Editing Fae (section)

=== Courts ===
<blockquote>''Main article: [[Faerie Courts]]''</blockquote>The term '''Faerie Court''' or '''Courts''' refers simultaneously to the [[Realm]] of the Fae, their leadership, and to the system of sub-divisions all Faerie are divided into. 

When they have exhausted the potential of a specific Court system, the Faerie will overthrow their rulers and institute a new dynamic, often using glamour to make it appear older.<ref>The Faerie go through trends, fashions of a sort. Mixing notions, styles, and past ideas into new forms until they’ve run completely out of ideas. Then they rebel, they overthrow the court, and a new season begins with a different foundation. Light faerie versus the dark, for example, or a court with a true king and queen and a dynasty that they’ve glamoured up to extend back through the centuries. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/02/01 Excerpt] from [[Damages 2.5]]</ref><ref name=":5">“I see,” Sandra Duchamp said. “Here’s my counteroffer: what if I offered a messenger?”<br><br>“The Queen won’t listen,” Padraic said, sighing.<br><br>“To other banished Faerie, in other cities and towns. Until our family line ends or the Queen is replaced and the court dynamic changes up once again.”<br><br>“Springtime,” Padraic said. “Mm. That would have been a good offer. Paved the way for an insurrection of sorts.”<br><br>“Perhaps,” Sandra Duchamp said. “''That'' would be dangerous for my family. I was thinking of maintaining some connection to the courts, in a peripheral manner.” - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/01/21 Excerpt] from [[Damages 2.2]]</ref>

When [[Johannes Lillegard]] met [[Faysal Anwar]], there was more than one Court, including a "winter court" that was also known as "the sunless court" and held "the darker faerie".<ref>One of the darker faerie, a lucky find, his ace in the hole. He’d spent four months screwing with the rat population until something took notice. He’d expected a spirit, he’d picked up the faerie instead. '''One from the winter court, the sunless court.'''- [[Interlude 14]]</ref> During [[Pact]] in 2013, there seems to have been a singular Court<ref>As your partner Rose already said, they’re weak against the unrefined, against crude things. That includes attitudes. Their court is one of dancing around subjects, allusions, games, masquerades, and complex plots that unfold over decades and centuries. [...] She wasn’t so good she could become part of the story they were telling in the court. [...] Some defy the court and try to change the game in another way, trying to bring about a larger change, and they get banished when they fail. - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/02/01 Excerpt] from [[Damages 2.5]]</ref><ref>Exiled faerie were kept out of towns with Lords as a matter of course. The Court apparently didn’t want exiles making deals or gaining power, so they stuck them only in small villages and towns, or even in areas well out of reach of humans. - [[Signature 8.2]]</ref><ref>The Duchamp family works with the Court and the Court may well wonder what happened to its fine allies, to the highborn and noble faerie who were given as pets to the Duchamp families. [...] Sandra wasn’t Faerie, but she had picked up some things in her time as the Duchamp ambassador to the Court. - [[Interlude 13]]</ref> with a single hierarchy<ref>Padraic would be unhappy, but he wouldn’t take it further from that. I know Faerie superior to him in the court, and I would act as the middleman, putting you at minimal risk.  - [https://pactwebserial.wordpress.com/2014/07/22 Excerpt] from [[Signature 8.6]]</ref> led by a Queen.<ref name=":5" /> There were some Exiled Fae as well.<ref name=Exil/>

As of 2020 there are seven Courts.<ref name=":0">“There’s courts?”<br><br>“Seven courts,” Guilherme explained. “My court is one of wine and adventure, romances and tragedies, and simpler ballads of those led astray. Heroes, courage, and the threads of epics braiding together and into one another. The great bard wrote of us. The court of nature and summer, touched by sun.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref> Three seasons each divided into high/bright/above/sun and low/dark/below/shadow Courts, plus undivided Winter:
* High Spring - "emulates human aristocracy and celebrity".<ref name=":2">“The courts below are dark shadows of the ones above. The High Spring emulates human aristocracy and celebrity, the Dark Spring does away with the humanity and replaces it with the monstrous, dressing themselves in chitin, spiderwebs, and skins while they deal in nightmares and upstaging one another in the torments they can inflict. The Dark Summer instead lost their Faerie nature, mingling too much with distant and opposed Others, because they fought them for too long, or they took them as allies one too many time. Imagine the monsters of fairy tales, and you would not be far amiss.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref>
* Low Spring - monstrous aristocracy.<ref name=":2">“The courts below are dark shadows of the ones above. The High Spring 
emulates human aristocracy and celebrity, the Dark Spring does away with the humanity and replaces it with the monstrous, dressing themselves in chitin, spiderwebs, and skins while they deal in nightmares and upstaging one another in the torments they can inflict. The Dark Summer instead lost their Faerie nature, mingling too much with distant and opposed Others, because they fought them for too long, or they took them as allies one too many time. Imagine the monsters of fairy tales, and you would not be far amiss.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13/stolen-away-2-2/ excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref>
* High Summer - "Adventure, festival, and pleasant debauchery".<ref name=":3">“Yes, I do think it scares '''him''',” Maricica murmured, and she slid her bare arm out from beneath the wings she had wrapped herself in, along Verona’s neck and shoulder, pointing at Guilherme. “The court of  High Summer is the court that loses the most Faerie to Winter. Adventure, festival, and pleasant debauchery can only tide you over for so long. Of import: The court of Autumn Below loses the least.” - '''[https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt]''' from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref>
* Low Summer - those who have become non-Fae [[Others]].<ref name=":2" />
* High Fall - "melodramatic and brooding, tangled in human ways"<ref name=":1">“High spring, aristocrats and gilded things, parties, fine craftsmanship and even finer, craftier lies. High fall, melodramatic and brooding, tangled in human ways and things, they play for keeps, with beginnings and endings in mind.” - '''[https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt]''' from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref>
* Low Fall - focus on "transformations and curses"<ref name=":4">“The court of Dark Fall is the court of the wretched, if not the most piteous and powerful,” Guilherme said. “When a Faerie of another court is cursed to carry a scrabbling rodent in her womb for every rodent born in her country, the penalty of a game lost or offending the wrong noble, she might crawl to the court of Dark Fall, to seek assistance and to become a different kind of Fae that can bear the curse and still function.”<br><br>“Grey Isbold,” Maricica said, like she was amused. [...] “They grow inside her, they scratch and writhe, they’re eventually born, and they dart into dark corners, where they summarily disappear. Their job is done, you see. She’s learned to manage them, in more ways than the one. My home court is one of transformations and curses. I do think it’s the most interesting and subtle.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref>
* Winter - Fae who have lost themselves to boredom, stasis, and repeated patterns.<ref name="won">“Is there a winter court?” Avery asked.<br><br>“There is,” Guilherme said.<br><br>“He doesn’t like to even think about it,” Maricica murmured, walking behind the three girls. Avery averted her eyes, turning a bit. The Faerie woman went on, saying, “Faerie live for very long times. Grey Isbold’s offense was done in an era when men held swords, not guns, and she had been around for thousands of years before then. But as much as our bodies are immortal and we are ageless, our minds grow restless. There are only so many things to see and do, so many stories to tell or adventures to participate in. After a while, you start to see that stories tend to have the same underlying structures. Then you see that ideas come from the same places. There is precious little that is truly original in the world. The courts are in large part defined by how we approach that problem.”<br><br>“That you get bored?” Verona asked.<br><br>“That we ''become'' boredom. After thousands of years of listening to music and making our own, we might hear something new, and it entertains us for a few hours or days. Then, trained by hearing thousands of years of music and its variations, our minds jump to the obvious conclusions. We guess how the rest of it goes and what might come of it, and what follows from that new thing is only minutes, now, of entertainment or distraction. Do the same for music, for interaction with others, and we fall into a kind of stasis. Habits become personal rules, become inevitability, and the personality ceases to be. ''That'' is the winter court. Doomed to stasis, often powerful, but more automaton than individual. Like your computers playing chess against one another, getting the same results over and over again, if you watch long enough.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref> The winter court is largely stable no matter what the greater dynamic among other courts.