Fae

“Wonderfully – madly – magical, we sometimes call the fairies of the world ‘The Kindly Ones’ or ‘The Lords and Ladies’, or indeed ‘The Fair Folk’, because they adore flattery. And also… well, also because drawing their attention isn’t a great idea, and speaking someone’s name is a good way to get it. For all that they may be magicked to be impossibly tough, their bane is found in every smithy in the land, and that’s the only reason that they aren’t running the world, I’m quite sure.”

• King Ulfgar Ironforge, Seventh King of Understone Reflections Upon Magic and Its Doings (~874 A.T.)

It’s said that there are as many types of fairies in the world as there are grains of sand upon a beach, but that estimate comes from the fae themselves, and they’re known to be tricksters at the best of times. Although they don’t like to share too many verifiable details about themselves with mortals, it seems that fairy culture is deeply political, separated into large factions, and then fractally smaller factions, until it seems like every fairy might be at war with themself.

Powerfully magical, fairies stand with one foot in the plane of Ariel, and one foot… elsewhere. It is said that within the otherworldly territories controlled by the faeries, time passes differently, and magic is far easier to work.

Otherworldly Beings

Although many fairies have connections with nature and the natural elements that make up the world of Ariel, most claim residence in a different plane of their own. Little is directly known about this world, save that it is intensely magical, and its inhabitants are less constrained by such things as gravity, extension, or physics. Time travels at the whim of the most powerful there, and those captured by the Fae and stolen away may return after months of bizarre parties or blisteringly dangerous fights, only to discover that it was the very night of their departure – or stayed only for tea, and returned a subsequent year.

Perhaps in search of more stability, some fae make the plane of Ariel their primary residence. They often populate the natural and distant parts of the world, where mortal artifice has not been in many years, or is thin on the ground. Some cohabit, willingly or grudgingly with mortals, and others flee them or try to drive them away. It is said that many ‘fairies of nature’ perform inscrutable tasks that help the seasons to turn, the tides to roll, and the blossoms on the trees and bushes to become fruits in the passing of time – but these things still seem to occur in places where the fairies are not as populous, so such claims are dubious at best.

Fae Factions

Although often lording their magic and power over mortals, there is – usually – a bigger fish even among the magically potent fairies. Favours owed, fealty sworn, and difficult to follow family trees all help to create the various factions of fairy society. Although fae are (generally) proud of their allegiances, the exact nature of each faction is either hotly contested or (more likely) being obscured from mortals, who have a nasty way of using information to escape fae dominion over themselves.

• Summer Court fairies claim that their power comes with the gilding of the corn, the hot and humid nights of revelry and hedonism, and a noble potency that haunts a summer glade… but just as often, they’re hot-tempered as the summer sun, and laconic as a lazy summer afternoon.
• Autumn Court fairies claim that their magical secrets were revealed by those who stared deeply into the abyss and were left with enough of their minds to work potent magics that put even the other courts to shame… but their magic is just as often whimsical, found in the crispness of a dry leaf or the melancholic of a wet September afternoon.
• Winter Court fairies claim that their court’s pageantry is as refined and dignified as it is to reflect the uniqueness of every snowflake, and the calm majesty of a winter’s morn… but many of their courtiers are pinched in demeanour, mean of word and deed, and viciously bitter foes.
• Spring Court fairies claim that theirs is the purpose of life, of the world reviving after lengthy slumber, near to (but not quite at) a point of death… but the fury of spring storms, the heady wines and headier pheromones of raucous lovemaking, and the flighty nature of flower fairies suggest that their attention is easily misplaced.
• The Wild Hunts… mostly just claim to take in rogues and bounders, caught up in the vicious thrill of blood on the snow or the soil, taking all that they can, lives included, and giving back only what they are forced to, and they certainly seem to be telling the truth. Some of the Hunts claim a nobility of purpose, but many live down to their reputation.

Not all fae are members of these groups, and any three ‘experts’ on the politics of fairies will give you four answers about what exactly the groups are like. What is likely to be the truth is that such groups are widely diverse, and the rules that bind them are arcane, even to those within them.

Many claim the status of monarchs of the fae factions or courts. If such monarchs genuinely exist, it seems that they do not guard their privileges jealously, or that the structure of their power is such that it is shared between several, clearly differing personas.

Types of Fae

Lesser Fae are commonly enough seen that they have fallen into folklore, with common wisdom spread of them. Red Caps are red-hatted killers, their long caps stained red with the blood of their victims, their harvest a bouquet of limbs torn off from unwary travellers before said travellers were beaten to death. Brownies may be more helpful if appeased with promises of bread, milk, and honey, but if scorned, they are just as like to curse the artifice of those who displease them. Clurichauns will drink a tavern dry with a single night of unbridled inebriation, and pay only in coin that vanishes with the morning mists. More fairies populate folklore and the small places of the world, only too happy to follow the folklore up until it ceases to be convenient to them.

Wild Fae are beasts of a different colour; dryads, naiads, and oreads, keepers of the trees, streams, and mountains, are shy and retiring, but possess powerful magic to heal or to harm. Creatures of great beauty, they will often ally themselves to the service of Arkady, the goddess of beauty. Satyrs belie their fame as inebriates (and more) as powerful spellcasters in their own right, and at least one local to the Yorik region was locally famous as an alchemist and herbalist.

Greater Fae are, appropriately enough, creatures that are their own beings, though they are more likely to ally to one of the great Fairy factions. Too specific to fall into broad groups, they are named beings with reputations to match – Springheels Molly, Grandmother Wither, and Jack of the Candle are all masters of whatever best matches their names and reputations, but there’s no other fae that are exactly like them, and so they defy categorical description.

Royal Fae tend to be leaders, or highly placed lieutenants of the fairy factions. Rarely appearing in person in the world of Ariel, it is rumoured that the most powerful of these fairies are capable of granting spells to followers as the demigods do, although this has never been credibly proven.

Fae and the Mortal World

The fae are rumoured to only be able to cross between the worlds in places where the barrier between here and there is thinned or weakened. What that actually means in practical terms is a bit ambiguous, but fairies tend to be quite populous indeed in areas where great magic has been worked. Perhaps more oddly, fairies appear in numbers when circles of mushrooms form, suggesting that this may be another form of gate – or that the mushrooms know something that mere mortals do not. Such mushroom gates spill out magic sufficient to blind an unprepared caster of the Detect Magic spell.

The magic of fairies is enormous, but they seem to be repelled by weapons and artifice made of iron. Why precisely this is, is a matter of hot contention, with some suggesting that mortal artifice is a bane to the ephemeral fairy folk, and others suggesting that something about the metal disrupts their substantially magical form on the plane of Ariel. Perhaps more telling is that while they dread the touch of iron and steel, fairies actively flee bared mithril, unquestionably because their magic cannot survive the weight of the mage-bane.

Authored by: Jared Hindle
Fantasy Alive Lore Team 2021
Copyright © Endless Adventures Ontario

Revised by: Andrew Dunlop
Fantasy Alive Lore Team 2026
Copyright © Endless Adventures Ontario