The Rhyming Song

Songs of the Sidhe by David Ross

The Rhyming Song Time is at once vitally important and virtually meaningless to the fey. Between their nigh-endless lives and the distorted time of Faerie, history as mortals reckon it seems but a fleeting fancy. A fey may well spend a century or longer on a flight of whimsy without once thinking of the past or future as he goes. However, the patterns formed by history’s interminable cycles are extremely important to the fey in their more thoughtful moments, for it allows them to predict what is to come. Not only do they record notable seasons and events in ballads and epic poetry, but they think of the passage of the seasons (and all of history) as an ever-changing, ever-rhyming song. Events may not repeat themselves, but they echo each other in remarkable ways that fey seers can read with piercing clarity. However, their perception of the past (and thus, the future) is never wholly agreed upon; every important story has many mutually exclusive tellings. Below is a brief, simplified version of a common plot derived from the ballads of the sidhe bards.

The Time Before Time

There is no such thing as an ultimate beginning as far as the fey are concerned. However, the earliest event that all fey can reckon is the destruction of the previous Creation. Even reality is subject to death and rebirth, after all.

The Unified Court Period

Age of Innocence: From the rotting loam of the previous Creation, the Seed of Life sprouts forth what is now Ladinion. At its heart appear the first fey, the fenghuangs. They help shape primeval nature while the Mortal Coil grows into a fullfledged plane. Life, role, and species are fluid and magical as natural laws develop. Then, outside influences begin to disrupt the balance and the Tree of Life divides into distinct layers. The wisest fenghuangs create new beings bound to the nature so that they might protect it, including the daoine sidhe led by the Old Seelie Court and King Fintan.

The Lost Age: Fey have mixed interactions with the Elder Ones and other primeval denizens of Terra. While the fey prefer the vital realms of Faerie, Terra is a dark, relatively blank slate for the Elder Ones, who create many wonders within. Fascinated by these strangers and curious about their origins, Fintan’s consort Cessair nearly causes disaster when her exploration of everything beyond Faerie reaches the Void Beyond. For her recklessness, she is banished from Faerie along with her followers. The Second War of Law and Chaos begins in the Realms Beyond, leading to conflicts between vaati, qlippothim, and other interlopers, although at first their collateral damage is manageable. Meanwhile, the earliest gods appear and many Elder Ones vanish (often mysteriously) from the known Cosmos.

The Elder Gate: Perhaps spurred by the rise of new gods, the Second War of Law and Chaos spreads in earnest to the Mortal Coil, and Fintan finds his tactics and diplomacy unable to curb the devastation. He steps down as Seelie King. With deft skill, his successor Queen Gloriana dances in and out of alliance and conflict with Elder Ones, vaati, and others to successfully preserve the interests of Faerie. Eventually, however, Cessair and her followers return with a new threat. Seeking the vanished Elder Ones, they construct the world-spanning Elder Gate to look beyond Creation’s edge. Instead of Elder Ones, the Elder Gate allows an Old One-like force of the Void Beyond called the Elder Horror into Creation. It rips holes in space and time across Terra. Queen Gloriana closes the Gate with the Elder Seal, but perishes in the process. The damage can only be partly undone, shaping the modern Void Between the Stars and erasing nearby societies from history. The power of the Old Seelie Court is forever diminished.

The Scouring: The Second War of Law and Chaos reaches a fever pitch while the fey struggle to recover from the Elder Gate event with the guidance of Queen Rhiannon I. Eventually, the vaati grow so desperate that they unleash the Rod of Law, which scours life from many worlds, cripples both Law and Chaos, and ends the war. A movement of fey against Rhiannon coalesces around many powerful fenghuangs and an archfey calling himself King Vindos I who dispute Rhiannon’s authority. Named Unseelie by the Old Seelie Court, these fey devastate world after world in an attempt to root out all lingering threats to fey power. Perhaps the most visible of these threats are true dragons and giants; Vindos attempts to remove them by fueling their fierce rivalry into open war.

The Splintered Courts Period

Rhiannon’s Peace: Yi, Gloriana’s former champion, slays the Unseelie leaders and disgraces the fenghuangs. Queen Rhiannon I, her rule now all-but undisputed, exiles Yi for murder. She marshals the fey to a semblance of their previous eminence in over nature and fosters goodwill with mortals by initiating some of them into the fey world. Among these mortals are giant refugees from a great war with the dragons; their flight eventually contributes to a peace forged by Good powers from both sides.

Reign of Danu: Gods begin establishing dominance in Terra, though they seem a small matter early on. After Rhiannon I’s death, Queen Danu cements the fey’s camaraderie with gods and eventually draws widespread worship from mortals, claiming divine power for her court. The Wars of Divine Succession begin.

The Battles of Magh Tuiredh: As Danu and the other new fey gods begin to care more for their worshipers than for their Faerie realms, their servant Aeval leads the Seelie in rejecting them. Danu and her children (the Tuatha Dé Danann) depart for the Realms Beyond and Aeval becomes queen. Soon, the Tuatha Dé attempt to lay claim to giantish realms for their worship; after a Pyrrhic victory in the ensuing First Battle of Magh Tuiredh, the gods fall under the slavery of the halfgiant god Bres and his Unseelie allies. When the gods gain a new leader in the half-giant Lugh, they gain a true victory in the Second Battle of Magh Tuiredh. Despite the giants’ loss, the Unseelie’s ranks swell with fomorian refugees and leaders. Meanwhile, the Seelie suffer a series of disastrous conflicts with fiendish interlopers. Hoping to overcome the weakness which gave footholds in Faerie to the fiends, Queen Aeval purges all those not of pure fey blood from the Seelie Court; other fey leave in protest.

The Plague War: Taking advantage of the rift among the fey, the great linnorm Gottenrvnr Two-Tongues arrives in Faerie. In exchange for an alliance and the boon of the linnorms’ now-infamous death curse, he forces a crude order upon his lesser kin and aids the Unseelie King Tethra, a young half-fey fomorian, against his enemies. Tethra then takes in many of those who left the Seelie Court, including the Wild Hunt. Queen Aeval, hoping to avoid more bloodshed, meets with Tethra, but he assassinates her in an attempt to steal her power. He manages to establish dominion over death and destruction, but the Seelie heir, Caelia, retains the power of vitality and the allegiance of most Seelie. The two begin a bloody war over control of Life and Death and all the Faerie Courts. The fierce conflict weakens the courts as a whole and hampers their resistance to the rising gods in the Wars of Divine Succession. Most courts gain a degree of autonomy as they repeatedly change hands, and the Demesne Courts begin to fight violently with each other over control of territory.

The Warring Courts Period

Caelia’s Clemency: Unwilling to throw away any more lives, Queen Caelia eventually issues an offer of clemency to any Unseelie who wishes to rejoin the Seelie. She chooses to turn a blind eye to the affairs of death and decay under Unseelie control unless threatened. Some accept clemency, and the Unseelie Court begins to falter against the gods in the Wars of Divine Succession. The Seelie, conversely, are reinvigorated by common ground with nature gods and fellow enemies of the Unseelie. Many pantheons (the Seldarine, Olympians, even the Tuatha Dé Danann), ally with Caelia. Although the Two Courts no longer fight directly, they engage in a tense cold war (the Dance of Light and Darkness) over vassal courts.

The Peace of Paradwys: The tiring Queen Caelia slowly restricts her control more and more to Faerie as she relies on the Seelie’s close divine allies to deal with any problems in Terra; at the same time, the Unseelie continue to lose their war against the gods and are largely reduced to guerrilla attacks from Faerie. Internal pressures rise when old Tethra is replaced by Queen Vercana, a fiery young fomorian. Soon, armies once arrayed against the gods are arrayed against each other. The Dance of Light and Darkness threatens to grow into another great war, and the sage Watcher of the Current, Borlung, steps in. Forging a pact called the Peace of Paradwys, he takes stewardship of the Demesne Courts and manages their relations with the Two Courts in an ostensibly fair manner. With lasting peace, Queen Caelia abdicates in favor of the open and creative Rhiannon II, who fosters alliances with mortals by offering some of them the blessings of the fey world.

Vercana’s Folly: Queen Vercana and her lackies cannot abide Borlung controlling the Demesnes, so they attack the Watchers of the Current and murder Borlung while Queen Rhiannon II is away in Terra. This sparks another open war, now known as Vercana’s Folly for distracting the courts at a critical moment. Aberrant monstrosities known as mind flayers appear suddenly around this time in Terra and wreak havoc on its lands while the fey fight each other. Other aberrations, such as aboleths, also rear their heads. Many lesser fey leaders soon come to believe that they cannot afford this war; one by one, they bow out of Vercana’s Folly. Several, primarily the Demesne Courts, join a league of other courts for mutual protection against Seelie and Unseelie meddling. By the time the Wars of Divine Succession draw to a close, the Unseelie Court decides to divert what power it has left to protecting its interests from aberrations. Bereft of many fey pawns, the Two Courts turn to using mortals instead. The Unseelie Prince Vindos, eventually convinced that fomorian weakness allowed their rising aberration foes to gain footholds in Terra, stages a coup in the Unseelie Court which leaves many fomorians dead and forces the rest to flee. He becomes King Vindos II.

The Treaty of Thule: The Watchers Crieddylad and Ngalyod sponsor the Treaty of Thule, an agreement of mutual non-aggression in favor of fighting the persistent enemies of Faerie. King Vindos II agrees only on condition of binding Crieddylad to him. She proves invaluable in helping him decimate several worlds with apocalyptic floods. As it becomes increasingly clear that the strategy isn’t working, most fey factions withdraw from sponsoring mortals in favor of other approaches. Most prefer guerrilla tactics and sabotage, but Queen Rhiannon II abdicates to make way for the fresh and brilliant King Gwythr, who leads the Seelie in trying a wide variety of novel tactics. Soon, Gwythr frees Crieddylad from Vindos. A battle is fought over her, but the kings eventually agree to single combat to decide her place, repeated at regular intervals, to conserve their military strength for other foes.

The Many Courts Period (Modern Period)

The Dance Resumes: While the most fey courts are fighting a losing battle against the aberrations, King Gwythr’s Seelie help Gith’s Rebellion prepare themselves to overthrow the Illithid Hegemony. Gwythr sacrifices his life to power a spell which accelerates the evolution of the gith people; Titania then becomes Seelie Queen. Not long after, King Vindos II dies mysteriously and is replaced by the Queen of Air and Darkness. The Dance of Light and Darkness resumes through mortal puppets, gradually stepping closer and closer to the old devastating stakes. The new Unseelie Queen proves herself by leading her court to put down the ethergaunts, a potentially-dangerous aberration race.

The Present Age: As the Seelie successfully capitalize on fey and mortal allies, the Unseelie begins to lose ground in their ideological struggle. In addition, the Unseelie Court suffers the temporary loss of their primary city-dwelling agents, the insoril, who are kidnapped by unexpectedly resurfacing ethergaunts. Finally, the Harbingers of the Undying Season are again exposed among the Unseelie leadership, heightening the court’s currents of paranoia and fear although they try to keep this revelation from their rivals. In this climate, the Seelie are able to achieve a small measure of dominance.

The Song Goes On: Although none can be sure when, it seems Faerie will experience a great change soon. The tenuous superiority of Titania’s Seelie cannot last forever, and a sudden dark turn threatens from the uncertain future should the Unseelie become dominant once again.