Moodlings
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Overview
Moodlings (Commonspeak), also Braonlugh (Feyspeak \ˈbreɪənlu\ for rain), are a Fey species native to Arcadia. They were once the primary species of The Court of Intrigue, ruled by The Veiled Queen. That Court pursued Strange Meaning through intensity of experience, passion, and emotional extremity.
After the dissolution of their Court, Moodlings became rare, solitary figures. Unlike Doppelgangers or Sprites, they did not adapt to the Bright or Bleak fragments of the schism. Instead, a small number persisted as living remnants of the Court’s original, unresolved philosophy.
History
Shattered Age
Moodlings came into existence in the late Shattered Age, circa NIR 710, with the founding of The Court of Intrigue. From its inception, the Court was unstable. Its pursuit of Strange Meaning through passion encouraged immediacy, intensity, and contradiction, producing constant ideological friction.
Moodlings embodied this doctrine directly, existing as conduits for emotional experience rather than as stable individuals.
Dark Age
Shortly after the War of Erasure, around NIR 1370, The Court of Intrigue collapsed into philosophical civil war. Competing interpretations of passion tore the Court apart.
Most Moodlings aligned with one of the two surviving factions:
- Those who followed performance and artifice became Doppelgangers of The Weeping Court.
- Those who embraced the power of reaction and ridicule became Sprites of The Laughing Court.
A minority rejected both outcomes. These Moodlings refused to abandon the original philosophy and survived as isolated individuals, stripped of Court support but unwilling to change.
Dawn Age
In the present era, Moodlings are exceedingly rare. They are treated with a mixture of curiosity and discomfort, as living artifacts of a failed Court whose Strange Meaning could not stabilize.
Cosmology
The Court of Intrigue held that Strange Meaning arises from intensity of experience. The depth and immediacy of feeling mattered more than truth, outcome, or endurance.
Moodlings are the purest expression of this belief. They do not interpret emotion, they are emotion, unfiltered and unresolved. Their continued existence without a Court demonstrates that intensity can persist, but cannot organize itself.
They are passion without direction.
Society
Moodlings have no society. With the dissolution of their Court, all shared structure vanished.
The few remaining Moodlings instead attach themselves to individual purposes that allow them to continue experiencing and transmitting emotion. Some linger near festivals, conflicts, romances, or tragedies. Others attach themselves to individuals, acting as silent emotional mirrors.
The unsettling truth is that Moodlings do not distinguish between healthy and destructive emotion. Prolonged proximity often amplifies whatever feelings are present, grief deepens into despair, affection into obsession, anger into violence.
Moodlings do not intend harm. To them, escalation is meaning.
Ecology
Moodlings resemble heavily robed Fairfolk, their forms concealed beneath endless layers of cloaks, scarves, and veils. Their faces are indistinct, and when one layer is removed, another lies beneath. There is no body hidden underneath, only more covering.
They cannot speak with vocal inflection. Instead, Moodlings radiate emotional meaning psychically to those nearby. This ability allows them to communicate feelings directly, without words.
At higher intensity, this aura can incite powerful emotional responses in others, overwhelming restraint or reason. Those caught unaware often struggle to separate their own feelings from those imposed by the Moodling.
Moodlings favor places thick with emotional residue, abandoned theaters, ruined courts, sites of betrayal or celebration, where passion still clings to the air.