Shadow Fey Overview

The shadow fey are sylvan beings who dwell in a hidden rift of shadow. Travelers often call them drow, but they are no relation to dark elves and are not truly elves at all; they are offspring of the Plane of Shadow. Their homeland sits like an open wound in the middle of the misty dread realm, a membrane between that realm and the Plane of Shadow much as the Border Ethereal separates it from the Ethereal, and so it shares much of shadow's nature.

They span every alignment. Two great factions divide them: the mostly neutral Seelie Court and the mostly evil Unseelie Court. Nearly all belong to one of nine breeds: sith, shee, powrie, alven, brag, teg, fir, muryan and portune. Each breed has its own customs, but certain traits are shared by all.

Every shadow fey reveres the fallen Erlking whose name the race once took, and makes pilgrimages to his tomb. His law forbids any fey to knowingly kill another, and lawbreakers are cast out. They also honor his two children, the Prince of Shadows who rules the Unseelie Court and the Faerie Queen who rules the Seelie Court, and will obey a direct order from either regardless of their own loyalty. All of them loathe and dread their former master, a sorcerer-fiend whose rule was so harsh that this land of dread seems kinder by comparison.

Mischief runs in their blood, from harmless pranks to lethal tricks depending on the individual and the breed: sith joke about death, portune are bone-dry, shee toy with emotions, and the humor of fir baffles even other fey. Centuries of sameness leave them restless, so they watch short-lived, unpredictable mortals with great interest and amuse themselves by meddling. They also raid human homes for tools and supplies, usually by stealth at night rather than force. Good fey often pay back with a gem or a mended item; evil fey leave mischief to cover their tracks.

Each fey has an everyday name and a secret one shared only with intimates. A spellcaster who uses the secret name gives the fey -2 on its saving throw. Learning it is an adventure in itself; wish or limited wish might reveal it, but must first get past the creature's natural magic resistance, and the fey will fight hard to keep the name from spreading.

When mortals truly fascinate them, the fey carry their shadows back to their realm and turn them into changelings. A changeling loses most of its free will and any wish to leave, but its skill at its craft grows enormously. The bodies left behind are said in nearby human lands to be elf-shot, a term also used for daydreamers. The change requires consent, given by eating faerie food. Almost every fey believes it is doing these folk a kindness, sparing them dull, brief mortal lives and polishing a master's skill further, and cannot see why anyone would refuse. The price is usually steeper than the gain.

The fey may be immortal; they do not age or die naturally, though violence can kill them. The Prince and the Queen have each passed five thousand years, and the eldest known fey is almost three times as old. Pairings are not lifelong but may last centuries, a couple typically has about one child per century, and affairs with human lovers are just as temporary.

Size ranges from tiny alven and powrie to sith and shee as tall as or taller than a man. A child need not match its parent, because a fey's form follows its personality: a teg's daughter may grow into a powrie, sith or shee.