All about fairies

Everybody wants fairies, the subsecret blackmarket catalyst for all kinds of horrible people getting their way.

Fairies are small & potent magic. Oftentimes captured and held in bottles to be used later. Fairies desire FREEDOM and being held in a jar for them is like being buried in a coffin for you. They'll do anything to get out, even grant minor wishes. Their magic is contingent on their freedom which is why captured fairies are powerless to escape and need someone bigger to free them.

Fairies are cute and sweet and gentle on the surface and totally fucked up and manipulative on the inside. Secret lore: it's impossible to be friends with a fairy. They're really just biding their time to fuck you over. The longer they wait the more they secretly hate you and want you dead. They'll wait around until justthe right moment then turn the dirt under your left toe to water, causing you to tumble off a precarious ledge.

So really, you shouldn't feel bad when you squeeze out fairy guts into your mouth like candy from a sausage casing to get your spell slots back for the day. They're kinda assholes.

Everybody uses fairies if they can get them, which is nearly impossible (plenty of wizards have tried to automate the process, to the greater or lesser suffering of all life).
Goblins use fairies to grow into ogres for 2d12 minutes. Dwarves expend fairies to get a boost of creativity. Orcs use fairies to appear as normal humans and sneak into castles. Wizards use fairies to get a nefarious edge on their rivals, who are likewise using fairies as expiremental fuel sources for trans-demonsional portholes.
Plucky halfling adventurers in green tunics use fairies to heal their wounds.

Where did fairies come from? Fairies are to elves as dogs are to humans. They've always been together. Elves brought fairies to this plane with them as they fled their collapsing dimension. Fairy abuse is just as taboo in elf culture as it is for dogs in ours, but the reality is (just like our's) most of them have really fucked up ways of using fairies.

You know, like how most people keep their dogs, who are freedom and exercise loving play machines, trapped in their houses or chained up, never getting as much attention as they really need, never being properly trained or allowed to follow their instincts in a healthy directed way. Elves kind of treat fairies like that. But they get super mad when they see YOU doing it.

But it doesn't matter because elves suck.

(More on elves next time).

So fairies give PCs access to minor wishes or healing. They're about as rare as +1 magic swords in most OTHER people's games which means they're kinda common. It's like the default OOOSHINY treasure. If somebody finda out you have a fairy they'll try to steal it from you. Nobody's immune. Everybody wants something, even if its pure and selfless, it's probably also asking for wreck and ruin. Widows will steal to get their husbands back, amputees to get their limbs back, children to get some stupid trinket they want, assholes to inflict suffering on people they dislike, priests to make parishioners pay attention in mass, old ladies to bake nice cakes, hobgoblins to stop every human heart in a 5 mile radius.

Each fairy has a morale score of 2d6. Roll under for friendship over for mayhem. Every time somebody is a dick to the fairy reduce their morale by one. Nothing raises a fairy's morale because fairies dont want anything except for you to immediately set it free and ask nothing in return.

When somebody makes a wish on a fairy make a morale check. If you roll over they might grant the wish with a condition, warp the meaning, or add some other kind of magical mayhem mishap or mutation. Like, you get your sight back, but also your head is now a fly's head lolbye.

If you roll under the fairy just does it and its all cool. Then it disappears in a puff of glitter.

As stated before eating fairyguts straight from their neckhole, yknow by wringing them into your mouth tongue sticking out like a rag of neon koolaid, heals you completely and restores all your spell slots. 1 in d12 chance the fairy got off a last wish that does something horrible to you.

Wild fairies are proud and tribal and can often be reasoned with. They are hesitant to use their powers to help you, but will often trade useful information or rumors for seemingly mundane or benign things, like a dram of saltwater, a small crystal, a silver spoon, a bit of smoked meat, a brass screw, or worse, something that isn't yours to trade, like a lock of the local cowmaiden's hair, or a buzzard's whisper.

Elven outposts tend to be surrounded by fairywoods, places where fairies are freed to playfully wreak havoc. If you wander into a fairywood reality will bend and warp, subtly at first, growing more extreme the more attention you bring to yourself until ice catches fire, the stars wink out, the directions vanish, all sound becomes color, and standing still is the same as moving. This is why it's impossible to reach an elven settlement without powerful magic or an invitation.