Luansidhe – The Faerie Moon

Before the great Sundering, the realm of Faerie was a lush, verdant mirror to the Prime Materia, brilliantly teeming with life and ruled by capricious spirits. The ancient tales of the Fey say that the faerie lands had grown out in all directions from Duan, the great World Tree and that the rest of the myriad worlds of the multiverse were but fruit on the end of her branches.

Perhaps it was the splitting of Duan’s trunk by the ax of the celestial Chernobog that allowed the Sundering to happen in the first place, but when the veil between worlds was violently torn, the other planes bled into the faerie causing mass devastation. Mortal beings from the Prime ransacked faerie enclaves, while entropic energies from the Netherworld wilted and withered the flora of the perpetual fey springlands.

Panicked…the Fey sought refuge in the last strong of vestige of energies that had permeated their former home, on the great moon Luan. Many of the surviving fey became refuges on the land they renamed to the Luansidhe (Faerie Moon), planting a godtree sapling at each pole, and using their magicks to reshape her face into a more hospitable land for them to settle upon. The fey Summer Court, planted their tree on the light side of the moon, while the Winter Court planted theirs on the dark side of the moon, with the unaligned fey settling the lands between, and the monstrous Fomorians living within the moon’s subterranean core.

Summer Court

The fey of the Seelie Court settled in the lands surrounding the Dayspring Tree on the moon’s northernmost point. The Dayspring Tree absorbs darkness and toxicity through it’s vast system of roots, while radiating a warm, healing aura from it’s foliage that gifts the fey people with vitality and longevity. The impurities that are consumed by the great trees roots are distilled into it’s fruit, the juices of which are a deadly poison that is highly prized by assassins across the multiverse.

Because of their proximity to the Dayspring Tree’s bright, reinvigorating light the fey of the Seelie Court eventually became known as the Summer Court. The fey of the Summer Court are primarily comprised of high elves, satyrs, centaurs and wood nymphs. They revere inspiration, passion, valor and all things that ignite the flames of the heart. Summer fey are widely regarded as producing the most beautiful songs and poetry in the multiverse, but they are also the most openly warlike and imperialistic. They revel in acts of love and pleasure, particularly with members of other species, and celebrate acts of daring and bravery.

Summer Court fey are also renowned for their skill at magically shaping their darkwood trees into weapons and armor. Even their ships are constructed entirely of magically shaped wood (think Jurian tech from Tenchi Muyo). Each Summer Court “Dryark” has a Dryad navigator who establishes a connection with a sapling planted by a fey pilgrim along a path known as the Hamadryad Way”, which then draws the ship toward it in an inexorable fashion.

The court is ruled by the Summer King, known as Oberon “The Black-Handed” and his consort Titania. The Black-Handed is named for his withered and burnt sword hand, an injury he had sustained in a great, ancient battle by plunging a sword wrought entirely of cold iron into the heart of the Fomorian King Arawn – an act that freed the fey people from the cruelty and subjugation of the Fomorians and made Oberon a hero and king.

Winter Court

The Winter Court was once known as the Unseelie Court in the time before the Great Sundering. Long ago when there was a single unified fey court, The Winter Queen Mab was the consort of Oberon. Though the fey don’t prize monogamy as mortals do, the Black-Handed’s indiscreet dalliance with the mortal songstress Titania was an insult that the prideful queen could not bare. In a rage, Mab fled the court for the lands of the Goblin King Conchobar, taking fully 1/3 of the court with her, and for centuries thereafter dedicated herself to thwarting and undermining Oberon’s court.

After the Great Sundering, the Unseelie Court settled the lands surrounding the Eventide Tree, which devours life and light through it’s leaves and branches, while bleeding a gloaming coldness into the very ground that in turn protects it’s denizens from enemy incursions, which is what keeps the forces of the often indignant Summer King at bay. The fruit of the dusk tree can be distilled to make healing potions and other curatives. It’s said that this fruit is an important reagent in rituals that grant eternal youth to mortals, such as the one that granted the Summer Queen Titania her immortality.

Winter Court Fey are guileful and full of pride. They view deftly executed games of intrigue as the highest form of art, and revere cunning, ruthlessness and subterfuge above all. Though they are prone to cruelty and they have no love of mortals, the fey of Winter are not abjectly evil as much as they are insulated and self-interested. This survival mechanism is a necessity in a society where deception, manipulation and casual betrayal are a part of daily life.

The Winter Court Fey, comprised of high elves, changelings and goblinkin, tend to be skilled spies, negotiators and mercenaries. The watershapers of the court can form beautiful sculptures of water richly dyed which are then magically frozen into solid, dry and unmelting ice crystal. In fact, even the weapons and armor of Winter Court warriors are also made from magically shaped and hardened Ice Crystal.

The Winter Court do not have their own means of transdomain conveyance like the Summer Courts’ Dryarks. Instead, they have a reflecting pool which acts as a magic portal between their capital city of Frostspire, and it’s twin pool in the city of Silverspire at the edge the Bhalen’lad Cluster, where they hire transport to other domains as needed. As a result of this open pathway, they maintain primacy in trade relations with the mortal races.

Ironheart

Ironheart is the name for the cold iron core of the Luansidhe, as well as the home of the imprisoned Fomorian scourge and their king, Arawn the Heartless.

However, the first inhabitants of the moon’s core were the cyclops. In the most ancient of times, cyclops were a race of beings created by the clockwork Primordial Antikythron to act as custodians of it’s giant mechanical body of spontaneously forming pistons and gears. Slowly, the cyclops attained sentience and will of their own, after which Antikythron banished them along with it’s other organic components, becoming a self sustaining monstrosity of independently functioning mechanisms.

The liberated cyclops took refuge on the faerie moon in the time before the sundering, where they lived and worked and crafted, often making forays planetside to trade with the denizens of faerie. When the fey rebelled against their cruel Fomorian overlords, the cyclops formed a treaty with Oberon, fighting alongside the various faerie tribes and helping construct a prison that would hold their mutual enemies for eternity.

The prison of Ironheart is designed as a sphere of pure cold iron, which feeds upon the innate magical energies of the Fomorians, keeping them in a dormant state. Though still physically imposing beings, the powerful magicks that helped them rule over the other fey and threaten the cyclops and races beyond the realm of Faerie are dampened.

After many centuries, the fey forgot about the treaty they held with the cyclops, and after the Sundering they quickly moved to colonize the moon which resulted in a great war between the former allies. To make matters worse, the Dayspring and Eventide trees that were planted to terraform the moon fed on the energies leeched from the Fomorians by their prison, which weakened their magical bonds and allowed them to escape. The Fomorians made a pact with their former gaolers and joined forces with the cyclops, but were ultimately defeated once more by the combined might of the Summer and Winter Courts as well as the Wyld.

Ironheart no longer keeps the Fomorians imprisoned and dormant, but it does serve as their home, having become a great subterranean city in the years since the Sundering where they dwell along with their cyclops allies. The city is ruled by Arawn the Heartless, whose cold iron pierced heart was replaced by another godtree sapling, which fused with the ancient Fomorian king keeping him alive, and giving him great powers and an empathic link to the godtrees of both fey courts. He and his subjects are always scheming ways to reassert dominance over the faerie and peoples beyond the moon.

The Wyld

The lands between the warm embrace of the Summer Court and the Grasping, icy talons of the Winter Court are known as the Wyld. It is a vast expanse of lush, overgrown forestland that is inhabited by wood elves and other fey, as well as firbolgs and awakened animals who live together in independent tribal communities.

The denizens of the Wyld revere freedom and independence above all things, and recognize no king or queen. Though they have no unified ruling body beyond the leadership of their individual tribes, the free fey of the Wyld are unified in support of the Horned King, a sort of folk hero who defies and thwarts the expansion of both Summer and Winter, as well as incursions by Arawn and his Fomorian scourge. This is done through the Wyld Hunt, a practice of meticulously planned and executed guerilla strikes upon the forces and infrastructures of their enemies.

Whereas the Summer Court fey are masters of light and wood magic, and the Winter Court fey are masters of ice and water shaping, the Wyld Fey are masters of magical animal husbandry. Among their number are many awakened animals, such as intelligent, talking beavers and scholarly bison. Wyld Fey are able to form powerful bonds and partnerships with wild animals, who help them cultivate crops, build villages and even fight in battle. Imagine a stampeding army of firbolgs with stone tipped spears charging forth on angry dire bear mounts.

Some Wyld Fey shamans are even able to summon Astral Narwhals for passage tot he outlying territories and planetoids if the ancient beasts deem the fey’s cause worthy enough.

No one knows for sure the true identity of the Horned King. He appears as a cloaked and hooded figure in hunter’s leathers with stags horns growing from his cowl, and wielding a mighty lightning spear or ornate bow. Some say it is the once mortal bard Taliesin, former husband of Titania who was cuckolded by Oberon. Some say it is Duan, spirit of the original god tree, some say that the Honed King is just a symbol and a diversion, and that it matters not who is beneath the hood.

The Illusory Moon

The Dream Moon, otherwise known as the Monstrous Moon, or the Illusory Moon is the shadow of Luan, the body of an ancient primordial and sister to the world tree Duan. Before the sundering, both Luan and her shadow were visible to the people of the Prime, Fearie and the Netherworld, but after the sundering it can only be seen from the Faerie Moon.

The Illusory moon slowly and inexorably orbits the Luansidhe in phases, much like the moon did before the sundering. Each phase lasts close to a century, and the fey people have come to fear the Dream Moon’s waxing and rejoice in it’s waning. Despite it’s name, and it’s incoporeal body, the Illusory Moon is no mere illusion. Though their nature is uncertain, things most certainly live on that moon. The ancient tales call the Illusory Moon the mother of nightmares, and that Luan had sacrificed her life to keep the Monstrous Moon imprisoned within a pocket dimension. It is said that the nightmarish nature of the Dream Moon is what caused the fey to learn the practice of trancing in order to escape the danger of sleep.

Adventure Hooks

• Pirates and sellswords paid with leprecaun gold have been taking over Ark Branches along the Hamadryad Way, meanwhile Cyclops have annexed the reflecting pool in Silverspire. Why are the Fomorians trying to cut the Faerie Moon off from the rest of the multiverse? Are they finally declaring all out war, or up to something more insidious?
• A prince of the Summer Court has absconded with a princess of the Winter Court into the Wyld. But is this a simple case of star-crossed lovers, or is this a plot of the Horned King and the wyldlings to undermine the power of the Courts?
• The Dayspring Tree has been poisoned! It is held within a sleeping state during the waxing fullness of the Illusory Moon, it’s boughs and branches quivering in the throes of constant night terrors, tainting the land around it. Who could have done this and why? Surrounded by foes on all sides, the heroes will have their work cut out for them solving this mystery.

Wandering Monsters: The Fair Folk

I have always felt that the fey needed more page-space devoted to them. Several years ago, I think right after Player’s Handbook 2 came out, I tried to run a campaign that took place in a land that was tied closely to the Feywild.

There was not a lot of solid Feywild flavor in Manual of the Planes, so I ended up having to make stuff up/crib ideas from The Dresden Files, stuff by Robert Holdstock, some Hellboy, The Waterborn, and its sequel The Black God (the latter two mostly just for ideas on spirits and animism).

Heroes of the Feywild expanded on it quite a bit, and remains one of my favorite 4th Edition books of all time, so–to me, at least–it would be a shame to not at least see it as a strongly-presented option (especially given that it already has a strong foundation).

As for its inhabitants, I think that the description–inherently magical beings with strong ties to nature–is apt enough, so long as it also includes animals as well as plants; dryads and hags are all well and good, but it is a wyld world out there that includes the pooka, cait sith, selkie, and more. In addition to the whole shapeshifting shtick, I would not also mind seeing vulnerabilities (such as cold iron and various herbs), access to thematic magic (glamour, cold, fire, etc), magic resistances, and  fey rules (such as being bound by bargains, unable to lie, cannot cross over certain materials, etc).

Oh, I almost forgot spirits. Animal spirits and spirits of the land–basically, the stuff that made it into Primal Power–can make for compelling stories (as well as challenges).

On the topic of stories, I disagree that it is hard to come up with adventure plots concerning the fey. If you have never read the The Dresden Files, several books focus on the fey courts, and many that do not include them to some capacity (he does, after all, have a fairy godmother). Granted a lot of them stray from the “traditional” dungeon crawling formula, instead focusing on courtly intrigues, or using them as quest heralds or sources of information, but there are also plenty of instances where they end up having to throw down.

Even discounting the fey, the Feywild itself–or Faerie or whatever–can make for an interesting backdrop.

The descriptions and flavor for the various examples are not anything new; dryads are bonded to trees, hags are evil deal-making old women that spend their time hunched over cauldrons, nymphs can blind or kill you, and so on.

What I want to see is how the flavor extends itself to mechanics. Will dryads just end up with charm person and tree stride 3/day? Will hags just have a lengthy spell list and/or the option to lump on spellcaster levels to get them to do what you want or need them to do? How will a quickling’s speed work if they can allegedly “move faster than the eye can follow”?

A lot of this will probably depend on how spells themselves work. Personally I think it is silly for a dryad to have limited charms and treeportation, especially when each ability has its own cap. I mean, how do you explain that sort of magic? A hags magic could be based around how wizards work, and in that sense I could see them having more limited magic. I think an interesting and flexible ritual system, as well as a mechanic for making and breaking bargains, would go a long way to properly evoking their powers.

This would be a good chance to explore some experimental rules (hint hint).

Paragons of Fey Virtue

The last time I ran Erui one of the highlights was when the characters defeated some Winter Court agents and jacked their magic shit, which resulted in Beth’s character gaining a figurine of wondrous power that was an ice unicorn. Immediately after using it the game devolved into a bunch of Charlie the Unicorn jokes, which was fine because I can do the voice alright and they started it.

This time around I had initially intended to try and shoehorn in another unicorn for her, partially because it is a Feywild game, and partially because it is generally a safe bet that a female gamer–and to be fair some male ones–will want one.

Unfortunately Beth threw a curve at me by not only playing a male character, but a pixie of all things, which is why I find this article of fey-themed paragon paths deliciously ironic.

White Horn Knight
This would actually have worked out if you did not need to be able to wear heavy armor. Most of the features and powers have a decidedly leader-like quality, allowing you to dole out temp hps to adjacent allies when burning a healing surge, or allowing a nearby ally to heal when using the attack powers. There is some passive stuff, like a bonus against diseases and poison, as well as being able to ignore difficult terrain when charging due to rapid teleporting.

Really though the point of this path is being able to summon a unicorn at level 12 that you can ride around on, which gives you a bonus when charging, has its own kick attack, and can teleport and dole out a saving throw once per encounter.

Moon Hunter
Despite its focus on shapechangers I really dig this paragon path, which is basically a individual empowered by the Maiden of the Moon–or otherwise attuned to it–to help remove lycanthropes from the world. With the exception of the level 12 utility all of its abilities work on anything, but gain a bonus against shapechangers or creatures affected by a polymorph effect. It is alright, but will definitely work better if the DM makes it clear that the campaign will include were-critters or if the party has someone who can dole out polymorph effects ahead of time (witch, anyone?).

Soaring Rake
This paragon path demands that you either be fey or at least have a fey-pact going on, and be trained in Acrobatics. In exchange you get the ability to fly by doing basically anything part of it: spend an action point? Fly. Use the level 11 attack? Fly. Use the level 20? Everyone. FLIES. Hell, at level 12 you gain a once-per-round at-will that lets you fly. Whether or not the lack of faerie wings is a benefit depends entirely on your taste and/or orientation.

I like this article but while my players are not too far ahead to benefit from it, two are channeling concepts more at home in Kara-Tur, and the third is too small for a unicorn and can already fly. Oh well, maybe I can kill ’em off and start over.

Creature Incarnations: Fomorians

Its been awhile since I’ve posted between finals and God of War 3, but it seems that every time I’m about to need a shitload of variant monsters, something crops up to make my life a lot easier. Creature Incarnations: Fomorians adds eight fomorians and a spriggan minion to the roster with a level range of 14-20, which is handy in filling out the existing level gap. Its just too bad that almost half of them are also controllers.

Its not a large article, focusing almost entirely on the stat blocks and fluff relating to each entry, but it does manage to provide a few paragraphs of exposition about fomorian kingdoms and how they are “relatively” safe compared to the untamed regions of the Feydark. There’s a sidebar that explains how they sometimes get along with Vistani, making them a viable way to locate and navigate fomorian lairs. Also, a few of the new fomorians make it easy to justify the inclusion of angelic and/or infernal allies, adding to the flexibility of creating fomorian-themed encounters.

Winning Races: Winterkin Eladrin

This is the third Winning Races article that introduces a kind of “race specialization” that I like. The one on elves was kind of meh, but then I’m not exactly an elf fan, so take that for what its worth. I like the tiefling and dwarf one just fine.

Winterkin Eladrin introduces mechanics that help justify a connection to the Winter Court in the form of a racial path and series of bloodline feats. I feel that game mechanics are important in these situations because it helps the dice rolls and rules reinforce your character and the decisions you’ve made.

Anyone can say that they work for those guys, but having cold resistance and the ability to summon wintry gales to conceal their presence just has a lot more…clout, I guess. The path and feats do a fine job, but you dont need to take both and instead opt to spend either a single feat or dive in head first if the path appeals to you.

If you’re really fucking hardcore, do both.

The bralani wintersoul path plays up the concepts of, well, winter. And wind to a point. When you get hit by cold attacks you deal extra cold damage for a turn, and if you burn an action point it creates a zone of flurrying snow with a pretty hefty range. At level 16 you auto-slow any enemy that gets too close. The racial powers are somewhat predictable, dealing cold damage with a slow/immobilizing kicker effect.

Winter’s kiss is a level 11 attack that only hits one critter, while blizzard blast is a level 20 blast 5 attack blinds and immobilizes. You also get to teleport afterwards, which is pretty damned cool. Snowfall is the level 12 reaction utility that creates a zone that obscures the area and makes you insubstantial. All in all these attacks are pretty useful over a broad range of classes, especially given that they use your highest ability mod. I’d certainly pick it up as a feylock, but would also be tempted to do so as even a fighter since it would give me a nifty ranged attack and close blast (the auto-slow effect would also rule).

There arent a lot of feats, and they all focus on Winterkin Hertiage, which is a bloodline/gateway feat to the rest of them. By itself it gives you cold resistance in addition to winter’s shroud, which lets you teleport and gain concealment when hit as a reaction. It doesnt fuck with fey step, so thats two potential teleports per encounter. Since cold damage is fairly common, this is a really awesome feat.

The rest either modify winter’s shroud or just do something else. For example, Winter’s Reach increases the teleport range of winter’s shroud, while Winter’s Heart slows enemies that hit you when you arent bloodied (its a paragon feat, though).

Good for eladrin players, particularly those that have a reason to be tied to Winter Court fey. This is a lot better than making up a bunch of lame-ass subraces like they did in the past. At any rate, I can reskin these feats and present them as additional options for the players in my Songs of Erui game that actually do work for the Winter Court.