fae courts like, you know, the fae small claims court
Me, the DM: I actively regret all of the worldbuilding I’ve done on the faewild now because “the fae court of appeals” is a P H E N O M E N A L setting for a campaign.
it WORKS is the thing
the intricate and inscrutable rules. the importance of exact words. once an agreement has been formally made and witnessed it Has To Be Honored even if it’s not fair. beware entering unknown territory without a guide native to the world. things you say will be taken literally even when they were clearly not intended that way. there’s a lot of aesthetic formalities. you win by tricking people into telling the truth.
Essential to this concept is that the aesthetic remains entirely unchanged. The flowers and thorns and fairy circles and forests and thresholds and iron and salt as a ward and the bloody shadow war between courts and the charm spells and the dreams and the changeling stuff and the riddle games and the guardian creatures etc.
like you can still end up eternally bound in service to a fae court by eating food inside a mushroom ring
just also you can get there because you were subpoenaed
In the year 1869, Mr. James E. Singh, Esq. convinced the ruling Queens of both Summer and Winter that the mortal world, too, were ultimately ruled by courts—not quite like theirs, but just as requiring of respect and adherence to the rules of the land. He offered to negotiate a treaty of reciprocal respect and intersecting jurisdiction.
Every since, well, you do still need to be careful about circles of mushrooms, standing stones, horn calls and pounding hooves on moonlit or moonless nights, etc. The boundaries are precisely defined and you cross at your own peril! But you may also be summoned, with a letter delivered by a too-intelligent crow, written on birchbark in script that shines like sunlight or glistens like frost, to testify or even serve jury duty in the Land Under Hill, for mortal crimes may on demand be judged by a jury of peers. Or if the lawyers of our world won’t even hear you out, if the judges turn away and the bailiffs throw you out, you may hop through a fairy circle and request a trial by combat or by quest—but take care! Faerie Laws are often those of stories, and a heroic seeker of righteous justice might be favored, but great and powerful monsters don’t gain their power without breaking a few good heroes first.
And if one of the Good Neighbors is causing you trouble in this world, try tricking them into jaywalking. Thanks to the efforts of Mr. Singh, they will HAVE to pay the fine if formally accused, and they’ll hate it.
Guy who transforms into a swarm of locusts when shaken vigorously: hey can you turn the music down it’s resonating kind of hard and shaking the ground and I don’t want to endanger anyone
DJ Loudmusic: SORRY I CAN’T HEAR YOU OVER THESE SICK JAMS! HERE’S MY NEXT SONG, “EPIC JUNGLE BEAT THAT GIVES LOCUSTS THE DESIRE TO KILL HUMAN BEINGS”
No single city, no group of cities has that population. The TOP 10 cities in the US have a combined population of 28 million. Out of 328. That’s roughly 8% of the population.
If you add up EVERY SINGLE CITY with more than 100,000 people in it (Which is 311 cities), that’s still only 94 million. 28% of the US population.
So this idea that the popular vote would give power to just a few cities isn’t supported by the facts.
