Finn McGuire

Name: Finn McGuire
Seeming: Beast 
Kith: Nix 
Court: Autumn 
Freehold: Seaward (Corpus)
Entitlement: Scarecrow Ministry (Terrors of Mortals) 
Title: "Scarecrow", "Scarecrow Minister"  
Virtue: Fortitude
Vice: Pride
Pronouns: He / Him / His
Description: Finn is a Nix, a Beast creature designed to lure innocents to watery doom. Delicate scales snake down his arms, along his legs, up his neck, and along his checkbones; each scale has a soft pearlescent shimmer that reflects the light in a manner both lovely and unworldly. His fingers end in sharp clawed nails and something about the way his eyes blink--not often enough, until your own eyes begin to water on his behalf--is unsettling.
Since becoming a Scarecrow Minister, his mien has grown stronger and more unnerving; members report catching glimpses of wide fishy eyes or long fangy teeth out of the corner of their eyes. These features are gone when they look directly at him, but so many Changelings can't all be seeing things... can they?
Background: Ever since his escape, Finn has been interested--some might say obsessed--with keeping humans out of the hands of the Shining Ones. Particularly young humans, and particularly those who might stray into dangerous places. The areas the True Fae like to haunt, the spaces where hedge gates lie, the traps that fetches and loyalists lay out for their victims. Gates can be closed and loyalists dealt directly, but there are far greater dividends to be had in stoking fear in the hearts of humans and teaching them to stay away from magic. Close a gate and you save a human; teach a city to fear gates and you save a generation.
Finn has a deft hand both in water-arenas (being a Beast Nix) and in dream-working and, in time, the Scarecrow Ministers selected him to join their order. After the Corpus Christi tragedy, he was selected to move to the city and help with the rebuilding efforts. His primary mission is to strike fear in the hearts of the human residents so that none of them stumble into the hedge or volunteer to serve the True Fae in their backyards. His secondary mission, as he was soon to discover after moving here, is to keep his fellow Changelings on edge--many of whom are shockingly lackadaisical about the danger they face.
Personality: Quiet to the point of seeming sullen, Finn is rarely an open book to his fellows. He's capable of smiles and laughter, but they're reserved for a rare few who are able to crack his studious frown. He's smart as a whip and capable of great speed in his analyses and decisions, struggling not to scorn those who can't keep up with him. He is absolutely devoted in his cause to protect humanity from the True Fae, and sometimes frustrated when other Changelings lose sight of their most important responsibility. 
Mantle: A clammy wet chill fills the air, like ocean spray in late autumn. The sense of being watched by something under the waves which might reach up and drag you down at any moment. Little noises appropriate to the area manifest; rat feet scuttling in a warehouse, or bat wings rustling in an attic, or (most often) tiny ominous splashes in the ocean that no fish could make. The more Finn's mantle flares, the more he appears out of the corner of the eye like his chosen Bugbear Mask.
Hedge Beast: Against his inclination and much to his own fishy consternation, Finn picked up a hedge beast at his last freehold, a young sand cat which is intelligent, apparently capable of speech, and easily frightened. The kitten's name is Niall, but whether it will ever live up to its name of Champion is anyone's guess.
=== History ===
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Everyone asks about the kith. 
Every. Single. Time. I'm not Summer or anything, the head-injuries are to die for--in some cases, literally--but it's enough to drive a guy up the nearest wall in annoyance. 
"Isn't that a girl kith?" Obviously not.
"Well, but aren't most Nixes girls?" No statistics have been compiled on the subject, no.
"Doesn't the Autumn Handbook of Observed Kiths and Seemings call them--" River maidens, yes. Don't you have a Succubus to bother? They love these questions, I'm told. 
It wasn't even a river. The stretch of water where the neighborhood kids liked to go down and play was a brook, at best. I warned her not to play down there. It worried our mother, who swore there were snakes nesting in the grass. Or you could fall and break a bone; no one would hear you and you'd be stuck there until someone noticed you were gone. And of course you could drown in less than two inches of water.
I repeated her warnings to my little sister, but she never listened. There was a rumor that a lady lived in the brook and would tell stories to children and give out wishes and candy. Preposterous and ridiculous, of course, but Shannon swore it was true and that she'd seen the lady herself once. The woman had worn a glittering white dress and yet taken my mud-covered sister up on her lap, or so she told me, and combed and braided her hair and told her a story she couldn't quite remember when I asked her to tell it back.
She couldn't be telling the truth. Yet she didn't seem to think she was lying. I was worried. Sometimes Shannon imagined things too deeply and hurt herself when they didn't come true. Like when she was so sure dad would come back that she tried to cook his favorite meal and burned her hands. I was afraid she'd go down to the brook to find this imaginary lady and end up bitten or stung by something poisonous.
Well, she did go down to the brook. And there was something poisonous waiting. But she wasn't imaginary.
In the end, I bargained for her freedom. The bitch didn't want a baby; I was closer in age to what she wanted, and I cried less than Shannon did. When the promise was struck, she touched Shannon on the forehead and she dropped senseless to the ground; I almost screamed, but a touch of her pulse told me she was sleeping. I did scream a few minutes later, when she tore my soul from my heart, but I managed to quiet down when I realized what she was doing: a replacement made from weeds and reeds, sleeping on the grass beside my sister. Already curled protectively around her, even then.
I know she didn't make him for mother and Shannon, but I believed in him. It was a small hope, but something to cling to. Then a doorway shimmered in the air between the two entwined trees that everyone said looked like a fairy gate, and we passed through. The Queen and her boy-Nix. Not that she cared. Work was waiting for me to be done and, if that's what it took to survive this place, I was determined to do it.
Category:Corpus Christi
Category:Autumn
Category:Monarch
Category:NPC