The Fae have been core to the concept of Stars Reach since close to the very beginning. They are central to the core storyline of our universe, in ways that you are learning about in the recent lore story “Staying Grounded.”
In thinking about their visual appearance, it was important that they not be “space elves.” They are meant to be faerie, inspired by Celtic myth, and an important part of the science-fantasy aspect of Stars Reach. There’s a great wellspring of myth and legend to pull from there that is far more interesting than the sanitized and streamlined elf from D&D, which is basically a way less mystical version of Tolkien.
One of the earliest pictures I had in my head was of the character Bram from “Staying Grounded” – a massive hulk of a fellow, with tiny wings that really didn’t do much. In fact, I kind of envisioned him looking like Alley Oop. Just with those tiny, useless wings. This is because for any given one of our archetypes, I always want to play with subverting what one expects. I want players to come to the characters and instantly see a personality that they resonate with – a sort of “breakfast club” menu of characters: a jock, a goth, a slacker, a nerd… and then have the room to explore all the ways in which people are just not that simple and easily put in a box.
This here is one of our earliest key art pieces for the entire game, back when we were thinking about what the vibe of the universe was, and what gameplay might actually look like. You can see many things that would serve as core to the game: fantastical landscapes, weird but cute creatures, a player market, interacting via tools… and a Fae.
You’ll notice in these first two images that we tried out blending sci-fi elements in the core of the species. In the lore, the Fae do not have a homeworld – they have been living hiding in the ducts and crevices of the vast Servitor ships that roam the Garden tending it for the long-vanished Old Ones. They have wings, but they cannot fly – they are apparently vestigial. So early experiments involved adding bionic prosthetics to them. But that then looked like they could all fly after all, so that fell away.
Of course, elves exert a powerful gravitational force. Visually, it’s hard to get away from them, and as we were designing, we kept creating things that didn’t satisfy visually. We kept landing back at, well, space elves. In fact, we’d even get concepts labelled ELF. I kept having arguments with the artists, and eventually pulled out my Charles Vess, Arthur Rackham, and of course, one of my several copies of Froud & Lee’s Faeries, and sent around the bits that seemed to me most representative of our aim.
The key things that I was looking for were more of a sense of that otherworldliness. Elves in media have become very human over the years. The thing that was creatively exciting about Fae was the ways in which they could convey deep mystery, because we needed them to carry some of the central mysteries in the lore.
We needed pointier chins! Less Orlando Bloom and more wood spirit! More sense of magic, even though there isn’t any in our universe! In our lore, the Fae believe that their lost homeworld is Tír na nÓg, and that magic once worked there and they could fly. The rest of the Transplanetary League basically considers this to be a religious belief, but it needed to feel real and true to them, and to players who would choose to embody them.
For a while, we overcorrected, and actually had magic leaking out of them in various ways. That didn’t really work for our setting, though – our universe is often silly and often mystical, but not quite that mystical.
We explored concepts that were basically Tinkerbell, which was closer in some ways, but didn’t offer anywhere near enough visual differentiation from humans. But we were iterating closer over time, and bits of these concepts started finding their way into our iterations.
We got closer to capturing the sharpness of features, and the wings, and the otherworldliness, but the eyebrows seemed maybe a bit much.Part of the idea, after all, was to have a Fae who might be a spaceship mechanic, covered in grease, wearing goggles and carting a welding laser.
Having glowing magic bits hanging off of them led us to exploring more fantastical looks that conveyed their magical beliefs, and from there led us all the way back to the Celtic depictions of sidhe with antlers and horns and other animal qualities. The butterfly wings were an interesting touch, but we decided they conflicted with our desire to have wings, which is probably the single biggest thing that we could do to make them look less elven.
So even though having them all have glowing blue eyes felt like too much, it started leading us towards our eventual target. We landed at having a spread of wings from dragonfly to butterfly, at echoing those Celtic horns, and even some remnants of that leaking blue magic that summons faint memories of blue woad, as markings on the antlers and as tattoos.
The other thing that we want to achieve is to have the Fae be capable of being small. Every MMO wants to have its super-short choice, and faeries are a good choice for that (we explored having “chibi” Elioni and Hyugons too, but ultimately, it felt like there were already loads of short catlike people out there and Hyugons felt like they wanted to be elongated, not squished!). They don’t all have to be short, though. It felt like instead, having the variability was one of the things that could make them feel special and different. Fae with antlers and without. A lot of wing styles. Which fits, in the end, with the faerie tricksters of legend, shapeshifting creatures of air and shadow, with whom you must bargain very carefully, if at all.
HOMEWORLD: lost Tír na nÓg
CULTURE
The Fae have a pronounced split between Ground Fae and Space Fae. Space Fae lived aboard the Servitor ships, hiding in the nooks and crannies and living off of the leavings. Ground Fae snuck aboard descending Servitors and went to live in the wilderness of the various planets tended by the Servitors.
Many, many Fae died to the indifference of the Servitors, until the founding of the Transplanetary League. Now they are known as the first of the spacefaring species, and also the only one without a known homeworld. Some insist they came from a land where their wings worked and they could fly, and to this day there is a House of Magic that passes down the traditions of supposed magicks and obedience to Queen Mab. But these days, most Fae just think of all that as quaint nonsense.
Perhaps because of their lack of a homeworld and embrace of what others think of as mysticism, the Fae on the whole tend towards good cheer and indomitability, and of course, a certain wildness of spirit. There is still much mystery in the saga of the Fae, and it may be that the only answers require pulling back the curtains of night and passing beyond the veil.
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