Planar Adventures for Dummies: fey

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Saturday, March 30, 2019

Ecology of the unicorn

The unicorn has been represented in a variety of ways in folklore and fiction, so it doesn't have a consistent or orthodox ecology. Unicorns generally fall into one of four archetypes, paralleling the development of the unicorn myth in popular culture. These correspond to the monster types beast, celestial, fey, and fiend.

As a [beast], the unicorn may be identical to a common rhinocerous or possess at least minor supernatural traits. At the very least, its horn ("alicorn") is a universal antidote to poison. It may or may not be pacified by the presence of a virgin.
As a [celestial], the unicorn is a messenger of God and a potential paladin's steed. Its powers would focus on fighting evil, as with other angels. It may overlap with the pegasus, having flight in the form of wings or levitation.
As a [fey], the unicorn is a woodland deity that defends its forest from interlopers.
As a [fiend]... well, just look at the nightmare.

The standard D&D unicorn straddles between the first three archetypes. It is classified as a [celestial] as of 5e, essentially a forest version of the sphinx, but in the lore is associated with the [fey]. I feel this is bad world building because the line between clerics' and druids' spheres of influence should be fairly clear. Earlier editions of the game devised over a dozen more variants, so this conflation is doubly strange.

A number of unicorn variants have been published in third-party products: Monster Encyclopaedia Volume I introduces the platinum unicorn, Monster Geographica: Forest introduces the savage unicorn, Exotic Encounters: Unicorns introduces the sylvan guardian unicorn, storm unicorn and purifier unicorn, Tome of Beasts introduces the shadhavar, Monsters of Feyland introduces the black unicorn and red unicorn, etc.

100% anatomically accurate unicorn

In popular culture

Fantasy fiction ascribes the unicorn with all manner of miraculous traits that they notably lack in combat-focused Dungeons & Dragons. What follows is a small and not remotely exhaustive list:

Early accounts of the unicorn or “monocerous” in medieval bestiaries described it as a vicious beast, since it was based on misunderstood accounts of the rhinocerous. Some accounts added the myth that it could be pacified by a virgin, which hunters exploited to trap it. Inspired by these tales of unicorn entrapment, medieval bestiaries came to associate the unicorn with Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. The unicorn acquired connotations of purity, and its horn ("alicorn") was reputed to purify poison. In medieval bestiaries, the alicorn neutralizes poison even after being severed.

Harry Potter depicts the unicorn as essentially an animal with magical properties. Their blood can extend life indefinitely, but such a life is “cursed.”

In Peter S. Beagle's 1968 novel The Last Unicorn, the unicorns are depicted more like the Fair Folk. They are immortal and amoral, with mysterious powers that are largely unexplained. In Holly Black's The Spiderwick Chronicles, unicorns are explicitly listed as a type of fairy.

In Ridley Scott’s Legend, the unicorns guard the light of the universe. Their horns have unexplained magical powers, even after being severed. In the Beastmaster television series, a severed alicorn is used to gut a man then immediately heal him.

Fantasy fiction and games have introduced an evil counterpart to the unicorn, typically styled as a "black unicorn" or a "bicorn." This appears primarily in Japanese media, such as Megami Tensei and Overlord. It is the moral opposite of the unicorn: for example, it rejects virgins.

Other monsters have been referred to as unicorns in popular culture, such as the Arabic mi’raj, Persian karkadann, and Chinese qilin.

Research links

Gaming links

Bicorn links

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Beast lords and associates

The beast lords are a group of deities from the Stormbringer universe that were copied by Dungeons & Dragons. The beast lords have appeared in official Dungeons & Dragons supplements and a number of third party publications.

D&D aberrations, celestials, fiends, etc in a Moorcockian context

D&D took the chaos/order alignment trope from Moorcock and then added good/evil onto it, even though this is unnecessary. I decided to go back to the original Moorcockian model for my setting, but this means that the various monsters like aberrations, celestials and fiends need to be re-contextualized.

For those who are not experts on Moorcock's multiverse, the epic conflict is between law and chaos. Neutrality is a law because it demands a balance between law and chaos. Chaos rejects this because it is chaos, and law decides to enforce the balance. At some point law goes overboard and decides the only way to preserve the balance is to destroy chaos, which violates the balance in the other direction.

This conflict is fairly easy to understand but is at odds with the conventional D&D alignment system, which has law/chaos playing second fiddle to good/evil. The Moorcockian alignment system doesn't define good or evil in cosmology terms, except insofar as imbalance is evil because it is anathema to life.

The typical terminology for the Moorcock alignments is lawful, chaotic and neutral, but this terminology is inaccurate since it neglects the subtleties I mentioned previously. In a world where chaos is ascendant, there is little functional difference between law and neutrality; in a world where law is ascendant, the reverse is true. The generic fantasy setting is the former, and the characters are nominally associated with law/neutrality. This isn't to say that harmful manifestations of law cannot appear in a world where chaos is ascendant, but it is vastly less common than harmful manifestations of chaos.

The various spiritual entities would have different alignment associations compared to the standard.

Aberrations would represent chaos, full stop. While different groups of aberrations might behave in a seemingly lawful manner, that is due to chaos' inherent tendency toward diversity.
Celestials would represent balance, law and neutrality. They are active in that they actively fight for the balance.
Elementals represent neutrality in its purest form. They are generally reactive to imbalances, and actively maintain conditions suitable to life (e.g. the weather).
Fey would represent chaos, but to distinguish them from aberrations they are tempered by the presence of neutrality and law.
Fiends would represent any kind of imbalance, whether toward law or chaos.

Friday, April 6, 2018

Reading material on fey

In order to keep myself from forgetting, I am putting a list of reading material on fey in this post. Details below the break...

The fey life cycle

Fey have always gotten the short stick in D&D. They aren't well defined, aren't integrated in most settings, and there are very few of them if any. I'm using The Complete Guide to Fey as my primary source in defining fey.

What are fey?

Fey have never been well defined in the many editions of D&D. There seems to be a vague idea of them being nature spirits, but what is classified as fey or not has never been very consistent. Blink dogs and hags are labeled fey, but they do not resemble nature spirits. So I have decided to adopt a clear definition of fey from The Complete Guide to Fey by Goodman Games, which to my knowledge is the only source book that has ever given the fey a clear definition.

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