House Scathach

*Today I make a vow of blood and steel, and pledge my life to House Scathach. I shall heed the words of the oracles, and pledge my blade to no cause that invites dishonor. I shall tend my own steel, keep my own counsel, and walk my own path until the day I cast no shadow. Thus I swear, by bright moon and blooded blade. And so my long walk begins.*

**Pronounced:** SKAH-huh

**Court:** Seelie (nominally)

**Nicknames:** Gray Walkers, Killers (vulgar)

Even among the Shining Host, there are those who walk apart, preferring the deep shadows that accompany such dazzling displays. House Scathach has always worn the mantle of leadership uneasily, preferring the battlefield to the throne room, and seeing themselves as a warrior elite more than a ruling class. Like their legendary namesake and founder, the Gray Walkers try to lead by example and always fight at the front, in the process forming close bonds with many of the commoners they fight beside. Scathach even reached out to Prodigals, seeking to learn their battle tactics and share intelligence on common threats.

While Scathach was not the first house to elevate commoners into its ranks, their level insistence on merit as a determining factor set them apart from most of their fellow nobles. Of course, bucking tradition does not come without cost, especially among sidhe traditionalists. For daring to become close to commoners — and asserting that they had much to learn from them — House Scathach became a pariah among the nobility, sparking an enmity with the more traditional houses that persists to this day. Many “proper” sidhe look down on the house as spoiled runaways who couldn’t make it in politics, and so chose to quit the game entirely.

For their part, the Gray Walkers embraced their roles as knights-errant, as it allowed them more latitude to patrol the borders of the Kithain world and battle the dangers that stalked the fae from the shadows. They turned inward, trusting a council of their own mystics to guide them and developing complex fighting techniques. Never a particularly large house, over time their numbers dwindled until sighting a Scathach was a rare occurrence indeed, though they retained a great deal of love from commoners as tales spread of mysterious Gray Walkers leaping from the shadows to save fae in danger, only to vanish soon after.

In the modern age, Scathach tend toward professions that allow them to move around often and work on their own for long periods of time; despite their fearsome reputation, though, very few Gray Walkers actually make their living as mercenaries or hired killers. Instead, they often find themselves in jobs that offer a lot of autonomy and territory to cover such as private detectives, park rangers, long haul truck drivers, etc. Not coincidentally, these jobs also tend to take the Scathach to the sorts of places where terrible threats lurk in wait — back alleys, dark forests, deserted roads, downtrodden slums — and that is exactly how they like it.

While the Gray Walkers are technically a Seelie house, they hold few lands and rarely get involved in politics beyond a local level. House Scathach declines to put forward a head of house as the others do and stands only a handful of representatives in the Parliament of Dreams, none of whom claim to represent the house as a whole. Individual Scathach are nearly as likely to be Unseelie as Seelie, and suffer no particular scorn from their fellow house members if they are. For what it’s worth, efforts by other Seelie houses to get the Gray Walkers more politically involved are politely but firmly rebuffed, as are entreaties by the Unseelie Court to change sides.

## House Boon

The Gray Walkers excel at all forms of close combat, and seem to have a preternatural skill at going unnoticed. They make no sound when fighting unless they choose to do so, and receive a –1 difficulty on all Stealth rolls. A Scathach can never botch a Stealth roll. In addition, due to their intense combat focus, all Gray Walkers receive +1 die on all Brawl and Melee rolls, as their perception of time seems to slow down, making it easy to land hits and avoid return strikes.

## House Flaw

All Scathach suffer from a bad reputation with most of their fellow nobles, as well as commoners with royalist sympathies. All Social rolls with other nobles or royalist commoners are made at a +2 difficulty; nobles from houses Liam and Danaan are exempt from this rule. By ancient pact, Gray Walkers who are Autumn sidhe or members of other kiths are also forbidden to use Sovereign, a ban backed by the full weight of the Dreaming. In general, known Scathach are typically the first investigated if notable thefts or deaths occur among the nobility, particularly if it appears to be a sophisticated or polished job.

Arcadian sidhe do not suffer the Sovereign restriction, but have trouble tempering their battle lust, requiring six successes on an extended Willpower roll (difficulty 7) to break off from combat once engaged. A botch on this roll wipes away all accumulated successes and delays a new roll for one round, and a player of a Scathach may only spend Willpower for an automatic success on this roll once per combat. While she will not blindly attack friends or bystanders in this state, she is otherwise wholly fixed on her enemies and her objectives, and will do her utmost to prevent being removed from the field until her work is done.

## Exile

House Scathach was not exiled for the simple reason that only a small number of its members ever went to Arcadia in the first place. Most remained outside the gates, fading into the shadows of fae society. Unless a changeling had direct contact with them, the Gray Walkers were little more than urban legends until the Resurgence. Those few Scathach who returned from Arcadia found the house already humming along nicely in their absence, and aside from some necessary differences in philosophy and experience, there has been little friction between the two groups.

## Factions & Societies

* The Morphean Oracles, a secretive council of talented prophets and seasoned sorcerers whose words guide the house.

* The Eventide Society, warrior-diplomats who maintain contacts with various Prodigal communities in order to fight common threats.

* Dark Horse Investigations International, a private investigation and security company.

* The Seven League Knights, wanderers who protect travelers on trods and blaze new trails in the Dreaming.

* The Natives, a loose association of Gray Walkers who spend more time with an adopted Prodigal group – a werewolf pack, a mage cabal, etc. – than they do with other changelings.

## Notable Members

As befits a small, largely apolitical house, there are few well-known Scathach, and if there is a true High Lord that stands above the Morphean Oracles, none can say. Still, even in a secretive house there are some that have made names for themselves, for better or worse. Duke Valentine, an itinerant vigilante and famed debunker of fraudulent psychics, Lady Grear, a notorious one-eyed Shadow Court assassin, Dame Elenora Mendez, a valiant Thallain hunter from the Kingdom of the Burning Sun, and Kit, true rank unknown, a pooka of the Seven League Knights with a knack for using trods to make surgical strikes on corrupt political systems.