Close up illustration of a row of six small mushrooms with round caps in among some dark green moss. The mushrooms are glowing pale blue.
Safety Rating: Situationally dangerous.
Environment: Temperate Forests.
Fairy Circles: Each fairy circle fungus produces a ring of mushrooms that has a magical effect on anyone who enters it. They are called fairy circles because a number of fairy communities are heavily involved in cultivating and breeding them. As a result, there are many different varieties of fairy circle fungus, each of which produces a mushroom with a distinctive appearance.
The Glowing Blue Fairy Circle is a type of fairy circle with magic that can only be fully accessed by those who have formed a magical bond to the forest. Only characters that have lived in the forest for at least one year can form this type of bond.
Details: The mushrooms of the Glowing Blue Fairy Circle Fungus are pale blue with delicate, spherical caps on top of long stems. Glowing with a soft inner light, they form a ring that is fifteen feet wide.
All of the Glowing Blue Fairy Circles in a forest are connected. When the magic in one Glowing Blue Fairy Circle is activated, it teleports people and objects from it to one of the other Glowing Blue Fairy Circles in the same forest. Only people and objects that are fully inside the circle get teleported; people and objects that are part in and part out get left behind.
People with a bond to the forest have full access to the power of these Glowing Blue Fairy Circles. This means that there is no risk of magical side effects when they use a Glowing Blue Fairy Circle. In addition, they can activate and direct the teleportation of any Glowing Blue Fairy Circle that they are near, including activating and directing the teleportation of fairy circles from outside the ring.
Those without a bond to the forest can use their skill with magic or nature to activate a Glowing Blue Fairy Circle, however they rarely have any control over their destination. In addition, there are frequent magical side effects. Generally speaking, these side effects are designed to both be deterrents for using the fairy circle without a forest bond and be something that the fairies who created the Glowing Blue Fairy Circle thought would be funny to watch.
Lore: Certain types of fae have the ability to form a profound bond with their forest. Among other things, this bond gives them complete control over all of the Glowing Blue Fairy Circles in the forest. With a thought they can activate or deactivate any fairy circle. They can also can make a fairy circle go dormant so that no one can use it and they can lock the destination of a specific fairy circle so that it will only teleport people to a specific location.
Historically, during the Great Forest War, groups of resistance fighters used Glowing Blue Fairy Circles to move around quickly. As a result, their use was banned and attempts were made to destroy this type of fairy circle. However, even at the time, these efforts were largely unsuccessful and today, with the ban lifted, the use of Glowing Blue Fairy Circles is commonplace in many temperate forests.
Knowledge Rolls: When a character first perceives this distinctive type of fairy circle, they get the opportunity to make a Nature roll to find out how much they remember about it. Note that if a Glowing Blue Fairy Circle is hidden, the characters will first need to spot it before they can make this knowledge roll.
- 0 Successes: A failure means that the character only remembers that Glowing Blue Fairy Circles were banned during one of the historic wars. They can’t remember why.
- 1 Success: A partial success means that the character remembers that all of the Glowing Blue Fairy Circles within a forest are connected and that they allow people to teleport from one to another.
- 2 Successes: A full success means that the character remembers that people who are bonded to the forest can use its Glowing Blue Fairy Circles to teleport around without risk of failure or side effects. While people without a bond can activate the magic of these fairy circles, they are rarely able to control their destination and there are frequent random side magical effects.
- 3 Successes: An outstanding success means that the character also remembers that certain fae have the ability to form profound bonds to their forests that allow them to activate and deactivate any of the fairy circles, make them go dormant, or lock their destinations to specific locations.
Using the Fairy Circle: People without a bond to the forest can use either their skill with magic or nature to activate a Glowing Blue Fairy Circle. If someone with a bond to the forest is nearby, the bonded person can direct the activated fairy circle to take the player characters to a specific location. When a bonded person isn’t directing it, the destination of any non-locked fairy circle is random. Note that a quick google search for “random number generator” produces many useful tools that can be used to select a random location.
Activating a Glowing Blue Fairy Circle without a bond to the forest is either a Nature or Arcana skill roll. Characters that are specifically trained in the use of Plant Magic or Transportation Magic are considered prepared on this roll.
- 0 Successes: A failure means that teleportation doesn’t happen and a random magical side effect occurs.
- 1 Success: A partial success means that all of the characters and objects that are fully within the fairy circle are teleported to a random location. As they arrive at their destination, a random magical side effect occurs.
- 2 Successes: A full success means that all of the characters and objects that are fully within the fairy circle are teleported to a random location without any side effects.
- 3 Successes: An outstanding success means that all of the characters and objects that are fully within the fairy circle are teleported without any side effects to the specific location that they desire (or the nearest place with a Glowing Blue Fairy Circle). Alternatively, the player characters are teleported to a random location and they receive a useful magical effect, such as healing, magical flight, enhanced senses (they are considered prepared on Awareness Skill rolls), or magical language comprehension. With the exception of healing, these magical effects are temporary and last just long enough for them to be solidly useful.
Random Magical Side Effects: This is a list of ten of the random magical side effects that can happen when the player characters try to use a Glowing Blue Fairy Circle. Unless otherwise specified, these effects last for one scene. This list is numbered so that they can be selected with a random number generator. That said, there is nothing wrong with choosing a specific side effect that will be particularly fun for the group.
- There is a burst of fire and everything and everyone inside the fairy circle is singed, with smoke coming off more flammable objects. One object is actually on fire. It starts small at first, but grows. The characters need to act fast or the object will be destroyed. This fire can be put out by mundane means, such as water or a stop drop and roll maneuver.
- Everybody inside the fairy circle starts glowing the same pale blue as the mushrooms. While the characters are glowing, it is much harder for them to be sneaky, meaning that they have a one die penalty to using the Stealth skill.
- The ground beneath the player characters is suddenly covered in a slippery sheet of ice that completely fills the fairy circle. Moving on this ice requires an Acrobatics skill roll to avoid slipping and falling.
- All of the people and objects inside the fairy ring start levitating three feet off the ground. This levitation is different than flight, as it suspends them in the air without giving them a way to propel themselves. If the characters want to go anywhere, they will need to improvise ways to move themselves around.
- Long, entangling vines sprout out of a person or object.
- The mushrooms in the fairy ring start shrieking a loud alarm noise.
- The fairy circle is filled with a powerful spinning vortex of air, like a mini-tornado, that threatens to knock the characters over and rip objects out of their hands.
- All of the sounds in the area around the fairy circle become amplified. Quiet sounds are easier to hear, and loud sounds are overwhelming. Unless everyone in the area is being quiet, it is hard to discern anything through the cacophony. This means that when loud sounds are happening, there is a one die penalty to any Awareness Skill rolls (Insight, Perception, and Survival) that involve hearing. In addition, this sound amplification makes it easier for anyone in the vicinity of the player characters to hear them.
- The mushrooms continuously zap anyone inside the circle with painful, but harmless, sparks of static electricity.
- A large number of animals are called to the area. Each animal that arrives sits down and stares silently at the player characters. If anything dangerous comes at them, the animals move out of the way, but afterwards they immediately sit down and resume staring.
The Glowing Blue Fairy Circle is part of the Crossroads Setting for the tabletop role-playing game, Magic Goes Awry. Click here to go to the list of wild and whimsical magical plants from the Land of Crossroads.
