Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 9215076" data-attributes="member: 58172">This thread is more about what will happen within the 2024 setting. This post is something I hope happens more clearly.The Feywild is the go-to for fairytale tropes and animism. It does a decent job. The setting can emphasize certain aspects to do even better.There are two kinds of worldviews here. D&D can do both well.One worldview is, there is a separate other world, the Faerie, a fairyland, an otherworldly realm where purely magical creatures inhabit. It is immaterial and has little or no connection to the features of the Material Plane.The other worldview, the animistic one, is no other world. The nature beings are here among us, everywhere, roaming the trees, underwater, on mountainsides, in our homes. They themselves actually are the trees, waters, mountains, and homes. Nature is alive. Nature has personality and personal presence. The worldview is entirely this-worldly. All of it is in the Material Plane.The D&D setting can emphasize how it does both worldviews well. In the same way there is a "Deep Ethereal" and a "Border Ethereal", there is also a "Deep Feywild" and a "Border Feywild". Fey creatures are a kind of ethereal creatures, but the positive energy vitalizes and vivifies this ether.The Border Feywild is the part of the Feywild that is simultaneously part of the Material Plane. In this realm, all of the Fey creatures walk invisibly and ethereally among the creatures of the Material Plane − Eladrin, Hobgoblins, Dryads, Naiads, Alseids, Satyrs, Sprites, Gnomes (!), Pixies, Boggles, Hags, Dolphin Delighters, Blink Dogs, etcetera. Most of the time these nature beings ignore their Human neighbors. They simply are the mountains, trees, waterways, and do mountainous, treeish, and watery things. The Dryads are influences of a particular forest, and a Hamadryad is a particular tree. The Eladrin Elves are the manifestations of the Fey magic coursing thru the Material Plane evoking wonders and threading fates. But sometimes curiosity or need from either Fey or Humanoid provokes an interaction. Spells that affect the Border Ethereal also affect the Border Fey, such as See Invisibility and Planar Protection (namely Protection from Evil/Good). In a Norse-esque view, these Border Fey creatures are the souls of mountains, trees, and waterways, projecting outofbody in whatever chosen appearances. They are usually "hidden folk", namely ethereally invisible. But they can manifest as if solid, samewise as a conjuration spell effect made out of force does. The locales within the Material Plane, where natural life and magical power flourish abundantly, are Fey Crossings. Here at the Crossings, the hidden Border Fey are especially populous and active, and the separation between material and immaterial blurs.By contrast, the Deep Feywild is the Faerie. This fairyland is utterly separate from the Material Plane, and perhaps associates more intimately with the Astral Plane and its realm of conceptual ideals. There powerful Deep Fey minds can manifest locale and realms out of the stuff of the force of the positive ether, where emotions, perceptions, whims, and habits come to life. All Fey Domains are within the Deep Feywild. Unfettered magic becomes reality.Note, the Shadowfell likewise has these partitians: the Border Shadow and the Deep Shadow. Here the negative ether is where after death, part of a soul can rest while the rest of the soul expands within the eternal mindscape of the Astral Plane. (In Dark Sun, this Border Shadow and Deep Shadow correspond to the Gray and the Black, respectively.) All Shadow Domains are in the Deep Shadow. Meanwhile Shadow Crossings are where the restless Undead spirits of the Border Shadowfell are especially active, often animating their Material corpses.Between the positive ether of the Feywilds and the negative ether of the Shadowfelds, there is a mix of positive and negative that together behave as neither. This dynamically neutral ether is ether as an elemental substance, a physical-but-immaterial force. This elemental ether is the Ethereal Plane proper. It is the route of elemental beings.</blockquote>

Verification