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).

Feywild Themes

I am really pleased with the timing of the recent Feywild love, because my group has pressed me into re-visting Erui, a homebrew campaign that I ran and shelved over a year ago.

The first article is really in name only intended for the Moonshaes, a region in Forgotten Realms (which as an aside has an interesting-looking related article that I will write about later). In addition to giving some advice for reskinning some existing themes out of Neverwinter Campaign Setting, we also get the Sarifal warden and Callidyrr dragoon themes and a new varient elf.

Sarifal wardens start out with a turn-long aura that grants scaling energy resistance/vulnerability to your allies and enemies respectively. Level 5 gives you a bonus to Nature and lets you cast Spirit Fetch once per day for free, and level 10 gives you a Fortitude bonus.

• Sarifal Advisor (level 2 daily): You can summon a pixie that cannot attack, and is better than you at Arcana, Nature, and Stealth. It can also talk to natural and fey animals, and you can use its senses for a turn. Mostly I can see this being good primarily for social roleplay situations.
• Light of Sarifal (level 6 daily): A sustainable aura that imposes a damage penalty based on your highest stat.
• Level 10 is different; instead of choosing from a specific power, you can instead choose from blur, mirror image, shadowed moon, or warlock’s leap.

Callidyrr dragoons are like elite knights that are geased, but are generally charged with going on adventures anyway. On the plus side, violating the geas just causes a memory wipe, which could have some interesting side effects. You start out with Mounted Combat and a free martial weapon of your choice, making it ironically not too well suited for the types of classes that I would most often expect. Level 5 gives you a bonus to Diplomacy and Intimidate, and at level 10 you can use Diplomacy instead of Heal for triggering a saving throw or second wind. Oh, and you can do it at a distance. Fucking sweet.

• Dragoon Warding (level 2 encounter): An adjacent ally gains a AC and Fortitude bonus, and you take hits on melee and ranged attacks.
• Dragoon Parry (level 6 encounter): An interrupt that gives you a bonus to AC and Reflex against a melee attack targeted at you, and the enemy grants combat advantage for a turn.
• Dragoon Summons (level 10 daily): You summon an ancestral defender, which I guess is a natural animate that packs a damage boosting aura, can heal as a minor action, and take hits for allies as an interrupt. The downside is that it cannot attack, but then it is a defender.

Llewyrr elves are eladrin that can swap out their Arcana bonus for Insight and use long- and shortbows at the expense of Eladrin Weapon Proficiency.

The second article is a tad shorter, giving us the wild hunt rider and oracle of the evil eye.

Wild hunt riders give you a Perception bonus, but only when looking for a creature. On the plus side you ignore partial concealment entirely. At level 5 you can use Phantom Steed once per day for free, using Arcana or Nature (whatever is best). At level 10 you gain a bonus to save against effects that hinder your movement.

• Wild Hunt Leap (level 2 encounter): You can jump your speed, and gain combat advantage for a turn if you land next to an enemy.
• Moonfire Aura (level 6 daily): A small aura that negates invisibility and concealment. It is not friendly, so you gotta be careful.
• Relentless Pursuit (level 10 encounter): If an enemy moves away from you, you can teleport next to it as a reaction, and you do not need line of sight. Awesome.

Oracles of the evil eye are unfortunate victims that undergo a ritual that results in them gaining a fomorian’s iconic…well, eye. You can an at-will minor power that causes a non-marked creature to take a piddling amount of automatic psychic damage after damaging you. Like “normal” evil eyes it only works on one creature at a time. At level 5 you gain a bonus on Bluff and Intimidate, and at level 10 you gain low-light vision (or darkvision if you already had low-light vision).

• Eye of the Fomorians (level 2 daily): You can a bonus to Perception and can see invisible creatures for the encounter.
• Urge of Destiny (level 6 daily): An ally deals bonus damage for the encounter. If the creature marks them, they deal even more. 
• Evil Eye Mesmerism (level 10 encounter): A reaction that prevents a creature from attacking you at all for a turn if it misses you.

Aside from the elf variant I pretty much liked all the new themes for one reason or another. The oracle and dragoon can introduce some interesting adventure hooks–such as a key villain or memory loss plot hook respectively–and social roleplay elements to a game. I am also liking the ritual freebies, which if nothing else will hopefully encourage players to try more out (especially with the heroic rituals article).

Power Play: Arcane’s Gloaming Path

Two backgrounds, six spells, and four familiars. The spell distribution favors the wizard and warlock with two, doling out only one for swordmages and sorcerers. I would have figured that the bard would have gotten on there somehow, but better luck next time. Anywho I dont give a shit about the backgrounds, so I’ll start with new spells.

• Moonstride is a level 2 wizard encounter that changes you into moonlight if an enemy gets too close, by which I mean you become insubstantial and shift. Good contender for shield.
• Charm of hearts is a level 2 warlock daily that prevents a creature from making opportunity attacks against you, in addition to boosting your defenses. It can be sustained, to boot.
• Fate’s frayed threads is a level 6 warlock encounter that does quite a bit if an enemy botches an attack roll against you: they get cursed, take a -2 to attacks against you, and grant combat advantage to you.
• Stride of the gallant is a level 6 swordmage encounter stance that gives you teleport, but only if said teleportation would drop you next to a baddie.
• Witch’s reversal is a level 10 wizard daily that lets you reroll missed attacks if you fuck up at least two rolls.
• Maiden’s waking is a level 10 sorcerer daily that lets you act normally even if you are hit with a condition that reduces your actions (such as unconscious). Obviously, it requires no action to activate.

And then we wrap things up with a quartet of familiars.

• The muse sprite gives you a Diplomacy bonus, radiates dim-light, deliver mail, and let you make two checks for a few skills. Kinda like Tinkerbell and owls from Harry Potter rolled into one.
• White-eyed crows prevent you from being surprised and lets you reroll a missed attack if the creature is next to the crow.
• Gallant hawks grant a Perception bonus, increases the attack penalty from marks, and it has a very limited ability to save-ends mark all creatures next to it. Very cool.
• Moon wisps give an Arcana and Nature bonus, radiate light (with a built in dimmer option), and has a limited ability to negate concealment against creatures that are close to it.

All in all good stuff. I think it does a good job of adding primal flavor to arcane classes, meaning that it should get some use in Songs of Erui. :-3