To be a sluagh is to be alternately mistrusted, feared, taunted and ignored. It is to be accused of orgies beneath the earth and eating babies in obscene rituals. It is to be a pariah among those who are pariahs themselves. It is also to not care a whit for any of those things. We dwell, as we always dwell, in the shadows watching the other actors in the great play scurry to and fro. We listen to the secrets of the dead and learn those of the living, and then, like civilized beings, we share those secrets over tea. Remember: once upon a time, we were the faeries who took bad children... away.  Sluagh, Themselves and others
Everyone knows who the sluagh are. They're the nasty, smelly, slimy, creepy weirdos who know everything about everyone. They spy on all the other kith, hold forbidden revels in cavernous mazes deep beneath the earth, and occasionally sacrifice childlings to whatever dark things they worship. They also eat spiders and toads, hate sunlight and all the other kith, and can't be trusted as far as a boggan can throw an overweight troll. [If you're not playing a sluagh character, this is as far as your Character reads. None of the following is known to any but the sluagh, and they don't like their secrets spilled. Character knowledge which ventures further than this is unwelcome except amongst this nightmare kith. Be warned. Here be Dragons.] Of course, no one has ever seen one of these orgiastic rites (or, for that matter, a labyrinth of tunnels with a sign saying "sluagh made this"). No one has ever seen sluagh perform any sacrifice, human or fae. Most sluagh, even their detractors admit, are impeccably, if somewhat morbidly, groomed. While their taste in wine and tea is abominable, sluagh treasure spiders far too much ever to devour them, save as part of a cantrip's workings, and as for the toads, well, frogs' legs supposedly taste like chicken. So what does that leave? Not much. In fact, if one carefully examines the multitude of charges laid at the sluagh's feet over the years, one finds almost no evidence to support any of them. What's left? That they're weird. They're strange. Standoffish. Secretive. [...] Primal Days
The sluagh were born from fear, and on this they all agree. Every time a crone of a grandmother gave a name to the creaking of a floorboard or the groaning of a contracting stone, a sluagh was born. In the primal forests of Eastern Europe, the shadows and the noises came alive when they were given names, and they knew their purposes. They were terrors in the night, and that was all they knew. Born from the sounds and images that distilled fear from disquiet, they intrinsically knew that they were to continue with more of the same. Tappers on windows continued their furtive scuttlings; creatures born from night noises made more of the same. In this way the numbers of sluagh grew rapidly, for the more noises the crawlers made, the more names were assigned to them, and the more awoke from shadows and whispers. In some ways it was a golden time to ba a sluagh; as the stories about them grew more complex, they themselves grew more complicated. Their minds grew clearer, their purposes sharper, their cunning deeper. Tales ascribed servants to them, and creatures like the vodyanoi emerged to fill these roles. [...] And so they came, slithering and gibbering, to a great stone ring that they all somehow knew how to find. Deep in the Russian forest, far from any human habitation, the far-flung children of nightmare met their brothers and sisters for the first time. All night they danced around the twisted grey pillars that had called to them, indulging for the first and last time in the sort of bacchanalia the other kith regularly ascribe to them. At the height of the festivities, the gathered sluagh received a visitor. Nameless and crowned with an antlered casque, he rode forth from the blackest part of the wood on a white stallion. The horse's eyes and ears were the red of blood, and its hooves seemed to touch the earth but lightly. All around him, the sluagh fell silent, sensing the import of this intruder's visit. [...] No one has ever succeeded in finding that stone ring again, which is not surprising. It was not a part of the world, and was given to the sluagh for that night only. Many among them still do not realize this, and search for that ring fruitlessly. Others, wiser in the lore of their kind, merely treasure the legends. [...] Birthrights and Frailties
The Sluagh birthrights are ideally suited to a race of beings spawned in narrow spaces in the dark. However, certain of the gifts have faded with the centuries. Once the sluagh could ooze through cracks mere inches across. Time passed, though, and slowly the underfolk were acsribed hands (for reaching out of dark corners), legs (for scuttling across rooftops at night), and other large, irreducibly human-esque physical structures. Now they are reduced to contorting themselves into impossible shapes. Still, this is a great deal more than any other kith is capable of doing, and it is best to bind a sluagh with Glamour instead of rope. When using the Birthright of squirm, a Sluagh is capable of redistributing her body mass within her skin any way she pleases, so long as there is no deviation from the basic humanoid figure. She may choose to manifest as a grotesquely swollen head attached to a shrunken body, or to dislocate her shoulders and roll them so far behind her back that they meet. Sluagh also possess sharper senses than any other kithain. This comes naturally from ages of peering through knotholes and listening to whispers. As taletellers gave the sluagh knowledge of secrets and the status of omnipresent lurkers, they developed the tools with which to lurk effectively and garner as many secrets as possible. It is even believed by certain more superstitious nockers and boggans that sluagh grumps' senses are so acute that they can hear thoughts as well as spoken words. However, there is no doubting the supernatural acuity of sluagh eyesight. Sluagh are even capable of seeing the lurking shadows of the restless dead. With the effort of Glamour, sluagh can even communicate with these tortured souls, although the value and danger of the secrets of the dead are not always what they seem. A whisper is almost always far more terrifying than a shout, whatever a redcap might wish you to believe. Whispers in darkness are heard only by their intended. Others tend to dismiss so-called voices in the night that they themselves did not hear. Thus the voice of the sluagh is that of the hissing lurker in dark places. Indeed, they are no longer even capable of loud speech, although there is nothing in their anatomies that would prevent such utterances. It is believed by some of the more "rational" of the kithain that the ban is more phycological than physical, mroe sorcerous than natural. It is very real to the sluagh, nonetheless, and they do not take kindly to having their frailties prodded by outsiders.
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