What are fey? What is their world?

Now here's the thing, I generally know that aberrations have no connecting blood lines, world/plane, or any such thing ASIDE from BEING aberrations. Just like a snake swarm is not connected in any way to a spider swarm.

When it comes to fey though, I grew up reading and watching about the world of fairies, elves, magical plantation and other such things. When I see fey today, it strikes me that maybe they have no connecting world or home. Unless it was errata'd, pech are also fey and yet they seem to be a naturally occuring race that live underground. A magical world where pixies, leprechauns, sprites and nymps live that borders the material plane is what I envision when I think of the fey, that they come from a highly magical material plane kind of thing.

As for connections, would one fey care about what happens to another fey (I'm not asking as in are they heartless, I mean would they take it personally)? I know I can run them however I want, but I am curious as to what the usual DnD/PF view of fey are.

Also, what's the seelie/unseelie court?

The Pathfinder universe has a realm called The First World, a realm of pure, uncontrolled force that is like the Material Plane but wilder and more primal. Fey could be seen as forces of nature, both good and evil. They are spirits, they are the fair folk of Celtic mythology, and the children of beings similar to aberrations but quite different. They are nature in the purest forms, to the degree that only a druid or someone of advanced scholarly nature could truly understand.

The Seelie Court is from earlier D&D materials as well as originating from some mythology, the source of which I forgot. It's the court of fey royalty if I recall right, who are close to being deities of nature in their own right. The Seelie Court is aloof and usually not meaning of harm, but the Unseelie are dark, twisted fey who show the darker side of nature and take pleasure in destruction, corruption and torment. Most of them seem to especially enjoy hurting mortals and/or forcing those fey of the Seelie Court to switch sides, or just kill them as well.

Most of this information may be incorrect to varying degrees.

Greetings, fellow traveller.

In PF cannon, fey stem from the First World, a prototype world made by the gods. This was later split into the Material Plane where Golarion is found and the Shadow Plane.
Check out Pathfinderwiki on the topic and hope for Neil Spicer to stop by, he really digs fey!

Ruyan.

I think the same thing about fey in general, being a big fan of old European folktales and Tolkien's treatise on Faerie. And Froud's paintings. And every cable TV special or DVD on Fairies.

So I just assume a connection via that world, though the game doesn't provide it in game terms, per se.

Actually going back to 1st Edition, there was always just a hint of the Fey World, but not a lot I remember about it. For instance, certain female faeries in the Monster Manual are said to whisk human and elf males away to someplace, keeping them there for years, ostensibly as mates. But the manual never says where that "where" is. I assume it to be Faerie, as Tolkien described it, some haunted sort of world separate from ours, but into which we might roam at any moment as we walk along less-traveled roads.

Now, just because the rules are not specific on this, does not mean you cannot play it this way. I, myself, have used Faerie-like realms in my games. They are simple natural settings, filled with well-hidden Fey (sans elves, who are too "normalized" in the game for that sort of thing), and plenty of animals, nature-based spirits (elementals) and plant creatures, from which the PCs cannot escape, until they find some object, solve some riddle, agree to take something back to the "real" world, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is that using the Fey for what folklore intended, is a matter of campaign and world building, not rules-mining.

Thanks for the info guys :)

I wanted to give my players adversaries that were annoying but not something to kill. What I intended was that after capturing all the fey that've gone nuts in the town was that they'd have a place to send/take them back to, which I'm planning to make into an enchanted forest (world of the fey that borders the material world) where magical and dangerous things abound (though what I intend won't necessarily be what the players indulge in, they may actually simply slaughter them to make things easier).

Dot for interest.

Anyone else notice this upcoming product?

Give "deaths heretic" by James L. Sutter a try, if you get the chance. Not only is it a good book to read (albeit with a slightly mary-sue-ish and predictable main female protagonist) it also features some nice ideas on the first world and its connections to the material plane.