Darth Wiki / Summers Dream

Summer’s Dream is a Changeling the Dreaming 20th Anniversary campaign, set in the quiet beach town of Toadvine, Massachusetts. It surrounds three teens during their last summer before entering the adult world as they learn they are the reincarnations of a group of legendary heroes. They must cope with their new position as they are expected to face down the evil plaguing Toadvine and bring balance to the town

This Work Contains Examples Of:

• Best Years of Your Life: This idea is mocked in the opening session, where each character’s high school lives are depicted as banal and miserable. For them, the magic is in what happens after
• Big Good: Volk, the last remaining member of the Four Heroes, who has been fighting against the Dauntain in the heroes’s absence the entire time, and wishes to the guide the players to inherit their legacy
• Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: In the previous Changeling game, the antagonists were the blatantly horrible Thallian, and the well intentioned but unbearably smug High Court. In this campaign, the primary villains, the Dauntain, are portrayed mostly as Anti-Villains, or just troubled people being taken down a bad path
• Genre Shift: This campaign leans more towards horror than the last few Changeling games, and has a greater emphasis on stealth and puzzles in terms of gameplay rather than standard action.
• Heroic Lineage: Each of the players are reincarnated from one of the Four Great Heroes of the Nightfall Court, and are nearly immediately thrust into their roles
• Running Gag:
  • The Old Baron seemingly dying in his sleep every time the players talk with him, only to wake up whenever they start to get concerned and say “just resting my eyes”
• Story Branching: The players are given the freedom to do most objectives in any order they want, with outcomes and future plot points changing based on their choices
• Time-Delayed Death: Phoebe scratches Pfeiffer Badminton’s troops with her poisoned claws while they’re capturing her. It’s not enough to stop them from locking her up, but by the time the Heroes get to the outpost, the entire unit is dead.
• Urban Fantasy: Comes with being a World of Darkness game

CHARACTERS:

Johanna

Johanna

A shy moth pooka hailing from Iceland. The reincarnation of Acacius

• A Little Bit Beastly: Johanna’s appearance is mostly human, with only a few moth-like traits such as wings, tufts of fur, large black eyes, and antennae
• Beware the Nice Ones: Despite her friendly personality and meek demeanor, when she does actually get angry, she is a force to be reckoned with. The bullies who picked on Noah learn this the hard way, as their confrontation with her ends up with one of them getting thrown off the boardwalk, right into the ocean
• Character Tics: When she gets embarrassed (which is quite often, usually due to Aisha and her horny shenanigans) her face goes bright, and she hides her head in the tuft of fur around her neck
• Cute Book Worm: She’s a very dorky and cute girl who loves to be surrounded with books. She even has her own book review channel on Tiktok
• Raised by Grandparents: Her parents are absent from her life, leaving her to be raised by her grandmother Anna, and Anna’s friends, Eleanor and Kristin, who act as mentors to her
• The Redeemer: Johanna’s kindness can be infectious, and she has a habit of bringing out the best in some otherwise not-so-great people. This is first seen when she befriends Noah and influences him to come out of his shell and stop acting like such a self-centered asshole. She’s even been able to get Wake to warm up to her and start acting a little more selflessly
• Sexy Sweater Girl: Her typical attire includes a tight sweater that leaves her shoulders exposed
• Shrinking Violet: Johanna is generally a very timid person who would prefer to keep to herself

Faibh

Faibh

An energetic selkie who takes no bullshit. The reincarnation of Gwess

• Selkies and Wereseals: She is a part of the Selkie kith
• Happily Adopted: She lives a fairly happy life with her two adoptive fathers

Joe

Josephine “Joe” Ambrose

A distant nocker with a literal mind. The reincarnation of Thales

• Anti Anti Christ: Thales chose her because he saw her as a blank slate he could easily corrupt into becoming just as monstrous as him, but her willpower proved too strong. Upon learning of Thale’s true nature, particularly what he did to her brother, she’s completely rejected everything he stands from wants him dead possibly more than anyone
• Emotionless Girl: She comes across this as due to her very deadpan and blunt manner of speaking. Ultimately subverted, as she ends up being surprisingly emotionally intelligent, and it’s her empathy that allows her to befriend Padma and defeat the Schoolmaster
• Gadgeteer Genius: Comes with being a nocker
• Literal-Minded: She often has a hard time grasping metaphors, and tends to take sarcasm pretty literally
• Wrench Wench: She’s skilled with machines, and uses her wrench as her primary weapon in combat
• Talking the Monster to Death: Joe is able to set the Schoolmaster’s defeat into motion just by talking to Padma, getting her to open up to her and empathize with her struggle.

Nightfall Court

The Four Heroes

Acacius

Chet “Acacius” Michaels

The leader of the heroes and the former ruler of the Nightfall Court. They were a wise and beloved figure within the community

• Messianic Archetype: Acacius is primarily defined by their selflessness and willingness to help others, even when it lead to their tragic death, making them a dead ringer for this role
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: They are never described as anything but an all-around amazing person, and nearly everyone who knew them is still deeply shaken by their death.

Volk

Lou “Volk” Baldwin

A knight that once served Acacius, now the only survivor among the heroes. He now hopes to guide the next generation of heroes forward.

• Cool Old Guy: Volk is a badass warrior and also a loving family man who takes his grandchildren on magical adventures in the dreaming
• Half the Man He Used to Be: He’s gruesomely sawed in half by Haggard while attempting to crawl through a portal back to the Nightfall Court.
• In Touch with His Feminine Side: After raising a daughter on his own, who then went on to give him two granddaughters, he’s picked up a lot of traditionally feminine skills. He demonstrates this when he helps Johanna with her makeup before her meeting with Bastion at Adrianna’s
• Mentor Archetype: As a member of the original group of the heroes, Volk is the one who’s showing the players the ropes of their new positions
• Mr. Exposition: He’s saddled with the role of dumping all the lore on the players during the first few sessions
• Ret-Gone: After his death at the hands of Haggard, his body is fed to the Shroud Mother, meaning that all mortals will forget he ever existed, including the grandchildren who adored him.
• Survivor Guilt: Volk clearly harbors a lot of shame for running from battle while the rest of his friends died, even if he knew saving them was impossible no matter what he did.

Gwess

Gwendolyn “Gwess” Vaughn

A huntress who joined Acacius as a navigator. Often butted heads with the others

• Amazonian Beauty: She’s a very muscular and attractive woman who was one of the Nightfall Court’s deadliest warriors
• Commander Contrarian: Gwess never liked being ordered around, and would often push back on orders just for the sake of it.

Thales

Jeffery “Thales” Wainworth

A general of the Daybreak Court who gave up his comfortable life to join the heroes.

• BFG: In most artwork depicting the heroes, Thales is wielding a huge weapon, usually some sort of oversized gun or a cannon
• Putting on the Reich: His uniform’s design is rather…unfortunate

Citizens

Riley

A young redcap with dreams of being a chef. The unofficial voice of the Nightfall Court citizens

• Face of a Thug: He’s actually quite pretty at first glance, but the glowing yellow snake eyes and jagged fangs tend to send the wrong impression
• The Heart: Riley is more or less the glue that keeps his friend group together

Amy

A timid and mild-mannered troll who tends to the Glades

• Abusive Parents: Implied. She spends most of her time at the court, and seems afraid to go home.
• Caring Gardener: Amy puts a lot of love into maintaining the flora of the glades, and this kindness carries over to how she interacts with others

Aisha

A chronically online satyr girl who joined the court in support of Amy

• Expy: Of Zoe from Monster Prom
• Fangirl: She’s a massive fan of a wide array of shows, video games, and anime. She also approaches the Nightfall Court with her fangirl tendencies, being obsessed with shipping the Four Heroes

Noah

A bad-tempered nocker tinkerer who Riley forced to join the court to get him out of the house

• Fat Bastard: Noah is overweight, and generally an asshole, even if he isn’t an outright villain
• Gadgeteer Genius: More so than any the nocker we’ve seen, including Thales. He’s able to effortlessly build dog-sized robots that follow his orders.
• Hidden Depths: Despite his Jerkass tendencies, Noah seems quite eager to engage with others about subjects he’s passionate about. He’s very civil to Johanna when they discuss horror literature together during their research of Thorne

Wake

A gruff gargoyle who once fought alongside the heroes, and now serves as the only security to the Nightfall Court

• The Big Guy: Big enough to serve as the one-man security team that held off the Baroness and the Dauntain for 3 years
• Our Gargoyles Rock: He even has a leather jacket!
• Sink or Swim Mentor: According to him, having to dodge canon fire is appropriate for your first flying lesson

Later Additions

Padma

The valedictorian at the Heroes’s graduating class. The former host of the Schoolmaster.

• The Ace: She graduated top of her class, and has a reputation all around town of being a genius

Ripper

A prisoner kept in the Nightfall Dungeons, who later joins after the Heroes spare his life.

• Badbutt: Comes across this way due to his reluctance to swear, and failure to kill anybody despite supposedly being a “master assassin”

Daybreak Court

The Baroness

A cold and charismatic woman who runs the Daybreak Court with an iron first.

• The Baroness: She fits the role, being a beautiful, powerful villainess with a dominatrix aesthetic. It’s also literally her title
• Big Beautiful Woman: She’s described as having a very round and full shape, and portrayed as a figure of seduction and beauty
• Formerly Fit: In the Old Baron’s estate, Joe finds a picture that depicts the Baroness as being much thinner in her younger age. However, she also looked miserable and stiff, as opposed to her lively current self

The Baron

The Baroness’s husband. A shrewd and vulgar man who personally carried out the murders of the Four Heroes

• Hero Killer: The Baron is infamous for killing the four heroes. Or not. As it’s later revealed, he only killed Thales after he murdered the other three heroes, and then took the fall out of guilt for instigating the conflict that he believes motivated Thales’ actions.
• Visual Pun: Several characters call him a dickhead, and his hairdo is quite phallic

Old Baron

The Baron’s father, and the former ruler before he had to give up his title due to his ailing health.

• Cool Old Guy: In contrast to his son, the Baron is a wise and level-headed man who aids the players just because it’s the right thing to do
• Sacrificial Lamb: His murder teaches a harsh but important lesson to the players: every choice will make consequences, even the objectively right one

Officials

Khalil

Aisha’s overprotective brother, a guard assigned to prevent the Nightfall Court from taking back their territory

• Smug Snake: Khalil always assumes himself to be in the right 100% of the time, and acts as if he’s the smartest person in the room whenever the players encounter him

Seth

The conniving and cowardly leader of the Daybreak Court’s guards

• Cruel and Unusual Death: Impaled through the eye by Haggard’s horns, before having his head twisted off.
• Dirty Cop: As the head guard, he pockets funds for himself, harasses civilians, and refuses to do his job when there’s any risk to himself
• Hate Sink: While most of the central villains have some likable or entertaining qualities to them, Seth is just an whiny, abusive asshole
• Laser-Guided Karma: After the players turn the Baroness against him, he rants about how he’ll eventually punish them for humiliating them because “everyone always gets what they deserve in the end. Seconds later, he is brutally killed by Haggard.

Citizens

Phoebe

A bookish spider pooka rescued by the players from Dauntain scouts. She is close friends with Hugh

• Badass Bookworm: She’s a quiet, bookish girl that’s capable of draining all the blood from your body or filling you with deadly poison
• Cute Mute: She can’t really speak due to her deafness, instead communicating through ASL, or writing with her webs
• Poisonous Person: Phoebe’s fangs and claws are coated with a potent toxin that can be lethal in high doses. She ends up taking out an entire Dauntain outpost with it before they even notice they’re in any danger

Neil

An apathetic sluagh boy who works at Happy Burger

• The Cynic: Neil doesn’t see the point in much of anything, and is quite vocal about it. The reason he even joins the Nightfall Court in the first place is just out of hatred towards the Daybreak Court
• The Faceless: His face is constantly hidden by the shadows cast from his hood, showing only his glowing eyes

Hugh

A sidhe boy descending from a long line of heroes. He often embarks on adventures, accompanied only by his sword, Regulus

• Butt-Monkey: Nothing ever seems to go right for him, whether it be getting stuck traveling with a racist talking sword, or constantly having his traveling companions getting kidnapped
• Wrong Genre Savvy: He acts more like a D&D player character than a regular teenager. Unfortunately, those talents don’t really carry over to this system

Quinn

A laid-back korred boy who sells magic items he stumbles across during his travels

• Collector of the Strange: He picks up weird magic items that others overlook and sells them out of his coat
• Friendly Shopkeeper: Upon Johanna making a purchase at his shop, he immediately joins the Nightfall Court and swears to die for their cause

Kylie

An alt girl working at Happy Burger who hates her job and all the customers

• Abusive Parents: Her reluctance to go home, combined with her paranoia that anyone showing her kindness is trying to use her for sex, as well her father’s generally creepy demeanor paints a pretty terrifying picture of her home life
• Hidden Depths: She can be a pretty valuable asset when she puts the effort in, as she’s the one who first puts forth the idea of trying to communicate with the sleeping children through the orienomancy, and trying to barter with Thorne to get Shay back
• The Slacker: Kylie puts as little effort as possible into her job, often just ignoring customers all together when she doesn’t feel like taking their order and screaming at them when they try to get her attention

Dauntain

The Nobody

A mysterious woman who has no face. The ringleader of the Dauntain invaders. She controls the ruins of Happyland, the amusement park that once served as the town’s heart

• Big Bad Wannabe: She’s the leader of the Dauntain, but even from the beginning, it’s clear that she’s just playing second fiddle to whoever or whatever V is.

Bastion

A sadistic impish man who controls the restaurant district of Toadvine

• Ambiguous Situation: With the revelation that the cult has been spying on the party the whole time through Joe’s vision, Bastion’s instant knowledge of actions they take, like siding with the Old Baron, make more sense if he was a Fomorian cultists himself. We never get to find out before he’s killed off, however
• Evil Is Petty: He kills the Old Baron just because he was angry the players decided to seek his help instead of him
• Faux Affably Evil: Bastion is the only Dauntain who treats the Heroes with respect and has a genuine interest in negotiating with them. The facade of friendliness soon evaporates when Johanna and Amy visit his restaurant and see him publicly humiliating his employees
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: He tries to cut a deal with the players to help them take down the Nobody because he believes they will eventually defeat the Dauntain
• One-Winged Angel: When confronting the players, he fuses with the factory to become a giant machine called the Titan Of Industry
• Token Evil Teammate: While most of the Dauntain are Tragic Monsters who have been consumed by their worst traits, Bastion is a spiteful dick driven only by ambition

The Schoolmaster

A strange, puppet-like creature that controls the library. One of the most powerful and reclusive of the Dauntain.

• Evil Teacher: His entire shtick, luckily, he’s not actually in charge of any kids. As it turns out, the teacher aesthetic symbolizes his role as a manifestation of the crushing academic pressure weighing on Padma
• Invincible Villain: None of the party’s attacks were able to penetrate his wooden skin. It’s only when Padma refuses him that the wood starts to crack, leaving some spots vulnerable
• Perverse Puppet: He takes the form of a giant wooden marionette, and moves in the same jagged motion that a puppet on strings would.
• Puppeteer Parasite: A very literal example, as he’s a parasite that literally drags his host around on strings like a puppet
• Self-Disposing Villain: When he is blinded during his boss fight, he starts doing his charge attack at random in a panic, leading to him smashing his head against the wall
• Starter Villain: He’s the first of the Dauntain that the players end up facing off against, although he ends up sharing this role with Rajiv and Indira Kaur

Thorne

A flayed man obsessed with sadism and misery. He controls the art galleries, and often picks fights with fey that get to close

• Body Horror: Thorne’s fey mien has no skin, his muscles are fully exposed, just twitching and dripping blood. If that’s not bad enough, his swollen brain is sticking out of his skull.

The Deep

The Fomorians

True Fae fallen from Arcadia that now seek to conquer the dreaming to build a new paradise in their image

• Greater-Scope Villain: While the Fomorians attack their on the Dreaming Toadvine three years prior to the campaign set off the main conflict of the story, they don’t actually appear. Instead, their followers serve as the main antagonists of the story

The Masterminds (Spoilers)

Sun and Moon

The leaders of the Fomorian Cult who have been pulling the strings behind the Dauntain invasion the entire time

V (Spoilers)

Jeffery “Thales” Wainworth

Once the hero known as Thales of the Nightfall Court, who’s lust and anger drove him to betray his comrades and fall to the Fomorians

• Body Horror: He’s not pretty in his current state, his entire body being shriveled, bloated, and covered with scars. Some parts, like his legs and eyes, have atrophied completely, and been replaced with machinery
• Hate Sink: Thales is an entitled, lecherous manipulator who betrayed and killed the heroes because he was angry that Acacius, barely a legal adult rejected him. In the modern day, he works for the Fomorian cultists, kidnapping and torturing children to further their goals. Without a doubt, he’s one of the repulsive characters in the campaign
• Kick the Dog: Upon awaking in the lab, the first thing he does is snap the neck of the Glade Guardian that was accompanying Joe

Haggard

A strange fey clad in a mask made from a goat’s face. He wanders the town, killing under the orders of his master

• Chainsaw Good: He’s rarely seen without his weapon of choice, a giant, rusty chainsaw
• Eye Scream: As punishment for losing the music box key, V plucks out Haggard’s left eye
• Psychopathic Manchild: Haggard rants like an bratty fifth grader throwing a temper tantrum while viciously torturing Joe with a chainsaw
• Roaming Enemy: Despite working with the Dauntain, he doesn’t hold territory of his own. Instead, he seems to just roam the entire town, appearing at random, or whenever he is summoned by the Dauntain.

Metalhead

A mysterious, fanatical cultist that never speaks

Other Fey/Chimera

Sun and Moon

An enigmatic pair of merchants that often pop up in unusual places

• Dungeon Shop: They set up shop in each of the Dauntain boss’s dungeons, seemingly unfazed by the danger. This is one of the first signs that there’s something shady going on with them
• Malevolent Masked Men: While they’re not actively villainous, they definitely carry a sinister presence, and seem to have some kind of ulterior motives.

Glade Guardians

Furry little ape-like creatures that reside within each of the Glades

The Shroud Mother

Phoebe’s mother, one of Toadvine’s most powerful chimera, one capable of warping reality itself

• Necessarily Evil: Being eaten by the shroud mother is possibly the most horrific fate in the game, but if it wasn’t for her, the amount of suspicious deaths connected to the fey would surely lead to their existence being exposed
• Ret-Gone: What happens to the bodies consumed by her. Any memories of them are erased completely from mortal’s minds, with only fey remembering them

Residents of Toadvine

Family of the Heroes

Anna, Kristin, and Eleanor

A trio of sassy old ladies known as “The Posse” who raised Johanna

• Cool Old Lady: The entire trio qualifies, all being strong female role models to Johanna who take no shit from anybody
• Blind Mistake: Eleanor frequently gets into cartoonish, Mr. Magoo-sque antics due to her blindness.

John Ellis and Pete Ellis

Faibh’s adoptive fathers

• The Dividual: They’re both referred to as “Mr. Ellis”, wear the same outfit, talk in the same manor, and usually it’s not even specified which one is speaking

Sherman and Michelle Ambrose

Joe’s parents

• Expy: Sherman, being a well-meaning, but bumbling dad who’s a bit behind on social issues is pretty close to Frank Hoskins from the first campaign

Other Families

Rajiv and Indira Kaur

Padma’s parents

• Abusive Parents: They saddle their daughter with intense academic pressure and control every aspect of her life, forcing her to attend a university in another country that she doesn’t want to go to, and choosing which friends she’s allowed to have.
• Break the Haughty: Seeing the horrors they have inflicted on their daughter manifested in the Schoolmaster’s Academy finally gets them to change their behavior and start treating Padma like a person
• Education Mama: The Kaurs became so obsessed with their daughter’s academic performance, that they stopped caring about her well-being

Paul Springer

Phoebe’s kinain father

• Hot Skitty-on-Wailord Action: He fucked a sentient giant spider roughly the size of a house and conceived a child with it. No further clarification is ever given

Hector Alcazar

Riley’s father

• The Eeyore: His face is contorted in a near permanent frown as a result of losing his restaurant to Pal Marconi sabotage and being stuck at a shitty job in a good truck.
• Throw the Dog a Bone: Marconi’s mysterious death leads people to believe his restaurant is haunted, meaning Hector will likely be able to buy it back for a cheaper price in the future

Peter Sellars

The elderly owner of the library

• Punny Name: His defining trait is his conflicting feelings about potentially selling the library

Mr. Hadley

The Mayor of Toadvine

• The Chew Toy: Despite the horrors afflicting Toadvine being completely out of his control, he’s still the one getting shit on for all of it

Reverend Samuel Kincaid

A the town loon, an alt-right conspiracy theorist

• Authority in Name Only: Kincaid isn’t a real reverend, and isn’t associated with the local church at all. He’s just a podcaster
• Hated by All: Nearly the entire town denounces his paranoid, bigoted beliefs, and he’s treated as a pariah.

Melanie

A girl from the heroes’ high school that Noah has a crush on

• Hate Sink: She leads Noah on and asks him on a date for the sole purpose of ambushing him with her friends and publicly humiliating him, filming and uploading the whole thing online. Despite only appearing in one session, she’s one of the most loathed characters in the entire campaign
• "Just Joking" Justification : “It was literally for a Tiktok!”

Officer Hutchinson

An elderly cop who patrols the town on his bicycle