Aetrimonde

Continuing on from my post about the plane of Faerie, today I’m going to cover the Autumn Court, which will be the focus of several posts this month. I won’t be showing off any statblocks in this post, which is more concerned with the lore surrounding Sidhe in general and the Autumn Court in particular, but I’ll have several posts revealing specific enemies later in the month.

The Sidhe

For starters, let’s take a look at the Bestiary’s lore about the Sidhe in general. Some of this is repetition and summation of information from the campaign setting’s entry on the plane of Faerie, but there is also information about how the Sidhe behave that would be useful to adventurers dealing with them.

I’ve written the Sidhe to be a slightly postmodern take on fairy-tale villains: they’re almost cartoonishly evil, unable to avoid wicked acts even when they wouldn’t serve their interests…but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re totalitarian despots. Frankly, I would absolutely love to run a faerie-tale spy-thriller campaign, about a bunch of gnomes and pixies rebelling against a frighteningly powerful, and genre-savvy, Sidhe overlord…but alas, there’s only so many campaigns I have time for.

The Autumn Court

Now, for the Autumn Court specifically: I’ve picked the Autumn Court as this month’s focus partly because it’s seasonally appropriate…and also, because as of this writing, I find that the Summer and Winter Courts have been a bit overdone in popular media. (See: the Dresden Files, the Iron Fey, Wicked Lovely, arguably Frozen if you squint, etc.)

Aetrimonde’s Autumn Court are the least “civilized” of the Sidhe: have no use for things like “cooperation” and “mutually beneficial exchange.” They’re social Darwinists, turning their demesnes in Faerie into places where the strong survive and prosper, while the weak serve fearfully. And they’d like to do the same with the mortal world…of course, just how deeply the Autumn Sidhe actually believe in survival of the fittest, as opposed to embracing it because they consider themselves automatically the fittest fae around, is up to the GM.

The Autumn Court, like all the Courts, isn’t just the Sidhe. They rule the Court, but it contains other faeries as well. I’ve mentioned the Wild Hunt in the lore drop above, but to offer a few suggestions of other fae that would work well in Autumn:

• The Big Bad Wolf, who preys on little girls bringing food to sick grannies, is exactly the kind of faerie the Autumn Court would embrace. They like predators, they have nothing but contempt for the sick and needy…it’s a perfect match.
• Redcaps, hateful little faeries that prey on innocent travelers in order to dye their hats in shed blood, are likewise a good match. The same goes for Will-o-Wisps, who lure travelers to their deaths by imitating the light of a lantern.
• Aetrimonde’s ogres are hungry brutes, and hunger certainly ties into Autumn’s theme: a band of ogres who raid a farming community and carry off their food stores just after harvest time would make a perfect Autumn villain.

I’ll be revealing some of these enemies, and a few I’m keeping a surprise, over the next few weeks. Stay tuned!