Bandaluthia Elodee

Changelings often struggle with a sense of identity. Like so many with a similar lineage it is difficult to find yourself among the pressures of your race, heritage and culture, but the changeling has an extra layer of complexity to add in to the mix and Elodee has another layer on top of that. Much of her tale stems from this need for a sense of control and understanding of who and indeed what she is. She will defend her heritage passionately if it is called into question, and yet, so often questions it herself in the privacy of her own mind.

Before you can hope to understand Elodee you must consider the presence of Changelings within Bandaluthia. It is an impossible task for the authorities to document and track the presence of Changelings in their cities and districts. How do you keep tabs of a race that can change within the blink of an eye to look like any other race? It is rumoured that Changelings are frequently hired during times of census and election to rig voting and documentation. This can, in some way, go towards explaining the discrepancy in the recent census of 1.2 to 1.3 million. But this could well be speculative truth of the loose lipped and inebriated. Changelings most certainly play their part within the city's deep rooted politics. Pick any tavern, in any district, on any given night and you will here the conspiracy theorists talking into the bottom of their ale tankard about shape shifters, assassinations, thoughts being read, ideas being tampered with, theft and corruption. But as with most conspiracy theories, there has to be a little hint of truth does there not?

There are two sides to Elodee's tale and to fully understand her you probably need to hear both. There is the truth according to Elodee, what she knows to be true from everything her senses and intellect tell her of her past experiences, and what The Guild know to be true. Something not always shared with Elodee.

I was born in the slums of Bandaluthia to a Human Mother "Elenor" and Elven Father "Deeandro" who gave me my name, a legacy of both of them. I had a rich, pleasant and varied childhood surrounded by dolls, toys and trinkets. My mother and father were not well off and the luxuries of mirror glasses were more than we could afford which meant it wasn't until I was much older, and the other slums kids began to move away from me, and refused to play, that I realized I didn't look like everyone else. Or more precisely, I looked like everyone else. It took a great deal of courage for my parents to tell me that they took me in as an orphan infant, and that they assumed I was half elf, the perfect child to pass off as their own. No-one in the slums knew I wasn't really theirs. Whilst I was very young my mother said she would look at my human eyes and know that there was more human in me. My father would look at my bone structure and know I was more elf. In reality as I grew older I looked most like whoever was talking to me, more elven to my father and more human to my mother. This became more obvious when visitors came and my complexion, stature and facial features changed, at times even my gender.

It is rumoured that Elodee's parents were in fact members of The Guild who were tasked like many others to look after changeling children who had been "imported" from the Skopper Islands. The rumour goes that The Guild has been involved in this enterprise for many years. They have contacts in the Skopper Islands who are tasked with searching out parents who are about to have a child, and securing that child in one way or another. Depending on the team tasked with the job, some have suggested they are bribed, some drugged and kidnapped and others are murdered and the child taken. Elodee was one of these children, given to keepers who were to subtly test the powers of the child. Introduce them to new faces, different races, push buttons and train the child in the ethos of the guild, make them malleable to the demands which would be placed upon them.

Once I found out that my parents were not my parents I struggled with my identity and my emotions, for most this is a simple inner turmoil, but nothing is simple it appears. While I wast sure who I was, what I was, or what I should look like my appearance hanged with my mood, in fleeting moments of guilt and emotional encumbrance I would look stout and dwarven, during times of anger an resentment I would take on th appearance of an orcish child, and in rare moments of acceptance would look somewhere between human and elven. A face I now come to think of as my own, this is more me, than my natural form, something I only learnt when I came across the others of my kind.