FAERIE AS A STABILIZING FORCE

Songs of the Sidhe by David Ross

In the absence of Faerie’s inhabitants, a world will instead be influenced directly by the local gods and/or invading outsiders. Immortal beings of ideal and concept have many times proven themselves to be ill-equipped to design a seemless organic web of interacting and imperfect living things. Indeed, they are known to (for example) create massive monsters that strain local food sources to the breaking point or to create holy springs that burn non-good creatures instead of offering ordinary water. In fact, worlds lacking Faerie as a stabilizing force tend to get destroyed more quickly than others, often due to 25 spirits from the Realms Beyond staging cataclysmic moral or ethical conflicts there. Gods and other Powers are sometimes entirely self-sufficient creators, but few are as efficient or reliable as those of Faerie.

More than occasionally, it is the various local faerie courts and other nature spirits of a world that keep it sustainable. Depending on the world, these groups are often active only behind the scenes, keeping bizarre magical beasts, aberrations, extraplanar interlopers, and the like from overrunning the more conventional inhabitants that the fey draw power from. However, when the fey are divided into factions (as they usually are), those factions rarely coordinate their efforts.

Primal Powers such as archfey are sometimes even powerful enough on the local scale to stop gods and their foes from making war on Terra, home to the fey as well as others, and thereby saving mortal realms along with their own from becoming collateral damage. Put simply, the fey are commonly known to fend off dangerous forces, even if it is for selfish reasons. If gods are typically the reason why impossibly ancient cosmic entities have not taken over the Mortal Coil yet, then the fey are often what keeps deities from carelessly ruining their respective worlds.

The Seelie generally spread fertility widely to compensate for for all the destructive forces around, and work toward diplomacy with deities, Animal Lords, and other Powers. The Unseelie, on the other hand, tend to prevent nature from sustaining their enemies and attack those who would undermine the Unseelie power base -these dark fey have at many times warred openly with gods, giants, dragons, and other Faerie Courts. Similarly, the Demesnes and Blood Courts work for the preservation and spread of their respective spheres of influence.

Perhaps more important than discouraging divine devastation, however, is the hedging out of interlopers far more alien and caustic to natural reality than any deity or fiend. Certain archfey, especially the Watchers of the Current and the Wild Hunt, are among the few beings in Creation with the wisdom and courage to properly watch for the signs of the Void Beyond. Few others fully recognize that baleful influences from outside Creation always seethe in the darkest and strangest recesses of the planes. Countering fey efforts to keep Reality inviolate are the innumerable servants of alien Powers such as the Elder Elemental Eye and Tharizdun.

A number of planets were made habitable in the first place by fey (particularly the Seelie), who may act as helpers to creator gods, seed life on worlds born without gods, or even create new worlds whole-cloth. The Seelie Court is perhaps the most common reason that a balanced variety of mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, various plants and fungi and microorganisms, and so on tend to inhabit each world -they know from experience what works. Creating without Faerie influence or aid, a lone deity or pantheon is more likely to forge a strange, possibly unstable world with little resemblance to most others.

The Otherworld and its masters foster variety and adaptation. A good number of magical beasts and monstrous humanoids were once disruptive to the land, yet have since grown to fit well into the natural world and sometimes become allies to the factions of Faerie.