Adventures in Arcadayn
The Sidhe Races
The many species of Sidhe can roughly be categorized into four groups:
The Seelie Court: brownies, leprechauns, pixies, sprites, and tuatha ("trooping faeries").
The Unseelie Court: fachans, goblins, hags, ogres, trow (trolls), and "The Wild Host" (imps).
Tree Spirits: dryads, satyrs, walking trees, and wood elves.
Water Faeries: glaistig, merfolk, nixies, naiads, and water bogles.
In addition, many species of sidhe can interbreed with humans (notably, tuatha, imps, dryads, and naiads). These hybrids are variously called elfkin, feybloods or halflings.
See "Nonhuman Races of Arcadayn" for descriptions of species of sidhe which are allowed as options for player characters. [Currently, only elfkin ae allowed.]
Faerie Encounters on Kemil
The elves and other creatures of Faerie can visit Kemil in one of two ways:
Physical travel: The sidhe uses a planar travel spell, the Faerie-Walker advantage, or a special faerie horse to physically travel between worlds. The sidhe is able to affect, and be affected by, the creatures and things of the visited world.
Spirit travel: The sidhe uses a spell or psionic ability to visit Kemil in astral form. These are the spirits with which faerie shamans most commonly interact. The spirit-sidhe has a limited ability to affect its surroundings, but is also immune to most hazards. If the astral faerie is trapped on Kemil, it will become an Astral Entity (p. CI 96).
See "Travel to and from Faerie" for more details on these methods.
Feyborn vs. Earthborn Sidhe
Sidhe may be "feyborn" (born in Faerie) or "earthborn" (born on Kemil). Neither costs charscter points, but must be decided at character creation. This will determine the faerie's native plane for the purpose of Gate spells. In the Storm Isles and the Fey Isles, the sidhe are frequent visitors and even have some permanent colonies established by feyborn sidhe who produced earthborn children. Outside these Faerie-influenced lands, an encountered sidhe may be a feyborn transient or an earthborn denizen, but their communities will be smaler than those in Faerie or the northwest islands.
Magic and the Sidhe
The majority of Faerie has a "high" mana level. Because of this magic-rich environment, most sidhe have at least one level of Magery.
Many spells have special effects on faeries when they visit Kemil:
Banish (pp. M75, R122) will send a feyborn sidhe back to Faerie, or an earthborn faerie (or mortal) back to Kemil, but has no effect on creatures in their home world/dimension.
Exorcism (pp. M30, R124), Spirit Trap (p. R125) and Summon Spirit (p. R125) affect only disembodied (astral) faeries.
Pentagram (p. M62) will affect a sidhe as easily as any other magical being.
Sense Spirit (p. M72, R125) will detect sidhe on Kemil, since they are supernatural. However, sidhe (whether feyborn or earthborn) do not count as "supernatural" in Faerie!
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This page last updated 11/8/2003 by Timothy E. Emrick. | Copyright 1998-2003 Timothy E. Emrick.