Whenever enough new folks join the Dreamland RPG Facebook group or Discord server, I’m going to be posting new Dreamland material (the FB and/or Discord folks get to vote on what it is). In celebration of the Facebook reaching 600 folks, here is a brief post on the Secret Empire, the fairy folk of Dreamland.
Fairies, also known as goblins, are immortal magical beings of loosely humanoid form. Rather than imposing their will on the world as humans do, they are bound to it by mystical laws that are incomprehensible to us. If the human cultures of Dreamland have ethics that may be surreal or bewildering to outsiders, the alienness of fairies is another level entirely. Fairies are Others. Though they may sometimes seem charming or whimsical, the core characteristic that separates fairies from strange-looking human Dreamlanders is that fairies may not even have a “self” at all.
Fairies come in many different forms. Some are sublimely beautiful, though in an uncanny way, as fairies do not use facial expressions or eye contact as humans do. Others are hideous, with faces like gnarled oak trees, deformed humans or animals. Some go naked and live like animals; others wear gorgeous, elaborate clothes and live in shining halls. All are roughly humanoid, whether they are of normal human height, twelve feet tall, or the size of mice. So diverse are the sizes of fairies that some scholars suspect they originate from an artificial ecosystem where all ecological niches are filled by creatures with a humanoid body shape.
Fairies speak human languages, but they also have their own secret tongue, which they speak among themselves and sometimes inscribe into natural elements as patterns of moss, tree bark, mushrooms, or leaves. Many fairies have the power to create illusions or change their appearance; humans can use Wisdom (insight) or Alertness to see through these deceptions. A few fairies can shapeshift.
Fairies must eat and drink, but they are otherwise immortal unless killed, a difficult task without magic weapons. They often suffer from overpopulation and cull one another on cannibalistic killing sprees.
In addition to their other powers, all but the tiniest fairies can create phantasms, objects (or creatures) created out of thin air by the fairy’s will. It is through such magic that even isolated fairies in remote areas always have the tools and clothing of their assigned trade, and that more powerful fairies are able to conjure castles, footmen and fabulous wealth. This effect is similar to the marvels created by dreamers, except that phantasms fade and melt when the fairy who has created them dies. (Killing a fairy, however, is not easy.) Strange tools or furniture in the woods or other lonely places are evidence that fairies are nearby.
Fairies once were able to pass freely between Dreamland and the waking world, but their power has dwindled in the modern era. Fairyland itself is another world within Dreamland, or perhaps all of Earth’s Dreamland is only a bubble within the even vaster infinity of Fairyland. In the 1700s, British and Irish fairy lore inspired artists such as Henry Fuseli and William Blake. By the late 1800s fairies were a fad of Victorian society, their images everywhere, with countless mystics and folklorists claiming contact with them. In the waking world, strange distortions of time and space can still be experienced near the few true sites of fairy power; but often all that can be seen are crude symbols and ruins: grass-covered burial mounds, moss-covered menhirs, Stone-Age flint arrowheads, and twisted ancient trees. In Dreamland, these signs can also indicate fairies, but there are fairy cities and countryside, as well, all breathtakingly beautiful. People who sleep near fairy sites in either world, or who walk around them in a particular pattern, may experience hallucinations of being transformed into a different person and encountering even stranger beings. Some people in these places may look to the horizon at twilight and see a range of pale blue, impossibly high mountains, with three peaks rising taller than the others—the peaks of Fairyland.
Collectively, fairies are far more powerful than humans, but their attitude toward us varies from type to type. Truly evil fairies are among the most terrible beings a dreamer can encounter, maiming, slaughtering and eating humans with impunity. However, even adoring fairies can be dangerous: those who take too much delight in a mortal’s poetry, singing, dancing or good looks may invite them to eat fairy fruit and take them back to Fairyland to amuse the fairies forever…or until they grow bored.
There are currently over 20 named and reported types of fairies, but many more are said to exist. In the tall grass, beneath the soil, hovering in the air attracted by the smell of flowers or carrion, fairies gather, mutate and breed.