Fey-Tale is a dark modern paranormal fantasy setting for story-driven games that incorporates themes from fairy tales, myths and legends of the supernatural integrated into a modern world of dystopian horror.
The modern world as we know it today (mostly) is the backdrop for Fey-Tale stories. The Veil, a powerful and ancient glamour, hides the magical world from the mundane. The Veil is created and powered by The Fey Accords, a series of magical agreements between five ancient, and prominent powers. The Accords put harsh punishment upon any who tear The Veil and reveal magic to the mundane world.
In Fey-Tale, the Powers-That-Be (PTB) treat humanity like a natural resource; we human-beings are planted, grown, and harvested. Gaia, the collected super-being of all life, imagination, consciousness and materials that make up the biosphere of the Earth and the realms that surround Her is the soil upon which crops of human souls are planted. Imagination, consciousness, awareness, dreams all feed the many intangible realms that comprise Gaia, and with each new crop of humanity that rises and falls, Gaia grows.
There is a certain, horrible beauty to the Fey-Tale world; a magical ecosystem full of predator and prey, crops and wild-things, that grow and feed upon one-another. The horror of Fey-Tale is not in the system, a beautiful, precarious balance of natural forces, the horror of Fey-Tale is in the individual stories of the relationship between predator and prey. Though it may be a manifestation of natural order for a predator to hunt and feed upon prey, the process is one of horror and suffering for the prey, and Fey-Tale, by placing the masses of humanity squarely in the role of prey, touches upon that horror.
Vampire families infest the criminal underworld, running human trafficking to feed their hunger. Shape-changers, the tribes of the moon, control the entertainment industry, leveraging supernatural good looks and health into financial and social power, their bestial impulses dismissed as bad behavior common to the rich and famous. Ancient walking dead hold corporate strongholds, leveraging fortunes amassed across generations into multinational wealth. Fey move in and out of Arcadia, terrorizing unsuspecting travelers to sate hunger for mischief and predatory needs. The Hosts, powerful beings myth names angels or demons, manipulate human sentiment, fighting with one-another over human indulgence executing some long-term plan that benefits from the human spirit.
Even those Wise humans, awakened into magical power, forge their own power-bases to hold against the other members of the Accords. As members of the Accords, the Wise are not defenders of humanity, but instead seek balance between the factions. The Wise, like each other faction, have their human serfs, servants who fall under their protection and the rules of the Accords. Some Wise treat their serfs well, others, as slaves.
There is no greater forces for good in the Fey-Tale world; only systems that seek to maintain themselves, and the brave souls who try to do good in the face of them.
To ensure that each of these forces is under constant pressure, Outsiders creep into reality, their cults rising up dedicated to long-lost gods and foul creatures, foes to all sanity, enemies of Gaia and all realms surrounding her. Outsiders are the natural enemies of creation, spreading chaos to whatever they touch, infecting the very fabric of reality. All those bound by the Fey Accords and The Veil are compelled to resist the Outsiders, confront them, even die fighting them to protect the crop of humanity growing across Gaia. Wherever Outsiders penetrate existence, members of The Accords, mundane humanity and even the very land itself twists and grows powerful with madness, chaos and destruction.
The Outsiders are the blight that threatens the crop of human souls and force the factions to maintain The Accords; should The Veil ever fall, and the balance between Faerie and the mundane world shift, the gap would be a place into which Outsiders may creep to threaten the very existence of Gaia herself.
The Veil and Accords protect the shadow realms of Gaia and her resources, the secrecy of the supernatural world, relations between supernatural nations, and conserve use of humanity as a resource. The Accords may demand members rise up to oppose Outsiders and protect Gaia, but they offer no protection against the harvest of humanity that some supernatural beings need, so long as it is done in secrecy and the balance of powers is maintained.
Instead, the Accords protect the rights of supernatural predators to pray upon human beings every night until the dawn…and the awakened humans who join the Accords have to abide by their laws, even when trying to protect their kin.
Welcome to the dark modern fantasy of Fey-Tale.