The Feywild

What it is. The Feywild—also called Faerie or Isan Meidan—is a parallel “echo” of the Material Plane where nature is louder, magic runs hotter, and emotion literally reshapes reality. It is the cradle of the fey and the ancestral homeland of the first elves and eladrin.

How the plane feels and works

Senses & mood turned up to 11. Colors gleam, scents bite, music carries, shadows deepen. Your feelings affect the world: grief can sour streams and wilt flowers; joy can call fox kits to your heels or turn drizzle into glittering mist.
Geometry lies. The Feywild broadly mirrors Toril’s geography but distances refuse to stay consistent. A day’s march out might be an hour back—or a week. Natural landmarks loom grander; mortal cities often barely register.
Time cheats. You experience time normally, but when you return home it may be days, months, or years later—or no time at all. Lost years can “catch up,” striking a traveler with exhaustion, starvation, or even death. Non-fey often forget parts of their stay.
Magic is amplified. Arcane effects tend to be stronger, stranger, and longer. The plane is saturated in enchantment, and magical anomalies are common.

Crossings & phenomena. Travel relies on fey crossings (hidden doorways aligned to matching sites on both planes) or ancient byways called fey crossroads that open with the right ritual, riddle, or rhythm. Motes of concentrated planar energy, feywild sparks, drift like living stars and tempt collectors. On Toril, the barrier thins seasonally (e.g., Fey Day in Waterdeep), when accidents and invitations across are most common.

Where the Feywild sits in cosmology

Early Great Wheel. Faerie was a coexistent Outer Plane uniquely coterminous with the Prime: no Astral detour needed, few (if any) links to Ethereal or Shadow.
World Tree (late 14th century DR). Faerie seems absent or distant; bonds with Toril weaken amid elven Retreats and fading gates.
World Axis & beyond (post-Spellplague). The Feywild returns as a full parallel echo of the world (paired to the Shadowfell), with thin walls, overlapping regions (worldfall), and guarded links to astral dominions like Arvandor, Deep Wilds, and the Gates of the Moon. After the Second Sundering, the Great Wheel vernacular returns but the Feywild-as-parallel persists.

Origin myth. Primordials “edited” the newborn world—peeling away its too-bright, too-wild essence to form the Feywild, and its too-dark cast to form the Plane of Shadow (later the Shadowfell).

Peoples and politics

Fey & eladrin. Eladrin are elves who never left Faerie; over ages they soaked up its primal magic and built enduring citadels (Astrazalian, Mithrendain). Many elves of Toril still keep coexistent footholds (Evermeet, Evereska, New Sharandar) at points where the planes overlap.
Courts of contrast. Most fey drift toward one of two poles:
- Seelie Court of Titania (and often Oberon): radiant, gracious, etiquette-obsessed, still mischievous; they rarely admit non-fey.
- Unseelie Court of the Queen of Air and Darkness: macabre beauty, cruel sport, and prickly hospitality; paradoxically more willing to elevate mortals who amuse or serve them.
  Many fey owe fealty to neither and instead serve disparate archfey—Hyrsam, the Prince of Frost, and others. Hags and fomorians are generally unwelcome in both major courts.
Other denizens. Goblin nations (notably Nachtur), ogres, giants, blights, harengon (rabbitfolk blessed with luck), faerie dragons, and echo-creatures of Prime species. Below lies the Feydark, home to tyrant fomorians and their cyclopes host.

Places to know

Cities & strongholds

Astrazalian, City of Starlight — an eladrin port ruled by Lady Shandria.
Mithrendain, the Autumn City — built to cap a perilous way down into the Feydark.
Cendriane — vast eladrin ruin, now a playground of the vampire lord Kannoth.
Shinaelestra — a “fading” ranger-city that slips between planes and worlds.
Evermeet — heartland of elven culture; spent a century in the Feywild and now coexists with Toril and Arvandor.

Realms & regions

Brokenstone Vale — a lycanthrope kingdom built by outcasts; offers boons to werefolk that the Prime cannot.
Iliyanbruen — elven survivor-state (heirs of Illefarn) that reclaimed Feywild ground by the sword.
Nachtur — the labyrinthine goblin empire of the Great Gark.
Sildëyuir — star-elf demiplane often treated as a Feywild precinct mirroring the Yuirwood.

Feydark powers

Mag Tureah — the gemstone-lit megacavern throne of King Bres.
Harrowhame — salt-quarried palace of King Bronnor.
Vor Thomil — the cruel court of Queen Connomae, where captives are mocked as “courtiers.”
Realm of Malabog — a belligerent fomorian king who pushed his conquests up to the surface.

Domains of Delight (archfey demiplanes)
Independent, emotion-shaped pocket realms that wax and wane with their patrons’ power and passions. The best known is Prismeer, once ruled by Zybilna, shattered by the Hourglass Coven into Hither, Thither, and Yon. Within it lies Fablerise, the story-snared wood curated by Yarnspinner, a colossal tale-weaving spider.

History with Toril (very short)

Earliest ages. Circa −34,000 DR an ancient fey “creator race” guides early sprites, pixies, and korreds. By −27,000 DR vast elven migrations cross from Faerie: avariel, green elves, lythari, and the eladrin progenitors of modern elves. A disaster on Tintageer flings more gold and silver elves to Toril.
Drifting apart. Ritual calamities and local betrayals (e.g., the Susurrus severing a Heartlands wood, −2549 DR) loosen ties; many fey abandon Moonshae isles (−500 DR). Sharandar, capital of Iliyanbruen, is pulled back into Faerie.
Spellplague & reunion. 1385 DR: the Feywild snaps close to the world. New crossings bloom; Evermeet and Sildëyuir shift into Faerie. Eladrin resume close contact with Toril (Evereska, Sarifal). Malabog later schemes with Valindra Shadowmantle to breach Neverwinter via New Sharandar—adventurers end that plan.
Second Sundering. Bonds remain intimate; Evermeet coexists across the Prime, Feywild, and Arvandor.

Bestiary snapshot

Courtiers & tricksters: sprites, pixies, satyrs, redcaps, dryads, meenlocks, quicklings, blink dogs, eladrin.
Wilder powers: unicorns, treants, eladrin knights, archfey emissaries, hag covens.
Underrealm terrors: fomorians, cyclopes, cave-wights, horrors unique to the Feydark.
Curiosities: fungi with properties—eldercaps, Executioner’s Hoods, hummingbrellas—and drifting feywild sparks.