[most of the information below was created by me. X_x. I make up a lot of stuff.]
Fae
"I remember the dream that gave me life. It was a summer field, with soft wind blowing through the taller grasses.. The clouds puffed magically against a dewdrop sky." - Summer Field
There are as many sub-races for fae as there are types of dreams for humans; it would be impossible to list them all. Suffice to say, the fae have one thing in common - they are the children of dreams, created from dreams, and dwelling within those dreams. The fae that have been "misplaced" [either on earth, the spirit plane, or elsewhere] always feel very uncomfortable and usually depressed. They cannot survive for long without the essence of dream surrounding them. This essence has been called many things, from glamour to pixie dust to life-stream, but it means the same thing - it is faerie magic, and it sustains the life of every fae.
A fae has two names - their true name, which is known only to their own spirit, and their creation name, which is usually descriptive of the dream that created them.
A fae family is usually a group of fae created from the same dream, or dreams from the same human, or similar dreams from different humans. Fae created from the same dream are siblings, fae from older dreams are the caretakers [parental figures], fae from more recent dreams are the children.
Fae can live as long as the dream that birthed them can sustain them. Some fae live only a few hours, while many fae live thousands of years. Earth time doesn't matter on the dream realm, because in the dream realm, there is no true time.
Below are a list of the most abundant fae sub-races, though they are by no means the entirety of the fae.
- Elves.
- Elves are the most abundant of the fae. They are wingless, with ears ranging from slightly pointed to large and floppy. Usually taller than most fae [and humans, for that matter], the elves are responsible for most of the civilization found within the dream plane. They are also the only fae that could probably pass for human, should they find themselves in such an… earthly predicament.
- Earth history: At one point, there was a rift, a doorway from the dream plane to the physical plane. It was a sacred gate guarded by clerics of the order on both sides. The gate has since been lost or destroyed. The current ratio for elf to human is 1/140,000.
- Racial aspects: Elves are considered the more refined of the fae. They are usually created from memory-dreams, or from more logical dreams when the psyche struggles to piece together its own reasoning. Without the elves, the human race would likely not exist; and vice versa. They are closely tied with the human race, and neither race acknowledges or understands this bond - in fact, in all likelihood, the current-day elves are as unaware of the humans as the humans are of them.
- Imajin.
- Imajin are a race of fae created from nightmares - the darkness that causes a human to wake up screaming, the living shadow, the chaos that balances the elvish law.
- Earth history: A great war occurred in the dream plane between Imajin and Elf. The great city, whose name has been lost under the dust of a thousand dreams, was destroyed, along with more than half of the elvish race. This is likely when the gateway was also destroyed - by the Elves, no doubt, to keep the Imajin from stepping through.
- Racial aspects: The imajin have been called many things, including dark elves and drow. In their truest forms, they are nothing more than living shadow; but through the ages, they have slowly manifested elvish traits. The original imajin - the chaotic monsters created by the first nightmares - no longer exist, or are in hiding, and what remains of their children are more elvish than they could probably bear. Law and Chaos seem to have combined within this race's descendants; but the elves are still wary to trust any of them.
- Nymphs.
- Nymphs are nature's children, born from the golden dreams, the light, or whatever else you want to believe the elements can create.
- Earth history: They, too, used the gateway to travel to earth and revel in its forests, its rivers, its mountains and hills. Since the gateway closed, few nymphs have ever been seen on earth - long before the 1200's AD. Whatever remains of them on the physical plane is not pure nymph.
- Racial aspects: The nymphs were careful to stay out of the elf/imajin war, along with all the politics that have come and gone since. They are free spirits, and they care little for interracial quibbles - individuals are more fun than entire groups, and each individual is judged for their own actions and desires. Nymphs align themselves to an element, and usually manifest traits of that element. The more common are water nymphs, who earned the name "sirens" as well as "mermaids" on earth; and forest nymphs, who earned the name "dryads" or "treants." Fire and air are very uncommon nymph elements.
- Pixies.
- Pixies have many names, although they are usually simply called "fae" or "fairy." They are more likely what humans think when the word "fae" is mentioned.
- Earth history: Pixies are created from the dreams of children, and other such light-hearted dreams. They existed on earth only in faerie rings - bright circles of flowers, usually in forest clearings, which were known as small gateways for this particular race. If a human fell asleep in such a circle, they could easily be taken to the realm of dreams.
Since most of earth's forests were destroyed, most if not all of these faerie rings no longer exist. A pixie that happened to be on earth when their ring was destroyed was trapped on earth until they died (faded away) from a lack of dreams.
- Racial aspects: The pixies are usually incredibly small - the largest would be no more than a couple feet at most. They all have wings of some sort, ranging from twig and leaf shapes to butterfly wings or dragonfly wings or simple, "faerie" wings. When they fly, they become bright dots of light, and usually leave a trail of "pixie dust" - this is because the pixies are made up of the very glamour or faerie dust that sustains all other fae. They are well-respected because of this, but most other fae races consider them too child-like to have as companions for long.
- Changelings.
"I'm alone.. I'm so very alone.. And no one can grasp how sad it is to be ripped from your dreams." - Amethyn Shinne
- Changelings are children with the unfortunate curse of having both human and fae blood. They feel uncomfortable in both the physical and the dream realm, and in either place they would have difficulty finding sustenance.
- Fae naturally need dreams to survive. Humans need food to survive. The dream realm provides plenty of imaginary food, and the physical realm provides plenty of unobtainable dreams, so Changelings have the hardest life. Most Changeling parents teach their children how to "harness" the dreams of a willing human; many Changelings become prostitutes because of this, trading anything they can simply for a human dream.
- One dream can sustain a Changeling for several days; the same dream can sustain a Fae for only a few hours.
- The more diluted the fae blood is within a human, the less that human will have to worry about obtaining dreams. After the fifth or sixth generation, the fae blood is so diluted that a changeling could survive [perhaps a bit uncomfortably] without ever tasting a dream.