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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5496765" data-attributes="member: 4937">I wouldn't worry so much about fairy courts and the great among the sidhe.  Instead, I'd start by reminding myself that fairy legends are legends about basically small local household gods (or at least, the conception of that which replaced the notion of small gods).  Therefore, don't be afraid to make fairies somewhat mundane and pervasive.  You shouldn't necessarily make fairies something you encounter walking down the street, but there should be this sense that they are everywhere if only you take the time to notice.Bring up fairies in ordinary situations.If the players stay long at an inn or a house of a friend, have them find that there is a brownie that lives in the attic and helps in the kitchen.If they stay at a manor, have them find little fairies in the kitchen garden darting among the plants and playing with the servants children. If they pass through farm land, have them find mischevious buckawns tormenting cows by riding them around or suckling them for milk.  Have fairies be essentially the pets of secretive important people like mages, wise women, or hermits.  You can put a fairy in a setting anywhere you could put a house cat.  You can also put one anywhere you could put a mouse, and in the same ecological role.Have their be little soot fairies living in chimneys.  Have their be little apple fairies living in trees.  Liven up travel with black sprites living in blackberry brambles, or have the party catch glimpes of dryads flitting in cedar groves.Have their be little rock spirits living among the scree.  Make fairies occupy every ecological niche from animals to full fledged civilizations.The point is that if you have a fairy haunted world, then fairies aren't just monsters but both NPCs and parts of the scenary of the world.  Fairies are ordinary parts of rural life, and appeasing the fairies by leaving small gifts is part of the normal reutine or rural folk and perhaps even city folk.Now of course, in practice there is only so much color you can drop at once without boring the players.  Don't drop color encounter after color encounter any more than you should populate your map with empty rooms.  Low levels are an idea time for these sorts of color encounters because even your CR 1/6 fairies aren't completely trivial foes if offended or treated like monsters to be slain, but don't drop so much world exposition on your players that you harm your pacing (I'm really bad at that).  Focus therefore on finding ways to use fairies as quest givers, information providers, clue givers, and so forth.  Give them tasks in your story that you might other wise give to runes on the wall, books, or humanoid NPC's.  They can be handy as secret observers of affairs and help you meet your quotas set by the three clue rule.  I mean, think about all the times in stories when the protagonist meets some little talking mouse or worm or some such and by being friendly gets some important aid when the creature avenges itself on the crueler villains that have ruined its small neighborhood.  The big picture of the fairy world with its greater lords and politics is not something you need to immediately concern yourself with.  If fairies begin to become important NPC interactions with your characters, and the PC's form relationships with them, then you can gradually start moving up the fairy social heirarchy.  The thing to remember about the fairy social heirarachy is that its far vaster than the human one.  It's starts down somewhere close to semi-intelligent insects and vermin, and moves all the way up to something close to deities.  Don't worry too much about the deities until the players have some levels under their belts, and some notion of the vast gulf that exists between the Autumn Queen and her court and a flower fairy wearing a dress of petals and a acorn cap for a hat.Of course, you can subvert that.  That flower fairy might turn out to have been Queen Mag all along, and that's trope is something I'm very fond of.</blockquote>

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