I think it's time to tell a story.

This is the story of a Changeling the Dreaming game.

It was a great game. 80+ people came to every single game. Stories were told, adventures happened. It was great fun. Sadly, it imploded nastily due to some of the players forming a cabal, getting their own pet Narrator to agree to whatever crap they asked, and flat-out cheating with both hands.

Buckle up.

So these guys had a stooge. A fall guy. Someone they could hide behind.

Fisk.

A simpering, sniveling weasel of a man, trying to play a political game he lacked the brain meats to do.

And the character was a putz too.

But that was okay, because the cabal needed a fool.

See, folks were already questioning that their Scathach Baron held one Freehold (for those unfamiliar, Scathachs refuse to hold title or lands), so to grab more, they needed someone else. So they grabbed an unpopular Sidhe knight and supported his rise to power.

With violence.

There were rumors it was coming - an actual attack on a Freehold. You don't DO that. It's the second-worst thing that you can do in Changeling. But these guys had all the finesse of a train wreck, and so plans were made. My character, a talented Pooka craftstbunny, was involved.

A note on Pookas for those unfamiliar with the game - shapechanging animal trickster spirits. They never tell a plain truth. Mine was particularly skilled in making things.

That Freehold was trapped six ways to Sunday.

I had read ALL of Grimtooth's.

By any rights, the invading forces should have been horribly destroyed, as their tactics were known, and they were horribly brash.

But they had a pet Narrator, who pretty much glossed over the whole thing.

The rightful Baron fled, rather than Spill (his) Blood In A Freehold.

So they claimed the Freehold. Without incident.

Without knowing how to make it 'theirs', proper rites and rituals, etc. Fisk sat upon the throne and said 'Mine now!', but that doesn't cut it.

Without knowing what was protecting the site.

Without knowing what threatened the site.

Within a month, the Freehold was a smoking crater.

This is THE worst thing in Changeling. You can't get those back. They're the life blood of the fae, and once they're gone, they're gone. And you can't make more. And they had let one die because they were dumb and reckless.

Fisk was in a state. He was about to be called before the other nobles to explain why his Freehold was gone, and why he was there instead of the guy who knew what was going on. He needed someone to blame.

He knew my Pooka was an architect of the castle defenses, and grabbed him.

What followed was a thing of absolute beauty; the interrogation of a Pooka. I shall lay before you the facts as they were:

-First, Fisk had the ability to detect lies. Only lies. This is important. He implicitly trusted this ability. Hee hee hee.

-Next, he had me swear an oath to speak only the truth. This failed on multiple levels.
--First, he lacked sufficient magical power to craft a custom oath. This takes a lot of mojo.
--He tried to make it difficult to break by making it very, very long. This gave it dozens ofloopholes and even a couple contradictions. It would have failed on it's own lack of merits.
--He was of House Liam, the Oathbroken House. Any oath sworn to them is nothing more than words.
--There is NOTHING that can compel a Pooka to speak the truth. They can be made to say things that are true, but no magic can make them tell the truth. (in fact he should have been painfully penalized for making the attempt!)
--The phrase "Yeah, I do so swear to the thing whatever yadda yadda" is NOT an accepted sealing of an oath.

-He also tried threatening me with incarceration, not knowing that FBI(1) means you're working the mailroom.

-Ditto throwing around his Title. He wasn't a Baron yet, and House Liam is treated as one tier lower... and Squires have no real power, and are often openly mocked by Commoners (especially if House Liam).

-There are things that may be said that are neither truths nor lies. And as crooked as his mind may have been, he lacked the deviousness to know what they were.

-My Pooka-Ese was ON POINT. I was on fire, slinging the half-truths and evasions like you wouldn't believe.

-And finally, I didn't even have the information he wanted! Totally out of the loop on the whole thing!

So... to sum up: He had no power over me, thought I would ONLY tell the truth, and was too smug to realize he'd been had.

What followed was likened unto me handing him an enormous bucket of bullcrap and his very own spoon. An hour's interrogation of a Pooka he took as gospel.

"So you were in charge of the defenses?"
"You should ask the big blue guy about that."
"You mean Drake?"
"If I had meant Drake, wouldn't I have said Drake?"
"So who was it?"
"Hell if I know. Never got their name."
"But they were in charge?"
"I guess? Never met them, really..."

By the end of it, I had him firmly convinced that there was some sort of Troll Mafia, operating out of Las Vegas, that had taken the job in order to target him specifically (oh god the kid's ego...), and that one of his 'buddies' might have also been in on it...

Oh it was GLORIOUS. He took every single bit of that. Tried desperately to cling to anything that would indicate the fall of the Freehold was somehow Not His Fault. Something he could take to the Countess and save his sorry hide...

In the mean time, I took my leave of the game. It had been good, but it was clear it was no longer for me. It was a fine game, and a gloriously fun time, but things had deteriorated rapidly. My friend who played Drake stuck around a bit longer - he wanted to torment the cabal, and make it clear that they were at fault. He did an admirable job showing their cheating and hypocrisy.

He left when the Scathach Baron accused him of breaking his word, in order to have an excuse to kill Drake in a duel. (For those unfamiliar, breaking one's word is *fatal* to Trolls.)

So Drake stood there and offered no resistance, instead listing what horrible things the Baron had done in his ascent to power. Once he was down, the Baron stopped (Scathachs don't stop fighting AND they don't talk while fighting) and stood atop him to proclaim what a noble leader he was, that nobody should pay attention to the lies, etc. Then ran Drake through with Cold Iron, destroying him permanently.

The next game, the only ones to show were the members of the cabal. Congrats kids, you won. Enjoy your dirt pile in an empty lot.