Exalted: Fair Folk

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So far the Circle have discovered two very different kinds of Fair Folk, or Raksha, in their corner of creation - those dwelling in the First-Age Research Station on the outskirts of Miraculous Union Village, and those currently emerging from the Grey-Eye Penninsula.

The Research Station
An Unshaped Raksha dwells within the old First Age research station near Miraculous Union Village, That which preceded Nolquieth, who is referred to as Who quests in the mirrored hall. It claims to have been a friend of the Solar Exalted in ages past, a lover, a companion, a partner. It is introspective, claiming to pass its time seeking for its true name - which those learned in the subject may know that the unshaped do not possess. It explores its own desires and needs via its emanations, and the lesser fair folk that embody the facets of their personalities. Over the millennia they have resolved - for now - into four factions.

The Djinn

 * Nulvuq - The Djinn of Thematics (Who had their own recently developed pet and would not look kindly on anything that threatened to out-do or tread similar ground)
 * Rek the Djinn of Novelty (Prone to flights of fancy)
 * Axe-Eater the Djinn of Monstrosity (Who didn't seem to actually care about the beasts themselves, but did care about the quality of the arguments involved.)
 * Stacy the Djinn of Unassuming things. (Who just wanted a leg-up on her opponents)
 * Flamberand the Djinn of Technicalities.(Who wanted justifications, rules and reasons before approving anything)

Talos
A multi-headed, winged creature created by Hephastia during the final challenge. Its heads were an amalgamation of snake & spider features, its body was that of a bear, and it was flew with the aid of eagle wings.

Spear-Empress Bhadri
"Like a hole burned into the world in the shape of a woman..."Taking the form of a creature from the folk-stories of the Peninsula people, also known simply as The Huntress, Spear Empress Bhadri is a humanoid woman standing so tall that the trees come up to her waist. With skin blacker than any natural darkness, long white fangs, a belt and necklace of trophies of her past victims and a single baleful eye in her forehead, merely looking upon her from a distance via magic drove the medicine-man Luko'o Mwabe catatonic with fear, and almost did the same to Reeds Whisper when he looked through Luko'o's eyes. Even more worryingly, Bhadri turned and faced Reeds as he looked upon her, as if she was aware of him scrying towards her.

In the original stories she would choose a quarry and pursue them relentlessly, and inevitably claim her prey. Decades ago, a group of young teens including Lukha Palash trespassed into the heart of the Issyk jungle to drink and dare one another to go near the Grey Eye. Inebriated, Lukha stood before the portal and jeered that "I bet five... nahnahnah TEN talents of Jade that some fair folk won't reach out of the eye and grab me!" before spitting into the wyld. Somewhere on the opposite side, the entity that became Bhadri accepted the deal. Fortunately for the young Lunar he and his friends were chased off from the eye by Issyk hunters trying to warn them, who were annihilated instead when the Empress lashed out from the portal. Spending the following years (of mortal time) binding the five Rakshasa courts that would serve her, Bhadri emerged from the Grey Eye with her armies and attempted to hunt down the - now grown - Lukha.

Bhadri was an Ishvara, a being of terrifying power, but she had miscalculated by choosing a form so focused on completing the "deal" she had struck. At the final confrontation with her quarry and the Solars who were helping him, she caught her prey, but was thwarted by the Solars who pointed out that she had broken the terms of the agreement - she had crossed the threshold, and not reached through and grabbed him - and thus her hunt was illegitimate. Cheated of her prey, Spear Empress Bhadri returned to the Wyld, leaving her armies to their fates, but made a dire prophecy against the Solars who had stymied her:

“This land will fall, but not by my hand… though I and mine will make much sport of it before the end. I promise you this: you will be the instrument of your own destruction."

The Clockwork Caliphate
Wheels within Wheels... When Reeds and Daxi of the Solar Circle came to the Little Peninsula, they found the last of the Yensei refugees being chased over the hills by an outlandish army of Raksha. Three hundred and sixty warriors (Abdullah) of gleaming brass-coloured metal, marching in three flanks (Buraq), each of which is made up of four regiments (Dhikir) formed of five packs (Muezzin) of six warriors. These warriors were a strange amalgamation of gears and spokes, long bladed arms and whirring sawblades. At the centre of these three wings are two mysterious structures, Nasir & Tusi that rotate around a central machine - a gigantic spinning drill-shaped point, covered in blades with some kind of structure on top. This structure sporadically shot some kind of electricity out to the walking pylons that each regiment rotated around. Each of the five packs walked alongside a strange machine like a headless horse that channelled the Caliph's energy and instructions to the Muezzin.

Ibn Sina, The Clockwork Caliph
The central machine, a great spinning drill, contained an inner chamber lined with cages filled with the victims of its mind-devouring powers toiling away at machinery designed only to make them suffer, watched by a panopticon of lenses and filled with hadith cylinders that recorded data gathered. After the structure was destroyed by the self-destruct sequence, whatever force was animating the Caliphate as a whole escaped as a trail of smoke that headed back to the Peninsula.

Psygotwyr, the Emissary of the Court of the Ascendant Insect mentioned in passing that the Clockwork Caliphate's reason for accepting the call of Bhadri was a seething hatred for the "noise" of all the thoughts of mortals in Creation. Having been defeated, this ambition will never come to pass as the Grey Eye was closed while he recuperated his strength back in the Wyld, and he is not strong enough to break through on his own without help from within Creation.

Al-Zahrawi, the Chirurgeon
Inside the central chamber patrolled Al-Zahrawi, an obsessive xenocidal Raksha surgeon that monitored the slaves - occasionally pulling one out to "examine" (Read: vivisect) - and record data onto the hadith. Was destroyed by the Solar Circle when they stormed the Clockwork Caliphate.

The Kaaba - Jibril, Azrail & Israfil
At the centre of the Clockwork Caliph were three colossal tablets, each one controlling a different part of the Caliphate. Azrail, the Scythe of Harvest, gathered samples and data from the captives and surrounding environment. Jibril, the Signal Flag, transmitted the data back to the Wyld and received incoming transmissions. Israfil, the Horn of Command, controlled the Abdullah through the Muezzin pylons. While the three were attended to by their servitor arms, when the Solar Circle broke into their inner chamber and began firing upon them from outside their reach, they initiated the self-destruct sequence rather than give their intruders chance to plunder their data.

The Song of Flesh and Blood
While travelling along the Little Peninsula Reeds and Daxi saw some colossal writing wyrm of flesh pushing its way past Guimen and Hontari, heading Southward into the mainland. What was this host, and why were they heading away from the rest of the Wyld and the Bronze Tide they were pursuing? The answer would confound and horrify the already-troubled Solars.

The Flesh Wyrm
The central being of this host of creatures appeared to be a gigantic maggot-like Wyrm of flesh, that the Solars saw pushing its way through the jungle. Once it passed through the villages all the residents in them at the time followed it in a strange, writhing march. When the Solars finally came upon the Wyrm, however, they found it motionless at the mouth of the clearing on the outskirts of the villages, with its back split open as if something had climbed out, and with huge chunks missing from its flanks. During the ensuing battle with a hunting pack of Rakshasa the Circle came to a horrifying realisation: this wyrm was some kind of cocoon of flesh, into which the villagers had been absorbed and remoulded - still alive and conscious - like clay into new forms that could rip loose from the bulk and operate independently. After the hunting pack were driven off, the Solars tried to put the flesh to rest, only to find they could not... because the flesh was somehow still alive. With little else they could do, the party could only burn what was left of the wyrm's corpse and hope that was enough to kill it

The Many-Faced Worm & the Walking Furnace
Marching ahead of the wyrm was a strange biomechanical creature that appeared to be some kind of furnace, with a fire in its mouth and a smoldering chimney rising out of its back. It walked on six legs rather like a horseshoe crab or lobster. From the evidence found at the clearing, this furnace walked into the centre of the clearing... and seemingly disappeared. Some in the Circle hypothesized that it had somehow crossed over into the underworld through the shadowland, but with time pressing them they could not stop to investigate further.

The fisherman and his son, both residents of Hontari who were offshore fishing when the Song came through their town, witnessed some kind of smaller wormlike creature (still colossal when compared to a human) came back along the path the Wyrm had taken. The son claimed that it was holding a chest full of books, which it was holding and reading with the scores of faces and arms along its flanks. This creature was last seen reentering the ocean and swimming back towards the Peninsula.

The Marquis and his Dogs
It was as the Solars examined the Wyrm's carcass that they were set upon by a scouting party of the Song of Flesh and Blood's main host. A Rakshasa warrior, wearing several still-living villagers as a suit of armour and riding a man stretched into the shape of a horse, led a pack of villagers similarly warped into a pack of hunting dogs.

During the ensuing battle it became clear that the Rakshasa could not only absorb the "dogs" that were too wounded to fight, but could also draw more of the flesh from the Wyrm's carcass to form more dogs. Most horrifyingly of all, wounding these creatures caused the Solars to experience flashbacks of the prior lives of the mutilated people, who were indeed the villagers that had been absorbed into the Wyrm and remoulded, and were somehow still alive and conscious even as they were driven to attack the Solars.

After a gruelling battle most of the dogs were dismembered, but seemingly still alive somehow, but the horseman was severely wounded and retreated with the last of his dogs into the jungle. The Solars were left with more questions than answers: how many more Rakshasa had been born out of the Wyrm's remains and now prowled the jungle? Would the Rakshasa they had fought still be waiting for them upon their return? Or are there even individual Rakshasa as a part of the Song of Flesh and Blood, or are they just amalgamates of the warped flesh and broken minds of the villagers... and any other prey they happened to find in their hunt?

Later, in a vision granted by Psygotwyr the Emissary, Hephastia saw the Marquis; having "slain" one of the broken-off flesh hulks and attempted to burrow into it in some failed attempt to re-join the flesh, it lay curled up in the torn up gore, weeping with its stolen eyes.

The Court of the Ascendant Insect
While briefly scrying across the Cinder Isles, Reeds saw an army of troops with a swarming cloud of creatures flying over their heads. This was the Court of the Ascendant Insect, a strange facsimile of a mortal kingdom that revolved around its leader - a colossal, alien slug named Psygotwyr, the Emissary and his courts of Locust Knights, Beetle Knights and Moth Ladies, and their seemingly endless armies of termite foot troops called Myrmidons. These had been the most dominant force in Bhadri's army, sweeping over the Pelith and Mygdon territories and conquering the island of Kanilah, and their vanguard even proved more than a match for the Circle when they fought at Teteiwa. But even as the Court prepared to overrun Leotha and by extension spread to Baruntulga, Psygotwyr reached out to the Solars... to negotiate the terms of it's surrender. The Emissary had, upon becoming aware of its surroundings and having reached out with its psychic powers, realised there were other terrifying forces at work in the Wreckers Coast region, against which even it could not prevail. But having calcified into material form so completely they could not return to the Wyld without being destroyed, even if the Spear Empress would suffer to see them go. In exchange for declaring prophecy on how the Solars could thwart Bhadri and gifting Tokumei, Reeds and Hephastia with visions pertinent to their current predicaments, the Solars allowed the Court to settle in their new capital of Caerleon, where they now teach themselves how to be a mortal civilization.

Notable members of the Court of the Ascendant Insect
Psygotwyr, the Emissary and his steed, the colossal whip-scorpion Hengeron

Earl Parzifal, the Locust Knight who shot Daxi and Tokumei out of Hephastia's tornado, and his wife Lady Ygrane the moth.

Baron Hengise the Goliath Beetle, and his bannermen Duke Boers the Rhino Beetle and Seneschal Ector the Stag Beetle

The Vale of Slumber
Symbiotically tied to the Court of the Ascendant Insect is the Vale of Slumber. This court is unlike the others as it takes the form of gargantuan, alien plant life that spreads through the use of spores carried by the Insects. This seems to sacrifice that insect's life, as they are compelled to climb to a high point and spread their limbs as tendrils burst from its flesh and further spores rain down from it over the area. Judging by the clusters of Myrmidons in the ruins at Kanilah this is how that island fell, and the spores were almost spread to Leotha via an unknown Locust Knight but for the vigilance of the Tide who burned any insect bodies they found. Quite how these plants feed is unclear, although it seems to have something to do with the mysterious mounds at the feet of the giant plants tended by the insects, and where the name comes from is unclear. However, it does appear that it cannot spread indefinitely, as it is now confined to Kanilah... for now. In return for being spread by the Insects, it appears to allow its flesh to be "woven" into gossamer by the insects, who use it to craft their wares and potentially for trade.

Prince Zalak of the Wavecutter Chariot
Another army of the Rakshasa was never seen by the Solars; the Bronze Tide told them that one of Bhadri's armies had submerged themselves in order to pursue the fleet from beneath. However, something happened to them - according to Psygotwyr, some dark terror within the ruins of Njorlona - had destroyed them utterly, leaving only chunks of flesh and sheets of blood upon the surface of the ocean for the birds to squabble over.

The New Bordermarches
Having been conquered so utterly by the Fair Folk and the portal at its heart torn open, the lands of the Grey Eye Peninsula themselves have become corrupted by the Wyld. These shapes the lands took are echoes of the thoughts of the people who inhabited them, like the Courts that pursued them were their fears, but from a twisted reflection of their desires instead. The Issyk fiefdoms became a roiling, endless avalanche of coins in great ever-shifting dunes. The Mygdon kingdoms came alive and began prowling the praries as colossal beasts held together by their inhabitants trapped forever in a churning mass in their cores. And the Pelith steppe... no one knows what has become of them, for no-one has yet returned from them alive. Only the Issyk Jungle avoided this fate, but only because it became the domain of the Spear Empress, an oppressively dark and near-inescapable hunting ground where she could wield the nightmares of intruders against them.

Others
As the Grey Eye was closing, Reeds and the others glimpsed still-more armies of horrifying, shapeless terrors coming towards the portal from inside the Wyld. Were these still more armies of Bhadri's, some third wave to spread destruction still further? We will probably never know, as Reeds successfully closed the Grey Eye before they came through.