Sidhe

"For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror we can just barely endure,
and we admire it so because it calmly disdains to destroy us."
—Ranier Maria Rilke, "The First Elegy", Duino Elegies

The sidhe (pronounced shee) are the dominant species of Faerie, which is both a place (one of the more stable areas of the Dreamlands) and a class of creatures (which are also known as the Fae). They were the rulers of the Fae since at least the time of the Elven Empire, though now their realm is in ruins because of the Dreamlands War. The sidhe are also known as the Noble Fae, though in this case "noble" refers to their highborn status rather than any inherent moral character.

Origins

Like all creatures native to the Dreamlands, the sidhe were created by the interaction of mortal imaginations with the raw, primal creative force (sometimes called the Numen) that exists on that plane. If a mortal being dreams of a creature vividly enough, it gains enough "substance" from the creative forces of the Dreamlands that it can continue to exist when the mortal's mind departs the Dreamlands upon waking. The sidhe are believed to be the result of mortals dreaming about beings like themselves — they are "echoes" of humans, Elves, and other sentient humanoids, given life by the Dreamlands' creative energies. As more people came to believe in them, the sidhe became increasingly "real" and powerful — to the point where they could enter the mortal world and interact with it as readily as any native.

Appearance

Height Weight Body Type Skin Tone Eyes Distinguishing Physical Traits
varies, mostly humanoid varies, mostly humanoid varies, mostly humanoid varies, mostly fair Usually a Violet or a vivid green
Often pupils close vertically
Teeth are often sharp, sometimes to fangs
Ears are usually pointed
Extremely beautiful with a wildness about them.

The sidhe vary widely in appearance, but they are generally humanoid and roughly human-sized. They usually have fair skin and eyes of violet or a vivid green, at least in those parts of the Dreamlands that are closest to Galendor; in other parts of the world, the sidhe are more likely to resemble the local mortal population, albeit with at least one or two exotic features. Most sidhe have eyes with pupils that close vertically, like a cat's. Their ears are usually pointed, and their teeth are often sharper than a human's. Sometimes their canines are elongated into fangs, which adds to the feline appearance.

Most sidhe are extremely beautiful by mortal standards, but they have a wild look about them that can inspire fear as readily as wonder. When they need to move unnoticed among humans, the sidhe disguise their true natures through the use of a glamour.1

Powers

A sidhe's nature is so completely intertwined with magic that they do not think of magic as something separate from their more mundane skills; they will use either, or both, as needed, depending which is going to be the most effective for the task at hand. They refer to any use of cunning skill as "Art", whether it is weaving a spell or weaving a cloak — though if a sidhe were to weave a cloak, it would likely be weaving magic into it, as well. Treating magic as a separate discipline is a mortal concept, and to the sidhe it is like having a special word to refer to painting with only one specific color; they use whatever color is needed, and blend them together more skillfully than most mortal practitioners could ever hope for.

While the sidhe's Art is extremely versatile, however, it is also fragile. Because they are creatures of imagination, a sidhe's magic runs more toward the "soft arts" that affect energy — Illusion, Evocation, and Enchantment — than the "hard arts" that affect matter — Abjuration, Conjuration, Necromancy, and Thaumaturgy.2 Most of their spells fade quickly when exposed to the direct sunlight of the mortal realm, and items that they conjure into existence in the Dreamlands may prove to be mere illusions when they enter the material plane. Cold-forged iron, in particular, is anathema to faery-magic, and most of their spells can be broken instantaneously with a bag of iron filings.

In spite of its limitations, however, mortals should use extreme caution when facing a sidhe's Art. The more widely a sidhe is known and believed in, the stronger its power, and some of the faery lords have over ten thousand years of collected mortal belief backing them up. Just because a sidhe is a being of make-believe doesn't mean it can't hurt you.

Limitations & Weaknesses

The Bane

All sidhe fear and hate the power of the Bane — their term for iron. There is something about this element that is hostile to magical energies, though no system of magical theory has ever completely explained this. The sidhe are so inherently magical themselves that iron acts as a poison to them, as well as wreaking havoc on their magic.

Most forms of modern metallurgy disrupt iron's anti-magical potency by forging it at very high temperatures and alloying it with other metals; these forms of steel can cause discomfort for the sidhe, but their touch is not poisonous. For iron to be baneful to the sidhe, it must be "cold-forged" — worked at lower temperatures, without the intense heating and cooling that are used to temper most forms of modern steel. A sidhe can tell, without touching it, whether a particular piece of metal is baneful or not.

Cast iron and wrought iron are good examples of baneful iron. Swords and knives can also be made of cold-forged iron, but it requires the use of older steel-making techniques and lower temperatures than are used for most modern cutlery. The traditional folded-steel method used to create the Yamatoan katana is one technique that preserves the cold-iron property of the weapon, but such weapons are expensive because they require much more manpower than the mass-produced utility knives used by most people.

Psychology

In some ways, the sidhe seem familiar; they look like us, more or less, though they are "larger than life," their forms idealized by the dreams and fables of humans, Elves, and other sentient beings. Those appearances can be deceptive, however, because at their core the Fae are manifestations of the primal creative force — Nature, in all its chaotic, unrestrained, savage beauty.

The sidhe are more tightly linked to the nature of sentient mortals than other types of faeries, but there is much in our innermost natures that we would be afraid to look at too closely … and all of those wild, feral passions are brought to vivid life in the behavior of the sidhe. The sidhe are thus a blending of the familiar and the alien: mortal dreams given life by a primal force that is beyond our comprehension.

By human standards, all sidhe are insane. Their concepts of right and wrong are often very different from our own, and they are driven by desires and impulses that mortals cannot fully comprehend. Often these impulses are exaggerations of some mortal dream or desire, which the sidhe will pursue beyond the bounds that a human would consider rational or reasonable. These personal obsessions are as unique and individualistic as the sidhe themselves. The Sidhe Lord known as Cernunnos, for example, periodically leads a group of mounted warriors on the Wild Hunt, and anyone he encounters along the way must join him in the Hunt or be treated as prey to be chased and slaughtered. He doesn't care what choice a person makes; the same individual could be treated as an animal or a boon companion depending on how he or she responds to Cernunnos's offer. For him, the only important thing is that the hunt continues.

Like all Fae, the sidhe are prisoners of their natures; they do not have souls, and thus they lack the power to change, grow, and become better or worse as individuals. They are what they are. Unlike some of the stupider species of Fae, the sidhe do have the ability to remember, reason, and adapt their behavior to new circumstances, much like the sentient mortals they were modeled on — but their basic drives, needs and motivations do not change, and they will change their tactics only as much as necessary to continue achieving their desired goals. When presented with the same set of options and the same circumstances, a sidhe will make the same choice every time. Because of this, many philosophers say that the sidhe do not possess free will; however, because of the extreme complexity of real world circumstances and the wide number of variables in play, the sidhe can often pull off a very convincing impersonation of free will for extended periods of time.

Names, Truth, and Promises

The spoken word has tremendous power over the sidhe, perhaps because it is a manifestation of the same imaginative force that gave them life. This manifests itself in three major ways:

Names

Every creature has a True Name, which contains the essence of who and what that creature is. If you know a creature's True Name, you can draw it to come to you, exert power over it, cause it pain or pleasure, and even compel it to obey your will … provided that your will is strong enough, and that you know the right sort of magic to make it happen. For mortals, giving one's name to another is a relatively small risk; unless the person is a powerful wizard, they're unlikely to be able to do much with it, and the precise inflections of the True Name tend to change as the person grows and matures. For the sidhe, who cannot change their essential natures, the True Name is a static thing, and giving it to anyone is an enormous risk. The sidhe do not speak their names to anyone, and it is considered hugely offensive to ask a sidhe what its name is. All of the titles by which the sidhe are known are mere nicknames, ascribed to them by other people. The proper question to ask a sidhe is not "What's your name?", but, "What should I call you?" Similarly, it is extremely foolish to give your own name to a sidhe; while it will go "stale" and unusable within a few years, until then the sidhe will have a great deal of power over you.

Truth

The sidhe cannot lie. If a sidhe says something, you can be sure that it is true, or at least that the sidhe believes it is true.3 This is not the same as saying that the sidhe are honest. They are masters of dissimulation, the art of creating a misleading impression by providing selective information. The sidhe never lie, but they never tell anyone the whole truth, either.

Promises

Oaths have power, and never moreso than for the sidhe. If a sidhe gives its word that it will do something, it must make good on its word or suffer agonizing pain and a dramatic loss of magical power. Depending on the sidhe in question and the magnitude of the oath, this can be enough to kill them. As a result, the sidhe play it safe: they seldom give their word, and when they do they tend to phrase their promises very carefully. A sidhe can only be compelled to follow a promise to the letter, not to whatever implied meaning another person might have inferred from it. This, in connection to their talent for dissembling, can make it very dangerous to extract a promise from a sidhe. Even more dangerous, however, is questioning their word: a mortal who accuses a sidhe of oathbreaking may be killed out of hand for daring to speak such an insult.

Habitat

The sidhe are natives of the Dreamlands, and many of them still live there, suffering under the constant warfare between the fiends and celestials whom the Starchild banished there. Much of Faerie has been turned into a blasted battleground, its vast underground halls turned into dungeons and its aboveground settlements into armed camps. Those sidhe who wish to avoid being pressed into service by one side or the other must flee ever further into the remote reaches of their realm, where they often run into things almost as dangerous as the outsiders themselves.

Some sidhe have escaped the Dreamlands War by passing into the mortal realm, but this too is often uncomfortable for them. There is much about mortal society that they find incomprehensible, especially in the modern era, and the abundance of iron often makes them sick. Some of them have fled to nature preserves and other wild places, but this is a lonely existence for them; sidhe, like the mortals they echo, are social beings, and the loss of their native society is a tremendous blow to them.

Sometimes a group of sidhe will leave the Dreamlands together and settle in the mortal world, bringing a microcosm of their society with them. This may guarantee their survival, but it does cause them to diminish: subsequent generations are less magical than their parents, more mortal than Fae, though they maintain a strong sense of connection to nature. These descendants even have souls, and the free will that that implies — though where these souls come from is a mystery.4

Sidhe prefer to sleep and dine underground but spend most of their time under open sky, so their homes tend to be built into the sides of mounds and hillsides.5 Their underground halls can be quite extravagant. After humans began to build towers and castles, some of the Sidhe Lords mimicked them, and before the Dreamlands War it was not uncommon to see sidhe cities that were a mixture of elegant towers and vast chambers beneath the fairy-mounds. Now, with the celestials and fiends controlling much of Faerie, aboveground fortifications are much more common, and many of the underground dwellings have taken on a dark and oppressive air.

Known Types of Sidhe

Despite the stunning variety displayed by the sidhe, there are a few well-known varieties:

Tuatha de Danaan

("too-EH-heh DEH dah-NEHN"): Also known as the feeorin ("fee-YORE-in"), these are the most common type of sidhe: generally elven in appearance, with green or violet eyes and fair skin. They tend to be vain but courteous, foppish, and obsessed with the affairs of their own society. They are also fearsome warriors when the need (or desire) to fight comes on them.

Daoine Sidhe

("DEE-nah shee"): Sometimes called the horned fae, the daoine sidhe have dark skin — often black, grey, or purple — and large, curling horns like those of a ram. Despite their fearsome appearance, they are a more peaceful people than the Tuatha — slower to take offense and slower to take up arms, though they are devastatingly effective when they do choose to fight. They are known as the best craftsmen of Faerie, and some of the greatest swords and pieces of armor in history were forged by their hands. Both the celestials and the fiends prize their talents for the endless Dreamlands War, but the daoine sidhe would prefer to be left to themselves.

Leanan Sidhe

("LEE-uh-NAN shee"): These Fae resemble tall, shapely human women with elongated canines; they are often mistaken for vampires, though they are not undead. Breathtakingly beautiful even by sidhe standards, the leanan sidhe are obsessed with artistic creative expression. They are living manifestations of the creative impulse that exists in the heart of every mortal, and a mortal assisted by one of them is capable of producing works of astonishing power and beauty. The leanan sidhe seek out mortals of tremendous creative potential — musicians, artists, poets, playwrights, filmmakers — and attempt to seduce them, offering their supernatural inspiration in exchange for the mortal's affection. They are bound to serve their mortal charge until he (or she) falls in love with them; once that happens, though, the lines of control reverse, and the mortal is doomed to be her pet for the rest of his or her life.6 On the plus side, an artist bound to a leanan sidhe will usually have a stunningly successful career and produce works of tremendous genius; on the downside, they usually die at a young age, because the leanan sidhe feeds on their life force, often by drinking their blood.7

Sidhe Lords

A sidhe lord is not a specific type of sidhe, but rather a sidhe so ancient and powerful that it has transcended the limitations of its type and become something else. These are the true rulers of the Fae, and while many of them have been driven from their ancestral realms by the celestials and fiends, they have not given up their hope of reclaiming the land. Most of them, however, are driven by impulses beyond the acquisition of mere power; they are the manifestations of myths, legends, and the primal forces of nature, and they will carry out their work regardless of the actions of meddling outsiders.

A few of the better-known sidhe lords are listed below. Naturally, none of these are their real names, and many of them have multiple names in different cultures.

  • Cernunnos: The Horned Huntsman, master of the Wild Hunt.
  • Mab: Queen of the Winter Court, ruler of the Fae associated with death, destruction, and winter.
  • Morrigan: The queen mother of Winter, an ancient demigod associated with prophecy, death, and war.
  • Oberon: Titania's consort.
  • Pan: The forefather of all satyrs. Satyrs are not usually considered proper sidhe, but Pan is so powerful that he is undeniably a faery lord. He was once worshiped in some places as a god of fertility.
  • Robin Goodfellow: A merry trickster with green skin, known for his forest lore and his astonishing powers of seduction.
  • St. Nicholas: The Gift-Bearer, who brings presents to children on the night of the winter solstice. (He has a rather interesting history with the Lightbringer Field Commander Janus Starson.)
  • Titania: Queen of the Summer Court, ruler of the Fae associated with birthing, creation, and summer.

Author's Notes

Stories with the sidhe should play up their alien, otherwordly nature. People are already comfortable with the familiar, romantic side of faeries, so we need to shake that up and remind the reader why the Lothanasi are so adamant about stopping faery incursions when they happen. The sidhe are beautiful and often tragic figures, particularly given what has happened to their homeland — but they're also amoral, dangerous, often incomprehensible, and scary as hell.

The sidhe have engaged in repeated acts of terrorism around the Empire as a protest against Kyia's protection of Merai Starchild; these acts are not always lethal, but they are extremely disruptive and cause a lot of pain and suffering. When a whole town wakes up one morning to find that their babies have been stolen, they probably won't care that their children will be raised in the beauty and elegance of a faery court; it's still going to be treated as a terrorist act. Ditto for the five hundred men in Breckaris who found that their testicles had been removed the night before the summer festival began.

These acts are directly related to the Great War, also known as the Dreamlands War. Merai Starchild removed the aedra-kin and daedra-kin from the Heavens and Hells (respectively), and exiled them to the Dreamlands. Since then all Sidhe and fae have been caught in the crossfire, come under attack by the celestials and fiends and many have been pressed into service by one side or the other.

Not all sidhe are in favor of such acts; they are, in general, such a chaotic and fractious lot that it's difficult to get them to do much of anything in unison for very long. There are still plenty of red-headed, green-eyed children in rural Sathmore who grow up with a "faery godmother" watching over them, showing them favor. But even in cases when they are acting benevolently, the sidhe are still scary and dangerous. Just ask the mother of the boy who beat up that redhead on the playground…


Sources: Original MK2K Bible Entry- Races/Sidhe, A Lightbringer's Christmas Tale, A Lightbringer's Christmas Carol, Whispers in the Wood, Dreamlands War, Day of the Starchild

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