The Faye of the Wildlands

Each faye begins life in a melon sized, nut-like fruit. I have never seen this process myself, but the information I have gathered indicates that after conception, the external womb begins to develop, attached to the lower portion of the mother's abdomen. The womb is very delicate and many pregnancies end in miscarriage due to the difficulty of supporting and protecting the womb, combined with an almost three year gestation time. Those pregnancies which do reach term regularly result in upwards of fifty hand sized, winged "spryte". the collective noun for a group of spryte from a single pregnancy is a "falling".

The sentient inhabitants of the Wildlands have often bean mistaken for as many as six separate species due to the extreme differences between each growth stage. from my observations, the life stages of the Faye are as follows;   >"Spryte" a spryte's four wings resemble the wings of a maple seed. At this stage spryte have no hair and a colourful, iridescent exoskeleton. Spryte are not yet capable of speech or photosynthesis, but are mostly self sufficient, sustaining themselves on small insects, fallen fruits and discarded plant matter. All of the spryte from a falling generally reman together in a swarm, sometimes joining with other fallings to create mega swarms. If one of these swarms becomes large enough it can result in a plague, sweeping over the Wildlands and even beyond, into the territories of men, devouring everything in their path. These plagues are incredibly rare due to low birth rates. Most of the time there will only ever be one to two active fallings at a time in any faye settlement. Though faye do not directly care for their young as the races of men do, It is common for adult faye to leave food offerings out for spryte. This tradition is meant to show the spryte that a household has an abundance of resorses and will be ready to welcome new members into their "guild" (this is the faye's term for the chosen families that they form" when the spryte return as brownies.   > "Nymphs" around two years of age the members of a spryte swarm that have not been predated by wildlife will find a body of water with ample aquatic life to prey upon. Here they will shed their exoskeleton and begin a faze of rapid growth, developing the ability for speech and photosynthesis. When they emerge from the water around three years later, the nymphs will have grown to the hight of a human toddler* (please note that the physical proportions of a faye resemble those of an adult human throughout all of their life stages)   > "Brownies" Upon their return from their aquatic Nymph stage, the young faye begin to intergrate into proper faye society. By this time a falling will likely be reduced to a dozen or so in number. The group will typically split into groups of two or three and seek to intirgrat into a guild. They will spend the next twenty five or so years with their chosen family, being taught the traides of the family and finding their role within society. Many faye will stay within their first guild for their entire life.   > "Eylf" Faye reach sexual maturity around the age of thirty. At this age they will be around the hight of an adult human and their growth will slow considerably, though their limbs will continue to grow slowly throughout their entire life.   >"Jyant" When a faye has spent a long time on this world, they will have become elongated and wispy, reaching heights of ten to fifteen feet, though their heads and torsos will remain about the size of that of a human, their arms and legs will stretch out like the branches of trees, their fingers and toes becoming two to thee times the length of a human's digits.