Iteration Three

Iteraton three is the currently active history for the archetype of the Fey Court. The full flow of events is shown in the timeline which can be opened from a button at the very bottom of this page. The remainder of the article is a descriptive overview of the sweep of this history with more details of key events available via links both from within the text and at the bottom of the article (as well as in the timeline itself).

The Dawn of the Fey

Keiju by DMFW with Art Breeder

In the beginning, the first fey came into being, birthed from the dreams and nightmares of the first humans in neighbouring evolutions. According to legend, the very first of all is the one they call Keiju, who is also called "the one who walked alone". For many years, Keiju did indeed walk alone, wondering at the beauty and strangeness of the worlds she could travel between.
Yet in time, Keiju was joined by others who had also arisen from turmoil, chaos and imagination to become part of a very slowly growing people. These fey, we call the Unelmien Lapset, the Children of the Dream, because they knew no mother or father but were birthed full formed. Amongst the best known of the Unelmien Lapset are the famous fighter Batai Pollock and the songsmith Telynor Melysaf.
In this age the fey were without a home and they travelled freely between many realms but never in groups of more than two or three. After many years the immortality of the fey presented them with mental problems caused by perfect recall and vast personal histories. Unable to clear space for new memories by unconscious forgetting which is an ability possessed by all mortals, the fey, who needed this ability even more had to develop their own techniques of conscious forgetting. These began informally in the Dawn Age with personal strategies that were later incorporated into more formal rituals.
At length, the one we now call Mam Gyntaf, the first mother, joined with the first father, Tad Cyntaf and their union gave rise to Merch Gyntaf, also called the first daughter and the first of the Veren Lapset, the Children of Blood.

The Age of Wandering

Merch Gyntaf by DMFW with Art Breeder

After the birth of Merch Gyntaf, there was a profound shift in the cosmic order, and the generative powers of chaos and imagination were superseeded by those of flesh and blood. No more did the void give birth to the Unelmien Lapset and one by one, as they died in their turn, their kind diminished to be replaced by the Veren Lapset. Yet the age of wandering was marked by a gradual increase in the overall population of the fey and a strengthening of their bonds as they established customs and habits they retain to this day.
Perhaps the most important of these was the Festival of Song, begun by Telynor Melysaf, a periodic gathering of all the scattered members of the race to make and listen to music and to tell stories.
In the Age of Wandering the fey grew wise in the ways of the local Discontinuum and they learned how to work with different Laws of Form. This is when they found out how to exploit those systems which others in more ordered realms call magical. From weakness and isolation they began to grow strong and powerful, great in the knowledge of many magics.
The Age of Wandering, ended when a large group of fey determined that they would settle in one of the most favourable of the realms that had become open to them. This, they would later call the Fey Court and over time it attracted more and more of the fey from both the Veren Lapset and those that remained of the Unelmien Lapset.

The First Wars

Dovrim Lauram by DMFW with Art Breeder

Acynte Hequindos by DMFW with Art Breeder

Now the fey began to assume a more complex and organised form of society in the realm of the Fey Court and they elected the first King of the Fey, Dovrim Lauram, with his consort Acynte Hequindos to be their rulers by popular acclamation. The King feared that the realm his people loved might also be coveted by other hostile forces and one of his first acts was to order the building of the Western Watchtower, a great castle which they called Läntinen Vartiotorni.
The first Frost War began with an incursion into the far northland by a tribe of Frost Giants and their Ice Sprite servants. In truth it was little more than a few skirmishes, but it is notable for justifying the king's forboding that the realm of the Fey Court which had been so sweet and so empty when his people settled there, would also attract other hostile interests who might contend with them for control of the realm. Under the leadership of their king, the fey swiftly routed the invading Giants and peace returned to the realm.
After the First Frost War was over, the king commanded that a great citadel be constructed on the summit of a bare stone hill, the fey called the Binding Rock, which lay at the centre of the land of Tân y Gwanwyn. The High Seat of the King became the first capital of the fey and it was never conquered.
In the north, he ordered the building of Jäätynyt Ovi to watch over the lands where the Frost Giants had made their incursion and this proved to be a vital precaution which showed his wisdom and foresight.

The fall of Läntinen Vartiotorni by DMFW with Art Breeder

The First Rift War, nevertheless, caught the fey unprepared. It was a much more traumatic event for early fey civilisation than the First Frost War. The death of the king and the destruction of Läntinen Vartiotorni shaped all the history that followed, from the building of the White Tomb to the Rules of Magical Limitation which were designed to prevent the wilder forms of experimentation that had led to the disasterous invasion of the Glass Monsters.
Shortly after the end of the war, Acynte Hequindos was killed by a jealous lover, who had thought to rule beside her before she rejected him. She was buried in the White Tomb and the leadership of the fey passed to her eldest son, Cenwyn Drach.

Cenwyn Drach by DMFW with Art Breeder

It was Cenwyn Drach who ordered the building of Caer Cathasach and at this time also, the fey constructed the summer palace of Shaldarenen, though it was not so big or so important as it would later become.
The final conflict of the Age of the First Wars was the Second Frost War, a much more significant incursion than the First Frost War. A substantial force of Frost Giants and Ice Sprites were able to occupy a large area of north polar land, including the country around the White Tomb. They were eventually prevented from pushing further south by the forces based at Jäätynyt Ovi but not before Cenwyn Drach and Batai Pollock were both slain in battle. After a long period of stalemate when neither side made further progress, the war fizzled out and was finally brought to a formal conclusion with the signing of the Isotherm Treaty. This Treaty allowed the Frost Giants to retain the land they had won without ongoing harassment and a promise from both sides to not attempt further climatic disturbances by magical means, acknowledging Jäätynyt Ovi as the new northern limit of fey control. In return, the Frost Giants agreed that the fey could pass freely through their lands solely to visit the White Tomb for the burial of their kings and queens and that the site, already guarded by deep magic, would be treated as sacred in perpetuity and not disturbed by the Giants.

The Age of Lost Memory

The Age of Lost Memory began after the signing of the Isotherm Treaty. It was a time of relative peace, which lasted much longer than the Age of the First Wars. By convention, it is defined as an ever growing period, stretching from the Isotherm Treaty to the borders of contemporay collective memory, which according to the customs of Lost Memory always begins six royal funerals before the accession of the current king or queen. At present this means that it ends with the accession of Akasuki Ellethra, but her reign too, will one day move into the Age of Lost Memory, on the fateful day when Queen Mab is brought to rest at the White Tomb.
The first king of the Age of Lost Memory was Gruffud Cawl, the son of Cenwyn Drach. He is perhaps best known as the cold hearted architect of the circumstances leading to the death of Sendraya Santess, a story which has become a moral fable amongst the fey.
Somewhat later, the private rituals which had become associated with the preservation of sanity through selective forgetting and archiving of memory into history, were incorporated and extended into the modern public ceremonies of Lost Memory. This first came about when the death of king Ogidigbo Arthoom found the White Tomb already full, leading to the imaginative solution of the ceremony of Lost Memory which perists to the current day.
A significant change in the ordering of the Fey Court, occured during the reign of queen Efeomo who, following two personal and political tragedies, enacted a number of reforms affecting the selection of Kings and Queens. From this day forward, preference in matters of royal inheritence is granted first to female children, favouring queens over kings, where previously it had been the other way around. At the same time, the capital of the fey was moved to Shaldarenen and later, Efeomo's daughter Ayi Nehizena became the first queen to be crowned there.

Iceholt by DMFW with Art Breeder

Many years afterwards, under the reign of king Tang Ralta, the fey would establish diplomatic relations with a realm they called Trinity Moon, and for a time there would be a great flow of intelligence, trade and commerce back and forth to the Fey Court. The ties between their archetype and an evolution have never been so close, before or since, but the experiment in mutual co-operation between the Mages of Trinity Moon and the Fey Court came to a disasterous end after the events known as the Iceholt Betrayal. All relations were broken off in dramatic fashion with the realm that is now called Magicians' End, and ever since the fey have been wary of establishing formal links with other realms.

The Steps in the Dance

The Steps in the Dance is the phrase the fey use to refer to their most recent history and to contemporary events. By convention, these include all the events in the reign of the current king or queen and the six that preceeded them who now lie in the White Tomb, awaiting consignment to the Pool of Lost Memory.
Queen Akasuki Ellethra is the oldest ruler buried in the White Tomb, so the start of her reign marks the start of the Steps in the Dance. Her consort was Rodion Sokireski. Akasuki is known for building the House of Clear Winds on the shores of the lake called Sendraya's fate. Her eldest daughter, and the heir to the throne was Bronwyn Glathkind.
Akasuki was advised by a seer called Aeronwen Gweledydd, who is the mother of Tellamiss, the seer who advises Queen Mab today. No one knows the father of Tellamiss but there are many rumours that he was the Queen's consort.

Akasuki Ellethra by DMFW with Art Breeder

Rodion Sokireski by DMFW with Art Breeder

Aeronwen Gweledydd by DMFW with Art Breeder

One summer, an unsettling forboding came to the Fey Court for the seers and prophets all began to dream strange dreams and see strange visions which told them of a threat in the future from an alien power that would one day invade their realm. After much magical energy had been expended to try to clarify these visions, Aeronwen Gweledydd held a special day long fast and conducted a ritual which allowed her to determine the direction and a possible route through the geometry of the Discontinuum to the place that was the source of the visions.
The queen, who was not sure exactly what all this meant (but was fairly sure that her consort has been unfaithful to her with her seer), ordered Aeronwen Gweledydd to form a small expedition to explore and seek the realm where the troublesome visions originated, then report back to her. So a small group of five fey went with Aeronwen Gweledydd into the deep Discontinuum. This was the famous Eyesight Expedition. With one exception, which we will explain in due course, none of the members were ever seen again. Whilst the queen may have been none the wiser concerning the threat to the realm, at least she contented herself in the knowledge that she had removed the threat to her relationship with Rodion, and that much was true.
Some years later, Akasuki Ellethra died in childbirth when her second daughter, Nywellema was born. Her oldest child Bronwyn Glathkind, became queen of the fey.

Bronwyn Glathkind by DMFW with Art Breeder

Nywellema by DMFW with Art Breeder

When Nywellema reached maturity, she was appointed as the castellan of Shaldarenen by her sister and she has retained that role to this day. The sisters were always close, even though Bronwyn could not help but be sad that Nywellema's birth had brought about the death of their mother.
Bronwyn took Finn Jareth as her consort and together they had a daughter Iceina Lanti.
Much later in Bronwyn's reign, Sinrhyme Maddon returned as the sole survivor of the Eyesight Expedition. Unfortunately, he had gone quite mad and was unable to give any account of what had happened to the others or what they had found and he committed suicide shortly afterwards. He had, however, not come back empty handed. He carried a strange artifact in the form of an asymetrical spiked "seed", perhaps thirty centimeters in diameter around the spines but much smaller near the irregularly shaped kernal. It was suprisingly heavy. He proffered this thing to the queen in a private audience, during a rare moment of lucidity and warned her to keep it safe.
Bronwyn was greatly troubled by the strange Token, which Sinrhyme had called the Primal Axion . She locked it away in the Vault of Old Magic at Shaldarenen for she did not know what to do with it, yet she sensed it held a great power. Eventually, she determined to cast a warding spell, not to protect the artefact but to protect the world from the artefact, for she had every reason to be suspicious about its provenance and safety. She was right, but she had underestimated the magical powers of the Primal Axion. Somehow it managed to infect her with a fatal magical contagion, via the field of the warding spell and within ten days she was dead.

Iceina Lanti by DMFW with Art Breeder

Kaori Zan by DMFW with Art Breeder

Cyllell Cariad by DMFW with Art Breeder

Iceina Lanti, Bronwyn's daugher who was crowned the next Queen of the fey, determined that whatever it was, it was too great a risk to meddle with the strange Token and she ordered the Primal Axion to be be locked away under constant observation in the Vault of Old Magic. Greatly saddened by the untimely death of her mother, Iceina was a melancholy Queen, and there was nothing which her father or her aunt could do to change this cast of mind until Kaori Zan courted her. Together they brought first Quathooma Xinva and then Churai Alen into the world, and mother and father both loved their daughters above all else and doted on them. Unfortunately, Kaori Zan died in a hunting accident, ambushed by Mist Wolves in the The Autumn Country. After the death of her consort, Iceina Lanti retreated into melancholy once again.
Only the songs of Cyllell Cariad, a fashionably sad singer of the day seemed to soothe her troubled mind in these painful years. But a mood of melancholia swept the realm, seeming to spread from the scrying of the Court prophets and later identified as a spiritual miasma brought about by the insight that Iceina Lanti was afflicted with a rapid onset form of the Fade. After Iceina died it became public knowledge that Cyllell Cariad had become the queen's lover and that the queen had been Cyllell's muse. Cyllell, it seemed, was unable to face life without the queen and took her own in a manner that mirrored the lyrics of one of her famous songs.
Quathooma Xinva became queen after the death of her mother. Her partner was Vilandiss Kanlaw and they had two sons, Telberon and Oberon. The royal couple wanted a girl to inherit the throne ahead of her older brothers, according to the rules of succession set down in the reign of Queen Efeomo in the Age of Lost Memory but the desire for a third child was to prove fatal when Quathooma Xinva suffered the same fate as her great grandmother Akasuki Ellethra, dying in child birth but on this occasions the baby was stillborn. The queen was succeeded by her consort according to the complex rules of succession in the Fey Court which sometimes permit this (specifically if all heirs are male) and sometimes do not.

Quathooma Xinva by DMFW with Art Breeder

Vilandiss Kanlaw by DMFW with Art Breeder

Telberon by DMFW with Art Breeder

Now we reach the controversies and complex stories of more recent history. Vilandiss Kanlaw had not been king for long (as the fey consider time) when he went missing under mysterious and perhaps suspicious circumstances. He was assumed to have abdicated and his older son Telberon was crowned as the new king. A mere hundred years later, Telberon's rule came to an end, unravelling in spectacular fashion after the Dangerous Magic Indictment.
Oberon was declared to be the new king and Telberon was imprisoned at Hen Tŵr Gwyn, until the fateful day when he broke free with the aid of the Primal Axion and inadvertently caused the Second Rift War.
Oberon, his consort Titania and many other noble and ordinary fey, were slain in the war. When it was finally brought to an end, Queen Mab, the daughter of Oberonand Titania was declared to be the new Queen of the Fey. Queen Mab is the current ruler of the fey, as yet without issue and without a consort, which is a constant source of gossip and speculation in the Fey Court.

Oberon by DMFW with Art Breeder

Titania by DMFW with Art Breeder

Queen Mab (1) by DMFW with Art Breeder

As for Telberon, one of Queen Mab's first acts was to convene the Rift War Crimes Trial which found him guilty of high treason against the realm for a second time. Now there could be no mercy and imprisonment was not an option. The queen knew she must pronounce a sentence of death on her uncle and so it was that Telberon, having brought so much harm to the rulers of the realm, both before and after his own reign was finally executed. Although disgraced, deposed, imprisoned and finally executed, he still had the rights of a former king in death, and he is buried in the White Tomb with his brother. Their father has never been found, however, and so he does not lie beside his sons and his wife and maybe he will never be reunited with them, even in death.

Lathkelle by DMFW with Art Breeder

Jassindra by DMFW with Art Breeder

Telberon's spouse, Lathkelle now suffers from the Fade, living out her final days by the grace of Queen Mab in the House of Clear Winds. Their daughter Jassindra, Queen Mab has been compelled to imprison where her father was once a prisoner at Hen Tŵr Gwyn. Whilst the queen does not wish her cousin any ill, she knows that there are still some in the Fey Court that never accepted the judgmenent of the Dangerous Magic Indictment or the Rift War Crimes Trial and to these individuals, Jassindra is the rightful queen. Lathkelle is the only fey to openly express such an opinion but there may be others in secret. With a heavy heart, therefore, the queen keeps Jassindra out of harm's way, lest she were to become the spark that might ignite a civil war. It is the queen's desire to release her cousin when she feels that the circumstances are safe but she expects that this will not be until Lathkelle finally dies.

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The discerning reader will observe that neither within this article, nor in the timeline below it, are precise numeric dates shown for events. The Fey think in terms of sequences and cause and effect rather than absolute time and so it is very hard and perhaps a little meaningless to ascribe year numbers to the key points in their history. It is better simply to attach the name of the age in which the event took place and note its order relative to the other major events of the same age.
Any scholar of the fey, however, ought to be at least aware of the relative magnitude of the time spans of the different ages. The age known as the Dawn of the Fey, is far longer than any of the later ages combined, and similarly the Age of Wandering occupied a great span of time. In both cases, it is necessary to think in terms of millions of years.
By comparison, the Age of the First Wars is much shorter, perhaps only as long as a few tens of thousands of years. The Age of Lost Memory, is many times longer than the Age of the First Wars. The period known as the Steps in the Dance is perhaps a little longer than the Age of the First Wars but considerably less than the Age of Lost Memory, which is the longest in the modern era since the fey settled the Fey Court.

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The Missing and the Dead

A gallery of important living Fey sits under the first article about the realm of the Fey Court. The gallery at the bottom of this last article shows all those fey of the Unelmien Lapset and the Veren Lapset whose lives have been mentioned, yet who have now passed beyond the knowledge of the living and departed forever. Although this is only a fraction of all the fey that have ever lived, yet it includes the most well known heros and heroines and kings and queens from the third iteration of history. Most are dead, but some few may yet survive, beyond help or reach, wandering the Discontinuum all alone, just as Keiju did once, and may yet do now, for all that we know.