Editing Changeling

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[[File:A1334d220039632d69d30cd45f7830b8.jpg|300px|thumb|right|Changelings in D&D are often described as using their powers to be efficient assassins, making for a different sort of threat to the [[party]].]]
A '''Changeling''' is a creature of fantasy, generally an offspring of an otherworldly species left to be raised by parents of a more mundane sort. In modern fiction it is often simply some sort of race of shape shifters, or the name/alias of a single shape shifter.

== Folklore ==
Being folklore there are many variations, but they all follow the same pattern: a fairy kidnaps a child and replaces it with something known as a changeling. What the changeling is, how it behaves, how long the parent is stuck with it, and how you get rid of it sooner than that (''if'' you should get rid of it), depends on the version. In some versions it's the fairy's offspring; in others, it's a piece of wood with glamour on it. Sometimes to get rid of it you throw it in the oven, other times you be abusive to it and the faerie switches the children again because you aren't taking good care of its child. (In practice, this had a nasty tendency of escalating to full-blown infanticide.) In Ireland it was common to dress up boys as girls up to the age of 12 or 13 because their fairies had a preference of kidnapping boys, and items like iron scissors would often be left where the child sleeps to ward off the fairy. The child that is kidnapped is sometimes also called a changeling, but the term usually refers to whatever the fairy left in the child's place.

== Dungeons & Dragons ==
In [[Dungeons & Dragons]], Changelings are a race introduced in the [[3.5e|3.5]] edition campaign setting of [[Eberron]] as humanoids with a hint of [[doppelganger]] in their ancestry, which gives them limited shapeshifting abilities. In their debuting edition this takes the form of their signature supernatural racial feature, Minor Change Shape.

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== Magic: The Gathering ==
A Static key word ability found on only on shape shifters. The ability makes the card it is on every creature type. This is a characteristic defining ability, so it applies no-matter what zone the card is in. [http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Changeling]. The history of the mechanic can be read here [http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtgcom/daily/mr306]

== Pathfinder ==
In [[Pathfinder]], Changelings are an all-female race first introduced in the Carrion Crown adventure path. These are the juvenile forms of hags -- read, creepy-ass evil spell-casting monster-crone old women whose hobbies enjoy eating people, murder and torture -- and consequently inherit a lot of spooky behavior, magical powers and forms that are "beautiful, yet unsettling". This means players often get mocked for trying to play characters who are so beautiful it's a curse. Hags deliberately foster out their daughters to places where they're confident the locals will mistreat and abuse them; a changeling can only become a hag if she chooses to follow her mother's magical call and agrees to undergo the agonizingly painful ritual to be transformed into a hag. Thusly, mother hags do their best to ensure their daughters get bullied so badly they will willingly grab at the power and the chance to avenge themselves on humanity, even at the cost of being painfully turned into a hideously ugly old witch. Changelings have a natural affinity for the Witch class, as one might expect.

== Warhammer 40,000 ==
In [[Warhammer 40,000]], the Changeling is one of [[Tzeentch]]'s servants, and is a total dick.  He's special type of [[Horror]] that has the ability to disguise itself as anything, and uses that ability to [[Troll|wreak all manner of mischief]].  However, because it has shifted forms so many times, it forgot its original form. Only Tzeentch knows what the Changeling originally looks like, and commonly uses this as a bargaining tool to bind its loyalty to him.

One of the most famous hijinks involving the Changeling happened when it impersonated the Governor of the [[Hive World]] Raxos and threw it into total civil war, eventually conjuring a warp portal and having its other daemon buddies join in the fun. As usual, the [[Grey Knights]] were called in to contain the situation, which resulted in the total pacification of daemons in the uprising. However, the Grey Knights could not account for the daemon that started the war and assumed that it escaped in one of the evacuation shuttles that were taking refugees off-planet. So, in typical Inquisitorial fashion: the Grey Knights shot down all of the fleeing shuttles, killing thousands of civilians, in an effort to kill off this single daemon that MIGHT have boarded one of the shuttles. Overall, whether the Changeling was there or not, Tzeentch was most likely pleased by the amount of "[[Just as Planned]]" it did to bloody an entire planet.

Another one of its famous pranks was when a renegade governor's fortress was under siege by the the [[Dark Angels]], he summoned up a [[Keeper of Secrets]] for help. You can probably see where this is going. When the governor asked for something "to end the siege", the "Keeper of Secrets" only gave him a mysterious device and fucked off. When he activated it: Surprise! The Deathwing popped in and gunned him down; it was really a homing beacon stolen off of a wrecked Ravenwing bike. The lesson is that you have to be ''really'' specific when you make a bargain with daemons, and that Tzeentch isn't above helping out the Imperium to troll his Chaos BBF Slaanesh.

The Changeling's dickery isn't limited to mortals either. In the new Daemons codex, he cut Slannesh's hair off and Whoopy cushioned Khorne with nurglings. 

== World of Darkness ==
White Wolf's [[World of Darkness]] lines have a 'Changeling' game their original series, their LARP series, and the rebooted series.  They are more-or-less on opposite ends of the tonal spectrum.

[[Changeling: The Dreaming]] is for faeries that are born into mortal bodies and dealing with their dual natures.  Characters live in two worlds simultaneously: the mundane one we're all familiar with, overlapped by a world we might call make-believe but is very real for them, and the two worlds can affect each other.  There is always a tragedy with World of Darkness games; for Changelings, as they grow up the magical world becomes less and less real to them, until eventually they "grow up" and forget their natures as faeries.  All Changelings eventually succumb to mundanity, living the rest of their lives locked out of their potential for magic.  The different character classes are types of faerie: sidhe, troll, pooka, silkie, etc.

[[Changeling: The Lost]] is for mortals that were kidnapped by fae aliens, and managed to escape back to the real world but are forever scarred by the experience.  Resuming their old lives is made difficult by time-dilation effects during their imprisonment, and possibly by the simulacrum or impostor that replaced them when they were kidnapped (who is wholly convinced that they are the person who they were meant to replace and will react violently when informed otherwise). Characters are a little alien themselves since they've spent most of their lives among fae, and have a hard time acting "normal"; in some cases, they can end up turning into full-fledged fae themselves. Even if they do manage to adjust reasonably well, there's always the issue of their old masters trying to recapture them. Character classes are damned complex with 39 Seemings+Kiths, 12 Courts, 9 optional Entitlements, 28 Contracts, and that's just what's in the core book.

[[Category:Roleplaying]][[Category:Monsters]][[Category:Pathfinder]][[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:World of Darkness]]