Written by Kazakin

Chicago’s got a tumultuous, complicated history, and the Freehold within it is no different. Originally founded in 1838, not too long after the city itself came into being, the Chicago Freehold settled in a seasonal pact that was generally moderated by a powerful Winter Courtier called Ashen Sonya. Having unified the first Lost that settled in Chicago, it was natural that she should take the lead of the Winter Court as their Queen.

Early on, the Winter Court was the only stable Court in the Windy City, with the others having barely a handful of members. Slowly, with new waves of immigrants and trade routes opening, the other Courts developed stability of their own.

All seemed peaceful for almost twenty years, the charismatic and cool-headed leadership of the Winter Queen ensuring a calm succession and a secretive Freehold, until a violent attack from Loyalist Changelings killed the majority of the small Summer Court. The Freehold, spurred on by the remaining survivors, banded together for war.

It went badly. The Lost were beaten back, until they were besieged inside the walls of their own Freehold. The dockyard building, in the flourishing port, was held in a cold lock, with no Lost able to travel in or out on foot, or via the Hedge.

Ashen Sonya, recognising the necessity of the Freeholders’ crumbling morale, made a grave pact. The details have been lost – some say it was with her Keeper, while others say that she pledged with Fate itself, and still others give the opinion that she found a long lost Contract of Sacrifice.

Whatever the power behind it, the Winter Queen led a last ditch, desperate breakout attempt through the Hedge, and a miracle occurred. Arrows seemed to turn aside, bullets missed their mark, and blades lost their power.

The Freeholders slaughtered the Loyalists to a man, and suffered only one casualty in return.

By a bizarre, million to one chance, as the last Loyalist was killed, by a brutal blow from a Spring Ogre, his hand tightened on his pistol.

The bullet hit the Spring Ogre in the chest and ricocheted off his armour. Glancing again from a rock in the ground, it hit Ashen Sonya between the eyes, and she died at the same moment the Loyalist breathed his last. Her last words were reported as “Ever after, this will be our little secret...”

The entire Freehold attended her funeral in January of 1854.

Around this time, the first reports of a massive Cholera outbreak were being reported. Despite their Wyrd-borne resistance to the ravages of mortality, the Lost still dwindled heavily in numbers, until only a handful remained.

The Courts were officially disbanded, a single Monarch taking command of the Freehold. Tradition, and the respect and memory of Ashen Sonya, dictated it was a Winter Courtier, who would reign for a year and a day before exchanging the crown. Naturally, this bred resentment in the other courts, and fierce competition between the vestiges of Winter for the crown.

This breeding ground for distrust and competitiveness resulted in many monarchs dying in suspicious circumstances before their reigns were up. In the last one, in October 1871, a botched attempt at covering the murder of the previous sovereign lead to the Freehold going up in flames.

Conveniently, on the same night, most of the city was burning. Ashen Sonya’s protection wasn’t lost, and the burning of the house in the dockyards was noted down as just another casualty of the Great Chicago Fire. In the confusion that followed, the Freeholders scattered into the city, and it took some time for them to reorganise.

In the power vacuum, the Cult of the Iron Brand suddenly came on the scene. A four-man Elemental Motley, made of a Fireheart Summer called Umlilo, Thomas Ebony, a Woodblood Spring , a Blightbent Autumn called Jane Smoke and a Snowskin Winter called Shard. They promised a new era of stability, if only the Courts would pledge loyalty to them. And given few other options, one by one, they won over the majority and forged a new pledge, and a new Freehold.

And a peaceful, if somewhat strange settlement spread over the city again.

It was a lie.

The Cult of the Iron Brand were Privateers to a man. The Lost of the City spent several years none the wiser, the disappearances put down to civil unrest, and crime, and the natural attrition that all Freeholds suffer from over time. But slowly, voices of dissent appeared.

A Blightbent much like Jane Smoke was seen luring children towards a know Hedge Gate.

During Winter, rumour had it that people stayed indoors, muttering about a woman with icicles in her hair who kept being seen near the last known location of runaways.

Immigrants vanished from the dockyards, and a massive Zulu man with distinctive, fiery red hair was seen in the area.

Thomas Ebony’s parties started to have a nasty habit of the guest list diminishing slowly over time.

The first and last rebellion came when a young Spring Armiger was last seen in an agitated state, saying he’d seen Umlilo consorting with someone he shouldn’t have been, and that he was going to Ebony about it – and was found face down in the dock, apparently drowned while drunk. Rumour had it that he had some very strange burns, but of course, he couldn’t have been burned in the water, surely?

Resistance formed amongst the Freeholders, primarily under the leadership of a Courtless Broadback called Lug, a man heavily involved with the forming unions. Using his natural charisma and his simple, down-to-earth personality, he rallied the malcontents by forming up those who were dissatisfied with the more formalised, ritualised Freehold populated by the Cult.

But the Cult of the Iron Brand had an ace in the hole.

Jane Smoke was an Oracle.

She lured Lug to a labour demonstration, on May 4th, 1886, seeding information that she would be planning a mass kidnapping.

Lug took the bait.

He was shot in the Haymarket Riots, and although he managed to flee the scene at the time, died some six hours later from shock and blood loss. Word got around fast. Without a leader, the resistance crumbled, and the Cult of the Iron Brand threw off the shackles of their lie.

It was a dark day for Chicago, and the darkness held for another 33 years, all the way through a World War, until Chicago burned in the infamous Red Summer.

It wasn’t the Lost who broke the Cult of the Iron Brand. It was a lynch mob.

The Race Riot split the city open, and Umlilo was caught in the middle, out in the open. The Privateer Summer King was beaten to death by an angry mob. The enraged group had no idea that they’d just inadvertently liberated part of a Court. To them, he was just a man who had committed the crime of being the wrong colour.

But it broke the Brand. A King had bled. His Court were no longer pledge bound to his service.

Summer was free, and it stormed the remaining members of the Cult of the Iron Brand. Overwhelmed by the sudden rush, off-kilter in the burning city with human riots happening all around them, the Cult fought like madmen, and died.

And yet they were never discovered. Always, half-forgotten, Ashen Sonya’s sacrifice protected them.

The Freehold rose from the ashes of the city as the city itself shrugged off the after effects of the war. Summer took point, for the first time, pointing to their liberation of the city, and new pledges were formed. What might have been a period of peace was starkly disrupted in the middle of the rebuilding of the Freehold, however, and it changed the face of the place for the next half century.

The Summer Court had gotten its hands quite heavily involved in the organised crime in the area. The Autumn Court also worked in the same spheres, finding the atmosphere of fear caused by the mobsters perfect.

Friction ensued, and in the process, the Autumn Queen was shot dead by a Summer Levinquick. All might have been brushed away in the bustle of the Freehold rising, but for the memory of the Cult of the Iron Brand.

A clause was added to the Freehold pledge, demanding that the Summer Court have no Elementals amongst their members. Over time, to ease inter-Court pressures, this extended to all four. Elementals remained Courtless, living on the fringes of the city, or left the city in droves.

Over time, even the nature of Elementals become fetishised and overexaggerated, to the point that rumours were flung every which way that one or the other of the Courts had an Elemental hidden away, waiting to deploy against their enemies.

While most of these stories were exaggerations, it was true that one or two of the Courtless Elementals, living on the edge of the Freehold did get employed for their shock factor. Usually, they were quickly disposed of afterwards, to ensure that they never develop a Mantle, and thus shatter the Pledges of the Monarchs.

This changed in the heatwave of 1995. There are several stories, several different factions and opinions. Three seem to be the most prominent, although it is not certain which is true.

A Motley of Archers tried to assassinate a Levinquick, who turned out to be faster and manifested a mantle of Sorrow at his betrayal. The Monarch was stricken dead on the spot, and the other members died of fear before the Levinquick could reach them.

A wandering Metalflesh drifted through the Freehold, found by the Summer Queen, and weaponised, was used against the Courts in a vicious war of attrition. When the Metalflesh began to question his orders, she attempted to have him killed as a banner for the Summer Court to go to war. In a twist of fate, the Metalflesh slew the Red Victor and threw his Emblem at her feet, at which point everyone saw the rising heat of his new Mantle. The Summer General, in horror at the betrayal of the Queen, turned on her and stabbed her to death on her throne. In the confusion, the Metalflesh vanished from the city, never to return.

The Paladin of Shadows found himself in bed with a woman he thought to be a wandering Mirrorskin, but turned out to be a Sandharrowed in disguise. Having fallen in love with her, he permitted her to remain, but when she manifested a mantle of Fear, he took his own life in remorse.

What is certain is that the Summer Queen was certainly murdered by the Wroth General, and the Paladin of Shadows did take his own life. It seems more likely that the Winter Court assassinated their King somewhere in the confusion caused by the sudden overhaul, though many Archers did disappear in the surrounding tempest. A shrivelled, desiccated corpse was found in the Spring King’s room, wearing his clothes, but rumours abounded that the King, a Mirrorskin, had transformed himself into someone new and left a body in his place.

The Freehold gathered in the aftermath, trying to reorganise once more. The Wroth General was called on to stand and take the Summer Crown, by right of his victory. He refused, and demanded that all the former titled Courtiers be tried for their complicity.

And the story came out. Of how the Monarchs had been seeking power, of how they had been hoping, aiming to gain the power of the Others. He confessed, and named the others.

They were tried, and executed in the Freehold’s Hollow. Even now, the Hollow is still hung with their broken skeletons, and no one will approach it. It’s said that sometimes, even the ground screams with the General’s remorse at his guilt.

From the ashes, the Freehold rose for a fourth time, making the modern day alignment.

Present Day

Today, the Chicago Freehold flourishes, held steadily under the Seasonal Courts. A powerful alliance between Autumn and Summer has tempered the large Winter Court, who have retreated somewhat into the hospitals and universities in the area.

Spring

Currently ruled by a Fairest Bright One called Jane Burning, Spring moves happily through Chicago’s thriving entertainment industry, with heavy ties to the club scene. By mutual consent with Winter, they stay out of the university districts.

At least, they’d like to pretend it’s mutual. In actual factor, the Winter King told them to hop it, and they did.

Spring is the weakest Court, plagued by rumours that Jane Burning is in fact just another face of the Old Spring King, returned and desperately groping for power. Due to this, she finds it very hard to be taken seriously, and more than one Courtier has found themselves exiled for questioning her orders.

Summer

Under the current King, a quiet Darkling Razorhand known as ‘Phil’, Summer retains its roots of the early 1900s, being heavily involved in organised crime, particularly violence and robbery. A surprisingly secretive Court, Summer refuses to allow outsiders to participate in their feast days, leading to rumours that they are in fact, organised as a sort of Changeling mafia.

A medium sized Court, Summer can only compete with Winter thanks to their powerful alliance with Autumn. Summer and Autumn combined motleys are not unusual, leading to Changelings of the other Court accusing them of becoming mutts of the two... an insult that might have some merit.

Autumn

The current Dread Lady, a Darkling Razorhand called ‘Fiona’ and twin sister of ‘Phil’, Autumn remains heavily entrenched in organised crime. Where Summer deals in legbreaking, Autumn favours running drugs and weapons. Equally secretive, they employ their contracts to cultivate certain plants which may or may not be of dubious legality.

Larger than Summer, Autumn’s alliance with Summer has some dissent in the lower ranks, accusing Fiona of being too warlike and violent. The Autumn Queen doesn’t seem to pay attention to these dissenting mutters, but it looks like the Courts may be slowly becoming unstable.

Winter

Ruled by a Winter King, a Wizened Chirurgeon called Old One Eye, the Winter Court tends to avoid politics completely, a status they only manage to keep by their continued influx of Courtiers. Keeping strong ties with hospitals, university and law enforcement, the Winter Court are very much the guys who know a guy.

But they have a price, and usually it’s more than you meant to pay

Old One Eye doesn’t get on well with the other Sovereigns, who at least manage to be civil with each other. Outside of his Court, a lot of the day to day management is done by a young Ogre Witchtooth called Bright Bones. Many believe her to be ready to stage a coup, but a stranger rumour is that she is in fact, Old One Eye’s daughter, and his punishment from his Keeper for escaping.