The Pale Watchers

Oneiromancy is a dangerous art, even for an accomplished sorcerer, and not all who walk the skein make it back to their homes. Some are lost to the dreams, felled by unspeakable creatures or cut off from their escape routes and then tossed into the hypnogogic ocean. The Autumn Court does not abandon these unlucky few; and in Brisbane maintains a small private facility where their sleeping bodies can be cared for without troubling questions. This place, known as the Sepulchre, is maintained and guarded by a motley known as the Pale Watchers; a handful of Autumn Courtiers who have taken on the duty of caring for their twice-lost fellows.

Michiko

• Darkling Antiquarian

Born to an American father and a Japanese mother following the Second World War, Michiko had a bit of a hard time growing up. She was shy and coped with being a social outcast by burying herself in books, a habit that ultimately served her well when she got a job working in the Queensland State Museum in 1967. Unfortunately her comfort was not to last, as she was taken one evening in 1971 as she left work. Her new Fae Keeper had noticed her prying into an artefact which he had used in the past to locate people to tend to his personal collection, and chosen her to catalogue it all. She finally escaped after many years, and was picked up in Brisbane by a First Response motley in 2007. She initially joined the Certain Hour when it was still a secret society, but found her talents plateaued at only a very modest level after a close confrontation with an incubus in early 2008. Thereafter she moved to the Pale Watchers where she took up the task of chronicling the names and lives of the Dreamers; oneiromancers who had been lost in the skein but whose bodies remained alive and who were kept in the Sepulchre as both a mark of reverence to lost companions and as a warning to new acolytes. As well as this more esoteric task, Michiko took over the role of handling the essential organizing and bureaucracy to keep the Sepulchre functioning.

Rufus

• Beastkin Hunterheart (Grizzly Bear)

In life, Rufus was a park ranger in the United States. An especially skilled ranger, he had spent time working in a number of national parks across the country as well as running survival courses and hunting in his spare time. It was the latter-most of these activities that caught the eye of his keeper. Whilst on a hunting trip in Norway in 1987, he and his friend Henry had the misfortune of crossing paths with a Wild Hunt and were snatch away to Arcadia as the prizes. During their time in Arcadia their keeper had them turned into dangerous animals which he would hunt for sport, never killing them but merely counting coup. Rufus took on the form of a grizzly bear whilst Henry became a brown bear, and for many years they lived in the keeper’s forest. Henry never escaped Arcadia, but when Rufus did he ended up in Brisbane in 2009. Initially flirting with the Spring Court, Rufus was ultimately drawn to the Leaden Mirror and then into the Pale Watchers; where his affinity for time and imposing bulk made him a perfect choice to guard the Sepulchre and the sleeping oneiromancers who rested within it.

The O’Reilly Triplets

• Wizened Chirugeons

The O’Reilly sisters have no memories of their time before Arcadia, though they do not believe that they knew each other or were related at the time. All they know is that by some misfortune they were taken and brought together, and then crafted by their keeper into a set of nurses. It was at this time that they think they were brought together, because after that they know that they looked and sounded the same; as if they had been turned into a perfectly matched set. They escaped the hedge into Brisbane in 2009, and were quickly inducted into the Autumn Court. They initially formed a motley together that aided the armies of King Tros with their healing skills, making up for the gap Spring would have otherwise filled, but after the fall of King Tros and the loss of so many members of the Certain Hour the sisters joined the Pale Watchers to help tend to the needs of their own Court. Thus they tend to the health and wellbeing of those lost souls interred in the Sepulchre, ensuring that their bodies remain healthy and comfortable out of reverence and the fear that failure to do so makes the already very unlikely event of their return completely impossible or worse.