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<blockquote data-quote="John Quixote" data-source="post: 8298112" data-attributes="member: 694">But that modern interpretation is still just an interpretation, and an exaggerated (and annoyingly edgelordy) one IMO. &quot;Oh, look, another dark setting where the fay are alien and amoral and treat mortals as inconsequential playthings, how… original.&quot; Nuance would be to treat fairies as the bog-standard genii locorum they were, running the gamut from bane to blessing, with little rituals of respect and propitiation believed to produce concrete results (whether keeping the malevolent fairies neutral and aloof or currying the direct favor of the helpful ones).On the topic of grey elves, consider that Tolkien originally used &quot;gnome&quot; to refer to the Noldor (because of its association with &quot;knowledge&quot;), and &quot;Faerie&quot; was his original name for Valinor (which, it has been remarked, bears some similarity to Dunsany's version of &quot;Elfland&quot; in The King of Elfland's Dauger). It wouldn't surprise me at all of Gygax was aware of this (despite his vaunted dislike of Tolkien)—and he was, after all, working in a specific context.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="John Quixote, post: 8298112, member: 694"] But that modern interpretation is still just an interpretation, and an exaggerated (and annoyingly edgelordy) one IMO. "Oh, look, another dark setting where the fay are alien and amoral and treat mortals as inconsequential playthings, how… original." Nuance would be to treat fairies as the bog-standard [I]genii locorum[/I] they were, running the gamut from bane to blessing, with little rituals of respect and propitiation believed to produce concrete results (whether keeping the malevolent fairies neutral and aloof or currying the direct favor of the helpful ones). On the topic of grey elves, consider that Tolkien originally used "gnome" to refer to the Noldor (because of its association with "knowledge"), and "Faerie" was his original name for Valinor (which, it has been remarked, bears some similarity to Dunsany's version of "Elfland" in [I]The King of Elfland's Dauger[/I]). It wouldn't surprise me at all of Gygax was aware of this (despite his vaunted dislike of Tolkien)—and he was, after all, working in a specific context. [/QUOTE]

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