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[vrdantwind]

"Hey, this is Claude! Pretty sure I'm doing this correctly. You can leave me a message here, and I'll get to it as soon as I can. Talk to you soon~."

Comments

[fingersandteeth]

Well, I don't suppose they would be in most ordinary communities. Changelings, which is what in fact I am, are different.

I don't know if your world has the Fair Folk in it, but the easiest way to explain is that there's powerful otherworldly entities that live in a realm distinct from but also adjacent to everyday reality and they often kidnap people for their own uncanny purposes--and their realms shape us into creatures that aren't actually human any longer, even as we have magic to fake it in the company of normal humans.

Almost twelve years ago, I was one of the humans they stole away. And almost seven years ago, I escaped with five of my friends, although my five years away broke me in the process. I'm not for the most part broken *now*--but it was slow-going at points.

Changelings can see through the illusions that make us appear as normal to ordinary mortals. It helps us find each other. We have a tendency to form communities of various sizes in the wake of our experiences, called Freeholds. I'm from a large city, with well over a million people living there--even as rare as we Changelings are, that makes for a local Freehold population well into three figures.

I suppose you could consider it a secret sub-population living among the greater population of ordinary mortals? Officially the government of the land that I'm from knows nothing about us. Unofficially... they still very well may know nothing.

Each Freehold divides itself into 'Courts' of like-minded Changelings according to how we cope with our captivity and newfound freedom. The Courts share governance of the Freehold community, either geographically or temporally, depending on which system a Freehold follows, and each Court has a monarch, who best embodies the ideals of the Court. There are various other positions with the Court that people can fill.

The Autumn Court, which I am a part of, traditionally has a position which is poetically called 'the Barrow-Tender' or sometimes the 'ghul.' A Barrow-Tender's job is to protect the Freehold through killing those who threaten it, both inside and outside the community. When those threats come from outside the community, I'm an assassin. When they come from inside the community, I'm an executioner. Since it's not an excessively large community, I don't get deployed very often, but I usually am a few times each year and not always during my Court's season--though it's an Autumn job, our monarchs tend to share us with the other seasonal monarchs.

Freeholds, even in the largest cities, generally don't end up being *too* large themselves. I suppose when you've less than a thousand people, combining both roles into one whose job description is 'killing threats' makes sense. And believe me, Claude, the threats I killed *were* nasty pieces of work, one and all of them. I don't regret a single one.

Still, I'm glad you *do* understand, Claude. If you put this kind of thought into governing your father's country, you'll be a very *good* king, I think. One I can only hope to be as good as, should the Ashen Crown ever pass to me--although if it does, I'll likely have an easier time, with so many fewer subjects.

(And yes, actually, you *did* communicate things well enough and you have a point too.)

[vrdantwind]

Changelings sound a little similar to some things Grant's told me about his world. I don't know if they're the same or just alike, but I'm not entirely without a frame of prior reference. My own world doesn't have anything like it, though. Stories, maybe, but nothing real.

I...didn't realize you weren't really talking about a monarch in the traditional sense, though. If you're from the Autumn Court, then I'm guessing there's four courts to a Freehold to correspond with the seasons, right? And those four courts are split between, at most, almost a thousand changelings in your Freehold. Although 'three figures' could be a whole lot less than near a thousand. But at maximum, we're talking a monarch ruling over maybe 250 people?

I admit, that's not the scale I was picturing.

[Which is to say, Claude feels a little sucker-punched right now.

It's true that he's not playing his status as Almyra's king that close to his chest anymore. Those close to him have been told, and those who aren't from his world aren't likely to care; it'd have no meaning to them. But feeling like Steven came from a king's court, directly reported to a king, had made Claude feel like they could understand each other on a deeper level, and he'd opened himself up on that belief...only to find that the monarch Steven is talking about isn't anything like the kind of king Claude was thinking of. Not a ruler of nations, but more of a small, underground community leader.

There's an absolutely intense discomfort at feeling as though he's opened himself up under false pretenses, even though he doesn't see Steven wanting to misuse that information and in fact has no idea how he could. It's just...the feeling of giving more away than he should have, than he would have if he'd known from the start what he knows now. Of having miscalculated. He hates it.

It's not Steven's fault, and Claude doesn't blame him. But he's not any happier about it. But letting on that he's feeling vulnerable would be even worse, so he buries it as best he can. Primarily by changing the subject.]

I do have to admit, though, my primary experience with assassins is being their target. It's a unique experience for me to get to chat with one.

[fingersandteeth]

Well, I've only got nine hunts to my name since I've taken up the position, so I'm only a moderately experienced one.

And... well, I suppose I meant for you to make the inferences you did. It's easier for people to assume I'm talking about a traditional monarchy, rather than an underground community, and it saves so much explaining if I just let people make assumptions. But then you told me about yourself and... well. I felt like I ought to give you the full explanation, since you told me things you didn't have to.

[vrdantwind]

You say that like you have a metric to judge against. What's the standard number of kills for a highly experienced assassin? Assassinating nine people who didn't want to die - other changelings, at that, who sound pretty unique and probably have their own strengths and weaknesses and powers - doesn't sound like that low of a number to me, in context. I mean, I've foiled multiple assassins and I'm just one guy. Nine successes - consecutive ones, possibly? - when even one stubborn asshole like me could ruin your record and quite possibly kill you back is nothing to sneeze at.

Mind you, that's just one outsider's opinion.

And hey, what can I say, you played me pretty good there. I didn't really have much business making that kind of assumption in the first place, anyway - I don't even know whether your world has monarchies that operate in what would be considered the traditional sense in my world. I should've been more careful.

[fingersandteeth]

Technically one of them was a Mage and two were merely powerful mortals, but point taken. And I suppose you could count them as consecutive? Not all of them went down on my first attempt, but I got all of them *eventually*.

We do have monarchies, but they're mostly constitutional monarchies these days, where the bulk of the governance is done by a Parliament or something like that and the actual monarchy itself is more for show. And my own country was always a republic, more or less.

[It is nice to know he managed to pull one over Claude, who is a very tricky customer.]

[vrdantwind]

Honestly, thinking it over, 'consecutive' is kind of a meaningless word for me to have used. I mean, as opposed to what? Your being killed yourself in between assassinations? So yeah, I think it's fair to call any number of successful assassinations you've survived doing 'consecutive'.

Truth be told, the Leicester Alliance that I ran before heading back to Almyra was a ruling council of nobles, which...sounds a bit like what you're describing, I suppose. It was interesting, coming from a country of kings only to end up de facto leading a country that doesn't have them. If I've got nothing else going for me as king, I doubt any other king in history has had the benefit of getting experience beforehand in ruling a whole other country under a completely different style of government. If I can't use that expertise and knowledge to my advantage, then I've got to be my world's biggest fool.

I guess that's getting off-topic, though. Although at this point I'm not sure if we have any specific subject we're talking about or not.

[fingersandteeth]

I don't think we do, actually. I think we're talking just to talk, which is admittedly a terrible habit of mine--and yours as well, I suspect.

But honestly, Claude, I think your experience with other forms of governance will probably be the best asset you'll have as a king. If nothing else, it'll give you a lot more flexibility of mind than someone who's been used to the divine rule of kings. (I honestly don't know how much authority Almyra has in its monarchs, but I'm sure it's much more than the leading lord in an oligarchy might have.)

[vrdantwind]

Hah. Truth be told, there's no such thing as a divine right of kings in Almyra. Fodlan has something like that, at least in the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus and the Adrestian Empire. The Alliance was the one country in Fodlan that bucked monarchies. Of course, they call them emperors rather than kings in the Empire, but beyond that the distinction's pretty meaningless. In Fodlan, people rule by bloodline. But in Almyra, they rule by merit first and foremost.

My father did pass down his crown to me, as it happens, but he won the crown in his youth. And it's entirely possible for me to lose it, if someone challenges me and wins. Most of Almyra works on meritocracy rules.

Our kings have a good chunk of authority, too, but honestly a lot of being king in Almyra is dealing with international affairs or infrastructural management your average Almyran warrior has no patience for. Though of course we're also the ones who make the laws, who decide our international policies, who have the final say in matters of peace and war, that sort of thing. But a lot of local affairs in far-flung areas of Almyra are governed more by local Almyran warlords than by any dictates of the king. The warlords do answer to the king, but the king often doesn't need to intervene in most day-to-day affairs.

[fingersandteeth]

Honestly, I feel like meritocracy's a better system than inheritance, when it comes to seats of power. Although I might be biased, of course, because that's how the seasonal crowns get passed along in a Changeling freehold--when a court's monarch steps down or dies or what have you, the crown appears on the brow of whatever Changeling best embodies that particular court. (Which means it's likely to be myself once the current monarch retires, because, well, I'm rather known for being an Autumn's Autumn, so to say.)

Does the empire even have any sub-kingdoms? Because as I understood it previously, you rather require those to have an empire for real and not just a kingdom calling itself an empire to sound better.

[vrdantwind]

Huh. So the crown decides who's most worthy? It must be impressive magic for it to be able to tell.

As for the Empire, technically no. But originally the Adrestian Empire covered all of Fodlan. Then Faerghus broke away from the Empire, and sometime after that, the Alliance broke away from Faerghus, leading to the three countries. There were probably sub-kingdoms back at the time when the Empire was Fodlan, but that was so long ago that it's hard to know now. Besides, the Empire tends to be...overbearing, shall we say? I don't know how much individual identity any of those sub-kingdoms got to keep, and none of it may have been reflected in the history books they saw fit to print and preserve. One big happy imperialistic Empire.

[fingersandteeth]

It's not a physical crown, mind you. It's symbolic. Kind of misty. But unmistakable. And yes, it's very magical, but the Seasonal courts *do* have the power of those seasons behind them. That's how Changeling magic works, you see. We make contracts with concepts to lend us their power, the stronger the better.

And huh. That's interesting, regarding the Empire. The history part. The overbearing part is just part of being an empire, I'm afraid.