Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
Maybe there can still be funny seelie Hobgoblins. The "Hobgoblin Warrior" in the 2024 Monster Manual is an example of the unseelie, who maybe are all about gallows humor?
D&D 5E (2024) Feywild technically doesn't mention the Seelie and Unseelie Court
- Thread starter Kobold Avenger
- Start date
Chaltab
Legend
I like the notion that 'Seelie' and 'Unseelie' is just a mortal simplification of a much more complicated system. The various Fey Courts are constantly vying for power, dominance, etc. The Spring and Summer Courts may tend to be kinder to mortals but that doesn't mean The Green Lord will go easy on you if you start poaching in his demesne.
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
Also, the Fey embody the "fates". When they show up in person, they imply ulterior motives involving upcoming fateful events in play.
Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Lolth got exiled from the Feywild into the Demonweb Pits of the Abyss. The drow who still follow her aren’t fey courtiers at all, they’re demon cultists now. The Raven Queen is her successor (possibly usurper?) for the throne of the Unseelie court, and her elven followers are the Shadar-Kai.
Corinnguard
Hero
The Drow that follow Eilistraee, the daughter of Araushnee (later Lolth) and Corellon Larethian, could be the only Drow to make a return to the Seelie Court.
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
I view Corellon (pronoun them) as moreorless a shapeshifting anarchist. Their elven offspring view them as a beloved grandparent figure. They might be a progenitor of the seelie courts, but never governs in any of them. This means the local Fey courts are how elves regulate life. Each court may or may not form alliances with other courts. I suspect this is the intention of Corellon all along, but they still stays clear of serving personally as leader of a court.
I like the seelie Drow with the flavor of land spirits.
So, Lolth is a Fiend court. At the same time, there can be associations between the unseelie Fey and Undead and Fiends.
Probably the Raven Queen is the original unseelie court whose deathliness corresponds to the destructive quality of the unseelie.
Heh, this would imply that she is a Goblin Queen − or forms alliances with goblin courts.
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Charlaquin
Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
As a huge fan of both goblins and the Raven Queen, I am all for this interpretation.
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
My perspective:
The Seelie and Unseelie Courts aren't about moral alignments nor political factions, they are expressions of the eternal cycle of life and emotion. The waxing and waning of the Moon, the bloom and the blight, the joy of dawn and the dread of night.
Fey are born from the ephemera of dream, and thus are fickle and capricious creatures, capable of turning from mirth to malice in an instant. Fey have no fixed nature and thus must live by their ideals and their oaths lest they unravel themselves. Nonetheless different fey may find in any of the courts or some will change courts according to the seasons, mood or personal whim.
The Seelie Courts embody growth, vitality, warmth, and delight. They thrive in laughter, the bursting of spring buds, and the passionate revelry of summer nights. The Seelie present as bright, indulgent, and unrelentingly glamorous as they revel in the passions of mortal dreams.
The Unseelie embody stagnation, decay, cold and dread. They thrive in melancholy and ruin, the fall of the leaves, the sting of frost and the dread of darkness. The Unseelie present as austere or terrifying as they revel in the fears that mortals try to deny.
Most importantly though, Fey as creatures of dream and emotion have no understanding of the realities of Mortal life, or its limitations. Thus mortals who seek to trade with the Fey must learn to navigate these intricacies or suffer for their ignorance.
The Seelie and Unseelie Courts aren't about moral alignments nor political factions, they are expressions of the eternal cycle of life and emotion. The waxing and waning of the Moon, the bloom and the blight, the joy of dawn and the dread of night.
Fey are born from the ephemera of dream, and thus are fickle and capricious creatures, capable of turning from mirth to malice in an instant. Fey have no fixed nature and thus must live by their ideals and their oaths lest they unravel themselves. Nonetheless different fey may find in any of the courts or some will change courts according to the seasons, mood or personal whim.
The Seelie Courts embody growth, vitality, warmth, and delight. They thrive in laughter, the bursting of spring buds, and the passionate revelry of summer nights. The Seelie present as bright, indulgent, and unrelentingly glamorous as they revel in the passions of mortal dreams.
The Unseelie embody stagnation, decay, cold and dread. They thrive in melancholy and ruin, the fall of the leaves, the sting of frost and the dread of darkness. The Unseelie present as austere or terrifying as they revel in the fears that mortals try to deny.
Most importantly though, Fey as creatures of dream and emotion have no understanding of the realities of Mortal life, or its limitations. Thus mortals who seek to trade with the Fey must learn to navigate these intricacies or suffer for their ignorance.
Well, their morals are a blink like their lives are; codes never go away.
Since Titania was mentioned as a cultural touchstone, worth mentioning the disorder Titania explicitly notes in A Midsummers' Night Dream that arises as a result of their dispute between her and Oberon. It causes all manners of horrible weather, which negatively affects the natural world and human beings.
