Weird Facts About the Feywild and its D&D History

the wild beyond the witch light has been out for a few weeks now and quite a few of you out there are jumping in or are planning to jump into the fey wild and deal with all those sealy and unsilly face so i thought that would be a great time to take a peek at the plane of fairies and for those dungeon masters out there running their own worlds or maybe even their own adventures along the sword coast maybe just maybe you'll pick up a few bits of inspiration here as well for your table so let's talk about the mysterious joyful and very deadly feywild first off we should definitely start by talking a teeny bit about what the feywild actually is and its origin in the world and history of dungeons and dragons now full disclosure i've had to do a little bit of research here for you guys because while i've been playing d d for over 25 years now when i first started playing my friends and i exclusively made up our own world so i don't have the ability to just say oh yeah i read this when i first started playing back in second edition blah blah blah because well i didn't as far as the history of the feywild that gets a little complicated because well the feywild didn't exist before fourth edition except when it did what i mean by this is the feywild as we know it in fifth edition didn't exist until fourth edition's release in 2008 and the 5e dungeon masters guide obviously was just released six years later in 2014 so overall the feywild just hasn't been around that long but as i've alluded to already that's just the feywild as we know it the reality is the feywild can actually trace its origins all the way back to the second edition with a little book called the planescape campaign setting with a plane called arboria also yes i know the manual the planes for add first edition was released in 1987 but i didn't find anything on arboria in there so i'm just gonna go on with that with the video fast forward to third edition in the early 2000s and we get more information on the planes and other places to take our adventures and now we not only get arboria but also get a plane called the plane of fairy this is the really interesting part arboria is this place with sealy and unsealy fan but also is constructed of three different layers this big grandiose foresty layer on top an endless plane of water just below that and just for kicks it's got a third layer that's just desert on the bottom the plane of fairy on the other hand is described to use a quote as quote a land of soft lights and cruel desires the home of powerful elf-like beings that care little for mortals other than as playthings and prey it is a country of little people with great desires it's a place of music and death so along comes dungeons and dragons fourth edition and now we get a unified vision for a new place born from both arboria and the plain of fairy called you guessed it the feywild so who lives in the feywild i like to think of this as three different pods of creatures in our first pod we have the eladran the elagin can generally be thought of as really the people of the feywell they are to the feywild what humans could kind of be considered to the material plane ish kinda sorta in our next pod we have the famorians which are basically ugly fey giants that are generally pretty evil in nature and these can be really a great source for antagonists all you dunge masters out there for a party visiting the feywild and then i'm going to circle back here in a minute to talk about where the femorians can be found in the feywild but they are kind of a large enough and distinct enough group that i like to think of them as their own little pod at least i do personally maybe you do maybe not i don't know and then in our final pod we have really just kind of all the other races which includes quicklings dryads seders pixies red caps hags and really many many others so with all these races what's the deal with sealy and unsealing how do we know which ones are which we don't why don't we know because sealy and unsealing aren't really a thing those aren't terms actually used by dozens of the feywild the whole sealy and unsealy thing is basically a term that is used by folks from the material plane the short version is the terms help differentiate between kind of trustworthy and untrustworthy how do you know if a fae is trustworthy well you don't know until you know and that's part of the journey that is traveling through the feywild okay cody so how does one get to the feywild then well there are a few different ways the most obvious is through casting a spell like plane shift or gate however these methods might be out of reach for most adventurers as level 7 and level 9 spells respectively option two is to find and locate a portal now not all portals are simply open all the time even if you found one and they may be keyed to correspond to a correct time like every day at noon or perhaps even once a year during an anniversary to an important event from the past or they may need something much more straightforward like a portal key or even simply a command password option number three is to physically travel down a planar path to the feywild yes this is an actual thing where one might find a direct path to visit a different plane of existence by simply traveling on a planar path which is basically a set in stone location where you can travel between planes an example given to us on page 21 of the manual the plane's from third edition even lists the river styx and the river oceanis as different examples of planar paths but by far and away the most fascinating and perhaps unnerving way is via a fae crossing fake crossings are like a hazy reflection so close to one another that they simply blend back and forth and the craziest part about a fake crossing is they may not even be obvious you could walk through an orchard and suddenly find yourself in a powerful phase garden out in the fame wild you could go for a swim in a small pond to bathe and when you surface you could be on an entirely different plane of existence possibly without your gear or weapons this next one's pretty cool the fade dark is actually a thing aka the feywild's very own version of the underdark if you thought traveling through the underdark felt like going into a completely alien land you can just imagine how insane the fey dark could and should feel in your games this as i alluded to earlier is where most of the famorians can be found but consider this the fade arc can also have its very own fey crossings and in fact even drow have been known to use these fake crossings to travel unnoticed before a surface raid now that we're back on fate crossings just a bit we get some really wild information on these in a little four e-book called the forgotten realms campaign guide on page 68 that basically says that because of the alladron constructing secret realms on faerun that are connected to the feywild that that along with the spell plague may have pulled the feywild closer to the material plane well let's put two and two together for those of you who don't know in the world of torah the spell plague ended in 1395 dr and our beloved 5th edition takes place in 1491 so in reality the abundance of these fake crossings are likely less than 100 years old this could and should have wild implications really on both planes of existence it is very likely that only a small percentage of these new fey crossings have been discovered today because of this and more likely that as they continue to get discovered both denizens of torrel and the fey from the feywild will look to use them in ways to gain power and wealth speaking of looking back at time one of the most insane items of note in regards to the feywild is its history of time warping in fact traveling to the plain of fairy used to be a horrific prospect that could end in you simply aging to death instantaneously upon your return i know it's messed up but i'm not making that up on page 210 in the third edition manual of the planes for the plane of fairy we get a wonderful little excerpt that discusses flowing time quote for every day spent on the planet fairy a week passes on the material plane but unlike most planes time lost on the plane of ferry catches up with the traveler non-natives who spend time on the plane of ferry and then return to a plane with the normal time tray instantly catch up a visitor who stays a long time on the planet fairy may die if catching up with the material plane takes her beyond her normal lifespan that's like that's like the worst death ever now this is much much more evil when combined with the fact that the fake creatures not just from the unseelie courts mind you but seeley courts as well have been known to lure and even just straight up kidnap folks from the material plane to invite them to dinner or well you know sleep with them to put it nicely i mean so you like kidnap somebody you take them home you guys do your thing and then they leave and then like 40 years their life is gone like that's really dark it's really dark now all of this is to say the feywild has grown and adapted over the recent years and even some of the things discussed here today have already been retconned and changed for dungeons and dragons 5th edition time warping being a perfect example as it's listed as an optional rule now that might go in either direction in the dungeon master's guide as well as the optional rule of even having like memory loss now the point is we still don't know everything that happens in the feywild because it's it's pretty new in the game and that's exactly how it should be the reason the feywild is such a marvelous setting for your group's adventure is because it's supposed to feel foreign yet familiar odd yet known beautiful yet horrifying even the laws of the fae can be bent to be what you want them to be dungeon masters if it makes sense in your version of the feywild to have uh fey consider adventurers in their debt by simply taking food and drink and shelter then include that if you want your denizens of the fate wow to never tell lies but instead speaking half truths do that and if you want them to consider conditions of a curse absolutely unbreakable even if they have the magic to technically undo them then feel free to do that too and so this leads me to my question for you guys what are some of the craziest laws that you've seen or perhaps that you came up with for your own version of the feywild also if you happen to be playing in or running witch light already be sure to drop a quick 2-3 sentence review of your experience so far i will most likely be talking about the new adventures because a lot of you guys have been begging me to re-review the adventures now that we've had more since my last like kind of big sweeping overview of all of them and so i don't have a lot of experience with which light yet and i will be taking what your feedback is into consideration for that video so a couple sentences maybe keep it short short and sweet please if this is your first time here and you love role-playing games as much as i do i would love to have you subscribe i put out videos on gm tips player tips tutorials and more stuff just like this so if that sounds like something you might be interested in just hit that subscribe button down below and come join us i want to give a massive thank you to all of the incredible patrons over at welcomeadventures.com guys thank you so much it's because of you that i get to keep doing this and so for that i'm incredibly grateful if you guys enjoy this kind of content you want to support more content like this and snag some rewards for yourself like maybe jumping in a one-on-one coaching session with me head over to welcomeadventures.com and uh you know check that out and stuff thank you guys so much for watching my name is cody and may your games be filled with awesome memories and even better friends i'll catch you guys next time oh you

Channel: Taking20

Views: 74,387

Keywords: Taking20, Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeons & Dragons, 5th Edition, 5e, Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, Dungeons and Dragons 5e, Dungeons and Dragons 5e Barbarian, D&D, D&D 5e, Dungeons and Dragons Best Class, Player Tips, Player Tips D&D, How to Play D&D, Dungeons and Dragons magic items, 5th edition magic items, critical role, wild beyond the witchlight, Feywild, Feywild Music, Arborea, Plane of Faerie, Feywild 4e, Feywild 5e, witchlight carnival, seelie, unseelie, seelie court

Id: xNv3dKIf1Jg

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 25 2021