Feywild

The Feywild, also called the Plane of Faerie, is a land of soft lights and wonder, a country of little people with great desires, a place of music and death. It is a realm of everlasting twilight, with glittering faerie lights bobbing in the gentle breeze and fat fireflies buzzing through groves and fields. The sky is alight with the faded colors of an ever-setting sun, which never truly sets (or rises for that matter); it remains stationary, dusky and low in the sky. Away from the settled areas ruled by the Seelie Fey that compose the Summer Court, the land is a tangle of sharp-toothed brambles and syrupy fens – perfect territory for the Unseelie Fey to hunt their prey. Fey creatures, such as those brought to the world by conjurations of woodland beings and similar incantations, dwell in the Feywild.

The Feywild exists in parallel to the Material Plane, an alternate dimension that occupies the same cosmological space. The landscape of the Feywild mirrors the natural world but turns its features into spectacular forms. Where a volcano stands on the Material Plane, a mountain topped with skyscraper- sized crystals that glow with internal fire towers in the Feywild. A wide and muddy river on the Material Plane might be echoed as a clear and winding brook of great beauty. A marsh could be reflected as a vast black bog of sinister character. And moving to the Feywild from old ruins on the Material Plane might put a traveler at the door of an archfey’s castle.

The Feywild is inhabited by sylvan creatures, such as elves, dryads, satyrs, pixies, and sprites, as well as centaurs and magical creatures such as blink dogs, faerie dragons, treants, and unicorns. The darker regions of the plane are home to such malevolent creatures as hags, blights, goblins, ogres, and giants.

Seelie and Unseelie Fey

Two queens hold court in the Feywild, and most fey owe allegiance to one or the other. Queen Titania and her Summer Court lead the seelie fey, and the Queen of Air and Darkness, ruler of the Gloaming Court, leads the unseelie fey.

Seelie and unseelie do not directly correlate with good and evil, though many mortals make that equation. Many seelie fey are good, and many unseelie are evil, but their opposition to each other stems from their queens' jealous rivalry, not abstract moral concerns. Ugly denizens of the Feywild, such as fomorians and hags, are almost never members of either court, and fey of independent spirit reject the courts entirely. The courts have warred at times, but they also compete in more-or-less friendly contests and even ally with one another in small and secret ways.

Fey Crossings

Fey crossings are places of mystery and beauty on the Material Plane that have a near-perfect mirror in the Feywild, creating a portal where the two planes touch. A traveler passes through a fey crossing by entering a clearing, wading into a pool, stepping into a circle of mushrooms, or crawling under the trunk of a tree. To the traveler, it seems like he or she has simply walked into the Feywild with a step. To an observer, the traveler is there one moment and gone the next.

Like other portals between planes, most fey crossings open infrequently. A crossing might open only during a full moon, on the dawn of a particular day, or for someone carrying a certain type of item. A fey crossing can be closed permanently if the land on either side is dramatically altered – for example, if a castle is built over the clearing on the Material Plane.