Beiran

With pale-blue skin and white hair, the wicked beiran fey are among the most unrepentantly cruel of the First World's spawn. Commonly called ice fey, these wintry tricksters are sadistic and without remorse in their desire to spread the cold wherever they go. Beirans find freezing temperatures to be the most comfortable; the fact that other creatures suffer under such conditions is part of the fun. While a single beiran is unlikely to change the temperature of a given space by more than a few degrees, they're highly social creatures, and it's uncommon to find fewer than a few dozen beirans at any one time.

Though beirans are unapologetic in their rude nature, there's one type of creature they'll bow to and take orders from with no questions asked: winter hags. For reasons unknown, beirans are particularly subservient to these hags and will often flock to one in large numbers. Under a winter hag, the fey will make a bad cold snap worse for a suffering town. Fires will be extinguished, wood ruined, food stolen, all of which suit the mysterious tastes of the winter hag and her preference for joyless landscapes. What the beirans receive from this relationship is uncertain, though some fey academics believe it's possible that the first beirans were created by winter hags, much in the same way that the green men created leshies.

While beirans are most common in northern lands such as Irrisen and the Land of the Linnorm Kings, they also have a surprising presence in the Shining Kingdoms. When Queen Elvanna of Irrisen opened up portals to the Eternal Winter of Irrisen, several of them arrived in the town of Heldren in Taldor, and even today, some still haunt the woods around it. Eighteen years ago in Falcon's Hollow, a particularly nasty batch of beirans were involved in the Carnival of Tears, an icy circus that left many townsfolk dead in its wake before adventurers dismantled it. Winters in Kyonin are often heralded by swarms of fiend-touched beirans flooding in from the Tanglebriar, leaving the Wylderhearts on fey duty for months at a time.