[centre][img]https://i.imgur.com/XonJHsx.png[/img]

[h2]ROISIN MAGNOLIA[/h2]
[b][sup]The LITTLE GOD of the LITTLE THINGS | The FEIGHDFULC MATHAIR | LADY of the FADE | The KHODEXBORNDOTTR
LADYPRINCE of the FAE-FINTE | The FAERIE QUEEN | The GREAT VEILED ONE | MISTRESS of the PLACE BETWIXT ALL PLACES
HIGH QUEEN of the FAIRIES[/sup][/b][/centre][hr]

In aeons and ages to come, there would never be a quiet day in the court of the High Queen at the Highholt of Taramanca. In the wake of the War of the Trees, however, there was much silence. Even as the faeries came to be, there was no song or dance at Taramanca. Roisin Magnolia sat brooding on her high throne, and her thoughts were all of sadness and her eyes knew naught but tears. All across the Veil, the newborn race of the faeries fought and wrangled and ate one another as she wept; for aeons the Veil and its denizen feighdfulc knew only the law of the jungle. All the tree tribes and tree-kerns, all the great barked chieftains could but weep with the weeping of Roisin Magnolia and whatever words of reprimand they spoke to those born of them became sobs on the winds. Whispers reached Roisin Magnolia of the deeds of that wild fae race, but louder than those were the whispers carried on winds blowing from the Gate of the Furthest Fade. At that most northern point of the Veil, where the line was forever held against the coming of the Beasts of the Outer Rim into the Veil, the whispers spoke of beasts unlike any known during the Battle of the Wildwoods. The winds whispered of monstrosities whose image was a twisted mockery of the faerie form. Those darkfaeries cried havoc and murder, called out for war and vengeance in the name of one ‘Hylsek Adech’…

Though they met with success and easy spoils at first, at the Gate of the Furthest Fade those darkfaeries were soon checked. On that great frontier a warrior king of the fae arose like a mountain and marched forth like the storm. With the swiftness of a raging tempest, he subdued all the feighdfulc in those distant climes – all the thousand petty-feighdlords and ladies, fadechiefs and chieftesses, littekings and queens – and established the very first of kingdom of the fae: the Kingdom of the Furthest Fade with its Court at the Gate of the Furthest Fade. That glorious marcher feighdlord was known by all as Brentylwith the King; his name was the bane of darkfaeries and their curse, his blade their sure demise. The skies of the Kingdom of the Furthest Fade trembled when his airborne hosts swept across them to do battle; the hills and forests quaked and shook when his earthbound armies leapt forth to strike down darkfeighd. 

Wherever the name of Brentylwith was whispered on faerie lips, whether in the farthest east of the Veil or the most distant west, it was uttered only with wonder and awe – and no small degree of joy! Even the winds that carried his name and his glories to the ears of Roisin Magnolia gushed his name and deeds most lovingly into the Little god’s ear. In that manner hearing of his great exploits and defence of the Veil, Roisin Magnolia was pleased with Brentylwith the King. While never overhasty, she did not delay long before sending for him to attend to her at court; hearing the summons of the High Queen, Brentylwith forthwith called several of his [i]Eshgaebars[/i] to him and rushed to Taramanca on nine wings of gales and tempestuous storms and clouds.

When he arrived, the great walls of the Highholt of Taramanca reared up behind the Sweet River Rois. Unlike any time before, however, the gates of the Highholt of Taramanca lay open and a bridge of rainbows and mournful keening led the way across the river. Flanked by six of his [i]Eshgaebars[/i], who commanded divisions and regiments in his great marcher armies and who were themselves lesser lords of lesser courts in the Kingdom of the Furthest Fade, Brentylwith was the very image of confidence and easy command. His face left little mystery as to why he had arisen to kingship; a mere look upon his countenance caused the hearts of lesser fae to quicken and for there to remain little desire in them but his pleasure.

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[i]Brentylwith the King, Great Marcher Feighdlord of the Kingdom of the Furthest Fade, Pale Watchfeighd of the Gate[/i][/centre]

Beyond the wall, the palace of the High Queen spread out like a reclining nymph embossed in gold, precious stones, and winding vines of jewellery and silks. Rainbows tremored wherever the eye fell, fountains gushed with water and dew and honey. Streams flowed about the fountains, but the waters of the fountains themselves gushed forth from unseen subterranean rivulets. To breathe here was bliss. The king and his [i]Eshgaebars[/i] ascended ten marble steps from the palace gardens, then up beyond oaken doors engraved with silver and gold and embellished with rubies and sapphires and emeralds. Runes were carved into them out of running water and dew so that the great gates seemed to ripple and flow with liquid life. A great chamber opened before them. It was domed and pillared just as beautifully and intricately as the gate. The eye did not fall on anything in that chamber except that it was a testament to beauty. The pillars, the carved walls, the vaults, the calligraphy spreading like so many vines across the wall-tiles, the domes whose tiles were arranged in such a stellated pattern that one who gazed upward felt on the cusp of being swallowed by an endless night sky aglow with stars.

The chamber narrowed as they walked across it and eventually led into a wide hallway whose high ceiling extended seamlessly from the great fore-chamber. The hallway was likely equally beautiful, but it was exceptionally dark. So dark, in fact, that Brentylwith could barely see a handspan in any direction. He could only hear his [i]Eshgaebars[/i] about him and the constant rapping of their ornate wooden battle-staffs against the stone below. Those staffs were so sharpened by glamours that one who saw them in the light would have been forgiven to mistake them for spears rather than the instruments of terrible magick that they were, but in the darkness not even their shape could be gleaned. 

Though Brentylwith slowed in those shadows, he pressed on unwaveringly. Just as he began to think that there would be no end to the great dark hallway, they entered an ever-darker antechamber with a quick succession of sharp twists and turns. Abruptly, they emerged into a great courtroom ablaze with resplendent light. The king and his commanders stood awestruck by the sudden luminescence, the very heart of which was the veiled High Queen upon her high throne. Though everything in that miraculous chamber of immense size glittered and throbbed with life, exquisiteness, and beauty, and though the pillars were shaped and carved in ways inconceivable to the eye, its walls painted and embossed in manners of incomprehensible magnificence and art, its carpets, its floor, its mosaics- all seemed incarnations of beauty- and yet despite all that, or perhaps because of all that, the veiled god at the centre of it all seemed ever the more lovely, ever the more bright, ever the more resplendent on her throne of gems weaved into gold weaved into silks and damasks weaved into a spell of splendour and a word of wisdom and an art of arresting allure. Brentylwith the King and his [i]Eshgaebars[/i] could do nothing but fall to their knees in worship and press their heads to the floor; even veiled was the Little god of the Little Things near enough impossible to behold!

By glamours and arts beyond the knowledge of even a mighty king of faeries was Brentylwith brought before the high throne. He whimpered at Roisin Magnolia’s feet and thought the utter ecstasy and bliss of her presence would burst his very soul asunder. “Oh! My queen! Lady of my days and lady of my nights; lady of my twilight hours and lady of my dawn! Oh, how my heart throbs- oh what impossible pain and ceaseless bliss!” He brought his head so it rested at her feet, though those could not be seen beneath her great skirt, and he kissed the ethereal carpet there and the azure hemline of her dress. Her voice then caressed the air and flitted softly around his ears. “Is it what you see that causes your tongue to gush so, Brentylwith?” She asked him. His response was swift. “Your beauty knows no beginning and has no end, my queen!” There was a brief silence in the wake of his declaration. “What beauty have you seen, Brentylwith? I am veiled from your eyes and the eyes of all.” Came her soft, slow response. Brentylwith was at a loss for words, felt his throat clamp up and his heart hammer in fear- fear that he had somehow come short of speaking what best pleased her. “I… I…” he stuttered, “if my eyes lie to me, my lady, then certainly not my heart, certainly not my flesh- oh it does not lie! It has known a beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance. ‘Tis a beauty unseeable though bright- a loveliness beyond the realm of sight! It is not artifice, no glam’rous word or art! The heart’s its home and ‘tis known only by the heart!”

The High Queen allowed his words to fill the great hall and saturate every corner… then she gently stood. “A beauty of the heart- and what is the beauty the eye regards without that beheld in the heart? Can the cruellest heart give beauty’s warmth to the eyes? Is’t not the light of kindness that shines so luminescent on the smiling lip of the beauteous? Is it not righteousness, goodness, compassionateness – aye all the virtues of the beautiful heart! – that shines on the countenance of those we deem beautiful? Does not the cruel heart twist the face of those who, upon an erring first glance, seem to us cloaked in beauty?” Her voice quaked and cantillated with such passionate tones that Brentylwith could not keep himself from trembling, his heart growing in his chest and a veritable forest fire raging there. “Oh, have mercy – beauty of beauties, star of stars, moon of moons! The fragile hearts of those such as I have no capacity for the beauty and passions you speak- the cup overflows and the world into which it overflows bursts!” Though the fire in his chest did not subside, Roisin Magnolia ceased speaking for a time. 

Then her voice returned- lower this time, lighter on the love-maddened heart. “You have spoken of beauty, Brentylwith the King, with the tongue of one who bears a beautiful heart. With your beautiful heart- heart of courage, of going forth, of perseverance, of warding off tyranny and oppression, aye with a heart of justice and virtue- have you united the feighdfulc of the Kingdom of the Furthest Fade and led them against the terrors of Hylsek Adech’s darkfeighd at the Gate. Thus purifying your heart, you ennobled yourself; now you are made noble in the eyes of your queen and before the eyes of all. Arise Brentylwith and receive what I bequeath to you,” silken glamours raised Brentylwith to his feet and at his side a great horn appeared, “it is the Heart-horn; with beauteous heart, purified of all ugliness, blow into it and let all upon whom it sounds be beautified, purified, ennobled.” The king gripped the horn and raised it to his eyes, admiring its sleek symmetry and smoothness. Even as he examined it, the High Queen flicked her Godwand and spoke poesies that carved themselves into the horn; amongst those verses was, [i]Yon lovely visage is a poisoned dart if ‘tis not reflecting beautiful heart.[/i] And amongst them too was, [i]What pretty face can bring the youth honour if ‘tis evinced not in deeds and manner?[/i]

Taking care not to inadvertently look directly into his queen’s veiled countenance, Brentylwith the King hooked the horn into his belt and bowed low before Roisin Magnolia. “We will sculpt our hearts into monuments to your unencompassed beauty, oh pearl of pearls, jewel of jewels, queen of queens! This I pledge to you: the hearts of the feighdfulc of the Court at the Gate of the Furthest Fade will be most emphatic in their glorification of all things beautiful! At that Gate, and on that final frontline, we will wage war on ugliness more ardently than we war against the darkfeighd!”

It was a pledge Brentylwith the King abided by unswervingly. Many were the kings and queens who arose after him across the Veil. There was Asula the Tyrantfae, that most cruel and ugly Crownedfeighd of the Crowncourt of the Sullylands. There was the fair and resplendent Queem Eirgwyn of the Court of the Windrocks. There was the swift-striking Knightqueen of the Iron Knightcourt, Titania Terrorblade. There was the indomitable Burrowmistress Dichdorka of the Court of the Earthways. There was Hecate too, the Grand Witchfeighd of the Court of the Covenscore; of terrible visage and terrible soul was she! And there were dozens more, each with their endless retinues of vassal-feighdlords who in their own turn lorded over lesser lords of the feighdfulc. But for all the many courts and kingdoms that arose, and for all their expansions and wars in the material and immaterial plains, none had so vast a realm as Brentylwith the King. None had so many vassal-feighdlords or such mighty and numerous armies as he. Most importantly, none had such ardent devotion to the principle of beauty in both substance and form. Rightly did he in time come to be known as the King of Hearts, the Roisinsoul, the Great Marcher Feighdlord of the Court of Beauty All-Ascendant at the Gate of the Furthest Fade.

[list][*][hider=Summary]Exposition on faerie developments. It is established that the faeries initially warred with one another. When new outer beast faeries start threatening the Veil once more, however, a faerie kingdom quickly arises to check them. This kingdom is located near the frontiers where the outer beasts were finally cast out of the Veil during the War of the Trees, a place called the Gate of the Furthest Fade. The king of the Kingdom of the Furthest Fade is a faerie named Brentylwith. It is later mentioned that the outer beast darkfaeries whom Brentylwith fights are loyal to an outer beast lord named Hylsek Adech (see Longsight story). Brentylwith is summoned by Roisin Magnolia to her palace at the Highholt of Taramanca. It is a place of extreme beauty all around. Roisin there bequeaths on Bretylwith an artefact named the Heart-horn. This can only be blown by those who have a beautiful (i.e. virtuous, morally good) heart. It purifies the hearts of all who hear it. It is then noted that, after Brentylwith establishes his faerie kingdom and court, many other kingdoms and courts start cropping up – and these kingdoms in some cases extend out of the Veil into the material and immaterial plains. As his kingdom was the first and is the one keeping the darkfaerie outer beasts at bay, however, it remains the biggest and most powerful of the faerie kingdoms.[/hider]
[*][hider=Of Might & Glamour]Roisin’s opening Might: 14 Might

–1 Might (contributes 1 Might to Beauty [1/4]) to Create the Holy Site “the Highholt of Taramanca”
[indent]The palace of the High Queen of the Faeries. It has walls which lead into gardens. The gardens lead into several entrances to the palace. Amongst these is the fore-chamber, which leads into a dark hall that twists suddenly into the High Queen’s court room where she sits on her high throne. The palace has four wings. It is a place of great beauty, possibly quite unmatched in the world.[/indent]
–1 Might (contributes 1 Might to Beauty [2/4]) to Create the Holy Site “the Gate of the Furthest Fade”
[indent]The Gate of the Furthest Fade is a great opening in the worldfabric between the Veil and the southern pole of Galbar and marks the frontline in the war between Roisin Magnolia and the Outer Beasts, whose war is pursued by the darkfaeries of Hylsek Adech. The Gate is not physical but is a great chromatic aurora of great magicks and glamours over which Brentylwith the King and his faerie hosts keep eternal watch. Being a location sacred to Roisin Magnolia and imbued with her beauties, it acts as a metaphysical (though porous) barrier against ugliness. Most beings deemed ugly in heart and soul will struggle to cross the Gate- some may be struck down, others become lost in an eternal maze of fog, others yet find themselves returned to the material plane. That said, it is neither impossible nor uncommon for beings considered ugly to make it through, hence the continuing need for Brentylwith’s kingdom.[/indent]
–2 Might (contributes 2 Might to Beauty [4/4) to Create the Artefact known as “the Heart-horn”
[indent]The Heart-horn is a great war-horn that may only be blown by a person with a beautiful, purified heart; one that is in all ways kind, virtuous, and righteous. When blown by such an ennobled soul, all those who hear the sound of the horn are purified of their ugliness (i.e. vices and baser inclinations), or a great portion of it.[/indent]
–4 Might to Incorporate the Domain of “Beauty”
[indent]Roisin Magnolia is the font of Glamour and the theophany of Beauty. She is the truest, most transcendent beauty, and all specific manifestations of beauty point to and depend on her. But what is beauty?

[b][i]Beauty defined.[/i][/b] A concept or thing is beautiful when it is in possession of all its necessary and appropriate traits and is therefore [i]as it should be[/i]. In other words, what is beautiful is anything consisting of certain elements woven harmoniously together alongside the realisation of an ultimate purpose or function. Thus harmonious, flowing calligraphy, even when not understood, can still be appreciated for its beauty as its purpose is to render the beauty of meaning into the beauty of form.
While beauty is an objective quality, it can be identified through the senses and is usually accompanied by feelings of pleasure, vivacity, satisfaction, peace, tranquillity, elevation, delight, and more. Both physical forms or abstract things (like concepts, traits, formulas, codes, boardgame moves, poems, stories, objects, smells, sounds, and much else) can be beautiful. One’s heart or soul can be said to be beautiful, and such beauty is reflected in one’s goodness and moral virtue. A thing manifests greater inner and outer beauty and goodness the more like Roisin Magnolia it is. Beauty and goodness are inseparably connected; what makes a heart or soul beautiful is its virtues. The beauty of the soul then manifests as beauty in the form. Therefore, were one to ask, “why should I be virtuous when, by Itzal’s might, vices are stronger?” The natural answer is, “because, by the will of Roisin Magnolia, it will make you beautiful.”

[b][i]Beauty as praxis.[/i][/b] Most sapients may conceive that goodness, especially moral goodness, is associated purely with duties and obligations while beauty is nothing but a shallow but very attractive pursuit, little more than an indulgence. It may be thought that beauty can mislead people in all sorts of ways. And yet is it not frequently the case that people who are initially experienced as physically ugly can eventually come to be experienced as beautiful? And does the converse not also happen when physically beautiful people come to be experienced as ugly? Often, these shifts in one’s experience are a result of getting to know a person better, acquainting oneself with their character or personality. 
This tends to occur when a person is found to be particularly good – kind, honest, fair, considerate – or particularly bad – unfair, inconsiderate, cruel. The quality of patience, for example, is viewed as beautiful when a person endures hardship uncomplainingly, without resentment and without the need to advertise their suffering to others; in a word, displaying the type of self-command associated with a noble, magnanimous, and sublime soul. Someone who exhibits many moral virtues can be called a beautiful person, just as a kind, noble, and generous action can be declared a beautiful action. This means that people can experience good and evil as respectively beautiful and ugly. Beauty and morality, and ugliness and immorality, are therefore naturally and intrinsically linked. 
Specifically, moral virtues – honesty, kindness, fairness, empathy, patience, justice and so on – are beautiful character traits. Meanwhile the moral vices – their contraries – are ugly. This calls into question what exactly a character trait is. It may be defined as [i]a stable disposition of the heart or soul that causes actions to issue forth naturally and with ease[/i]. The form of a virtuous and beautiful character arises when the different dispositions of the soul achieve a harmonious balance. The beauty, purity, and virtue of a person’s heart and soul then slowly comes, by a mystifying process originating in Roisin Magnolia, to cause one’s physical appearance to be beautified in line with one’s virtue or, if one’s heart and soul are ugly, befouled in line with one’s vice. What can be quickly gleaned from this is that appearance and being (i.e., appearing a certain way versus being a certain kind of person) cannot be separated. 
In sum, external beauty is the theophany of inner beauty, just as external ugliness is a materialisation of inner defects and ugliness. Roisin Magnolia, who is the incarnation and manifestation of beauty, is the perfection of beauty in both character and form; therefore, all who aspire to beauty can only aspire to be like her. All that aligns with her in substance is beautified in form, and all that is unaligned with her in substance is befouled in form. It is she who possesses the truest beauty and sublimity; the beauty of all other beings is ultimately derived from her. The life of beautiful virtue fundamentally is, and should be understood as, a quest to become like Roisin Magnolia. The person who has gained insight into an attribute of Roisin Magnolia is filled with longing for that attribute, ardour for that grandeur and beauty, and a desire to be adorned by that feature. There is a generally ascending course an individual traces through the different stages of loving beauty. From love of beautiful bodies, the lover will progress to love of beautiful souls, to love of beautiful laws, practices, and sciences, and finally to love of Roisin Magnolia, who is the transcendent form of beauty on which all beauty depends.

[i][b]Can ugliness not also have harmony and purpose?[/b][/i] It may be argued that something can be [i]woven harmoniously together alongside the realisation of an ultimate purpose or function[/i], as beauty is above defined, but remain ugly and evil. However, this is untrue; vices are qualities that have ends contrary to goodness, harmony, and peace. They often frustrate conviviality, trust, cooperation, and all forms of sapient flourishing, or in other ways fail to realise virtue’s ends. In this sense vices can be understood as deformed and therefore ugly. In the case of virtues, however, they enable one to live convivially, allowing for the kind of trust and cooperation required for communication as well as more complicated structures such as social institutions, while making sapient flourishing possible. It is in part precisely because of these features that the moral virtues tend to give pleasure when contemplated on or experienced, while moral vices displease and disgust. Now, insofar as goodness manifests and [i]is[/i] beauty, and seeing as most people naturally incline towards what is beautiful, this coupling of beauty and virtue may well inspire many to seek the beauty-virtue of Roisin Magnolia and abandon Itzal’s vice-ugliness even though evil is stronger than good.[/indent]
Roisin’s closing Might: 6 Might[/hider][/list]