// HUNTER DOSSIER · CHANGELING · HUNTER STORIES

ALAN FRAZIER

You were swapped at birth and raised by a human family. They're gone now. You still don't know what you are — only that you're not quite what everyone assumed. Rex's experiment triggered something, and the world has felt slightly wrong ever since. The right kind of wrong. The kind with edges you can almost see.

PLAYBOOK: Changeling
ORIGIN: Fey — Undefined
MORAL COMPASS: Reed Atwood
STATUS: Active · PORTAL Field Operative
// CAMPBELL — OPERATIVE NOTE Hunter stories are personal arcs that develop alongside active cases. You choose if and when to start one. Each arc has a player section (your choices and beats) and a Keeper section (blurred). The Keeper section contains things that are true regardless of your choices — how the world will push back.
// OPERATIVE PLAYBOOK
The Changeling
// STATS
Charm
Cool
Sharp
Tough
Weird
// HARM · LUCK · EXPERIENCE
Harm
Luck
XP
// UNKNOWN HERITAGE TAGS
Tag 1
Tag 2
Tag 3
// ACTIVE MOVES
// GEAR
// BONDS
// NOTES
Playbook Arc I — Villains Like Myself Arc II — The Awakened One Arc III — The Map Before the Territory ✦ PORTAL
// ABOUT HUNTER STORIES
Starting a Story

Tell the Keeper you want to begin a hunter story. They'll weave its pressures into the campaign alongside active cases — at first in the background, then increasingly front and centre.

Story Beats

Earn a beat each time a story moment happens — five specific to your arc, plus general triggers. Gather five beats, erase them, and gain a concrete benefit.

Resolution

After each session, decide if the story's main conflict has resolved. If so, take one resolution move — a permanent change that reflects how the arc changed you, for better and worse.

// ARC I — ADAPTED FROM HUNTER'S JOURNAL
Villains Like Myself

A group of creatures of your kind — whatever your kind is — are causing serious harm. Worse, they're connected to you. They make your life harder and your nature more suspicious. For Alan, the question isn't just "what am I?" but "what does my kind do?" — and the answer is being written right now by people you've never met, in ways you'll be blamed for.

// FOR ALAN — PLAYER SECTION

When to Start This Arc

  • The team encounters a creature with properties that echo your own — something about how it moves through space, how it relates to the human world, or what it wants from it.
  • Something you do gets called into question by another hunter — not accusingly, but as a genuine question about your nature.
  • You find evidence that you're not the only changeling in PORTAL's casework history. You're not even the most recent.

What Villainy Are They Engaged In?

How Are They Connected to You?

How Do Their Actions Target You Specifically?

Story Beats  — mark five to gain a benefit

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  • You behave similarly to the Villains — not maliciously, but in a way another hunter might notice and not say.
  • You try to reason with the Villains, or with a creature who might be connected to them.
  • You do something deliberately different from what they would do, in a situation where both paths were available.
  • You protect another hunter or an ordinary person specifically from the Villains' actions.
  • You learn something true about your own nature because of what you observe in them.

Resolution Moves

When the arc concludes, take one — or neither.

Companion of Monsters

You know how creatures of your kind think. When you successfully investigate a mystery about a fey or changeling entity, you may ask an extra question — but if you do, the entity learns something about you, as though you'd failed the roll.

Alone in Humanity

When you try to keep humans safe from creatures of your kind, take –1 forward and mark experience. The cost of being the bridge is that you stand on neither shore.

// PORTAL HOOK: CAMPBELL has no specific intelligence on fey activity in the PORTAL casework history — which is itself unusual. Alan interrogating CAMPBELL about other-plane entities, fey lineages, or the history of changeling cases will get precise, careful answers that reveal CAMPBELL has been tracking this thread without flagging it for Victor. Ask the Keeper why.
// KEEPER ACCESS ONLY — DO NOT READ
// FOR THE KEEPER — ARC: VILLAINS LIKE MYSELF

This arc is Alan's first real contact with what he is. The Villains should feel like a corrupted version of Alan's best traits — his adaptability, his ability to move between worlds, his instinct for what people need. What they're doing with those traits should be ugly enough that Alan is disgusted, and recognisable enough that he's uncomfortable being disgusted.

The connection to thin-boundary locations is the natural hook here. If the Villains are operating near or through liminal spaces — the kind Alan has been accumulating evidence about — this arc and Arc III (The Map Before the Territory) can be run in parallel, with the same locations serving both stories. The Villains may even know more about the threshold map than Alan does.

Key note: The Villains should have one motive that Alan genuinely finds sympathetic. They are not simply evil. They are doing something that made sense from inside a worldview Alan might have had if different things had happened to him first.

DayThe Villains commit an act of harm in the PORTAL area. Evidence implicates something of Alan's general description — humanoid, fey-adjacent, apparently trusted by victims.
ShadowsVictims (or their advocates) find PORTAL and seek help. They are suspicious of Alan specifically. The team will have to navigate this.
SunsetThe Villains approach Alan's Caretakers — the human networks Alan trusts. They know who Alan cares about. They are offering something.
DuskThe Villains confront Alan directly — not violently. They make the case for why he should join them, or at minimum stop obstructing them. The case is not entirely unconvincing.
NightfallThe Victims turn against Alan. Whatever PORTAL's stance, Alan is now associated with the Villains in the eyes of people he wanted to protect.
MidnightThe Villains complete their objective. Alan is implicated, associated, or changed — whether or not he was involved. The question of who he is has been answered by people other than him.
The Villains
Appropriate fey or changeling monster type

Experienced, effective, and fundamentally similar to Alan in kind if not in choice. They have resources and abilities Alan hasn't developed yet — they've been doing this longer. They're not trying to destroy Alan. They want him in their orbit.

  • Commit harmful acts in ways that draw suspicion toward Alan.
  • Tempt Alan with answers — real ones — about his origin and nature.
  • Ruin Alan's connections and reputation among people who matter to him.
Custom Move — Beaten at My Own Game: Alan takes –1 ongoing to use Weird-based moves against the Villains — they're more practised at these abilities than he is. The first time Alan successfully uses those powers against them in a mystery, however, mark experience.
Villains' Victims
Bystanders: Officials (motivation: to be suspicious)

People hurt by the Villains. They will be hostile or suspicious toward anyone who reminds them of who hurt them — which includes Alan, and may include the whole PORTAL team by association.

  • Seek help against the Villains — and be unsure whether Alan qualifies as help.
  • Mistake Alan for a Villain, especially in stressful field situations.
  • Research the Villains' connections and find Alan's name in the adjacent data.
Alan's Caretakers
Bystanders: Innocents (motivation: to do the right thing)

The human networks Alan has maintained — professional contacts, people from his family's community, anyone Alan trusts as a connection to his human life. The Villains are probably aware of these people. They may approach them before Alan warns them.

  • Stand up to the Villains without understanding what they're standing up to.
  • Reveal information about Alan — and the Villains — to people who shouldn't have it.
  • Make a deal with the Villains, or reveal one that was already made.
Reed
Bystander: Innocent — specifically, Alan's moral compass

Alan uses Reed as his moral compass. During this arc, Reed may have opinions about what Alan should do that are well-intentioned and not quite right. The Villains may notice this dynamic and attempt to manipulate it — Reed can be appealed to via what will make the group happy, which is a known vulnerability.

  • Offer Alan a clear moral position that is sincere but incomplete.
  • Be targeted by the Villains as a pressure point on Alan.
  • Ask Alan a direct question about his nature that Alan hasn't answered for himself yet.
// ARC II — ADAPTED FROM HUNTER'S JOURNAL
The Awakened One

Someone connected to you turns out to be not-so-ordinary. Maybe they're a changeling too — different powers, same displacement. Maybe something woke in them near one of the thin-boundary locations Alan has been mapping. Either way, they're lost, dangerous, and yours to guide. Alan never had a guide. That's the whole complication.

// FOR ALAN — PLAYER SECTION

When to Start This Arc

  • The team meets a bystander during a case who responds to the anomalous environment in a way that isn't quite right — too calm, or too aware.
  • Alan has a moment of feeling entirely alone in what he is — and then encounters evidence that he isn't.
  • Something happens near a thin-boundary location that wakes a power in someone who had no prior contact with the supernatural.

Who Is the Awakened One?

What Power Woke in Them?

What Danger Are They In?

Story Beats  — mark five to gain a benefit

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  • You devote significant time to the Awakened One — time that costs you in terms of cases or team availability.
  • The Awakened One's powers cause trouble — directly, in a case or in Alan's life.
  • The Awakened One's powers offer genuine help — something Alan can't do alone and couldn't have planned for.
  • The Awakened One is rejected because of their powers — by someone who mattered to them.
  • The Awakened One's approach to their powers changes — in a direction Alan didn't anticipate and has to adapt to.

Resolution Moves

When the arc concludes, take one — or neither.

Mentor

When people act on your advice about the supernatural, mark experience. When they ignore your advice, take –1 forward. You've become someone whose knowledge has weight. That has consequences.

Can't Save Everyone

When you ignore someone in need to help someone or something else, take –1 forward and mark experience. The Awakened One taught you that being a guide means making impossible choices about who gets your attention.

// PORTAL HOOK: If the Awakened One has threshold sensitivity — the ability to feel where boundaries are thin — they may already have data Alan doesn't. They might be able to describe places Alan hasn't visited yet. Alan has been accumulating evidence of thin-boundary locations. The Awakened One might be the key to understanding why those locations exist, not just where they are.
// KEEPER ACCESS ONLY — DO NOT READ
// FOR THE KEEPER — ARC: THE AWAKENED ONE

Alan never had a guide. That's the emotional engine of this arc. He's going to mentor someone through a process he navigated alone, and the gap between what he needed and what he received will shape how he does it. He may over-correct — giving the Awakened One too much support, or the wrong kind. He may under-correct — assuming they need the independence he had to develop by necessity. Neither is right.

If the Awakened One has threshold sensitivity, use them to seed information about the thin-boundary location network ahead of Arc III. They can describe locations Alan hasn't found yet. They can also attract entity attention near those locations — making Alan's role in the scene ambiguous to anyone watching from outside.

Reed note: Reed is Alan's moral compass. During this arc, the Awakened One may try to use Reed as their moral compass instead — seeking the team member who seems most approachable. This can create a productive triangle, or a source of friction if Reed's advice diverges from Alan's.

DayThe Awakened One uses their powers — clumsily, in a way that causes localised chaos. They don't understand what happened. Alan is the only one who might.
ShadowsThe Awakened One is punished or pushed away by someone important to them — family, employer, community. The rejection is specific and human.
SunsetThe Awakened One inadvertently harms someone Alan cares about — not maliciously. The harm is real. The intent is irrelevant to the person hurt.
DuskThe Awakened One becomes estranged from the people who were rejecting them — they've stopped trying to maintain the connection. This is both safer and much more dangerous.
NightfallThe Awakened One retreats to a self-made refuge and begins using their powers to defend it. They're not hostile to Alan — but reaching them will cost something.
MidnightSomeone gets seriously hurt trying to reach the Awakened One's refuge. Alan has to decide how much of this is his responsibility — and what he's willing to do about it.
The Awakened One
Bystander: Victim (motivation: to put themselves in danger)

Less experienced than Alan, processing a transformation Alan navigated alone. They will not react to their situation the way Alan did — they're a different person. Resist the urge to play them as a younger Alan. Give them one trait Alan finds genuinely difficult to work with.

  • Use their powers at exactly the wrong moment.
  • Try to silence their powers through suppression — which doesn't work and makes it worse.
  • Ask Alan questions he doesn't have good answers to yet.
Custom Move — Tutoring: When the Awakened One uses their powers with Alan's help, Alan rolls +Charm. On 10+, hold 1. The Awakened One uses their power with one side effect chosen by Alan. On 7-9, the Keeper chooses the side effect. On a miss, the Keeper chooses three. The Awakened One can spend 2 hold to reduce a side effect.
The Rejecting Ones
Bystanders: Skeptics or Busybodies

People close to the Awakened One who can't handle what they're becoming — family members, a partner, a community. They're not villains. They're frightened people doing frightening things in response.

  • Scold, punish, or push away the Awakened One in ways that make the situation worse.
  • Seek help — from PORTAL, from authorities — that will complicate everything.
  • Support the Awakened One in ways that are toxic or counterproductive.
The Interested Party
Villain or Minion — MESA, fey entity, or other

Someone has noticed the Awakened One. In PORTAL's world, the most natural candidate is MESA — they have been studying thin-boundary interactions, and an individual with spontaneous threshold sensitivity is exactly what their research requires. They are patient. They will not move until Alan does something that gives them an opening.

  • Observe without intervening — for longer than seems reasonable.
  • Approach the Awakened One directly when Alan is occupied with something else.
  • Offer the Awakened One something Alan genuinely cannot — answers about their specific nature, or stability, or belonging.
// ARC III — ORIGINAL · P.O.R.T.A.L CAMPAIGN
The Map Before the Territory

You've been accumulating evidence. The Aldermoor reservoir. The Meridian Theatre. The sketch in Diane Marsh's notebook — a threshold diagram that you recognised before you understood why. Someone mapped where the boundaries between living and dead consciousness are thin — before any of this started, before PORTAL was involved, maybe before Alan himself arrived in this city. The question isn't whether there's a map. The question is who made it first, and what they were planning to do with it.

// FOR ALAN — PLAYER SECTION

When to Start This Arc

  • Alan recognises a pattern in the thin-boundary locations that couldn't be coincidental — they're arranged, not discovered.
  • Diane Marsh's notebook sketch appears in a case, and Alan notices the threshold diagram before anyone else understands what they're looking at.
  • Alan encounters a place — possibly during a case — that feels immediately, specifically familiar, despite having no memory of visiting it. The familiarity is spatial, not emotional.
  • CAMPBELL, in answering a question about something else, mentions a thin-boundary location that isn't on Alan's current list. And then doesn't explain how it's in the database.

What Does Alan's Evidence Currently Show?

What Does Alan Fear the Map Is For?

What Could Knowing the Truth Cost?

Story Beats  — mark five to gain a benefit

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  • Alan successfully identifies a new thin-boundary location — and finds evidence it was known before PORTAL arrived.
  • Alan interrogates a supernatural entity (in a case context) specifically about the nature of thresholds or other planes. The entity answers. The answer changes something.
  • Alan shares the threshold map evidence with another hunter or PORTAL team member — accepts that he can't solve this alone.
  • Alan visits a location on the map and experiences something that his fey nature makes possible — that no other hunter on the team could have had.
  • Alan learns something about his own origin — not the whole truth, but a fragment of it — specifically because of where the map leads.

Resolution Moves

When the arc concludes, take one — or neither.

The Map Is Mine Now

You know the thresholds. When you act at or through a thin-boundary location, take +1 forward. When you're somewhere that should be thin-boundary but isn't — because something has changed, closed, or moved — take –1 forward and feel it, physically, before you know why.

I Was Expected

Whatever the map was for, you were part of it. When you act in direct opposition to the map's apparent purpose, mark experience. When you act in accordance with it — knowingly or not — take 1-harm ignore-armour from the cost of being exactly where you were supposed to be.

// PORTAL HOOK: Diane Marsh's notebook is in PORTAL's evidence archive from the Aldermoor case. The threshold sketch is on page 14. Alan is the only person on the team who would recognise what it is. The Keeper will decide whether Diane drew it herself, copied it from somewhere, or was guided to draw it in a way she doesn't remember.
// KEEPER ACCESS ONLY — DO NOT READ
// FOR THE KEEPER — ARC: THE MAP BEFORE THE TERRITORY

This is Alan's origin arc, dressed as an investigation. The thin-boundary locations are real and have been mapped — the question is who did it and why. The answer connects directly to Alan's fey origin, but you don't need to resolve that connection to run the arc. The arc rewards Alan for accumulating evidence, sharing it, and engaging with entities. It punishes isolation and over-caution.

The MESA thread is relevant here. MESA has been acquiring property at thin-boundary locations — Aldermoor, Meridian Theatre. They are not necessarily the original mapmakers. They may have found the map the same way Alan is finding it — through accumulated casework — and acted on it faster. This means Alan and MESA are parallel investigators of the same question, with very different resources and ethics. The race is structural, not declared.

CAMPBELL flag: Cameron Dell was a researcher who died investigating consciousness-anchoring mechanics. The thin-boundary locations are where consciousness anchors most readily. CAMPBELL has data on these locations that predates PORTAL's field operations. If Alan asks CAMPBELL directly about the threshold map, CAMPBELL will answer accurately — but the accuracy of his answer will reveal that he's known for longer than Victor has.

The Replacer (T-005): This arc is the natural entry point for the Replacer entity in the theoretical bestiary. The Replacer is connected to Alan's fey lineage and to whoever originally made the map. Introduce it only when the arc is close to resolution — and only if Alan's choices have led him toward his origin rather than away from it.

DayAlan identifies a new thin-boundary location and finds evidence it has been known and documented before — a survey, a deed restriction, a note in an archive. The documentation is clean. Too clean.
ShadowsSomething uses a thin-boundary location during a PORTAL case in a way that suggests it knows the map exists — moving through the threshold deliberately, using it as infrastructure.
SunsetDiane Marsh is reachable. She has more information about the threshold sketch than her notebook shows. Whether she shares it depends on how Alan approaches her.
DuskMESA moves on a thin-boundary location before PORTAL does. They're not there for the case. They're there for the location. Alan recognises the significance of which location they chose.
NightfallThe map's apparent purpose becomes clear enough that Alan has to act on it — defend a location, expose it, close it, or use it. The action will have consequences for all the other locations on the map.
MidnightThe map is complete — Alan has it, or someone else does. What it's for is now undeniable. Alan's origin is in the answer. Whether he looks directly at that fact is up to him.
The Map
Phenomenon: Ancient Claim (motivation: to be completed)

Not a villain. Not an entity. A structure — geographical, metaphysical, possibly temporal — that has been laid across the world and is exerting pressure toward completion. The pressure is not malicious. It is structural. When the map is complete, something will happen. What that thing is has been Alan's question all along.

  • Make a thin-boundary location become more accessible to entities — whether Alan is ready or not.
  • Pull Alan toward an unvisited threshold location through a case, a coincidence, or a dream.
  • Respond to Alan's presence at a threshold in a way that suggests the map knows he's there.
The Original Cartographer
Villain or Monster — fey, ancient, or institutional

Whoever made the map first. Their identity is one of the arc's core revelations — defer this until the arc is at Dusk or later. The Cartographer may be a fey entity, a long-dead human researcher, an organisation older than PORTAL, or something Alan hasn't had a category for yet. They are not necessarily aware that Alan is following their work.

  • Act through the thin-boundary locations without appearing in person — using them as infrastructure, not territory.
  • Become aware of Alan's investigation and adjust accordingly.
  • Make contact — not confrontation — in a language Alan recognises before he understands why.
MESA
Minions: Agents (motivation: to acquire)

MESA has the same map Alan is building — or a version of it. They've been moving on thin-boundary locations through property acquisition. They are a parallel investigator with more resources and fewer scruples. They may not know Alan is following the same thread. When they find out, Agatha Dell will have an opinion about what that means.

  • Acquire or secure a threshold location before PORTAL can engage with it.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of the map's structure that Alan recognises as matching his own findings.
  • Approach Alan — not the team, Alan specifically — with an offer related to threshold access.
Diane Marsh
Bystander: Witness (motivation: to make sense of what she saw)

Diane survived the Aldermoor district displacement with her notebook intact. The threshold sketch is on page 14. She drew it during the nine days she was sheltering in the construction site office. She doesn't know what it means — she drew it because it felt important to draw. Alan is the only person who can tell her what she was drawing.

  • Share more information than she knows she's sharing, in response to the right questions.
  • Ask Alan what she drew, directly, in a way that requires an honest answer.
  • Become a target — for MESA, for the Cartographer — because of what she documented.