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drawingfreak
2009-12-04, 01:17 AM
I really want to be able to use the Feywild as a legitimate location for danger but the overall feeling I get when I hear of the Feywild is the same feeling I get when I pass by a Tinkerbell product on a shelf in Target. Whimsical, but not what I would call a good adventuring location.
I blame my love for nature and hiking.

What have your takes on the Feywild been like? Any interesting stories?

Draz74
2009-12-04, 01:21 AM
Read The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. What common people call "demons" in this setting (and soil themselves at the thought of) are actually just the evil half of the setting's Fey.

Fey can be a very dark group of beings, and the Feywild can reflect this.

Innis Cabal
2009-12-04, 01:23 AM
You've not read enough Irish Myth. Get to it, come back after your break down.

Grynning
2009-12-04, 01:26 AM
I haven't actually had any adventures take me there, but dude...the Feywild would be scary as hell to a normal person. Imagine the biggest baddest forest on earth, make it infinitely larger, and populate it with ravenous wild animals, evil fey, not-so-evil fey who don't at all care if you live or die, and freaky magically amped up weather. Not a pleasant hike in Yosemite at all.

Granted, there are beautiful parts of the Feywild, but it's always exceedingly dangerous to mortals. The "civilized" areas aren't safe either; the Fey are not nice or cute, they are alien, immortal and callous.

kieza
2009-12-04, 02:36 AM
I sent my players to a wild part of the Feywild once. The first thing they ran into was a swarm of pretty, glowing pixies...which proceeded to swarm them with little thorn daggers and crawl around stabbing them under their armor. It got nastier from there; I had a guy named the Riverlord at one point, and the players jokingly asked about the Lord of the Dance. I worked him in a couple of weeks later as a rather sinister chap; he had a bunch of devoted eladrin followers, who were in the midst of a happy, boisterous dance. They were fine, but the mortals providing the music...they were chained to the bandstand and literally pouring their lives into the music.

If you have a player who likes roleplaying his "romantic encounters"...toss in an evil nymph. I guarantee it'll scare him off female NPCs for at least 3 sessions when some chick walks up out of a river, starts kissing him, and then tries to drown him once he's under her spell. If you can do it without making the rest of the table uncomfortable, try the variety that *ahem* takes him to bed, then "works" him to death. (Before anyone takes me for a nutcase, I haven't actually used either; it's just a fairly common theme in darker fairy tales.)

The trick to the Feywild, at least for more mature audiences, is to make everything pretty, and either utterly alien in mindset, capricious and impulsive, or outright hostile. Or two at once, for that matter. If you prefer an analogy, make it the prettiest rose your players have ever seen, then give it inch-long poisoned thorns.

jmbrown
2009-12-04, 03:11 AM
Read up on Brothers Grimm (the classic, unedited stuff where people sometimes die horribly) or any fey oriented work like The King of Elfland's Daughter. Faeries are completely alien to the human mind. They're amorous and single minded. They're raw emotion personified and their only motivation is to feel that emotion.

The same fey can be cruel one day, kind the next, and murderous the day after. They're extremely rigid and their powers are usually based on oaths or written law. Do you know the story of Rumpelstiltskin? He offered a woman to spin straw into gold in exchange for her first-born son unless she guess his name right. A fey could offer a farmer healthy crops so long as he doesn't let a candle burn halfway; if he does, the fey would haunt the farmer for the rest of his life.

When designing fey encounters, think of a raw emotion like sorrow, hatred, anger, greed, love, or sloth and apply it to a monster. Fey aren't always hostile but they're incredibly tricky. The more they can confuse someone, the better. For terrain, keep the term "bittersweet" in mind. A fey's world is an overgrown, untamed, magical and cruel reflection of nature. Mushrooms spit beautiful but poisonous spores, vines grope madly to squeeze the life out of anyone with brown hair, hedges open up swallowing people whole, and trees bend for some folk while rearranging their position and blocking off others.

As a general rule, your players should always be on their toes. The feywilds should be wondrous and terrifying at the same time.

Mando Knight
2009-12-04, 03:13 AM
Feywild is the Feywild. Fey aren't nice. They're not cutesy. They might be, but that's not what makes them fey. Being a little... "off" comes with the package.

FoE
2009-12-04, 03:43 AM
Let me put it this way: warlocks can forge five different pacts in 4E. The infernal warlock makes pacts with the Nine Hells. The star warlock makes a pact with eldritch abominations from beyond the stars. The vestige pact utilizes the power of dead gods and forgotten legends. The dark warlock makes a pact with the secret powers that run the drow civilization. And the fey warlock makes a pact with the creatures of the Feywild.

The fey pact isn't the "good" option out of those five, you know what I'm sayin'?

Read up on the Fair Folk (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheFairFolk), fella. (That's where I got the above example.) For much of man's history, we did not think the fey were Tinkerbell. At best, they were uncaring (but often mischievous). At worst, they were cold and malevolent.

I ain't read up on the Manual of the Planes, but so far I know there are few "good" races from the Feywild. Formorians are cruel overlords who have enslaved more than one entire race. Hags are shapeshifters that delight in tormenting others. Spriggans, banshrae and quicklings get their jollies from murdering travellers. Satyrs come off as lovable rogues, but turn violent at the drop of a hat. Sprites are hateful little pests and owlbears are vicious, bloodthirsty monsters. Lamias hollow out corpses and add to their swarms with every kill.

Even dryads, who are charged with guarding forests and hidden glens, will gladly tear apart anyone who they view as harming their precious trees. Centaurs are incredibly territorial. Firbolg are savage warriors.

WotC hasn't been good at providing a lot of fey-centric adventures, but I suggest you read "Dark Heart of Mithendrain" and "Winter of the Witch" for ideas. Mithendrain would also be a good "home base" for adventures in the Feywild.

dsmiles
2009-12-04, 05:20 AM
Definitely read up on your Celtic mythology. Fey are not all nice. There are things "out there" like redcaps and spriggans. Very evil faeries. Read up on the Seelie and Unseelie courts, and then you can have some very frightening adventures in the Feywild.

Shardan
2009-12-04, 11:01 AM
for comparison... elves are fey..... drow are elves...

drow are NOT tinkerbell
For every 'playful trickster' in fey mythology there is a 'fatal trickster' 'I'll trick them into eating these magic berries that will give them donkey ears' vs 'i'll trick them into eating these berries that will grow trees in their stomachs instantly' Playful illusion dances vs trapped in a dance you can never leave til you collapse and die of exhaustion.

The 'regular' creatures there are magic infused. Think fierce packs of wolves (blink dogs), bears that are half earth elemental, giant spiders infused with fire, their webs burst into flames when they catch something and don't actually burn off.

Look at some of the fantastic monsters and reskin them or look at 'normal' monsters and give them fantastical templates. The idea of players facing a pack of wolves who start breaking out PC abilities and roles will blow some minds.

Gametime
2009-12-04, 01:40 PM
This could be a recommendation for any vaguely-mythological setting ideas, but I'd suggest checking out Neil Gaiman's Sandman. Aside from being one of the greatest graphic novel series of all time, by the end of it you should have a very good idea of exactly how malicious and terrifying even the standard fair folk can get.

Talyn
2009-12-04, 02:08 PM
Here's the problem with "Fatal Trickster" - fatal tricksters are, if they are run well, extraordinarily dangerous, and they are basically immune to retribution. This can be ENORMOUSLY FRUSTRATING for the players. Trust me, I've been on the receiving end of a DM literally rewriting the rules on us... why? Because it's the damn feywild, and he can do that.

Here's the thing, though - I'm not criticizing him for making the fewild, well, fey. If you read some of the stuff other posters have recommended (and, I would like to add The Dresden Files book series to the list, for a truly excellent read with a great take on the beautiful-but-otherworldly fey), you'll see that the stories usually involve hapless mortals and extremely powerful, unknowable fey. But you have to be very careful not to make the players feel powerless and frustrated - if they wanted to feel that way, they'd be playing Call of Cthulu or something. :smallcool:

Artanis
2009-12-04, 04:00 PM
Take all the dangers you'd associate with a "normal" fantasy forest. You know, stuff like bears, poisonous plants, and xenophobic Elves.

Now make every last one of those things immortal sadists whose magic puts most Druids to shame, and you get a very non-Tinkerbell Feywild :smallbiggrin:

rayne_dragon
2009-12-04, 06:45 PM
You may also be able to find some handbooks on the Fair Folk from older editions of Ars Magica for free on the internet (I think even on atlas games website). Ars Magica does a great job of taking the essence of the Fey and putting it in a game context.

Sir_Elderberry
2009-12-04, 07:10 PM
It's a long book, but it's worth it, and has faeries as a major force: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

KillianHawkeye
2009-12-04, 07:20 PM
The Feywild is also where the vicious and terrible gnomes can be found. :smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

FoE
2009-12-04, 07:36 PM
The Feywild is also where the vicious and terrible gnomes can be found.

"I'm a monster! RAAAAWWRRR!

Asbestos
2009-12-04, 07:37 PM
I blame my love for nature and hiking.

Nature can be scary, nature in the Feywild can be REALLY scary.

Examples from the real world:
Caterpillars that can kill you if you touch them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lonomia
Birds with neurotoxic feathers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooded_Pitohui
And Sam, the World's Ugliest Dog (WARNING: Extremely Freaky looking animal!)
http://www.scaryanimalz.com/images/uglydog.png

That dog will haunt my dreams, don't Google Image search him either.

So, basically take all the freakiest things in nature, crank them to 11, and put them all over the place.

Decoy Lockbox
2009-12-04, 08:44 PM
Faeries are completely alien to the human mind. They're amorous and single minded. They're raw emotion personified and their only motivation is to feel that emotion.

Sounds a lot like the fade spirits from Dragon age. When I think of the Feywild, I sorta picture an entire neon green, foresty bad acid trip dimensionm, a little like a more murderous "Alice in Wonderland". I've never taken my players to the feywild (or any extradimensional area actually), but now I'm starting to get interested...

Nai_Calus
2009-12-04, 08:57 PM
The problem I have with the Feywild is that everyone is convinced that the entirety of it is like this thread with immortal amoral everything...

...And then the two main sentient races people are going to run into aren't immortal and not even by default that unknowable or alienly amoral. Especially if you've run into them in the material world. Eladrin I've usually seen played as the high elves of old, not as bizzare wacko fey, and gnomes are usually at best pranksters, and usually good-hearted about it.

So you run into this situation where you have an expected environment in which your average gnome and eladrin PCs simply couldn't have come into being because they should be these amoral asshats with no regard for anything but some bizzare incomprehensible code. And it's like 'er... ok that's nice but that's not really how it even *can* work, I don't recall Eladrin PCs being able to take people's memories or whatever'.

Major disconnect there for me. (Especially since trying to cast Eladrin as typical asshat fey leaves D&D with no High Elf race.)

jmbrown
2009-12-04, 10:06 PM
The problem I have with the Feywild is that everyone is convinced that the entirety of it is like this thread with immortal amoral everything...

...And then the two main sentient races people are going to run into aren't immortal and not even by default that unknowable or alienly amoral. Especially if you've run into them in the material world. Eladrin I've usually seen played as the high elves of old, not as bizzare wacko fey, and gnomes are usually at best pranksters, and usually good-hearted about it.

So you run into this situation where you have an expected environment in which your average gnome and eladrin PCs simply couldn't have come into being because they should be these amoral asshats with no regard for anything but some bizzare incomprehensible code. And it's like 'er... ok that's nice but that's not really how it even *can* work, I don't recall Eladrin PCs being able to take people's memories or whatever'.

Major disconnect there for me. (Especially since trying to cast Eladrin as typical asshat fey leaves D&D with no High Elf race.)

In fiction fey are described as alien and godlike because they possess powers compared to mundane humans. Rumpelstiltskin can spin straw into gold which is wondrous in the real world but in D&D terms he's a level 9 transmuter.

Besides, true fey are rare. Eladrin and elves are like all civilized races in that they spread across whatever world they occupy while most true fey are 'solitary' or appear in small groups. You'd be lucky to find a single dryad every 100 square miles.

Je dit Viola
2009-12-04, 10:36 PM
It's a long book, but it's worth it, and has faeries as a major force: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.

Oh! I love that book.

The faerie(s) are whismical, malicious, and it has some pretty nice magic in that book too.

And I love the Alternate World places in it, home of the faeries.

Captain Six
2009-12-04, 10:46 PM
Actually I like to use Tinkerbell as a good example of fey. Even in the Disney version of Peter Pan she spent the entire movie trying to murder a ten year old girl for trying to kiss the wrong person and is STILL seen as a cute, innocent little thing. Tinkerbell is a nasty piece of work.

Tiki Snakes
2009-12-04, 10:48 PM
Actually I like to use Tinkerbell as a good example of fey. Even in the Disney version of Peter Pan she spent the entire movie trying to murder a ten year old girl for trying to kiss the wrong person and is STILL seen as a cute, innocent little thing. Tinkerbell is a nasty piece of work.

Tv Tropes tells me that in the BOOK version, Pan himself switches sides breifly in the final fight, (possibly even killing a lost-boy?) simply to keep things interesting.

Oh, and he was originally going to be the bad guy, apparently.

Quite an appropriate Fey feeling from the whole lot, really.

Human Paragon 3
2009-12-04, 10:53 PM
I scared the hell out of my players the other day using fey. They had to go into the wild woods and save a vestel virgin from a pack of horny satyrs. She had gone in with her secret boyfriend and they planned on getting married, but things didn't go as planned.

The players are strangers in a strange land, so they never know what to expect from the creatures here. Orcs are very organized and intelligent, for example. Little things to keep them on their toes.

Before going into the forest, they were warned that out of all the dangerous things in the forest, the worst were the elves, because the elves didn't need a reason to kill you. They were perplexed by this, but not too afraid at first. The warning went on, that the elves here aren't like the elves they knew. They're tall, pale immortals with very powerful magic.

So they're tracking the unhappy couple, and at one point, the mans tracks dissapeared and the woman's tracks hastened. A day's journey later, the man's tracks re-appear, and soon they find him. Turned inside out.

He's been reduced to a pile or organs and bones on top of his inverted dermis. They begin looking for other clues, when the air starts to buzz and ripple, and the faint sound of bells tickles their ears. Out of the rippling air steps an elf riding an enormous stag. The elf himself is 9 feet tall and pale as snow.

After a brief exchange of pleasentries, the "elf" explains that he took the man into his realm (the feywild, for you), where he was made to entertain the elf for some months. Eventually, the elf grew tired of his whining about returning to his realm, so he brought him back, and only about a day after they left. "But, instead of thanking me, he cursed at me. So I turned him inside out."

Then, because it pleased him, he lifted a curse on one of the PCs without lifting a finger or even stopping his sentance. Gave a few bits of advice about Satyrs and left, stepped back into the feywild.

Believe me, the players were very, very, very polite to him and do not want to see another "elf" again any time soon.

If they had decided to be smart mouthed, the elf would have blinked them out of the forest Dr. Manhatten style, making them start the entire adventure over again, or blinked them into the feywild, or if they were really really bad, eviscerated them. He really gave the impression that he'd just as soon rip their heads off as help them out.

jmbrown
2009-12-04, 11:07 PM
Tv Tropes tells me that in the BOOK version, Pan himself switches sides breifly in the final fight, (possibly even killing a lost-boy?) simply to keep things interesting.

Oh, and he was originally going to be the bad guy, apparently.

Quite an appropriate Fey feeling from the whole lot, really.

What happens (at least, in the original play) is Tinker Bell tricks Tootles into shooting an arrow at Wendy who's turned into a bird because it would bring favor to Peter Pan. When he finds out, he thinks he killed Wendy and asks Peter Pan to kill him but all is forgiven when Wendy is unharmed.

Disney pretty much ruined every fairy tale, or at least the horrific dark sides of them. Compare the original Coachman from Pinnochio who's a small, cherub faced effeminate man that mutilates the children-turned-donkeys (he bites one donkey's ears off!) with the Disney version who's fat and makes the donkeys work in the salt mines. As much as I like Disney's movies they removed all the darkness from a lot of classic stories. They were supposed to scare kids.

Hansel and Gretel moral: Abusive step mothers will order their husbands to kill their children, bread crumbs will be eaten by forest creatures, and the old lady in the gingerbread house is fattening you up for the feast.

Mando Knight
2009-12-04, 11:16 PM
The problem I have with the Feywild is that everyone is convinced that the entirety of it is like this thread with immortal amoral everything...

OP wanted examples of a dangerous Feywild. Crazy evil boogeymen that moved in from fairy tales are the easiest examples.

Archfey are the "not a tame lion" version when they're the good guys, and Maleficent or stranger villains when evil.

All in all, just remember that the Feywild is called "wild" for a reason. To keep up with its vibrant nature, it fluctuates far more insanely than the main world, just as the Shadowfell is a dreary, gray world that can crush the soul with despair. To live in the Feywild, you're either sane, or completely insane. It's the only way your mind can handle a place with teleporting panthers, butterfly dragons, and MILF-y winter queens.

Nai_Calus
2009-12-04, 11:46 PM
Yeah, but this is what gets brought up in EVERY Feywild thread I've ever seen, whether the OP was looking for danger or not, and always with the implication that the entire thing is like that with nobody and nowhere even remotely normal at all. Which... Yeah. Makes it hard to figure out where anyone's Eladrin/Gnome PC who wasn't born for some reason in Towneville, Material Plane gets being Good/Lawful Good and/or even remotely able to normally interact with the rest of the party from.

I don't think I've ever actually seen anyone suggest in any Feywild thread an opinion that there are parts of it that actually *are* decent. :smallconfused: (Strange, because that would make parts of it that ARE completely bizzare nasty evilland even more dangerous and player-head-messing. "Hey, that Eladrin town was full of people who were nice and weren't out for anything weird, I thought this Feywild place was supposed to be scary and dange- Merciful Kord, what the hells is THAT?" You get lulled into nice false security and then wham. :smallamused: )

Fey to me get dull when ALL of them are nasty amoral little buggers who'd as soon kill you as look at you. Then it just turns into 'Oh, a fey. Kill it before it can pull anything that'll screw us over.' :smallsigh: Throwing a few that are good and helpful into the mix keeps things interesting.

Sir_Elderberry
2009-12-05, 12:04 AM
Well, it's a question of expectation. The "fairies are good" meme is what we're fighting here. Obviously, much of the feywild--from analogy with the elves/eladrin/etc--is the good kind of otherworldly, more beautiful than the Prime.

However, I think the way the 4e MOTP describes the feywild is as "enhanced". Everything is brighter, more vivid, and therefore more extreme. The good places might be really good, but the truly wild places are...well, see above posts.

Namillus
2009-12-05, 11:04 AM
I personally see it as that the Feywild is so rich in natural, emotional magic that it has a deep effect on creatures that remain too long under its boughs.

Those weird, amoral, creepy-yet-sexy Fey you're meeting in there? They aren't mere Eladrin, they're Super-Eladrin who have been hopped up on the place's innate weirdness for centuries, if not longer.

That's why Eladrin and Gnomes can be party-compatible PCs; though the Feywild is in their blood, and because of that they will always be slightly detached or odd by human standards, they have spent more time away from the Feywild than in it, which gives them a more human outlook on things.

By the same token, a human abducted by Fey as a baby would probably be much much weirder by comparison due to protracted exposure to the Feywild. Perhaps slightly pointed ears, different eye colour... Would be an interesting origin story for a half-elf.

Ridureyu
2009-12-05, 11:30 AM
I completely agree with looking at mythology - heck, the Nuckelavee is worse than most modern horror monsters. At the same time, before you say "It's all tinkerbell WAAAH!", have you even looked at the Fey in either Monster Manual? Cyclopes, fomorians, the new alien dryads, spriggans, quicklings, chokers, and umbral sprites really aren't all that cutesy. I mean, I guess you could name one of these Tinkerbell:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y185/Ridureyu/umbralspriteswarm.png

But then it would be kind of an ironic joke.

Mercenary Pen
2009-12-05, 11:38 AM
I must admit that I'm not so well read on all things Fey as I ought to be, but you could try having their personality change with the area, the weather and the seasons...

For example, the PC's first enter the Feywild at fairly low level in the spring and encounter an Eladrin city which, while slightly aloof, is relatively receptive to them.

Some levels later, they go back in the autumn to the same place. A thunderstorm is raging and the inhabitants are more fractious than before, prone to turning on you at the slightest provocation in a deliberate parallel to their surroundings.

Aldizog
2009-12-05, 12:57 PM
Just avoid going overboard and making the Feywild into the Far Realm... one difference is that they fey really aren't that alien. They have for the most part human emotions and desires amplified and stripped of any filter or societal barriers. All the old favorites like Lust, Greed, Envy, Pride, Gluttony, and Wrath, depending on who you're dealing with. (Sloth, not so much, as the fey seem to like getting out and doing their thing.)

And another difference is that there should be a fair chance for the PCs to come out ahead in their dealings with the fey. Not guaranteed, but not Call of Cthulhu or Asian Horror Movie either. Of course, for a good story, the key to success is not going to be firepower. In fairy tales, the protagonists sometimes do come out ahead by being clever and by understanding (or at least respecting) the rules of the realm. Despite being whimsical and individualistic, the fey do have this bizarro-lawful side where they have to abide by certain rules and, it seems, generally give the poor mortals a sporting chance.

Mando Knight
2009-12-05, 01:14 PM
Just avoid going overboard and making the Feywild into the Far Realm... one difference is that they fey really aren't that alien.
Yes. While fey are weird and alien compared to the normal world, they might seem really weird mostly because they look a lot like something normal, but aren't. They're kind of what happens when a child's imagination is applied to normal things: the winter is the coldest winter EVER!, that old woman with the crooked nose must really be a creepy old witch out to eat you, those trees' branches really are trying to claw and grab at you...

Far Realm is where the real boogeymen are: writhing masses of unholy flesh, creatures warped by the Realm into monstrous beasts that retain only a semblance of their counterparts...

Sir_Ophiuchus
2009-12-05, 01:49 PM
Wow, this is an amazing thread!

I'll just add my voice to the others':

Fey are not human: they don't have a "filter" between wanting to do something and doing it. They are more elemental, more tied into archetypal ideas and emotions. But they are human enough that it's frightening how different they are.

In answer to the poster who commented that populating the Feywild with eladrin didn't really make sense: I always draw a distinction in my games between the eladrin and the true fey. The way I work it is that, apart from the obviously supernatural creatures (dryads and nymphs were mentioned), eladrin who get old enough, powerful enough and in touch with the Feywild enough become true fey, which is a different order of being. I've actually played an eladrin who had that as his goal ... he was not a very nice individual.

In response to the "Call of Cthulhu" allegations: as Aldizog explained, the fey play by rules. For example, I once co-wrote a LARP where half the characters were true fey and half were mortals. Power disparity? Oh yes. But the fey can't lie, must honour debts, and fear cold iron. It balanced itself out very well. The aforementioned eladrin character (a fey pact warlock) made a particularly bad pact with an extremely powerful true fey (Queen Mab of the Unsidhe Cort, in fact) and ended up unable to touch cold iron. Ever.

The Dresden Files, Sandman, and The King of Elfland's Daughter (hello, fellow Lord Dunsany fan!) have all been mentioned, so I'll chip in with the ballad Tam Lin (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Child%27s_Ballads/39).

Sir Ophiuchus' 10 Simple Rules for Dealing with Fey:

1) Learn what rules bind them. Typically they cannot lie, but enjoy bending the truth (like Aes Sedai from the Wheel of Time, only more so). This is because, for the fey even more than for humans, words (descriptions, names, titles, promises) define reality.

2) Listen carefully to anything they say. "You may call me Bandubh" does not mean that that is their name.

3) Be extremely careful what you yourself say. Common expressions in formal speech such as "my lady", "my lord" and "at your service" should be avoided. "Your wish is my command" is right out.

4) Make no promises you cannot keep. Expect any promises you do make to be more difficult than you expect. Specific is good, time-limited is even better.

5) Accept no gifts. Remember that gifts are not always tangible.

6) Give no gifts or thanks unless appropriate. Good luck figuring out when it's appropriate.

7) Offer no insult and do not violate the rules of hospitality. These are (roughly) not to insult/attack your host or his guests, to defend his household as necessary, to receive protection from him and from his guests, to receive food and shelter from him, to be polite. Note that these cut both ways - if inviting fey into a building, ask them as guests. If they invite you, thank them for extending their hospitality to you.

8) Speak softly, and carry a cold iron blade. Learn to make circles of salt.

9) Do not give them your name, or important information about yourself. Classic answers to give to common questions include "my father's son", "a little older than my teeth and as old as my tongue", and "in front of me".

10) If possible, don't deal with fey.

CrazySopher
2009-12-05, 02:28 PM
I suppose I might as well throw my two cents in. The best way to go about it would be if we borrowed something from earlier in the thread.
I had a guy named the Riverlord at one point, and the players jokingly asked about the Lord of the Dance. I worked him in a couple of weeks later as a rather sinister chap; he had a bunch of devoted eladrin followers, who were in the midst of a happy, boisterous dance. They were fine, but the mortals providing the music...they were chained to the bandstand and literally pouring their lives into the music.


Aside from Sir_Ophiuchus' rather excellent list up there, kieza's description of The Riverlord up there is also a particularly prime example of why the sentient inhabitants of the Feywild can be dangerous. Great Fey beings often seem cruel and uncaring because they are absolutely incapable of caring for other creatures, especially mortals, unless they serve some sort of purpose or amusement. Combine that with an absolutely selfish need for amusement, the ability to harness powerful and weird magic, and their inability to care for the thoughts of others, and you get situations like the one keiza has described above.

Fey act on a whim. In a world where your exact word is law, it can be easy to ensnare the unaware in pacts and promises they don't even realize they are keeping. Think about the dangers associated with making a Faustian Pact, or dealing with a Genie, involving mistakes in word play. When an entire plane of existence runs on that particular mindset, the PCs cannot simply brute-force their diplomacy checks with dice rolls. You need to think very, very hard about every single word you say, if the DM is clever enough.

Perhaps the last major aspect is that the Feywild is beautiful, enchanting, maddening, and untrustworthy. Think about just how heavily Fey-related powers, classes, Paragon Paths, and Epic Destinies rely on enchantment, trickery, stealth, deception, and charm. The prime danger of the Feywild is that while it may be gorgeous and bursting with life and color, absolutely everything within it betrays our senses because mere mortals are unable to fully comprehend it. This is what drives an enemy mad with wonder when a Fey-pact Warlock power lets him glimpse it. Likewise, its inhabitants are, oftentimes, unable to comprehend that we mortals can do anything other than follow our flighty whims and be self-serving, or that our words can be anything other than literal, and this is why the Rivermaster doesn't seem to direct a mere thought at his enslaved, dying mortal performers. They are detached from our cares and desires, utterly and completely.

This is why the Feywild, to me, is more dangerous than the Shadowfell, the Far Realm, or even the Abyss. You know what's up in the Shadowfell. You know how utterly screwed you are in the Abyss. You know that you can't comprehend the Far Realm. But you always have at least an idea of what's going on in the Feywild. Unfortunately, you will always be wrong, and the entire realm will have a much, much better idea than you do.

FoE
2009-12-05, 06:27 PM
Far Realm is where the real boogeymen are: writhing masses of unholy flesh, creatures warped by the Realm into monstrous beasts that retain only a semblance of their counterparts...

But the Far Realm is at least safely removed from the rest of the universe. Let's not forget about the Nine Hells and the Abyss, which are places of untold horror that are located right next door.