Greetings.
Stumbling over the great Fey Feature articles after a long time, I decided to 'fabricate' my own version of the standard fey that seems to compose the population, or at least the nobility, of the seelie and unseelie courts. Basically I transformed the quite powerful half-fey template into this separate race. So far I'm quite happy with the race and would like to hear your opinions. 
Sidhe (seelie and unseelie)
· Dex +2, Wis +2, Cha +4.
· Medium size.
· Fey type.
· A sidhe’s land speed is 30 feet.
·Immunity to sleep spells and effects, and a +10 racial saving throw bonus against enchantment spells or effects.
· Low-Light Vision: An sidhe can see twice as far as a human in starlight, moonlight, torchlight, and similar conditions of poor illumination. She retains the ability to distinguish color and detail under these conditions.
· Weapon Proficiency: Sidhe are proficient with all simple weapons.
· +2 racial bonus on Hide, Listen, Search, and Move Silently checks.
·Spell-Like Abilities: A sidhe with an Intelligence or Wisdom score of 8 or better gains spell-like abilities. The caster level equals the sidhe's character level. Save DCs, where applicable, are Charisma-based (10 + spell level + sidhe's Cha modifier).
|
Character Level |
Spell-like Ability gained |
|
1st |
Charm person at will, hypnotism 1/day, faerie fire (unseelie) or glitterdust (seelie)1/day |
|
3rd |
Detect law 3/day, enthrall (unseelie) or sleep (seelie) 1/day |
|
5th |
Protection from law 3/day |
|
7th |
Confusion (unseelie) or emotion (seelie) 1/day |
|
9th |
Eyebite (unseelie) or lesser geas (seelie) 1/day |
|
11th |
Dominate person (unseelie) or hold monster (seelie) 1/day |
|
13th |
Mass invisibility 1/day |
|
15th |
Geas/quest (unseelie) or mass suggestion (seelie) 1/day |
|
17th |
Insanity (unseelie) or mass charm (seelie) 1/day |
|
19th |
Otto's irresistible dance 1/day |
· Automatic Languages: Common, Elven, Sylvan. Bonus Languages: Draconic, Gnoll, Gnome, Goblin, Orc.
· A sidhe has damage reduction 5/cold iron. The damage reduction increases to DR 10/cold iron at 10th level.
· Favored class: Sorcerer (Bard, Druid).
· Level adjustment: +2
· CR: +1
To get back to the planes themselves, I'd be grateful for some information about the faerie plane (in 2nd and 3rd edition).
Also I'm curious about the nature of Titania & Oberon and
the Queen of Air and Darkness. Wikipedia lists them as deities, while
in the fey feature article they seem to me more like very powerful, but
non-divine beings. I could imagine that this is the lore before the
introduction of the faerie plane, but maybe someone here can tell me
more about it.
).
Maybe Empress is what you want?
I'd remove the Con penalty. Low Con is an incredible rarity among fey (their only score that ever seems to be low enough for a penalty is Strength), and these guys will already be hurting for hp thanks to the LA as it is. I'd also swap the alignment-themed SLAs for something else. They didn't make sense when included in the 3e half-fey template, and they don't make sense for the sidhe described in the Fey Feature (note that the Seelie court encourages lawful behavior, and that aside from the Seelie prefering law and the Unseelie chaos, ethics get largely ignored).
As to your conceptual questions, I recommend checking out Songs of the Sidhe (at Dicefreaks), the whole point of which is to tackle the contradictions you found and turn them into a consistent whole that suits play in the Great Wheel. You would probably find the introduction, "The Geography of Faerie", and "The Politics of Faerie" especially useful. A note on the geography: we added on to it, but the section called Annwn is more or less exactly how Faerie is described in the 3e Manual of the Planes. (Sorry for the blatant plug, but the material is what you asked for.) As far as D&D sources go, we drew primarily on the Fey Feature and Monster Mythology for inspiration. In addition, we have pulled a lot from world mythology (Celtic and others).
We see Titania et al as Powers, though not conventional gods. Running with the unusual traits noted for the sylvan gods in Monster Mythology, we depict them as distantly presiding over the lesser fey but not being worshiped by them. They don't have clerics. Really, they are closer to older renditions of the archfiends, which saw them as planar rulers who contest the gods in raw power but don't operate much like deities and have different interests. The fey, as nature spirits, have lords who concern themselves with nature almost like demon lords concern themselves with evil.