Fabled

"Fabled" is the term used to describe mundane, non-magical folks who are descended from fae creatures of long ago. The word comes from the compound word "faeblood," meaning fairy blood or magic blood, and over time it was shortened and Anglicized into the homonym "fabled." Unlike the culture of a certain wizarding world, the term "fabled" does not have a negative connotation associated with it, save for those who are fae purists and deem associating with humans as sinful. Thankfully, though, most of those folks lived long ago. Magical and mundane have lived alongside one another for so long before the schism that pretty much everyone is a mix of something.   Back when the world was just the Outside, with no Veil and no Fae Realm, the magical folk and the mundane folk (who could also be referred to as "fae" and "human," though that would call into question the species differences between humans like us and the other humanoid races such as halflings and orcs) coexisted in the world surprisingly well. There were plenty of marriages and families of multiple races, some of which had particular traditions or traits. Some cities and towns contained more of a certain race than others, though systemic racism as we know it today was uncommon in most people's daily lives. The focus was on farming and living and thriving, not so much on wider racial or cultural differences.   But as we know, nothing lasts forever. Centuries of smaller conflict caused the fae folk to slowly go into hiding and be outcast from society. Initially, this presented as fae folk starting their own communities on the outskirts of mundane communities and vice versa, giving rise to towns and architectural styles that are known as "elven" or "orcish" that survive to this day in the Fae Realm. Those who looked the most human, for instance, half-elves, halflings, and tieflings with more human-looking skin tones and smaller horns, were able to live among humans more easily than their more visibly magical counterparts. Underground societies of elvish and halfling folks cropped up here and there; some tried to fully integrate into human society to avoid conflict altogether, occasionally at the expense of their own heritage.   Eventually, violence broke out. There was a series of magical hunts (real-world analogy: think of the witch hunts in Europe and colonial America, but on a larger scale than the true historical witch hunts) that forced many magical folk into hiding. Magic and sorcery were outlawed in most places, and offenders were jailed, exiled, or killed. After years of violence, the fae folk retreated into magically formed extradimensional locations around the world, connected by tunnels of magic and hidden from human beings by an invisible veil. These were created by the most powerful of magic users at that time, and continue to be upheld by magical scholars.   Centuries passed, and the stories of the fae folk became things of myth and legend in the human world. Some believe in them, but most do not. (See footnote.) Fae folk and stories of them made their way into human folklore, with tales of creatures like mermaids, dwarves, pixies, and elves. These tales are often greatly embellished, as expected when stories are handed down through generations upon generations, without much concern for their accuracy. In some ways, the human tendency to discount stories of magic as "fairy tales" meant only to entertain helps to protect the fae folk from another conflict like the last one. As long as nobody believes that they exist, nobody can be angry with them for existing.   Fae live for much longer than humans, generally speaking, and so they are more inclined to remember the conflicts between fae and humans in the past. While the fae have faded into legend for the mundane folk, humans are far from being merely a legend to the fae. Young folk in the Fae Realm are taught the history of human beings and the fae, how a relationship of harmony and trust became one of violence, lies, and bloody conflict.   In the current day, if you know where to look, you can see some of the fae ancestry in human beings. There are people who have an uncanny ability to feel the shifts in others' emotions, those who have a natural tendency for understanding nature, those who seem to attract animals. These are the people who are descended from creatures like werewolves or woodland elves. Some of the best swimmers are distantly descended from merfolk; the pressure under the water doesn't bother them.   There are, of course, those in the mundane world who know the truth. They are often the kinds of people who live in cottages in the woods, attuned to nature, and perhaps they practice some form of magic themselves. Sometimes, they are outcasts from society themselves, like the magical folk who came before them. Very few of them have ever visited the Fae Realm, but a handful do know of its existence (and the importance of keeping this existence a secret — if that information were to fall into the wrong hands and be believed, it would spell disaster for all those involved). Children also seem to have a greater insight into these old truths. They know certain things in their hearts and souls, but most forget them as they grow up. They'll look back with fondness on their childhood memories of going searching for dragons in the woods and building fairy houses for the pixies and learning about the Bible and saying, "See Mom, I knew that unicorns were real!" [Yes, unicorns do show up in the Bible, for those who might not have known.] But they acknowledge in their maturity that these things were fun children's games and entertaining tales, not things of truth. There is no such thing as dragons, or pixies, regardless of the fact that they once saw a pixie so clearly that they drew a picture of it and remembered its name. It's the few of these children that grow up to not lose their sense of wonder at the world, to keep asking questions and searching for answers, who see science as the study of how nature works and not the study of how to control it, that understand the existence of the Fae. Whether or not they are believed, they take comfort in knowing that they are not alone in their outlook on the world.