The Boundless Earth, Withered and Bare (or, Dark Revenge of the Fairy King)

[Elven Doritos]

1.   For We Reach Our Hands to the Great White God (Though He Ne'er Shall Answer Our Prayers)

"How can this be?" I asked
And the creature answered thus:
"Your kind spent its favor
By building great iron spires.
In books you wrote your laws
While pretending they were His.
To reprimand your hubris
Your realm descended thus;
For God so loved the world
He cast it into darkness.
   -excerpt from the Book of Daggers

This is how it began:
   We were nearly gods. Earth was our empire. Mighty towers rose in majesty. Our words could create and destroy. We could kill from any distance. We knew no law but our own. We were bound by nothing.

Or so we thought.

When the last tree fell, the Strangers awoke.

And when the Strangers awoke, the world of men ended.

[Elven Doritos]

2.   Fay Huntsman Delivering Judgment in the Stormtower Wilds

Gone is Tuatha Dé Denann;
Gone is Daoine Sidhe.
Gone too is Ferrishyn.
Who then do they revere?
The Great White God and little else—
Only Black Ankou,
The Nameless Toother,
An elf-lord and his slaves

Gone is wisdom,
Gone is luck,
Thus is the legacy of Finvarra the Clement,
Thus is the curse we must not repeat.
-Foster Ealdan on the decline of Faerie

The great faerie circles were meant to ward us from the malign spirits of a world that once bled into ours, but when ancient wisdom was lost to modern ingenuity, slumbering powers were roused. The greatest fay courts convened for the first time in a millennium, and their verdict was unanimous: humanity was unworthy of its prosperity and must be made to suffer.

The nature of this suffering was the matter of some debate. Xantho Xi Xuripenes, Golden Queen of the Sea-Nymphs, argued for another Great Flood. Agylferycwm the Aelfdane proposed to steal the firstborn children of the entire world and petrify them. Fafnir Dragon-Eyes offered to burn unfaithful lovers to a husk, though this was met with mixed opinions.

Foster Ealdan, protector of the now-lost forests, gave the winning answer—the world of mortals, now ruined, would be swallowed by the world of fay.

[Elven Doritos]

3.   Merlin the Revenant and the High Congress of Devils

The stalk is withered dry, my love,
   So will our hearts decay;
So make yourself content, my love,
Till God calls you away
-"The Unquiet Grave," folk song

Myrddin Emrys, known to bastard tongues as Merlin Ambrosius, returned to Earth as consort to Nimue, known to men as the Lady of the Lake. The great fay courts were preparing magicks to swallow the mortal Earth into Faerie, and Nimue and Myrddin were sent to barter with the devils of the Underrealms for their consent. Myrddin thus convened the first High Congress of Devils since shortly after the Fall.

The great lords of Hell had long grown tired of humans as prey, knowing them to be endlessly corruptible and quickly disposable. Moloch, speaking with the authority of the Congress, agreed to the annexation of the mortal world by Faerie under one condition—the denizens of Hell would be allowed to enter the fay realm, should they choose. Myrddin agreed to the demand with one proviso: the devils and their servants could only harm mortals while in Faerie, and never the fay themselves.

The fool he was, Moloch accepted.

[Elven Doritos]

4.   The Eldritch Hour

The powers convened.

From the fay, Foster Ealdan, Xantho Xi Xuripenes, Bugul Noz, the Red Banshee, Ereimin of the Korrigans, Maug the Goblin King, Sky-eyes of Gremkin, the Jack-In-Irons, King Farbin of the Leprechauns, Robin Redcap, Nicholas Elflord, Nimue, Viviane, Morrigan, Queen Mab, Marina of the Merfolk, the Lonely Man of Winter, and the Seven Nameless Little Ones.

From Hell, Moloch alone.

The precise mechanism is unknown; such is the mystery of the Faerie Magicks. What is known is that the world was untethered, its people abducted, and its landscape distorted as the fay invaded. Before we could react, our iron towers and great lead weapons were turned to dust, and we were exiled to the Twilight Lands in the furthest corners of Faerie. There, the fay tormented us and the demons hunted us for sport. What few of us remained were scattered, feral, and quickly vanishing.

[Elven Doritos]

5.   The Court Divided

She picketh acorns from his beard,
She drinketh nectar from his hall,
A mortal wench is now thy Queen!
King shalt I be, with thee or without.
-Adamar Aelfling

The fay are not prone to unity. Though small princes and petty kings rise among the peoples, there is at any given time only a semblance of central authority to the wild folk—the Seelie Court. Since the fay reclaimed their power, they required a new Court, but the great fairy queens and kings of old were no more. The fay knew that without a ruler, the Great White God would strike out in anger against them—only a monarch could extract the holy tribute and preserve peace with the divine. And so Foster Ealdan, master of the world-devouring ritual, was made Faerie King. He chose as his queen a mortal woman named Polly.

On the outskirts of Faerie, Moloch and his demon hordes built ties with the crueler fay tribes, earning the loyalty of Sky-eyes of Gremkin and Krangor, Grand Prince of Trolls. Moloch then assumed a false name and form, becoming a handsome dark fay named Adamar Aelfling. In this form, Moloch claimed to be the living shadow of Finvarra, the former Fay King.

Foster Ealdan was incensed, having so recently concentrated power in the Seelie Court. Without the support of the Gremlins or the Trolls, the thin alliance that held the Seelie Court together threatened to collapse. And so it was that Foster Ealdan declared war and Moloch-as-Adamar declared the Unseelie Court.

[Elven Doritos]

6.   The Faerie Civil War

Several factions formed within the Seelie Court, though none were as mutinous as the followers of Moloch. Disorganized and in sharp disagreement on how to wage a war with other fay, the armies of the Seelie Court were left scattered and chaotic on the eve of Moloch's invasion.

With an army of gremlins, trolls, renegade fay of other races, demons, and human slaves, Moloch destroyed much of the Oaken Sanctum, the center of Foster Ealdan's realm. Maug, King of the Goblins betrayed the location of King Farbin of the Leprechauns to Moloch in return for the safety of the goblins, and Moloch's army quickly killed and enslaved many of Farbin's subjects.

Many of the great lords of the Seelie Court retreated to the wilderness, afraid that the invading army signaled a new threat comparable to the human era of Earth. Only Xantho Xi Xuripenes and the Jack-in-Irons stayed to defend Foster Ealdan and Queen Consort Polly from the Unseelie Court, and hope dwindled.

When Moloch finally overtook Foster Ealdan's magical wards, he cast away the identity of Adamar Aelfling and revealed his true form. In an act of great cruelty, he murdered Polly and reanimated her corpse with dark magic. Overcome with fury, Foster Ealdan then issued the Great Decree: any human who took up arms against Moloch would be protected by the Seelie Court, and their descendants would be equally favored by the fay. The human slaves in Moloch's army immediately mutinied as the gremlins and trolls hastily blamed one another for the ensuing chaos.

The Unseelie Court retreated, but not for long. The goblins soon entered the war on the side of the Seelie Court, having rallied several powerful fay lords under the command of King Maug. After a relentless pursuit across half of Faerie, Maug's army decisively bested the Unseelie Court and drove them to the Hissing Caves, the sprawling labyrinth that separated Hell from Faerie.

For his victory, Maug was made Marshal of Fay for one thousand days.

For his betrayal of Farbin, Maug was turned to stone for one thousand days and one.

[Elven Doritos]

Coming soon:
7. The Caves of Ysbaddaden and the Triumph of the Cyclopes
8. The Iron Dragon
9. Manfolk in the Overrealm

and more

[SA]

"He chose as his queen a mortal woman named Polly."

I thought this was hilarious at first. But now, for some reason... it's terrifying.

[Lmns Crn]

Why didn't I read this earlier? It's pretty awesome.

[SA]

That was exactly my thought.

At this point, knowing so much more about the faerie than the human beings, I wanna play as... say... Moloch. Any rules for dat?