By Myranda Kalis (nagaina@yahoo.com)
Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay."
The Company of the Shadowed Blade has no exalted place in Kithain history. No ballads are sung in their praise, no young sidhe fresh from his knighting aspires to be one of their legendary number; none of them are known for their bravery or their honor. The Company dwells on the fringes of Kithain society, patrolling the perimeter between the hungry darkness and the fragile light of their people, who revile their defenders for their mercenary customs and darksome reputation. Founded by a Scathach renegade and former servant of the darkest powers of the Unseelie Court, the Company of the Shadowed Blade is an ancient, oathbound household of decidedly motley provenance, accepting into its ranks all Kiths of proven worth and intentions, who share the Company's dedication to its goals and keep faith with its beliefs: that they are one of the few forces standing between this world and the horrors emerging from the Realm of Nightmares.
Members of the Company originate in a time ages past, before the Sundering and the Shattering split the Dreaming from the world of humankind, when traverse between the realms of the fae and the realms of the mortals was unimpeded. It was during this time that the Company's founder, the Scathach warrior-sorcerer known as the Huntsman, stalked the night at the behest of his dark and hungry liege, Necnevin, the Queen of Air and Darkness, who ruled from the eternal night of the Nightmare Realms to which she had been banished by the power of a cabal of Seelie sorcerers. Trapped within her fearsome realm with no means of escape, the Queen sent forth her servants to reap for her what she could no longer attain for herself: Dark Glamour, the succulent power of human and Kithain terror and pain, the sweet savor of misery and suffering, of tragedy that scarred the soul and rent the mind. Locked within the darkest heart of Nightmare, the cabal of Seelie sorcerers had hoped that the Queen would starve and wither from her confinement, like a criminal walled alive within the alcove of a dungeon. She survived, however, with the aid of her servants, who fed her doses of the Dark Glamour that comprised her fae soul and for which she hungered, eternally and insatiably, the Huntsman and his minions, the Host of the Unforgiven Dead, generating a body of darksome legendry that endures to this day.
No one is quite certain what occurred to break this dark symbiosis -- some claim that it was the slowly gathering force of the Shattering that finally spelled its doom, others that the Huntsman himself was driven to betray her. All that is known for certain is that, during the Shattering, when the Dreaming was driven from the world and the trods to Arcadia slammed shut in the faces of the horrified Kithain, so too did they close upon the Realm of Nightmares, and the Host faded into legend and story...for a time. As the ages passed and the world grew darker, the Queen's servants slowly began seeping back into the world, through cracks in the walls holding the Dreaming at bay, through trods that opened upon the sites of modern, man-made horrors. The Huntsman, long in exile from both the Dreaming and the Realms of Nightmare, sensed the swelling growth of their numbers, tasted the Dark Glamour in winds tainted with blood and smoke, and slowly began preparing for the day he knew must come. He travelled the world in search of those who remembered the dark days of the Queen's hand looming over the world, who recalled, far more vividly than any human, the horrific sound of the Host passing over and across the earth in search of their ruler's next unfortunate meal. A breath of a tale was frequently enough to rouse memories long buried beneath healing forgetfulness, to awaken fears of what would happen if the Queen broke wholly through her prison and discovered a world tailor-made to her appetites and none willing or capable of denying it to her.
From such beginnings was the Company of the Shadowed Blade born. Named for the Huntsman's death-hungry sword, forged, so the legends went, from a shard of the prison that had bound the Nightmare kiths away from the Dreaming, the early company was almost entirely of commoner and Nunnehi extraction, along with those few Scathach renegades willing to throw their lots in with another pariah of their own House. Their mercenary reputation arose by their frequent involvement in conflicts both mortal and Kithain -- modern warfare bled astonishing amounts of Dark Glamour into the Dreaming, as did its aftermath, and the Shadowed Blade prowled the battlefields searching for the servants of Nightmare drawn to such things like carrion crows. Eventually, they began to take payment for their involvement in such affairs, the weight of their talents turning the balance for more than one commoner, lord or mortal combatant, and allowing them to do their work with maximum efficiency. When, in 1969, the sidhe returned from their centuries-long absence, special effort was made to question and recruit them, as few among the Company believed that their resurgence was a cause for celebration. The force of Dark Glamour had waxed incredibly strong over the centuries, losing more servants of the Queen into the world, no doubt feeding the Nightmare Realm's dark monarch, weakening the ties that bound her in her prison -- perhaps shattering them altogether. Among the members of the Company of the Shadowed Blade, it is commonly believed that the returning sidhe are not exiles, but refugees -- refugees from the Dreaming, conquered by the Queen of Air and Darkness, and warped to her will.
Since then, the Company has renewed its vigilance, watching and waiting for the night when the Queen shakes off her chains and attempts to reemerge from her prison, to take this world as she has the Dreaming and make it her own. They whisper to those inclined to listen, they battle the Queen's minions wherever they find them, and they pray that they have the time to make themselves ready to face the approaching cataclysm.