2020: Whispers of the Veil: The Tzvika Incident

“Not all monsters wear their teeth where you can see them.”
— Attributed to Lady Angelica Fleming, Troll Knight and Sheriff of Doan’s Corners

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the mortal world sent deep reverberations through the Dreaming. Starting in 2020, the plague years gave birth to swarming nervosa, creatures of dread and delusion that slithered into Cleveland’s corners and preyed upon both Dreamers and fae alike. While the commoners of the Moondog Barony hunkered down and leaned on Dreaming-rich creative expression and mutual aid, the Sidhe-dominated Doan’s Corners found itself unsteady and anxious.

That anxiety opened the door for a Bogie, a Thallain changeling of particularly insidious cunning, who posed as a Sluagh and took on the name Tzvika. Tzvika earned the trust of Baron Veylon ap Liam, worming her way into his inner circle and becoming a confidante and "whisperer" — a supposed parallel to the Moondog Barony’s own elusive Gray Voice.

What Veylon did not know was that Tzvika was no Sluagh, and her information was poisoned with manipulative intent. Several controversial decrees made by the Baron during this time — including the banning of Dreamer gatherings on the Case Western campus and a short-lived alliance with a volatile Prodigal faction — are now rumored to have been based on Tzvika’s whispered suggestions.

The unraveling began when a curious Childling Sluagh — gossipy and unusually bold for her Kith — took it upon herself to spy on Tzvika. What she found was more horrifying than she expected: Tzvika rendezvousing with two gaunt figures, sidhe-like but wrong, at the edge of the Dreaming near the Wade Park Lagoon. There, they presented the Bogie with a bound mortal whom Tzvika promptly "fed upon."

Though the Childling relayed her story to other local Sluagh, she refused to name what it was Tzvika did to the mortal, only saying, “It was a feeding, but not of the body. She was gorging on something truer than fear.”

The pursuit that followed, led by Lady Angelica Fleming, resulted in failure. Tzvika and her disturbing allies slipped past even the sheriff’s arcane traps and chimerical sentries, vanishing from the barony.

The incident left Baron Veylon politically embarrassed, and some whisper that Fillion, his loyal scribe, has been left to manage the resulting diplomatic fallout. Though Tzvika has not reappeared, some believe she still whispers, now to others, from behind another mask.