Towerlands: The Fey
In appearance, fey look like small people, a few feet tall at most. Even the adults retain a sort of childish look.
Fey live very short lives. They are fairly helpless (like human children) when born (really: hatched) but become self-sufficient within a year. By age two, most of their abilities have developed to a functional "adult" level. For the first four or so years of their life, they retain the look and personality of small but serious children. Around age 4, they cocoon. The silk is spun as a sort of sticky hair that grows all over them. It falls off and they wrap themselves in it and, once all covered, go to sleep in a safe, hidden spot like a hollow tree or a dark cave or a hole in the ground. A few months later, they wake up and emerge from the coccoon with radiant, more adultlike features and shimmering "dragonfly" wings.
Their adult wings are not strong enough to lift them yet they seem to be able to hover magically. The wings, however, can propel them and steer them.
Most fey do not live for more than a dozen years. Their decline is sudden, happening in the last few months of their life. Without much warning, their body starts graying and wrinkling and they get weaker. Their wings fall off, and they die, usually in their sleep. But a miraculous thing happens after that. The spirits of fey find other female fey and "impregnate" them. In fact, fey do not procreate using the usual means, though they may still have sex for fun. All fey are created in this manner, through a type of intentional reincarnation. Newborn fey often retain some or occasionally all of their former memories, though past lives get harder and harder to remember.
Female fey lay eggs a few times a year. Unless "fertilized" by a fey spirit, these eggs cannot hatch. They are just an "empty basket," as the fey folk say. They treat the unfertilized eggs with an irreverence that shocks many other cultures. Sometimes they'll toss them on travelers who have the bad fortune to pass beneath one of their tree houses. A few of the darker races consider these eggs -- fertilized or not -- to be great delicacies.
Fey live very short lives. They are fairly helpless (like human children) when born (really: hatched) but become self-sufficient within a year. By age two, most of their abilities have developed to a functional "adult" level. For the first four or so years of their life, they retain the look and personality of small but serious children. Around age 4, they cocoon. The silk is spun as a sort of sticky hair that grows all over them. It falls off and they wrap themselves in it and, once all covered, go to sleep in a safe, hidden spot like a hollow tree or a dark cave or a hole in the ground. A few months later, they wake up and emerge from the coccoon with radiant, more adultlike features and shimmering "dragonfly" wings.
Their adult wings are not strong enough to lift them yet they seem to be able to hover magically. The wings, however, can propel them and steer them.
Most fey do not live for more than a dozen years. Their decline is sudden, happening in the last few months of their life. Without much warning, their body starts graying and wrinkling and they get weaker. Their wings fall off, and they die, usually in their sleep. But a miraculous thing happens after that. The spirits of fey find other female fey and "impregnate" them. In fact, fey do not procreate using the usual means, though they may still have sex for fun. All fey are created in this manner, through a type of intentional reincarnation. Newborn fey often retain some or occasionally all of their former memories, though past lives get harder and harder to remember.
Female fey lay eggs a few times a year. Unless "fertilized" by a fey spirit, these eggs cannot hatch. They are just an "empty basket," as the fey folk say. They treat the unfertilized eggs with an irreverence that shocks many other cultures. Sometimes they'll toss them on travelers who have the bad fortune to pass beneath one of their tree houses. A few of the darker races consider these eggs -- fertilized or not -- to be great delicacies.