Seelie Faerie

Seelie faeries are among the oldest and most plentiful dwellers of the shadowy faerie realm, as at home in its fey glamour as elves are in the natural world. No two look alike. They come tall or tiny, plump or gaunt, ancient or youthful, sometimes enormous; some sport wings, horns, tails or fins, some look like little humanoids, and others are odd blends with pumpkin heads, ivy for hair, or goat hooves. Nobody knows whether these forms are real or simply glamour, which the Seelie Court shapes better than anyone else in their realm. A few scholars suspect that without it they would all look identical, and rather dull.

Seelie faeries avoid direct fighting, preferring to tangle foes in confusion and treacherous promises, though they can defend themselves. Turning invisible at will often wins them surprise. Small and weak, they shun melee; when forced into it, some draw a little knife for 1d4.

Their real defenses are spells and glamour. Each faerie can cast five spells a day, chosen from any 1st- or 2nd-level priest enchantment/charm spell or from this set: barkskin, continual light, create food and water, create water, entangle, faerie fire, goodberry, light, produce flame, protection from evil, purify food and drink, pyrotechnics, shillelagh, speak with animals, tree, warp wood and water walk. The seelie spell of forgetting can be cast without limit.

Glamour lets them affect all five senses, where most others manage one or two. In a fight they loom over enemies, slash with illusory claws or breathe imaginary flame; elsewhere they may thunder in giant voices, fill the air with sweet or foul smells, or seem to reshape the land to block a path.

Iron weapons deal 3 extra points of damage to them per hit, and salt thrown on a faerie stops it from turning invisible for 1d4 turns.

Most belong to the Seelie Court, a grand assembly hidden in the realm's most enchanted forest. Nobody who deliberately seeks it ever finds it, so many think the court wanders, carrying its magic from wood to wood. A traveler who blunders in may be teased, tested or helped on a whim, then led out of the forest and put to sleep with a seelie spell of forgetting, waking to recall it all as a dream at best, with no way back.

Though the court numbers in the hundreds, faeries are usually met alone, far from home, and those met in the waking world are nearly always solitary, especially changelings. They usually go about unseen; detect magic, detect invisibility and comparable spells expose them, or by an observer whose perception score is within 10 points of the faerie's glamour score. A faerie may choose to appear, though it will not do so for anyone evil, and each can innately sense alignment as by know alignment.

A faerie who approaches travelers usually wants something: to beg help, deliver a warning, or make mischief. Some follow a party for miles or days before appearing in a time of need; others reveal themselves when someone wanders onto their ground. Many work their magic unseen, and a faerie who does not wish to be found rarely is. How they treat a party depends heavily on the first meeting. Kindness comes back multiplied; so does cruelty. They covet beauty in people and objects alike, trinkets, treasure, even human children, and may trade help for a cherished possession or simply trick a traveler out of it. They make delightful adventure hooks and cryptic guides, but they are too fickle to be dependable allies.

Their speech is riddles, rhymes and double meanings, always holding a grain of truth that may be hard to dig out. Seelie law turns on the literal meaning of words, especially oaths. Promise to share supper for directions and the faerie may dine with you nightly for life, in exchange for directions too garbled to follow. Yet they are bound by the same literalism: find the loophole, say by calling the evening meal 'breakfast', and the baffled faerie must concede. Unexpected behavior throws them badly, and when a faerie offers two bad choices, the wise traveler looks for a third.

Common temperaments include the Deceiver, who misdirects for sport with sometimes deadly results; the Innocent, a very young faerie of only a couple of centuries, who tags along asking 'why' endlessly and poking at everything; the Helper, who repays a past kindness, perhaps one done by another traveler of the same people a century ago, once, openly or secretly (say, refilling rations overnight), not always successfully; the Protector, who watches over a person it owes or whose mission it favors until the debt is paid or the charge leaves the realm; and the Trickster, who lures people into binding commitments, from harmless jokes to truly menacing bargains in the style of the old name-guessing tales.

The lawful neutral Faerie Queen rules the Seelie Court, a being of unearthly beauty devoted to her 'children' and fair to strangers who have not wronged them. Any nonfaerie who looks on her must save vs. spell or be charmed. She has a glamour score of 100 and sees through glamour at will, needing no perception score. Iron deals 2 extra points of damage per hit to her, and salt suppresses her invisibility for 1 turn. She has 20 Hit Dice and 162 hit points, stands 5 feet tall, has 50% magic resistance, and is immune to illusions and charms; she turns invisible at will and senses alignment. Her Dexterity is 18, Intelligence 18 and Charisma 19 (XP 21,000).

As the last of the Elder Fey she commands both wizard and priest magic, casting six spells each of levels one through five, five of 6th, four each of 7th and 8th, and three of 9th daily. She knows every illusion/phantasm spell and every low-level (1st or 2nd) enchantment/charm spell, wizardly or priestly, the seelie list above, and also blink, color spray, confusion, dancing lights, detect invisibility, detect magic, enchant an item, false vision, feather fall, gust of wind, hold person, lamentable belaborment, affect normal fires, the 10-foot-radius version of protection from evil, reflecting pool, suggestion, tongues and true seeing.

She guards her subjects as a mother and disciplines them as one too; faeries met far from court are often serving a temporary or permanent banishment, to them the worst punishment imaginable. They love her enough to die for her.

In the first age, before the two worlds were sundered, the Elder Fey lived there, innate wielders of both natural (priestly) and rule-breaking (wizardly) magic, which they gathered rather than prayed for or memorized, as elves still do. The force that split the world tore each Elder Fey in two: a seelie faerie in the shadow realm and an elf in the waking world. The faeries kept natural magic and gained glamour; the elves kept wizardry and became bound to the land. Only the Queen remembers. Whenever an elf is born, a new faerie appears at court, and nobody knows what would happen if the two halves met.

Barring violence, seelie faeries are immortal in their realm but mortal in the waking world, while elves are the reverse. Attuned to their realm, they have no natural predators there, only unnatural ones. They eat mostly fruit, nuts, roots and seeds, accept meat if offered, and loathe milk, a trick for unmasking a disguised faerie. The unseelie faeries are their evil counterparts, and brownies, leprechauns and sprites are all seelie kinds.

Seelie spell of forgetting (3rd-level charm; range 50 yards; components V, S, M, a pinch of faerie dust per subject; casting time 3; area 50-foot cube; permanent; save special) is cast only by members of the court and wipes memory of time spent among faeries. Saves are adjusted by perception: +3 penalty for none, +2 slight, +1 lesser, 0 middling, -1 bonus greater, -2 extraordinary. Success leaves only a hazy dream; failure erases everything. Names, places and directions stay lost unless the caster chooses to leave some, such as the way to safety. Meeting the forgotten faerie or place again brings only deja vu. Charms, suggestions, geas, quest and similar bindings remain, though the victim forgets their source. Only limited wish or wish restores the memories.