The game
Changeling: The Lost is the fifth supplementary role-playing game line published by White Wolf Publishing. It is primarily inspired by tales of changelings from European folklore but includes elements of similar stories from around the world. While superficially similar to the Classic World of Darkness game Changeling: The Dreaming, Changeling: The Lost approaches the legends from a more traditional perspective of mortals kidnapped by Fae and eschews the past life angle that characterized its predecessor.
The dominant themes of the game are the pain of loss, the quest for identity, and the bittersweet nature of human existence.
Changelings refer to themselves as “the Lost”: they were kidnapped by the godlike Fae, taken to an alien realm, and held prisoner. While trapped there (referred to as their “Durance”), they were forced to serve their otherworldly masters and endure inhuman tortures; to survive under the twisted laws underpinning Arcadia, they also had to undergo physical and supernatural metamorphoses. Many escape only to find that they have been replaced by a faerie simulacrum (called a “Fetch”) and that they have not been missed at all. Most also discover that time passed differently in Arcadia than in the mortal world, and they are either too old or too young to resume their normal lives. Those who can often attempt to pick up where they left off before they were taken, with varying degrees of success, while others try to build new human lives elsewhere. However even under the best possible circumstances, the Lost are no longer fully human; they have become part of both worlds and while they are still human enough to make sense of human things, they have metamorphosed just enough to skew their perceptions. Many embrace their new existences, compensating for the loss of their mortal lives by immersing themselves in changeling society. Most find that they have come to appreciate humanity in a new way, finding beauty in the most mundane or painful of experiences, aching for things they did not appreciate before their capture.
