firstly does anyone use the seelie / unseelie courts in their games with any regularity?
secondly are elves considered fey?
thirdly what is corellan larethin's position when stacked up against Oberon and Titania? related, allied, acqainted?
Thanks in advance for the imput, and please ignore any spelling errors its late.
firstly does anyone use the seelie / unseelie courts in their games with any regularity?
Not me.
secondly are elves considered fey?
Nope - humanoids with the elf subtype. I figure that elves may have at one time been Fey, but that for some reason they fell from this perfected state.
thirdly what is corellan larethin's position when stacked up against Oberon and Titania? related, allied, acqainted?
Were I to use them, I would likely make them Outsiders surrounded with Fey servitors, the Neutral counterparts to Morwel and her Court of Stars (Book of Exalted Deeds). Thus they would technically be servants of Corellan and the Seldarine. There would of course have to then be an evil counterpart, but that would be far removed from the Courts of Morwel and Oberon, down in the Demonweb Pits. Creepy evil spider-fey; extremely attractive and disgustingly revolting at the same time...
I'm familiar with the Seldarine, and have heard of the Seeliee (sp?) court, but I'm afraid I'm somewhat ignorant as to what it is. Please, enlighten me? And the un-seeliee part, too!
As an aside, what's the name of the dwarven pantheon? I read it in Races of Faerun once, but can't remember. Moradinsamman or some such?
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I'm not the definitive expert on European legend by any stretch, but...here's what I can recall. I make no claim as to the ultimate veracity of any of these statements, but I think I have the basic jist of it.
The realm of faerie has been in myth and legend considered to be almost another plane of existence, intermittently coterminous with our own at certain special places. You can enter the realm of faerie, and the feyfolk can come over here to the "real" world. The laws of time and space follow different rules in the realm of faerie. One could go there for a night, come back to the "prime material," and find that decades have elapsed.
The realm of faerie is divided between "Seelie" and "Unseelie" courts. Oberon is King of the Seelie Court, and Titania is the queen. They are the nicer of the two; I'm hesitant to call them the good guys... The Unseelie Court, though, are the more wicked of the bunch.
I think the word "seelie" is derivative of the Gaelic "sidhe" pronounced "shee" which was a word for the faerie folk. I think they were descended from the "Tuatha de Danaan," or "The Children of Danu," Danu being the earth goddess.
I think it's a little different than the Tolkien model, if you will, of human-sized flesh and blood elves walking around in the prime material plane, building cities and existing in a similar fashion to men.
As to using Corellon Larethian, it would depend on the somatics of the use of the realm of faerie. If I was hypothetically using a mythos system with Danu the earth goddess, I could see Corellon Larethian as an ancient elven culture hero, elevated to deitical status. Oberon and Titania, ancient by human standards, would see him even elder still.
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...the Seelie Court...are the nicer of the two; I'm hesitant to call them the good guys. The Unseelie Court, though, are the more wicked of the bunch.
Classically, none of the fey see mortals as equals; some don't see mortals as really sentient. The way I think of it, the Seelie Court sees mortals as occasionally useful and often diverting; mortals make good pets for those that like pets. The Unseelie Court sees mortals more as livestock -- and they like bull-baiting -- and hamburgers.
Here is a link to an article on wotcs' site about the difference in the seelie and unseelie courts. http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fey/20021213a
To put it basicly the seelie are the pure fey and do not accept anything that isn't a pure fey. The unseelie are the ones that accept anything that has a drop of fey blood in it even if that drop is from a very distant ancestor. The seelie also feel they are perfect and everyone should try to be like them they are the classic bards and artists. the unseelie are everything the seelie are not.
I'm loving this thread and all of the contributions. Making me want to go far far afey.
I'm loving this thread and all of the contributions. Making me want to go far far afey.
Glad I could stir the conversation.
I like the thread too. Just thought I'd mention, however, that it is spelled "fey," in D&D. "Fae," the spelling on the thread's title, nearly gave me a heart attack to begin with, as the B*%@% Queen which birthed me happens to bear that last name (for reference look through Place Your Rant Here).
I'm loving this thread and all of the contributions. Making me want to go far far afey.Party with them for a night, bro, you'll wake up with a killer hangover and realize it's the year 2349 a.d.
I actually have. Time does warp a bit but I haven't returned to the wrong year. Not thus far anyway.
Once you have a faery, you'll never go back. I'm as serious as a semi-rational man can be.
And everybody wonders why there's so many half-elves with exquisite diction walking around all over the place.
Jadey Appleseed?
In the language of your people AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
The Manual of the Planes has the alternate outer plane of Faerie in it. It mentions the highest fey are the Sidhe, the seelie and unseelie, which are essentially celestial and fiendish elves respectively.
It has been intimated in the Forgotten Realms novel Evermeet: Island of Elves that the elves that populated Faerun were refugees from Faerie, from a cataclysm there, and that they had to leave their homes. The lythari (good elven werewolves) still travel back and forth across Faerun using fey crossroads, and they have homes in Faerie as well.
Oddly enough, Faerie doesn't appear in Faerun's cosmology, however.
The Coucellors and Kings Trilogy also mentions that a drow in ancient times learned the Song of the Unselee, and she could use it to charm spiders and the like. The song of the Unselee is suppose to be very unsettling to any that hear it, but even more so for drow, and Lolth is intimated, in that book, to have "absorbed" the Spider Queen into herself when she fell from grace, thus gaining her knowledge of the Unselee Song.
Essentially, there is a lot to suggest that elves may be fallen fey of some sort of another, but the exact details have never been spelled out. Plus, there are the LeShay, from the epic level handbook, that are elf like fey that are very powerful (and in Bruce Cordell's recent book Darkvision it is intimated that the ancient Imaskari learned some of their magical arts from the LeShay).
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There are also templates for the Seelie and Unseelie fey from Dragon. I don't remember what issue, but I know they included them in the Dragon Compendium. For what its worth though, I thought those particular write-ups sucked. If it were me, I'd go with the earlier bit about elves with the fiendish or celestial template.
There was also a series of articles on the WotC website a few years back about the Fey. I think the same chick who wrote the Dragon articles did them.
The Manual of the Planes has the alternate outer plane of Faerie in it. It mentions the highest fey are the Sidhe, the seelie and unseelie, which are essentially celestial and fiendish elves respectively.
It has been intimated in the Forgotten Realms novel Evermeet: Island of Elves that the elves that populated Faerun were refugees from Faerie, from a cataclysm there, and that they had to leave their homes.
It's probably worth noting that the 'Faerie' that Toril's elves came from was another planet in the prime material, and it just happened to seemingly share a name with the 3e notion of a potential demiplane of Faerie which was home to the Seelie and Unseelie courts. Outside of the name, there's no connection between the two places, or anything directly connecting the elves and the actual fey.
The fey of Toril inhabit their own seperate domain that while never actually named, can safely be assumed to be something along the lines of a seperate demiplane of sorts, like 'Faerie' in the MotP, or the roving domains of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts as described in 'Planes of Chaos' in 2e. It's always been vague enough to fit whichever model you prefer (and I tend to use a bit of both).
It's possible that there's some incredibly distant connection between the mortal elves and the immortal fey, but it might also be nothing, sort of equivalent to assuming that humans have some connection to titans or archons etc because of general body shape, etc.
I typically see the actual fey as a sort of quasi-outsider that represents aspects of mortality taken up about a dozen notches. Rather than alignment or element, they exemplify a sort of overglorified dance of mortal existance in all its glories and perversions combined.
firstly does anyone use the seelie / unseelie courts in their games with any regularity?
secondly are elves considered fey?
I love the Fey and use them (or at least plan for their inclusion) in all of the D&D games I run. The usual difference between the Seelie and Unseelie we like is the whole Changeling-esque Seelie as Lawful and Unseelie as Chaotic. They can and do mix freely. The main advantage of this set up is their obvious link to other outsiders.
As for Elves - no. They're link is more with the natural world, than the dreamy, fairytale world of the Fae. The Elves and the Fae are more like friends with something in common (i.e. a love of nature).
Peace,
tfad