Born of the tales and myths of the mysterious East, the Veela are a Kith largely mysterious even to their western Kithain cousins, who usually rank them among the Gallain as unknown and unknowable.
Eastern legends are rich in the lore of the woman warrior: many of the Slavic cultures of Eastern Europe reckon their descent from the sons born of Amazon mating raids, with fighting blood running hot from both sides of their parentage. The names of the warrior queens Valasca and Tamara are still spoken with deep honor, and songs are still sung of the fighting princess Wanda who took up arms against her country's oppressors when all her brothers had fallen in battle. Ancient Slavs worshipped the Great Mother in her guise as Kupala and Ziva, and nearly every nation east of the Danube still regards the earth as their mother, and their country as their motherland. From such fierce devotion and such stirring tales were born the Veela--the warrior women of the eastern mountains and forests, huntresses, choosers of the slain, companions to the greatest heroes of the east. Given form by the memory of warring goddesses, the Veela tend to be tall, strong, and fair in the way that a finely crafted sword is fair, grim but not humorless, fierce, loyal to those who can command their loyalty, and deeply loving.
The Veela were an ancient Kith long before the Sidhe rose to dominance over the western Kithain, born from the primordial worship of the great mother in her warrior aspect. They prowled the lands from Scythia in the south to the Lapland in the north, sharing dominion with their cousins the Valkyries. Of all the western Kithain, they had the most contact with the Trolls, for whom they had a natural affinity, and with whom they enjoyed their most satisfying relationships, both Kiths being extremely given over to honor and battle. When the Sundering struck, the Veela themselves were almost entirely unaffected--the waves of banality ravaging the west breaking almost harmlessly against the bastion of folklore, legend, and superstition forged over millenia of close association with vampires, werewolves, and the fae in the East. Realizing that the buffer of Glamour protecting their western cousins was rapidly eroding, the Veela selectively opened their freeholds and began inviting western Kithain to take shelter with them, promulgating, as they did so, Easternized versions of the western Kiths: Russian Sluagh, Germanic and Lithuanian Trolls, Hungarian, Serbian, and Romanian Sidhe.
Banality took far longer to infiltrate the East than the west but, slowly and surely, the numbing force of mortal disbelief began insinuating leaden fingers into the mountain fastnesses that the Veela called theirs. The Industrial Revolution came, bringing with it poisons to sully the rivers, air, and earth. War came, and not the honorable warfare on which the Veela thrived, but the modern warfare of mass slaughter, of death camps and jackbooted thugs, Nazi and Communist. Heroism died a slow and terrible death as brother turned against brother and nations ripped themselves to pieces over slights centuries old and the vicissitudes of politics and religion. As their world crumbled around them, the Veela likewise began to crumble, facing the slow erosion of all that they found great and Glamourous in the world, trapped away from the Dreaming by the icy blanket of banality choking the life from them. The numbers of the Veela declined dramatically, their freeholds devoured by banality, their sisters undone by their own despair. By the time of the Resurgance, only a few Veela remained in a few isolated freeholds, risking Bedlam rather than chancing their own destruction in a world far too warped and twisted by banality to support them.
The return of the Sidhe and the flood of Glamour they brought with them washed across the whole of the world: even in the East, where there was considerable aggravation that the Americans would reach the moon before the Soviets, the air of breathless wonder was unmistakable and undeniable. In the wake of the Resurgance, the Veela experienced a Renaissance of their own, many of them leaving their traditional homeland and travelling west to meet the newcomers and the wash of Glamour spilling across the world. As it became apparent that there was going to be substantial trouble between the newly returned Sidhe and the entrenched commoner-nobles, Veela of American and Eastern birth flocked to Concordia, as did the mendicant sisters who had wandered the world since the Sundering. The Accordance War breathed new life into the Kith, and individual Veela and Veela warbands supported both sides of the conflict in various capacities from front line combat troops to tacticians in the warrooms of nobles and commoners alike. The equally cataclysmic blast of the Women's Rights movement further empowered the Veela, who have been on a powerful upswing ever since, becoming heavily involved in efforts to improve the lot of women across the world.
These Kithain inspire awe in women and a certain spavined feeling in men--particularly men sure of their own superiority for no better reason than their sex. Males with the proper respect for the deadlier half of the species receive the same awe as most women, as well as the uplifting feeling that they are standing in the presence of a woman who is their equal. Other fae tend to regard the Veela with sincere ambivalence--in the West, their stories are rarely told, and so few know the tale of the great Queen Libussa and her sisters, the sorceress Kascha, and Tetka, bearer of the sword of Justice; Istevana Silver-Crowned, who razed the walls of a fortress of her enemies singled handed though opposed by a hundred men; Oossood, the speaker of the Fates, who whispered secrets to the mothers of young children; and Raviyoyla, the god-sister and shieldmaiden of the hero, Marko. Of all the western Kiths, only the Trolls know them well or understand them at all, though they enjoy excellent relations with the mendicant warriors of House Scathach, with whom they have shared many a bondmate, friend, and lover.
The Veela are generally tall and straight, well muscled and fair, with white skin and flashing eyes, normally in shades of grey and pale blue. Their voices tend to be low and musical, their smiles rare except in the heat of battle, where their laughter and warcries frequently ring out. They move with the grace common to wild animals and warriors, preferring the colors white and silver above all others, and frequently wielding elaborately carved bows that display their status and firing silver arrows that kill painlessly with one shot. Silver hair is rare among them and much prized as a result, considered a sign of favor from the Great Goddess. There are no male Veela.
Childling Veela tend to be little tomboys or hellcats, continuously climbing trees and tearing their clothing, the despair of mothers who want their daughters to wear dresses. Some childling Veela, products of the former Soviet Bloc gymnatics machine, tend to be quite muscularly developed and remain stuck in a near-state of physical stasis until the Glamour of their position as gymnastics stars begins wearing off.
Wilder Veela are the archetypal warriors of their Kith, running with their swords unlimbered and their bows strung, looking for a way to make their mark on Kithain society. They tend to live, love, think, and fight very much in the moment.
Grump Veela are deeply honored by their Kithmates as elder warriors and sisters, closer to the Goddess for having brushed shoulders with Death on the battlefield. Many Veela Grumps have recently lost their bondmates and are pining away to Undoing as a result, though more than a few have simply retired, hung their swords over the mantle, and decided to let the young ones benefit from their experience whenever the opportunity arises--and it arises frequently.
Veela tend to have taken complete and total advantage of the growing shouts for full female liberation and can be found in any number of occupations ranging from career military to politics to journalism to art to...well, you get the picture. Many young Veela, particularly those born in the East, tend to gravitate toward gymnastics, considering the rush of competition to be an adequate replacement for the rush of combat--at least for a while.
Fae
When a Veela finds a warrior whom she considers her equal, they will frequently forge between them an unbreakable bond of Glamour that links their faerie souls together until death or Undoing part them. This bond allows the Veela to Rhapsodize her bondmate without causing them harm (yielding 2 to 3 points of Glamour for every one that the Veela invests) and also allows the Veela to transfer her own Glamour to her bondmate in times of need. Veela tend to prefer Trolls, Scathach Sidhe, and Gwydion Sidhe as their bondmates, though they can and will bond to other Kithain if it seems right for them to do so.
When in battle, a Veela can target a specific victim by either pointing at them, calling out their name, or signifying them in some way. She then engages in a roll of contested willpower and, if victorious, spends a point of Glamour--her opponent is immediately smitten with horrific images detailing precisely when, how, and where they are to die. These images are often so distracting that they become a self-fulfilling prophecy on the Veela's chimerical weapons. If the victim of this birthright survives the initial encounter with the Veela, the images thus imparted will haunt them in the forms of nightmares, possible derangements, and the spawning of nervosa, none of which will be particularly friendly to them.
The Veela's bond to their Kithain soulmate, as well as being their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness. If the bondmate ever breaks that bond through apparent or actual betrayal of the Veela, they age rapidly, almost overnight, withering away to grumpdom with unnatural speed due to the damage to their faerie soul. If the bondmate ever physically attacks the Veela, even if it is not by their own will (i.e., forced on them by a geas or cantrip), the Veela will be immediately Undone as though by cold iron, even if the weapon that wounded them was chimerical.
Myranda Valis [[email protected]]
Back to Interpretations of Changeling