[Curseborne] The Fae

We’re nearing the end of our routine updates about the Curseborne setting, and so we wanted to share some “teasers” for some material we have planned that won’t necessarily show up in the core rulebook.

We’ve hinted here and there about the Fae. While this blog post is not going to answer maybe some of your most pressing questions about them, we did want to give you a sense of them from the character’s perspectives.

Who, or what, are the Fae?

That’s a great question that I’m not going to answer fully. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to share some insights, but there is no hard truth to be found for this question in this blog. What I am going to share with you are some in-character accounts of the Fae, the way that the Accursed see them, and the unreliable legends surrounding them.

Before I do that, let’s run down what we know for sure coming out of the core rulebook:

• The Fae are a type of supernatural creature.
• All the Lineages have legends of the Fae, but most people don’t talk about them a lot.
• No one seems to have ever met or seen a Fae themselves, but they’ve probably read a story or heard an accounting of what they can do.
• No one knows where they come from, or where they are now. The Outsides factor into some speculations, but there is no certainty about that on either front.

Okay, so that’s a lot of nothing, I’m very aware. Rest assured, we have plans for the Fae. 

We have long known that Fae creatures are a popular supernatural creature type and we aren’t ignoring them. They’re baked into our game from the start. We’ve had plans for them since the beginning, but their truth belongs in another book that can fully explore who and what they are. So the core Curseborne book sets the stage, and gives you hints. And if you don’t think you’ve seen hints about who and what the Fae are in the core rulebook after getting a chance to read the whole thing during the Kickstarter, read it again. They’re there.

Legends

Below are some in-character legends about the Fae. Keep in mind that these accounts are from unreliable narrators who either know little more than you do about the Fae, or have been filled with urban legends and wild tales about them from an early age.

The Fae? In my family, you’ll get slapped in the face for saying that word out loud. And that’s if you’re lucky. We don’t talk about the Fae. I asked a long time ago why not, and the answer my uncle Charles gave me was probably the most chilling and dissatisfying answer I’ve ever gotten: “If they hear us talking about them, we’ll end up like the Drakes.” I spent three years trying to find out who the fuck the Drakes are. And no wonder it took me so long. So, there used to be a Sorcerer Family, long before our time, who called themselves Drakes. No, I don’t know why, there really isn’t that much recorded about them. What I did find is that they existed for about two-hundred years and then they just… stopped. I could only find records of them showing up to Lineage meetings, Family Head names, a few Family announcements from them that went to everyone, and then nothing. No note or remark as to why they stopped attending meetings. No explanation for where they went. It’s like they never really existed. And fuck, if the Fae can just wipe you off the face of the Earth like that… yeah, we don’t talk about them in our family.

— Patricia Lenox, the Network

Okay, so you’ve encountered something you don’t understand and you want answers. I get it. But if you start digging into the Fae, you’re only going to come up with more questions than answers. I’ve been down that road before, and I can guarantee you with 99% accuracy that what you’re dealing with isn’t the Fae. They aren’t here anymore. They’re the boogieman your Family tells you about to keep you in line until you’ve been around long enough to know right from wrong. I think if they were here, there’d be no mistaking them. So look, I’m going to cut past all the bullshit of old-aunt’s tales and Family secrets and tell you straight up.

The Fae are gone. But when they were here, they were the most powerful creatures on Earth. If you think your Family Head is the most powerful Hungry you’ve ever met, you’re about halfway to a Fae. Think Damnation slinging fuckers who can warp the world around them with a thought and you might be closer to the truth. If we had that kind of shit out there still, you’d think more of us would know about it. So, yeah, they’re gone. The Fae can’t hurt you.

— Nigel Ingo, Iscariot

Nothing scares Mother. I used to think this was true. It’s certainly the line the Family tows, and is evidenced in so many of her actions and edicts. But I found something in the Family library that gave me pause. It created doubt. And so I asked about it. You’ve never seen anyone so terrified as Laurence when I asked. If there’s anything that Mother fears, it’s the Fae.

It was just a scrap of a journal. Most of the pages were missing: torn out or burned up. It was Mother’s from a long time ago. I think even before she formed our Family. Some of it was just her musings on being a ghost. I could see some seeds of her plan to create our Family. Then I got to the worst of the burned out section. Only a few scraps were legible. From what I could parse, the Fae were hunting, but not whom or why. Mother seemed caught up in the situation, and she made a bargain of some sort. Was it with the Fae? I don’t know. The account ended in char and lost pages before I could find out what became of the hunted or Mother’s bargain. The last singed page in the journal had a single line in Mother’s hand, but clearly disturbed, shaky, and unhinged. It read, “I’ve imbued my account of that year with a ritual. If you find this and it’s burned, it’s too late for me.”

— Nathaniel Jordan, Wardens

Okay, so if you’ve never heard of the Fae, let me tell you this story my brother told me when he was giving me a rundown of the world. There’s all sorts of supernatural creatures out there. There’s things that live in this world, and things that come from other places. We call them Outsiders. So the little things are like phantasms, and imps, and goblins and stuff. You know, the guys who have magic, but it isn’t nearly as good or cool as yours? Then there’s the Accursed, that’s us, and we’ve got some pretty strong magic, especially the longer we’ve been messing with it. I mean, just out the gate we can turn into hulking monsters and rip someone’s throat out. Then there’s Outsiders, and not all of them are big bads, but many of them are particularly brutal, like the most powerful Accursed ever might go toe to toe with a spider demon from the Outside. Then, there’s the Fae. The Fae are beyond powerful. They make and break power. They are the nexus of power. The alpha, the omega, and the fucking beta through zeta. Are they Outsiders? Maybe. Are they the thing that Outsiders would be afraid of in our world? Maybe. Good thing you’re unlikely to ever meet one.

— Yvette Timball, Eight Hands

We don’t really know if the Archons are real. We have evidence, of course, but they don’t come into our world, and we aren’t stupid enough to go into theirs. That is unless you’re a BG Angel, and even they aren’t stupid enough to try to take on an Archon. The only account we have of someone fighting an Archon is about the Fae. We just assume Fae are Archons because of the scale of their power and influence. My guess is that if the Archons are the leaders of their respective realms, then the Fae are the Archons of Earth. It makes a sort of sense. Anyway, the way I heard it was that there was some trouble up in the north country. A big battle group went to check it out, and only two came back. They say they dealt with whatever it was, but their accounts were all scattered. It was just one entity, but it split itself into an army. It was several entities that came together into one frightening amalgamation. They fought for what felt like years, but they were only on the battlefield for under five minutes. They weren’t in a liminality or a Battleground. But the thing they fought molded reality as though they were in the fucking Outside. In the end, it simply disappeared. They don’t even know if they killed it. They just know that there was no evidence of everything they had gone through. No trace of the battle, the changes, the creature, or the trouble. Even the dead were gone, and they couldn’t even remember their names. 

— Leon Frakes, Chimera