Thread by @BrandesStoddard

For each Like, RT, or new sale of Fey Gifts & Bargains (starting... now), I’ll write one new fey NPC, location, or story seed. (If this blows up, maybe spells, magic items, and other fey stuff too.)

Go forth and make me regret this!

https://twitter.com/BrandesStoddard/status/1275154599335395336

1. The Night Collector - an Archfey who loves secrets and dangerous treasures - has a black marble vault that stores everything she has gathered. Here secrets might be written on gilt scrolls, sung by caged birds, or woven on spider-silk looms by tiny, warped goblins.

2. The Night Collector’s fey-touched goblins know too much to ever be allowed out of her keeping. Extracting one of them is the key to answering a vital question that the PCs face - but who knows what the Night Collector might do in retaliation?

3. The Seelie and Unseelie each have their own embassies in the Courts of Hell and in many layers of the Abyss. If you want to recover a soul that has been made into a soul coin, bargaining with the Night Collector or the Queen of Air and Darkness might be your last hope.

4. It isn’t that the Seelie Queen won’t recover souls from Hell, for a price. Of course she will.

The problem is aesthetics: a condemned soul needs a fresh coat of paint before she could think of passing it along. By the time she’s done, there aren’t many original parts left.

5. A fey named the Yew Lord became so fond of feasting and celebration that he withdrew to a place in the Feywild where time’s current is stagnant.

At all times, his feast is beginning, ongoing, and ending. Invitations are traded around as rare treasures, among the fey.

6. In the course of this Festival Perpetual, the same events recur, because they are Fated, until a mortal causes a change. The PCs get involved when they learn that the magical harp they need was last held by the Yew Lord’s favorite minstrel.

7a. Then, of course, there’s Robin Goodfellow - or maybe you know him as Reynard or Puck or a thousand other names. Is he truly loyal to the Seelie Queen and happy with his rôle as Court Jester? Or does he have... ambitions?

7b. In a better world where none of your players have ever been hurt, the Good Fellow is the source of ridiculous, Noises-Off sex comedy. In our world, uh, that needs so much care and consent to run that it’s safer to give it a miss.

8. But when you, a rogue, get pinched for a crime you can’t possibly have committed, it’s a fair bet that Puck is behind it - and also in the magistrate’s court watching you try to explain your way out of this one.

9. That’s all a long game so he can twist your arm into joining his cult of burglars and grifters. See, he’s planning greatest heist of all time... robbing Nessus and Azzagrat in the same night, and pinning it on the yugoloths.

Pretty sure this won’t come back to bite ANYONE.

10. The storyteller with the too-bright green-gold eyes comes to your village only in spring and fall, and they’re gone by morning. Once their tale is told, they offer a game of questions - secret lore in exchange for speaking painful truths aloud.

Woe to the one who lies..

11. All fey are drawn to rivers, of course, but naiads and leech-fey most of all. Naiads care for the river, giving and receiving life from its waters, and speaking to one another through its babbling voice. Most of all they wait for the wisest salmon of each year’s spawning.

12. Leech-fey dwell on the water, not in it, poling along in small boats and traveling only by night.

They gather all sorts of odds and ends in their travels, trading them to mortals in exchange for feeding the leeches a sip of your blood. You could even pay for passage...

13. The Stony Oracle is a fey that has joined herself to the earth in a deep crevasse. She welcomes visitors and provides clearer answers than most soothsayers, but only the quick-footed or silver-tongued can ever leave.

14. A hedge maze festooned with thorns guards the Hawthorn Palace. Even flyers may prefer to take their chances with the maze, rather than the scourging malice of the treants that tower over it.

15. Once inside the Hawthorn Palace, all things seem to be the height of refinement and luxury, so that none wish to leave. As long as you keep moving, enjoy it to your heart’s content, but if you rest, the thorns soon grow over you and hold you fast.

16. If it’s so dangerous, why even go to the Hawthorn Palace? IMC, the PCs had to bind and destroy the human cult leader who ruled there, to pay their debt to another Archfey.

Maybe your PCs didn’t mean to go there, but it found them after they got last in a primeval forest.

17. Maybe you’re going in after a friend who has been thorn-bound - and the longer you take, the more of your friend’s memories have been leached away and sold off to the Goblin Market.

18a. The Hawthorn Palace has grand treasures, even if it doesn’t eclipse the Night Collector’s vaults.

I’ll come up with original suggestions as well, but #themagnusarchives 171 has horrible, magical (?) flowers that are perfect here.

the-magnus-archives.fandom.com/wiki/MAG_171:_…

18b. Other treasures you might find here:

Loqui, the Golden Songbird
The Ever-Growing Foundation Stone (aka Daern’s Eventual Fortress)
The Seven Ruby Seeds
The Lhyragyth Manuscript (a magic book to make your spells stronger against fey, especially Seelie fey)

19. In the Midnight Gallery, where the Queen of Air and Darkness displays her achievements, there is a statue named Brigid Honor-Bound. If you stand before the statue, Brigid can speak to you in the barest of whispers.

20. Brigid Honor-Bound was once a dwarf knight sworn to the Silver Knight, an Archfey of impeccable honor. Over many years the Queen ensnared Brigid in contradictory oaths and prohibitions, until Brigid was paralyzed into inaction and gradually petrified.

21. For the Queen, this was a game to steal one of the Silver Knight’s followers, and to show that Seelie honor is untenable for mortals.

Brigid would be freed if she were released from even one of her many oaths - but she can’t bring herself to request that freedom.

22. Redcaps are the one kind of fey that it’s trivially easy for a mortal to *become.*

People who are satisfied in their lives can’t understand why someone would go before Mother Merciless and seek her blessing. You have to be starving first - for food, justice, or other things.

Sidebar: This is a reminder that the Seelie aren’t GOOD and the Unseelie aren’t EVIL. It’s easier now than ever to see someone would reject the glamour and propriety of the Seelie in favor of rage and revenge, and be right to do so.

23. No one knows better than the Archfey that no matter how powerful you become, there’s always someone stronger. It is their Fate (fey ~ “fated”) that the Eldest among them will return, or escape, from their long Exile and tear down the vaunted glory of the Feywild.

24a. What are the Eldest, and what are they like? TBH this isn’t a question I’ve really tried to answer for my campaign, much less yours, so I’ll just suggest a few different answers.

24b. Primal beings of Creation - basically the cast of Hesiod’s Theogony, or your standard Nobilis PC. They want to complete the creation of the Feywild, into a form antithetical (or at least disadvantageous) to the Archfey, who they see as a minor misstep in their Plan.

24c. The faces of primal chaos, especially if the standard demon lords and Abyssal cosmology aren’t part of your setting.

These might be Excrucians from Nobilis, or they might have unusual names like He Whose Touch Rends the Word. (@lostshaman1, @standsinthefire)

25. Though many fey shy away from iron, steel, and most forms of engineering, the Muse of Steel embraces metallurgy and related arts eagerly.

She speaks most of all to people too passionate about their art for their own good; her bargains are the perilous compromises they make.

26. In Rhu-kel’s Hearth, mortals reign their dreams in steel, mithral, crystalvine, and the like. All it costs them is memories: of peace, of satisfaction, and most of all, love.

More than a few come here to burn away memory and get something, anything, in return.

27. Rhu-kel’s Hearth brought many great weapons and armors into being, but it is Known that the greatest is yet to come.

One of the Eldest will return long before the rest and be slain. That spirit will be shaped into a weapon, and its name shall be What-Thou-Must.

28. Some of those other treasures -

Graelian's Guard, plate armor with a lion motif; grants a pounce attack
Crowfeather, a black-enameled buckler shield; lets you glide short distances
Lance of the Airy Gate, a mithral lance forged only to storm the Unseelie Queen's bastion

29. A treasure made in Rhu-kel’s Hearth:

Captain Jutic’s War Helm - Jutic, a rare satyr who fights in the war between the Courts, had a helm made to hold his pan flute by his mouth. He needs hands to play it, but doesn’t have to stow it when it’s time to fight.

30. In several parts of the Feywild, there are spiral staircases standing out in the open and seemingly leading to nowhere. During twilight (and solar eclipses, on which more later), the rest of the staircase appears, leading upward to a crystalline door.

31. Originally, there were as many keys as Archfey, fashioned out of twilight and dream-sand. Over countless years, each one has been lost or stolen, until only the Night Collector’s key remains. She didn’t take the others, but she certainly profits from their loss.

32. Getting to make other fey - even the Seelie Queen, once or twice - come to kiss the ring in order to climb the Twlight Stair has its perquisites. Though Unseelie, the Night Collector also stands outside the Courts at times.

Which is no doubt how she met the true thief.

33. He has lived a thousand lifetimes in the wainscoting of the Feywild, sustained by the Twilight Stair and the power of the Feywild itself.

He is Hygelac, the Thief of Five Fates (for whom the Eldritch Invocation is named). All he has left is a need to evade retribution.

34. What’s on the other side of the door of the Twilight Stair?

It is a place outside, where hidden connections between disparate things become visible, granting the Archfey much of the secret understanding that lets them manipulate mortals so thoroughly.

35. Rhu-kel’s Hearth can make replica Keys of the Twilight Stair, though they are substantially lesser: each works only once, and you can only observe and analyze the connections for a short time before you are shunted back to the Feywild.

These flaws may be deliberate.

36. The PCs encounter the Thief when they need to hide from an Archfey, or when they’re asked to track down one of the lost Keys. He’s much more protected against fey magic than mortal power.

A bargain might be possible: one or more keys, in exchange for becoming an Archfey.

37. The toil of sowing, reaping, and milling are not part of life in the Feywild. Two reasons:

Firstly, dryads, naiads, and pixies give the land a superabundance of fertility.

Secondly, the Archfey do away with what would make the land less alluring to mortals.

38. Thus it is partly magical effort, exercised in ancient rituals such as the fairy rades and seasonal games, that delivers bounty.

A cruel or greedy fey knight or lord often leads to blighted land. Many symbolic things of the Material Plane become actual in the Feywild.

39. But the story of the Seelie and Unseelie is the cycle of the year: the Unseelie are hunger and the dread thereof, winter, and loneliness.

There are only a few places where growth and plenty are year-round - most of them traps for the unwary.

40. Queen's Farewell is a silvery-hulled ship with leafy sails. It has no visible crew, but sails by its captain's will alone.

She never leaves her quarters, but sometimes she allows visitors or passengers inside, where she is swathed from head to toe in silk.

41. Queen's Farewell can plane shift, as long as it is out in open waters, between the Material Plane, the Feywild, the Shadowfell, and the Dreamlands - but there are other ways to do those things.

It *is* the only ship that can find the Island of Ang-Yr-Ban.

42. There are two creatures unique to Ang-Yr-Ban that might make you want to visit, and one to stop you from leaving.

The Winterheart Falcon was the companion of six of the greatest rangers in all of elven, human, and fey history. He hopes to learn the ways of orcs next.

43. The Cerulean Toad also lives on Ang-Yr-Ban, croaking out a heady mix of aphorisms, witticisms, and such profanities as the day would quake to look upon. He eats things that do not agree with him - take that as you will.

44. There is a Lotus Serpent on Ang-Yr-Ban as well, whose venom stops the desire of the heart, not its pulse.

He returns these wishes to the lotus-blossom with the tip of his tongue, so that the lotus can remember its first blossoming in distant shores.

45. One of the often-overlooked side effects of the memory trade is how it affects teleportation. Sell a memory of your youth, and you sell the ability to teleport to the room where it happened.

Possession (of a memory) is nine points of the law.

46. That, then, is one reason PCs might seek out a Goblin Market or another memory trader.

Do you want to teleport to a distant continent, or into the lich’s lair? Buy your way in! It probably won’t cost your WHOLE childhood.

47a. Goblin Markets are one of my favorite ways for PCs to encounter fey content. It just happens that they're also hard to run well, because they're a shopping session where the players don't even know what they're looking for or hoping to find. To say nothing of the risks.

47b. I did a lot of thinking about this over in Tribality, years back, and it would seem silly not to link it here, even where it now feels outdated in my approach.

tribality.com/2016/03/24/in-…

47c. And another link, with more magic items. Some of this item design reads as painfully janky now.

tribality.com/2016/05/19/tre…

47d. Some merchants you'll meet in the Goblin Market, then:

Tamizand the Haberdasher, a balding goblin with a wide variety of solutions
Huqul the Masker, a fomorian who trades in names and faces
Akbe the Weaver, an elf who sells fey-woven cloth and tailored clothing

48. Three more Goblin Market merchants.

Itirri the Knife, a redcap who sells the best meat in the Market. This is fine.
Bone-chewer, a redcap scrimshander. Also fine.
Bitterling, a korred brewer. He works for the Good Fellow & gives away half his product. Zero cause for concern.

49. What is it that wears your long-lost uncle’s appearance on the same day that you visit the Goblin Market?

Who is the Wild Hunter that follows it, and how does their hound know your uncle’s scent?

50a. It’s an oddity to me that D&D files unicorns under Celestial and not Seelie/Summer Court Fey. “In the Company of Unicorns” introduces fey and fiendish unicorns to round this out.

drivethrurpg.com/m/product/2405…

50b. It goes without saying that fey unicorns have a strong affinity for the Silver Knight, as well as the Green Man and the Seelie Queen.

Sometimes they allow virtuous knights, uncorrupted by self-aggrandizement, to serve them.

The greatest knights serve *alongside.*

51a. First impressions are everything, if you are a hopeful knight meeting a unicorn. Neither arrogance not obsequiousness will serve.

The behavior of your companions, if any, matters almost more - it tells the unicorn what you tolerate, and what you speak out against.

51b. “Knight” here should be understood not in a mortal, feudal sense, but in a fey, courtly one.

A wizard, warlock, or rogue could be a knight if they possessed the proper presence, dignity, and courage. These traits seldom accompany humility, so unicorns are discerning.

52. Fir-Eidhal is a young and energetic male unicorn, some 250 years old. He knows that any knight he takes on will need a lot of work to shape into a true hero. Show him you're willing to listen, and he'll overlook more flaws than most unicorns would.

53. Dea-chlú is a female unicorn, and a philosopher by nature. She's unlikely to accept a companion who can't keep up with her contemplations on honor, aesthetics, and other matters. Previous riders have accepted her requests to travel to meet with other philosophers.

54. Sela-Na-Seor is a grassy mountain ridge in the Feywild where herds of fey unicorns gather, particularly during spring and fall. While they are gathered, they defend it fiercely.

Year-round, it is one of the only sanctuaries that the Lord of the Hunt dares not violate.

55. (Here I'm using some of the unicorn lore I set up in ITC Unicorns.)

Oro-Sethna is a female unicorn and a solitary Knave, traveling the Material Plane as a common mare or a milkmaid. What she has learned is that humanoid life is more complicated than the herds realize.

56. Verren Riverstone is a halfling bard of the College of Valor. The unicorn he served was slain by the Queen of Air and Darkness. Now he seeks a way into the Feywild, to pledge his service to a Seelie Archfey and avenge his companion.

57. Moonrise Watch is a rocky cliff by a waterfall. The water flows due east, pointing to where the moon rises every night. As a result, it is a traditional place for hopeless romantics (a majority of the fey) to gather and tell tales of loves won and lost.

58. The players get involved at Moonrise Watch when one fey seeks their help in rekindling a romance with a past lover, or when they seek the aid of a fey too lovelorn to be bothered with their petty mortal problems (at least until the PCs make the fey feel better about it all).

59. The Archfey play their own convoluted games with Moonrise Watch as well. People with sorrows and desires are often ready to bargain with the Night Collector, who has any number of creative ways to make emotions or memories go away.

60. The Muse of Steel and the Dream-Tyrant send their agents to Moonrise Watch to offer “replacements” for lost loves. The Muse offers animate sculptures or nimblewrights; the Tyrant sends intricate dreams. Things seldom end happily in either case.

61. Talessua the Golden is one of the Muse’s masterworks, a surpassingly lifelike construct built for a jeweler who gave so much of her life to her craft that she left nothing for herself.

Who am I, Talessua wonders, now that the jeweler is dead?

62. The Tyrant sent a dream named Ati to console a man who lost his brother, his son, and his best friend in the same year. He played the 3 roles ably, always giving excuses for leaving for a moment or an hour.

The old man died. Ati is neither dead, nor ghostly, nor living.

63. PCs might get involved in Ati's story as a strange form of haunted house; by seeking him out as a teacher for Disguise Self, Alter Self, Performance, Deception, or Mask of Many Faces; or by investigating a tale of relatives who returned from the dead in a fey bargain.

64. The fey perform strict laws of hospitality, and even the hungriest redcap or fomorian, or the most lackadaisical pixie, won't knowingly harm one who has given them food or drink that they've accepted, or one who has accepted it from them.

It's a high-stakes game of manners.

65. The execution of that hospitality is at its most comically bizarre when it is also deadly serious. Redcaps are *delighted* for you to be too grossed out by their table manners or the victuals they offer to accept hospitality.

One way or another, you're staying for dinner.

66a. I've never *especially* held with "never eat the food of fairyland, or you'll waste away with longing for it," because it means fewer social encounters with potential antagonists. It's a common element of the fiction, though.

66b. To include it when hospitality and exchange of food are common ways for fey and mortals to interact, maybe that longing is a common punishment for breaking a rule the fey don't tell you about: you're supposed to bring a gift, or share some food that you brought as well.

67. The best gift to bring to a fey table for dinner is crystalvine wine. The grape of the crystalvine is fruit and gemstone, both and neither, and only fomorians can stomp them into wine.

Its taste reminds you of the first time you met someone who is drinking it with you.

68. The Winter Lord regards hospitality as HIS, above even other Archfey, because it is he who conjures inviting campfires or mead-halls in the bitterest winter night.

Which means he has travelers over a barrel to negotiate a new Pact.

69. Nice enough gifts can rebalance the situation - above all else, the Winter Lord can’t bear to seem churlish.

Good wine, beer, or mead, choice cuts of meat, fine furs, or new hunting hounds win great favor with him.

Overall, though, he’s a classic horror-motel premise.

70. The Winter Lord offers the most quintessential frying-pan-to-fire situation: you spot a cheerily-lit hall in the distance, with the Wild Hunt on your heels. Once you accept his food and drink, he'll turn the Lord of the Hunt away at the door.

It's a bad cop, good cop con.

71. As mediums for revealing and concealing truth, symbols of vanity, and magical tools, many of the fey are obsessed with mirrors. Some can travel, scry, or mentally influence others thru reflective surfaces.

Mirrors also induce deep self-examination, which they like much less.

72. Mirrors are - as Snow White suggests - places of binding for powerful spirits, where the binder can still confer with them. When a fey needs to seal away a genie, they use a mirror as often as not.

It’s a golden opportunity for a mid-dungeon social encounter.

73. Duels offer such a chance for glory, spectacle, and decisive action that they’re a highly public part of life among and between Seelie and Unseelie.

Famous duelists favor theatrical, named attacks and fighting styles.

(Get fighters in on the fun, is what I’m saying.)

74. Lanaq is a male eladrin duelist whose career is just starting. He has a clever new parry to teach (recover a CS die when you roll a 1 or 2 on a Parry) that he’ll teach to anyone who helps him find placement in service to a fey lord.

74b. Whoops, forgot to name it: The Ever-Faithful Ward.

75. Skath is a female fomorian duelist sworn to the Queen of Air and Darkness. She favors glaives, pikes, or bare-knuckle brawling.

If paid with the heart of a dragon, she can teach the Blossoming Steel. 1/long rest, expend 1 CS die to convert a weapon attack hit to a crit.

76a. Belë is an Unseelie sylph duelist, in service to the Thornweaver. They favor a long knife paired with a buckler, or a shortbow, and specialize in elaborate stealth duels conducted in fog-shrouded mazes.

76b. Belë’s loyalty to the Thornweaver is often seen as an aberration, but no one remarks on it in their hearing... not anymore.

If you have a supernatural gift from the Thornweaver, they’ll teach you the Perilous Plunge.

77. Perilous Plunge lets you spend a CS die to make a Reckless Attack, when you are attacking from above. On a hit, you deal an additional weapon damage die. If you suffer falling damage in making this attack, your target takes +1d6 damage.

Side note: Crazy Delicious on Netflix is a great model for a fey feast - a lot of fanciful dishes, things that are delicious but taste like something unrelated to their appearance. (From what I understand, this was a big thing in 15th c. cooking as well.)

78. Vayrix Iron-Shod is a redcap who fights for Mother Merciless, often with iron-shod staves and rib-shattering iron boots.

The fey who fight him take years to recover from their wounds.

Convincing him to teach his methods requires a reputation for wanton cruelty.

79. Vayrix can teach you the move he calls Red Sky at Night.

It grants advantage on Str (Athletics) checks to grapple or shove a creature whose hit points are less than half its maximum. On a success, the target takes damage equal to your Str modifier (min 1).

80. Anwyn the True is a duelist in service to the Green Man. IMC, he's dead, but that doesn't stop her from upholding his honor at sword's-point. Technically, she's a paladin of the Oath of the Ancients.

She keeps the Good Fellow's people in line as much she fights the Unseelie.

81. Anwyn uses that Channel Divinity as a stern reproof.

In exchange for punishing an oath-breaker that is beyond her reach, she teaches the Sword of the Harvest: a creature that succeeds a save against her Nature's Wrath takes +1d6 radiant damage from her attacks for 1 min.

82. Mirror-space can be used for extradimensional storage. Look for places where a reflection - in any mirror - isn’t quite right, then reach through your mirror in the normal way (...?) to retrieve the item.

A fey’s personal quarters almost always have valuables hidden there.

83. “The normal way” might be a spell.

Mirror-Shunt
1st-level conjuration

Store an item in an area’s mirror-space, or retrieve an item from an area’s mirror space. Starts at Tiny object, scales up with spell level.

84. Ythiren is a eladrin lord who, by losing a game of chance, has become Mother Merciless's majordomo. In 5,268 years, when his term of service ends, he'll return to the Seelie Court, much reduced in station.

Unless someone bargains on his behalf to end his service early...

85. The Sea Hag - definite article definitely necessary - has long been denied pride of place in the Unseelie Court, despite the vastness of her domain and the great many pacts she seals with sailors, who are typically clinging to flotsam at the time.

86. As a result, the Sea Hag keeps her own court, a be-kelped reflection of the Unseelie Court. It is a haven to those who have been rejected or spurned; they say there that the ebb tide brings all forgotten things to the Sea Hag in time.

(Shattered Isles formed my ideas here.)

87. Her court has its own lords and knights, after a fashion.

One such is Tylith, Lady of Deathly Stillness. As mistress of the doldrums that befall the westerly seas. She demands sacrifices of treasure before she permits the sylphs to do their work.

88. Rachomer, Marquis of the Flood Tide, embodies the threat of the undertow, and any form of sudden loss at what seems like a moment of strength.

He is as greedy and heedlessly cruel a fey lord as any who have ever existed, bargaining to give back what he has stolen.

89. Eäretha, Lady of the Fathomless, has her demesne in the lightless deeps, where few but aberrations dwell.

She has become a part of her throne, encrusted with barnacles, in a darkness no light can banish. Her strange song offers powerful mysteries to those who seek her out.

90. Deep Finachta is one of the Sea Hag’s knights, a sea elf warlock who creates false lights to lure ships to their destruction, and ensorcels lighthouse-keepers.

His knightly estate is a sunken warship, swarming with stingrays. Their dance can maze a watcher’s wits.

91. The Reef of the Belle Dame is akin to a summer palace for the Sea Hag - deadly to ships, but brightly lit and iridescent.

The Sea Hag regards its beauty and danger as a natural expression of the concept of fey glamour. If she brings you here, she means you to die in beauty.

92. What the Sea Hag doesn't do is raid coastal settlements. All she needs to do is wait for hazardous conditions or mortal ambitions to create her opportunities. She has all the time in the world.

But nothing pleases her like arranging a doomed romance between land and sea...

93. PCs get involved when are hired to recover goods from a shipwreck, including a strange bronze device. Her commoners are taking it apart to sell to a goblin market, unless the PCs make a good impression on the Sea Hag and secure its return.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythe…

94. The PCs are investigating a ruined monastery out on a lonely island, as a growing number of briny fey emerge from the water. It is time for them to begin the rite that calls the century-storms. Can the PCs survive the gathering lightning and disrupt them?

95. Dame Ulukia is a knight who left the Seelie long ago to serve the Sea Hag, for only in the poisonous depths could the Eldest named He Who Quenches Stars be chained. She and a cadre of enchanted, talking sea creatures keep the vigil between seven thermal vents.

96. The Sea Hag has a complicated, contentious alliance with the Thornweaver, built on a desire to destroy the Good Fellow for his endless deceits at their expense. He - or his agents - usually escape because the two Unseelie fall to quarreling over who gets to kill him/them.

97. The Fountain of the Lady’s Tear is made of stone and mithral, in the midst of a primeval forest. For an hour after drinking from it, you see the Material Plane with your right eye and the Feywild with your left.

Follow a fey beast’s tracks to pass fully into the Feywild.

98. Wondrous strange fey beasts come to the Fountain of the Lady’s Tear, as it gives them access to the Material Plane.

Many of them, such as the bronze-antlered stag Oriolatë, can speak Common and Sylvan, and perform modest feats of magic.

99. Another talking beast of the fey is Ystri, the serpent. She is among the wisest of teachers, and any who would know the secrets of the Green Man will come to her in time.

If you would win her favor, know that she delights in the taste of the Night Collector's tiniest spies.

100. Most talking beasts go unnoticed by the Courts, and prefer it that way. The barred owl Mithomer is one such; he waits near the Fountain of the Lady's Tear for those who are confused by its magic. He offers aid, but his guidance is deceitful unless he is paid in secrets.

101. Parsifel, a talking fox, is the favored quarry of Balin the Scather, an elven hunter in the Lord of the Hunt's retinue. Balin has pursued Parsifel several times; when he catches the fox, he leaves a gleaming scar on him. When Balin fails, the Lord takes one of his fingers.

102. Ryvelle, a talking peacock, comes to the Fountain of the Lady's Tear to lead questing knights to the Castle of the Onyx Eye, where his friend Lauveletai, an eladrin warlock, has been thrown into the deepest dungeon cell by the fomorian princess Beszamura, for trespassing.

103. The Good Fellow takes no notice of brownies. Practical, kind, and industrious: three strikes against them.

Then there's Ban-Kiesal, who got assigned to help a bored scribe, and learned to draw in the margins.

Now they leave artwork on the walls wherever they go.

104. The PCs encounter Ban-Kiesal's work as clues, mostly in the homes of mortal commoners. They paint whatever they're thinking about - comical depictions of the Archfey (with the Good Fellow hoodwinking the Thornweaver... again), the secret of making magical shoes, or...?

105. Once they've encountered a few pieces of Ban-Kiesal's work in "normal" places, like someone's home, what does it mean when they spot it in strange places, like the fifth level of a megadungeon?

It means there's a shrine to the Good Fellow nearby. Pay up to rest safely.

106. What coin do you pay the Good Fellow with, accounting for inflation?

I can recommend mistletoe cut with a copper dragon’s talon, the hearts of unkind hosts, or coins scammed from con men. If the debt is too great, pay him with tears of laughter, but only once per customer.

107. Napping - or even staying the night! - in the Good Fellow's safehouse is safe in terms of bodily harm. For your dignity, not so much.

If you're lucky, you wake up with your facial features changed into a caricature of your normal appearance. It lasts for a turn of the moon.

108. If you *deeply* offend the Good Fellow somehow, he arrives and promises to help you find the humor in life.

This means getting randomly targeted with Tasha's Hideous Laughter 1-3 times a day. Most likely when it's embarrassing or could wreck an NPC relationship.

109. The Good Fellow’s laughing curse has an escape clause, of course. That might require some legendary prank or heist, like swindling the Sea Hag’s pearl-encrusted crown away from her, or stealing the Mortal Rose from the Thornweaver.

110. Now, everyone knows how to identify some of the passageways between the Material Plane (which I always want to call "Prime") and the Feywild.

Crossroads, circles of mushrooms, a garden gate if the garden is kept just so, passing through two trees grown together...

111. Your lore hasn't told you that forces of the cosmos have their own designs upon those passageways, so that they can control the magic. life. and mythic force that flows between the two realms there.

But the Archfey know how bad this is, and repair makes a great quest.

112. One such pathway is the freestanding stone archway under Hound's Hill. Long ago, the whole castle of Prince Alfric was lost to a goblin-fey in a game of chance, and carried away to the Feywild. Only the archway remained behind, a servant's entrance so Alfric could visit.

113a. Alfric's Door now allows travel to the Feywild, but a mortal sorcerer seeking to understand it made some... changes. Sometimes moving a lever is how you understand the machine.

When you pass through, roll 1d6.

113b.

1. For 24 hrs, your mind is replaced with your self from a year and a day earlier.
2. For 24 hrs, you must pass a DC 12 Wis save to enter a dark area. (fear effect)
3. As 2, but entering an area of bright light.
4. The Lord of the Hunt learns your name.
5-6. No change.

114. In the Deepshadow Glen, there is a pool that the villagers use as a swimming hole, Children remember, and adults forget, that it's also a passage to the Feywild - because at its center, it has no bottom. You swim down and down until you surface in Seelie Queen's demesne.

115. The Deepshadow Pool's problem is that its naiad Tauinu was imprisoned by a cultist of Olhydra, who installed a water elemental, who can sometimes (50/50) redirect the passage outgoing from the Material Plane toward the Plane of Water instead of the Feywild.

116. Lovers’ Grotto is named for two trees that grew together (among other reasons). Passing between the trunks used to take you to the Queen of Air and Darkness’s demesne, where social rules were violated and temptation was embraced.

117. But other Powers use those same tools. One of Grazzt’s incubi learned of this place from a victim, and ensorcelled the passage to instead connect to Azzagrat some of the time.

It can redirect travel from either side, though the Unseelie can leave Azzagrat unimpeded.

118. Fixing the Lovers' Grotto passage involves *either* a big purification ritual, provoking a demonic incursion and risking the possession of the ritual caster, or a heist mission into Azzagrat (!) to steal back the cuttings from the Lovers' Trees that grant control of it.

119. Alternately, use the Lovers' Grotto as a quest goal for a PC warlock with a demon prince patron.

The patron wants them to be the one to corrupt and redirect it. Since it's currently giving power to the Unseelie, maybe it feels less morally fraught than some orders.

120. The Oldstone Crossroads is a battleground in a secret struggle, largely invisible to mortal eyes, between the fey and Hell.

Oh, the fey still maintain cordial relations with the Court of Hell, but out here they play the Great Game, with mortal souls as the prize.

121. All the mortals know is that if you go to the Oldstone Crossroads with a powerful wish in your heart, you might meet someone who can make it come true. Love, wealth, power, vengeance - they can get it for you wholesale, whoever they are.

I'm sure it's fine.

122. The fey merchants and beguilers are led by Baron Alcuin de Marche (Seelie eladrin) and Count Qivin Ravure (Unseelie fomorian).

In Hell's camp, Rahamlikut is an uncommonly clever, diplomatic cornugon, with close ties to Titivilus himself.

The fey are in a tight spot.

123. They're in a tight spot for a few reasons.

They face internal divisions of Seelie against Unseelie. Alcuin and Qivin know they could receive orders to undermine the other at any time. The cornugon could be overthrown by his subordinates, but Titivilus would punish mutiny.

124. Secondly, Rahamlikut wants souls, which mortals value lightly because they can't hold or count them.

These fey can't claim warlocks - they *aren't* Archfey - and have no practical use for souls. So they trade for memories, or things mortals DO value - like firstborn.

125. In the struggle at Oldstone Crossroads, Hell and the Feywild battle from shadow to shadow under the moonlight, pushing one another away from the crossroads itself and cutting them off from any chance to barter with mortals.

126. Both sides hide the conflict from mortals with illusions, but those with subtle senses note the smell of blood mixed with honeysuckle, nightshade, or brimstone.

A fey or devil who reveals the truth to a mortal is likely to be recalled to their court for severe punishment.

127. It’s one thing to see a dilapidated old well in the village green.

It’s quite another if it wasn’t there this morning, and might be gone again by dawn.

You might as well make a wish, right?

128. The one in the well does not speak, but listens and waits. Some wishes are granted, such as wishes for material goods. Others are taken away, so that you forget that the desire was ever in your heart. This happens most of all if your wish is for another person.

129. The one in the well is kindly, are they not? They use their magic and resources to end the agony of desire, and if the memory of that desire provides them sustenance, that’s no concern of yours anymore.

Threaten them, and you’ll see how much more they can take.

Sidebar: yes, I think this does unfold into the plot of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and I feel great about that.

130. Venture into the old well if you want. The one in the well welcomes visitors. Drink the tea if you like; it won't hurt you, though it shows you things in their lair that you might wish you couldn't see.

I can't recommend the scones; they're a bit dry. Nice lavender, though.

131. There's just one tiny problem. If you stay past dawn, the top of the well doesn't go to the Material Plane anymore. Sometimes it goes to the Feywild, which is okay if not ideal; sometimes it goes Nowhere At All, and that's more of a problem.

132. The one in the well obeys the rules of hospitality - so your first three days in the little cavern go well. After that, if they haven't come to a new village green, feeding you becomes harder for them, and you might lose little things.

Your desires are fine guest-gifts.

133. That said, if you want a new start in life (sorry, no de-aging), you wouldn't be the first person to climb down in the well and stay for a time, and it beats some alternatives.

You're probably not the only long-term guest - think of who else you might meet.

134. The old well has one permanent guest.

He had a name once, and wished for it to be known far and wide.

He wished to rule a kingdom, and no longer remembers his home.

Finding himself in an unfamiliar village green... he climbed into the well.

One day, he wished to leave.

135. Maybe the man who is a tabula rasa is the goal of your quest. He does, after all, still have the things he earned, rather than wishing for:

His mother’s sword
An uncanny knack for any game of cards
The friendship of the Yew Lord
The enmity and spite of the Seelie Queen

136. Once upon a time, there was a woman who loved, above all things, the thrill of knowing something secret. The more lives that *might* be ruined if it were told, the better.

One day she realized that all her petty secrets were connected, into one great big lie.

137. The secrets were so tangled that she wrote them down and connected them, one illicit affair to one sordid murder at a time. When she was done she couldn’t walk through her house without crawling over the ground on all fours, in strange contortions.

138. She hid herself in attics and under floorboards, spying. If someone’s name didn’t appear in her secrets, they weren’t to be trusted - they must possess the skill and subtlety to be the masters of the great lie.

Most people have secrets, so she drew closer to *a* truth.

139. At the last she finds a murder without a motive, the last secret and the heart of the great lie. A man is dead, and no one knows why. She finds the body, preserved under glass and without injury or a day of decay.

She takes the body out and begins her examination.

140. It is only when she tastes the blood - liquid, but still - that she is certain he died of the poison that now flows through her.

She wakes at last to the truth behind the great lie.

He was an Archfey and the whole village was his fantasy of being a mere mortal.

141. His blood is in her mouth and his vengeance is at her hands. His power passes to her.

She is, now and ever more, the Night Collector.

142. To use this town in your game, make it fairly isolated, then crank the soap opera drama up to 11.

Under normal circumstances, they try to be goodly, but when the Archfey grows bored, he uses magic to instigate more chaos.

He believes this is simply “their nature.”

143. In the heart of the Graymire, a massive and dismal swamp, the islands are connected by arching wooden bridges, decorated by the work of a delicate hand.

The towering cypresses are painted with the faces of thousands of fey, from the highest Archfey to the least boggart.

144. The largest of the islands is a riot of color, flowers from every clime and fey bedecked in bright garments.

When the Good Fellow’s jests no longer lift the Green Man’s spirits and the intrigues of the Court are a burden, this is his refuge.

145. This refuge is called the Painted Isles, and the central island is the Illustrated Grove.

When the Green Man is away, one of the eldest of all eladrin rules in his stead, named Seanathair na hÓige (Grandfather of Youth). Almost alone among eladrin, he is stooped with age.

146. Most surprising of all, Unseelie commoners are often welcome here, as performers or as audience. Conversely, knights and nobles of both courts draw invitations only rarely.

The Green Man assumes the commoners need to get away from the nobles just as much as he does.

147. Probably the main reason PCs go to the Illustrated Grove is to speak with the Green Man outside of the interference of Seelie Archfey, particularly the Seelie Queen and the Good Fellow. Her raw presence and his jests make it difficult to seal a pact with the Green Man.

148. Beyond that, the Seanathair can tell you the common names of every fey pictured on the cypresses. If you make it worth his while, paying with fantastically strong coffee or pomegranate seeds from the Outer Planes, he may slip and tell you their truenames instead.

149. Go to the Illustrated Grove if you want to hear the secrets of Mother Merciless's house. A trio of redcaps - Ocras, Dúnmharú, and Ainneoin - are scullery servants there and gossipy celebrities here.

They're next in the stew pot if Mother finds out.

150. A group of sentient shambling mounds and their dryad handlers, called the Legacy of the Green Shroud, guard the Painted Isles from uninvited guests.

The spores and sickles that the dryads use to guide the shambling mounds would be powerful gifts for a druid to earn.

151. A warlock with the Pact of the Tome - even one with a Patron other than Archfey - may find the Green Man or his servants unusually willing to teach rituals.

All you have to offer is memorable entertainment or one of the few surviving Phials of Elder Starlight.

152. The Legacy of the Green Shroud has been tested in the past, as when the proud sorcerer Kuthru the Skyshard attacked the Painted Isles, seeking to bind the Seanathair.

The Green Man sentenced him to eight centuries of waking stasis, under ten feet of mud and swamp water.

153. The Fortress of the Bitter Blade, in the Feywild, is presently held by the fomorian Lord Amargen. It is named for the constant battles between Seelie and Unseelie that take place here.

Shrines of the Silver Knight and the Lord of the Hunt dot the surrounding hills.

154. The Fortress of the Bitter Blade controls several magical resources. Within its high curtain walls stands Blue Ember Keep.

Insects called moon beetles come to the keep’s walls to sleep each night. When the moon shines on them, they glow a steady azure.

155. These moon beetles carry the moon’s power, when they are used in magical workings.

Among more esoteric applications, they can be used as an extra component in a Moonbeam spell to increase its effective spell slot level by 2.

156. Inside Blue Ember Keep, the fomorians have placed the Stone of the Long Night. Before battle, their greatest warriors ritually place their weapons in a crevice in the stone.

The weapons’ strikes feed magical power back to the fomorian lord, who weaves it into deadly spells.

157. The Fortress of the Bitter Blade also overlooks the Glade of the Candle-tree. The trees of the glade burn but are not consumed, making it the ideal base for flametongue blades and the like.

Stealing candle-tree wood draws pursuit and reprisal from the fomorians.

158. Three knights are the most dreaded among the fomorians of the Fortress. The first is Gwlgir the Hunter, who rides a fiendish unicorn named Talagh. He won her loyalty from Hell in a joust.

They prefer to overtake a target, encircle them in her flames, then strike.

159. Second among the fomorian knights is Yrrua the Shatterer. Her thundering steps and crackling hair suggest a mixed storm giantish parentage.

She wields, with apparent ease, a mace that is the envy of battering rams the world over.

160. Greatest of the three is Drughea Half-Crowned, famed for sundering the crown - to say nothing of the skull - of a previous Seelie ruler of the Fortress.

She rides a loathsome kelpie and, as a result, favors unexpected ambushes emerging from bodies of water.

161. Beyond stealing moon beetles or candle-wood, PCs might get involved in retaking the Fortress of the Bitter Blade, or freeing a prisoner held there.

Capturing the fey shrines and performing ceremonies there during moonrise critically weakens Lord Amargen's magic.

162. Among the Night Collector's many relics, there is a single wooden wheel, rimmed in bronze. Long ago, it was part of the Sirocco Chariot, which belonged to a kingdom of desert-dwelling elves and humans. A searing wind protected passengers from arrows and hurled spears.

163. When the half-elf Queen Te-Wara ruled this kingdom, the Lord of the Hunt took notice of them. He thought that a people who fought with chariots, arrows, and hurled spears ought to pay him homage.

Te-Wara rebuffed him, and his hunters began to haunt the kingdom's borders.

164. The Sirocco Chariot thwarted the Wild Hunt repeatedly, with its speed, warding wind, and fearless driver and archer. Many Unseelie knights and lords were sorely wounded or slain as they stalked the sands.

Then the Lord of the Hunt devised the means of the chariot's ruin.

165. Alone and shrouded in seven veils of fey magic, the Lord of the Hunt crossed the kingdom's border and buried himself under two inches of sand. His greatest hunter, disguised as the Lord himself, provoked the charioteers and fled over that hiding place.

166. As the chariot passed over him, he caught the axle with a hook on the end of a chain. As the chariot pulled him, he sprang up in pursuit. The wind burned him, scouring away the veils of magic, but in the hours of pursuit, the axle weakened and broke.

167. The charioteer struck many telling blows against him with their spear, but it takes more than bronze and sinew to strike down the Lord of the Hunt when he is within a few feet of his most elusive quarry. In the end the spear-wielder died covering the driver’s escape.

168. The driver returned the next day and found only one wheel and the splintered axle remaining. Many evils befell her and the whole kingdom without the Sirocco Chariot to defend it. With each new disaster, she stared at the wheel and whispered a vow of vengeance.

169. The kingdom fell into decline, as mortal and fey enemies alike scented blood. The driver's vows seemed to come to nothing as she grew old.

She traveled into the dark corners of the markets in the great western cities, where she learned of the Night Collector.

170. Though distrustful of another Archfey's schemes, she couldn't walk away. The Night Collector drew out her desire for vengeance and said that all was not lost. The driver would gain a second youth and a second chance, in exchange for the Sirocco Wheel.

171. The driver agreed; perhaps even the Night Collector was amazed at this. She said that with her second youth, she would either carry out her revenge, or find something that the Night Collector valued even more than the Sirocco Wheel and trade for it again.

172. Every time the Lord of the Hunt harms one who has not earned the wrath of the Queen of Air and Darkness, the Sirocco Wheel turns on its axle and gains more power.

A burning, scouring wind passes over the Lord of the Hunt, shrieking his doom.

173. Pirutti, the blacksmith of his village, was known far and wide for his singular devotion to his labors, and in time his creations came to be prized even among the fey. Unbeknownst to him, a brownie came to dwell in his house, sent by the Silver Knight.

174. The brownie, Jovanne, found a house in dire neglect and worked each night to improve the house, taking only the leftover crusts and cups of milk that are a brownie's due.

After a year of this, Jovanne realized that Pirutti had not noticed the great change in his house.

175. Brownies don't expect thanks. Jovanne served the Silver Knight and the Seelie Queen, and he would have a dignity above other commoners at court - that was enough.

Curiosity impelled him, all the same. He brought in a boggart cousin to watch Pirutti's dreams.

176. What they learned was that Pirutti wanted a child more than anything, but was unable to have children of his own. There were no orphans in the village to adopt. The focus of his work was a needed distraction.

Jovanne went to the Silver Knight to see what could be done.

Side note: I'm not sure what the most correct way to proceed in this little story is. I'd ask you to remember that this is first draft material.

177. The Silver Knight, like all of the Archfey, had received many firstborn children over the years as part of bargaining with mortals. Those who wanted something from the fey more than they wanted their child... perhaps that child *is* better off with the fey.

178. Ordinarily, such children become indistinguishable from fey themselves, potentially entering into life at court. In this case, however, the Silver Knight gave a girl-child to Jovanne, who brought her in turn to Pirutti's doorstep.

179. Still unaware of Jovanne's presence, Pirutti took the girl in and cared for her, while asking around for who might have left her. Her features bore no similarity to the people of that land, though, and he accepted that she would be his daughter until someone claimed her.

180. The point of this story is, I guess, just an idea about a possible character background.

Also, even the Archfey can be moved by the needs of children.

Maybe she learns, in time, that she is welcome in the Seelie Court as well as her mortal home.

181. Koimillo is an adult now and has become a warlock of the Queen of Air and Darkness, but long ago his father gave him to the fey in exchange for a long, hedonistic life.

Koimillo seeks to buy back memories he sold off to advance at court. What happens when he remembers that?

182a. I struggle with what to do with sprites, since they don't have a way to size up to being a combat threat, and fighting hundreds of gnats is a little too real for THIS Georgia boy.

Best I've ever done is scaling PCs down to their size and restatting them accordingly.

182b. That could be a lot of fun as a recurring thing, as long as "I dunno, fumigate the area" doesn't become an available PC solution. (Yes, I've seen Onward.)

Okay, I've got it.

Thanks, The Starless Sea! You're a mother lode of an idea mine.

182c. Oleander is a toymaker, especially of dolls and dollhouses. Weirdly, I'm not going in a creepy-doll direction here, though YOU can.

In her shop, she has one dollhouse that she just can't seem to sell. She tries, and children want it, but their parents always demur.

183. She calls it Glorianna House, though she doesn't remember why. It is a startlingly realistic dollhouse, save for one door that only appears on one side of its wall.

When Oleander closes the shop and goes upstairs, sprites and pixies come out of that door.

184. If you could follow them through that door, it would take you to the Basement, where this clan of tiny fey spend daylight hours.

The Basement is a cozy enough place, but the sprites have had to brick up most of the doors down there.

185. Glorianna was the matriarch of the sprite family. Long ago (six months, give or take), she went through one of the doors to make her way back to the Feywild. She never arrived, and the sprites sent to find her never returned, so her family bricked up the door in terror.

186. Glorianna's House is now the doorway to a megadungeon holding a passage to the Feywild. As long as you can break into Oleander's shop (or get her permission, fiiiine), you can spend your nights delving into this dungeon, looking for Glorianna.

187. All you've got to do is shrink down to Tiny size. GMs that want this to be easy can give the pixies this ability. Otherwise, the PCs need to find their own way. This might be a quest for Glorianna's Talisman or a Wand of Greater Diminution (only works on willing targets).