Relationship between Fey, Demons, and Divines

[Trask]

DM: You are walking through a dark and lonely wood when a shape steps out from behind a tree. It has cloven hooves, taloned fingers, gleaming black horns, and is covered in short bristly fur.
Player: Holy crap its a demon!
DM: Actually its a Satyr, which is a Fey being. Totally different

Nonsense aside, I run into this problem a lot when worldbuilding. I like to represent the different classic D&D elements in my world, but its hard to find a place for everyone without overlapping, considering that to ancient peoples faery creatures double as demons and in modern horror literature both were used for the purposes of lovecraftian horror, its hard to keep it all separate.

What are some ways you've differentiated the different supernatural beings in your setting? Where do the fairies come from and how do they differ from demons? If you have Old Ones what are they doing that makes them different? What differentiates a fire elemental from a demon of the fiery pit?

All cosmologically and metaphysically speaking of course. The most generic model I can conjure is Heaven and Hell representing Order and Chaos while Faeries and Elementals exist outside of the power to Create but have the freedom to inhabit the physical world and manifest their power there without the use of a medium (such as a cleric or warlock)

[Flumphburger]

I'm actually in the process of sort of assembling a homebrew DnD setting at the moment, and ran into the same issue myself. What I ultimately decided is that...there is no difference. Or rather, the differences are social and political rather than innate.

"Fey" is a broad category of beings that are not gods or directly empowered servants of the gods, but have a spark of divine power in them. Most are fallen angels (in many cases "fallen" through no fault of their own; there have been wars between the gods, and gods have died in them, and while SOME of a dead god's angels will sign on with another god of similar disposition the others can end up all over the place), and a few are minor gods or discarded fragments of gods that became too weak to draw power directly from worship.

Some fey are benevolent toward mortals, most are ambivalent, and some are hostile. Without a god to sustain them, these former angels have all needed to find alternate sources of nourishment (originally provided by their patron deities, using a fraction of the worship they receive). Most have attached themselves to the natural world and feed on the life energy of the plants, animals, and land itself in small amounts, careful to encourage regrowth and protect their chosen environs to ensure longterm sustainability (this is why many fey live in wild places and are strongly protective of them). Others have turned to shadier means of survival, with one particularly horrid faction known now as devils who consume the souls of mortals.

So, when an angel stops being an angel, it tends to take on a form with some combination of horns, wings, fur, tail, and scales, for whatever reason. You can't tell by looking if a given fey is a devil who feeds on suffering and souls, or a harmless nature spirit who lives in symbiosis with a grove of ancient trees (though if he's wearing black spiky armor and wielding a fiery sword with a pommel of human bones, he's prooooobably the former). Their powers differ depending on the path they've taken, but there are often some commonalities left over from their shared origins as angels or demigods.

[the_david]

I'd say fey tend to be more humanoid, but then there are the exceptions like satyrs...
One of the worst offenders to me is demons vs. devils. Pit Fiends and Balors are way too similar to make sense to me. It does provide a kind of symmetry that works well with the great wheel cosmology. (If you take a good look at the great wheel cosmology you'll notice that the outer planes are neatly ordered by alignment. To this day, I'm still amazed that the chaotic powers put up with that nonsense.) The deities in Dragonlance have a similar symmetry.

[Aniikinis]

I typically use the planescape cosmology with elements taken from other editions to make a better picture. This is mostly because I grew up with 2nd edition and planescape with spelljammer influences, but also because it allows for dramatic backdrops so long as the blood war isn't brought front and center for too long.


So you have the 4 max singularly aligned planes, 4 max dually aligned planes, and 8 dually aligned planes with one side more prominent in between forming the great wheel with The Outlands (the True Neutral plane) in the center and Sigil hovering above it.


"Underneath" The Wheel sits the material plane with three sides: The Plane of Shadow(with the shadowfell being a small region and Ravenloft and even smaller region), The Prime, and Fey'ri (with the lands of Faeri, the UnderFey, Feywild, and The Court Lands). The Astral Plane reaches from the Prime Material out into the Outer Planes and does not cross with the Ethereal in any way. The Ethereal Plane has two (technically three) regions: the border ethereal that touches the prime material plane, the deep ethereal that touches the inner planes, and the region between the two where the "fog" gets thicker and harder to maneuver in until you hit the deep and feel the traces of elemental energies.

Things live in the border that can affect the prime, and the same is for the deep. Though, legends tell of monstrous things in the thickest reaches of the fog before the elements blow it away. Stories tell of gargantuan phase spiders able to ensnare entire demiplanes, strange pyramids seemingly phasing back into the border, tendrils of living ethereal fog that seem to writhe with an intelligence searching for... something elsewhere. The ethereal has barely been explored and many secrets are hiding in that bleak fog, unlike the star pocked astral, where one can see for thousands of miles and ride whales made of dreams to distant lands.



"Within" the Material is the Inner or Elemental Planes with the axis of Positive and Negative running through the center. The planes are infinite but bleed into one another through rifts and where the rifts of planes meet come the paraelemental (fire+Earth), quasielemental (Fire+Positive), and paraquasielemental (Fire+Earth+Positive) planes.

Some of my settings have other cosmologies, but I won't get into detail with those unless asked.

[Izzyboshi]

Some fey are benevolent toward mortals, most are ambivalent, and some are hostile. Without a god to sustain them, these former angels have all needed to find alternate sources of nourishment (originally provided by their patron deities, using a fraction of the worship they receive). Most have attached themselves to the natural world and feed on the life energy of the plants, animals, and land itself in small amounts, careful to encourage regrowth and protect their chosen environs to ensure longterm sustainability (this is why many fey live in wild places and are strongly protective of them). Others have turned to shadier means of survival, with one particularly horrid faction known now as devils who consume the souls of mortals.

So, when an angel stops being an angel, it tends to take on a form with some combination of horns, wings, fur, tail, and scales, for whatever reason. You can't tell by looking if a given fey is a devil who feeds on suffering and souls, or a harmless nature spirit who lives in symbiosis with a grove of ancient trees (though if he's wearing black spiky armor and wielding a fiery sword with a pommel of human bones, he's prooooobably the former). Their powers differ depending on the path they've taken, but there are often some commonalities left over from their shared origins as angels or demigods.

The origin of this line of thinking comes from the real world ousting of folk beliefs in Scotland and Ireland in favor of Christianity. The result repainted all the original gods or spirit beings as fitting into the cosmology of the Christian rhetoric so that they could in essence have their cake and eat it too. Given that a lot of RPGs ( D&D included) are Pantheistic setting I feel like that doesn't quite jive for me personally because there are Gods for so many different aspects of the natural world or different alignments that it is hard to pick out which gods had angels to start with and why.

One real world inspiration one can draw from that has both a Pantheistic religion and a weird bunch of critters that like to play tricks on or kill humans for fun like the faeries can be found in Japanese culture.The parallels between yokai and fairies sometimes gives them a fair amount of overlap and the stories about either once you strip out regional cultural differences and settings, can be kind of interchangeable. Yokai can be manifestations of the physical or natural world, small divinities created by some accumulation of natural power. They can be spirits of the dead who have been transformed through time to lose their human qualities and gaining supernatural power. They can manifest from objects or animals that have accumulated strength and become wise in the human sense either becoming helpful or malicious based on how they were treated. Yokai are a manifestation of the world's power. You never know might be fun to give the fair folk the unusual origin of not being outsiders of the planes but having them be true natives of the world they are in. Weird creatures that originally manifested from energies that pooled, shaping themselves rather than being the creations of specific gods. Wild and feral critters with no allegiances to anything but themselves.

[Trask]

You never know might be fun to give the fair folk the unusual origin of not being outsiders of the planes but having them be true natives of the world they are in. Weird creatures that originally manifested from energies that pooled, shaping themselves rather than being the creations of specific gods. Wild and feral critters with no allegiances to anything but themselves.

I like this idea a lot. The "Fallen Angel" Fey never quite sat right with me either for typical polytheistic D&D, nor do I really like the idea of the "Feywild" as a separate place from Earth.

[Izzyboshi]

I like this idea a lot. The "Fallen Angel" Fey never quite sat right with me either for typical polytheistic D&D, nor do I really like the idea of the "Feywild" as a separate place from Earth.

I find that a lot of fantasy settings get a bit hung up on it's own Occidental origins. The way it treats gods coming from the Grecco-Roman and Norse Germanic traditions through. We tend to view the worship of deities through a lens subtly tinted with a history of Christian faith and tradition. Older editions tended to have you put forth on your character sheet which God was your god (even for players who were not clerics or paladins) but in most Pantheistic cultures you sort of just worshiped whatever made sense given your immediate need. Voice a prayer to the Goddess of the Hearth for a peaceful home, the God of war to be victorious in battle, or the local nature god to support your community with wood, food etc. Some gods were worshiped universally others you might never need to call on because you aren't a smith or a scholar or a warrior.

Dividing games from this origin and giving it a flair of something like Hinduism, Taoism or Shintoism while keeping it's original skin can lead to something a bit more unique feeling I find. Some of these theistic traditions don't shunt spirits and divinities off into a corner where they are foreigners. They are as much a living part of the world as humans are and I think that kind of makes them more interesting.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Like Izzyboshi, I take the "fey as natural beings" route, with a twist.

I have two layers of "fey":
Nature spirits (for which I appropriated the Japanese word "kami") are inhuman, eternal* spirits of natural elements. They can be propitiated or appeased, but each one is unique. Druids and rangers work through and gain power from kami. These are totally natural beings.

* As eternal as the natural feature they "inhabit", which might be as large as a mountain or sea or as small as a patch of wildflowers. They can amalgamate together into a single consciousness, sharing information. So a mountain kami might be the confluence of a bunch of smaller spirits representing the trees, rocks, streams, etc. that make up the mountain.

Fey are what results when kami are exposed to mortal emotions, desires, and actions. The kami amalgamate into collective consciousnesses that mimic, in a warped way, mortals. They are a cracked mirror onto mortal minds themselves. Sometimes they result from a mortal who gives themselves to a single larger kami, who then inhabits the body (dryads are a common result of this hybrid human/kami being, where the kami is that of a great tree or forest).

Fey can be "killed", which really means that the bonds holding the kami together are disrupted and they break into their constituents. Some fey are ephemeral (especially the little ones), lasting only until they get "bored". Others are much longer lived. All are alien in mindset. The greater ones try to learn and mimic mortal thought, growing more and more complex as they live.

Angels and Devils are Astral entities, spiritual beings. The forms they take when they interact with mortals come from the universe-level requirement that all mortal-plane entities must have physical bodies to interact with physical things. Angels and devils differ in their role in the universal economy--angels are bound by duty/oath to guard the universe against things from Beyond and to police the planes. Devils are the go-betweens between the Astral and the Mortal, both for the gods and as summoned by mortals. If you meet an "angel", it's most often a devil in angel's clothing. And that's normal. Killing a summoned devil merely disrupts the spell-created shell they're inhabiting and sends them back to the Astral.

Demons are beings that gain power by consuming souls. This process corrupts them, until they can only live in the prison-like pocket dimension of the Abyss. They can be summoned outside, but it's uncomfortable (especially for the stronger, and thus less "human" ones). Demons are vulnerable wherever, unless they've made other arrangements (like storing a piece of themselves in the Abyss).

[Izzyboshi]

Phoenixphyre seems to have have a D&D friendly way of incorporating some Shinto aspects into a system. It's way harder to pull off but if you want to go full Shinto (cuz why not) there's a bit less of a Nature spirit > Fey evolution but more of a lateral shift.

Kami in the Japanese tradition is a catch all phrase. It can sort of be used to mean "divine spirit" which encapsulates everything from spirits of natural sources like trees, rivers and mountains to big name divinities we'd call "Gods" to the spirit born in an object like a statue or a teacup for example.

Yokai (Ayakashi or Mononoke are other names) are sort of feral kami. They might have originated as a kami or from the spirit of a person or they might have been born from a lineage of other yokai. They can come from things like a cracked mirror, a once loved umbrella someone disposed of or a once venerated wild wood god who was forgotten and got lonely. They aren't defined by people, some are just wild creatures that dislike humans.

The line between Kami, yokai and ghosts is really blurry. It's possible for things to cross those boundaries really easily. The ghost of a famous human who died in some horrible way might be worshiped as a measure taken to pacify it elevating it into the ranks of a respected god and then be forgotten and become resentful twisting itself into a fearsome monster yokai which could be later elevated back into the ranks of Kami. The transition is fluid and the only thing that defines one from the other is whether they are working constructively or destructively. Things working outside the positive realm can generally possess people and be purified or exorcised utilizing the power of kami who are in line with the selfless duty of upholding the natural world.

Japan does have it's angels and demons too but they are components of the afterlife being true outsiders both literally and metaphorically. Shinto doesn't deal much with the afterlife so demons were introduced through the mixing of Chinese Buddhist Pure-Land sects which has a heaven/hell based afterlife.

In this way kami and yokai are kind of spiritual components of things in the mundane world. Bit hard to work into a rigid RP system like D&D but it might be an interesting homebrew recolor of lore that could shake things up for jaded players.

[Max_Killjoy]

Not to play amateur mod, but I'd hate to see the thread get canned, and to me it seems like it's already right on if not crossing the line.

[Trask]

Not to play amateur mod, but I'd hate to see the thread get canned, and to me it seems like it's already right on if not crossing the line.

How exactly?

[Max_Killjoy]

How exactly?

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/announcement.php?a=1 -- scroll down to "Inappropriate Topics". Really, I should have just linked to this in the first place, apologies. Your OP and question isn't the issue.

[Izzyboshi]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/announcement.php?a=1 -- scroll down to "Inappropriate Topics". Really, I should have just linked to this in the first place, apologies. Your OP and question isn't the issue.

So banned topics include :

Real-world religions (including religious reactions to gaming)
Real-world politics (including political reactions to gaming)
Graphic violence
Illegal drugs
Illegal/Criminal activity
Explicit sexuality


Hmm... Seems like a bit of a hamstring not being able to discuss how one might be able to glean interesting ideas from the wealth of world religions and mythologies that exist but I suppose the rule was probably placed there to avoid people taking offense. Well that gains a "harumph" from me for the end of an interesting line of discussion.

[Max_Killjoy]

Hmm... Seems like a bit of a hamstring not being able to discuss how one might be able to glean interesting ideas from the wealth of world religions and mythologies that exist but I suppose the rule was probably placed there to avoid people taking offense. Well that gains a "harumph" from me for the end of an interesting line of discussion.

IANAM, but it has been my impression that if you "file the names off" so that you're not referring to any specific real-world religion or deity, that goes a long way. I've seen theoretical discussions get pretty deep.

[Izzyboshi]

IANAM, but it has been my impression that if you "file the names off" so that you're not referring to any specific real-world religion or deity, that goes a long way. I've seen theoretical discussions get pretty deep.

It just makes me sad to divest something of it's history and context as it takes away an opportunity to expand and learn subjects or philosophies that have deep connections to other times and places. Don't get me wrong. I thank you for the heads up and will respect the peace but I still find the rule disappointing.

[GaelofDarkness]

I like the idea of fey as yokai. I have two other interpretations of fey that I've used and that worked quite well at the table - in that the players got it without a big lore dump or anything.

First is that just as the celestials and fiends are manifestations of morality (i.e. good and evil) the fey are manifestations of aesthetics (i.e. beautiful and ugly). The fey do not do things because they are "good" or "evil", they do things because they suit their aesthetic. Dryads, nymphs, pixies and the like are all about beauty though each in a particular way (in water, in forests, in fun and games). Hags are the opposite end of the spectrum. They're all about the ugly. Because the aesthetics of being good is typically not considered ugly, people often mistake fey of beauty for "good" creatures and this is why the fey can seem so unpredicatble and enigmatic.

Second is that fey are spirits of nature but more specifically, they are spirits of living things - the emergent properties of nature as it grows into more complex forms. So there are fey for forests, intense emotional responses, living things impressions of the natural world and other things that are of nature but not in it's raw form, like say a fire. In this sense they are more like counterparts to elementals or even dragons who tend to be associated with nature in base form - elemental fire or water or what have you. Equally you can put them as counterparts to undead being the collapse or twisting of the complex forms of nature that gave them life, creating some really interesting implications for how you worldbuild that had nothing to do with the divine or profane. In this interpretation, advanced technology is actually a pretty "fey" thing and I like how that flips the typical notion on it's head.

There are some cases that don't fit into these very well though. Like the korred which isn't really about any kind of aesthetics and is definitely about elemental earth and metal.

[Izzyboshi]

I like the idea of fey as yokai. I have two other interpretations of fey that I've used and that worked quite well at the table - in that the players got it without a big lore dump or anything.

First is that just as the celestials and fiends are manifestations of morality (i.e. good and evil) the fey are manifestations of aesthetics (i.e. beautiful and ugly). The fey do not do things because they are "good" or "evil", they do things because they suit their aesthetic. Dryads, nymphs, pixies and the like are all about beauty though each in a particular way (in water, in forests, in fun and games). Hags are the opposite end of the spectrum. They're all about the ugly. Because the aesthetics of being good is typically not considered ugly, people often mistake fey of beauty for "good" creatures and this is why the fey can seem so unpredicatble and enigmatic.

That is outright just a cool idea. People do tend to ascribe a lot of false virtue on pretty things but it is a shallow interpretation of something's nature that can't be trusted which seems spot on for the fey. Following this line of reasoning what about things that fall close to the middle of the ugly/beautiful spectrum like satyrs?

[Tvtyrant]

DM: You are walking through a dark and lonely wood when a shape steps out from behind a tree. It has cloven hooves, taloned fingers, gleaming black horns, and is covered in short bristly fur.
Player: Holy crap its a demon!
DM: Actually its a Satyr, which is a Fey being. Totally different

Nonsense aside, I run into this problem a lot when worldbuilding. I like to represent the different classic D&D elements in my world, but its hard to find a place for everyone without overlapping, considering that to ancient peoples faery creatures double as demons and in modern horror literature both were used for the purposes of lovecraftian horror, its hard to keep it all separate.

What are some ways you've differentiated the different supernatural beings in your setting? Where do the fairies come from and how do they differ from demons? If you have Old Ones what are they doing that makes them different? What differentiates a fire elemental from a demon of the fiery pit?

All cosmologically and metaphysically speaking of course. The most generic model I can conjure is Heaven and Hell representing Order and Chaos while Faeries and Elementals exist outside of the power to Create but have the freedom to inhabit the physical world and manifest their power there without the use of a medium (such as a cleric or warlock)

Most frequently I turn to animism for most of the monsters, fae and other weird stuff. The world is full of spirits which act symbiotically with life, faeries are spirits of memory and dream which is why they seem so weird. The spirits feed on human dreams and memories but become trapped in repeating them, which is why faeries have repetitive and dreamlike qualities.

The Court of the Unseelie and Seelie are reenactments of the original human courts, repeating the first party and first war forever. To humans that see the faeries this seems quite strange, but to the fae survival demands they perfectly repeat their actions in order to draw on the residual energy of the original event. Other faeries repeat memories of actions and events, or more frighteningly dreams. Faerie nightmares can exist too, creating monsters that repeat themselves forever.

Druids, Bards and Witches gain power by bargaining with spirits and can influence the faeries by offering them sustenance in return for favors, their magic is actually a collection of hundreds or thousands of bargains being carried out.

[JoeJ]

Deities range tremendously in power, from the great gods who created the world down to the minor spirits of trees and streams. Fey creatures are the lower end of this range. Essentially, they are very minor gods. Fiends share the same divine nature, but are not associated with particular natural phenomena; they exist only to cause pain, sickness, and death. Most of these beings date from the beginning of the world, but there are a few who were mortal once, and who were transformed after delving too deeply into things better left alone.

[Flumphburger]

The origin of this line of thinking comes from the real world ousting of folk beliefs in Scotland and Ireland in favor of Christianity. The result repainted all the original gods or spirit beings as fitting into the cosmology of the Christian rhetoric so that they could in essence have their cake and eat it too. Given that a lot of RPGs ( D&D included) are Pantheistic setting I feel like that doesn't quite jive for me personally because there are Gods for so many different aspects of the natural world or different alignments that it is hard to pick out which gods had angels to start with and why.

That's exactly the history I was trying to capture in mythical/fantasy form.

But you are right in pointing out that the lack of distinction between the gods themselves and the natural forces typically associated with fey in most DnD settings makes this sort of silly, now that I think about it.

Regardless though, I don't think that fey and devils should be fundamentally different sorts of beings. There are just too many aesthetic and conceptual similarities. So, whatever origins they both have, they should be related.

[Whiskeyjack8044]

My setting was inspired by Mordenkainen's Elf origin myth. Corellon still loves his children even though he banished them. He created the Fey Wilds from his imagination and wrapped it around the prime material plane like a comfort blanket. He wanted to give his children a place to live that would remind them of home. This is why elves are fey, and why the Feywilds are a fantastical copy of Prime flora, Funa, and Geography.

[Eldan]

I think one important difference in the D&D setting is that fey are creatures of primal nature, while demons and the like are born from mortal belief. Meaning that fey can have a soul, while demons are a soul.

[GaelofDarkness]

That is outright just a cool idea. People do tend to ascribe a lot of false virtue on pretty things but it is a shallow interpretation of something's nature that can't be trusted which seems spot on for the fey. Following this line of reasoning what about things that fall close to the middle of the ugly/beautiful spectrum like satyrs?

Thanks!

Well, for fey like satyrs I'd treat them more as having a particular style than being all about beauty or ugliness. They are still creatures of aesthetics, but they sit in that super-subjective space where a style might appeal to some and repulse others. Like something might be edgy or a little punk-rock and it's certainly still a style just not really what one would call definitively "beautiful" or "ugly", depending on cultural norms I guess.

Satyrs are just straight up libertines, all about debauchery and hedonism, or rather the style of these things. They don't really care if something is actually pleasurable, only that it is most definitely viewed as indulgent. For me, a satyr would look at a picture of a bunch of folks passed out drunk (some possibly having barfed) in a baroque banquet hall and post it to instagram captioned "my aesthetic". So a satyr will want to have the company of beautiful fey - whether or not he actually gets along with those fey. So if the beautiful fey entertain his presence, he will likely ally with the beautiful fey. If not, he might ally with the ugly fey in some scheme or another in an attempt to force the beautiful fey into spending time with him. Such a satyr would literally spread a disfiguring disease throughout a town to get an invite to the fey dinner party imo. Of course, a satyr would only ever get their hands dirty as an absolute last resort because it doesn't gel with their schtick.

I'd also add that it could be fun to run a game where a region has wildly different aesthetic preferences than our norms - impacting the local fey populations as a result. For example, if a community of dwarves considered forests to be dirty, nasty things fit only for firewood and ghost stories then dryads might appear as gnarled and twisted figures of briars and broken branches. Their ability to enchant might be replaced by something that intimidates a creature into service instead of charming them. They're still "good" fey, and have essentially the same as any other dryads but the way in which that is perceived changes their very being. Conversely, murderous quicklings or redcaps might have a certain beauty to goblins or orcs. To drow or others who consider pain an artform, a meenlock's ability to psychically torture creatures and eventually turn them into meenlocks (the very source of their suffering) could well be viewed as the pinnacle of the artform.

[Cazaril]

My preferred method draws a lot from the Gaiman-esque idea that magical beings take their form based on the imaginations of nearby peoples. So your demons, angels, faeries, djinn, etc, are all variations on the same basic theme: a newly-formed or newly-summoned magical creature will likely take a form consistent with what people expect it to look like. So your magical incarnations in a desert area will likely awfully djinn-like, and your magical incarnations in a forest culture will look awfully faerie-like. A godlike being summoned by an evil cult probably looks a lot like a demon, while one summoned by a high priest might take a more angelic form.

These shapes will tend to be self-reinforcing, since seeing a faerie will tend to solidify peoples' ideas of what faeries look like. But, there's plenty of room of variation as cultures change over time.

[Trask]

I like the idea of fey as yokai. I have two other interpretations of fey that I've used and that worked quite well at the table - in that the players got it without a big lore dump or anything.

First is that just as the celestials and fiends are manifestations of morality (i.e. good and evil) the fey are manifestations of aesthetics (i.e. beautiful and ugly). The fey do not do things because they are "good" or "evil", they do things because they suit their aesthetic.

That is a particularly cool and unique take, I like it. I think that one of the most everpresent aspects of the archetypal fey, yokai, spirits, djinn, nymphs and all other things like that are their moral ambivalence from indifference. Its not like these creatures act cruel or kind out of their nature but on whim and influenced by things they desire. Thats really what makes the Fey archetype so appealing to me, its a great source for powerful, strange, and varied supernatural beings in a game world that dont carry nearly as many moral strings as demons and divines.

[rferries]

In real-world mythology, the fey steal human children (replacing them with changelings) because they need to pay a tithe of souls to Hell. In a homebrew setting the Seelie court could have a similar relationship with celestials.

[Trask]

Thinking about it today, I realized that many questions about the nature of supernatural creatures boil down to one assumption.

Is magic "native" or otherwise inherent to the world, or is magic something foreign?

I think in the former case we see many agreements from native Eurasian beliefs and in the latter the Abrahamic beliefs would be agreeing.

I think for the purposes of the game setting I am looking for, magic being an inherent aspect of the world is a more interesting argument as it allows for magic "insiders" and magical "oustiders" in the form of Fey/Nature spirits and Cosmic beings respectively.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Thinking about it today, I realized that many questions about the nature of supernatural creatures boil down to one assumption.

Is magic "native" or otherwise inherent to the world, or is magic something foreign?

I think in the former case we see many agreements from native Eurasian beliefs and in the latter the Abrahamic beliefs would be agreeing.

I think for the purposes of the game setting I am looking for, magic being an inherent aspect of the world is a more interesting argument as it allows for magic "insiders" and magical "oustiders" in the form of Fey/Nature spirits and Cosmic beings respectively.

Despite my own personal beliefs about the real world, I'm very much with you on that last paragraph. To me, a properly fantastic world, fit for fantasy stories, should be fantastic, "magical" if you will, to the core.

My setting has the root of all magic being the same as the root of all being. The hopes, dreams, growth, lives, experiences, and yes, suffering and death, of living beings. Everything stems from that, and from the ineffable Spark at the core of every ensouled being.

[Aniikinis]

My setting has the root of all magic being the same as the root of all being. The hopes, dreams, growth, lives, experiences, and yes, suffering and death, of living beings. Everything stems from that, and from the ineffable Spark at the core of every ensouled being.

Just going off of that, I think you'd enjoy Warhammer a bit. Probably WH Fantasy, but maybe 40k. It's settings have that as one of the core pillars.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Just going off of that, I think you'd enjoy Warhammer a bit. Probably WH Fantasy, but maybe 40k. It's settings have that as one of the core pillars.

But WH is also gonzo grimdark. And I'm much more on the heroic side. I read about those settings (and steal ideas, because I'm a magpie), but don't find them all that fun as anything other than self-satire/deconstruction of tropes.