The Fields Behind is a transitional realm between the Near and Far Dreaming, within the Vale of Mists and part of the larger Fields.
Overview[]
Also known as "the Back of the Fields," this transitional realm is the best known of the ones between the Near Dreaming and Far Dreaming. On their peripheries, the Fields Behind are quite similar to the rural towns and isolated communities that endure on Earth: a world of small but satisfying homesteads where everyone knows everyone and family runs deep. As one travels dreamward along the trods, though, the communities grow more eccentric and unlike their human counterparts.
Beyond the Vale, all signs of Banality disappear. Chimerical entities affiliated with the land and natural phenomena become more and more common. The trod-roads grow older, simpler, and more derelict, eventually becoming unusable for vehicular travel. At this stage, the traveler knows that they have left the Near Dreaming behind and are now walking the Back of the Fields.
A small but important community of kinain has emigrated to the Fields Behind over the decades, some brought here by their Kithain relations as an alternative to death. Generally, the oldest ways and forms of the peasant lifestyle are preferred here over the ephemera of modern life. Toward the deepward core of the Fields, even the kinain live the fairy-tale lifestyle of villages, cottages, and simple festivals in the midst of a boundless, wondrous wood.
Chimerical inhabitants of the Fields typically have taken leave of the Earth for more fully faerie communities. Most take little interest in earthly things as the weight of time and death in that place saddens them. Some are eager to accept newcomers from the Nearward, welcoming them as fellow exiles; the occasional chimera even holds travelers, against their will and "for their own good," in order to prevent the newcomers from wasting their lives on Earth. Others in the Fields struggle to keep their homes quarantined from all encroachment of the banal, and they do not take kindly to Nearward strangers who might bring the plague of time to their villages.
The Fields do not partake in politics, though particular sections of the Nearward periphery do pay fealty to the various lords and ladies of the earthbound realms. The true Fields Behind could be considered almost wholly commoner territories, ruled only by the oldest laws and traditions that bound the common folk and chimera alike before the return of the sidhe. Noteworthy exceptions tend to be those chimerical towns that yearn for "proper" or "Earth-fashion" rule by sidhe or other truly fae suzerains. These towns organize quests to find nobles worthy enough to rule over them, and often kidnap or coerce likely candidates. The results never seem to make the townsfolk happy, however.
Most of those villages too sensible for this silliness are governed by Grandmothers, ancient chimerical (or Bedlam-bound) women who serve more as advisors than rulers.
Mythic History of the Fields[]
There are few, if any, legends focusing on the Fields. Their proximity to the Flesh Realm has caused their history to be more tightly entangled with that of Earth than with that of the Dreaming. Except for accounts of the early lives of Arcadian heroes born in the Fields Behind, the epic histories of the Green and Black Compendia are silent about this faerie hinterland. The cataclysmic wars between the Arcadian Houses and between the sidhe and the fomorians had only minor effects out here on the periphery of the Dreaming, which is how the Fieldling Folk prefer it.
The nature of this realm excludes any appearance in it of the truly "epic" or the cosmically important; the Fields are not about the overarching events that shape history, but about the insignificant, homespun trivia that collect to form the everyday world of the Dreaming. If a humble, commoner faerie is born in today's bleak times the birthplace is most often somewhere in the Fields near Earth. If a simple but nourishing Dreamstuff must be harvested or Crafted, the Fieldlings are the likeliest providers. In fact, the secret recipes for the creation of truly nourishing faerie food (as opposed to the tasty but ultimately non-nutritious stuff commonly manufactured from Glamour) are unique to the Fields. The Fields Behind are homespun but hearty, unobtrusive but substantial, qualities that suit their inhabitants perfectly.
The Glamour of the Realm[]
Magically speaking, the Fields are strongly connected to the everyday rituals and tools of human peasant life. Treasures, like the Sharpened Ears, tend to include such things as butter churns, featherbeds, and screwdrivers, and ceremonies tend to focus on food and handicrafts. Noteworthy natural affinities are the Cow and the Sow, vegetable magic (especially that pertaining to grains and other crops), and the weather. The Fieldling Folk are among the best chimerical weather-workers in the whole of the Dreaming and have many tricks and little spells for predicting rain and sun. Because birds tend to be antithetical to the Fields, the Scarecrow is a particularly common enchanted object, and many trods leading to the realm are guarded or otherwise inhabited by members of the tribe of Scarecrow.
Dream Landscape[]
Because the Fields resist the creation of especially interesting sites, the realm itself appears remarkably homogenous: a vast patchwork of small homesteads, connected by dusty lanes and bounded on all sides by progressively wilder brambles and river gullies. From time to time, the homesteads cluster together into a faerie village or town, but the majority are isolated cottage holdings inhabited by one or two extended families of commoner faeries.
In the Flesh Realm, the major geographic distinction in such an agrarian landscape would be that produced by crop diversification. However, the Fields resist such rational classifications. In an apparently nonsensical pattern that would be impossible closer to the earthy world, cornfields alternate with wheat fields, rice paddies, barley rows, and even those rare grains unique to the Dreaming.
However, it is, appropriately, in the fields that the true geographic wonder of the Fields presents itself in all its splendor. Each grain field of the realm is a molded and flattened unique pattern of circles and spirals. Together, they resemble nothing so much as agricultural hedge mazes or traditional knot-work. On festival nights, the Fieldlings gather to dance around these circles and weave from field to field, from spiral to spiral.
Of all the hearts of the Dreaming, the Fields feel most intensely the weight and time of Banality. Vast tracks of this realm are continually being pulled down to the Earth, where they are incorporated into earthy reality or destroyed. The dispossessed Fieldlings crowd into neighboring territories and add to the refugee population, thus straining Fieldling society even further. The process is a vicious one, growing inexorably in speed and fury.
The most salient signs of this rot taking hold in a homestead are the appearance of television antennae and the disappearance of the crop patterns. Once these signs begin only the wisest Fieldling can determine the quests to heal the stead and preserve it from Banality.
Fieldling Folk[]
As with the land, so with the native folk. The chimera who inhabit the Fields Behind tend to oppose the idea of fame or adventure; otherwise, they would have left their safe cottages in search of same. While there are local heroes and villains, wise folk and notorious fools, they are noteworthy only within their own immediate village... in the next town over, there will be different names of renown, similar but unique in their own small ways. Grandmother Ella in one village is similar, but not identical to, Grandmother Eola in the Next, and both are slightly different from Grandmother Elka in the third.
Magical personages common to the Fields include Scarecrows, Potatohead, and other Vegetable Folk, some Dolls and domestic animals, and an unlimited variety of Devis, giggly Shrubberlings, Zephyrs, Pebblings, and other such small and spritely Edible People, each type governed by its own Little Parliament.
Cows & Sows[]
The only important social distinction within the Fields is that between Cows and Sows. Difficult to explain to outsiders, Cows and Sows appear to fill, somewhat, the role of the Seelie-Unseelie dichotomy within the largely "Seelie" Fields, and tend to provide an arena for competition and social change. Membership in one faction or the other derives from a Fieldling's primary choice of livestock. Those homesteads that raise faerie caste for meat and milk belong to the Cow and celebrate certain Cow festivals; those homesteads that raise faerie hogs belong to the Sow and adhere to the Sow calendar. While Cow-Sow affiliations rarely cause animosity or open conflict, members of each faction tend to socialize with "their own kind"; if asked, many will discuss the "obvious philosophical differences" between Cow and Sow at length. Regardless, the two lifestyles appear nearly interchangeable to non-Fieldlings.
Perhaps the most important distinction between Cows and Sows in the autumnal dream of the current age is that the newcomers (hippies) to the Fields tend to be Sows, while the oldest families (farmers) tend to be Cows. In many of the Nearward villages, the recent influx of Sows has strained tempers, as the long-established Cows feel threatened and outnumbered by their rivals. Cows paint these new arrivals as destroyers of the simple environment that the Cows labored so long to build. Sows can expect to be treated with suspicion and even a degree of rudeness until they make their intentions known.
The Fields & the Denizens[]
The Fields Before[]
The part of the Fields before the Vale of Mists, the Fields Before are a traditional changeling stronghold and have weathered attacks by Thallain, wicked chimera, and Denizens alike. A place of relative safety, the Fields Before were both strengthened and weakened by the influx of changelings after the Resurgence. Most commonly inhabited by pooka, boggans, and other sociable changelings, the Fields Before have long been considered among the most "civilized" realms in the Near Dreaming. Things have changed considerably since the opening of the Twilight Roads. A week of fiery storms passed through the region, wreaking havoc upon its residents' simple way of life. Fire, black tar-like water, and strange chimera rained down from the sky, poisoning crops and sowing fear and dissension. These were followed by news of savage attacks abroad. Outlying homesteads in the Field Behind (in the adjoining Far Dreaming) have played host to gruesome massacres as redcaps, emboldened dark-chimera, and even worse creatures attacked from the Bullydale Wastes and beyond. Now, in many parts of the Fields, changelings and other civil chimera board up their windows and doors at night. Once welcoming strangers with open arms and fulsome hospitality, many here have become suspicious or downright hostile.
The Fields Behind[]
Formerly civilized, in less than a year after the Week of Nightmares things changed considerably in the Fields Behind. Bandits travel through the countryside. Formerly benign chimera have taken an ugly turn. Large raiding parties from the Bullydales have slaughtered entire towns, casting a dark pall over the land. Unable to control the growing chaos, some towns took to vigilante mobs to maintain order. Traditionally commoner in governance, some desperate communities have even turned to the sidhe for help. It isn't strange to spot Red Branch or Balor knights or Scathach abroad in the land. The region's strangest defender is Anasta-dal, a "Seelie-minded" female fir-bholg knight. Although viewed with suspicion, she is known to have saved several Fieldling towns from certain destruction. Rumors of gathering armies in the Bullydales and of movements in the dark forests beyond mean that few can genuinely complain of her protection.
Few Denizens come to the Fields. Most changelings remember the War of Trees, at least in legend, and are suspicious of those not in the recognized changeling fraternity.
References[]
- CTD: Dreams and Nightmares, p. 65-67
- CTD: Denizens of the Dreaming, p. 30-31