Fae

The Faerie or Fae are a species of Others that are living, beautiful lies of pure Glamour.<ref name=":9">“The Fall fae is younger than you’d think, for a Faerie.  New to your world, new in many things.  Still old enough to not remember coming to be, but… no faerie I’ve met remembers.”

“Where do Faerie come from?” Verona asked.

“New Faerie?  Some say a human is taken, drowned in glamour, traded through hands until they pass under the noses of the oldest and most powerful Fae in the winter court, and then have the last traces of their old lives taken.  All that is left is the glamour and the general shape of them.  Other stories are similar, saying that a man who lives a lie can become more lie than person, they find their way to the places where Fae dwell, and the person is lost.  The lie becomes elaborate enough to have its own personality, and then you have a nascent Faerie.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref> Unlike their lesser Fairy cousins, each is a unique individual.

Description

Faerie come in many shapes and sizes, male and female, but generally speaking they follow trends that change over time. Faerie manipulate things to distract, to addle your senses so you aren’t paying attention to the fact that it doesn’t fit with reality, with Glamour. Faerie are weak to crude materials and direct behavior, as a result of it challenging their beliefs and self-delusions. Additionally Silver is a solid defensive measure against all things Fae, as long as they aren't in Winter.<ref>Cutting Class 6.3</ref> Psychologically they are easily bored, to the point where some throw away their minds or lose them in order to start fresh. It is said that once faerie become bored they become monsters of the worse kind.

Faerie typically don't get along with Goblins and it has been revealed that some time in the past they actually enslaved and bound some goblins, during an era when the courts were changing over. As a result it mixed up relationship between the two.^{[citation needed]} Their personalities and abilities tend to be opposite as well. Goblins refer to them as the unfair folk.<ref name=":10">The goblins shared stories between one another about what goblins were and why metal was so problematic. The usual story was that when a Wise man drank from a cup while dining, the bits of food that got into the cup and lingered after the drink was done accumulated. Except it was workings, not drink, and bits of self, not food. Greasy fingerprints left behind when touching something beyond the veil. Bits of skin that should have grown and the hairs that should have fallen from one’s head, that didn’t, because they were wearing different skin or hair, and the stuff that wasn’t had to end up someplace.

There was another story that said that the unfair folk were people once, and they chopped off all the bits they didn’t like, and those bits became goblins, but Buttsack didn’t like that version.

Fuck the unfair folk. Being magic hairballs for humans, fabricated of their dust, scum, grease, pubes, and stress, that was one thing. Being of faerie? Fuck that idea sideways and backward.

Whatever the case, many stories had one or two common elements. The goblins were leavings, discards, scrap given form. The earth called to them, to decompose them like it was meant to devour and decompose all leavings, and the metal was the earth in distilled form. Or maybe the process that made goblins was - excerpt form Signature 8.1</ref>

Thanks to their immortality, their love of sophistication, and the benefits of glamour, Faerie are generally inhumanly skilled at what they do. They map to anything on Deals and Interaction in practice.<ref>Is an alternate table you could work with, for example. Some stuff's only going to slide left and right or up and down, but you could stick Fae-something in any Deals column thing or Interactions row thing. You could also reach into any of these things with a high enough Schools stat in a practice, in Pactdice terms. - Wildbow on Reddit</ref>

Origins

The origins of Faerie are disputed. Some say they began as human Practitioners who cast off their ugly sides (which became the Goblins)<ref name=":10" /> and/or simply buried themselves so deeply in lies Glamour there was nothing but the facade left, which took on a life of it's own. Others say they are the ultimate form of the Glamour Drowned victims of the fae, every trace of their humanity lost and nothing but glamour in their general shape remaining.<ref name=":9" /> Different stories may be true for different Fae, of course.

Faerie never seem to remember their own origins.<ref name=":9" />

Types

Exiled Faerie, those who are banished, are not allowed to directly harm innocent people or appear in large cities or interact with Lords.<ref name=Exil>Exiled faerie were kept out of towns with Lords as a matter of course.  The Court apparently didn’t want exiles making deals or gaining power, so they stuck them only in small villages and towns, or even in areas well out of reach of humans. - Excerpt from Signature 8.2</ref>

Courts

Main article: Faerie Courts

The term Faerie Court or Courts refers simultaneously to the Realm of the Fae, their leadership, and to the system of sub-divisions all Faerie are divided into.

When they have exhausted the potential of a specific Court system, the Faerie will overthrow their rulers and institute a new dynamic, often using glamour to make it appear older.<ref>The Faerie go through trends, fashions of a sort.  Mixing notions,styles, and past ideas into new forms until they’ve run completely out of ideas.  Then they rebel, they overthrow the court, and a new season begins with a different foundation.  Light faerie versus the dark, for example, or a court with a true king and queen and a dynasty that they’ve glamoured up to extend back through the centuries. - Excerpt from Damages 2.5</ref><ref name=":5">“I see,” Sandra Duchamp said.  “Here’s my counteroffer: what if I offered a messenger?”

“The Queen won’t listen,” Padraic said, sighing.

“To other banished Faerie, in other cities and towns.  Until our family line ends or the Queen is replaced and the court dynamic changes up once again.”

“Springtime,” Padraic said.  “Mm.  That would have been a good offer.  Paved the way for an insurrection of sorts.”

“Perhaps,” Sandra Duchamp said.  “That would be dangerous for my family.  I was thinking of maintaining some connection to the courts, in a peripheral manner.” - Excerpt from Damages 2.2</ref>

When Johannes Lillegard met Faysal Anwar, there was more than one Court, including a "winter court" that was also known as "the sunless court" and held "the darker faerie".<ref>One of the darker faerie, a lucky find, his ace in the hole. He’d spent

four months screwing with the rat population until something took notice.  He’d expected a spirit, he’d picked up the faerie instead.  One from the winter court, the sunless court.- Interlude 14</ref> During Pact in 2013, there seems to have been a singular Court<ref>As your partner Rose already said, they’re weak against the unrefined, 

against crude things. That includes attitudes. Their court is one of dancing around subjects, allusions, games, masquerades, and complex plots that unfold over decades and centuries. [...] She wasn’t so good she could become part of the story they were telling in the court. [...]

Some defy the court and try to change the game in another way, trying to bring about a larger change, and they get banished when they fail. - Excerpt from Damages 2.5</ref><ref>Exiled faerie were kept out of towns with Lords as a matter of course.  

The Court apparently didn’t want exiles making deals or gaining power, so they stuck them only in small villages and towns, or even in areas well out of reach of humans. - Signature 8.2</ref><ref>The Duchamp family works with the Court and the Court may well wonder

what happened to its fine allies, to the highborn and noble faerie who 

were given as pets to the Duchamp families. [...] Sandra wasn’t Faerie, but she had picked up some things in her time as the Duchamp ambassador to the Court. - Interlude 13</ref> with a single hierarchy<ref>Padraic would be unhappy, but he wouldn’t take it further from that.

I know Faerie superior to him in the court, and I would act as the middleman, putting you at minimal risk. - Signature 8.6</ref> led by a Queen.<ref name=":5" /> There were some Exiled Fae as well.<ref name=Exil/>

As of 2020 there are seven Courts.<ref name=":0">“There’s courts?”

“Seven courts,” Guilherme explained.  “My court is one of wine and adventure, romances and tragedies, and simpler ballads of those led astray.  Heroes, courage, and the threads of epics braiding together and into one another.  The great bard wrote of us.  The court of nature and summer, touched by sun.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref> Three seasons each divided into high/bright/above/sun and low/dark/below/shadow Courts, plus undivided Winter:

• High Spring - "emulates human aristocracy and celebrity".<ref name=":2">“The courts below are dark shadows of the ones above. The High Spring

emulates human aristocracy and celebrity, the Dark Spring does away with

the humanity and replaces it with the monstrous, dressing themselves in
chitin, spiderwebs, and skins while they deal in nightmares and 

upstaging one another in the torments they can inflict. The Dark Summer

instead lost their Faerie nature, mingling too much with distant and 

opposed Others, because they fought them for too long, or they took them

as allies one too many time.  Imagine the monsters of fairy tales, and 

you would not be far amiss.” - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref>

• Low Spring - monstrous aristocracy.<ref name=":2">“The courts below are dark shadows of the ones above. The High Spring

emulates human aristocracy and celebrity, the Dark Spring does away with

the humanity and replaces it with the monstrous, dressing themselves in
chitin, spiderwebs, and skins while they deal in nightmares and 

upstaging one another in the torments they can inflict. The Dark Summer

instead lost their Faerie nature, mingling too much with distant and 

opposed Others, because they fought them for too long, or they took them

as allies one too many time.  Imagine the monsters of fairy tales, and 

you would not be far amiss.” - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref>

• High Summer - "Adventure, festival, and pleasant debauchery".<ref name=":3">“Yes, I do think it scares him,” Maricica murmured, and she

slid her bare arm out from beneath the wings she had wrapped herself in,

along Verona’s neck and shoulder, pointing at Guilherme.  “The court of
High Summer is the court that loses the most Faerie to Winter.  

Adventure, festival, and pleasant debauchery can only tide you over for so long. Of import: The court of Autumn Below loses the least.” - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref>

• Low Summer - those who have become non-Fae Others.<ref name=":2" />
• High Fall - "melodramatic and brooding, tangled in human ways"<ref name=":1">“High spring, aristocrats and gilded things, parties, fine craftsmanship

and even finer, craftier lies.  High fall, melodramatic and brooding, 

tangled in human ways and things, they play for keeps, with beginnings and endings in mind.” - excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref>

• Low Fall - focus on "transformations and curses"<ref name=":4">“The court of Dark Fall is the court of the wretched, if not the most

piteous and powerful,” Guilherme said.  “When a Faerie of another court
is cursed to carry a scrabbling rodent in her womb for every rodent 

born in her country, the penalty of a game lost or offending the wrong noble, she might crawl to the court of Dark Fall, to seek assistance and

to become a different kind of Fae that can bear the curse and still 

function.” “Grey Isbold,” Maricica said, like she was amused. [...] “They grow inside her, they scratch and writhe, they’re eventually born, and they dart into dark corners, where they summarily disappear. Their

job is done, you see.  She’s learned to manage them, in more ways than 

the one. My home court is one of transformations and curses. I do think it’s the most interesting and subtle.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref>

• Winter - Fae who have lost themselves to boredom, stasis, and repeated patterns.<ref name="won">“Is there a winter court?” Avery asked.

“There is,” Guilherme said. “He doesn’t like to even think about it,” Maricica murmured, walking behind the three girls. Avery averted her eyes, turning a bit. The Faerie woman went on, saying, “Faerie live for very long times. Grey Isbold’s offense was done in an era when men held swords, not guns, and she had been around for thousands of years before then. But as much as our bodies are immortal and we are ageless, our minds grow restless. There are only so many things to see and do, so many stories to tell or adventures to participate in. After a while, you start to see that stories tend to have the same underlying structures. Then you see that ideas come from the same places. There is precious little that is truly

original in the world.  The courts are in large part defined by how we 

approach that problem.” “That you get bored?” Verona asked. “That we become boredom. After thousands of years of listening to music and making our own, we might hear something new, and it entertains us for a few hours or days. Then, trained by hearing thousands of years of music and its variations, our minds jump to the obvious conclusions. We guess how the rest of it goes and what might come of it, and what follows from that new thing is only minutes, now, of entertainment or distraction. Do the same for music, for interaction

with others, and we fall into a kind of stasis.  Habits become personal
rules, become inevitability, and the personality ceases to be.  That
is the winter court.  Doomed to stasis, often powerful, but more 

automaton than individual. Like your computers playing chess against one another, getting the same results over and over again, if you watch long enough.” - Excerpt from Stolen Away 2.2</ref> The winter court is largely stable no matter what the greater dynamic amoung other courts.

Named Faerie

• Letita
• Padraic
• Keller
• Arthild
• Essylt
• Maricica
• Guilherme
• Grey Isbold

Trivia

• Beings recognizable as faeries can be found around the world.

References

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