Court of Autumn

The Leaden Mirror, the Ashen Court, the Court of Fear

Fear

Fear is a line in the dust. It’s a boundary, an invisible wall. Fear keeps your enemy from crossing your threshold. Fear keeps your allies from presuming too much. Fear is a fortress, and the Leaden Mirror knows all the secrets in its foundations.

And that requires sorcery. Nothing terrifies one of the grand gameplayers like the realization that what they’d mistaken for a pawn has its hands on the rulebook. The Ashen Court has a complicated relationship with their signature passion. Some of them revel in the rush; others consider terror the most rational weapon in a frightening world. Obviously, they all know how what it’s like to live in constant dread, thanks to the durance — but that could be said to be true of every Lost. The difference is that it takes a certain amount of introspection to swear the Autumn vow. Spring and Summer might suppress their old fears, and Winter may hide from them. But Autumn has to come to terms with those old scars.

Why, then, doesn’t the Ashen Court play more like the Summer Court? Why do they treat the dread of knives and gasoline and broken glass as secondary at best? The answer’s pragmatic — as terrifying as the threat of violence is, it works best on mortals. The True Fae play by different rules. They don’t even reliably have bodies to break or blood to spill. To get at what frightens one of the Gentry, you have to threaten the rules they play by.

Autumn had many gifts to offer, but the Ashen Court chose fear. It was a power that flowed from lengthening nights and dead leaves falling from skeletal branches, of ripe fruits rotting on the ground. Autumn granted the understanding that death itself is not as frightening as dying. Animals fatten up before winter, driven by the secret understanding of starvation. Rich greens wither away into sere browns. Mortals honor their ghosts and light lanterns against the deepening dark. Horror movies and Halloween are florid offerings to Autumn’s ancient and subtle truth: the unconscious dread that perhaps this will be the year you won’t see the coming of spring. The immortal Gentry don’t understand mortality in these terms — but who better than the Autumn Court to instruct them?

Fear is a dangerous emotion to harvest. Stir up too much dread, and a neighborhood starts looking too closely at anything strange going on. The fear you get at horror movies is superficial, about as nutritious as the popcorn. But the Autumn Court has its ways. They follow people home at night, staying just out of sight and making just enough noise to let the person fill in the rest. Children have vivid imaginations and low skepticism, making it worthwhile to seed rumors of the frightening house on the corner. A measure to frighten children might also infect their protective parents. An animal shelter reeks of the stuff, with stressed animals panicking every time one of them cries out.

Bargaining

Everyone relies on their mechanisms. When the pressure’s too great, an Autumn Courtier usually tries to find a way out. They don’t run and hide, though — all that trafficking in terror builds up calluses on the soul, keeping the fight-or-flight question at bay. They have time to ask questions like “What could I have done differently?” or “Is there anyone I can get to help me?” That level of awareness doesn’t mean they’re fully in control, though. It only means their desperation is more articulated.

The Leaden Mirror’s attention to the Wyrd feeds this character flaw. Magic has always been a practice of pacts and bargains, especially changeling magic with its Contracts and pledges. Do this, give that, and something will teach you how to turn the pages of reality until you find something you like better. So, when an Ashen Courtier feels her life or freedom is truly in danger, her first instinct is to look for some kind of escape clause.

Those Lost who’ve seen this side of the Autumn Court — really seen it — may find the Court of Fear even more frightening than before. When a desperate changeling starts thinking in terms of bargaining, well… The other courts are always at least a little worried that someone in the Leaden Mirror might turn coat and strike a deal with the enemy. The sorcerers are, after all, very good at bargains.

Worse, the Fae also know this.

The Turning of the Seasons

High Autumn: Autumn doesn’t usually take the throne with grand displays like Spring and Summer. Their ceremonies are smaller, but more binding — an Autumn monarch will hold you to anything you say, so beware of empty platitudes for courtesy’s sake. When an Autumn Queen does plan a grand event to mark her ascension, odds are that she intends to secure her rule through fear, and the intention is that everyone will leave the ceremony afraid to cross their new queen. The coronation banquet of such a ruler is certain to be…memorable.

When Summer has primacy, they look to the freehold’s arms; when Autumn succeeds Summer, they look to the freehold’s magic. This often takes the form of a cryptic census. Ashen Courtiers visit every member of the freehold, inquiring in the King’s name as to any pledges they honor, any tokens they carry, or any oaths they are bound to fulfill. Usually people lie, or outright refuse to give up their secrets. The Leaden Mirror rarely presses the issue — secrecy is, after all, an important defense for the Lost. But given Autumn’s mastery of the occult, they can often offer advice for better using a token, dream, or Contract than the owner would have guessed. An honest changeling becomes an educated changeling. An educated changeling is of more use.

If an Autumn Queen needs to prosecute a war, or to complete a war that her Summer predecessor started, she plays dirty. She enlists the Winter Court to supply her with all the information they’re willing to share on the enemy’s weaknesses. She searches out the loopholes in the oaths binding her foes. She uses bait and false retreat tactics to lure hunters into arcane traps. She uses sorcery to obliterate magically weak opponents, and dispatches Summer Court volunteers to overrun physically soft tar gets. She disdains glory and honor for shock and awe. If she utterly destroys her enemy’s appetite for conflict with the freehold, she’ll have to fight only one battle during her reign.

Low Autumn: When another court sits the throne, the Ashen Court return to their archives. On a practical level, the Leaden Mirror appeals to changelings who want to learn. We all need to know more about ourselves and our world, just to survive. We’ll share our knowledge with you. Just about every Autumn Courtier has a measure of interest in magic, often with an occult specialization. One might be fascinated by words, and surround herself with books and blackboards; another, immersed in the symbolism of colors, keeps a spectrum of rooms where each is dedicated to the spells peculiar to its hue. The court is one part cabal of witches and one part scientific community, sharing their findings. They don’t hide from others the way the Winter Court does, but other changelings are often reluctant to seek them out. This suits them, of course. It gives them more privacy for their research, and of course, it isn’t a bad thing to be feared.

Autumn Courtiers settle into a variety of roles to support a freehold. They make fine advisors and soothsayers, but more interestingly, some are natural therapists. These Ashen Courtiers can surgically expose, identify, and soothe a person’s innermost worry and dread. The court also reaches for certain clerical duties, from cataloging the tokens known to the freehold to recording the freehold’s history. They make excellent solicitors, devising the craftiest and most beneficial wording for an oath, pledge, or Contract. Some put the court’s lore to work by exploring the Hedge, whether to find secret paths in and out or to tend and harvest goblin fruits. Finally, a freehold’s justice system is of great interest to the Autumn Court. Winter may provide more investigators and Summer more constables, but Autumn accepts the truly ugly business of playing gaoler and executioner. Caging another changeling is a disturbing reenactment of the durance, but when it must be done, best that the job goes to someone who can at least benefit from a prisoner’s terror.

No other court has anything close to the Autumn interest in the terrifying supernatural beings that lurk on the fringes of mortal society. While they don’t trust vampires, ghosts, werewolves, or the like, these “fellow Autumn People” are grimly fascinating. Other supernatural beings have magic of their own, and they are entities to be feared. They feel like kindred spirits, though you’d have to be a fool to assume any bond. The Ashen Court has a dangerous tendency to investigate rumors of other supernatural beings. Some hope for allies; some to steal valuable new magics. All are rightly cautious.

Give and Take

Autumn’s Bargain compels transparency. When the Court of Fear reigns, the Others and their pawns must give clear warning of their intentions before they attack. Autumn protects its children from the dread of uncertainty. The more powerful the Gentry, the further in advance it must announce its intentions; the time varies from a few hours to as much as a lunar month. The True Fae wriggle and writhe to find cryptic, unreadable ways that might announce their intentions only to someone capable of their riddle-thought, but these attempts inevitably fail. So the Others draw up their battle lines and send out liveried hobgoblin heralds, or they scatter engraved invitations to a slaughter, or they light runes of fire on the Hedge borders. If they aren’t permitted surprise, then they shall at least have grandeur.

The Ashen Court repays Autumn’s blessing with many rituals — more, truth be told, than Autumn ever required. At the smallest level, they practice tiny individualized superstitions as minor sacrifices. A courtier might bury a packet of burnt pumpkin seeds before a diplomatic errand, keep a bit of worn heartwood on a keychain, or count the steps every time she goes downstairs. These micro-rituals are a show of reliability, proving that the changeling can uphold even the most trivial of bargains.

Greater rites are usually some variant of a harvest ceremony. A few of these are innocuous feasts, mostly notable for the amount of magical shop talk that takes place. But more are hunts — the Ashen Court harvests fear, after all. It’s unclear to outsiders what differentiates the Hunt of Leaves from the Falling Night from the Ash Run, even if those outsiders are invited. They all have very similar structure. The quarry is an enemy of the freehold, from fetches or changeling traitors to True Fae themselves. The Autumn Court provides weapons and masking spells to all interested parties, and in return claims first choice of any enchanted spoils they may find.

Legends

Nobody could catch Autumn. She had a robe made of leaves of every color, and when she wore it you could never tell her from a tree or a stone. She ran faster than a deer, could break anything in her path, and never got tired. Many brave hunters ran after her until their feet bled and they collapsed. But there was one who just walked.

He was a clever one, who sometimes walked like a spider. He had a big bag full of stories that bent him near double, but he said it didn’t weigh a thing. He went wandering into Autumn’s lands until he found a clearing he liked, then he sat on a stump and opened up his bag. He took out a story, examined it carefully, and then recited it to make sure it was still proper. When he put it back and made to close the bag, a voice whispered, “Another.” So he took out another story, and another, and another, and Autumn gathered up her invisible robe and crouched there, listening. When he finally put his last story away, he said “Well, and now it’s the solstice.” And to her surprise, Autumn admitted defeat.

The first Autumn Queen wasn’t what you would have expected. Clay Ariel wasn’t strong, she wasn’t swift, and she damn well wasn’t frightening. She was a little thing, whose flesh and bone hands were replaced with soft clay after she was taken. She had to be careful not to damage her poor hands, so all her tools and toys and weapons were clay as well, things she could handle with magic kneaded into them.

But you’d be right to fear her anyway. When the four hunts began, Clay Ariel said, “I’ll search out Autumn,” and she set out with nothing more than the clothes on her back and a little smile on her face. She came back with the Bargain, and the Contracts of Fear. Now what in God’s name could this quiet little clay mouse have done to earn that? How did she get picked over the sharp-edged murderers and doomcrows that set out on the same quest? We’ll never know. And that’s the lesson: Never take anything for granted.

Spring and Autumn were once husband and wife. They had many children — storms, flowers, fruits, grains, all things young and beautiful, and all things ripe and sweet. But in time, Autumn fell ill. When her form became withered and leafless, Spring could not bear to look on his wife any longer. He fled, and she cursed him for his cowardice.

They feuded for many long years. Autumn swore she’d slay whatever living child of Spring she could catch, and Spring vowed he’d engender so many she could never kill them all. When they finally made truce, it was at the behest of a brave pair of changelings, a husband and wife who each sought out one of the seasons. Alas, these mortals sacrificed their own love for the Bargain. Spring’s champion died to appease Autumn — at the hands of his wife, the first Autumn Queen.

When Silver Marya went looking for Autumn, she found him waiting for her in his great bleak house, sitting on his barren chair. He welcomed her and offered her his blessing, his Bargain, and the hand of his handsome son in marriage…if she could prove herself worthy. The cunning old season asked her to gather his thousand horses by feeding time, to comb the leaves from his orchard by bedtime, and to sow his fields with wheat to make into dumplings by breakfast time.

She did each of these things, but not alone. With pledges and oaths, she compelled birds to gather the horses, sang the leaves away, and persuaded the wheat to grow and the millstone to grind it. When she sat down to breakfast with Autumn, Autumn smiled and told her she’d cheated. Before she could reply, he said, “But that’s good. I want a daughter-in-law who knows it’s better to be wise than brave. Teach all your children how to make pacts like yours, for only fools rely on their hands alone.”

The woman held out her fist, blood dripping from it and her skinner’s knife. “I call on the silver bear,” she said, and the Huntsman’s silver-furred cloak bound his arms to his sides. “I call on the seven wolf brothers,” she said, and the Huntsman’s hide boots slammed together and would not move. “I call on the red stag,” she said, and the Huntsman’s russet leather choker tightened around his neck. “Aid me,” she whispered once more, “and avenge yourselves.”

Mantle Effects: The Autumn Court’s Mantle is…peculiar. It’s distinctly Autumn — in its strength it may be a cooling breeze, a rustling rattle like a tree’s denuded branches in the wind, tiny flickering candle flames or lantern fires, dead leaves spinning from nowhere and vanishing to the same. A truly powerful Autumn Mantle withers green plants away to brown and sends shivers up the spine. But tied into all that are the marks of the Ashen Court’s sorcery. Occult glyphs shimmer like witchfire or spread like blotting ink before fading. An atonal chant sings a wordless warning. Sparks like dying stars fall from the changeling’s fingertips. An aurora of unearthly hues shimmers about the shoulders. The precise form these arcana take depends on the courtier, but wise Lost quickly learn to recognize the sign of a potent Autumn sorcerer.

Courtiers: An aspiring general discreetly inquires into Contracts that strike at the enemy’s morale. An oneiromancer captures and catalogs nightmares, soothing his comrades’ rest and uncorking the terrors in the dreams of enemies. A literal internet troll hacks a darknet database and threatens to dox the names she finds. A performance artist weaves spells of dread into an already disquieting act. An archivist searches out the details of every pledge spoken in the freehold, recording each one in massive chained ledgers. A candlemaker blends wax with the juice of goblin fruits to protect — or curse — certain favored customers. An alchemical vintner crafts intoxicating draughts that alter the drinker’s perception of the mystical. A lawyer goes over Contracts in exacting detail, extrapolating new possible loopholes to exploit. A would be shapeshifter runs wild at night, and seems to have a different patch of fur or scales or feathers every morning.

Type

Court, Noble

Don’t be simple. Of course it’s not better to be feared than loved. But someone has to wear that particular crown.