Hey all,

I’m getting through with red lining Changeling. I want to make sure I get the Seemings all out there before I’m finished, since I’ve gotten great notes. This time, I’m going to show you our Ogres. I’m just going to put them in-line in the post here. Normal rules apply, be excellent to each other. This is a first draft, so understand that. Don’t drink and drive.

Here’s the thread for discussion.

Ogres

What do you want to know? Names? Dates? Locations? What food was on their breath? What color their eyes were? Want to know the last words they spoke? Want to know which ones deserved it? Or better yet, the ones that didn’t? Want to know which ones begged?

Eliot Spencer, Leverage

If the Ogre is a brute, a thug, a monster, it is because it is necessary for him to be so. Of all the Changelings broken by their Keepers, none have an ending with such potential for tragedy. For the Ogre, the need for violence, for control, for consumption is a means of survival. For the Ogre, all becomes survival of the fittest. For those around the Ogre, one has to question if survival is worth it when it costs so much. The Ogre puts up stonewalls between himself and any danger, emotionally and physically, and when you dig in to why, it’s hard to even blame him.

Appearance: You will know the Ogre by the scowl on her face, the clench of her fists, and the subtle sound of teeth grinding against teeth, or joints popping in anticipation of violence. Not all Ogres are physical thugs, throwing punches and beating up anything smaller. They may be small and mean, or conduct their violence emotionally or verbally rather than physically. They may even find a way to control the rage, directing it only for some greater good they cling to.

To the Changeling, the Ogre takes up more space than it seems like she should. The floor slopes toward her as if the weight of her potential violence in inevitable, a slow slide. Joists in the ceiling bend to make room for her head, if she’s actually that tall or not. She’s not got skin, or if she does, it’s softness is hidden behind a layer of something harder. It might be patchy, or a complete shell, but by and large, any visible part of the Ogre is hidden behind tough leather, stone, mud, scales, anything but delicate human skin.

Background: Ogres can came from a lot of backgrounds, like so many Seemings, but by and large, they share one thing. Ogres were bullied. Most often, this bullying is real, brutal, constant. Bullying that’s really better to call abuse. More rarely, but not impossibly, Ogres come from people who perceived bullying where it wasn’t really happening, and so the abuse that drove them was mostly from their own persecution complex. Mostly, though, Ogres were first people who were pushed and pushed and hurt and hurt until they had no choice but to lash out, to respond with violence or brutality, and that moment, when they snapped, they fled, flung, or were grabbed into the Hedge. The power to snap, the thing that pushed them over could come from within, but often, comes from the Keeper and his servants, to draw the Changeling in.

The Escape: An Ogre-to-be spends her Durance waiting. They know all about abuse before the Hedge, and all thought it’s fantastic and horrific, it’s just more of the same. He went in to the Hedge raw, skinless, vulnerable, but there’s no way he’ll stay that way. The Ogre-to-be bides his time, building up his strength and his shields, sculpting muscle and a new skin out of the violence and chaos around him. He doesn’t just make himself armour, he makes himself into armour. Eventually, when things get hard, when the pain isn’t just physical, he makes a choice. He reaches into his chest and pulls out his own heart, replacing it with rock or clay so that he becomes, he thinks, invulnerable. Liberated from the part of him that can still hurt, he makes a break for it. He’d been watching, you see, enduring, planning his escape, and now is the moment he goes. He destroys everything in his wake, moving with such brutality and chaos that he can’t be stopped.

Character Creation: It’s an easy mistake to assume that all Ogres are combat focused meat-machines with their whole character build focused on hitting and getting hit. Violence, and inflicting violence has nothing to with fighting and combat. Some Ogres might, on the surface, eshew fighting, leaning on pacifism and that kind of morality, or out of cowardice. But the anger builds, regardless of intent, and so they manipulate and abuse violently, or protect themselves with brutal social rhetoric. Bullies happen in academics, the sciences, and anywhere there are people. An Ogre can thrive in almost any field, so long as she operates by brute force rather than finesse.

Blessing: Clarity of Violence. Suffice to say, Ogres aren’t especially good at communicating with words. There are some ideas only her fists can communicate. Once per Story, if an Ogre can manage to get a message across through the use or threat of violence, she gains a point of Clarity for Free.

Curse: Hurt People Hurt People. Despite their outward appearance and instance otherwise, Ogres do feel pain just like anyone else, and so, when someone else can prove to an Ogre, or those around the Ogre, that something is causing him real pain, it’s a Clarity breaking point. This Clarity break only happens once per any specific source for the pain. So, after some heavy conversation and a lot of beers, an ex boyfriend tells an Ogre that his real problem is that he never forgive his parents for dying, and it’s a Clarity break. Bringing up those dead parents again won’t do it. However, pointing out that he’s broken his fist in a fight about the honor of his dead mother, that’s a new break.

Concepts

Everyone told him someday, he’d whoop his kids the way his daddy always whooped him. He swore no. The night his wife told him she was pregnant, something else went wrong. He didn’t hit her, but he put his fist in a wall, and that night, walked away. He walked into the Hedge. When he broke out, he never went back. He sends her letters and money, but never even asked what his babies name was. Better not to know.

No one ever hit her, or called her names, they just left her to herself, and a child without love and support is a child abused. She turned her anger inward, hate and violence saved for herself. When she hurt herself bad enough to go to a hospital, she went to the Hedge instead. She’s whole now, and understands better what was done to her, and when she broke out, it was to get revenge.

They couldn’t understand how important he was, how much smarter. They were stupid, and ignorant, and he’d been planning his revenge for years. He never realized that his mistreatment of his little sister, the way that he vented his rage at her, would mean her one day selling him out to his Keeper. When he escaped, he came back determined to make them all pay. He doesn’t know that sis is still watching him, undoing him, and should he ever find out, well… It won’t be pretty.