THE MYSTIC WILDS
 
Expository Document by Bitter
 
LATEST UPDATE: 11/20/11
- Landscape: New information on the area between worlds.
- Pixie Lords: Added a new capability.
- Animus: New revelations on the nature of monsters and their relationship with fey.
 
 
PURPOSE
 
The Mystic Wilds is a setting I recently invented to serve as a backdrop for "The Way of the Wilds" (which, in point of fact, was not actually given that title until later). As often happens, the minimal kernel of a setting I had created a chain of what-ifs and how-does-its, and before I knew it the Wilds had ballooned into a much larger setting than a single bit of smut could possibly contain. This document will describe the most important elements of the Wilds (those being the ones I've already considered, haaaa).
 
Unlike the Bittersweet Realities and the Precursor Realms, the Mystic Wilds are not a "setting template". There is one and exactly one instance of the Wilds. However, in the interest of allowing me to pull the same non-contiguous storytelling that the Realities and the Realms permit, the Mystic Wilds are infinitely large. There is an entirely unlimited amount of territory in the Wilds, so it's possible for one area of the Wilds to be so far removed from another that the goings and doings of the inhabitants there have no bearing on those of anyone else.
 
The Wilds are also much more of an "anything goes" setting than the Realities and the Realms. Little is proscribed in the Wilds, merely highly improbable.
 
 
GENERAL
 
The Mystic Wilds function on the same general principle as the death-scape from "Death Warden". That is, the Wilds are an infinitely large tract of axis-aligned land. Whereas Earth is round and directions like east and west are actually rotational functions, moving west in the Wilds means moving west absolutely. This is very convenient for cartographers, who don't have to deal with any bizarre geometric transformations to accurately transcribe the territory. Unfortunately, this comparative advantage for mapmakers is entirely negated by the other important feature of the Wilds, which is that they are big. "Infinite" is a concept that requires no introduction. You cannot map the Wilds in their entirety. Furthermore, the terrain features of the Wilds are themselves very, very large in cases. This does not necessarily mean that things are any bigger in the Wilds, just more numerous and widespread. Things like forests that would cover the surface of the Earth several times over, for instance, leading up to mountain ranges just as long. Most of the sentient natives of the Wilds only recognize one kind of environment. This is not to say that there don't exist areas of more immediately variable terrain, but owing to the sheer infinity of the world terrain features can grow as much as they like.
 
Night and day occur in the Wilds through a very different mechanism than on Earth. Earth's night and day cycle relies on which side of the Earth is currently illuminated by the one and only Sun, which is at a fixed location (relatively speaking) while the Earth spins on its axis. In the Wilds, each individual star in the sky may at some point act as a sun. The stars, actually themselves a sapient life-form (see "Solar Fey", far below) hurtle through space at alarming speed, every so often drifting into sun-like distance from the surface of the Wilds before retreating back into space or drifting out of visible range. The end result is a recognizable sun-night cycle, with visible stars in the night sky. Subtle variations in the distance that the stars swing create seasonal patterns.
 
In terms of physics and matter, my outline says I should say "Made of magic, whatever the Hell that means." The Mystic Wilds is not necessarily a place that lends itself to being understood, and I think it would be safest to say that fundamental processes at work are so alien as to render the specifics meaningless. Suffice it to say that the Wilds are one of those bizarre edge worlds like the Feywild or Magicant or Aslan's Country, where you're best off just learning the most general principles and leaving the rest alone. Thus: the Mystic Wilds are made of magic. Whatever the hell that means. It's the sort of world that summon spells go to for something powerful and magically sensitive. It's one of those places where heroes go when there's some kind of powerful artifact or rare reagent that they'd really prefer to get somewhere else but can't. It's the kind of place where you need to learn the rules quickly or they'll get used against you in a powerful (and quite possibly fatal) way.
 
Oddly, though the Mystic Wilds are "made of magic", I'd vacillate before outright calling it a high-magic setting. In a high magic setting, magic is highly visible and basically a way of life. Much of the "magic" (that is, actively employed magic as opposed to the universe's composite thaumaturgic energies) that's used in the Wilds is very subtle and difficult to detect. In fact, much of the magic employed in the Wilds is specifically dedicated to thwarting detection. The Wilds are full of enchantments, glamours, and charms, but very few evocations and conjurations. The specifics of magic (which are incomprehensible) make such high-energy displays as lightning bolts and fireballs incredibly wasteful. In the Wilds, it is far easier to control fate than it is to control physics. So, while the Wilds are full of magic, they are not necessarily full of overt magic. That's not to say that it doesn't happen, but most of the fighting that happens among the creatures of the Wilds gets done with the very same stuff as in ours: teeth, claws, and knives.
 
Part of the reason why so few overt spells get used is that the creatures in the Wilds are, in a way, spells themselves. Though material and tangible, a living creature in the Wilds is a self-sustaining expression of magical energy. On Earth, a living creature is a specific pattern of activity in its composite material. A very small disruption in that pattern leads to a total failure of the pattern; for instance, remove a certain amount of blood or introduce a bit of a compound that interferes with nerve activity and you'll kill an Earthling in short order. However, their body will remain and you'll be able to see the evidence of what was previously a living animal. Creatures of the Wilds, however, exist only so long as they have enough energy to manifest their body. When their energy begins to run out, a creature of the wild will visibly begin degrading: they become increasingly sluggish and discolored, and eventually their "living" parts cease to exist. See "Animus" for more information.
 
The relevance of the above paragraph to the limited use of overt magic lies in this fact: in the Wilds, there is no difference between that concepts that are normally expressed in games as "HP" and "MP". One describes health, the other limits the use of special abilities (typically magic). In the Wilds, they're the same thing. To use magic, a creature of the Wilds must employ the same energy it survives off of; using magic is inherently self-wounding. Very few creatures will use magic unless it results in an immediate net gain of energy (for instance, capturing prey or eluding a predator). "Ambient" magic such as glamours are far more energy-efficient than wasteful aggressive magic, especially when you consider that a dead creature can't be recovered. "Death" in the Wilds is synonymous with "disintegration". Unless you really just want someone dead, blasty magic serves no useful function in the Wilds. And for that purpose, again, knives work wonders.
 
The all-important end result of total bodily collapse as a world dynamic is that it forces creatures to use live whole swallowing. In the Realities, creatures used live whole swallowing because they could; in the Wilds, they must. Allowing prey to die simply isn't a viable option in the Wilds. Instead, they must convert the prey's body into a usable form while the prey is still alive. Remember that death doesn't work the same way in the Wilds as it does on Earth-- a creature in the Wilds is not necessarily dead simply because it's a puddle of meat soup. Essentially, digestion is a loophole to the absence of energy rule: the victim is transformed, but not necessarily caused to lose its energy first. The specifics. Question them not, you must.
 
Creatures in the Wilds usually maintain consciousness throughout the entire digestive process, all the way through absorption. The predator and prey occasionally experience a brief "contact" with one another as the prey is absorbed; this is because their composite matter momentarily belongs to the both of them before becoming finally and irrevocably part of the pred.
 
As anyone who has even the most incidental of contacts with the concept of magic will tell you, magic tends to beget further magic. We've all heard the stories about wizards trying to accrue as much magical might as they can for the sheer hell of it, or to take over the world or to fix all the world's problems or whatever. The point is that magic tends to collect, almost magnetically. This principle has a profound effect on the Wilds. As creatures of magic, the inhabitants of the Wilds are bound to follow the same principles. That's my one-sentence explanation as to why there's so much bloody vore in the Wilds. It also explains preyish feelings in many of the sapient species: their composite magic wants to conjoin with other magic. Some magic does this by consuming other magic, and other magic does this by getting consumed by other magic. Regardless of the survival instinct, for many creatures getting eaten just feels right, and they'll do it with various degrees of awareness and enthusiasm. Even the most predish of creatures has some innate desire to be consumed, which can (and, rest assured, will) be turned against them.
 
As a further consequence of the magic aggregation principle, the digestive decomposition process works differently in the Wilds. As mentioned in "Way of the Wilds", it's difficult to make magic do anything it doesn't want to. It is easier by far to make sure that what you want to happen is what the magic wants to do. It would be nearly impossible to transmute a creature of the Wilds into another form against its will-- they know the shape they have and they want to keep it. So, instead, digestive systems in the Wilds work through a form of seduction. They inflict an unbearable pleasure on the victim, such that they eventually relent and allow the digestive system to do whatever it wants to them. One can resist digestion for a while by trying to remain stoic, but let me tell you: the stomach always wins. "Inert", "unconscious", or "passive" material like clothing and metals have no wills of their own and therefore crumble easily under digestive acids, more so than living creatures.
 
As a result of the difficulty of taming magic, most creatures find it impossible to willfully change their own shape. Their bodies have a very specific form that they want to keep, and no willful effort on the part of the body's resident consciousness can change that. They do have some limited ability to deform, but this is exclusively used for swallowing things whole that they normally wouldn't be able to. So, a Fey could wrap its jaws around another Fey in flagrant violation of all Earth sense, but they can't spontaneously turn scaly and sprout a snout.
 
 
THE FEY
 
If you haven't noticed already, I sort of have a thing for elves. Whatever setting I create, there will be elves, and subsequently most of the stories I write in those settings will be about elves. In the Mystic Wilds, I have at last said "fuck it" and simply jumped straight to the elf stage. The primary sapient inhabitants of the Wilds are a species of human-like creatures called the Fey and their derivatives. In the Wilds, the term "Fey" could be used in the same way that "Human" would be used in other fantasy settings, while the term "Fey-like" maps onto "Humanoid". Taking a D&D example, Humans are just that, Humans, while Dragonborn are humanoids. There's a species in the Wilds known as the Fey, in terms of which all the other Fey-likes are described. This specific species is more commonly referred to as the "Lesser Fey", though that name is given to them by every other species which is not itself a Lesser Fey. For the purposes of disambiguation, "Fey" shall refer to the general case and "Lesser Fey" the specific.
 
Physically speaking, Fey are very much like humans, though it would be more appropriate to jump straight to the end and say that they're exactly like elves. Owing more to lifestyle than to natural forces, they tend to be very fit and physically attractive. The Fey specifically are marked by long, pointed ears that curve away from their heads. Though limited or influenced by species, in totum their hair and eye colors run the entire chromatic gamut. Speaking of hair, it's important to note that the Fey do not cut their hair. As spirit creatures, their hair is as much a part of their body as any other-- shearing it off would be like snipping away your fingers to them. (Some Fey have been known to shave their pubic hair. This is painful, but at least not mind-rendingly so.) They're born with a full head of hair (more on that immediately following) and they tend to keep it until the day they die. Though the Fey have many organs with human counterparts-- lungs, heart, digestive tract, brain, etc.-- they do have one which does not exist in the human organism. Situated in the center of their lower belly, at the end of the intestinal tract, is what I am currently calling the Fey's "spark". This construct is explained in more detail in its own section below. As a final note on Fey bodies, they are much more immediately mutable due to their current energy reserves than humans' bodies are. Though Fey will never become emaciated, they can get quite thin; conversely, a Fey who's just eaten a heavy meal while merely peckish will probably pack on some weight (as usual, this varies by Fey species).
 
Though humanlike in appearance, the Fey are not born in a mammatic way. (Asking a Fey to survive for nine months with a child inside them is just silly.) The Fey might actually be considered a form of plant life, much akin to fairies in the Bittersweet Realities. The Fey "fetus" grows in a seed (which could also be reasonably described as an egg) that begins roughly three inches wide and five inches long, though every fey subspecies's is a different shape. Over the course of a year after being planted, the seed absorbs energy from the surrounding environment and the natal Fey grows within. When the Fey is survivable, a large flower (of various forms, depending the Fey) buds and blooms, at which point the Fey is rather unceremoniously ejected from its seed-pod and thrust out into the world. The flower serves a functional purpose: the petals are a high-energy food item, and typically serves as the Fey's first meal, which will tide them over until they find something better to eat. Fey emerge from their seeds at human physical maturity. Furthermore, the Fey implement a kind of Lamarckian evolution. That is, the skills, talents, and knowledge of a Fey's parents are passed down to the child in a reduced form. The Fey are born with all sorts of useful knowledge, including a full understanding of certain vital concepts like "friends", "eating", "survival", and so on. A Fey can bloom, wander into a collection of other Fey, and perfectly integrate in short order (outside of a bit of social weirdness at being buck-naked and covered in natal goo). Yes, this is very much like how it works in Ishara. Consider it a case of convergent solutions to a similar problem statement.
 
Seeds don't just plant themselves, of course, and in this one respect an unborn fey is reliant on a parent. Fortunately, there is an instinct that gives a seed a fighting chance: fey are compelled (in every sense of the word) to bury seeds in their possession. Simply holding a fey seed causes a fey to go into a trance-like state in which they space out entirely and seek out a viable spot to bury the seed, bury it (using their bare hands, if necessary), and then wander off and promptly forget where they put it. Even fey who awaken from this planting trance right on top of the seed they just buried will be hard-pressed to remember actually putting it there, and some even forget that the planting took place (even if it makes sense for it to have happened... such as in the quite likely case that they were the fey who gave birth to the seed). Women are, naturally, the most likely to be found planting a seed, but if a lady fey has the presence of mind to hand a freshly-birthed seed off to a nearby male, he'll exhibit the exact same behavior. Some fey women find this hilarious.
 
It takes roughly one day to go from conception to a world-ready seed. (Beats the hell out of human pregnancy.)
 
Outside of the skills and talents of their parents (and the rare odd mutation that produces an unpredictable skillset), one other factor affects the path a Fey takes as they grow in their seed: the "zeitgeist". The lands of the Mystic Wilds take on a character of their own over time, and are as much living things as the actual living things within them. Lush gardens are happy places, while former battlefields are grim and despairing places. Fey born in these places, regardless of their parentage, drift toward the spirit of the land and the times. If two large groups of Fey are at war, the Fey newly bloomed in that region and during that age will awaken knowing the war and its factions (and which they belong to), and very likely will hate oppositely-aligned Fey without knowing or caring why. Meanwhile, Fey born in peaceable and abundant regions will usually take on a contented and easygoing demeanor, even if they eventually move into less stable areas.
 
The one magical ability common to all Fey is a glamour. Note that this is an old-school usage of the word "glamour", meaning "a spell that changes the recipient's perceptions". As I said (repeatedly, often) in "General", overt magic is wasteful. Glamours, on the other hand, are very energy-efficient, as they only affect something invisible and intangible, the mind. Every Fey has some form of glamour, and a few have several. The most common is the kind used in "Way of the Wilds", the stealth glamour. A stealth glamour prevents other creatures from detecting the Fey that uses it, by any and all means. It can only be overcome by a creature with sufficient magical might. Note that there is a threshold level for being able to detect the use of a stealth glamour; it is not sufficient simply to have greater magic strength than the user to detect it. To put it another way, it's entirely possible for two Fey to walk right past each other, fooling each other with a stealth glamour and remaining completely unaware of each other's passing.
 
Fey experience permanent increases in "power" as they live longer and devour other creatures, but there is an upper bound to just how much magical force any one Fey can put out; this limit varies by Fey species. A Fey can always grow stronger, but their power behaves asymptotically, and eventually reaches a point of severe diminishing returns. This guarantees that no Fey can ever become truly invincible-- someone out there will at least get close enough to you to take you down eventually.
 
A note on terminology: I'll be using the terms "predish" and "preyish" in the sections to follow. Take these simply to mean "attracted to eating things" and "attracted to being eaten", respectively.
 
A further note on terminology: the terms "wild" and "civilized" refer to whether the Fey has a stable place of rest. Some Fey are born in or near cities, while others are born into a solitary lifestyle from which they may never escape. A "civilized" Fey is one who lives in a city, while a "wild" Fey is one who lives out in the wilderness. If a Fey species' behavior differentiates along this axis, I'll point it out in those terms.
 
 
THE SPARK
 
Situated in a Fey's lower belly, somewhere at the end of their small intestine, is an organ structure that fairly well marks them as non-human. The spark is composed of the spark proper, which is actually intangible and indeed non-physical, and several ancillary organs that allow it to interact meaningfully with the body. Though only the core is truly "the spark", in common parlance the entire structure is referred to collectively as the spark. The spark serves several purposes, which taken together go a long way toward explaining why the fey are the way they are.
 
First of all (and most relevant to a fey's day-to-day life), the spark is an energy center. As its incendiary moniker implies, it burns things; matter fed directly into the spark is converted into energy. However, the energy produced by the spark is different from the kind produced by routine cellular metabolism; it is much more wasteful to obtain energy through spark-based decomposition than through what more resembles our world's digestive process. It's akin to the difference between getting energy from sugar and getting energy from complex carbohydrates-- one is very fast, very powerful, and very temporary, while the other is more lasting and ultimately better for you. The spark is a furnace rather than a tank, though its total energy is actually much higher than the whole rest of the fey's body. It acts as a sort of pulmonary organ for mana, and aids in distributing the magic energy that the fey need to exist (in addition to all the physical needs related to being a flesh-and-blood being. Fey require the continued function of both their heart and their spark to survive).
 
Being situated at the end of the fey digestive tract, the spark serves as an overflow buffer for the digestive system. Anything that doesn't get absorbed by the intestines is burnt instantly for fuel. Thus, the fey produce no waste, though anything that makes it through their intestines intact is likely to be wasted.
 
Apart from its utilitarian functions, the spark also serves as the fey's genetic center and core essence. That is, a fey's spark defines who and what a fey is. As the spark proper is intangible while housed inside a fey's body, it might be thought of as the fey's "spirit", though I rankle at such a description. While within the fey's body, there is a very tight binding between the two-- destruction of the body is necessarily the destruction of the spark, and vice-versa. This aspect of the spark's nature makes it a significant part of fey reproduction. The spark is responsible for sperm creation in males and plays the role of the egg in females. (The implication being that female fey do not have ovaries.) Fey reproduction works similarly to human reproduction, with one signficant difference: rather than triggering a fertile egg to begin cellular division by completing its genetic code (don't hurt me, biologists! I'm improvising!), fey sperm causes the female's spark to bud off and create a new spark with a mixture of their essences.
 
This dual nature as both the endpoint of digestion and a reproductive organ explains, in large part, why the fey get so hot and bothered over eating. In terms of their internal structure, eating and sex are strongly linked, and exercising any part of the overall system is bound to trigger the other end as well.
 
I made an oblique reference to a concept that I'll now explain in full. While attached to the fey's body, the fey's spark is diffuse and, by and large, intangible. However, through certain uncommon magics, the spark can be rendered physical. When this occurs, it appears within the structures that otherwise connect the body to the spark, in the lower body, as a transparent, colored crystal. From there, all it takes is a really powerful orgasm to cause a fey's body to void the manifested spark. The same invisible mechanisms that connect the fey's digestive and reproductive system to the spark remain intact and will extend indefinitely; the fey's body can be moved functionally any distance from their spark without harm. There will, however, be a time delay between energy intake at the body and when it arrives at the spark. Moving away from their spark can cause a fey to become weak and listless as their energy stream thins out. So, while there may be a theoretical maximum, very few fey actually wander far enough in their lifetime for it to make a difference.
 
Having their spark extracted from their body is an extremely perilous situation for a fey. Though they fey's spark and body are tightly tied when together (they are one and the same), when apart, the fate of the spark is more significant. Anything that occurs to the spark occurs in equal measure to the body, but effects on the body are not reflected on the spark. In fact, the body can be destroyed entirely and the spark will be entirely unharmed but for no longer having a means of obtaining new fuel efficiently enough to keep from fading. If someone does take their spark, a fey will be far more concerned with recovering it than with any damage their body may suffer in the process. As I said, effects on the spark have equal effect on the body, but it might be better to say that effects on the spark have an equal proportionate effect on the body. Bear in mind that the physical manifestation of the spark is much, much smaller than the body, and that means that the actual effect is greatly magnified. Enchantments become irresistable commands when turned against a fey's spark, damage to or destruction of the spark results in unbearable pain and instant death, respectively, and digestion of the spark (which, in the Wilds, is not quite the same as "damage to or destruction of") causes the fey to melt away into thin air (an experience the victims usually find both horrifying and pleasant).
 
If two manifested sparks make contact, the stronger of the two will immediately absorb the weaker, destroying the weaker one entirely. If inserted into another fey's body, an extruded spark will, if stronger than the other fey's spark, consume it and take its place, warping their body into the shape of the original fey's body. (Think Mr. Smith from the Matrix sequels.)
 
Culturally speaking, removing a fey's spark from their body is unavoidably considered foul play. It may be completely acceptable to put a charm on someone that makes them actively want to be eaten, but doing the same thing by drawing out their spark approaches mortal sin. It's a lame analogy, but I'd liken it to aimbotting in an FPS: you're not allowed to have perfect accuracy against everyone (including people you technically can't even see), and in the Wilds you're not allowed to charm, kill, or digest people without giving them at least a saving throw (and the ones they make against having their spark taken don't count). Suffice to say that spark-takers are the Wilds' darkest villains, typically the sort that don't get mercy even if they beg for it. By engaging in that dark art, they've demonstrated that they're willing to use the maximum available force; even the most kind-hearted of fey will be unlikely to forgive them for it.
 
 
THE AURA
 
Sensory perceptions in the Mystic Wilds are not strictly physical. In fact, physical sensations such as sight, sound, and touch, are mostly decorative to fey. The real powerhouse sense that fey use to navigate the world is one with no real-world analogue. A creature's spark is its genetic core, the thing that defines what the creature is. Its body is the most immediate result of the spark's shape; the body, whether fey or monster or plant or whatever else, is shaped like it is because of the specific type and variances of the spark. However, since the spark is technically just a living "spell" or wave-form, it is not limited to affecting the body exclusively. To put it another way, the spark not only shapes the creature's body, but the circumstances around the creature's body, like a magnetic field. This field or disturbance is the aura, and most creatures in the Mystic Wilds have the ability to detect them.
 
The aura is responsible for a lot of the counter-intuitive physical weirdness that goes on in the Wilds. The spark is the center, and its body is the thing you have to deal with at some point, but both of them necessarily reside within the creature's aura. As goes the aura, so goes the body, and with it the spark. Often it'll be the case that a prey creature completely folds to a predator when it seems like they ought to be able to escape easily; this is because the predator's aura has enveloped their own, and therefore it's impossible for the prey to take action to escape-- the predator's intent to eat them overwhelms their own intent to escape, essentially paralyzing them with despair.
 
The aura is the mechanism that drives fey glamours. Invisibility, in particular, is a simple matter of arranging one's aura so that it does not appear to be present. This is akin to wave-form cancelation in the field of audio. That is, you can produce silence by emitting a sound wave that's exactly opposite the one currently playing. Likewise, most other glamours have their basis in the deliberate rearrangement of auras to alter perceptions.
 
The aura and its behavior accounts for why love, sex, and eating are so easily conflated in the Mystic Wilds. Extremes of physical, emotional, or simply biological closeness cause a subtle mixing of auras into one another. That is, when fey have sex, their auras wind up tinged with the other's "color", and that synchronization of their auras feeds back into their sparks. Given enough such exposures, the two auras become so similar in composition as to be indistinguishable and fuse together. From there, a similar fusion of the bodies and sparks is inevitable, and the result is vore in all cases.
 
The intangible force most often referred to as "Fate", capital F, can be described succinctly as "the sum total of all auras". Everything which is-- from a rock to a tree to monsters to fey-- has an aura that's flowing in and around everything. Sufficiently powerful creatures can, though unable to control it, at least perceive a greater amount of the surrounding web than that which comprises their own aura. This isn't always a useful talent, but it can at least be a comfort to know that yes, you're actually going to get eaten today.
 
 
MAGIC
 
As one might expect of a setting that's "made of magic" (see General), the Mystic Wilds contains a fair deal of things that don't play by the rules of our universe. However, that does not mean that they don't play by their own rules, which for safety's sake ought to be enumerated (without crossing the line into questioning the specifics). The world is made of magic, but that doesn't mean there aren't some predictable behaviors.
 
The cardinal rule of the Mystic Wilds is that thought drives action. Thought is the Wild's most fundamental physical force, and is capable of superceding all others. That is: belief creates truth. On the one hand, this permits a certain Matrix-y ability to do awesome things just because you want to. On the other hand, there are strict limitations to how much you're allowed to twist reality. The "belief creates truth" law functions in all directions, not just in terms of the here and now but also the past and future. The Mystic Wilds extends infinitely in both directions in terms of time; therefore, in order to cause some extranormal event, you must not only warp the current thought-space but also the combined expectations of all persons past and present. In other words, the Mystic Wilds is pretty well convinced of what it is, and no single fey or collection of fey, not even the ones closest unto gods, can overturn the fundamental nature of the world. Distortions of the natural order are usually temporary, costly, and within certain agreed-upon limits. So, in a way, breaking the laws of physics is a physical law unto itself.
 
"Magic", as a term, can also be used to describe the practice of working magic. All creatures in the Mystic Wilds, be they fey or animal, are capable of using magic, regardless of whether or not they actually do. In fact, in terms of "belief creates truth", the very act of, say, breathing or walking is itself a form of magic, as it's an applied thought with a specific purpose. Magic in the Wilds is intuitive rather than practiced. That is, in some settings, wizardry is simply a matter of combining the right components, chanting the right words, and waggling your fingers the right way. You could conceivably make an orc do magic if you trained him properly, and in practice the only difference between an archmage and an apprentice is that the archmage has been doing it a lot longer (and is less likely to screw up). In the Wilds, doing magic is like flexing a muscle-- it's practically a bodily function.
 
In fact, the "flexing a muscle" analogy is particularly apt. All magic in the Wilds is, essentially, the enforcement of a new shape on the world by an exertion of will. Basic, commonplace actions-- again, breathing or walking-- are technically magic, just forms that are so deeply mundane that they are essentially without cost. Stronger and more complicated displays, the kind that would be recognized as magic in any other setting (such as causing someone to spontaneously become obsessed with the idea of sliding into your throat) actually require effort. This fundamental premise of all magic leads to an interesting implication: technically, any creature (indeed, any object) is capable of any form of magic. However, most creature's bodies are "optimized" for a specific form; they will find it far easier to use some spells than others. Branching out and gaining new and different types of magic may require more effort than most fey are willing to and most animals are capable of.
 
On the other hand, some degree of every kind of magic, especially universally useful kinds, are available to anything with a mind to use them. That is, everyone (all fey, at least) is capable of a few very subtle magics. These include:
Assistive tekinesis: they cannot exert tangible force on any object, nor do so at range, but they are certainly capable of lifting and managing things with just their hands that would otherwise be physically awkward-- say, grabbing someone by the waist, lifting them up, and swallowing them whole. This, in combination with the ability below, allows fey to eat things their own size without losing all their mobility.
Space distortion: Fey are capable of subtle alterations in the size and shape of things, permitting soft-vore stretchiness and the ability to swallow things that might seem just a tad too large.
Projective empathy: Fey broadcast their emotions to those around them; they can't cause people to experience that same feeling, but it's immediately obvious what they're feeling unless they go out of their way to conceal it.
Regeneration: Worn-out parts of a creature's body, from small cells to large wounds, are slowly restored over time by drawing energy from their spark.
 
All applied magics in the Wilds are essentially elaborations on their core abilities. A fey who can shrink someone down to a few inches tall is using an advanced form of their basic ingestive magics, a fey who can charm people into loving them immediately is using a powerful projective empathy, and a fey who has a healing touch is just offering their own regenerative powers to someone else. However, do not take this rule to imply that these are the only possible tracks for magic. Remember, belief creates truth. So long as a fey has sufficient power to impose their will upon the world (at least, the small part of the world around them), anything is possible.
 
 
THE LANDSCAPE
 
As mentioned above, the Mystic Wilds extends infinitely on the east-west and north-south axis. On the up-down axis, the behavior is slightly stranger: the world actually wraps around. If you go all the way past the top, you wind up back at the bottom. The typical reference point considered to be the "bottom" is the start of the layer of solid matter that majority of the Wilds's population lives on.
 
The very bottom of the Mystic Wilds is a layer of living flesh typically called "Gastros" by those aware of it. It is non-sentient, that it, fundamentally unaware of itself and dedicated only to the continuance of its own existence. Gastros is an ecosystem unto itself, with its own (extremely short-lived) fey. It continually grows downward while lifting upward-- such that the oldest flesh is on top and the newest is on the bottom, but the entire layer remains in the same location. As it gets further from the origin point, Gatros's flesh ossifies and turns into bedrock whose behavior tracks closely with that of Earth's. Therefore, the Mystic Wilds' earth acts quite a bit like Earth's strata, except for the fact that it's got a giant layer of digestive organs where the molten rock of the earth's core would be.
 
Part of Gastros's physiology is a series of energy channels that shuttle liquid mana from place to place. These mana channels are known as "ley lines", and as they're composed of the most concentrated form of the stuff the Mystic Wilds runs on, they have a significant impact on the world above. Regions above and around the ley lines are especially fertile, and one can expect to find fey and wildlife in especially diverse and concentrated populations in those places. Furthermore, the shifting of the ley-lines over time suffices to produce an effect akin to continental drift-- mountains rise and valleys fall as the ley-lines change their courses. However, this process occurs over some fantastically long periods of time, especially relative to a given fey's expected lifespan. Solar Fey (described in a separate section) have never been observed to appear in any location other than a major intersection of the ley-lines.
 
On the surface, climates are mostly Earth-like, with rare jaunts into total abstraction. Sometimes you get a redwood forest, and other times you get a forest made entirely of shimmering crystal.
 
{*}The effect of the ley-lines on the distribution of life and terrain in the Wilds works in both directions. Where the mana channels are densest, life is abundant. However, there are also vast areas where the ley-lines either run too shallow to reach the surface or simply don't exist at all. The surface world above these regions is a dead zone known as the Between, so called between it neatly partitions tracts of the Wilds into discreet zones that function as independent worlds. As everything is fueled by Mana in the Wilds, such an absence means that the Between is, in a way, emptier even than space. Those attempting to move through the Between find themselves stymied by an utter lack of space and time to move through, to say nothing of the lack of air, light, or convenient food. The Between is to fey as the Wilds is to humans-- empty of the very fundamentals of our existence. The terribly rare traveller that does manage to even attempt fording the Between will perceive it as an expanse of total darkness, with a perfectly smooth floor of solid tile at its bottom. Regions near the Between are where the Mystic Wilds decays into less Earth-like conditions, forming a barrier between livable conditions and a place where you have to navigate Penrose stairs any time you want to get somewhere.
 
For those determined to cross the Between, there is a far easier method than pushing through despite the utter absence of mana. Where conditions are amenable, the mana from a world can puncture the Between, forming a pressurized mana channel almost but not quite like a ley-line. The mana in these roads flows extremely quickly, so fast that an unprotected fey of normal size would be torn apart in an instant if they touched it. However, there are cases of highly-advanced fey civilizations building vessels capable of surviving the currents, and with some experimentation (because I guarantee you the first couple thousand attempts are going to result in wrecked ships), reaching one of the points where the roads through the Between empty out into another world. There will almost always exist at least one such channel in the Between surrounding any given world which loops back into the world itself; the local solar fey use this to maintain a consistent cycle through the sky. This fact contributes a significant hazard to attempts to navigate the Between: I don't care how heavy your ship is, the sun has the right of way.{&}
 
 
ANIMUS
 
As mentioned in "General", everything in the Wilds (creatures especially) is essentially a spell. Spells require energy to continue; when the energy runs out, so does the spell and whatever it was that the spell was causing to happen stops happening. However, not all spells are created equal; some are more complicated and require more energy to maintain. This variable complexity is "animus". The more animus a thing has, the more energy it requires to keep moving, and, coincidentally, the more sapient it is. However, this is not an objective measure; rather, it's a ratio. The more animus a thing has, the more spell-like it is.
 
The chief thing this notion of "animus" affects is how much and what gets left over when a creature runs out of energy through means other than digestion. Digestion fully utilizes the victim's body, but death by energy depletion has its own behavior. When a creature totally runs out of energy, its body instantly decomposes. However, many of the simpler creatures of the Wilds are Earth-like in their composition; that is, they are dust which thinks it's alive rather than something which is actually alive. When a snake dies in the Wilds, some of its living parts vanish, while harder and more mineral-like parts remain-- such as its bones and scales. Which parts of a monster's body will remain after death depends on the monster and a bit of chance; for some creatures, it's their skin, and for others, it's bone or sinews. Fey, on the other hand, are extremely high-animus creatures, and very little is left of them when their energy runs out. On death, Fey simply disintegrate into a very fine powder which is well-known to be useless for any purpose.
 
{*}The reason for a monster's low animus is its origin. The fey are a type of animal that has evolved in such a way as to be able to reproduce itself, deliberately creating something in its own image. This is a unique capacity among all the species of the Wilds. All other life is an offshoot of the ley-lines; when a bit of mana (akin to a droplet compared to the Amazon river) is separated from the main flow, it takes on a life of its own. Should it return to the ley-lines, it is reabsorbed and whatever information it gathered in the interim destroyed. Those that spend enough time worming through the earth are exposed to the zeitgeist of a world and given a shape. On receiving a shape, the creature more deliberately heads for the surface and erupts from the earth in a bloom, much as fey do. The new lifeform falls into the broad category of creatures known as "monsters". Even non-hostile life such as trees and moss are technically monsters, and do not deliberately reproduce. Animal and floral husbandry is still possible, but the actual mechanisms are alien to us.{&}
 
 
FEY CULTURE
 
One of the more mutable aspects of the fey is their culture. As individual fey are, on the whole, fairly short-lived, their growth can be tracked better by the progression of the fey in a particular region overall than in the behavior of any given individual. There are five major phases of fey cultures: ferality, enlightened ferality, tribalism, nationalism, and globalism.
 
Though the existence of fey in any given phase is pyramid-shaped overall, the "ferality" phase is much smaller than the ones above it, only slightly larger in terms of population than globalism. The reason for this is that ferality is an "unnatural" state for fey to be in. Feral fey are marked by an incapacity for language. They may be aware of important concepts, but they have no means of expressing them, clarifying them, or communicating them. Though feral fey are capable of using magic, they only tend to learn to do so under extenuating circumstances, and understand it on no more than an instinctive level. In terms of raw magical power, feral fey are extremely weak. A population of fey will generally only become feral by a precipitous drop from a higher-energy state. That is, when a highly-advanced culture falls suddenly, if there is anything of them left behind, it will be feral fey-- pathetic things barely clinging to life.
 
The state of enlightened ferality is the most common for fey, and comprises a majority of all fey in the Wilds. Enlightened ferals live like animals-- clothing is unheard of among them, their main occupations are finding food (while avoiding becoming food) and mates, and their understanding of the world around them is fairly limited. However, enlightened ferals are still quite intelligent, as much so as fey at any other point in their cultural development. Ferals are actually degenerates, but enlightened fey have as much brainpower (or brainpower potential) as if they were born in an industrialized city with a proper academy. The key is their lack of knowledge; enlightened ferals generally exist in the wildlands where they are unlikely to encounter anything that would spur their curiosity. Furthermore, there have been known to be enlightened ferals who are well aware that there is something more out there and are actively disinterested in it. (See the "herdsmen" from "Black Sheep" for an example.) For some reason (likely related to the "zeitgeist" as explained above), being in the state of enlightened ferality triggers a familiar Earth survival / reproductive mechanism in fey, namely going into heat. Enlightened ferals experience periods of intense arousal and the use of olfactory and pheromonal cues to indicate their fertility. This tendency weakens in tribalism and vanishes entirely in nationalism and globalism (though a few rare individuals may experience some embarassing attacks from time to time...).
 
Tribalism occurs when some impetus drives the fey to start banding together. It may simply be that they notice that keeping everyone in the same place makes finding mates easier, or it might be that monster attacks are a big enough threat to provoke banding together to fight back. Or, it might even be that strong personal differences drive them to take sides. However it comes about, once fey start grouping up and declaring other fey to be not like themselves (in contradiction to the enlightened feral's tendency to think of anything of the same species as being in the same group as itself), you have tribalism. The availability of fellow minds to share ideas with in this phase very rapidly leads to basic "technological" advancements such as the discovery of the alchemical type of magic that converts certain types of objects into other objects. Clothing, weaponry, shelter, and other such fundamentals of civilized life appear in rudimentary forms. Toward the end of the tribalism phase, various tribes may begin speaking different languages, moving away from the common tongue used by enlightened ferals.
 
As tribes of fey gain in strength alongside each other, they will eventually begin to recombine. Either they will discover the value of economics and begin building monetary networks that allow them to specialize, or they will discover a common bond that unites them and adjacent tribes under a common banner (a mutual enemy helps), or violent tribes will move on weaker tribes and simply devour them. One way or another, you wind up with larger, common tribes, leading into the nationalism phase. In nationalism, the use of magic drifts away from the intuitive and predominantly physical or evocative magics of prior phases and toward enchantments, geases, and technological or systemic applications of magic. Some cultures may neglect the use of magic altogether, if it is unnecessary. Lifespans start to reach human-like spans in the nationalism phase, measured relative to the onset of adulthood. So, take a human lifespan and subtract the age of consent, and you've got the amount of time a national fey might live, give or take a few years. A further marker of the national phase is the establishment of a food caste. That is, a certain population of fey (almost always Lesser Fey, even in an otherwise Lesser Fey-comprised society) will regress into the enlightened feral phase, born understanding that their purpose in life is to act as food for the people who actually matter. More often, though, the food caste is simply a population that did not evolve as quickly as the others did, and is set upon as a convenient source of people who can be eaten without disrupting normal life.
 
When many nations have existed for a great deal of time alongside one another, they can be said to have entered their globalism phase. The advent of a globalist phase usually coincides with the ascention of a new Solar Fey, which guides the ideals of the region. A globalized region is the mostly likely to have an "plot", so to speak. There's finally a "world" as such, which can be threatened, dominated, preserved, or enriched. A globalist era is a time of ambition and great works. It is when history is no longer about the squabbles between France and Germany but about the goings-on in Europe. Many fey work together to produce their greatest artifacts in these times. However, globalism is also the most unstable of all phases, and the most susceptible to catastrophic failure. Dark magic is at its most prevalent in globalism (though by no means unheard of in the other phases), and most likely to succeed in unmaking all that's been built up. Globalism also tends to coincide with a contraction of diversity in the kinds of life-forms that exist in the region, possibly leading to major ecological collapse. Of all the phases, globalism is the most likely to fall into ferality, with nationalism a distant second. Tribalism and nationalism are both more likely to gently revert into their preceding forms-- say, when a budding tribe is simply overwhelmed by the number of monsters and disperses, or when fractures among a nation cause it to disintigrate into territories that are too small to have much cultural relevance. By the time globalism arrives, however, the fey's greatest enemy can only be themselves.
 
 
 
THE LESSER FEY
 
The "Lesser Fey" are what might be considered the default, standard Fey in the Wilds. If humans are the basis of elves, dwarves, nekomimi, and naga, then the Lesser Fey are the basis of all the other kinds of Fey. It's important to note (again) that the Lesser Fey do not call themselves that. They simply refer to themselves as "Fey". It's the other Fey who call them Lesser Fey, with good reason. They are the spammy, numerous sorts, who tend to get snacked on by other, more powerful Fey. The relationship is not entirely one-way, and clever or powerful Lesser Fey can turn the tables on weak or unsuspecting superior Fey, but for the most part they spend more time avoiding getting eaten by other Fey than they do finding other Fey to eat.
 
In true prey fashion, the Lesser Fey are a bit more vulnerable to the effects of taking on excess energy than other Fey. Though Fey rarely lose their svelteness, a Lesser Fey who overeats could find themselves with some extra curvature. The lady Lessers tend not to mind this effect for some reason. Lesser Fey hair colors can hit any color of the rainbow, but they usually take on bright, vivid shades of those colors-- if red, then tending towards pinks and hot reds, if blue, then sky blue or saturated blue, and so on. There is no real correlation between Lesser Fey eye colors and hair colors; any combination is possible. As with their hair, Lesser Fey eye colors tend to be bright and striking. As mentioned in the authors comments for "Way of the Wilds", Lesser Fey have humanlike teeth. Among Fey, the Lesser Fey are the most "bish", and typically possess a feminine beauty regardless of their sex. For clothing, the Lesser Fey are typically underdressed; they wear open-chested vests and jackets, and loose, baggy pants, shorts, or skirts (this goes for both sexes, mind you). Civilized Lesser Fey tend to be more conservative in their dress, while wild Lesser Fey usually only make token gestures in terms of clothing. The following holds for all Lesser Fey: they tend to wear sexy clothing. They're the sluts of the Fey. (Again-- the rule applies for men and women both.)
 
Of all the Fey, the Lesser Fey are the most likely to band together. It isn't unheard of for a Lesser Fey to be solitary (especially if they bloom somewhere where there aren't other Lesser Fey around), but Lesser Fey have a noteworthy tendency to live in groups. Some of the largest cities in the Wilds belong to the Lesser Fey. Their population grows explosively; it doesn't take long for a small population of Lesser Fey to turn into a large one. Their population growth is usually checked by a population of superior Fey of some variety. If the Lesser Fey population gets too large, you can all but guarantee that a collection of superior Fey is going to take notice and start culling them (if only because Lesser Fey are such easy prey). This will usually continue until the Lesser Fey population has contracted enough that it can no longer support the predator population, at which point the predators move on.
 
Compared to other Fey, a Lesser Fey's digestive system is downright laconic. Their stomach acids are weak (with a smell and consistently that is alarmingly like honey) and their intestines work very slowly. It can take them most of a night to get through a Fey-sized meal, and even then they'll probably have a lump left over when they wake up. On the other hand, their digestion is extremely thorough, and they don't wastefully burn off a lot of what they take in. Consequently, they rarely experience the predish sexual high typical of other Fey, though they do get their own unique sensation of "plumping up" while absorbing a large amount of food. This typically colors a Lesser Fey's prey's experience of being absorbed; they'll generally sense themselves becoming fat in the predator's body as opposed to dispersing into their entire form.
 
Most Lesser Fey do not eat other Fey, and instead sustain themselves with a diet of roots and fruits. "Wild" Lesser Fey, the ones that don't attach to a civilization, tend to spend most of their time scavenging; civilized Lesser Fey may farm or establish themselves within naturally-occurring orchards. Cannibalism among Lesser Fey begins to emerge when their populations become extremely large-- other Fey may then be the only available food source, as Soylent Green as that sounds. Instances of Lesser Fey eating other Lesser Fey also occurs in smaller population pools, but it is far rarer and more likely to be a significant event.
 
The Lesser Fey are naturally preyish and slightly predish. It does not take long for a Lesser Fey to begin experiencing feelings of pleasure at the thought of being devoured, and it only takes a minor effort on the part of a predator to get a Lesser Fey to submit.
 
Besides a stealth glamour, the Lesser Fey also employ a "preyishness glamour". This is one of the more diffuse and less conscious glamours of those used by Fey. The preyishness glamour, as its name implies, amplifies the natural preyishness of the recipients. This is predominantly turned against fairies, the one kind of Fey that the Lesser Fey eat with any regularity. However, since the Lesser Fey are themselves highly preyish, it's entirely possible for a Lesser Fey to ensnare one of their own kind with it by mistake. Since the Lesser Fey do not have much conscious use of the preyishness glamour, they take such things in stride. They treat eating a charmed Lesser Fey the same way as humans might speak of a one-night stand at a alcohol-heavy party: "You know, we were drunk, he was kinda cute, one thing led to another..." *gurgle* In rare instances, the preyishness glamour can affect people miles and miles away from the original Fey, drawing them as if magnetically toward a point where they know something exciting and important is going to happen, but they don't know what. The chief victims of this effect are superior Fey who have lived a very long time and thus have a ramped-up natural preyishness. This tendency has earned the Lesser Fey a reputation as the "bottom feeders" or "decomposers" of the Fey. They get the old and the weak-- however much those terms apply in the Wilds.
 
Lesser Fey are prone to civilization, and will attempt to civilize basically whenever they can. If two Lesser Fey encounter each other in the wilds, they'll partner up and remain together until forcibly removed from one another (if only because one succumbed to the other's preyishness glamour).
 
 
GREATER FEY
 
The "Greater Fey" are the originators of the title, though at the current point in the Wilds's history the term is ubiquitous and used by all of the superior Fey.
 
Physically, the Greater Fey are nearly identical to the Lesser Fey. They have a few distinguishing marks that makes them identifiable, though few are terribly immediate. First, the Greater Fey are a few inches taller, on average, than the Lesser Fey. Their bodies do not retain energy in the same way that the Lesser Fey do; they have swimmer's builds, even after a heavy meal. Their hair and eye colors, just like the Lesser Fey's, can run any color of the rainbow, but whereas the Lesser Fey's are usually bright, the Greater Fey's are usually darker and less saturated. Finally, the Greater Fey have sharp, sharklike teeth, as opposed to the Lesser Fey's incisor/canines/molars configuration. This doesn't really affect anything; it's just that way because when a species grows shark teeth you know it means business. Greater Fey dress more conservatively than the Lesser Fey, but not by much; the key difference in their clothing is that Greater Fey clothes usually fit tighter and impede their movement less. Greater Fey's clothing almost always exposes their abdomen; they have powerful stomachs and like to make sure the other Fey know it.
 
If a Lesser Fey does not know a Greater Fey's name, they'll usually use an epithet centering around the Greater Fey's teeth, such as "Teeth", "Gnasher", "Bitey", what have you. This rarely actually insults the Greater Fey, but it makes the Lesser Fey feel better to use it.
 
In stark contrast to the Lesser Fey, the Greater Fey's digestion is forceful and rapid-working. Physical force is a key part of their digestion, and while they use the same temptation paradigm as any other Fey stomach, their stomachs also inflict a sense of inevitability on the victim. As mentioned in "Way of the Wilds", a Greater Fey's stomach has a sort of masculine, sweaty smell to it.
 
Though Greater Fey are more likely to be solitary creatures, they still have a pronounced tendency to band together, especially when Lesser Fey are doing likewise. The average size of Greater Fey tribes scales in proportion to those of adjacent Lesser Fey tribes. This is because the Greater Fey's primary food source is, as you might guess, the Lesser Fey. For many Greater Fey, especially those who live near large Lesser Fey populations, the Lesser Fey can even be their exclusive source of nutrition. In cases where the Lesser Fey over-thrive, the Greater Fey are most often the ones who become the limiting force on them. Despite the antagonism between the two species (see below), Lesser Fey and Greater Fey are the two sorts of Fey who are most likely to wind up living with daily face-to-face contact.
 
As the titles might suggest, the Greater Fey consider themselves to be absolutely the superiors of the Lesser Fey. They're bigger and stronger physically than the Lesser Fey, and they usually have an extra supply of mana on-hand due to their eating habits, making their magic stronger as well. Culturally speaking, the Greater Fey believe they have a right to devour the Lesser Fey. They're Lesser.
 
The Greater Fey are naturally predish, and among all Fey are the least preyish. This is not to say that they don't experience preyish feelings, but the Greater Fey have a noteworthy disconnect between their bodily preyishness and their conscious decision-making. The Greater Fey usually think of their body as something that needs to be tamed. They aren't stoics, but if they start feeling pleasure for the "wrong" reason, they're more likely to go "What the fuck are you thinking, body" than to give in and let come what may. They fight their preyishness the whole way. Hell hath no fury like a Greater Fey who's realized that he's about to give himself up to some Lesser Fey.
 
Scared as they are of giving in to preyishness, the Greater Fey try to avoid admitting to receiving pleasure from someone else as much as they can. Therefore, it has been joked (with some truth) that the Greater Fey don't have sex, they just have various degrees of rape. Greater Fey sexual contact ranges from "sex at an inconvenient time" to "sex you were not expecting and might not, upon serious consideration, even want" to "sex in which the recipient is badly injured" all the way up to "sex in which both partners are badly injured" (Greater Fey consider this really good sex).
 
A Greater Fey's glamour is subtly different from a Lesser Fey's, but works on the same principle. It's easiest to differentiate the two by what statements they make: a Lesser Fey's glamour says "You want me to eat you", whereas a Greater Fey's glamour says "I am going to eat you". One is soft, gentle, and consensual, where the other is hard, forceful, and nonconsensual. More than anything else, this difference in the specifics of their glamours is what separates the Lesser Fey and the Greater Fey. If a Lesser Fey and a Greater Fey were to turn their glamours against one another, you'd see the Greater Fey simply ignore the Lesser Fey's attempt to turn him preyish, while the Lesser Fey would immediately succumb to the Greater Fey's assertion that he (the Lesser Fey) was about to be eaten. It's like Scissors versus Paper; the one defeats the other absolutely. (Almost absolutely. There are very rare exceptions.) A victim under the effects of a Greater Fey's glamour tends to obey spoken commands. A Greater Fey's glamour is fairly short-ranged and can only be exerted from a few feet away. Once affected, however, the victim will remain under its effects for some time.
 
Despite being terribly predish, the Greater Fey are not necessarily superior to all other Fey. In fact, they are more akin to the Lesser Fey than they like to admit, and in terms of "power level" they are the bottom rung of the superior Fey ladder. Like true bullies, the Greater Fey compensate for their weaknesses by taking it out on someone who's weaker still.
 
Though very similar in appearance and behavior, the Lesser Fey and the Greater Fey are separate species and cannot interbreed. Perhaps they share a common ancestor not many generations off (relatively speaking), but they've since diverged.
 
Naturally, as the evil bastards of the Mystic Wilds, the Greater Fey are the most likely to practice spark-taking. No species is without its deviants, and the vast majority of Greater Fey wouldn't even think of trying to learn the requisite magic, but among those rare few who would use it, the Greater Fey stand out as the most common offenders.
 
 
THE HOODED MEN
 
The Hooded Men are a unique sort of Fey about which little is known conclusively (even by the narrator).
 
As implied by their name, the Hooded Men can be identified by their unique style of dress. Every Hooded Man wears the same style of clothing, that being an all-black full-length coat with a hood that pulls over their face. The hood comes far enough forward to cast a shadow over their eyes and down to the bridge of their nose at all times; no environmental or artificial light can change this. The visible parts of their faces are extremely pale, practically albino. If Hooded Men do have elfish ears like the other Fey, they make no impression on the hood. Most Hooded men also wear gloves that cover their hands (also black), pants (the ends of which are just barely visible underneath their coats) and leather shoes or boots (take a guess... they're black). The exact details of their clothing can vary; female Hooded Men might have more dress-like coats and high-heeled shoes, while Hooded Men in colder climates could wind up with thick, fur-lined coats and galoshes. Their coats are spun around their bodies when they bloom and never change after that point, even if they migrate to territory where the climate is very different. What little of their hair can be seen is always black, or a distinguishable color that's nearly black. Their hoods might have a flap in the back for their hair to spill out of.
 
Hooded men can manifest shadowy appendages out of any opening in their coat, though the ones they use most often are their hood and their arms. These are usually grasping, tentacle-like protrusions; the Hooded Men cannot make terribly detailed or precise forms. These shadowy extensions may only exist in incomplete lighting, and their size and strength is directly proportionate to the absence of light in the area. In total darkness the Hooded Men can change shape freely. Though Fey-like outside, their internal composition is a sort of shadow-matter. Their coats serve as a shell that protects this shadow matter from being injured or destroyed by light. Shining light directly into a Hooded Man's chest would destroy it completely. Though Hooded Men feed through their hoods out of habit, it's entirely possible for an unsuspecting creature to be drawn in through the sleeves, the bottom of the coat, or even the open chest of the coat (though a Hooded Man would only use this last tactic in the safe cover of total darkness). Lacking any real digestive organs, Hooded Men instead directly absorb their prey, converting them into more shadow-matter.
 
The Hooded Men tend to live underground and, specifically, deep in caves in the safety of absolute darkness. Some Hooded Men do venture above ground, but even then they stick to shady areas such as those with frequent heavy rains or dense forests. Surface-dwelling Hooded Men are more likely to civilize than those below; the extra teamwork is required to build and maintain the structures necessary to avoid sunlight. Subterranean Hooded Men are wilder and at most form persistent hunting parties of three to five Hooded Men.
 
The Hooded Men's glamour is a glamour of horror. Beyond any natural fear of the Hooded Men and their powers (see below), victims of the Hooded Men's glamour are paralyzed with a sense of the horribleness of the Hooded Man.
 
Outside of their glamour, the Hooded Men have a second special power, known as Imposition. The Hooded Men may create impositions on mana freely, though exactly to what extent they can apply this power depends on the power of the Hooded Man. An imposition on mana means that the mana must either retain its current form or a specific pattern of changes. Most often, the Hooded Men use this to disable spell-casting in other Fey. If the atmospheric mana may not change form, then they can't use it to any given effect that they want, such as creating light or making the wind support them (like Poyin did in "Way of the Wilds"). As a result, encountering a Hooded Man usually ends very badly for Fey that rely heavily on applied magic, like Lesser Fey and Greater Fey. Specters (see below) are particularly badly affected by the Hooded Men's impositions and go out of their way to avoid Hooded Men entirely.
 
Despite being amorphous internally, the Hooded Men are highly legalistic. They speak simply and do not lie. A Hooded Man is always true to their word, though this should not be taken to mean that they are incapable of deceit. Rather, they either refuse to make specific agreements or make agreements that are so dreadfully specific as to be useless (they go around what they said they wouldn't do). Many a Fey has tried to save themselves from a Hooded Man by relying on their strict observance of spoken agreements only to find themselves outmaneuvered through a loophole.
 
Hooded Men love games, especially (as one would expect) games of laws and implications of laws. If anyone would invent Chess in the Wilds, it would be the Hooded Men. Defeating a Hooded Man at his favorite game is a good way to get a favor out of him-- which ought to be very carefully worded.
 
Hooded Men reproduce in the same way as other Fey. However, one interesting factoid: whatever the mating process in Hooded Men entails, it is so horrifying that it has never been reliably recounted. The Hooded Men do not speak of it, and any other Fey who sees it loses all memory of the specifics; they know that they witnessed it and that it was mind-bendingly terrible to behold, but otherwise they cannot recall what happened.
 
 
SPECTERS
 
There is some in-universe debate as to whether or not Specters count as a true Fey or Fey-like. By strictest technicality, they are not; however, as they appear in a Fey-like guise most of the time, they are worth discussing as if they were Fey.
 
Specters are, at heart, parasitic creatures made of a type of ectoplasm. This ectoplasm is light blue and translucent, with a thin, wispy consistency, and is cool (but not cold) to the touch. This is a "base form" which all Specters may assume if they so desire. However, all Specters have a "solid" form as well, which is in the shape of the last creature they absorbed. A Specter may cocoon another creature with itself and attempt to absorb them; technically this is a form of digestion. The prey's composite matter is slowly converted to Specter ectoplasm; to the victim this feels something like being wrapped up in nicely cool sheets and gently evaporating. After absorbing their prey in this way, the Specter may assume the victim's form. The form of the previous victim of the Specter is then discarded; they cannot resume that shape again.
 
While in the shape of the last victim they absorbed, a Specter has access to all of the victim's capabilities. Whatever spells, skills, and glamours the victim had, the Specter is able to use them. However, the "power level" of the resulting hybrid is then the minimum of the Specter's previous "power level" and that of the victim. So, if a puny little Specter somehow managed to subdue and absorb a giant, fire-breathing dragon (though this has its own complications; see below), it would have the shape and abilities of a giant fire-breathing dragon but the "power level" of a puny little Specter. (Very weak flame breath. Possibly unable to support its own weight.)
 
In floating blob form, a Specter may not bifurcate its body. If any part of a Specter is broken off, that part immediately begins fading and can only be saved by immediate reconnection. For this reason, attempting to absorb prey who are much stronger than the Specter is typically fatal for the Specter, since they can simply be thrashed apart.
 
If a Specter wishes to eat prey without changing their secondary form, they must employ whatever eating mechanisms their stolen form possesses. Directly absorbing prey uncontrollably leads to assuming that prey's form.
 
A Specter's personality is divided between that of their stolen body and a core personality that migrates with the Specter. So, if a Specter who had absorbed a Lesser Fey were to then go on to absorb a Greater Fey, they would take on aspects of the Greater Fey's personality while retaining a certain set of personality traits unique to the Specter itself. Note, however, that though the Specter is at least partially the person their victim used to be, their prey is destroyed by the absorption and ceases to be. That statement is mostly to solve the philosophical quandary of the self. The prey ends at absorption; what remains with the Specter is a duplication.
 
If two Specters attempt to absorb one another simultaneously, the result is the two Specters going unchanged while combining their two stolen forms. In other words, if a Specter who's absorbed a Greater Fey and a Specter who's absorbed a Lesser Fey try to absorb one another, the Specters themselves are unharmed and they both wind up with identical copies of a Greater Fey / Lesser Fey hybrid.
 
Specters in their solid or blob form may be devoured normally. Specters who devour other Specters through normal means may digest them.
 
A Specter is translucent but occludes any internal goings-on. So, despite the fact that a Specter is see-through, they can render a prey invisible by swallowing them.
 
After devouring a Fey, the Specter duplicates their clothing with ectoplasm, if any clothing was absorbed along with the Fey.
 
Specters reproduce asexually, which is one of the key points that makes them technically not Fey. Specters occasionally divide into two imperfect copies of themselves; each retains use of their stolen form, with different Specter cores at heart.
 
Specters talk about their stolen forms as if they were clothing. "Who's that you're wearing?" is a common question between Specters.
 
Though it's possible for a Specter to absorb animals and monsters, there is a severe taboo against it, both culturally and internally. The analogy is imperfect, but Specters think of absorbing someone as a form of marriage-- a disposable marriage, perhaps, but something nearly as significant and profound. You would not marry your dog, and a Specter would not absorb it. Specters who, for whatever reason, actually do absorb a monster (either out of desperation or deviance) tend to lose their grip on their spectral cores and just act like the monster. If they successfully bud off, it is unlikely that the two new animal-Specters will recognize one another and one will probably kill the other. This puts an evolutionary pressure against Specters absorbing beasts and goes a long way toward explaining why they operate near-exclusively as parasites on the Fey.
 
 
THE WINGED ONES
 
Avoiding the religious connotations associated with the word, the Winged Ones are angelic Fey who, true to their name, are defined by a broad pair of wings.
 
The Winged Ones are unique among Fey species in that they are entirely female. Furthermore, they tend to be rather... shall we say, egregiously female? They have a curvaceous beauty about them that's either matronly or destined to be matronly. It's rarer to find a Winged One without large breasts and wide hips than with them; like Lesser Fey, their bodies grab onto extra energy and never let it go. Their hair tends to be as white as the Hooded Men's are black, with tints of various other colors. When their hair does assume a color that is not highly white, it's usually a warm color such as yellow, orange, or red. Black-haired angels aren't unheard of but are very uncommon. The feathers in a Winged One's wings are usually white, but in rare cases (usually corresponding with black hair) may become black. Winged Ones' wings are fully flight-capable, however much Earth physics may deny that a creature built to those specifications could be. Winged ones wear simple, light clothing that covers but flatters. Skirts and bikini-ish toga tops are the norm.
 
The Winged Ones, like the Lesser Fey, are highly social and have a tendency to form groups and communes. They tend to gather in high areas like the tops of mountains, in treetop villages, and in some cases even in floating crystalline cities built on tracts of land that levitate above the earth and drift from place to place. The Winged Ones do not have any form of social order; no one Winged One has more social power than any other (though it's important to note that this is in terms of social mobility and judgment of personal worth, rather than actual power. The Winged Ones still have leaders and aristocrats; they just aren't considered "better" than other Winged Ones by default). In other words, their organization is completely flat (even if the Winged Ones themselves aren't... ho ho ho). The Lesser Fey might live in a migratory pattern if they must; Winged Ones will immediately create a stable home, wherever it may be, and build upon it. There are two exceptions: one is newly bloomed Winged Ones, who travel around for a short while. This behavior assures that they attach to any existing nests before creating a new one. The other exception occurs when a nest gets too large; at this time a group of Winged Ones will fly the coop to found a new nest somewhere.
 
The Winged Ones have a record three different means of feeding. The first is the same oral ingestion that all Fey are capable of; this process is comparable to that of the Lesser Fey in experience, with the only major difference being the consistency of their stomach acid; a Winged One's is more like a thick cream. Second, a Winged One may cut out the middleman and simply absorb her prey into her breasts. The exact mechanism by which this works is rather famously unknown; not even the Winged Ones are capable of explaining it. Their prey is simply drawn into their cleavage, transmuting directly into dense breast fat. Oral reports by those undergoing the transformation have described it as feeling "buttery". That same word always seems to occur to people trying to give a name to the sensation, nobody has lasted long enough to quantify it better, and most of them were too caught up in the experience to want to waste their remaining time explaining what it felt like further. Those who are curious are encouraged to go find out for themselves.
 
The third and final means of feeding for a Winged One is unbirth, which also serves as their method of reproduction. Through a physical process that ought to be easy enough to assume, the Winged One takes her prey (typically a volunteer, or a least someone willing after being presented the opportunity) into her womb. The prey is then slowly evaporated by the Winged One's spark, which, if you'll pardon the synesthaesic description, feels like a pleasant melting away into light and warmth. Once freed of its body, the prey's spark is partially decomposed and fused with an offshoot of the Winged One's own spark, producing a Winged One seed. The resultant Winged One exhibits traits of both the prey and the Winged One mother. Unbirth by a Winged One is not a true reincarnation or reformation, and the Winged One that is born from the seed produced by an unbirthing does not consider themselves to be the same person as the prey that was unbirthed. However, they do acknowledge that they got their life at the expense of another, which goes a long way toward explaining why Winged Ones behave the way they do.
 
Winged Ones tend to be the most benevolent of the superior Fey, and can often be found engaged in some random act of kindness when they aren't tending to their own needs. This can range anywhere from dropping in on some other Fey to let them nurse a while (gotta do something with those over-stuffed breasts, after all) to rescuing a Lesser Fey from a Greater Fey's advances by offering themselves as a substitute (or, if the Winged One is thinking more clearly, by eating the Greater Fey). The sort of Winged Ones who would be wild if they were any other Fey are the ones who tend to go adventuring and range farther from their nest than other Winged Ones. They still have a strong sense of "home", they just spend much of their time away from it.
 
Winged Ones have a glamour of awe. Any target whom the Winged One wishes to direct their glamour against is struck with a sense of worshipful wonder at the Winged One (ptu) and becomes willing to do as they are directed. The Winged One must be aware of the target for it to have an effect; one cannot be "accidentally" struck with the Winged One's glamour. A Winged One may not direct the target of their glamour to do something that the target would find repulsive, though they can be directed to do things which they are mildly unwilling to do. For instance, a Winged One could direct a Greater Fey to give up chasing a Lesser Fey (which they might naturally do, if the Lesser Fey were too elusive to capture), but not to feed themselves to that same Lesser Fey (which is anathema to the Greater Fey).
 
About the only thing that really scares the Hooded Men is the Winged Ones. As "heavenly" creatures, the creation and control of light is one of the most common spell-casting abilities of the Winged Ones, and those are about the only things the Hooded Men can really be injured by.
 
 
THE HORNED ONES
 
The Horned Ones are the mirror image of the Winged Ones, looking something like pagan fertility spirits.
 
The Horned Ones, like the Winged Ones, are a one-sex species; while the Winged Ones are all female, the Horned Ones are all male. A Horned One can be identified by their horns, which emerge from just below the hairline, roll downward for a short distance, then curve back toward the top of their head and make a final bend into the air. A Horned One's horns grown in proportion to their "power level", young and weak Horned Ones are very short, while older and stronger Horned Ones have horns that travel the full path described previously and may even begin to loop back around themselves. A Horned One's horns are made of a specific material; see the paragraph below for more information on what material the horns are made out of. All Horned Ones have powerful, muscular builds, beginning at the Greater Fey "swimmer's physique" and ranging up to the "mountain of muscles" paradigm. An overfed Horned One of any level will build up a beer gut. Their skin is dark and earthy, and their hair similarly takes on dark, cool, earthy tones. Their eyes typically take on a metallic hue, be they iron-grey or bright golden. Each Horned One has a black, leathery tail that starts at the end of their spine, and runs a variable length (usually two feet or so) to a spade-shaped end. The Horned Ones usually go topless, and for bottoms they tend to wear loincloths, kilts, and in civilized cases may even deign to wear pants. Capes and scarves are a common top-cover; the Horned Ones also have a tendency to wear jewelry and fine accessories.
 
The astute reader will probably have already guessed what special vore paradigm the Horned Ones are capable of; the Horned Ones are the Fey who are capable of cock vore. Through an instinctive reflex, they can cause their penis to swell to practically the height of a Fey body; their testes also enlarge to a proportionate size. In this form, their penis gains the ability to swallow man-sized objects, which are transported into (contrary to popular expectation) the prostate gland by suction. There, the prey is converted into a slurry of fluids and sugars which the Horned One may either absorb (with some deliberate effort) or ejaculate out (far more likely). Absorbed prey are converted into energy the same as any other way. If ejaculated, the semen that the prey became will soak into whatever earthy material is available and build a seed out of that. Whatever material is most precious becomes the material that the Horned One's horns are made out of. Few Horned Ones care enough to deliberately influence this, but some have been known to "seed their seed" with precious metals like silver, gold, and diamonds of various descriptions, especially if the person they made their sperm out of was an honored friend.
 
The Horned Ones' inherent maleness gives their stomach acids a musky, semen-like smell and texture.
 
The Horned Ones have a glamour of lust. It is technically a targeted glamour, but it has a "splash" effect that can also affect Fey who were not the explicit target of the glamour. Unlike many other glamours, a Horned One may also be the subject of his own glamour-- at viable ranges for the glamour, a Horned One usually cannot avoid affecting himself with his own glamour. The effect of the glamour is to make the target horny; for the direct recipient, this usually means falling into a blind, uncontrollable rut. Whatever it takes to get themselves off, whomever they may be in front of, they'll do it. For reasons that ought to be obvious, many Horned Ones will deliberately inflict their own glamour on themselves if bored.
 
The Horned Ones have a long-running, instinctive antagonism with the Winged Ones. As male, earthy spirits, their nature is forever opposed to the female, heavenly spirits that are the Winged Ones. Both the Winged Ones and Horned Ones are resistant to each other's glamours, to the infinite frustration of all involved. The Horned Ones refuse to acknowledge the Winged Ones for the grand and wonderful creatures that they are, and the Winged Ones refuse to turn into depraved, carnal Bacchanalians like everyone else. A particular point of contention is that the Horned Ones claim that the Winged Ones are dishonest; though a Winged One might come bearing a blessing to some other Fey, it's entirely possible that she may simply swallow them up or stuff them into her breasts or even (horrors!) unbirth them, thereby making more Winged Ones. Horned Ones, so the Horned Ones claim, are at least honest: you know that when you run into a Horned One, you're fucked (in all senses of the word). The Winged Ones, in retort, claim that at least they try to be kind, and you couldn't possibly try to argue that the Winged Ones are at all worse than any of the other Fey in their overall behavior. Apologetic bullshit, claim the Horned Ones, designed to excuse the way the Winged Ones draw in their prey with half-truths as opposed to just up and admitting it feels great to get fucked and eaten. And so it goes on in circles forever.
 
In contrast to the Winged Ones' completely flat social structure, the Horned Ones have a very clear pecking order. Every Horned One is immediately capable of telling if he's outranked by another Horned One (even if he's never had contact with another Horned One before), and the expectation is that the Horned One of greater rank will be obeyed absolutely. If two groups of Horned Ones (in the rare instance that they do form groups) encounter one another, they'll immediately re-stratify according to the new ranking order. In other words, you outrank anyone you'd outrank in a vacuum, even if they were previously subordinate to someone who outranks you. Disobedience is met with swift and terrible retribution.
 
Horned Ones are more likely to form "teams" when they are born together. For instance, if a Horned One were to encounter a group of Lesser Fey and CV them all, the resultant Horned Ones would all bloom together and live their lives as a unit.
 
Horned Ones rarely CV one another, as for the most part it's a pointless exercise. Usually it only happens when a Horned One is reaching a preyish point in his life, and rather than let the species suffer, he gives himself over to an honored friend in order to help perpetuate that friend's bloodline. Much like the Winged Ones' unbirth, this is not a form of regeneration or reincarnation. Cannibalism among Horned Ones is similarly rare. Horned Ones usually only eat each other as punishment for disobedience. As I said, they are devil-like but not evil; more pagan than demonic. They do not backstab each other for the hell of it.
 
The Horned Ones are the martial experts of the Fey. Though any Fey species may take up arms with proficiency, the Horned Ones have a special talent for the use of weapons.
 
Among all Horned One cultures, one thing is consistent: a notion they call the Law. It may go by a synonym, such as "The Contract" or "The One Law", but it will always have a sense that it is capitally-lettered and supercedes all else. The Law has as many formulations as it has names, but it always goes something like this: "the strong devour the weak". The Horned Ones do not abide by cowardice. The exact enforcements of the Law may also vary depending the particular Horned Ones involved. Some would rather die than flee from battle, while others believe that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor and, in particular, that perhaps it's less that you're weak and more than your strengths lie in not being caught. When all is said and done, though, they demand 100%, and if a Horned One is found to have willfully avoided full engagement, he faces a jerrible judgment indeed. Most Horned Ones do not hold other Fey species to the Law, but they certainly respect attempts to abide by it.
 
 
FAIRIES
 
It just wouldn't be a magical realm without fairies. There are two variations on the fairy species, much like the basic Fey are divided into Lesser and Greater Fey. The Lesser Fey equivalent of the fairies are... the Fairies.
 
Fairies are a scaled-down version of the Lesser Fey with patterned butterfly wings attached to their backs. They stand about four inches tall, and their wings are roughly as large as their bodies. Their wings display two or three different colors; the individual strands of their hair will randomly exhibit all colors present on their wings in the same proportions. Like the Lesser Fey, the fairies are susceptible to variable body mass composition; well-fed fairies get extra fat deposits while starving fairies become very slim. Other than those attributes, fairies are just like the Lesser Fey.
 
Fairies are far too small for clothing.
 
Fairies live in modular brown-shelled hives which scale well between various population sizes. When the number of fairies outgrows the amount of space in the hive, they add on to it. The hives are built out of what is, essentially, glorified fairy vomit. A fairy's stomach digests food into a thick paste with which the fairy can do one of three things: hork it up to make building material, which dries into a hard, crusty, brownish shell; digest it a bit more and THEN hork it up to create a deferred food source in the same way that bees make honey, or digest it thoroughly and absorb it for energy. Fairies tend not to use this third method except by mistake; if they take too long to reach home or get lost while trying to evade a predator, they might accidentally digest what they ate completely. If at all possible, a fairy will make honey out of their food so the non-gatherers can have a chance at nourishment. (Fairies who arrive fat tend to get swallowed by other fairies and turned into honey anyway. This is bad for the fairy, of course, but the alternative is trying to survive alone as a four-inch tall Fey.)
 
Fairies do not have any particular glamour besides the stealth glamour. Individual fairies survive by being small, difficult-to-detect targets; in a group, they fuse their stealth glamours together in order to hide the entire hive.
 
Fairies are not terribly bright creatures, and are in fact only capable of single-word "sentences". Their vocabulary is limited to words with broadly applicable and contextually-modified meanings. "Food" can mean different things depending the attached inflection and behavior; it can mean "I found food, and I need some extra people to help me eat it" or it can mean "I am starving, and I badly need some people to go find food and turn it into honey for me". To compensate for their lack of individual intellect, fairies have a hive-mind of sorts. When dealing with a fairy hive, you need to remember that everything one fairy thinks is going to be thought by all the other fairies in the hive. Startle one, and you'll set the entire hive in a panic; comfort one, and you'll calm all the rest of them.
 
Fairies are the primary Fey prey of Lesser Fey, and may either live in a strained symbiosis (giving up their extra honey to Lesser Fey who ask for it, or offering a few of their own every so often as "rent") or a simple predator-prey relationship (the Lesser Fey simply go out, find fairy hives, and give them the preyishness glamour full-blast).
 
When a fairy hive outgrows the number of fairies its infrastructure can reasonably support, a group of the fairies will eat a bunch of the other fairies and fly off to found a new hive, stopping once their previous hive-mates have sufficiently digested. Usually they digest their "starters" to full absorption, and build the hive out of available food sources that they find on the way.
 
 
HALER FAIRIES
 
Among the many aphorisms you could eventually arrive at regarding the Mystic Wilds (and, ultimately, destroy yourself by cleaving too closely to), one that would get you farther than most is "Misfortune, at least, is honest." When things seem to be going badly for you, you can probably rest assured that things are in fact exactly as bad as they seem to be. Granted, someone might just go right over your head and use something that looks bad to drive you into something completely different which is even worse, but on the whole most tricks are of the "it looks better than it actually is" variety.
 
Such it is for most of the people who encounter haler fairies. Like most deadly threats, a haler fairy is nearly indistinguishable from something that isn't, in this case the garden-variety fairy. Whereas normal fairies rely on their sheer numbers to ensure the collective survival of their entire hive, the haler fairy is a species of fey that lives individually. They pack the same amount of energy that a typical fey would contain (roughly equivalent to a full fairy hive) into a single several-inch-tall body. And, as you might probably have guessed, their glamour is designed specifically to suppress people's perceptions of how large their aura is. What looks like a lone member of a typically simple-minded and easily subdued race is, in fact, a predator on par with fey many times its size.
 
The "haler" part of their name is short for "INhaler", though god only knows who first decided that that first syllable had to go. Haler fairies have a noteworthy genetic relationship with the Aeries, and exhibit an even more extreme version of the Aeries' spatial compression ability, though they lack the ability to create a vortex. Simply put, a haler fairy with access to a loose appendage can suck down a fey-sized meal without trouble. Powerful (or just plain hungry) halers can even go for a second or third helping, a feat that most large fey wouldn't even think of attempting.
 
For all their terrifying capacity to eat, halers face issues with physical strength. Keeping so much energy in such a small package is something of a wasteful configuration, meaning most of their power goes into maintaining the distortions necessary to stay both small and intelligent and powerful. Consequently, haler fairies are basically as frail as standard fairies despite their extra energy reserves, and they haven't got a whole lot to spend on complex spell-casting. Instead, they favor the element of surprise, using their small frame to slip close to a potential victim unnoticed.
 
Haler fairies exhibit much more of the traditional fairy psychological profile than either fairies or pixies. Because they eat on the same schedule as other fey (once every day or so, less if they gorge themselves), they have a lot of spare time to come up with dastardly things to do with their stealth abilities. Those that don't choose to do random acts of kindness to unwitting big-fey (most of them) choose to come up with random acts of mischief to inflict upon them instead. Robes quickly fall out of fashion in areas known to contain haler fairies; the little bastards love nothing more than to find two fey having a nice, involved conversation, sneaking up on the one with the most flowing garment, and slurping the thing right off. When hungry, they might even swallow one party as the other looks away. They find the resulting confusion on the other party's part hilarious.
 
One dead giveaway that you're dealing with a haler fairy rather than a normal one is the propensity to wear clothes. Most normal fairies go around naked, but halers may well exhibit intelligence/civilization enough to wear clothing. In fact, that's another way to figure out whether you've got a haler on your hands or not: if you can trick it into speaking, it's definitely a haler fairy. However, if you've got a haler fairy on your hands, well, it's past the point where the knowledge will help you...
 
 
PIXIES
 
The Greater Fey equivalent to the fairies, pixies are spiteful little bastards.
 
Just like the fairies are a scaled-down version of the Lesser Fey, pixies are a scaled-down version of the Greater Fey. While the same size as fairies, they've got muscular builds and terrible dispositions. Their wings have more angular shapes and angrier markings, though the same pattern of matching wing colors to hair colors applies. They flap their wings much faster than fairies, and tend to fly around at much greater speeds. Unlike fairies, who have tiny but still human-like teeth, pixies simply have two large fangs that fold along the roof of their mouth when their mouths aren't open.
 
While fairies are agrarian scavengers, pixies are bloodsuckers. With fearless bravado, they will relentlessly attack any Fey they detect, latch on with their fangs, and drink until their bellies are swollen. Then and only then will the pixie detach itself and fly away, if the Fey hasn't forcibly removed it or crushed it into fading by then. While individual pixies are a nuisance, groups of pixies are one of the Wilds's greatest terrors. Though light alone, a gang of pixies can eventually drag down a Fey with their sheer numbers, bite into every available inch of skin, and suck the blood out of the poor bastard until he fades. Being captured in this way is even worse if you're caught near a pixie nest, which is usually Fey-sized, cylindrical, and has an opening specifically for placing Fey in. Someone unfortunate enough to wander within range of a pixie nest stands to be swept up by hundreds of pixies, dragged into their nest, and repeatedly force-fed and drained until their body can't bear the stress any more and fades out of sheer exhaustion.
 
Pixies do not have a stealth glamour. Instead, they possess a strong glamour sense that allows them to locate potential prey with ease.
 
As hornets are to honey bees, pixies are to fairies. Any time a nest of pixies locates a hive of fairies, the result is all but certain to be a bunch of fat pixies. Lesser Fey often take it upon themselves to be the stewards of the fairies in order to prevent their territory from getting covered in (potentially deadly) pixie nests.
 
Stupid as fairies may be, pixies are even worse; they appear to be completely feral and only avoid eating each other out of habit (or perhaps out of a similar hive-mind structure to the fairies). Pixies have very little individuality or rational thought.
 
 
PIXIE LORDS
 
You wouldn't expect one of the most feared threats in the Wilds to have such a goofy-ass name.
 
Just like the fairies, the pixies not only have an analogue in the Greater Fey but also an evolved form in the form of the Pixie Lords. Pixie Lords, just like haler fairies, pack all the energy of a single hive into a single individual. The trick with Pixie Lords is that they are still fundamentally a hive of pixies. It just so happens that a Pixie Lord is anywhere from a hundred to several thousand pixies all fused into a single human-sized body. They are easily defined by several abnormal attributes: pale skin, hair that runs in dark shades, batlike wings, and in some cases even demonic horns.
 
Pixie Lords have a range of abilities that make them inordinately difficult to deal with for most fey. First of all, a Pixie Lord is capable of splitting its body arbitrarily into any of its composite members. This is primarily a defensive ability; it's quite difficult indeed to swallow something that can explode into a bazillion flapping terrors at a moment's notice. On the other hand, they can also use this ability to split to their own advantage by drinking blood from dozens of unwitting victims, silently gaining power without drawing too much attention. Second, as a winged fey, Pixie Lords can freely fly without the aid of costly and tiring magic. Third, they retain the pixie's blood-sucking digestive system even at full size. A Pixie Lord is capable of feeding off of a fey just by sucking the blood out of its body-- in a world where the willingness of the victim is a key element of a successful hunt at any time, that's a huge advantage to have.
 
Despite their moniker, Pixie Lords have relatively little sway over pixie hives that aren't themselves. They get their name from their tendency to refer to themselves in the first-person plural, which stems from their nature as a collective rather than a single entity. This strikes most people as an affectation in the use of the royal plural rather than their actual honest self-perception. The fact that they typically presume themselves to be better than everyone else and try to conquer as much land as they are able does little to dispel that image.
 
Incidentally, Pixie Lords are real bastards when it comes to actually destroying them. Though they have only a single spark, it's near impossible to tell which of their composite pixies is actually carrying it. If things start looking bad, poof! You've got ten seconds to figure out which of ten thousand pairs of bat wings is carrying the Pixie Lord's soul-- if any. Most Pixie Lords are evil and cunning enough to secret their "true" body somewhere safe, while running their main mass around the world wreaking havoc. Because it's so difficult to destroy a Pixie Lord utterly, they are a fairly long-lived type of fey, usually only brought to an end by a concentrated effort by many other fey. As a further consequence, Pixie Lords have the advantage of experience in most forms of confrontation; they are, on average, very cunning.
 
Fortunately, Pixie Lords are egotistical enough that they rarely work together with one another; when they do convene, it's typically either to mate to destroy each other. Possibly both.
 
{*}Though they most often devour their victims by simply draining the blood out of them until all their energy is consumed, Pixie Lords are entirely capable of whole swallowing. In fact, this method of devouring their prey has a rather terrifying consequence: rather than completely unmaking the victim and absorbing their consciousness, as most fey's digestive systems do, a Pixie Lord's digestive system strips away all but a fraction of the victim's spark, leaving only the most wicked, hateful, and hungry parts. This shard of the victim's spark becomes a new pixie in the Pixie Lord's menagerie. This fate is usually reserved for the Pixie Lord's most hated enemies.
 
Fairies occasionally aggregate in the same way as Pixie Lords, though as you might imagine the result is much kindler, gentler, and altogether more reclusive.{&}
 
That Pixie Lords have a marked proclivity for cravats, leather jackets, elaborate gowns, and other such gothic attire has absolutely nothing to do with their startling similarity to aspects of Western Earthling vampire lore.
 
Really.
 
 
THE TATTOOED FEY
 
The Tattooed Fey are a hybrid species of Greater Fey and Lesser Fey; they share genetic similarities with both, but are a distinct species. They are occasionally also called "Succubi" and "Incubi".
 
While all Fey are beautiful, the Tattooed Fey have a very "adult" beauty. That is, while most Fey are born appearing in their late teens and slowly gain a more mid-twenties countenance, the Tattooed Fey start where most Fey end and grow to an early-thirties build. They get their name from the markings that cover their body, which look like arcane, runic tattoos. The exact amount of skin coverage is non-constant, but generally difficult to conceal when fully visible. Some Tattooed Fey are covered head to toe, while others might have a single birthmark that runs from their heel to their scalp on one side. As mentioned, a Tattooed Fey's markings are not visible at all times. With force of will, a Tattooed may cause their markings to recede. They cannot completely delete their markings in this way; some part of their "ink" must always remain. Arousal makes hiding their tattoos difficult, as maintaining the required concentration can be problematic.{&] Many Tattooed Fey use this talent to conceal their markings from other Fey in order to integrate with them. A few distinct markings still exist even when their tattoos are hidden: a Tattooed fey's eyes have a distinct irridescence about them, and they have very pronounced canines. Otherwise, a Tattooed Fey looks very much like a Lesser Fey.
 
The Tattooed Fey have two methods of eating. The first is orally, which they don't often use except when encountering prey of the same sex while starving. Their preferred method of feeding is through sexual intercourse. The Tattooed Fey use the "aura mixing" quirk of sex to great effect. In essence, rather than try to swallow up another fey and melt them, they simply discolor the other fey's aura so much that they become the Tattooed Fey by definition. As a side-effect, the Tattooed Fey and their victim form a psychic link that causes them to experience a synchronized pleasure. By the time they reach orgasm, the prey's body is completely under the control of the Tattooed Fey's. At orgasm, the prey's body loses all cohesion and gets sucked into whatever genital orifice the Tattooed Fey possesses, as if the prey's body were a liquid. This liquid essence is temporarily stored in either the testes (in males) or the womb (in females) before being absorbed and dispersed as energy inside their body. It's possible to withdraw from sex with a Tattooed Fey, but extremely difficult. Not only must you overcome your own feelings, you have to overcome the Tattooed Fey's feelings as well. Having enough disinterest for the both of you is a feat.
 
Oral sex, tribadism, and frottage with a Tattooed Fey is perfectly safe outside of the fact that you're having sex with a Tattooed Fey, which is dangerous in and of itself.
 
Though genital feeding is a much better paradigm overall, a Tattooed Fey will occasionally resort to oral feeding when they can't find a suitable prey of the opposite sex. Here they relax their taboo against unwilling prey, though they'll make every effort to ensure that their prey is willing before it goes down. Digestion in a Tattooed Fey's stomach is unusually sensuous-- their stomach fluids have a consistency like a heavy oil, and their stomach seems to actively tease its food, varying between forcefulness and softness to prolong the experience.
 
The Tattooed Fey have a glamour of desire. They can make a Fey who's aware of them want-- desperately and uncontrollably-- to have sex with them. Anyone who is not aware of the Tattooed Fey cannot be affected by their glamour. However, most Tattooed Fey do not employ this glamour as a primary tactic, preferring instead to use it only when absolutely necessary or to enhance the experience of someone who's already willing. They much prefer willing prey; to this end, most Tattooed Fey are skilled in seduction-- real, actual seduction, based on being truly charismatic and a conscious control of body language and speech patterns. Some Lesser Fey cultures are quite accepting of Tattooed Fey, and keep them around as counselors and "entertainers" (nudge nudge, wink wink).
 
Despite having a powerful feeding paradigm, the Tattooed Fey aren't terribly powerful in terms of magic; they're barely stronger than Lesser Fey. However, they have strong minds for science and mathematics; many of the more complicated technologies employed by the Fey were either created by or maintained by the Tattooed Fey. This proficiency in thought can be tied back to their preference for seduction: they work hard at being clever and making things work the way they want to.
 
 
ANURAS
 
Close kin of the Greater Fey; possibly a mutation.
 
The Wilds' only "ugly" Fey, though "ugly" is a relative measure. They are ugly by comparison to the other Fey. This has as much to do with their stature than anything else. The Anuras simply don't give a damn. They allow their clothes to get shabby and their hair to get toussled; they don't bathe nearly as often and as a result tend to retain the dirt of daily life; they slouch. In build, they are somewhere between the Lesser Fey and the Greater Fey; not as muscular as the Greater Fey but not as a rounded as the Lesser Fey. Their hair and eye colors are all variations on a single between-everything color that can't be conclusively called a shade of anything, but resembles brown if you absolutely had to nail down the average. The one defining physical feature of the Anuras is that their tongue acts as a snaring appendage. An Anura's stomach is a slimy place with an overpowering smell of beer; relatively speaking, their digestion takes a long time to work.
 
An Anura's tongue can be stretched to an incredible distance, far more than would appear possible. Their tongues have been known to stretch fifteen to twenty feet and can cross that distance in only a few instants. In flight and after prolapse, the tongue is highly mobile and not overly affected by gravity; it can be held aloft with minimal effort, even with prey attached. Once extended, the Anura has full prehensile control over their tongue, though they find it easiest to drag its length around by the tip.
 
There exist at least three variations on the base Anura "design"; these variations are true sub-species in that they do not interbreed and every child Anura will have the same "design" as its parents. Some Anuras just have a wet, extensible tongue, such as the one in "Meet the Anura". Their usual tactic is to use their tongue like a lariat and hog-tie or molest prey into submission before swallowing them. Other Anuras have sticky tongues that act like fly-traps; in rare cases, this adhesive can be so powerful that the only way for the Anura to free their tongue from what it's attached to is to drop it into their stomach and digest the prey off. Finally, there exists a strange variant whose tongue acts as an extended throat, the end of which is capable of swallowing prey.
 
Anura culture is mostly an exercise in doing only as much work as is necessary to avoid being the guy who never does anything. Do too little, and some go-getter will go-get you. Do too much, and... well, the others probably won't do anything about it, but you'll definitely be the odd man out. The Anuras are not terribly proactive people.
 
In accordance with their slacker disposition, the Anuras do not have anything terribly unique in terms of glamours. However, their stealth glamour is very powerful, and they do not need to drop their stealth glamour to attack. A Fey who isn't paying attention might well only realize that a Anura is there when all of a sudden half of him's turned into a wet, sloppy bulge in the Anura's tongue. And at that point there's pretty much nothing he can do to stop the other half from turning into a wet, sloppy bulge as well.
 
Anuras are sometimes epithetically referred to as "frogs".
 
 
AERIES
 
Aeries, occasionally also known as "Sprites" or "Jinn", are a mid-range Fey species roughly at the level of Greater Fey and Anuras.
 
Aeries are deceptively small Fey, generally standing around a foot shorter than a Lesser Fey. However, their most noteworthy and distinguishing physical feature is their skin; in defiance of the usual melanin scale, an Aerie's skin color is usually in a chromatic hue. The only restriction on this color is that it is not a normal skin color, and it is only very rarely the same color as their hair. Aeries have no particular inclination toward particular builds-- there are squatter, fleshier Aeries, and taller, thinner Aeries. Their clothing trends toward the Arabic; they love soft, flowing cloth and loose, drooping accessories.
 
What sets Aeries apart as predators is an innate special ability. Simply by inhaling, an Aerie can create a wind tunnel that draws whatever object they desire toward their mouth. This vortex is a linear effect; for the most part, it only affects things that the Aerie has direct line-of sight to. Objects close to the vortex may also be drawn in, but, for instance, they can't bend it around a corner. An Aerie can sustain the vortex for as long as they can inhale; this is a much longer duration than a human could spend inhaling in most cases, but still limited. The vortex leads directly to their stomach; if a prey (like another Fey) gets lodged in their throat, all they have to do is keep sucking and eventually they'll get pulled all the way in.
 
After swallowing their prey, Aeries can bring their second ability to bear on them. An Aerie's stomach is much larger on the inside than it is on the outside, though to what degree the internal space and the external space mismatch is a variable. An Aerie has to willfully trigger this ability, but once triggered it becomes subconscious. Thus, though an Aerie might be momentarily weighted down by eating a Fey larger than themselves, they can simply flex their stomach muscles a bit and compact their prey down to a much more manageable size. The prey isn't directly affected by this; they aren't immediately crushed, just pushed into a bubble of contracted space. The bottom line is: an Aerie can turn a bulging, heavy stomach into a flat, manageable one immediately with a little effort. This has no effect on how long it takes the prey to digest.
 
Most Aeries are impulsive and selfish. They're used to being able to take whatever it is they want immediately, from whatever range. If they want to eat the cute little Fey over there, they just open their mouths and suck them in, consequences be damned. Many a valuable trinket has been lost because it got in the way of an Aerie and the thing that the Aerie wanted to eat. This rashness has two side-effects: first, it affects the Aerie's glamour. Aeries have a glamour of haste and panic. People affected by an Aerie's glamour get a sense that everything is extremely important. Like the Aerie itself, they become more impulsive, more honest (in the negative sense), and more rash. This is a passive effect; Aeries do not choose who gets affected by their glamour and how. Aerie cities, then, are extremely busy places-- everyone drives everyone else into a panic. Visitors (the ones wearing iron boots so they don't get sucked in) tend to get lost in Aerie conversations because everyone's talking so damn fast. The second effect is on the kinds of magic that Aeries wield. Most Aerie magic is of the quickening sort-- while they can't fly, they can certainly run really fast, jump extremely high, and dodge things with only a moment's notice.
 
Aeries tend to live in open places with long sight-lines from place to place, and avoid regions where the wind has trouble flowing (such as forests or chasms with lots of intrusive rocky outcroppings).
 
Winged Ones are not fond of Aeries, seeing as they spend the vast majority of their time hanging around where there's no cover and nothing to grab onto.
 
Aeries are relatively solitary Fey, and if they do congregate they typically do so among their own kind. The reason for this is simple: Aeries are pretty damned disruptive. If you had Greater Fey and Lesser Fey living in the same city, you don't run into many disturbances. Sure, some Lesser Fey get accosted and devoured in an alley (or, hell, in plain sight of everyone, culture permitted). Troubling for the Lesser Fey, maybe, but nothing that can't be worked around with managed expectations. Aeries, however, eat by creating a giant goddamn whirlwind and sucking up everything between them and their prey. This is not conducive to a stable, coherent atmosphere (in any sense of the word), and unless a settlement is deliberately built around supporting that kind of lifestyle it's just not worth putting up with them.
 
 
SYLVANS
 
A mutant species of Lesser Fey. Though their proper name is "Sylvan Fey", most cultures simply truncate this to "Sylvans". They have also been called "Dryads" or "Alraunes", though neither nickname is entirely correct, especially since the Wilds contain creatures which do actually go by those names.
 
Despite their name, the Sylvan Fey do not necessarily live in the forest. Rather, they get their name for their bizarre resemblance to trees (hence the "Dryad" misnomer). Their skin trends darker on the melanin spectrum than other Fey-- it's not unheard of for there to be white or yellow Sylvans, but most of them have brown or black skin, dark or green eyes, and green hair. Though rarer, any color you could see out of tree could be seen on a Sylvan's head-- cherry-blossom pink, autumn red, orange, or yellow, wintry white or simply a dark color, same as their skin. They're slightly taller than Lesser Fey, and a bit narrower overall. Their women are not terribly hipsy, and their men are not overly muscular. There is, however, at least one extraordinary trait for each sex: whatsoever is round and dangling on their bodies will be extremely generously proportioned. Sylvan men are the tanuki of Fey; Sylvan women are... well, just enviably busty. Naturally, these unnatural proportions have led to a number of jokes at the Sylvan's expense; for instance, it's said that Sylvan men are as tall as they to keep their balls from dragging around on the ground (this is absolutely not true, but makes for good humor). The exact formulation varies, but Sylvan women tend to get some variety on the sentiment that the biggest fruit ought not be hanging so far out of reach. Sylvans treat such jibes which the same gentility as they do everything else (see below), especially the males: very few other Fey, even the Horned Ones, can produce as much semen in as protracted an orgasm as a Sylvan Fey.
 
Digestion is a slow process for Sylvans. For their prey, it is akin to being immersed in an extremely thick, nearly molasses-consistency syrup and slowly dissolving into it.
 
The Sylvan Fey are defined by what I call "gentle hedonism". The definition that most people default to when they think of the word "hedonism" is debauchery-- wanton indulgence without regard for the future. While the Sylvans give little regard to the future, they are not depraved; they are peacable, tranquil people who smile no matter what the circumstances. If the future is bright, they smile because they know that good things are on the way. If things are turning sour, they smile because life is better now than it will be. Furthermore, they are unambitious; they do not trouble themselves with thoughts of what might be or what they could have. If they have food and shelter and company, they are content. Even digestion they take in stride; a Sylvan who finds themselves unable to escape is likely to smile, accept that their time has come, and let someone else profit by their body.
 
A key factor in creating this passivity is a function of the Sylvan Fey body. The Sylvans retain a great deal of what they eat in its original form. Like the plants in the Mystic Wilds, they are very low-energy creatures. That which they eat stays in their body for a very long time. As a result, they assume many of the properties of what they eat. Since their diet is predominantly vegetarian, the end product is an easy-going, passive mentality. As an interesting side effect of this retentive ability, the "merging" that most Fey experience as they digest is extremely protracted. Someone eaten by a Sylvan becomes a second consciousness resting behind the first-- they cannot assume control of the Sylvan's body, but they experience all the sensations that their host does. For this reason, Sylvans are extremely wary about whom they eat; they will never eat someone whom they wouldn't want hanging around for the long length of time it takes them to fully absorb. Like so many things with the Fey, the exact rate at which this occurs is strongly variable, and for some Sylvans can become indefinite (especially if they eat things they'd rather absorb than the person, for instance).
 
The Sylvan Fey have a glamour of comfort, which is an ambient glamour rather than a projected one. Predatory Fey find it difficult to directly assault collectives of Sylvan Fey simply because it feels too damn good to be there and being all violent would just ruin the mood. Even when alone, this glamour is enough to render harsh, violent Fey softer and gentler. It doesn't save the Sylvan from getting eaten, but it's rare for a Sylvan to have their body completely ripped out from under them as would happen when, say, a Greater Fey and a Lesser Fey meet in the woods.
 
Sylvan Fey settlements tend to be extremely simple affairs. They lack the motive to produce even the simplest houses, so when a group of Sylvans settles down, you wind up with a really big pile of lean-tos and tents. Unless the weather is prohibitively severe, the Sylvans really don't need any more than that. Of course, if the weather is prohibitively severe, you're unlikely to find Sylvans there anyway.
 
 
HILL FEY
 
The Hill Fey are one of those cases where it becomes clear that the terms "fey" and "elf", in the context of the Mystic Wilds, are nowhere near equivalent.
 
Though possessing all the traits that define the Fey (many various hair colors, inevitably long hair, and pointed ears), the Hill Fey are among the more significant departures from the standard Fey build. Standing between eleven and thirteen feet tall when erect (a rarity), the Hill Fey cut an imposing figure on those grounds alone. However, they're always much wider than the average Fey, in terms of both fat and muscle. They are big ol' piles of flesh, the Hill Fey are. Fortunately, they rarely assert their full stature. They slouch in ape-like fashion: their arms are proportionately longer than normal Fey's, and their legs are slightly shorter. Most Hill Fey maintain a homo sapiens gait, but some resort to knuckle-walking. In a further subversion of expectations, Hill Fey are alone among Fey subspecies that grow facial hair with any vigor; a male Hill Fey's beard can rival a lower Fey's normal hair for length.
 
In personality, Hill Fey have the typical bruiser profile. They're slow of thought and simple of speech, and their frame makes them inefficient at crossing distances. Do not mistake these these attributes for physical sluggishness, however. Hill Fey are capable of alarming feats of violence, made worse by their instinctive desire to hold something very large to hit things with. However, being slow in all things, they are likewise slow to anger. Alternatively, they are slow to calm, and once enraged, a Hill Fey might never be truly peaceful again. This at least is constant: Hill Fey do not change easily, and what they are, they are likely to remain.
 
The most significant source of impulse to a Hill Fey's mood is frustration or satisfaction. Hill Fey tend to fixate on their immediate visceral needs; they hate being denied what they want and love having their whims tended to. Insults and compliments slide right off of them; words are just funny little things that tickle their ears. An empty belly, on the other hand, is a sin against nature which must be rectified by filling it up with littler Fey posthaste, or there will be hell to pay. For this reason, Hill Fey are most likely to be found in good spirits in the company of Sylvan Fey, their cousins in sloth, who rarely put up a big fuss about being eaten. In all other environments, though, it's likely that the Hill Fey will find themselves outmaneuvered by nimbler critters until they're finally angry enough to snatch something up.
 
Naturally, Hill Fey are predish overall. A fat, contented Hill Fey might swing preyish, but about the only thing capable of swallowing one of the big palookas is another Hill Fey.
 
Slow is as slow does, therefore the Hill Fey's glamour is one of slowness. It's difficult to move while around Hill Fey; their very presence suppresses motion and renders people clumsy and awkward.
 
Though terrible with their hands, Hill Fey are alarmingly talented with their teeth, which are resistant to wear and tear under even the most horrifying dental catastrophies. Hill Fey are well-known to create clubs by knocking down trees, lopping off a decent part of the bottom half of the trunk, then gnawing a handle into one end. Where they can't get trees, they'll suffice with rocks. Wherever a Hill Fey can't fashion a shroud large enough to cover most of their body (they haven't the skill for anything more complicated), they'll make do with plate armor hewn out of the largest rock they can find, if they don't simply decide to traipse about in the buff.
 
 
BUTHIDS
 
The Buthid Fey, in physical appearance, are quite a bit like Greater Fey. They stand slightly taller than Lesser Fey, and have more pronounced musculature. Their skin tends toward a middle-eastern tan, but varies wildly by region. Their hair is as multichromatic as any other fey's, but the most common hues are red, green, brown, and black. Buthids are unique among Fey for having short hair, though in this context "short" usually means "between shoulder and shoulderblade". What sets the Buthids apart from other fey is their tail. Always the same color as their hair, their tail emerges from just below where the spine meets the pelvis and extends roughly nine to twelve feet. The tail is segmented, muscular, fully prehensile, and leathery to the touch. It ends in a bulbous tip with a three to six-inch needle on the end. The needle is extremely hard, but can be broken off with enough force; if so, it regenerates itself over a day or so.
 
The tail is a Buthid's primary method of feeding. Their tail-tip contains glands that secrete a powerful digestive fluid. Buthids attack by jabbing their tail's needle into the victim and injecting the digestive into them. Muscular contractions in the rest of the tail draw out the liquefied flesh and carry into the Buthid's body through peristalsis. Though this is a powerful means of devouring a victim, it is also fairly necessary for Buthids. Whereas most fey's digestive systems link the stomach to the intestines and the intestines to the spark, a Buthid's spark sits at the top of their intestines, between the stomach and the intestines. Therefore, food swallowed orally is mostly wasted. To gain any real benefit from eating, Buthids must drain their prey with their tails. This denies them the advantage of paralyzing their victim by trapping them in their stomach. To compensate, most Buthid Fey use crippling or disabling magic before attacking.
 
This rare capacity for eating without whole swallowing makes the Buthid Fey notorious monster-eaters. Even a fey's ability to stretch has limits, but nothing is too large to have its insides dissolved.
 
Buthid Fey are unique in that their glamour does not affect the mind. Instead, their aura allows them to displace loose earthen matter. They cannot tunnel through solid rock, but dirt and sand will give way at will, allowing a Buthid Fey to simply "swim" through what would otherwise be difficult terrain. They often use this ability to hide from predator and prey alike.
 
Perhaps as a side-effect of the fact that Buthid Fey cannot eat properly without their prey having most of its mobility intact, Buthid Fey are, on the whole, peril fetishists. They sit on a very thin line between predator and prey, and most of them are aware that their fortunes can change in an instant. They delight in games of chance and stakes. Furthermore, they're an extremely competitive breed; there is very little that they will not turn into a contest. Or, to put it another way, there is no time at which they believe a fey should be safe from having to defend its own life. Buthid Fey have been known to attempt to drain each other while mating, with both of them surviving only if they're close enough in power to avoid one overtaking the other. Self-draining can serve as a form of masturbation for certain Buthids; fortunately, it's extremely difficult for a Buthid to do enough damage to itself to actually die of it.
 
Some rare subspecies of the Buthid Fey have soft, rather than hard needles. These soft tips can be folded open through extended muscular systems, turning the tail into less a draining appendage than a prolapsed throat. In these subspecies, the digestive fluid in the tail-tip is far more caustic and flows backward, into the tail. It will usually render the prey semi-solid by the time they reach the intestines. If a Buthid Fey has this capacity, it will not be able to use its tail for traditional draining.
 
 
SHADOW FEY
 
The Shadow Fey are a small, lithe species of fey, closely related to the Lesser Fey. At rest, their skin is dark black, and their eyes and hair tend to be of unusually intense hues, giving them the appearance that someone took a normal fey and inverted their color palette. However, they often use glamours and illusions to conceal these attributes, meaning they are functionally indistinguishable from a normal Lesser Fey under most circumstances.
 
The Shadow Fey confirm one of the fundamental conceits of the Mystic Wilds by subverting another one. That is, the Shadow Fey act as a living reminder of the fact that one's safety can never be guaranteed, as a result of the special ability unique to their species. Let us recap a few important facts about the working of the Mystic Wilds (and, in so doing, clarify a little about how digestion works): the spark is a fey's "soul", which defines the nature of the fey. There is a link to the fey's spark at the end of its digestive tract; material reaching the spark is burnt up and emitted as waste heat. The shape of a fey's body is an emanation from its spark. When two sparks collide, the stronger of the two will consume the weaker. (This is what produces the sensation of becoming the other predator in the absorption process.) A fey's body is its main energy store; when a spark requires more energy to survive, it draws energy from the body. The merging of minds is actually an unrelated side-effect of digestion; devouring a fellow fey is a means of obtaining the energy stores from their body. The prey's spark is mostly useless. It is, however, a perfectly safe operation-- the predator's spark has all its own energy to draw on, plus what it just absorbed from the prey, to help it "win the battle". That assumption is the key element that the Shadow Fey operate on.
 
A Shadow Fey's body is specially built to be difficult to absorb. Though they melt down just as easily in another fey's stomach, fey intestines can only absorb them very slowly, and will mostly pass them on through. Because of this, when the Shadow Fey's spark reaches its predator's spark, it's backed by most of the energy it possessed before it was digested. Most fey sparks are not used to fighting other sparks on equal terms, and there is a very good chance that the Shadow Fey's spark will absorb its predator's. As a result, the predator's body contorts itself into the shape of the Shadow Fey's-- that is, the Shadow Fey takes its prey by being eaten and then digesting their devourer from the inside out.
 
As you might expect, Shadow Fey have a suite of attributes designed to get them eaten as fast as possible. In addition to a strong capacity for illusions (to surmount the fact that their normal appearance is a giant "EATING THIS IS A BAD IDEA" sign), they also possess a hunger glamour which, when turned against any creature, causes it to feel starved. They can't directly suggest that the creature actually eat the Shadow Fey itself, but given a long enough exposure with no other readily-available food, the prospect inevitably seems very attractive. Their own instincts also lead them powerfully toward being eaten. Shadow Fey are total prey-sluts, and the mere mention of going stomach-diving it typically enough to get them into a sexual frenzy. In fact, this is a good way of determining if someone is actually a Shadow Fey in disguise-- if they get all hot and bothered over the mere hint that they might get eaten soon, it's a bad sign.
 
It's important to note that the name "Shadow Fey" does not indicate a proclivity toward or a basis in dark magic as defined for the Mystic Wilds.
 
Certain cultures live in symbiosis with the Shadow Fey. Though they're rarely accepted outright (being poisonous and all), Shadow Fey occasionally factor in to rites of passage in certain tribal cultures-- the candidate must swallow a Shadow Fey, and is only judged worthy if they survive.
 
Finally, it's also important to note that the Shadow Fey are by no means invincible. Their chief advantage is the element of surprise; once they've lived in one area for a while, the surrounding fey species tend to develop a capacity for digesting their allegedly indigestible flesh. (If only by process of natural selection. The ones with the strongest intestines will survive and pass on that trait.) Plus, their immunity only extends to fey in most cases. Non-fey digestive systems have little trouble with them. For that reason, cultures living near high populations of Shadow Fey will often take up monster-taming to give the Shadow Fey a convenient place to dump themselves into.
 
 
 
SOLAR FEY
 
Solar Fey represent the absolute pinnacle of Fey existence. They are the ultimate form of life in the Mystic Wilds, the very top of the cosmic food chain.
 
If you've ever seen a painting of a Hindu god, you have a vague mental image on which to base the appearance of a Solar Fey. A man, sitting cross-legged in an astral sea, with eight arms, each of them holding an achingly symbolic implement, whose hair streams out from him in an infinite kudzu fractal. A woman holding her palms together above her head, standing en pointe in front of a sun-shaped clock with sub-faces for every eon, from whose nipples Time itself flows in a milken stream. That sort of abstracted, impossible figure is how the Solar Fey actually appear.
 
But what is a Solar Fey, really? A Solar Fey is any Fey, from any sub-species, who has gained Total Understanding. A Fey who gazes upon the Truth of the Mystic Wilds is transformed into a Solar Fey, to join the heavenly host in the astral dance. So great is the power of a Solar Fey that their waste heat, the ambient energy that entropy demands their bodies radiate from the simple act of existing, is enough to instantly incinerate any terrestrial creature within several hundred thousand miles. They simply cannot exist within the Wilds proper; they must flee to the emptiness above. Thus the greatest of Fey become the stars that warm the earth below (and hence, also, the bizarre, meandering patterns of said stars).
 
In personality, the Solar Fey are as varied as the kinds of Fey that ascend to become Solars. However, one thing is constant: much like Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, a Solar Fey always has a distinct sense of removal from the events of the world. They are, as Manhattan put it, "Just a puppet that can see the strings". They see everything, past, present, and future in all the unlimited dimensions that define the Mystic Wilds universe. Though they manifest all that made them unique when they were terrestrial Fey, their reactions have a strange scriptedness to them, as though what they say is said only because it just so happened that they said such a thing at that time. The transition is subtle, and occurs slowly. Solar Fey who are closest to the earth are youngest, while elder Solars (those who are not devoured by their peers-- even the stars must eat) drift higher and higher over time, into realms farther and farther from the world known as the Wilds.
 
As they grow in age and in power, Solar Fey become further and further entwined with the fundamental forces of the universe. They have sex and give birth to cultures and ideologies rather than new bodies. They take hold of the very dimensions of Space and Time, curious at these rare few things which are yet inscrutable to them. They follow the path of Fate, enthralled by their own reflection in the intermingling strands. They explore lands of a kind that defies the use of language to describe. Those final few who reach the very end of their journey reach the absolute top of the Wilds, the ending point. There, they are absorbed into the universe itself-- and in a brain-twisting violation of all that we understand, emerge at the bottom as the energy that coalesces into new matter, perpetuating the cycle eternally.
 
 
MISCELLANEOUS
 
The Fey definition of a "month" has nothing to do with the division of a year. A Fey "month" is the amount of time an average Lesser Fey will spend outside a stomach. A Fey "year" is the amount of time it takes for a seed to bloom after being planted. That the Fey month happens to be around thirty days long and that the Fey year happens to be almost exactly twelve months is an astounding coincidence.
 
To reiterate, a Lesser Fey lives one month on average, their typical cause of death being an uncontrollable erotic fascination with the idea of being eaten. "Superior" Fey (from Greater Fey on up) have longer lifespans, proportionate to their stance on the power chain (see below).
 
However, it is worth pointing out that the preceding statistics are subject to the same mathematical clank-donkery that keeps the 80-year average human lifespan from implying that the vast majority of us die at 80 years old. Consider this: other factors aside, back when the average lifespan was around 40, many people still lived into their 80s. Why was that? Because if you survived all the horrible shit that killed people under 20, you pretty much weren't going to croak on account of anything else. The same principle applies in the Wilds. There is a vast, seething underbelly of untamed lands where Lesser Fey are fortunate to last more than a week. More civilized Fey of all stripes, on account of their social network, better food supply and further removal from the most dangerous elements of the wilderness, tend to live far longer and live more significant and complicated lives.
 
Different Fey have different levels of magic power, in the same way that a larger animal with more muscles is capable of exerting more force. However, do note that a tiny animal with a deadly poison can bring down an animal hundreds of times its own size. Exceptions exist to every rule, but in terms of raw magic available, the following line ranks the Fey in terms of power. < signs divide Fey species, weaker on the left and stronger on the right. Multiple < signs indicate a broader divide in no particular mathematical scale. = signs indicate that the two species are roughly equal.
 
Fairies < Pixies <<<<<<< Sylvans < Lesser Fey << Tattooed Fey < Greater Fey = Anuras = Aeries = Buthids < Hooded Men = Hill Fey << Horned Ones = Winged Ones <<<<<<holyfucksomanyanglebrackets<<<<<<< Solar Fey
 
You can expect anything that's higher on the power chart to prey upon things at the same level or lower, though reversals are always a possibility.
 
The Wilds are, of course, populated with an endless variety of man-eating creatures, the full extent of which would be impossible to document in its entirity. Most anything an author could imagine could be found somewhere in the Wilds. The only significant limitations what could be deduced from the "General" section: most creatures are designed to use whole swallowing, and pleasure-traps (pheromones, playful hentai tentacles, Valuable Shiny Things) are the most common lure. Content creators using the Wilds are encouraged to be creative.
 
It might seem strange that I stress how overt magic is rare, yet I repeatedly make reference to creatures able to make light through conscious use of magic. Understand that creating light is a far cry from creating lightning. One releases energy of a specific visible spectrum, while the other releases enough energy to stress the fundamental composite forces of a body. That's a huge difference in energy; light is a simple enough thing to make that it can be done on a Fey's mana budget.
 
This listing of Fey varieties, while extensive, is by no means comprehensive. The Wilds are infinite, and nobody can tell how many species of Fey there might ultimately be. However, the most common kinds are listed here, and in my opinion they're the most interesting.
 
There is no one single seat of the consciousness for Fey and other creatures of the Wilds. Most of them assert a head and certain vital organs, which, if destroyed, lead to extremely rapid death (fading). As mentioned in "General", however, a Fey's consciousness simply travels with its composite material, whatever shape it might take, and is ultimately destroyed when that material is no longer associated with the Fey to which it belongs. Therefore, a Fey's consciousness ends when they've been absorbed entirely, though since most Fey experience a "joining" with their predator, it might reasonably said that they simply continue their existence in a new shape. The Mystic Wilds do not contain an analogue for the "soul"; nothing persists of a Fey beyond their body (which is, itself, somewhat like a soul).
 
Imagine, if you will, that you have been informed that you have, at most, a month to live. At some unknown time, potentially at any point from this moment on, you could be swept up and submitted to the single most pleasant experience of your life (on average), after which you will cease to be. This is what a Fey is faced with at birth, and it colors their mindset. They do not form strong attachments to things or to people; not only might they themselves be taken away at a moment's notice, but anyone around them might as well. This does not mean that they do not love, nor are they sociopaths, but the Fey are resistant to the sense of loss. Their lives are short and pleasant, and they do not have time to waste on weeping that it was, perhaps, not better than it could have been. They have only the hot, passionate now.
 
Sleeping creatures in the Wilds are more difficult to locate. When sleeping, a creature's body is (as is reasonable) in an overall low-power state. However, as an evolutionary adaptation, its stealth glamour gets extra power. So, while the creature is asleep, they use less energy overall, but that particular function gets more than usual.
 
Rocks and minerals in the Wilds are, fundamentally, the same as living things. They are an object which asserts a specific shape and slowly burns energy to do so. Being non-conscious and non-motive, their energy needs are practically non-existent. Furthermore, having no specific anatomy, they can be bifurcated without any form of injury. However, since they lack a specific consciousness, they cannot defend themselves from psychic attack: that is, if something wants them to change shape, they must. For this reason, rocks, metals, and other non-conscious materials fold quickly under digestion. Against a stomach, flesh is actually sturdier than steel. (Coincidentally, this also means getting swallowed with your clothes on results in a sexy scene where acid strips you naked.) Plants are "psuedo-conscious" forms of life, and thus act quite a bit like minerals. They don't take in a lot of energy, and they don't use a lot of energy (barring the carnivorous varieties, naturally). Owing to this borderline state, plant materials are capable of surviving long enough while detached from their parent creature to be useful as material for cloth, buildings, and so on, though not quite as long-lasting as brick and stone. The end result is behavior quite like our own world, so don't trouble yourself overmuch with the details. People build houses out of stone and make clothing out of plant fibers. Simple, intuitive.
 
There was one and only one Fey-- a unique instance in both space and time-- who managed to drill to the very bottom of the earth. He emerged in the bizarre realms at the very top of the universe, and in a incredibly improbable series of circumstances, fell all the way back down to the earth without colliding with anything. He landed on the very spot where he was born and vaporized on impact.
 
Light behaves strangely in the Wilds. Take into consideration that the Solar Fey fly over the flat landscape, acting as a light source of similar power to our sun. Without something to block line-of-sight, it should pretty much always be visible. However, light (and vision) are distorted in such a manner in the Wilds that most creatures perceive the earth as a very subtly rounded plane. This usually winds up confusing fey cultures that are developing toward a solid grasp of science. Using sound observations based on their own perceptions, they typically work out the math and conclude that the world they live on is a large earthen ball of a particular circumference. Confident in their findings, they set out to circumnavigate the globe... only to discover, to their extreme alarm, that what all their math says should be back where they started is someplace completely different. Further advancements in the understanding of the Wilds's physics may eventually lead to the correct conclusion that the Wilds is an infinite horizontal plane with fucked-up photons, but a significant population also winds up convinced that science is bunk and the attempt to understand the world is fundamentally misguided. I can't say that I agree, but that's a bit closer to the truth in the "Mystic" Wilds than in our world.
 
 
HUMANS AND THE MYSTIC WILDS
 
Humans have a nasty habit of getting themselves into everything, and I suppose I'd be remiss if I didn't define the interaction that our inquisitive little species has with this particular corner of the multiverse. The short of it is: human contact with the Wilds is fantastically rare and, by and large, inconsequential. Metafictionally, this is simply to preserve the narrative purity of the setting, but there are good in-universe reasons for it as well.
 
First of all, there are no native human populations to the Wilds. The Fey and all their variations are the standard sapient life form of the Wilds, and may be thought of as the native human-equivalent life form. Whatever chain of causality that would normally manifest as something we'd recognize as human instead spun off and created the Fey. Still, that doesn't necessarily prevent plane-shifts; there are critters out there known for leaping across the barriers between universes. How about them?
 
The problem is the basis of matter in the Wilds. Positing, for the moment, a system in which all existence is predicated on a specific fundamental composition, the periodic table in the Wilds is written completely differently than it is in many other realities. Basically everything is made out of mana, ether, or whatever other name you want to call sparkly magic stuff. Humans, in contrast, are made out of predominantly carbon with some other base elements in supporting roles. Now, that doesn't directly affect a human who moves into the Wilds from some other universe-- the Wilds don't simply bounce said plane-shifter out with a dialog box that says "You lack the appropriate drivers to coexist with this reality". The issue is more practical: the necessary compounds for life as we know it to continue don't exist in the Wilds. The air is breathable, but terribly thin, and living matter in the Wilds only contains traces of the nutrients that a human-centric universe's life would expect to find in spades. Not only is it basically impossible to subsist on the Wild's plants or animals, it's basically impossible to get anything that a human would subsist on to survive, either. Bring your wheat, bring your rice, bring your lichens, none of it will take. Nor can such things be produced out of thin air; the mana in the Wilds doesn't "understand" the foreign chemical structure you'd be attempting to make it represent.
 
There's another issue at play, as well: the Wilds are made of magic, and humans in most universes do not have a strong innate sense of that energy spectrum. Even light, sound, and force in the Wilds are expressed differently than in human-centric universes. What does that mean? If you took a totally average human (not a sorcerer or priest or the like) and stuck him in the Wilds, he'd be in a total sensory blackout. Sight, sound, touch, even balance and direction-- they'd be completely wiped. Even basic cognizance in the Wilds requires a certain level of etheric sensitivity, otherwise the whole of the Wilds simply appears as a void-- not even empty space, just nothingness. For this reason, it's rare that anyone other than the odd wizard winds up in the Wilds. (Particularly clever wizards will simply leave the Wilds proper alone and just draw mana off of it.) Certain cults occasionally use the Wilds as a rite of passage, a place where initiates are sent to gaze upon the divine, and there are a few realms out there whose banishment spells link into the Wilds (throwing someone into the Wilds with no way back is a brutally efficient means of killing them).
 
There is one upshot to the utter incompatability of human realms with the Wilds: humans are far safer than anything else in the Wilds. Think about this: why is a ghost terrifying? It is a creature that exists only slightly on a marginal field of view. Ghosts are something you can barely see, and can't hear. Or can hear, but not see. Or only barely see and hear, on occasions, and can't touch. This is how humans appear to Fey. With such a limited amount of mana available to them, humans hardly register at all with a Fey's senses. Recall that the king of capabilities in the Wilds is stealth-- so a creature that you can see-- partially-- but cannot sense the power of, is much, much stronger than you are. Non-sapient creatures are similarly affected; they may not have the existential dread of That Which Is Seen But Not Felt Otherwise, but they pay humans no mind. Therefore, the greatest hazard to a human in the Wilds isn't being eaten, it's not having enough to eat.
 
The principle works in reverse as well. Fey are so heavily reliant on magic for their existence that a Fey drawn into another universe and not fed an ample supply of mana (more than most worlds can safely support) is liable to fade within a matter of minutes, if that. Fey of this particular kind are almost never seen outside of the Wilds.
 
 
BESTIARY
 
A brief listing of the sort of creatures seen in the Mystic Wilds-- as many as have occurred to me and I think might be interesting. Naturally, there are all sorts of strange things out there... this list is by no means definitive.
 
Spectrebloom - A type of carnivorous plant. It is capable of shifting its twelve to fifteen-foot long stem and petals willfully, but it never moves form where it initially sprouted. Like most carnivorous plants in the Wilds, it uses a sweet smell as a lure. Unlike most carnivorous plants in the Wilds, however, the sweet smell is really only that, an pleasant olfactory lure. Whereas other plants add a pheromonal kicker to the mix to relax or charm their prey, for the spectrebloom it's enough just to sucker the victim into coming closer-- because it's completely invisible, being made out of stuff that doesn't catch light at all. As a result, even wary fey who know to ward their mind against intrusions might blunder within striking range. Those who fail to escape sink into a stomach of sorts midway down the stem, to be liquefied and drained into the plant's root system in full view of anyone who might be nearby.
 
Natal Alraune - One of a genus of sapient flora that uses a flower-like appearance to snare its prey. The Natal Alraune has a humanoid frame about three to four feet tall composed of root-like plant flesh. A large flower, roughly the same size as those that bloom into fey, emerges from the Natal Alraune's back. The Natal Alraune gets its name from the ruse it uses to lure in fey. A Natal Alraune waits underground until it senses a fey moving nearby. Then, it unburies itself enough for its flower to be visible. A fey seeing this could easily be fooled into believing that a new fey is blooming into the world, and approach, either thinking they have the opportunity to make a few friend or catch an easy meal. Instead, the Alraune lashes out with vines from inside the flower, drags them in, and covers them in the petals, at which point the end result should probably be obvious.
 
Blobs, Slimes, Oozes, and Just About Every Other Icky Living Puddle - Yeah, they get into just about every fantasy setting they can, and they're in the Mystic Wilds, too. In fact, blobs are a unique threat to fey rather than a nuisance for low-level characters to grind EXP off of. The problem with basing your survival strategy on deceit is that deceit requires a receptive mind. That is, for you to make me believe that you aren't there, I have to have some idea of what should be there and what shouldn't. However, blobs are brainless. They have nothing but the most naive perceptions, so simple that no amount of flim-flam and bamboozling will give them the wrong idea. Consequently, blobs are completely immune to all known charms, enchantments, glamours, etc.. This makes them especially hazardous to sleeping fey, who normally rest any old place they care to under the impression that their heightened invisibility glamour will protect them from prying eyes. Even small blob monsters can be dangerous; they act as the Wilds's only real equivalent to the concept of "disease". Once one gets on or in you, very little short of burning it out or a powerful, targeted poison is going to stop it from subsuming the entire rest of your body.
 
Naga - Humanoid reptiles, though still more snake than person. (They have a rather uncanny similarity to EveAra's idiomatic style...) Though quite intelligent, very few speak fey language (by choice). They are a very visually-oriented species, and prefer to make themselves understood by gesture, posture, motion than by words. This trend continues into their hunting methods; a naga's movements have a natural hypnotism to them that attracts and retains a fey's attention. The height of this ability is when the naga dances; fey witnessing the dance are compelled to join in until the naga chooses to stop. More often, however, the dance winds up including the sensuous motion of the fey's body down the naga's throat as one of its steps. Like snakes, nagas live in a gorge-and-hibernate cycle; a naga usually finds as large a gathering of fey as it can safely subdue and dances until it has drawn in and devoured the entire village, then returns to its den to sleep for anywhere from months to a full year as the fey digest.
 
Aulurochi Carrier - Here's how to paint a good mental image of the Aulurochi Carrier: start with a forty-foot wide sphere. Give it shaggy brown fur, like a wooly mammoth's but shorter. At one end, stick two big, black, glassy eyes, and just under that open up a slit to serve as its mouth. Now, put four tiny little columns at the bottom, close to the center, just long enough to keep the round part between them off the ground. This is an Aulurochi Carrier. It is a beast of burden used by the civilized fey tribes of the Auluroch Desert (see "By The Oasis") to cross the sands. They are perfectly docile (in fact, downright stupid) animals which literally know of no other existence than moving forward-- the Aulurochi build tracks rather than pens for them, so that they can just keep stepping forward without actually getting anywhere. Since they're so huge, very few things are actually capable of eating one, leaving their riders mostly unmolested on top. How they maintain their balance is a scientific mystery.
 
Dune Antlion - Of course, any time you say "nothing could possibly eat one", there has to be something that can eat one. Enter the Dune Antlion, a larval insect that buries itself in the desert sands. Its mouth is large enough to take in an entire Aulurochi Carrier, albeit with a little effort. It uses a glamour to render an entire sand dune over its pit, which is built steeply enough to tip even the Aulurochi Carrier off-balance and drop it into its maw. Naturally, confining itself to such a narrow range of prey means that food doesn't come along often, but fortunately Dune Antlions don't expend much energy. However, that does mean a Dune Antlion is horribly bad news for a fey that drops in. Since a Dune Antlion is designed to make even as huge a meal as an Aulurochi Carrier would be last, it takes FOREVER for it to digest a fey completely. The experience is pretty nerve-wracking.
 
 
CHANGELOG
 
1/3/10: Removed Merfolk and Naga from the list of Fey. I am trying to avoid half-human-half-X template creatures in the Wilds.
 
1/5/10: Added Miscellaneous entry on souls and Fey attitudes toward death. Added a brief description of Horned One clothing trends and a note about martial prowess.
 
1/21/10: Expanded lifespans across the board. 1 month is the average Lesser Fey lifespan. Finally thought to include the Fey Power Chart.
 
2/15/10:
Added "Latest Update" note.
Horned Ones - Added a note about The Law and tinkered with the CV mechanics.
Winged Ones - Changed which substance their stomach acid improbably resembles.
Aeries - Newly added
Tattooed Fey - Rewrote their entire section. They are now less monsters and more a rational type of Fey.
Sylvans - Newly added
Vampires - Deleted. Akin to Merfolk and Naga, I'd like to avoid existing fantasy archetypes. Besides that, they just didn't fit thematically.
Miscellaneous - Added a note about sleep. Added a note about nonliving objects.
 
4/6/2010:
Fey General - Added a note about the "zietgeist" effect on natal Fey
Sylvans - Meditation on the subject of pine pollen led to new additions regarding their sexual prowess
Silver Fey - Entirely retooled
 
5/19/10:
Hill Fey - Newly added
Solar Fey - Newly added
Humans and the Mystic Wilds - New section
Miscellaneous - Further tweaked Fey lifespan expectations
 
5/24/10
The Spark - New section
Fey - Expanded on their "planting" compulsion and "pregnancy"
Greater Fey - Added a note about spark-taking
 
6/12/10
Lissams - New name for Star-Tongues; section revised
Magic - New section
 
11/27/10
The Aura - New section
Buthid Fey - Newly added
Silver Fey - Redacted as incompatible with the creative direction
Horned Ones - Rejiggered how their cock vore works
Tattooed Fey - Alternative explanation for how their form of genital vore works
 
12/19/10
General - Jostled a few sentences in light of new section on "Animus"
The Fey - Removed the "preyishness ramp"; replaced with a more sensible limiter on Fey lifespans
Animus - New section
Buthids - One physical tidbit
Miscellaneous - Clarified a point on fatality
 
4/17/11
Shadow Fey - New section
The Landscape - New section
Culture - New section
 
6/15/11
- Haler Fairies: New section
- Pixie Lords: New(ish) section
- Miscellaneous: Added a bit on the weird way light works
- Changed the "Lissam Fey" to the "Anura Fey".
- Bestiary: New section
 
11/20/11
- Landscape: New information on the area between worlds.
- Pixie Lords: Added a new capability.
- Animus: New revelations on the nature of monsters and their relationship with fey.