Sluagh (CTD)

Called the underfolk by many, the sluagh (SLOO-ah) are often pariahs even among other fae. Though rumors persist of underground catacombs and mazelike lairs, many sluagh prefer crumbling Victorian mansions to dank sewers. Places dark and forgotten, often with a mushroom garden, attract them. Those who intrude into their inner sanctums often leave with nightmares. Just as they value secrets and mysteries, sluagh treasure their privacy, and do a great deal to foster reputations that discourage visitors.

A Night's Worth of History
As long as the sluagh have known enough to name themselves, they have walked with the dead and in the shadows. This is as much a part of what they are as who they are. Sluagh and death, sluagh and fear, sluagh and pain... they are all bound up in a knot of years and darkness. Telling their history, therefore, is in some sense an obituary. No other kith is so obsesses with the truth of their origins. They search for the moment and place where the first sluagh raised her head to the star-filled night and said "I am." you see, they do not lie to themselves about what they are or where they come from. They have no comforting myths of glories or sunny prophecies of a bright future. They instead want to know the past and what it means for the future. While they use illusion to frighten others, they have few of their own.

Primal Days
The sluagh were born from fear; on this they all agree. Every time a grandmother gave a name to the creaking of a floorboard or the groaning of stone, a sluagh was born. In the primal forests of Eastern Europe, the shadows and the noises came alive when they're given names and they knew their purpose. They were the terrors of the night and that was all they knew. Born from what causes fear, they knew they were to continue more of the same. Tappers on windows continued their scuttling; creatures of night noise made the same. In this way their numbers grew rapidly. As they made more noises and shadows, there were more noises and shadows to name, and the more named, the more that wakened. As their stories grew more complex, they too became more complicated. Their minds grew clearer, their purposes sharper, their cunning deeper. Tales assigned servants to them and creatures like the vodyanoi or Awd Goggie emerged to fill the roles.

The one thing the sluagh didn't know, though, was why, and this gnawed at them. Why must they inspire fear night after night? Why did they receive more pleasure from a scream than a smile? Why was silent slithering more enjoyable that crafting art or plying more reputable trades?

Recognizance
The instant of self-realization, when it finally came, was the decisive moment for the sluagh, even more than their initial awakening. The moment they realized that they were to put fear to a good use created the kith as it is known today. They were no longer a collection of ragtag spirits haunting specific areas or houses. Instead they had purpose. Fear became their tool, not their master; a means to end, not an end. For countless centuries, sluagh researchers have worked to pin down the exact moment of this revelation came to every sluagh in existence simultaneously. None have succeeded. When it happened, though, they all knew they were not alone.

And so they came, slithering and gibbering, to a great stone ring they all somehow knew how to find. Deep in the Russian forest, far from human habitation, these children of nightmare met their brothers and sisters for the first time. All night long, they danced around the twisted gray pillars that had called to them, indulging for the first time in the sort of bacchanalia the other kith regularly subscribe to them.

At the height of their festivities, they received a visitor. Nameless and crowned with an antlered casque, he rode out of the blackest part of the wood on a white stallion. The horse's eyes and ears were red as blood and its hooves seemed to touch the earth only lightly. The sluagh fell silent, sensing the importance of his arrival.

He spoke to the assembly briefly, bestowing a blessing and extracting a promise. The blessing none of among the sluagh will relate; the promise was that no child ever be truly harmed in their frightenings. The sluagh, one and all, agreed to the compact. The knight, in turn, agreed that the promise should be kept for a number of years equal to 13 times 13 generations. Then, business concluded, the knight of the Tuatha de Danaan rode back into the forest. The festivities continued through the night and at sunrise, the sluagh dispersed almost magically to their homes across the face of Eastern Europe.

No one has ever found the stone ring again, which isn't surprising. It was not a part of the world and was given to the sluagh for that night only. Many still so not realize this and search fruitlessly. Other, wiser sorts merely treasure the legend.

The Golden Age
With the discovery of their purpose, the sluagh became a much more formal kith. They arrogated the role of the last guardians of virtue, choosing to punish evildoers (especially children) with fear. Sluagh justice was ruled to be better than no justice at all and so a clandestine alliance between parents and sluagh was struck.

Simply put, the sluagh became secret allies to parents all over Eastern Europe in the never-ending war to make children behave. If a child would grow to unruly or disrespectful or vicious, the parents could summon the sluagh to enforce the lesson they could not. By signs and portents, the sluagh let it be known what offerings pleased them in attracting their attention and before long the cracked bowl of sour milk and the loaf of bread (burned, moldy, or baked with inedible like insects) became staples for harried parents across the continent.

The sluagh were more than happy to enter into this relationship and receiving parental sanction motivated them to greater heights of creativity. They soon became artists of fear, with legendary fright-spinners striving to outdo each other in achieving epic terrors. They also began moving westward at this time, scuttling down Finland and along the shores of the Baltic into the lands of the trolls, who at first did not know what to make of them. Initial meetings were cool, to put it mildly, and relations never improved that much. Despite that, however, it was the trolls who inducted the new arrivals into the Seelie Court despite their disdain for sluagh techniques.

Back in the forests of the East, though, disaster brewed. One glorious Highsummer Night, the worst happened. For unaccountable reasons, the sluagh lost their voices. There are legends among them about what happened that night, but they are always kept away from outsiders. Some secrets are for the sluagh alone. (For more information, see the article Slaying of the Voices)

Their sudden inability to talk above a whisper, however, confirmed certain scurrilous rumors about the kith in the minds of many trolls and other fae. One by one, the other kith turned their backs on the crawlers. Still, the sluagh kept to their purpose. Fear had been their friend for long years before they met the other fae and it would be their friend still.

So they continued to spread, boldly ignoring the contempt of the others. From Scandinavia they reached England, tucked in the hidden dark places of longboats and knorrs. Through German forests and mountains, up the Danube and across Northern Europe they slithered. Soon the children of the entire continent slept less soundly, at least those who had something to fear, anyway.

Abbey Lubbers & Buttery Spirits
During the Middle Ages, certain sluagh in northern Europe, and especially in the British Isles, took it upon themselves to punish a particular subject of wrongdoers. Specifically corrupt innkeepers and monks. Human histories from the time are full of tales of monks growing fat on worldly pleasures and innkeepers who put sand in horses' feedbags and water in the wine. Fae historians speculate, therefore, that the two species of humans were explicitly breaking promises by this sort of behavior and were excellent targets for vengeful sluagh. The fact that the falsifiers were adults, and so could not claim protection of the secret sluagh oath, helped make them easy targets. Thus was created the order of sluagh called by mortals the Abbey Lubbers, the Buttery Spirits, as well as other, less complimentary names.

Two major repercussions followed the advent of these sluagh. First, it became popular belief that the sluagh actually devoured the cheap foodstuffs provided by dishonest tavern hosts and soon enough this perception became reality. While before the bowl of sour milk and inedible bread had been a token offering that could be taken or left, the choice began to disappear. Even the sluagh who had feasted on the best food of the monasteries found themselves increasingly drawn to watered wine, stake bread, and sour milk until it was all the sluagh could subsist on.

The second change of this period was perhaps more devastating. For the first time, sluagh began defection gin large numbers to the Unseelie Court. The apparently ineffective campaign to frighten others into proper behavior wore down many a crawler's patience, particularly when corruption was so evident to the bottom of society. It may have been the greed and sensuality of the monasteries that finally pushed many sluagh over the edge. Efforts to frighten wrongdoers into reform transformed into punitive expeditions against the worse culprits. The reputation of the sluagh among mortals began, correspondingly, to darken at this time and matters have continued apace ever since.

For more information on these societies, see the article Abbey Lubbers.

Killmoulis
About the same times as the Abbey Lubbers and Buttery Spirits were forming, a subtype of sluagh also appeared. For more on these fae, see the article Killmoulis.

Dwelling Among the Dead
Sluagh have had a long association with ghosts; their very name links them to the Restless Dead. Alone among the Kithain, sluagh are able to see and converse with spirits of the dead. This isn't a recent development either. They have been talking to the dead as long as they can remember. The first recorded conversations between sluagh and ghosts date back to the days before the sluagh encountered even the trolls and still restricted themselves to muttering and slithering in the forests of Eastern Europe. Supposedly Aleksei of the 13 Toes was the first sluagh to actually stop ignoring the dead as harbingers of bad luck and talk to one. He recognized in these ghosts the tremendous potential for bringing new heights to fear and chose a respectable-looking ghost with whom to open line off communication.

The empire of Stygia had not yet reached out its iron claws to "organize" this region of the Shadowlands and so the wraiths of the Slavic lands were disorganized, chaotic, and more or less friendless. Happy to cling to any structure at all, the native ghosts were glad to talk with these strange, pale creatures who seemed half-dead themselves. The rough organization this alliance generated also enabled these wraiths to meet the advancing Stygian armies on reasonably equal terms; no war of conquest among the dead was fought in the lands of the sluagh. While the ghosts with whom the sluagh originally dealt kept their mouths shut regarding their relationship with the fae (reliable Skinland allies was a solid advantage), word spread of fae that could see and speak to the dead spread from ghost to ghost. Communication with the sluagh was never officially sanctioned by Stygia but the fact that certain wraiths and crawlers were speaking together remained an open secret. Now wherever the sluagh spread, they found talkative ghosts waiting for them. The problem was particularly bad in the British Isles, especially in Ireland and Scotland. In some cases, sluagh were driven out of freeholds in these countries because of all the wraiths looking to speak to them.

Some sluagh, though, managed to gain some benefits from this presence of friendly ghosts. As the lines between wraiths and faeries were already somewhat blurred in Celtic Europe, sluagh deliberately obscured them even further until that line between sluagh and wraith was essentially nonexistent in mortal minds so that ghosts were thought to dwell in local síds and as mortals liked interfering with the dead even less than the fae, this kept human distractions to the sluagh at a minimum. Hiding behind a graveyard mask, the sluagh distanced themselves from human culture while still remaining close enough to affect it. Most faerie mounds associated with the dead were close to towns and these places, the sluagh took for their own so they could still confound those who needed a good scare.

As the years passed and the Shroud thickened and laws of the dead forbade commerce between wraith and sluagh, relations grew strained. What had been formalized became informal and sporadic; only the odd ghost talking to the odd sluagh.

Dealing With Devourers
The other kith with strong ties to the northern part of England is the redcaps and there has never been any love lost between the two. As the redcaps kept mainly to their ruined peel towers and the sluagh to their síds, friction between the two was minimal. Conflicts did erupt, however, when the frighteners were blamed for some redcap atrocity. Having their subtle work confused with redcap crudity insulted the sluagh to no end while the redcaps, in turn, found sluagh tactics incomprehensible and the sluagh themselves disturbingly devious.

Adjudications of quarrels between the two were surprisingly spotty in their nature and quality and often developed into free-for-alls. Many legends of "war beneath the mound" that mortals told on hearing sounds of fighting coming from the síds were really evidence of sluagh and redcaps settling their differences the old-fashioned way. Unsurprisingly, redcaps liked this approach while the sluagh preferred less direct conflict.

Interregnum Days
The closing of the gates to Arcadia was both a good and bad thing for the Sluagh. While they had as difficult time as any other kith in adjusting to changeling existence, they had a couple other complications to deal with. With the sidhe gone it meant that the courts' institutionalized discrimination against the sluagh was a thing of the past but the new era ushered in a more chaotic type of discrimination form the other kith. Without the sidhe present to control their worst impulses of some of the others, the sluagh became convenient targets for the resentment, fear, and panic that set in after the Shattering.

The inevitable happened. Other fae, looking for scapegoats, settled on the crawlers. As few sluagh were foolish enough to reveal themselves to the scorn of the other fae, the few who did received more than their fair share of abuse. They suffered insults, slings, arrows, bottles, stones, and rotten vegetables hurled at them by their so-called kin, and that on top of all the Glamour-spawned malice they could stand. Sometimes, the violence would get out of hand and an unfortunate sluagh could find themself the recipient of physical assault or worse.

Eventually, equilibrium was reached. The angry mobs didn't notice any improvement in their status even after hanging every sluagh they could get their hands on (an admittedly difficult proposition) and found other amusements and arrangements. Their was a sudden power vacuum at the top of fae society and the scramble to fill it became more pressing than assigning blame for past catastrophes.

The crawlers wisely stayed out of the other kith's maneuverings, at least publicly. As changeling society settled into a bizarre cross between feudalism and socialism, former petty nobles and commoners adopted into noble houses struggled to keep their places atop a much-reduced pile. A few freeholds carried on as pale shadows of their glory days, complete with courts overseen by knights and baronets. In other places, strength was all that mattered as motleys settled fonts of Glamour and evolved their own local governments.

And the sluagh? They got out of the way, instead funneling clandestine support to the few leaders the felt deserved assistance. It wasn't until long after the new politics settled in (and the memories of the pogroms had grown cold) that the crawlers felt comfortable re-entering into fae society.

Reasons & Lies
Rumors that the slough had in fact been responsible for the Shattering have persisted for centuries. Modern fae apologists for the predecessors have pooh-poohed these claims as invented justification for the abuse heaped on the sluagh during the early days of the Interregnum. In the depths of there cups, however, drunken trolls still occasionally mutter about how it's all the damned sluagh's fault.

Once started, such a story never goes away. The sluagh have learned this lessen better than anyone.

Agrarian Reform
Country sluagh grew more and more few as the mills sprang up and the railways brought every little town days closer to the cities. Most rural crawlers were virulently anti-technology and not a few could be found among the followers of the mythical Ned Ludd. Their fear, one which would soon be realized, was that industrialization would soon turn laborers from artisans to automatons and drain the world of even more Glamour.

While the possible benefits of technology, notably improved medical treatments, were lauded by the sluagh, most refused to trust that these advances would be used for good rather than for the sake of profit. Time, sadly, proved them right.

Two Tales of Cities: the 19th Century
For the sluagh, it was the best of times and the worst of times. It was a time of the great migrations to the cities across the Atlantic but also the time of sweatshops and huddled masses in the tenements. The era of Industrial Revolution, Dickens, and the explosion of cities had a profound effect on the fae as a whole but the sluagh bore the brunt of the changes.

Cities are havens for secrets of all sorts; filled with hiding places and unexpected treasures. It's hardly surprising, then, that as soon as the sluagh woke up and started skulking about, the flowed into the cities in (relative) droves. Of course, cities of the Middle Ages and colonial period were relatively puny things with rigid population ceilings enforced by the laws of economics and sanitation. Rome and Paris, massive compared to other hamlets, really didn't house that many people or that may hiding places.

Once the Industrial Revolution went into high gear, though, the equation of cities changed. Now there was work for millions in the factories and mills and those millions needed places to live. More, they needed places close to where they worked. As the factories tended to grow near shipping centers (like major cities) those cites grew exponentially. Land, people, and money: cities swallowed them all.

At the same time the cities were metamorphosing, railway men were pinning down the land with wooden ties and iron rails. Lay lines were irreparably damaged by this cavalier treatment and, slowly but surely, the living countryside found itself vivisected by time-tables and steel.

The cities didn't take care of what they swallowed, either. New facotries belched smoke and vomited filth day and night. Tenements and company "villages" were overcrowded, filthy, and rat-infested. And the inhabitants? They were underpaid, overworked, desperate, and poor.

In these horrid conditions, dreams died, killed by smokestack fumes, the cancer of poverty reducing visions of glory to hopes of having enough for another meal, foul water and insufficient food, and despair at a dead-end existence that seemed to stretch out far into the future.

Mines & Sweatshops
The cities swallowed children as well. The garment and mining business were the particular villains here. Small hands meant delicate stitchery on fancy ladies' garments that owners could charge more for. Small bodies could squeeze into smaller tunnels, saving owners from blasting full-sized shafts. Most of all, small hands took home smaller checks and small voices raised in protest were easily drowned out. If a child's hand was mangled in a machine or a few coughed their lungs into bloody scraps in the mines, well, there were always more children desperate for work to help put food on the family table.

Under such conditions, generations of children were brutally stripped of their wonder. They slept dreamlessly when finally allowed to totter home from the factories. Many dreams left the world at this time because those who would have dreamed them were otherwise occupied.

Many sluagh, particularly in England, the United States of America, and the more industrialized German states simply gave up at this point, surrendering sadly to Banality. As they saw it, there role as punishers of bad children had been usurped. What terror could they present worse than what so many children were already facing every day?

Other less defeatist sluagh changed tactics. They focused on the children of the rich; their logic being that if these youngsters benefited from the torment of other children, the deserved some torment as well. This approach got out of hand somewhere along the way, though, and the intent of the punishing sluagh changed. Where they originally intended to use the children of the rich as abject lessons and impress upon the rich the horrors of what their factories were doing, the lessons devolved into simple missions of punishment, guilt or innocence be damned. It's little wonder, then, that so many of the heirs of the robber barons and manufacturing tycoons were mad; even centuries removed from their golden age, the sluagh had forgotten none of their tricks.

The Sluagh Everyone Knows

 * Aleksei of the 13 Toes


 * Amie Randall


 * Todd the Gray


 * Eleanor Dell


 * Old Boris


 * Nix


 * Anna the Monster Maker

Chimerical Friends

 * Awd Goggie