Queen Raidne — Roleplayer Guild

[Finished]
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It's fairies In Space! along a semi-sentient magical hyperspace path that lets anyone walk from world to world (at the Path's pseudo-random whims), if you can find it in the first place.

|\Name of nation: The Faerie Inns

|\Summary in a Sentence: Fairies living in hyperspace that can literally walk between worlds (and so can everyone else, mostly).

|\Species: Fay or Fairy, plural Fairies, possessive/adjective Faerie or Fae

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Spindly humanoids of height between three and four-and-a-half feet tall with splendidly-colored wings and large ears, born with a natural connection to the magical "aetherfield". When seen "naked" - that is, without the omnipresent glamour concealing their true appearance - they're rather plain. That same glamour allows them to conceal themselves as members of other species, and some even undergo surgery to complete the effect. A very few even remove their wings (obviously those few had rather boring wings). As a rule, however, they are always extravagantly beautiful, decadently wasteful, and incredibly vain. 

Relatively speaking, they're fairly weak - flight doesn't work well with muscle density. They make up for it with their mastery of illusion and subtle enchantment.

However, their natural bond with the aetherfield also makes them extremely sensitive to radiation and cold iron. Radiation disconnects fairies from the aetherfield in a painful way. Iron is so poisonous to the Fay that mere touch causes skin lesions. The colder the iron, the worse the reaction; conversely, hot iron will do nothing more than cause a rash. Only recently did an enterprising fairy realize that a small dose of radium, taken every day, can disconnect a fairy from the aetherfield and prevent the symptoms. The "cure" has the obvious side effect of preventing a fairy from using her magic. It's also disorienting having one of your senses suddenly shut off. If used too often, the disconnect becomes permanent, and the fairy is usually labelled an outcast.
|\Description of government: Confederation of four independent city-states. Inasmuch as there exists a government, anyway. Nobody rules the Fay so much as manages them. There's a long history of rulers that have tried to say "no" meeting horrifying fates - such as being devoured. Or entombed in a brick wall. Or strapped to a table and fed one drop of a nutrient paste every two weeks to just barely keep them alive. These weren't viewed as punishments as much as they were entertainments.

On the other hand, there's an unwritten Fairy Code. Any who go back on their word are exiled on the spot. Unsuspecting hyperspace travelers occasionally run across these "exiled" bodies. Particularly nice Fay will merely force twice the agreed-upon price from contract violators. Creative Fay will occasionally extract an elaborate and slow-burning revenge before the inevitable exile.

Each city-state, namely, the Inns-Between-Worlds, functions independently, with its own form of "government". They all amount to a weak dictatorship held up by one thing or another, with the head of each Inn known as an "owner". However, under crisis, the four owners can almost comfortably rely on each other. They generally all gather only in emergency, but that doesn't preclude one owner meeting with another for the purpose of trade, gossip, or repayment of a debt.

Finn's is ruled by the titular Finnegan, who relies on an extensive network of favors owed to him to stay in power. While other people (even of varying species) have degrees of power in Finn's, all profitable deals tend to have Finnegan involved in some way. Even if it's just in the "respects" paid to Finnegan for operating on his turf.

The Tawdry Oyster is ruled by Cinnamon, who relies on her good looks, charms, party-planning skills, and overall entertainment value to keep her Fairies in line. It works so long as she remains the most interesting Fay in The Oyster. Her current glamour of the moment is to make her wings (and clothes in general) appear to be made of flowing water.

The Marblehead Inn and Suites is ruled by Rock, the night watchman, who relies on his extensive knowledge of secrets. The original owner is lost somewhere above the 731st floor, so Rock has taken over the checking in of guests, charging them one secret apiece for admission. At this point, anyone who challenges Rock risks a torrent of terrific secrets being let loose; unfortunately, Fairies being what they are, it's inevitable that this will happen some time.

The House at the End of the Road is ruled by Lady Ruby. Hers is a more traditional power structure; she has both the most extensive knowledge of hexes and largest amount of "willing" sacrificial victims with which to fuel them.
|\Territories:

The fairies have four territories - the Inns Between Worlds - that they control (five if you count the Path itself). Each exists in a locally-stabilized hyperspace node along the Fairy Path. These nodes vary wildly in climate and terrain, partly due to the enchantments thrown down by the fay to make the places look better.

There are three ways to get to these nodes. The first is through happenstance wandering along the Fairy Path. The Path will decide on its own terms to favor aliens, and guide them toward one place or another - which usually isn't an airless asteroid. The second is through guided wandering along the Path. Either you are a fairy, and thus have a natural instinct for Path navigation, or you have a fairy token, which will guide you to a specific place along the Path (or via hyperspace in general). The third way is through happening to stumble along the Path as you navigate hyperspace in your starship - Finn's and The Tawdry Oyster even have purpose-built zero-gravity docking ports for such encounters. Of course, you occasionally find yourself randomly plucked out of hyperspace and docked between two great pillars of dirt, stone, and grass, as if it were an advanced spaceport... but not. 

Lucky travelers, after staying at an Inn, never feel so refreshed, often finding chronic aches and injuries healed upon waking, and their vehicles in mysteriously perfect working order. 

Unlucky travelers, however, may end up as dinner, new members of the permanent Inn staff, mermaids (not as fun as you'd think), or sacrificial victims. Said traveler's vehicles and belongings are confiscated in exchange for their new role at the Inn.

Finn's - A recently rebuilt bar at which nobody speaks of the former establishment, lest they be banned, but otherwise resembles a merry pub (with rooms for rent up top!) in the middle of a large blast crater. The establishment is rather dwarfed by the trading boomtown which surrounds it, all owned and leased out by Finn's. 
The Tawdry Oyster - A tropical resort boasting live mermaids (stay there too long and risk becoming one!). Like Finn's, The Oyster rents out land to other guests. Stringent guidelines (and pricing) make the Oyster the locale for only the richest, beautiful, and most famous of species' celebrities.
Marblehead Inn and Suites - A towering modern edifice that adds more floors as people climb the stairs, despite the owner's best efforts to get the building to stop already. If you don't want to be found, you have a chance of ending up here for a while. Ironically, it's a good place to "lay low", despite its skyscraper nature. Interestingly, the decor subtly changes as you rise, so you might start off in the luxurious marble lobby and end up in a minimalist observation lounge with square plastic benches and recessed strip lighting.
The House at the End of the Road - Which has various names, (The House, House on the Hill, Quiet Hill Inn, 1408 Elm Street, etc.) but invariably appears to travelers with no other choice in lodgings and a desperate need for them. Rather spooky, but only at night.
|\Description of Military:
Any military equipment is up to the individual to field. So you'll end up facing an army cobbled-together from various technologies and magics, ranging from platinum-iridium spears to railgun tanks. Any technological artifact is generally stolen from some other species.

Each Inn-Between-Worlds is responsible for its own defense, and each has wildly different strategies to that effect. For instance, The House relies on hexes and terrifying glamours, which ultimately costs its residents dearly each time it has to defend itself. Happily for the House, it's usually terrifying enough to make most would-be invaders not bother after the first few nights. Finn's takes rather the opposite approach, preferring to be such a valuable trading hub for everyone that nobody would want to invade and everyone wants to defend it.

The Tawdry Oyster has the most familiar military, consisting of a small number of legions fit for policework and defense, and all with a maritime theme. Meanwhile, the Marblehead Inn and Suites has no military. The ever-growing staff can barely keep up with the building as it is; a large number of bellhops and concierges are their best option. However, the Marblehead usually opts for retreating up a few floors. Once they even tricked an invasion force into taking a recently-installed elevator to the top floor. It's said that, late at night, you can still hear distant dings and screaming.
|\Technological Overview: The technology level varies massively from one individual to the next. The Fay themselves generally invent nothing, preferring to steal from other races (and even steal the scientists of the other races) when they feel so inclined. Yet, they have a few claims to fame. On is the Fairy Path, created by the outcast fairy Euryale. A living entity comprised of beautifully subtle aetherfied hyperspace tunnels, the Path is a series of trails threading through most known worlds. The Fay can literally walk from world to world. Of course, so can anyone else who stumbles upon them. Not that they'd notice - one of the Path's many glamours make each transition from world to world seamless. You only realize you're no longer in Kansas when it's far too late. And walking the Path is dangerous - some trails lead to airless moons, glassed planets, and frigid ice worlds. The routes change according to the Path's inscrutable whim, influenceable only by Queen Titania herself (recently missing). The Fay themselves, of course, know how to navigate the Path; it's part of the glamours lacing the thing. Like all Fairy magic, however, it's thwarted by radiation. The Fairy Path has learned to stay away from highly-populated technological areas, sticking to the deep woods where at all possible. Fewer people usually means less radioactivity.

Their other claim to fame is the reason that the locally-stabilized hyperspace nodes still exist, despite the planet Faerie (the heart of the Path) mysteriously disappearing. Each Inn-Between-Worlds has a stabilizer, powered by the blood sacrifice of a specific type of individual once each relative year. The type of individual varies for each inn; the Marblehead requires a cold, logical thinker; the Tawdry Oyster requires a beautiful seductress; Finn's needs someone with wealth that yearns for more; and the House at the End of the Road requires a brash adventurer.

A minor achievement are Fairy Tokens, which allow other species to use the Path to walk to a specific node. Each token is keyed to a specific Inn (though they could be keyed anywhere, in theory; you'd just have to make them wherever you wanted to go). Far and away the most tokens are keyed to Finn's.
|\Magical Overview:
Glamours are an innate ability shared by all Fay. A glamour is an illusion cast on either themselves or a small object altering its appearance. Many glamours are incredibly elaborate, as it's considered a marker of high status to have a detailed glamour. Queen Titania, the former head of state, could change what she appeared to be wearing based on how she was feeling at the moment. Fairy gold is another example of a glamour: exchanging a few leaves that look and feel like gold for favors is an old trick. The more tech-savvy Fay can fool e-banks into believing funds have been transferred - for a day or so, anyway.

On top of glamours (or perhaps as a subset of glamours), Fay can cast simple prestidigitations - real-life magic tricks. Levitating small objects, turning paper roses into real ones with a flash of fire, making objects disappear, increasingly complicated card tricks, that sort of thing.

Another aspect to fairy magic is curses and blessings. Curses and blessings affect processes. Fairies can curse or bless items and organics, causing harvests to be particularly good or bad, or certain industrial processes to function foully or fairly. Tech-savvy Fay can even bless code to execute to the author's intentions, and not what they mistakenly typed. In general, curses and blessings can be mistaken as periods of particularly bad or good luck, which aid the Fay in their secretive, semi-mythical lifestyle.

Finally, there are hexes. Developed by the House on the Hill after the Path got "ornery" following the planet Fairie's disappearance, Hexes are a dark subset of Fae magic requiring sacrifice. The more powerful the effect, the greater the sacrifice. In return for this bit of darkness, complex and specific things can be achieved - like the series of carefully-calculated spacetime manipulations that keep the Inn's hyperspace nodes locally stable.
|\Cultural Overview: Fairies are vain, fickle creatures that make ironclad bargains (which they take seriously, if only at face value) and believe wholly in the power of the individual. This value emphasis on the individual permeates their society so wholly that the Fay are essentially ungovernable. Getting a group of them to do anything is generally more difficult than herding hungry cats. There once was a fairy Queen - Titania - who survived as such chiefly because she remained entertaining; that and she'd agreed to host a party and clean up afterwards. The trick was that she still hadn't cleaned up for the past several dozen years, so she was still technically host, which was more authority than anyone else had. Unfortunately, she disappeared with the rest of the home planet of Faerie. The owners of the Inns Between Worlds fell into the power "vacuum" (Titania herself freely admitted that she had little actual control over subjects). 

The Fay are a long-lived species (or at least appear to be; time tends to dilate along the Fairy Path - and very few Fay allow themselves to appear old). They believe totally in the freedom of the individual. Aside from the four Inns, which are really only ruled out of happenstance or convenience, there are no organizations. The rest of the Fay, scattered throughout the galaxy, live as shopkeepers, farmers, seers, sooth-sayers, "demons", kleptomaniacs, and minor deities (or so they claim). Generally, Fairies will do anything but reveal themselves as fairies, instead preferring to assume a glamour of the locally-dominant species. This goes back to a practical and deep-seated distrust of other species. When you have almost no military, it behooves you to keep your race (let alone the location of your homeworlds) a secret. Plus, it helps to allay suspicion in missing child cases, or whatever shenanigans the Fairy has gotten themselves into.

Outcasts are those who eschew their magic for living near radiation and cold iron; namely, on starships. When pressed, they usually claim that they're a member of a near-extinct nomadic species (something not far from the truth). If further pressed, they usually leave. While outcasts are seen as weird and there's a social stigma toward them, they enjoy the same rights as any other fairy. The outcasts just choose not to exercise them, most of the time.

The two constants among all fairies are vanity and pride. Fairies are convinced that they are the best at whatever they choose to do (and with magic, that's not always a lie), and of course they're the most beautiful beings in existence. Or else. Aside from relatively standard activities, Fairies love mischief. Whether that mischief comes in the form of the occasional abduction, experiment, meal, or risqué escapade, if there are fairies, it exists.

Fairies are obsessed with the fine arts. Rumors of Fairies letting themselves get enchanted by a particularly beautiful melody, painting, statue, or dance aren't unfounded. And any alien that makes a pact or deal with a Fairy will see the Fairy hold up their end to the (exact) letter of the bargain. Fay demand equal trade and reciprocation. No deed is for free, and saying "thank you" is often deadly. Fay view "thank you" as attempting to repay a kindness with words, and very few Fairies think their special kindnesses are worth mere words. Fairies will also do whatever they think is most interesting, and if nothing interesting is happening, they'll make something interesting happen. These two behaviors mean that any slight or insult will be avenged mercilessly.
|\History: Once upon a time [couldn't resist, sorry], there was a democratic federation of magical beings known as Fay. The Fay spanned a few star systems, having travelled there via the good will of their neighbors, as the Fay themselves had no interest in technology, but every interest in all things beautiful. That interest motivated them to reside on strange new worlds, absorbing fantastic natural sights. In return for the shuttle services, for which no bargain was struck, the Fay took it upon themselves to beautify their neighbor's planets, making them all the more incredible to behold. And there was peace and prosperity for a while.

One day, however, an evil man came to power in a nearby empire. This empire violently expanded. When the evil emperor learned of the beauty of the neighboring planets, he immediately declared war. The neighbors regretfully informed the Fay that it could no longer afford to shuttle the Fay from planet to planet while fighting a war.

A young Fay by the name of Euryale, self-exiled for her love of technology, created the ultimate masterpiece of Fay art and engineering: the Fairy Path. To birth the Path, however, there was a price to be paid. Faerie and the star it orbited were forevermore inaccessible to the universe at large. This was, of course, Euryale's intention; the evil empire couldn't destroy Faerie if they couldn't find it.

The peaceful neighbors, meanwhile, were utterly annihilated. Those that survived were "assimilated" into the empire. Thus they paid the price for slighting the Fay nation. Meanwhile, the glamours and blessings bestowed upon the planets faded, and soon very little that was not ugly grew in the soil there. And so peace and prosperity once again followed.

At one point or another, one particular Fairy decided it would be more fun to rule permanently than to continue with democracy. An insurrection followed, and the would-be ruler was entombed behind a brick wall filled with spiders and insects that liked to chitter in his ears. Complete anarchy took hold of the Fay, with nobody wanting to submit to anyone.

Another Fairy, seeing this anarchy, sought to reform a peaceful government capable of "getting things done". If anything, the insurrection that followed was more violent than the previous one, and the would-be ruler was kept forever alive while forever starving, her wrists and ankles bound to a stone alter with rings of frozen iron.

Finally Queen Titania rose to power through a deceptively simple deal. She agreed to host a party. So long as the party continued, she would be host, and so long as she was host, she had authority. It helped that she was extremely adept at manipulating the aetherfield, and had a mysteriously good rapport with the Path. Would-be assassins were eliminated long before they got near her (often in public, to everyone's chagrin). In short, she maintained power by being entertaining.

Eventually, enterprising fay discovered four natural nodes of stability along the Path. The Fay set up Inns on said nodes. These nodes became meeting spots for various cultures that stumbled upon the Path, whether Fay or otherwise. 

One night, the home planet of Faerie mysteriously disappeared, and the Path began to unravel. While Finnegan shouted "last call" and hyperspace distortions rippled spacetime, Lady Ruby from the House at the End of the Road stabilized the Path. The feat had been accomplished through a rather elaborate sacrifice of seven hundred souls.

There's been a relatively easy peace since then. Finn's has continued on as the main meeting place and tradinghouse between worlds and cultures, the Marblehead continues to be an excellent place to disappear for a while (some whole kingdoms have been known to take up residence from time to time), and the Tawdry Oyster remains an excellent getaway for the elite. The House continued down its path, getting progressively more creepy with each passing year.
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