Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 148 - Monster Series - The Fey

Episode Date: October 30, 2022

We conclude horror month with the mysterious and aloof creatures of the Feywild or First World.  What makes these creatures scary?  What the heck are the Seelie and Unseelie courts?  This nymph is offering me a deal that's too good to be true.  Should I take it?  Tune in and find out. #DnD #DungeonsandDragons #Pathfinder #DMTips #Fey Resources: https://roleplayersrespite.com/fey-creatures-in-dnd-5e

This week on the Taking20 Podcast. What could possibly be scary about cute little flying fairies and pixies with gossamer wings and beautiful faces who occasionally help out lost travelers with pure hearts in the forest? Because that's only half of what they are. Thank you everyone for tuning into the Taking20 Podcast, episode 148. This week, continuing the monster series all about the fae. I'd like to thank this week's sponsor, dogs. My neighbor's Siberian dog has turned out smaller and fatter than I expected.

No worries though, he's just a little husky. This podcast survives solely because of the donations from listeners like you. I know times are hard right now and many of us don't have a lot of discretionary funds to throw around. I completely understand if that's your situation, but if you enjoy the podcast and have a little extra, please consider donating to help keep this podcast alive. I promise you I'm not taking your donations and I'm getting a pool installed in my house. I promise it all goes to hosting and audio processing fees and just all the day-to-day to keep this thing going. Another announcement. Don't forget about the contest. Please send me a screenshot of your liking or following 3D Crafts and Curios on

Facebook or Insta and you'll be entered to win that beautiful fairy dice tower. See my social media if you want to see a picture of it. You can direct message that to me on social media platforms or email it to contest at taking20podcast.com. The deadline is November 19th, so send those in. The tower is gorgeous. You're going to want it. Thank you again for listening to the episode. This week's all about Tina Fey.

I mean, oh God, what's not to love there? She's smart, funny, beautiful, tiny, so she fits in luggage you can carry on an airplane. What? Oh, oh, THE Fey. Not Tina Fey. Right. That's a shame, too, because I was going to wax poetic about her career

and how much I loved her on 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Only Murders in the Building. I mean, her biography was funny. Are you sure I can't talk about her this episode? No, Jeremy. Fine, fine, fucking fine. Let me just scrap all my notes here. Megamind, Saturday Night Live, Date Night with a messed up hair, and...

Oh, my goodness, and, uh... Sorry, I got lost in a fantasy... You know what? Never mind. Anyway, right. The Fae. The Fae are based on creatures of myths and legends tied to forces of nature and the wild places of the world. So let's talk about why I'm covering Fae in Horror Month. What could possibly be scary about cute little flying fairies and pixies with gossamer wings and beautiful faces who occasionally help out lost travelers with pure hearts in the forest?

Because that's only half of what Fae are. For every group of sprites that escorts a lost child out of the woods, there's a displacer beast who hunts cattle and robs farmers of their livelihood. For every dryad that heals the wounded druid, there's a kelpie who wants to lure them into a lake and drown them. Fey are extremely varied, just like other creature types in the game. I mean, there are dozens of types of humanoids, undead, devils, demons, various shapes, sizes, and personalities. Literally, there are dozens of types of Fae with similar variations.

So what makes Fae so scary is their inscrutable nature. They simply don't act or even think like traditional humanoids do. nature. They simply don't act or even think like traditional humanoids do. Fae love jokes and pranks and many times will base their treatment of creatures on how the creature responds to a prank. The majority of the time these pranks, by the way, are relatively harmless. Pixies, for example, will set up illusions to trick passersby. They may tie shoelaces together to make you trip. If you're willing to laugh at yourself and the prank, they may, may reveal themselves to you. Why do they fill your boots with water or make every breath you take sound like a wet fart? Because it's funny to them. But not all the pranks they pull are harmless. Sadders, for example, are hedonistic revelers who love food and drink and

music and dancing and all the pleasures the world has to offer. So far, that sounds awesome. But if a lone traveler discovers a group of satyrs mid-party, they'll likely be invited to join, and they could have the night of their lives, or be made to dance for days on end until they drop dead from exhaustion. Why do satyrs do that, make people dance themselves to death? Because it can be funny to them. In 5th edition, Fae generally call the Fae Wild home, while in Pathfinder, that plane of existence is called the First World. The Fae Wild is a realm of everlasting twilight, a land of lush forests and fields, beautiful streams and rivers, and even vast oceans where creatures mundane and magical

live, but also areas of thick syrupy swamps, dangerous crevasses, and windswept hills where much more dangerous creatures reside. Now I want to give the Feywild its own episode one of these days, but in short, per the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide, the Feywild is a land of soft Oh. Like a concert for most indie college bands. Okay, okay, that wasn't fair. Unlike the Feywild, the lighting for most college bands sucks. There are two general groups of Fey. I hesitate to call them kingdoms, but they more closely resemble different philosophies of the fae. They're called the sealy and the unsealy fae.

The settled areas are for the most part ruled by the sealy fae that compose the summer court, but the wilder areas of the fae wild, the land is brambles and fins and they represent the danger that nature can bring. In those areas, the unseelie fae reign supreme. Seelie and unseelie fae comes right out of Scottish folklore. The difference is the courts. Basically, the seelie is the summer court, and it's ruled by someone known as the summer queen. Seelie, by the way, has the same root word as the English word silly, which should help you understand how these types of fey would act in the original legends. Examples of Seelie fey are pixies, sprites, blink dogs. The Unseelie fey, meanwhile, are part of the Winter Court, and they're ruled by the Queen of Air and Darkness.

Examples of Unseelie fey would be like red caps and displacer beasts. Page 49 of the 5th edition Dungeon Master's Guide has an info box concerning the courts of the fae wild, but it does fairly little to describe the nature of the courts. Seelie and unseelie do not directly correlate with good and evil. Many mortals make that equation, and yes, many seelie fae are good aligned and many unseelie are evil aligned, but their opposition to each other stems from their queen's jealous rivalry, not necessarily abstract moral concerns. Interestingly, the characteristics of the two courts, Seelie and Unseelie, have changed as newer versions of D&D have been released. Older texts describe the Seelie Court as beautiful and exclusive,

meaning you have to be pristine-looking and absolutely gorgeous to become part of the Seelie Court. Meanwhile, the Unseelie Court was described as nightmarish and ugly, but very inclusive. I can't find that same lore in any of the 5th edition books, so that may have been superseded. in any of the 5th edition books, so that may have been superseded. In Volo's Guide to Monsters, page 52, Hags, Dark Sisterhood, because both the Seelie and Unseelie courts appreciate and revere beauty among the Fae in their own way, for that reason, Hags really aren't welcomed in either court.

To repeat, do not assume that the Seelie Fae are always good and the Unseelie Fae are always evil, no matter who they exclude. While the tendency is there, assuming the Seelie Fae will always act in a benevolent way is a one-way trip to Dance-to-Ya-Die-Ville, or turn your blood into Whiskeyopolis, or forever being painted like a clownberg. Wow, that city joke really devolved there, didn't it?

Anyway, the way I have the two types of fey sorted in my mind is that both Seelie and Unseelie fey will lure you into the forest and play pranks on you. The Unseelie fey are more likely to possibly have a prank that kills you, while the Seelie fey may just play the prank on you, make you uncomfortable, but probably stop just before the kill you part. There's nothing wrong with treating unseelie fey as a bit less honest or more prone to violence in some ways, but honestly, you really can't trust either side when dealing with a fey. Both seelie and unseelie fey are capricious and moody with attitudes that change like the weather. They can be friendly for ten straight minutes,

and then, because you open your jacket and reveal you're wearing a vest with a spiral pattern, they suddenly grow cold or angry and the entire encounter changes. Friendly can quickly become deadly over some slight that the character may not even know they've committed. That being said, even offended Fae like bargaining and deals. Fae bargains tend to be verbal, which gives them leeway for creative interpretation of the terms. It's harder to wiggle out of aspects of a deal once it's on paper. Mechanically, I tend to treat this like a deception check by the Fae creature versus an insight check by the mortal in the proposed deal. But regardless,

fey need to win the trade in their eyes. That's always their goal. So what are fey asking for from mortals in a deal? According to fey legends on earth, fey loves sweet things like butter and cakes and sugar, but there's no way in hell to let your characters off that light. Here, here's a thousand pounds of sugar, now tell me that devil's true name. Oh no, mark that, that's too easy. Interestingly, the value Fae tend to assign to things they ask for depends on what you think the value of the thing is. Most player characters are utilitarian. They assign value to something based on how useful it is and or how much they could sell it for. Not the Fae.

If you need something from them, they're going to ask for something important to you in return, even if it has little actual value to the Fae. Even if the deal makes no sense to us or to the one who's entering the deal. For example, in traditional folklore, Fae love memories. Not just any memories, important memories to you. This is not a benevolent exchange. They're not going to take the memory of your character when they were laid up for three days with trollpox and couldn't move. Uh-uh.

They're going to want to take the memory of your mother's face, your first kiss, the cherished friend you had growing up who ran off, passed away, or otherwise isn't in your life now. Another thing Faye loved bargaining for is being able to place limitations on you. For example, you can now never refuse a request for hospitality from anyone. Or you could never shower or bathe again. You're now repulsed by the sight of blood, which is going to be a challenge for your barbarian. Or something really nasty like you can no longer see halflings. They have no actual use for your ability to see halflings, but if your lover's a halfling, they know that you'll

assign a very high value to that ability. Another thing fey love are pledges of fealty, and they will give you something now in exchange for something later. Warlocks, for example, requesting an Archfae patron are potentially promising their soul later in exchange for power now. Sometimes another example would be young people request something of the Fae, but they must promise their firstborn child to get it. But they say, oh, that's okay,born child to get it. But they say, oh, that's okay, I'll never have kids. Until they do. And the Fae comes knocking to collect. Fae sometimes will ask for something unusual and unique. They want your shadow, for example. They want your voice. They want the color of your eyes, or they maybe want your first name. Now you may be saying, how the hell

can they claim your first name? Fae magic is how. Suddenly everyone you know starts referring to you by your last name, and no one can recall any other name you may have gone by, including yourself. Fae will sometimes ask for something that changes the way you interact with the rest of the world. Everything you touch turns moist. Everything you see that is blue turns purple, or clear. Or you can no longer differentiate between copper pieces and gold pieces. That last one, by the way, is the one I came up with on the fly at my table, and I am still proud of that one.

The character would pay for everything in silver or platinum, and would sometimes have to ask assistance from the other PCs or from an NPC they sort of trusted to make sure they weren't getting swindled by a merchant because they could not tell the difference between copper and gold. Fae will sometimes ask for a service in exchange for information or whatever the PCs want from the Fae. This is the closest to a traditional humanoid motivation that you will ever find in the Fae. It's a quid pro quo. We want X, you want Y. You do X, I give you Y. That simple, clean, and easy. But what they ask may seem disproportionate to what you want. You must forever silence the tornado alarm that disturbs all the dryads in the area.

Who cares that the town won't be warned about tornadoes anymore? That's not the Faye's problem. That's your problem. Or you must claim the promised part of another deal and bring it to the Faye. You must find two people who were in love as teenagers and rekindle that spark. Even if they're already in other relationships. That's not the Fae's problem. That's what I want you to do if you want what you need from the Fae. But I think the most dangerous thing of all that the Fae can ask for is they'll ask for a service or a future favor without

defining what that future favor is. It's the old godfather favor that you may seriously regret owing to the godfather. You get what you need now, but what you don't know is that three years from now, the Fae will demand that you, I don't know, marry them. The fact that you're already married with children and another on the way, not their problem. You agreed to the deal. You must abide by the terms. The deal can seem innocuous. Your blood turns yellow. You no longer cast a shadow. Everything around you smells almost, but not quite, like roses. From our perspective, a lot of these things wouldn't benefit the Fae at all.

Why would they ask for it? That's part of what makes Fae so terrifying and can haunt the PCs for years afterwards. So for these deals, what would a Fae offer in return? Material goods? Absolutely. Money? Magic items? Of course. But that's relatively little that most adventuring PCs could eventually get on their own anyway. I could see a PC making this deal for an exceptionally rare magic item that would be perfect for their character. Sometimes Fae will offer service for a short period of time, like a specific spell that the PCs need cast. Or maybe the PCs need to perform some ritual or ceremony,

and they get the Fae to set up a very specialized area for that ceremony, or maybe design them and protect a home base for a year and a day. Remember, Fae will generally not risk their lives just for a deal. Sometimes the fae will offer the return of something that is lost. Resurrection is a tough ask and would require a very powerful fae like an archfae. But returning someone kidnapped by the fae who are still alive? Sure, at a cost. Sometimes fey can provide improved or accelerated natural processes like harvests, livestock health, removing diseases from people, animal, plants, etc. So you know the types of deals that can be made, what fey will give, and what they'll ask. The

next question is, what happens if the mortal breaches the contract? Okay, these are creatures who love practical jokes and have nothing but time to make the person in breach of contract have an absolute nightmare of a life. Giving them physical deformities, mental infirmities, bad fortune and everything like job and love and gambling and life. Ability score penalties, loss in any and all memories, loss of the sense of self, insanity, and maybe worse. Way, way the hell worse. But on the other side of the coin, what happens if the Fae violate the deal? It's important to remember, it's said that Fae never lie, but boy do they twist words and tell you things that are true from a certain point of view.

Given any wiggle room in a deal, they will meet the deal's requirements in the easiest or most advantageous way for the fae. If the deal's for healthy crops but doesn't specify a duration, they may make the plants healthy immediately, but they don't do anything to keep the crops healthy. So the wheat looks amazingly healthy today, but it starts getting leaf rust tomorrow. But there have been times when capricious fae do try to back out of a struck deal. If an arch fae discovers this betrayal though, they may enforce the deal and force the fae to follow terms and impose a penalty on the fae that's uncomfortable for the fae creature. Additional service to the mortal, giving of gold to the mortal,

or the Fae could be demoted to a weaker form. Now, one thing legends are pretty consistent about is that Fae must never learn or use your true name. If a Fae knows your true name, then they generally have power over the mortal. In legend, that meant the mortal had to accept a certain deal from the Fae, and the mortal couldn't harm the fey, that type of thing. In game terms, from behind the screen, I generally say the fey has advantage on any spell the true name owner casts at the fey, and any attacks made against the fey, if that fey knows your true name, are made at a disadvantage. Also, since the fey has the mortal's true name, the Fae can impersonate

the true name owner anytime they want to, looking, sounding, smelling, just like them. Now, there are precautions mortals can take. Obviously, don't tell them your fucking name, let's start there. A wise mortal could even tell the Fae their name and immediately declare that the Fae is not allowed to use their true name in any way, shape, form, fashion, or sense. But what is a true name anyway? Well, game systems are pretty mum on the topic. In my head canon, for most people, their true name is the full name they are born with. A person could go by their first, middle, and last name, but that really is the exception. Most of us don't use all three of our names day to day. So the Fae may ask your name, and if you just say Jeremy or Magnazar or Crag the Barbarian,

that won't give the Fae power over you. But if they figure out that Magnazar was born John Smith of Winterborn, they could potentially have your true name. It's not uncommon for Fae to try to prey on unsuspecting mortals by asking mortals for their full name or their true name. And if the character isn't paying attention, they may just give it away. So how do you roleplay Fae and why are they scary? Fae are capricious and flighty.

They're magical creatures and don't think and act like humans, orcs, or elves. Fae are mercurial and extremely petty. They feel slighted at the smallest things. Think about the movie Maleficent, who curses a baby and destroys a kingdom because she didn't get an invite to the friggin' baby shower. Fae treat favors as currency to be collected and hoarded. Fae are terrifying because they are clever. The character who thinks they got the better of a Fae in a deal usually gets a nasty surprise when they unexpectedly come out on the wrong end of the deal through technical interpretation of the deal made by the Fae. Fae generally value the natural world and strive to protect it. It's not uncommon for Fae to attack

creatures who are destroying trees too close to their homes, or at least their adopted home. The humans just think they're expanding their settlement or getting a better source of water, only to find out they've angered Dryads, Sprites, or even powerful Archfae. Another thing to remember about Fae when you're roleplaying them, Fae don't care for you. You might spark their interest or they may take a shine to you the same way you take a shine to a butterfly that wanders into your yard. But ultimately, they very, very rarely make any meaningful long-term connections with Nong and Faye. Characters should be curiosities to them

at best, but more often, targets for their tricky or even malicious senses of humor. Maybe they're just a source of entertainment for them for a few minutes, hours, or maybe even days. For example, how do I use pixies in my campaign? Well, the arrival of visitors may pique pixies' curiosity. They're generally too shy to reveal themselves at first. They'll study the visitors from afar, engage their temperament, or play harmless tricks to get them to measure their reactions like I talked about earlier. They may tie dwarfs' boots together, create illusions of strange creatures or treasures, or use dancing lights to lead the interlopers astray to fall off a bridge. If the visitors respond with hostility, the pixies give them a wide berth.

But if the visitors are good-natured, the pixies are more likely to be emboldened and more friendly. The fey may even emerge and offer to guide their guests along a safe route or invite them to a tiny yet satisfying feast prepared in their honor. Pixies abhor weapons and would sooner flee than get into a physical altercation. Sprites, meanwhile, much more serious than pixies. They see themselves as the protectors of the forest. They tend to be good aligned, aggressive, and hardy warriors that won't hesitate to use guerrilla tactics to take down the bigger creatures who

are destroying their beloved forest. Lastly, I want to talk about two major enemies of the Fae. Ettercaps are purplish humanoids with spider-like faces that tend, feed, and watch over spiders. They're kind of almost like shepherds to spiders, the same way we oversee sheep. They love setting up traps to capture pixies and sprites because evidently, besides being cute, they're freaking delicious. Another enemy is the Fomorians. These are huge, misshapen giants with deformed, gross bodies and hearts and minds even more twisted than their physical form. They were subject to a fae curse thousands of years ago. At one point, the Fomorians were among the most beautiful and brilliant of races, but they lusted for magic and power above all else. The Fomorians sought to

conquer the fae wild and enslave the inhabitants, claiming those creatures' magic for themselves. and enslaved the inhabitants, claiming those creatures' magic for themselves. In a rare case, the Fae united, seely and unseely alike, to defend their realm, and one by one, the invading giants fell as their bodies were warped to reflect the evil in their hearts. The giants fled and retreated deep beneath the world to nurse their hatred for the Fae. Cursing their fate, they have ever after plotted vengeance against the Fae that wronged them so horribly. If you want to introduce Fae to your game, either enemy would make for a great campaign background with the shy Fae asking the adventurers to help rid them of a menace in exchange for something. Or maybe even the Fomorians hiring

the PCs to kill the Fae for them. In today's episode, we talked about the Fae, and honestly, this probably should have been a two-part episode because there's a lot of information about folklore and RPG sources about these mythical creatures. Keep Fae aloof, inscrutable, curious, and powerful, and I bet you and your players will have fun doing it. Do you have a topic you'd like to

see covered in an episode? I'd love to hear from you. Message me on social media or send it to feedback at taking20podcast.com. Tune in next week, by the way, when we're going to talk about lessons we can learn from video games and apply to our RPGs. Also, get those contest entries into me. Deadline is the 19th. Before I go, I want to once again thank this week's sponsor, Dogs. My brother has always wanted to adopt a dog that knows magic tricks. He really, really wants a Labracadabrador. This has been episode 148, continuing the Monster Series, this week about the Fae. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.

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