IFAQ: Faerie Tales in Eberron

My Patreon supporters are still voting on the subject of the next major article, but it the meantime I wanted to take a moment to answer this question from The Ultimate Human:

In an upcoming adventure, my players are going to head into Thelanis. I want them to have to advance through stories to advance to deeper layers of the plane. Do you have any suggestions for commonly told (in universe) stories or myths that would be unique to Eberron, or ideas for adapting fairytales to the setting?

When I’m making up faerie tales or folktales for a story, I try not to make it very deep or complicated. If the idea of a story is that it’s a story that all the characters know – a common folktale they’d have heard as kids – it needs to be a story the players can pick up quickly. If it’s too long or contains too many details, they won’t be able to remember it all.

With this in mind, I’ll certainly use stories from our world as inspiration. In Exploring Eberron I mention the tale of “The Sleeping Prince.” A newborn prince is cursed by Sora Katra; when he comes of age he falls into a deep slumber, until he’s are saved by the Woodcutter’s Daughter. This isn’t Briar Rose, but it’s close enough that I don’t need to explain it in any more detail to most players. Now, if the ADVENTURE needs more detail—the characters need to re-enact the conclusion—then I’ll add something that fits the adventure I want to run. Well, she had to steal the Silver Rooster from the giant’s tower, and when the Prince heard it crow at dawn the curse was broken. Say, there IS a giant tower just to the north… The key point here is that you can make a story first, and then figure out the adventure; or you can make the adventure (I want a story with a giant!) and the explain how it connects to the story.

In general, there’s a few steps I’d use to create an in-world story. The first is to identify the purpose of the story. WHY do people tell this story to their friends or children? Here’s a few basic reasons.

  • Warning. Don’t stray from the path. Don’t tell lies. Don’t take gifts from strangers. The story teaches you NOT to do something, by showing the disastrous consequences of that behavior.
  • Encouragement. Be brave! Be honest! Believe in yourself! This story shows the values and behavior society wants from you, and the rewards it can have.
  • Fan Fiction. The story may encourage or warn, but it’s primarily an opportunity to showcase a protagonist who is based on a historic figure or who exemplifies the values of our culture, family, or nation. This is King Arthur; we all know the stories aren’t entirely true, but it’s fun to imagine that they could be. You could make someone up for this story, or grab a figure from history (King Galifar! Lhazaar! Mroranon!).

The next step is to consider if there’s an existing trope that applies, because again, in this case you WANT it to be as easy as possible for the players to fill in the blanks. Person cursed to enchanted sleep? Child trapped in a tower? Hero is rewarded for act of kindness with unreasonably powerful magic item? Got it.

Following this principle, consider a few of the challenges faced in the novel The Gates of Night when a group of adventurers are passing through Thelanis. They need to hunt a legendary beast; this is essentially the Calydonian Boar/Questing Beast myth. A serpent offers to let them cross a river on its back, but only if they answer a question truthfully: this is an encouragement story, be brave and be honest and you’ll make it across. They go to an inn, where the innkeeper demands a character’s voice as payment for the night, promising to return “a voice” in the morning; hijinks ensue when it’s the wrong voice. Don’t make shady deals with strangers!

These sorts of stories are great for a single adventure. If you’re dealing with a longer arc for fey, you may want a deeper story. In creating the Prince of Frost for Court of Stars, I said that he was once the Prince of Summer, but his heart froze when his beloved chose a mortal hero over him. She and the hero cast their spirits forward in time to escape his wrath; now he bides his time in his tower of frozen tears, taking out his anger on mortal heroes and waiting for the spirit of his beloved to be reborn. This adds a touch of tragedy—he’s not just EEEEEEvil, he’s betrayed and bitter—but gives him both an ongoing role (he hates virtuous mortal heroes) and a concrete goal that could be explored (if one or more of the PCs carries the spirit of his beloved or her lover). Yet it’s still a story that I could tell in two sentences.

The final question is if you can add a concretely Eberron touch to the story. For example, in “The Sleeping Prince” it’s Sora Katra who curses the Prince. I could imagine a story about how an ancient druid stuck an axe in Oalian and said that only the destined protector of the land could remove it; when the farmer Arla did, she became the first Warden of the Wood, gathering the bravest rangers from across the land around the Oaken Table in the Greenheart, along with a mystical advisor (The Great Druid). Boom, now I can easily spin off a whole bunch of stories about the Wardens of the Wood by lifting from Arthur.

Another option to consider when creating folktales for your campaign is to involve your players. The whole idea is that these are stories the CHARACTERS will know and care about. So rather than you just telling them, ASK for details. “Hey,Bo Mroranon, everyone knows the story of Mroranon and the Troll King—how young Mroranon tricked the Troll King and stole his crown. Do you remember how exactly he tricked the King?” There are times when this isn’t the right answer, but if you don’t NEED to control every aspect of the story, this is a great way to give the players a sense of personal investment; these are THEIR stories. Note that in doing this, I’ll establish the absolute details; I could have said “Mroranon stole the Troll King’s crown, but lost his hand in the process” — meaning the player can’t now say “The King just gave him the crown and nothing bad happened!

So: I recognize that I haven’t actually answered the original question in the sense of “What are some stories in the world” — but that’s because *I* don’t have a library of existing stories, I make them up as needed. Consider the lesson of the story; if there’s a familiar trope you can hang it on, but at the same time if there’s a twist to ground it in Eberron; and how it’s going to affect the adventure.

Do you have any collections you like?

I think the simplest answer is to just share a picture of a few of my bookshelves. A Field Guide To Little People is certainly a favorite, as are the D’Aulaires myths. But I also enjoy books that take the style of faerie tale and folklore but tell unique stories, such as The Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić; Night’s Master by Tanith Lee; and Deathless by Catherynne Valente.

Have you created any faerie tales or folktales in your Eberron? Share your experiences below! And thanks as always to my Patreon supporters for keeping this blog going!

40 thoughts on “IFAQ: Faerie Tales in Eberron

  1. Do you have any collections you like? I’ve found the {color} Fairy Book series by Andrew Lang (it’s a very old series) to be a helpful resource.

    • I wanted to include a picture with my answer, so I added it to the end of the article.

  2. I like to imagine if there are major cities in Thelanis, they might have developed around stories in the same way Khorvaire developed around magic. Like, if there’s an important road that passes through a well-known story, there are people in the city you can pay to attempt to cross ahead of you so you can be the Third Person who does it successfully.

  3. I was recently part of an adventure called Disharmony in Harmony and it was glorious. Here’s the synopsis.

    Wayfinders are asked to look into a plea for help found in a children’s book in the woods. We figure out how to get to the town and immediately realize as players that we’ve walked into a twisted Disney musical. Our DM did an amazing job of twisting folktalks and fairy stories and Disney classics and standing them on their head in ways we didn’t expect.

    Eventually we find out that a true Fey had come to the town and wanted to play out her own fairy story as the princess but when the townsfolk tried to fight back, one of their own accidentally summoned a coven of hags from Thelanis, long before the party arrived.

    So the town was twice cursed, by the Fey (who lost her memory) and the hags and while they were able to put the hags in magical slumber the townspeople couldn’t break the singing and dancing curses.

    So like big himbos we start out by stupidly gallavanting around town trying to play out the part of big damn heros until we realize we are actually about to free the hags.

    Much infighting ensues as we try and parse out truth from fiction and eventually we figure it out but not before destroying friendships and finding out we were the Disharmony all along.

    Hags dead. Fey freed. Town saved. Much drama.

  4. I’ve got a player running an exiled/hunted elf from Santa’s workshop. I’ve been wracking my brains trying to come up with a mythical Eberron-flavored creature that is stalking the character; working name is, ‘The Owl Lord’.

  5. Always glad to see more inclusion of the Daughters of Sora Kell in Eberron cultural stuff because they truly are more than just leaders of a nation, they’re all noted to be terrifying/powerful figures of history and legend in their own right

  6. Would the Quori have rewritten tales to control the narrative and push their “values” (don’t rebel, submit to authority, know your station)?

    • They have certainly done this IN SARLONA. The Path of Inspiration—the state religion—is in essence a story designed to instill these values. Beyond this, the hanbalani monoliths allow them to control the dreams of the entire populace, which lets them influence culture on a broad scale.

      In Khorvaire, they don’t have this sort of monolithic control at this time. They aren’t supposed to be the secret masters of all stories in Eberron (and it can’t help that Phiarlan and Thuranni —— who are after all the primary source of entertainers and pop culture —— are led by elves who don’t sleep or dream!). But this is exactly the sort of thing they MIGHT do; you could definitely introduce a Dreaming Dark sect that’s made up of bards who are spreading stories and songs that serve the quori agenda.

      • I never ever realized that! Basically there are no elves in Sarlona!

        Do you think the undying court knows of inspired? If it knows, does it care? Or it’s a non-elves problem?

        • I never ever realized that! Basically there are no elves in Sarlona!

          That’s correct. Secrets of Sarlona specifically calls out that the Inspired haven’t invited Aerenal or Valenar to establish embassies in Riedra.

          Do you think the undying court knows of inspired? If it knows, does it care?
          They certainly know OF the Inspired; the Inspired have been ruling the nation for over a thousand years. Do they know what the Inspired ACTUALLY ARE? I’d say probably not. As noted above, the elves have very little contact with Riedra, and no personal experience with Dal Quor. With that said, here’s the official word on the matter from Secrets of Sarlona.

          To date, the Inspired have kept their distance from the lands of the dragons and the Undying Court. Interactions generally occur on foreign soil, either in the courts of Khorvaire or in Stormreach on Xen’drik. No hostility is apparent between these powers, but the ancient elves and mighty dragons watch the Inspired with great interest. Perhaps their inaction means that they’re unaware of the quori agenda, or perhaps they feel that they have nothing to fear from the outsiders.

          • When the description of the Chosen notes their deliberate breeding over generations, in the ECS they’re mentioned to have elven and fiendish blood. What’s the origin of this?

            • Good question, but like the previous question on magebreeding, I think this is off-topic and would be better saved for a discussion of either magebreeding or the Inspired.

      • I meant within their domain, but the idea of them spreading influence that way is an interesting idea.

  7. I am working on a supplement for the Guild that deals with exactly this. I offer thirteen urban tales and each tale has three different regional hooks to represent changes in how the stories are told. This is a fantastic article, and very helpful! Thanks!

  8. Unrelated, but I’ve searched and searched and can’t find any information about it…

    Are there any details of the mechanics of magebreeding? I have an Ashbound Druid in my game that abhors Vadalis and Magebred animals and, I want to add some details of the process for them. Are the animals fed magical foods, spells cast while they’re in utero? Some way to breed across very different species etc…?

    • It’s a good question, but very off topic and not something I’d like to answer as a comment; it should really be a separate IFAQ.

      • Completely understood. Thought I’d put it on your radar in case there was an old article I missed somewhere or you wanted to tackle it in the future. Really appreciate all the juicy worldbuilding you do here.

  9. I’m working up a layer of Thelanis for my players to eventually visit which is a realm of conflict between the Lord of Misrule and the Abbot of Unreason. It will be a carnival of topsy turvy mayhem.

  10. If a historical figure has become a figure of folklore, how would they manifest in Thelanis? In the Sleeping Prince story, how closely does the Thelanis version of Sora Katra resemble the true daughter of Sora Kell? If the faerie tale has changed over time, does the figure in Thelanis change as well, or does the Thelanis version remain a sort of Platonic ideal of the sotry?

    • In 5e all three types of hags that the daughters are, are fey, so even though they aren’t Thelanis-born, I would think that they Are their stories, not that there would be replications on Thelanis… maybe of legends about Katra but I don’t know if there would be a facsimile of her. I could be wrong, though.

      • A very interesting point, however: in 3.5 hags were monstrous humanoids. For all we know, if there’s a 6th edition they’ll be fiends. I don’t intend to change their backstory with each shift. The Daughters aren’t from Thelanis. They were BORN, and unlike archfey they will one day die. On the one hand, they FEEL like figures of fey legend; on the other, many of the stories attributed to them ACTUALLY HAPPENED… track it down and you can find out WHICH prince Katra cursed.

        The short answer is to say that just as Rakshasa are native fiends, the Daughters are NATIVE FEY. They share many traits with their cousins in Thelanis. They have an affinity for fey logic/magic and they have a remarkable talent for inspiring stories. But they are also mortal, and they can do new things every day; they aren’t as trapped in their loops as the archfey of Thelanis.

        So: it’s still the case that Sora Katra isn’t in or from Thelanis, and that she often seems to fit the role of the Lady in Shadow, who IS an archfey in Thelanis. Coincidence? Hard to know…

    • This ties to the Mror dragonshard, where you asked if there was an interaction between the Mror and Thelanis. Let me start by reposting some of that, emphasizing a few points…
      The planes are largely independent of Eberron. Shavarath EMBODIES war. It’s the platonic ideal of “War.” Some scholars argue that we have War because Shavarath exists; others say that Shavarath exists because we have war. But there’s no way to know the truth, and the simple fact is that there’s war in Eberron and war in Shavarath, but most soldiers are never going to meet a Shavar angel or a demon.

      The same goes with stories and Thelanis. The Mror tell lots of stories. Some are undoubtedly overblown tall tales. And if you GO to Thelanis, you might wander into a region where you say “Wait a moment, I KNOW this story! This is just like Mroranon and the Troll King!” But a) It’s NOT Mroranon and the protagonist won’t be called Mroranon; they’ll call themselves “The Warrior Prince” or something like that. It’s not a PERFECT match — it’s just the same essential plot. Which leads to b) It’s unclear whether this story exists because of the actions of Mroranon… or whether Mroranon and the Troll King in fact has varied from the truth over the centuries to be MORE LIKE THIS STORY, because Thelanis leaks into the collective unconscious.

      The key point: Thelanis is home to a version of The Sleeping Prince. In the Thelanis version, the Prince is cursed by an archfey known as the Lady in Shadow, an iconic witch-figure who both shuns and is shunned by the wider world. The people of Breland tells a story that matches the basic details of the story, but in THEIR version, the Lady in Shadow is Sora Katra. The Mror have a version of that story too, and in THEIR version, it’s Lady Narathun who curses the prince. In ancient Sarlona, the people of Corvagura told a version of the story, but the Lady in Shadow is the Devil-Seer of Ohr Kaluun. They’re all clearly versions of the same story, and the crazy part? It’s possible that something like this may have actually happened in one or more of these cases; Sora Katra may have ACTUALLY DONE what the story says. Crazy part two? The Lady in Shadow is OLDER THAN ALL OF THE CIVILIZATIONS THAT TELL THE STORY.

      The point is that people DON’T KNOW how these things are tied together. Does the story keep repeating because Thelanis keeps pushing it out into the world? Or is it just that there’s only so many ideas out there, and it happens that there’s a story in Thelanis for almost every occasion? Is it possible for people in Eberron to change a layer of Thelanis because fo the way they tell a story? MAYBE. But it’s not TRIVIAL and it’s not obvious. The Lady in Shadow and the Sleeping Prince are ARCHETYPES that leak out in many forms across many cultures; Thelanis is essentially home to the pure tropes, not the specific cultural interpreations of those tropes.

      • Secondary side note: The Lady in Shadow isn’t an archfey whose entire existence is tied to cursing a single prince. She’s linked to a number of different stories playing out across Thelanis; she’s the embodiment of the “Feared Witch Figure Who Curses People Who Get In Her Way/Don’t Respect Her.” So she might, for example, also have a son locked in a tall tower, and she might have cursed another family with sterility, etc. Again, in the versions of stories people tell in Eberron those may generally be three different people, but she’s the ARCHETYPE that fills the role.

      • That ties to the other thing, where an archfey might be sympathetic to a mortal or at least material figure.

        Maybe Sora Katra did the thing because she was like the Lady in Shadow. Maybe she did it, and thus gained her favor. Maybe The Lady in Shadow influenced her to do it.

        Maybe the Archfey are pulled toward emerging patterns that may fit their story, and if the moons are aligned, they’re able to push material beings to play their Fey stories out in Eberron.

  11. The idea of people on Eberron telling fictional stories about the Greyhawk figures referenced in core rules (Mordenkainen, Tenser ect.) makes me chuckle a bit.

    On a serious note, I had an idea: Binder lore isn’t really touched on by Tome of Magic or PGtE (ToM does, however, say a lot about Truenamer lore on Eberron for some bizarre reason). Given each vestige has story, and that story actually has relations to some mechanical effects (conflicting spirits and influence effects generally), perhaps on Eberron, Binders work with the power of STORY itself, the accuracy of it be damned?

    That would solve two of the major problems with Binders in Eberron 1: The whole fluff of vestiges existing interacts weirdly with Eberron’s handling of the afterlife 2: Most of the stories just flat out won’t work with Eberron lore.

  12. I’m curious about the split between myths and faerie tales as it pertains to Thelanis. In previous Dragonshards and articles, you’ve mentioned that myths are very separate from the kind of faerie story that Thelanis is made out of. However in this article, you mention myths like the Caledonian Boar being used as inspiration for these kinds of Fey adventures, and objectively mythical creatures like Dryads and Satyr are mainstays of the Fey in D&D. At what point does a myth become separate from a faerie tale, when they are both effectively fantastical stories told to make sense of the world around you?

    • The tales of Thelanis aren’t about GODS. They don’t involve the creation of the world, and they don’t claim to have ongoing influence over the people of the world; they are simply stories that generally teach a lesson of some sort.

      In the myth of the Calydonian Boar, it is Artemis who unleashes the boar. But my point in bringing it up was that it’s a story in which heroes must overcome a mighty beast; in the novel in which this scene appears, the Sovereigns aren’t invoked in any way (it wasn’t unleashed by Balinor, and one of the hunters wasn’t raised by Arawai). It’s not a story that NEEDS to be tied to gods, even though I quoted an example that is. Ultimately, this comes back to the point I make in another comment: the stories of Thelanis aren’t about SPECIFIC INDIVIDUALS, whether they are gods or mortals; they are about ARCHETYPES.

      objectively mythical creatures like Dryads and Satyr are mainstays of the Fey in D&D.

      In OUR world those creatures are drawn from specific myths. But again, they don’t need to be tied to GODS, any more than they are tied to nature. In my previous article on Thelanis and the Fey, I said this:
      While the Greensingers would take issue with this, in my opinion the Fey of Thelanis aren’t part of nature… not even the dryad. The Fey are the magic we wish was in the world. The dryad is the spirit we want the tree to have, when we see a slender willow and think of it as a beautiful woman. But there’s nothing natural about a tree having a spirit that resembles a human woman; it’s something magical, a story we want to believe. For me, this is what Thelanis is. The realm of stories. The realm of the magic we want in the world. The Fey reflect hopes, fears, secrets and desires both conscious and unconscious.

      A myth is a story, yes; but it’s a SPECIFIC story. The tales that shape Thelanis are ICONIC stories, that can be retold in dozens of different ways by different cultures. A perfect example of this is the story of the Deluge. The tale of Utnapishtim surviving the flood, of Deucalion or Noah—THESE are myths. But Thelanis wouldn’t have Utnapishtim, Noah, or Deucalion; it would just have a layer that tells the story of THE FLOOD, with a ship-builder who survives it. Different cultures can CLAIM that dryads are the children or Arawai, or the tears of Eberron; but the fact is that they are what we want to be there when we look at a tree and anthropomorphize it. And ultimately the fey of Thelanis are born from that desire, not shaped by any specific god.

  13. I haven’t had a chance to play it yet, but I’ve got a firm idea that started off as a mechanical widget – “I love the House Ghallanda spell list, and hey, Goodberry on Warlock spell slots could do some interesting things” – and turned into a seed of a character and a fairy tale.

    It’s one of the classic shapes – lone traveller comes to inn, asks for a room for the night, can’t pay on the spot but promises gratitude; innkeeper lets them in and is rewarded when the traveller turns out to be wealthy or powerful.

    The specific character would be rewarded with an eldritch pact and become an Archfey patron Warlock, and details would need to be established with any hypothetical DM whose game I used the idea in, but I’m curious how folks would put an Eberron twist on that fey noble. The obvious shape for the story is some sort of Exiled Prince figure; anyone got thoughts on what they might be doing in Khorvaire, rather than dropping in on other fey in Thelanis?

    • This sounds good to me. The basic point is there there ARE archfey whose stories specifically involve meddling with the material world. The Prince of Frost COULD just pick on imaginary heroes in Thelanis, but his story is that he pulls the wings off mortal flies, and so he does. What you’re talking about sounds entirely appropriate if either there’s a manifest zone tied to the archfey’s domain near the inn, or if the event occurred at a time when Thelanis was coterminous with Eberron—which are times when this sort of fey interaction becomes more common.

      So certainly, “The Exiled Prince” seems like a fine core concept for an archfey. The main question is where the story goes next, because that’s the question of “What do they want your warlock to do?” The Prince of Frost wants to torment heroes while waiting for his beloved to return. Does the Exiled Prince want you to be kind to people? To help him regain his lost kingdom? To find the treasures of his kingdom that are scattered across the land?

      The mysterious traveler story also, of course, evokes the Traveler of the Dark Six, but this doesn’t sound like a typical Traveler story (which would likely have ended with the inn burning down).

      • Thanks for the thoughts! They’re already sparking more ideas for me.

        One big advantage of going with a coterminous period rather than a manifest zone would be to make it a bit more exceptional – if the Exiled Prince spends a lot of their time testing people’s hospitality, it feels like there would be a lot more warlocks around the place, but if it’s something that can only happen when the Planes align it’s easier to see why such a major change can result.

        The Traveller angle is one I hadn’t considered, and I really like the tension it brings in – having two directly opposed cultural narratives like that can make for a lot more ambiguity. There’s space to bring some more of that in, too; sure the inn didn’t burn down, but upending a comfortable life to thrust an innkeeper into intrigue and danger feels like an Upheaval, so I could easily see some religious types interpreting the fey as representing or channelling the Traveller in the same way as every village blacksmith is a part of Onatar.

    • What Keith said, but also, I’d tie in Prince Oargev ir’Wynarn of Cyre, who is very much a current Exiled Prince.

      If the character is Cyran, the story is going to resonate with them on a whole extra level. If they’re tied to the prince in some way, even more so.

      Perhaps Oargev himself was the actual traveler, but the archfey known as The Exiled Prince essentially possessed him or influenced him or whatever in this instance, and Prince Oargev played out his role as the PC played theirs, and at th end Oargev returned and gave the PC an item which the Archfey Prince has secretly made into the PC’s Eldritch Pact Boon.

      • This is an interesting concept to explore: archfey who essentially feel a connection to mortals who embody their stories. So by this logic, the Exiled Prince could feel protective of Oargev and assign warlocks to help him; while the Lady in Shadow might provide assistance to Sora Katra.

        • Yeah! And the three sisters (or your Archfey take on the Raven Queen with a connection to Lady Vol) might aid Blood of Vol Seekers, or figures like Lady Vol, etc.

          Meanwhile other archfey might have an especial animosity toward certain types of mortals, for similar reasons.

  14. Thelanis has left me in a bit of a bind in recent years, actually. Its presentation as a “realm of stories” wasn’t in anything I read about it until I saw it mentioned on this blog a while back, so my earliest usages of it in my games featured fairies in a completely different light. Then I got a few players who encountered Thelanis and made some missteps based on assumptions that they were dealing with living stories. So, I’ve sorta made Thelanis have multiple sub-realms in my usage now. There’s sort of the centralized “Land of Fairy” where roguish tricksters and strange monsters haunt the forests while mysterious and imperious nobles dance forever in their castles. But then I have the “Land of Fable” where characters from popular stories and figures in the collective consciousness (and more recently memes witnessed in Thuranni/Phiarlan shadow theaters) exist, along with popular images of historical figures.

    I’ve *also* designed (but not yet subjected my players to) a Land of Fates wherein it is not the fey who live out their stories and patterns forever and ever, by mortals who get trapped in their own representation. I’m still working out the details, but this is sort of where a human might “become” a story, for better or for worse (Ebeneezer Scrooge’s Eberron counterpart might live there, for instance, though I think he would live in his happily ever after version if he came to this realm after the “story” ended.)

    I’ve also used a phrase for a few players who are trying to work their heads around the characters they meet being “stories”. One wizard says that they’re “not truly bound” by the stories they’re known by, but “the math works out that way”, as if Thelanis has a weird kind of narrative-driven coriolis-effect set of rules that may not truly exist, but you’ll probably be safe if you make plans assuming they do.

  15. In my Eberron, the Raven Queen and her two sisters; The Red Witch and The Lady of Silver Mists (also called the Lady of The Well), are three archfey who both created the Shadar-Kai and Vryloka, and are from the same ancient race from which those two races come.

    Their story is the first instance of a particular great myth, which is (behind the screen) part of how one becomes archfey. Millenia ago, before the first Dragonmark, when Eberron had 13 moons, there was an island and a people who held the island, and had access to its power. That power was coveted, and they were attacked. By fiends, giants, by dragons, and by other mortal races. Finally a power came so great that the people were not enough, and the lesser islands fell one by one.

    The Three gave council to the people, who were after all their own people, and bound the blood of all the people, and their beast friends especially the brave wolves who fought beside them and the ravens who gave them council, and they cast a spell.

    The Raven Queen gave a third of the people the power of Death and Darkness, and they became Shadar-Kai.

    The Red Witch gave a third of the people power of the Wolf, and the power to become great crimson wolves, and they became the Kalesh-Vryloka.

    The Lady of Silver Mist gave the remaining third of the people dominion over the mist itself, and the ability to become one with it, and they became the Torat-Vryloka.

    But there was a cost to this spell. The three sacrificed their true names, and the island itself was hidden from the world, even from the people themselves, and the name of their home, and their own name as a people was lost also, so that they called themselves by new names, and called their lost home Jaelis Vas Shadar, The Home Lost to Darkness.

    In other cultures the story sometimes describes an elven kingdom lost to the giants, or a great kingdom of Dwarves lost to the Darlkyr, but at the root is the tale of Jaelis Vas Shadar, and the Three Sisters.

  16. In terms of known stories, growing up as a generational Slavic Pagan, stories of Baba Yaga were commonly told. Sora Teraza had made a marvelous Baba Yaga equivalent in many campaigns. The old Witch who can be a blessing or a nightmare to the brave heros depending on her mood and if they are worthy.

  17. A bit late to the party on this post, but I’m working on a Thelanis adventure and wound up wondering: Eberron has manifest zones and is affected by planar proximity; is that true of the other Planes?
    In Thelanis specifically, I suppose an area riven by battle might just be a story about war playing out, but it might also be a manifest zone of Shavarath?
    Might there be a warm spring in the middle of Risia that is a manifestation of Fernia?

    I’ve just started digging into Exploring Eberron, and I’m loving it so far, lots of good planar knowledge to sink my teeth in.

    • No, per canon the planes aren’t directly to each other. The idea is that each plane is a pure, idealized principle, and that the material plane is where all those concepts converge; that what defines the material. The Immeasurable Market is the closest you get to a planar crossroad, but even that doesn’t channel the traits of the connected planes.

Comments are closed.