Fairies are just tiny elves that can fly

I don't agree. If you remove the human features then they're less effective in the role of the trickster archetype. Being able to relate to them on a human level is key to making them ambiguous, unreliable allies that the players should be ambivalent towards. No-one is going to trust a talking magical vortex or some weird tree/wolf hybrid that just appears in the woods. On the other hand a fairy that gets caught trying to steal a sausage from the campfire and offers help in return for their freedom (and a sausage) is more likely to go somewhere.

So when you got back to civilization, how many years had you been gone?

I hate that the relatability thing is true, humans are such shallow creatures easily swayed by a face that looks like their own, even though the creature that it belongs to is not of their kind. Which is why I would keep them largely inhuman, but allow them a guise. An adaptation they can use, like the insects of the Mimic films who could twist their body and assume a vaguely human silhouette from a distance when they are really anything but.

Touhou unironically has the best version of fairies.

So, which one is your favorite?

>Anthuria
Good taste.

Dude, that's PART of our civilization. If a senator can't claim some otherworldy heritage, they're usually laughed at or talked about behind their back. I think it comes from having our first emperor be descended from a lycanthrope...

lwedlves are fine

In the setting I'm playing fairies are another small race like gnomes or halflings. Their height is the smallest (ranging from extreme cases of 30cm to 100cm, averaging at 85cm) with elf qualities of extremely long lifespams (looking like children most of their life), wings on their back that vary between families (some are like butterflies, other are bat or other are like a cape) that may allow to fly or hover. Lastly they are extremely strong, for their size that is, they can hold and carry objects meant to be used by humans, like weapons, without much difficulty.

They are also disgustingly treacherous and evil as fuck

"Fae" isn't a real word, faggot.

Your autism is showing.

The only way for the relatability thing to NOT be true would be if humans were explicitly engineered NOT to look for the familiar.

Language, Velma! What would Daphne say?

That's true, and why I like to create creatures that exploit and prey upon that behavior. Create pressure for people to look for sapient creatures who are "more honest" about what they are visually, vs those who seek to deceive with the superficial comfort of faces that are closer to their own.

What’s so terrible about little girls with insect wings? I like them.

Faeries are why my butterfly collection are helt down with cold iron pins, no shapeshifting once stuck.

Where the hell do you buy pins made out of iron instead of stainless steel?

So you propose making them the same shit as elementals?, boring

They were never like that.

I make them myself, from bog iron, can't trust mass produced pins to be pure enough when dealing with the little winged fucks, just one batch tainted with nickel and bam your family goes to sleep and ban, they are found dead literally stuffed full of feathers.

I like the ideas of fey as manifestation, not of elemental forces but emotions, little balls made of dreams, nightmares and a simple emotion like joy/spite/envy/lust/gluttony, their entire existence centred around indulging it, encouraging it... and ripping anyone apart who'd hinder it.

Thats much better, simply associating them with nature is trite victorian garbage peddled by teosophists.