Pucks

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A well preserved, ancient illustration of a Puck, now extinct.

Overview

Pucks (Commonspeak), also Leor (Feyspeak \ˈlɔr\ for enough), were a Fey species native to Arcadia. They were the sole species of The Forgotten Court, ruled by The King Who Never Was. Unlike other Fey species whose Courts were dissolved, the Pucks are truly extinct, erased so completely during The War of Erasure that they did not re-form, do not dream themselves back into being, and do not linger as echoes.

Among the Fey, Pucks are remembered not as a lost people, but as a missing one.

History

Shattered Age

Pucks came into existence in the early Shattered Age, circa NIR 420, with the founding of The Forgotten Court. That Court pursued Strange Meaning through chance, luck, and circumstance, asserting that meaning emerges not from intent or structure, but from the outcomes no one planned.

The Pucks embodied this belief as creatures improbably favored by coincidence, survivors of situations that should have ended them.

War of Erasure

During The War of Erasure in the Dark Age, around NIR 1350, The Forgotten Court was annihilated by the Diothu Bri enacted by Lolth. The King Who Never Was was erased entirely, along with his Court, his philosophy, and the Strange Essence of Condition itself.

The extinction was instantaneous and absolute. Every Puck ceased to exist at once. Unlike other Fey, they did not dissolve into dream, return later, or fragment into lesser forms. They were removed from reality as though they had never been.

Dawn Age

In the current era, Pucks exist only in memory, record, and speculation. No living Fey has ever encountered one since the War.

Cosmology

The Forgotten Court held that Strange Meaning arose from luck and circumstance. Survival itself was treated as proof that events mattered, even when no reason could be assigned.

The annihilation of the Pucks is often cited as the ultimate refutation of this belief. When the Strange Essence of Condition was erased, the Court’s philosophy lost all footing. If circumstance itself could be denied, then luck had no domain in which to operate.

Pucks are the only Fey species whose Strange Meaning failed so completely that it could not even preserve their return.

Society

No Puck society exists, but Fey scholars and historians have proposed several theories about what The Forgotten Court may have been like.

Common speculation suggests that:

• Puck society lacked hierarchy, relying instead on chance encounters and improvised roles.
• Leadership may have shifted constantly, determined by coincidence rather than authority.
• Rituals likely involved wagers, gambles, and deliberate exposure to danger.

None of these theories can be confirmed. Records of the Court are fragmentary, incomplete, and often contradictory, as though even memory resists stabilizing around the erased.

Ecology

Pucks appeared similar to Fairfolk, but perpetually unlucky in demeanor. They bore signs of minor misfortune: bruises, swollen lips, bandaged fingers, bloodshot eyes, and the exhaustion of someone who had just narrowly escaped disaster again.

Nothing about them was grotesque or extreme. The effect was cumulative rather than shocking, a portrait of persistent bad luck survived rather than avoided.

Ironically, Pucks were renowned for legendary resilience and improbable fortune. No matter how dire the situation, they always seemed to walk away, battered but alive. This quality made their total extinction all the more unsettling.

Among the Fey, it is sometimes said that the universe itself finally caught up with them.