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Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
 - Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

In the dim recesses of history, before the two realms divided, Ravnos the Wanderer and his children Ravana the terrible, Nataraja the lord of the dance and Surpanaka the mother of Mysteries were guests of the early Unseelie Court. Ancient and powerful pacts were woven between the fae and their guests, giving them and thier brood the ability to call extrusions of the Dreaming into the Autumn world. Ravana's death loosed the full force of the Dreaming contained within the now-broken pacts. Combined with the circumstances of his destruction (and the thousands of humans who died with him), the cataclysm wrought results in the Dreaming, opening long sealed trods into the dark dream realms and shredding the nearby Silver Path like tissue. A vast storm of ancient blood and darkling spirits cascaded through the Dreaming, affecting even the most distant realms. The Naraka and the Acheri were at ground zero for these events. Many died in the ensuing holocaust; others were forever changed by the spirit energies released and were among the first to enter the Autumn Realms.






PAST
At last the old darks return and many believe that the Denizens who appear at their forefront are the first harbingers of Final Winter, Are they avatars of Apocalypse or secret vassals of hope? This is the riddle and the story of the Dark-kin.

PRESENT
As a rule, they don't care much for human visitors. Right now, they're deciding whether to let us in, or kill us both. Try to look charming and interesting .."
- Shadows Fall
- Simon R. Green





FUTURE


NARAKA
"They're supposed to be Immortal. They were very beautiful, but so cruel . . . civilized, but still savage."
- Shadows Fall
- Simon R. Green

The Evanescent & the Changelings
Not all Naraka were barred from earth after the war of trees. Some individuals stayed behind, sheltered in hidden enclaves throughout the waking world. Some stayed for reasons known only by the rulers of Mahâraurava or because they enjoyed the Autumn world and its amenities, others stayed because they were trapped or because they were renegades, hiding from the rulers of the Asura. Wars, plagues, inquisitions and genocide sometimes opened the ways not protected by the silver path and these eruptions of dark glamour have always attracted the Naraka.

Few of these Evanescent fae underwent the changeling way ritual. Those who did lost a part of themselves governed by their Aria and gained the benefits and flaws of a seeming. Changeling Naraka are still effected by their Aria as far as politics are concerned, but it now has a much subtler effect on their appearance. Their Birthrights and Frailty remained almost unchanged and while they learned what they could of the Changeling Arts they still relied most heavily upon their own skills with Discord.

They had no more trouble adapting from life as a dream born spirit to one as a half human - half chimerical being as any other Kith, but they did lack the large numbers of their own kind that the major Changeling races enjoy. These Naraka Changelings crept around the Unseelie courts, reincarnating only among Hindu families and rarely revealing their true natures to other supernaturals they met. Until the time of the Raj and the large influx of Hindu practitioners into the west, most of their contact was relegated to the Eshu or with Sidhe who followed the British into their homelands. There has never been any discernable organisation among the Naraka changelings, they simply continued to follow their previous careers, bound by the concepts of their Castes and whole heartedly dedicated to their inhuman and cruel pursuit of decadence and hedonism.



SEEMINGS

CHILDLINGS

WILDERS

GRUMPS

AFINITY

BIRTHRIGHTS



FRAILTIES

PROJECT KHAOS