"You are lucky, very lucky indeed to have arrived here, so close to the Clerical Grove. There is a vast wilderness, and much of it is inhabited by creatures that are not too friendly to those they don't know. And some of the Seasonal Courts are not too friendly to outsiders either; don't get me wrong, you may wish to visit them before you leave the Feywild, but it is important to understand the fey peoples, before you begin to mix with them. They are not like those from your world, not at all."

-Patron Saint of the Dawn, Samuttan

Fey Culture

Sylvan of the Woodland Realm

In the first eons Adra, when it was merely a plaything of the gods, the world was devoid of all normal life, only filled with lifeless and deathless beings, the Eldar. Faetari, and those who followed her, wanted to change this. They began to fill Adra with plant and animal life, along with her chief ally Gökotta, and made Adra green together. However, they had to constantly pump energy into the cycles of the world to keep this fragile life from dying. Eventually, the two gods decided to establish a permanent ecology, fueled by them both. Gökotta remained on the Prime Material Plane, to directly support life there. Faetari crafted for herself a world which laid upon the Prime Material Plane, and filled it with deathless Eldar which had life flow from them. Everything there was deathless, the people, animals, and the plants. From them, a small degree of deathlessness, or life, flowed into the material plane, and helped to stabilize the flora and fauna there, along with Gökotta's efforts. As time went on, the gateways between the Feywild, as it came to be known, and the material plane became concentrated in places in the material plane that most resembled the Feywild, that is, places completely overrun by nature and wilderness. The Eldar which inhabited the Feywild slowly became known as Fey, Fay, Fae, or Faeries, all names which derived from the goddess Faetari. As they inhabited a realm which served as a pure well-spring of natural energy, or nature magic, they changed as a result, both physically and mentally. The Fey became known for their whimsy but also their unpredictability. Just as the rain may benefit someone in drought, but injure someone drowning, the fey often reflected nature's ambivalence towards individual persons. In the Feywild, four courts took shape which expressed the four varieties of Faetari's will; a summer court, spring court, winter court, and autumn court. The courts were ruled by fey queens, who each had castles, lands, and followers within the Feywild. They all claimed to represent the holy-will of Faetari, and yet gathered power for themselves at their courts independent of the Clerical Grove of the Seasons. Overtime, these queens amassed godlike power themselves, and warred for territory and followers. The Spring Court generally became associated with good, light, and peace, while the Winter Court generally became associated with evil, darkness, and chaos. The Autumn and Summer courts, less black and white, found themselves often pulled to one side or the other in the constant conflicts between the two opposing courts. Still, while many fae viewed one court as worse than the other, most if not all agreed that all the courts were necessary, just as all the seasons were necessary. Only through the impoverishment and death of winter can the life and renewal of spring come forth. 

          Those of the Feywild are an incredibly diverse set of people; often their exact cultural heritage will depend on the types of Fae they spent time with, and the part of the Feywilds they lived in. Most fey however, particularly the types adventuring in Adra proper, would be humanoid fey, Eladrin for example. There are a small number of Fey who live in the Clerical Grove of the Seasons, a mighty forest in the center of the Feywilds that holds the Court of Faetari, the Saints, and her most loyal followers. However, the vast majority of Fey live in one of the four seasonal courts. Those fey that live in the Spring Court would value life, rebirth, and renewal. These fey tend to be good natured, honest brokers. Spring fey enjoy vibrant activities over thoughtful ones, taking to dancing, running, climbing, and anything that gets the blood flowing. It is said that Spring fey are often drawn towards pregnant women, towards children, and anyone in the throes of flourishing life. They are welcoming towards outsiders, and quick to love all their fellow creatures. While they enjoy whimsy and creativity, they do not value chaos inherently, and rather believe that maintaining peace and harmony is preferable to raw chaos. Winter fey are essentially their opposites, at least in many ways. Winter fey tend to view the world, and its inhabitants with darkly colored lenses, seeing treachery and betrayal in the most mundane of events. Therefore, they are slow to trust, and rarely deal with outsiders; when they do, they are outsiders that share their view of the world. The Winter fey also value chaos in all things, seeing destruction, change, and death even, as natural parts, requirements in fact, of life. They look mirthfully upon the suffering of some, always seeing in it the seeds of change. They do not disvalue renewal and rebirth, but they do see chaos, the raw untempered chaos of the wilderness, to be a basic requirement for it. While the Spring fey view peace as inherently good, the Winter fey are suspicious of it; peace usually means someone is benefiting from the current order, and they tend to think the civilized world, with its mechanization, its covering up of the land, its industry, benefits inherently when the wild folk sit back and do nothing. Therefore, they constantly provoke war and violence, particularly towards settlements on the fringes of the wilderness. Fey of the Summer court are known as the most expressive of the fey, often found to be brimming with emotion, particularly heated emotions, like excitement, anger, love, etc. They are thought also to be less-than-rational, becoming bored easily at long winded explanations, uninterested in history and the sciences, and more likely to make decisions based on a gut feeling rather than making due considerations on an issue. Therefore summer fey are often unpredictable, and this unpredictability can lend them to have a negative reputation outside of the Feywild. Finally, Autumn fey, just as Spring fey are most naturally in opposition towards Winter fey, are most naturally in opposition towards Summer fey. This is not to say that they are hostile towards them, as often the Winter fey are towards the Spring, but they do often have trouble understanding them. Autumn fey, rather than being slaves to their passions, are slaves to reason. In fact, one can easily see that Autumnal fey have trouble even expressing proper emotions as we would think of them; they react to marriages and births with ambivalence, and to deaths and atrocities with a sort of vague ennui. That is not to say they are cold robots, calculating only what is best for their own affairs; they often use their rationality for the betterment of others, themselves, and the world at large, but, due to their lack of keenly expressed emotions, they often find it difficult to communicate with others, both inside the Feywild, and outside it. They are somewhat prejudicial towards those who are not in control of their emotions, like the Summer fey, and so distrust the reasoning capabilities of others, that rarely if ever a non-fey is found in the Autumnal court, except under rare circumstances. While their pure-rationality gives them clarity when thinking on a subject, their lack of expressions also imparts on them a lack of motivation; often even when they do know the correct thing to be done, they are slow in doing it. This is the polar opposite to the Summer fey, who often rush into situations immediately, doing their best to fix them, but having no idea of how to do so.

          The Fey people are most highly concentrated in the Feywild. They are found sometimes wandering the physical world, or the other planes, but those born in the Feywild must return home eventually, or else their spirits will slowly be sapped of their energies. The races of the Fey are most predominately Eladrin elves, and other faerie races, but it is not wholly uncommon to find other races who call the culture their own, particularly among other elves, gnomes, and sometimes halflings and humans as well. In the Feywild, it is rare for anyone to hold any pantheon other than Faetari's close to their heart. However, due to their proximity to Faetari, fey peoples in the Feywild tend to have a somewhat less reverent, more casual relationship with religion. Spring fey tend to be vibrant, but also naïve. Summer fey tend to be passionate, but also erratic. Autumn fey tend to be thoughtful, but also detached. Winter fey tend to be assertive, but also cruel. The Fey speak Sylvan, almost exclusively.

If you choose the Fey Culture, you gain the following:

~A +1 to your Wisdom score~

~Either a -1 to your Strength score or a -1 to your Constitution score~

~As a known language, Sylvan~

~A Sub-Discipline in every knowledge skill on checks relating to Fey Culture~

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