“You raise your sword to attack the fairy. Make an intelligence saving throw.” “Uh, 12.” “You swing your baguette at the fairy & the baguette turns to liquid.” “I try to scoop up the liquid” “Make a charisma saving throw” “20!” “You’re holding the liquid in your hands, a great big chunk of it” “I uh, squash the liquid into a ball” “Make an intelligence check” “17” “The bread decides that it was more fond of being a sword than a ball & is upset at you - you notice the fairy is gone at this point” “I chase after my bread & try & find the fairy” “You find a forest of bread, looking around you unsheathe your fairy, worried about what dangers lurk here”
@@PandorasFolly Thanks man. In my imagination, things in the Feywild both shouldn't make sense & at the same time, be whimsically dangerous. No one is going to stab you with a sword, or throw a fireball at you, but they'll turn you into a sheep & make the suggestion that you should pretend to be a cloud - then you end up floating into the sky for an hour until Polymorph wears off.
@@HeavensOfMetal exactly. Have you ever read any of the books from the Game "Mage of the Ascension"? You can find the pdfs online and if you haven't read them, they are totally blooming from this kind of trellis. Each book has about a PhDs worth of research in them.
Dael’s book recommendations: - “On Fairy-Stories” by J.R.R. Tolkien - “Surprised by Joy” by C.S. Lewis - “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel” by Susanna Clarke - “Irish Faerie and Folktales” by W. B. Yeats - “The Crystal Cave” “The Hollow Hills,” “the Merlin Trilogy” and others by Mary Stewart - “Faeries” by Brian Froud; Allen Lee
Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy. Written at the height of his prowess. Cannot more highly recommend it, great folk and Fae encounters and truly mystical mad magicians, a joy. Dry wit with a light touch.
"The nature of Fey is that often what you look at is hard to describe, and the idea is more pervasive than the physical appearance. When a fairy has clothes the color of a mid day storm. How cloudy? How rainy? Lit up by lightning or over the ocean? Snow storm? Blizard? Thunder? These things are answered by the observer because the ideal is more important than the physics of shape light and color, and the constant of its appearance isn’t what it looks like, but what you think when you look at it." My DM describing why Fey are so strange so we stop asking questions about what the color of clouds means
I would run that if the players go into Faerie with cold iron the world starts to reject them, they don't see anything as the very light shies away from them, they don't hear anything because the sound avoids them, even the very ground crumbles at their feet because it fears the cold iron.
In many myths, it's cold wrought iron that affects faeries, rather than iron itself. That's iron that has been worked without heat. In DnD terms, cold wrought iron weapons would be rare magical items, specifically made to be effective against faeries.
In my game, creatures of the feywild dont die. So eating another creature in the feywild is a decision made with that creature - an elk or fish of the feywild would be entirely aware of the whole process of its being eaten, and you wouldn’t cook meats in the feywild. One of my players was taken into the feywild during a one shot by a beautiful white bull that carried him through a wall. He lied to a few pixies that he was the god Dionysus, resulting in him being brought to a party in the court of an ancient fairie dragon. The dragon aided him in supplying the feast and performance that would be expected should Dionysus/Bacchus arrive as a guest, thereby cementing his pact - and continuing what he then learned was a longstanding family tradition. At some point he will return there to seek out his parents who have been elsewhere in the feywild for a long time. To me the fey crossings are - like you were saying about getting lost - places where the quality of the environment feels beautiful, serene, calm and safe. Disturbingly undisturbed. They are palces where you could not tell which side you were on at the time you cross. I think that reinforces the idea of having designated crossing times. A party decides to take a long rest there, and come morning you tell them the sun is just peaking over the horizon. But as the day goes on it never seems to advance so you never really know if it is night or day.
That sounds awesome. I especially like the idea of eating creatures you came up with. I might steal that at some point ;) I love the Feywild. It's such a unique setting
Hurrah! Another Dale vid. How do we convince WOC to hire you as a creativity advisor. You bring a level of insight and originality wound through with mythology and mystery that would greatly benefit D&D products. Thanks as always 👍
No one gets it like Dael does. I'm currently writing a play about two people who get lost in Faerie, and I honestly learned so much from this video. It felt like a lot of things that lots of us might on some level inherently know and use in our stories or campaigns without understanding the factors influencing it - but this video puts them into words so well. Also, "Use the language of ideas to put non-pictures in people's heads." is possibly some of the best writing advice I've ever heard. It's that idea of the non-picture. Prompting someone's imagination to conjure something up that they can't possibly conjure up, and so they conjure up the absence of it, the shape of it, the outline; or in place of it, they imagine something completely different, completely unexpected even by the author. It's like directly triggering the part of the brain that contains and responds to the Uncanny.
This video makes me think you'd really enjoy parts of The Kingkiller Chronicles and how Rothfuss implies way more often than he explicitly tells in his storytelling.
Something I'm doing currently is there's a place called faerie lake and the bottom of that lake is actually the top of a lake in the fey wild. And the shadowfell is a seemingly endless shadowed land
This is such a good video to re-watch for ideas for my archfey warlock I'm planning. I love the idea of a human who somehow gets wrapped up in all of the high magic, low logic strangeness of a fae.
Love this video precisely because it's about the desired affect, not the steps to take. The Feywild isn't just another place. It's a whole different way of thinking.
I have played with direction for the feywild: West: Deeper into the Feywild, East, closer to the "border marches." North is towards the Unseelie, and South is towards Seelie. You can't *merely* head East to escape the Feywild, but if you don't you will surely remain. You can't avoid all Unseelie fae and the darker aspects of fae by going South, but it matters.
I have a place in my setting that is like a very well known area, but it doubles as the entrance to the Feywild. It's called The Feylan Forest, this massive almost like "The Lost Woods" styled forest that circles of kingdom of the Fey Elves. The Elves are the only people that can navigate the forest from memory, and certain areas of the Feylan Forest will bleed in the Feywild during certain times of year. (I conduct this via a percentile roll that gets triggered whenever the party indicates that they change direction. Going straight just loops you back to the entrance no matter what.)
A while back I ran a campaign with a lot of faerie creatures in it. I had iron weapons do double damage to fully faerie creatures (eg pixies, driads and unicorns, but not elves or centaurs). But iron weapons were only easily available to dwarves. Most other creatures used bronze weapons, though elves sometimes used titanium. Elves weren't available as a player race, as I was keeping them sinister, powerful and manipulative. In this campaign, I was using metallurgy of weapons and equipment as a large part of the culture for various races and also part of what made some weapons magical. Smiths were redsmiths (bronze) or whitesmiths (tin), only dwarves had blacksmiths (iron). If you look into it, there are a lot of interesting modern and historical alloys of copper or other metals. Some of which (e.g. spring copper: copper/beryllium) would make very effective weapons or armour. Another example: Tungsten has the same density as gold (about 4x iron). The dwarf fighter in the party had a tungsten battleaxe, as he had the strength to wield it. If anyone had got hold of a cold wrought iron weapon, it would have been especially deadly vs faerie creatures. Though it would have taken a great deal of effort by a very talented blacksmith to work iron without using heat.
I've been fleshing out my version of the Feywild for my homebrew world, and this video was excellent! The use of fantasy authors and scholars really shows the care and research you do for your own storytelling, and I can't help but admire that!
This is so good, you killed it. If you ever want to make a follow-up, delving deeper into how to really get into the mindset of the fey would be like a gift of a kumquat from the Lady of Hopeless Wishes. It’s one thing to talk about having worldview and frame of values that’s totally alien, but getting into that headspace and doing a great job RPing it is another kettle of stolen children altogether.
My interpretation of Faerie is that it is a world just like ours, only with different people and rules. Not just laws of society, but the laws of existence, are different. Direction has no bearing, and when you ask someone where to find a certain landmark, they will tell you “You’ll find it,” as if it were a saying that had been uttered a million times. You will never know where something is, only where it isn’t. It is a world that comes about when Existence has a child with Itself; it’s not quite its parents, but something resembling the grey area between them. Faerie is you, and faerie is me, but not always. We are only Faerie in our most transitory states, when what we are is fundamentally changing. The physical place of Faerie is a constantly changing state between our law-abiding plane and a plane far in the future (or perhaps the past) governed entirely by chaos. When rules and bindings are written in Faerie, the ink itself dances about on the page, and the meaning takes no comprehesive shape. However, because of this lawless property of scribing, art comes to life as if it were living all along. Creatures in Faerie often look so different that it is believed that there are no species, only unique individuals drawn into existence by magic itself. Those born in Faerie live forever while there, but those who come into Faerie from the mortal world will immediately age several decades when they come back out.
I have been deep diving into the content of Dael Kingsmill. And Thank You Dale! Such great content. But this video may be one of my favorites and possibly most favorite. Ps Dael Kingsmill has now become the name of a character in the DnD world I have built. Currently the PC`s are in a Swamp. Now because of this I will adjust the name of the northern part of the swamp that has an open rift to the Fey, it is know known as the, "Bog & Mire Forest of Forgotten Friends".
Found your channel recently, and I love it. Personally, I expand "cold iron" to mean all sorts of steel. Worked steel is the antithesis of all those fae themes, so it's the antithesis of the fae. In response, though, you don't want to go brandishing a steel weapon or threatening with it unprovoked. It can be justified in defense, but you go bullying the fae with iron, and you've declared war. Doing so on their turf means that the land itself will hate you.
I agree with the notion that defining the fae (or even game mechanics regarding magic and monsters - anything that is fueled on mystery and the unknown) is a slippery slope. Even referring to goblins as 'goblins' instead of describing features and mannerisms half seen in the gloom, each an individual rather than a species with set characteristics, in my opinion, is better to avoid. Vids like this one are really great for GM/DMs behind the curtain, tinkering backstage. Thanks for uploading. Dael, great stuff.
Check out her video series "Wolfgang" too. It's awesome commentary on relations among strange creatures who are just trying to be real. It has some utterly hilarious bits and some poignant moments that make you think and remember. Short, punchy episodes and a good thruline story.
So the Faewild appears to be a realm of fluidity that is based on whimsy and mischief with just a hint of wonder, the phrase "expect the unexpected" is heavily implied there, and it appears that laws and rules are bound by deals between two parties
just discovered your channel and this is both really helpfull for what I think is the hardest plane to run as a DM and also a really great discussion on the concept of liminality in folk tales.
I love your D&D videos. This hobby really benefits from people that can turn the exploration and social parts of the experience into things as elaborate and deep as the combats usually are. I would love to hear your take on the Shadowfell, on how to depict Seelie and Unseelie fey and if you have a way of making single combat (as in trial by combat from Game of Thrones) more than just a series of boring turns trying to hit the same target.
So they fey is like Ikea, you can't tell what time it is and you can walk and walk but you'll never reach the end. And when you do leave you find time has passed differently and your pack is full of things that you don't remember picking up.
With regard to using spells to get to Faerie/the Feywild, I think it's easy enough to say you can get there, but not to the part of it you're aiming for (and the rules support this). Generally you'd end up in a border region that is considerably more mundane than other areas.
First of all, congrats on the event. Second, in regards to the feywild: Have you played the Witcher (especially Witcher 3) and/or heard about the Leshen? I think they're one of the most interesting forest spirits I've read about so far. While usually portrayed as hostile, they could be changed to something akin to a protector of the feywoods, while at the same time having a very twisted feeling of creepiness. All in all, they bring something eerie to the table I haven't seen in british faerie mythology so far. Similar goes for the three crones from The Witcher 3, by the way.
But animals (or at least various mammals) have displayed senses of justice and fairness similar to ours. Even snakes have an etiquette when it comes to duels. They have their own systems of behaviour that simply differ from ours.
Dael, have you encountered the Wyld from a game called Exalted? It is their equivalent of Faerie, but since they pull from non-Western inspirations it also includes the folktale logic of India and China and Mesoamerica. They call their sidhe equivalent "Raksha" for example. I wonder as to your opinion and hmm ... "folklore-feel" of it.
The Acq Inc "C" team game uses a lot of "vague and evocative" language, if people want to see an example. Jerry feasts on vague and evocative language like fine cuisine. Also I super want to have a game where my players have ended up trapped in the Feywild for hundreds of years mid adventure and come back to a world overtaken by the BBEG, but having absorbed some of the ineffable magical aspects of that realm.
Ireland's Immortals is a really good analysis of our mythologies if you've space on your reading list. I don't know the specific Yeats book you mentioned but in general Yeats was a bit of a bastardman and had a fairly questionable agenda behind most of his work (namely a lifelong project of sleeping with Maud Gonne) If I ever find out where that field is though, going on a pilgrimage
Thank you for trying to introduce this mostly new and younger audience to some of the myth, litriture and prose that led to what we know as modern fantasy. It's a shame that the conduit for most people and point of contact is 5e where the phrase "because magic" covers a lot of the inconsistences and cracks that affect the system, let's hope this new generation of DMs won't be trapped by the rules as written.
There is a place in Cornwall called come-to-good. The odd thing is when I visited the place on a family holiday I remember three neighboring places, come-to-good come-to-bad and come-to-bed. Yet I can find no evidence for the other two places. Was it my father messing with me or did we wander into faerie?
Kids usually have a strong connection with the supernatural, since they are free of sins. So yeah, you could have watched 3 other alternate dimensional places. Be thankfull you didn't interact with come-to-bad or come-to-bed. Otherwise your name will be added to the missing children international list.
Okay having watched more yes it obviously is. I am just excited to hear someone else talk about that book. Excellent video by the way! It was super helpful and genuinely made sense. Or at least as much sense as this stuff should make, eh?
Ok, Like this post if you would like Dael to do a reading/audio-book of a classic fantasy story. I don't care which one...she has an AMAZING, clear voice with excellent pattern and cadence! Dael..you have to do this. {gets money ready to throw at her...} :)
I honestly hate the "High" and "Now" magic descriptors being the "Only one" or "Hard" and "Soft" magic being the "end all". Magic is chaotic in a lot of cases. You can have both the "hard" and "soft" magic systems. With how you have your worldbuilding, it's like "Wizards are the Hard magic system because they make it into a science", "Sorcerers are like a "Soft" magic system because they just *do*." but then you have the more Chaotic, "wild" aspect to your world which Witches, Warlocks, and Fae play with. The type of magic which you can't just "fix" with math or understanding. I'm kinda curious to see your thoughts on the "magic" system of Dungeon Crawler Classics and if you would implement aspects of how they do magic in a campain.
Could you list all the books you quoted so I can find them more easily. Love me some good fantasy material. Vague and evocative content as usual (in the best way) Edit: I should finish the video first. List anyway??? You do you Is Johnathan Strange and Mr.Norrel what you were quoting at the beginning of the video???
For me in the feywild everything is the original version where our world feels like the copy of a copy, a fey tree is just more treeish than a material realm tree.
When it comes to getting INTO Faerie, or the Feywilds, I am always reminded of a line from PotC: At World's End - "For certain, you have to be lost to find a place that can't be found, elseways everyone would know where it was." I also like the idea that certain geography has a natural connection to the Feywild, and that the two might bleed together. So a party that is lost in a Forest would more likely find Faerie, as opposed to just being lost on the plains. I might even go so far as to include the idea of twilight, since I have always envisioned it as being constant twilight there. It comes from my love of the Courts - Seelie/Unseelie, Summer/Winter, and the constant balance between light, dark, warm, cold, night, day.
As a gameplay mechanic and a bit of fun narratively - what if the creatures in the Feywild are resistant or immune to magic weapons but non-magic weapons do damage to them? Should this happen after 8th level or so it could become a neat challenge
I'm not sure were it originated from but cold-forged Iron is typically seen as a weakness of Fey-Creatures in pop culture. It makes sense in a way, especially if you use a DND-twist to make it where you're literally forging the iron with ice rather than fire.
Bailey Higdon This is a common misunderstanding. In real life, iron is never “forged” cold. But in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, the term “cold iron” was used poetically, in literature, to mean a weapon made of steel - such as a sword. Much like we might say “Her words cut him deeper than any cold, hard steel ever could.” Some fantasy rpg’s have taken this misunderstanding and built it into their lore. For example, the Forgotten Realms wiki says “Cold iron was a type of iron. It was forged at a lower temperature than normal iron or steel, in order to preserve its properties. It was mined deep underground and famed for its efficacy against fey creatures.” So in the Forgotten Realms, “cold iron” weapons were specially made for that purpose. But in my homebrew, I just make all fey vulnerable to any iron based weapons. Imagine my young fighter’s delight when she discovers that her ordinary rapier is more feared by the Hag than the wizard’s firebolt or the Druid’s wildshaped bear attacks.
I love all of this. Personally, I go the exact opposite with cold iron, largely due to my being a massive Dresden Files fanboy: Any old Iron will do. a steel sword, a lump of iron ore, a handful of nails, you name it, if it's ferrous, fey can't abide it (except ones like Annis Hags and Redcaps who explicitly have iron elements in their lore and statblocks, and that just inspires all sorts of fun questions like how they got their iron immunity and how other fey feel about them), and merely the touch of iron is unpleasant to the fey. But, they're preternaturally good at avoiding contact with the stuff. Good luck sneaking up on a faerie to stab it with a steel dagger or hack it to bits with an iron axe. I don't have explicit rules for any of this, I would probably deal with it on a fey-by-fey basis, but off the top of my head, I would suspect contact with iron would screw up what the fey is best at, so a caster might have difficulty concentrating on spells, while a warrior might become frail and clumsy after touching iron. I also think that glamours are interesting. I love the idea that the beauty of Faerie isn't even skin deep. Like, I love in The Sandman when Nuala comes to stay in Dream's realm and he strips her of her glamours and she's just this frail, plain creature. Or in Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies when you get hints (or at least, I did the first time I read it; probably due for a reread) that underneath the sophisticated illusions that the Elves wore into Lancre were just primitive warriors dressed in hides killing their victims with stone weapons. I love the idea of Faerie glamours being like illusions, but better. Like, there's a solidity to them, an appeal to all the senses that eludes even the greatest of mortal illusionists while being like child's play to the fey. Ooh! That's a third thing. I think part of what makes the fey so interesting and alien is the reversal of what comes easily versus what is difficult compared to the experience of humans and other mortals. Like, humans need to go to all this work to use magic, whether it's a lifetime of worship in a temple, or of study in a magic school or bardic college, or of servitude to an otherworldly patron (with sorcerers as the exception), but creatures of Faerie are creatures of magic through and through; they cast complicated spells as easily as a mortal makes a sandwich. On the other hand, things like lying or using iron tools are so easy that any mortal can do it without thinking, but would stymie a faerie creature to no end. These are just my favorite examples, but it's a neat shorthand to illustrate their alienness: What's hard for mortals but easy for the fey, and what's easy for mortals but hard for the fey?
Anthony Sladky I do something similar with my fey/iron interactions. In my world, all fey are vulnerable to any iron based weapons. Imagine my young fighter’s delight when she discovers that her ordinary rapier is more feared by the Hag than the wizard’s firebolt or the Druid’s wildshaped bear attacks. Specifically addressing the Redcap issue, after they are slain, my players discover that Redcap bodies “revert” to what they actually are rather than what they appear to have been - Like Pinocchio being a puppet that was turned into a real boy by a fairy, Redcaps are “real old men” that were made from straw filled puppets. When they die, they turn back into the marionettes that they were. It turns out that the iron shoes are actually just thin LEAD cups at the ends of their footless legs. No wonder they are so clumsy. Fey will occasionally use other metals, lead and tin, copper, silver, and of course gold. But they will never willingly touch iron. Although some, like the Annis Hags, will create the illusion of iron teeth or nails, partly to hide their dread of the metal, partly just for the thrill of deception.
I played a character that looked like a goblin but was actually supposed to be a fey trickster sort of character (along the lines of rumplestiltskin or a bubbayaga, be careful about the specifics of the deal you make). Part of what was fun to play was having rules that the DM and I knew but the other players, didn't. For example, he didn't value most things, but precious metal, especially gold, were of extreme value to him, though not so quantity specific. The actual tangible coin was the valuable thing, not the promise of much wealth. (think paying the ferryman, you need the coin in hand to pay not a future promise) I had chosen a shadow monk class, so his fey aspects were greatly enhanced once he reached the early level where he can shadow teleport. The campaign started with villages having problems with nearby goblins having been attacking travelers and homesteads, so my character sleeping in front of the fire at an in naturally lead to hostility. Ended when a player (not the quest giver) trying to end the fighting by offered him a job helping them - and pulled out a few gold coins to visually communicate during the fighting. A bargain was immediately struck. (being fey, this was a binding agreement, though the terms are particular) At another time, the people we were with refused to give the goblin some of the food they were cooking. Having shown him offense, it would be returned mischievously. Having tracked down some of the enemy goblins, he took part of one and cooked it into jerky (nasty goblin-flesh tasting jerky) and then snuck it into their provisions for a nasty surprise later. (remember he is fey and only appears like a goblin, so this isn't cannibalism for him to give someone goblin flesh) Also, he would listen/obey to the person who payed him, because that was part of the bargain, be he would often ignore the other party members trying to tell him to do something unless they were willing to strike some deal with him.
I also like the twist Terry Pratchett had on the Fae/Elves (on their morality, or lack thereof): Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
My favourite succinct depiction of Faerie magic comes from Doctor Who, of all places. “Humans do all sorts of things with numbers - you split the atom! Well, [witches] do that with words.”
A thought I had, watching your always excellent videos, was to utilize PCs Behaviors, Ideals, Bonds, and/or Flaws as things that manifest in people/places/things in the Feywild. Do not, as a DM, inform the players of this, but rather introduce it on the sly and wait to see when players start to resonate with these aspects that they themselves chose for their characters, but often get overlooked (such is the nature of the game). Example: Flaw - I'm a sucker for a pretty face. As the players enter the Feywild they continuously encounter (and accrue) fey that are simply infatuated by the PC with this trait. It matters not what this PC's charisma score is, or how attractive they have described themselves, what matters is that this is a manifestation of their reality in a way that is almost like a mirror. Alternatively, the same flaw could manifest as a nymph who consistently appears for everyone but the PC with this flaw, or perhaps only for them, and threatens to lure them away. The ultimate goal of such is to give the players some soul searching to chew on as they see their own aspects reflected as if in fun house mirrors. Warped, but still identifiable, and perhaps not to their liking. The only other thing I wanted to mention was that the endeavor to describe Faerie was highly entertaining and eye-opening. I came to realize that Faerie is the embodiment of that inability to explain Faerie with our limited human terms. It is the feeling, plain and simple. The state of recognizing something as more natural than ourselves and the painful longing to abandon that which is human in us so that we can be a part of it. Like abandoning your day job to live in the woods and build a cabin with nothing but a stone axe. The need to forget language so that you can accurately describe a sunrise, and yet the frustration of having forgot the very means by which you can share it to another. Ultimately, the need to bear witness to nature personally, and not through the limited shared consciousness that language affords us mortals. Thanks, Dael!
On the nature of fairies: There was a great reddit post that I have since lost on the morality of fairies. It took the approach of creating an axis (similar to our good/evil x lawful/chaotic axis we use for character creation) and came to the conclusion, based off various stories mentioning fairies, that fairy society would value the natural over the constructed and the spontaneous over the methodical. Essentially it was that a fairy believes it is virtuous to keep with ones place in nature. This doesn't mean that like civilization is evil, but more of a "don't rock the boat" mentality. If you're a beggar or a king, be content with your place in the food chain. And then on the other hand, they would also believe that it is virtuous to be spontaneous. The fairy who seeks to control the future through careful planning is foolish. To do what is dramatic in the moment, what is interesting and *fun,* is most noble. Sticking to plans that have since become dull is nonsense. Anyway, it was an interesting thought and has definitely influenced how i view Fairy behavior. If i ever find that post again I will link it here.
Great video! Love hearing Lewis and Tolkien’s thoughts on this. And I love your description of your setting as pervasive magic. It’s deeper and more primal.
The thing I'm most excited to do in a Feywild campaign is to put the party against a lich inspired by Koschei the Deathless (who is actually one of the oldest, if not the oldest lich in human folklore history). Koschei hid his death in a needle in an egg in a duck in a rabbit in a chest locked away in a box on a remote island. I think it would be so funny/cool to have a fey lich who has hidden their phylactery so tediously and randomly.
sail into a mist, wait untill the food runs out and the players are giving up or going to panic and want to go back. then their boat will hit a shore in the mist with a high white cliffside and a path up it.
I really like the "getting out" part. " - Oh sure, you can go home easy, just dive into this pond. As long you didn't eat anything or said "thank you" to a fairy or bow to anybody here, you'll be perfectly fine. - huuuuuu... about that..." And the classic "I'll take you to a gate. But it's dangerous. And you have to take me with you to the mortal real." With all the troubles that keeping (or breaking) the promise might create. The concept of finding a friendly/dangerous/trickster/oblivious/whatthehellareyou "guide" in the fey land is a classic, always nice.
When I DMed a campaign that had a section on the fey I took a lot of inspiration from Algernon Blackwoods 'The Willows' and a number of modern forest centered creepypastas. Like, the the creepypastas about forest rangers and finding pristine staircases in the middle of the forest. Stuff like Slenderman and the Rake, all which are basically modern fairy tales. Those were some of my best moments as a DM where logic and mechanics no longer held meaning to the player and watching them figure out that you need to THINK differently, and that you actually need to FAIL a survival check from getting lost to succeed. If done right Fey scenarios can be the most memorable in my opinion.
Love the deep dive into Fearie. Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norell is a great place to start. Have you ever read The Dresden Files? Jim Butcher has one of my favorite and well fleshed out descriptions of the Never Never(Fearie)
Carapace Tomahawk is one of the best names ever. Also I would agree that trying to _definitively_ quantify the Feywild kinda misses the point of the Feywild. Sounds like your world's magic is very Narnian. I like it.
Everything you said about C.S.Lewis on faerie reminded me of the Horse and his Boy. One theme of the book is “Northernness”. Shasta lives in the mundane desert land and wants to live in the faerie North where exist the talking animals, fauns, and dwarves. He longs to escape his dull life of abuse in the desert and live free in the cool northern vistas.
I unfortunately don't have a group to play with:( However, I have created 6 different lvl 1 characters in case I found a group. My favorite is: A Female Drow Feylost background Death Domain Cleric sworn to the Raven Queen.
Percy Jackson trash here After the Hades reference and traveling west I just got why the doorway is in Hollywood. It's west from Manhattan. Thanks Rick
Fun fact: When Silena leads the Ares Cabin into battle against the Lydian Drakon by pretending to be Clarisse, that directly mirrors Petroclus leading the Greeks into battle against the Trojans by pretending to be Achilles. There's a lot of subtler nods to Greek Myth hidden beneath the more overt ones, one of the reasons i love the series so much.
This is fantastic. The only games I've played where the feywild comes up, have been run really well. I think the love of what Fairie is, only appeals to people who already get it, even if they can't understand why they like it. Their fascination with the feywild is as abstract and emotional as the feywild itself. Thank you for bringing up Jonathan Strange. It's my second favorite modern Fairie story after King of Elfland's Daughter.
Also, Ian McDonald's "King of Morning, Queen of Day" always sticks in my head as a way to discuss how the fey can passingly interact with multiple generations, with a history of Irish struggles.
As an addendum: When I first read "The Cats of Ulthar" by H. P. Lovecraft, I thought that it very much sounded like a faerie tale. Granted, it's in a Lovecraftian mode and has a horror styling to it, but it still seems very much a cousin or acquaintance of faerie tales. I just thought it was worth mentioning if people want someone a bit nonstandard for ideas or inspiration. Or if they want their version of the Feywild to be a bit spooky.
Lots of Lovecraft actually works for faerie stories...there's a sense of ineffability about most faerie stories that work well with the unknowable monsters and strange rules of creatures from the Mythos.
“You raise your sword to attack the fairy.
Make an intelligence saving throw.”
“Uh, 12.”
“You swing your baguette at the fairy & the baguette turns to liquid.”
“I try to scoop up the liquid”
“Make a charisma saving throw”
“20!”
“You’re holding the liquid in your hands, a great big chunk of it”
“I uh, squash the liquid into a ball”
“Make an intelligence check”
“17”
“The bread decides that it was more fond of being a sword than a ball & is upset at you - you notice the fairy is gone at this point”
“I chase after my bread & try & find the fairy”
“You find a forest of bread, looking around you unsheathe your fairy, worried about what dangers lurk here”
Bugs Bunny energy in that last line.
Old Spice: D&D Edition
Dealing with the fae wild should feel like a dream....or a mushroom trip.
Congrats. Fucking nailed it.
@@PandorasFolly Thanks man.
In my imagination, things in the Feywild both shouldn't make sense & at the same time, be whimsically dangerous. No one is going to stab you with a sword, or throw a fireball at you, but they'll turn you into a sheep & make the suggestion that you should pretend to be a cloud - then you end up floating into the sky for an hour until Polymorph wears off.
@@HeavensOfMetal exactly. Have you ever read any of the books from the Game "Mage of the Ascension"? You can find the pdfs online and if you haven't read them, they are totally blooming from this kind of trellis. Each book has about a PhDs worth of research in them.
Dael’s book recommendations:
- “On Fairy-Stories” by J.R.R. Tolkien
- “Surprised by Joy” by C.S. Lewis
- “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel” by Susanna Clarke
- “Irish Faerie and Folktales” by W. B. Yeats
- “The Crystal Cave” “The Hollow Hills,” “the Merlin Trilogy” and others by Mary Stewart
- “Faeries” by Brian Froud; Allen Lee
I’ve only read the first one
Was looking for this, thank you
Jack Vance's Lyonesse trilogy. Written at the height of his prowess. Cannot more highly recommend it, great folk and Fae encounters and truly mystical mad magicians, a joy. Dry wit with a light touch.
Thankyou
"The nature of Fey is that often what you look at is hard to describe, and the idea is more pervasive than the physical appearance.
When a fairy has clothes the color of a mid day storm. How cloudy? How rainy? Lit up by lightning or over the ocean? Snow storm? Blizard? Thunder? These things are answered by the observer because the ideal is more important than the physics of shape light and color, and the constant of its appearance isn’t what it looks like, but what you think when you look at it."
My DM describing why Fey are so strange so we stop asking questions about what the color of clouds means
If you had a T-Shirt with "Vague & Evocative" on it, I'd probably buy it. Just saying.
Andrew Webb I agree.
I’d also wear “Zip-Zap-Boing”.
honestly i never had a word or phrase for the feeling until i started watching this channel so im obliged to buy one
I'd wear it.
Came here to comment this, black shirt, white lettering, maybe pseudo D&D font.
Vague and Evocative is my jam. It’s delicious on toast.
I would run that if the players go into Faerie with cold iron the world starts to reject them, they don't see anything as the very light shies away from them, they don't hear anything because the sound avoids them, even the very ground crumbles at their feet because it fears the cold iron.
In many myths, it's cold wrought iron that affects faeries, rather than iron itself. That's iron that has been worked without heat. In DnD terms, cold wrought iron weapons would be rare magical items, specifically made to be effective against faeries.
In my game, creatures of the feywild dont die. So eating another creature in the feywild is a decision made with that creature - an elk or fish of the feywild would be entirely aware of the whole process of its being eaten, and you wouldn’t cook meats in the feywild.
One of my players was taken into the feywild during a one shot by a beautiful white bull that carried him through a wall.
He lied to a few pixies that he was the god Dionysus, resulting in him being brought to a party in the court of an ancient fairie dragon. The dragon aided him in supplying the feast and performance that would be expected should Dionysus/Bacchus arrive as a guest, thereby cementing his pact - and continuing what he then learned was a longstanding family tradition. At some point he will return there to seek out his parents who have been elsewhere in the feywild for a long time.
To me the fey crossings are - like you were saying about getting lost - places where the quality of the environment feels beautiful, serene, calm and safe. Disturbingly undisturbed. They are palces where you could not tell which side you were on at the time you cross. I think that reinforces the idea of having designated crossing times.
A party decides to take a long rest there, and come morning you tell them the sun is just peaking over the horizon. But as the day goes on it never seems to advance so you never really know if it is night or day.
That sounds awesome. I especially like the idea of eating creatures you came up with. I might steal that at some point ;)
I love the Feywild. It's such a unique setting
+
Hurrah! Another Dale vid.
How do we convince WOC to hire you as a creativity advisor. You bring a level of insight and originality wound through with mythology and mystery that would greatly benefit D&D products.
Thanks as always 👍
No one gets it like Dael does. I'm currently writing a play about two people who get lost in Faerie, and I honestly learned so much from this video. It felt like a lot of things that lots of us might on some level inherently know and use in our stories or campaigns without understanding the factors influencing it - but this video puts them into words so well.
Also, "Use the language of ideas to put non-pictures in people's heads." is possibly some of the best writing advice I've ever heard. It's that idea of the non-picture. Prompting someone's imagination to conjure something up that they can't possibly conjure up, and so they conjure up the absence of it, the shape of it, the outline; or in place of it, they imagine something completely different, completely unexpected even by the author. It's like directly triggering the part of the brain that contains and responds to the Uncanny.
This video makes me think you'd really enjoy parts of The Kingkiller Chronicles and how Rothfuss implies way more often than he explicitly tells in his storytelling.
Something I'm doing currently is there's a place called faerie lake and the bottom of that lake is actually the top of a lake in the fey wild. And the shadowfell is a seemingly endless shadowed land
This is such a good video to re-watch for ideas for my archfey warlock I'm planning. I love the idea of a human who somehow gets wrapped up in all of the high magic, low logic strangeness of a fae.
Love this video precisely because it's about the desired affect, not the steps to take. The Feywild isn't just another place. It's a whole different way of thinking.
I have played with direction for the feywild:
West: Deeper into the Feywild, East, closer to the "border marches."
North is towards the Unseelie, and South is towards Seelie.
You can't *merely* head East to escape the Feywild, but if you don't you will surely remain.
You can't avoid all Unseelie fae and the darker aspects of fae by going South, but it matters.
I have a place in my setting that is like a very well known area, but it doubles as the entrance to the Feywild. It's called The Feylan Forest, this massive almost like "The Lost Woods" styled forest that circles of kingdom of the Fey Elves. The Elves are the only people that can navigate the forest from memory, and certain areas of the Feylan Forest will bleed in the Feywild during certain times of year. (I conduct this via a percentile roll that gets triggered whenever the party indicates that they change direction. Going straight just loops you back to the entrance no matter what.)
A while back I ran a campaign with a lot of faerie creatures in it. I had iron weapons do double damage to fully faerie creatures (eg pixies, driads and unicorns, but not elves or centaurs). But iron weapons were only easily available to dwarves. Most other creatures used bronze weapons, though elves sometimes used titanium. Elves weren't available as a player race, as I was keeping them sinister, powerful and manipulative.
In this campaign, I was using metallurgy of weapons and equipment as a large part of the culture for various races and also part of what made some weapons magical. Smiths were redsmiths (bronze) or whitesmiths (tin), only dwarves had blacksmiths (iron). If you look into it, there are a lot of interesting modern and historical alloys of copper or other metals. Some of which (e.g. spring copper: copper/beryllium) would make very effective weapons or armour.
Another example: Tungsten has the same density as gold (about 4x iron). The dwarf fighter in the party had a tungsten battleaxe, as he had the strength to wield it.
If anyone had got hold of a cold wrought iron weapon, it would have been especially deadly vs faerie creatures. Though it would have taken a great deal of effort by a very talented blacksmith to work iron without using heat.
I've been fleshing out my version of the Feywild for my homebrew world, and this video was excellent! The use of fantasy authors and scholars really shows the care and research you do for your own storytelling, and I can't help but admire that!
This for me was the most helpful video I’ve found on the Feywild thus far
This is so good, you killed it. If you ever want to make a follow-up, delving deeper into how to really get into the mindset of the fey would be like a gift of a kumquat from the Lady of Hopeless Wishes. It’s one thing to talk about having worldview and frame of values that’s totally alien, but getting into that headspace and doing a great job RPing it is another kettle of stolen children altogether.
My interpretation of Faerie is that it is a world just like ours, only with different people and rules. Not just laws of society, but the laws of existence, are different. Direction has no bearing, and when you ask someone where to find a certain landmark, they will tell you “You’ll find it,” as if it were a saying that had been uttered a million times. You will never know where something is, only where it isn’t.
It is a world that comes about when Existence has a child with Itself; it’s not quite its parents, but something resembling the grey area between them. Faerie is you, and faerie is me, but not always. We are only Faerie in our most transitory states, when what we are is fundamentally changing. The physical place of Faerie is a constantly changing state between our law-abiding plane and a plane far in the future (or perhaps the past) governed entirely by chaos.
When rules and bindings are written in Faerie, the ink itself dances about on the page, and the meaning takes no comprehesive shape. However, because of this lawless property of scribing, art comes to life as if it were living all along. Creatures in Faerie often look so different that it is believed that there are no species, only unique individuals drawn into existence by magic itself. Those born in Faerie live forever while there, but those who come into Faerie from the mortal world will immediately age several decades when they come back out.
I have been deep diving into the content of Dael Kingsmill. And Thank You Dale! Such great content. But this video may be one of my favorites and possibly most favorite. Ps Dael Kingsmill has now become the name of a character in the DnD world I have built. Currently the PC`s are in a Swamp. Now because of this I will adjust the name of the northern part of the swamp that has an open rift to the Fey, it is know known as the, "Bog & Mire Forest of Forgotten Friends".
Found your channel recently, and I love it.
Personally, I expand "cold iron" to mean all sorts of steel. Worked steel is the antithesis of all those fae themes, so it's the antithesis of the fae.
In response, though, you don't want to go brandishing a steel weapon or threatening with it unprovoked. It can be justified in defense, but you go bullying the fae with iron, and you've declared war. Doing so on their turf means that the land itself will hate you.
I'm preparing to make a feywild arc with my players and wow, this videos is beyond incredible, thank you
I agree with the notion that defining the fae (or even game mechanics regarding magic and monsters - anything that is fueled on mystery and the unknown) is a slippery slope. Even referring to goblins as 'goblins' instead of describing features and mannerisms half seen in the gloom, each an individual rather than a species with set characteristics, in my opinion, is better to avoid. Vids like this one are really great for GM/DMs behind the curtain, tinkering backstage. Thanks for uploading. Dael, great stuff.
Yay! I've been watching your dnd vids literally all day and I'm so excited to watch this
Check out her video series "Wolfgang" too. It's awesome commentary on relations among strange creatures who are just trying to be real. It has some utterly hilarious bits and some poignant moments that make you think and remember. Short, punchy episodes and a good thruline story.
So the Faewild appears to be a realm of fluidity that is based on whimsy and mischief with just a hint of wonder, the phrase "expect the unexpected" is heavily implied there, and it appears that laws and rules are bound by deals between two parties
I could have used this earlier. My players are on the way out of the Feywild in a few sessions. Nice to see you again 😁
just discovered your channel and this is both really helpfull for what I think is the hardest plane to run as a DM and also a really great discussion on the concept of liminality in folk tales.
First vid of yours I've seen - your mind is the greatest thing I've experienced in months. Thank you!
I like your take on the ineffable quality that IS Faerie.
Great video! Until I read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell I found the Feywilds a very difficult concept to grasp.
It strikes me how much a 5e DM has to fight against the system to *keep* magical things magical.
I love your D&D videos.
This hobby really benefits from people that can turn the exploration and social parts of the experience
into things as elaborate and deep as the combats usually are.
I would love to hear your take on the Shadowfell, on how to depict Seelie and Unseelie fey
and if you have a way of making single combat (as in trial by combat from Game of Thrones)
more than just a series of boring turns trying to hit the same target.
your video made me realize that the faewild, sylvan, faerie, whatever you want to call it is basically romanticism incarnate
The depiction of Faerie from Johnathon Strange & Mr. Norrell is so so good!
So they fey is like Ikea, you can't tell what time it is and you can walk and walk but you'll never reach the end. And when you do leave you find time has passed differently and your pack is full of things that you don't remember picking up.
Faeries seem like, on her description, to be kind of the otherside of the coin from the Eldrich, like Lovecraftian lore.
I love how the video darkens when you mention stealing something from Fey. XD
With regard to using spells to get to Faerie/the Feywild, I think it's easy enough to say you can get there, but not to the part of it you're aiming for (and the rules support this). Generally you'd end up in a border region that is considerably more mundane than other areas.
First of all, congrats on the event. Second, in regards to the feywild: Have you played the Witcher (especially Witcher 3) and/or heard about the Leshen? I think they're one of the most interesting forest spirits I've read about so far. While usually portrayed as hostile, they could be changed to something akin to a protector of the feywoods, while at the same time having a very twisted feeling of creepiness. All in all, they bring something eerie to the table I haven't seen in british faerie mythology so far. Similar goes for the three crones from The Witcher 3, by the way.
The fact that this isn't called D&Dael is a travesty
I know! But I've been gone for a month, I gotta stroke that metadata for the sake of the algorithm
But animals (or at least various mammals) have displayed senses of justice and fairness similar to ours.
Even snakes have an etiquette when it comes to duels.
They have their own systems of behaviour that simply differ from ours.
I love surreal fantasy so much.
I watched this video while microdosing psilocybin and let me tell you, this groks well.
Dael Kingsmill getting to meet Matt Colville is almost as impressive as Matt Colville getting to meet Dael Kingsmill.
✨Vague✨ and ✨Evocative✨
Good stuff Dael, thanks for posting.
Oh my version of the Feywild is different.
*Me lost in the Feywild,
Faerie Man: BRING THAT ASS HERE BOAH!!!
Just felt real weird because I live on Beacon Hill drive in Oregon
Dael, have you encountered the Wyld from a game called Exalted? It is their equivalent of Faerie, but since they pull from non-Western inspirations it also includes the folktale logic of India and China and Mesoamerica. They call their sidhe equivalent "Raksha" for example. I wonder as to your opinion and hmm ... "folklore-feel" of it.
Welcome back Dael
I love the recommended reading at the end. Like, I won't read it. But I appreciate it nonetheless
I respect that.
Kinda sounds like you're describing Arcadia from _Changeling: The Lost._
The Acq Inc "C" team game uses a lot of "vague and evocative" language, if people want to see an example. Jerry feasts on vague and evocative language like fine cuisine. Also I super want to have a game where my players have ended up trapped in the Feywild for hundreds of years mid adventure and come back to a world overtaken by the BBEG, but having absorbed some of the ineffable magical aspects of that realm.
Ireland's Immortals is a really good analysis of our mythologies if you've space on your reading list. I don't know the specific Yeats book you mentioned but in general Yeats was a bit of a bastardman and had a fairly questionable agenda behind most of his work (namely a lifelong project of sleeping with Maud Gonne)
If I ever find out where that field is though, going on a pilgrimage
you can swim with orcas in norway in november :).
1 of the things i´d like to do in life. i do hate the cold though :s...
Thank you for trying to introduce this mostly new and younger audience to some of the myth, litriture and prose that led to what we know as modern fantasy.
It's a shame that the conduit for most people and point of contact is 5e where the phrase "because magic" covers a lot of the inconsistences and cracks that affect the system, let's hope this new generation of DMs won't be trapped by the rules as written.
There is a place in Cornwall called come-to-good. The odd thing is when I visited the place on a family holiday I remember three neighboring places, come-to-good come-to-bad and come-to-bed. Yet I can find no evidence for the other two places. Was it my father messing with me or did we wander into faerie?
Kids usually have a strong connection with the supernatural, since they are free of sins. So yeah, you could have watched 3 other alternate dimensional places. Be thankfull you didn't interact with come-to-bad or come-to-bed. Otherwise your name will be added to the missing children international list.
yay, you're not dead :3
welcome back, dael.
Wow this would have been extremely useful 4 weeks ago
My players are in the process of exiting the feywild. Oh well, useful for next time I suppose.
Was that some Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell at the start? My favourite book!
Okay having watched more yes it obviously is. I am just excited to hear someone else talk about that book. Excellent video by the way! It was super helpful and genuinely made sense. Or at least as much sense as this stuff should make, eh?
Agreed! Fantastic book 😊
Yes! A new Dael vid!
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell opening?
8:29 and here we see Dael briefly get warped into the Feywild
Ok, Like this post if you would like Dael to do a reading/audio-book of a classic fantasy story. I don't care which one...she has an AMAZING, clear voice with excellent pattern and cadence! Dael..you have to do this. {gets money ready to throw at her...} :)
I love her so much. Would love to play in her game so much!
19:03 there is a place called 'pity me' in the real world though (edit: oh, you mention it, lol)
If the people their offer you tea and biscuits do NOT accept!
It's unfortunate that Brian Fraud's Faeri9es is so hard to get your hand on nowadays.
Put lots of elves in it with human clerics.
I honestly hate the "High" and "Now" magic descriptors being the "Only one" or "Hard" and "Soft" magic being the "end all". Magic is chaotic in a lot of cases. You can have both the "hard" and "soft" magic systems. With how you have your worldbuilding, it's like "Wizards are the Hard magic system because they make it into a science", "Sorcerers are like a "Soft" magic system because they just *do*." but then you have the more Chaotic, "wild" aspect to your world which Witches, Warlocks, and Fae play with. The type of magic which you can't just "fix" with math or understanding. I'm kinda curious to see your thoughts on the "magic" system of Dungeon Crawler Classics and if you would implement aspects of how they do magic in a campain.
Could you list all the books you quoted so I can find them more easily. Love me some good fantasy material.
Vague and evocative content as usual (in the best way)
Edit: I should finish the video first. List anyway??? You do you
Is Johnathan Strange and Mr.Norrel what you were quoting at the beginning of the video???
Oh.
I thought this was going to be like "If I were Queen of the Feywild, boy there'd be some changes over there."
i want that video too
like this was good lets hear the other video
For me in the feywild everything is the original version where our world feels like the copy of a copy, a fey tree is just more treeish than a material realm tree.
Cool! The realm where the platonic ideals of objects and concepts actually exist!
When it comes to getting INTO Faerie, or the Feywilds, I am always reminded of a line from PotC: At World's End - "For certain, you have to be lost to find a place that can't be found, elseways everyone would know where it was."
I also like the idea that certain geography has a natural connection to the Feywild, and that the two might bleed together. So a party that is lost in a Forest would more likely find Faerie, as opposed to just being lost on the plains. I might even go so far as to include the idea of twilight, since I have always envisioned it as being constant twilight there.
It comes from my love of the Courts - Seelie/Unseelie, Summer/Winter, and the constant balance between light, dark, warm, cold, night, day.
You got the overalls as a gift for being a guest?
... You're not making Holland sound _less_ fae, you know
They gifted her with Clothing so she could be free and leave?
Ken Huff Dael is a free elf?
As a Hollander, I can confirm
That low-key minion cosplay tho
As a gameplay mechanic and a bit of fun narratively - what if the creatures in the Feywild are resistant or immune to magic weapons but non-magic weapons do damage to them? Should this happen after 8th level or so it could become a neat challenge
I'm not sure were it originated from but cold-forged Iron is typically seen as a weakness of Fey-Creatures in pop culture. It makes sense in a way, especially if you use a DND-twist to make it where you're literally forging the iron with ice rather than fire.
Bailey Higdon This is a common misunderstanding. In real life, iron is never “forged” cold. But in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s, the term “cold iron” was used poetically, in literature, to mean a weapon made of steel - such as a sword. Much like we might say “Her words cut him deeper than any cold, hard steel ever could.”
Some fantasy rpg’s have taken this misunderstanding and built it into their lore. For example, the Forgotten Realms wiki says “Cold iron was a type of iron. It was forged at a lower temperature than normal iron or steel, in order to preserve its properties. It was mined deep underground and famed for its efficacy against fey creatures.” So in the Forgotten Realms, “cold iron” weapons were specially made for that purpose.
But in my homebrew, I just make all fey vulnerable to any iron based weapons. Imagine my young fighter’s delight when she discovers that her ordinary rapier is more feared by the Hag than the wizard’s firebolt or the Druid’s wildshaped bear attacks.
Mirko Polyak On top of this. Make only pure Iron affect them to add an extra sense of uncertainty.
I love all of this.
Personally, I go the exact opposite with cold iron, largely due to my being a massive Dresden Files fanboy: Any old Iron will do. a steel sword, a lump of iron ore, a handful of nails, you name it, if it's ferrous, fey can't abide it (except ones like Annis Hags and Redcaps who explicitly have iron elements in their lore and statblocks, and that just inspires all sorts of fun questions like how they got their iron immunity and how other fey feel about them), and merely the touch of iron is unpleasant to the fey. But, they're preternaturally good at avoiding contact with the stuff. Good luck sneaking up on a faerie to stab it with a steel dagger or hack it to bits with an iron axe. I don't have explicit rules for any of this, I would probably deal with it on a fey-by-fey basis, but off the top of my head, I would suspect contact with iron would screw up what the fey is best at, so a caster might have difficulty concentrating on spells, while a warrior might become frail and clumsy after touching iron.
I also think that glamours are interesting. I love the idea that the beauty of Faerie isn't even skin deep. Like, I love in The Sandman when Nuala comes to stay in Dream's realm and he strips her of her glamours and she's just this frail, plain creature. Or in Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies when you get hints (or at least, I did the first time I read it; probably due for a reread) that underneath the sophisticated illusions that the Elves wore into Lancre were just primitive warriors dressed in hides killing their victims with stone weapons. I love the idea of Faerie glamours being like illusions, but better. Like, there's a solidity to them, an appeal to all the senses that eludes even the greatest of mortal illusionists while being like child's play to the fey.
Ooh! That's a third thing. I think part of what makes the fey so interesting and alien is the reversal of what comes easily versus what is difficult compared to the experience of humans and other mortals. Like, humans need to go to all this work to use magic, whether it's a lifetime of worship in a temple, or of study in a magic school or bardic college, or of servitude to an otherworldly patron (with sorcerers as the exception), but creatures of Faerie are creatures of magic through and through; they cast complicated spells as easily as a mortal makes a sandwich. On the other hand, things like lying or using iron tools are so easy that any mortal can do it without thinking, but would stymie a faerie creature to no end. These are just my favorite examples, but it's a neat shorthand to illustrate their alienness: What's hard for mortals but easy for the fey, and what's easy for mortals but hard for the fey?
Anthony Sladky I do something similar with my fey/iron interactions. In my world, all fey are vulnerable to any iron based weapons. Imagine my young fighter’s delight when she discovers that her ordinary rapier is more feared by the Hag than the wizard’s firebolt or the Druid’s wildshaped bear attacks.
Specifically addressing the Redcap issue, after they are slain, my players discover that Redcap bodies “revert” to what they actually are rather than what they appear to have been - Like Pinocchio being a puppet that was turned into a real boy by a fairy, Redcaps are “real old men” that were made from straw filled puppets. When they die, they turn back into the marionettes that they were. It turns out that the iron shoes are actually just thin LEAD cups at the ends of their footless legs. No wonder they are so clumsy.
Fey will occasionally use other metals, lead and tin, copper, silver, and of course gold. But they will never willingly touch iron. Although some, like the Annis Hags, will create the illusion of iron teeth or nails, partly to hide their dread of the metal, partly just for the thrill of deception.
I played a character that looked like a goblin but was actually supposed to be a fey trickster sort of character (along the lines of rumplestiltskin or a bubbayaga, be careful about the specifics of the deal you make).
Part of what was fun to play was having rules that the DM and I knew but the other players, didn't.
For example, he didn't value most things, but precious metal, especially gold, were of extreme value to him, though not so quantity specific. The actual tangible coin was the valuable thing, not the promise of much wealth.
(think paying the ferryman, you need the coin in hand to pay not a future promise)
I had chosen a shadow monk class, so his fey aspects were greatly enhanced once he reached the early level where he can shadow teleport.
The campaign started with villages having problems with nearby goblins having been attacking travelers and homesteads, so my character sleeping in front of the fire at an in naturally lead to hostility.
Ended when a player (not the quest giver) trying to end the fighting by offered him a job helping them - and pulled out a few gold coins to visually communicate during the fighting. A bargain was immediately struck. (being fey, this was a binding agreement, though the terms are particular)
At another time, the people we were with refused to give the goblin some of the food they were cooking. Having shown him offense, it would be returned mischievously. Having tracked down some of the enemy goblins, he took part of one and cooked it into jerky (nasty goblin-flesh tasting jerky) and then snuck it into their provisions for a nasty surprise later. (remember he is fey and only appears like a goblin, so this isn't cannibalism for him to give someone goblin flesh)
Also, he would listen/obey to the person who payed him, because that was part of the bargain, be he would often ignore the other party members trying to tell him to do something unless they were willing to strike some deal with him.
I also like the twist Terry Pratchett had on the Fae/Elves (on their morality, or lack thereof):
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
“Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.”
My favourite succinct depiction of Faerie magic comes from Doctor Who, of all places.
“Humans do all sorts of things with numbers - you split the atom! Well, [witches] do that with words.”
A thought I had, watching your always excellent videos, was to utilize PCs Behaviors, Ideals, Bonds, and/or Flaws as things that manifest in people/places/things in the Feywild. Do not, as a DM, inform the players of this, but rather introduce it on the sly and wait to see when players start to resonate with these aspects that they themselves chose for their characters, but often get overlooked (such is the nature of the game).
Example: Flaw - I'm a sucker for a pretty face.
As the players enter the Feywild they continuously encounter (and accrue) fey that are simply infatuated by the PC with this trait. It matters not what this PC's charisma score is, or how attractive they have described themselves, what matters is that this is a manifestation of their reality in a way that is almost like a mirror.
Alternatively, the same flaw could manifest as a nymph who consistently appears for everyone but the PC with this flaw, or perhaps only for them, and threatens to lure them away.
The ultimate goal of such is to give the players some soul searching to chew on as they see their own aspects reflected as if in fun house mirrors. Warped, but still identifiable, and perhaps not to their liking.
The only other thing I wanted to mention was that the endeavor to describe Faerie was highly entertaining and eye-opening. I came to realize that Faerie is the embodiment of that inability to explain Faerie with our limited human terms. It is the feeling, plain and simple. The state of recognizing something as more natural than ourselves and the painful longing to abandon that which is human in us so that we can be a part of it. Like abandoning your day job to live in the woods and build a cabin with nothing but a stone axe. The need to forget language so that you can accurately describe a sunrise, and yet the frustration of having forgot the very means by which you can share it to another. Ultimately, the need to bear witness to nature personally, and not through the limited shared consciousness that language affords us mortals.
Thanks, Dael!
The PC personality traits idea is genius. It would also serve well in a Lower Planes setting for tormenting PCs in true Dante fashion.
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On the nature of fairies: There was a great reddit post that I have since lost on the morality of fairies. It took the approach of creating an axis (similar to our good/evil x lawful/chaotic axis we use for character creation) and came to the conclusion, based off various stories mentioning fairies, that fairy society would value the natural over the constructed and the spontaneous over the methodical.
Essentially it was that a fairy believes it is virtuous to keep with ones place in nature. This doesn't mean that like civilization is evil, but more of a "don't rock the boat" mentality. If you're a beggar or a king, be content with your place in the food chain. And then on the other hand, they would also believe that it is virtuous to be spontaneous. The fairy who seeks to control the future through careful planning is foolish. To do what is dramatic in the moment, what is interesting and *fun,* is most noble. Sticking to plans that have since become dull is nonsense.
Anyway, it was an interesting thought and has definitely influenced how i view Fairy behavior. If i ever find that post again I will link it here.
Lawful Grumpy during Winter & Chaotic Merry during Spring & during Summer the courts are divided by Lawful Merry & Chaotic Grumpy during Autumn?
Great video! Love hearing Lewis and Tolkien’s thoughts on this. And I love your description of your setting as pervasive magic. It’s deeper and more primal.
The thing I'm most excited to do in a Feywild campaign is to put the party against a lich inspired by Koschei the Deathless (who is actually one of the oldest, if not the oldest lich in human folklore history). Koschei hid his death in a needle in an egg in a duck in a rabbit in a chest locked away in a box on a remote island. I think it would be so funny/cool to have a fey lich who has hidden their phylactery so tediously and randomly.
sail into a mist, wait untill the food runs out and the players are giving up or going to panic and want to go back. then their boat will hit a shore in the mist with a high white cliffside and a path up it.
That reminds me of a description from The History Of The Peopling Of Ireland
Dael video
Drop everything and watch.
I really like the "getting out" part.
" - Oh sure, you can go home easy, just dive into this pond. As long you didn't eat anything or said "thank you" to a fairy or bow to anybody here, you'll be perfectly fine.
- huuuuuu... about that..."
And the classic "I'll take you to a gate. But it's dangerous. And you have to take me with you to the mortal real." With all the troubles that keeping (or breaking) the promise might create. The concept of finding a friendly/dangerous/trickster/oblivious/whatthehellareyou "guide" in the fey land is a classic, always nice.
"Earthy and alien" seems like an apt description for the Feywild.
When I DMed a campaign that had a section on the fey I took a lot of inspiration from Algernon Blackwoods 'The Willows' and a number of modern forest centered creepypastas. Like, the the creepypastas about forest rangers and finding pristine staircases in the middle of the forest. Stuff like Slenderman and the Rake, all which are basically modern fairy tales. Those were some of my best moments as a DM where logic and mechanics no longer held meaning to the player and watching them figure out that you need to THINK differently, and that you actually need to FAIL a survival check from getting lost to succeed. If done right Fey scenarios can be the most memorable in my opinion.
Love the deep dive into Fearie. Johnathon Strange and Mr. Norell is a great place to start. Have you ever read The Dresden Files? Jim Butcher has one of my favorite and well fleshed out descriptions of the Never Never(Fearie)
Faerie is just one small part of the NeverNever
Just ordered Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Been needing some truly out there fancy so hurray for your timings and suggestions.
Carapace Tomahawk is one of the best names ever. Also I would agree that trying to _definitively_ quantify the Feywild kinda misses the point of the Feywild.
Sounds like your world's magic is very Narnian. I like it.
Everything you said about C.S.Lewis on faerie reminded me of the Horse and his Boy. One theme of the book is “Northernness”. Shasta lives in the mundane desert land and wants to live in the faerie North where exist the talking animals, fauns, and dwarves. He longs to escape his dull life of abuse in the desert and live free in the cool northern vistas.
I adore that book
It's a small delight that your ear looks pointed from this camera angle.
David Miller Now the question is, was that intentional?
I would like to see a video of you delving into dragons the same way
dragons mentality and .... that
Can you share a guide to fairy salad forks? I really wanna screw my party over by having them use the wrong one. Roll initiative!!
I unfortunately don't have a group to play with:(
However, I have created 6 different lvl 1 characters in case I found a group.
My favorite is: A Female Drow Feylost background Death Domain Cleric sworn to the Raven Queen.
Percy Jackson trash here
After the Hades reference and traveling west I just got why the doorway is in Hollywood. It's west from Manhattan. Thanks Rick
Fun fact: When Silena leads the Ares Cabin into battle against the Lydian Drakon by pretending to be Clarisse, that directly mirrors Petroclus leading the Greeks into battle against the Trojans by pretending to be Achilles. There's a lot of subtler nods to Greek Myth hidden beneath the more overt ones, one of the reasons i love the series so much.
This is fantastic. The only games I've played where the feywild comes up, have been run really well. I think the love of what Fairie is, only appeals to people who already get it, even if they can't understand why they like it. Their fascination with the feywild is as abstract and emotional as the feywild itself.
Thank you for bringing up Jonathan Strange. It's my second favorite modern Fairie story after King of Elfland's Daughter.
Also, Ian McDonald's "King of Morning, Queen of Day" always sticks in my head as a way to discuss how the fey can passingly interact with multiple generations, with a history of Irish struggles.
As an addendum:
When I first read "The Cats of Ulthar" by H. P. Lovecraft, I thought that it very much sounded like a faerie tale. Granted, it's in a Lovecraftian mode and has a horror styling to it, but it still seems very much a cousin or acquaintance of faerie tales.
I just thought it was worth mentioning if people want someone a bit nonstandard for ideas or inspiration.
Or if they want their version of the Feywild to be a bit spooky.
Lots of Lovecraft actually works for faerie stories...there's a sense of ineffability about most faerie stories that work well with the unknowable monsters and strange rules of creatures from the Mythos.