Revealed from the Shadows: Abbey Lubbers and Buttery Spirits
By Andrew Besuden

The Orders of Those Who Deal in Secrets
In the society of the kith known as sluagh, societies have arisen throughout the centuries to this day. Two groups within the sluagh have gained much renown, and in some cases much blame, over the ages: the Abbey Lubbers and the Buttery Spirits. It is these two groups that had allowed the sluagh to carry on some of their more secretive business, as well as permanently alter the sluagh themselves. Though their story begins long ago...

Early Days
The medieval ages saw many things, the rise of feudalism, and the creations of inns and taverns where one might be able to purchase food and rest (in some places even the serving wench) for the night. Meanwhile monasteries were havens of Christendom and the preservation of the biblical and religious, as well as the occasional vintage port or wine. The fae where also beginning to feel to first cold breezes of banality. Many sluagh began turning their attention to the affairs of mortals at this time, whether to try and get their minds off of loosing their voices permanently or something more personal only the sluagh know. What is known is that throughout northern Europe, two groups of sluagh began to terrorize certain monasteries and inns revealing the inner corruption of these establishments, and also giving the other places a good dose of worry if the monks or innkeepers were trying to cheat out society. The other sluagh looked down on the crass behavior of their brethren. Sluagh are meant to work behind the scenes, not have an audience, that's what pooka are for after all. Yet they began to notice that with these Abbey Lubbers and Buttery Spirits, as mortals began to call these groups, gave other sluagh a low profile while the Abbey Lubbers and Buttery Spirits' antics made mortals, and other fae, look elsewhere.

Consequences and More Consequences
The attention that was given to the Abbey Lubbers and Buttery Spirits allowed other sluagh activities to go unnoticed, and even the mention of either groups name would cause people to run up to the inn or monastery and cry out for justice. But unknown to the Abbey Lubbers, Buttery Spirits, or the entire sluagh kith, the attention given to the both groups and assumptions by mortals slowly altered the sluagh's food preference. Mortals began assuming that the reason that Abbey Lubbers and Buttery Spirits, mostly the Buttery Spirits, were hanging out at the inn because they loved grimy victuals that the money grubbing innkeeper served to his guests. This belief by the mortal populace had altered the sluagh's taste buds so that now only the disgusting and rotten victuals that sluagh only ate before hand now became their staple diet and the only thing that sluagh could eat. While sluagh don't mind this nowadays, in fact they actually enjoy it. The feelings at the time were less then pleasant. However at the time this occurred the sluagh were more concerned at the moment with the Shattering going to go and have a talk with the Abbey Lubbers and Buttery Spirits. The rest, as we know, is history.

One Order or Two? The majority of the sluagh believe that the Abbey Lubbers and Buttery Spirits are one and the same. While both groups share the similar role of punishing wrongdoers and making a scene to let other people know what's going on, there the difference ends. The groups function of different paths, Abbey Lubbers focus on the monasteries and often use violent measures to expose corruption, while the Buttery Spirits focus on inns and taverns and focused on exposing the owner through as much ruckus as possible. When sluagh outside of either order often mistakenly lumped the groups together as one out similarities alone. This seems to work for both orders quite

The Order of the Abbey Lubbers
The Abbey Lubbers where those sluagh that attacked monasteries where monks were exploiting others in order to gain some good for themselves, such as purchasing wine with tax-free tithe money or taking advantage of weaknesses of the flesh for their own pleasure. The Order of the Abbey Lubbers is the less populous of the two groups, having no more than ten or thirteen members at any one time, often due to the majority of kithain view against the church and that the Abbey Lubbers had interference here and there from members of House Liam and from a group of mages who were influential in parts of the church. Now this doesn't mean exactly that those sluagh who remained in the Order of the Abbey Lubber truly loved the church, it is more of a fact that the Abbey Lubbers felt that oaths and duties sworn by mortals were as important as those taken by fae. Though small in numbers, the Abbey Lubbers make up for this in their violence and proficiency of handling the corrupt. The Abbey Lubbers, as what any sluagh does, would sneak around and spy on the monks in order to see whether or not they were committing anything that was going against their sworn duties. If such proof was given, the Abbey Lubbers then went about exposing the wrongs committed by the monasteries or individual monks in a harsh manner. Often the next day would see rooms befouled with left food, spilled wine and the fleeting glance of the Abbey Lubber leaving, and often they would find in the stables or a lone bench a monk drowned to death with driblets of wine flowing from his mouth. Other times the wall of monastery would have images of those monks who had done wrong. For those monks who had carnal desires, the punishment death was often far more gruesome. Often the simple words "ecclesia stultitia," or church's folly, were left around as a warning for the others. With brutal and often violent tactics such as these it is no wonder that the Order of the Abbey Lubbers was almost totally comprised of members of the Unseelie court, though Seelie Abbey Lubbers did many of the more gruesome acts. The Abbey Lubbers also became the cause for the mortals' eventual distrust of sluagh as a whole, and giving some Seelie Fae the notion that the Shattering was caused by the sluagh as a whole. When the Shattering occurred and the subsequent decades following, the Abbey Lubbers activity declined, though during the Protestant Reformation there were reports of monks being driven out of one monastery by a great ruckus and the words "the punishment has begun" scrawled in blood all over the walls. Only in recent times the Order of the Abbey Lubbers has arisen again as they added the field of politics under their belt as well, though often blackmailing the senator or mayor in question as killing said members is a trouble beacon for the sidhe nobility and the media. Currently the Order of Abbey Lubbers has thirteen members. And all contacts between members are made through anonymous letters or the occasional email. The head of the Abbey Lubbers is known only as the Deacon and little is known of him or her. The Abbey Lubbers currently have taken no side in coming war in Concordia, though its has been theorized that the recent disturbances in the Dreaming has caused some trouble for them. Abbey Lubbers often have jobs as social workers, teachers, or other such positions where an Abbey Lubber can easily get inside a political machine (they've also have started a serious secret war against many of the Big Tobacco industries). The Abbey Lubbers have also targeted these same groups, and other mortals that are in such a question of morality. Often the cases of teachers who had affairs with students would find photographs of themselves caught in the act, or police would find their bodies with a simple note attached, were signs of the latest retaliation by Abbey Lubbers.

Interference in the Church and Outside With the Abbey Lubbers running through monasteries and revealing some of the more secular and uncharacteristic actions of some the monks, it would natural that the Celestial Chorus, or those mages that would later create what we know as this tradition, would take notice of them. And there are documented cases of the Choristers often trying to exorcise the Abbey Lubbers from the monasteries they were plaguing, and often some retribution later on, especially when the Abbey Lubbers turned to path of the assassin. What the Abbey Lubbers didn't expect was the interference from House Liam. Whether naivety on the part of the sidhe house or some of the more gruesome deeds committed by the Abbey Lubbers, a rift between the two began often where Liam agents would try to undo an Abbey Lubber's plan and vice-versa

Buttery Spirits, the Traveler's Torch
While the Abbey Lubbers took the role as punishers of the monks, the Buttery Spirits took on another role. Buttery Spirits had the arduous task of revealing deceitful acts of owners of the taverns and inns of northern Europe. It is around this time the sluagh received help from a new force, an odd creature with a voracious appetite for the food that the sluagh were trying to expose. These odd creatures where called the killmoulis, largely because they didn't have much to say about themselves, due to the fact that they had no mouth and a large nose which they stuffed the food into via gaping nostrils. With killmoulis aid and a few well-timed pantry raids, the Buttery Spirits began to cause much trouble for inns and taverns. It is also probably this reason that the Buttery Spirits became a more populous group than the Abbey Lubbers, usually 20 -30 sluagh, and the entirety of the killmoulis. Buttery Spirits, or as they call themselves at times The Traveler's Torch, main goal was to allow mortals to see the corruption at the inns and taverns, though on rare occasions Buttery Spirits have been known to leave innkeepers barely alive in their own stables with a feedbag full of dirt dumped over their heads. Buttery Spirits also had a knack of showing off and being rather noisy when doing so. It got to be that a plate licked clean of rotten food that crashed to the ground, was all that was needed for an inn or tavern to be utterly ruined. However this attention to the Buttery Spirits had a greater impact of the sluagh themselves. Sluagh all over began to notice that only rotten and disgusting victuals, like those provided by the innkeepers and tavern owners who were the target of Buttery Spirits. After the Shattering and through the Interregnum, the Buttery Spirits worked here and there exposing what was wrong in inns and taverns all over Europe and even the burgeoning Americas, though they did suffer the loss of the killmoulis as well. It was in the 19th and 20th Centuries that the Buttery Spirits, along other sluagh, began several majority campaigns. The Buttery Spirits' talents at exposing the inner corruption proved useful in helping motivate both sluagh and mortals, and other kithain as well, to promote an end to child labor. The second instance of Buttery Spirits involvement in mortal affairs was when they worked along side the muckrakers of the US. The Buttery Spirits' subtle clues for muckrakers allowed them to expose the corrupt underbelly of business (No Upton Sinclair, author of The Jungle, wasn't a sluagh and he found most of this on his own; though the sluagh did fraternize with him). Presently, the Traveler's Torch continues its surveillances of restaurants, hotels, taverns, and inns as well lurking about the various businesses as well. Buttery Spirits sluagh have hidden as critics, disgruntled workers, bust often work in the shadows. Some of the haunted restaurants actually contain a rather active sluagh trying to show the customers that their meals are far worse than they realize, and not an angry wraith.

What are Killmoulis? What exactly were the killmoulis? This is a question that sluagh debated for some time. Many theories have arisen over time. One belief is that the killmoulis are a rare kith of fae, and like many other rare kiths during the interregnum, eventually disappeared. The second belief is that the killmoulis were a type of chimera that later retreated deep into the Dreaming when the Shattering occurred. The final theory is that the killmoulis is an offshoot of the sluagh that slowly merged with the majority of the kith again. This latter theory may prove to be true as some sluagh who went through chrysalis often had fae miens similar to that of the killmoulis, sometimes a larger nose or a missing mouth. However the Buttery Spirits have kept their lips sealed firmly on the matter.

Buttery Spirits And Pentex In recent years, Buttery Spirits have come across an equivalent of a donkey on a rope when it comes to one chain of fast food. O'Tooley's has been hit on ten separate occasions by the Buttery Spirit's pantry raids and still business has gone on. However, the Buttery Spirits noticed some odd things from the O'Tooley's pantry raid. First the food gives off a stench far worse than any thing from the dump, and that's when its fresh from the freezer. Even though the sluagh normally enjoy such rancid delights, the food from O'Tooley's somehow manages to turn the stomachs of even the sluagh, not that it taste disgusting, its like there's something rotten inside of it essence. However the one thing that has made sluagh take full notice is that the Werewolves have made similar raids on O'Tooley's, though the in end the place seriously needs permanent redecoration.