Faeries

There are generally accepted to be ten races of Faeries. There are twelve. The discrepancy is old, nobody at court will explain it, and pointing it out is considered rude.

Faeries are humanoid, winged, immortal, and magical. Every one of them metamorphosed into that shape from something else and remembers none of it. What separates them from the Goblins is not ancestry or power but the Kingdom's judgment that they are beautiful — which is to say, that they look sufficiently like humans, the "godlike" giants of the Waking World whose approval no Faerie has ever actually sought and whose world no Faerie has ever seen improved by their presence.

That judgment is the load-bearing beam of the whole society. The more humanlike the Faerie, the higher the race is ranked; the High Sidhe at the top are indistinguishable from humans save for their impossible beauty, and hold the entirety of the nobility. Every other race is a "lesser" form, and every lesser Faerie is encouraged to believe that right thinking, right action, and devout service to the Queen will one day metamorphose them upward.

No race is one people. Each has its tribes — the word is inexact everywhere and refused outright in two provinces — split along the same lines the land splits: who stayed in the old country, who works the productive middle, and who moved toward the capital. Each race's page lists its own.

Common Traits

All Faeries share three things, covered in detail under Magic:

• Flight — summonable insect wings, unique in pattern to each individual but recognizable by race. Fast, agile, and exhausting; minutes at a time, and useless at altitude.
• Glamour — transformation magic, used at minimum to show and hide the wings, and at its height to pass as something else entirely. It requires concentration, which Faeries are bad at.
• Attuned Magic — one element per race, always available, growing in scope with practice rather than changing in kind.