Winter Fey

Fey born in the moons of winter usually have white or silver hair, though the occasional black-haired child is considered very auspicious. Winter Fey can have any eye color, though blue is most common. Winter Fey are slightly shorter than other Fey. They wear long, flowing robes with many layers and heavy embroidery. Silver on white is a common color choice, as is white on icy green or pale blue on darker blue. Their headdresses are frequently fashioned to look like crowns of icicles or leafless branches.

The Winter Fey are often shrouded in mystery and contradictions. On one hand, they are quiet, melancholy thinkers who watch the turning of the world and remember what the Fey have lost. On the other hand, they are active, obsessive doers who take vengeance for what is gone and to protect what remains. The Winter Fey are aloof, even for far, often hiding their shifting emotions behind a calm demeanor; they truly live in the shadows of their season.

Like all Fey, the Winter Fey love beauty, but they tend to find it in hidden places. They feel that "real" beauty was lost long ago, and until they can be restored, the only truth lies in death and decay. Some Winter Fey say that this decay is beautiful; others simply acknowledge it as powerful and inevitable.

The Winter Fey are not terribly concerned with appearances. They find the substance to be more important than the surface, and do not mind associating with creatures that other Fey find distasteful or ugly. They are tolerant and slow to judge-- since they acknowledge that everyone has ugliness in some way, they do not feel it their place to point out ugliness in others. If that ugliness threatens them, however, they take swift action to cut it out of their life.

The Winter Fey love gathering knowledge, especially hidden knowledge and secret mysteries. They can be obsessive in their quest for knowledge; a Winter Fey scholar may not be content that they know every language that has ever been spoken, but spends their spare time translating obscure works of poetry into an arcane script that perhaps nobody else will ever read-- except maybe a fellow Winter Fey. More martially-inclined Winter Fey can be equally obsessive in their training, pushing themselves until they can split a hair with an arrow or fight five enemies while blindfolded. While an Autumn Fey may seek to surpass a rival, a Winter Fey's rival is not a person but an impossible ideal; perfection is always just beyond reach. It is often hard to know which of these deeply held obsessions are some secret mission of the Winter Court and which are just that individual's personal fascination.

The Winter Fey avoid the spotlight and go stealthily about their business. They prefer to be the power behind the throne, to remain unseen and underestimated. From the shadows, the Winter Fey believe, they can be the most useful and most deadly. Winter Fey dislike being observed, and woe to anyone who interrupts them while they are engrossed in an important, secretive task! At that point, the Winter Fey's mask of calm may break, and they may lash out with sudden viciousness. The stories of mortals who disturbed the Fey and were turned into animals were probably about mortals who stumbled upon the Winter Fey.

Winter Fey in Society

The Winter Fey take on tasks that other Fey cannot (or will not) do. If something needs to be accomplished in secret, it is the work of the Winter Fey. They track down dangerous artifacts of power and hide them away in secret vaults. They send out assassination squads to quietly kill those who threaten their people. Other Fey have no idea of the dangers the Winter Fey have averted, and the Winter Fey take perverse pride in going unacknowledged. They do not desire accolades or songs sung in their honor; that the deed was done, and done well, is enough for them.

As far as the other courts know, the Winter Fey as disreputable information gatherers and grave robbers-- useful, but distasteful tools. With contracts in high and low places, the Winter Fey can find and acquire just about anything, be it an item or a piece of knowledge, and they sell these acquisitions for a steep price. Because the Winter Fey accept missions from all the other courts, each court believes the Winter Fey are secretly only working for them. The Winter Fey do not accept all contracts they are offered, though; they only take on missions that further the ultimate, secret goals of the Winter Court.

Chief among the purposes of the Winter Court is to guard the past, which is a task they carry out very quietly. They believe that they live in a scarred and broken version of a world that was once perfect, and they strive to keep alive the memory of what was lost and plot the restoration of the world's former unity. How, precisely, this restoration is meant to occur is a secret that perhaps even the Winter Court themselves do not yet know-- but it is clear that they not afraid to tear down the current world in order to put something better in its place. The Winter Fey do not believe in creation without destruction, which makes them innately at odds with the Spring Court. Both courts wish to restore the former glory of the Fey, but the Spring Fey see the present world as something good, needing only to be tamed and shaped into perfection, while the Winter Fey see the present world as something rotten that must be swept away to bring about future perfection. The Winter Fey see the other courts, particularly the Spring Court, as play-actors who pretend that perfection still exists and that they are not monsters... when it is clear to the Winter Fey that everyone in this broken world is a monster.