This witchlight module that WoTC is putting out is intriguing to me, especially the carnival that comes with the setting. Obviously the Feywyld would be blocked by the Grey, but I wonder about adding small pocket domains with fey that might reside inside of the Grey, perhaps even on Athas.
Are there any canon fey on Athas I wonder? I suppose the closest place to that would be in the Halfling forests… perhaps they still reside there, who knows. Eladrin and Elves are technically descendants of fey of some kind, but they are very far removed from them.
One cool angle you could take with it, is that the Witchlight festival somehow arrived on Athas, but are unable to go back to the Feywild, and now it is stuck on Athas. That more fey can arrive on Athas, but they are unable to go back… That could be an adventure hook for the players to figure out how to help the carnival leave.
4e did have the feywilds as a thing - the lands beyond the winds it was called. It was dying and the elastin believed arcane magic was causing it and so sent out assassins to hunt down arcane users.
Athas had Pixies, but they were successfully Cleansed; Gnomes too, depending on your (edition related) view as to if they’re Fay. I’d imagine any other fay would have either been killed as by-catch from the Pixies or screwed when the land was defiled. But I suppose a single Dryad or Nymph might have survived im the Forest Ridge or wherever, if there ever were any…
The 3e Spirit of the Land is a Fay. I think the Legends of Athas Preen is a fay as well.
I didn’t see any other fay listed in the 3e Terrors of Athas.
I have read a bit in my 4e campaign setting and there isn’t much, but from what I understand The Land Between the Winds are tiny pockets of oasis of the Feywild that are left guarded over by Eladrin and Druids, one such place is in the forest ridge called Witchgrove, but there is no real information about it. I suppose you could easily put in pocket realms of anywhere there hasn’t been intense defiling, which could give you an in on adding the Witchlight carnival… and possibly a portal to a small feywyld adventure.
Since there was fey and they were cleansed, there is or was a fae wild or pocket realm for them to reside in.
In my game, it’s much like the realm in the Wheel of Time books where traveling occurs. It’s locked away with few access points, corrupted and dying… and slowly fading into the Grey. Time dilation also occurs there.
Hrm, now I’m curious as to what Athasfied pixies would have been like if they had survived. Maybe like schools of flying piranhas who devour any poor person they come across alive.
What are “fey” really? Beings that come from another plane, the Feywild, right?
In Athas’s history though, all the (PC) races you would elsewhere consider to be Fey, here are Rebirth Races, created by halflings using lifeshaping technology / the Pristine Tower.
Even some degenerate races considered to be Fey above, are really mutations or shaped by the warped magics.
Nothing comes from a Feywild since Athas has it’s own unique planar cosmology.
The only race that you could sort of discuss about having a different origin would by the pyreen maybe? The timeline on this website at least does not explicitly list them as one of the Rebirth races.
Here is what the 4e DS CS book says about they Feywild.
“Travelers in the wastes tell of the Lands Within the Wind, an otherworld of magic and enchantment that exists alongside the material world. Known in some ancient texts as “the Feywild” or “the Kingdoms Invisible,” this otherworld seems to be an echo or reflection of Athas. It is absent from most places
around the planet, but pockets of this realm lie in remote deserts and mountains, especially the Forest Ridge. These pockets are small; scholars believe that the total amount of the plane remaining in existence, combining all fragments scattered across Athas, would fit inside the walls of Tyr. The Lands Within the Wind are home to the eladrin, an elflike race of mysterious powers. A traveler could walk right past an eladrin palace and never see it because it lies in the other plane instead of on Athas.”
Well, the Feywild is only from 4e (which is occasionally considered to be generally garbage by some - so YMMV).
Fey are generally humanoid, with innate magic powers, often having wings and a connection to nature. Remove the nature bit, and they fall neatly into 3e’s definition of a monsterous humanoid along with Yaun-Ti, centaurs, minotaurs, gargoyles, hags, etc.
Preen were what the nature masters became, those who drove the rebirth.
Yeah my knowledge of DS sort of stops after 2E and is spotty at best on 3/3.5E and quite non-existential on 4E which explains why I didn’t know these things you all mention.
Playing 5E now and prepping a 5E DS campaign I would definitely ditch the Feywild or whatever one might call it.
I would probably include weird pockets of Gray or even Black related dimensional spaces at certain locations.