Fae

Fae are a large group of beings that we associate with fairy-tale creatures like fairies, pixies and elves. However, there is very little in common between some of them, aside from them all being otherworldly. Fae are not native to our world, one of their main characteristics is the ability to move between worlds or realms, something many of them use for exploration, so most fae are temporary visitors here. That said, some fae have found a home in our world and there are a few fae colonies that have been thriving for generations. Fae are acutely aware that contemporary human cultures have distanced themselves from magic so they remain hidden or disguised in cases of potential encounters.
Because fae are otherworldly and tend to keep away from humans, building a clear taxonomy of the fae is practically impossible (among other things, some fae find it tremendously amusing to confuse the rare scholar they meet with contradicting facts, all true facts, mind you, but facts that relate to different types of fae). There have been various proposals for fae taxonomy, with subcategories like winged (alatifae) and non-winged (inalatifae), large and small fae (magnusfae; minutafae), even element based separations. A clear categorisation is very difficult with fae because many can belong to more than one group, creating rather awkwardly named subcategories, and also some awkward encounters as, for example, some of the fae resented being called small or big because in their home world they were “perfectly normal in size, thank you very much!”. To avoid such issues, I use a very general taxonomy for fae, placing all the different species directly under ‘fae’.