Creating an Archfey Villain in D&D

foreign isn't it so dirty and dull really your gratitude is not necessary I simply couldn't fathom failing to offer my assistance in brightening up your dreary lives watch how Flora blossoms and brings Beauty true beauty to your homes your pets and cattle shaped into more pleasing and elegant forms your Offspring given purpose higher than you could ever hope to teach them this is my gift to you filthy ignorant little beasts any resistance you carry leave it at the door all rather what was your door because your new ruler is here and ready to make your life so incredibly Vivid just for you foreign is a concept in Dungeons and Dragons is one that is quite vague and underdeveloped which is one of the reasons why I absolutely love to utilize them as villains in my campaigns we're always so stubbornly certain with what to expect when it comes to Undead foes like liches and vampires or indeed dragons themselves to the point where the awareness of their color scheme gives players a vast amount of information from both in and out of the game system of their capabilities now this is where lacking developed Archway Beyond hags dryads or fairies on steroids provides a rich gap for you as a DM to get creative with the themes and challenge you want your villain to present this video was inspired by pointy Hat's recent upload on the feywild and DND but also based on the large amount of discussion and requests for advice on Archway in particular cropping up online you can see the video here I'll link it in the description ultimately what is an archway I won't delve into the details of the Free World as a setting since that has been covered by pointy hat and others in Greater detail but I want to dispel this notion of the Fey boiling down to being the DM's chance to go LOL I'm So Random I'm going to cover an arch Faye bbg's Outlook from my current campaign and if you are a player in the floodgada setting specifically the region of flaknemia turn the video off now to avoid spoilers you five know who you are the monologue at the beginning of this video was from the perspective of katoska an archway who takes the appearance of an anthropomorphic Red Squirrel here are a forge image on screen now not an industrial sponsorship totally original not based on any mythology at all no steel the Overworld of lookada is home to various animal folk races in addition to the other standard ones you would find in d d being mostly res skin variants squirrel folk are one such fraction of this race but notably all squirrel folk are gray in coloration now the party has encountered this mysterious Red Squirrel folk across the campaign so far they're aware he is very real forcing them into sleep sleep invading their dreams seemingly able to steal some aspect of their being or abilities when doing so for a purpose that has yet to be revealed they're also aware that he has aligned himself with a myriad of other powerful and unique Faith beings to carry out a shared goal with hints dropped so far about terraforming and the capture of children who mysteriously seem to show up far older than when they were last seen the party has already encountered the ruins of a former settlement that was in the process of being merged with the Fey realm to act as some kind of foothold in the material realm having met one of these other Allied Faye beings who utilized delusions of Undead to keep the locals away through fear of the land being cursed this use of trickery and warping of reality to suit an almost alien whim gives the Fey a much more interesting and almost Eldritch angle something more in line with the darker aspects of old folklore looking back at that earlier monologue how is all of this reflected in the choice of words used by katoska he brings of how dirty and dull the material plane is speaking as if he is saving the people here from the Dreadful fate of being mediocre and routine in their existence calling them filthy and ignorant beasts compared to the pleasing and elegant new forms of their transformed pets and cattle his plan for this world is to make it Vivid as all worlds should be but what relevance does being a red squirrel have here and how does this all equate to my idea of an archway firstly I was inspired by the idea of the conflict between gray and red squirrels although it seems to be more of a dubious notion these days paralleling the smaller more aesthetically creative red squirrel with the campaign's theme of magic being withdrawn from the world in favor of brutal understanding was an idea I wanted to explore this is far from an original concept of course as it was also inspired by an scp-1762 here be dragons what would it be like in a world where the Wonder and ore is something you don't understand gives way to the cold dismissal of a single sentence explanation whether true or not it seems so empty and this is where the children come in the concept of their youth and Imagination being harvested by the Fey to keep their world alive though not only to survive but to conquer its existential threat without the dreams or nightmares of living beings to form their purpose the Fey would cease to exist and that's what infuriates katoska to be beholden to these frail lesser creatures in order to persist to acknowledge all his ideas all that Fey are made of is born of something else he sees as inferior to himself without something external to behold the beauty of the Fey the feywild may as well not exist at all this is me taking the idea of the pharaohm being extra compared to our own and trying to find a darker angle you know something for the players to wrestle with as they foil katoska schemes an arch Fay to me needs to embody a concept an emotion a struggle that we face ramped up to 11 and formed into a character much more so than any other kind of character development you know they need to be dramatic they need to have that Flair to them to feel larger than life itself because that at the end of the day is what Faye bigger brighter and Beyond us so what about utilizing an archface impact in your games do we just abandon the trickery element I'd seriously advise looking more at the dark Fey implications to avoid the LOL random feel so far my party has had to solve riddles involving throwing some cute goats they befriended down a well in order to proceed insult and call each other out on their deepest regrets to open a door that enjoys guilt unpetrify a battle in progress that kept some poor commoners alive from the monsters attacking them in order to get some of the monsters blood for an ingredient you know fun stuff with moral implications maybe your Archway could embody the spite of spurned affection and wield a group of dryads and saters to corrupt those who Pride loyalty to their loved ones or perhaps they might instead be an individual so Twisted by loneliness that they separate families from each other not out of needing friends but because that is what it sees as the natural way of things trauma personified after all as was stated earlier what use is all of your Perfection and power if there is no one around to acknowledge it

Channel: Craig Argyle Audio

Views: 3,446

Keywords: archfey, feywild, dungeons and dragons, dnd, d&d, 5e, 5th edition, dm, gm, dungeon master, how to run campaign, villains in rpgs

Id: r0qymZihTrk

Length: 7min 54sec (474 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 04 2023