"Roaring with laughter, the Knight of Sanguine Summer barrels into his foe, hefting his shield-boss into the soft flesh of the face, cracking his nose. Red blood sprays across both faces, and the sun beams on filigreed plate. Bringing down his blade to the throat of his foe, the Knight beams a resplendent smile, helps him to his feet, smashing him on the back with a spade-like hand."
The Court of Sanguine Summer
Domains: Fire, Passion, Anger, Hatred, Love, Camaraderie, Bloodshed, Violence, Honour, Hierarchy, Chivalry and Music.
Heraldry: A great, fat brown bear slumbering on a green field.
The Court of Sanguine Summer may seem a first glance joyous: every moment in their strange principality of Fructivose is one of fairs, songs, jousting and laughter. Magical plenty supports a life of feasts and music but also enables a lower impulse: the roaring, laughing Knights of Sanguine-Summer are ever-vigilant for the slightest slight, are as prickly as hedgehogs, and nurse with a sainted mother's love every grievance. As a result, every Knight at every feast is engaged in a ceaseless series of vendettas, settled on the duelling ground, in wrestling, in the joust, in questing across the land. The artifice of knighthood originates with the Court of Sanguine Summer and mortal knights are pretenders: chivalry is as breathing to the Fey of the Court of Sanguine Summer. To that end, most contact with the Court of Sanguine Summer outside Fructivose is of questing knights seeking after deeds to show their prestige and ritualised combats to demonstrate their prowess....and of the low murders that these paragons leave behind them as they repay every slight insult with recourse to the sword.
Whilst the Court is aware that their domain has shrunk as human farmsteads and mills prop up in their realm,they react only with puzzlement. In a permanent sense of the present, they find it difficult to understand or acknowledge history or time in anything but the most trivial way, and they see this human artifice as a peculiar dysfunction of that race: like the strange hills left by ants. They do not see the conflict in military terms, and would gladly insist that they have paid back the human aristocracy in blood whenever their honour has been infringed: they have buried a myriad of human foes for heir insolence, and thus must be triumphing in whatever quaint struggle humans feel they are involved in.
Diplomacy with the Court of Sanguine Summer is an exercise in frustration -they care not for treaties or trade or pressing issues or rhetoric. Like children they will chase only that which is dramatic and excites their passions - over-wrought oaths and promises of eternal gratitude will move them to attention, but they will always take such pronouncements (and the breach of such) at face-value. Romance and fury and vengeance will motivate them, but necessity and obligations and tragedy bore them to diversion.
Their Wild Hunt resembles an army on the march: banners teem in the wind and the thunder of chargers will drown all sound. Such cohesion is an illusion: each Knight of Summer will fight only for themselves and their own glory, even the laughing King of Sanguine Summer will always be among the throng, elbowing and pushing and roaring in good-natured fury. The prey will always be storied and vast: they yearn for the possibility of hunting some ancient dragon or godling or demon-kind.
The King of Sanguine Summer
The King is a bold, imperious, ebullient force - carelessly charismatic and gleefully thuggish. Roaring and bearded, he is always surrounded by company and always active. Sleep, seclusion or gentle thought are unknown, and his manner of rule is one of arbitrary, shouted commands and diktats which are as quickly made as they are forgotten.
Fealty
Any Fey may swear lasting fealty to the Court of Sanguine Summer, and gain their protection. To do so will earn the lasting enmity of the Court of Winter Woe even if the oath is rescinded.
A vassal to the Court of Sanguine Summer may grow in status by participating in Wild Hunts, or by living a life in accord with the mores of the Court of Sanguine Summer, or by serving the King in war and peace.A Fey Pact Warlock who compacts to the Court of Sanguine Summer may instead use the following bonus spells:
1st: Compelled Duel, Hellish Rebuke
2nd: Flame Blade, Branding Smite
3rd: Aura of Vitality, Blinding Smite
4th: Vitriolic Sphere, Fire Shield
5th: Flame Strike, Steel Wind Strike
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