Faellem

The Faellem are a fictional human species from Ian Irvine's arc of novels, The Three Worlds Cycle.

Characteristics

The Faellem are a small, dour people with translucent skin and golden eyes.

They are very long lived and their powers with the Art are mostly in the form of illusion, deception, confusion and enchantment. The ability to "link" is a talent that can only be inherited from the Faellem.

The Faellem are descended from the original people of the world of Tallallame. Their world is considered to be the most beautiful of all the Three Worlds. The Faellem see all places to be but a shadow next to the beauty of Tallallame, and because of this, have alone of the four species, never made a home on Santhenar. On Santhenar they dwell in the boggy land of Mirrilladell because it is sparsely populated and because on Tallallame the Faellem had lived a mostly tribal life.

All Faellem children learn to play the nanollet at a young age.

Leadership on Santhenar

Faelamor was chosen, before crossing the Void to Santhenar, to be the leader of the band of Faellem who would venture to that far off world to hunt for The Golden Flute and to keep watch on the disturbing Charon. Faelamor's main rival in gaining leadership was another Faellem woman by the name of Hallal. Hallal was somewhat different in character to Faelamor and if she had been chosen to be leader, it is likely many things would have been different. The events of "The View from the Mirror" may not even have come to pass.

Genocide

Tallallame once was home to two distinctly different species of human. One was the small, dour Faellem. And the other is a forgotten species, the tall, dark Mariem. The two species rarely interbred and the two societies could not be more different.

Both species were very long lived. The Mariem built great cities, cut down trees and dammed rivers. This greatly disturbed the Faellem, who loved their world and could never condone harming it in any way. The Faellem noticed how the Mariem were able to use their Art to travel great distances using magical gates.

The Faellem knew that with the rapid expansion the Mariem were undergoing, that they themselves would soon dwindle to nothing, and that they must do something to stop it. The Faellem gathered their most powerful mancers together and experimented with the use of gates. When the Faellem mancers had mastered that form of the Art they used their mastery of the mind to cast a great illusion over the entire population of the Mariem to make them believe they were going through a gate to a wonderful world of their own. Instead the Faellem envisioned a place of violence and brutality and sent the Mariem to their doom. The Faellem had no idea that such a place existed and that was where the Mariem would end up: The Void.