"In the frost-bitten taiga of Nivôse you might see them: lean and cruel and wiry, with sunken faces and muscles tendon-tight. You might think them starvelings or waifs, look upon their tattered leathers and old mail and laugh that such a motley band consider themselves one of the most puissant courts of Fey-kind. And they would smirk their dagger-sharp smiles and let you believe it, to better drink your hot, fat blood."
The Court of Winter-Woe
Domains: Cold, Death, Stability, Solitude, Pitilessness, Dread, Forethought, Endurance, Law, Earth and Water.
Heraldry: A white wolf's head with blooded maw on a field of black.
Making their homeland in the taiga-forest of Nivôse are the Court of Winter Woe, one fourth of Fey chivalry. They are to the royalty of man perhaps the most distant both geographically and culturally, for they look upon the trappings of majesty with nothing but contempt. Driven to Nivôse by their generations-long war with humanity, they match in every respect that land: they are cold, and cruel, and bereft of luxury. They maintain in their fur-and-skin yurts, staring into the embers of dying fires, that they are in fact the victors in the great struggle: that the age of mankind's heroes is over, and they are rotting in the cold earth, whereas the greatest of Winter Woe's champions still prowl Nivôse, made hard and strong by a pitiless land. They joke often that man has only grown fatter and more fractious, and that soon the King of Winter Woe will call his banners all and lead his khagans to the final blood-letting, and frost will cover every flower. Around their camp are their banners of ox-skin and leather which record their ancient deeds in curt poetry, and they take a stoic joy in a day of hunger, of cold, of wounds - they know it hones them like a blade.
Knights of the Court of Winter-Woe carry the title but not appearance of nobility. They are oft as haggard and sun-browned as any hoary peasant, and the pinch of hunger haunts their features. If you meet with them they endeavour to share their grim and stoic demeanour: they dislike luxury or joy and will treat such fripperies with contempt. Many other beasts populate the Court of Winter Woe: creeping ghouls; thin wolves with blooded maws; cannibal giants; pitiless spirits of bare woodland; beastmen and draugr and ice-things. Ever-wandering after herd and hoard they cross the Nivôse - with no great seat of power for a petitioner to seek or avoid - and they are pitiless in their dealings with outsiders. Those few merchant caravans that chance across the Nivôse, or plucky adventurers set to plunder ruins and barrows from the Age of Heroes, oft avoid any contact with the Court - the Nivôse is trackless and vast. Those who do stray into the Court's path can expect no quarter. Attempts to trade or barter with the forces of Winter-Woe will only harden their hearts - they see such things as the weak artifices of doomed mankind. As the Veil of Brom is weaker in Nivôse, and it is partially covered at times by the Mists-Between-Worlds, monsters creep through the fabric of reality and prowl there also, testing their strength against the Court's endless appetite for struggle.
In common with all the Courts of Fairie, the Court of Winter Woe maintains the tradition of the Wild Hunt. Unlike the others, there is no pomp or ceremony. The King simply nominates one champion and one prey to dance the grim dance of predator and prey: hunts often last days. Across frost-hard ground and death-cold streams they track their foe, and are as like to split its head with sharpened flint as run it down with a lance - to suffer in the hunt confers the most prestige, to become most like a beast brings the greatest renown in this strange, cold court.
The King of Winter-Woe
This sovereign of the Nivôse and the Court of Winter-Woe is a gaunt, tall figure, crowned with snowy, spider-silk-thin hair. He speaks little and seeks solitude often, often leaving the hot-fires and companionship of his camp to wander beneath a uncaring sky. He seldom speaks to outsiders and his pronouncements are a whisper which cuts through the boasting of his wandering knights.
Fealty
Any Fey character may swear fealty to the Court of Winter-Woe and gain their protection and passage through the Nivôse. To do so will earn the enmity of the Court of Sanguine-Summer in perpetuity even if the oath is later rescinded.
A vassal to the Court of Winter-Woe may grow in status by participating in Wild Hunts, or by living a life in accord with the mores of the Court of Winter-Woe, or by serving the King in war and peace.A Fey Pact Warlock who compacts to the Court of Winter Woe may instead use the following bonus spells:
1st Ray of Frost, Longstrider
2nd Pass Without Trace, Silence
3rd Sleet Storm, Spirit Guardians
4th Blight, Ice Storm
5th Cone of Cold, Enervation
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