Changelings

No nation — shapeshifters

Culture: No homeland. Found throughout all nations, often in positions requiring social navigation — diplomats, spies, merchants, entertainers.

Body¶

True form: Grey, smooth, and faintly unfinished — a face that hasn't decided what it is yet. Features are there but soft, hair thin and pale. Unsettling enough that most Changelings never wear it in public.

The change: A Changeling can reshape face, voice, coloring, hair, and build into anyone of roughly their own size, from any people of human shape — Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Hobgoblins, and the like. It takes about twenty seconds of concentration. The change is real flesh, not illusion; it holds until the Changeling lets it go, and it falls away at death. Clothing doesn't change with it.

What they can't become: Peoples whose bodies are too far from a human's. Catfolk, Kuwaffri, Rephaim, Lizardfolk, the Ice-Trolls, and Goblins (three to four feet tall) are all out of reach, and so are the Warforged, who aren't flesh at all. A Changeling can take a Nasrin's shape but not the Jinn-marks — the hair stays still and nothing glows in the dark — so it can't pass as one.

The eyes don't change. Whatever face a Changeling wears, the eyes are their own. Changeling eyes come in ordinary colors — which, set in a grey and colorless true face, is somehow more unsettling than if they matched. In a borrowed face they only give a Changeling away to someone who knows which eyes to look for. A Sigil-bearing Changeling is another matter: the purple eyes stay purple in every face.

The Tracker Sigil: A shapeshifter who can locate anyone is genuinely frightening. The Tracker Sigil makes Changelings simultaneously the most valuable intelligence asset and the most feared individual in any room once their nature is known. It is also the one Changeling who can never hide being Sigil-marked.

Catfolk affinity: Natural understanding with Catfolk — both peoples know what it means to exist without a nation and to navigate worlds that weren't built for them.

Sigils present: Tracker

Origin Focus — Changeling¶

Taken like any other Origin Focus, with a normal Focus pick. No bonus skill.

Level 1: - Shapechange. Over three rounds of concentration, take the shape of a stranger: any face, voice, coloring, hair, and build of roughly your own size, from a people of human shape (see What they can't become, above). You can't copy a specific person. The change is physical, so no check sees through your body — only your behavior can give you away. It lasts until you end it, and ends if you die. - Your Own Eyes. Your eyes never change.

Level 2 — Mimic: You can take the shape of a specific person you've studied closely — a few hours in their company, or a day of watching. Body and voice are exact; mannerisms, memories, and handwriting are not, and fooling someone who knows them well takes Perform or Convince checks as usual. Your eyes are still your own, so a perfect copy needs a target whose eyes already match yours.

Open: where Changelings come from; whether they have any culture or customs of their own beyond the work they're known for.