Seelie and Unseelie Courts

The Seelie court are known to seek help from humans, to warn those who had accidentally offended them, and to return human kindness with favors of their own. Still, a fairy belonging to this court will avenge insults and could be prone to mischief. The most common time of day to see them is twilight. Other names for the Seelie court are 'The Shining Thron' or 'The Golden ones' and 'The light Court'. The categorization of fairies based on court is whether or not a fairy is light or dark. Light fairies are known for playing pranks on humans and having a light hearted attitude, forgetting their sorrows quickly and not realizing how they might be affecting the humans they play pranks on. The Unseelie Court consists of the darkly-inclined fairies. Unlike the Seelie Court, no offense is necessary to bring down their assaults. As a group (or "host"), they appear at night and assault travelers, often carrying them through the air, beating them, and forcing them to commit such acts as shooting at cattle. Like the beings of the Seelie Court who are not always benevolent, neither are the fairies of the Unseelie Court always malevolent. Most Unseelies can become fond of a particular human if they are viewed as respectful, and would choose to make them something of a pet. Some of the most common characters in the Unseelie Court are Bogies, Bogles, Boggarts, Abbey Lubbers and Buttery Spirits. The division into "seely" and "unseely" spirits was roughly equivalent to the division of Elves in Norse mythology, into "light" and "dark" distinctions.

In the French fairy tales of précieuses, fairies are likewise divided into good and evil, but the effect is clearly literary. Many of these literary fairies seem preoccupied with the character of the humans they encounter.

The Welsh fairies, Tylwyth Teg, and the Irish Aos Sí are usually not classified as wholly good or wholly evil.


Trooping and Solitary Fairies

Yeats divided fairies into the solitary and trooping fairies, as did James Macdougall in Folk Tales and Fairy Lore. Katharine Mary Briggs noted that a third distinction might be needed for "domesticated fairies" who live in human households, but such fairies might join with other fairies for merry-making and fairs.

The trooping fairies contain the aristocracy of the fairy world, including the Irish Aos Sí. They are known as trooping faeries because they travel in long processions, such as the one from which Tam Lin was rescued. But the trooping fairies also include other fairies of lesser importance; a trooping fairy can be large or small, friendly or sinister.

Unlike the trooping fairies, solitary fairies live alone and are inclined to be wicked and malicious creatures, except for beings such as the brownie who is said to help with household chores.


Changelings

Changeling is said to be a faerie that is exchanged for a human child, although the term can refer to the child who was taken. Usually, children are taken out of curiosity or because they have caught a fairy's eye. Sometimes, they are taken as a prank or an act of vengeance. Fairies are said to make this exchange if the human child's parents have caused the faerie world a serious offence, or if the fae have been attacked in some way by the parents. Rarely are children taken because the faerie is in love with it, though that is a possibility. Children are sometimes taken and sold to other fairies in a sort of slave trade.

On some occasions instead of a faerie child being left the faeries will leave a doll made of sticks and grass that is glamoured to look like a human child. These are called fetches and usually have a very short life span, however in some stories, these dolls grow up in human society believing they are human and become the great artists of their time. Faeries will also sometimes take people who are older into their realm. Usually they do this if a specific quality about the person catches their eye.

Once in the faerie realm, humans are usually made servants or pets. In some mythology, (Since time passes differently in Arcadia) their faerie master determines how quickly they age. As children they usually just play while the faeries watch. When they are older they may be made a handservant (though they are always well loved), an entertainer, a lover if the fae has become especially fond of them, or an ornament. Sometimes faeries keep humans as pets or as their own children, though this is rarer. Changelings almost never wish to leave their fairy masters and are very loyal.

The magic of the faerie world changes the nature of the humans taken there so that, even if they do manage to escape, they are no longer fully human. The type of change that happens to them depends on who their master was and what they did while in the faerie realm. They almost always have a weak to intermediate grasp of faerie magic when they leave, with the ability to glamour and do other things.

Methods of supposedly repelling faeries included leaving an open pair of iron scissors on the baby's bed. The symptoms of a changeling includes unpleasant traits in the body, paleness, a green tint, bad temper, and/or a voracious appetite. "Positive" traits include an extensive vocabulary at a young age, which signified the changeling's intelligence. Children suspected to be changelings were persecuted and/or murdered, and those responsible were rarely blamed or punished.



Elemental Fae

For humans (at least those not on the side the anti-supernatural movement), elementalism is mostly a great thing! You get all these wonderful powers, you’re eternally connected to something greater than yourself, you even get a familiar! Guess what? There are elemental fae, too!

And they’re often considered a birth defect.

Yes, that’s right. Elemental fae are more accepted in the Seelie court, but for the Unseelie fae? Having an elemental fae in the family is taboo – a horrible secret you don’t want anyone to know about. The unseelie consider it a birth defect, a clear sign that something was wrong with the union that lead to the birth. And why is that?

Elemental fae are incapable of channeling magic from any element but their own. What’s more, they are doubly susceptible to their opposing element. You would never find a water elemental fae living in the desert – they simply couldn’t survive there. A fire elemental fae in Michigan would not be able to survive long in a Michigan winter without constantly being around a fire. And if attacked by an opposing elemental? They cannot channel that magic, and have no way of protecting themselves against it.


Tricksters

Legend has it that the tricksters were created by an ancient Unseelie queen. When the weres and magic of shapeshifting were created (with no one being 100% sure who created them, and how), she had a mind to show that the fae could become shapeshifting creatures, too. It didn’t work as well as she had hoped, but the creatures did prove to be amusing.

Tricksters are fae who pretty much live to – you guessed it – play tricks on people. They take it to an extreme far beyond that of your average fae – a trickster will happily spend decades, or even centuries, setting up their tricks. Their lives revolve around their games, and they often have a touch of insanity. It’s not uncommon for them to speak in riddles, or tell more lies than they do the truth. Tricksters are one of the only variations of fae that have a strong link to native American tribes, but are also common in other nationalities. Tricksters are always male, and a fae can only be born a trickster if his father was one as well.

Every trickster has a totem animal that they are able to take the shape of.  What’s truly remarkable about the trickster is that, though born male, they have the ability to take a female form. No matter what form they take, they are still, at their core, themselves.

As legend has it, a thousand years ago, when the tricksters were causing so much trouble, the Seelie queen and king stepped in to make a few alterations of their own. With powerful magic, they gave the tricksters their biggest weakness: messages. Now, if targeted by a trickster, the only way to deflect their attention is to give them a message to deliver. Tricksters adore playing the messenger, and will eagerly abandon any plans in favor of delivering a message.


Bean Sidhe

Human history has actually gotten a small amount right about the bean sidhe - they tend to show up right before someone dies, and sometimes they make a big deal out of it. The rest of it? Not so much. The bean sidhes have the ability to see a potential death coming - though they don't have a long eye, making the 'foretelling' portion a bit of a myth. Their greatest power lies in their ability to influence someone's personal death, whether it be to increase the likelihood or decrease it. They don't have perfect influence - they can make it less likely that a particular death will take someone (or more likely), but they can't control it, can't make it a certainty. It's more of a probability game, for all that they don't do it very often. Getting a bean sidhe to interfere in one's upcoming potential death means you've either pissed one off or are a very good friend, and not just because the backlash involved (in the case of an unsuccessful attempt at nudging fate) is quite painful but also because the act of trying to influence someone's immediate future is extremely tiring.

The bean sidhe are always female, usually Unseelie, and almost always look like walking corpses - they're definitely not the most attractive of the fae, but they are certainly some of the most eye-catching. Their palettes tend to run towards the greys and blacks, pale purples, blues, and greens, occasionally deep reds or sickly yellows. Their wings, if they have them, are usually smaller and nondescript, giving the impression when seen flying from the front of a sort of spiritlike hovering.

Most notable about the bean sidhe, however, is their (usually unfortunate) habit of wailing whenever one of their 'chosen' has died. While the bean sidhe can sense all death, each have an affinity for a particular type of death that makes them exceptionally sensitive to its occurrence. When someone dies in a way that a bean sidhe is sensitive to, that bean sidhe can't help but to wail. Or screech, or keen, or make some otherwise relatively unpleasant noise. While in the fae realms, it doesn't matter as much beyond being irritating to other fae, but around humans... well, it requires one to be more circumspect. The bean sidhe can't completely deny the urge to wail, but they can (and do) try to channel it into something less otherworldly - some try for off-key singing, some loud coughing... methods vary, but most every bean sidhe that means to travel the human realm (and not scare the humans or give themselves away) has a way to try and disguise their wail.


Strengths

Glamour. One of the key abilities of the high court fae is that of glamour, an ability to cast illusions. Humans can resist glamour by placing a variety of magic ointments over their eyes *Example of Glamour; Making mud look and taste like ham.

Sensitivity. Psychic abilities, such as telepathy, photo kinesis (those that require light to regenerate would be helped by this, those that are harmed by light - such as vampires, could conceivably be killed by it), teleportation.

Harmony with nature. The ability to be in sync with nature, giving one the ability to move through it without causing harm.

Enhanced physical abilities (preternaturally fast and strong, and unusually resistant to damage), can heal others and is swift to heal.


Weaknesses:

Cold iron. Unlike vampires and lycanthropes, fae are not bothered by silver. Cold forged iron or even lead is more damaging to them.

Fairie ointments. The use of a four-leaf clover, Saint-John's-wort, red verbena, daisies, rowan, and ash can break glamour. As such special ointments are made of either four-leaf clovers or Saint-John's-wort, and spread on the eyelids, mouth, ears, and hands, making a person proof against glamour.

Salt. Temporarily disturbs fae magic, either by throwing it on the fae or the thing being magicked. 



Elementals:

As an aether elemental one would, conceivably, be able to manipulate gravitational forces.

An air elemental would be able to control the wind, creating anything from a light breeze to a tornado.

An earth elemental would be able to create rock slides, and even earthquakes if powerful enough.

A fire elemental would be able to manipulate fire, creating fire from seemingly nothing, by highly exciting atoms to create heat and igniting particulates in the very air.

A water elemental could cause water to fall upward, travel along the ground in any direction desired, create waves, or even tsunamis if strong enough.