Overview
Of all the peoples who walk the lands of Lumeris, only one did not arrive through the Luminous Veil. The Fae were not gathered from the ruins of dying worlds. They did not survive a Shattering. They did not flee through a convergence gate.
The Fae were born here. They are Lumeris — or rather, Lumeris is, in some fundamental sense, made of them. They are ancient beings of magic formed from the raw essence of nature and emotion, existing between the material world and the Feywild — a parallel realm of pure magical current that underlies the physical world like a second heartbeat. They embody elements and seasons and primal forces that predate every civilization in the realm. Some among them remember a world before the first mountain rose.
To encounter a Fae is to encounter something that has always been here. Their age alone makes most mortal races feel young. Their power, which is not learned or trained but simply constitutive of what they are, makes mages who have studied for decades feel like students.
They are also deeply strange. The qualities that make them beautiful — their whimsy, their unpredictability, their absolute comfort with contradiction — are the same qualities that make them difficult to fully trust. A Fae does not think in the straight lines most mortal minds prefer. They think in spirals, in seasons, in the long arcs of centuries. When they act, the reasoning is real. It is simply older than the question you thought you were asking.
The First Breath of Magic
Before the World Existed
Before Lumeris existed, reality was formless. There was no sky, no ocean, no stars. Only two infinite cosmic forces drifting through the void. The first was the Radiant Weave — the force of creation, light, growth, and order. The second was the Umbral Veil — the force of shadow, change, emotion, and chaos. For eons the two existed separately, incapable of touching, each defining itself by the absence of the other.
Until something changed. At the beginning of existence, the Weave and the Veil collided. The impact shattered the emptiness itself. From that collision erupted time, matter, emotion, elemental energy, and the first magic. This event became known as the First Convergence — and the explosion birthed a living world: Lumeris.
At the center of the newborn realm formed a divine magical core — the Heart of Lumeris. It pulsed like a living soul, releasing waves of magical energy across the forming land. Where that energy touched reality, life awakened. And the very first beings born from those currents were the Fae.
The Primordial Fae
Spirits Before Form
The earliest Fae were not flesh and blood. They were living manifestations of magic itself — spirits of flame, thoughts carried by wind, emotions given form, songs made alive. These ancient beings were called the Primordial Fae, and they possessed what no mortal race has ever fully reclaimed: immortality, vast magical power, and the ability to reshape reality through will alone.
The Primordial Fae wandered the forming world, shaping mountains, forests, oceans, and storms. Every major geological feature of Lumeris that predates the Age of Arrival was touched by Fae hands — or by the wind of a Fae thought — in some age so deep it has no name in mortal record.
But as their numbers grew, so too did their differences. The Primordials began to divide along lines of affinity — those drawn to fire gathered with fire, those drawn to deep water drew apart from those who loved the open sky. These divisions deepened over centuries into something more formal, more structured, and ultimately more dangerous: the Six Eternal Courts.
The Division of the Primordials
The Six Eternal Courts
The Six Courts were not formed by any decree or treaty. They emerged naturally from the fundamental differences between the Primordial Fae — each Court crystallizing around an elemental or cosmic force that its members embodied most completely.
The Sundering
The Fracture That Changed Everything
For long ages the Six Courts lived within the Feywild — the parallel realm of pure magical current that underlies Lumeris like a second world overlapping the first. The material realm and the Feywild were not separate in those ages. They were permeable to each other, blending at their edges, the Fae moving freely between both.
Then came the Sundering — a catastrophic event whose precise cause is still disputed between Courts. The Embers Court holds it was an act of excess magic that tore the boundary open and collapsed it simultaneously. The Umbral Court holds it was inevitable: all things that are one will eventually become two. The Tides Court holds it was the first mortal spell ever cast — a human mage reaching across the boundary and pulling so hard that it snapped.
Whatever its cause, the effect was total. The material plane and the Feywild separated. The boundary between them hardened into something that could be crossed but not dissolved. Many Fae were trapped in the material realm at the moment of separation — caught on the wrong side of a divide that had not existed the moment before.
These trapped Fae faced a choice: find a way back, or adapt. Many tried to find a way back and failed. The ones who survived were those who adapted — learning to move among the larger beings of the mortal world, developing their Veilshift ability to change size and form, building relationships with mortal races that made them useful and therefore protected.
Since the Sundering, the Courts remain divided — sometimes allies, sometimes rivals — while their influence quietly and persistently shapes the world. The Fae in Lumeris today are the descendants of those who adapted, those who chose to stay, and those who have been born into the material world across the centuries since.
Physical Appearance
Many Forms, One Nature
The Fae do not have a fixed physical form in the way that most races do. They are inherently magical beings, and their appearance reflects their Court affiliation, their emotional state, and the choices they have made about how to present themselves to the world. Two Fae of the same Court may look dramatically different from each other. A Fae in a heightened emotional state will look different from the same Fae at rest.
The features common to all Fae regardless of Court are few but unmistakable. They are slender — almost impossibly so by the standards of most humanoid races, as if some portion of their mass exists in the Feywild rather than the material world. Their eyes are luminous without an identifiable light source, carrying an inner glow that brightens with emotion and dims with exhaustion in ways that no artificial lighting replicates. Their ears taper to fine points. Their movements carry a quality that other races consistently describe as slightly out of sync with the physical world, as if they are following a path that passes through spaces between moments.
Most Fae in their natural state carry wings — ranging from the delicate translucent wings of the Gales Court to the deep leathery shadow-membranes of Umbral Fae. The ability to reduce these wings to near-invisibility through Veilshift is universal, as is the ability to shrink their overall size when navigating spaces built for other beings.
Court affiliation shapes everything else. Embers Court Fae often carry warmth in their skin tone — copper, amber, deep gold. Tides Court Fae run toward cooler palettes — seafoam, pale silver, deep oceanic blues. Gales are often pale with translucent quality to their features. Deep Roots grow natural patterns into their skin resembling bark or leaf. Radiant Court Fae are frequently white-gold with eyes that hold genuine light. Umbral Court Fae shift color with their emotional state and are the most visually unpredictable of all.
The Way of the Courts
Culture & Society
Fae society is organized around the Courts — not as a government so much as an identity. To be Fae is to belong to a Court, and to belong to a Court is to embody its force. There is no Fae Council, no universal law, no single authority that speaks for all six. What exists instead is an elaborate and perpetually shifting system of inter-Court diplomacy, bargain, and alliance that has been ongoing since the age of the Primordials.
The Bargain is the Fae legal system, spiritual practice, and social currency simultaneously. A Fae oath carries weight that no mortal contract can replicate — when a Fae gives their word, something in the fabric of magic binds it. Breaking a Fae bargain is not merely dishonorable; it has tangible consequences for the breaker that operate at the level of their own magical nature. This makes Fae agreements both the most reliable contracts in Lumeris and the most dangerous ones to enter without reading every word.
The Fae relationship to time is one of the most disorienting aspects of dealing with them for mortal races. They do not experience urgency the way beings with finite lifespans do. A Fae who tells you they will return shortly may mean a decade by mortal reckoning. This is not deception — it is a genuinely different temporal orientation. Fae who spend significant time with mortal races often develop better calibration for mortal time, but they never fully lose the deep sense that time is not something you run out of.
In the Age of Arrival, the Fae occupy a unique and complicated position. They are the oldest living beings in Lumeris by an enormous margin — their history predates every other race's presence here by ages. Yet they are not rulers and have no interest in being so. Their Courts work on different ambitions, shaped by the cosmic forces they embody rather than by territorial or political calculation. Other races seek them out as allies, as advisors, as sources of magic that cannot be found anywhere else, and as deeply unpredictable wildcard presences in any alliance. The Fae generally find this satisfactory.
Playable Race Traits
Advantages
- +Primordial magic — innate magical ability that requires no training and draws on the world itself
- +Veilshift — ability to alter size and physical form; cross the boundary between material and Feywild
- +Court attunement — deep affinity with the element of their Court; elemental magic costs nothing
- +Glamour — ability to alter perceived appearance, create illusions, and shape emotional impressions
- +Bargain-binding — oaths sworn by Fae carry magical weight; breaking them is structurally difficult
- +Flight — all Fae carry wings capable of sustained aerial movement
- +Temporal resilience — age at an enormously reduced rate; effectively immortal in ideal conditions
Disadvantages
- −Iron vulnerability — iron disrupts Fae magic in its presence; iron weapons ignore some natural resistances
- −Bargain-bound — the same magic that enforces Fae oaths constrains the Fae giving them
- −Temporal disorientation — mortal urgency is instinctively difficult; short-term tactical urgency is a learned skill
- −Court obligation — deep allegiance to Court may override personal judgment in conflicts of interest
- −Emotional resonance — strong emotions bleed visibly into Fae appearance and magic without full control
- −Feywild pull — prolonged absence from Feywild contact causes gradual magical fatigue
- −Unpredictability penalty — others' distrust of Fae nature creates social complications in formal contexts
Permitted Classes
Court Bloodlines
The Six Subraces
Each of the Six Eternal Courts has given rise to a distinct subrace of Fae — beings shaped by their Court's elemental force from birth. Explore any bloodline below to discover their unique traits, history, and abilities.
Final Lore Summary
The Fae are not visitors to Lumeris. They are its oldest memory, its deepest magic, and the living proof that the world was not assembled from nothing but born from something vast and alive. They were here before the first mountain rose and they will be here after the last kingdom has turned to dust. They do not rule, do not conquer, do not accumulate. They simply are — and in being, they shape everything around them without needing to lift a hand.
They are the spiral at the center of the oldest tree.
They are the bargain spoken before language had words.
They are the first breath of magic, still exhaling.