A Year & A Day: Sun-Downers

Changeling: the Dreaming

Homebrew Rules

Character Creation Guide Download: Sun-Downer.pdf

Quoth the Sun-Downer:

“Big bikkies for a Brekkie is Mickey-mouse Mate; get with the tinnies or plonk and Fair go. Ridgy-didge way for me.”

Kith Excerpt:

Less than an Aboriginal Baijini (Kith) but more than a Celtic one, the Sun-Downers are a unique Yuuri (Changeling) born of the White-fella’s dreams of the Outback. They are the Aussie Kithain’s imaginings of a life at one with the Bush. Part White-Fella, part Dreamtime, these kithain are all the Crocodile Dundees, all the Ned Kellies, and every mad-cowboy-wizard of the Australian wilds in one.

Sun-Downers (also known as Swaggies, Swag-Men or Tussockeers) is an old Australian term used for an underclass of roaming drifters and peripatetic highwaymen, who travelled by foot during the Australian Depression of the late 19th Century. Essentially the Australian parallel of American hobos, the Sun-Downers grew famous for their knowledge of the Bush, and their hearty ways. They were also never without their traditional swag (their few possessions rolled up and carried in their swag or bedroll).

Swag also has another definition, in the early 19th Century Britain, the term swag was used by thieves to describe any amount of stolen goods, a testament to the Sun-Downers’s affinity for Sleight of Hand. For the Turong (unseelie), this might mean Greed. However, only the most Turong of the Kith would resort to this as they each have a particular code of Honor that prevents them breaking certain rules of the road. Most make their ends meet by performing odd-jobs at local farms. They can be found shearing sheep or rounding up cattle, (but were not above stealing the odd jumbuck to fill their “tuckerbag”).

Flavor

“Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a coolibah tree, He sang as he watched and waited ’til his billy boiled, ‘You’ll come a-Waltzing Matilda, with me…'” – Slim Dusty, Waltzing Matilda