Hollis Burnette is a Nocker Grump and the mayor of Coal Town .
Overview[]
Near Harlan, Kentucky, in a "holler" hidden in the mountains, is a commoner enclave known as Coal Town. Once little more than a bunch of shacks inhabited by dissatisfied coal miners who wanted independence, it is now a thriving faerie town. It owes its existence to Hollis.
Hollis was born in Harlan in 1933. His father worked the coal as his father before him did. The family lived in a company house and shopped in company stores. They were poor and uneducated and no way out. Once you bought from the company store to owed them forever. Hollis started mining when he was 13. Working the coal seam, even with strip mining, was dirty, back-breaking, dangerous work.
The boy dreamed of something better. Even when exhausted he studied at night; reading books from the public library. The more he learned, the more detrmined he became to escape the life his parents and neighbors lived. His mond opend and he became of things beyond work and home. First music intruded on his awareness, then a discovered aptitude for mechanics when one of the machines broke down. Rather than leting the bosses shut down the mine and send people home without pay until it was fixed, Hollis fixed it. The boss was amazed when it worked.
Soon after, Hollis Chrysalised. Without realizing it, though, he had come to the attention of the bosses. A few weeks after he repaired the machine, they called him and gave him a new job keeping the equipment in shape. They also hired him for outside jobs; fixing their cars and keeping their tools sharp and ready. Soon he was making enough money to help his parents out of debt and get himself an old car.
Once mobile, he could travel to nearby towns to find Glamour. On one of these trips, he ran out of gas and camped overnight. He felt himself drawn to a glen where he felt Glamour pouring into him. No one claimed the area so he put his own mark on it. He thought no more about it until a few weeks later when his parents died in a fire while he was visiting a friend in another town. From then on he started sleepin in his glen and drawing Glamour from it.
He built himself a chimerical cottage in the Glade and a mundane one a ways off, outside of it, where he lived most of the time. Within a year, he spotted another Nocker born into a local family. then a Boggan. Each new changeling became family to him. Each was shown the glad and many built cottages in it. Before long, Hollis was the acknowledged leader of an enclave of changelings. In honor of the work most of their parents did, they named it Coal Town. Many of them, including Hollis, helped lead strikes against the company; demanding better wages, an end to exploitation, and safe working conditions. Many of them lost their fae identities to the bludgeons of the paid enforcers the company sent to get them back to work.
Seeing this, Hollis proposed that the kithain withdraw from mining altogether and use their skills in other ways. Thus was born the Coal Town Handicraft Cooperative. Boggans, nockers, trolls, eshu, and even redcaps produce various folk arts and crafts. Hollis took these quilt, coal statuettes, decorated brooms, baskets and furniture to the city and placed them on consignment. Soon the cooperative's reputation for fine work led to invitations to craft shows and to give demonstrations of "authentic mountain crafts."
May residents ended up marrying and enchanting their mates. Whole families live in the town. Hollis acts as mayor. Several children have been born in Coal Town and a surprising number of them are kithain. Since the Resurgence, no sidhe have desired to live there, not that they wouldn't be welcome; the town remained neutral during the Accordance War because Hollis counseled it, saying the fight had nothing to do with them.
With the Treaty of Concord and the formation of the Parliament of Dreams, the residents elected Hollis as their representative and he has done so for almost 30 years. He has a reputation for honesty, toughness, and the foulest mouth in the legislature. However, with over 30 commoners calling him leader and a major glade under his control, the mayor of the best-known faerie town in the USA has the ear of many representatives. He isn't a noble but his standing is equivalent to a Duke and many nobles would rather not offend him or his constituents.
Personal[]
Hollis has been around a long time and seen a lot of things. The best of all was finding that Glade and founding Coal Town. Without it, he and many others would still be slaving away in the company mines. He guesses he's done some good in Parliament all these years by making those pointy-eared idiots listen. They don't like his mouth but that's their hard luck. He is a gifted speaker and diplomat when he chooses to use those talents. Many see him as a country blowhard with a foul mouth. They miss the point. He doesn't just complain to carp; he always has a real gripe when he speaks his mind and he always brings up issues that are troubling many commoners, not just those in Coal Town.
Image[]
Hollis has mouse-colored tufts of hair around his almost bald head. Similar tufts serve as eyebrows. His eyes are a startling green and he has the wiry, underfed, pinched-face looks of many folk in the Appalachians. In fae mien his skin is read, face pasty white, and he wears well-made coats and trousers with swirl designs and a matching hat. He's still going bald. At 65, he believes he's the oldest changeling in American who hasn't succumbed to Banality. (He's wrong but he believes it.) (A better contender for that title is the Eshu Cientilla.)
References[]
- CTD. Kingdom of Willows, pp. 119-120