D&D General Faerie Blue / Orange Morality Systems

[Baron Opal II]

I've been thinking on how to put a more interesting framework for Faerie and their kin. At the moment I only have two solid things; they must follow agreements literally and have little conception of time.

Agreements are always followed as spoken, literally, but usually non-maliciously unlike with infernals. They won't necessarily twist wording to the other party's disadvantage. However, they certainly can if they are upset with you. Because their nature compels them to fulfill their part of a bargain, they have difficulty not understanding when mortals break their word, unintentionally or not.

Faerie time-blindness can play into this as well. When the Lady of Summer Revels does not get her promised offering at the special well on Midsummer's noon, she rightly appears at the side of the mortal who agreed to do so. To her great surprise he's been dead for a few years, and the kids forgot to do the otherwise meaningless ritual dad performed. While the fae are aware of human mortality, their concept of the passage of time, both personally and between realms, is sporadic at best.

I can see a difference between the Seelie and Unseelie courts is one of respect. The Seelie initially have some baseline respect for mortals and the Unseelie don't. However, by mortal actions and Faerie's inscrutable rules this respect can be lost or gained without necessarily knowing the trigger.

What do you all think?

 

[Charlaquin]

I very much like the idea of fae time blindness. I mean, any immortal creature should struggle to understand mortal timescales, right? In a lot of ways, human social systems are built around the exchange of time, as the only resource that can never be recovered once lost. A being that has an unlimited amount of this resource would be deeply alien to us, and so many social behaviors would be confusing to them.

Fae and contracts have a long and storied history together, so I’m onboard with them being very important. And I see what you’re going for when separating them from devils by making them not necessarily misleading, but I do think misunderstanding the terms of an agreement with the fae is an iconic trope one wouldn’t want to lose. Where I would differentiate it is that a devil’s contract is misleading because the devil is so intimately familiar with the conventions of contracts that they can cleverly hide loopholes and exploit technicalities. Whereas I feel like the misleading nature of a fae contract is more likely to arise out of naivety than out of intentional deception. Where the devil tricks you into agreeing to terms you didn’t fully understand, it never even occurred to the faerie queen that you wouldn’t know what she meant when she asked if she could “have your name.”

 

[Mind of tempest]

I've been thinking on how to put a more interesting framework for Faerie and their kin. At the moment I only have two solid things; they must follow agreements literally and have little conception of time.

Agreements are always followed as spoken, literally, but usually non-maliciously unlike with infernals. They won't necessarily twist wording to the other party's disadvantage. However, they certainly can if they are upset with you. Because their nature compels them to fulfill their part of a bargain, they have difficulty not understanding when mortals break their word, unintentionally or not.

Faerie time-blindness can play into this as well. When the Lady of Summer Revels does not get her promised offering at the special well on Midsummer's noon, she rightly appears at the side of the mortal who agreed to do so. To her great surprise he's been dead for a few years, and the kids forgot to do the otherwise meaningless ritual dad performed. While the fae are aware of human mortality, their concept of the passage of time, both personally and between realms, is sporadic at best.

I can see a difference between the Seelie and Unseelie courts is one of respect. The Seelie initially have some baseline respect for mortals and the Unseelie don't. However, by mortal actions and Faerie's inscrutable rules this respect can be lost or gained without necessarily knowing the trigger.

What do you all think?

seelie sharing a root with the word silly tend to prefer for it to end like a comedy, the unseelie do not care at all but are still easier to work with than feineds

 

[touc]

I ran a fey-heavy Kingmaker (Paizo) campaign and had a ton of fun with it. Fey can be nasty and frivolous in the same minute as their reality is different from mortals. Here's what I had:

• Fey don't die. They might lose their body and have to assume something else that they don't like later down the road, but they don't experience true death like mortals. So, they don't suffer a lot of anxiety if they cause a mortal death. But, losing their own body is a big deal, and fey will go a long way to avoiding that.
• As you noted, time isn't a big deal for them, and a fey party that might last decades (while feeling like hours for a mortal) is a real threat.
• Fey tend to live in their own bubble (e.g. pranksters, tricksters, cleaning shoes for kind mortals) and can't see outside it, ever. It's part of what separates them from mortals.
• Contracts with mortals are a big deal, and the point of a contract is to advantage the fey. It's just how the universe works. Every contract is going to have a negative for the mortals, but the universe also requires every deal have an "undeal." It just may not be apparent, and fey don't normally share this wisdom with mortals.
• What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Do unto fey what you will, and they'll do the same back. Cut down a treant and make him into a table, and they'll have no problems doing the same to a mortal. A bit more gruesome, but it's fair.
• It's a big deal for some fey to experience the physical, mortal realm. Some have become a permanent part of it, experience death and mortality, but are still friends with the eternal fey (e.g. treants, unicorns).
• There are fey factions. Some are more malicious than others, and some are more sympathetic to mortals than others. Some exist solely to be helpful, enigmatically, and almost always on behalf the downtrodden and truly innocent. Amongst all fey, even the malicious ones, the truly wicked are never rewarded. Rather, see goose/gander.
• Names, true names, have power. Fey are loathe to share their real names, and speaking the wrong name at the wrong time attracts trouble. So, monikers amongst fey are a big deal.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm a big fan of fey being tied to specific aspects of nature. Stronger the fey, the more significant the aspect.

One might be tied to cacti and will help burn a village to protect one cactus.

Another might be devoted to the migration of a specific animal.

Dryads happen when a fey is forcibly tied to a tree.

Fey royalty are given big domains like seasons, winds, or all predatory mammals.

And a fey's logic is twisted by it.

Former fey, like elves, are fey who had a connection to the Natural aspect of the world that they were supposed to be tied to severed and they become humanoid with just a fey ancestry