The Waning Princes

"When the air grows chill and the leaves lose their luster be wary of a jaundiced glow between the trees. Listen not to the whispers carried on the wings of crimson crawlers, or honeyed promises dripping from the lips of kindly strangers. For in autumn the veil between worlds thins and the princes of drizzle, rot, and nightmare seek the fealty of foolish hearts. Their edicts arrive on thunderclaps, their favor is as fleeting as lighting. It is the season of the Waning Princes. The wise do not draw their gaze."

Pitch

The Waning Court are evil fey who embody autumn: storms, harvest, rot, fear, and an encroaching chill. These fickle creatures busy themselves with petty wars, perverse delights, and centuries-long machinations well waiting for their sire, The King Under Amber, to die.

The Waning Princes view mortals as playthings and the material plane as a canvas for their twisted whimsies. Their beholden warlocks foster Waning Cults swelled with the disenfranchised and insane. The Waning Cult's rites are primordial and blasphemous, conducted in depths of dark forests or dank caverns. Where these cults hold sway parasitic direflies, insects consisting of fly, fey and wasp, grow hives in trees, buildings, and even living creatures.

Themes

Folk Horror: Members of a Waning Cult can usually be found on the fringes of civilization. Their strange practices are often mistaken for druidic or other rustic, folk religions. That is until their bloodletting can no longer be obfuscated or their hive-riddled bodies are revealed to the populace at large.

Body Horror: Speaking of which direfly hives growing in the very marrow of a Waning Cult is only the beginning. The malefic blood honey the insects produce further mutates those which consume it. Sometimes the imbiber's parasitic infestation goes into overdrive and they devolve into a still-living mass of honeycomb and muscle. Other times they perish and germinate into strange carnivorous fauna from the Feywild.

Alien Horror: Then there are the Waning Fey themselves. Both elegant and repellant these outsiders are pulled from the darkest of the old tales. Their great beauty tempered by antelope-like horns clustered with honeycombs at the base. They craft hideous, animated tools from the bones of both their enemies and lackeys that have displeased them. Their magic pulls on the power of autumn storms, nightmare, and decay. Rather like spoiled, noble children, if not for enmity the Waning Princes show one another they surely would have carved out fiefdoms in the material plane long ago.

Strife: This constant back-stabbing and competition between the Waning Princes brings nothing but misery, madness, and death to mortals. Why? Because mortals are less-than expendable to these fey and they treat them more like a commodity to be spent on any whim which crosses the mind. In competition with one another the Waning Princes use their followers more like chips in a friendly card game, and if they lose their stake they laugh it off and begin again. Save, they usual pin their failure on whatever warlock used to be their favorite and the poor sod suffers greatly for their displeasure.

The Waning Princes, In Brief.

Prince of Whispering Winds, the Thief of Leaves

As the eldest waning prince, the thief of leaves would dominate his siblings if not for two important factors. First, the archfey rapidly shifts from one project to the next and never quite completes what he starts. Second, his main lover is a common fey once destined to be a rookery crone. By adoring a woman far below his station the prince has garnered the disdain of nearly all other waning nobles. Though, they wouldn't dare even whisper any disparaging remarks about the coupling within his earshot. To do so invites certain, painful death.

Also called the Howling Prince, the firstborn is interested in stealing 'wealth' from across the planes. It doesn't matter if the treasures he gathers have monetary or sentimental value, he covets them all the same. The treasury of the Court of Gales is filled with strange wonders indeed. His courtiers make all manners of askew deals or conduct vicious raids to obtain these items and his favor. These range from a set of unique golden goblets to the treasured doll of a child lost too soon.

Prince of Scarred Branches and Invisible Blades

Quick to anger and flashy in attire, these are the two qualities that best describe the Prince of Scarred Branches and Invisible Blades. The Master of Lightning does not suffer fools lightly. At the same time while his wrath is swift and white hot he rarely strikes down those who displease him. Instead, the archfey brands them with his displeasure as a reminder of their failure. Though, most mortals do not actually survive this process. They are such fragile things, after all. The Prince of Scarred Branches constructed the first rachis lantern due to this very fact so his warlocks could actually suffer for their shortcomings.

As the Lord of Invisible Blades, the secondborn employs assassins of both the lethal and social variety. He enjoys seeing reputations sliced to ribbons, and failing that his rivals diced instead. Mostly, the villain doesn't like to get his hands or his fine clothes dirty. He doesn't kill people, he has people who do that for him. His agents employ a wide array of people who often do not know the alien horror they really work for.

Prince of Omens, Beloved by Banshees

While the Prince of Omens, Beloved by Banshees is the youngest of the Waning Princes he is, by all accounts, the wisest. He is also the loudest and often seen as a drunken louse. His alcoholism is directly due to an unbidden soothsaying ability which torments the prince so. He knew that his father would be trapped in amber and that his siblings would fall into idle bickering and skirmishes. He knew the grisly fate that his mother would suffer at his own hands and he knew the only women who would ever grace him with attention would be the wailing dead. He also knows that he cannot escape this fate or be more than the red-nose blackheart that he is.

The Court of Echoes is an unquiet grave.  In fact, it is a very loud grave. The Prince of Omens claimed the ruins he was destined to dominate after usurping the night hag he was foretold to slay. In doing so, the archfey released the multitude of damned souls the hag gathered in a thunderous crash of banshee cries. This dreadful cacophony continues to this day, sometimes in a whisper and sometimes deafening.

Princess Solemn Harvester, Mistress of the Last Sheaf

The eldest daughter of The King Under Amber is also the most stable of his children. The Solemn Harvester realizes she has a role to play in her family, in the Feywild, and with the turning of the seasons. Stone-faced from a young age, the archfey is a mistress of death and has deadened her heart to cope with these duties. Hers is the scythe that shears the grain, beheads the cattle, and culls the weak. If these deaths serve she and her kin, all the better. She commands some of the deadliest and eeriest forces of the Waning Court and dispassionately deploys them wherever needed.

The last time the Mistress of the Last Sheaf gave into emotion, she tore a rift between her son and herself that can never be healed, and that plagues the waning court to this day. After an affair with an archdevil born not of passion but a mere attempt at an alliance, the Solemn Harvester found herself with child and her lover suddenly absent. The babe came out rotting and yet still horribly alive and the Scythe Bearer could not even bear to hold it. The half-fey, half-fiend grew into the rogue Duke Fallowfields of Autumn's End and tortures the planes in an effort to sate resentment-filled anger that can never be soothed. 

Princess of the Pale Moon, Betrothed to Winter

The Princess of the Pale Moon eagerly waits for the day she will recite the vows that will tie her fully to the Winter Court and she can leave her siblings behind. Now, Betrothed to Winter doesn't love her intended in the slightest. She just hates her family. She loathes their squabbles. She is sick of their hapless reveries. As the embodiment of the first chill signifying the frozen season is on its way, the archfey fervently believes she belongs in a different court. This bitter and unfulfilled expectation has led her to be the cruelest of the Waning Princes. She lets her victims slowly wither and waste away until they perish in final agony, whether from direct torture or destroying a settlement's food stores to watch them starve as winter nears. Despite being only betrothed to the Winter Court she has allies among its members and augments her personal forces with theirs.

Born shortly after the Solemn Harvester, the First Chill despises her sister above all others. Some of this animosity has to do with her sister's superior position, but most of it comes from how self-assured the Mistress of the Last Sheaf is about her position in the world. Betrothed to Winter's hatred of this sibling drives her to spoil crops and end the harvest time of the year as soon as she can. Rumor swirls that she is behind the disappearance of the Solemn Harvester's devilish lover.