Spindles

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A Spindle.

Overview

Spindles (Commonspeak), also Gaothcas (Feyspeak \ˈgɔɪkɑs\ for wind), are a Fey species native to Arcadia. They were once the primary species of The Court of Alignment, ruled by The Concordant Queen. That Court pursued Strange Meaning through harmony, balance, and the correct relation of parts to one another.

After the Court’s Reframing during The War of Erasure, most Spindles who stayed loyal to Lolth were reshaped into The Chain of The Court of Genuflection. A small number survived unchanged. These surviving Spindles are now the rarest living scions of any dissolved Fey Court.

History

Shattered Age

Spindles came into existence in the early Shattered Age, circa NIR 370, with the founding of The Court of Alignment. This Court asserted that Strange Meaning arose from proper alignment, when disparate elements were arranged into harmonious relation without dominance or submission.

Spindles embodied this belief as living systems of articulated balance, capable of reorienting themselves endlessly without losing cohesion.

War of Erasure

During The War of Erasure, around NIR 1300, The Court of Alignment was attacked. Rather than erase the Court outright, Lolth employed a powerful form of Strange magic known as Reframing.

Through Reframing, the Court’s philosophy was forcibly altered. Alignment was narrowed into Genuflection. Harmony became reverence. Balance became hierarchy.

This metaphysical alteration reshaped most Spindles into The Chain, binding them into a new collective existence under The Lady of the Web. A handful of Spindles survived this transformation, either by distance, resistance, or incompletely understood anomalies.

Dawn Age

In the current era, surviving Spindles exist only as individuals. They do not gather, reproduce culturally, or attempt to restore their Court. Their rarity makes them objects of quiet fascination and unease within Arcadia.

Cosmology

The Court of Alignment held that Strange Meaning arose when parts related correctly to one another, without coercion. Every component retained autonomy, yet contributed to a greater whole.

Spindles embody this belief through extreme flexibility and articulation. Their bodies are capable of infinite reconfiguration without submission to a fixed hierarchy.

The fact that their hive mind remains distinct from that of The Chain is considered deeply significant by Fey scholars. It implies that Reframing did not merely redirect allegiance, but fundamentally altered the nature of collective thought. Genuflection did not inherit Alignment; it replaced it.

Society

Spindles no longer possess a society of their own.

Instead, surviving individuals occupy highly specialized roles within greater Arcadian society, often in places where precision, adaptation, and relational thinking are required.

Common roles include:

• Engineers of impossible structures that must flex, rotate, or realign.
• Weavers and fabric-crafters, especially of Strange textiles that respond to tension, motion, or thought.
• Consultants to other Courts on matters of balance, where hierarchy alone produces instability.

Spindles avoid both The Court of Genuflection and The Chain. Not out of fear, but out of a subtle, but profound, philosophical incompatibility.

Ecology

Spindles resemble Fairfolk at rest, though careful observation reveals faint seams at their major joints: shoulders, hips, neck, spine, wrists, and ankles.

In motion, their true nature becomes apparent. At each seam, Spindles possess full rotational freedom. Their bodies can move through all six degrees of freedom, bending, rotating, and reorienting in ways that defy conventional anatomy. Aside from the physical impossibility of occupying the same space twice, there is effectively no posture a Spindle cannot assume.

They possess a collective mental awareness similar to that of The Chain, though entirely separate. This hive mind allows nearby Spindles to share spatial awareness and intention, but not obedience.

Spindles thrive in environments defined by tension and motion: looms, bridges, rotating halls, suspended structures, and places where balance must be constantly renegotiated.