Fae

A History Of The Fae

Since the beginning of human history, man kind has shared stories about the capricious and dangerous beings that were just beyond the campfire’s light, and the danger they posed to unwary mortals. Sometimes they were called gods. At other moments in history they were called fae.

For thousands of years, Earth was home to both mortals and an endless variety of fae that played with and tormented them. Varied in form and power, these beings were divided by two warring philosophies: The Seelie Court, which valued Honor, Beauty, and Love, and the Unseelie Court that promoted Power, Passion, and Change. At the top of each court sat the strongest and most feared tribes of Faekind: the Tuatha de Danaan, who dominated the Seelie Court with their terrible beauty and glory, and the Fomorians, who epitomized the Unseelie court with their dark power and unassailable might.

Mankind lived in fear of these great creatures until their defeat at the hands of the Milesians. A tribe of warriors, they were named after their leader, Milesius, a soldier reputed to have learned his trade in Scythia and Egypt. He led his people to ancient Hibernia, where they made war against the central stronghold of the Tuatha de Danaan. Although Milesius and the greater part of his men were slain in the ensuing battle, the mortal army triumphed and forced the Tuatha survivors to surrender. The Tuatha made a pledge to split the land in half with their conquerors, bidding them to name the half they would take.

Milesius’ sons took counsel, then declared that they would take the surface of the world, leaving Faekind the underground to keep as their own. Left with no choice but to accept what was offered, the Tuatha swore the Milesian Oath. So powerful was their status in Fae society that all other tribes of Fae were forced to accept the binding of this powerful bargain.

From that moment forward, all Fae found that they would sicken and eventually died if they stayed on the surface during the daylit hours. They were left no choice but to flee underground, digging out a great Labyrinth of tunnels that were connected to the world above by their sidhe, or fortress mounds.

For the next two thousand years and more, the Fae struggled under the Oath, slipping out of the sidhe at night to dance upon the hills or to raid mortal villages for sport, becoming mere myth in the eyes of most humans, legends of the past.

Then came the Darkening.

None know for sure how it started, or why. Some suggest that the tunnels of the Labyrinth went too deep, and that some unfortunate dwarf had dug a hole straight into Hell itself. Others would claim it was evolution, a natural change to their environment. Yet, despite not knowing its source, the effect of this event was pronounced and shook the already defeated Fae society to its roots.

Fae started to twist, finding the Tales they were mystically defined by becoming dark and wicked, even by Fae standards. Entire tribes of Fae would disappear from contact with their neighbors, then would suddenly invade years later as dark and twisted entities, eyeless, pale cannibals that would capture, torture and eat any they could find.

The Fae called these corrupted creatures Dokkalfar, and at first tried to seal them away, collapsing miles of the Labyrinth and filling the connecting tunnels and byways with hundreds of traps. But for every tribe they sealed away, another group of previously unaffected Fae would suddenly succumb to the Darkening and savage their neighbors.

The Tuatha de Danaan led the war against these dark beings, but finally acknowledging that this was a battle that could not be won by might of arms, they gathered up the still-healthy tribes and fled the Labyrinth and passed over the endless seas to the ancient land of their origins, a place they had forsworn when they had first invaded Earth: Tir Na Nog.

With Earth was lost to them and the Labyrinth had become a poison to their kind, the Tuatha de Danann found only one option open to them: to fight to reclaim their homeland as their own.

After a long and arduous journey, the Tuatha and other fleeing Fae tribes found themselves at the shores of a beautiful, mist-covered land, looking upon a sunlit land for the first time in thousands of years. Tir Na Nog was a land without death, free of mortal influence and far from Earth and the Milesian Oath. Beautiful and wild, the Tuatha had left it millennia ago out of ambition of mastery and lordship of another realm. Now, those ancient dreams of glory beaten down by defeat and darkness, they simply wished to return home.

The Tuatha had planned to return to the Four Great Cities they once dwelt in: Gorias, Findias, Murias and Falias, eternal metropoli of the land that held their Four Great Treasures. Here they could rebuild their strength, recover from the hardships of the past and find glory again.

But instead of finding empty cities ready for their return, they found that their greatest enemies, whom they had not seen for centuries, had made dreaded Balor, the Fomorians had claimed Tir Na themselves at home. Under the leadership of the Nog, its Four Cities, and the Treasures within.

The Seelie tribes rallied around their beautiful and fearsome lords. The Unseelie hosts, finding their ancient masters now in dominance of an eternal land, threw themselves at their feet and renewed their pledges of loyalty.

Thus began the Endless War.

At the start, the Unseelie had a clear advantage. The Balor had fortified the Four Cities, and held the powerful Treasures within. But the bravery of the Seelie host, led by the unquestionably peerless warrior heroes of the Tuatha de Danaan, was an amazing thing to behold. Within a hundred years they had claimed Gorias the golden, then led by Lugh, greatest of their warriors, a surprise attack managed to drive the Unseelie from torch-lit Findias. There Lugh took up Gae Assail, his ancient spear that no shield could turn aside, and chased the Unseelie hosts back to the gates of frost-covered Falias.

This was a time of heroism, and tales of thousands of glorious battles were sung of in Gorias’ golden halls. Known by name and deed was each soldier that stood watch on Findias’ walls. Among the sunken ruins of Murias were accounted the greatest Unseelie sorcerers, and the weapons forged daily in Falias were peerless, each worthy of a legend and a name that would be spoken for all time.

But after these early, glorious days, the Endless War earned its name, grinding on without resolution into a stalemate that has continued for millennia.

For in Tir Na Nog, there is no death. Once a joyful land of endless beauty, it is now host to a terrible war where the soldiers fight, are maimed, and suffer on the field of battle, but cannot die. The immortal Fae hosts of each Court devise new weapons, new stratagems to savage their foes. But without death, there is no defeat that cannot be recovered from, and no victory that lasts forever.

The Tuatha and Fomorians, far above the lesser tribes in their strength and glory, called Godfae by many, care not. They can only focus on their endless hate for one another, a feud that has existed since before the Milesian Oath was first spoken. And so under them, the lesser fae fight, and suffer, and are maimed, and fight again in a war that will never end.

They have heard stories of another realm, one across an endless sea. A place called Earth where the Godfae themselves were driven away by a tribe called Men, banished forever with a mighty oath. Surely in such a place peace could be found?

But by those oaths all fae are banned… yet there are always ways. Always new tricks. One Fae, a stunted hideous goblin who knew much about bargains and weaving, found a way to cheat his way out of that bargain by weaving together his fate with a single strand of a mortal’s fate. So what if that man or woman ceased to be, their destiny and life being absorbed by the goblin? By doing such he found he could walk freely in this Earth, where the Godfae could not easily reach him.

In the centuries since then, thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of fae have spun together their fate with those of men to cross the endless sea and walk the shores of Earth in a bid to escape their cruel endless war.

You are one such refugee.

Timeline

The Fae Calendar acknowledges the following era notations in addition to the dating systems used by humans:

BIC: Before Imperial Calendar. Used to denote the period prior to the foundation of the Nephilic Empire.

IC: Imperial Calendar, which dates the years From Nephilic Empire’s foundation. Due to the great lengths of time involved, and the turnover of Fae population from the era of the Empire’s foundation, there is no exact date for the Empire’s foundation compared to the human-tracked BCE dating system. However, most Fae scholars agree it occurred roughly 50,000 BCE.

27,011 BIC – The Fae host, lead by the Last Prince and a small band of Nephilim warriors, escape through a summoned portal from the original homeland of the Fae to Earth. On the other side of the portal, the Eternal King of the Fae and the virtual entirety of the original Nephilim noble lines sacrifice themselves to hold back the Choir and seal the Perilous Gate.

The period known as the Wandering begins, lasting from the Exile through to the foundation of the Nephilic Empire, when the Fae under the lead of the Last Prince wandered all the Realms exploring for a new home.

13,032 BIC – The Last Prince leads a delegation of Tales of Glory to negotiate with the inhabitants of Hell with the hope of securing a homeland for the Fae. They are ambushed by Hell’s warriors, and only surviving through the intervention of a group of Tales of Mischief who in the process steal Hell’s Divine Fire, which was being used as weapon in the ambush. Matu, the Compass Star, is among the dead.

1 BIC – After over twenty-five thousand years of wandering, having explore all the Realms before crossing the Endless Sea seeking a place to call their own, the Fae Host arrives on the shores of Tir Na Nog. There they find the wreckage of an ancient city on the western coast, with no sign of its original inhabitants. Finding the island free of natives, plentiful in nature’s bounty, and capable of sustaining true immortality, the Last Prince declares the Wandering to be at an end, and dubs the island their new homeland. He then announces that the time has come for him to leave his people, and begins a personal pilgrimage to find the path back to the original home of the Fae, for the day that the host is ready to retake what they have lost.

1 IC – Rish-Shamesh the Ensi, the last blood relative of the Blood Prince, founds a new empire of the Fae, ruled by the Nephilim and with the restored city (which would one day be called Murias) as their capital. He is crowned the new Emperor of the Fae. The Nephilim are the sole pantheon of Godfae in this era.

2980 BCE – The Tower, a great project that links all the Realms with a single massive world-spanning tower, nears completion under the reign of Nimrod the Hunter King, last Emperor of the Empire. However, before it can be completed a great storm forms across all the realms, coming from somewhere far over the Endless Sea. The skies open with rain, filling the Realms with the Great Deluge, and the tower is rent apart by lightning. The Nephilim are stained by the Deluge, with most dying in the tower’s collapse, and the remnants falling from godhood to be mere Fae. The Nephilic Empire is ended.

2900 BCE – The Fomorians leave Mag Mell to explore the lands of men (said to be an opportunistic act taken shortly after the Deluge according to some Fae historians), and take for themselves the island of Ireland.

2680 BCE – A mortal named Partolomus leads his tribe to Ireland, where they defeat the Fomorians, driving them from the land.

1900 BCE – The Tuatha de Danaan come from the Four Cities of Tir Na Nog to Earth, where they wage war on the Fir Bolg. They defeat their foes, and reign Ireland for well over a century and a half.

1700 BCE – A band of soldiers under the surviving sons of Milesius conquer the Tuatha de Danaan in battle. The Godfae are compelled to take an oath to surrender half of the land to the conquerers. The Milesians choose to take the top half of the land (aka, everything above the surface). The power of the oath of the Godfae affects all Fae, forcing them underground during the day lest they are destroyed by the sun for violating their oath. The exploration of the Labyrinth begins.

The Fae dwell below the surface for almost two millennia, only occasionally risking the journey above occasionally. At some point, the Fomorians disappear from the Labyrinth.

996 – The Darkening begins, and tribes of Fae in the Labyrinth begin to twist into the dark Tales of the Dokkalfar, cannibalizing their fellow Fae and engaging in acts of horror even the most jaded Tales of Terror Fae find horrifying. After failed attempts to contain or combat it, the Tuatha de Danaan lead the surviving, non-Darkened Fae away from the Labyrinth and back to Tir Na Nog.

1087 – 1104 – Cath Bhruacha Geal, or The Battle of Bright Shores. The Tuatha de Danaan and the fellow refugees from the Labyrinth find that the Fomorians have taken the empty Tir Na Nog as their own. After failed negotiations, the Seelie and Unseelie courts begin what would become known as the Endless War. It starts with a seventeen-year long siege as the Seelie Court fought to first retake Gorias, and then Findias, from Unseelie hands. During this time, twelve great Fae would come to be recognized for their actions by the Godfae, and become the founders of the Great Houses.

1562 – Studying the pheomenon of Talebound, the rare half-human children of Fae that manage to evolve their Myth far enough to become Fae themselves, a small, hobgoblin-like Fae named Rumpelstiltskin discovers how to take a mortal strand of Fate and spin it into his own destiny, becoming the first Fatebound. By doing so, he escapes the brutal conditions of the Endless War and flees to Earth. He then turns around and starts selling the secret for massive fortunes before it becomes widespread. After this, Fatebound start to trickle into Earth. Slowly at first, but then in a flood by the 1590’s, and mostly to Europe.

1618 – 1648 – At first, the war-weary Fatebound refugees are spread thinly, and live quiet lives in peace. By 1610, however, the Seelie and Unseelie Court philosophies begin to result in open conflict. This is exasperated by Fatebound who have blended their fates with noble mortals and then begin to manipulate politics to better mimic their philosophy. This eventually helped trigger the instabilities in Europe that erupted into the Thirty Years War (although most Fatebound scholars claim the impact of their own kind was minor compared to mortal grievances… which the Fae eagerly exasperated). Between 1618-1648, the Fatebound engaged in outright conflict throughout Europe and its colonies in the name of the Seelie and Unseelie courts.

1648 – After years of backroom negotiations and a few convenient assassinations, the head nobles of the Seelie and Unseelie courts came together on the Spring Equinox of 1648 and agreed to the Equinox Truce, a bargain that would end overt war and provide channels of diplomatic cooperation and rules of conduct between the courts.

Types of Fae

Fae

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