Travel within the Feywilde is much easier, its strange relationship with distance is one of its most attractive features to visitors from the Material Plane. According to theorists, part of the reason the landscape of the Feywilde is so mutable is that the fabric of the plane itself is constantly undulating, bunching and unbunching like a page being crumpled and smoothed. To those within the Feywilde, this undulation manifests as distances never being fixed; two locations that are leagues apart one moment can be neighbors in the next as the plane scrunches itself into a new arrangement. For those like the Eldest who have sufficient willpower, it’s even possible to temporarily direct the folding of the plane’s fabric and step straight from one location to another. and hence is not bound to the same dimensions. The Feywilde exists next too entirety of the Material Plane Deities do not interact with the Feywilde. For most gods, the Feywilde holds little entertainment compared to the Material Plane, and such prejudice is reinforced by the Feywilde’s lack of those items that most hold deities’ interest: souls. Creatures of the Feywilde have no souls, and thus have little to offer the gods. Accordingly, most Feywilde residents have little time for religion, and those few who still agitate for the gods’ return find their prayers falling upon deaf ears. On the plus side, however, the gods’ negligence makes the Feywilde a perfect place to hide from their sight, should one incur divine wrath. Faith within the Feywilde is a curiosity, and most residents of a worshipful bent tend to place their faith in one of the Eldest. Those faithful who pass into the Feywilde from the Material Plane often report a terrifying feeling of disconnection from their patrons, and divine magic functions even more strangely within the fey realm than its arcane counterpart. Spells contacting deities or summoning outsider allies have a high probability of failing or acting in unforeseen ways, and spells intended to summon animals tend to summon their strange Feywilde versions instead. Of course, the fact that clerics can still cast spells within the Feywilde at all leads many Material Plane practitioners to smugly assert that the gods haven’t actually abandoned the Feywilde. Yet the fey are just as quick to point out that the clerics' spell effects may be the result of the will and conviction behind their faith, with the casters shaping the world around them through traditional Feywilde means. The Feywilde is known throughout the Material Plane as the ancestral home of the fey and the place from which gnomes emigrated long ago, yet it is home to more than just dryads and pixies. Its varied environments boast ecosystems a hundred times more complex than those of the Material Plane. Nearly every creature that has ever existed on the Material Plane still has an aspect within the Feywilde, many with strange traits. In the Feywilde, wolves might have tentacles, birds reptilian tails, or badgers giraffe-like necks to steal honey from the hives of intelligent bees. Given the plane’s vastness, the variations are literally endless, and some posit that summoners tap into this to create their eidolons. Within this world, the fey are dominant, existing in harmony with the landscape much as their Material Plane counterparts do. Yet to equate two dryads from different planes is a mistake, for while their forms may be similar, their mindsets are distinct for several reasons, the most significant being the immortality of Feywilde natives. Simply put, creatures of the Feywilde do not die—at least, not without powerful magic. Cut off from the cycle of souls, a mortally wounded native reforms from the stuff of the Feywilde after a variable amount of time. As a result,a Feywilde native’s concept of death is sketchy at best, leading to customs and a capricious sense of humor that can be unintentionally murderous to outsiders. Similarly, the mutability of their home in all respects makes them inherently fickle and untrustworthy, with priorities that rarely align with those of mortal creatures. They are fundamentally disconnected from all the things that give mortal life balance and significance, and this disconnect makes them a dangerous unknown in most matters. Oddly enough, one thing that doesn’t change much in the Feywilde is language. With few exceptions, all speechcapable beings within the Feywilde communicate in the same unnamed universal language, a tongue that may be the foundation of both Sylvan and Aklo, and that speakers of either can generally understand. In addition to conventional fey, several other prominent Material Plane races have their origins on the Feywilde. Gnomes live here in abundance, though immortal and even stranger than their Material Plane kin. Linnorms also roam the forests and mountains, claiming to be the ancestors of all modern dragons (who supposedly descend from linnorms that emigrated long ago). And hundreds of others, from lesser jabberwocks to treants and vegepygmies, make their way in the wilderness of the Feywilde. Most creatures from the Feywilde, however, never venture to the Material Plane—for if a Feywilde creature dies on a different plane, it ceases to exist. Faced with such a risk, it’s a wonder that any of the fey remained on the Material Plane long enough to become part of it. |