"There is a dream dreaming us."

---A KALAHARI BUSHMAN

The child next door has a wreath on her hat;
her afternoon frock sticks out like that,
All soft and frilly;
She doesn't believe in faeries at all
(She told me over the garden wall)---
She thinks they're silly.
---Rose Fuleman, "The Child Next Door"

When sometimes one find oneself lost or somewhat disoriented---as if enchanted into a trancelike state---we say that one has been "pixy led." Many accounts can be found of pixies leaving gift or helping out, yet it cannot be denied that first and foremost they are pranksters and tricksters. Most of all they like to blow out lamps and kiss pretty lasses under cover of darkness. Won't you come along and take a pick, then? Oh c'mon, come along, and follow me into that curious world in which we round up all those strange ideas that occur in the small hours when all decent people ought to be sleeping but CHANGELING players are up and gaming...

Herein lies a netherworld made wholecloth from dreams, visions, illusions and hope. Born of imagination and nurtured in the flames of creativity, changelings are creatures of fire and passion, but also of deep sorrow and inexpressible longing. Changeling radiate hope in a world buried in drabness. The embodiments of creativity and the power to dream, these remnants of the fae protect and nurture those fading shreds of wonder and imagination that still remain. In an older time, the fae served as muses to humanity, inspiring artists and musicians, craftsmen and philosophers, prophets and leaders to expand the boundaries of their minds and hearts to encompass new thoughts and works of beauty. Now, changelings fulfill an even more important purpose. In an era when science threatens magic, reducing it to a series of physiochemical reactions or a mechanical progression of cause and effects, changelings proclaim the reality of the inexplicable. They tip the balance of the senses, jar the edges of the mind and defy the "natural laws" that consign the creatures of the world to one fixed form.
Changelings announce to the world that dreams exist. Like their name suggests, they represent the essence of mutability. Reality does not have to lie stagnant or conform to the rules. The children of the Dreaming, by their very existence, break the rules and shatter the conventions of everyday life. Their lives testify to the fact that WHAT IS doesn't have to be.

Hail, fellow traveler- welcome to the Dreaming.

- Changeling: the Dreaming is a role-playing game from White Wolf studios and one of the many storyteller games in their World of Darkness series.
- The black and white illustration, "im-ages" above is by Lenore T. Hughes