What is the point of Fairy Hunting?

Hey everyone! I was wondering something about one of the two major occupations of Felarya, Fairy Hunting (the other being adventuring). I know many people consider it a joke, but there have been a few successful hunters. I was wondering how do you actually hunt a fairy? I've seen some art of failed fairy hunters and they appeared to have a butterfly-like net. I have also read on the wiki that a kind of rare plant can drain their magic away. While the plant theory (or another magic draining material) makes sense, what about the butterfly net? Unless they have rules similar to fairies like on the Fairly odd parents where fairies lose all magical ability once in a net, it doesn't make any sense as they can change their size to escape.

Also, how would you get paid? I'm assuming its like a bounty hunting system and each fairy has a price. I was wondering if, after capture, if they are taken alive or killed? Both would work, kill it for revenge and so it won't escape, or keep it alive so it can be studied for more anti-fairy measures.

I'm interested in what you say!

No, Dragon.

Fairy hunting with a net is, in fact, supposed to be a joke. Unless the net damages the wings (or you very quickly put the fairy in a jar and then screw the lid on top really tight), all it really does to fairies is annoy them: the pictures of fairy hunters that do it with nets are just Karbo being silly (though I like to think Felarya has a few people sharing the Darwin award every year).

As far as I know, you're the first to think of bounties for fairies. So far, we've assumed that fairies are hunted for their wings, not for their evil deeds, and most certainly not for the need to study more anti-fairy measures on captives. It's also been assumed that you need 'em alive, otherwise, set them on fire and you're done.

As for how to hunt a fairy, there are many ways. There's the plant that stops them, there's the plant that stops them from shrinking you, there's the bird that stops them from shrinking anything just by being close, there's bugs that don't care about magic, there's the mushroom you can eat and it keeps you at your size, there's the element of surprise, there's traps that don't trigger their predator sense, there's inhaled poison, there's the gun that shreds wings, there's the dryad that gets them to stop thinking... there's anything you can think of.

Brainwash a fairy, make her your pocket minion. Sound a lot useful than a giant naga or a giant dridder who cannot enter settlements without causing uproar. But first, you have to catch a fairy.

Well, there are quite a lot of reasons to hunt fairies. Not only are they an extremely rare and potent ingredient, but think of the applications of having a live fairy! They are often rightly feared as the most dangerous hunter in Felarya--note that I said "hunter", not "creature"--and mages would love to figure out how their magic worked. Or what about having a fairy shrink stuff for transportation, or growing food in Negav, or as a deterrent to predators.

Picture a fairy in an isolated cage, that is used to shrink predators, like a head of Medusa? Dangerous and cruel, but I do not doubt prey wouldn't resort to this.

Oh, and then there are the people with a grudge against them. Yep, those would hunt them some fairies as well.

The captured fairy would be bound to people who want use her with either magic or something life-threatening (a magical collar that will cut off her head if she tries to grow giant, for example).

Btw, while fairies can be used to shoo away small fries, they cannot shrink something that are too big. Say, a giant naga, for example. Still, asking them make you too large for a predator to eat is a nice idea, though.

People bearing a grudge... like captain ahab and the white whale? Well... if i was to hunt for oversized dragonfly wings - get a crossbow, go for the head - end of story. Or even better: a rifled wheellock-witchhunter-gun. And then go for the head. I bet thus magic they aren't to survive a blasted skull from a .500 projectile: "Oops - I really didn't see this coming..."

Catching a fairy alife - hm... ever thought of really strong sedativa or a relaxans on a small dart? Such as from a safari guy hunting and marking lions? 'Spakk!' Hohooo... thar she goes down! Of course if she awakens again you better can tell e really good story - or you are so busted, it doesn' t look real...

^Fairies, in people's stories, are often bottled into anti-magic bottles, so that they cannot use their magic to escape and take revenge on their captors.

I believe that the less a fairy gets wounded (especially her wings), the higher price the captor will make by selling her.

Ok, have anyone thought about this? A fairy-wings making factory where caught fairies are gathered in a magic-sealing area, have their wings harvested, get fed until their wings regrow for the next harvest.

Yeah, I know it sounds cruel, but if humans do not consider fairy as people, they will feel to abuse them as they please when they have the chance and the means, especially when it comes to making profits.

Yes - give a Human enough financial Dreams - and he might come up with something like a big Tin Bottle full of compressed Air and a sleeping Powder in it.

FAFFFFFffff...

"Ohh... Lookit her - when she falls out of the Sky, she looks almost... cute and harmless."

"Yeahyeahyeah... FINE! Now help me wrap her up in this Spidersilk-Rope. Or she will let YOU and ME fall out of the Sky. From very high above."

I am partway through making a drug/drink to capture fairies with I call it feysoon. it uses a mix of feyweed and oosoon berries mostly to make a phermone laced drink that drives fairies to want it bad enough to trap themselves in a bottle of it.

There are tons of stupid people, both in real life and I imagine felarya. I mean just look at some of the ways people try to break the law in real life.

I think fairy wings, while poisonous, carry huge magical and alchemical properties, and thus would be worth a lot to the right people.

And if something is worth anything decent, people will try to acquire and sell them, no matter how retarded their plan to get them is.

I also imagine the same sick things that go on here on Earth would happen in Felarya. I am talking about sex trafficking, so I am sure some individuals on felarya may want to capture all kinds of species alive for such things.

I think fairy wings were only poisonous in the Calabi-Yau verse by Petite Emi. And it has nothing to do with Felarya.

Could be wrong, though- depends on what Shady last revised.

I never heard about fairy wings being poisonous until just now, so that never crossed my mind when I was revising their article.  I could have mentioned their wings fetching a high price on the market due to how magically potent they are now that I think about, though.  Woulda a been a humorous tongue-in-cheek reference to Karbo's drawings of people unsuccessfully trying to catch his fairy characters with butterfly net.  And besides, like Grave said, there's probably a couple of dumb schmucks who came to Felarya for this very reason without knowing what they were really signing up for. Maybe I'll ask Karbo to add that little reference.

I'd have to say the point of fairy hunting, is the same reason as any other near suicidal activity in felarya... riches or power

I always figured that Fairy Wings would be sought out as an ingredient by mages (assuming they still attain some of their power after being torn away from the fairy)

If this is the case, then the 'Isolon University of Magic' would need a steadily supply in order to teach their students Alchemy.

So perhaps it's the University that mainly employs Fairy Hunters.

Da Wiki wrote:

Alchemy - Potions, elixirs, transmutation, reinforcement and enhancement of physical objects, scroll crafting... Alchemy is all that. Pretty much any spell one can think of can be turned into a potion or a scroll. Quaff a high-level potion, and suddenly you can travel between planes of existence. The big drawbacks to any form of Alchemy is that it tends to require a lot of preparation. Trying to gather the reagents is never easy, but on Felarya, it's even more dangerous. Most alchemists prefer to let their assistants do this part of the job. (Protip: If your alchemical formula calls for fairy wings, go back to the drawing board and figure out a way around it, it will be probably better in the long run!)

I'm pretty sure, and by that I mean I seriously hope, that the big wigs at a university are smart enough to adhere to that last clause. You still have to pay the hunters for their services, and if you keep having to cycle through so many hunters cause they keep dying, it's going to drain the school's resources in the long run. Not to mention, it's bound to attract media attention somehow sooner or later, and once word of mouth gets out, The Negav Eye Journal is gonna have a field day which most likely won't be good for the university's PR.

I was under the impression that the Isolon University was funded by Ps'isol Magiocrats....as in the government, the authoritarian government. No newspaper would ever speak against them.

To be fair. I'm imagine death and recycling is going to have to be a common necessity in that culture. or period and Felarya. It isn't a world like ours. It's a death world. People don't have the life expectancy to live past 30 and if they due, they got used to the rules of the world and are surviving it or hiding it. So no shady, a big field day would be seeing one of the longest living elders die. Not some new recruit teachers, or ones that know the ropes averagely. (yeah they may live long, but their students later might think they'll die sometime soon of they stick around for a lengthily period)

And yeah i'm with dark. it's either funded by the nobles that support them or them themselves. As far as beign authoritarian. you can me manipulative and still be authoritarian. Freedom of speech is good way to gain control if you understand the mechanics of it. And it seems like the Magiocrats just like keeping their seats while seemingly giving people freedoms to keep the city afloat.

You guys keep forgetting that life expectancy inside Negav is a thousand times better than it is outside, so long you don't live either the underground or Cremona Maze, which is only two districts, so people can potentially live a very, very long time in most areas of Negav.  Where did you even get the idea that life expectancy in Negav rarely goes past 30 in the first place? Considering that one of Felarya's main features is its healing soil, that pretty much already discredits your claim, as far as life in Negav is concerned.

You also need to consider that since this is Negav we are talking about. Most people are aware that fairies are actually top-tier predators, so the most likely answer a hunter would give would be "We're not going out there looking for fairies, fuck you!"

I don't forget that. But you have to understand Shady, Negav is a social hub for survivors and foreigners even if it has quite a bit of a permanent populace. You have to look at it on the outside view too even if you are in Negav, you go out there your expected and have the thought process. "Question isn't how but when." And i get that from everything karbo points out when living outside a good town or city. i put my own number in there, but even with eternal youth since everything can eat you, it's safe to assume that 30 years of going up and growing isn't a bad estimate or guess on a deathworld and i might be being too lenient on that guess. it's also kind of pointless to mention that people live to be hundreds in negav, we know that, that's why Negav is still there. And now that you brought a point up since people know that faries are out there, the people looking for them are generally not going to live long. There apparently is a profession in fairy hunting according to karbo. So what you said isn't appropriate since people in that profession venerate on looking for faries, and yeah i can imagine some sleezballs wanting a title for rep gain. from it but the better thing to be saying is. "You'll go out, we look, we hope we find one, but once you see an open mouth, considered yourself dead and we don't give a fuck."

The thing with fairy hunting, however, has mostly, if not wholly, been in his silly vore pictures. There actually hasn't been any official confirmation of fairy hunting, or monster hunting as a profession as a whole, mostly because anyone in such profession in Felarya would be regarded as a complete fool. At best, these are freelance individuals who fancy themselves hunters, and probably know nothing about Felarya in the first place.

Or do, again with like most other things. it's there to build upon greatly. We just have to set rules and reasons of why such a profession exist. I don't know if Karbo wants to make it seem legitimate rather than silly, since in yours and my mind it would be seem cool and stupid if such people exist. However it's one thing to get out of the way should we try to make a plausible canon for it.