Faerie, Unseelie

Lussina, they called her. The Dark Queen. She held my spirit in terror and my son in thrall. Yet the more I think about her in the years since my near-death at her hands, the more she reminds me of a rebellious adolescent in an eternal temperamental snit. Albeit a dangerous, deadly adolescent.

—Faylene, 1421 HC

Unseelie faeries are a macabre host of evil and undead beings, the hideous counterpart of the Seelie Court. The Unseelie Court has its own dark queen and other “nobles” who manipulate the Seeming to ward their own sinister ends.

The Unseelie Court comprises two types of faeries: evil living faeries, and evil undead faeries. Like the seelie faeries, each is unique in size, shape, and form.

The evil that the living faeries carry within has corrupted their physical appearances. Their skin bears ashen tones, their eyes are sunken or blaze with the fever of malevolence, their bodies are withered or bloated. If an evil faerie has horns, they are twisted, if it has wings, they are leathery, if it has a tail, the appendage is barbed. Unseelie faeries are far more likely than seelie faeries to sport cloven feet or taloned hands.

Undead faeries are incorporeal phantasms of their former selves. Their eyes have no pupils—only blank, white-hot glowing orbs that seethe hatred.

Unseelie faeries are even more likely than their seelie counterparts to torment travelers just for kicks. Their tricks range from merely mean-spirited to seriously harmful or even deadly—particularly if the unseelie faeries believe their victims to be allies of the Seelie Court or otherwise agents of good. PCs may not even realize the source of the attacks.

The Unseelie Court wages an age-old war against the Faerie Queen and the Seelie Court. Characters may find themselves caught in the crossfire, enlisted (willingly or not) to aid one side, or trying to redirect the war efforts toward subduing a larger menace: the Cold Rider (assuming that shadowy presence doesn't win over the Dark Queen first).

Combat: Unlike their counterparts in the Seelie Court, unseelie faeries harbor no reservations about engaging in hand-to-hand combat. Peaceful encounters are rare.

Unseelie faeries always try to use their ability to turn invisible to gain the advantage of surprise. Once discovered by an opponent, their strategies vary.

Living evil faeries use their spells until they reach melee range. They can cast five of the following spells per day: any 1st- or 2nd-level spell from the charm sphere, destroy (create) water, entangle, faerie fire, protection from good (evil), putrify (purify) food and drink, shillelagh; badberry (goodberry), barkskin, obscurement, produce flame, speak with animals, warp wood; bestow (remove) curse, pyrotechnics, spike growth. In addition, they can cast seelie spell of forgetting an unlimited number of times.

In melee, they fight with magical (+1) short swords individually scaled to each faerie's size and carrying an enchantment that works only when borne by a faerie. If fighting nonfaeries, they also use their Seeming abilities, both offensively and defensively (see the “Faerie, Seelie” description).

Living unseelie faeries are immune to charms and illusions, but have several weaknesses. Iron weapons inflict an additional 3 points of damage per hit. Salt renders them unable to turn invisible for 1d4 turns.

Undead faeries close to melee range as quickly as possible. The touch of such a creature chills the blood and clouds the mind. For each successful hit, victims suffer 1d8 points of damage and lose 5 points from their perception score.

Undead faeries can be hit only with iron or +1 or better weapons. They are vulnerable to holy water, which inflicts 1d6+1 damage points per vial. They can be turned as spectres.

Evil doesn't fight fair. Even in what seems to have been a “peaceful” encounter with an unseelie faerie, travelers often walk away victims of a curse.

Unseelie faeries are matched only by their seelie counterparts in command of the Seeming and ability to see through it. Against nonfaerie opponents, they use it constantly to bewilder and intimidate their foes. Against the Seelie Court, however, they know such illusions are useless

Habitat/Society: The Unseelie Court is a hideous mockery of the Seelie Court—in a sense, the Faerie Queen's entourage as seen through a fun-house mirror. The Dark Queen (see below) and her followers reside in the Shadow World's most haunted, twisted forest. There, they plot against the seelie faeries and others they consider their enemies. Because evil seeks its own reflection and treachery breeds mistrust, the unseelie faeries see an enemy in nearly everyone they encounter.

The Dark Queen

The Dark Queen, Lussina, reigns over the Unseelie Court. The daughter of the seelie Faerie Queen, she once possessed beauty beyond imagining. But Lussina also possessed envy, ambition, and ruthlessness. She plotted to overthrow her mother and take her place as queen of the Seelie Court. She failed. The Faerie Queen, unable to bring herself to punish her daughter with a traitor's death, cast Lussina out of the Seelie Court forever. In a rage, Lussina gathered her followers together and formed her own court— with herself as queen.

Lussina, the Dark Queen: AC 3; MV 15, Fl 15 (B); HD 14; hp 81; THAC0 7; #AT 1; Dmg by spell; SA Seeming, spells; SD immune to illusions and charm spells, invisible at will, know alignment; SW iron, salt; MR 50%; SZ M (4' 4" tall); ML 16 (champion); AL NE; XP 15,000.

Notes: The queen has a Seeming score of 78 and a perception score of 90. SW— Iron weapons inflict an additional 2 points of damage with each hit; salt thrown on the queen neutralizes her invisibility ability for 1 turn; holy water burns her flesh for 1d6+1 points of damage.

S 11, D 17, C 17, I 16, W 13, Ch 19.

Personality: Cruel, calculating, seductive, megalomanical.

Spells under her command (6/6/6/5/3/2/1 per day): All priestly spells of the charm and necromantic spheres, plus destroy (create) water, detect good (evil), detect magic, entangle, faerie fire, protection from good (evil), putrify (purify) food and drink, shillelagh; badberry (goodberry), barkskin, obscurement, produce flame, speak with animals, undetectable (detect) charm, warp wood; bestow (remove) curse, create food and water, pyrotechnics, seelie spell of forgetting, spike growth, tree; hallucinatory forest, protection from good (evil) 10-foot radius, reflecting pool, sticks to snakes, tongues; false (true) seeing.

The Dark Queen has lost her comeliness but retains the allure of a black widow. Any male character who beholds her must immediately succeed at a saving throw vs. spell or fall prey to her seduction (per a charm spell). Lussina seeks not to seduce her victims sexually, however, but psychologically, trying to enlist them in her side of the eternal war she wages on the Seelie Court.

Lussina demands (and receives) absolute loyalty from her followers. She grants no clemency for the smallest of infractions; even harmless negligence is punishable by death. Her own life, she believes, demonstrates the folly of mercy—she considers her mother a fool for having spared it. The Dark Queen will not risk another traitor rising up to depose her.

The Unseelie Court continually receives new members. The Faerie Queen has no tolerance for faeries with evil tendencies—more often than not, the malevolent faeries she banishes from her court find their way to her daughter's.

Ecology: Undead members of the Unseelie Court come into being when a faerie (of any alignment) dies in a battle between the two courts. The horror of kin slaying kin creates a ripple through the Seeming itself, preventing the deceased faerie from dissipating into it. The creature's spirit becomes trapped, sentenced to eternally walk the Shadow World but stripped of the magical abilities it once had. It becomes an unthinking being, lashing out in anger and resentment at the living, held in check only by the Dark Queen.

Gremlins and imps (see the MONSTROUS MANUAL accessory) have been spotted among the Unseelie Court