Post by Lerochelle De La Fae on Mar 1, 2010 6:54:42 GMT -5
Merry Gentry’s Fae World
(Please note after each specie name.... (P)....this means that that specie is an approved playable specie.)
The Fae Species:
SIDHE: ...(P)....[(Seelie/UnSeelie)(Summer/Winter)(Light/Dark)] –
The royalty of the fae, the Sidhe are divided into the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Usually marked with triple irises and bright glowing skin. Sidhe (pronounced 'shee') literally means "people of the (fairy) hills". It is the Gaelic name for the fairies in both Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland.
THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE COURTS: One thing the Unseelie teaches is love of every form of fey. There is beauty in all of us. Ugly is simply not a word you use at the Unseelie Court. At the Seelie Court I was considered ugly, not tall enough, not slender enough, and my hair was the blood auburn of the Unseelie Court, not the more human red of the Seelie Court. (KoS 109.)
The Fae courts have never gone outside to humans for justice. Faerie rule; faerie law. Or truthfully, sidhe rule; sidhe law. The sidhe had ruled faerie for longer than anyone could remember. Since some of those memories stretched back thousands of years, maybe the sidhe have always been in charge, but it tasted like a lie. The sidhe do not lie, for to truly lie is to be cast out of faerie, exiled. (LOF 1)
Adultery is a crime among the sidhe. (KoS 359)
They torture people at both courts,<snip>. Queen Andais just doesn't hide what she does because she is not ashamed of it. <snip> Am I stating for the record that King Taranis' golden court tortures as punishment? I am so stating. (Lof 24)
SEELIE COURT (SUMMER/LIGHT):
Also called "the Bringers of Beauty and Wishes" whose power descends from their King or Queen. The Seelie Court is ruled by King Taranis. It is the court of light.
Description of parts of the Seelie court: Rooms of marble and gold. Rooms with cold pink walls with veins of silver and pillars of gold. Rooms of white marble with veins of pink and lavender and pillars of silver….There was nothing organic in this place of marble and metal. It was a palace, but it was not a home for beings who had begun life as nature spirits. (Lof 254)Though Taranis is the King of Light and Illusion, it is a saying in the Seelie court, "Whatever the king says is truth." (Lof 241)
The greatest punishment of all is to be castout of the Seelie Court, the golden court. But it is punishment because Taranis and his nobles have convinced themselves that once you join the Unseelie Court you become a monster. Not just in actions, but in body. They tell their people they will become deformed if they join with the Unseelie. (lof 16) The Seelie court try and ape human behavior. They're stuck somewhere between the centuries of fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred, but the try to play human more than the Unseelie. Many of those exiled to our court (Unseelie) have been exiled because of simply wanting to remain true to their original natures, and not let themselves be civilized in a human manner. (LoF 29)
UNSEELIE COURT (WINTER/SHADOW):
Also known as the lesser court or the dark court ruled by Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness. They take in all those turned away from the Seelie court.
Description of parts of the Unseelie Court: The white light that filled the hallway was sourceless, coming from everywhere and nowhere…once upon a time there were entire worlds underground. Meadows and orchards and a sun and moon of our very own. I've seen the dying orchards and flower gardens with a few straggling blossoms but no underground moon or sun….and the blueprint of the interior seems to change at random, sometimes with you walking through it, like walking through a funhouse made of stone instead of mirrors. (KoS 283)
OTHER SPECIES OF FAE:
BROWNIE: Customarily brownies are said to inhabit houses and aid in tasks around the house. However, they don't like to be seen and will only work at night, traditionally in exchange for small gifts or food. They take quite a delight in porridge and honey. They usually abandon the house if their gifts are called payments, or if the owners of the house misuse them. Brownies make their homes in an unused part of the house. The brownie had the qualities of man and spirit curiously commingled. They have a peculiar fondness for solitude at certain seasons of the year. About the end of Harvest they would become more sociable, and hover about farmyards, stables and cattle-houses. They have a particular fondness for the products of the dairy, and can be a fearful intruder on milkmaids, who made regular libations of milk or cream to charm them off, or to procure their favour. They could be seen supposedly only by those who had the second sight, though instances where they made themselves visible to people not so Gifted have been rumoured. They are said to have been a jolly personable folk. Every manor house had its brownie and in the kitchen, close by the fire was a seat, which was left unoccupied for him/her. When irritated through neglect or disrespectful treatment they will not hesitate to become wantonly mischievous. Usually they are rather gainly and good-natured rather than formidable. Though, on the whole, a lazy and lounging, they would often bestir themselves on behalf of those who understand them. When in this mood, they are known to perform many arduous exploits in kitchen, barn and stable, with marvellous precision and rapidity. These kind turns were done without bribe, fee or reward, for the offer of any one of these will banish them forever. Kind treatment is all they ever wish for, and it never fails to procure their favour.
These creatures are shorter than most humans. Four to five feet in height, with brown hair covering all of their bodies, and no nose. They frequently have great abilities with telekenesis and have an inborn immunity to iron.
DEMI-FAE: Small, often winged fey ruled by Queen Niceven. It is said that where the demi-fae travel, faerie follows. The demi-fey seem to have many secrets, one of which is that a few are able to grow larger to become human-size. They are masters of glamour and often appear as birds, butterflies, or other winged insects. Diminutive Fairies. They ARE Faerie, the raw stuff of it. They can grow to larger sizes and can be as small as a gnat. They have a fondness for blood.
WILL-O-WISPS: The Seelie version of the demi-fey.
REDCAP: Cannibals, murderers, monsters. Redcaps are said to murder travelers who stray into their homes and dye their hats with their victims' blood (from which they get their name). Redcaps must kill regularly, for if the blood staining their hats dries out, they die. Redcaps are very fast in spite of the heavy iron pikes they wield and the iron-shod boots they wear. Outrunning a redcap is supposedly impossible. They are depicted as sturdy old men with red eyes, taloned hands and large teeth, wearing a red cap and bearing a pikestaff in the left hand. Red Caps once were a kingdom among themselves.
GOBLINS: Goblins are considered the foot soldiers of the Unseelie Court since they do most of the fighting during war. Described as intimidating horrific creatures (from a human perspective) the Goblins consider moles and extra limbs and eyes marks of beauty. Goblin society is violent and taking blood and flesh during sex is expected among them. Kingship among the Goblins comes not through inheritance but battle challenge. Kurag is the goblin king. They consider anything that comes out of the body more valuable than jewels or weapons. It was also an insult if the men did not leer at your women. It implied that she was ugly and infertile. An alliance can be formed with the goblins if the rights of both blood and flesh are invoked. Sex should always be negotiated before starting when dealing with goblins. Goblin society represented the ultimate in Darwinian evolution: only the strongest survive, and only the very strongest rule. In goblin society the lower you go, the more respect you feel for the person you are addressing. The Goblins are the foot soldiers of the Unseelie. To drink of someone’s blood among the goblins is considered theft, the only greater theft is a theft of flesh. It is an insult not to leer at a woman, as a goblin, and public sex is common place for them. Negotiating a contract of what was and was not acceptable is an important part of Goblin sex. "The goblins loved flesh better than blood or sex To share flesh meant both sex and the greater gift of an allowed bite that would leave a scar until your lover died." Goblins are a separate court. Beauty to them is multiple limbs, eyes, heads, and breasts. They are ruled by a king, who holds his throne by force of strengths; they have their own culture separate from the sidhe.
SELKIE:...(P)... Selkies are able to transform to human form by shedding their seal skins, and can return to seal form by putting it back on. Stories concerning selkies are generally romantic tragedies. Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a selkie, and wakes to find them gone. Other times the human will hide the selkie's skin, thus preventing them from returning to seal form. A selkie can only make contact with one particular human for a short amount of time before they must return to the sea. They are not able to make contact with that human again for seven years, unless the human is to steal their selkie's skin and hide it or burn it. Examples of such stories are the ballad, The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry and the movie The Secret of Roan Inish.
In The Secret of Roan Inish, a fisherman steals the selkie's pelt while she is sunbathing. She is then forced to return to his house, as she cannot escape back into the sea, and becomes his wife and bears him children. The skin of the seal gives her power over men, but without it she is a mortal woman, trapped on land, slave to the whims of her husband. The life there slowly suffocates her and she spends much time splashing in the shallows of the ocean. Years later, one of the children sees the pelt and asks what it is. The wife immediately knows, drops what she is doing and retrieves the pelt from its hiding place, having long ago despaired of ever finding it. She does not hesitate; she rushes to the ocean to return to her former life as a seal.
A Selkie can be Male or Female.
FAUNS:...(P)... Fauns are spirits of untamed woodland. Romans connected their fauns with the Greek satyrs, wild and orgiastic drunken followers of Bacchus (Greek Dionysus). Fauns have horns and resemble goats below the waist, humans above; fauns have goat-like hooves. The Romans also had a god named Faunus and goddess Fauna, who, like the fauns, were goat-people. They’re powers are elemental and they tend to be very shy. They do have a limited Glamour.
SLUAGH (or The Host): A rude name for the lesser Unseelie fey. The Host was a polite phrase. Only the Unseelie could say 'slaugh' and not have it be a mortal insult. Nightmarish creatures, the Sluagh are feared even among the Unseelie where inhumanity is common. Among the Sluagh are the nightflyers and nighthags. Nightflyers make up the creatures of the hunt. The Sluagh are creatures that hunt Sidhe and can be called on by their King to do just that. They are ruled by Sholto, shadowspawn and a half sidhe, half nightflyer mix. Origin: A horde of evil spirits in Scotland, who fly in groups like birds. According to Irish legends, they are the souls of deceased sinners and they try to take other souls with them. They come flying from the west and therefore, when someone is dying, people keep the windows on the west-side closed. This way, the soul of the deceased can not be intercepted before it reaches heaven. The dream of all creepy-crawly which crawl about in the dark of the night, tap on the windows and can never be seen in the clear light. The Host is not one type of creature but rather a gathering of multiple types. It is ruled by Sholto, Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows, King of the Sluagh.
NIGHTFLYER (MALE): A winged creature under the command of Sholto. Few creatures in Faerie were stronger than Sidhe, nightflyers were one of them. Most of their body parts are able to regenerate and contain a nest if tentacles resting in their abdomen. The royals have spine down the length of their peni which meant they were fertile males.
NIGHT HAGS (FEMALE): Female nightflyers of the slaugh.
HELLHOUNDS: Also known as the 'hounds of the great hunt'. They foreshadow death or doom. Having nothing to do with the Christian concept of Hell, the Hounds are among the many creatures who disappeared from Faerie but have returned since Meredith's rise to power.
JACK-IN-IRONS: In folklore, it is a dangerous giant from Yorkshire that can often be found haunting lonely roads. Double tusked is highly prized and a curve on the end is considered a sign of virility. Uther is one of them.
THE NAMELESS: It was the last attempt by both courts to keep the courts from dying. Every fey was required to put magic into the nameless and it was held somewhere within faerie to keep the magic from disappearing. It's a evil manifestation of the powers from all the sidhe combined into one form. It could only be physically seen if it had been hurt because it could move through time and space.
PHOUKAS (POOKAS): A type of fey that can change shape from a horse to a dog to a human or any mix of the above.
STARVIN' ONES: They are the remnants of the first gods. If someone were to discover their name and give them followers, they could, theoretically, rise to "life" again. Human ghosts do not have such options. To raise them would mean automatic execution with no trial.
Copyright © 2010 by Aydryan Underwood for the Anita Blake Roleplay in Wood Bourne
(Please note after each specie name.... (P)....this means that that specie is an approved playable specie.)
The Fae Species:
SIDHE: ...(P)....[(Seelie/UnSeelie)(Summer/Winter)(Light/Dark)] –
The royalty of the fae, the Sidhe are divided into the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Usually marked with triple irises and bright glowing skin. Sidhe (pronounced 'shee') literally means "people of the (fairy) hills". It is the Gaelic name for the fairies in both Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland.
THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE COURTS: One thing the Unseelie teaches is love of every form of fey. There is beauty in all of us. Ugly is simply not a word you use at the Unseelie Court. At the Seelie Court I was considered ugly, not tall enough, not slender enough, and my hair was the blood auburn of the Unseelie Court, not the more human red of the Seelie Court. (KoS 109.)
The Fae courts have never gone outside to humans for justice. Faerie rule; faerie law. Or truthfully, sidhe rule; sidhe law. The sidhe had ruled faerie for longer than anyone could remember. Since some of those memories stretched back thousands of years, maybe the sidhe have always been in charge, but it tasted like a lie. The sidhe do not lie, for to truly lie is to be cast out of faerie, exiled. (LOF 1)
Adultery is a crime among the sidhe. (KoS 359)
They torture people at both courts,<snip>. Queen Andais just doesn't hide what she does because she is not ashamed of it. <snip> Am I stating for the record that King Taranis' golden court tortures as punishment? I am so stating. (Lof 24)
SEELIE COURT (SUMMER/LIGHT):
Also called "the Bringers of Beauty and Wishes" whose power descends from their King or Queen. The Seelie Court is ruled by King Taranis. It is the court of light.
Description of parts of the Seelie court: Rooms of marble and gold. Rooms with cold pink walls with veins of silver and pillars of gold. Rooms of white marble with veins of pink and lavender and pillars of silver….There was nothing organic in this place of marble and metal. It was a palace, but it was not a home for beings who had begun life as nature spirits. (Lof 254)Though Taranis is the King of Light and Illusion, it is a saying in the Seelie court, "Whatever the king says is truth." (Lof 241)
The greatest punishment of all is to be castout of the Seelie Court, the golden court. But it is punishment because Taranis and his nobles have convinced themselves that once you join the Unseelie Court you become a monster. Not just in actions, but in body. They tell their people they will become deformed if they join with the Unseelie. (lof 16) The Seelie court try and ape human behavior. They're stuck somewhere between the centuries of fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred, but the try to play human more than the Unseelie. Many of those exiled to our court (Unseelie) have been exiled because of simply wanting to remain true to their original natures, and not let themselves be civilized in a human manner. (LoF 29)
UNSEELIE COURT (WINTER/SHADOW):
Also known as the lesser court or the dark court ruled by Andais, Queen of Air and Darkness. They take in all those turned away from the Seelie court.
Description of parts of the Unseelie Court: The white light that filled the hallway was sourceless, coming from everywhere and nowhere…once upon a time there were entire worlds underground. Meadows and orchards and a sun and moon of our very own. I've seen the dying orchards and flower gardens with a few straggling blossoms but no underground moon or sun….and the blueprint of the interior seems to change at random, sometimes with you walking through it, like walking through a funhouse made of stone instead of mirrors. (KoS 283)
OTHER SPECIES OF FAE:
BROWNIE: Customarily brownies are said to inhabit houses and aid in tasks around the house. However, they don't like to be seen and will only work at night, traditionally in exchange for small gifts or food. They take quite a delight in porridge and honey. They usually abandon the house if their gifts are called payments, or if the owners of the house misuse them. Brownies make their homes in an unused part of the house. The brownie had the qualities of man and spirit curiously commingled. They have a peculiar fondness for solitude at certain seasons of the year. About the end of Harvest they would become more sociable, and hover about farmyards, stables and cattle-houses. They have a particular fondness for the products of the dairy, and can be a fearful intruder on milkmaids, who made regular libations of milk or cream to charm them off, or to procure their favour. They could be seen supposedly only by those who had the second sight, though instances where they made themselves visible to people not so Gifted have been rumoured. They are said to have been a jolly personable folk. Every manor house had its brownie and in the kitchen, close by the fire was a seat, which was left unoccupied for him/her. When irritated through neglect or disrespectful treatment they will not hesitate to become wantonly mischievous. Usually they are rather gainly and good-natured rather than formidable. Though, on the whole, a lazy and lounging, they would often bestir themselves on behalf of those who understand them. When in this mood, they are known to perform many arduous exploits in kitchen, barn and stable, with marvellous precision and rapidity. These kind turns were done without bribe, fee or reward, for the offer of any one of these will banish them forever. Kind treatment is all they ever wish for, and it never fails to procure their favour.
These creatures are shorter than most humans. Four to five feet in height, with brown hair covering all of their bodies, and no nose. They frequently have great abilities with telekenesis and have an inborn immunity to iron.
DEMI-FAE: Small, often winged fey ruled by Queen Niceven. It is said that where the demi-fae travel, faerie follows. The demi-fey seem to have many secrets, one of which is that a few are able to grow larger to become human-size. They are masters of glamour and often appear as birds, butterflies, or other winged insects. Diminutive Fairies. They ARE Faerie, the raw stuff of it. They can grow to larger sizes and can be as small as a gnat. They have a fondness for blood.
WILL-O-WISPS: The Seelie version of the demi-fey.
REDCAP: Cannibals, murderers, monsters. Redcaps are said to murder travelers who stray into their homes and dye their hats with their victims' blood (from which they get their name). Redcaps must kill regularly, for if the blood staining their hats dries out, they die. Redcaps are very fast in spite of the heavy iron pikes they wield and the iron-shod boots they wear. Outrunning a redcap is supposedly impossible. They are depicted as sturdy old men with red eyes, taloned hands and large teeth, wearing a red cap and bearing a pikestaff in the left hand. Red Caps once were a kingdom among themselves.
GOBLINS: Goblins are considered the foot soldiers of the Unseelie Court since they do most of the fighting during war. Described as intimidating horrific creatures (from a human perspective) the Goblins consider moles and extra limbs and eyes marks of beauty. Goblin society is violent and taking blood and flesh during sex is expected among them. Kingship among the Goblins comes not through inheritance but battle challenge. Kurag is the goblin king. They consider anything that comes out of the body more valuable than jewels or weapons. It was also an insult if the men did not leer at your women. It implied that she was ugly and infertile. An alliance can be formed with the goblins if the rights of both blood and flesh are invoked. Sex should always be negotiated before starting when dealing with goblins. Goblin society represented the ultimate in Darwinian evolution: only the strongest survive, and only the very strongest rule. In goblin society the lower you go, the more respect you feel for the person you are addressing. The Goblins are the foot soldiers of the Unseelie. To drink of someone’s blood among the goblins is considered theft, the only greater theft is a theft of flesh. It is an insult not to leer at a woman, as a goblin, and public sex is common place for them. Negotiating a contract of what was and was not acceptable is an important part of Goblin sex. "The goblins loved flesh better than blood or sex To share flesh meant both sex and the greater gift of an allowed bite that would leave a scar until your lover died." Goblins are a separate court. Beauty to them is multiple limbs, eyes, heads, and breasts. They are ruled by a king, who holds his throne by force of strengths; they have their own culture separate from the sidhe.
SELKIE:...(P)... Selkies are able to transform to human form by shedding their seal skins, and can return to seal form by putting it back on. Stories concerning selkies are generally romantic tragedies. Sometimes the human will not know that their lover is a selkie, and wakes to find them gone. Other times the human will hide the selkie's skin, thus preventing them from returning to seal form. A selkie can only make contact with one particular human for a short amount of time before they must return to the sea. They are not able to make contact with that human again for seven years, unless the human is to steal their selkie's skin and hide it or burn it. Examples of such stories are the ballad, The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry and the movie The Secret of Roan Inish.
In The Secret of Roan Inish, a fisherman steals the selkie's pelt while she is sunbathing. She is then forced to return to his house, as she cannot escape back into the sea, and becomes his wife and bears him children. The skin of the seal gives her power over men, but without it she is a mortal woman, trapped on land, slave to the whims of her husband. The life there slowly suffocates her and she spends much time splashing in the shallows of the ocean. Years later, one of the children sees the pelt and asks what it is. The wife immediately knows, drops what she is doing and retrieves the pelt from its hiding place, having long ago despaired of ever finding it. She does not hesitate; she rushes to the ocean to return to her former life as a seal.
A Selkie can be Male or Female.
FAUNS:...(P)... Fauns are spirits of untamed woodland. Romans connected their fauns with the Greek satyrs, wild and orgiastic drunken followers of Bacchus (Greek Dionysus). Fauns have horns and resemble goats below the waist, humans above; fauns have goat-like hooves. The Romans also had a god named Faunus and goddess Fauna, who, like the fauns, were goat-people. They’re powers are elemental and they tend to be very shy. They do have a limited Glamour.
SLUAGH (or The Host): A rude name for the lesser Unseelie fey. The Host was a polite phrase. Only the Unseelie could say 'slaugh' and not have it be a mortal insult. Nightmarish creatures, the Sluagh are feared even among the Unseelie where inhumanity is common. Among the Sluagh are the nightflyers and nighthags. Nightflyers make up the creatures of the hunt. The Sluagh are creatures that hunt Sidhe and can be called on by their King to do just that. They are ruled by Sholto, shadowspawn and a half sidhe, half nightflyer mix. Origin: A horde of evil spirits in Scotland, who fly in groups like birds. According to Irish legends, they are the souls of deceased sinners and they try to take other souls with them. They come flying from the west and therefore, when someone is dying, people keep the windows on the west-side closed. This way, the soul of the deceased can not be intercepted before it reaches heaven. The dream of all creepy-crawly which crawl about in the dark of the night, tap on the windows and can never be seen in the clear light. The Host is not one type of creature but rather a gathering of multiple types. It is ruled by Sholto, Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows, King of the Sluagh.
NIGHTFLYER (MALE): A winged creature under the command of Sholto. Few creatures in Faerie were stronger than Sidhe, nightflyers were one of them. Most of their body parts are able to regenerate and contain a nest if tentacles resting in their abdomen. The royals have spine down the length of their peni which meant they were fertile males.
NIGHT HAGS (FEMALE): Female nightflyers of the slaugh.
HELLHOUNDS: Also known as the 'hounds of the great hunt'. They foreshadow death or doom. Having nothing to do with the Christian concept of Hell, the Hounds are among the many creatures who disappeared from Faerie but have returned since Meredith's rise to power.
JACK-IN-IRONS: In folklore, it is a dangerous giant from Yorkshire that can often be found haunting lonely roads. Double tusked is highly prized and a curve on the end is considered a sign of virility. Uther is one of them.
THE NAMELESS: It was the last attempt by both courts to keep the courts from dying. Every fey was required to put magic into the nameless and it was held somewhere within faerie to keep the magic from disappearing. It's a evil manifestation of the powers from all the sidhe combined into one form. It could only be physically seen if it had been hurt because it could move through time and space.
PHOUKAS (POOKAS): A type of fey that can change shape from a horse to a dog to a human or any mix of the above.
STARVIN' ONES: They are the remnants of the first gods. If someone were to discover their name and give them followers, they could, theoretically, rise to "life" again. Human ghosts do not have such options. To raise them would mean automatic execution with no trial.
Copyright © 2010 by Aydryan Underwood for the Anita Blake Roleplay in Wood Bourne