The Feywild

Long after the humans who landed on Lintukoto evolved into the Keiju (the Elves), built a new culture and ethos for themselves, and later divided themselves into various factions (which eventually became distinct ethnic groups), the Jalo Keiju, the High Elves, achieved a level of technomancy that began to rival even that of the Celestials, who had been in relentless pursuit of new abilities since even before their post-Earth colonies were founded. The Jalo had a somewhat later start, since countless generations of Keiju had lived and died on Lintukoto since civilization there was first established before they decided to go beyond the bounds of the simple, if Dionystic, culture of the Keiju to embrace that curiosity that defined humanity for so long. They were aided in their experiments in no small part by the advent of the Weave, the field of technomancy-powered energy that the Celestials bound to the Cosmic Microwave Background across the whole of the universe. With access to the Weave, the scientists and mages of the Jalo were able to rapidly accelerate their culture's own technomancy-enhanced research. (Note: the other Keiju of Lintukoto also bent the Weave to suit their own purposes, but this took on a more "divine," nature-worshiping bent for both the Metsä (wood elves) and Meri (sea elves), while the Vaeltaja (dark elves) used it for more practical purposes to help them endure the self-imposed hardship of wandering in the Forever Night.   There are many reality-bending aspects of technomancy, but of course a few advancements were the lofty aims of many dabblers in the techo-arcane. These included instant communication across long distances, the ability to traverse these distances instantly, the manipulation of thoughts, the manipulation of energy and matter using the mind, the conjuration of matter and energy from elsewhere, the creation of new life itself, escaping from the confines of not only death but of the limitations of being bound to a physical body, the manipulation of time, and finally, the creation of alternate planes of reality with properties very different from those found within our own mundane realm, over which the creator might exercise some level of control.   While the Celestials had pioneered this last ability and eventually become masters of it, with only the unknowable beings of the Far Realm challenging that mastery, the archmages of the Jalo discovered this power for themselves after aeons of painstaking research. By that time, they had been locked away in their towers for generations (which are quite long by elven reckoning). Though dedicated to their arcane studies, they had developed a palpable sense of jealously for the others of elvenkind, their neighbors the Metsä especially, who by then had, through the subtle three-way connection they had developed between themselves, the Weave, and nature itself, become much closer to and more appreciative of nature and its sovereignty over all things. The Jalo sought a shortcut so that they might get more than a taste for this lifestyle and connection to the universe.   So, they used their knew technomancical prowess to construct for themselves a plane, a universe all their own. Within in they built an infinite wilderness full of nature, stylized and idealized by themselves, colored not only by their own experiences in the woods and glades of Lintukoto but by ancient memories and fantasies of humanity on Earth. They filled this place, which was not exactly a planet for it had no particular shape nor relation to celestial bodies, with creatures from ancient Earth, manufactured again to suit their whims, and with fantastic creatures such as faeries, nymphs, dryads, centaurs, unicorns, satyrs, unicorns, and even firbolgs and gnomes. They built taller mountains than anywhere in the known universe, denser forests, deeper lakes. They gave themselves immortal bodies that they could change at will from man to woman and everything between and without, from elf to unicorn or satyr or faerie. They could bend the shape of the Feywild (the name they gave it according to their whimsy) to their wills.   However, they knew that living forever as an immortal being in complete control of their surroundings would very quickly (at least, on the timeline of eternity) become something of a bore. To proactively combat this eventually, they encoded within the very stuff of the Feywild a certain intrinsic chaos, a sense of wonder and whimsy that held to no particular set of laws either natural or moral. And so, the Feywild was imbued with the ability to surprise even the godlike for all of time ever after, and they made this place their home. There they lived with their creations as well as any who would dare venture into such a strange and inherently magical place. When the rest of the Keiju learned of the Feywild, and of the archmages (now calling themselves the Archfey) who now inhabited it, many long to live there themselves and so did, and the Archfey were largely happy to have them, as the more the merrier. Gradually the magic and chaos of that realm seeped into the very being of those Keiju, changing them forever into the Eladrin, the Fey-Elves.   The archfey eventually formed two loose coalitions, calling themselves the Seelie Court (or the Summer Court), and the Unseelie Court (the Winter Court). The queen of the Summer Court called herself Titiana, while her sister, ruler of the Unseelie, took no name and was called simply the Queen of Air and Darkness. The political differences between these two factions are difficult to understand for those not immersed in the blue-orange morality of the Feywild, a place where pain and suffering are but curiosities and pleasure and plenty can be created with the wave of a hand. At a glance, the Summer Court can seem more concerned with things that would be considered conventionally pleasing (aesthetically or otherwise) and good, while the Unseelie see more value in the juxtaposition of beauty and darkness, and have a taste for cruelty. These concepts in the mortal sense, however, are all largely alien to these beings; instead it can be thought of as differences in how best to extract the most surprise and pleasure from their interactions with the world. The Summer Court approach this venture (the goal of their eternal lives) with a sort of unrestrained maximalism, while those of the Unseelie see that light and darkness must coexist if pleasure can really please the Archfey as much as possible.   While some among the sentient creations were perfectly happy living in this plane of unending plenty and whimsy, others among them were not always so complacent, and for varying reasons. Three such examples were the fomorians, the gnomes (Törpe), and the firbolgs. The first two were actually the creation by the Archfey of their own fey-based versions of the descendants of humanity from the world of Sivár, races known as the giants and the dwarves to outsiders. Both of these piqued the now wholly alien interests of the Archfey. The giants they found to be somewhat perverse mockeries of their human lineage, and so they created the hideous and twisted giant-kin, the fomorians, and set them loose in the Feywild to be mocked. Some place the blame for this creation on the Unseelie court, but the origins remain unclear. Likewise, the Archfey found the dwarves to be ridiculously whimsical, for, at that time, their society had reverted to a nearly medieval culture. So, the gnomes were created as a mockery of their stouter cousins, though imbued with some of the chaos and nature of the Feywild. The reactions of these two races, once they discovered something of the nature of their origins, were decidedly different. The fomorians, in all their rage, went on the warpath against their creators, and when they were finally defeated (the Archfey would never resort to merely ending their existence and instead took the opportunity to recreate the wars between the faeries and fomorians from ancient myth), the twisted giantkin fled far below the surface of the Feywild's landscape. Many gnomes actually embraced the truth of their creation, their minds, like their dwarven cousins, delighting in the making of things, and what greater making could their be than the making of a people? Others, however, were less happy with their role in the Feywild, especially as their more mechanically and scientifically minded ventures were oftentimes at odds with the dominating nature of the Feywild's ecology. So, many of them left en mass to found their own culture back in the material world, on a very Earth-like planet they called Ujkoti.   With them traveled many firbolgs. These last, unlike the fomorians and the gnomes, were not the direct creation of the Archfey, but were rather beings that evolved out of the beasts of the Feywild itself, eventually gaining sentience.