The Fools Court
Members of the Fools Court are cruel and sadistic agents of pure chaos, devoted to promoting disorder, confusion, and terror throughout the known worlds. They take great pleasure in thwarting the goals and aspirations of other organizations, favoring especially with their dread attention those people and groups of rising social or political prominence. Their attacks range from the satirical to the outright violent, depending on the murderous mood of the particular Fool in charge of a given operation. In all cases their actions are spectacular and very public, as they seem to take delight in the horrified reactions of crowds.
Most major cities have a local Court, consisting of a governing official (who traditionally takes any of a variety of noble titles) and a dozen or more of his or her attendants. Wherever there is a center of power, there are sure to be Fools found.
Fools believe that life is the greatest joke ever played upon the mortal worlds, and anyone who takes it too seriously deserves to be divested of it altogether. The mortal races, they say, are merely the playthings of the gods, who themselves are petty and undeserving of our attention. Their philosophy espouses rebelling against the order of things by rebelling against the concept of order itself, which they hold is nothing more than the rules of the game established by the divines at the moment of creation. Their apparently hierarchical organization is simply a mockery of the most prevalent forms of government around them, and is subject to violent reorganization according to the whims of the stronger members of the Court. Assassination and duplicity within and between courts is not unusual, and may even be encouraged by the machinations of the organization's leaders.
No one knows when or how the Fools Court was founded, but its members have been wreaking havoc across the mortal planes for at least a decade. Some suggest that the group has its origins in a guild of noble fools established in secret hundreds of years ago, but as the organization maintains no records, this theory is impossible to confirm.
The current King of Fools, an incredibly tall and thin creature named Hurmes, has lorded over the Court for several years, and his violent and maniacal approach to the Court's governance is a source of fear, respect, and inspiration to his followers. He maintains a stronghold in the catacombs of the city of Gloomwrought, in the Shadowfell, fashioning the sunken remnants of the city's fallen structures into a grotesque fun-house through which petitioners must fight or flee to gain an audience.
Individual courts rise and fall in favor with the King based on his reaction to the acts of ridicule and terror that they carry out. Their political machinations come to a head at the Feast of Fools, an irregularly occurring confluence of courts held in secret every few years. It is here that the various smaller factions vie for favor in the greater court, play their cruelest tricks upon one another, and engage in battles of wit and will that leave the losers humiliated, exiled, or even dead.
In the city of Gloomwrought there is a very public rivalry between the Fools and the local guild of beggars, manifesting as an often violent conflict over territory between the two groups. The source of friction between these unlikely adversaries is said to originate in a personal feud between Hurmes and the beggar-king Romulus.
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