Faerie Courts

<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Faerie Courts</default></title>

<image source="image"></image> <header>Basic Information</header> <image source="map"></image> <label>Type</label> <label>Location</label> <label>Inhabitants</label> <label>First Appearance</label> </infobox> The Faerie Courts, also known simply as the Courts or Court, is the Realm or collection of Realms where the Faeries mostly reside. Elegant, deadly and drenched in glamour.

Description

When they have exhausted the potential of a specific Court system, the Faerie will overthrow their rulers and institute a new dynamic,<ref name=":5">“I see,” Sandra Duchamp said. “Here’s my counteroffer: what if I offered a messenger?”

“The Queen won’t listen,” Padraic said, sighing.

“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.”

“Springtime,” Padraic said. “Mm. That would have been a good offer. Paved the way for an insurrection of sorts.”

“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.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.2 </ref><ref>It’s one moving piece in the midst of a thousand thousand that will see the courts change again.  From seasons to something else, though the Winter Court will remain what it is and always will be, the rest of us will adjust, and so will the games we play.  Your great-grandchildren, if any, could be dead of old age by the time those moving pieces start moving. - Excerpt from Out on a Limb 3.8</ref> 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. - Excerpt from Damages 2.5</ref> As of 2020 there are seven Courts:<ref name=":0">“There’s courts?”

“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.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref>

Spring

High Spring

Features "aristocrats and gilded things, parties, fine craftsmanship and even finer, craftier lies",<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.” - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref> "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.” - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref>

Might keep Glamour Drowned humans as dancers, competing to train the best one.<ref name=":6">Many of the Glamour Drowned were used for a specific function. In the High Spring court, for example, they may be endless dancers, trained by Faerie to dance as a competitive act, where one Faerie competes against another to see who can elevate a human more. The Fall courts may turn them into animals to sell to the other courts as pets and accessories, with the ability to turn them human on a whim because it is easier to set aside a place for a human than, for example, a twenty-foot serpent. The winter court may turn a person into an object, such as a goblet that is asked to tell riddles, or a tapestry that changes to keep track of the days in reailty. - Bonus Material: Dossiers</ref>

Low Spring

Akin to High Spring but without the human appearance; "dressing themselves in chitin, spiderwebs, and skins while they deal in nightmares and upstaging one another in the torments they can inflict".<ref name=":2" />

Daniel Alitzer was held captive by this Court, forced to sing an endless song of mourning for their dead Queen.<ref name=":7">Shellie, 27, is a Bright-Eyed human woman, caretaker of her brother, a 30 year old Glamour Drowned. Sold to the Faerie by their own parents as children, they were separated, Shellie sent to the Bright Fall court, and Daniel to the Dark Spring.

Daniel Alitzer was made to bear witness to the death of an immortal queen of the Dark Spring, an event contrived to evoke a sense of tragedy never before seen. [...] Shellie spent a total of eighteen years among Faerie brokers, hieves, and Fae who traded in faces like money. - Bonus Material: Dossiers</ref>

Summer

High Summer

Features "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 [...] nature and summer, touched by sun."<ref name=":0" /> "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 leasant debauchery can only tide you over for so long. Of import: The court of Autumn Below loses the least.” - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref>

Loses the most to Winter.<ref name=":3"/>

Includes Guilherme.

Low Summer

Consists of Fae who have become non-Fae Others.<ref name=":2" /> meant almost as a "anti-body" for all non-fae things.<ref>Dark Summer/Summer Below

Monstrous Faerie. The fairy tail trolls, ogres, and other lumbering monsters find allies in these Fae, who have given up a lot of what makes a Faerie a Faerie. They’re not always subtle, they’re not always pretty, and they’re not very fragile.

Key words are instinct, savagery, violence, scars, blood, brutality. The goblins love to tell us stories of these guys, so it’s pretty easy to draw those associations. Verona thinks they remind her of a fantasy book. Like, swords and sorcery being adopted by the Faerie, kind of.

Lucy wondered at one point if they were something like an antibody or failsafe. Something familiar the Faerie keep around as a way to deal with some very anti-Faerie threats or problems that could do a lot of damage otherwise. Or stirring things up + breaking them down without weakening the Faerie realms, cuz they’re still made of glamour and understand glamour? Dunno. - Faerie Courts & GoblinsFaerie Courts & Goblins</ref>

Autumn

The courts of Autumn are both liable to trade in humans transformed into, for example, animal pets.<ref name=":6" />

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" />

Shellie Alitzer was a slave to this Court.<ref name=":7" />

Low Autumn

These are "the most wretched of Fae",<ref>“You have yet to succeed in swatting me,” Maricica taunted, before laughing.

“You’re enemies?” Lucy asked.

“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.” - 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.”

“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.” - 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?” - 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.”

“I’ve yet to decide if that’s what I wish to do,” Maricica said, dropping down from the ceiling. - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref> or transforming them into pets to trade.<ref name=":6" />

Few are born to this court,<ref>“Can I ask what you did to get sent to the Dark Fall court?” Verona asked.

“Can we please stay focused?” Lucy asked.

“I was of the rare few born to it,” Maricica said, her eyes wide. - 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" />

Include Maricica and possibly Grey Isbold.

Winter

Fae who have failed to stave off boredom, understanding the patterns and cliches of everything and so becoming nothing but patterns and cliches themselves. Automatons.<ref>“Is there a winter court?” Avery asked.

“There is,” Guilherme said.

“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.”

“That you get bored?” Verona asked.

“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.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref> Falling to Winter terrifies other Fae.<ref name=":3" />

Most likely to turn captured humans into semi-animate props.<ref name=":6" />

Grey Isbold, now known as Grey Isbold, had fallen to this court.

Court Borders

There are realms part-way between the Courts and Earth, including the larger "fairyland" that the courts are situated in, this and the adjacent realms are inhabited by Fairies.

Residents

• Fae
• Fairies
  • Brownies
  • Gnarlings
• Glamour Drowned
• Bright Eyed

History

When Johannes Lillegard met Faysal Anwar, there was more than one Court, including as always 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. - Excerpt from 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. - 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. - Excerpt from 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. - Excerpt from 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. - Excerpt from Signature 8.6</ref> led by a Queen.<ref name=":5" /> As of 2020 there are seven Courts.<ref name=":0"/>

Daniel Alitzer was witness to the death of a Queen of the Dark Spring at some point before the year 2000.<ref name=":7"/>

References

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