What An Awesome Story!

The perfect poem for spring

Blessed Full Moon

It is the Harvest Moon! On gilded vanes And roofs of villages, on woodland crests And their aerial neighborhoods of nests Deserted, on the curtained window-panes Of rooms where children sleep, on country lanes And harvest-fields, its mystic splendor rests! Gone are the birds that were our summer guests, With the last sheaves return the laboring wains! All things are symbols: the external shows Of Nature have their image in the mind, As flowers and fruits and falling of the leaves; The song-birds leave us at the summer’s close, Only the empty nests are left behind, And pipings of the quail among the sheaves. - Longfellow

These are cool, wouldn't mind owning a handful.

Wow, that's a lot of information, but amazing and exactly how I have been imagining archfey in my head.

Villains - Archfey - Worldbuilding Wednesday

The villain is my favorite part of ANY campaign. So here I am gonna talk about how you can make different kinds of villains, honing down on a specific type and offering various ways to make them interesting. As always, we will be looking at real world history, culture, and mythology to make your villains seem realistic and specifically dastardly. For our first entry let’s discuss…

~~~~~~~~~~~~Archfey Villains~~~~~~~~~~~~

Why archfey? Two reasons: 1) I like archfey, they’re fuckin’ dicks. 2) Someone who’s name I can’t find asked me to make this and I am more than happy to make things for my followers.

NOW, let’s understand what an archfey really is.

An archfey is a creature of fey ancestry that is excessively powerful, nearing the power of a deity. Usually, such creatures are native to the Feywild. Within this realm, they command great power and can even shape the realm itself to their whim and whimsy. 

Common Misconception

Archfey doesn’t mean “superelf.” An archfey can be a pixie, a dryad, a ghost, a beast of some kind, anything that is classified as “fae” or “fae-like” can be turned into an archfey. Elf-like archfey are the most COMMON, but absolutely not the ONLY form of an archfey.

The other misconception is that the archfey are good. This is because the Feywild is mistaken as a plain of good, while Shadowfell is a plain of evil. This is wrong. Feywild and Shadowfell aren’t images of good and evil. Their are images of abundance vs lack of emotion. Shadowfell is a plain of the depressed, the emotionless, the broken. Feywild is a plain of the bipolar, the expressive, the artists and the madmen.

(I’m getting tired of saying “archfey”)

Characteristics of the Archfey

So to understand how we get an Archfey villain, lets discuss some general characteristics of the archfey.

Background.

The archfey come from the Feywild. This is a place governed by emotion. When its denizens feel something strongly, they can physically change their environment. A cruel witch will transform the forest around her to grow trees that bleed and produce fruits shaped like heads. While a kind princess will transform the fields around her into a gorgeous plain of crystalline flowers.

Now, the archfey can transform the Feywild at a moment’s notice. Which means they can do one or both of these things:

They can control their emotions very well.

They only ever have emotional extremes powerful enough to instantly alter the Feywild.

Lifestyle

The archfey live careless lives. They are too powerful to have any natural predators, as such live carefree and happy. Due to their extended life (they live like thousands of years), they are NEVER in rush. Why should they be? They’ve got time, ALL the time.

Environment

Based on HOW the Feywild is, how it is ever-shifting and changing, its denizens must learn to control this change to be able to thrive. Since we are working with an archfey, we can assume they’ve already thrived to the top of their food chain. As such, they must have learned to command the Feywild OR adapted to this changing world, having very drastic changes in personality, behavior, or even looks.

With all this information, let’s share some ideas for archfey villains.

Examples of Archfey Villains

Example #1: The Many Faced Man. Simply put, a doppelganger. The archfey are ever-changing. For this example, our villain always changes their looks. So your Party pisses off this archfey or in some way becomes enemies with him. So when your spends the night camping outside, whoever is keeping watch suddenly poof, is teleported away (because this is an Archfey, it can do this kind of shiz) and in steps a the Many Faced Man who takes this lost PCs form.

I urge you, IRL, pull the Player of this character aside and tell them your plan. Tell them that you want to replace them with a Doppelganger, but not to worry, because their PC will eventually be rescued. THEN, offer them to role play as a doppelganger pretending to be their character. Most players will have TONS of fun with this idea. If you player doesn’t want to RP a doppelganger offer them to role a new temporary PC or just dump the idea.

Example #2: Prince of Liars. A very powerful archfey this one is. He has immense power in the Feywild, and has managed to TRAP the Party in his domain. I’m stealing from Curse of Strahd here, but essentially rework that campaign with more fey-like themes. Instead of vampires, we got fey, instead of Strahd we got a spoiled brat of a prince who is all-powerful but only wants to mess with the Party before killing them in a cruel manner for his or her amusement.

For additional complexity, you can make the Prince of Liars have very drastic shifts of emotion. Think, the bad guy from Split (the movie). One moment he is nice to the Party and leads them to a place filled with treasure, the next he snaps into sheer brutal cruelty and slaughters the ranger’s companion. This will put the Party on edge when dealing with the guy. Furthermore, knowing that the archfey is powerful enough to destroy them with ease puts the Party on the edge, at least until they find something that can kill or neutralize this big bad.

Example #3: The Undying Court. This is for LARGE scale campaigns. Let’s say you have a game that is heavy on politics, but spans different dimensions. So the PCs are working with the politics between Mount Celestia and the 9 Hells and the Abyss, etc. That’s when you throw in the Undying Court. A hive-mind of several Archfey that operate as a singular entity and wish to expand their chaotic influence across the many plains. They may ally with Demon Lords and expedite chaotic situations to gain more power, so your PCs would have to negotiate a turbulent field of politics.

And that’s that folks. I hope this provides SOME use to y’all and helps you out with future ideas. Of course you don’t HAVE to follow my guideline 100%. You don’t need to follow it at all, in fact. Just take it as it is, my ideas for a good fey villain. What about you folks? Would you like to see breakdowns of other kinds of villains? I’d love to do more. Send your recommendations my way or share your ideas for villains. I’d love to hear it. Good luck everyone.

The Unfair DM

That is amazing. Bowie was a character but a humble one at that, and he had some class.

This looks like a good read

Book of the Day

“Banshees, Werewolves, Vampires and Other Creatures of the Night” by Varla Ventura

I just realized I haven’t posted my Inktober sketches here yet, so here they are!

We are ignorant of the meaning of the dragon in the same way we are ignorant of the meaning of the universe, but there is something in the dragon’s image that fits man’s imagination, and this accounts for the dragon’s appearance in different places and periods. 

Jorge Luis Borges

Beautiful! I haven't seen this Mucha before.

Laurel, 1901, Alphonse Mucha

Medium: lithography

https://www.wikiart.org/en/alphonse-mucha/laurel-1901

I'd like to know the origin of this limerick

My staff has murdered giants/ My bag a long knife carries/ To cut mince pies from children’s thighs/ With which to feed the fairies

I love cat sidhe folklore.

The Cait Sidhe

Celtic mythology describes Cait Sidhe as a fae spirit that takes the form of a large black cat with a white spot on its chest. People of ancient Ireland believed that cats operated somewhere between the mortal and spiritual realms.

They viewed them as guardians of the gates of the Otherworld.

a link between humans, the Otherworld and other realms. According to Celtic folklore, spirits that took the form of Cait Sidhe, a large black cat, could steal the soul of the dead before the Gods, devil or the angels could claim it. Where they take the souls nobody knows.

Northern Scottish believed hearing a Cait Sidhe scream or yowl meant you or someone in your family would die soon while the centeral and southern Scottish saw them as gentle guardians of death that guided lost souls into the place after.

The Insular Scottish believed they were the ones that warned you of death but also would grant you wishes if summoned and given offerings.

The Icelandic people have the yule cat which is put in the cait Sidhe terminology.

From what I can tell Russians and Germans held the black cats are witches in disguise belief but they also had a fearful respect if them.

Another Irish tradition derived from the ancient belief that certain spirits took the form of a cat happens on All Hallows Eve, known in Ireland as Samhain, hallows eve, all hallowsv day and just halloween on that night, spirits, fae and demons would be roaming the earth. Everyone set a dish of milk outside so that when Cait Sidhe passed your house, they would be happy with the offering and bless your home and maybe even your whole blood line. If you did not set out milk, Cait Sidhe would be displeased and disrespected so they'd leave a curse on your livestock and cause the cows to not give milk or bare young. Possibly curse your wife as well woth infertility.

Catholics and Christians took the idea of the Cait Sidhe and erased the fae part. Claiming they were demons sent from hell so they may sell innocent souls..

The mythology of the Cait Sidhe even had it's hold in the Americas. Ingenious people say the black cat as a trickster, african south Americans saw the black cat as a symbol of evil while African north Americans saw them as guardians.

White americans had mixed feelings on black cats but they always held some sort of magical power be that a protector or a trickster.

The neolithic Irish people and many Scottish also believed in the Cait Sidhe but believe that Cait Sidhe were not fairy spirits but were actually witches that could take the form of a cat. It was said that these witches could transform into a cat eight times but if they took the form of a cat on their ninth transformation, they would remain a cat. Many think it's the origin of the saying that cats have nine lives.

This is also thought the term " never cross a black cat's path " comes from since that cat may just be a Cait Sidhe or a witch.

References too the Cait Sidhe can also be found in Edgar Allen Poe's story the black cat✨