A Year and A Day: Samhanach

Changeling: the Dreaming

Homebrew Rules

Character Creation Guide Download: Samhanach.pdf

Quoth the Samhanach:

“Trick or Treat!”

Kith Excerpt:

Once, long before summer’s end was christianized as All-Saint’s Day, there were beasts that lived in the sacred liminal moments between the end of Beltaine and the arrival of Samhain. In those few special hours when the crown was being passed from the Seelie to Unseelie courts, madness and misdirection were the rules. Some small shadow of that nebulous chaos would be remembered in the form of Halloween. Yet for one Hibernian Tribe, that time never ends.

The Samhanach (liteally, the ones from Samhain) are a frighteningly obtuse family of masked children. They are rarely over teenage years, and despite their ancient pedigree, actively abstain from politics, ruling, or any other pursuit of agency. Their whole raison de vivre seems to be play and play alone.

However, one aspect that they do take seriously is the rescue of children. Children victims of abuse, neglect, or even excessively banal households are sometimes “rescued” by the Samhanach. For one night, these children are captured, bound up in garish costumes, and carted around on all sorts of adventures with the equally costumed Samhanachs- almost as if they were one and the same with the Samhanach Tribe. Sometimes that Child will find their way back, none the worst for wear- but undoubtedly changed. Othertimes, a New Samhanach has been brought into the fold, back of the Milk-Carton be damned.

Flavor

“For these beings, fall is ever the normal season, the only weather, there be no choice beyond. Where do they come from? The dust. Where do they go? The grave. Does blood stir their veins? No: the night wind. What ticks in their head? The worm. What speaks from their mouth? The toad. What sees from their eye? The snake. What hears with their ear? The abyss between the stars. They sift the human storm for souls, eat flesh of reason, fill tombs with sinners. They frenzy forth….”
― Ray Bradbury, “Something Wicked This Way Comes”