Check here for a time-line version of FayryLand's historical happenings.
The Highpriest Balder
The lonely beggar not even the
Thieves'
Guild bothers outside the Drunken Wench Inn is
actually, under all that grime, stench, and ragged
raiment, the Highpriest Balder, Speaker and
Representative of Lord God Wendall of FayryLand. He
ran a shining Citadel under the Elven Highlord's
reign, but did not escape the Wrath of Maw Behl the
Acrid when the Highlord neglected to pay his tithes
to her in timely fashion. Those who knew him could
not find him when at last Maw Behl had left the Land,
and after a weeks of searching, they finally gave up.
Most of those Citizens have long since emigrated from
FayryLand, and those who currently populate the Land
have never heard of him outside of the Fayry
Chronicles. Around the time Lady Elfie assumed
ownership of the Wench, just after the Holocaust and
before Elven's Chamberlain rescued him, she adopted a
harmlessly mad vagabond who refused all of her offers
of a place to live and a job. After her death, the
vagabond would stand in the open plains about the
Capital and howl to the gods, no matter what the
weather. The Elite Guard tried to bring him in for
shelter now and then, but finally ended up building
him a sort of lean-to against the outside city wall,
and they made sure he had bread and water. No one
realizes now that he actually guided the Lady's
daughter Vanilla to the Land with prayer, not even
Vanny. And with no one from FayryLand's Golden Age
to recognize him, no one but Vanny and Beebalm knows
who that repulsive vagabond really is, or what drove
him mad. Beebalm knows only because Vanilla enlisted
the pixie's help in keeping him alive in spite of
himself. Vanilla knows because the Spirit of the
Land itself charged her with protecting the holiest
man in FayryLand.
The Citadel now houses icons of gods from another
time - for all intents and purposes an empty shrine,
save for the monks and nuns who still sing their
prayers, just for the sheer joy of song.
Originally it was run by The Cook, a portly human who
prided himself on the finest ale in the Land, and the
fact that the Highlord patronized his bar more than
any other in the then-Capital. The influx of
non-Fayry travellers and citizens, coupled with his
serving wenches' penchant for on-duty sampling of his
wares, made the name-change to "The Drunken Wench"
inevitable. Just before the holocaust, he removed
the faded Griffin sign from over the door, and
replaced it with the Wench's emblem. The Cook
disappeared shortly after Maw Behl's holocaust, and
Lady Elfie assumed undisputed ownership. As she
waged her vendetta against Krimson Balstave, she saw
the Wench burn to a mere husk, and insisted it be
rebuilt mundanely, using magic only to levitate the
heavier materials into place.
Thus the Wench survived Krimson Balstave's holocaust,
when his death triggered a manna-bomb which burned
off all the airborne magic in FayryLand -- wiping out
many species which depended on magic for their
survival. The Lady Javken inherited the building
with its foundation and spirit intact.
Of necessity, the layout has changed over the years.
You can view the current blueprint here. My
apologies: I drew it in pencil, and had to fiddle
with my scanner in order to render the images
readable. I didn't want to alter my originals --
they date from 1994.
The city is made entirely of diamond and quartz, with
a tiny shard of celinor at its core. Because
it is made of crystal, the city is very
regularly-shaped, the way basalt forms perfect
hexagons and quartz forms four-sided pyramids. Its
people are also crystalline, and the magical
radiation of the celinor animates them. The
people are roughly human-shaped, multicolored, and
transparent according to the type of crystal they're
made of. (Let's not get into offspring -- they are
obviously not biological creatures and wouldn't breed
the same way humans do!)
Kab'nethites have "hair" of sorts: their heads are
crested with crystal spikes or beaded "dangles".
They don't wear clothes -- they have no experience
with "flexible". Anything bendy is actually jointed
-- they would understand how a snake moves better
than how a branch waves in the breeze. They speak in
chimes, not with voice as humans know it. Their faces
have very vague features, but they DO have noses,
and they can "smell", after a fashion. Their eyes are
multi-faceted, like insects' eyes, and they take up
fully half their faces. Eye color can vary, and the
eyes are not entirely transparent. See our heroine
Gwynn.
However, just because the Morians are xenophobic
doesn't mean King Belthuz can't turns his sights on
the coveted glittering satellite over the peninsula!
Their lensed viewers (telescopes) offer them a
beautiful close-up of the glittering, uninhabited
spires and harvest those mountains of gems...
A little history: Stone Ring used to be called
"The Capital" because it was the seat of the Highlord,
and also where celinor was concentrated near
the surface of the planet, with a crystal vein leading
almost directly (give or take a few earthquakes'
damages) to the crystal at the planet's core. Stone
Ring is so named now for a battle between an aspiring
Gehenna Spawn and Highlady Javken. To protect the
Capital and its citizens, Lady Javken summoned the
Land's mantle and extruded a huge, hollow spire of
solid stone to encircle it. After the battle, the
citizens had to cut the spire down to size a section
at a time, and they deposited the rings of stone on
the Plains about the city. They left the lowest
portion encircling the city intact, and simply
burrowed gates through the solid stone.
She is actually from a double-gravity planet in
another dimension, and she used to be a member of
"The Resistance", attempting to overthrow her Imperial
government. Her mother Lady Elfie had also been
involved in this Resistance, and had made more enemies
than you could easily shake in a normal lifetime, and
she had exiled herself to FayryLand to hide, first
leaving her secret daughter at an orphanage -- the
same one where Elfie had been raised. Vanny spent
most of her life searching for her mother, which meant
she had to get involved in the same dangerous
activities as her mother, and arrived in FayryLand
only days after her mother's heroic death. Although
everyone knows Vanny is an alien to FayryLand, it is
not commonly known just how strong she is, what arcane
items and knowledge she inherited from her mother, or
whether she actually communes with her dead mother's
spirit or just hears voices in her head. She keeps
her Landright abilities as secret as she can --
geas-casting is her most public Landright act. It is
not generally known that the Highlord (or Highlady)
can merge with and manipulate the elements, call upon
the Spirit of the Land, and physically feel the
Spirit's pain. The Highlord can, in desperate times,
cast a sleep over the Land's people, but such a
Landright act doesn't affect the unliving creatures
(such as the Blue Sheep, the Hell Realms, the gods,
and the Spirit herself). Global acts tax not only the
Land's strength, but the Highlord's, and as such a
Highlord will use it only as a last resort.
Return to the Land of the Blue Sheep
Beebalm
Pixies in general are cute, teeny people with wings
and often the attention span of a gnat. Most glow
with their own magic, and are very clever, if not
intelligent. Beebalm is exceptionally bright in all
senses of the word, and takes care of the Drunken
Wench Inn for Vanny when Vanny has to do Highlady
things. Beebalm zips around mostly naked except for
her silk slip, and she wears that only because the
humans around her seem to think she's otherwise
butt-nekkid. When you have nothing but a set of
dragonfly wings to hold you up in the air, you don't
want to burden yourself with unnecessary weight, like
clothes or ornaments. Because they must beat their
wings around 7000/minute, they consume vast quantities
of high-calorie foods -- like wine, hard candies, and
beer if the pixie is in the mood for a more nutritious
meal. Because they cannot actually create the food
they crave, they hang around humans and elves who
can. Pixies and elves have long coexisted,
sometimes even symbiotically, although they take
offense to any comment that they are "domesticated"
or "pets".
The Big Man
Nobody has ever knowingly seen the Big Man, and that's
just the way he likes it. You don't become the chief
of the largest and most organised Thieves' Guild in
Fayryland if people know who you are. Especially if
they know that you're ten inches high. Even in a city
like Stone Ring Capital, there aren't many openings
for gnomes. Fishing and sitting on toadstools are
not fulfilling occupations. The Big Man decided very
early on a life of crime. Small people can steal
small things very easily, and small things can be
very valuable. So began the rise of the littlest Mr
Big ever known. The Big Man is polite, urbane,
possesed of a dry sense of humour and no scruples
whatsoever. His muscle is provided by two
indistinguishable, scarred and generally silent
humans, Algernon and Aloysius, and a troll called
Wayne, who is brighter than the average silicaceous
life-form, even though that's not saying much.
The Blue Sheep
The Blue Sheep is a mystical beast with humorous
origins. It's a long, inside story that isn't nearly
as funny as it is to the people sharing it. The Blue
Sheep is a rare beast who appears whenever someone
makes a sheepish statement or gesture (sheepish grins,
sheepish shrugs, sheepish duck of the head). Most
people don't even see the Blue Sheep anyway, as it
appears only for an instant, you have to be looking
right at it when it does appear, and
your mind has to be teetering on the back legs of the
Chair of Sanity. There is one crazy old man no one
recognizes who sees the Blue Sheep every time it
makes an appearance around the Drunken Wench Inn.
Everyone knows he's mad. Even the Thieves' Guild
leaves him alone, since he gets insulted when people
throw him money and tries to give it back. Beebalm
and Vanny feed him every night, but he refuses to
accept their offer of shelter, even on the coldest
winter nights.
Celinor
Celinor is the blue crystal at the core of
FayryLand's planet that radiates the magic which makes
so many things possible. It's like a second set of
physics that plays off the universal first set. In
Kab'neth's case, its own celinor core holds the
city together, and keeps it hovering above the Land.
It doesn't permit Kab'neth to leave the atmosphere,
nor does it allow the crystal city to crash. It does
draw the city to other concentrations of
celinor, hence the city's anchor to the
equatorial regions -- the Mori-Mori peninsula. (And
hence Mori-Mori's famed psychic clams and invisible
oysters.)
The Church
The Church is an ancient institution, with origins in
the worship of many fractious deities. Great battles
were fought in the names of gods, and the gods
themselves tended to meddle in the affairs of mortals.
Until, that is, Elven Highlord (Vanny's predecessor)
opened a carrier portal for extra-FayryLand
travellers. The Goddess of this portal and its
uniquely stable and non-magical properties was the
most irascible and demanding of all: Great Maw Behl
the Acrid. (FayryLand used to be a BBS: Bell Canada
had a tendency to do annoying things like unexpectedly
adding Call Waiting to the line, thereby booting one
Citizen offline to admit the next one who was dialling
-- the result was that no one could post a message
during the peak calling hours, and the Highlady found
out only because a concerned Citizen called her voice.
Oh yes. We know all about Maw Behl.)
Highpriest Balder
originally served the Fayry God Wendall, a gentle and
generic god. Maw Behl the Acrid demanded the main
altar and apse of the Citadel whose dome overshadows
the Market Square, ousting the mild-mannered Wendall.
Maw Behl demanded monthly tithes (the phone bill in
Real Life). Near the end of his reign, Elven Highlord
neglected to pay those tithes in timely and regular
fashion, resulting in near-total devastation and the
closing of the carrier portal (cutting the phone line
-- you get the idea). Wendall's priest Balder
disappeared during those terrible two months, and at
last when the Land was reopened, most of the Fayry
Gods themselves were inhumed back into FayryLand's
spirit with the Restoration (the elven tripartite --
more history involving Highlord, Lady Elfie, and a
drow Elf Hellion). Those who would know were
convinced that Wendall himself managed to avoid the
fate of his more fractious fellows, but he has not
manifested himself in all these years since the
Restoration. Some swear he has abandoned FayryLand,
if that's possible for a god. Most have simply
forgotten he ever existed.
D-Jumping
This is not a magic. This is an innate talent of the
Lady Javken, although she cannot use it any longer.
She used to be able to travel between dimensions
without magic even as Highlady, but not since the
Spirit of the Land transformed her into a hazel tree,
effectively imposing the Fayry "helix" on her own DNA.
In other words, Vanny has been assimilated into
FayryLand even more thoroughly than most Fayry-born.
Historian Postr, one of the librarian Chroniclers,
described her thus: "Not FayryBairn, but Fayry made."
Her mother Lady Elfie, on the other hand, having
never actually touched celinor or worked great magic,
retains the rare talent for travelling between
dimensions without technological assistance. There
are limitations to this ability, however, which are
going to be really scientific when I can either find
or make up the technospeke to explain them. [GRIN]
Timing is everything in order to make an accurate
D-jump, and Elfie has explained once or twice to her
companion travellers that it's like trying to turn a
profit on the money market, but with time and space.
The Drunken Wench Inn
The Drunken Wench is quite possibly the oldest
surviving institution in Stone Ring. The Wench, as it
is fondly called by all its patrons, has endured two
Holocausts, two devastating arson attempts, several
name changes (from "The Griffin" to "The Wench", plus
various minor changes from "Inn" to "Tavern" and back
to "Inn" again), and innumerable magical assaults.
The madcap wizard Alkafizz the Fabulous seldom used
the door: he almost always arrived through the roof.
He learned to perfect his "speedy repair" spell
pretty quickly, which explains why there is so much
residual manna in the air, and why FayryBrandy is so
popular at this particular establishment.
FayryBrandy
FayryBrandy is considered to be the finest drink in
the cosmos, either in or out of FayryLand. Even
non-FayryLanders seem to think so. This special
brandy is made with Fayry byrries. They grow only
in the wilds of the Dhoom Mountains, past Icedeath
Glacier territory. There is a very strong
concentration of airborne manna radiation in that
area, lending the byrries various wyrd nuances.
Because of the byrries' scarcity and difficult
harvest, the Brandy is extremely expensive. Well and
good that it is extremely potent, and a little always
goes a long way. Most people don't go so far as to
wonder what the Brandy is made of; they tend
to worry about what will happen when someone
drinks it in their vicinity. Processing the
ByrrieWyne saps most of the byrries' manna, and
distilling the Brandy removes even more of it, but
because the Fayry byrries were grown in strong
magical fields, they tend to absorb local magical
radiation and suddenly release it when the sugars and
proteins are digested, starting with the drinker's
saliva. The liquid Brandy starts out a deep golden
color, which will change to blue at a rate depending
on the local field's intensity. The most common
effect is for the drinker's personal gravity to
suddenly reverse, which is why people will NEVER
drink it outdoors. Other documented effects are
polychromism, polymorphism, and spiritual
manifestations. Some drinkers swear they can see the
Blue Sheep while under its influence.
Gwynn
Our Heroine Gwynn is an amber-tone crystal in
C-minor, with the unique quality of depth of octave
and piercing hue, which often leads to Gwynn's
sidestepping to a slightly different tune than other
Kab'nethites. Gwynn is less frail than the majority
of ion-groups, and consequently has a tendency to hum
first, and consider resonance later. Nevertheless,
or perhaps due to her strange orientations, Gwynn is
both a well-known and well-loved minor of Kab'neth.
The High Council
Highlord's privilege permits a hand-picking of Lords
and Ladies to serve as advisors and bureaucrats.
They take care of the more mundane details of running
the Land as the Capital of the planet, and as the
Capital of the region. There is no limit to the
number of people who can serve as Lord or Lady on the
Council, but since attendance is the
no-excuses-give-two-weeks'-notice-of-your-death kind
of mandatory, the Council usually remains pretty
small in the name of efficiency. The Chamberlain
acts as co-Highlord in most respects, save that there
are some tasks even he cannot perform - tasks
involving Landright magic. Lords and Ladies on the
Council are invited to live in the High Castle, and
have a personal staff of three servants: two menials
and one secretary. The money is good, but not
corruptingly so.
Kab'neth
Kab'neth is a crystalline city floating high above
FayryLand. It tends to drift out to sea for much of
the year, but gets drawn back to land for the typhoon
season. It is viewed as a daytime moon by the people
who inhabit the Mori-Mori peninsula, a moon that
casts both a shadow below and a light above. In
truth, it mirrors light back to the sky, but
occasionally a facet will reflect an intense beam to
the surface and scorch it.
Kab'nethites
Kab'nethites are the crystalline people who inhabit
Kab'neth. As their city is very regular, they are a
very orderly people. Their government is the Lattice,
their religion is the Order. They have had no
contact with the random and biological societies below
them. Their realm of experience is limited to what
the wind brings them, and the occasional glimpse at
the ground below. They believe the animals to be a
form of mobile vegetable, like a moving forest.
(Water, carbon, a few other trace elements, and voila!)
If it's not formed in a lattice, how does it hold
together?
Mori-Mori
Mori-Mori is one of the Southern known countries in
FayryLand, encompassing a dinky peninsula on the
Land's largest continent and a widespread archipelago.
It is sort of the FayryLand "China" of the Middle
Ages. The people are somewhat xenophobic, which
means its bordering nations are more or less left
well enough alone (Morians don't believe the land
around them is worth conquering). Foreign traders are
restricted to the seaports for trade with the natives
and transshipping cargoes bound for destinations up
the other side's coast. Morians value tempered
metals of any kind, glass, gems, and magical items.
For these, they trade generously their silks, woven
carpets, liqueurs, pearls, and coral used for magic
potions.
Stone Ring Capital
This is where the Highlord or Highlady rules
FayryLand, and it is the city in which is located the
Drunken Wench Inn. Most Citizens of the Capital have
been preoccupied with campaigning against the Orcs,
goblins, and Frost Giants housed in the Gorn Mountains
to the North and East. Traders usually come from the
South, but they say little about what they've found
there, and most of what they do say has been filtered
through many ears. Very few Morians actually leave
the peninsula.
The Thieves' Guild
This Guild is organised into chapters, each covering
an area of several streets and alleys. Every thief,
beggar and lowlife in the Stone Ring pays the Big Man
ten percent of their takings, ensuring their ransom
if the Elite Guard picks them up on minor criminal
charges. The Highlady pretends not to know about this
arrangement, as it keeps her Guard from turning into
Elite Thugs. Guildmembers report any happenings of
interest to their local chapter head. They, in turn,
report to the Big Man in person. It's a simple
arrangement: cheaper than paying taxes, so far.
Unlicensed thieving, withholding information and
other misdemeanors are very inadvisible.
Turbit Swayles
An unassuming dwarf jeweller, Swayles left his home
in the mountains because of incurable and extremely
embarrassing claustrophobia. He is married, with a
daughter he dotes on, and a small shop in Hodgkin
Alley, where he produces small items of jewellery.
He also has a lucrative and - so he thought - secret
sideline in thieves' tools and small edged weapons,
and an unwillingness to ask where certain of his
materials came from. He hasn't been in Stone Ring
long enough to realise that mumbling beggars outside
your door are almost certainly gathering information
even as they frighten your customers away. Swayles
has been charged with the task of finding out where
the strange gems flooding Stone Ring came from.
Unfortunately, as a spy and information-gatherer, he
makes a very good jeweller.
Vanilla Javken
Vanilla Javken is a green-skinned, elf-eared
(big elf-ears), tetradactyl, brown-haired,
violet-eyed and slender midget -- biologically an
alien to FayryLand. She is photosynthetic, and her
biggest food after sunlight is water and sugar.
Alcohol is just another form of sugar to her.
Caffeine acts like alcohol, except for the slurring
and drowsiness. The short version of how she became
Highlady of FayryLand is that the previous Highlord
abdicated without an heir, and Vanny was the only one
who wanted the job.
Check the Appendix to the Glossary
Volume I
Email a new chapter or character profile for the Glossary to Elfie