The Faeries of Eireann Fae

[Eireann Fae]

(OOC: Back again, with my third 'factbook'-type thread! The information to be laid out in this one isn't even complete yet, but I'm putting it up anyways because I do have a lot of information on the Faeries that people should know when we RP. For the record, if I post with this account (Eireann Fae), it's MT-era (though the nation uses PT-level tech), and no Faerie in the civilization is over 3,000 years old. Overseer Ezula, for the record is a mere 2,981 years old, and is the oldest in the Eireann Fae civilization. Fae Omega is another story, but they got their own thread [linked in my sig]. :-)

History
Types of Faeries
Faerie Magick

Spirit
Earth
Air
Water
Fire

Faerie Life

Life Cycle
Reproduction
Habitat
Government
Language
Religion

[Eireann Fae]

[History goes here (I have none written right now...)]

[Eireann Fae]

Types of Faeries

There are five basic types of Faeries, based on the five basic elements of life: Spirit, Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Faeries glow a certain colour, depending on their type, and use a certain form of magick; both of which will be explained below. The Faeries are all co-dependent on one another, and live harmoniously with all Faeries of other types.

Spirit

These Faeries are gold in colour, and are noted for their generally kind nature (with a few exceptions...). They have the ability to see spirits, including those bound within earthly shells. Some of the more powerful Spirit Faeries can influence thought and emotion; even more advanced ones can actually read the existing thoughts of others. It is for reasons such as these that Spirit Faeries are often called upon to be diplomats.

Earth

Faeries of the Earth are green in colour, ranging from a dark forest green to the hue of a brilliant emerald. These Faeries can feel the life-force in all natural plants and animals. They have a talent for promoting cellular growth, and often use this talent to help trees and other plants to grow. As they get stronger, they may even influence the cells in complex life-forms, typically using this power to heal others. Such a case is unheard of, but the strongest of Earth Faeries do have the ability to disintegrate living cells, literally dissolving life-forms.

Air

These Faeries are white in colour, and are the quickest fliers of all the Faerie types. Once they have lived a couple hundred years, they are often able to outfly bullets. Their domain is the air, obviously, and their magick typically involves controlling the wind and, when they have sufficiently advanced, the weather as a whole.

Water

Water Faeries are, naturally, a deep blue colour. Faeries of this type can glide through the water as easily as they can the air. These Faeries can control liquid water naturally almost from birth. With some practice, they can learn to manipulate other fluids, and eventually even liquidy vapours. The most powerful of the Water Faeries are those that can draw all the moisture from an object - or a living thing.

Fire

Faeries of a the Fire element range in colour from dark orange to blood-red. Their natural ability involves controlling the temperature of objects. Despite their name, these Faeries can draw heat away from the air or an object, as well as produce it. It's not until they've been around for several years that they can actually produce flames of their own, but they can handle being in flames from birth. The most advanced Fire Faeries can melt metal with a casual wave of their hand.

[Eireann Fae]

Faerie Magick

All Faeries are born with one or more innate abilities that they can develop over time. In addition to their unique passive talents, Faeries of the five elements can develop active abilities related to their element. The source of this power is found within the Faeries' very spirits - a power within themselves that they can channel to effect the outside world. They cannot die by using this spirit energy, but it does have a draining effect on them. If they use too much power, they will become fatigued and need to rest. The older a Faerie gets, the more spirit energy they have at their disposal. No matter how drained of spirit energy the Faeries get, they can be back to full strength within a full day's rest. Passive abilities, of course, do not drain the Faerie spirits.

When casting a spell (as the outward exertion of spirit energy is called), Faeries may either use a wand (most often seen among young Faeries who require precision in directing their energy), their hands (the most common form of casting involves 'shaping' the spirit energy with their hands and directing it for the desired effect), or sheer force of will. No spell actually requires physical guidance with wand or hands, but it can make the spell come easier, and more manageable. Some spells must be concentrated upon for their duration (like an Air Faerie conjuring a strong wind), while others only require an initial casting by the Faerie (like an Earth Faerie's closed wounds). Specific abilities and how they are controlled are laid out below.

[Eireann Fae]

Spirit

Most of the Spirit Faeries' magick has to do with spirits. From birth, they have the innate ability to see spiritual auras as easily as most beings can see physical bodies. In fact, Spirit Faeries have to concentrate to not see spirits. As they grow older, Spirit Faeries learn how to interpret these auras based on their size, shape, consistency, movement, colour, and other factors known only to them. It is through reading auras like this that the Faeries can tell what emotions one is feeling, and eventually, even what thoughts they may be thinking.

As the Spirit Faeries grow older and more powerful, they can learn how to actually shape spiritual auras to have an effect on the mind or being attached to the aura. In its earliest stages of development, this comes in the form of minor emotional changes. A Spirit Faerie who's been around a few years can gently shape the aura to slightly alter its owner's mood. A happy person could be made overjoyed. Eventually, the Faerie will learn to more dramatically shape the spirit aura to induce greater emotional changes, like going from sad to angry, or happy. The most powerful Spirit Faeries can bring someone from the darkest despair to overwhelming joy. Or, if she is for some reason feeling particularly malicious, the other way around.

Right about the time a Spirit Faerie is learning to make emotional changes of reasonable impact on spirit auras, they will begin to pick up whisperings of thought expressed in the spirit energy they are working with. Nothing clear at first, but they can certainly tell when someone is lying. At this stage of their development, they can get a basic sense of someone's motives. Over the course of the next several years, they can more distinctly make out what a being is thinking, learning new spiritual 'words' every year. They can not actually read minds like a book - there are no words. But intentions and the nuances of one's emotions are laid bare to such a Faerie, and sometimes they can even glean clear images of what someone is thinking.

Once a Spirit Faerie has mastered this level of spirit aura reading, they can begin the fine manipulations required to actually alter subconscious thought. They can cast a spell upon the aura to implant a light suggestion, so far as it is nothing to contradictory to the being's normal way of thinking. If they alter a thought too much, the being will simply become confused for a moment, and likely shake it off. As the Faerie practices, however, she can implant more and more clear ideas into the spirits of others, until finally nothing short of suggesting direct harm to themselves will raise suspicion. There are tales of some Faeries, however, who can go even farther than that...

[Eireann Fae]

Earth

Just as the Spirit Faeries have domain over the Spirits of beings, so do the Earth Faeries have domain over the physical realm. This ability manifests itself in a variety of ways, ranging from promoting plant growth, to repairing organic wounds, to literally moving mountains. Earth Faeries do not see in the visible spectrum, but in monochrome based on material density, ranging from pitch black for zero density (air) to solid white for high density (metals, for instance). If they concentrate, the Faeries can focus their vision for a specific spectrum - useful for spotting deposits of metal in a similarly hard rockface, for example.

When they are born, Earth Faeries can do little more nudge soft plants, such as grass or flowers, to grow faster. As they learn more about their abilities, and figure out that they can manipulate organic material on a cellular level, they can perform truly amazing feats of material manipulation. Because their form of magick involves direct manipulation of cells, these Faeries cannot, strictly speaking, do anything with bare rock. If they are skillful enough, though, they can focus on the organic elements found in soil, lichen, or even bacteria to have some effect on raw earth and stone. Similarly, they cannot manipulate pure metals. If the metal is coated with an organic substance that can alter the metal (either in eating it, being strong enough to bend it, or some other process), they can manipulate the metal in that manner. Earth Faeries can manipulate rock-eating organisms into eating the stone around metallic deposits with great accuracy, making them very efficient miners. This last ability is a trick they generally keep to themselves, though, lest they be exploited by greedy slave drivers.

It takes an Earth Faerie about a decade to be able to take a simple plant (such as a flower) from seed to maturity in the space of a few minutes. To do the same with vegetables such as peas or beans, or fruits such as grapes or watermelons, takes a couple more decades of work. In about a century's time, they can raise a basic tree (such as pine) in about an hour. After a few more decades of practice, they can do the same with fruit-bearing trees. An Earth Faerie that's been around for a millenium or two may have the ability to raise an entire orchard or vinyard in a matter of minutes!

Another use of this Faerie's talents lies in their healing ability. They can't even close the smallest of wounds, however, until they learn the cellular nature of their talent. This usually happens within the first few decades, and the Faerie can close basic skin lacerations. Working with the softer tissue of internal organs takes a few more decades of fine-tuning their abilities. Mending bones is actually fairly easy for Earth Faeries, but they need to know how to hold the softer organs (such as skin) out of the way so the bone doesn't grow into them. After a few hundred years, an Earth Faerie may have the knowledge, skill, and spiritual ability to reverse the process of aging in organisms, but this is a very closely guarded secret. They see it as an offense against nature to reverse the growing process and interrupt the lifecycle, and have only been known to do this a few times. Another ability that they keep secret is their practical knowledge and ability in cloning living things, again, seeing such as an affront to nature. Working with a Spirit Faerie, they may even be able to construct a perfect golem, but no such collaboration is known to have happened to date.

[Eireann Fae]

Air

Air Faeries are masters of all forms of gas, but find it easiest to manipulate their natural atmosphere. They can use their dominion over the air to dart through the air even faster than the other Faeries (who are already capable of fairly quick flight, considering their size). Air Faeries can do anything from call forth a small breeze to drawing out all the air from an area (even creating a 'bubble' in atmosphere), leaving a pure vacuum.

Within a year of their birth, Air Faeries are able to push a blast of air away from their bodies, propelling themselves through the air for short distances. Using this technique, they are sometimes able to fly before they even grow wings! In just a few years, they can call on sufficient breeze to cool a Human, or focus this amount of pressure to push one around. In a few decades' time, they gain the power to call upon gale-force winds. Several years after achieving the raw power for such winds, they learn to apply rotation to it to create tornados. Another decade or two later, and Air Faeries can actually create hurricanes!

The opposite of moving massive amounts of air in a particular direction would probably be to draw all the air out of an area, creating a vacuum. This ability actually comes fairly easily to an Air Faerie, and they can create small vacuums after just a few years of practice. A malicious Faerie might use this ability to suffocate a being, but this has not been known to happen yet. Lethally, anyway...

[Eireann Fae]

Water

Water Faeries, as their name implies, have mastery over water. In the beginning, pure H₂O is the only substance these Faeries have any dominion over, but they eventually learn to control other liquids as well. Similar to the Earth Faeries, Water Faeries do not see in the normal visible spectrum. Instead, their vision is based on the solidity, temperature, and elemental differences inherent in substances. Their perception ranges in colour saturation based on solidity, ranging from black for completely non-solid substances (such as gas) to medium saturation for liquid substances (the threshold being the state of H₂O at one atmosphere) to white for completely solid material (such as metals or stone). The colours effected by the solidity of the substance range from deep red (very hot) through the visible spectrum colours to ultraviolet (very cold substances). The barrier between substances is seen as a shadowy black outline, allowing a Water Faerie to see even the particles in a fine mist, or the exact outline of a drop of rain.

Almost as soon as they are born, these Faeries are able to swim. In addition to their unique vision, Water Faeries also have the ability to breathe fresh water through their nose. Their nasal passages can filter out most aquatic impurities, but not salt or similar minerals. Very old Faeries can purify sufficient quantities of salt water in real-time, allowing them to swim the depths of an ocean or salty sea as easily as they can fresh water. The most basic active ability of a Water Faerie, though, is the simple ability to move water as they will. This talent does not manifest until the Faerie has her wings, though. In a few years' time, they start developing the ability to alter the temperature of water; only a few degrees at first, but once they learn the principle behind the temperature fluxuations (molecular excitement), the ability comes more naturally to them, and they can boil or freeze water in seconds within a decade.

Once they understand their ability to modify water molecules, they can expand this knowledge to other liquid substances. The only domain they will ever have over solids or gasses, though, is the ability to freeze or vapourize liquids. Once they solidify or vapourize a substance in this manner, however, they lose control over it. For a Water Faerie to maintain control over such a substance, they must keep it at least partially liquid (a thick cloud for gasses, or a waxy consistency for solids, for example).

In their youth, Water Faeries can command water to move. In the beginning, this is limited to causing a small pool to ripple, for example, or calling forth a drop to rest on the surface of the pool. Within a few decades, however, they are capable of manipulating vast amounts of liquid, very quickly. If a Faerie were so inclined, one at this stage of their development could act as a sort of magickal umbrella, for example. After about a century, they are powerful enough to generate medium sized waves - in another few centuries, they gain the power and control to summon massive tidal waves. When a Water Faerie is a couple hundred years old, they may learn to draw the water out of a mostly solid substance, such as a plant or animal. With a few more decades' practice, they learn to draw the water out of the very atmosphere, creating liquid globules in mid-air.

The most powerful Water Faeries, those that have been around for a millenium or more, can even control precipitation on a massive scale. At this point, they can form clouds where there are none, and have them solidify enough to drop liquid rain, or even control the temperature of the water enough to produce snow. It is a very old Water Faerie indeed that can call forth a full-on blizzard on an otherwise hot and cloudless day!

[Eireann Fae]

Fire

Finally, we come to the Fire Faeries. A bit of a misnomer, really, as they control the temperature of substances in either direction, hot or cold. Their vision is based on thermal sensory - like the Water Faeries, their vision ranges from infrared to ultraviolet hues based on the thermal condition of what it is they're looking at. Absolute zero temperature would be in the ultraviolet range, appearing to a Fire Faerie as a deep purple colour, almost black. As things get warmer, they go down through the visible spectrum to where the hottest of things pass through red, infrared, and finally appear as white light for absolute heat.

From birth, Fire Faeries have an exceptionally warm body (not warm enough to see themselves as 'red' in the visible spectrum, but a fair bit warmer than the other Faeries). Unfortunately, it takes this type of Faerie the longest time to get the hang of their magickal abilities. For the first several years, the only effect they have on temperature of substances is to warm something up by touching it. Eventually, though, they learn that they have the ability to heat or cool a substance by direct molecular manipulation. Where a Water Faerie can move water by spiritually 'pushing' liquid molecules, a Fire Faerie heats water by exciting the substance's molecules, and cools it by stilling them. Their talent is easiest to manifest in liquids, but control over gasses (including the atmosphere) soon follows.

They can only have minor effects on substances at first, only making a few ounces of water get a few degrees warmer or cooler for the first decade or so of their life. By the time they have lived fifty or so years, it only takes them a few minutes to bring several litres of water from freezing to boiling. At this point, they can already heat or cool a 10x10x10' volume of gas by several degrees, very quickly. It is only now, though, that they are beginning to have an effect on solids, and it'll take another several decades for them to be able to heat steel to the point where a Human could not handle it, or cool the material enough to be brittle.

By the nature of thermal physics, it is easier for a Fire Faerie to cause molecules to become more excited than it is to calm them down, so heating of substances comes more naturally to them than cooling them down. Just the same, their ability to cool things is often not that much behind their ability to heat them up. A Fire Faerie that's been around for a few thousand years can still bring the local temperature to absolute zero, it just takes them a few more seconds to accomplish than it would to heat the same area up a few hundred degrees.

[Eireann Fae]

Life Cycle

When a Faerie Flower (more on that later) first buds, the Faerie is about the height of an acorn. At this point, they look no different than incredibly tiny Humans. Faeries are born without wings, do not glow, and do not generate Faerie dust. They are already the colour of their natural element, but are several shades lighter than their mature forms. As a Faerie grows in age and power, their hue darkens, until they are only a few shades above black. It can be very difficult to make out the element of a Faerie that has lived for a millenium or two. Throughout their lives, though, the eyes of a Faerie always maintain a brilliant hue based on their natural element.

Faeries gain their wings approximately a year into their lives. The Faerie must return to a Faerie Flower and stay inside the bud for about six weeks before emerging with their dual pairs of dragonfly-style wings. At this point, they are typically about seven centimetres tall (approximately half their height when fully matured), and are already several shades darker than when they were born. Their skin colour will change less radically from here on out, darkening about half again what it has already over the next five years, the rate of darkening slowing down even more past that point. Once a Faerie has her wings, she will begin to generate 'dust' - waste produced from unmetabolized food or drink, or simply produced by physical or spiritual exertion. An act as simple as flying is enough to induce a Faerie to dust. The material dissipates within seconds of leaving the Faerie's body, unless it comes into contact with a Faerie Flower.

A Faerie is physically mature at about five years old, but will slowly darken in the coming years. In a century, she will turn an average shade of whatever her natural colour is, and will begin to darken halfway towards black over the next four centuries. At five hundred years, she will begin heading for the next half-black hue over the next thousand years. At this stage in her life, she will begin darkening all the way towards solid black skin colour, which she will reach when she has lived five thousand years. At this point, the only semblance of her natural element is reflected in her eyes, which will retain their youthful appearance. As a Faerie has no natural lifespan, they will live until killed, always black-skinned, always brilliant eyes.

Most Faeries will reach a point in their lives where they wish to leave their Community, and explore the world on their own. This can happen any time between one hundred and three thousand years of age; the Faerie will feel an irresistable urge to leave her kind and strike out on her own. A very small number of Faeries can resist this urge - even fewer never feel it at all. Once the Faerie has left the Community, it is very likely that she will never be seen or heard from again. The Community is not saddened when this time comes, but are glad that the (usually) elder Faerie is ready to take The Journey.

[Eireann Fae]

Reproduction

Faeries do not reproduce in the fashion of most animals. When ready to produce offspring, one or more Faeries (up to four) come together within the petals of a Faerie Flower, which will fold closed around them. If alone, the Faerie will curl up into a little ball, hugging her knees. If there are multiple Faeries, they will hug closely to each other. They remain in this position for six weeks, not leaving to eat or drink, concentrating only on filling the flower with their spirit energy. After six weeks, the petals of the Faerie Flower open up, allowing the Faeries to depart (leaving behind a considerable amount of Dust), and close back up again, beginning the gestation period.

If there was only one Faerie, the newborn will be of the same element as her parent. If there were two or more, and none are the same element, the new Faerie will take on the first matching element of one of its parents in the order of: Earth, Water, Air, Fire, and Spirit. If multiple Faeries were of the same type, the newborn will be that type, regardless of the elements of the minority Faerie(s). For example, if two Air and one Earth Faeries mate, the resulting child will be an Air Faerie. If one Spirit Faerie and one Water Faerie mate, the offspring will be of the Water element. The more Faeries involved in the mating process, the more powerful the spirit energy of the resulting child will be, particularly if there are multiples of the same element. If there are four Faeries of the same element that come together to make a child, the resulting Faerie would mature and gain power four times as quickly as usual. If there are four Faeries and two are of the same type, they will be thrice as powerful (2x for the two of the same element, and another +.5x for each of the other two). If two Faeries of a different element come together, the resulting Faerie will mature at 1.5x the usual rate. -This part needs some tweaking, but the idea expressed here is close enough to what I want to happen

Whatever the composition, the Faerie Flower will open for the second time after six weeks, exposing the infant, wingless Faerie to the world. She will almost always be cared for by her parent(s), but sometimes the Community as a whole must take care of the infant. All Faeries produce milk all their lives after maturation (defined as when they get their wings), and it is Faerie milk that sustains a Faerie until they gain their wings.

[Eireann Fae]

[Habitat (I have nothing written for this or anything below it...)]

[Eireann Fae]

[Government]

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Language Components
Full Fe'rœſ Feſaför (Faerie Language) thread here
The Alphabet

Kk Gg Þþ ǀǀ Nn Mm Pp Bb Mm Rr Jj Ww Ŵŵ Vv ʑʒ Ff Ll ʂʃ Zz Sſ Hh Õõ Ũũ Aa Œœ Ee Ii Öö Üü

Consonants

Consonants are formed by obstructing and/or shaping the flow of air from the lungs using your throat, tongue, teeth, and lips. As a first approximation, consonants vary in these dimensions:

Place of articulation, where the obstruction or shaping occurs:

• labial: using the lips (w), or a combination of lips and teeth (f)
• dental: using tongue with the teeth (th)
• alveolar: keeping the tongue behind the teeth (s, t)
• palato-alveolar: keeping the tongue further back from the teeth (sh, r)
• palatal: touching back of your tongue to the top of the palate (Russian ch)
• velar: back of the mouth (k, ng)
• uvular: way back in the mouth (Arabic q, French r)
• glottal: in the throat (h, glottal stop).

Degree of closure, which proceeds in the following steps:

• stops (stopping the airflow entirely: p t k)
• fricatives (impeding it enough to cause audible friction: f s sh kh)
• approximants (barely impeding it: r l w y).
• affricate (a stop plus a fricative, which must occur at the same place of articulation: t + sh = ch, d + zh = j.

Voicing, whether the vocal cords are vibrating or not. That's the difference between f and v, t and d, k and g, sh and zh.
Nasalization, whether air travels through the nose as well as the mouth. For instance, m, n, and ng are stops like b, d, g, but only the oral airflow is stopped.
Aspiration, whether stops are released lightly, or with a noticeable puff of air.
Palatalization, whether the tongue is raised toward the top of the mouth while pronouncing the consonant.

	labial	lab-den	dental	alveolar	pal-alv	glottal
stop	p, b			ǀ[1]	k, g
fricative	õ, ū[2]	f, v	þ[3]	ſ[4], z	ʃ[5], ʒ[6]	h
approximant	w	ŵ[7]		r, l	j[8]
nasal	m			n

¹ This represents a "tsk" sound - like a very quick, short, shallow 't'. It is written in pronunciation guides as "t!".
² These are explained below, in the Vowels section.
³ Þ/þ make a hard "th" sound, as in 'think' or 'thorn'. There is no soft "th" sound like 'the' or 'that' in the language.
⁴ S/ſ makes a hard "s" sound, as in 'soft' or 'sound'. There is no soft "s" sound like 'rose' or 'blows' in the language.
⁵ ʂ/ʃ makes a "sh" sound, as in 'shoot' or 'shave'.
⁶ ʑ/ʒ makes a "zh" sound, as heard in 'vision' or 'treasure'.
⁷ Ŵ/ŵ makes a "vw" sound. There is no equivalent sound in English, but it is similar to the Irish sound in 'an bhuil'. This is generally phoenetically written as "un vwil". I can't find the IPA transliteration of the sound.
⁸ J/j makes a "y" sound, as found in 'young' or 'you'.

Vowels

The most important aspects of vowels are how open the mouth is (height), and where the sound is produced within the mouth (frontness).

Height: The usual scale is high [i, u], middle [e, o], and low [a]. There may be two middle steps, usually called closed [ay, oh] and open [eh, aw].
Frontness: How close the tongue is to the front of the mouth. Vowels can be classified into front (i, e), central (a), or back (o, u).
Roundedness: Whether the lips are rounded (u, o) or not (i, e).
Length: Vowels may contrast by length.
Nasalization: Like consonants, vowels can be nasalized.

Vowels include: a (as in 'father'), œ (as in 'feet'), e (as in 'fret'), i (as in 'flit'), ö (as in 'float'), ü (as in 'flute').

The language also includes the sounds õ and ũ, which are simply a puff of air with the sound of the indicated vowel carried with it (like a voiced blow).

Phonological constraints

Typically, words are constrained to the shapes that follow [õ|ũ|ǀ](C)V[C|V(C)]

A palato-alveolar stop cannot follow an aspirated fricative (ex. 'sh' cannot precede 'k'). No more than two vowels or consonents in a row.

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[Religion]

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