Lore
The Feyn
“What was old is made new again, come the next Cycle. What is new soon crumbles to dust.” —The Chronicles of the Feyn
The Fallen are not the only entities from the other Realms. The Feyn are a variety of an entirely different order. Long forgotten by mortals in many ages, only appearing at the time of their approach to the threshold of death, even then hiding behind the mask of a face that is not their own. An Oyun, a mortal bound to them by Pact gives them some entry into our world, in exchange for some amount of access to theirs, but otherwise to most mortals dwelling within space and time, they remain incorporeal as water vapor.
Their Chronicle contends that the essence of a life is the story it weaves, carried aloft in their Realm until every trace has been transcribed or eaten by their scribes, leaving the soul a pristine canvas upon which new tales may be inscribed after emerging from life’s shadowed slumber. Intriguingly, their word for “human” can also signify “entertainment,” “knowledge,” or “sustenance.”
All mortal spirits pass through the same gate, whatever their point of origin. From there, they pass into the Land of the Dead.
For as long as memory, the Feyn have tended this garden. Collected it, pruned it. According to them, they are guiding the passage of souls… However, this is a service collected at a price. Their scholars are sometimes known as Memory-eaters, as they have consumed the myths and stories of entire civilizations. All mortals must traverse their abode in the cycle of transmigration, cleaved from the confines of space and time. Ultimately, most return to their point of origin, cleansed of memory, an inadvertently fit vessel for a Fallen entity to inhabit on their passage back to birth.
Consequently, there is tacit competition between Feyn and Fallen. A game, of sorts. The Fallen want their Scions to remember what they are and who they have been, and to bring a message from those distant shores back to their eternal safekeeping. On the other hand, the Feyn want to bring human souls the bliss of forgetfulness, so they say, and to themselves make use of those accumulated experiences, either as sustenance or stored within their scrolls. Which will stake their claim to influence the next Cycle?
Feyn Subtypes
While the Feyn remain typically incorporeal in most Realms beyond their own, they have discovered how to fashion bodies for themselves in Alterran, the dreamworld which once belonged to the Fey. From these have developed four distinct lineages: the Chatillians, the Tovag, the Meliae, and the Karlu-Chatil, who are the product of Chatillian or Meliae interbreeding with humans within that Realm. More information is available on this in Tales From When I Had A Face, and currently in-development RPG setting and lore materials specific to the Second World.
The Old Fey and their Descendents
According to myth and rumor, the true Fey were once inscrutable beings of unfettered life, vast and alien intelligences more akin to Lovecraftian Old Ones than mischievous and photogenic sprites or fairies. Those few ancient entities who claim to have encountered one of the Old Fey have found language incapable of describing them — a shudder or shiver seems to be all even the greatest poet can manage.
They once dwelled in the spaces even beyond the surreal landscapes visited by mortal minds in dreams, in the liminal space between dream and death. However, their lingering influence remains tangled in the roots of life.
The remnants of human folklore that speak of the Fey speak of what they cannot know. These stories, passed down through generations, offer glimpses of lesser entities, the dwindling reflections of an ancestral power that has already long faded.
