There is an old folk song that is sung in Exandria. It goes by a lot of titles–In Marquet it’s commonly known as The Liar’s Love, while natives of Xhorhas would know it as The Fey Groom, and the elves of Syngorn’s version has a title that translates to “The Sacrifice of Truth for Love.”
It is a story ballad that tells the story of a fey who journeyed to the Material Plane in search of stories (interestingly, the Dwarvish version here uses a word that translates closer to “truth” than “story” and shares a root with their word for “news”). While there, the fey meets and falls in love with a brilliant woman from a city in the clouds. The two are happy together, until a day that the woman’s brilliance backfires, and the fey, who had left his home out of admiration for the stories created by mortals living their lives, chooses to forge false stories of his own to protect her. The two are driven apart by this deception, until one day the city in the clouds begins to fall. In her brilliance, the woman is able to save it, but nearly falls in the process–until the fey speaks one last truth to inspire her to finish (the version from the Dwendalian Empire has an extra verse where while the fey is able to help the brilliant woman save the city, the two still die shortly after).
The origin of the song is unknown–there are variations from all over the world, and no one has ever been able to determine which version came first. The lyrics’ reference to a city in the clouds has led some scholars to speculate that the song may be referencing events of the Age of Arcanum, but most consider that unlikely. After all, there are many stories in Exandria of a mortal stumbling into the Feywild and falling in love with some enchanting faerie they met there, but there are almost no stories of a fey who came to the Material Plane and fell in love.
