Re: Faeriespace - Was: Fairyspace Expansion

From: "Edward Swing" <blackdaggr@???.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 12:25 PM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Faeriespace - Was: Fairyspace Expansion


> As far as the courts and government go, we could draw from medieval 
> history, as well as the nature of the fey.
>
> The fey are ruled primarily by local lords (we can call them dukes) who 
> owe fealty (?) to Aelivere. Aelivere occasionally visits each noble, in a 
> grand tour of the sphere. Since fey are largely chaotic, Aelivere's role 
> would be somewhat ceremonial. He would also step in to resolve conflicts 
> when they got out of hand, but would probably leave most problems to be 
> worked out among the parties. Aelivere could also arbitrarily depose a 
> duke, but rarely has to - the threat of this keeps the nobles in line.

The principle of fealty works well, especially if each race (and I wouldn't 
make all the races fey) thinks that Aelivere is a member of their own race.

You might want to look at "High Kings" from Celtic history. They are 
hereditary titles, rather than inherited ones. That might work a bit better. 
When Aelivere travels around Faeriespace, he could actually find areas where 
one of the dukes, lords, barons or whatever have died and choose a 
replacement from the local population.

You could probably rip off the Sword in the Stone myth and have Aelivere 
arrive on one of the planets of Upgood or Vastdarken with a "Sword of Power" 
and then thrust it down into the ground (the Shrakma Tree) and leave it 
there. The sword could be pulled out by the person "destined to become the 
next leader" and could then function as a magical item that assists them in 
their duties.

> The Seelie and Unseelie courts would be the nature of the two sets of 
> worlds. Seelie tend toward good, while Unseelie tend toward evil. 
> Aelivere, who rules over the entire lot, would probably be neutral. There 
> could always be some local duke who actually has switched sides - a local 
> lord on Upgood has Unseelie ties, while a lord on Vastdarken switches 
> alliegances to the Seelie.

I'm sure that Aelivere would have to be true neutral. Otherwise he wouldn't 
be able to balence the needs of good, evil, lawful and chaotic races.

As for races switching sides, I think that they would be expelled from their 
homes and would make a long exodus to the other layer. The Mratzal Drow (and 
any other drow*) could be a group of elves who followed a leader (called 
Mratzal) who became convinced that the principles of Upgood were not in the 
interest of the elves.

* = I'd like to see multiple drow societies across the worlds of Vastdarken 
and maybe on some of the other branches of the tree.

I don't think you need to make people just switch between good and evil. You 
could for example have lawful good, neutral good and chaotic good elves 
living in different parts of Upgood. We could have every known type of elf, 
branch off from the original Faeriespace elf race and form their own 
society.

I don't think we would have enough time to develop *all* of this, but we 
could list a few and hint that "there are over two dozen other subraces" (or 
whatever). We also wouldn't *need* to develop game rules for all of the 
subraces, as we could list Ggaarin Elves and six other types of elves as 
having identical game stats to grey elves. The differences between the elves 
would then come down to fluff, where we could describe Ggaarin as an NPC elf 
druid from one of the four worlds of Upgood, who sought to become one with 
the great tree and left his home to seek out the land of Armon. The Ggarin 
Elves could be the decendents of him and the people who went with him. We 
could then make several other grey elf tribes that take their name from an 
ancient leader or something else. (In fact sticking *mostly* to groups of 
elves based on standard subraces will keep the amount of crunch to a minimum 
and make this sphere easier to convert between D&D editions.)

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/