Feywild

The Feywild, also known as the plane of Faerie, was a an "echo" of the Prime Material Plane suffused with potent magic. It was the place from which fey originated, and from where the first elves arrived.  

Description

The Feywild was a place of unrestrained and awe-inspiring natural beauty. The plane is always bathed in twilight of the setting (or perhaps rising) sun, with lanterns and fireflies providing additional, haunting lights. As an "echo" of the Prime Material plane, its geography was similar although not entirely identical to that of Toril, but the natural landscape was markedly more dramatic and beautiful in the Feywild, with mountains standing straighter and sharper, rivers flowing clearer and faster, and flowers bloom brighter and more fragrantly. While most Prime locations and landmarks had analogues in the Feywild, sites of civilization in the Prime could be so unimportant in the Feywild as to be easily missed, while natural landmarks might be significantly more majestic or extreme. Navigating the Feywild was further complicated by the fact that distances did not always make sense. While two landmarks might be the same distance apart as in the Prime when travelling in one direction, they might be inexplicably further or closer on the return trip.   Further complicating any visit to the plane was that time did not flow the same in the Feywild as on the Prime. While any visitor would experience time flowing as normal, it was often the case that more time was passing in the Prime, sometimes on the order of weeks, months, or years longer than expected, although it was also possible for little or no time to have passed instead. More concerning, leaving the Feywild could have dire consequences. Lost time could suddenly "catch up" to a mortal, sending them into fits of exhaustion or hunger, or even killing them instantly if many years had passed. At the same time, those with no fey ancestry might find their memories of time spent in the Feywild going hazy, if not vanishing altogether.   Arcane magic ran more freely and powerfully in the Feywild than it did in the Prime, and it was for this reason that so many of its inhabitants and landmarks were suffused with magic. Visitors to the plane found that all sensations, both sensory and emotional, were heightened. Smells were stronger, colors were more vivid, and sounds were clearer, but at the same time shadows were darker and impulses were harder to control. As an additional consequence of this all-encompassing magic, arcane spells tended to be amplified in power or duration when cast in the Feywild.  

Cosmography

The Feywild has had a unique relationship with the Prime Material plane, and consequently was in an unusual cosmological position. When it was created as an "echo" of the Prime, it was relatively easy to travel between them. However, its proximity to the Prime would ebb and flow, and it became an outer plane for much of history prior to the Spellplague, although it existed outside of both the Great Wheel and World Tree cosmologies. Despite this, it retained the unique quality of being closely connected with the Prime. Creatures and fey could sometimes pass back-and-forth between the two planes at matching geographical locations without needing to traverse the Astral Plane. The Feywild also had crossings which connected directly to Arvandor, the Deep Wilds, and the Gates of the Moon, although these were often dangerous or well-guarded. However, there were no connections to most transitive planes, including the Astral Plane, Ethereal Plane, or Plane of Shadow.   Following the Spellplague, the Feywild was returned to its original status as a parallel plane to the Prime. Travel between the two planes continued to be fairly easy as the boundary between them was quite thin, and in some cases there were regions which existed in an overlapping space between the two, a phenomenon sometimes called worldfall. The most common means of traversing in or out of the Feywild was through a fey crossroad, which often required special knowledge of how to pass between the planes. Other locations, such as at Myth Drannor, could be almost completely closed off from the Feywild.