Broadback is one of the sub-types of the Beast seeming. They are Changelings who are attuned to animals that are renowned for their endurance or stubbornness, such as camels, elephants, horses, mules, goats and the like. Their blessing is Stoic Forbearance.
Overview[]
Laborers and sometime tricksters, Broadbacks have endured much to return home from Faerie. They are a stoic kith, often willing to accept a greater burden or more dangerous challenge simply because it seems necessary. As most developed some form of herd instinct to match their shifted miens, they also get along well with most other changelings, and other Beasts in particular — with the exception of Hunterhearts, who just sometimes rub Broadbacks the wrong way. The Broadback’s ties to his animal half tend to manifest most often in the ears, in hooves where feet would be and with horns or tusks where appropriate. Many are unnaturally broad of shoulder, befitting the name, and could pass for linebackers even when covered by the Mask. They often have large hands and thick, callused fingers that reflect the heavy labor that was their Arcadian lot. A Broadback may be quite handsome, if his aspect is akin to a sacred bull or favored horse. Some still bear scars or stranger marks from where the Others’ tack and harness bit into their skin.
Durance[]
The Broadback’s name implies a beast of burden, and that’s the most common use Broadbacks were put to in Faerie. Broadbacks may have pulled obsidian plows through fields of skulls and bleeding roots, or they may have carried stone to build the latest monument to their Keeper’s vanity. Most Broadbacks were deliberately shaped for their purpose; the number that took on animalist traits from being left among Faerie animals is lesser. Those that were among animals tended to be lost in vast herds of oxen, or kept in crowded Augean stables and fed the same mash as their charges. A stolen slave might be charged with the care of a prized herd of animals, and punished when any escape by having to spend time in an animal’s skin.
Folklore[]
Just as all Beast kiths, the Broadback draws as much inspiration from animal folklore as from humanlike animal-hybrids. Storytellers typically paint beasts of burden such as oxen and horses as stoic and supportive, befitting the kith’s blessing. However, they may be sagacious as well, such as the wise horse Falada from “The Goose Girl” or mischievous as an Each-Usige. In other circumstances, they are prizes to be fought over (such as the Brown Bull of Cooley). Greek satyrs may well be Broadbacks at their more seductive. The cow-tailed huldra of Scandinavian folklore is much the same way, in turns lustful seductress and devoted wife. The huldra was noted as distinctly strong, though her powers could be affected by a Christian priest or church. Broadbacks might have run alongside a rampaging herd of drunken centaurs, or stood guard at the temple of an African bull-god.
Frailties[]
Cannot eat meat, repelled by recitation of wedding vows, must aid those who ask for help by name, repelled by the corpse of an affinity animal, suffer greater injuries from spurs, cannot resist sexual advances made by a white-haired person.
References[]
- Changeling: The Lost Rulebook, p. 102
- Winter Masques, p. 62