Aetrimonde

Well, it’s November, and that means that this blog is moving along into a new monthly theme: the Autumn Court of Faerie. Of course, the first question that I feel the need to resolve is “What is Faerie?” And to answer that, I’m going to start off with a crash course on Aetrimonde’s cosmology before diving into the nature of Faerie.

Overview of the Planes

The mortal world (or material plane, if you prefer) of Aetrimonde exists alongside other planes of existence that are more fantastical than a mere ball of rock and water. And alongside is the operative word here: as best as Aetrimondean arcanists who study such things can explain it, each of the planes including the mortal world “occupy a subspace within some metaphysical topology of higher dimensionality.” Where and when those volumes overlap in mere four-dimensional spacetime, it is possible to pass from a point in one to the corresponding point in another.¹ These places where the planes overlap are called planar crossings, and with the proper magic (principally the Plane Shift ritual), mortals can force their way into other planes from within a crossing.

Planar crossings vary in nature depending on the plane they connect to. In some cases, they are relatively stable, appearing in the same place constantly, or on a reliable schedule. Others are transient, and only appear intermittently when the conditions are right. With the right magic, crossings can be stabilized, holding them in place, but this is not always practical: often, transient crossings open in dangerous situations like storms, or battles, that make it difficult first to perform the appropriate magic and then to keep it intact.

There are a multitude of small planes, anywhere from a few dozen meters to several hundred kilometers across, clustering close around Aetrimonde, but these are essentially nothing more than a bubble of Aetrimonde that has been four-dimensionally “pinched off” from the main mass: they seldom have any interesting magical properties or unusual residents, although they are sought-after as personal demesnes for powerful arcanists.

Of more interest are the five-and-a-half known major planes that consistently intersect the mortal world: Faerie, the Underworld, the Elemental Roil, the Heavenly Realm (and its attached Pit of Hell), and the Dreamlands. Each of them has a distinct magical nature and is home to a variety of otherworldly entities.

Going from Aetrimonde to another plane isn’t something to be done trivially: the planes have dangers that mere mortals are not used to, and they are generally higher-magic than the mortal world. Getting there, however, is fairly straightforward.

Faerie

The first of the major planes is Faerie, also called Neverland, and recently, the Realm of the Sidhe. Crossings to Faerie are common and easily identified: stable ones are surrounded by rings of standing stones erected as boundary markers, while transient crossings are generally marked by rings of mushrooms, unseasonal vegetation, or other such natural delineations. Faerie is one of two planes that can have crossings forced open from any location in the mortal world (although predicting where such a crossing will open in Faerie is very much an art). As such, Faerie is the most easily accessible of the major planes. Faerie is the original home of trolls, ogres, gnomes, redcaps, pixies, satyrs, centaurs, and all manner of creatures out of Aetrimonde’s Faerie tales, many of whom have also established a presence in the mortal world.²

Topology, Not Geometry

The Realm of Faerie is unlike the mortal world in that it does not have consistent geometry. This is most evident in what would-be explorers refer to as the “Fractal Valley phenomenon.” The Fractal Valley is a well-known location, near to several reliable crossings into Faerie: a valley perhaps a dozen kilometers across on its long axis, but containing, at last count, one thousand, four hundred and twelve square kilometers of area. From the rim of the valley, visitors can see perhaps fifty square kilometers within the valley’s bowl…but take the wrong path through one of the woods dotting the valley floor, or follow the wrong branch of the river, and you can find yourself in a part of the valley not visible from the rim, all the while remaining inside the valley and in sight of the distant mountains and hills at its edge.

Fractal Valley is merely the best-known and most-studied example of a phenomenon which occurs throughout Faerie: it manifests as forests that you can walk around in ten minutes but not through in a week, rivers where a hundred leagues on their banks is a mere kilometer on their waters, and tunnels in small hills that lead to valleys in massive mountain ranges. The scholars who have studied the phenomenon believe that Faerie occupies a more densely folded section of the metaphysical topology, allowing larger spaces to be contained within smaller ones. It is thus difficult to map Faerie: the most usable maps (for anyone not a student of higher-dimensional geometries) tend to be in the form of atlases mapping out the plane’s small, self-contained spaces and describing the manner in which they connect to each other and the dangers that might befall a traveler.³

Narrative Causality

Faerie has no overt perils in the way that some other planes do: the terrain and physical laws (other than the strange topology) are much like the mortal world’s; the food, water, and air are fit for mortal consumption; and while navigation can be difficult, the landscape is at least static, and can be mapped in some sense. The danger in Faerie is that, in addition to physical laws, it appears to be governed by a kind of narrative laws. Visitors to Faerie are advised to read up on their Faerie tales, and attempt not to be drawn into the narrative: avoid interactions with the locals wherever possible, and especially do not accept gifts or offer oaths. The best defense against Faerie’s narrative causality is to be boring.

If a visitor to Faerie is caught in the narrative (typically signified by an implausible number of interesting events happening to and around them) the best course of action then is to fit oneself into the narrative role of a protagonist. Be kind to traveling peddlers, heed any advice given three times, and above all, do not lie, cheat, steal, or break oaths. Outsiders who fit into a heroic archetype (the knight in shining armor, clever trickster, or wise mystic are most common) tend to find that the complications in their way, while tedious at best and dangerous at worst, are ultimately rewarding. Playing along with the narrative can bring rewards ranging from pots of gold to magic swords…or, sometimes, an opportunity to undergo character development.

Falling into a villainous role is far more dangerous. Faerie actively discourages craven, jaded, and venal behavior, first by presenting those its perceives as villainous with opportunities and mild incentives to reform. These often resemble traps in the form of object lessons: a stolen purse of gold turns out to be cursed, turning all the coins placed within into lead; a broken oath brings uncommonly bad luck with it, until the oathbreaker makes amends. If a villain fails to take the hint, Faerie then escalates, throwing increasingly lethal obstacles and foes into their path until they leave Faerie or fall to one of them.

However, in rare cases, Faerie is known to claim villains for its own. Villainy done with style, panache, and a certain amount of self-awareness seems to receive some respect from Faerie, and visitors who can play a villainous role well find that their villainous deeds work out…so long as they aren’t facing an equally good hero. The danger here is that the more a villain plays into Faerie’s narrative, the harder it becomes to break out of their role…ultimately making them a creature of Faerie, and just one more of the plane’s repertoire of plot devices.

Faerie Tales

It is unclear where Faerie tales come from: certainly they seem like they could be factual accounts of events that actually did happen in Faerie, but it has also been pointed out that they could instead be the inspiration causing the plane to impose such a narrative. The earliest Faerie tales were part of an oral tradition before being set down in print, and as such their origins are lost to history. Some later tales that entered widespread circulation were commissioned from bards and minstrels, extolling the supposed deeds of various adventurers and heroes, but at least some of these are known to be exaggerations of the real events, or invented from whole cloth.

Some scholars have attempted to settle the question by looking into more modern additions to the genre. One serious effort compiled a list of children’s stories verifiably written by mortal authors in the last century, and then commissioned several bands of adventurers to visit Faerie and question the inhabitants about events resembling the narrative in these stories. The adventurers who returned did bring back several positive results in which creatures of Faerie reported historical events resembling the narratives in these stories…but always as second-hand accounts. None of the actual participants in these events (and certainly no mortal participants) have ever been identified…and to further muddy the waters, a later study discovered that nearly half of the authors whose stories were included in the earlier effort had submitted their manuscripts pseudonymously and could not actually be identified by their publishers. Conspiracy theorists like to suggest that many published faerie tales are actually the work of faeries, disguised as mortal literature for some nefarious purpose.

The Sidhe

Faerie did not used to have rulers. Accounts from a century ago describe Faerie as dotted with small villages, with few of them owing fealty to any authority other than the mayor of a nearest town or a duke in a nearby castle. There were no great cities, and few kings or queens.⁴

This changed, with no warning but also no particular chaos or strife, at some point in the last century. Around eighty years back, accounts from visitors to Faerie started describing people in positions of authority, resembling elves and calling themselves the Sidhe,⁵ along with mentions of great cities and fortresses. Strangely, the residents of Faerie treated these things as entirely ordinary, as though they had always been present.

The sudden appearance of the Sidhe was rapidly followed by their consolidation of power throughout Faerie. They seized objects and places of power formerly held by trolls, built roads and signposts leading to hidden gnome villages, and conscripted ogres, redcaps, centaurs, and other denizens of Faerie into their armies. All this, they accomplished with little resistance: few of their subjects particularly liked what the Sidhe were doing, but the vast majority quietly acquiesced to their authority. The resistant minority, faced with all the power now held by the Sidhe, were forced to flee into the mortal world or into secret places deep within Faerie’s convoluted topography.

With a solid grasp on power within Faerie, the Sidhe proceeded to subtly reshape the plane’s narratives. Where once it told stories of noble heroes casting down tyrants in single combat, it now told stories of desperate heroes scrabbling to achieve temporary victories against the nigh-omniscient Sidhe and their ruthlessly efficient enforcers.

Mortal visitors to Faerie have had few direct interactions with the Sidhe since their sudden appearance, but certain facts have emerged. While their rank and file are indistinguishable from elves, their nobility have magical powers distinct from ordinary mortal magic…and they claim to be the rightful rulers of Caras Seidharen⁶ (from which they take their name), who escaped the Collapse by fleeing into Faerie. Their magical powers make them evidently no longer mortal, but whether that means they have become creatures of Faerie, beholden to its will, or something else entirely remains to be seen.

The Genius Loci Hypothesis

The leading hypothesis on the nature of Faerie is that it is a genius loci: a place with a mind. In this hypothesis, there is an intelligence that suffuses the plane of Faerie, and that enjoys telling stories–and a particular kind of stories, at that, designed to shape the mortals ensnared in them into more heroic individuals (and thus, more interesting to the mind of Faerie). The plane’s convoluted topology, the narrative laws that it enforces, and even the proliferation of faerie tales in the mortal world are its tools used in guiding its stories to a satisfying conclusion.

It’s not clear how the Sidhe would fit into this hypothesis, if it were true. Some scholars believe that they are a sign that the genius loci’s tastes have shifted, and it is now attempting to tell a different, darker kind of tale using the Sidhe as a plot device. Others believe that the Sidhe are responsible for the shift in the tone of Faerie’s narrative, having used their magic to somehow effect a change in the fundamental nature of the plane. And a few, generally regarded as crackpots, think that the plane’s tastes are influenced by the mortal world, and that recent changes there (the advance of industrialization, the rise of modernity over romanticism, or perhaps the cynicism caused by the Wars of Smoke and Steel) have had corresponding changes in Faerie.

Plot Hooks

The nature of Faerie makes it an interesting plot device for GMs to use: its narrative causality can be fun for players to try to work with (or exploit), and because the plane is relatively innocuous (by the standards of the planes), it can be used in low-level adventures without too much work.

Encounter Hooks

• A mortal who spent too long in Faerie and fell too deep into a heroic persona has just escaped back to the mortal world, and is having trouble re-adjusting. Too used to the black-and-white morality of Faerie, they keep mistaking mundane things, like moneylenders charging interest or guards making arrests, for villainous plots. The PCs first learn of this when their ordinary adventuring behavior causes this would-be hero to mistake them for a band of brigands.
• A band of the Sidhe’s enforcers have crossed over from Faerie, and are demanding that the local town hand over the many Fae refugees who settled here after fleeing the Sidhe. The locals are none too eager to hand over people who have become part of their lives, but they are hardly a match for Faerie soldiers…unless some passing adventurers care to get involved.

Adventure Hooks

• The PCs need to travel a long distance quickly, and the only option available to them is to cross into Faerie and journey between two crossings that are closer together in the other plane than they are in the mortal world. In order to make their deadline, the PCs desperately need to stay unentangled in Faerie plots…which is tricky for such interesting people as they.
• A band of renegade Fae hire the PCs as mercenaries to help them strike a blow against Sidhe oppression. Of course, it’s not clear whether these Fae are themselves part of a Faerie narrative, or have broken free of the plane and are acting out of their own free will…
• Events reminiscent of Faerie tales have been playing out in the mortal world…with anticlimactic twists. The goose’s golden eggs cause devastating price inflation, Little Red Riding Hood has contracted lycanthropy, and the Frog Prince has been transformed into one of those poisonous tropical species, with lethal consequences. Each of these occurrences has claimed more lives than the last, and it is up to the PCs to find the cause and banish the narrative back to Faerie.

Campaign Hooks

• The Sidhe have set their sights on the mortal world, and their agents, in the guise of mortal elves but gifted with the Sidhe’s unusual magics, are working to turn Caras Elvaren and Tir Coetir to the service of the Sidhe. The PCs are in a position to expose the agents and forestall this scheme, but the Sidhe themselves are untouchable in their seats of power within Faerie. Ultimately, the only way to unseat them and put a permanent stop to their plans will be to discover how they grew so powerful and cut off the flow of power that the plane of Faerie offers them…

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1. There are other paradigms that attempt to explain this truth, of course. They include the planes being intertwined branches on a great world tree, bubbles in the foam of an astral sea, and so on. The difference is largely academic. ↩︎
2. Which tend to be of a grimmer (and Grimmer) nature than ours. ↩︎
3. E.g., “To reach the village of Bellberry in Fractal Valley, enter from the semi-southmetaeastern pass and follow the river in the direction of flow from the left bank. Continue until, while passing beneath a footbridge, the sun abruptly moves to the opposite rim of the valley. If at any point you find yourself inexplicably on the right bank instead of the left, stop immediately and retrace your steps. Avoid kissing any frogs claiming to be princes, especially if brightly-colored.” ↩︎
4. Certainly too few to account for the population of princes and princesses to be found in Faerie. ↩︎
5. Pronounced “shay.” ↩︎
6. Pronounced “shee-DAHren.” See also this previous post. ↩︎