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I have a game where the main villains are evil fey. Yes, I have some scenes with mischevious pixies but how ELSE do you use the fey?
Here are some villains I've got in the idea phase that I've yet to flesh out:
- a forlarren who steals the beauty of mortals so she can appear beautiful
- a biloko druid who uses some kind of warping power to manufacture fey-touched creatures
Similar to your biloko druid:
Evil faeries living at the bottom of an abandoned mine abduct children from nearby communities, transforming them into goblins (fey creature template). For inspiration, see Fable.
I just had a bunch of Hags take over a grove of Dryads and co-opt them into all sorts of nastiness against their better judgment. Fortunately the PC's looked JUST LIKE the sort of bad-guys roaming around.
Humans, with swords and blades, walking in the forest...
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Humans, with swords and blades, walking in the forest...
picking up the field mice and bobbin' 'em on the head.
I do something a bit weird. Emphasise the fey in my setting and their at times alien mindsets. Remove elves, so the fey are it in that sense. Well, there are also plant creatures, vine ogres and the like, so in a way I mix plant creatures with fey and make them the old and sometimes creepy forces of nature.
In the grand scheme of things they are more neutral, but also sometimes kill to procreate (vine ogres killing people and planting seeds in remains), or are a part of a very old faction which patrol the old forest and kill any interlopers.
So far, put in some satyr, thorns. The satyr was welcoming and generous, but pursued sexual relations. Thorns are mostly little forest homicidal maniacs.
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Yeah I ran them as very alien in mindset, took the players by surprise.
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I had my players go on a small fetch quest to a nearby town to retrieve a gift for a fey dignitary who was visiting their lord. one of my players found a bird cage filled with andoren song birds that had been trained to chirp a particular tune (we are playing in qadira so these were a oddity) he took them back to the fey dignitary who squealed with delight and began popping them into her mouth savoring their tiny songs accented by the crunch of their bones.
A good place to look for inspiration for the fey was the exalted setting. their fey were all about bringing the raw stuff of creation into the real world and overriding the current reality. I have my fey working to bring about the same goals but naturally they are attempting to reassert the first world as the only world.
Tell me more.
In my world they are the biggest member of the independent faction. There are the big bad guys, the good guys which are also somewhat the bad guys, and the old forces, of which the fey/plants are, and they aren't always friendly or good.
Check out this thread for fey prank ideas.
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Ironically I have the concept of a coven of hags/witches/evil fey trying to blight the land instead of add to it. But wait...brainstorm...
For months I've been thinking the fey want to blight the land and they're in league secretly with the church of Abadar. Meanwhile there's a fey-hunter prowling the woods. Now I'm thinking I've got a better idea.
The church IS the evil fey hunter. Each time they slay the fey, in order to ensure the little critters stay gone they perform some heretical ritual which is blighting the land. "It's for the greater good" I can see them saying.
So the fey should be smaller, unobtrusive even. I like the biloko druid for this. Stealing the idea above he's making kids into mites.
The party will meet him posing as an NPC in town. He comes off as a charming entertainer, if a tad aloof. He and his "assistants" perform magic for kids at night during the local festival.
So the villains: mites, giant insects, insect swarms, the biloko himself, and perhaps some evil plant creatures. The locations: a darkened thicket, a nearby swamp, a peat mound partially covering a ruin sinking into the mud. Plotline:
The fey have held revels and been discovered by the church of Abadar who arrives with a "final solution" to the problem (has to be Abadar since it ties in with a higher level plot). The church begins hunting the fey and blighting the land. The fey in retaliation call upon this dark member of the court.
He goes from town to town, capturing children and taking them back to "the hive"; the ruin beneath the mud. Here he makes mites of them and has been flooding the forest with the little buggers. This fits in with a bunch of ruins that the party is supposed to be exploring for loot for the Archivist's Guild to preserve and study.
I love using fey creatures in campaigns; they're always portrayed as a bit odd, but while weird might be the norm, horrific is the exception. I've reworked the nuckelavee as a huge-sized centaur-shaped cyclops and rewritten the twigjacks as CN trickster sprites. I've replaced fauns and satyrs with a custom humanoid race that serves the same purpose without any 'fey' expectations.
I like for fey themes to function as a sylvan equivalent to Lovecraftian elements.
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I don't use them, they use me.
My fey are very strongly influenced by the books I've read, probably most of all being Dresden Files. I very rarely run evil fey, but just as equally rarely good ones too, most are some shade of TN or CN and pranksters/tricksters/manipulators to boot.
That said, the fey realm in my homebrew setting is entwined with the Dreamscape, which in turn is connected to the Realm of Nightmares, from whence come the horrors of beyond and the Dreaming Dead...
All these comments and nobody's mentioned the Grimm's tales. That's actually what got me on the trail of the fey in the first place. When I mentioned the fey would be a featured villain in my homebrew one of my players made his 2 characters brothers: Jakob and Willhelm Grimm.
My very first 3 plotline ideas were: a cruel, beauty-stealing fey has cursed a young girl into doing her bidding, which includes using poisoned apples to spread wererat lycanthropy through the town; a korred that helps young maidens for a price and the baron's daughter has pledged the the greatest reward of all - her firstborn. The party has to find the korred and deal with him; a fey has afflicted a local woodsman with werewolf lycanthropy and is using him to hunt small children who wander through the woods. As the PC's are searching for it they come across a little girl in a familiar crimson frock...
My players loved when I told them they'd be fighting fey. "They're so squishy; fight scenes will be over in minutes!" I haven't pitted them against any of the pranksters yet but I can't wait til they realize they're not going toe-to-toe with a satyr or a pixie here...
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My fey concepts have been forever tarnished (burnished?) by my reading of Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell, by Susanna Clarke.
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Pans Labyrinth might provide some great inspiration.
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In general terms, I use fey as beings whose bodies and souls are attuned more heavily to abstract concepts, metaphors, and natural forces than anything biological. Highly morphic dependant upon a number of factors. Their souls burn more brightly but at the same time their ties to the physical world are more tenuous. They originally came from a Gaiman-ish "plane" of Faerie that touches on many planes. Beyond that the diversity kinda explodes for them.
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... The satyr was welcoming and generous, but pursued sexual relations. Thorns are mostly little forest homicidal maniacs.
Switch Thorns with Satyrs (and visa versa) and really confuse your players...
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I actually find Golarion fey to be pretty dull.
They all seem to be either:
A: Creepy Evil
B: Spoilt-little-child-gone-mad-with-power
Is there a single Fey in APs or Modules who does not fit one of those descriptions?
I like fey to be capricious. I think that sums up my fey.
If you are wary of them, if you can't trust them... it isn't because they're mean, it's because you can't understand them and they can't understand you.
But still, they're strangeness is deliciously tempting and fascinating, and for every adventurer who stumbles out of the First World with a cracked mind and shattered soul there is another who tumbles forth with amazing new powers and a magic sword that can cut through time.
My literary inspiration would be: The Mabinogion, Rothfuss and (like Mikaze) Gaiman.
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I have a tendency to try and look at them with the mindset that they are like children looking on the world as a toy box and we're the toys. They think of starting wars as playing with army men, throw monsters at heroes like we play with knights and dragon toys, and help people like when children play with doll houses. To them it is all just fun and games and it doesn't really matter since no one (well no fey) get hurt. I often think that to them they don't really grasp that mortals are as alive and sentient as they are, to them they just kind of think we can be replaced or might just be a made up person they project on the mortal they are playing with at the moment and can project on the next when this one inevitable expires (which leads to some problems when the new toy doesn't play like the old one). This mentality works with all of them regardless of alignment with good fey just being those who take better care of/are a bit more attached to keeping their toys in one peace and "happy" while evil fey are more like Sid from Toy Story.
As for examples of things I've done with fey right now I'm working on something in my homebrew where one of the current Orc tribes running amok in the lands nearby is organized and guided by a fey who is more or less playing army men with mortals and could potentially be running both sides. Other ones is the angry friend where a fey kidnaps the child of one of their original playmates who has grown up and moved on while the fey has stayed the same, becoming angry at it's original plaything and trying to replace it with its newly found lookalike. Finally you always have the "Worlds most terrifying fan" where you have an incredibly powerful fey that takes an obsessive interest in one of the PC's like he is the greatest new action figure and throwing him into the most suicidal of quests in an effort to show off all his cool "features". This gets worse when he decides to either play hero and imitate him and his endeavors with his own feyish flare or, god forbid, he throws him up against one of his other fey buddies "cooler toy" and set these 2 on a course to fight one another to prove who has the better hero.
In my homebrew the elves are the big bad fey race who for years I've used as alien villains with a huge hate for the mortal races, humanity in particular
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I GM a fey-heavy KM campaign. So far, my players have mostly encountered the nicer versions. Although, they've been beset by redcaps, lurkers in light and pixies out there demanding payment for the death of a faery dragon.
The more they entrench themselves in the Stolen Lands, the greater the powers, they wake and the more manipulative they become, using the PCs for their own machinations.
Generally, I aim for fey inspired by Tad Williams' Shadowmarch trilogy.
Ruyan.
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Redcaps, must get more redcaps.
But still, they're strangeness is deliciously tempting and fascinating, and for every adventurer who stumbles out of the First World with a cracked mind and shattered soul there is another who tumbles forth with amazing new powers and a magic sword that can cut through time.
This sums up my Kingmaker group perfectly, heheh. All three of them stumbled into FaeReie (my setting's variant of the First World, also known as The Between) pre-campaign.
The Magus came out with an intense phobia and loathing hatred of fey (he'll have to make a save vs. fear whenever encountering one, but if he succeeds he gets Favored Enemy [Fey] for free for that combat), and a subconscious compulsion toward attention-grabbing actions when in a crowd.
The Oracle got her powers (Spellscar) but also found herself bound by the Fey's inability to tell a straight lie or break her word (Legalistic curse).
The Centaur Barbarian got nothing at all, positive or negative.
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Redcaps, must get more redcaps.
Papa Smurf was a red cap.
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If you look at the Darkmoon Vail setting book they depict a fey queen who is in rivelry for power with her sister. Nymphs and dryads are somthing as a royal cort, satyrs are forest patrol gaurds, pixies are scouts and so on.
I've gone on to see dryads as something of forest clerics, nymphs as camanders, and satyrs, when welling, to be men at arms. Pixies, sprigins, and such are sorts the common folk, and then some sort of ruling force. Druids are mortal followers or loyal subjects of the community.
Out siders, hunters, loggers, enterlopers apon sacrid ground. Whatever. Are in their eyes tresspassers, vandels and theives. Elves play a roll if wanted as joined gaurdians, fellow woodland dwellers, or possably a rivel or sepperate faction viaing for power that players may have to deal with or face.
What I'm gathering from this thread is that if I have a tactical gaming group that's highly motivated for dungeon hacking and doesn't really pay attention to story or fluff, I've made a terrible, terrible mistake by making the fey my villains.
How do you build a megadungeon around the fey?
What I'm gathering from this thread is that if I have a tactical gaming group that's highly motivated for dungeon hacking and doesn't really pay attention to story or fluff, I've made a terrible, terrible mistake by making the fey my villains.
How do you build a megadungeon around the fey?
Teleportation through trees, journeys across worlds, be miniaturized or enlarged. Fight on lily pads.
What I'm gathering from this thread is that if I have a tactical gaming group that's highly motivated for dungeon hacking and doesn't really pay attention to story or fluff, I've made a terrible, terrible mistake by making the fey my villains.
I'd say you'd be missing out on about 80% of the fun to be had with fey, yes. There are ways you can make a fitting dungeon around them, but it's kind of like using a hammer to play pool. It'll do the job, but there are better tools and you're not getting your money's worth out of the hammer.
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I severed my fey from some faerie realm. The whole lot are the result of divine tinkering (or punishment depending on the race). Even then they all still pay at least lip service to the same progenitor, who can be as whimsical as his fey.
My sprites and such are pretty much the norm. Some are annoying, some are fun, others are nasty.
Don't use satyrs, korreds, and many similar fey.
Centaur got a more sinister reputation as raiders from the edge of civilization. Births are 90% male, leaving a shortage in breeding stock. In response they kidnap females of other races and use rituals to change them into centaurs.
Harpies get tamed down some. They are actually civilized, claiming to be cursed kindred of the elves of old.
Dryads got an overhaul. Woody looking maidens are okay, but I allowed tweaked them allowing them to change form into the 4E look for combat.
Glaistig, possible the most viscous of the fey in my world (using the 3.5) can also be one of the more helpful if PC's help them. The overriding need for them to drink blood can lead some to amazing schemes to get reliable sources. Those that go to long with feeding risk becoming feral predators.
Kitsune, I threw them into the fey since they fit the bill for my standards.
Nymphs, beloved of their god. Promoted from other fey and humanoids in his service.
Hags. I punted them out of the fey. All hags in my campaign are humanoid females who made a deal with the local demon lord for various reasons.
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What I'm gathering from this thread is that if I have a tactical gaming group that's highly motivated for dungeon hacking and doesn't really pay attention to story or fluff, I've made a terrible, terrible mistake by making the fey my villains.I'd say you'd be missing out on about 80% of the fun to be had with fey, yes. There are ways you can make a fitting dungeon around them, but it's kind of like using a hammer to play pool. It'll do the job, but there are better tools and you're not getting your money's worth out of the hammer.
Kind of have to agree with this guy, you can make them fit into a dungeon set up but the fun to be had with them is how much they don't. Fey are the creatures you use when you want to flip your parties perspective on its head, have a cocky fighter who likes to brag there is nothing too big for him to handle? Throw a group of pixies at him and have him start making will saves to not lose all his memories and think he is a warrior for peace and love. Have a rogue who is known for wooing all the greatest beauties? Throw a nymph at him and have him learn what it is to love something that thinks of him like we think of a pet or new shiny toy. Have a party that doesn't fear anything? Pit them against a capricious satyr mage or Leprechaun who thinks it would be funny to make them the size of mice, leave their weapons normal size, and make them fight a house cat with pins, nails, thimble armor.
I severed my fey from some faerie realm. The whole lot are the result of divine tinkering (or punishment depending on the race). Even then they all still pay at least lip service to the same progenitor, who can be as whimsical as his fey.
My sprites and such are pretty much the norm. Some are annoying, some are fun, others are nasty.
Don't use satyrs, korreds, and many similar fey.
Centaur got a more sinister reputation as raiders from the edge of civilization. Births are 90% male, leaving a shortage in breeding stock. In response they kidnap females of other races and use rituals to change them into centaurs.
Harpies get tamed down some. They are actually civilized, claiming to be cursed kindred of the elves of old.
Dryads got an overhaul. Woody looking maidens are okay, but I allowed tweaked them allowing them to change form into the 4E look for combat.
Glaistig, possible the most viscous of the fey in my world (using the 3.5) can also be one of the more helpful if PC's help them. The overriding need for them to drink blood can lead some to amazing schemes to get reliable sources. Those that go to long with feeding risk becoming feral predators.
Kitsune, I threw them into the fey since they fit the bill for my standards.
Nymphs, beloved of their god. Promoted from other fey and humanoids in his service.
Hags. I punted them out of the fey. All hags in my campaign are humanoid females who made a deal with the local demon lord for various reasons.
Actually did a few things with the centaurs of my setting. For one they broke off from the rest of the fey, pretty much, although I do consider centaurs fey whatever the monster manual says. The northern centaurs roam in nomad tribes out on the endless plains. Some are very pacifistic.
The southern zebrataurs are a bit different. They are much more warrior tribes. They share tech with the mongols/magyar of this setting, the Bodki hill tribes. So bows, spiked chains, polearms, whip daggers. All cool stuff to use when riding hard.
The zebrataurs fight with the Bodki and with the Southern Carim feudal lands. The area they roams is a divide between more civilised territories, making them natural predators if you get too close.
Kind of have to agree with this guy, you can make them fit into a dungeon set up but the fun to be had with them is how much they don't. Fey are the creatures you use when you want to flip your parties perspective on its head, have a cocky fighter who likes to brag there is nothing too big for him to handle? Throw a group of pixies at him and have him start making will saves to not lose all his memories and think he is a warrior for peace and love. Have a rogue who is known for wooing all the greatest beauties? Throw a nymph at him and have him learn what it is to love something that thinks of him like we think of a pet or new shiny toy. Have a party that doesn't fear anything? Pit them against a capricious satyr mage or Leprechaun who thinks it would be funny to make them the size of mice, leave their weapons normal size, and make them fight a house cat with pins, nails, thimble armor.What I'm gathering from this thread is that if I have a tactical gaming group that's highly motivated for dungeon hacking and doesn't really pay attention to story or fluff, I've made a terrible, terrible mistake by making the fey my villains.I'd say you'd be missing out on about 80% of the fun to be had with fey, yes. There are ways you can make a fitting dungeon around them, but it's kind of like using a hammer to play pool. It'll do the job, but there are better tools and you're not getting your money's worth out of the hammer.
This is brilliant stuff and will be thoroughly borrowed.
Over the course of building my campaign setting, the fey have gone from fairies to an infinite being that existed before the big bang. Sort of like the god of God's god. Cthulhu-esque.
He/She/It uses arachnids as its agents in the world.
Sometimes it gets more directly involved, but its motivations are so beyond even the gods of my campaign that no one is ever quite sure what it is, what it wants, or what its doing at any given time.
When it needs to make direct communication, it uses the form of an elf, but the elf always looks "wrong".
It "creates" other messengers and agents, which are traditional fey creatures with an arachnid flavour added.
They're also all psionic users as opposed to magic users.
I use them as a way to kick my players in the right direction when need be, or to stop them from going in the wrong direction.
So what's the angle of your fey? Are they inhuman and play with people like toys? Are they defenders of the wilds? I want mine more fairy tale like.
What I'm running into is the same problem that has kept me from an aberration game all these years. I don't get the monsters I'm designing for. In one-offs sure; fey are easy. This one wants a baby to enslave or that one turns a fisherman into a fish. But long term I don't know how to make the inhuman creatures make sense.
For goblins, undead, demons/devils, it kind of makes sense to me; I get their motivations. Goblins raid towns to get stuff. Undead slay the living because they're compelled to. Demons/Devils have a defined hierarchy and locale to appease.
So what do the fey want long term? What could an immortal race actually want?
In my campaign, the "Fey", which is effectively a single being, is trying to atone for the creation of the universe.
He/She/It existed before the big bang, in a singularity of pure energy, and was an immortal being that lived with other immortal beings.
He/She/It became bored, he/she/it tried to kill itself.
That act was the big bang. The big bang was God putting a 44 in its mouth and pulling the trigger.
After several billion years, the "Fey" regrets its decision, as the eventual end result of its action is the heat death of the universe, which will also spell its own death. It's like suicide that's going to take a few trillion years to bleed out, but in that time an entire universe of life evolved out of your blood, and their death is your fault too.
Hence its trying to save the universe from itself. A simple motivation, but the being is capable of thinking in 4 dimensions. It thinks of time like we think of space and can move/think in 4 dimensions, so while the motivation is simple, its methods of "fixing" the problem are convoluted and alien to anyone not capable of 4 dimensional thought.
Where as you try to fight a dictator, or even if you had time travel, go back and kill the dictator, the fey would instead go back to a point where a small furry creature that is the evolutionary ancestor of that dictator had a small mutation that eventually lead to that dictator's instinctive need for power, so it squishes the furry animal, taking that mutation out of the gene pool, preventing the dictator from ever having the desire to be a dictator.
Of course, this also probably changes the entire course of human history, but to the fey the course of human history is like 0.00000000000000000000000000000000001% of the equation.
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This is brilliant stuff and will be thoroughly borrowed.Kind of have to agree with this guy, you can make them fit into a dungeon set up but the fun to be had with them is how much they don't. Fey are the creatures you use when you want to flip your parties perspective on its head, have a cocky fighter who likes to brag there is nothing too big for him to handle? Throw a group of pixies at him and have him start making will saves to not lose all his memories and think he is a warrior for peace and love. Have a rogue who is known for wooing all the greatest beauties? Throw a nymph at him and have him learn what it is to love something that thinks of him like we think of a pet or new shiny toy. Have a party that doesn't fear anything? Pit them against a capricious satyr mage or Leprechaun who thinks it would be funny to make them the size of mice, leave their weapons normal size, and make them fight a house cat with pins, nails, thimble armor.What I'm gathering from this thread is that if I have a tactical gaming group that's highly motivated for dungeon hacking and doesn't really pay attention to story or fluff, I've made a terrible, terrible mistake by making the fey my villains.I'd say you'd be missing out on about 80% of the fun to be had with fey, yes. There are ways you can make a fitting dungeon around them, but it's kind of like using a hammer to play pool. It'll do the job, but there are better tools and you're not getting your money's worth out of the hammer.
Why thank you sir, happy to help. If you ever meet any of my party you should ask the scout about his biggest fan, the fey who decided to follow him around and emulate his life and then eventually steal all his memories so he could play superman filtran (the rogue in question) with his newly acquired sidekick (aforementioned rogue) suffice it to say the rogue was annoyed lol.
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So what's the angle of your fey? Are they inhuman and play with people like toys? Are they defenders of the wilds? I want mine more fairy tale like.
What I'm running into is the same problem that has kept me from an aberration game all these years. I don't get the monsters I'm designing for. In one-offs sure; fey are easy. This one wants a baby to enslave or that one turns a fisherman into a fish. But long term I don't know how to make the inhuman creatures make sense.
For goblins, undead, demons/devils, it kind of makes sense to me; I get their motivations. Goblins raid towns to get stuff. Undead slay the living because they're compelled to. Demons/Devils have a defined hierarchy and locale to appease.
So what do the fey want long term? What could an immortal race actually want?
I think that's sort of the point though is that at the end of the day the motivations of the fey should be alien and inscrutable, at best we can just guess at the short term reasons (they want a new love, new playmate, are bored etc.)or at worse know the truth of their actions in that they are just finding some way to amuse themselves for the time being. In the end these are beings who really don't need to interact with our world at all unless they want to they have their own plane, powerful beings rivaling archdevils and demon lords, and whole societies and cultures of their own that value their particular skills and abilities. To them we are just dalliances to occupy their attention and that in and of itself should be scary.
I mean think about it, you are fighting for months to take down this Fey king who has rallied an orc horde together and is invading the country sides of your land. When you finally manage to make it to this horrible despot your parties paladin puts the sword to his neck and asks him what his big plan is and why he did all this and all he can say is "Why not? There was nothing better happening." and he goes on to talk about how he was just bored, and with nothing going on in the faelands he decided to bust out the old material plane toybox and play army men for a while. Hell he even made these cool new heroes that get to kiss the girls and go home to their ale houses champions, all in all the story he made was pretty cool and was a hell of a view and to him this is exciting and to the party they realize that they are just pieces in this guys living play and even their success was manufactured by this guy just wanting something interesting to watch. At this point if your players are suddenly feeling like the biggest tools and dumbfounded at this guy and almost wishing they hadn't gone on this mission at all. If you can pull this off then you are right on top of the fey, they are an entire race of GM's in the game world just looking for something entertaining in your world and it is quite often PC's.
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So what's the angle of your fey? Are they inhuman and play with people like toys? Are they defenders of the wilds? I want mine more fairy tale like.
What I'm running into is the same problem that has kept me from an aberration game all these years. I don't get the monsters I'm designing for. In one-offs sure; fey are easy. This one wants a baby to enslave or that one turns a fisherman into a fish. But long term I don't know how to make the inhuman creatures make sense.
For goblins, undead, demons/devils, it kind of makes sense to me; I get their motivations. Goblins raid towns to get stuff. Undead slay the living because they're compelled to. Demons/Devils have a defined hierarchy and locale to appease.
So what do the fey want long term? What could an immortal race actually want?
Imagine a group of fairies who has just discovered that human presents come in shiny ribbons. They have decided to take every single bit of shiny material from the whole kingdom to wrap up boxes of Qadiran delight that they are giving to the nymph at the heart of the forest.
Can we kill them? Should we negotiate? Are we going to have to provide alternative shiny? It seems so stupid but they are amazed, and in the end they trade it for the adventurers delivering the lokum themselves and singing a jolly good song when they do so (Oh, but it has to be a surprise: you can give it to her when she is bathing... nude...a nymph...) Oh, and when the fairies meet you they also meet the local princess, and one of them falls in love, and so they make her fall in love with him, and take her to the fey realm, then they forget about her in the Forest of Singing Trees and someone has to rescue her.
But it can actually be much, much more significant than that: it turns out the nymph asked them to collect mithral and they misunderstood, she needs to plug a hole in reality so that the bone-door doesn't open and let the souls of the dead drift through the forest.
So, now your adventurers have to convince the king (not possible, they'll have to steal it) to hand over the two mithril swords which are the only sources of the metal in the entire kingdom. Then they have to travel through ghost-infested ruins with a map made by someone who perceives time differently and sees space in different ways...
And at the end the Nymph gives you a kiss and ties a ribbon in your hair. That's it.
Of course, 3 months later your character has his head chopped off by a death knight waving a vorpal sword... time stops, the ribbon explodes, time bends, space goes wrong and suddenly your character is holding the sword, the death knight's head is sailing away from its body and you can feel the warm scent of the nymph's hair in your nostrils for a moment.
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In traditional myth...Fey had a very prickly demeanor that meant they could be easily offended. Something as simple as claiming your daughter was the fairest in the land, or not inviting a fairy noble to some event, could be enough to precipitate war between the Fey and Human worlds. It doesn't even matter if no one even knew the offended fey even existed.
An easy angle would be to have some sort of similar innocent misunderstanding by a human king arise, causing the Fey to curse the land, abduct the princess, etc.
I'm running a Kingmaker campaign with the E6 rules, and for that
I've not used their "mischiveous" or "playful" nature, as they don't see the fun in practical jokes with a human in the same way that a human doesn't make practical jokes for a wooden stick.
I've also used a few more "scary" fey than normal (including one with this art).
I love the fey. When I use them the key thing to know is that they're temperamental and dangerous. Some are good, some evil, most are neutral, and most are chaotic, and of course none are very human in the way they act. The fey in my games don't see things the same way as humans and what they may see as harmless fun, minor acts of revenge, or mundane actions of little consequence could equate to a high-level "things have just gotten REALLY bad" situation for your average humanoid party.
I'm working on an urban campaign at the moment with fey villains. The finale basically involves a rift to the first world tearing open in the middle of town and the first would essentially pouring out and enveloping the city, turning it into a literal urban jungle.
The main villain isn't evil, just rather petty. She has no concept of the fact that she's putting an entire city's worth of people in mortal danger with her actions.
I'm working on an urban campaign at the moment with fey villains. The finale basically involves a rift to the first world tearing open in the middle of town and the first would essentially pouring out and enveloping the city, turning it into a literal urban jungle.
I approve. So very much.