So, I'm soon starting up a kingmaker game using E8 rules, and my idea is to make the Nyrissa plotline into some kind of cosmic horror theme, portraying fey as otherworldly, strange creatures that care about only their own goals and see humans and the human world as insignificant (partially because I like cosmic horror, partly because you cannot fit a group of 8th level characters against a CR20 caster). While this is somewhat the case already with Nyrissa, she's not the run-of-the-mill fey, and I want to mark the whole group as alien and weird.
Pan's Maze will be something of an inspirational source.
That isn't very hard to do generally, as many fey can easily be portrayed as territorial and deadly and some are downright evil as is (though we're not using any alignment system). Dryads, nymphs, satyrs, and quicklings can easily be used this way.
I've also managed to get my hands on an adventure for a swedish rpg that has just that feeling, with a sentient, fey-like tree as a mindcontrolling leech that lives on sucking the life-force from enslaved elves. Fits right in.
HOWEVER. There are other fey, and I don't know what to do with them. Right now, I'm mostly concerned with Tyg-Titter-Tut and the fairy dragon, since it's right at the beginning. I could just drop the encounter, but it's a nice, non-combat encounter (and that's heavily needed in all AP's since they're so combat heavy) and it's also somewhat important to get important info. I could leave it as is, but I don't want fey to feel ambivalently "sometimes good, sometimes bad"; I want them to feel alien and hard (if not impossible) to understand for human beings. I could switch tyg-titter-tat to something else. Or I could make griggs into something else than fey, though that seems a weird solution.
So, my questions are two-fold:
1. What should I do with the fairy nest encounter?
2. Do you have any other suggestions, ideas, or warnings about my idea in general?
Thanks a lot for any aid!
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My dm had dragons that fed off of emotions and complex ideas. He had fey work for them. You could have fey that feed off of emotions and complex ideas. Fey that create political turmoil to feed off the emotions created by it. Nuglubs and Lurker in Lights are perfect for this. Gremlins in general are great creators of turmoil. There is the Fey Creature template that you can apply to whatever you want, including aberrations for more gruesome fey, and creepy swarms.
Hmm, it's not a bad idea with emotion-feeding fey. The only drawback is that it makes fey _dependent_ on other sentient life.
Yes, gremlins are excellent, and though I don't know of the fey template (I'll have to look that up) I've already thought a lot about monstrous humanoids and aberrations together with the fey. Even oozes can fit nicely.
For the sickeningly sweet fae, I usually amp them up to manic, let them fixate on random unsuitable things, and have their energetic optimism overflow uncaring past human limits.
"Serious adventurers!? That's great. We can march until the flesh sloughs from your feet, yay! Stand against ancient threats no matter their power, like salmon fighting their way into the bear's maw, wriggling against it's teeth and struggling down it's throat, wheeee!"
"Taste my euphoric breath, then we can be one, and all can be one, and all can be won, be wan when one can win for surprise makes one wan and one won wan makes one win one wan....."
"Nice gifts, we like you now. We could fiddle for you now, and if you like you could jig to our tunes for days and days. Or do you have a home and family? We could guard them ever so well, so they never leave you and never have little deaths and are so happy we all dance on cracked and bloody feat to show our joy."
"Did you say love? Lovey love love loooovve loooarrrrrrvey loaiiirrrreeggggve!!!" (starting as singing, quicker and harder until devolving into unintelligible screaming, until it stops and they go back to normal.)
Yeah, the thing is that I don't want them scarily euphoric and annoyingly loving, I want them more pan's labyrinth-scary and cthuluesque-weird (though in somewhat humanoid shape).
I don't want fey that likes being loved by humans, I want fey that don't consider humans properly alive at all, and that don't even entertain the thought.
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In an Ars Magica campaign way back the GM did a good job of making all fey really dark and inhuman. One of them had a tree where she would hang the dreams she stole from the people she killed. The dreams looked like faces of the people with a purplish cast to them. She looked normal and human but tried to feed you enchanted porridge to put you to sleep. Then she would steal your dreams which would kill you. Very eerie.
Another time we spoke to a friendly fey but he was strange looking as if he tried to make himself look human but had to rely on an inaccurate description of humans. He was 8 feet tall and wore liederhosen that were far too short. He had an exaggerated large hook nose and arms that hung down to his knees. He liked to collect items of personal importance. We were asking him for some books that contained information we needed. In return for the books we had to give him a personal item and tell him stories about why it was important to us.
In his games fey liked to collect intangibles or tangible items connected to intangible things. Usually those things were feelings like happiness or pride or fear. The form of collection varied depending on if the fey was Seelie or Unseelie.
That was the thing that made them kinda scary. Our lives were worth less to them than our intangible experiences which they used for money or power.
Remember that the grig and faerie dragon have awesome SLAs, notably invisibility. Just find some freaky art for both on the reveal-- the body plans are a good start, very alien.
I had a similar problem with that encounter, but I realized it is mainly the art. For capricious, malevolent fey, look no further than European folk mythology.
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Some really good suggestions here, I know I'll use some of it.
I agree that the art should be changed for many fey; found this picture, and g$~%!@n do I want to include that as a fey!
Also, using drider art for the grig might work, especially since none of the players know very much about either fey nor the underdark creatures.
Stringburka, thank you for finding the two images I will be using in my own game.
Yes, I think changing that, and their alignment if necessary, should be sufficient.
My KM party is going to be somewhat evil, so good aligned works just fine.
Fey should definitely be scary. Even the nice ones have very little understanding of mortality. They should consider life to be a curiosity worth experimenting with on. How about a Fey vivisectionist who wants to understand more about humans inside and out?
Don't forget the First World borders both the Shadow Plane and The Dark Tapestry. Having negative energy themed fey (check out my Laru in this year's RPG Superstar) or HPL style, twisted fey that have touched things unknown should be positively encouraged.