The Faywilds

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

Description

The Feywild is 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 is similar although not entirely identical to that of the world. The natural landscape is 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 are comparable in certain respects in the Feywils; 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 is further complicated by the fact that distances does 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 does not flow the same in the Feywild as on the Prime. While any visitor would experience time flowing as normal. It is 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 runs more freely and powerfully in the Feywild than it does in the Prime, and it is for this reason that so many of its inhabitants and landmarks are suffused with magic. Visitors to the plane find that all sensations, both sensory and emotional, are heightened. Smells are stronger, colors are more vivid, and sounds are clearer, but at the same time shadows are darker and impulses are harder to control. As an additional consequence of this all-encompassing magic, arcane spells tend to be amplified in power or duration when cast in the Feywild.  

Cosmography

The Feywild has a unique relationship with the Prime Material plane, and consequently is 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 has ebb and flow. Despite this, it retained the unique quality of being closely connected with the Prime.  

Notable Locations

Though much of the Feywild is the same as the Prime geographically, there are differences, and more importantly, the lands answered to different powers. Much of the elven or eladrin civilizations had their earliest roots here and abandoned remnants of their culture littered the landscape. Unlike the elves, however, who had all but abandoned the Feywild, some eladrin remained behind in the Feywild, most notably the "noble" eladrin, who maintained strong kingdoms and citadels. Some notable elven cities and settlements were located at points where the barrier between the planes was extremely thin, and as a result they existed in both the Prime and the Feywild simultaneously. Such locations included Evermeet, Evereska, and New Sharandar.  

Feydark

The Feydark is the echo of the Underdark in the Feywild. Like most parts of the Feywild, it is more majestic and fantastic than its natural counterpart, with cavernous maze-like tunnels filled with exotic fungi.  

History

The Feywild was created by the Primordials, beings of power comparable with the gods. Finding some things of the Prime too "bright" or too "dark," the Primordials tore these parts from the Prime, creating the Feywild and the Plane of Shadow (which later became the Shadowfell), respectively. It was believed that the original deities worshiped by the elves, the Faerie gods of the Seelie Court, originated in the Feywild. The first creatures to join them in this world were the fey, and came in many forms. Circa -34000 UY, the plane came to be ruled by a mysterious fey creator race, who gave rise to the first korreds, sprites, and pixies.   Circa -27000 UY was the first record of the fey immigrating to the Prime Martial Plane, which brought them into conflict with the dragons. The Fey ushered the green elves, ancestors of the wild elves and dark elves, to the Prime, hoping that the (at the time) primitive creatures would help them. Later, circa -25400 UY, a small group of gold elves and silver elves also arrived on the Prime following a magical experiment gone terribly awry that destroyed the Feywild island of Tintageer.  

Inhabitants

The inhabitants of the Feywild varie in temperament from kind to malicious, but almost all have a mischievous side to them and few stopped to consider the needs or worries of visitors to their home. While many of those living in Faerie were untamed, large numbers also congregated according to race or by political allegiance.   The fey eladrin has the closest thing to a civilization in the Feywild. They are the descendants of the elves that never left the Feywild, and over the millennia had become suffused with the plane's primal magic.  

• When a person gets injured in the Feywild, their blood could spawn redcaps, a type of bloodthirsty creature that ceased to be if it did not have fresh blood on its cap every three days.
• Boggles are a type of mischievous creature that spawnes when a person is overcome by loneliness or abandonment.
• Meenlocks are a deformed fey that spawn when someone is overwhelmed by fear in a place touched by or in Feywild.
• Hag are a malicious and varied race of fey that delight in tormenting mortals.
• Sprites are a race of small fey with the ability to tell if a creature is good or evil by the sound and feel of the beating of the creatures heart.
• Satyrs are fey that look like a man from waist up and a goat from waist down.
• Goblinoids, ogres, giants, and blights could be found in the more sinister regions of the plane.
• Dryads are female fey tied to the trees of the wood.

 

Seelie and Unseelie Fey

Most but not all fey serve one of two godlike archfey queens, Titania the Summer Queen or the Queen of Air and Darkness, who share an ancient and bitter rivalry. Those who belonged to Titiana's Seelie Court are known as seelie fey, and are generally good-aligned and represented or celebrated the beauty of nature. They are known to be honorable toward visitors to the Feywild, if a bit mischievous, but they do not welcome non-fey to join their Court.   Those who belonged to the Queen of Air and Darkness's Unseelie Court are known as unseelie fey, and are generally evil-aligned and represented or celebrated the darker and more macabre aspects of the natural world. They are generally more dangerous and untrustworthy in their dealings with visitors, however they are known to be more welcoming of non-fey into their Court. The Unseelie Court work tirelessly to undermine the Seelie Court, sometimes violently but more often through games and cruel mischief.   The remaining inhabitants of the Feywild either hold no allegiances except at their own whims, or serve another of the archfey, such as Oberon, Hyrsam, or the Prince of Frost. Uglier inhabitants of the Feywild, such as fomorians and hags, are generally not welcome among either the Seelie or Unseelie Courts.   Source: Forgotten realms