the fae of the great wood act like a miniture civilization unto themselves, with complete ideologies, religions, rulers, regions, states, and ethnicities existing in the mircoscopic world of the fae. At the timescale the fae live on our world is incomprehensibly slow, a fae king may be triumphant in the morning and publicly executed by dinner time. A religious martyr may be killed on the new moon, and by the time the moon has overshadowed itself he may be rejected as a heretic, and by the next new moon he is forgotten entirely. The long scrolls of fae history are as complex as they are incomprehensible, but there is one event just significant enough, that we may need to discuss it in some deeper detail.
In what we would call the 4562nd year of metrisolem, but which the fae of the western greatwood would refer to as the 340th day of the Champagne Era, In the capital of the Toop province of the Emilian Empire, there came the 2nd coming of the 3rd Vanguards of Vertibre, a religious coalition of extremist faeries who wanted to eradicate all insect life. The first coming had failed on day 297 due to political disagreement over the rights of arachnids, which had splintered the coalition’s leadership. The origins of the Vanguards of Vertibre stretch all the way back to the beginnings of the Dark Era, in a small fae village in a bushel of roses on the outskirts of a reverentian trading village. Some even believe that the first Vertibre ideas may have been spread by a Dark Elf named Wart who’s face was especially attractive to flies.
The leader of the Vanguards was a fae by the name of Lilijip Pippilip II. He was determined to destroy the regional parliament of Toop, and become the supreme leader to eradicate all insect life, and ultimately separate from the empire. It’s ironic because Lilijip Pippilip I had actually died in a coup that had reinstated that very parliament just 400 days earlier, which had been one of the main factors in the beginning of the Champagne Era. Fortunately for Lilijip Pippilip II the 2nd coming went exactly to plan, in no small part because he was having affairs with every elite guardsfae in the capital. Power and Authority were unquestionably his in a matter of hours, and while the border with the empire stayed contested for as long as it existed, the Vertebran Separatist State (VSS) managed to stay in power for 7 months, before willingly rejoining itself to the empire, due to fear of gruntlefae invasion.
Lilijip Pippilip II made many extremist mandates as soon as he entered power, including a strict plant-based no insect diet, the banning of any sort of insect domestication, and the crackdown on feral and wild insects. The consequences were noticeable almost immediately, by day 342 due to a lack of consumption by insects the supply of nectar shot through the roof, which at first lead to wild inflation, and a lot of chaos. Soon however the fae of the Vertebran Separatist State managed to synthesize the nectar into mana, and the casting of magical spells became more convenient than ever before. By day 351 The residents of the VSS were known for teleporting across the entire empire, cursing anyone who even slightly crossed them, and being very very protective of their mana reserves, as reflected in the Emilian courtsong “Oh god. Oh no. Oh fuck. I’ve pissed off this VSS citizen”. Soon faefarmers were raising entire fields of lavender and foxglove due to their high nectar yields, and then summoning legions of spirits to harvest field upon field. The cost in mana was worth the speed. By day 357 The mana use in the VSS had skyrocketed to 500% of pre-Verterbran values, and demand for nectar only rose and rose. The aristocrat Carlar Targar was known for wearing bracelets around his wings to show how often he teleported, and that he did not need to fly. The speed of the teleport became an expected part of life to many, and it was hard to find a job unless you had the nectar to regularly teleport long distances. By day 366 unemployment had risen to 14%, with the poorest fae hit the hardest. The flora surrounding the capital was being mowed down to create more room to plant more lavender and foxglove. On day 369 a mole dug underneath a sunflower field, and in spite of usual fae practice, which dictated the land should be ceded for the mole’s use, the Vanguards attacked it. It was a bloodbath: of the 40 Vanguards that charged the mole only 14 returned alive, all injured, and yet hours later the town criers declared it a triumph and not a tragedy.
Within the second month of Vertebran rule all the monocultures that had been planted for nectar grew infested with locusts, and a special type of snail that had evolved to feed off of faerie dust (a byproduct of magic use). On day 400 Lilijip Pippilip II celebrated the 400th day of the champagne Era, and boasted about the steadily climbing nectar yields which had not shrunk since the beginning of his reign. On day 401 Nectar yields had fallen 89% due to the pest. The economy just broke, the value of everything became unclear, magic use plumeted and suddenly the things it were vital for, like healing or food preservation became impossible. Valiantly Lilijip Pippilip II fought to make the lives of his people livable, banning teleportation altogether, and rationing out nectar so that those in the most need could have it. A food shortage rushed over the entire province as food reserves molded and were eaten by pests, as well as by a passing Satyr child who liked sticking his tongue into fae granaries for the sweetness they contained. The instability raged, as fae fought fae for just a bite to eat, and yet the elite guard stayed loyal to Lilijip Pippilip and defended him through the riots of the evening of day 402. By day 403 the fae of the VSS figured out how to make locust legs and magic snail slime just palatable enough to be eaten, and the VSS got to work regenerating the local ecosystem. It was a grueling couple of months of chewing on grey snailmeat, and of course the loss of teleportation had it’s own negative effects. Many fae had grown accustomed to the immediacy of teleporting, and many diverse international friendships ended, because it was impossible to continue them without regular visits. Communication over the post was simply lesser. By Lilijip Pippilip’s death on day 432 he had grown so dedicated to the rejuviation of nature that he had even allowed the return of some spiders, given that they could prove they weren’t also insects. He left a hopeful Nation to his heir Strippinkip Pippilip IV, a nation on the right track back to prosperity. Strippinkip Pippilip IV continued Lilijip Pippilip’s legacy of environmentalism. In his lifetime he managed to get the Emilian, Duriform and Angigglion empires to sign the “Binding Contract of Nopey Wopey No Magic, No I won’t sir, I won’t” a legal document that bound the empires to treat any organized group of fae overusing mana as an enemy in addition to outlawing some of the most mana intensive hexes and spells. To its credit, the message on environmentalism stayed locked in the fae subconscious, ever after and there is no record of the fae overusing mana for the rest of their history.
