A Year and A Day: Ankou

Changeling: the Dreaming

Homebrew Rules

Character Creation Guide Download: Ankou.pdf

Quoth the Ankou:

“Knock – Knock! Hey there neighboroonie, can I borrow a cuppa sugar?”

Kith Excerpt:

The Ankou characterize the darkest and most disturbing aspect of the Welsh Crimble (Kith) if not the whole of the Celtic Plentyn Newid (Fae)- Tribes. They are in turns both a blessing and a curse upon their mortal friends and families. A Blessing due to their gregarious natures and kindly idiosyncratic values towards life death. Yet a curse due to them being walking, talking, dark manifestations of Death’s indiscriminate character.

They are masters of Gallows-humor, making the departure for the next world a happy punch-line to the sick sad joke of life. Traditionally they would ride into town on his big black coach ( the Cóiste Bodhar- or the silent coach of Ireland is one such tale, but sometimes it’s the Irish family of Dullahan that pilots it). Once in town, the Ankou would claim those close to death, knocking on the door, an omen of ill repute, and within one day’s time a member of that household would have gone to the next world. The Ankou would by then have ridden to the next town, ready to claim their next soul.

Between those archaic understandings of the Ankou, and their modern context of companionable comrades to those on Death’s door, the Ankou lives in both worlds. This isn’t exactly the case. They do live in the realms of death, but also where Life slows down. They are a liminal family, and one worth knowing

Flavor

“The Roasting of the Salmon to the very end of you, six horse loads of grave-yard clay on top of you, may you be mangled and may you not see the cuckoo nor the corncrake, may you be inflicted with the itch and have no nails with which to scratch.”
– Traditional Celtic Curse

How much fun is that? Reads awesome, don’t it?