Post/Author/DateTime	Post
entity 06-27-07, 05:54 PM	Does anyone know what these incorporeal creatures look like? Magic of Faerun pg. 183
MerrikCale 06-27-07, 07:43 PM	a little like Lord Karsus
Andyr 06-27-07, 07:54 PM	I'd imagine they don't have much of a set form, and aren't really seen so much as sensed.
entity 06-28-07, 12:57 AM	I'd imagine they don't have much of a set form, and aren't really seen so much as sensed. That just seems like a lazy writer's cop-out to me. An unseen being that spawns Satyrs. Better to just make the Satyrs the guardians :twitch:
Fabius Maximus 06-28-07, 10:19 AM	That just seems like a lazy writer's cop-out to me. An unseen being that spawns Satyrs. Better to just make the Satyrs the guardians :twitch: Could be an invisible deepspawn...
The_Wrath_of_Talos 06-28-07, 04:14 PM	Think of any other fey, but these are incorpreal huge size versions. Huge pointy eared b******s that can be earth, air, water, or fire based depending on the entrance to the crossroad and the DM's perspective on things.
Gray Richardson 06-28-07, 10:30 PM	What if the guardians are the ghosts of fey? Bound to the crossroads entrance by the act of creating the portal. Perhaps the ritual for creating such a portal requires a fey to sacrifice its life (or at least permanently bind his spirit) to the portal or the land on which it rests. They would not be ghosts, per se, but could have some of the same incorporeal qualities. I doubt that their "body" would be in the Ethereal plane, but would be either in the plane of Faerie, or maybe in the dimensional interstices between the conjunction where the Material plane crosses over to Faerie. Another option would be to use the Nature Elemental from the Realms Bestiary by Tom Costa & Eric Boyd (http://www.ericlboyd.com/dnd/monsters.html).
Fingoldfin 06-29-07, 01:27 AM	What if the guardians are the ghosts of fey? Bound to the crossroads entrance by the act of creating the portal. Perhaps the ritual for creating such a portal requires a fey to sacrifice its life (or at least permanently bind his spirit) to the portal or the land on which it rests. They would not be ghosts, per se, but could have some of the same incorporeal qualities. I doubt that their "body" would be in the Ethereal plane, but would be either in the plane of Faerie, or maybe in the dimensional interstices between the conjunction where the Material plane crosses over to Faerie. Another option would be to use the Nature Elemental from the Realms Bestiary by Tom Costa & Eric Boyd (http://www.ericlboyd.com/dnd/monsters.html). Thank you Gray. I will use what you just wrote in the game that I run in the High Forest.
sleyvas 06-29-07, 10:42 AM	rather than "ghosts" of fey, if you want incorporeal fey, look at the telthors of Rashemen. Nothing says they have to be exclusively tied to that country.
TomCosta 06-29-07, 03:07 PM	Gray, that's a really cool idea--about them being former fey who sacrificed themselves (not the bit about the nature elemental, which is just an okay idea. :D)
The_Wrath_of_Talos 06-29-07, 03:16 PM	Well does anyone have the magic of faerun book on hand that can look up the crossroads and backroads spell in it and see what the requirements/effects are for it?
Gray Richardson 06-30-07, 07:33 PM	Not to confuse the issue, but it also occurs to me that, just as many fey seem to be spirits attached to natural features (dryads to trees, naiads to rivers, limnides to lakes, oreads to mountains, etc.) the crossroads guardians may just be a species of fey that are the spirits of portals. Spirits of the doorways. Just thinking of possible names for such a spirit I checked the Perseus dictionary of classical Greek: cross-roads=enodios, doorway=thura, gate or portal = pule or pronopia; so maybe something like enodiads, thurides, or pulides or maybe pronopiads. But I don't speak Greek, so I can't be sure of what the most appropriate name might be. Perhaps I will think of it later... I wonder what the ancient Greeks might have called a "spirit of the stairwell"? ;) Of course, this doesn't necessarily contradict the idea that a fey has to sacrifice itself or bind itself to a portal. To live one's life (or afterlife) in service of (or symbiosis with) a natural feature seems like a particularly fey thing to do. It's not something a human would likely do, but it does seem more in tune with the fey psyche. I think it is something a fey might be glad to do. Come to think of it, maybe becoming a crossroads guardian is something a dryad chooses to do when her tree dies. Or a naiad when it's river dries up or becomes uninhabitable due to pollution or some such. Or maybe some fey just feel a calling to bind themselves to any unattended new crossroads that springs up. I don't know how the mechanics of it might work, but it could work similar to the rules for possession of objects (see the Fiend of Possession prestige class for reference).