Strata of the Surreal

The laws that define the Surreal are as strange as its geography. Common sayings on the Material are laws of reality for the Surreal. Attempting to grapple with the Surreal using logic is a fruitless endeavor – one must trust in superstition and adages to navigate the strange reality of the Surreal.

Strata of Fey

What distinguishes a fey elf from an intelligent bear? Why is it a faux-pas to strike down a pixie with an iron axe, but not to cut down a talking tree with that same axe? In the Surreal, there is a strict division between different types of fey. These different categories of fey, referred to as strata, are defined by which laws the creature is subject to. These laws are binding, and creatures under them are physically incapable of breaking them. Asking a fey to break such a law is like asking a newborn Kenku to spread their wings and fly. A creature of a low stratum is subject to the laws of its stratum, as well as the laws of every stratum above it.
These strata are reflected in the societies of the Surreal. Creatures of lower strata are viewed as a human might view an animal – of little consequence. Foreigners to the Surreal exist outside these strata, not bound by any of their laws, but wholly ignorant to the workings of the reality. This makes foreigners dangerous but valuable targets for tricks, traps, and other such mischief, as they simply don’t understand the laws that govern such things, but have no restrictions a fey creature can count on. A creature not native to the Surreal is treated as a part of the Earth Stratum – their lives are worth little, and it’s perfectly acceptable to hunt them for sport, manipulate them into meaningless but deadly games for entertainment, or otherwise toy with them.

Earth Stratum

Comprised of sentient and sapient flora and fauna, this stratum is the lowest, and subject to several laws no other creature in the Surreal is.

You Are What You Eat

All creatures of the Earth Stratum that eat other creatures are subject to this rule. Herbivores will, over the course of decades, begin to slowly transform into flora, until they eventually become rooted to their spot and become plants. This is why there are so many animal-shaped hedges in the Surreal - these are the corpses of herbivores.
Carnivores too take on the traits of their meals. This has two consequences: carnivores who hunt herbivores exclusively will transform into omnivores, and if they continue, herbivores, and eventually plants. Such creatures find their teeth dulling, their digestive tracts shifting to accommodate plant matter, and their hunter’s instincts fading. Some omnivores carefully balance their diet to maintain their status as omnivores. The Tiger Lily is a famous example – creatures that hunt other carnivores and eat lilies in equal measure in order to maintain their physique.
Some carnivores hunt only creatures stronger than them, relying on their wit or luck to take down more fearsome creatures and consume them, thus driving their own improvement.

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

If a lesser creature fights a more intelligent, luckier, or otherwise better creature, and doesn’t die in the process, it improves itself accordingly. This can be thought of as the metaphysical counterpart to the first law. Rather than altering the body of Earth Stratum fey, this law alters the mind. A creature may grow beyond the Earth Stratum if they fight and eat enough creatures of a higher stratum, though doing so is difficult at best. If a creature did successfully do so, they would no longer be bound by the laws of the Earth Stratum, and thus could no longer grow simply by hunting and fighting.

Forest Stratum

Comprised of intelligent and more advanced creatures such as fey elves, kingka, hags, saytrs, fairies, fomorians, treeants, mandrakes, and the like, the Forest Stratum’s laws are defined not by adages, but by superstitions.

Thresholds

Most fey creatures cannot pass a threshold without permission. While those in other realities have loose, utilitarian definitions of a threshold, on the Surreal, it has a specific definition. Thresholds do not appear on every building, or even every house, and those that do vary greatly in their strength. A threshold is formed from the energy of the life that is lived inside a building. Happy homes and the homes of large or devout families tend to have strong thresholds, while the homes of lonely people or temporary dwellings have little to no threshold. Churches and temples that see many different people every day might have a threshold if the clergy live there, but only those that serve a truly devout congregation have thresholds of the same power as a home (although these places are often hallowed ground, which is more powerful than a threshold).
Unlike vampires, fey are capable of crossing these thresholds. However, they leave their powers on the other side of a threshold, rendering them as weak as mortals. Furthermore, due to the Material being suffused with protective energy, only creatures born to the Material Reality can establish a threshold.

Cold Iron

Fey creatures have a fundamental weakness to cold iron. A protective circle made of cold iron shavings may as well be a wall of adamantine to a fey creature, and weapons formed of cold iron are particularly lethal to fey creatures. Though not bound by law, most fey avoid iron implements of any kind, instead using exotic barks, stones, and other natural materials found in the Surreal to suit their needs.

Sky Stratum

Reserved for powerful creatures on par with Elder Trees and Archfey, the laws of the Sky Stratum are surprisingly straightforward, unambiguous, and completely ubiquitous. All fey creatures are bound by the laws of the Sky Stratum.

Oathbound

Any creature born in the Surreal is bound by their word - literally. Oaths are given sparingly and with great solemnity. This makes natives of the Surreal choose their words very carefully, lying by omission or intentionally misleading the other party. It's not unheard of for fey creatures to go through extreme lengths to avoid performing certain simple tasks, because doing so would break an oath given decades ago in a roundabout way. For this reason, most oaths a fey creature gives has a strict termination point, where both parties are freed from their obligations.
A fey creature that breaks an oath effectively surrenders a part of their power to the other party or parties of the oath. For instance, if a mandrake vows to “drink until they see stars” to a satyr, but passes out before the clouds in the sky clear, that mandrake may go completely blind. The satyr cannot control the nature of the punishment, only whether it is exacted or not. It almost always is, or used as leverage for an even more punishing deal.
This law is an area of expertise for creatures that hex and curse others, such as hags. They learn from the magics of the Surreal that enforce these laws to impose their own curses on their victims. An oath is defined as anything shaken upon, or signed into contract. Crossing one’s fingers behind the back negates the oath, and so does signing with one’s nondominant hand. Finally, saying the words ‘I swear’ forms a binding verbal oath, but only for that sentence.
For this reason, fey very rarely thank each other. Thanking a fey is the same as admitting to being in their debt, and the vagueness of the thanks often leads to drastically disproportionate favors being expected. These favors are just as binding as an oath. Though natives to the Surreal can lie or break oaths so long as they aren’t on the Surreal, it almost never happens as the instinctive aversion to lying is very hard to overcome.