Appearance
Sprites about a foot and a half tall; very tall ones might reach two feet, short ones only a foot. They have smooth skin but long hair that comes in a variety of colors and shades. The vary, too, in shape of the eyes and ears.
Sprites have wings. These fold in seamlessly so that when they go on foot a casual observer would not know these were winged people. The wings are nearly transparent.
These people are long-lived, reaching three hundred years or so. They are considered children until age fifty. They don’t have individual birthdays. Rather, all sprites become a year older at the autumn equinox. This makes for a memorable party.
Society and Economy
Unlike other races that are defined by where they live or their affinities, sprites are defined by their trades. A sprite community entails all sorts of trades, but within a family only one trade is followed. The primacy goes to the eldest, male or female. The second becomes a scholar of that trade and enters a school.
Sprites rarely have more than two offspring, but if they do, the third becomes a freewing. She or he gets a stake of sparkles and is sent out at maturity (fifty) to find his or her own way in the world.
Their trades are defined in ways other people find peculiar; for example, maker or finder or weaver (but this covers far more than just cloth). Outsiders tend to put labels, such as locksmith or tanner, onto sprites, who in general don’t take offense at it.
Once they reach maturity sprite are expected to take up a trade, marry, and make a family. Having one child is sufficient, but the expectation is to have two. If the woman does not conceive after ten years, she can take on a second mate. This one is not called husband, only mate. All children born are in the same family, regardless of parentage. A mate must not have his own family. If the husband dies, the mate becomes the husband. If the woman dies, the man remains a widower, unless he is childless, in which case he can take on a new wife, though it’s difficult. There’s a social stigma associated with being a childless widower.
Men and women alike raise the children. Their trade at that point is parent. They are cared for by the rest of the community. The adults can have a hobby, but it is not a trade.
Once the last child reaches maturity, the adults are expected to find their own trades. They might stay together, or they might find new partners. As elders, they can have whatever partners they wish, but their trade is set. They have twenty years in which to select a trade, a stage of life considered by all clans to be quite dangerous. These are the sprites responsible for most of the mischief inflicted on the World Beyond.
Outsiders call them trades, but the spritish word translates more like trade/art/vocation. Sprites are fond of words that have three shades of meaning.
In the free/undisciplined/tradeless phase, sprites are the most likely to go to war. They are quite fond of war, for it is a chance to show how terrifically clever/strong/lucky they are.
Money the way humans understand it does not exist for sprites. They barter. They will barter even with coins, but it’s the intrinsic value of the coin that is traded, not the numeric value on its face.
The uneducated among humans or dwarves frequently mistake sprites and pixies. It is unwise to make this mistake in the presence of either. Elves tolerate the fae, treating them rather like an ill-mannered cousin.
Sprites belong to clans, which are numbered one to eight. These clans are related not by blood but by adherence to common ideals. These ideals are expressed more consistently than they are followed. Exactly what those ideas are varies with time and place, but the variance is apparent only to outsiders. Sprites regard themselves as being utterly consistent.
History
The earliest record we have of sprites is no earlier than our first records of other fae, including elves. Many people assume sprites accompanied elves in the great flotillas, but there’s no evidence for this, not even in elvic or spritish legends. Indeed, the first evidence we have of sprites is archeological and dates from after the Age of Dragons. This has led some scholars to believe sprites are a product of that age, a wizardly creation. It is not advisable to tell this theory to a sprite.
Sprites themselves write no history, so what we have mostly are collections of spritish folk tales along with clan lore. The latter is regarded as private; so much so that what we have written down is third-hand at best.
Religion
Sprites do not believe in gods but they do believe all living things have a spirit. Not all spirits are benevolent, though, so sprites have a whole mythology that tells what is harmful, what is beneficial, and what is more or less neutral. Indeed, their moral vocabulary extends in more directions than it does with ogres or elves or even humans. The result is that many people tend to regard sprites as unreliable, even shifty.
Magic
Sprites can do things others cannot, and some people call that magic. Sprites do not. For them, magic covers most anything others can do but they cannot; for example, the ability of merfolk to dive deep, or the ability of humans to construct complex machines.