D&D 5E Need help with some fey challenges

[Maxperson]

Hi all. My players are about to enter into a fey forest to try and gain a fey artifact. I'm thinking of having the fey leadership(after suitable discussion and RP) offer to let them have/use the cloak if they successfully make it through a gauntlet of challenges. Some will be pranks. Some will be challenges. Some things will be deadly or perhaps result in things like aging or other magical "curses." I put that in quotes because they're more hinderances than real curses. I thought I'd ask here for ideas, since I'm going to need several I think.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Blue]

Here's thoughts for two social challenges.

To first make the deal, they need tro deal with an agent of an archfey/local fey lord. Play up the need for immaculate courtesy and politeness, but also to be careful making promises, and to make sure what you think you bargained for is actually what you want. Hold them to the most precise and annoying letter of their agreement.

Finally, at the end of the challenges they need to get it from said fey lord, and they have been enjoying music being played (for weeks) and characters must sing all interactions else displease him. When I did something like that I told the players that if they didn't want to sing they could just hold their finger in the air while talking and I would assume their character was singing. (Since our characters can do things we may not be able to, like fly or sing.) had a whole track about how happy or annoyed he was at the group.

 

[toucanbuzz]

I'm running a fey-heavy setting atm, homebrew using a mix of European/Slavic/Russian/Germanic folklore. Universally, fey don't operate with the same reality, concept of mortality, or morality that PCs do. What may seem trivial could be amusing and novel to fey who need new experiences to feel alive. Others have jobs like couriers for nightmares and so forth. The cloak might be trivial as well, or the challenges.

Two universals should exist will all things fey:

1. If a bargain is struck, it is kept and something given/taken. However, they are usually construed so mortals are on the losing end of what they believed they were going to get and include an "undeal" (a way to negate the deal for the mortal, such as guessing Rumplestiltskin's name).

2. Fey challenges can be deadly. Their bodies don't experience death quite the same way as mortals, so they don't see danger in the same way.

The Legendary games 5E products (writers include Jason Nelson who worked on the original fey Kingmaker setting) Faerie Mysteries / Faerie Bargains could be mined for innumerable challenges.

• Attached is a reincarnation quest I wrote up (customized for my players, but feel free to take anything of use) that is a fey encounter.
• Attached is a fey bazaar. While it's best to avoid fey deals, who can refuse... You can obviously customize any way you see fit. The challenge might be the PCs have to "buy" at least one thing from the market (and you could sneak in a clever undeal such as buying Stumpy's shoes, which he is always obliged to sell for a ditty).
• Attached are "hex" (exploration) supplements to my kingmaker maps, some of which are fey themed and one that involves setting a rusulka to rest (a murdered woman who drowns men who enter her waters until the justice and vengeance are done, a difficulty when the murderer has passed on). While they reference stuff unique to my setting, they could be adapted.

 

[TheSword]

Hi all. My players are about to enter into a fey forest to try and gain a fey artifact. I'm thinking of having the fey leadership(after suitable discussion and RP) offer to let them have/use the cloak if they successfully make it through a gauntlet of challenges. Some will be pranks. Some will be challenges. Some things will be deadly or perhaps result in things like aging or other magical "curses." I put that in quotes because they're more hinderances than real curses. I thought I'd ask here for ideas, since I'm going to need several I think.

Thanks in advance!

You could check out Tales of the Old Margrave. It’s available on PDF. It has about a dozen adventures of various levels and advice for running a living forest.

If you’re not looking to spend money then here’s my tuppenny worth…

- have a fight with a set of seemingly easy woodland creatures - a bear, wolves, giant wasp etc, (depending on their level) but have they weapons, wands and divine foci bend like soft lead whenever they try to use them. The party need to find a way without using their weapons or foci (unarmed attacks, spells with material components or using druids mistletoe etc).

- Have the party meet a peasant bedeviled by the fey. Someone relatively helpless. But maybe quite rude. The NPC expects the party to help them (carry them, give them something to defend themselves, escort them from the forest) but gets increasingly belligerent and annoying. This is a test and at the opportune moment the NpC reveals themself as fey and either congratulates or warns the PC.

- Kingmaker had a great little Fey Mystery in the location names the Swamp Witches hut. Essentially

Spoiler

A dryad Queen is transformed into a terrible monster which destroys a village. There are two local fey that ask you to end its menace. A ghost of the village headman called Wilbur is distracted and thinks he is still alive but the fey won’t let him sleep. He’s actually dead and haunting the village. A ghoul named Dorsey is roaming the wilderness around the village searching for to coins for eyelids. The village pond has the perfectly preserved corpse of a beautiful woman bedecking in wedding jewelry lying in it. Fey spirits hiss “leave our Nyta alone and attack if the body is disturbed”. A boarded up well contains 3 angry Will i whisps that each drop a coin if destroyed. Two Coins have Wilbur scratched on them. One has Callitropsia carved on it. A poisoned grove near the village has a souped up treat/blight. If killed it has a wedding ring and a letter from a girl called Nyta to someone called callitropsia.

Essentially by reading the letter and speaking to the specters and the dryad you can find out the truth.

The village was one of the rare few that lived in harmony with the fey side by side in the fey forest. A young girl Nyta the Headman Wilbur’s daughter was betrothed to a young merchant called Dorsey. However a queen/king of Dryads Callitropsia fell in love with Nyta and tempted her away. Instead breaking off the engagement to Dorsy and intending to marry the Dryad. You never know whether because of enchantment or true love. Dorsey protested to the Headman who forbid the wedding to the Dryad offending the other fey greatly. He realizes he has no right to do this and unknown to Nyta changes his mind. This offends Dorsey.

A powerful but wicked fey told Nyta a secret to getting her way. Writing her fathers name on a coin an tossing into a forbidden well. She does this and her father is killed by a death curse.

The same fey tells Dorsey the same method to get his revenge and writes Wilbur’s name again on a coin and also the dryads name. Wilbur is doubly cursed and rises as a ghost. Callitropsia is turned into the scythe tree and kills Nyta at their wedding ceremony. Then destroys the village. The fey then spirit the corpse away to preserve in a pool of water. Cursing such a powerful few backfires on Dorsey and he is twisted into a ghoul to pay for his pettiness.

If Dorsey’s coins are returned to him his curse is broken and he can rest.

If Wilbur is given the coins he remembers his old role and what he did and he is laid to rest.

Destorying the scythe tree gains you the letter from Nyta explaining everything and also their wedding ring. This can be returned to Nyta’s body to quell the few spirits there and possibly earn a reward.

Nyta’s Letter

My beloved Callitropsia,

Every day I spend without you seems to drag on forever! The only thing left to do is to think of our coming wedding. Only you know how I long for this day to finally come. Each time I close my eyes, I see us, together. I see happy guests and tables set out for a feast, I smell the fragrance of flowers and fine cuisine, I hear cheerful music, I feel your touch as we whirl in dance. But even these dreams pale in comparison to the mere thought of the eternity we'll spend together. I shall love you forever, even after death, in every life after this one and across all of creation.

Only one thing disturbs my happiness. Do you know that someone tried to interfere with our wedding? My former groom, Dorsy, has talked father into trying to disrupt the ceremony. Picture this: father took it into his head that since he is a headman of our village, he can decide my fate! But don't you worry, my love — their plot has fallen apart. No gods could prevent our union, for a higher force is standing behind us. A few nights ago I dreamt of a mesmerizing maiden, who told me how to free myself out of my father's grip. I did everything as she told — I was so angry with him! Now, of course, I am beset with doubt — was it the right thing to do? Still, I hardly think any of this is more than pure superstition: such silliness cannot change how things are, and I could have dreamt up absolutely anything.

Think nothing of this, my love. Think only of me. I love you.

I cannot wait for our day!

Your Nyta"

I think it’s a fun little fey related mystery that I ran for my PCs in my Kingmaker 5e campaign and it worked well.

 

[Krachek]

Stole a kiss from a Medusa.
Replace back a shooting star
Catch a wind blow
fold a rainbow

 

[Stormonu]

Gotta have a Tea Party where Manners Matter and You Can't Fight Your Way Through This One.

Of course, the Tea is magical, and depending on the mood you put the server in, it will have beneficial effects or a curse for the next challenge.

 

[Maxperson]

I just wanted to thank everyone who posted for their help. It's given me a good start. If anyone has anything further to add, more aid would be welcome.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

One thing I always try to keep in mind with fey and fey-like beings: giving them motivations that are kinda-sorta understandable if you squint.

My go-to example for fey is usually a beauty-centric blue-and-orange morality. That is, to them, evaluating an action based on whether it is altruistic/noble/virtuous/etc. vs selfish/wicked/vicious/etc. is silly or even confusing; instead, actions that are beautiful, aesthetic, or dramatic are "good" and those that are ugly, merely functional, or pedestrian are "evil." The beauty of an action is its justification. As a friend of mine just mentioned tonight in a discussion about the fey, these are a people who will ask the musicians at a party to keep playing nonstop, even if it causes one of them to drop dead from exhaustion--and the musicians will willingly do it, because beauty justifies such acts.

So consider an event or discussion that might not even necessarily be intended as a trial, but becomes one because the players need to "think like a fey" in order to succeed. If it's an actual trial/test/prank/etc., letting beauty lie orthogonal to both good and evil as mortals understand it could be expressed in various ways, for example, "solving" a love triangle by killing one of the rivals in a suitably dramatic fashion is just as good a solution as finding the rival a new lover and pressing a dramatic rejection from them, but sitting down and working through all the emotions logically would be horribly offensive (because it's boring and functional rather than exciting and beautiful).

If it's not at all intended to be a trial, have it demonstrate the (presumably) friendly-but-alien characteristics of the fey. E.g. they base their treatment of the party members on how stylishly they're dressed (treating the un-stylish ones as suspicious or "bad") or are casual about the death of an "ugly" sapient being but become distraught over accidentally causing damage to a random, beautiful flower.

 

[Lyxen]

Great resources for the Feywild come from 4e (frankly, inventing the Feywild and the Shadowfell was brilliant), in particular Manual of the planes. Just reading through the description gives ideas for challenges, like:

• "The most well known of the Gloaming Fey is the Maiden of the Moon. She is a formidable hunter who carries a silver sword said to be able to cut through nightmares": bring back a slice of nightmare for the table of a gourmet archfey. Could be helped by "The Maiden of the Moon wages a private war against lycanthropes and other savage killers, and she is considered benevolent toward mortals.", so maybe help her figtht lycanthropes or something to gain a reward, and then have a PC recount and materialise a nightmare to fight and slice ?
• "The Prince of Hearts sometimes meddles in the lives of mortals he believes should be in love, attempting to drive them together. If the unlucky pair dislike each other to begin with, he finds the attempt even more delightful." I had tons of fun with him in my 4e campaign at the time, with PCs in the court of love being duplicated by feys, and trying to seduce each other. Maybe bring back and unrequited love by visiting the court ?

In each case, the description of the archfey is a little longer, so there are other elements that you can draw from.

And another great resource if you have access to it is Ars Magica, that I have a look at every time I look for Fey ideas. For example, there is this Regio of Faerie, with different levels that shrink you more and more until you come to the centre where there is a troll named Grenki who collects shrunken people. Grenki is very dangerous, but he is little more than a spoiled child that does not want to harm his collections, so there should be ways to trick him and to collect something shrunken for a collector Archfey.

And many more ideas if you have access to other Ars Magica supplements.