Gloaming Court or Glooming Court

Crystalline lights twinkle in the cavern ceiling in the Gloaming Court, home of the Queen of Air and Darkness and her twisted fey servants. While initially reminiscent of stars, these crystals have a cold distant quality about them, and do nothing but heighten the darkness and isolation of Pandemonium. These crystals drain hope away as they serve as a physical reminder of the unattainable dream of all fey creatures in the queen’s exiled home.

Or at least that’s the desired effect. Beneath those crystalline lights, the Gloaming Court stretches out in the gloom. Sprites, nymphs, grigs, and many other types of fey, all twisted into cruel mockeries of their former selves, live in hatred and solitude under the gloating eye of the Queen of Air and Darkness. Fear, cruelty, and naked ambition run rampant through the faerie citizens in the Gloaming Court, heightened by their queen’s obsession with the destruction of the archfey courts in the Plane of Faerie.

The Gloaming Court itself is comprised of hundreds of stalactites and stalagmites that serve as the homes for the various fey residents. The Queen’s home is a palace of black marble nearly invisible in the darkness, but those that go to visit rarely return unchanged. Petrified forests dot stretches of the massive cavern as well along with rivers of liquid sludge (minor tributaries from the River Styx on the first layer). The Pandemonium wind howls just as strong through the Gloaming Court, but most of the fey residents have become inured to its effects. Or were simply insane to begin with.

The Glooming Court is associated with darkness, dreams, the stars and the dangers of the night. Its members rarely act together and they work more like a loose alliance than a proper organization, but when the time for the Court of Stars comes, the Queen of Air and Darkness gathers and rules this council to start their scheming against the other courts, especially the Summer Court.

They are less elitists than the Summer Court and accept people with almost no fey ancestry to mix with them. This creates creatures of peculiar physiognomy and abilities that they consider beautiful but are seen as perverted and macabre by the other courts. It would be wrong to confuse the Glooming Court sense of beauty for a lack of one, as they still reject hags and fomorians on their court.

An adventurer can find a place to stay between the Glooming Court, though, this is usually dangerous for the guest, as a fey from the glooming court invites foreigners only to take benefit from them, as most fey do

The Glooming Court is usually confused with being evil, the truth is that not all its members are evil, the Maiden of the Moon being a clear example, in the other hand not every fey from the Summer Court is good. The Summer Court likes this misconception and usually divulges it between mortal visitors.