Sunday 3 February 2019

[Brumaire] Varieties of the Fey: The Court of Spur and Spring

"Impassioned eyes sparkling, the Knight of Spur and Spring stands upon the barricade, roaring his defiance of all, to all. On the morrow, he was gone - fluttered away like some red-breasted robin to sunnier climes."

The Court of Spur and Spring
Domains: Growth, Revolution, Change, Dissent, Independence, Innovation, Progress, Birth, Youth, Glibness, Dilettantism, Chance,, Individualism, Deception and Vengeance.
Heraldry: A thorned red rose pushing through a white field.

Scattered across Brumaire are the thousands of Fey whose manifold allegiances include the Court of Spur and Spring. This changeable, mercenary group are to be found where ever there are battlefields and barricades. The Court of Spur and Spring remains devoted to a single unifying principle: forceful, rapid change. Many would-be revolutionaries and visionaries have recruited a smattering of The Court of Spur and Spring to their cause only to be abandoned or worst, turned upon as a reactionary and subjected to the terror. Unique among the Courts, Spur and Spring sees itself as a not a foe of humanity but a great catalyst of its awakening into the anarchic utopianism that characterises their own court. In fact, many sharp words have been spent dithering on whether it is just to intervene in human affairs, or but a relic of the same imperialistic impulses they are fighting. The prevailing opinion of the Court of Spur and Spring - if there are even capable of such a thing - is that a ceaseless winnowing of of the earth brings them closer and closer to true liberty - they must raise up and throw down new tyrants in order to bring themselves, ponderously, to their goal.

Diplomacy with the Court of Spur and Spring can be a challenge as they are ever-shifting and divided. Individuals of the Court may join some outlaw or peasant rebel for a time, but they are as fickle as spring rains, and are as likely to raise him to lordship as murder him for some imagined step towards tyranny. They are storied on humans for their betrayals and deceptions, but this misses the point: to the Court of Spur and Spring, the conspiracies were there from the beginning, and this is some bold move in a further game against the hated force of order.

The Wild Hunt has been cast aside, like all Fey traditions, by this most radical of Courts. When they gather to kill, it is an ironic motley impersonation of the great hunts of Sanguine-Summer - a band of roving jesters who seek not game, but despots to dethrone. Whilst a lord of Sanguine-Summer might adorn his keep with a dragon-head, a champion of Spur and Spring will carry a few tokens from vanquished lordlings - a signet-ring is as likely as an ear.

Whilst the armies of Brumaire have driven the Court of Winter-Woe to the edge of the known world and sacked the great city of the Court of Fade and Fall, it is with Spur and Spring that the Greatest Estate most concerns itself - drawing out and murdering their agents is a constant part of internal policy, and there are few rulers in the human realms who would tolerate these renegade fairies to live. As a result, they dwell on the very margins of society: in brigand-bands, amongst the urban poor, begging on the streets or driven to the deep forests. Where there are the marginalised and the beate-down, the Court of Spur and Spring will find sanctuary for a time.

The Queen of Spur and Spring
The Queen of Spur and Spring is an unacknowledged monarch spat upon by her own people, and yet she lives a life of such luxuriant abandon as to inspire contempt and horror: she gluts herself ceaselessly on bread looted from the starving and built a throne for herself from the bones of beggared children. Some posit her behaviour is a great parody of the behaviour of monarchs the world over; an elaborate living satire. Others claim she shows the rapine appetites of the new demagogues thrown up by the Court of Spur and Spring. She offers no answers.

Fealty
Any Fey may swear lasting fealty to the Court of Spur and Spring, and gain their protection. To do so will earn the lasting enmity of the Court of Fade and Fall even if the oath is rescinded.

A vassal to the Court of Spur and Spring may grow in status by fermenting revolution or by living a life in accord with the mores of the Court of Spur and Spring, or by mocking and occasionally overthrowing The Queen of Spur and Spring .A Fey Pact Warlock who compacts to the Court of Spur and Spring may instead use the following bonus spells:

1st: Tasha's Hideous Laughter, Dissonant Whispers
2nd: Crown of Madness, Earthbind
3rd: Haste, Beacon of Hope
4th: Confusion, Phantasmal Killer
5th: Danse Macabre, Mislead