Hippogriff Soup Leftovers

 It's been a week and I'm completely out of bison stew, Dungeon Meshi Maniacs. I polished that dish off with amazing speed! Easily done when it's that delicious. What about you?  Did you spend the week hunting down bison in your area?  Shouldn't be that hard since there are half a million of them, right? And in that week has anyone in your friends group started to act a little...different?  They're themselves but at the same time not? Let's take a quick look at a monster from last week that we didn't eat. The Changeling!

Yes, yes. That's not a Changeling. That's Senshi looking cool.  Cut me some slack, DMMs. You know I'll take any chance to post Senshi. But if you recall, Laios used some mushrooms to change the "griffin" meat to hippogriff meat. Well, not so much change as switch back to normal. In the Dungeon Meshi universe these mushrooms are actually monsters called, you guessed it, Frank Stallone.

Or Changelings.  I loved this reveal, DMMs. Growing up I heard all sorts of stories of children being switched by fae with Changelings.  The Changeling looked like the child from head to toe but there was always something off about them.  One day the real kid goes off to the Fairy World and what's left behind is creature of some kind.

Don't think that the remaining creature is always evil, DMMs. No, no. Sometimes they were elderly fairies that wanted to retire by being pampered by human parents in their old age.  Other's say that human milk was great food for the fairies so they'd switch with a human baby and have a good meal! Of course every myth starts somewhere and has a little basis in reality.  The going theory is the Changeling was an explanation for Autism or other developmental issues.  One day the child is "normal" and the next they are acting differently.  You don't have access to modern medicine and need an answer and "the child was swapped by fairies" fits the bill.  So you have a Changeling on your hands!  What do you do?  Well.....

There was a going belief that you put the Changeling in a heated oven to deal with it. Not with a roaring fire...I don't think.  Just hot.  I've seen conflicting reports as to whether that means leaving the child in the heat until they die.  Still, you're putting a living kid into a hot oven  Grizzly stuff, for sure. We don't have a good amount of reporting as to how often this actually happened, however.  It could be an old wives tale or there could be a lot of burned ancient children out there, DMMs! A less deadly way to deal with Changelings is mix some egg shell into their food. A Changeling that eats egg shell will FREAK OUT! They hate it! And they'll leave.  Changelings apparently hate unhygienic cooking, DMMs.  I wonder if serving them raw chicken would also work?  Still no word as to whether this gets your child back.  What if, and a big IF here, you don't want your child stolen in the first place. What can you use?

Not the ladle, DMMs, but what it is made of. Iron! Fairies hate iron as much as they hate cooks that don't wash their hands. Hanging anything made of iron above a crib is a great way to ward off pesky child swappers.  Second, baptize that baby!  Fae also can't touch children that have been baptized. Don't have any iron or priest nearby?  Turn the baby's clothes inside out. I looked high and low as to why this works, DMMs, and came up empty. I'm guessing fae have traditional senses of fashion and seeing someone wearing clothing wrong is too much for them to handle.  In my part of the dungeon you could put your dad's shoes at the foot of your bed. The fairy would fall into the shoes and get stuck until poofing away at sunrise.  This also works with ghosts!

You'd think the way I've been talking about Changelings that this was some ancient belief from long ago, And you would be wrong, DMMs!  A poor Irish woman named Bridget Cleary was murdered by her husband in 1895 because he claimed she was a Changeling and that his real wife had been stolen by fairies.  It's an awful story, DMMs, so look it up at your own risk. The courts didn't buy the murderer's claim and he was convicted of manslaughter. Not murder, mind you. Only manslaughter so the court clearly took his weird belief in account. Just know in the real world the fae aren't going to kidnap you or anyone you care about.  If someone you know starts acting differently maybe try asking them what's up? If they sprout butterfly wings and speak in rhyme then maybe...MAYBE feed them an egg shell sandwich. That's is for fae for now as the Dungeon Crew are moving away from the Changeling mushrooms. So they shouldn't be a concern going forward.  Right?

Right?