Are Drow considered "Fey".....? Why or why not?

[Tuzenbach]

In general, D&D never really defined 'fey' or 'fairy'. The notion began to take shape when 3e began to distinctly classify monsters as 'animal', 'beast', 'dragon', 'aberration', etc. However, to my knowledge, 3e didn't attempt to provide any coherent single mythic basis for each of these categories, leaving that up to the individual DM. Fey in my campaign therefore retained their homebrew origin as the 'small gods' of the fern and flower that predated the later gods that were born from the fruit of Yggdrasil (a conception that was independently created in parallel with that presented in 'The Book of the Righteous', probably with similar real world mythic inspiration). Fey also provided the basic design template that the gods would later use to create the humanoids (so in fact, humanoids are vaguely feyish in my campaign world rather than fey being vaguely humanoidish). Fey in my campaign world are basically close kindred to the elementals, and could be considered a sort of prime material elemental. The close semblance between the fey and the elementals can be seen in elementals such as the sylph and nymphs, that share with fey both demeanor and natural form. Fey are just prime material stuff that gained life and sentience at the same time the animals and plants were springing up, apparently through some basic chaotic principle of the universe (as in contrast to plants and animals, fey are overwhelmingly chaotic in nature). Some of them later migrated into other areas of the multiverse, particularly the far ethereal (now often called Fairie) and the near astral (the so called Dreamlands) and later the dominions of certain chaotic deities whose outlook they shared, but fundamentally they are simply the eldest and oldest incarnations of the material world. Among the fey, there is a belief that the eldest of the fey on first awakening saw the Nameless Creator's back as he departed from the multiverse.

OK, from this I'm getting that 'Fey' doesn't possess a proper definition. You then go on to attempt a definition. I know not whether your definition is right or wrong, I just wish there was a universally accepted definition of "Fey". I have a scientific mind and tend towards compartmentalization of things. To understand a thing, a thing must first be defined. I cannot, at this point, understand what is "Fey", for there is the distinct absence of a universally accepted definition. This really, REALLY irritates me. LoL, it's not your fault, though.

So that is who the fey were and are for me, but when 4e came along they decided to give all of 3e's categories a definitive mythic explanation. So, as pemerton pointed out, in 4e fey simply refers to denizens of the feywilde. That is to say, "Fey are from fairy." To me this rather reverses the story of my campaign world (and incidently, of the real myths of Earth as well), in that rather than having fey flee to fairy as they are pushed out by people gradually causing this world to fade somewhat, it has them invaders from some other world. Ultimately, there is nothing wrong with that and the 4e world is interesting in its own right, but it always struck me that 4e's various canonical inventions were no more than some DM's homebrew being allowed to take canonical status. This is particularly true of the areas where 4e departed canonically from what had been canonical myth and origin stories in prior editions.

I've never been exposed to anything 4e. Therefore, I'm not inclined to place any credence upon anything that originated from the realm of the 4e rules set.

All of this is just a long preamble for getting around to saying that ultimately, fey are simply whatever you decide is best for you own campaign. By and large this isn't a settled question with a single canonical answer. At best you could say, "What are fey in X edition?" or "What are fey in X campaign setting?" There is no universally accepted definition of fairy.

OK. From this I'm getting that you absolutely and unequivocally equate the word "fey" with the word "fairy". I don't know if that's right or wrong. Hence, I remain confused. It's an interesting topic, though.......





PS: I really should have started a separate thread for the whole "Tengu should be written-up as 'Fey' ...." topic. Hindsight is 20/20.......

 

[Tuzenbach]

hmmmm... interesting bit on that page.

"Gnomes enjoy making light of supposedly serious things, and this unites them with fey as well, though only in attitude."

and then.......

See...... this, to me, is a bunch of crap. To me, Gnomes are definitely NOT "Fey". However, Spriggans ARE "Fey".


Everybody knows that Gnomes are demi-humans......

 

[Cleon]

I'll attempt to find this & read it. However, it it goes on about "crow people" with no discernible innate, magical ability, I'll not consider it a proper write-up of the Tengu. I've recently read too many legend/lore thingies from Japanese mythology to believe the Tengu are only silly bird-men without inborn magic.....

Tengu have been innately magical beings ever since they first appeared in the 1E AD&D Oriental Adventures (1985), which gave them spell-like abilities that remained pretty much the same for their subsequent appearances in the 2E AD&D Kara-Tur Monstrous Compendium (1990) and the 3E D&D Oriental Adventures (2001).

The problematic "silly bird-men without inborn magic" referred to above is the Pathfinder Tengu, not the D&D one. It's pretty obvious the creature's been "stripped down" to make it a more easily balanced PC race.

 

[Celebrim]

Is the word "fairy" now taken to imply "fey"......???

Outside of the context of an RPG, would there be a universally accepted way of distinguishing the concepts? If you look up 'fey' in a dictionary, it will read, "Fairy". You might also get "Obsolete: Feral or dangerous" or "Obsolete: Enchanted or magical" depending on which obsolete period of the English language we are talking about, but that doesn't help you because if you trace the words back they are all the same thing: fay, fae, fey, fairy, fairie are just variant spellings. Technically, 'fairy' means 'land of the feys' and properly refers to a place and not the denizens thereof, but over time fairy itself also came to mean well... fairies. So, yes, fey = fairy.

For me, even without resorting to lexicography and etymology and philology, in D&D this is easy to work out by working backward from the end result. All the things that ended up being categorized as 'fey' in 3e, when the term first began to have real currency in the system, were things which fell easily into the category of 'fairy'. And conversely, none of the things that are in Western European myth of the same category as 'fairies' or are in fact subcategories of 'fairy', such as gnomes, dwarves, orcs, goblins, elves, and trolls, which had post D&D non-fairy traditions were classified as fey, even though a gnome or a goblin is every bit as much a fairy as a pixie or sprite is.

Again, this is very, VERY confusing!!!!

Only if you are trying to be Socratic about it. But D&D didn't start out with a Socratic approach. D&D started out with an Aristotelian approach - these things are fey because there are in my list of things that are fey - and only retroactively tried to create Socratic definitions of the term.

If you trace Drow's history in the game, it's very clear why they aren't fey in the game, for the same reasons its clear why Orcs aren't fey in the game.

 

[Tuzenbach]

Tengu have been innately magical beings ever since they first appeared in the 1E AD&D Oriental Adventures (1985)......

You know what? I actually have that book but haven't opened it since probably the 1990's!!! Ha! I also have the 1E Fiend Folio with the "Kenku". That I skim through every 2-3 years. The biggest reason why I don't skim through the Oriental Adventures book is because the PAGES ARE LOOSE!!!!

 

[Celebrim]

Everybody knows that Gnomes are demi-humans......

Ahh... but Tolkien knew that Gnomes were a sort of elf. In fact, it may only be an accident of history that when we see the word Gnome in an RPG, we think little bearded guy with a pointed cap and not fair faced powerful elven wizards and alchemists.

You see, when Tolkien was composing the background of Middle Earth, for the longest while he considered using the word Gnome to mean 'High Elves'. Eventually, he translated the word Gnome into its elvish equivalent - Noldor - and decided to use that word in his stories. But in point of fact, Noldor means Gnome. Which is as much to say that Elrond and Galadriel are Gnomes.

At roughly the same time Tolkien was writing, the Gartenzwerge statue was introduced to England. Gartenzwerge translates as 'Garden Drawf' in German, and this sort of fairy creature caught on as lawn decoration. Because Gartenzwerge is a mouthful in English, the little guys quickly adopted the preferred term 'Garden Gnomes' or just 'gnomes', and its from there we get RPG gnomes. Even further complicating the story, the appearance of the thing we think of as a Gnome is in fact inspired by the drawings of Disney's 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarves'.

But if you go back into the myth on Gnomes, which really only goes back to the 16th century, they are in fact elemental earth spirits - but this doesn't mean that they come from D&D's 'elemental plane of Earth'. The term was actually made up as a classification of all the diverse chthonic fairies of myth, such as well, Dwarves.

 

[Tuzenbach]

Only if you are trying to be Socratic about it.

Yes. Yes I am. And so should all of us!!! Otherwise, there'd be chaos. Oh .....wait a minute...... there already is. Ooops!!!

But D&D didn't start out with a Socratic approach.

It should have?

D&D started out with an Aristotelian approach - these things are fey because there are in my list of things that are fey - and only retroactively tried to create Socratic definitions of the term.

D&D needs to be pushed towards what you're calling "the Socratic approach" (what I'm thinking is a "Scientific approach"). To not do so, IMHO, results in the "dumbing down" of the D&D culture. Just a bunch of nonsensical debates moving backwards and forwards without any substantial outcome. Much time and productivity tends to be wasted on confusion. There needs to be order made out of chaos.

If you trace Drow's history in the game, it's very clear why they aren't fey in the game, for the same reasons its clear why Orcs aren't fey in the game.

Dude, Orcs aren't "Fey" 'cuz they aren't born with innate magical powers.

 

[Zinnger]

OK, from this I'm getting that 'Fey' doesn't possess a proper definition. You then go on to attempt a definition. I know not whether your definition is right or wrong, I just wish there was a universally accepted definition of "Fey". I have a scientific mind and tend towards compartmentalization of things. To understand a thing, a thing must first be defined. I cannot, at this point, understand what is "Fey", for there is the distinct absence of a universally accepted definition. This really, REALLY irritates me. LoL, it's not your fault, though.

There actually IS a definition for Fey. It is in the MM P. 6. "Fey are magical creatures closely tied to the forces of nature. They dwell in twilight groves and misty forests. In some worlds, they are closely tied to the Feywild, also called the Plane of Faerie. Some are also found in the Outer Planes, particularly the planes of Arborea and the Beastlands. Fey include dryads, pixies, and satyrs."

From the reading of the full entry of Fey and the lack of an entry for Fairy, I would consider Fairy in the category of Fey. I agree that if 4e has some other definition for Fey then it really may depend on the version of D&D that is being played. But with 5e being the most recent release from D&D, then I think it proper to use a 5e definition for what is current. Also, in 3.5 elves were not considered Fey. It seems that only 4e apparently classified them as something different. I never played 4e so I really don't know about it. But the 5e MM shows drow elves as medium Humanoid (elf). Also, if you look at P. 7 in the MM for 5e it clearly gives you the definition for Humanoid as well.

"Humanoids are the main peoples of the D&D world... The most common humanoid races are the ones most suitable as player characters: humans, dwarves, ELVES, and halflings..."

Therefore, I conclude that for 5e all elves (including drow) are humanoids (elf). For a 4e drow elf the answer might be different but this is coming directly from the most recent official D&D 5e source. This is the definition that I would go with.

 

[Herobizkit]

It seems like the OP has their mind made up on what they feel is 'Fey', so the easiest answer is 'Fey are whatever you feel Fey should be in your game'.

I mean, if you (the OP) really care, start digging through Grimm's Fairy Tales and other fantastic works, especially works that cite the Seelie/Unseelie Court for examples.

If you like, you can aslo check out Pathfinder's fey bestiary here: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/fey

 

[Tuzenbach]

OK, from this I'm getting that 'Fey' doesn't possess a proper definition. You then go on to attempt a definition. I know not whether your definition is right or wrong, I just wish there was a universally accepted definition of "Fey". I have a scientific mind and tend towards compartmentalization of things. To understand a thing, a thing must first be defined. I cannot, at this point, understand what is "Fey", for there is the distinct absence of a universally accepted definition. This really, REALLY irritates me. LoL, it's not your fault, though.

There actually IS a definition for Fey. It is in the MM P. 6. "Fey are magical creatures closely tied to the forces of nature. They dwell in twilight groves and misty forests. In some worlds, they are closely tied to the Feywild, also called the Plane of Faerie. Some are also found in the Outer Planes, particularly the planes of Arborea and the Beastlands. Fey include dryads, pixies, and satyrs."

From the reading of the full entry of Fey and the lack of an entry for Fairy, I would consider Fairy in the category of Fey. I agree that if 4e has some other definition for Fey then it really may depend on the version of D&D that is being played. But with 5e being the most recent release from D&D, then I think it proper to use a 5e definition for what is current. Also, in 3.5 elves were not considered Fey. It seems that only 4e apparently classified them as something different. I never played 4e so I really don't know about it. But the 5e MM shows drow elves as medium Humanoid (elf). Also, if you look at P. 7 in the MM for 5e it clearly gives you the definition for Humanoid as well.

"Humanoids are the main peoples of the D&D world... The most common humanoid races are the ones most suitable as player characters: humans, dwarves, ELVES, and halflings..."

Therefore, I conclude that for 5e all elves (including drow) are humanoids (elf). For a 4e drow elf the answer might be different but this is coming directly from the most recent official D&D 5e source. This is the definition that I would go with.

Dude, I'm looking for a Universal definition of "Fey" which is applicable to ALL editions, not just what is considered the "current" standard (5e for some peeps). From what I'm being exposed to, it's looking like there isn't one. IMHO, that has to change ..... and invariably WILL change!!!