Raven Crowking
First Post
pawsplay said:
IMC, elves and gnomes are fey. Dwarves and their kin are small giants.
Sell me on fey!
- Thread starter freyar
- Start date
IMC, elves and gnomes are fey. Dwarves and their kin are small giants.
GreatLemur
Explorer
I've been doing some more thinking on the way I'd like to see fey handled. I'm really liking the idea that all fey are essentially the same type of creature, and not truly biological in any meaningful way. Their bodies are physical, but they don't truly depend on them. They don't eat, sleep, breathe, age, get sick, or reproduce. When a fey's physical form is destroyed, its spirit is merely suspended for a while in the astral plane or some kind of dream land, until it can coax a new body into existence.
And here's where that connection to "nature" comes in: In order to grow a new body, a fey spirit requires a strong and diverse ecosystem. Depending upon its nature and specific requirements, the new body might take shape in the muck of a river bed, under the roots of an old tree, or within the bud of a flower. The size and shape of a reborn fey's new body will be partially a result of deliberate design, and partially a result of the fey's nature, temperment, and mood. In fact, a single body might change through those same influences over time. One result of all this is that fey can be tiny or huge, beautiful or hideous, and will generally mix human, animal, plant, and even elemental characteristics in their forms in a wild and ever-changing array of appearances.
Another result, of course, is that fey depend strongly upon thriving wilderness, and will therefore resist encroachment by creatures who would destroy or weaken their domains. They aren't any more a part of nature than other intelligent beings; they simply make use of it in a different way, which is wholly compatible with "unspoiled" wilderness, and extremely incompatible with cities. Maybe they do change their environments to suit themselves, though, warping living plants (and animals?) to serve as buildings and furniture in much the same way that they create their own bodies.
Naturally, they've also got a lot of either innate magical power (including lots of enchantment and illusion abilities) or psionic power (particularly in the telepathy discipline). Between this and their physical mutability, fey seem mercurial and bewildering to other creatures.
The whole baby-stealing bit has to be worked in somewhere, and it makes loads of sense if we assume the fey can't reproduce naturally. They can live forever, but they number of existing fey spirits gradually dwindles due to some kind of permanent death (probably due to mortal civilization impinging on the wilderness, or something to do with iron, or maybe just immortal ennui), so they need to replenish their number by abducting mortal children and converting them to fey, somehow. Maybe the abducted children spend a few centuries in some kind of half-fey state, where they have some few abilities, but less dependence on the wilderness (and less alien mindsets?), and can therefore serve as emissaries or spies or something. And, gradually, if they survive this period, they become true fey, able to be reborn after physical death. Hell, maybe these "half fey" are what elves really are.
As for where the fey originally came from, maybe they're the prime material plane's equivalent of outsiders, or the wayward servants of some creator god that went feral while they helped make the natural world, or the transcended spirits of some once-mortal elder race. Maybe even the fey don't even know where they came from. I like the idea that while their memories are long, they only remember what they choose to, and they remember that only the way they want to. (That fact, combined with loads of individual power and what amounts to a post-scarcity society, would naturally give rise to what mortals interpret as their "chaotic" nature.)
Man, now if only I could find an explanation for their whole iron thing...
...But then you get the Athach, with doesn't seem to fit the aberration type in any way that I understand.
I dunno; sometimes I think the whole creature type system needs an overhaul.
And here's where that connection to "nature" comes in: In order to grow a new body, a fey spirit requires a strong and diverse ecosystem. Depending upon its nature and specific requirements, the new body might take shape in the muck of a river bed, under the roots of an old tree, or within the bud of a flower. The size and shape of a reborn fey's new body will be partially a result of deliberate design, and partially a result of the fey's nature, temperment, and mood. In fact, a single body might change through those same influences over time. One result of all this is that fey can be tiny or huge, beautiful or hideous, and will generally mix human, animal, plant, and even elemental characteristics in their forms in a wild and ever-changing array of appearances.
Another result, of course, is that fey depend strongly upon thriving wilderness, and will therefore resist encroachment by creatures who would destroy or weaken their domains. They aren't any more a part of nature than other intelligent beings; they simply make use of it in a different way, which is wholly compatible with "unspoiled" wilderness, and extremely incompatible with cities. Maybe they do change their environments to suit themselves, though, warping living plants (and animals?) to serve as buildings and furniture in much the same way that they create their own bodies.
Naturally, they've also got a lot of either innate magical power (including lots of enchantment and illusion abilities) or psionic power (particularly in the telepathy discipline). Between this and their physical mutability, fey seem mercurial and bewildering to other creatures.
The whole baby-stealing bit has to be worked in somewhere, and it makes loads of sense if we assume the fey can't reproduce naturally. They can live forever, but they number of existing fey spirits gradually dwindles due to some kind of permanent death (probably due to mortal civilization impinging on the wilderness, or something to do with iron, or maybe just immortal ennui), so they need to replenish their number by abducting mortal children and converting them to fey, somehow. Maybe the abducted children spend a few centuries in some kind of half-fey state, where they have some few abilities, but less dependence on the wilderness (and less alien mindsets?), and can therefore serve as emissaries or spies or something. And, gradually, if they survive this period, they become true fey, able to be reborn after physical death. Hell, maybe these "half fey" are what elves really are.
As for where the fey originally came from, maybe they're the prime material plane's equivalent of outsiders, or the wayward servants of some creator god that went feral while they helped make the natural world, or the transcended spirits of some once-mortal elder race. Maybe even the fey don't even know where they came from. I like the idea that while their memories are long, they only remember what they choose to, and they remember that only the way they want to. (That fact, combined with loads of individual power and what amounts to a post-scarcity society, would naturally give rise to what mortals interpret as their "chaotic" nature.)
Man, now if only I could find an explanation for their whole iron thing...
I'd say it's a pretty tenuous connection, but they do generally seem to be unified by theme and tone, if not by any actual relationship.freyar said:
...But then you get the Athach, with doesn't seem to fit the aberration type in any way that I understand.
I dunno; sometimes I think the whole creature type system needs an overhaul.
Raven Crowking
First Post
Removed
Last edited:
GreatLemur
Explorer
In theory it's a great idea, but in practice it seems to work out to little more than confirmation that just about every creature in D&D has 60' darkvision, and a way to punish Rangers for picking the wrong favored enemy. I'm wondering if we might be better served by more modular, logical, and meaningful catch-all traits like mindless (unaffected by mind-effecting spells, fear effects, social skills, etc.), non-biological (unaffected by disease, poison, Fortitude save effects, etc.), non-anatomical (unaffected by critical hits and other precision damage, possibly resistant to piercing damage), and so on. I don't see how there are any real flavor or mechanical requirements for all aberrations to have good Will saves, you know? But I'm running off on a huge tangent that does not belong in this thread (or, arguably, this forum).Raven Crowking said:
Raven Crowking
First Post
Removed
Last edited:
Nellisir
Hero
IRL, fey are usually humanoid creatures, or animalistic creatures of human intelligence, with a connection to an "Otherworld" or spirit world (one of the big things lacking from WotC's fey). The natural world, or natural features, can substitute for a spirit world in many cases (ie, dryad, leshy). A quasi-magical nature is also common; also the trouping feature.freyar said:From what I've seen in this thread (and what still remains confusing to me), is that the RL definition of fey is also a kind of "trash bin" or "grab bag" for any kind of folkloric mystical creature. Really, should fey in D&D just include everything except mundane animals? I'm happy with keeping goblins, etc, separate from fey (and even elves -- I like my Tolkienesque PC elves). But I would like to see something to unify the fey, as presented in D&D so far, a bit. So what's a good D&D definition of fey?
There are also fairy animals, which are fey versions of normal animals, but not really fey in and of themselves (cait si, for one).
Goblins, bugbears, and hobgoblins are traditionally fey, but bugbears and hobgoblins in particular have been dragged so far from their traditional roots as to make a "reversion" to fey pointless.
Fey are not traditionally servants of gods; there might be links between the two (fairys as partially-fallen angels), but they are largely neutral in divine affairs (though they might be good or evil).
The fey are nature incarnate, and in my mind the downright coolest creatures in D&D. Syltorian really hit the nail on the head.
We've been developing them and their otherworldly home, Faerie, over at Dicefreaks. Here's a link: http://dicefreaks.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6398
That's the summary of stuff we've more or less finished, and there are links in it to other things we've worked on (including proper Sidhe stats, particularly the daoine sidhe).
We've been developing them and their otherworldly home, Faerie, over at Dicefreaks. Here's a link: http://dicefreaks.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6398
That's the summary of stuff we've more or less finished, and there are links in it to other things we've worked on (including proper Sidhe stats, particularly the daoine sidhe).
freyar
Extradimensional Explorer
GreatLemur said:
Yeah, I've often wondered why the athach isn't some sort of weird giant. I'm in agreement that types were a good idea but that creatures weren't always sorted properly. This could be an interesting alternate biology project.
I think I might have figured out the centaur, though; it is probably supposed to be like wemics and other half-human/half-animal critters, which are monstrous humanoids (I think).Re dryads, nymphs, etc: Here's a point that's a little sticky for me. These are creatures/spirits from Greek myth, which are being classified IRL (?) with folkloric creatures from the middle ages.
Similar Threads
