Judd, I had a few quick questions based on your experience with shifter. As you're one of very few people I know who have experience with them when they aren't mutants such as in my world, I was hoping to see if I could pose them to you?
[Listen, he doesn't know how to tactfully ask the question out loud without giving away his investment in it. And if Judd is anywhere near as powerful a telepath as, say, Charles, distance wouldn't necessarily protect his mind while he asked it over the phone so... texting is safer.]
In the pop-culture lore of my world it is held that werewolves can only enter their were-form on the full moon, or maybe that and the two nights bracketing it, and that regardless of whether they see the moon or not. Is the same true of shifters in your world?
[Yes. Start small and work around to ‘unimportant’ details.]
Not any more than my abilities being tied to any sort of cosmic cycle. Changelings are both animal and man. Limiting their ability to shift would wound both sides mentally.
Under normal circumstances, they can shift forms whenever they desire.
Oh my, seems like my world has gotten it quite wrong. Still, it is good to hear they have control. Though I'm left wondering if there are situations where there is uncontrolled shifting.
[There might be another reason, but curiosity has Judd in its snare and he isn't about to point that out now until he gets to the bottom of what this is all about.]
The pups have a tendency to shift randomly, but they're still young. It's mostly spotaneous semi-shifting that occurs when Changelings are experiencing extreme emotions.
[A pause.]
It can be forced through psychic interference, but it's an extremely vile practice.
[And he'd personally take out anyone that thought it was a good idea.]
Changelings come in all species--wolves, deer, leopards, bears, tigers, rats, snakes, eagles, lynx, hyenas, swans, wildcats, falcons...
That includes water species as well. However, they've historically been incredibly insular, and we're all playing a little catch up. A conclave of water changelings have sprung up in the last century, with its current alpha being a woman I've met multiple times, but we'll all be damned if we know what her animal is.
SnowDancer betting pool currently has it at great white shark or killer whale.
Yes. Changelings divide themselves into predatory and non-predatory species. The non-predatories typically live on predatories lands and receive their protection.
I've got a non-predatory deer buck on my speed dial--he runs the bar the juveniles get into all kinds of shit in.
Other predatory species need explicit permission from the pack that holds the land to live in or travel through pack lands. Pack law.
Wow, that's all really interesting. Formalized processes in the best ways. What, I have to wonder, is the value to protecting non-predatory species? There has to have been an evolutionary bias for that? And is there interbreeding between species?
Changelings are protective by nature, and predatory changelings take it to another level. [Dominant predatory changelings can sometimes be downright insufferable.] The process had to be formalized to prevent another war.
The value to protecting other species is that, again, they're protective by nature. While predatory changelings have no compunctions hunting down a wild deer, the human side has no desire to go after a Changeling Deer.
Even if they aren't altruistic, changelings can only keep the land they can protect, and that includes ensuring safety of those lands to everyone in it.
The common theory is that we all started out as humans. Psy and Changelings merely evolved differently from them--Changelings physically, Psy mentally.
Pre-Silence, Psy married and lived freely among Humans and Changelings. However, we had a much higher insanity rate as a result of our abilities. Insanity would often lead to violent outbursts.
In 1979, we implemented the Silence Protocol in an attempt to curb it. Psy knew that our abilities were tied to emotion, and that through emotion we lost control, so through Silence it was conditioned away.
I can understand the desperation of the initial council that signed off on the Silence Protocol. I fought breaking Silence, even if it meant not being with my mate, until it almost killed me.
Because the idea of having emotions and harming someone on accident wasn't worth the payoff.
Emotions will always hurt people. But a lack of them hurts people more. And makes it easier to see those with emotions as lesser, as needing controlled.
You caught on to an issue of Silence a lot quicker than most.
It also allowed for the truly Silent, the sociopaths, to roam free unchecked. The latter Psy Council's even covered this fact up, to protect the Psy and to protect Silence.
[He knows. He helped to cover it up.]
You'll be happy to know that Silence has fallen. The Psy reputation is long in tatters among the other races, and it will take decades, if not another century, to repair.
Yeah, I was going to point out that it makes it hard to pick out people who are just sociopathic and more likely to hurt others. It's a lot worse when you can silence your victims. Let them live in the horror.
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