Leprechaun

Leprechauns are an ethnic group of fae-halfling mixers native to the islands of Neverland. They are descended from the fae, of course, and from a group of Quadlings who were thought lost on the Sea of Tears during the Wander Years between the First and Second Age.

After over 100 years, the Leprechauns emerged from hiding and shocked the halfling world by siding with the interloper Oscar Diggs during The Invasion of Oz. And yet, this so-called “lost tribe of halflings” would come to deeply regret their part in the whole affair.

Not only did the Leprechauns not get the land in Oz that Diggs promised them, they also struggled for centuries as a wandering stateless people. They were the subject of bigotry wherever they did roam. And their kindness and generosity—not to mention their magic—was abused time and again by those seeking money and power.

History

In the year 37 CE, after The Seven Voices sang the six-hundred and sixty-sixth iteration of reality into existence and all sapient species except for the halflings disappeared from Eden, explorers from all four tribes of halflings set out to more fully explore the purgatorial paradise which had been granted to them by the sister goddesses.

During an seafaring expedition which set out from Saltgate, a party of 56 Quadlings lost their way. As the descendants of mariners who’d thrived on the Pacific Ocean during the Earth-665 iteration of reality, they were unfazed by this; they’d been lost at sea before, of course. And yet, as the weeks wore on and the food ran out, the intrepid Quadlings began to fear the worst.

It was then that they were rescued by a fae colony who called one of the smaller Neverlandian islands home. Though the Quadlings had been raised to fear fairies (having grown up on the tale of Lüe and Kala’s sacrifice on The Oadü), they gradually came to appreciate and even love their rescuers.

That said, they waited for a good long while to be rescued by the tribesmen they’d left behind. Many among them swore it was only a matter of time before their own people found them again. That never happened, though, and resentment swelled for a time—before the fae swept in to comfort them.

Content now to settle down for good on this island home, the Quadlings began to intermingle with the fae. Soon, a new generation of hybrid beings was born. And over the course of the next hundred years, sheltered from the rest of the world by the thick fog which surrounded the island, a new culture developed and thrived.

In the year 141, the Ceaseless Cyclone appeared over the Sea of Tears and wiped the fog surrounding the Leprechauns’ island from existence. Oscar Diggs, the future Wizard, was already campaigning around Eden for the overthrow of the “corrupt” United Countries of Oz. When he learned of a tribe of halflings that had been thought lost, he seized upon the opportunity to play on their feelings of abandonment and use them as a central part of his casus belli.

Diggs promised the Leprechauns a sizeable portion of their ancestral homeland of Quadling Country in exchange for their support, the Leprechauns took the podium at a press conference called by Diggs—where their statements, unbeknownst to them, were manipulated by Diggs’ four witches—and the stage was set for the Invasion of Oz to begin.

The trouble was, once Diggs had established his so-called Ninth Empire of Oz, he backed out of the deal he made with the Leprechauns. “Wouldn’t you be happier on your island?” he asked them. “Quadling Country is naught but a swamp anyway,” he said, and he left it at that.

And so, the Leprechauns returned to Neverland. But without the protective fog which had shielded them for so long, they were now being raided day in and day out by pirates like the infamous James Hook. And though heroes like Peter Pan and Ingvar Östenson did their best to keep the peace in this lawless corner of the world, the Leprechauns were soon driven off of their island.

Now a people without a home, the Leprechaun diaspora spread throughout Eden—with the largest concentration remaining in The South, still hoping that one day they might reclaim their homeland. They worked most often as tinkers and cobblers, trying to hide their fae nature whenever possible by working mundane jobs. And yet, they were often found out and pressed to do their magic for the ne’er-do-wells of the world.

Despite all that they have suffered, however, the Leprechauns remain a jovial bunch who love nothing more than dancing, drinking, and dirty jokes. All they truly long for in life is a little bit of love, a little bit of mischief, and land to call their own.