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Changeling

“Protect me from the fairies wild, Or exchange thee for a stolen child. A debt be paid more than a few, Tempting hunger with fairy stew. A mother’s distraction used as bait, To steal unchristen babes in wait. Malevolent fairies will deceive, Of lower nature and unbelief. An act to reflect the human soul, Will light the darkness of shadow. By living life of higher mind, A changeling thee will never find. In thy cradle a bundle of love, Your child protected by God above."
  In a world where magic flows so strongly through the ground, many ancient and powerful beings have settled. And one of such are the Archfey, that hide deep in the woods, utterly unbothered by most mortal things, only coming forth to have a little fun now and again. Trapping beings in contracts, becoming patrons of warlocks, stealing names or children. 
And whenever they steal a child, which they often do to keep the little things as entertainment for themselves, they almost always replace it with a changeling. A being that starts out just like a normal child would, looking exactly like the stolen one, only a little paler, a little weaker, a little sicker. And they often are strange too. Always keeping that part of their origin and their maker inside them, yearning for the woods and the magic inside it.
And then, as they get older, they discover their own true nature, which normally is even concealed to them till they grow around 16 years. A truth that has seldom been a blessing.   Many fear the changelings, for their ability to become anything. They fear to be around them and blame them often for the real child they have lost. And in the cases that the parents find out about their nature before the children do, they rarely even think twice about abandoning the changeling in the wild.
Because this is not their child. Its a parasite. A monster.   So most changelings end up without family or roots all together. Abandoned by the parents they were given to and a simple one-use tool for the Archfey that created them in the first place.
They mostly live in secret, only letting few know of what they really are, and so no one really knows how many of them there are. 
Their abilities though also lend themselves to certain work fields. Some of them becoming shapeshifting performers, talented spies or untouchable grifters.  

Appearance

  While changelings can look like anyone, they do have a true form. Their natural look can be scary to some due to their lack of detail and distinctive features. Their skin tone is always pale, either white or light gray, and they tend to have slender bodies with limbs slightly longer in proportion to other humanoids. They have large colorless eyes circled by thick black rings. Their hair color is most commonly a light shade of silver followed by platinum and blonde. In rarer cases, their hair can be pale shades of green, pink, and blue. Similar to elves, changelings lack body and facial hair. However, most changelings are rarely seen in their true form and prefer to adopt all kinds of humanoid shapes, treating their appearance like others treat clothes. This includes gender.  

Racial abilities 

 
Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 2. In addition, one other ability score of your choice increases by 1.   Shapechanger. As an action, you can change your appearance and your voice. You determine the specifics of the changes, including your coloration, hair length, and sex. You can also adjust your height and weight, but not so much that your size changes. You can make yourself appear as a member of another race, though none of your game statistics change. You can't duplicate the appearance of a creature you've never seen, and you must adopt a form that has the same basic arrangement of limbs that you have. Your clothing and equipment aren't changed by this trait. You stay in the new form until you use an action to revert to your true form or until you die.   Changeling Instincts. You gain proficiency with two of the following skills of your choice: Deception, Insight, Intimidation, and Persuasion.   Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and two other languages of your choice.
 

DM Advice

If you are interested in playing a changeling, please contact me about that privately, as obviously the reveal to be a changeling is half the fun of it. Also, for a character of this race, you need not only think about who your character is, but also, the things they like pretending to be. You should have at least three personas they ready, that they frequently jump into, including a small cover story and personality for each. 

Lifespan
Changelings mature slightly faster than humans but share a similar lifespan — typically a century or less. While a changeling can transform to conceal their age, the effects of aging affect them similarly to humans.
Average Height
In their natural forms, changelings average between 5 to 6 feet in height, with a slender build. (Medium)

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