Editing Faerie Courts (section)

=== Autumn ===
The courts of Autumn are both liable to trade in humans transformed into, for example, animal pets.<ref name=":6" /> They often establish markets at [[Crossroads]] between different [[Realm]]<nowiki/>s.<ref name=":9" />

==== High Autumn ====
They are "melodramatic and brooding, tangled in human ways and things, they play for keeps, with beginnings and endings in mind",<ref name=":1" /> "playing pranks, stealing [humans] away to return them to the same place, years in the future", including "the small, gnarled Fae who do errands and give gifts in exchange for cream or honey".<ref name=":8" /> Include "Faerie brokers, thieves, and Fae who traded in faces like money".<ref name=":7" /> Melodramatic, and inclined towards high-stakes dealings and betrayals that would produce a dramatic ending.<ref name=":15">These guys focus on change, changing, and exchange.  Those things cover transformation, constantly shifting positions and dynamics, markets, manipulation, and back-and-forth betrayals.  If the High Summer Fae watch the perimeter, these guys deal with tunnels, caves, back doors and ways through to other places.  Or our world.  They’re apparently broody and melodramatic, and mingle a ''lot'' with other non-Faerie Others, and with humans.  They love rises and falls, individual status, and stories. [...] Maricica Adds:  Their love of beginnings makes them fond of children and preying on a child’s naivette.  This can be used against them, if you feign such.  Else, turn them against one another, or turn the bartering into a game of very high stakes.  Their love of endings gives them a secret wish for a dramatic loss or fate.  Use this, but do not lose if you do.- [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/08 5.2 Bonus]: [[Faerie Courts & Goblins]]</ref>

They focus on change and exchange, including trade with the outside world, both open and clandestine.<ref name=":15" /> They charge dearly, and their goods inevitably carry hidden costs.<ref name=":16">Guilherme Says…<br>Seeing the courts outlined like in your notes can lead one to think they are the rabble or commoners, the High Spring court the nobles, and the High Summer the military.  This is not so.  Each is its own culture, and the Bright Autumn court benefits from being thought of as lesser.  Some may be shabbily dressed, but pretty in their own ways, or you may find the small Fairy in their number, cooking, cleaning, or selling knick-knacks for the equivalent of pennies.  All is by its design, and all are conniving.  Faerie have in the wake of Man’s rise, but the Bright Fall Faerie have adapted and weathered this better than any, though some would say it wasn’t without cost and a loss of some of what makes them Fae.  They scrabbled and fought, even climbing over one another to establish a place and a meaning, and you, or anyone else they might deal with, are the handholds and footholds by which they achieve this scrabbling.  If you find yourself in dire need, you could seek them out.  They’ll give you answers, cures for illness, madness, or a curse, they can transform you, permanently or temporarily, or give you a magic item.  Just know that when you strike a deal,the price they ask of you will seem (and be, Maricica adds) to be exorbitant, paid in favor, barter, or coin.  The actual price you pay will become clear in time, and will exceed the given price by ten times or more.  - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/08 5.2 Bonus: Faerie Courts & Goblins]</ref> Their trades are so crooked that there is no [[karmic]] penalty for stealing from them - although they employ terrible traps, and indeed the goods are often a trap to encourage stealing. Other than trading, they also cover entrepeneurship and invention.<ref>Toadswallow on the Bright Autumn:<br>Their markets are so steeped in cheating and unfairness  You can cheat, steal, or rob them and it’s not going to count against you.  It’s a whole other game, where they protect wares and have special measures set up.  Some even want you to steal something they’ve cursed or made a part of a bigger story.  But if you’re there out of desperation, it can be better to steal it, and deal with the traps and consequences then and there, while your desperation give you an edge, instead of waiting for it to hit you years down the line.<br><br>Outside the market, you can find Faerie, half-Faerie, and Fairy researchers, inventors, and others.  Trying to work out the next big fashion, making magic items, or using Glamour to blend a man with a mystery or mix a child together with a dream.  I don’t very well f’ing know.  They’re looking for opportunity.  Don’t be that opportunity. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/08 5.2 Bonus: Faerie Courts & Goblins]</ref>

Sometimes viewed as "lesser", the rabble, but they are a fully-formed society in their own right and have weathered the rise of [[Human|Humanity]] the best of any court.<ref name=":16" />  

[[Shellie Alitzer]] was a slave to this Court.<ref name=":7" /> The [[Blue Heron Institute]] pupils visited a minor, out-of-the-way market in this Court on a field trip.

==== Low Autumn ====
These are "the most wretched of Fae",<ref>“You have yet to succeed in swatting me,” Maricica taunted, before laughing.<br><br>“You’re enemies?” Lucy asked.<br><br>“A question of courts and houses,” Guilherme said. “I’m of the Summer court above. She is of the court of the most wretched of Fae.” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref> "the wretched", who 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> "cast off rules and roles [...] be this or do that".<ref>“Oh, I’ll tell you of the Court of Fall in Shadow,” Maricica said, slipping out of the shadows to appear right next to Verona. “We cast off rules and roles. That we should be this or do that. Why wear ''one'' skin, hm?” - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref>

Many "traffic in humans", creating new Fae from them (the primary court to do this), bartering them, breaking them down for spell parts,<ref name=":8">Guilherme smiled. The cave was cool enough that his breath fogged a bit. “While I’m telling you things about her, I could tell you one more thing about her court. Fae of the High Fall traffic with humans, playing pranks, stealing them away to return them to the same place, years in the future. You have the small, gnarled Fae who do errands and give gifts in exchange for cream or honey… but the Fae of the Darker Fall court don’t traffic ''with'' humans so much as they traffic ''in'' humans. The children who are stolen away, the ones who I described making their way to the Courts, or being brought in to then be drowned in Glamour? Largely the province of that girl’s court. The ones who can’t be bartered away to other courts for power, cures, or fixes become parts and ingredients for remedies.”<br><br>“I’ve yet to decide if that’s what I wish to do,” Maricica said, dropping down from the ceiling. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref> or transforming them into pets to trade.<ref name=":6" /> Responsible for most stories of Changelings.<ref name=":17">'''Dark Fall – Maricica’s Court'''<br><br>Other courts change.  The Court of Dark Fall is mostly made up of the changed, the changing, and the exchanged.  The stories of changelings, who are Fae placed in a crib to replace a child that is stolen away are mostly based on this court.  Fae from the Dark Fall may be the cursed of other courts finding refuge, the transformed and those who wear more than one skin.<br><br>They are the best at moving in shadows, because so many are used to hiding and they share tricks among one another.  They are also described as being pretty monstrous.  Not in shape or anything, but in what they’ll do with stolen children, selling them or changing them to different forms.  Human-animal forms or forced transformations to the animal or monstrous are pretty common.  These guys can harbor a lot of grudges, and they seem to use kids as, like, sharpening stones for the tools they want to use for revenge.  Really good at transforming and Maricica says they’re resistant to Winter? - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/08 5.2 Bonus: Faerie Courts & Goblins]</ref> However, they cannot take infants without the parent's accidental consent, or older children who have not implicitly volunteered.<ref>There are rules on who and what they can take.  They say the very young can only be taken if the parents ask for it.  A mother at her wit’s end over her squalling child may say something she doesn’t truly mean and something at the window may listen.  Once a child has autonomy, they must invite it themselves, or else accept an invitation to run away, to join a circus, or such.  - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/08 5.2 Bonus: Faerie Courts & Goblins]</ref> Their agents often leave behind bone, hair, shed feathers and shed skins, carcasses with essential pieces missing, and dolls and other children’s things that are made of macabre or curious materials.<ref>Keep an eye out for bone, for hair, for shed feathers and shed skins.  For carcasses with essential pieces missing, and for dolls and other children’s things that are made of macabre or curious materials.  These things left here and there can mark the activities of the Dark Fall.  They may operate in groups or with singular agents, and will travel to and from the markets in shadow with their gains. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/08 5.2 Bonus: Faerie Courts & Goblins]</ref> In addition to children, they also have markets which sell the darkest of secrets; almost nothing is verboten to this court.<ref>We allow indulgence in all things and we rule nothing out.  For those who want dark secrets or power, with a few specific exceptions, our markets sell all things, including that knowledge. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/08 5.2 Bonus: Faerie Courts & Goblins]</ref><ref>Toadswallow says:  They’d be good company if they weren’t so wrapped up in their misery, trying to convince any who’ll listen that they’re piteous.  Their market is safer than the ‘Bright’ one, my dears, but only because the dangers are either obvious or you’ll know to stay clear because the trap is too well wrought for you to ever notice. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/10/08 5.2 Bonus: Faerie Courts & Goblins]</ref> 

Few are born to this court,<ref>“Can I ask what you did to get sent to the Dark Fall court?” Verona asked.<br><br>“Can we ''please'' stay focused?” Lucy asked.<br><br>“I was of the rare few born to it,” Maricica said, her eyes wide. - [https://palewebserial.wordpress.com/2020/06/13 Excerpt] from [[Stolen Away 2.2]]</ref> but Fae who have been cursed may make their way there to learn control over the curse.<ref name=":4" /> Lose the least to Winter.<ref name=":3" /><ref name=":17" /> 

Include [[Maricica]] and possibly [[Grey Isbold]].