Fey

The fey are the inhabitants of the realm of Faerie, also known as the First World, Dreamland, Fairyland, the Otherworld, Arcadia, Avalon.

Faerie is one of the major realms of creation, and essential to the cycle of anima, or life force. Plants, animals, fungi, bacteria; these all all burn through anima as they eat, grow, breed, and die. Anima doesn't stay in a body, instead it is used up, expelled, and replenished naturally, just like a body will replace old cells with new ones.

Now, don't confuse anima for souls; anima allows creatures to live, while souls give such beings the ability to choose *how* to live. A soul allows a creature to rationalize their actions based on morals, ethics, and values--in short, a soul grants creatures free will. Creatures without a soul just act and react as their instincts tell them... they may be cunning and creative, but most just act upon their primal urges instead of their sense of right and wrong. A creature with a soul typically possesses only a single one over their course of their entire lifetime. The exact mechanics of a souls are still little understood, as neither their origin nor their ultimate destination has ever been discovered, even by the greatest dragons or archmagi.

The origin and flow of anima is far better known. Anima originates in a font of pure vitality known as the Well of Souls, the Source, or the Fountain of Youth. It then flows through the mortal realm, where it is consumed by living creatures in their daily lives, and then into the Pit, the End of Everything, where the used up anima is destroyed to make room for more.

However, pure, unfiltered anima can animate anything... it gives life not just to flora and fauna, but also object: rocks, rivers, clouds, mountains, oceans, moons, suns and stars, even time itself. Therefor, Faerie came into being as something as a filter, keeping the full brunt of anima from reaching the mortal realm. Weather this was a natural outcome of the anima flow--areas that collected anima migrated to a higher level of resonance until it became a separate realm--or a creation of some higher being or beings is one of the most contentious debates of modern scholars.

Regardless, the existence of Faerie allowed the mortal realm to stabilize into a happy equilibrium between the raw creative potential of the Fountain and the utter oblivion of the Pit. Due to its nature as a filter, Faerie adapted to somewhat mirror the mortal realm, especially those places rich in anima: planets, and then planets with life, and then specifically regions teeming with life such as forests, swamps, jungles, and coral reefs.

As life developed on the mortal plane, so did life develop on Faerie, but it rarely followed the logic of the mortal plane. Living trees, animals that fused flesh and fungus, and walking stones were all common beasts in the primordial era of Faerie. And then some apes decided to become sentient, and Faerie was never the same.

Now, most humans cannot access magic, because magic relies on twisting anima, and the mortal plane's anima is in careful balance, which means that manipulating the anima there requires external help, a natural talent, or the development of specific skills through years of study. However, the fey didn't have that issue: from almost the first days of their existence, the fey were one with the magic of the multiverse.

However, mortal souls had a significant impact on the world of Faerie. See, while most mortals are unable to manipulate the magic of the mortal realm, their echoes can shape and twist faerie around them. Unspoken desires resonated through the planes, and began to mold and twist Faerie. A human who desired a bountiful feast could create a verdant tree in Faerie, while one who wished for riches might create a sparkling vein of gold and gems to erupt on Faerie. This creative potential was especially notable when humans were dreaming or creating stories. In these moments, when a human's creativity ran amok, faerie shook. The echoes of the people and creatures in those stories began to attain a degree of stability, and then, eventually, when there were enough humans telling stories and dreaming, these stories and dreams came to life. And thus the fey came into being.

Fey are effectively living stories, and though they have free will and their own desires, they are generally bound by the tropes that define them. A fey who embodies the story of a hero will generally act heroically, and seek to do heroic things, while one who incarnates the story of a great disaster is a horribly destructive force. Though they are a living story, a fey will create an avatar, or a character, though which they will interact with the world. Typically the fey and their character are inseparable, and they should generally be treated as the same thing. However, when a fey character is slain, the fey will typically create a new character over the course of a few weeks to a few centuries. This new character will not always be the same as the last one, and may not even share any of the memories of their predecessors, though as they have the same soul there are typically a great deal of similarities between the various characters of the same fey in terms of overall morals, ethics, and worldviews.

The fact that they are living stories means that fey are naturally attracted to storytellers. Interesting humans whose minds can shape Faerie, alter stories, and even create new ones are incredibly fascinating to fey. A fey is, after all, only the incarnation of a single story, while humans have can have dozens if not hundreds of separate stories rattling around in their heads. This is why there are countless stories of fey abducting humans and taking them into the wilds of Faerie: they want to keep these wonderful stories for themselves.

See, fey don't quite "get" humans. Even the most empathetic of fey sees humanity as strange, inscrutable beings. Fey live for the story, the dramatic and the dynamic. Humans, however, defy fey conventions: they are able to change their own personal narrative as they grow and develop, and they can even go so far as to be able to create internal dissonance and tell falsities as if they were truth!

Humans looking at the fey usually see them as similarly alien: fey are chaotic, spontaneous beings who seem to place undue emphasis on traditions, personal honour, and their position in fey society. This has lead to countless tales of capricious, selfish fey out to steal everything a poor human may have, up to and including their firstborn child.

Given the fey's many ties to stories, dreams, and legends, it should come as no surprise that much of faerie seems to be stuck in the past, in the era where magic and fairy tales were possible. Great castles rise against the horizon, noble fey knights ride out on their majestic steeds to fight for their queen, and quaint villages are populated by those poor fey who embody the fleeting stories of the peasant or the cobbler, mentioned only in passing. There are some parts of faerie which reflect more contemporary aspects of reality, and even fantastical science fiction, but for the most part, faerie seems locked sometime between the high middle ages and the renaissance (or corresponding eras of mythic and magic in other regions of the world, such as the Islamic Golden Age or the Zhou Dynasty).

Likewise, the fey tend to mirror a variety of idealized beings from human myth and legend. There are fey who resemble the classic elves, pixies, nymphs, or fauns, but the fey also include goblins, dwarves, gremlins, centaurs, firbolgs, leprechauns, domovi, cyclopes, harpies, maenads, pukwudgie, and ijiraq, as well as mythical beasts such as sphinxes, lamassu, tanuki, griffons, unicorns, phoenixes, pegasi, thunderbirds, kirins, wolpertingers, treefolk, and various talking animals. There's an incredible diversity of fey, but these forms are still just characters assumed by the sentient, living story.

Many fey align themselves into courts, which serve as both a fey's closest allies and family, and the closet thing most fey have to a nationality. Many fey will identify themselves by the court they pledge allegiance to. There are dozens of courts, the most notable of which are the seasonal courts: the Summer Court of Titania and Oberon, the Winter Court of the Queen of Air and Darkness, the Autumn Court of Fortuna, and the Spring Court of Puck. These courts have been engaged in a deadly dance of politics for millennia now, and the histories of their conflicts have supplied the many fey bards and poets with ample material for the next masterpieces. However, many fey exist outside the structure of the courts, including the numerous wyldfey, as well as the dwarves of Nidavellir.

It's important to remember that fey are besouled beings, and thus have free will and the ability to choose their own destinies, and thus not all fey are enamoured with the chaotic nature and dramatic politics of their homerealm. Indeed, a number of fey have migrated to the mortal realm because they find humanity to be better company than their fellow fey; be it a dwarf who prefers humanity's industrious nature, a leprechaun who prefers spending his time helping those less fortunate, or a hippogriff who just wants a break from the chaos of faerie and finds living amongst humanity a welcome change. With the magic of the Veil, even the most monstrous of fey can easily assume a human form, and pass among mankind unknown to all but those gifted in the supernatural.