Autumn and Spring Courts

[bestial warlust]

Okay.  Now I have this visual of the old knight from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in my head - the Autumn Knight, mortal preserved by the infusion of the courts power, living in the shadows for centuries.  He looks - and physically is - a frail old man, but he's been steadfastly working for centuries to curry favor, earn rewards, hoard power, and lay plans...   Waiting for the day he can snare a greater prize, and restore his former court to its proper - and stolen - glory.

He still has some small remnant of his own power - the ability to veil himself - but his ability to travel to/from the Nevernever (where he haunts his old court part-time) is now limited to an Item of Power, a sword that lets him "cut holes" in reality.

Ooooo, this one I'm going to have to develop.  Something like:

High Concept - "The Once and Future Knight"
Trouble - "A Shadow of His Former Self"
Aspects - "Wisdom Before Beauty", "A Smiling, Sad-Faced Old Man", "Faerie Sword"

And I just may steal this from you. I had the idea of something like this at one point. Sponsors wishing to reclaim what once was.

[arentol]

Well, I think the earlier comment is the most important one here - there's actually a discussion in Summer Knight (

(click to show/hide)

when he's going off to meet the Mothers, immediately after meeting the Unicorn

):

"The Nevernever is a big place.  In fact, it's the biggest place.  The Nevernever is what the wizards call the entirety of the realm of spirit.  It isn't a physical place, with geography and weather patterns and so on.  it's a shadow world, a magical realm, and its substance is as mutable as thought...it contains within it just about any kind of spirit realm you can imagine, somewhere.  Heaven, Hell, Olympus, Elysium, Tartarus, Gehenna - you name it, and it's in the Nevernever somewhere.  In theory, at any rate.

The parts of the Nevernever closest to the mortal world are almost completely controlled by the Sidhe.  This part of the spirit realm is called Faerie..."

So this establishes that the Faerie courts live in a small, small corner of the spirit realms - the corner touching the mortal realm, where there's a lot of crossover and interaction.  However, it also establishes that the rest of the Nevernever is infinite.

So the idea of a former Autumn/Spring court - or even the vague remnants of one - doesn't contradict the cycle-as-written as long as they're not part of it.  Four real possibilities come to mind:

• They aren't mentioned because they never existed.  QED.  (this has the virtue of simplicity, but the vice of boredom)
• The Spring/Autumn courts still exist, but they've been pushed out of the cycle.  Some point in the past, the Summer and Winter courts grew enough in power to "close the loop" and exclude them.  They're now in exile.  They still exist in the Nevernever, but not in Faerie; their strength is a weak echo of what it used to be.
• The Spring/Autumn courts formerly existed, but have been razed.  There's no crippling imbalance in nature because there is still the summer/winter transition.  The cycle may be more of an oval than a circle now, but it all works out.  Maybe you pass through the dark, decayed ruins of their courts when passing from Faerie to the rest of the Nevernever?  (a dark interpretation, but certainly not out of character with the ruthlessness of the Faerie queens!)
• The courts still exist - as ghosts.  You can find them, reliving their moments of glory, as pitiful shades of what they used to be...  Ghosts in a ghost land, and angry over their exclusion from reality and clutching at the past.  Their power still exists, but is - literally - a shadow of what it used to be.  (This one is my favorite interpretation, and one I'm seriously considering working into the game I'm working on starting locally)

Excellent research and ideas. I am now firmly on the side of these courts having existed at some point, and possibly still existing, and now I have good ideas how to implement them if someone wants to use them.... I still say being a simple scion or knight is a bit of a weak idea, but at least now I have some good ideas how to work with them.

[Rel Fexive]

I like the idea that they once existed but were absorbed by Summer or Winter.  Somewhere in each Court is a elderly sidhe who is the only true remnant of those long-forgotten Courts of old and they only have one function: to find a mortal to act as their Herald.  The Spring Maid, beholden to Summer, sends her Herald to make the (often fatal) traditional challenge to the Winter Court, in the lead up to the Midwinter Battle.  The Herald of the Prince Of Autumn, servant of Winter, challenges Summer to appear at Midsummer.

This also allows for two more mortal Knights - well, Heralds - of Faerie.

[Brock]

Perhaps they are better used when their respective seasons are in order.  as Winter begins to wane, the Spring Court (consisting only of Dukes and Barons) are called to service for the Summer Court and the inverse for Autumn and Winter.

You could easily have the Gruff's showing up as part of one court or the other and some very interesting creatures in the mix that are there as facilitators to ensure that Winter loses power and Summer regains it, etc.

Then if you use the Summer Knight plot, it could easily be that someone struck a bargain along the way to keep the involvement of the Spring/Autumn court out of it.

This leaves the Erl King as his own entity, as a neutral party and the Spring/Autumn court having no ill will or battle against each other. They only work for the Queens that give them their fiefs.

[swordsman]

Anyone thought of Oberon as ruler (in exile?) for the Spring court? Maybe Titania ended up absorbing the court over that affair a certain midsummer night... Of course, Mab absorbed Autumn just to keep the Balance.

[FishStampede]

We're building our city right now. Ostensibly Asheville, NC, it's really more covering the entire great smokies region of western north carolina. Someone wanted to play an Autumn Knight, and we thought it fit really well for the area For those who don't know the area, Autumn is VERY important to the economy. It's the main tourist season, and a poor leaf display means economic trouble.

We decided the Autumn Court is still around, but they're based on lurking and fear. They eventually got so good at hiding, they just vanished. Even records and memories of them are sketchy, with smudges, bookworms, stuck pages, and other things conspiring to keep them off the books.

The only concrete proof of their existence is their knight (who is a bit confused about it all), and a freeholding charter admitting the Old Things of the Mountains, under Spearfinger the Witch.

[KOFFEYKID]

In one game I'm in we decided that the Autumn and spring courts exist, but as daughter courts to Summer and Winter. So Autumn is a part of Winter as a whole, but has its own system of nobility but they still answer to the Winter Lady/Queen/Mother.

[Faithmage]

When the GM crown rolls to me in my game The Spring and Autumn courts will become the male side of the same equation and mercenary. They will have kings and princes, and their Knights are often Female, but not always. They will be strongest in areas without strong winters or summers like California which in many places go from spring to autumn and back. An the Kings are always trying to curry favor with summer and winter as appropriate.

[CMEast]

Very nice idea Faithmage, if we ever have spring or autumn courts that's definitely how we'll play it.

[vultur]

a freeholding charter admitting the Old Things of the Mountains, under Spearfinger the Witch.

Is this Spearfinger based on the spear-finger/u'tlun'ta from Cherokee mythology?

[John Galt]

I like the idea of Spring and Autumn Courts.  In a seattle pbp I'm playing a former High Sidhe of the Autumn Court whose now a half-mortal Bard damned to remember and share the sorrow of his destroyed Court with the rest of the world (or at least Seattle).  Personally I like the ideas of former great courts destroyed by summer and winter.

I also like the idea that the Erkling is the King of Autumn and there's another wildfae King out there with power close to Mab and Titania who is effectively head of a Spring Court.

I like not because it's particularly true to the books, but because it lets groups stay true to the books and still play a Knight of a Faerie Court. 

[FishStampede]

Is this Spearfinger based on the spear-finger/u'tlun'ta from Cherokee mythology?

Yup.

The Old Things are largely based on a mix of mountain folklore, Cherokee myth, and the stories of Manly Wade Wellman.