The Porcelain Queen and The Grey King
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Overview
The Porcelain Queen and The Grey King are the co-rulers of The Lower Bone Court, one of the Concordant Courts of Arcadia. Together, they explore a Bleak inflection of the Strange Essences of Location and Substance, seeking meaning through impermanence, misplacement, and persistence. Their rulership is mutual rather than shared; neither philosophy can act without the other. Their fabled relationship is that of twins.
Porcelain Queen Overview
Rhiannon (Feytongue \riænən\ for great queen), the Porcelain Queen, is the Fey God of the Offlings and was the ruler of The Lower Court prior to The Concordance. Her original Court explored the Strange Essence of Location, seeking meaning through things lost, the tension caused by things not where they are meant to be. She was obsessed with lost things: objects, memories, people.
Among mortals, Rhiannon is known only as a fable of Strange horror. If people are ever unsettled by children in masks or creepy dolls, it is probably because they heard stories of Rhiannon, true or otherwise.
Grey King Overview
Arawn (Feytongue \ˈɑraʊn\ for exalted one), the Grey King, is the Fey God of Greyfolk and was the ruler of The Bone Court prior to The Concordance. His original Court explored the Strange Essence of Substance, seeking meaning through persistence without hope. He was obsessed with the forces of erosion and decay.
Among mortals, Arawn is generally regarded as a sort of grim reaper mythical figure. Many associate him incorrectly with the Gods of Autumn. The only accurate information comes from his Orisons, though rarely given.
History
Origin and Ascension
Rhiannon
Nothing is known of Rhiannon from before her time in Arcadia, other than myth and rumor. Most myths assert that she was an orphan in Pelithos and made her way to Arcadia, even as a child, through her incredible power of dream. Others say she was a refugee during The Midnight Road. Once in Arcadia, she became known as "The Urchin", a creature that seemed content to lurk on the edges of Arcadian civilization, homeless and alone, with purposes unknown.
Eventually she began to attract other Fey who lost their way, either literally or allegorically, and they adopted her philosophical views. After the War of Erasure created the Bright and Bleak inflections, Rhiannon ascended to the Bleak throne of Location, c. NIR 1400. Her followers changed into the Offlings.
Arawn
Arawn was an Elf in Pelithos, believed to have originated in the Zero Year. He led many lives, as a king, warrior, scholar, father, and more. Most of his lives ended in tragedy. Arawn became a philosopher known to criticize Elven longevity as a curse.
He migrated to Arcadia looking for peace. He joined The Forgotten Court as a Puck for several hundred years, drawn to the idea that immortality was a curse. Fortunately, he abandoned the Court before The War of Erasure, avoiding Erasure. But the fate of his old Court brought further substance to his bleak philosophy. It was his curse to endure, and in so doing, to have meaning. After the War of Erasure created the Bright and Bleak inflections, Arawn ascended to the Bleak throne of Substance, c. NIR 1380. His relentlessly pessimistic philosophy attracted followers who became the Greyfolk.
The Concordance
Rhiannon and Arawn were not original collaborators in the Concordance, but were forced into fusion by its metaphysical side effects. When Bright Courts merged through philosophical union, the inverse law compelled Bleak Courts into complementary fusion. Thus, The Lower Court and The Bone Court collapsed into a single Concordant Court: The Lower Bone Court.
Following fusion, the two retained distinct identities but lost unilateral control. Their cooperation came quite naturally, almost immediately finding philosophical complements in each other.
Description
Rhiannon
The Porcelain Queen appears as an Elven child, roughly seven years of age. She wears an anachronistic, fancy, worn, dirty dress and her skin is covered in smudges of dirt. Her hair is in a fancy, braided bun, but is matted and stiff with dirt. She wears a porcelain doll mask that completely covers her face. The mask is starkly white, glaringly in contrast with her dirty clothes and skin. The porcelain mask is pristine, except for one crack on the forehead.
In her rarely seen surreal form, called Gleoite (Feytongue \ˈɡlɔɪtə\ for cute, adorable), The Nightmare Doll, she is a towering, terrifying doll-creature. Her limbs are long and bend at impossible angles, covered in porcelain with joins of frayed twine. Its hair is wiry and patchy, cut into a short bob with a bow. It wears a faded and tattered pink dress from a bygone era. It moves with incredible speed and unnatural agility.
Arawn
The Grey King appears as a tall, gaunt, desiccated man, stooped over, but still immense and towering. His body is wrapped in layers upon layers of robes, resembling burial shrouds and funerary vestments. His hands tremble constantly. His skin and clothing is completely without color, all in shades of grey. His thin hair is long and wispy.
In his surreal form, called The Bone Wind (Commontongue), The Grey King becomes a massive, inhuman skull of grey-brown bone. The skull is missing its jaw and its eyes glow with pale grey light. Surrounding the skull is a slowly churning cloud of crematory ash and bone fragments. The slow moving storm gives a grinding sound.
Personality
The Porcelain Queen is curious, attentive, and sincere. She innocently asks questions without understanding their sensitivity. She delights in caregiving rituals: feeding pets, mending broken toys, arranging dolls just so. Her Bleak nature is revealed by her need to lose, break, or abandon the things she cares for, hurting every time.
The Grey King is melancholic, patient, and exhausted beyond despair. He remembers everything, but it brings him only sorrow. He speaks slowly, often losing his train of thought midway through a sentence, less from confusion than from lack of purpose.
The two cling to each other desperately, never far from each other and often holding hands. The Queen clings to him as a constant presence and the King looks upon her with his last shadows of joy. Neither can exist without the other.
Strange Philosophy
Things have meaning because they end.
—Lower Bone Court adage
Meaning fills the shape of what is lost.
—Lower Court adage
Meaning is what remains when all other reasons for existence have been exhausted.
—Bone Court adage
The Lower Bone Court teaches that meaning arises from impermanence. The Court believes that Arcadians lost meaning when they lost the ability to truly die, seeing it as the deepest flaw of the Fey.
- Meaning from impermanence
- Obsession with mortal death ceremonies
- Obsession with Erasure magic, the only thing that seems to end a Fey
- Obsession with lost things
- Obsession with the forces of erosion
Creatures most often drawn to this philosophy are the elderly, the terminally ill, the forgotten by society, people who have lost something or someone dear, or Fey who dread their immortality.
Relations
- The Bitter Queen: Maeve derides Rhiannon as an overbearing parent propping up a feeble partner, and mocks Arawn as a dependent child sheltered from consequence. The Twins regard Maeve with quiet contempt: Rhiannon sees her as willfully blind to endurance, and Arawn treats her ridicule as proof that she mistakes patience for weakness. Together, they refuse to engage her framing, knowing their bond functions precisely because it does not perform strength in ways Maeve recognizes.
- The Bloated King: Mammon and the Twins share a coarse, indulgent relationship marked by morbid humor and mutual appetite. Mammon delights in supplying objects of decay and ill-considered luxury, finding genuine pleasure in how eagerly they are consumed and lost. Rhiannon and Arawn, for their part, regard Mammon as a vulgar but strangely endearing source of offerings that test the boundaries of endurance, loss, and meaning, accepting his gifts with open eyes and dry amusement.
- The Cake Queen and Candy King: Rhiannon and Arawn regard the Sweet Couple as an existential threat whose endless pleasure must eventually be ended or risk invalidating their entire philosophy. They make careful, patient plans to eliminate them, convinced the act will be merciful and necessary. Milseach and Siucran remain completely unaware, treating the Twins as somber but harmless acquaintances.
- The Cartographer Queen and Hearth King: Neasa and Nuada relentlessly study the Twins, convinced that impermanence represents a dangerous philosophy that must be understood, mapped, and contained. Arawn allows this attention, interpreting it as another pressure to be endured in the long arc toward inevitable endings. Rhiannon remains wary, sensing that the Fated Couple’s fascination risks turning understanding into interference.
- The First Queen: Ceadra and the Lower Bone Court share a sincere and affectionate friendship, rooted in long familiarity and mutual respect. Rhiannon and Arawn love her music deeply and, in moments they rarely admit aloud, wish it would never end. This desire shames them, for it contradicts everything they teach about meaning arising from endings, and they fear that indulging it could one day undermine their Court’s philosophy.
- The Giving Queen: Iobairtin treats Rhiannon and Arawn as dependable subordinates, trusting them agree with her on matters of sacrifice that result in an ending (as many do). The Twins, in turn, are utterly certain of her authority on matters of sacrifice, viewing her as the one Bright ruler who understands the concept of finality. Their loyalty is a silent agreement between the Concordant Gods.
- The Keening Women: Cailleach maintains a quiet, protective watch over Arawn, treating him as something precious that must be contained, a relic of endings. Arawn accepts this guardianship with stubborn dignity, enduring her oversight as a necessary constraint that preserves him from misuse or erasure. Rhiannon finds the arrangement perplexing but tolerable, while the other Keening Women understand it as an ancient courtesy between those who remember the oldest losses and refuse to let them be forgotten.
- The Lady of the Web: Bright Lolth treats Rhiannon as something precious to be guarded, hovering with an intensity that Rhiannon finds deeply unsettling. Rhiannon submits out of fear more than gratitude, never certain whether she is being protected or groomed. Arawn bristles at this dynamic, viewing Lolth as an intrusive overseer and resenting that her protection subtly undermines his own role as Rhiannon’s true guardian.
- The Never Queen and Promised King: Morrigan and Finvarra present themselves as allies to the Twins, offering allegiance framed as respect for wisdom and power. In truth, they regard the Twins as an existential threat: impermanence undermines incompletion entirely. Rhiannon and Arawn accept the alliance cautiously, convinced the Toxic Couple’s loyalty is hollow and potentially predatory.
- The Sleeping Queen: Aisling presents herself as a devoted student of Arawn, listening intently to his teachings on endurance and endings while quietly hollowing them into justifications for oblivion. She maintains the pretense because Arawn’s philosophy grants her a more socially acceptable language for her vacancy, allowing her to move unchallenged among those who would otherwise resist her influence. Rhiannon recognizes the performance for what it is and regards Aisling with wary concern, sensing that Aisling is not learning, but unaware of her true motives.
- The Spider Queen: Bleak Lolth is openly fascinated by Arawn, probing his philosophy of endurance and endings with invasive interest. Arawn responds by withdrawing as completely as possible, refusing to engage and treating her attention as a slow, existential threat. Rhiannon watches this warily, understanding that Lolth’s curiosity is dangerous, but also recognizing that Arawn’s silence is the only defense he has.
- The Thespian Queen: Cealgran and Arawn have been involved in an intense love affair for some centuries, but she has been getting overwhelmed by the gravity of his presence and philosophy, and the roles it takes to relate to him. Rhiannon watches with concern, both for both of them in different ways.
- The Wayward King: Lugh and The Twins share a relationship of reluctant respect between begrudging teachers and student. Rhiannon and Arawn treat Lugh as a reluctant lesson, a living display of what happens when one refuses to confront endings and stillness. There is a part of Lugh that is willing to learn, a part that years for an end to the journey, but he is too afraid to face this fact and so resents their insistence but cannot fully stay away.
Orisons
Most Orisons of The Porcelain Queen and The Grey King are Offlings and Greyfolk, numerous within the Court. Mortals who form pacts with these monarchs often include the bereaved, elders near death (albeit briefly), undertakers, menders, and caretakers of abandoned things. The most famous of their Orisons include:
- Adeline Fendred: Human, Woman, Acrolon, Dawn Age, Presumed Dead. Aging beauty of Acrolon in the Dawn Age, made a pact with the monarchs to avoid aging. She lived for several more decades with untarnished beauty, then vanished from the world. People say that she visits dreamers on occasion, apparently in great distress, though they can't remember why.
- Salk of the Last Rite: Human, Man, Acrolon, Dark Age, Dead. An acolyte of Nexia and mortician who insisted on performing funeral rites even during mass executions. His presence was said to make soldiers hesitate before killing.
- Grave-Singer Aveleon: Elf, Woman, Pelithos, Dawn Age, Alive. A wandering minstrel who sings only at sites of loss and abandonment. Her songs cause lost objects or people to resurface, only to be broken or killed.
- The Rust Pilgrim: Unknown, Unknown, Arcadia, Dawn Age, Unknown. A silent, nearly mythical figure who collects eroded tools, bones, and ruined monuments, arranging them into temporary shrines that collapse at dawn. Some claim it is a Fey, others insist it is mortal.