The Sidhe Courts

“Call them beautiful. Call them terrible. But never call them Fae.”

— Dr. Emmeline Vire, University of Carbury

There is a world parallel to that which humans call home. It is a strange place, commonly known as Faerie but more properly called Tír Lán Dóchas, the Land beyond Hope. To humans, it is a realm of twilight and impossible geometry, where time coils like smoke and truth is whimsical. The creatures that live there are not human, and have never been anything like humans. They are the Aes Sidhe, and they are far more powerful than any force humanity has ever mustered.

Luckily, travel between these worlds is difficult and rare, at least in most places. But on the island of Inisfal, the two worlds come close enough for gates to form. There, the lords of the Aes Sidhe can enter freely, and do as they wish upon the people who live there. They cannot travel far from their gates - they are sustained by the magic of their realm and wither without it - but they can ride the length and breadth of Inisfal itself.

For Love of Art

The Aes Sidhe find human expressions of art intoxicating. Painters, poets, dancers, musicians - especially those who are tormented or visionary - are prized above gold. Abductions are common on Inisfal, and have been for as long as humans have lived there. There are ways to keep them at bay; putting your shirt on backwards will make you invisible to them, and they are barred from entering a home uninvited. Iron is anathema to the Aes Sidhe, and the sound of church bells causes them great pain. But despite these protections, there are still many who go lost in the night, carried off on strange steeds through a portal in earth.

The Courts

The organization of the Aes Sidhe is difficult to understand. They call their gatherings Courts, but this is a misleading term. Their alliances are protean, shaped by mood, music, and memory, and are best understood as overlapping emotional states given sovereign will. Each Court is a kind of ecosystem, personality, or philosophical aesthetic given form. The power of a Court lies in its narrative and its ability to impose that narrative on others. So the Court of Thorns celebrates the joining of beauty and vengeance, while the Ashen Court broods upon endings and dissipation. There are hundreds of these courts, although not all of them may exists at one time (at least as humans understand time). Sometimes, a Court will form around the art of a single abductee, and then dissolve suddenly when they grow tired of making the human sing and dance without rest.

Membership in a court is also a confusing matter to humans. One of the Aes Sidhe may be the King of Thorns in the morning, only to become the lowest page in the Court of Fireblossoms before noon, and then an advisor within the Court of Mirrors as night falls. The Aes Sidhe do not see any contradiction in this, with the shifting from one Court to the next happening as naturally as the steps in a dance. One song ends, a new one begins, and each takes their role until the mood changes again. The Department of Sidhe Studies at the University of Carbury have cataloged as many of the Courts as they could find records of, including:

• The Gloaming Court, which celebrates the lost and the forgotten.
• The Verdant Court, gardeners who cultivate monsters and rot.
• The Court of Mirrors, whose masks are their true faces, and conceal beautiful lies beneath them.
• The Hollow Court, where emptiness and void are sought both mentally and physically.
• The Ashen Court, which celebrates the endings and the fall of all things.
• The Court of Thorns, where beauty is married to revenge.
• The Court of the Fireblossoms, which is a mad dance towards glory and immolation.

This world is intended as a setting for tabletop roleplaying games, and there are many secrets embedded in the world that players should not know beforehand. If you would like to have access to all of these secrets, you can join the Lorekeepers group here.

Lorekeepers

Type

Magical Court

Fae, or Aes Sidhe?

When stories of the Aes Sidhe first spread from Inisfal, most believed them to be fictional, a silly idea associated with a rural and backwards population far from the civilized world. But the tales were entertaining, and many indulged in telling and retelling them. In Carovingia one person who was particularly fond of them was Countess Marie-Catherine Le Jumel. In 1667, she published a collection of her favorite tales which she had rewritten and embelished. It was called Les Contes des Fées, and it popularized the Carovingian term Fée or Fae for the denizens of Tír Lán Dóchas.

The Aes Sidhe despise this name. They are aware of it (although it is unclear exactly how and when that happened), and consider it a deadly insult. Those who call an Aes Sidhe a Fae to their face are selected for especial torment, and live short, miserable lives thereafter. Dr. Emmeline Vire of the University of Carbury's Sidhe Studies department makes it very clear to her students - never, ever, call one the Aes Sidhe a Fae.

The Changelings

Sometimes, those who have been abducted by the Aes Sidhe escape back to Inisfal, or their children or grandchildren do. But while they manage to escape, they do not do so unchanged. Their bodies are subtly reshaped, made too symmetrical, too luminous, too thin. Their minds often remain elsewhere, listening for a music no one else hears. Some are maddened. Some are gifted, either in Magic or in art. All are distrusted by the humans who encounter them. They are the Changelings.

Throughout the Empire, Changelings face discrimination and suspicion. They are denied civil offices, barred from military service, and often institutionalized. But they are there, looking haunted, hollow-eyed, and sometimes carrying secrets they dare not speak aloud. You can read more about the Changelings here.