Helldiver

Occasionally, the True Fae need to get places that even they can’t reach. Sometimes they need a spy or a thief in their byzantine intrigues, someone who would go unnoticed and unaffected. When they feel like engaging in espionage, the Others create Helldivers.

Helldivers are unusual among changelings in that their Keepers not only expect them to leave Arcadia, but encourage them to do so. This doesn’t free them, though. Even in their otherworldly forms, still-captive Helldivers have a silver thread attached to their person leading back to their Keeper. All Helldivers know the excruciating pain of being yanked out of another realm unexpectedly to face their Keeper’s wrath. Once the thread breaks, the Helldiver is free. Helldivers break their threads in different ways. Some find a goblin smith willing to destroy it (for a price). Some convince the people they were sent to infiltrate to do it. Some simply go through the agony of breaking it themselves.

Whether captive or free, Helldivers are never in one place for long. They are always chasing some new rumor of a rare token, exploring alien realms, or listening in on conversations they really shouldn’t. Helldivers are hungry for knowledge. After all, knowledge is power.

Beast: This changeling has bright, inquisitive eyes and vestigial wings. They move with startling speed and are usually content to listen — that is, until you get them talking.

Darkling: Even without diving, she doesn’t seem completely solid. Her eyes are constantly roaming the room, checking for threats. She speaks in a hazy, distracted sort of way, as though she’s not all there.

Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you! Hazard of the job, I guess. You won’t believe what I saw down there…

Kith Blessing: When the Helldiver uses Larceny in the Hedge, Arcadia, or another unearthly realm, achieving three success counts as an exceptional success.

Dive: Spend a Glamour point to make a Dexterity + Occult roll. On a success, the Helldiver begins to fade into an incorporeal, invisible form. It takes a number of turns equal to (10 − her current Clarity), to a minimum of one full turn, to completely fade. While fading, the Helldiver cannot take any nonreflexive actions or interact with objects or people, and attacks with a non-magical component pass harmlessly through her. Once she completely fades, she acts like a dematerialized Hedge ghost, unable to physically interact with anything except other immaterial beings and objects, such as Hedge ghosts, other Helldivers, changelings using the Whispers of Morning Contract, the unquiet dead, and spirits of all stripes. She can see and interact with all of these, no matter their current state. If she can find a gate to another realm, such as the deathly Underworld or mysterious Shadow, she may slip through with a point of Glamour as though it were a Hedgeway. If ephemeral beings are normally material in another realm, she becomes so as well. She can spend as much time as she likes Diving, but she still requires basic necessities, such as food and sleep.

To end this effect, spend another Glamour point and make another Dexterity + Occult roll. If successful, the changeling fades back into the world at the same rate she faded out. Should a Helldiver gain the Comatose Condition while Diving, she immediately vanishes from wherever she is to reappear inside her Bastion, as though she had passed through the Gate of Horn to be physically present in her dreams.