will. From them came all life; each animal and plant, each human descended from one of these godlike shapechangers. Pooka? Perhaps. They certainly claim they were the dream-progenitors of the aboriginal natives.

The Sundering
Pooka, it would seem, traveled nearly as much as the eshu, spreading their own particular brand of dream-philosophy. Hints appear in the mythologies of India, China, Africa and North America, though whether these were pooka manifestations or other sorts of animal companion spirits remains a mystery (at least to everyone but the pooka). No culture went untouched by their presence, just as no culture could avoid the influence of animals upon their development. Pooka have always worked at odds against the advancement of human civilization, viewing the cities and farmlands as an encroachment upon their territory. Throughout the ages, pooka have responded to this in a variety of ways, evolving in a one-step-forward, two-step-back process from enemy to advisor to guide and finally to a complicated combination of all previous stages.

For millennia (or so they say), the pooka were gods. Then monotheistic religion and rational thought began to supersede their influence. Science replaced myth in explaining the world’s mysteries. Organized religion swallowed up the animal cults and replaced ancient beliefs with more humanocentric dogma. As early Christianity spread its doctrines that spoke of a god that resembled man and denounced the worship of idols, they changed the pooka image from that of a benevolent and natural deity into that of a demon whose only goal was the temptation and undermining of mortals. Pooka had to go underground.

Christianity crusaded north and east, gradually pushing out the pooka and sending them fleeing with their tails between their legs. Pooka continued to protest the crush of civilization’s footprint upon nature’s domain, but more quietly and while looking over their shoulders. Some battled in Europe and the East, too stubborn to retreat even when defeat seemed inevitable. Others fled to the wilder parts of the world, away from the stone cages, both physical and mental, that humankind was building.

The Americas
Like many other fae, the pooka fled from the Banality released by the Sundering. Long before the Europeans discovered the land to the west, pooka traveled to Tir-na-N'og and came into contact with the native people there. Nearly every one of these ancient cultures, especially those that rose to importance, had gods that they painted or carved as a mix of human and animal. Many of these gods could transform into either purely animal or purely human form.

In the ruins of Teotihuacán, the spiritual metropolis of Mexico at its peak in the 5th century C. E., a temple bears the image of Quetzalcóatl, the Feathered Serpent. Changeling historians believe that he was a pooka. In his human form, he was tall, fair-skinned and bearded. Myths about him actually indicate that he was a prince among the people of Teotihuacán, one who kept aloof from his subjects, refused to have mirrors in his palace, and disliked human sacrifice. The myths claim he took to the sea again, traveling toward the East from which he had come, and promised he would return. Thus he birthed the myth of the tall, pale god from the eastern seas that opened the door to the Americas for the Spanish invasion a millennium later.

Both the Aztecs and Mayans believed that every human had an animal counterpart. The animal and the person were linked so strongly that whatever happened to the counterpart happened to the person as well. Thus, harming or healing the animal counterpart gave the same result to the individual. Thus the pooka were protected for a little while, but they could not hide from the rising wave of Banality that threatened to sweep across the ocean.

Disbelief and loss of respect for things of the spirit created more and more Banality in the world. Though some fae worked to keep dreams alive, they could not hold back the tide of despair caused by the Black Death. The Shattering had begun and even the far lands of the west buckled under its crushing weight.

The Shattering
The gateways to Arcadia began to snap shut and the mortal world grew more and more entrenched in reason. Pooka began to realize the futility of facing the enemy head-on. Downhearted and defeated, many pooka abandoned the fight, albeit temporarily, when Silver’s Gate, the last trod to Arcadia, closed. They acceded to the Changeling Way taken on by the fae who remained in the world.

Many others fled, burrowing deep into pockets of the Near Dreaming. Not all of them left, but a large number did. The sudden departure of a majority of pooka caused many to believe they had been lost forever. This sent ripples of worry through the changeling community and saw the birth of the first pooka conspiracy theories. During the year following the loss of Silver’s Gate, pooka offered sanctuary to their fellows. Their pack mentality kicked in and, as more and more pooka disappeared, others hurried to follow. (See Dream-Burrow)

Invasion & the Advance of "Civilization"
In the 16th century, the white man came to the Americas with his stomping boots, his enslaved horses, his superior attitude, and his religion. Some pooka arrived with them, moving from the cesspools of Europe to a new land with as many hopes and dreams as their human counterparts. Other pooka fought alongside the natives and Nunnehi, trying to slow the thundering advance of the white man. Over the next centuries, they watched in horror as native peoples were driven from their lands and imprisoned; treated like domesticated animals. They fought viciously as the invaders broke the spirits of these proud peoples.