>Anyone have any cool ideas to play with?

Yeah, how about you post this in >>83533445?

>>83616997
Dont be a faggot, this is different than folklore and house spirits

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Artpostin

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>>83617036

>>83616992
>Anyone have any cool ideas?
How about you invite me to your fucking table?

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>>83617008
>Dont be a faggot
I'll be as much of a faggot as I want, nerd.

But also check out this book:
https://feral-indie-studios.itch.io/into-the-wyrd-and-wild

Pretty sure it's in the O-S-R trove. Has some neat rules and ideas that seem right up your alley.

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>>83617069
I like the idea of lots of body horror getting involved as a result of faerie exposure, your skin and flesh turning gelatinous, moth-like wings and appendages crawling out of you, gestating gaggles of bone eating insectile pixies, and the like. Your parts turning into other parts just because of the arcane, eldritch irradiation. Becoming beautiful and horrible and not a person anymore, forgetting who they are after the fae stole their names, yearning to be human once again

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>>83617105
Hell yeah I'll check it out
>>83617091
Heh, a big thing last campaign involves the players making deals with the diminished fae for their help, with a caveat being that in a hundred years the Old Truce would be broken.

The game is taking place just a bit over a century later. I'm excited to see how fucking weird it gets, and if the players will come to regret their old characters making such a deal. Perhaps it would have been better for this world to have been extinguished than the blight of Change that is coming.

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>>83617144
A plague of undeath(?) has swept in from the sea, but is being disregarded as madness and rumour. Strange beasts wander the wilderness, and hamlets and farmsteads are found abandoned. Dragons are coming down from the mountains, reasserting their place at the top of the food chain. It's only a matter of time until what's changing the beasts of the earth and the trees of the forest and the people of the wilds starts to change the dragons of the skies into something else too.

The fae do not want to exterminate life as the last grand threat did. They just want to improve it. And whether it's a want or a need or just some basic side effect of their existence is indeterminable.

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>>83617203
Heres something I wrote while very very high about the life cycle of dragons. I like my dragons as cunning apex predators, not necessarily magical talking demigod creatures.

Dragons lay metal eggs when they eat enough metal, that's why they hoard, stone, metal, and gems they devour are used for egg shell they vomit up

They eat metal because gems are their natural diet for egg shells, and metal glimmers like gems and feels the same to them
Can mate with multiple partners for maximum genetic diversity, or do aparthenogenesis
Dragons get larger with age, infinitely basically
Bigger dragons lay bigger eggs
This means a dragon being nearby will eventually result in more, near identical dragons of a size very similar to the mother

Multiple dragons likely means much more unique dragons

Extremely complex DNA so a dragons baby might be completely different from its parents, which means new unique dragons almost all the time, things like red dragons and snow dragons and green dragons are common because their parent was extremely successful solo and performed a lot of self cloning with apartheogensis

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>>83617228
I'm just gonna keep schizoposting until people engage.

I want to start the campaign session 1 in media res in the middle of a fight with a farmer who's sold his soul to the forest and is now a mutated awful thing that's at half health and has butchered the half dozen mooks in their mercenary outfit already as the game starts. I want him to be weird, but not oh god oh fuck weird.

I'm thinking of describing him as bloated, with blood like thick milk imbued with moonlight, and his skin is gelatinous and pale. Any detail in his face has been lost to the swollen mass of soft flesh, and his limbs are elongated and lanky. He wields a lumberjacks axe graced with the light of the moon, and swings it erratically as he leaps around in the bog they're fighting him in. He has javelins impaling his back that he occasionally throws. He does a lot of grabs and throws and area based attacks so I want a crash course for myplayers on positioning and using the environment during a set piece fight. At phase 2 (whenever feels appropriate I guess) he sprouts a gnarled moth wing from his neck that he uses to painfully flutter up to 15ft and overcome the sucking depths of the swamp water. All the while he is howling and yawping and screaming gibberish, with the ocadio al I intelligible word or phrase condemning the players to hell or screaming how much he hates them.

I've made it clear their jobs up until now have been guarding caravans, night watch, and shaking down farmers for protection money, so this whole encounter is supposed to feel way over their head. They thought they were here to arrest a man accused of murder.

I want them to feel the tone of "this is a horror game full of weirdness" right off the bat but I'm worried this is too weird to start off with a slow burn? The idea is that things would kind of revert back to normal right away but this encounter would always kind of be in the back of their minds during their mundane early adventures making them paranoid.

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Definitely going for colour out of space / annihilation vibes in terms of faerie influence, but not sure how to make it a slow enough burn that is evident from the get go but not in the players faces too much?

>>83617407
That's a good start except i wouldn't start right at the fight. Better to built up for it untill half of the session.

It'd be cool if the farmer "dropped" a piece of faerie artifact, and if the players decide to track down it's origin, they'll find the old farie-worship ruins deep into the forest near the farmer's estate, where the "transaction" happened

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>>83617630
Hot starts are a great way to get the players perked up and excited for the session. Starting with investigation / a long walk out to a farmstead is never really tense unless the game is dark heresy or something IMO, plus it helps deal with early game tard wrangling rather than hoping to God they go do the one thing I've prepared or hard railroading them to it. I'd rather start then halfway in the fight and then they're free to go, the tone having been established, than do some "you all meet in a tavern" trite

>>83617203
>They just want to improve it
What’s their metric for how “improved” something is?

>>83617036
Artist is Keith Thompson

>>83617407
It might be a bit too out there as a first introduction to the escalating body horror - remember, Bloodborne starts reasonably "normal" with werewolves and hairy men, with some oddity in the item descriptions and that one surprise brainsucker your first indication that something is really off. Maybe keep the guy looking bloated and seriously unwell, and way more dangerous than a single man with an axe should be, but its only when they finally put him down they find something seriously godawful inside him - his heart replaced with a pale wormsnake, a beehive, fresh sprouting soil for guts, some idol wrapped in thorns, something that will link to a fae critter - or perhaps parts of him change into forest-y materials. If he's a woodcutter, maybe he had an accident and Something quite literally gave him a hand, which is the route for his corruption.

One of the things that differentiate far monsters with the classic Lovecraftian ones is that the Fae have rules and they care intimately about people following them, and they can sometimes be bargained with (though its rarely a good idea). The Rules might not make sense, but they are followed, while the average tentacle beast from beyond doesn't/can't really give a shit. Don't go in the woods. Don't eat this food. Be Polite. Don't step in fairy rings or else. Bring a gift, or a gift will be taken. They Can Smell Grief. Not all your fae creatures will follow the same ones, or even all the time, but you can theme them with whatever entity is active in an area so for example The Tall Man In The Woods takes those who stray from the path, likes stands of white pine, and his coming is heralded by silence in the forest. He might leave woodcutters alone if they sing a song while they work (although he will probably stay and listen, and singing might attract other things).

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>>83619371
The Many Fingered Boy might help people who have hurt themselves in an accident, but God help you if you look at his hands or comment on the silky stiching of your wounds. Things like that.

I dont know if youve seen it, but the film The Ritual could be worth a watch. Without spoiling it, a group of lads go on a walk through Scandinavian woods and Have A Bad Time. It does escalate as it goes along, and if you can avoid spoiling yourself I thought the final reveal was really effective (and potentially completely up your alley)

I was also reading a book of folk horror stories recently, if I can remember where I put it I'll give it a rec.

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>>83619428
Yeah I liked that one. I have ideas for the Many Fingered Boy who is not a boy and doesnt have fingers, like picrel but smaller maybe. I honestly have been reading a lot of forest related spookypasta lately and it's all good inspo.

And yes, the MAIN (potentially only?) significant difference between fey and outer gods in this setting is that fey live here and are primarily concerned with here, rather than cosmic beyond. They're like larval old ones, still terrible and ancient and powerful, just more local. And I like the idea of them having these vaguely discernable forms, like body horror mockeries of humans, not out of maliciousness but out of a genuine curiosity and desire to interact with humans, they just Dont Get It and it ends up uncanny and gross.

>>83618975
I dunno but I can assure you it's probably not a lot of fun for the person being "improved." Think Katha Hem ala BPRD, his breath just changes men into monsters, the next phase of man, horrible corpulent fiery apex predator things, mindless and full of fury and hunger, but better suited to a world ruled by the Ogdru Jahad than mankind ever could be

>>83617439
God I hated that book
>Hey look at these spooky mysteries!
>so many mysteries! wow!
>This thing is mysterious! the explanation must be incredible!
>"Some mysteries have no answers"
go fuck yourself book.

>>83619716
I think smaller is definitely better for that one. You've got to think how they get these names to start with. It might be obscured by taboo or literally obscured by people not getting a clear sight of the thing, but whatever it is is going to be rooted in some characteristic it has. Boy makes me think: young, male, small, excitable, might be more up for a fight than a girl. If you heard children playing in the woods, you could probably tell what sex they are and get some idea of how old they are, which might explain the name even if it's bigger than expected - you go out to yell at the giggling little bastard pranking you and find something else entirely - but if its bigger than a house or leaving the trail of something large I'd probably call it something else

>>83619716
Using obfuscating or mundane names for horrible things in the woods fits exactly with the mythology of the Fair Folk. I like it.

>>83619841
The best thing to come from those books was that not-SCP game that took a lot of inspiration from Authority.

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>>83617407
>I'm thinking of describing him as bloated, with blood like thick milk imbued with moonlight, and his skin is gelatinous and pale. Any detail in his face has been lost to the swollen mass of soft flesh, and his limbs are elongated and lanky. He wields a lumberjacks axe graced with the light of the moon, and swings it erratically as he leaps around in the bog they're fighting him in. He has javelins impaling his back that he occasionally throws. He does a lot of grabs and throws and area based attacks so I want a crash course for myplayers on positioning and using the environment during a set piece fight. At phase 2 (whenever feels appropriate I guess) he sprouts a gnarled moth wing from his neck that he uses to painfully flutter up to 15ft and overcome the sucking depths of the swamp water. All the while he is howling and yawping and screaming gibberish, with the ocadio al I intelligible word or phrase condemning the players to hell or screaming how much he hates them.
Sorry, kiddo

>>83616992

First of all, remember why the Fey were called the Fair Folk, or the Good Neighbors. It was not because they were fair. It was not because they were good. It was because if they caught you saying bad shit about them they would curse you in horrible ways and fuck up your life, so the only safe thing to do was call them by pleasant sounding names by default but know that what it really was meant as was a warning.

Fey should be dangerously whimsical. They are powerful, but either do not know or do not care about the damage they do or the suffering they cause. Their ire can be easily triggered, absolutely awful in the punishment they inflict upon you, and then they forget you even exist a day later even as you spend the rest of your life paying for it.

Finally: there is only one thing more dangerous, more life ruining than the ire of a Fey. And that is the love of a Fey. A Fey that likes you will stick around and try to HELP you. Even if you never asked for it. Even if you beg for it to stop. A child with a Fey that has taken a liking to them will be given wonderous baubles and sweets and all of the Fey's love. The Fey will also curse or murder anyone who makes the child upset, even their parents.
This can be especially fucked up if the kid can't even see the Fey, lacking the sight to see such spirits but still having their life manipulated by a psychopathic 'friend'.

But despite all of this, always remember: there are no evil Fey. They can't be evil. They know not what it is.

>>83619841
this is genuinely the worst interpretation of Lovecraft and i really hope you don't think like this in your own head

>>83622549
But it is a very fair evaluation of the book Annihilation, which is like the JJ Abrahams version of the Color Out of Space; all setup, no payoff.

>>83617144
>tidus_laugh.mp3

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>>83619892
Hes called a boy because he wants to be called that. He lives in the woods. Has lots of appendages. Likes playing games. Likes other children especially.
>>83621692
Yes I love the idea of them like, obscuring their own power and horribleness and being like "yOu sHoUlD mAkE a DeAl I'm JuSt LiKe yOu!"
>>83622414
Huhh
>>83622530
Yes, I really want to work to drive home that the fae are completely amoral. They're working on blue and orange morality here and it makes no sense without guidance from cultists or sages.
>>83623741
I've never read the book, I meant the moooovie. IMO tabletop games have lot more to do with movies or television series than they do books because of the pacing and the energy. I dont know how else to explain it. A ttrpg is like infinite budget TV and as the GM you are in the director's seat and can control the camera, but you dont have a script and everyone is ad libbing million dollar stunts and sets and even though you can control the camera, the actors are also the audience and the producers so you have to Do It Right or they get upset or bomb your ratings.

Tfw players are fae IRL

>>83617008
Not really.

>>83619841
lol; Lovecraft was truly ahead of its time

>>83619716
>Think Katha Hem ala BPRD
I have no idea what you’re talking about.

>>83624547
>>83622549
Was talking about Annihilation. Awful book. Utterly atrocious. Lovecraft can set tone and actually has payoffs.

>>83626441
watch the movie, it's a complete slog for like 80% of the movie but the last 20% is THAT GOOD that it redeems the whole thing

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>>83616992
get this

>>83626682
I'll do it, but never read the book: it's the biggest waste of time I've ever gotten form a book.

>>83616992
Fae-Style Eldritch Horror is a severly underrated branch of eldritch horror, consider reading this:
https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/I%27m_a_Search_and_Rescue_Officer_for_the_US_Forest_Service,_I_Have_Some_Stories_to_Tell

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Dumping one of my favorite collection

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>>83626865

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>>83626875

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>>83626884
desu this is the only one that matters, the others that i posted where mostly for flavor, but this really gets that innawoods fae horro vibe

>>83616992
How well do you like your Fae to understand humanity? Should they understand but not care, or just not just get mankind?

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>>83625222
If you like eldritch shenanigans read BPRD, it's a comic about all the underpowered normie side characters in Hellboy trying and failing in a shadow war against the end times as old gods are awakening. The first volume is slow but stick with it, it gets buck wild. Spoiler: humans lose
>>83626441
>>83626682
I liked the movie it was a nice slow burn and was relevant to the grief I was dealing with at the time
>>83626800
YUP I have absolutely read all that, it's definitely part of the inspo
>>83626905
Based series of meemees friend

>>83622530
>Finally: there is only one thing more dangerous, more life ruining than the ire of a Fey. And that is the love of a Fey. A Fey that likes you will stick around and try to HELP you.
A magical creature that tries to make your life better but keeps getting it wrong. It looks through your window at night with imploring eyes. Whilst you sleep it types in an e-mail to that girl you always wanted to ask out, it is poorly written and short. It steals things you want. If you mention you want to lose weight it takes your food. When you wake up you see it gently stroking your hair. If you lash out it disappears for a while but then tries harder to please you. It only wants to make you happy but has no idea how to achieve that.

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>>83627651
I like them as varying degrees of understanding. It more has to do with which archfae and their progeny you're dealing with. Some are more malicious than others but all spell doom, either deliberately, inadvertently, or benevolently. The ones that understand humans, hate them, and the ones that dont are trying their best but are fucking uncanny and gross about it

I like elves as apex warrior fae touched stable post human lineage, very bestial in combat, but regal and noble and able to rip a horse in half

>>83617105
Any idea what folder in the trove it might be under? I can't seem to find it.

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>>83616992

very solid world building so far but can i ask
can we could go fuck the wendigo

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>>83628137
No, but you better believe the wendigo is gonna fuck you, your wife, your children, and the rest of your village to create a new generation of offspring to sing and dance at his court

>>83628353
... so can i hit that wedigussy?

>>83628372
No

>>83628137
Magus Bride is unironically a really good example of what OP is looking for, its just more chill about it. Most of the time. The fey in that setting ARE horrifyingly powerful eldritch monsters, they just generally leave the human world alone because they have their own shit going on and the ones that still check in on us now and again do so because they like us. A Magus can barter with the Fey for power, using magic they never truly control or understand because it was never theirs. From the perspective of a Magus, all you ever see if what they can't do, the limitations of their craft.

And then the manga drops you into the fucking School arc, where they go to wizard college and get embroiled in wizard politics. Wizards can't see spirits for the mostpart, and certainly don't make deals with them. The magic they use is just science that recognizes that the supernatural exists. And after like 50 chapters to putting up with wizard politics bullshit, Chise finally just says "I'm tired of pretending I cant solve this problem with overwhelming force", turns into a fucking dragon, and summons an ancient celtic goddess of war on top of the people behind the evil plot. Because, to the wizards of the setting, a Magus is only one step short of being a mythical being themselves.

In a setting like what OP suggests, anyone who bums power off the Fey is going to seem a lot like a Magus.

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>>83628372

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>>83628845
>the part when they summon a pregnant lady

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>>83628845
The paradigms of magic in the setting, at least with this ushering in of a new iteration and fresh take on this persistent play world we play in, are threefold.

"Divine" magic is more of a plea to long dead saints, a sort of hero worship idolatry. It's very blinged out catholic reliquary style. Different saints embodied different things and that's where you're different clerics and Paladins and the like come from. Saint Arkus, patron of winter, Saint Maaj, patron of war, Saint Darton, patron of grief and suffering, etc. Its sort of an inward facing, solipsistic kind of worship. It's the eschewing of powers beyond Man, and a sort of solidarity in the primeval power of the collective psyche and human spirit. Miracles work because you believe they work because why wouldnt they? Man Triumphs Over Nature By Becoming God

Arcane magic is much more rote and academic, and lately much more scientific. Magitech, and the scholarly application of the bending of the natural order and replicating paracausal activity are the main goals. It's sort of Man Triumphs Over Nature By Changing The Rules. It's about deciphering and demystifying the cause and effect of actions that fundamentally lack cause and effect. The entire goal, both in setting and thematically, is the de-magicking of magic.

The third magic is in contrast to the first two. It is the accdptance that Man Will Never Triumph Over Nature. It is the stargazing sort of magic that is less about asserting ones will than it is guiding the flow of what's already going to happen. It is deals with fae that you dont even know you are making. It is stealing the eldritch, but entirely natural power of the creatures in the woods and beyond the stars and most of the time they dont really notice or care all that much when they do. It's about shaping the ways reality is already bending and accepting that no matter how many books or rules or machines you build to control it, it's only being controlled because its letting you.

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Artbump

My DM mentioned coming up with something similar today. He said it came to him in the shower. Fucking liar.

>>83630789
The Fey truly works in mysterius ways...

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>>83630789
Lmao that son of a bitch. Hes got good taste tho, lmao. I'm laying the groundwork of a campaign that's gonna last years, ideally.

Tell him I told you that mechanically, for the first season of the game at least, the game is gonna be sort of a point crawl and I'm gonna draw very detailed and pretty maps that the party will need to acquire from travelling Geodesist Pilgrims, who do not part with their maps easily. The gameplay loop becomes > do jobs for local tyrant clans and chieftains > git munny > spend money on expeditions to cool points of interest the party picks on the maps, while developing this background eeriness and escalating metaplot of the fae encroaching on the pockets of civilization that do exist

Ask him what he thinks about the dragon lore up thread where they've evolved to be solitary, self reproducing apex hunters

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>>83627651
There 2 types of Fae: The ones that DON'T understand how humans work, so any arms that they inflict on humans is purely by accident, because they don't know that making you dance for a whole year, without stopping, has undesirable effects for your health, if i remeber correctly these are called Bright Fae

Then there those that DO understands humans, but are Huge sadists that hunts us for sport, they know exactly how to maximize our suffering in mind, body and spirirt, and generally act like a more extreme, unhinged and evil version of a bored english noble who love to hunt, these are the Dark Fae

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>>83630964
>basic bitch summer court winter court
Bro please

>>83630998
Bro i'm talking from an anthropological prospective here, these are the 2 most common type of Fae In fables and folklore
Shit's mad interesting when you think about, that fear of the inhumane, the OG alien
if you're not willing to learn the basic bitch stuff first, you're not

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>>83631391
Okay but literally everyone already knows all that stuff, we all read midsummer nights dream in high school bucko. Fae as they are in dnd are fucking boring, especially BECAUSE they're so coded and tropey instead of being horrible alien things, not from another plane, but from just beyond where you can see in the woods from your farm. They're not scary because hehe summer court winter court hehe chaotic stupid, they're scary because they're utterly alien and powerful and cant be comprehended but can be bargained with, but more importantly they're RIGHT THERE and you have NO idea what they want or what they're going to do to you and your family

I'm insulted you think I dont know basic fae lore and history

I'm too working on a campaign involving faes and I'm very interested in this thread.
Not much to contribute sadly, you guys are more creative than I.

How do you fight/oppose/protect yourself the faes?
In my setting, aside from the obvious cold iron, salt do play an important role due to how the world is structured.
>tldr; three sisters shaped the world, each fashioning one part of it independently from the others according to her desires and perceptions. This resulted in three intermingled spheres, each not designed to accomodate the childrens of the two others mother goddesses. One such sphere belong to the Lady of the Deep, and include the waters of all seas and oceans. Salt is an intricate part of her realm and essential to her childrens, but it eat away others creatures to various extent. It is mostly irritating to humans, outright corrosive to faes, which are among the childrens of the other two goddesses.
So it is tradition to offer salt to a guest before letting them in your house, and to carry gift as well as a bag of salt when venturing in misty woods.

>>83631559
Oh that just gave me an idea to have like, sharing salt be a cultural norm that no one really understands anymore but it's just s thing you do. It used to be done as a "touch this salt and prove you're not a fucking skinwalker right now" thing to ensure youre guests were human and the man coming home from town was actually your husband and not something wearing his skin intent on raping you

>>83631426
>Fae as they are in dnd are fucking boring
i was not referring as the DnD fey, we all know that they blow ass, if anything the closest thing i've seen to what i'm trying to described are the True Fae from Changeling: The Lost.
>they're scary because they're utterly alien and powerful and cant be comprehended but can be bargained with
I disagree, Eldritch horror is not Cosmic Horror, The "Horror" (even if it's more akin to an overwhelmng sense of weirdness and displacemant) of the Fae is something akin to alice in wonderland, you've accidentally and/or unknowingly stepped into a realm that follows rules unknown to you, this puts you into grave danger, i agree with your take on The Woods, but IMO what's scary about the woods is not really that it's on your porch, but that it hides everything that's within it, and by stepping inside it, you're leaving your whole world behind you, plus the Fae don't even need to be these Grand and Powerfull entity, they just need to be completley foreign to our worldview, cus that's another deal of The Fae: when you meet Sir Fartsalot, the boglin knight, armed with a comically large spoon, riding a giagntic slug into battle against an anthill, you can't even point at him and say "you're weird" cus he'll just reply with "Nuh-Hu, this is perfectly normal around here, if anything YOU'RE weird, Mr. Trespasser"

Also i shit you not but we've never forced to read midsummer nights back at school

>>83631559
>but it eat away others creatures to various extent. It is mostly irritating to humans, outright corrosive to faes,
Why does salt affect Fae so much more than humans? Also, we need salt to survive.

>>83631559
Do remember that salt was expensive back in the day. It may be cheap now, but a family would probably only afford a small bag of salt a year unless they were well off.

>>83616992
Lots of material to work with desu, even just with scary movies released in the last decade or two. Except for cabin in the woods, that one is right out.

The Ritual for an enormous and powerful fae who seeks worship, by any means.

The Descent for something along the lines of a motherly fae who wishes to keep her children close, forever. (leading to the degenerate versions of humans)

Hell, IT could be a source of inspiration to. Have a creature who found an alternative to the cosmos to empower it, (peoples fear) and aids the party in keeping the status quo, so long as it doesn't have to stop munching on villagers kids. See how far along they can get before pulling the plug on it and then you get to open up a can of empowered fae, and they have to puzzle out its weaknesses from their interactions with it because its so far beyond the usual 'adventurer diplomacy' that it hurts the soul.

>>83633085
I imagine this is pretty location dependent. Seaside towns aren't going to have that issue and its probably a common thing to sea racks of sea salt drying in windowsills.

You're not wrong though, hell it was used as a sort of de facto currency at times too.

>>83633214
Well, yes. If you live near the ocean or near a salt mine obviously you have better access to salt. But everywhere else it is a precious and life-saving commodity. You NEEDED salt if you wanted to preserve your food for the winter.

>>83626800
Good stuff.

Reminds me if a thought I once had regarding the supernatural that might be applicable to OPs topic.

I've always thought a good explanation for why supernatural stuff only happens to individuals or pairs and only happens way out in the woods is because the thing that really drives back the weird shit, the real anathema, is us. Not us as individuals, but us as a civilization.

We build cities and expand and multiply. And in doing so our very presence drives back the Other. You could be sitting in a spot that was once forbidden or cursed and it wouldn't matter anymore because we paved over it both literally and metaphorically.

And it doesn't even take many people to suppress the supernatural. Get fourty or so people in the woods looking for a lost child? Nothing strange. One or two individuals? Weird shit starts happening. Not because the weird shit is trying to hide, but because it literally couldn't happen with so many humans around pushing it down.

The edges of maps once said "Here be dragons".

Maybe that wasn't just a creative way to say "we don't know what's here". Maybe there were dragons and other things there and it was the very act of expanding that drove them away.

Of course, the implication here is that in a post apocalyptic scenario with massive depopulation all that spooky shit can start happening again.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts from my brain to yours.

>>83633255
Smoking was actually the most common method of preservation for a very long time. If you had wood, you could smoke your meat keeping it fresh for longer. The practice dates back through pre-history. Salting was faster, less labour intensive and would allow your food to keep longer or around moisture (such as on sea journeys) but made the food taste like shit if not carefully prepared (see soaked in water). Sorry for nit picking matey, the more you know and all that.

>>83633931
>but made the food taste like shit if not carefully prepared (see soaked in water)
Did the water have to be fresh?

>>83633255
>or near a salt mine
What are the best places to mine salt?

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>>83616992
>ctrl+F
>Fomorian
>Nothing

Irish myth literally has a race of crippled demigods of death and the watery deep, and you niggas ain't even interested.

They intermarried with the Tuatha-De-Dannan eventually, genocide ensued, naturally - the labor gebala erenn is called "The book of invasions" (more literally "the book of the taking of Ireland")

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” - Ecclesiastes 1-9 - King James Bible

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>>83616992
Not sure this is cool, but my setting has the idea that Fae hate writing as much as iron. Sure, iron shovels and axes and spears destroy the woods and their creatures, but writing destroys their magic.

After one of the countless fairy tales is congealed into physical words, it becomes crystallized and can't be freely altered and mixed with the others like it once was. Plus, the mortal races now know how it goes, and what are the dangers. Can't warp the time and space of the Fae domains with their Fae Narrative if it is fixed in place.

My Fae are warring against civilization itself for thousands of years now, and the damage brought by metal tools and letters. Their main weapon is the Orcs they created.

>>83631426
>>83631572
>dude Shakespeare is so boooring, why can't we learn about this Hellboy comic instead
your fairies are one of the more boring type of modern fairies. If you want lovecraft use lovecraft instead of throwing out all the cultural origins of fairies for an insipid twist

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>>83616992
What are some good designs for how such Fae might look?

>>83639217
At rest or at a distance or at a quick glance they are human enough to pass.

But when they move... Or when you get a close look. Or a long enough look. That's when everything is wrong.

>>83637239
I am playing with the idea of the undersea god having been put there by the fae and having a bone to pick, but it wasnt a pressing thing to talk about. I love the idea of inter eldritch rivalry, believe you me
>>83637849
An ever present theme in the campaign is very much going to be technology vs the wild in sort of a constant jockeying back and forth. I like the idea of recording the rules preventing a fae from changing the rules.
>>83638176
Please learn to understand nuance. Not everything has to be a direct expie of something else and theres a wealth of inspiration to draw from. I was pointing in another direction because everyone and their dog is familiar with "classical" fae lore.
>>83639217
>>83640128
I like archfae themselves to be absolutely fucked, but their offspring to get more and more "human esque" as the generations go down. In the fae arc of the last campaign the players were travelling through an enchanted wood with a free company and at each headcount they had fewer and fewer men until the number started to go back up again and eventually surpass the original number and they realized looking people in the eye gave them headaches and made their brains hurt while they tried to fill in the details of faces that didnt make sense, and they just had to play it cool for as long as possible and let the skinwalkers play house with them until they were able to find their way out because they had no idea how theyd react if they knew the party knew

>>83638176
Bro i was arguing against using Fae as Lovecraftian Horrors, read the whole post next time

>>83640128
Post art please. Thanks.

>>83616992
What’s with that mouth? Just why?

>>83643014
Its gross and I like it, but has little hands to greet u with because hes Just Like You, A Human

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>>83616992
What are some interesting beasts that we can associate with such eldritch Fae?

>>83640247
standard D&D fae are not even based on AMSND so your point is retarded

>>83646583
Good question. Seconding please.

>>83617105
>That pic
Whoa, Snufkin is badass.

>>83647890
>>83648023
>bumpfagging instead of responding
now I see why people hate bumpfags

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>>83647890
What about this guy?

Anyone ever think about how gremlins (the traditional fighter plane type) and creatures like them would fit into the whole fae system? They're from a period after many of the fairy tales were codified by Grimms and such but only by a few generations, so are they too far removed from the mythos and thus more urban myth material, or do they still follow the basic idea of things like redcaps or kobolds or whatever which can be considered part of the wider fair folk mythology even if they're associated with more mundane or industrial environments like battlefields or mines.
I guess what I'm saying is that I want more settings where an industrializing civilization must deal with it's own fair-filled past and how some things never truly leave, only change.

>>83617407
It definitely hinges on exactly how quickly you want to get your players into the crux of the campaign, but a massive part of the reason Berserk's reveal worked is that for 5 volumes there isn't a single fucking hint at the supernatural, then Zodd turns up out of nowhere and changes the entire perspective of the world, only for that facet to disappear again for another 4 whole volumes.
If that's the tone and shock you're going for, I'd tone down this first encounter. He's bloated, obviously sick looking, babbling deranged nonsense and stronger than any man has a right to be, but he's not immediately supernatural. Once taken down something happens that further hints at fae involvement but, again, only hints. Something like a large insect crawls out of his mouth or the autopsy showed he ingested huge amounts of an unknown mushroom, or his blood blackens the soil.

Alternatively, have this encounter happen as planned and just go back to fucking normal for a few sessions. Everyone in their company is starting to make jokes about the woodcutter hopped up on forest weeds that gave the PCs a scare while they're back to doing their day jobs.

Then roll out something even worse. Ideally something that effects them purely coincidentally.

>You hear about DunVille?
Town down the road that got hit by bandits or whatever? Terrible story that. Not one survivor.
>Naw, you haven't heard the whole story then
What's that?
>I mean, yeah no survivors but they weren't killed by any normal bandits I ever heard of
What do you mean?
>I mean most bandits don't leave all the food in the storerooms and the livestock still in the pastures, or do... what they did... to the people
C'mon then, spill it out
>Well I heard this from my Uncle Tosh who was one of the first to see the place. Man has never told an untrue tale in his life, and swoar on Saint Rann that this was true
>Apparently they found the village empty, no sign of struggle. Figured there was some holiday or festival, big wedding maybe. So they started looking around. Nobody at any home. So they start looking around the nearby fields, figuring maybe they were all out there for a shindig.
>What they found in the biggest pasture was awful to hear about, and Uncle Tosh just about lost his lunch recounting it.
>They found all the village adults staked out on the ground. Hands and feet spread out. Guts opened up from throat to groin, ribs opened up "like wings" and all their innards arranged around them, still attached.
>And in each person, where the heart should have been was a little sapling tree.
That's... That's got to be your Uncle Tosh trying to spook you. I've heard of sadistic killings and evil rituals before, but how could you do a whole village like that.
>No idea. But it's definitely true. Uncle Tosh was telling it to the magistrate, I wasn't even supposed to be there. Overheard them while cleaning the room next door.
Wait. You said all the adults. Where are the kids? They didn't do them in that way too, that's too awful to think about.
>Nope. Never found even one of the kids from the village. That's why he was talking to the magistrate. Wanted to get him to form a search, hoped they were hiding in the woods somewheres after seeing all that...

>>83617407
what are you running this in system wise? What time period/setting?

>>83646583
I like typical woods creatures that have been warped and clearly touched by the mutagenic magics of the fae, especially the more docile ones because I think it lends to the uncertainty of it all. If you see a wolf with two heads, a thorny tentacle tongue and porcupine quills you know it's bad news, but if you see a hairless, sallow skinned elk with no facial features and its eyes are full of antlers, you dont know what to expect. It could just as likely spew acid at the party as it could just stand there and observe or skitter away harmlessly off the path.
>>83646637
No but they're based on the fey stuff of the renaissance, which is long after the fun was sucked out of pagan forest gods as a concept by christcucks
>>83648095
OP here, that wasnt me, cool art is bare min for a bump IMO
>>83649142
I like it
>>83649328
I love gremlins as an anathema to artifice, and absolutely plan on introducing a gremlin blight on the magi tech states as the fae shadow uprising escalates

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>>83650704
>>83650704
Yeah I've actually decided the first session will start in a middle of a battle against the armies of the Slaver Tyrant, the chief warlord in the north who rules over the giant slaver clans. I'm definitely following a theme of weirdness of the wild sort coming down from the northern mountain reaches.

Anyway its gonna start in the middle of a battle against them as the players are draftees in the grand army of the church opposing them, and their side, barring an absolute miracle session 1, is absolutely going to lose.

Its gonna highlight the mudcore and help establish the shittiness of mankind and how petty and preoccupied the people in power are. Itll also give the players a chance to flex their characters, bonk some 1 hp mooks, and fight a mini boss or whatever. I might add a ballista and a giant to teach positioning and teamwork too idk

Anyway, after their little tutorial fight, where they may or may not sustain injuries, its gonna be clear the grand army is broken, and itll be their choice what they do there. After that it's out of my hands, but being deserters is a good hook and if they create it themselves by CHOOSING to desert instead of me telling then they deserted, all the better, because it humanizes the decision to choose survival over a cause. I am not sure if that makes sense. Or maybe they continue to fight and we see what kind of injuries they might get, or establish what the consequences of that are. I plan to play out whatever goes on until they get somewhere "safe" or we figure out what's happened, and figure why they've chosen to stuck together and what bonds they've forged, then skip forward some time to the "present" where actual play will begin as the party being a battle forged band of companions rather than as strangers in all but name.

I have foreshadowed fae will be involved, so I've gotta work to make them forget the fae are important, while also laying the groundwork for "ohhh" moments that click looking back

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>>83650815
Yea I love this shit. I love using the whiteboard I track initiative on as a way to subtly worldbuild too, by using names the players then learn out of character and can intrigue and puzzle the PLAYER rather than the character, like I know I want to do a scene at a farmstead where the people there are all fucked up and warped and maybe undead and call them "The Sinners of Whateverplace Farm" so the players start asking themselves what that means and hypothesizing and stuff, and half the time I have no idea, it's just a cool name, and it gives me ideas I wouldnt have come up with otherwise to reverse engineer some lore if the players investigate later.

Good greentext btw, solid stuff, I love the child snatching themes because, especially now that my peers and I are reaching that age where the guys are getting married off and the gals are getting pregert, the idea of losing your kid really starts to have meaning
>>83650873
Homebrew setting weve been playing in off and on for years. Its somewhere between mudcore dark ages in the more rural areas and oda nobanunga feudal japan in the more advanced areas, with a splash of renaissance Italy in the port towns, with the southern peninsula of the map basically being telvanni morrowind but weirder and its bastard wizards working on magitech and stomping each other so none of them gets too powerful

TLDR mudcore transition period between sword and board and pike and shot, theres barbarians, muh honour, "parry this you fucking casual" and devil powered magitech looming as a mirror to the fae spookiness looming, this campaigns arc is very much going to determine the next era of the setting and which paradigm will come out on top, I think. I enjoy the symmetry of the world getting brighter but the world also getting darker, and I'm excited to see what happens, I'm excited for the players to break things in the sandbox

>>83616992
Cool idea. Just be careful to not get so lost in the "AAAAAHhHHHh save me nigggerman! I saw gore and I'm going insaaaaaane" aspect and more toward the "nature is brutal and death is just a part of it" so you dont lose the neutrality of fey

>>83651922
Faelians

>>83652112
>neutrality
Is an aspect of nature really neutral? 99.99% of nature either actively wants to kill you or doesn't care if it does kill you. Even "cute and harmless" little animals like bunnies and squirrels would eat you if they were capable of doing so.

>>83651922
>>83652657
https://www.davidbrin.com/fiction/thoseeyes.html

>>83651331
>Good greentext btw, solid stuff
Thanks. I like throwing ideas like that around in a good thread if I get enough inspiration to write something. This thread is definitely right up my alley in terms of themes and ideas.
>I love the child snatching themes
Its really common with Fae. In fact, you could even twist that around. There wasn't really enough space in one post to put all the details, but I wanted to hint that the adults were both alive at the time of being opened up, and that they didn't struggle. With an underlying suggestion that maybe the kids participated, or were otherwise affected by whatever did this to the town themselves. It could be played straight as well, with them being kidnapped, or even only some of them being caught and the rest hidden somewhere nearby. Lots of hooks.

>>83616992
I've ran a bunch of fae & eldritch campaigns/settings & often mix. Here's some of my favs

"Bloodcotton" infects areas near from an unnamed fae that resembles a large blind toad & its tadpoles. Blood cotton is a thick white fur mould ontop of red puss. Bloodcotton cripples newborns for life, destroys crops & is a key necromancy ingredient (for last of us style shroom zombies)

Trees of significant life essence (old, worshipped, tampered with etc) become "pregnant" with fae larva in bulbous amber. I've used various fae for this

Farmers are terrified of catipillars & butterflies that grow on nettles aside farmland. The larva of mothmen grow in the same conditions. On harvest moons, the air is filled with hallucinogenic dust & drowning all other sound out with a hypnotic drone. All those caught are lured in their sleep towards the glowing lights. It is unknown what happens to folk who follow these fae sirens song

A long forgotten pact with a fae for immortality. The "Immortal" may transfer their essence into a hat stained red from the blood of 13. The next person who donns this cap is possessed by all those who came before & becomes the new incarnation this collective conscience, their old personage now forever mixed into this identity. You would be the lastest in this long line of souls added to this amalgam

There is a worm that slithers in the deepest, darkest corners of its victims unconscious, spreading via speech. It is only "seen" by those infected when under extreme psychological stress (nightmares, life or death, hallucinogenics). It corrupts & changes a person as their soul is fed upon by a growing pile of larva. They spread to others via speech & can slither through the collective unconscious

>>83655898
"Summer" is an imposter of the sun that hangs in the sky, never setting, always watching. Producing extreme paranoia in individuals. if they look at it, a mark is ingrained into their retina, always there when they link. Victims become lost & unable to find their way, slowly becoming blind as the mark takes over their vision.
Similarly, "Winter" is an unnatural cold & voice that whispers during the night, luring people away. Victims technology fails, they gradually lose capabilities, abilities, powers, senses, speech, movement & eventually life as they get closer & closer to it.

I've not got a name for this 1 yet, my party is dealing with it. But if you disrupt a devil deal at the crossroads, break ritualistic salt, foil a fae contract unlawfully or generally go back on an "unnatural" dealing, a red coin will appear on your person to indicate a bad deal. This thing will start to follow you. Its presence felt just out of sight, getting closer, watching you.When the time is right, if you find yourself too close to a reflection of some kind, you will be taken. Upon your demise, a small voodoo-esque doll will be provided to the "victim" of the deal as compensation

>>83616992
The high fae are living songs sung by their attendants

>>83655911
Got a new idea while writing this because of a funni meme about kermit the frog being found in space

A force that "kills you" over stretched & non linear time, often causing locations to be mistaken as haunted. So you'll travel to a centuries old haunted church, lots of reports of people seeing scenes of a man screaming for help as they are disemboweled. Big news is they found the perfectly preserved corpse of somebody matching descriptions within the foundations. You visit & see the corpse. It's you.

Cordyceps are good inspo for eldritch style fae, I tried a take on that 1 that turns tarantulas into mushrooms, except it's people who get more & more warty as their flesh is replaced with bark & eventually become trees with pained faces in the bark. Didn't work great in practice

>>83656120
love this, will steal & pass as my own

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>>83622530
>It was not because they were fair.
It was because they were fair.

>I'll tell you an old legend from the northern provinces. The places that get deep cold, the kind of cold that makes trees explode.
>A family like most was battling it's way through a winter storm worse than any in memory. In this kind of storm people can go days without leaving their homes, they hole up by their fires. Neighbors might be only a mile or two away and they might as well be on the other side of the world for all it matters. You'd freeze or become lost in the snow long before you got there.
>And yet the hogs still have to be fed and the barn has to be checked on. So the father strings up a rope path leading to the livestock pens and back home. A common practice. He hangs some wooden trinkets on them, to make them noisy in the wind, be so you can find your way back even if you get separated.
>One night the father is awoken by the sounds of panicked animals. Even over the moaning of the wind and banging of his ropes.
>He goes out to check on them despite the late hour and completely blinding conditions. Soothes the animals, and starts on his way home, what should be a scant dozens of feet.
>He gets about halfway home and suddenly his rope goes slack. The blinding snow makes navigation even in his own yard impossible. He carefully lays down the rope he's holding, cleverly he plans to crawl, following the slack rope without pulling on it.
>His family found him a day after the storm finally ended. His body frozen stiff. Something had taken the rope he had made, cut it at both ends, and tied it together in a circle. He was never more than a few dozen feet from home, but couldn't find his way.

>>83655733
I like the idea of fae not ready being able to reproduce so they snatch things and change things into their "children" instead, with human kids being a favourite since they have intelligence that wildlife lacks. I like the idea of stolen children becoming elves or something. And that would be creepy if there was no sign of struggle. Maybe the things in the woods enchanted them and even made it pleasant and rapturous.
>>83655898
Love em, I like the Caterpillar one
>>83656120
Noice
>>83656329
Yah I love cordyceps, theres actually gonna be a fungal zombie plague in the background that will start as just a rumour. Theres lots of unmarked mass graves out in the world too, so theres even long dead bones being brought together as fungal amalgamations.
>>83658829
Based
>>83660877
I like this, but what I would like even more is
>he follows the rope, taut, for hours and hours. It doesnt make sense. It's only a few yards of distance, but it feels like hes been travelling for leagues.
>he follows the rope until he collapses from exhaustion and the biting cold.
>the family never finds his body when the storm clears

>>83660877
>>83661552
Or this
>he follows the rope back home, and when he gets back to his home, his wife and children are gone without a trace

>>83661552
Nah, in your version the family have to find the body or else the story never spreads. If it's taut in the morning but dad's missing he just got blown over and lost in the snow or something, or of its cut it could be a normal accident or a normal (if really malicious) act of sabotage. It's sad, but understandable. If they find him a foot from home still holding a perfect, unbroken circle of rope (not even cut and tied, fused) surrounded by strange footprints/no footprints at all THAT'S Fae Folk Fuckery. You have to leave someone alive to tell the tale unless it's the fae creature ITSELF saying that's what happened

>>83661567
This works straight up, because the origin point for the story is obvious - the dude who had a creepy experience and then lost his family. If you have it as a story that's out there it also shows that Fae folk can do spatial distortion or mindgames that make it seem like they do, so it can set up stuff involving that later.

>>83661638
>unless it's the fae creature ITSELF saying that's what happened
Why would it do that?

>>83624164
Kill yourself faggot

>>83663306
Fairies are famous for their hospitality.
Don't eat the food.

>>83663366
Right, you get trapped forever if you do that, right? Underworld rules?

>>83663366
what if they have tacos?

>>83667351
"Fae ese, you want some tacos?"

>>83667351
>>83665694
I'd be fine with getting trapped forever in exchange for 1-3 tacos rn

>>83631391
You haven't read a single piece of folklore in your life

>>83616992
damn what would we have done if a fat spaniard hadn't invented the concept of an alien race

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>>83616992
Just remember that Lovecraftian isn't body horror. It's formless and truly inhuman. Two people looking at the same creature see different things. Fae are also deeply rooted in the natural elements. The Lantern King is a good example to fit this descriptor. Everything about this is purely alien and its thought processes only seem confusing to those that can't understand them. In order to pull off Elder Gods or Old Ones you have to know that less is more and everything means something in the grand scheme of things.

>>83669126
Okay but I actively dont like the formless thing, and I DO like body horror. That image doesnt spook me literally at all, it seems uninspired "aaaghh I'm going crazy save me Nigerian!" Stuff.

I'm not leaning into lovecraftian horror so much as I am leaning into just played straight horror I guess. The fear isnt of the unknown, you KNOW the Tall Man in the Woods is real, too many people have seen him for him not to be. What's scary is you dont know what the fuck he wants, knowing that whatever it is, theres nothing you can do to prevent it. It's about powerlessness I think, and helps really represent the overarching fae vs magitech, old vs new, powerlessness vs power, juxtaposition going on thematically

>>83616992
What’s hanging from the horns? Is that it’s flesh?

>>83669126
Lovecraft has plenty of body horror. True, its often not the main focus, but the scenario of your body being not your own, or being placed in a disgusting body outside of your control, or of your body being warped or changed against your will comes up a few times in his works. Sure its not the main focus of Cosmic Horror, but OP wants more Eldritch than Cosmic anyway.

>>83671832
>more Eldritch than Cosmic anyway.
What’s the difference between them?

>>83626905
I want to be like this.

>>83628664
yes?
>>83629013
where there's a will, there's a way

>>83660877
if you take out the rope being tied in a circle this could just be a 411 kinda story

>>83627674
>A magical creature that tries to make your life better but keeps getting it wrong. It looks through your window at night with imploring eyes. Whilst you sleep it types in an e-mail to that girl you always wanted to ask out, it is poorly written and short. It steals things you want. If you mention you want to lose weight it takes your food. When you wake up you see it gently stroking your hair. If you lash out it disappears for a while but then tries harder to please you. It only wants to make you happy but has no idea how to achieve that.
but it sounds so cute

>>83653487
Nature is neutral in that it isn't actively malicious, it just doesn't give a damn about your idea of morality. That works well with fae having their own alien mindset. Like imagine having a civil conversation with a fae hiding in the woods just outside the firelight, who nonchalantly states that if the fire goes out it will eat you because that's just how things go.

>>83673672
>Like imagine having a civil conversation with a fae hiding in the woods just outside the firelight, who nonchalantly states that if the fire goes out it will eat you because that's just how things go.
that is an extremely appealing dynamic to me

>>83617407
>>83617630
>>83617782
Wanting to provide build up and making it horrifying is good, but what is effective in horror is that initial "What the Fuck is happening". Perhaps make the first encounter basic, the mercenary group is hired to arrest a farmer for murder (already a red flag, one shouldn't need to hire a band for a single farmer), as they approach they are attacked by wildlife and farm animals, just some basic stuff. When they arrive at the farm, they encounter the farmer doing creepy insane fae worshipper shit, and then boom! Transformation, monsters, Father Gascoigne, etc., you get the idea. Bait them with the normal, make things uncanny, have build up, and then THE CLIMAX

>>83629134
post more pregnant ladies

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Grandma had always told her stories of "the old man in the woods." He'd lived in the woods behind grandma's house even before she and grandpa settled down there. They were mostly scary stories to entertain her, though sometimes she told them to make her stay out from the woods. Initially she'd been curious, but that was before grandma told how she got her glass eye, losing the original one to the old man in a trade. Grandma never said what she got for her eye, but she'd pull the glass one out and gross the girl out with it to drive the point home.

She didn't meet the old man herself until years after grandma and grandpa passed away. At first she thought he was just some insane hobo, wrapped in a tarp and wearing a crude mask made from plastic scraps. But the way he acted and talked, and mentioned grandma by her maiden name, made the girl think the man might be legit. She began visiting him occasionally, asking him about the stories she'd heard of him. He didn't deny or admit anything but did tell more stories to her, stories of everything he'd seen over his long life. She told him about her life in turn and started to see him as a friend.

Entrance exams for college were coming up, and the girl was worried about her chances. Once hearing of her troubles, the man offered a deal. He'd help her with the exams, for a price. She was hesitant, remembering grandma's glass eye. The man assured her it'd be fine, all he wanted was to hear her full name so he could remember her after she leaves for college. So she told it to him, Sarah Jean Waters.

The man pulled out a ring, held it high, and spoke. "With this ring, Sarah Jean Waters will always live her best life." The girl held her hand out, but the man put the ring in his own finger, much to the puzzlement of the girl. The man lifted his mask off for the first time and the girl's heart skipped a beat as she was suddenly looking at a mirror image of herself. "I am Sarah Jean Waters now."

>>83669126
You've got me thinking, another thing about the fae in Kingmaker that is kind of Lovecraftian was how insignificant mortals were to them. That was always pretty obvious in how people could die due to their carelessness with their magic and pranks, but what really stuck with me was the reveal that a thousand kingdoms over the course of who knows how many centuries were purposely raised only to be demolished by one incredibly powerful being, who was only doing this as a form of apology to another even more powerful and spiteful entity. The kingdom the game is all about building up from nothing, plus neighboring kingdoms, plus all the many ruins of ancient and forgotten empires that clutter the region, were all nothing more than a means of punishing one fae for misbehaving.

>>83671832
>>83676034
You could probably work body horror into the stealing identities aspect. The thing that takes its victim's place looks like a human but isn't, and its true nature may be apparent in unsettling ways.

>>83676034
Kind of reminds me of the Ultimate Doppelganger.

It doesn't just turn into you and try to steal your life, it turns into the best version of you and lives your life better than you did. Your friends and family will see you and it and think you're some sort of cheap copy.

>>83674317
I've actually decided to start with a totally normal battle, gonna be a mudcore start and escalate slowly. Just to highlight how people are fighting each other even with all this crazy shit going on in the background. And right, that's definitely how I'm gonna approach it later on, a few sessions deep I think. Gonna follow a berserk style arc of escalating weirdness.
>>83676034
Last campaign during the fae arc there was a doppelganger thing going on too. I even got one of the players in on it and he was playing as a skinwalker that had assumed his identity for like, 4 or 5 fucking sessions before the party found the actual character captive and were like, oh god

I love shapeshifting and identity theft, especially if they not only assume your identity but STEAL it from your own mind, and your own face, leaving you as someone else who has no idea who they are.

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>>83676034
>>83676527
How many people do you think would willingly commit suicide-by-fae to let it steal their identity and give whatever cause they believed in a superhuman champion?

>>83681373
Yikes. Is that supposed to be a corrupted human or something?

>>83651922
>The truth was like a green crack through my brain. Weapon statistics floating in the air, glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. The repetitious act of shooting, time slowing down to show off my moves. The paranoid feeling of someone controlling my every step. I was in a computer game. Funny as Hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of.

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>>83630876
;)

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>>83616992
>That description.
Anon, I fucking love you. I wish I could join your table.
>Cool ideas.
I have a world built out in my head quite extensively, that heavily involves Fae.
Even had a game going briefly, but failed to keep it up due to not feeling it due to PC's splitting up all over the place, and players not liking not DnD.

Two things.
>Tanks.
My game had the PC's in a Mk1 Landship. WW1 era, rolling through the Faewylds. It was deafening and barely breathable in there, but it kept you safe from the outside, warded off other predators by looking like a big, iron covered one, and had BIG GUNZ on it.
Finding the balance between going outside to not die of heat and carbon monoxide, and staying inside to not die of ambush predators can make for a great juxtaposition. Especially the contrast between man and Fae, science and nature, order and chaos.
>Even just the use of a ritual armour, to ward off the effects of the deep woads, alongside creatures and blows, could be a cool concept to work with.

>Logic.
The stuff I have for mine has magic entirely antithetical to science or math. The Fae part animal, part magic, and part their very environment they stand in. They are incredibly old, wise, and mentally powerful, but lack the capacity to understand math, science, or logic pathways. Nothing physical of theirs works, when looked at through a microscope. Their spears travel in straight lines, and their guns are just knotted fancy spears, and are the most lethal weapons in existence, as they only need to convey the idea of a killing act to actually kill.

>>83680612
A lot of very sad people I suppose.
Or people who do not believe in the loss of their current identity to be a death of self.
Like 'Ghost in the Shell'. Is it really identity death, or merely another form of growth as a person?

>>83630964
I like to use a Summer / Winter court thing in my game where the Seelie fae are apathetic and uncaring of humans, while Unseelie are actively malicious. For a more Lovecraft connection, it's the difference between Shub-Niggerath and Nyarlathotep, and it's the reason why you should be scared of the darker and unexplored part of the map

>>83616992
I'm glad this thread is still up because this concept is fucking dope as hell.

>>83656120
>that anon who posts a based idea in one line and fucks off
Stolen

>>83633774
When I was working on my own setting, Fae was the term used for any creature needing magic to exist in our world, because magic inherently contradicts laws or physics and logic. Because of this Technology around powerful sources of magic fail and vice versa; guns are a great equalizer for humans. Thus the fae closer to human civilization are weaker and get stronger the further into the frontier you go, with the most powerful being abominations that are completely foreign in thought and shape hiding in the far corners off the edge of the map.

>>83685969
I think it works better if the Fae are able to actively push back on their own. Impose their own illogical magical world on civilization, if only through seemingly underhanded means. Especially for OP's purposes. Fae who are perpetually falling apart at the first sight of a tractor aren't as much of a spooky threat as ones that can turn that tractor into a monstrosity of thorns, screeching metal, and teeth if they have enough time to weave their shit into it.

Yes Fae are almost always portrayed as being on the backfoot to civilization and have to be afraid of Cold Iron and whatever, but in this case it is far more interesting for it to be a kind of guerilla war the technological races don't even know they're fighting yet and they're losing.

>>83616992
>your party/mercs get paid to clear out what sounds like a minor undead problem
>get given a priest or shaman or whatever NPC if you don’t have one in your party in case required to deal with the issue for good
>you get there, village/town in disrepair, smoke on the opposite side of it from the party
>fighting “undead” creatures and people in various states of damage and decay
>but the usual anti undead methods do nothing. Holy weapons, positive energy, nope. No more or less effective than if they were used on the living.
>keen/educated party members, or those from seedier lifestyles, may notice more than a few of the “zombies” bear wounds that look self inflicted, or the result of suicide attempts
>npc/spiritually sensitive/aware party member can hear cries of pain
>but only they can
>leads the party through the place (and subsequent combat encounters) and you end up at the source of the smoke; a large bonfire
>the cries were growing louder as you traveled there
>as the rest of the party pokes around, the NPC/spiritual PC stares at the pit of the roaring flames, stunned or horrified
>speaks, shocked and barely audible over the crackling bonfire
>“the ashes are screaming”
Find out that the village/town had a “friendly” relationship with a local fae (mix of naivety, ignorance, and the fae simply having not done anything too weird yet)
>fae grew fond of them, but peripherally learns that they will “die” and go away. It doesn’t quite understand mortal death, but knows it doesn’t want them to go away
>offers a deal, where it will stop them from dying
>they accept, be it through want for immortality or extended life or not understanding (thinking it’ll protect them from threats maybe?)
>so it did as it said, and stopped everything in the area from dying. Not “undeath”, not “life”. They didn’t die. Wounds and illness that should be lethal, weren’t, but were there and debilitating and painful all the same
(1/2)

>>83686886
>drove them all mad, the animals rabid and the folks not too far from that
>suicide was attempted for the ones that did so fast enough before losing their mind
>when that didn’t work, they tried for more extremes
>like the bonfire, and the ashes, that still hurt
>still scream
Bait and switch your PCs without too significant a threat. Maybe have them kill the fae or something to release them, learning all this from the one semi-sane person left who begs them to do so and release him from this living hell, to let him/her die.
Please.
(2/2)

>>83686552
>have to be afraid of Cold Iron and whatever,
Where did that weakness come from anyway? And why cold iron specifically?

>>83684528
>My game had the PC's in a Mk1 Landship. WW1 era, rolling through the Faewylds.
This is a campaign of my dreams, so if you would please STORYTIME NOW

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>>83689215
Posting some of the Animism and Folklore thread.

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>>83616992
I really like that kind of "fae" as they are more like what they were for our ancestors, Household or garden spirits were only a part of them.
About your idea, I recomend the Books of Monster blood tatoo and wyrdeweald. The first fits it better, its a very 16-18th century feeling, with halbers, alchemist and gunpowder world than it's been in war with all kinds of monsters (than have a very few twist) for all the history. The tale itself, is meh truth to be told, but the author is very autistic about names and worldbuilding and has a lot of stuff to steal.
The other, wyrmeweald, is wild west dragon hunting with crossbows, but the natives are either canibals than live inside the earth or dragon riders than kill humans because they were kidnaped and brainwashed be dragons. Again the tale isn't that spectacular, kind of coming of age and a bit of romantic, but the setting is very cool.
Both are ilustrated, as they are YA books, but in the edge chronicles level (heck, wyrmeweald is from the same authors).

Big fan of the images being posted here, keep em going.

>>83673374
Cosmic is about how little the importance of humans are in the cosmos, eldritch is more about Old things lurking and doing unspeakeable stuff.

>>83669065
Correct! but i did read a lot of anthropologist literature regarding the topic

>>83616992
She looks like she fucks Human men.

>>83690837
>She
At best, if your lucky, It

>>83619428
>I was also reading a book of folk horror stories recently, if I can remember where I put it I'll give it a rec.
Please say you’re still around.

Does anyone have that image of the fairies in a tree, and they're staring down at this woman in the forest with cold, icy-blue eyes? I think one or more of the fairies wore a crown.

I'm trying to remember the title of that comic where a guy is heading home, and stumbles across a pale thing that looks like a little kid. The thing tells him that it and its friends will rape and murder the man's family, and then horrible things ensue. Does anyone remember what I'm talking about?

>>83689215
Thank you.
>Trying to branch out of DnD with myself and group.
>Also a Massive Mil-History nerd. The kind of person that corrects the realismfag.
>Figure I'll use my strengths and make a game that covers a lot of military history. Knew one player was into Greek stuff, so could have them roll up on Troy and shit.
>Players are a bunch of WW1 Brit army enlistedmen. One nurse, non-comb (player didn't like guns and gun stuff), but Welsh and intensely hateful of English (irl too).
>One Heavy weapons guy called Roman. He was Scottish. He had a lewis machine gun he called Vladimir. Vladimir was apparently a she. He was the perfect soldier, being strong, tough, stubborn, loyal (only to non-com's) and dumber then a shoe.
>Other two were a pyromaniac engineer with a flamethrower and PTSD, and a uni grad photographer who was a scout/sniper and coward.
>All of them get called up from the trenches (as most didn't want to leave) to go to a backlines project, and get introduced to these "Water tanks" they're going to drive.
>Had a Lieutenant Orville, english and a noble, but happy to say so charismatic that he even won the Welsh nurse over.
>Roll across the first battlefield tanks were deployed to. Even researched the correct tanks to make it there, which ones got there first, how the germans reacted, and gave them checks to pilot the vehicles properly.
>In the process, everyone else but the PC's and a DMPC/NPC to shoot one sides guns and facilitate the plot, die off.
>Party has to roll through a line of burnt out trees to get to a village, so they push forward.
>Eventually, the trees start being more alive, and the forest gets denser. A little odd, but it was a proper thicket.
>Eventually, the navigator puts two and two together and realises they've been going at pace for long enough to have driven to the village already.
cont

>>83616992
>old gods
>elder ones
>ayy lmaos
>etc
>they all have eyes
>WHOA HOLY SHIT DUDE I CANT BELIEVE THIS SPOOKY AS FUCK ENTITY WITH WHICH WORDS FAIL AND SEEING CAUSES MY MIND TO ROT HAS EYES JUST LIKE WE DO
>HELP ME CULTURALLY INSENSTIVE-NAMED CAT OF MINE, I'M GOING INSANE
lmao fucking niggers

>>83692488

>Party hear some noises outside, despite the din. Not guns, but more like feelings of sheer dread and fear manifesting into the sounds of predators. One even jumped on top of the tank.
They were going to be the PC's, after the end of the arc, where they encounter themselves, after changing so much, losing their guns and their tank over time, but changing into legendary heroes, only to realise they were never themselves, and the real them's, just rolled through like normal.
>Party rolls through a particularly dense line of trees, with help from the scout, then falls down a minor cliff face into a clearing.
>Everything is tree or plant. Some trees stretch up for kilometers on occasion to the canopy above, or are hundreds of meters round. One person at one point puts a foot through the foliage, clears it away, and finds out this isn't even ground. It's roots and branches making a platform, and theres a darker level below.
>They turn around, and find the slope behind them faces downwards gently. This only comes around to one person who starts sweating at the table and going "Oh shit".
>They try to navigate through the forest that's somehow too abundant with nature to be a forest, and the photographer scout, who knows nature, is also concerned that nothing in here is recognisable to him.
>Party end up slowly splitting off to do different things. Some get ambushed by this long-term human inhabitant of the Faewylds, a 10 foot tall celtic woman who gives them the rundown that the only thing keeping them alive is that their giant metal beast is so noisy and repulsive and alien it confuses predators that they're lucky they haven't encountered in the few minutes of being more then 10 meters away.
>To highlight this, before leaving, she strings up a greatbow as tall as herself, and shoots an arrow the size of a spear, fast enough to break the sound barrier at something that screaches in three voices.
cont.

>>83692556
Party ends up splintering due to player issues and the strange desire to go off and show off their characters.
>A couple end up making it out briefly to encounter germany ten years prior, and get arrested for rolling up with boarderline magical weapons of war with the single dumbest story as an excuse, that they're a british army group that was operating in france, and somehow ended up coming into germany from the OTHER SIDE.
Game sadly didn't pick up well. Damn near everyone ended up by themelves, I never had time to figure out a way to get PC's back together, and everyone else in my group also had games, which were DnD, and thereby easier for most players to do comfortably.
In part, it was my error for inexperience, but also I didn't mesh well or feel comfortable with half the PC's and how their players played them, given this was English WW1, not DnD 5e, and the contexts, cultures, and mechanics I'd laid out at the start, kept getting ignored by the players in question.

Honestly, I'd love to pick it up again with some new players.
I have an extended universe made for it. I must go now, but if people desire I can share it when I get back.

>>83692601
The rough setting works by the contrast of magic and science.
Math, science and logic all make sense. They can be predicted, but they don't need to be understood. You can look at it under a microscope and it makes sense, but it will still continue to function without relevance.

Magic, works in opposition to this. It's not logical, but its conceptual. The closest thing is comparing Magic to meme principles. You can't study something magical under a microscope and see it make sense, but you can understand it with study or with learning, and that can either make magic an incredibly potent thing, or something that will fizzle out when confronted with reality. Which will win out, is up to the power of either, and a collision of magic and science can stretch and strain the fabric of reality as two violently opposing opposites meet.

The Fae are at least 2/5ths magic, 2/5ths animal, 1/5th literally their surroundings, if not more. Elder Fae can be more magic. They're born ancient, and will live for eternity, until they 'die' by losing what is their 'meme' and having something of an identity death by either a Ghost in the Shell change, or something similar. While often considerably more mentally powerful, cunning, and wise, Fae cannot innately comprehend logic or sciences, and struggle with anything more then clear math.
Fae warriors and weapons can often be some of the most dangerous in existance. An Elven knight can throw a spear both faster then sound, and in a perfectly straight line, as their act of slaying is not beholden to logic.

>>83616992
Check out Changeling the Lost. Seems to be exactly what you want.

>>83693666
Honestly would anyone be interested in playing if I ran a game like this?

>>83616992
Yes but which system are you running on? 5e? Pathfinder? GURPS?

What do Fey value from each other? They're always trying to steal mortal names and firstborn and shit like that, but what would they use as currency or request from other Fey as payment for a service?

>>83696479
Interesting mortal souls or slaves, or esoteric shit like the lost hope of a first love or something. If you want to go with the parodied nobility shit, the anything that appeals to vanity or status anon each other could be traded.

>>83696585
>anon
among*

>>83696479
I imagine it depens a lot about the fey. But I really like the idea of stuff like Novelty, Fashion and Fades.

>>83698026
>Novelty, Fashion and Fades.
I think that I get the first two, but what about the last one?

>>83699457
I don't know if its the word in english, a think than gets the spotlight fast and gets over in the same speed.

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>>83690998
Hi, me here >>83619428. The book is an anthology called "The Fiends In The Furrows". I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you, I've managed to misplace my copy somewhere and I've been trying to remember the title! There's a story in there about a puritan era executioner hired to kill a witch in a village on the edge of a forest that's exactly what OP is looking for, and if I can find the damn book I'd be able to give you the title or author! The other really memorable one involved megalithic standing stones acting as giant teeth, sucking everything around them into some kind of crushing maw and the horribly bizarre drug trade that's grown up around the things, but I'm not sure its as relevant.

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>>83617144
>players

>>83699606
a fad

a fade would be the noun version of the verb 'fade'

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>>83616992
See the Nightwatcher from the Stormlight Archives.

>>83701580
And yet, calling it a fade kind of works...

Legend has in the woods there is something called "The Fairy throne" a stump of wood that spits down the center in a pair of four long branching arch's.

It's said whoever sits on the fairy throne becomes ruler of the forest.

The reality is worse the fairy throne is the mandible trap of some ancient old spider like thing. Upon sitting on the throne its wooden tendrils enter you from within (yes from there) and you are now apart of it slowly beginning to atrophy away, while the stump reveals itself to be a spider like object and the pair of pronged arches are its legs.

The Victim who is now its voice and food source dangles from the top of the entities body able to mimic the voice of its victim and its web it lays across the forest touching it tricks the mind of those who touch it making them fall in love fulfill the desires of that slowly atrophying entity.

And now some tiktokstar/influencer/painter & flapper have wondered into the woods to find that throne and have not been seen for the last few days.

>>83700801
>and the horribly bizarre drug trade that's grown up around the things,
Do we even want to know?

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>>83704687

>>83692556
>They were going to be the PC's, after the end of the arc, where they encounter themselves, after changing so much, losing their guns and their tank over time, but changing into legendary heroes, only to realise they were never themselves, and the real them's, just rolled through like normal.
What do you mean by that? The fact that they encounter an earlier version of themselves due to time fuckery do not make the version from months/years later frauds.

>>83700801
Thanks man. I’ll pick up a copy.

>>83619716
Maybe you fake out the players by first showing them an actual many-fingered boy. Something like "Okay, this is creepy, but not too bad."
And then they look a little closer and notice that the "boy" is more like a puppet -- or more accurately, the lure of an anglerfish. The real Many-Fingered Boy is a horrific eldritch monstrosity controlling this little avatar to easier interact with humans.

>>83619841
What's there to question? Everything was caused by some alien terraforming device that was altering things to be more like its homeworld.

>>83626800
I was a bit underwhelmed by the ending, but the idea of the Stairs starting to appear in the ocean is pretty neat

>>83648095
>says the bumpfag

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>>83710516
Can we stop it with this? Here, have an eldritch image.

>>83710407
In the movie, yes.
In the book? No such clear answer was given. The lighthouse isn't even a thing and we aren't given the intro or background that even says the Shimmer arrived. It just IS. Furthermore, a lot less weird shit occurs, the "mixing" that is central in the movie isn't a thing in the book either. It just drives everyone on the team crazy for no really outwardly apparent reason, and the unreliable narrator doesn't give you anything but speculation. Lastly there is a final "confrontation" with a "thing" in a tower which is a tunnel. And then the MC has an opportunity to go further and learn more, but stops and fucks off into the wilderness, as the other anon said "because some things are just mysterious"

The book is frustrating as all hell and it's sequel is no better and legitimately boring on top. I've heard the third in the series finally clarifies some details but I'm not slogging through all that to find out. Arrival is one of the very few instances where a movie adaptation was VASTLY superior to the source material.

>>83712312
Annihilation not Arrival. Fuck.

>>83712338
It’s okay. We all make mistakes every so often.

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>>83708340
>I’ll pick up a copy.
>got you covered, senpai

>>83720158
Well, this will certainly help. Thanks, man!

>>83720158
Fuck, that's some good shit. Thanks bud.

Much like the Fae, it seems like this thread has been around forever and will continue eternal. Time has no meaning here.

>>83725657
ew

>>83725688
What? What’s wrong with it?

>>83727600
Not sexy enough

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>>83616992
saw this and thank you for the next setup for my campaign/world OP
will use this as the basis for me osr shit or whatever i run next
where I'd go with this
>I like that CoC has tiers for its monsters explicitly, this helps as a DM for me to run shit. If I see that a module or scenario has grunt mythos monsters as a focus (deep ones or dimensional shamblers) thats gonna be a very different read for me than if the focus is on cthulhu
>would go the same here
>different tiers for the fae (this is strictly for me as a dm when writing scenarios/thinking of what this fae is doing and its power and impact/scope)
>tiers would be something like (minor/petty (pixies/animate torches/familiars) -> low (ogres/hags) > nobles (great old ones essentially) > domain rulers (queen mab and what have you, essentially outer gods)
>engagement would vary, some rural village might have a small pact with an ogre that leads to good harvest in exchange for children or limbs/ears (think the witcher iii's hags)
>degrees of malevolence would also vary, only the low tier ones can be said to barely map onto something we could understand/relate to.
i was trying to think of the first area/region Id start my players off in
i like the idea of the initial area visually being autumn harvest gone wrong and was painting up some miniatures with that theme in mind.
i like the idea/setup for a small sandbox being that a low tier fae (the midday man/the man in the tall grass/the noon walker) abducted a local lord's child and replaced it with a fetch. The fetch is endlessly hungry and is ballooning in size, by the time the game starts its the size of a bear. Lord has no idea what to do about this except to feed it more. His men are beginning to change/shift into things and shift and the region is endlessly stuck in this idealic, beautiful autumn state.
idk, initial thoughts?

>>83727606
How so? It looks pretty good to me.

>>83725657
Tumbrlart

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Bumping with art

Also, while it is for kids, The Spiderwick Chronicles had some pretty good shit for Fae, especially if you're leaning into the folklore aspect

>>83616992
What system do you plan to run this game?
Horror is much better when run on a system made for it.

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>>83616992
In my campaign, the fey are an accident of the gods in their first draft of creation. The folly of newborn gods trying to create that led to something close to caricatures of mortality. The fey deities, in specific, are particular emotional or fey-esque concepts so accidently intense that they formed sapience. Baba Yaga was an attempt by the gods of law to form the first mortal bound by contracts and tradition, for example. Or Ragadhan, father of Wyrms and Worms who was created when the first evil deity tried to make the undying fey fear hell.

As for your idea of converging spheres of fae with mortality, I can offer my take since my campaign setting is quite similar. The world of my current campaign is an artifical gas giant formed around a pocket of the fae world after several of the fae deities were locked out of the fae world. So the fae world is literally within this planet. My players have been to that world before but since they're seeing the last vestages of the god of whimsy's dominance of the plane, they didn't get to enjoy most of the proper mind-warping alienness of the accident of creation that the fey are just yet.

And all the while, the fey are beginning to throw off the metaphorical shackles of the whimsy fey lord who just wanted to make jokes and have his fun so that they can return their rule to the surface via the new druids as opposed to the nature worshipping, fey-hating uber ancient druids.

>>83616992
Most grimdark take on 'changelings' I'v encountered in the wild; domesticated humans (a la the degenerated humans as described in Lovecrafts 'The Rats in the Walls').
>'Changelings' are the slightly inbred decendents of individuals captured but not killed by some specific fey who are inteligent enough to have some conception of 'farming'; instead of eating 'wild' humans they instead consume what is raised within their own lairs, occasionally 'topped off' with stolen children and young adults
>'changelings' are the natural result of humans spending too much time in the mere presence of the fey; individuals who were taken as children become changelings through trauma
>these 'changelings' generally live in squalid conditions in underground grottos, pale and flabby like grubs, and range from truly degenerated to just a touch off-looking, perhaps with mouths with no canine teeth or with eyes just slightly too far apart (go wild or mild)
>of course, the exact sort of brainwashing and mental abuse a changeling is likely to endure constantly would depend on what's keeping them alive and the exact degree of freedom they have
>occasionally, a archfey which requires a emissary will utilize a changeling; they induce what amounts to the uncanny valley effect in normal humans
Also, I'd suggest reading Laird Barron's old leach short stories.

I remember reading one story where the idea of fae was a misty illusion that covered the reality. In actuality the elves were rotting aged creatures eating filth, living in ruin among insects and vermin. Some were described as mounds of flesh and some like scarecrows. The idea was that they were incredibly good at creating these illusions, which is what made them special. The characters in the story decided to return to the illusion as it caused them no harm to engage in fantasy as long as they eventually return to reality.

>>83728556
That's a good opener I think. It's a bit off from OPs idea that fae fuckery is relatively new to the world, but it still works.

What reason does the Midday Man have for taking the Lord's Child? It could be random, that's fine, but I think ironic punishments or ancient agreements gone bad are just as important for Fae theming. Something like the Lord's grandfather had asked for protection or good harvests and the Midday Man only asked for a future payment it never bothered to collect on until now. Just because you're dead and didn't tell your descendants you had a debt doesn't mean payment isn't due. This works as a bit of a climactic reveal and puts the Fae's random seeming actions in context for how you want it to act throughout the campaign.

>>83730745
Spiderwick is top tier. Froud too.

>>83732016
What's this story, anon?

>>83730745
>>83733784
fuggg i should really be reading those
anything good he made besides the giant ones?

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>>83735538
been too long dont remember

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>>83732121
>>83728556
>. It's a bit off from OPs idea that fae fuckery is relatively new to the world, but it still works.
DESU we could still blend the two together. If we went with your idea as a building block for the backdrop (a fae collecting on an old pact); maybe the fae are just returning now. Maybe they can't action pacts directly anymore (because some of them are with hundreds of years old dead people) but they can sure as shit go for the next best thing, and maybe now a heap of people are having to deal with generations removed pacts they've made.

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OP here again, session 1 went well, I'm excited to do another session this week.

Low key I'm considering a trench war arc because of firearms and stuff and a third party country importing in firearms and artillery to destabilize their neighbours. I think it could be cool to be doing a whole swords and sorcery thing and monsters and just start dipping our toes into eldritch fae stuff then suddenly WE NEED YOU TO FIGHT IN THIS BATTLE and being selkswords that's a natural yes please, and if they sign up it goes full world war 1 and the whole time the players are like "guys theres really way more important shit than this right now" and just escalate it and continue to juxtapose the horrors of magic against the horrors of technology. I like the idea of the players existing, unknowing, as potential pivotal characters in a time of such change and tumult, when the balance could swing either way for the fate of this world and how their butterfly effects could cascade the course of history, or not.

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>>83738039
OP here again, that's the premise yeah, the fae arent NEW, they're having a resurgence in power as a direct result of an offhand deal made in the last campaign. They used to have to jockey for power with various other extra planar entities, but the players hunted down and killed most of them, so now it's just fae left really. I like the idea of fae as extraplanar entities that arent extraplanar, they're from HERE, and they were here first, and they want it back

>>83663333
As a folklore aficionado fairies are no different from aliens, even the stereotypical "flying saucer" or UFO as its better known is a liquid metal object running on magic instead of a legitimate ship or vessel. Other UFO phenomenon are the typical lights, the little people who do weird shit and you have to placate them, etc. The Old Ones are just more of the same of that.

>>83735538
Matrix, I believe.
Also that one episode of Love, Death and Robots.

>>83738779
Probably should probe your players interests in this beforehand desu. If I signed for a sword and sorcery game I'd be kinda miffed if I was tossed in some random WWI shit instead.

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>>83739493
It would just be an arc, a few weeks at most unless they really got into it. And honestly they're all fucking ww1aboos so I'm sure theyd like it. It's the same group I've been running for years, I know these fuckers like the back of my hand and I think I'm pretty good at gauging interest and putting the pedal to the metal where it matters and backing off and trying something different if it doesnt stick.

And they do know that its mudcore mercenary company work, and that can range from monster hunting to bandit bounties to open field warfare, and I think the prominence of hyper rapid technological advancement will definitely make it palatable to my players. I can see how it would absolutely miff pick up groups or if it was a gotcha campaign, but I wouldnt make a campaign of it, I'd make a few sessions of it just to continue to highlight that People Suck

Also I just watched the kings man and I didnt like the first one, didnt see the second one, but I liked this third one and it reminded me how fuckin cool and bleak ww1 was and reminded me of trench melee

I dont actually want to forewarn them of this. They already know eldritch fae are going to be a theme, and they know technology is a theme, and they know humans are bastards is a theme. I'd love to spring it on them the same way trench warfare as a concept was sprung on the 1900s in the sense that they expect war to be an open field shot and pike affair but its gonna evolve into something so much worse before their eyes.

I love the idea of whatever stuff my players lean into shaping this setting for further campaigns years down the line into something more lovecraftian and alien, or something dieselpunk, or something I am not even anticipating.

>tldr it totally wouldnt fly for every group but my players are basically my brothers at this point in my life and I love them dearly and I know this is right up their alley even if it's just a taste

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>>83732121
>>83738039
I really like these ideas

>>83739465
>that one episode of Love, Death and Robots.
What episode? Details man.

>>83740810
Beyond the Aquila Rift, which is actually based on a short story by Alastair Reynolds.

>>83740868
How faithful is it to the story? What does it change?

>>83741749
I don't know, I haven't read it. Zima Blue, another episode from Love Death and Robots is also based on an Alastair Reynolds story.

>>83742084
Have you read that either? How do the episodes themselves rate?

>>83743400
I haven't read Zima Blue, either. Both episodes are fantastic, however.

>>83742084
>Zima Blue,
Isn't that the one where the artist becomes a pool-cleaning robot?

>>83619428

It's not the best film, but it has a very cool set-up for the cult and why they fear but also worship this creature. And GREAT creature design. If the same team got a real budget and maybe a good screenwriter they could do something quite good.

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>>83616992
Just so you know, I'm stealing your idea.

>>83747087
The artist originally was a pool cleaning robot. He just went back to doing what he loved.

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>>83747937
>>83748011
Please do, the eldritch, fae, and devil's can thematically all pretty much be consolidated into a single, much more deep and multifaceted category rather than 3 superficial ones I think.

>RE trench warfare
The setting has slave giants that can dig trenches with a plow pretty quickly, even if they're bound to be gunned down

It's also using paper cartridge matchlock weapons so they're quick to load and fire, and I like the idea of some rival city states being gifted hand crank gatling guns as a way to escalate tensions from their neighbours that want them both weakened.

I am just trying to figure out how to make it interesting from a player standpoint. Obviously things like night fighting in no mans land with daggers and axes is cool, and so is trench invading, but what are some other set pieces I can have in the back of my brain to deploy as needed?

>>83748461
Contraband? Stopping or doing it.

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>>83747937
The story itself was pretty slight but I thought the performances were good, Rafe Spall especially, and the "supermarket" parts were obviously done as cheaply as possible but were really effectively creepy. And you're absolutely right, Keith Thompson did amazing work and the effects team did an even better job bringing the thing to life. You can see the maquette here, with all the bits you can't really see in the film
https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3486511/effects-teams-maquette-gives-us-crystal-clear-look-ritual-creature/

If you've not seen the film, I urge you not to click the link, its reveal is really well done. Keith Thompson also did art direction for the movie, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark which would also be worht a watch for OP. He illustrated a prequel book to it too, called "Blackwood's Guide to Dangerous Fairies". This mural is the cover, and in the movie as a painting

>>83690867
at worst, they/them

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>>83748461
The thing with the classic WW1 style trench warfare is that it came about because advances in firepower got way ahead of mobility. It gets a bit... weird to put in without the whole thing that leads up to it, and it might overtake your campaign. Most armies probably wouldn't settle down to a horrible meat grinder, they'd find ways around it if they could. If you've got a giant, why not have the bastard fling stuff rather than dig, or make him a really big shield and turn him into a battering ram/tank-type thing, that's the sort of thing that crosses my mind.

I did just think though, you could get the same flavour of trench warfare with a particularly nasty siege of a specific, important place. Armies are trying to capture [Place], the defenders are well dug in and they have bizarre and effective firearms. You can see the main building off in the distance, but for whatever reason the giants can't cross the no-mans land and sticking your head above the trench parapet is a death sentence. The commanders have settled in for a siege, but its taking waaaaay too much time, so they bring in the party to either break it, or explore closer to the objective.

That's where you can introduce fae madness getting stronger towards the centre. Trenches that are turning into labyrinths or hedge mazes, lost scouts that have been wandering for years and changelings who have stolen their faces, Balor-the one-eye searchlight beasts, Fae that have adapted to more modern contrivances, that sort of thing. You could then have the objective being a kind of endless party, good food, good drink, fine dancers, a nice big map with miniatures showing the labyrinth expanding ever outwards... one part callous WW1 generals behind the lines, one part masquerade ball. And now they have to find a way to make it stop

If they want to keep at Fantasy WW1 you can keep at it, but if not its more of a one-off fortress mission you can move on from.

>>83749057
Yeah the trench war would be around city states, and there just arent enough slave giants to throw into a meat grinder like that because they're easy to aim at with artillery. And yes I love flavoring it with the fae stuff, I love the idea of trench mazes and stuff, changelings stealing the identities of soldiers in no mans land etc

And yes I love ballroom episodes too.

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>>83616992
Some Fairy Pokémon can get pretty creepy, like picrel under their costume.

>>83749578
>pokemon r creepy
Please fuck off back to /v/

>>83749978
name three NC (non creepy) pokémon

>>83740868
>>83742084
>>83743400

The stories are pretty good. As always Alastair Reynolds is at his best when starting fresh in a story even if it's in a familiar place, so it works well. Both are in collections of short stories by the same name. They as good as the first-in-series novels, though as always he has an uncanny ability to fuck up each sequel even harder than the last.

>>83747087
>>83748248

Started as, but the point of the story is wasted if you start it from the timeline as opposed to narrative order.

>>83748651

The best feature of the creature is the way it 'justifies' the creepy fucking totems some tribal groups make; from this perspective that's them trying their best to capture the creepy unfolding anatomy of the thing. Or puts in mind the troubling idea of finding the creature a native American totem pole represents and discovering that it is not abstract at all.

>>83750047
>though as always he has an uncanny ability to fuck up each sequel even harder than the last.
How’d he do that?

>>83738846
>As a folklore aficionado
Any books or websites you'd recommend?

>>83658829
I wanna see the full bodies.

>>83616992
Go idea mine Exalted 2ed. Fair Folk for concepts, Malfeas for aesthetics.

Seriously, it's the game you describe, complete with fancy named NPCs, socio-political drama among the humans, rebuilding of society (and some firearms) after a continent wide apocalypse.

About the only differences are that most (not all) fae in Exalted come from outside the world, body horror mutations are a pinch of flavor you'll have to add (mutations are part of the game, just not that horrific), and Exalted doesn't have a faux-Catholic Church (it has a faux-Asian styled Celestial Beauracracy).

The setting really is kind of awesome and inspiring. Shame the system (any version) is competitive-crunch-heavy-fmaling-garbage padded onto 90's-era-handwavy-storygame-trash.

>>83754387
>Fair Folk for concepts, Malfeas for aesthetics.
Aren’t the former shapeshifters?

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>>83628845
I'm a big fan of the vignettes. The selkie, vodyanoi, and leanansidhe stories were very good self-contained little stories that showed the myths in an interesting manner.

>>83741749
It's the one where the guy meets this hot girl on a deserted planet or something and they fall in love, but it turns out it's all an illusion and she's a horrifying giant spider alien.
It's even weirder because she actually does love him and she didn't want him to be scared of her.

>>83736570
I like the idea of his backstory even thought it's only in supplementary materials; he was a fat Spanish Inquisitor who was cursed to become an eternally starving emaciated monster.

>Turning Fae into bogstandard spoopy bodyhorror
>Everything is murky and dark and depressing

The whole point of the Fae is to be enticing; they are supposed to lul you into the woods where you're never seen from again, to be a dark reflection of hendonistic pagans who did nothing but live in the forest eating fruit, boar and fucking among the branches. They're supposed to be manic and chaotic, not dull.

>>83759870
To build on this point, to me Fae are the exact polar opposites of Elder gods and Lovecraftian beings.

Fae absolutely 100% give a shit about what your opinion is and who you are and will completely and utterly spite you for the simple act of not being polite.

Imagine if Cthulu could meet you at a crossing on a calm midsummer eve and ask you what you think of his Shoes, and if you answer you like them, he weaves your soul into a shoelace so you can be part of them, and if you dislike them he agrees, taking them off, only for them to turn into two people, one dressed in roman armor and one dressed as a victorian minister, who age to dust in front of your eyes, he then turns to you and asks where he can go to get some better shoes, and he is hanging on your every word.

If Lovecraft is about proving the universe cares so little about you that you are nothing, the Fae are proving that the universe cares way too much about you.

>>83616992
I love Fae that are completely alien in culture and nature and opperate under onomancy

>>83759935
But that's what OP is asking for. He wants the body horror, and difficult to impossible to understand motivations and form aspects of Lovecraftian deities but not the cosmic indifference. What you described is great body horror, as well as having it operate on strange logic. No human says "Well if you like my shoes so much, be part of them!" That's not human logic which makes it all the more scary to deal with Fae.

>>83720158
based, thank you kindly

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>>83759870
Why are you assuming the interpretation of the fae we are dealing with DOESNT care? Why are you assuming they arent enticing and trying to Play Human and grant wishes and make deals? That's half the fun of it I think, is these things being benevolent but you know in your heart of hearts that they arent benevolent, not really, not in the way you or me think that, and they even wear shoddy disguises and play pretend illusions to make themselves more palatable to the human senses but they dont really understand us the same way we dont understand them, so their efforts come off as repulsive and horrifying no matter how sincere.

Some of them want friends. Some want to join this new golden age of mankind but are too shy to say so. Some want to return to the old times when the world was wild. I think that the precise, autistic, dnd style categorization of "elder gods bad and weird, fae silly and wild, devils precise and cruel" is just fucking boring. It's far scarier to not be able to categorize what you're dealing with, which I why I want to work with the title fae as a way to denote "from here, intelligent, but not human / relatable at all"

Believe me I am not running spooky tentacle save me niggerman shit, but I absolutely am going to run weird temptors that travel via corners and shadows that want friends but think friend means you let each other borrow your skin.

>but they're supposed to be manic and chaotic!!
They're not SUPPOSED to be anything, they're made up creatures for fucks sake. This is just dragon vs wyvern pedantry in a different shape

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How about we reverse this. Instead of the fae being eldritch monstrosities, we take the great old ones and apply fae characteristics to them.

>Instead of indescribable horror we have indescribable beauty that makes people obsess over it and do anything to witness it only to find out that the entity hadn't noticed them and once it did, it casually obliterated them like you would swat an annoying fly.

>The deep ones are seductive mermaids and fishchads that lure humans to the depths so that they can breed enough children in order to both make acceptable sacrifices to Dagon and not go extinct.

>Humans are flawed evolutionary mistakes that lack the ability to experience the true cosmos and are doomed to never be worthy of the elder gods' attention and cope by practicing weird rituals and senseless superstitions like hanging their shoes from the chimney every second winter. True sorcerers however have found which of those rituals actually work and are planning to wake up Azathoth as a fuck you to the uncaring and cruel gods.

Hell, Nyarlathotep is a canonical mischievous prick that fucks with both mortals and gods for the lulz. Shub Niggurath needs little to no tweaking to be associated with satyrs and possibly hags. Carcosa is already a slightly darker Alice's Wonderland and the fact that in order to summon the King in Yellow you have to read and potentially act out a nonsensical theater play is already bordering on fae dickishness if we add that he actually wrote it and cares about people's opinions.
I'm also tempted to add some humour and have Niggerman actually helping. Something to the effect of cats in general being antifae or black cats in particular being the only ones that can see them hence why people would correlate black cats to fae and be afraid of them.

>>83761049
>>Humans are flawed evolutionary mistakes that lack the ability to experience the true cosmos

I live in deep fear of this. There's enough spoopy unexplained shit going on in our world, there really could be an entire caste of matter that we just didn't evolve the necessary equipment to interact with. Its there, we get occasional hints at it through secondary interactions with matter we CAN interact with but we just don't have whatever senses are needed to detect it. It was either just not important, since it rarely affects "normal" matter, or, worse, its evolutionarily disadvantageous to interact with. On top of this, because we didn't evolve with those senses our brains fundamentally cannot comprehend what is needed to interact with this "other matter."

I know the concept has been bumped around in various forms forever, but its one of those things that when you think about for too long seems too plausible. Obviously its a fundamentally unscientific idea, since you can always just say "well we can't detect it because we can't think of how to detect it, therefore its still possible it exists" whenever anyone proposes a way to test for this "other world" and finds it doesn't exist. Its still compelling on some level though.

>>83761049
>Something to the effect of cats in general being antifae or black cats in particular being the only ones that can see them hence why people would correlate black cats to fae and be afraid of them.

Its funny because now I know you haven't read a huge amount of Lovecraft. Cats in Lovecraft's mythos ARE powerful beings. They go to the moon and shit. Read The Cats of Ultharr or The Silver Key. Both have cats as beings closer to the mythos and cosmos than humans.

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>>83761418
Nice catch. I have read most classics but I have intentionally avoided the dream cycle because I was more interested in the horror. Maybe now that I am somewhat less of an edgelord than when I used to read HPL I should give those stories a try.

Just bumping to say that this thread being alive still gives me hope in this board.
Good fucking thread.

>>83616997
>NOOOOO YOU KNOCKED ONE OF THE ZILLION GOBLIN COOM THREADS OR BAIT THREADS OFF THE FRICKIN BOAAARD WITH ACTUAL DISCUSSION AAAAAAAAAAAAA

>>83761418
>>83761677
The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath, possibly the greatest story in the dream cycle, features the main character being rescued by cats on the moon. They straight up carry his ass back to Earth. All because he's good to them in the waking world.

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Had session 2 today. Players 1 and 2 busted player 3 out of jail and were hired to hunt a mystery beast that's been killing prized cashmere goats and (less importantly) farm children. I set it up to be obviously an owlbear but theres no actual precedent for owlbears in setting so it's the result of fae fuckery. The players made a clever trap for when it came to eat another goat and fought it, but learned the hard way it has a transfixing many eyed glare, and has human teeth in a second jaw in its beak and cries like a child. They're unsure if that's the noise it makes or if its mimicking its victims. If they fight it in its cave its gonna definitely do psychic attacks I think too, just overwhelming sensory stuff and maybe fear.

They traded blows and it eventually retreated into the woods. Next session they plan on tracking it to its den and putting an end to it, so how can I make things weird but not too weird? They know this is a fucked up body horror thing from the woods, but that's about it. Next session they'll have their beastman with them, and he can definitely go toe to toe with it in melee as an equally large and tanky creature, so what ideas do yall have for like, making it spoopy?

I like to run single creature encounters with lots of legendary actions and reactions to keep the action economy relatively balanced, that way single creature encounters arent fucking boring, it's always moving and attacking and telegraphing its next ability.

Right now it attacks with claws or beak and can prime a psychic attack, and its reactions are using the psychic attack, crushing a grappled target, and disengaging and moving around a bit. It has dark vision, most of the party doesnt.

I'm thinking the cave is maybe deeper than expected, or is in some way not real space and labyrinthine. I like the idea of splitting the party and using the creatures mimicking abilities to fuck with them.

I dont wanna pull gotchas but I do want them to feel spooked and be in real danger

>>83761394
Be not afraid.
All of those things can be explained just fine.
Be afraid of that rather.
There's extremely more to life than mere mechanical optimizations to stimuli, and evolution is just one mechanism out of many.

>>83764008
>Be afraid of that rather.
Um, what? You lost us.

>>83756506
Yes and no. Fair Folk in the Wyld (outside Creation/the world) are formless. The closer to Creation they come, the more they become "set". But on the edges (Bordermarches?) between the two, raksha can duel by shaping reality and each other. Meanwhile, in Creation, raksha are bleeding away their existence and have to feed on souls (emotions, memories, motivations, personalities, etc.) in order to survive (soulless people still live and can make great slaves/breeding stock/undead parts/food). And then there's the Mountain Folk, who used to be fae/raksha, but were changed so they could survive in Creation without eating souls (or being so mercurial).

Sad thing is, from a mechanical stance raksha/fae are (wait for it) convoluted messes. But that's besides the point: mine Exalted for ideas, not as an actual game to play.

(it's also been years since I cracked open one of their books, mind-puked at shaping combat, and closed the damn thing. So I could be wrong.)

>>83762549
Heaven forbid right?
God help us if we have cool tabletop talk on our fucking tabletop board.
>Nah, gotta pave more way for two threads about guns in fantasy settings, four on whether matt mercer killed D&D, and six that are just furshit, amazons, or greenskin pinups

God fucking speed OP. This thread should live forever.

>>83763635
A minor thing, but considering the context of the next session's location (the owlbear's den), the players are probably expecting any further childlike cries to be that of the owlbear. While still unnerving, they'll be more confident in what they think they know.
But what if the owlbear wasn't the only thing making those cries in its den? What if it spared some half-chewed up kid for later, or if one of the missing children managed to evade it for the time being? It could reinject that element of uncertainty, putting them back on edge.

Now it's not just the players and the owlbear - now there are other unknowns at play. Are the children genuine, or is it more deception? Are the other cries from other survivors, or the owlbear itself? Or, if they find the owlbear first, is there more than one owlbear in the area?
It doesn't necessarily have any direct mechanical impact on the combat encounter, but it might plant the seeds of doubt you need for your players to check over their shoulder a bit more.

You know.
Just in case.

>>83764778
I think he means you should be more afraid of how all those things can be supposedly "explained" through human concepts and logical understanding, even though there really isn't anything that inherently binds their way of existence to how we understand them.
To put it another way, you should be more afraid of how everything we've achieved as a species could very well just be the blind leading the blind.

>>83762558
Great fucking story.
Dreamlands stuff in general is underrated.

>>83720158
You're a saint Anon

I think the Summer/Winter court concept can still work with Fae being isolated, individualistic beings of unreal power. It could be kind of like Berserk with the Godhand and the Apostles. There is a supreme being and a governing body, they just don't do anything most of the time. The Apostles are explicitly told to go do whatever they want. In the same vein the Seelie or Unseelie might have authority they never excercise over all the weird shit out at the edges of civilization.

>>83768080
Indeed.

In case anyone wants to read the Dreamquest, I recommend first reading the previously mentioned "The Cats of Ulthar" and "The Silver Key" along with "Pickmans Model" and "The Outer Gods" (I think those were the titles, anyway). Dreamquest has a lot of crossovers with other dream cycle stories.

>>83768004
That’s disturbing. See if I sleep tonight, thanks.

>>83768004
No, utterly not.
I meant that you should be afraid of knowledge.
Once you go past the line when things make too much sense there's no turning back.
All the more if you start losing yourself along the way. First price for knowledge is knowledge itself.

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>>83738796
its super cool that this is the result of a natural progression of your campaign and players actions, how long have you been playing for and what system mechanically? 5e right?

>>83739687
>>83739543
i like the idea of trench warfare vs fae creatures
>>83768603
it feels like if we add in a summer/winter court thing itd break some of the mystery behind what the fae are
id maybe allow for the party to stumble upon the ramblings of some scholar whos attempted to categorize them into courts, but thatd purely be some madman's attempts at defining what he clearly oculdn't shape naturally

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>>83773244
>id maybe allow for the party to stumble upon the ramblings of some scholar whos attempted to categorize them into courts, but thatd purely be some madman's attempts at defining what he clearly oculdn't shape naturally
Yeah, that's the way I'd do it, especially if there's contradictory information. People like having stories to explain things and the courts are another story that could explain a collection of vaguely associated fae or fae traits - you see more of the Tall Men and the Spindly Dancers in Winter, could be they like the cold, could be they just don't have trees for cover during the cold months. It could be that the courts exist for some communities insofar as its a taboo word for a collection in an area that seem opposed, then you get storytellers and scholars trying to universalise it and accidentally spreading false information.

>>83763635
I would start by asking yourself what the monster was to start with (or at least what it mostly was). If its a bear, it will want food, water and warmth. Human will similar, but it could also be trying to get items from its old life and trying to return to normality - blankets, lights [spoilers]toys[/spoiler]. It could be the bearthing is a victim of the environment, and its the cave itself that's causing the problem. If that's the case, you can go hog wild with crazy stuff that's fallen in, taken shelter or burrowed up from below. Maybe actual wild hogs! Underground lakes with crayfish rats! Air eels! Singing voices echoing Hi Ho!

Have a spooky meat deer for your troubles.

>>83773244
>>83773402
Have any fae the party meets and tells about the supposed "courts" play along to humorously mislead the party. They don't actually organize like that, but they're not gonna pass up such a trolling opportunity.

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>>83616992
What do you like your changelings to be like, especially in such a scenario?

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I like having mundane adventures in horror heavy shit, even if I'm running something like 5e. Would go with something like the following for this:
>>83773402
>Yeah, that's the way I'd do it, especially if there's contradictory information.
> It could be that the courts exist for some communities insofar as its a taboo word for a collection in an area that seem opposed
For sure. I like the example you give here.
If I was writing scenarios in this setting (and assuming a more action heavy, but still horror focus) I might even write one where a group of humans are struggling to survive a heavy winter.

Desperate they go to the old wizard's hut on the edge of town (really just some reclusive madman) and discover his notes on fay courts and shit, and half them decide to attempt to appeal to the summer court to break the winter and allow for crops and the other half attempt to appeal to the winter court to shelter them from the worst of a blizzard/storm. Completely mundane adventure but whoever wins out of the two has the events miraculously go their way; summer followers win and the day breaks suddenly, winter wins and the storms/winter lessens that theyre able to get help/find food in a lull in the storm/whatever.
>>83774651
cant speak for OP but I really like how changeling the lost presents fae and particularly fetches
true fae are scary as shit and they replace the people they've spirited away with fetches.
fetches are dopplegangers woven from something thematic to the fae in question (one might be made out of wood/sticks/ect/ another might be a scarecrow) and a piece of the taken person's soul. They range in base personality a lot; some might be a 1:1 of the person, others might be a weird mirror of the person taken or emotionally damaged or emotionally dead.
If confronted by their opposite they get a bunch of weird abilities on realizing tat they're not human
alternatively the hole in the ground was a pretty good take

>>83637126
Any social media

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>>83766755
I like it bless you anon holy shit the stakes involved in finding a kid, why didnt I think of that. I really like the idea of the owlbear mimicking party members voices or the kids voices etc to really fuck with them in the cave
>>83768603
I like the division of summer and winter court conceptually as "benevolent" vs "malevolent" but they're both inhuman and deranged to the point where their benevolence is probably a lot worse to experience as a human being
>>83774651
Mindless progeny of the wilds. Faceless, skinwalking puppet people that are only able to mimic.

The fae arc in the last campaign heavily featured skinwalkers bodysnatching NPCs on a long journey through the woods and replacing them, until it reached a point where there were more shapeshifters in the party than there were NPcs to begin with, and the party was hopelessly outnumbered and just had to play it cool akd let the body snatchers keep playing house until they were clear of the forest.

One of the players was in on it and played as a shapeshifter playing his character for several weeks until they found and rescued the real character. They only parroted words back and mimicked movements and stuff. Theyd tend to fires without really tending to fires. Theyd move things around the camp haphazardly. Theyd trundle along on the march. Theyd repeat nonsense phrases to each other. It was spooky I made one of the players have a bit of a meltdown irl
>>83773244
Trench war vs fae could be fun, I was more thinking trench war between rival city states and fae are making no mans land and the trenches and time get weirder and weirder.

Its 5e (begrudgingly, but it's the easiest game to get my players to actually get excited about, but I run it a lot more loosey goosey. I could write a dissertation on this lmao, but a clear line of communication and GMing brutally but not adversarially is essential I think)
>>83773402
Definitely started as a bear

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Cont
>>83775991
Yes I definitely like "background horror" to keep people on edge but i definitely am gonna lay off weirdness for a while. Its gonna be dealing with highwaymen, tax collecting, finding missing chickens, etc, and every time the players look to the forest they just feel it looking back and the more they actively investigate the fae stuff the more attention the draw from them and the crazier they seem to normal people
>>83775991
Fetches are cool but I'd save that for like, archfae babysnatching stuff rather than mundane skinchangers. I like the idea of not knowing who your friends are the second you cross the threshold

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Thread rescue heres some art

>>83777673
I'd fuck that

>>83776705
Do people live in that? Honestly curious.

>>83776735
for some reason this art really disturbs me

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>>83781284
It's a player race in my setting. I tried to make all the nonhuman races WEIRD. Theres wildling cat people that are the size of half ton trucks that do not comprehend or speak languages, mantid thrikreen that crashed their hive from space, slave giants that are always Good and soft hearted and gentle like big autistic children, vapour people with lifespans measured in just a few brief years from across the sea that want to feel every indulgence before they evaporate, mole rat dwarves, and owl people from the north that are a stable strain of faespawn that used to keep the dragons in check but are being hunted to extinction by a new vast dragon swarm. They all sound weird but their all pretty localized to their own continents or realms, except the giants really, so it's not soupy. I wanted roleplaying non humans to not just be "quirky optimized human but blue" but instead offer completely different mechanical and roleplay opportunities. The giants are Giant! The cats are large and primarily quadruped and have no language! The dwarves are repulsive and blind and have a dig speed! Etc etc.
>>83781284
Good :)

Found this on a blog I was reading, I think seeing a bunch of these spores drifting above the trenches like paper lanterns only to realize they're predatory would be intense I think

>>83781284
that one is cute though, it doesn't even mesh uncanny features together like this one >>83777673

>>83784005
Why would anyone trust these things

>>83787457
What are those things on his head? Are they supposed to be wings?

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>>83787457
I prefer my elves like this:

>spurned and vengeful
>scions of the old gods, once had it all but were usurped by mankind
>pissy about it
>tired of living in the shadows
>you get to pick and choose themes from all elven archetypes like living in the forest, being cruel, being beautiful beyond compare
>also machine elf stuff going on too maybe
>I also like the idea elves never stop growing, so older elves are larger and larger almost like an orky hierarchy
>the biggest elves are upwards of 11ft tall and are elegant and graceful but lanky and stretched
>they can unhinge their jaws to eat babies
>darkvision
>are better than you, but arrogant

>>83787457
Which is the best spirderwick book? I want to give one of them a read

>>83784005
I know it's got a bad rep, but I love Veins of the Earth to bits. Unfortunately I lost the pdf and can't find it anywhere, but some of it's monsters and races fit this thread very well.

>>83789736
>once had it all but were usurped by mankind
How, if they’re actually so much better than us?