Shape-Shifters

Overview

The Shape-Shifters are Changers of the Probability Fog who have learned to master what happened to them. They change form at will, but only within the Fog: outside it, they are fixed in whatever shape they wore when they left.

Appearance

A Shape-Shifter has no proper shape. It may come as a stranger, a grey dog, a heron, a version of the traveller's companion, or a drift of fog that is a little too thick. The tell is the eyes, which stay the same whatever the shape, and a faint shimmer at the edges as it settles into a form. Its changes are quick and quiet, with a soft sound like cloth folding.

Habitat and Range

They range through the Fog and stay near its edges, where travellers come in. They are few.

Behaviour and Temperament

Shape-Shifters are curious and often mischievous. They take the forms of things travellers expect or want, to watch what follows; some guide, some lead astray, many do both. Those who were people once keep their wits and something of their old character. They avoid leaving the Fog, since a Shape-Shifter that steps out stays as it stepped out, perhaps for good.

Abilities

They change into any form they can imagine, within the Fog, and keep its abilities while they hold it: wings fly, a hound's nose scents. Unlike the Odds-Takers, they choose their changes. Unlike other Changers, they can change back.

Life Cycle

They begin as Changers, visitors transformed by the Fog, who in time learned to change on purpose. They age, if at all, as their forms do.

Uses and Dangers

A Shape-Shifter may guide a lost traveller out, in the shape of something they would follow. The danger is following the wrong shape.

Lore and Belief

Tales of shape-changers in the mist are told on every foggy moor. Many are about Shape-Shifters; many are about nothing at all. Some believe a Shape-Shifter that leaves the Fog in a person's shape lives on among people and is never found out.

The moorland songs tell of the bride who came home from the fog and was not the bride, and of the brother who knew it by the way she held a cup and drove her back into the mist with a burning brand.

Where It Appears

• The Probability Fog