The Lost can enter the Hedge through any portal (p. 109), replacing the mundane world beyond with a darkly verdant elsewhere and turning that door into a dormant Hedgeway, or gate into the Hedge. They can exit the same way. Humans can only enter and exit through specific rituals, at Hedgeways that a fae being has already opened previously. Every gate has a Key, a method for opening that particular path into the Hedge. Finding a Key is far from impossible, but most humans don’t realize it’s not a two-way affair — a door may have a separate ritual for returning, or might not have a counterpart on the other side at all. Escaping means dealing with the denizens of the Hedge, or finding a changeling to rescue them.

For a number of turns after a changeling opens a Hedgeway equal to her Wyrd, the gate remains, only then to fade away once more. After a gateway has been used, it remains a dormant Hedgeway until the seasons change. During that time, other Lost do not need to spend Glamour to open the passageway, but once the season is up, they must establish the gateway again. A dormant Hedgeway hides behind the Mask just as a fae creature does (p. 83). A changeling can find a dormant Hedgeway using her kenning (p. 107), or tokens and Contracts that identify supernatural phenomena.

Humans cannot open a Hedgeway by touch — the world they see is solid and the Mask is reality. To enter the Hedge, they need to find another way in, and a few exist: • Following Others: Humans can pass through a Hedge gate that’s already open without issue. As a changeling’s Mask falls away when she steps through a Hedgeway, many humans who see one enter the Hedge do choose to follow, out of curios- ity if nothing else.

• Keys: Legends such as fairy circles, alien abductions, or the enthralled woodsman following the beautiful hulder into the land of the Fair Folk can become Keys when a human heart holds the tales dear. These stories can play out when a human soul in the right place believes they should, triggered into existence by this belief. It requires a successful Resolve + Composure roll to open a Hedgeway this way, but the belief must come first.

Keys also exist on their own. They can be physical objects, such as a turtle shell carved with the right sigils or the broken-off star of an old Mercedes. They can be specific songs sung at certain times of day, or a particular confluence of events, or the presence of red-haired twins — nearly anything can open a Hedge gate, but the would-be traveler must find out what each gate’s Key is separately. A curious seeker can take an extended research action to do so, with access to the right kinds of information sources, or can learn about it from a fae who knows. A few Keys see steady use, by individuals or groups.

• Vice: Any time a human indulges her Vice (p. 174) near a Hedgeway, her player may roll to resist the subconscious tug of the Hedge. She may waive this roll instead, resulting in the usual failure effects, below. Action: Reflexive Dice Pool: Wits + Composure Roll Results Success: Temptation flares, but the character resists. She remains unaware of the Hedgeway, save only for a slight feeling of relief and disappointment deep down in her subconscious. Exceptional Success: In a blurry flash of sepia vision, the character sees her future as the Hedge would have shaped it, and becomes aware that a path to somewhere else beckons her — and that she has escaped a doom today. Failure: The Hedgeway opens, presenting a temptation that appeals to the character’s Vice as above. She may answer the call or not; if she does, she gains another Willpower point for fulfilling her Vice again, beyond the normal limit of one per scene, and her player takes a Beat. The gateway slams shut behind the character once she passes through. Dramatic Failure: The Hedge calls, and the character answers. The gate opens before her, and inside she sees her heart’s desire made manifest. The pull is such that she need not even approach it; the Hedgeway reaches out and envelops her immediately, closing behind her. The object of her desire may turn out to be an illusion. When it doesn’t, the story turns darker still.

Common Modifiers Has visited the Hedge before+1 per previous visit, to a maximum of +3 Current Willpower is 8 or higher+1 Current Willpower is 3 or lower−1 Has Occult 2+ or a supernatural Merit−1 Virtue also supports entering−1 An Aspiration supports entering−2 Has lost friends or family mysteriously−2

Hedgeways exist wholly inside the Hedge, too, cordoning off some areas from the rest. The Gate of Horn (p. 217) that separates the Dreaming Roads from the Hedge proper is one example; the myriad hidden en- trances to mirror space are another. Finding and stepping through these gates works just the same way as above.

Other Beings Called to the Hedge Characters who don’t have Vices may still prove tempting enough prey for the Hedge to accost. Vampires, Remade, Prometheans — these are harder for the Wyrd to read, providing no easy hook to snare them. However, the Storyteller may decide that the Hedge can call these beings in other ways, playing to their particular weaknesses and wants. Other supernatural beings who do have Vices can fall for the Hedge’s tricks just as easily as mortals.

The Hedge is the borderland between the human world and Arcadia. But it’s more than just a strip of contested territory — it’s a whole world in itself, one that’s always around the edges of the mortal world. In the lonely places, where yours is the only breath stirring the air; in the uncanny places, where fear quickens your step; in the liminal places, where you hang in the balance between here and there. An abandoned office park, weedy grass breaking through broken asphalt; a graveyard, Spanish moss hanging from the low branch of a tree; a cold beach at dawn, succulents dangling over the lip of a sandy cliff. It doesn’t always rip you away from the world, briars catching you and tugging you into some dark hollow of hobgoblins and malevolent Fae. Sometimes a fairy glen is lovely and mild, with soft places to tread, or lay down your head. Contact with the Hedge is the risk you take in your reclaimed life, and risk brings not only disaster, but reward.

The Hedge shapes itself according to need, presence, and the available terrain. It has some constants. Its paths are always labyrinthine and confusing. Time passes according to different stars, and the land beneath you shifts under different skies. The character of the obstructions you encounter there will vary according to what you carry with you into it. Including, and especially, what you are carrying in your heart. The thoughts, desires, or memories that shape you will skew the landscape you navigate. Carved through the Hedge is a network of trods, the country roads that lead through the wild wood that lies between the human world and Arcadia. They range from well-traveled streets to loose suggestions of paths half buried in undergrowth. The clarity of the path is not a good predictor of its safety, however. Some overgrown hiking trails might be quiet and unnoticed, protected by their obscurity. Some wide, busy roads may be kept superficially clear by enterprising bandits. Many trods are worn into the fabric of the Hedge by years of regular use, but some are maintained. All sorts of creatures might opt to maintain a trod — freeholds or hobgoblins caring for paths they need, individual changelings guarding a secret hollow or garden, or one of the Fae who likes a garden path to stroll along while in search of a new diversion. Objects you carry into the Hedge may continue to work, but will become temperamental and whimsical. A flashlight may throw light, but as a lantern or a candle or a cold flame cradled in your palm. A phone might make contact, but to the person you last told a secret or with your voice translated into a forgotten tongue. An object may choose to obey the letter of the law rather than the spirit, or interpret your actions as metaphoric desires. A lit path may glow with a sudden beam of sunshine, or become alight with flame. A sword might become a serpent in your hand, poised to strike the warrior as well as the adversary. Eerie paths lace around the Hedge, linking it with the minds of dreamers. These are the Dreaming Roads, and the Bastions of human dreams that line them vary in strength. Even the poorest offers a moment of rest, a shortcut, or an escape. Somewhere else, both within and throughout the Hedge, a maze shines — desolate and cold, but not uninhabited. In the distance, hear the song of a Huntsman’s horn, or the murmuring of voices behind the mirrors that line the halls. In moments of anguish, doubt, or pain, when you catch your face in the mirror and recoil or look away, unable to face yourself — you create a mirror-person. And these, the Halls of Mirrors, are their home.

Most humans never intended to enter the Hedge. They stumbled in, through misadventure or deception, and never found their way back out.

Your first steps were easy and charming. A touch of wildness overlaid on a familiar place, a note in the distance that might have been a horn or a songbird, a tingle you felt under your skin, a sense that you had time to linger. When you crossed the threshold, things began to turn. Paths turned wilder and the noises become stranger, even what you suppose must have been the sound of your own footsteps. A rare, lucky few force their way back out before they’ve traveled past this point. You found your- self drawn deeper instead. When you tried to turn back, you found the way unfamiliar and disorienting. Walls of thorns grew up in your footsteps. Gusts of snow erased your path even as you looked back at it. Walking forward was far easier than trying to place just where your feet had been. It didn’t resist the way it did when you tried to leave. The Hedge drew on what lay inside you, calling up your secret fears and dreams to drive you forward. It tested your strength even as it lured you in. Beguiling you with the nearness of escape while pushing you to expend your will against it. But even as you were fighting a sketch of a path into being, you were moving deeper into the Hedge. And through the Hedge, you were borne into Arcadia. Given the chance, why would it have let you go?

It never gets easy, exactly, to move through a space where your perception of reality is constantly working against you. But you learn to negotiate (with yourself, with the residents, and with the Hedge itself), and take an active part in shaping the paths you walk. Changelings have an intuitive way with the Hedge. Perhaps no one survives their escape from Arcadia without a little bit of that skill, perhaps the strangeness in it simply calls out to the strangeness in you. You have limits, of course. Even adept Hedgespinners can’t make the Hedge behave too far outside its own nature. A coursing river can’t become an empty street any more than a dragon can become a dandelion. A few river rocks might become concrete, or a dragon’s scales develop a soft coating of fluff, but their essential selves remain intact. Underneath any change imposed by a fae or a changeling or a hobgoblin, the Hedge is a dangerous wilderness — jagged rocks, cold stands of trees, endless thorny underbrush. The thorns are what you remember best.

When you first escaped, each step that took you back home bled the soles of your feet and raked at your skin. Each thorn tore a bit of you away. You try to be a little thankful, though. At least you made it through with enough of yourself still intact. Not everyone you’ve met on the other side has. Some hobgoblins make a living picking up the ragged bits and pieces people like you left pinned to the briars, selling them for favors or goods in kind, maybe even to the someone those Icons belonged to.

Thanks to your missing fragments of skin and soul, the experience of navigating the Hedge is complex, and your feelings toward it might be mixed. Most changelings return, for reasons practical or sentimental, and find it’s a little like their captivity and a little like their escape. The bubble of joy that comes with being only yourself. The Hedge won’t accept a Mask. It burns away any illusions or disguises that lie between the world and your true face. Not every changeling had a family or a home, or wants one now, but the part of them that is fae feels at home in the Hedge. At the very same moment, the pain of loss washes all over you again, undimmed by time or distance. The parts of you that tore away, trying to find the parts of you that escaped. And that ache in your soul is the least dangerous thing to be found in the Hedge.

Your Keeper, for example, and all the hunters and hobgoblins they have to hand. In many ways, a changeling is a creature of Arcadia. But the Huntsmen and the hobgoblins were here first, and their mastery of the Hedge is superior. The mask-lifting a changeling feels when they enter the Hedge is literal, too. A Huntsman looking for a changeling will recognize them more fully and track them more easily. (Though nearer to their stolen heart, a Huntsman is also more easily distracted.) A hobgoblin hindering a changeling has no clarity to lose while expressing their dread powers. (Though they are softer of heart and more vulnerable to counter offers.) So even if your Keeper chooses to remain in far-and-near Arcadia, her servants may yet be seeking you along trods and the Dreaming Roads and in the faces of the strangers you walk past without ever seeing.