Anyway, I'm trying to get information for a friend. We talked, and he decided to be an eladrin rogue with the fey pact. The story we decided on was that he was a human thief who stumbled into Thelanis from a manifest zone. In order to get back home, he had to give the fey a part of his humanity and join the Red Gauntlets, for reasons only known to them (and me
).But, this leaves me in a quandary, due to the fact that I'm not too familiar with Thelanis.
Some of my ideas have been... borrowed... from White Wolf's Changeling: The Lost, but I have some original ideas of my own. (I'm not a thief, I'm an author!
)First off, Thelanis just drips magic. As common as magic is on Eberron, many things on Thelanis simply ARE magic. The creatures are manifestations of primal magic. Thus, I view it as, while not as crazy as Xoriat, kind of topsy turvy. Some things are just strange and confusing.
For example, while the politics and maneuverings of the fey are deep and run the gambit from instant gratification to years in the making, the goals just don't make sense. Why does the Oaken Assembly want to trick a member of Lady Enthemal's entourage into giving them a leaf from a tree that is in the Oaken Assembly's territory?
So I guess that's about it.
Thanks in advance for any assistance,
Capfalcon
Wolves made of blood, animals that speak, a crow that speaks and likes to go through your thoughts for memories and secrets, trees are much more "alive", and a bunch of magic fey stuff that is dangerous.
I could say, for sentient creatures of Thelanis, play on stereotypical idea of the animal's personality. Non-sentient, rummage through the MM and just use what is fey-ish, magical, and nature-ish.
Gates of Night also describes the plane as divided into different terrorities of Night. It is always night, but each area looks different. The stars and moon vary from place to place.
Also, if you can get your hands on Roger Zelaznys Book of Amber, (It's actually two series of 5 books each, but there's acollectors ed. out there named Book of Amber with all of them).
It makes for awesome reading, and will give you huge amounts of ideas.
But basically, as Father Hellcow says in Gates of Night: Thelanis is the plane of Magic.
Intelligent animals seem to fit very well, as well as 'aware' plants (not necessarily alive, but with some degree of consciousness).
You should also describe the fey in a lot of detail; Where do they live? How do they live? are they used to mortals?
If your reading list isn't too big I'd recommend "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel", it has a very nice representation of a magical world. It's pretty big, but it's also a very nice book regardless of its Fey lands.
Alternate planes are not just the magical equivalent of other planets. Nor are they simply zones where the normal rules of physics and magic are bent. They are literally other realities. Therefore, the rules of normal reality, our logic and reason and understanding, need not apply.
When my players visit a plane like Kythri, the problem isn't that the terrain is rather hostile to mortal life. The problem is that concepts like "order" have no pull, and that "lawful" behavior contradicts the reality. For reasons beyond the comprehension of mortals, no plan will ever succeed on Kythri, and the better thought out a tactic is, the more spectacularly it will fail. Impetuous behavior, however, has a much higher chance of panning out than it would in our world. Such things just work well.
Likewise, on an evil plane, good rarely wins. The normal assumption, that good will triumph, is entirely wrong. On a good aligned plane, everything has a way of working out for the best, more so than even the greatest optimist would expect.
The more different a plane's underlying reality is from our own, the more hostile it is to mortal survival. Some, like Xoriat, are so different as to be incomprehensible and utterly deadly. Others, like Thelanis, are similar enough to seem almost pleasant.
Have you ever heard the phrase "its all fun and games until someone gets hurt (or "until someone loses an eye")"? I would say that the defining aspect of fey and their world would be a playfulness that extends far beyond human expectations. They treat everything like a game, or like make-believe, even when it is a matter of life and death. That is how I would roleplay them and their reality: a place where everything is treated as a game (whether it is or it isn't), complete with rules that might seem contrived to outsiders. In short, run every encounter as though it were part of a "reality show". Everything should be a caricature, larger than life, to the point of becoming macabre at times.
Lastly, I would caution against leaning too heavily on the nature/animals/elemental theme. You don't want to step on Lammania's toes, or to confuse your players.
Gates of Night also describes the plane as divided into different terrorities of Night.
Obviously GoN shows my view of Thelanis, but I'll just note that this is a slight misinterpretation. It's not always night in Thelanis. It's always night beneath the Hunter's Moon, one of the territories of the Nine Brothers of Night... Just as it's always dusk in the domain of the Queen of Dusk. The PLANE isn't about dusk, day, or night - but any given realm within it may take one of those points and explore the magic of that moment.
So.. would that make inhabitants of Thelanis who travels much, age fast?
And "people", (I use the term in the loosest possible way here), who stay put, more or less eternally young? Maybe the children of this world have to complete a circuit, (spelling), of the realms to be considered grown up.. as a very real coming of age ritual..
But if most of these people does it at a young age, they would have the mental age of child and physical age of grown-up, thus explaining why you suddenly have a realm of powerful fey who act like children who deosn't know how much it hurts when they slap you playfully..
Just Brainstorming here.
Obviously GoN shows my view of Thelanis, but I'll just note that this is a slight misinterpretation. It's not always night in Thelanis. It's always night beneath the Hunter's Moon, one of the territories of the Nine Brothers of Night... Just as it's always dusk in the domain of the Queen of Dusk. The PLANE isn't about dusk, day, or night - but any given realm within it may take one of those points and explore the magic of that moment.
Yeah, this is how I had planned to run it before even reading GoN. I had always, in my head, imagined different faerie realms each with their own season, or time of day, or aspect of fey lore (mushrooms, underground halls, aboveground fey parties, etc). So I got super excited when I read GoN and had my ideas confirmed and eloquently described.
It's completely apart from the Material Plane, (probably the wrong name in Eberron, but I'll use it anyway), and it reeks of alien and weird, without being too disturbing.
Not the wrong name, it is just that Eberron IS the material plane. And the other planes revolve around it (except for Ethereal and Astral). So a being from another plane could refer to it as the "material plane", but I would think it would get refered as "mortal plane" more likely, if not just "Eberron".