Fair Folk

Fairies, Fae, Seelie, Sidhe, Youkai. Many names have been given to them, but they call themselves the Fair Folk. Ancient beings of great power gifted with the gifts of near immortality and an inherent connection to the forces of magic, the Fair Folk are one of the most important groups among the Downworlder races. Native to a parallel dimension known to them as the Hedge, they have existed for as long as mankind, if not longer.

History
Thousands of years in the past, during the age of myth when civilization was only starting to spread, magic ruled the world. Fantastical creatures roamed the land while gods and mages held terrifying power at the tip of their fingers. The arcane and the mystical were a common part of life, not separable from the mundane, and events that would later become legend and myth took place. During that age, the ethereal races of the Fair Folk were at the height of their might. Unopposed lords of the vast untamed lands and completed unmatchable by the fledgling mankind, they lived without worry in their hidden halls.

The Fair Folk were capable of freely moving to and from the parallel dimension known then as Faerie, where they built cities and palaces, and they could use the forces that flowed through the ley lines of the world to cast their own strange magics, with a talent and control over them much greater than that of human mages. The Folk also used the pathways of Faerie to move vast distances in mere moments. The Fae captured humans from their villages to take them as slaves and delighted in meddling with the affairs of the mortals, and they were often worshiped or appeased by them through sacrifice and offerings.

However, their power did not last forever. The age of myth ended with a wide-reaching wave of collapse and disaster. As the Middle East was purged by the Great Flood, the rest of the world suffered countless other disasters, and the magical energies that once flew through the ley lines suddenly waned. Gods and mages lost most of their awesome power, and the many magical creatures that roamed the land either died or retreated to the most isolated areas of the world or to parallel dimensions. Meanwhile, Faerie was twisted into a dark shadow of what it once was, a dark and lethal Hedge of thorns and monsters. In order to survive the loss of their world and their civilization, those that remained had two options: either live far closer to the humans, using their powers to secretly manipulate them and hide themselves both around and within human society, or retreat into the depths of the Hedge and isolate themselves from the world. In the distant future, those two groups would become known as the Seelie and the Unseelie Fae.

The true nature of the great disaster that ended the age of myth, as well as its causes and details about what happened during the time it took place are still almost entirely unknown, and a subject of great study among Fae scholars.

Biology
The Fair Folk are extremely diverse, varying greatly in shape, size and demeanor. The true origin of the Fae is a mystery to many and a topic of discussion to scholars of ancient history. Some have proposed they were created from the interbreeding of angels and demons that somehow managed to produce a viable offspring that kept the beauty of it’s angelic side and the malice of it’s demonic one, but such a case would be essentially impossible. It’s uncertain whether they are natives of Earth or the Hedge as well

All Fae are inherently magical, even if not all of them are capable of spellcasting. As they age, a member of the Folk will get stronger and more attuned with magic. After living for multiple millennia, the venerable few that reach such old age partially lose their physical nature and become beings of almost pure magical essence, giving them power comparable to archangels and greater demons. This magical nature also gives the Fair Folk a well-known weakness: cold iron (meaning pure iron, with greater effect if it was worked purely by hand). Pure iron is anathema to the magic of Faerie: it burns the Fair Folk if they touch it, and wounds caused by it are almost incurable. It's mere presence is often enough to weaken fae magic, and objects made from cold iron aren’t affected by it. The older and more powerful they become, the stronger their weakness becomes, the mere touch of pure iron being enough to make them start disintegrating.

Physically, the Fae are extremely varied. While the majority of them are human-sized, some deviate greatly from that norm, from minuscule pixies and sprites small enough to fit in your hands to hulking trolls and ogres. Almost all Fae are capable of using glamour magic or shapeshifting in order to hide their inhuman nature. The Seelie tend to look almost human even in their true forms, often only having a few unnatural characteristics such as oddly colored hair or eyes, horns, pointed ears, unusually shaped facial or anatomical features and sometimes even wings. This is partially due to the fact that living so close to humanity makes hiding their forms a necessity, but also due to the fact that the Fae that became the Seelie also included a number of faeblooded humans and changelings, humans that were taken by the Fair Folk and changed into Fae beings. The Unseelie, however, tend to look far more monstrous and fantastical, with vividly colored skin and noticeable features of animals, monsters, plants or elements. As they age, the Unseelie become less and less human, turning into great beasts or creatures that despite being shaped similarly to a human, are in no way like them.

Society
How the Fair Folk society works varies greatly between Seelie and Unseelie. While some may see them as respectively the “good” and “evil” subgroups, the primary difference between the two is how they interact with humanity and the other supernatural species.

Having chosen to live among mankind during the collapse of the age of the gods, the Seelie have divided throughout the centuries into hundreds of small local factions, each laying claim to territories ranging from a single city to entire states and even small countries. Despite their pride and arrogance, the faeries that became the Seelie were not the nobles the act as. Instead, they were the survivors of common rabble, the exiles, the hybrids and the humans taken as servants and changed by the Fae. They live among human society, using glamours and mental manipulation to hide their existence, as well as using powerful magic to create hidden pockets of space that could not be accessed by humans, where the Fair Folk could openly live in and exert their domain. Some have returned to the Hedge and founded towns and cities in the areas nearest to the edge of the two worlds. Those Hedge cities are often threatened by Hedge creatures and the Unseelie, but they also the only places where the rarest and most valuable treasures of the Hedge can be found.

Those hundreds of local factions are organized into the four Seasonal Courts: Spring, Summer, Winter and Autumn, but the frequent infighting between members of the same courts, as well as conflicts and alliances with members of other Courts mean that the supposed leaders of the Seasonal Courts at world levels have very limited power beyond their personal domains, despite the attempts of organizations such as the Clave to interact with them as if they were unified groups.

The Unseelie, however, were the true nobility, in all their power and majesty. They abandoned the human world and retreated into the darkest and deepest areas of the Hedge, where the magic flows strongly and great magical beasts still exist. This isolationism has given them a sinister reputation, as their disregard for the affairs of humans and other supernatural races mean they still follow ancient Fae traditions that the Seelie have long abandoned, such as the capture of humans, particularly children in order to make them into Changeling slaves. This often puts them in conflict with the Clave, but their reclusive nature and the barrier created by the Hedge makes it more or less impossible for active measures to be taken against them. For the same reason, the actual nature of how their society is also unknown to most. They have a strong enmity with the Seelie Fae, whom they see as cowards, traitors and mongrels. Unlike the Seelie, who have adapted to it from living so close to humans, the Unseelie shun technology, looking down on it with at best a smug sense of amusement.

The Hedge
The Hedge is a parallel dimension to that of Earth. A place filled with strong magic, the topology and geometry of space and time are distorted inside of it: trying to follow a specific direction and then go back from where you came will lead you to a vastly different place, making it extremely easy to get lost in it. The environments in it vary greatly, from dense forests filled with brambles and thorns that give the dimension it’s name, to mist covered jungles, shifting deserts and dark swamps.

Some areas of the Hedge have been made stable and unchanging by magic. Those can be naturally formed, such as the dens of various creatures, or artificial, such as the Freehold cities created by the Seelie or the many ruins and buildings built by previous inhabitants or the more intelligent Hedge creatures. There also exists an infinite web of pathways and roads that criss-crosses the Hedge. Connected to countless portals leading to different locations on Earth, this network allows for an experienced navigator to easily cross massive distances on foot in a matter of hours or days at most. However, some of those paths can lead towards the dark domains of the Unseelie.

Portals to the Hedge can be found everywhere in the world. Natural ones tend to appear in places with a natural concentration of magic, and can take the shape of any natural formation that could be described as gate-like: an ancient tree bent into an arc by time, a hole crossing a moss-covered boulder, a cave with no end or bottom in sight, etc. Portal can also appear in urban areas, but are extremely rare and hard to find. It is possible to create artificial portals, but while it is easier for the Fae, it requires noticeable skill and power, as well as rare materials and complex rituals. Natural portals allow anyone to cross them but artificial ones or those that have been bound by spells require rituals to activate them. The rituals vary wildly in difficulty and complexity: it may require anything from just saying a password to burning a lock of the hair of a person, mixing it with the blood of it's enemy and spilling the mixture over the outline of the portal drawn over a flat stone.

The fauna and flora of the Hedge are particularly noticeable. Like everything else in it, the plants are imbued with fae magic, and so can have a variety of side-effects, many of them being powerful reagents for alchemy. Those plants can vary from golden apples that heal the wounds of anyone who consumes them, to a bush with silvery leaves that induce visions when consumed to even a root that works as a powerful narcotic for vampires and does not require them to consume it with blood for them to actually feel it. Meanwhile, the Hedge is the last home of creatures than on Earth only exist in myth, such as dragons, gryphons and unicorns, as well as stranger beings, which like the plants can often have mystical powers and properties