Realms of Power: Chapter One: Nature of Faerie
This page is part of the Realms of Power: Faerie Open Content
Faeries are spirits with bodies made of incidental matter, held together with a type of spiritual energy called glamour, and moved with stolen vitality. The bodies of faeries are constructed as temporary vessels for interacting with humans, out of symbolically significant matter. Each interacts with humans through a role, which is a series of symbols that the faerie cannot change, and rules that the faerie cannot break. The intricate mystical rules a faerie must follow are called its glamour, and define its nature and its supernatural powers. The faerie’s glamour also defines how the faerie must appear to humans, and how it seeks vitality.
Faeries are drawn, instinctively, to the mutable lives and passionate emotions of humans. Faeries can borrow these capacities from people. This human energy, called vitality by magi who study these things, allows faeries to feel, grow, learn, and age. Many faeries do not know why they are drawn to humans: they lack a quality that Hermetic magi call cognizance.
Cognizance: Understanding the Need for Humans
All faeries require human vitality, and seek it instinctively. This instinct to seek humans, and catch their attention — to bask in their aliveness — is what separates faeries from creatures aligned to the other Realms. Different types of faerie are aware of this need to varying degrees. And faeries can be divided into broad classes based on their understanding of the relationship between their glamour, role, and need for human vitality. Examples of the following strata are found in Chapter 4: Faerie Bestiary, and each has its own Virtue, described in Chapter 3: Faerie Characters.
Incognizant Faeries
Those faeries with the least cognizance are often the focus of very simple stories, usually warnings and advice for methods of avoidance or propitiation. Some animals and werewolves, as examples, demonstrate this level of cognizance. They are completely unaware that they derive nourishment from the fear of and precautions taken by humans, rather than from the sheep they worry to death. They usually do not know that their bodies are held together by glamour, and may imagine themselves to be as organic as humans. If their bodies are destroyed, incognizant faeries may create new ones, but have no memory of their previous incarnation. This is the most common sort of faerie encountered by humans.
Not all incognizant faeries are simple creatures. Many powerful faeries act upon complex plans, unaware that by fulfilling any of the overt goals of their plan, they also gain human vitality. When the Queen of Winter kidnaps a baby, and then forces its parents to play a sinister game with the life of the child as the prize, she is acting with this level of cognizance. She desires the child. She enjoys playing ruthless games with terrified adults. She is unaware that this behavior is typical of her type of faerie creature, and that she is harvesting vitality either by gaining a child or by terrifying its parents.
Narrowly Cognizant Faeries
Some faeries are aware that they feed on human vitality, but understand only a single, narrow mechanism for harvesting it. Take, for example, a faerie wife who deliberately drains the life of her husband away so that she is able to bear a child. She is far more cognizant of her nature than the faerie queen above. Other faeries instinctively reenact variations on a single story. They are unable to consider why this particular series of events provides them the greatest sense of well-being, though. Narrowly cognizant faeries are aware that they need something from humans, and are usually aware that their bodies are made of enchanted matter. They are able to use their powers strategically, and their memories persist if they create a replacement body. They cannot, however, seek to improve themselves in the way that highly cognizant fairies do. Narrowly cognizant faeries are less common than incognizant faeries.
Where Did Faeries Come From?Members of the Order do not have a definitive answer concerning the origin of faeries, but many speculate. Popular conjectures include:
It is possible that different varieties of faerie derive from dissimilar sources, or even that different examples of the same variety of faerie do. This book is about what faeries do – not what faeries are. |
Highly Cognizant Faeries
Highly cognizant faeries are those that may seek out creative humans, because they are aware that these humans provide opportunities for self-redefinition. If they wish to, these faeries can develop new powers by tricking or bargaining with humans. With sufficient human vitality they can change roles, allowing them to become a completely different sort of faerie. Highly cognizant faeries are little concerned by the loss of their bodies, creating and dissipating them as required. Highly cognizant faeries are rare.
Glamour: Rules Instead of a Soul
Glamour, the term that players are most likely to have heard in relation to faerie magic, is not used outside of a small piece of Scotland in Mythic Europe. It’s a mispronunciation of the word “grammar.” Faeries emerge from, and change the world through, a set of rules concerning the appropriate placement of symbolic things in relation to each other. Each role has a particular set of rules: its own grammar.
Faeries cannot break their glamour. A faerie who ceases to fulfill its role simply fades away, or perhaps retreats into Arcadia until it re-emerges, in some other form, to participate again in the game of grammar. Etiquette and symbolism are vital to faeries because doing things in the correct way, fulfilling a role in a story, holds the faerie’s body and psyche together.
Faeries become more powerful when they participate in stories. A story, to a human, is series of events that will entertain others when recounted after they are complete. To a faerie, a story occurs when symbolic objects and events are placed in sequences that shake vitality free from humans. A faerie need only be an incidental character in a story to harvest some vitality from the human participant. Faeries are fascinated by stories because faeries are living story elements.
Bodies: Incidental Matter
When a faerie manifests in an area, it creates its body by seizing nearby objects that are symbolically related to its role, and writing its glamour into them. This spiritual anchor then draws to itself dust, water, and other incidental matter to create a substantial form that is granted cohesion and superficial appearance by the faerie’s glamour. Incognizant faeries feel pain when their bodies are damaged, narrowly cognizant faeries must appear to, and highly cognizant faeries suffer pain only if they wish to.
The role a faerie plays determines how the matter of its body is arrayed. When a faerie has the role of a fox, it must look and act like a fox. The ugliness of spirit in a malicious faerie is expressed through its appearance. Beautiful faeries can generally be trusted to be kind and good.
Some stories, however, allow faeries to have predatory roles. Bluebeard, for example, who is handsome, passionate, and solicitous of his wife, changes physically when the heroine breaks a taboo and sees something he tells her she must not see — the corpses of his previous victims. He is required to be as physically as hideous as the actions that his glamour requires. In each half of the role, a character reading the mind of the faerie would find appropriately benign or murderous thoughts.
It is a source of endless frustration and fascination to the fae that humans have an inner life. Humans can talk to themselves inside their heads, and interpret events, and console themselves with explanations. Humans interpret themselves through a continuous process of internal autobiography. Faeries are either incapable of that level of self-reflection, or are unable to act on it while in material forms. Faeries have a rulebook instead of a soul.
If its body is catastrophically disrupted, the faerie may not have sufficient time to draw its glamour from its spiritual anchor. The spiritual anchor, filled with glamour, is the vis that magi hunt so earnestly. Most of the faeries described in Chapter 4: Faerie Bestiary have mundane objects in which they have stored their vis; these are examples of spiritual anchors.
Some faeries have unusual anchors, which are purchased with Virtues described in the Chapter 3: Faerie Characters. Some faeries place their spiritual anchor at a distance from the rest of their material form, snapping the Arcane Connection as the body becomes useless. Others keep their spiritual anchor at hand, but place sufficient of their power in it that it offers a minor supernatural ability to a human that possesses it. These well-maintained anchors allow the faerie to build a new body far more swiftly.
Ownership
The clothes and tools of faeries are usually parts of their bodies, created by their glamour. The things that a faerie owns usually cannot pass from its possession except with its permission, or by completing a story in such a way as to change the ownership of the item. Items taken from faeries that they do not wish to relinquish turn into incidental matter, like leaves or coal, when the faerie withdraws its glamour. This usually happens when the thief leaves the Faerie aura. Any vis in these items vanishes, as well. All of a faerie’s possessions, if generated from glamour, are Arcane Connections to the faerie until it changes its role.
Faeries acknowledge that those things that form Arcane Connections to a human are an extension of the life of that human, and that to steal them is to steal part of the human’s life. Mortal goods that lack Arcane Connections are considered not owned, and faeries feel no compunction against taking them. Those things that are not part of a particular mortal’s life, because they contain a vitality of their own — like milk, beer, risen bread, and gemstones — are particularly valued, and therefore frequent targets of what mortals call theft.
Some powerful faeries spread their glamour over a large area surrounding their spiritual anchor. They embody many, or even every, object in their surroundings. These faeries usually also generate a human body in order to direct the attention of guests to a certain focus. They then appear to be human-like and have mystical control over their surroundings, but are actually only controlling distant parts of their bodies. Incognizant faeries may be unaware of this.
Stock Characters
Faeries take roles in stories so that they can interact with humans, but often do not take on personas, which is one of the ways they can be detected. In Ars Magica, unlike many other role-playing games, troupes are encouraged to design specific monsters and specific people for the player characters to encounter. Many faeries, however, lack the subtlety required to impersonate humans successfully. The characters these faeries assume are, to a greater or lesser degree, caricatures. Faeries pretending to be humans often seem like representations of the stock characters that appear in folk tales.
Faeries tend to gloss over details. A faerie pretending to be a healer may carry a bag of medicines, but a real healer looking in it would know that the collection of colored liquids, herbs, and seashells is just a prop. Some faeries pretending to be healers just carry a single, sovereign remedy, and a large silver spoon. The remedy works because of the faerie’s magic, not because the horrible concoction has medicinal value. Similarly, when asked for names and biographical details, faeries passing for human often lack the creativity to convincingly lie, so they give vague, general answers.
Taboos
The glamour of each faerie contains rules that the faerie must obey. Some actions are mandatory, but others are forbidden. The taboos kept by individual faeries vary, and are detailed as Flaws in Chapter 3: Faerie Characters. A human breaking the taboos of a faerie offends it, and owes it redress.
Humans dealing with faeries should avoid breaking any of their taboos. These usually revolve around hospitality, carrying iron, using names, ownership of objects, payment for favors, religion, and opening the body to influence. Human characters, at creation, may take a broken faerie taboo as a the cause of a Story Flaw like Plagued by Supernatural Entity or Enemy.
Pretenses
Faeries pretend to have human Abilities, but instead simulate them with minor magical powers called Pretenses. Pretenses do not cost Might, and faeries use them without Concentration — they are an expression of glamour. Players use the mechanics for Abilities when using Pretenses, but faeries cannot learn Abilities through experience as humans do. They instead develop the power to mimic superior human models, causing their Pretense scores to rise through the methods described in Chapter 3: Faerie Characters.
If the faerie is deliberately using a Pretense to accomplish things no human could, then any character who is a master of the simulated Ability notices this immediately. Other characters may notice, or not, depending on their level of credulity. A character who has mastered an Ability, which is represented by a score of 6 or more, may notice that the faerie is using subtle magic instead of that Ability, even if it stays within human possibility. This requires a Perception + Awareness check of 12 – the Ability score the faerie is pretending to have.
The fata, for example, are faeries who inconspicuously join the sessions of weaving and gossip among elderly ladies in some villages. These women, who are mistresses of the craft of weaving, might notice that the fata’s fingers are not making all of the movements required to weave cloth, and are not moving fast enough to create it in such volume. It’s rude to point this out, because it tells the fata she is playing her role badly and scares her away, but they watch what they say in her presence.
The Open Body Is Vulnerable To Glamour
Any opening of the body allows faeries to attempt to influence the character of a human. Parts of the person can spill out and be taken by the faeries, but also, faeries can slide their glamour into the person and enthrall him. These links can be purged by contact with Traditional or Sovereign Wards, which are described in greater depth in Chapter 3: Faerie Characters.
By speaking, the character lays himself open to fairy dominance, because the faerie has the right to reply. And when the faerie’s words enter the character’s head, they can carry a piece of glamour. Humans can also change the faerie with their eloquence, and Free Expression Virtue. This is why faeries so often paralyze the tongue of their victims, or forbid them to speak. Speaking to a faerie creates an Arcane Connection to that faerie with a Penetration multiplier of 2 that endures until the conversation ends.
If a character eats the food of a faerie, the character becomes the guest of the faerie, and, like medieval guests, cannot leave the court without permission. By eating the host’s glamorous food, the guest takes a fragment of the host’s power into his body. This makes him part of faerie society — a servant of the one whose food he ate. This also creates an Arcane Connection to the glamour the character carries, with a Penetration multiplier of 2 that continues until the character is permitted to leave.
Wounds bring the character closer to the faeries that guard the border of mortality, or who are themselves the dead. When a character is wounded, he is effectively leaking the vitality that fairies crave, and this may make them act in ways uncharacteristic of their roles. A character whose blood is taken or tasted by a faerie has an Arcane Connection to that Faerie with a Penetration multiplier of 3 until the wound heals.
Sex with a faerie can create Arcane Connections, and allow the body of the victim to be controlled by the faerie. While carrying a faerie’s child, a human mother sometimes develops supernatural powers; but the faerie father can usually find her, and often wishes to steal the baby away. Intercourse with a faerie creates an Arcane Connection to that faerie with a Penetration multiplier of 4 during the intercourse. Pregnancy creates an Arcane Connection between the parents with a Penetration multiplier of 5 until it ends.
Story Seed: Base SlanderA bard in the employ of an enemy of the covenant is spreading lies about its prominent servants, slandering their moral character. Unknown to the bard, one of these servants is a faerie. When the faerie next visits the area where he has developed a negative reputation, how he responds is affected by his level of cognizance. An incognizant faerie may continue to behave normally, because he subconsciously calculates that the vitality he gains from retaining his current role is superior to that he would gain from the new interpretation. Or he may develop new personality traits based on the bard’s stories. As a third option, he might instead switch back and forth, unaware of the changes that take place depending on his audience, garnering the maximum vitality from each person. The other player characters eventually notice this, and must rehabilitate the reputation of their colleague, so that, subconsciously, he decides to return to his previous role. A highly cognizant faerie is able to feel the potential vitality in the new story, and consciously act to harvest it. His strategies might mirror those of less-cognizant faeries, or he might take more-subtle action. For example, he faerie may recruit a second cognizant faerie, and reveal him to the populace in the role of his evil twin brother, allowing the two to develop a lucrative public feud. Or the faerie may attack the veracity of the bard, arranging humiliating experiences that erode his believability. The faerie might also kill the bard. Cognizant faeries know they need humans, but they also know that they rarely need specific humans. |
Vitality: Energy to Act and Change
Some humans have more vitality than others do. Faeries subconsciously sense this greater supply of nourishment, and seek it out. Humans are more vital when their emotions are roused. Some humans have the ability to find new ways to feed vitality directly to faeries, and other humans can follow the feeding methods that creative individuals establish. Humans are more vital when they are about to enter or leave a stage of life. Humans also carry vitality in the physical structures of their bodies, so some faeries eat people, or suck their vitality away with their blood.
Stories Guide Humans and Faeries
Faeries both mold, and are molded by, the stories told in the communities that adjoin their homes. A story is an etiquette — a way for humans and faeries to promise each other rewards. The faerie knows it will get vitality from the human’s roused emotions and, perhaps, change of life stage. The human gets rewards similar to those claimed by past heroes. The actions of faeries change the stories that humans tell, but faeries also change their actions and appearance to suit the stories that humans remember.
Expressed Emotion Feeds Faeries
Some faeries, through repeated, similar interactions with humans, develop a preference for a particular expression of vitality. This faerie’s presence and behavior then enter local folklore. Stories about the faerie are told to younger members of the community, so they know how to interact with their strange neighbor. If the story spreads to other places, new faeries are drawn to the story and the human vitality it promises. In this way, new species of faeries, demonstrating minor regional variations, can spring up in the wake of a quick-moving story that captures the imagination of those who hear it.
Other faeries sense the expectations of humans they encounter, and adapt to suit them. The faerie master of a small wood might take many shapes, from terrifying ogre to tempting woodwife, depending on which will draw the most vitality from the human currently in the wood. Some faeries are aware that they change shape to provoke humans. Others forget they had previous shapes, and recall only interactions had in their present form.
Many faeries seem superficially similar to creatures from other Realms. It is easy for an untutored person to mistake the Magical spirit of a woodland glade, or an Infernal poltergeist, for a faerie. This is because faeries often borrow the shapes of these creatures, to complete stories.
Faeries often ally with covenants because magi seem to be regularly beset by trouble, which lead to stories and heightened emotions. Adventuring parties are, on one level, a source of flavorsome food for faeries.
Where Are the Rules for Faeries Feeding on Vitality?There is no numerical system for vitality. Faeries do not gain a number of vitality points when watching a story conclude, and then spend a number of vitality points per year to survive, or to gain new powers. Faeries can survive indefinitely without vitality; they just never want to. Faeries always want more vitality, regardless of how much they already have. They are chronically addicted to people, as part of their Essential Nature. This is what differentiates faeries from magical spirits, who care about humans if it suits their nature or purposes, but do not incessantly desire human attention. |
Artistic Expression Feeds Faeries
Artistic works that cause a lift in the spirit of humans can feed faeries. The producers of such works usually have the Free Expression Virtue. Noble faeries often seek out bards, storytellers, and other artists for this reason. Lesser faeries often lack sufficient cognizance to seek out artists, but are still able to feed on the vitality of art. Some magi think that the unfettered imaginations of children allow them to feed faeries in a similar way to artists, partially explaining the common desire among faeries to steal children, but this is disputed.
Traditional Offerings Feed Faeries
Traditional offerings are the pivotal elements in simple tales. Each bowl of porridge left on the doorstep, tiny suit of clothes on the mantel, or pot of cream in the dairy also expresses a little hope or fear, which faeries can feed upon. Pagan gods were, some magi conjecture, fed with a similar mechanism, although on a far larger scale.
Violent faeries are fed by the traditional wards that protect against them. There is little difference, metaphysically, between a brownie given milk on the doorstep and a vampire given a tribute of garlic over every windowsill, although the vampire and brownie lack the cognizance to realize this.
Certain Types of Theft Feed Faeries
Some faeries can consume the vitality out of particular objects, even if they are not offered as part of a traditional transaction. These faeries are likely to be thieves, because they do not see ownership in human terms. Individual faeries may draw strength from various objects, but the things they steal all seem to possess a natural vitality. Faeries have been found that are able to feed on milk, ale, wine, leavened bread, moldy cheeses, and gemstones. (Most gemstones, in Mythic Europe, reproduce sexually deep beneath the surface of the Earth, after all.) It may be that some faeries can naturally feed on the vitality of these items, or that these are the offerings of forgotten traditions. Faeries lack human concepts of ownership, and may see a human going to the effort of baking bread, milking a cow, or mining a stone, and then leaving it unowned, as a form of offering.
Spirits of the Borders
Faeries reside in liminal states — that is, they are the spirits of borders. Human vitality surges when a person crosses from one stage of life to another, so people about to make these transitions are the most likely to encounter faeries. Human emotions are roused when they venture beyond their homes and into dangerous places, so many faeries live at the edges of communities. Some faeries are guides between states of consciousness, as well, while others patrol the borders between social classes, ethnic groups, and periods of time. Many faeries embody two liminal states simultaneously. Chapter 4: Bestiary gives examples of faeries that dwell in each liminal space.
Murder & Eating People
Some faeries feed on humans by consuming their vitality directly. People assailed by these faeries feel lethargic, and if they continue to be harvested, they become weak and then die. Other faeries consume vitality by drinking blood, eating flesh, or sucking the breath from humans. Some magi believe these faerie can ingest vitality directly. Others suggest that these faeries feed on terror, or feed on the offerings of traditional wards. Occasional murders become necessary so that the terror and warding continues. The faerie, they hypothesize, eats victims simply to be shocking.
Violence
One way of rousing emotions is by threatening people. The threats from faeries take several forms. Some threaten to kill, unless kept away by folk rituals. Some merely threaten harm to people or property, again harvesting the vitality they gain from traditional wards. Others attack humans, so that the humans will kill them. A few do kill, but only so that their reputation spreads. A few faeries encourage violence on a larger scale — family feuds and village warfare are sometimes stoked by faeries pretending to be ancestors, or taken as spouses.
Many faeries engage in violence with the expectation that they will suffer, and perhaps even seem to die, at the hands of the human foe they face. Many of the more violent forms of faerie have ways of mitigating the effects of violence. Others simply lack sufficient cognizance to understand that defeat by this particular hero will lead to interaction with generations of future heroes. Each will defeat the faerie, and in so doing, feed it attention and violent passion.
Faeries and TruthOne of the most important borders that faeries straddle is that of belief. People in Mythic Europe do not believe every faerie story they tell. Nor do they dismiss them all as a false. Each faerie story might be true or not, and different versions of a story might be true, or false, or a mixture. Stories are told because they are amusing, and might be valuable. Similarly, faeries don’t care whether stories are told accurately or not, provided the stories still engender heightened emotions and traditional gifts. The only faeries that require humans to fervently believe in them are those that feed primarily from the gifts of worshipers. This method of feeding has been rare since the Church rose to dominance. Desire that the story be true matters more than that it actually be true. That a story be told is more important than that it be told accurately. |
What Are Faeries Like When Not Seeking Vitality?
Magi don’t agree on what faeries are like when they are not interacting with humans. The key problem for researchers is that faeries will provide confirmatory evidence for any theory, if it will lead to further research. Faeries treat attempts to understand their nature as a form of traditional offering, and try to complete stories around the researcher’s dream of enlightenment or glory. Many theories about faeries are popular, though, and different theories may be true for different faeries, or even for the same faerie depending on whether it’s in Arcadia and the mundane world. These possibilities include:
- Faeries have permanent identities and a complex society in Arcadia, hidden behind a defensive façade of stories.
- Faeries act freely when humans are not watching, but select a role suited to their audience when a human is encountered.
- Faeries act freely when unobserved, but are forced into a role that suits an observer.
- Faeries continue to play their role in whatever story they were last involved with, until they find a new audience. If the story concludes, it begins again, repeating endlessly until a human intervenes.
- Faeries don’t do anything when people aren’t watching. They just wait for human observers. Humans that repeatedly visit a group of faeries may not realize that the faeries lose motivation in their absence. When the faeries restart the story, they may skip events so that, to the human, the narrative seems to have progressed.
- Faeries don’t even remain physically incarnate when people aren’t watching. It is impossible to find the same faeries repeatedly. When humans appear, a faerie present will adopt whichever available role is most prominent and likely to allow a harvest of vitality, and so often switches characters.
- Faeries cease to hold their roles when people cease to observe them, even for an instant, and new faeries seize each role as human attention returns.
Faerie Auras
Auras arise in those places where the fae are strong. Events that promote the well being of the fae make auras more powerful, and auras decline if the faeries leave them. Faeries often change their roles to continue to reside in an area once humans have altered it, but faeries that wish to continue in their old roles are forced to continually recede, as the wilderness does. If humans drift away from an area, faeries may desert it as well, to flock closer to the vitality they crave. In some distant parts of the wilderness, however, some incognizant faeries continue to play roles defined in pagan times, at sites where they were worshiped.
Potent faerie auras are found at the edge of civilization’s influence. The courts of faeries are usually in the ring of semi-settled land that that separates the true wilderness from the Dominion. Other auras emerge in places within human cities that have been abandoned. Some also haunt the dangerous places where humans regularly go, like mines, the sea and mountain passes.
Faerie Presence
The presence of any faerie with the Extend Glamour Power creates an aura. Any place that such a faerie claims with its glamour has an aura of (Faerie Might / 5). If such a being moves away or is destroyed, the aura immediately vanishes unless another faerie steps into the role. If many faeries live in an area, it is usual for only one to claim the territory with its glamour, and only this faerie’s Might generates the aura.
At times, two powerful faeries may clash over an area. While both pour their glamour over the area, it has an aura of 2+(highest Might/5) to a maximum of 9. Each of these faeries may be supported by others in the roles of its retainers, but they do not add to this total. This is most often observed when seasonal courts battle for the control of an area, at the equinoxes or solstices. Magi have also reported times when co-rulers of a court, or challengers for the role of ruler, have fallen into dispute, causing the aura to surge and each side to seek mortal supporters. Areas filled with minor, territorial faeries may have high auras because of this friction between their glamours.
Epic Events
The sites where epic events are believed to have taken place, which are recorded in popular tales, often have faerie auras. This is not, magi have discovered, because events imprint themselves in the landscape — though that sometimes creates Magic auras. It is because faeries flock to legendary sites to feed on the vitality of the humans near them by assuming the resonant roles that the humans expect. A Merinita magus of the Stonehenge Tribunal first explained this to his sodales, after the many duplications of Arthurian sites in the area enabled him to visit several places that seemed to be Camelot — near Edinburgh in Scotland, within Winchester in England, and near Caerleon in Wales — and meet at least three Arthurs.
Does My Character Know This?The Faerie Lore Ability quantifies the character’s capacity to understand the motives of, bargain with, and predict the actions of faeries. Some characters with high Faerie Lore do this through an encyclopedic knowledge of the roles faeries have played in recorded events. Some do this through an intuitive sense of what is correct in faerie-related situations. Some calculate the faerie’s reaction through the framework given in this chapter. Your character may use this framework if that suits your personal preference, but there is no in-play disadvantage to characters who have other perspectives. For example, a character who worship faeries as gods, and learns Faerie Lore from the sacred texts of his religion, is just as capable of predicting what faeries will do, and negotiating with them, as a character who views them in a more secular way. In part, this is because faeries deliberately modify how they respond to humans to suit the human’s attitude toward the fae. |
Local Folklore
Every villager knows there are some places where it is dangerous to go, because the faeries dance, or feast, or live there. It’s not clear if the story that a particular faerie lives in an area always precedes the formation of an aura in a place, or if a faerie new to an area deliberately confronts humans to spread its fame. It is obvious to magi that once there is either a chicken or an egg, each possible cause contributes to the other: the story makes more people aware of the faerie, while encounters with the faerie encourage people to tell its story. If a local faerie is destroyed, another rapidly seeks its role.
Some faerie auras lack obvious principal faeries because the site itself draws sentimental power from folklore. Humans come to these sites and repeatedly fulfill simple stories without prompting, so the resident faerie need never bother with a material shape. These sites include lanes and glades frequented by courting lovers, and diving pools and caves where young men challenge each other’s bravery.
Legacies and Monuments
Ancient sites of pagan worship often have faerie auras, because the faeries that dwell in them refuse to leave, even when humans ignore them. These faeries may be incognizant, and therefore unable to understand that they can leave. Some trapped faeries are narrowly cognizant, and are only waiting for a human to come and conclude their story. A few are highly cognizant, but enjoy their current role so much that rather than relinquish it, they are willing to wait for a human to arrive so that they can attempt to modify it.
Auras Rise and Fall
When a foreign aura impinges on a faerie area, it increases or reduces the Might of the faerie generating the aura. This causes the aura to rise or fall. Other activities can cause the aura to change in local areas, by making the area more or less suited, symbolically, to the glamour of the presiding faerie. If part of a forest lord’s territory is felled and tilled for crops, for example, it loses its connection to his glamour, and its aura. If another faerie takes control of the area, or the forest lord redefines its role as a fertility faerie, then an aura returns.
When a magus begins to take vis from a Faerie aura, the presiding faerie must decide on a response. If the faerie prevents its removal, the vis remains the faerie’s and the aura does not fall. If the faerie is unable to prevent the extraction, the magus has effectively challenged the faerie’s ownership of the area and the aura falls by 1. Each extraction further distances the area from the glamour of the faerie, causing the aura to fall until the faerie relinquishes the area entirely. This hole in the aura is usually only 300 paces across, but may be larger or smaller if the magus performing the extraction operated in a space that could be easily labeled, like a glade, an island, or a barn.
The faerie may regain control of the area, and renew its aura, by seeking redress. The faerie must take something from the magus that symbolically balances the vis he has stolen. Faeries and magi may make deals that allow the removal of vis, in exchange for something of equal value from the magi. Note that this means equal value to the faerie, not the magus; simple rituals performed when gathering the vis may suffice in some cases, while other faeries might demand a season of service. This does not challenge the glamour of the faerie, provided the magi do not breach the conditions laid upon them by the faerie. To prevent damage to the aura, the faerie usually takes vis from elsewhere in its demesne and releases it into the harvested area.
Traveling Auras
The role of some powerful faeries permits them to travel. When they do, their glamour encircles them, sweeping over the countryside, then retreating as they pass. When a faerie travels with glamour extended, the land around them seems to twist into new shapes that suit the faerie’s motif.
The basic geography of the region does not change when the faerie spreads its glamour. Local people do not believe they have been swept away to another country: even if the change happens while they sleep, they will know that their own land has been changed around them.
The changes made when the glamour of the faerie lays over an area are not permanent, unless the faerie wills them to be and uses an appropriate power, but the effects of human action are. If, as an example, a Queen of Winter freezes a village, then the crops that have shriveled beneath her glamourous snow will return to health as she departs, unless she makes an effort to destroy the crops by feasting on their vitality. Cattle, or people, that freeze to death will revive as if they have slept, unless the Queen makes a special effort to murder them under the cover of glamour. If a human chops up a table for firewood and burns it to keep warm, then the table will still be destroyed.
Aura Conflicts
A faerie that enters an area dominated by another Realm, if it has not followed a traditional method of gaining admittance, must withdraw its glamour into its own body. This barring occurs regardless of the strength of the other aura. This inability to pour glamour over objects means that faerie characters cannot use powers with Ranges greater than Touch until they have been given leave to do so, unless they have Arcane Connections to the targets.
If the faerie has gained admittance to an area, then it is able to pour its glamour over its surroundings. This creates a tiny pocket of Faerie within the larger aura. The area may transform to suit the motif of the faerie, but generally does not. The hospitality that faeries invoke varies by place and method, and has limitations that may prevent such overt changes.
Gaining Admittance
Each area has different methods of gaining admittance, and faeries can read these with their Sight. Typical methods include:
Many Magical and some Infernal areas are not home to any conscious thing. Faeries can sense that this is not a “home” automatically — that it is terra nullius. Note that all Divine areas are attended, as are all Faerie places.
Having the right, recognized in local folklore, to enter at certain times or when certain events occur. Some urban faeries, for example, simply have the right to exist in their city. When a hero kills a giant, and the same faerie returns in the guise of its brother seeking revenge, it has tricked the hero into giving it the right to seek the hero out, even if he is within the Dominion.
Being invited in by a human aligned with the spiritual force that holds the faerie at bay. In the Dominion this is relatively simple. A human that invites a faerie into a home as a guest gives the faerie leave to use its powers in that house. A human responding to the faerie with fear gives it permission to do the things that are feared. Many medieval people reflexively face their fear by calling on the power of the Divine to save them, which withdraws this permission.
Likewise, in a covenant an invitation into a house may grant the faerie leave to use its powers in that house. But only participation in the Aegis of the Hearth ritual, and possession of one of the tokens this creates, allows a faerie to use its powers without facing the formidable magical resistance common to covenants.
Agreeing to a code of behavior that severely limits the faerie, like forsaking actions that would be sinful for a human while within a town, or performing a profane actions for the amusement of demons.
Paying a price, like offering a service or a small faerie as a servant, in exchange for entrance. Some courts of faeries pay Hell a human soul every seven years, in exchange for access to the seedy parts of cities.
Contesting for ownership of a place with a local faerie. This boosts the aura of the place while the contest occurs, but each faerie might become a supporting character to the other’s role.
Keeping Home Wonderful
When a faerie leaves its traditional demesne, it may mark the place so that it retains its wonder if a human visits while the faerie is absent. Few faeries wish for humans to believe that a place sanctified by folklore has been abandoned. The faerie may mark its demesne in one of three ways. It may leave a steward, it may leave its essence, or it may block access to its site.
Principal faeries peruse different strategies when they travel from their usual haunts. Some powerful faeries leave a lesser steward in their place, to tend the site until they return. Their return is usually rapid, because a faerie’s steward is a servant, and contains a little of the faerie’s glamour. This glamour provides an Arcane Connection used for rapid travel.
A faerie with the External Vis Virtue may leave its spiritual anchor in its site, allowing its body to roam. If the court is visited, the faerie simply sheds its distant body and appears around its anchor.
Some faeries ensure that local folklore suggests their sites are accessible only at certain times. The lord of a barrow said to open to Faerie every Midsummer’s Eve can simply leave, knowing that humans who seek him will wait for a time that he finds convenient.
Regardless of the method used to slow or dissuade human visitors, the lesser faeries of the court may be left behind with instructions on how to deal with unexpected audiences.
Humans surprising the faeries may discern that the aura of the site is lower than expected, though. If they enter an area kept by a steward, then its aura will be (steward’s Might/5). If they enter a site lacking a steward, that is meant to be accessed only at set times, they may find it abandoned. A character breaking into a faerie barrow on an unseasonal day may simply find the dusty remains of a Saxon king.
Regiones
Regiones (see ArM5, page 189) are very common in Faerie areas. They are caused by an affront or injury to the glamour of the presiding faerie in a regio.
Finding a Regio Entrance
Faerie regiones are often far easier to enter than the regiones of the other Realms. Magi who study Faerie suggest that this is because the faeries desire humans to seek them. A character almost always enters the regio by performing an action, and a character who has successfully perceived the correct action can explain it to others, but cannot perform the action on their behalf. For many regiones, the action is simply walking through a symbolic doorway, but it may include defeating a particular menace or solving a riddle.
Characters may find the entrance to a faerie regio in several ways.
A character with Faerie Sight, Second Sight, or Magic Sensitivity can, at an appropriate place, read how to enter the next level of a faerie regio with a Perception + Awareness roll against an Ease Factor of (5 + twice the difference between the current aura and the next level). Characters seeking regiones sometimes gain one of these Virtues temporarily by using folk charms.
If the faerie that claims the region wants the characters to enter, they can. The faerie may send a minion to make the entrance obvious, by guarding it for example, or may make it seem that the character can find his own way in. For example, a mother who can hear the cry of her stolen child, guiding her into the regio, may well be listening to a faerie imitating her baby.
A person who has learned the symbolic action required to enter, either from a human who has perceived it or from a faerie guide, may perform it.
A person with an Arcane Connection to something in the regio, and the ability to sense Arcane Connections, can automatically find the entrance by following the connection, but will not necessarily know the required action.
Regio entrances can be seen with Intellego Vim spells, like Piercing the Faerie Veil (ArM 5, page 158).
A character whose True Love is within the regio can always find the entrance, and although he will not necessarily know the method of entry, faeries, either serving the regio’s principal or stealing some of the vitality from the story, will give it to the character, although this may involve some other trial.
A character who has found an entrance, but does not know the action required to open it, may use Faerie Lore to guess it, based on the motif of the local faeries. This requires an Intelligence + Faerie Lore roll against an Ease Factor of 15.
This target is reduced if the story the faeries are telling reduces the range of likely actions, so that the magus is simply weighing their suitability. For example, if the magus is told that before a particular door will open he must either blow a horn or draw a sword, and if he chooses incorrectly he will be cast out, then the Faerie Lore roll has a target of only 3. This choice is common in folklore, and the magus understands clearly what each tool symbolizes, so he knows he needs to blow the horn to open the door.
Also note that if a regio leads to Faerieland, then the principal faerie of the regio is often the threshold faerie. Entrances to Faerieland from a faerie regio are treated as regio levels with an aura of 10, unless a trod runs through the regio. Then the rules for trods, given in Chapter 2: The Realm of Faerie, apply.
Ephemeral Exile
Faeries may not steal those areas marked by God, the Infernal Realm, or magical spirits as theirs, but the converse is not true. When another Realm attempts to steal the home of a faerie, the faerie may flee to a new place, or may instead choose to duplicate its part of the the mortal world. This duplicate, which is made of the glamour of the faerie, touches the real world only where the invading power is comparatively weak. The faerie may often touch the world in points of traditional strength, where humans, seeking the faerie, tacitly invite it to reach out to them and draw them in.
Faeries may bargain with the power that dominates the material world, seeking lenient terms allowing access to humans, however. Much as faeries offer gifts and services for the hospitality of alien powers, so they offer similar things for the right to influence the real world at certain specific times and places. But some faeries do not bargain: they choose to wait out their exile, or to only have access to humans lucky or misfortunate enough to stray into the power of the faerie.
Faerie Roads
Faeries do not need permission to enter an area when they have the “right of way” — the ancient right to travel through a locale. In many parts of Europe there are certain paths known to be used by the fairies as they travel. These roads are also, commonly, the paths used to carry corpses from isolated villages to a central church for burial. In many areas it is considered unlucky to use a different road than the traditional one when carting a corpse.
How the faeries and the corpse roads are linked varies from place to place. In some areas the faeries made the roads in ancient times, and thus own them. In others, the carrying of a corpse creates a liminal space — a space where the living and the dead travel together. The road is not entirely of the mortal world anymore, and the faeries can claim it.
Characters traveling a faerie road are usually left unmolested, although they may be aware that invisible spirits are traveling around and through them.
Faeries are particularly careful not to molest funerals on the road because these processions have a greater right of way, and they may actively assist pall bearers. For instance, along most corpse roads are places to rest coffins. The faeries who dwell near the road keep these places clear, and protect the springs that are sometimes found at stops. Other travelers, unaware that they are on a faerie road, are punished if they desecrate such places.
As an example, pall bearers are allowed to camp at certain sites on the faerie road, but others may not be. If camping is allowed, humans will still be punished if they camp in the wrong place, or break a taboo. In many places a camper would be punished for chopping down trees, going to the toilet inside the cleared area, or failing to leave beer or bread as a token of thanks.
Characters with Supernatural Abilities who camp on corpse roads often see dead travelers, but these encounters should not lead to combat. Fighting on the road is generally taboo.
Also, characters with mystical abilities traveling a faerie road may slip onto an aspect of the Mother Road, described in Chapter 2: The Faerie Realm. Characters traveling on a faerie road do not feel that they are traveling faster than normal, because they are required to make every step along the road. The unpredictable flow of time in faerie is what differs from that of the normal world, so that they arrive at a distant place more quickly or slowly than usual. Characters bearing a corpse never miss the funeral, because of the strange flow of time on a Faerie road.
Each faerie road has an owner or caretaker. If a human slips into the regio along the road, he must meet this threshold faerie. It is usual to pay a traditional toll for use of the road. Some people fight the faerie instead, and use the road by force. But if the faerie is merely the caretaker for a greater power, this may rouse all of the faeries of a region against the transgressors.
Corpse roads are the most common form of faerie road, and faerie roads are the most common type of trod (see Chapter 2: The Faerie Realm). Not every road a corpse is carried along remains a faerie road, although many become one, briefly, while the corpse passes.
Regio Levels As Acts
When two powerful faeries clash over a site, they play a game of symbols that may result in the glamour of one infecting the other. This makes the victorious faerie the principal faerie of a site, dominant over the other, but not to such a degree that the lesser faerie is drawn into the immediate orbit of its superior. This, too, creates regiones: the humans see their real world as interpreted by the increasingly powerful faeries that they encounter, which are progressively more-potent lieutenants of the principal faerie. Each level of the regio corresponds to a discrete series of tests that the human must face. If the experience were written as memoir, each chapter in the book would represent one regio level in the magus’ quest.
Jerbiton magi often report that a principal faerie prefers to have two lieutenants, with each of the three supervising one level of a regio. Merinita magi dispute this. They suggest that complex regiones are rare, and that the faeries are just responding to the observing magi, giving them encounters that have the five-act structure of a play by Seneca because Jerbitons enjoy that structure. Regardless of whether this structure is indigenous to the faeries for mystical reasons, used by the fairies because humans respond emotionally to trinities, or provoked by humans, it is common.
In the five-act structure, humans are motivated to visit the faeries by something outside the regio. Though those who criticize this structure note that the provocation of human action is often a servant of the principal faerie. In the next two encounters, the human quester draws closer to the final confrontation, gathering information and equipment while being exposed to the motif of the regio, and two variations on a moral or theme. In the highest level of the regio, the human has a final confrontation after which his success or failure is obvious, and he leaves the regio. The human then returns to real life, either stronger or weaker for the story’s outcome.
Some Regiones Are the Past Made Present
Many humans see faeries as linked to the past. This is particularly apparent in areas where the dominant group displaced another tribe to gain its land. In part, this is because when one nation invades another, they often bring alien supernatural forces that subdue the indigenous faeries. In areas where invasion occurred, some faeries, rather than flee or accept secondary status, instead enter exile and recreate the lands and customs of the displaced tribe, so that their stories can continue undisturbed.
Time in Faerie Regiones
Characters who willingly enter a faerie regio, and successfully complete the story they find there, use the same rules to determine the length of their stay that characters who enter Faerieland do (see Chapter 2: The Faerie Realm). Characters who enter mortal places with faerie auras do not experience time flowing at unusual rates.
Characters who are led into a faerie regio, or who find their own way into a regio and affront the glamour of the principal faerie, leave when their departure is appropriate to the glamour of the principal faerie. Affronting the glamour of the principal faerie is not the same as harming, or even killing, the principal faerie. It is harming the principal faerie’s role — refusing to grapple with the principal faerie and feed the local spirits with stories and vitality.
Characters who destroy the principal faerie, by harvesting the vis in its anchor, do not regain control of the rate time passes for them in the Faerie aura. A new faerie takes the principal role, and it gains control of the rate of time for the characters. Characters who repeatedly slay the principal faerie eventually encounter a highly cognizant claimant for the role of principal. This faerie may bargain with or fight the player characters through servants, and may refuse to take anchored form.
The appropriate time to return a human is not a choice freely made by the principal faerie — it is always a time that symbolically connects with the faerie’s glamour. A character who has climbed a faerie hill on Saint John’s Eve is usually returned a dawn. A character who loses track of time dancing with the maids of the harvest is usually returned at planting. Humans who travel to faerie auras usually age as suits their subjective experience of time.
Withering Away To Dust
Mythic Europeans often fear that if they enter faerie places, when they leave hundreds of years may have passed and they will crumble to dust. This is uncommon — it happens to humans who live in faerie regiones for so long that they die of old age, not noticing their frail state under the glamour of health that has been laid over them. After this, the human’s spirit continues to reside in the regio with a material form held together by the glamour of the host. When this faerie, thinking itself human, leaves faerie, its glamourous body falls apart.
It is not the passage of Earthly years that destroys those who dwell in Faerie auras then return. Instead, it is the fact that they have lived so many subjective years that their bodies have been worn away to dust. Characters determined to flee a Faerie court do not find that they fall away to dust when they leave, unless their escape attempts feel like they take many decades to accomplish.
Vis
The vis collected from the fae comes in many types, but these are not usually distinguished by magi. A character can immediately tell that his vis is of a faerie type with any simple Intellego Vim spell, like Sense the Nature of Vis.
Encased Vis
Encased vis is the most common form discovered by magi in faerie areas. Encased vis is simply Magic vis that a faerie has laid glamour over, to claim possession of it. Faeries have many uses for vis. They primarily desire it for the same reason they seek out milk, bread, and beer, because they can consume its vitality. Vis also allows them to make glamourous objects real, by giving them independent vitality, which allows faeries to reward mortals for participating in stories. And faeries may use vis to make it easier for them to change roles, as described in the Chapter 3: Faerie Characters. Many of the faerie courts that surround human areas are placed as they are because a vis source lies nearby.
Faeries do not impinge upon the Magic auras that support these vis sources, though, because it would damage them. Instead, they use glamour to play tricks, befuddling humans so that they never see the vis source, or fail to understand its nature. These tricks may include games with distance so that a court seems to take up the space in which the source is found, or faeries may create beautiful facades that the vis sources are hidden behind. In some courts, there are fascinating things hidden around a drab vis source, so that humans are distracted from it. Finally, leaving faerie areas can play tricks on the memory, so that the vis source is forgotten, or made to seem inconsequential.
Anchors
Anchors are mundane objects into which faeries have settled their glamour — the cores around which faeries agglomerate bodies. When a faerie’s body is destroyed unexpectedly, it is this anchor that magi prize for its vis. Some anchors are distant from the body they motivate, while other types allow the bearer to access one of a faerie’s powers. Each of these unusual anchor types is found as a Virtue in Chapter 3: Faerie Characters. Highly cognizant faeries understand what anchors are, and may bargain for them with magi.
A faerie remains conscious, and in its current role, while trapped in its anchor. But it is unable to use its powers, other than the ability to draw matter to produce a new body. Characters may communicate with a faerie trapped in its anchor using Intellego Vim spells.
The connection between the faerie and its anchor is enforced by glamour, and can be broken if the faerie’s glamour is damaged. For example, if the faerie’s anchor breaks a taboo — represented by a Ward Flaw — the faerie’s role breaks and it fades from the mortal world. This is particularly fortunate for some faeries, who are forbidden from straying from their lands or are unable to enter the Dominion, because it allows them to escape to Faerieland before magi destroy them permanently. Anchors whose faeries break taboo become accrued vis.
Accrued Vis
Accrued vis forms when faeries end their roles. As an obvious example, it accrues in places where those faeries that age go to die. Fragments of their glamour are left behind in the matter that formed their bodies, and over time this accrues into useful quantities of vis. These tangles of glamour might, some thinkers suggest, become the simplest of faeries, and so this form of accrued vis might actually be an obscure form of anchored vis.
Accrued vis is also found in the bodies and accouterments shed by narrowly cognizant faeries when they complete their roles. These items contain a great deal of coherent glamour, and may be used in several ways by humans. Many of these items retain Pretenses, which a human bearer may use. A faerie offered a tool that contains accrued vis may, if the creature accepts it, immediately take up the role that the previous faerie has laid aside. All faeries can read the glamour within accrued vis, and decide if they want to incorporate it into themselves. Highly cognizant faeries are willing to bargain for desirable roles.
Sleeping Vis
Sleeping vis is like accrued or anchored vis, in that it is a material object with a simple glamour in it. But it lacks any vitality, and so makes no attempt to form a body and participate in its role. If provided with vitality, some sleeping vis ceases to be dormant and becomes a faerie. Magi conjecture that this may be true of all sleeping vis, and that they have only awakened faeries that are lightly dormant by singing to them, soaking them in milk, or seeping them in blood, rather than those that require more expensive forms of vitality — like vis or murdered babies — to awaken. Some sleeping vis spontaneously awakens. This odd form of vis has been discovered occasionally, but it is difficult to differentiate from accrued vis, so it might be more common than the few confirmed examples indicate
Magi are divided on the cause of this vis, as even highly cognizant faeries that are awakened are unable to account for their state. Popular theories include that these faeries are new, and have not been embodied before; that these are faeries that have been struck down by the Divine through the miracles of saints, the spread of the Dominion, or the silencing of the oracles; and that faeries are able to drive each other to sleep as part of their games of status.
Some powerful faeries choose, for their amusement, to shed their more-complex roles for a time, and live as a narrowly cognizant faerie. They leave the surplus parts of their glamour in a guarded object, and pick up their more powerful role as they require it. It is conjectured that some powerful faeries have many such roles, kept in Faerieland that they wear as humans wear clothes. These shed roles might creating sleeping vis that, when given a spark of vitality, becomes a faerie independent of its previous spirit.
Magi of House Merinita are willing to pay handsomely for sleeping vis. Many believe that the vitality offered to the vis will influence the role and attitude of the embodied faerie. They hope to create a class of tractable faerie assistants, to aid them in their research.
Abstract Vis
Abstract vis is a lie, or perhaps a promise made solid. It is a tiny piece of glamour pressed on matter that can be detected as enchanted, but does not truly have vis within it. The faerie that creates the abstract vis treats the items as if it were as valuable as real vis, and uses its glamour to create effects that mimic those expected when the abstract vis is used in its demesnes. This includes the effects that mundane people enjoy when they use vis, like warriors who know that if they eat apples from a certain tree their wounds will be healed, or witches who know they can predict famine by sucking the icicles from a particular overhang.
The servants of a powerful faerie immediately recognize and must always honor the abstract vis of their master. If other faeries honor the abstract vis, then the faerie who originally created it owes them a favor, which they usually collect through human intermediaries. Magi cannot employ abstract vis for concrete uses like crafting magic items.
Attribution
Attribution Based on the material for Ars Magica, ©1993-2024, licensed by Trident, Inc. d/b/a Atlas Games®, under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license 4.0 ("CC-BY-SA 4.0"). Ars Magica Open License Logo ©2024 Trident, Inc. The Ars Magica Open License Logo, Ars Magica, and Mythic Europe are trademarks of Trident, Inc., and are used with permission. Order of Hermes, Tremere, Doissetep, and Grimgroth are trademarks of Paradox Interactive AB and are used with permission.