Skinchangers are cursed beings that can steal the skin - appearance, voice, fingerprints, etc - of other living beings.
Powers[]
The Skinchangers' most notable ability is their ability to wear the skin of others with shocking effectiveness. They even will grow to absorb more and more of the original owner's memories over time, improving their ruse the longer they keep it going.
Skinchargers are biologically immortal as they are technically undead, with no blood flowing through their bodies. Their curse also gives them superhuman strength, speed, and powers of observation.
Weaknesses[]
There are two primary tools in one's arsenal against Skinchangers: observation and fire. A keen observer will note the tightness around a Skinchanger's face, as they usually fail to wear the skin perfectly in this area. A suspected Skinchanger can be tested quickly, as they do not bleed. A simple prick of the skin will suffice as a test. Immolation is their true weakness however. The curse that Skinchangers bear will not let them die even if they are reduced to just a brain with no body. Fire is the easiest and most convenient way to destroy a Skinchanger once and for all.
History[]
Arrival at the Steppe[]
The first Skinchangers were part of a company of Knights of Adarnum led by one Adolphos Knecht. Two dozen knights and their retainers (various priests and acolytes) rode into the steppes of the world of Videna to bring the light of Kirva and Adarnum to the various nomads therein.
Sometime in the first century After Unification, the company established a hold deep within the steppe, built over top of one of the few watering holes in the region. The fort was a natural position, perched on a rare outcropping of high terrain from the flat wastes. From this position, the knights converted and subjugated much of the local population, gathering hosts of new worshipers into an army of the faithful.
This eventually caught the attention of the clan chiefs. When one of their number challenged the knights and was slain for his trouble, the others assembled a coalition against the invaders. Over the next few years, the route between the hold and the civilized lands of Videna (such as the city of Hauldt, where much of The Skinchanger Campaign took place) became plagued by raiders, and the hold began to starve. The knights, whether out of pride or fear that they would be picked off in the steppes, refused to abandon their castle. Adolphus Knecht in particular is said to have hanged his own squire for trying to desert the castle.
The knights could not hold out forever, though, and their local forces withered from famine or melted away in a steady stream of desertions. Their loyal acolytes became increasingly demoralized, and talk of mutiny became rampant. So Knecht did the only logical thing: to preserve the souls of his men and spare them the shame of treason, he would take the crime upon himself and secretly open a route from the caves beneath the castle into its very heart, so that he and his men could die in battle rather than dishonor themselves forever by fleeing or starving ignobly. The nomads found the passage, as Knecht knew they would, and poured into the castle. The remaining locals were slaughtered along with the acolytes and priests.
Curse[]
the Taker of Skins, the elder thing that created the first Skinchangers
- Main article: Taker of Skins
But for the surviving knights (a dozen of the original twenty four), a more severe punishment was in store. They were taken to the deepest caves beneath the castle, where even Knecht and his inner circle had not strayed. The knights were not the first to note the strategic value of their hold's position. It so happened that wiser heads had known more about what lurked beneath the rocky outcrop. For in ancient days that long predated any pretense of civilization on Videna, the caverns below had become the lair (or perhaps the material shell) of an eldritch abomination, a cosmic refugee from the great cleansing of lesser gods that followed the Pantheon War.
This nameless, skulking thing became one with the caverns and for millennia uncounted (in part because the nomads had no numerical system) was sated with the scraps of half-understood rituals and sacrifices. The knights were subjected to one such ritual, flayed alive in the cavern and left for the horror to claim. And claim them it did, cursing them to live though their skin had been taken, to clutch blindly along the walls though their eyes were plucked out. These first Skinchangers made their agonizing way to their old castle, where they found the rotting bodies of their erstwhile servants batting away vermin and carrion birds, pressed on by some hideous instinct that told them exactly how to go about doing so, they took the skins, the eyes and the tongues of the dead.
Three knights could not bear the horror of their new form. At first, they attempted to bleed themselves to death, but failed. They then immolated themselves in purifying flame, revealing to the surviving Skinchangers their principal weakness. The nine that remained had new faces, new voices. Knecht, of course, had new purpose: refusing to believe himself cursed, but rather blessed, he pressed his brethren to embrace the power to steal the appearance of others and turn it against their torturers.
Expansion and War[]
Thus, over the next decades, the nomads of the steppe became ruled, unwittingly, by knights with the faces of chieftains. From this base of power, the Skinchangers would spread their influence across Videna, going so far as to infiltrate the local chapter of the Knights Mercantile and thus throwing open the entire cosmos to their machinations. They learned how to make others like themselves, and to become a Skinchanger soon became the reward of their most trusted mortal servants. For a century, the Skinchangers operated as a horrifying parallel arm of the Knights of Adarnum, delivering victories to the forces of Kirva through sudden and unexplained infighting among their enemies: in the bloodiest days of the Fialta-Shantine War, many a Fialta warlord heard of once loyal captains declaring open rebellion against him, or of Fialta princes assassinated by trusted retainers. For their part, the Knights of Adarnum and the Kirvan Church remained either blissfully or willfully ignorant, praising their deity for unexplained good fortune.
Naturally, the patrons of the Fialta sought a more concrete explanation, and in finding it, initiated a campaign of extermination against the Skinchangers. It was this shadow war which ensnared poor Dietmar the elf and others like him, subjects of experimentation by the agents of the god Valdos to peel away the mysteries of the Skinchangers skin-by-skin.
Recent Operations[]
Along the way, a faction within the Skinchangers did seek to reverse the curse, leading them to hunt for the Codex Exilium in hopes of binding an angel of Kirva or Idolmar to their aid: this endeavor was temporarily thwarted by the events of the Heist Campaign, but Mimir, the Count of Lidenia would ultimately honor the promise of Roy Stallion Jr. to transfer the Codex to the Skinchangers. Their continued search for sacred artifacts during the events of the Black Pyramid Campaign would suggest that they were unsuccessful in using the Codex to achieve their ends.
At least two of the original Skinchangers are known to be dead, slain during the events of the Skinchanger campaign; the remaining seven may or may not still be at large.