Love the spicy food idea. Gonna steal that. It could also be a good litmus test for whether a seelie is undercover, checking out their tolerance to spicy food.

I love how you put good and evil in quotations, which is overall very accurate. It's more on the nose to say that the Seelie represents abundants, the side of nature that more freely gives during certain times of the year. The Unseelie, by contrast, is the more harsh and survival oriented, the side of nature that demands strength and cunning to survive the harshness. Neither is inherently good or evil, but necessary contrasts to the natural world.

Ah yes! Bitter food and drinks. The best esspresso can be found at the Unseelie Court :D

If you've never seen it, you may want to check out the Canadian series Lost Girl, which centers on Fey politics, including the conflict between Light and Dark fey factions. The main character is a succubus private investigator named Bo, who solves cases involving fey. I think you'd like it.

I’m reminded of the conversation between Puck and Titania’s fairy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They’re on opposite sides at the moment because of their masters’ feud. He brags about all the pranks he pulls, she talks about how she’s taking care of nature.

As someone whose setting is built off of the concept of a prime material after the unseelie have been banished from the feywild, im looking forward to shattering all my preconceptions and reassembling them

Okay but a smuggling desert/savory-spicy food ring between courts sounds so over the top fun and intriguing at the same time

Oh thank god, this is exactly what I've been needing to create a more "alive" feywild / first world. I've always been thinking of these places as almost entirely peaceful for their natural inhabitants but extremely dangerous in abstract ways to those unfamiliar with the laws of their world. I've always read or heard of "rulership" in these worlds as almost single entity with no conflict. But thats exactly what my worlds were missing, conflict. Perhaps to the point that the martial plane / universe starts feeling the effects of the more intense clashes of power and will which encourages the players to investigate and resolve the clash themselves.

why do fey need mortal champions in their war? because fey can't weild cold iron, so they gotta have someone wielding the 'unholy' blades that slay fey :D

I've always liked the idea of small Fey (or Grugach) riding Blink Dogs; something of an Elfquest vibe with an extra boost. I tried to create a character using the 2E Beast Rider Kit, but the DM wasn't having it. The monsters have been in DnD all the way back to the Greyhawk Supplement for the three little books. The Feywild origin stories are therefore retcons. To be honest the Displacer Beast seems more like an Aberration, what with the tentacles and non-Euclidian geometry going on. There's some thought that it's based on AE van Vogt's Couerl, which is a highly intelligent psionic alien "cat" with tentacles.

The way I sometimes describe the two Courts is that the Seelie are all about Beauty and Abundance, while the Unseelie are all about Brokenness and Scarcity. The Seelie operate in the mindset that "beautiful = good", and while they're much more optimistic and glamourous, not to mention they certainly have higher standards of living, they're also incredibly superficial and fake. The Unseelie, in contrast, believe that corruption is the true form of all things, so while many depraved folk (notably hags) find their home in the Gloaming Court, the Unseelie are also known for living authentically and being accepting of outcasts. Both are incredibly fickle and vengeful, as is their Fey nature, but while Seelie are more likely to smile to your face before stabbing you in the back, the Unseelie are more likely to give a lengthy monologue about why they hate you before stabbing you in the face.

I like the way Mercedes Lackey describes the two courts in her novel, Born To Run. The Seelie court likes humanity, or at least tolerated it. The very worst of the Seelie court wished that humanity would just go away. The Unseelie court hates humanity one and all. In Fay Wilde terms, I could see the Unseelie court as the "good" ones will not kill you on site but find a use for you whereas the evil ones will.

i want to incorporate the fey into a project im writing and this was a great explanation of how the courts work. thank you!

Thanks once again for some fantastic ideas that I can feed into my campaign. I am planning to introduce internal political conflict into the Seelie court that the players may get involved with. I like the idea of a conspiricy involving some of the lesser Seelie nobles plotting to overthrow Tatania with the help of some Unseelie fey, and the players needing to choose how they align themselves.... we'll see how it goes. I'll throw the hooks out there, but the players may decide on a different direction.

I loved this video! I was actually going to watch it yesterday but went to bed too tired, sorry 😂 I've always liked new ways to differentiate between Seelie and Unseelie without calling them good and evil, or bright and dark. In my own campaign the sort of balance between them (inspired by the first summaries I read of them when i got Domains of Delight) is that the Unseelie embrace the mercilessness of nature and the elements, and they have a harsh and daring culture, while the Seelie are known for the elegance and complexity of society, and their luxury and beauty hides dangers of its own

All that yummy food talk isn’t good for my doctor-ordered diet, but then, D&D and not-so-healthy food binging have gone together for decades. Might as well make it part of the game. During breaks, players can fill up their plates with selections from the seelie and unseelie tables.

love it and happy to see you back ! keep it up1

Great concepts @ play here, bravo!

Great video with great ideas.

10/10 video, definitely going to be stealing the food as currency concept

WITCHLIGHT CARNIVAL SPOILERS: I rewrote Act 1 of "The Wild Beyond the Witchlight" Where the Seelie themed Carnival introduces two homebrew NPCs. One is a reskin of the hag Granny Nightshade and the other is a reskin of the Warlock. I changed it so that they work together to convince the Party to trash the vibe of the Carnival, so that the Witchlight Monarch Crowns one of them, and they steal the whole carnival. Secretly they work together, but they play the role of two opposing sides. They do things like throw the head of lettuce in snail racing to rig the race, thus making the party feel encouraged to do the same. If players abstain from foul play and do things like help the lost kid get back to the displacer beast, Mr Witch and Mr Light crown a member of the party. Either way you end up fighting a Warlock and Hag in a big battle at the end, unless you actually side with them. In that case Carnival gets evil aesthetics and the players get rewards like "brought back that relative you wanted brought back to life but now theyre a zombie." Or a promise of being up to your eyes in gold, but the party member is transformed into a gold statue.

this is something more so for a homebrew setting but i'd like to make the difference how they handle and view fey bargains and repercussions for failure. So a seelie fey value honor and honesty so if a fey requires you to collect a mcguffin a seelie will aid you as much as possible, giving you as much time as needed, giving you information you need etc. however should you fail a seelie will get deeply offended because not only did they not get what was promised to them, you have tarnished their reputation and the consequences for failure matches their temperament. An unseelie fey on the other hand values wits and sportsmanship and an agreement is their battlefield. so they will try to outsmart the party by sabotaging them from completing their quest but if you fail they'll merely collect a prize, a memento to remember this battle, given that you didn't try to deny them the fun. the conflict between the two courts comes from how seelie fey see unseelie fey as dishonest thieves while unseelie fey think seelie fey are daft and unsportsmanlike.

Thoughts on Changeling: The Lost?

finally this is so cute 💘💘

Seelie and unseelie are mischievous and malicious, respectively.

I like to think unseelie are more chaotic. There fore they blend in the modern human world than seelie. I could be wrong. Just my 2 ce

Imagine all this stemming from some guy who just wanted to make a Dogs and Cats hate eachother joke.