D&D 5E Who are the current Archfey?

[Sword of Spirit]

If you really want to get confusing, the 5e MM also mentions fey gods (in the unicorn entry).

 

[Quickleaf]

Lurue is a curious figure – mentioned in the 5e DMG page 11 – who has existed as a unicorn goddess since 2e. She seems ripe to be an archfey to me, but is explicity called out as a goddess. Maybe because unicorns are celestial in 5e and not fey?

Lesser deities are embodied somewhere in the planes. Some lesser deities live in the Material Plane, as does the unicorn-goddess Lurue of the Forgotten Realms and the titanic shark-god Sekolah revered by the sahuagin. Others live on the Outer Planes, as Lolth does in the Abyss. Such deities can be encountered by mortals.

The description makes it sound like Lurue might be comparable to how Auril appears in Rime of the Frostmaiden.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Sekolah lives in the Material Plane now? What got him booted out of Stygia???

 

[Ancalagon]

I've never found fae particularly compelling - their sense of whimsy and mystery is difficult to portray well in a game I have found, so I've avoided it...

BUT if I were to do it, I would 100% homebrew it. That way, it's something I would be very familiar with, and able to do well. That, of course, would include the arch-fey.

 

[Quickleaf]

Yeah, it's like you were saying @Hexmage-EN , there are some massive lore changes in 5e, they're just a bit more hidden and less "in your face" than in 4e. My hunch is that these Lesser Deity changes are setting up specific future story arcs.

I don't own it, but apparently in Candlekeep Mysteries an adventure called "Lore of Lurue" involved traveling to a demiplane, encountering fey creatures and Malar cultists, in order to learn how the unicorn goddess Lurue was involved in founding the city of Silverymoon.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

PHB gives the names: Prince of Frost, Queen of Air and Darkness, Titania, Oberon and Hyrsam as examples. Prince of Frost I think was first mentioned in 4e, while Queen of Air and Darkness, Titania and Oberon were at least since in 2e's Monster Mythology, and Titania and Oberon are best as known coming from William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

There are write-ups of several of these in Cawood Publishing's Monsters of Feyland, for those who want stats. It's a solid book for the Feywild or any fey-inflected woodland.

It's been suggested that the Beast Lords (despite originally being placed in the Beastlands) are also Archfey. Powerful Hags including Baba Yaga from Slavonic Mythology might qualify as Archfey.

All things considered, I doubt any of these names are the type of Archfey to be confined to a Domain of Delight, though it might be such domains are less a prison, or there's effectively two different tiers of Archfey, and those big names are like the Dark Powers of Feywild.

My guess is that archfey aren't trapped in their domains, so much as they create demiplanes that reflect their interests and passions. Powerful mages in Mage: The Ascension did something similar. I don't think WotC wants to have two planes full of prisons and making Domains of Delight something else would be the easiest way to differentiate them, since some of the Feywild will certainly be almost as dark as some parts of Ravenloft.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I've never found fae particularly compelling - their sense of whimsy and mystery is difficult to portray well in a game I have found, so I've avoided it...

There's a dial you can turn with them. While Midsummer Night's Dream is certainly whimsical, I'd say Macbeth is also a template for fey adventures, which isn't whimsical at all.

 

[Samloyal23]

You could make an argument that the Celtic gods are archfeys, at least some of them, they are intimately connected.

 

[jgsugden]

I prefer to not have the Archfey spelled out. I like that nobody knows much about them. I have about 8 well known names in my 'Pantheon' of Archey, but there are 20 more that are ready for me to pull out and use that are entirely homebrew and will feel foreign and mysterious to the PCs when used. I do not use them often, though...

 

[Nefermandias]

If you really want to get confusing, the 5e MM also mentions fey gods (in the unicorn entry).

Those are likely the Seldarine? I was really fond of the idea of elves presented as fey back in 4e.