Changelings
Shapeshifters who transfer with Larracos and will pose as basilica guards to keep the gods off the NPCs.
Story so far
The changelings were among those slated to move with Zerzura — all of them, plus the thousands of NPCs who lived in Larracos and the Semeru Dwarves, would go to Ascendency on The Twelfth Floor.
Their role there was defensive and deniable. Since the rules of the gods hold NPCs untouchable until Ascendency actually starts, Juice Box's squad of changelings would use their ability to change into basilica guards to hopefully keep the gods at bay should any rules change in the meantime. Rosetta was among those coordinating the move, heading for the Saferoom with Tipid and the others.
Appearance
Shapeshifters capable of taking on the exact form of basilica guards.
Role
The crawlers' disguised security detail for the transferred NPC population.
Relationships
Earlier in this series
Also appears in books you've already read — spoiler-safe to their endings:
- The Butcher's MasqueradeBook 5
Sources — 24 recorded facts, by chapter
- Shapeshifting infiltrators who can be identified by body temperature, and who have quietly seeded the Desperado Club.
- Shapeshifting NPC race whose displayed level shifts with each form, making their true power unreadable.
- Shapeshifting race whose two-part marriage customs include a private legal wedding and a month of divorce papers.
- Carl's changelings, who began the stronghold in the wrong shape and whose children Mordecai fosters.
- Body-swapping allies who wanted a powerful castle name and now labor on the stronghold and borders.
- The shape-shifting allies who brought Bonnie along with them out of the Butcher's Masquerade.
- Shape-shifting Posse operatives infiltrating the Operatic side to disarm traps before the war begins.
- Group of changelings sheltering at the FUPA who exclude the resurrected children from their games.
- Shapeshifting NPC infiltrators, two of whom replace the planned digger for the assault on the Naga castle.
- Shapeshifting race whose skill lets the child Skarn pass as an adult scout named Gangue.
- Shapeshifting being whose knowledge of the area's hidden tunnels Carl still means to extract into a usable map.
- Shapeshifting dungeon-born race, embodied at council by Juice Box's flash-change into an alien horror.
- Shapeshifting race that can only assume forms of creatures they have personally touched.
- Shapeshifting NPCs whose copying restrictions have quietly failed, letting them mimic almost anything they touch.
- Shapeshifting allies whose children resent Carl's no-child-soldier rule and keep trying to fight.
- Shapeshifting species Houston declares the key to the Beautiful Place and the reason for every cycle.
- Shapeshifters serving as Team Retribution's officer corps and as the ogre guards holding a god at bay.
- Juice Box's shapeshifters, two of whom stand as ogres blocking Harpocrates's entrance into town.
- Juice Box's changelings climb onto the conscripted god Harpocrates alongside Li Na.
- Race that might theoretically copy the Sledge's missile spell, though Edgar thinks it unlikely.
- Shapeshifting allies whose only representative on the rescue is Juice Box, the rest repairing Larracos.
- Shapeshifters who take on other creatures' forms — and, as Juice Box learns, sometimes their curses too.
- Shape-stealing race Tagg blames for his mother's besmirched name during Donut's taunting.
- Shapeshifters who transfer with Larracos and will pose as basilica guards to keep the gods off the NPCs.