Changeling: The Lost/Awesome


 * An example from the Camarilla global LARP chronicle that also, in a way, counts as a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming: The Freehold of Orlando was being besieged by the Hobgoblin armies of a Keeper known as the Lord of Silver and Sable. He had taken a member of the Freehold hostage, but sent a messenger to arrange a parley in order to return home with richer trophies. Among those who went to this Parley were the Autumn Queen of the freehold and her niece the Summer Queen. The two were dear friends, despite (or even because of) being two of the corners in a Love Triangle.

The Autumn Queen offered the Lord of Silver and Sable a deal. He was known to be an expert manipulator, able to bend the minds and emotions of mortals at his whim. She challenged him to a contest of emotional manipulation in lieu of the hostage, with the Summer Queen as the subject of the contest. If the Autumn Queen won, he would be barred from attacking or kidnapping any members of that Freehold, or their friends and allies, forever. If he won, he could take her, instead. He refused; one slave, even a Queen, wasn't worth two in his balance. With a sense of foreboding, the Summer Queen offered herself, as well. The Fae considered the contest, and accepted. Immediately, the Autumn Queen turned to the Summer Queen. “Love” She said. “Feel Love, as truly as you can, with all the fire and passion you have in your soul.”

The Summer Queen smiled, kissed her aunt on the cheek, and said “That is easy, my Queen.”

That done, the Autumn Queen turned to The Lord of Silver and Sable, and challenged him to make the Summer Queen feel love, as she had. And he couldn't. The True Fae could inspire fear, lust, obsession... but not true love. He was bound by the oath of the contest, and was forced to flee.

Bad. Ass.
 * In a Changeling: the Lost game I'm in, the most recent session, with the town being overrun by monsters on Winter Solstice, generated Crowning Moment of Awesome for all three PCs.
 * Draconic Accountant Drake reached into a fabled monster's wound and unwound him with a pull after pretty much blasting the Hound's face.
 * Goddamn fucking lucky Living Painting Fu ends up fighting a horde in a nightclub, trying to get everyone else out safe, with his girlfriend going "STOP TRYING TO BE A DAMN HERO!" Cue Fu running at a monster, grabbing him and using the momentum to get into the rafters and then elbow drop one, saying, "But I'm not trying!"
 * Cloudcuckoolander Dryad Mala wiped the floor with the summoned monsters a True Fae summoned. She took a few nicks, but being made of wood and him using a dinky knife... No problem. Finally at the end, she smiled and stated, "I don't have nightmares, nightmares have me."
 * Changeling: The Lost: Our motley was being cautiously stalked by a mage who had caught wise that there was Something Funny Going On at the little house up the street and generally figured out that we always keep to our word, even if it's strictly to the letter. So he decided he wanted to capture our Chatelaine by getting on the city bus he rode to work with him, and quietly telling him our 14-year-old Ogre was scheduled to be chloroformed and kidnapped if he didn't cooperate, but if he did cooperate, he would call the attack off. Our Chatelaine agreed to this, and the mage figured he had it in the bag. When they went to get off the bus in some creepy, isolated part of town, our Chatelaine pulled the door lever himself instead of letting the driver do it, turned the door into a Hedge gate, and proceeded to kick the mage through it before he realized what happened. Cue spectacular beatdown in the Hedge, as without magic, the mage was an ordinary, incredibly wiener-like human, and once it was over, our Chatelaine pledged the ex-Mage that he would take him out of this horrible place if he called off the attack. It worked, he called it off, and our little Ogre came home without a moment's interruption. Our Chatelaine never told anyone else, and passed every necessary degeneration roll with flying colors. The rest of our motley still doesn't know about it IC.
 * Fun, though your ST got magic wrong: the only restraint the Hedge puts on Awakened magic is that you can't use Space to make a portal that leads out of the Hedge (into it is just fine), magic related to perception is capped by the mage's Wisdom, and that the thorns strip away the soul, and hence one's ability to enact Supernal magic (which requires the mage to travel through the Hedge off the path for an extended period). The mage would have been trapped there, but all his other magic should have worked just fine.
 * In a game I'm in, my character has, in the last six months or so IC time: Found out how to create a Hedge gate that only exists as long as it's wanted, discovered a way to refine iron ore into iron without need of heating it, invented a way to seal a Hedge gate more or less permanently, created a way to look into the Hedge (or out of it) without risk of opening a door for the inhabitants of the Hedge, and building on the the above-mentioned method of cold refining iron, worked out a method to make cold iron bullets practical, all of it working strictly within the rules of the game as written. Autumn really, really likes her. Summer's getting rather fond of her too. Oh, and she's one of Fairest, who earns her living as a stripper and an artist's model. Tropes are neat toys!
 * And are you going to share these methods?
 * A Freehold-defense motley consisting of a hound Beast, a lead-soldier Elemental, and a Wizened cavalry soldier went on an expedition into the Hedge to find a place called the Court of Ashes, a location where a member of the Freehold had prophesied they would find a Token lance needed to stop a dragon Hedge-beast currently rampaging through the Thorns toward their Freehold.
 * After fighting their way through a couple of encounters with Hedge-beasts, they were not exactly at their best when they were accosted by a mob of apelike hobgoblins speaking an unfamiliar language. The Elemental stepped up to try to intimidate or bluff them down, and thanks to a couple of lucky rolls and a lot of really quick thinking, managed to pick up enough of their language on the fly to begin actually communicating with them, leading to an agreement for them to allow the motley to pass in return for the motley performing a quick Fetch Quest.
 * When they found the Court of Ashes, they found the Token protected by a wall of flame which could not be circumvented by any method available to the motley. With only the previous prophecy to go by, the Wizened soldier got off his Fae Mount, took off his weapons and armor, contemplated his reasons for needing the lance - and stepped into the flames. His clothes went up spectacularly, but he himself emerged unscathed with the Token, to considerable good-natured joking from his motley-mates.
 * Thus armed, the motley then set out to fight the dragon, an encounter that would not have gone nearly so well if the Elemental hadn't managed to start things off by ensnaring the beast with a lot of piano wire, using his elemental contract with metal to hold the thing in place for several rounds. It broke free eventually, but not before the other combatants had gotten some good hits in, including an iron-tipped arrow in the eye courtesy of the hound Beast, and a stone Elemental ally climbing up onto the dragon's back to take her axe directly to its head. The Wizened soldier ended up charging straight down the barrel of the dragon's breath - a searing beam of pure concentrated light - on the back of his Fae Mount, wielding the Token lance, which activated itself by drawing a point of Lethal damage worth of blood straight through his hand. The whole thing was an exercise in pure unadulterated Badass on the parts of both the motley and the Storyteller.