Ty Hulse - Fairies and Fairy Tales

Fairy Food

2026-03-24T18:20:00.000-07:00

You are wondering far from home when you encounter a fairy which offers you a simple meal of bread and butter. Should you accept it?

Many would say no, assuming that gifts of food from the fairies are dangerous.

In the ballade the Childe Rowland Merlin, for example, warned the protagonist who was setting into fairyland to rescue someone that they should “bite no bit, and drink no drop, however hungry or thirsty you be; drink a drop, or bite a bit, while in Elfland you be and never will you see Middle Earth again.”

Lady Wilde points out that in Ireland it was believed that to eat fairy food was fatal.

Often fairy food turned out to be foul and dangerous things, glamoured to appear like food.

So at first glance you might think you should avoid eating fairy food, after all there are many stories where this turns out to be dangerous.

Yet nothing in fairyland is ever so simple as this. For the fairies are our neighbors and they frequently care about us.

a man from the City of Doualan who was struggling to feed his family. One evening while he was returning home he pasted over Crokelien hill when he encountered a woman who asked him why he was grieving. He told her that it was because he couldn’t earn enough to feed his family.

Fairy Mythology for Gamemasters & Worldbuilders by tyhulse

“If you want you can send your son to keep my cows and I will give you as much money as you’d like,” the woman told him.

She then led him underground to great heaps of gold and wheat and beef. So he filled his pockets and returned home. The next day he sent his son out to watch the woman’s cattle. When dinner time came the woman fed the young man a meal more wonderful than he’d ever eaten.

Other times ploughmen would ask for loaves of bread and find them on plates at the edge of their fields. In another story from the Alpes an old fairy gives lost children food and keeps them safe through the winter, and they are fine.

Indeed, one needed to be careful, for not accepting food from the fairies could also lead them to feel so insulted they might kill you anyways. In Scotland, for example,

A ploughman while engaged at his work heard, or fancied he heard, a sound of churning, and said he wished his thirst “was on the dairymaid.” In a short time after a woman appeared and offered him a drink of buttermilk. Her green dress and sudden appearance made him refuse the offer, and she said that next year he would not need the drink. When the twelve months were nearly out the man died.

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, by John Gregorson Campbell

I’m reminded of Scandinavian tales which makes this clearer, with two friends encountering the fairy who offers them each a bit of butter, the one who refuses is cursed and the one who accepts is blessed.

Another similar story comes from the Isle of Man, where Wentz records that one woman was offered butter milk by a fairy. “but the thirsty woman, ignorant of fairy customs and the penalty attending their infringement, declined the kind offer of refreshment, and immediately found herself a prisoner in the hillock. She was led to an apartment containing a chest full of meal and a great bag of wool, and was told by the fairy that when she had eaten all the meal and spun all the wool she would be free to return to her home. The prisoner at once set herself to eating and spinning assiduously, but without apparent result, and despairing of completing the task consulted an old man of very sad countenance who had long been a captive in the hillock. He willingly gave her his advice, which was to wet her left eye with saliva each morning before she settled down to her task. She followed this advice, and gradually the wool and the meal were exhausted. Then the fairy granted her freedom, but in doing so cursed the old man, and said that she had it in her power to keep him in the hillock for ever.’ (wentz)

As stated, one had to be careful refusing fairy food, for doing so might lead to curses, imprisonment, and death.

Fairies were dangerous neighbors but they were neighbors as shown by a story from Britanny France in which a family lived above a fairy family, and the two of them could hear each other talk and pass things back and fort on occasion. One night, when there wasn’t a crumb of bread left in the house and the human woman’s child was hungry. She told her child to knock on the hearth and ask for some bread.

"Here, my boy, here is enough to eat all your life and give it to no one but your parents."

Such stories, of fairies providing people with bread that never ends are fairly common and are often a pleasant surprise, rather than something which is asked for.

One should perhaps keep in mind that fairies often need human food to survive. This is likely in addition to their own food of course, but there does seem to be some magic in human food that keeps many fairies from growing sickly.

Generally, if you are in fairyland or there is a party of fairies the food is dangerous, but if you are in the human world or being offered a humble meal by a humble fairy within our world, even if you enter the fairy’s cottage, it is generally dangerous not to eat. Again, this latter case likely exists because fairies were our neighbors and could come to care for us, in their own, nonhuman sort of way.

Except this isn’t entirely satisfying. We can now turn to a more abstract question. Why does eating food at a fairy party or deep in fairy land lead to imprisonment?

In the lore of many steppes people, of which the Indo-Europeans likely hail from as well we see that when someone would try to pull a spirit of the dead from the land of the dead, such as a shaman or the Greek Goddess Demetrus, if a person of Goddess ate food in the land of the dead they were trapped there, and there was no getting them out, at least not completely.

Eating food in the land of the underworld then is a sign that you accept your place within it.

In an Irish story a woman is taken to fairyland and essentially appears as a ghost after to tell her husband” "Do not be disturbed, dear husband," said the appearance; "I am now in the power of the fairies, but if you only have courage and prudence we may be soon happy with each other again. Next Friday will be May-eve, and the whole court will ride out of the old fort after midnight. I must be there along with the rest. Sprinkle a circle with holy water, and have a black-hafted knife with you. If you have courage to pull me off the horse, and draw me into the ring, all they can do will be useless. You must have some food for me every night on the dresser, for if I taste one mouthful with them, I will be lost to you forever.”

Even closer to the idea of the human as a ghost, taken to fairyland comes from the story of Bridget.

“It happened when she was about nineteen years of age that she fainted one day on the street before the house, where she was washing the spuds for dinner. The mother and sister went out for to carry her in, and they laid her down on the bed—the poor girl never rose from it more. Maybe a week she was lingering dying, not a word ever came from her lips and she used no food at all.

Not a long after the burying her mother heard a rapping on the window, close upon midnight. She rose and she says, “Oh Bridget dear, is it you?”[164]

“It is indeed, mamma,” says a voice. “Let you give me a drink of sweet milk and a small taste of bread.”

“I’ve heard tell of the dead were uneasy, but never of one needing food,” says the mother.

“The fairies have me away,” answers Bridget. “’Tis myself is living this day, and you are after giving decent burial to an old thing they left in my place.”

With that the poor mother brought milk and bread to the window and handed it out.

"Will you ever contrive to get home, my poor Bridget?” says she.”

In another Newfoundland story there are girls are seeking to avoid being pulled into the underworld forever by sneaking off when they can to eat human food. They are essentially living as ghosts, neither in the underworld with the fairies nor in the land of the living.

This might be in part because there is some magic in the food of humans, the food of the land of the living, and food made under the sun and fresh air. This could explain why fairies needed human food in the first place, for many were like ancestor spirits in many places crave human food. They need human food to remain healthy.

Wentz recorded an Irish story in which

The fairy queen was “fretting her life out for want of some milk that has the scent of green grass in it and of the fresh upper air.”

In Denmark People would often see these trold dancing at night. However, one of these trold told a man that they were going to move. “Why?” The man asked. “We can’t survive here anymore,” the trold told him. “You see the trold have been surviving by stealing food, but people have started putting a cross over everything so we have to move or starve to death.”

What fairies have then is insubstantial food, at least much of the time, for they exist in a liminal state.

This might give us a better answer about human and fairy food. For much of fairy food might very well be a liminal and dreamlike thing, perhaps even a thing of the underworld and the land of the dead in some cases. Thus, it is something to be avoided. On the other hand while many fairies have connections to lands of the dead or other liminal spaces, many dwell within our world or places of paradise, so their food can be the same or better than ours. This then becomes a question of what you think the source of the fairy food is.

Is it liminal and illusionary food from the land of the dead or something rotting they are trying to pass as food?

Is it food from our world that they now have?

Is it food from the a sort of heavenly otherworld that is even better than our own?

It is difficult to tell, of course, but you can generally trust fairies if they are giving you food out of sympathy, as payment for your work or goods, or they are fairies that live close enough to you that you have at least heard them and they have heard you frequently. They aren’t trustworthy if they are acting flippant or you had to enter the otherworld to meet them, without any agreement before hand.

Still, this doesn’t answer the question we began with. What do you do if you are far from home and a fairy offers you food?

I don’t know of any stories with this scenario, for they are all deep in fairyland or in lands where the fairies would be your neighbors. And so I can’t help you with it. After all, this fairy isn’t your neighbor, per say, but fairies did sometimes help travelers. Yet other lands are often considered to be part of the otherworld and the fairies from them could be dangerous.

So flip a coin and hope that luck gives you the right answer, for sometimes fairyland is just dangerous. Also, if you do survive this type of encounter, please say something so we can all learn.

How do fairies fly? + Do fairies have wings?

2025-01-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

Perhaps some of the most common questions on the internet involve fairy flight, such as do fairies have wings? can fairies fly? how do fairies fly? etc.

We’ve all seen the images of fairies with wings, so it might surprise you to hear until the 20th century those who described their encounters with fairies never included wings in their descriptions of them.

Fairies, could fly without wings, however, for as Kirk writes in a “Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies” (1691) fairies would “swim in the air near the earth.” And Scottish fairies would kidnap or attack people by flying.

Katherine Briggs states that “It is very rare in traditional fairy tales for Fairies to travel by means of wings. They generally fly through the air on transformed ragwort stems, twigs or bundles of grasses, using them as witches use broomsticks, and most commonly levitated by a magic password.” Such as horse and hattock.

Yet, as with all fairy magic, fairy flight seems to be limited by function. For while they fairies would fly as a form of play, to steal from humans, to move about quickly, to shoot curses at people, etc. But not as a means of escaping people intent on capturing them. I can’t think of a single story where a fairy flew to escape someone who trying to catch them.

This might be because humans have the ability to thwart fairy spells with their gaze. Stare unblinking at a fairy in folklore and they can’t vanish, for example.

That said there is a story where the fairies helped a human to escape a death sentence by flying him away.

In this story a young boy is in the wilderness when he comes across a cottage with a friendly lady who allows him to stay the night. During the night, however, the ladies of the house show their fairy nature by donning white caps and saying “Here’s off” at which point the fly away. Afraid to stay in the hut alone the boy grabs another cap and says “Here’s after” at which point he flies to where the women are dancing around a fairy ring. Then they all fly off again, this time down a chimney and into a wealthy mans cellar, where the boy drinks so much wine he passes out and is caught. Just before he is hung for the theft the fairy lady comes to him, puts a hat on his head and they fly away

Here the fairy explained that she had been displeased by his taking her magic cap, and that if befriended by fairies, he must never in future take liberties with their property. This he promised, and after a good meal, was allowed to depart to his home.

It is fairly typical of fairies living in cottages to be kindly disposed towards people, although there are no guarantees in fairyland. Not that that’s relevant to the current discussion, I just thought it was an interesting aside.

Kathrine Briggs believes that this story has more in common with witches’ tales, and I would tend to agree, primarily because the boy and women manage to fly away from danger, something, as I’ve said the fairies seemingly didn’t do. Except for a Danish tale in which some fairies are carrying a woman off and someone forces them to drop her and then drives them away. Although in this story the fairies were already flying when the man approached them.

Fairies, after all, were often responsible for witch flight in stories.

As Emma Wilby Says “several contemporary anecdotes relate how ordinary people could find themselves transported in 'fairy whirlwinds'

Where they would dance with the fairies.

Regardless of the means of flight, however, what we see is that in most cases then fairy flight is clearly a spell, often associated with a magical object and magical words,

Okay, so where does the idea of fairies’ as being winged come from?

It's likely it started with a German Alchemist named Paracelsus (1493-1541) who determined that there were four classes of elementals, with air being represented by sylphs and they were depicted as having wings.

It is worth noting at this point that fairies were rarely ever associated with the air. Rather they were the spirits of rocks, of lakes, earth mounds, and the like.

In any case sylphs began to appear in English plays in the 16th century, for example Ariel in Shakespeare’s play, although she wasn’t a fairy she acted much like one of the fairies from Midsummer Night’s Dream would have, thus the association was easy to make. Something that seems to have happened by the 17th century when fairies began to wear winged costumes in Masque plays for the wealthy.

Outside of these plays, even in drawings, fairies were still depicted as wingless. Still, theatrical fairies grew in popularity and so they influenced pop depictions of fairies, but it does seem that most people at the time could still tell the difference, as again fairies weren’t mentioned as having wings for another three hundred years in encounters with people.

World Building - Cultural Psychology and Monsters

2025-01-13T13:33:00.000-08:00

How would cultures react to zombies, the presence of blood thirsty armies, or a kaiju attack? In a fantasy world magical monsters, weather rare or common are a reality. So it can be interesting to ponder h ow cultures would adjust to their presence.

It can be tempting, of course, to turn any world filled with monsters into a grim dark, a nightmare realm with sorrowful peasants. However, it is worth remembering that a few years after Joan of Arc’s village had been burned to the ground by marauding armies, and raided on multiple occasions, after disease had killed many of the people she loved she described her village in idyllic terms and talked about how much she’d loved working with her mother and the other members of the village.

This was during the height of the 100 Year War. It is important to remember that the bright and often vibrant cultures we know today developed under some of the worst wars in history, the 80 Years War in the Netherlands, the 30 Years War in Germany, etc.

Obviously monsters and war are different and how monsters would affect cultures is entirely speculative; there is no good research on the subject of how the presence of a dragon would impact the psychology and culture of a village. But there is a lot of research on how different catastrophes, from tsunamis, to plagues, and of course wars will impact a culture which I will be using in my speculations.

Consider, for example, monsters such as vampires, vampires, werewolves, cultists, demons that can change shape or possess people. That is monsters that could pretend to be ordinary people. As fairy tales show people would have to be extremely careful with such monsters around, for example, one Romanian vampire tale begins:

There once was a woman who fell in love with a young man who seemed perfect in every way. At last, the two of them were married and the women went with the young man to his house. He led her into the kitchen, where he had a girl hanging from meat hooks, for the young man was really a vampire. "Cook this girl for our supper," the vampire told his new bride.

Even those one knew could become a threat in such a world as seen in the following story.

Once upon a time a boy and a girl loved each other, but the young man died and became a vampire, though the girl didn't know this. That night, when she was alone in the house, the vampire came. But, vampires can only enter unclean homes, so because the girls home was clean, the vampire couldn’t enter it. The vampire called up to the girl's window in his familiar and loving voice, and so lured her out into the night. Although she was still undressed, he convinced her that it was urgent that she come with him, and so he took her hand and led her to his tomb.

Because of this people would be cautious around strangers and even friends who might have been turned. This is similar to the way people deal with pathogens and so would likely impact cultures in a similar way.

Research indicates “ethnocentrism, xenophobia and other specific forms of interpersonal prejudice” and a strong disdain of deviation from social norms are strongly correlated with cultures who have had to deal with pathogens. After all, avoiding potential signs of pathogens and contact with outsiders is a good survival trait when a disease is ravaging the land.

Fincher Corey L, Thornhill Randy, Murray Damian R and Schaller Mark 2008Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivismProc. R. Soc. B.2751279–1285

http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094

It’s important to keep in mind that this doesn’t mean that people would be dark and brooding, rather people would likely seek to act in a way that is opposite to the creatures that are threatening them.

If the vampires are dark and brooding, people would go out of their way to be bright, vivacious, and colorful. For the primary means of dealing with such creatures would be to watch for signs that someone had didn’t fit with the social norms, so the norms would be the reverse of the monster’s instincts.

Thus, in a world with werewolves hiding among a populous meat might be eaten last, after slowly eating many tiny vegetable dishes, as a means of trying to get the hungry wolves to reveal themselves by obviously longing to eat the meat sooner. In a world with the kitsune who tend to act wild and speak rapidly, people would be more reserved, calmer, and controlled in hopes that the kitsune would lose control and reveal themselves.

We can see from these examples that often the response to the presence of most monsters would be likely be some form of collectivism. As “Collectivism is characterized by a strong value placed on tradition and conformity, whereas individualism is characterized by a greater tolerance for (and encouragement of) deviation from the status quo”

I.e. the xenophobia people often develop as a result of dealing with plagues is associated with collectivism.

You can see in this chart the impact of pathogens on collectivist vs individualist behaviors.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094

Fincher Corey L, Thornhill Randy, Murray Damian R and Schaller Mark 2008Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivismProc. R. Soc. B.2751279–1285

http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094

(Me)

Of course this chart isn’t a perfect line, because while Pathogens are positively correlated with collectivism they clearly aren’t the only factor. Which is why it's important to remember that there are many things hat can impact culture and so the presence of one factor doesn’t guarantee a culture will behave a certain way.

This is because distrust of outsiders and a strong adherence to social norms aren’t the only response to monsters. Indeed, we might see the opposite effect on cultures which frequently have to deal with dragons, kaiju, giants, and other massive monsters which could show up, destroy their village, and leave.

Certainly in such societies high levels of cooperation would be necessary for survival when a dragon attacks, but this cooperation could extend to much larger groups of people, sometimes from villages hundreds of miles away.

That is when the dragon attacked people might seek refuge, food, and aid in fighting the creature from other people, sometimes hundreds of miles away.

As a result people would need to befriend people from other lands, which would tend to make them more accepting of differences and likely to get along with people outside their ingroup, which is one of the hallmarks of individualism.

Those living in cities and ports, or who herd animals, who are in frequent contact with many peoples from other lands will tend to be more individualist.

In addition the need for innovations can also help encourage individualism. Thus, a place that needed inventive wizards or clerics would be more likely to shift individualistic.

After all, “Individualistic values may promote other kinds of functional benefits. For example, the discovery or spread of beneficial new technologies may occur more frequently when individuals are encouraged to deviate from existing traditions and engage in interactions with non-group members.”

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094

Fincher Corey L, Thornhill Randy, Murray Damian R and Schaller Mark 2008Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivismProc. R. Soc. B.2751279–1285

http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2008.0094

Disasters help to enhance traditional means of seeking comfort or survival. Thus, we would expect those who must deal with monsters on a regular basis to have stronger tendencies towards either aggression or caring, ingroup social norms or outgroup alliances, and so forth, depending on the nature of the monster involved. For example, Natural disasters remind people how powerless they are and so can cause people to become more religious, such that even the children of children of immigrants who experienced earthquakes are more religious than their peers.

More than just psychological changes, the presence of monsters would likely be written into the very architecture of the village. Likely inspired by the real villages built on lakes and rivers for defence in England’s past, Tolkien had Lake Town built on a lake to make it easier for people to escape the dragon’s fire.

Thus, in addition to walls a city in a fantasy world could include the presence of frequent hardened canopies and gazebos with spikes atop them to stop wyverns or dragons from landing on or taring their way through them. In addition there could be vaults similar to panic rooms and tunnels throughout a village and perhaps even under the fields where people farm, as a way of escaping from flying or marauding enemies.

Stone alcoves could be built into the city walls to allow people to duck away from flame or acid breathed by dragons or fireballs flung by wizards.

In the fantasy realm of Ogma De I wrote that every house has a few goats in it, so that if a giant rips off the roof, it is more likely to grab a panicking goat than a person who can quickly fling themselves down trap doors and who likely has a sword nearby.

It might even be that people would build multiple long thin cities beside each other, rather than one large city, that way sewage could flow from smaller pipes into the larger sewers that exist outside the city walls in order to prevent sewer monsters from being an immediate threat.

In other words, from the way people build their homes and towns, from the pets they keep, to the way they think and feel could all be impacted by the presence of monsters and actually thinking about these impacts could be very interesting.

Thinking about what people might do to protect themselves from various monsters can allow you to add interesting little details into the description of your village.

Solid infrastructure systems that include buildings, food storage, vaults, etc. isn’t the most popular way people will seek to protect themselves in Fantasy TTRPGs, however.

The most popular method for dealing with monsters in games is by seeking help from heroic adventurers.

Those seeking help from adventurers who could potentially be anyone including outsiders and the strange, uncouth kid from down the street that grows up to be a powerful sorcerer, would likely come to accept odd quirks and differences from the social norms. Indeed, those who are odd are typically more likely to fit into unusual roles related to wizardry, paladins, warriors, sorcerers, warlocks, and even great fighters.

As a result of the need for those with unusual skills people would likely encourage such things as self-actualization, and come to admire aggression, competitiveness, and success. More than this they would be more likely to question authority and hierarchies as anyone could be the hero they hire and the leaders would be less important to them or might even come to be seen as a hinderance.

That is these cultures would be individualist, have strong motivations towards success and achievement, and of course would have a low power distance on the Hofstede cultural scale.

This is contrasted by the fact that research has shown large infrastructure projects to support agriculture and complex ocean fishing are associated with greater cooperation and less assertive behaviors. More conformity to social norms, and a greater respect for leadership. What’s more such societies are strongly associated with a much more moralizing deity, one which punishes deviation from social norms – or sin as some cultures would call it. After all in a strict system where everyone must follow the rules to survive, people are more likely to discuss gods that punish those who don’t follow the rules.

On the opposite end of this coin, gods in heroic societies are likely to be less concerned with moral behavior and more concerned with heroic behavior. Think Odin, who accepts the souls of those who died in heroic combat, or the general idea of Nordic Mythology that it is a virtue to obtain admiration and fame in whatever one does.

The descendants of the societies that spawned the Vikings, with limited infrastructure and heroes who would go out to do battle, is high in the caring values and individualism at the same time. This despite, or perhaps because of the fact that they also once had to deal with frequent raids from each other as well.

What we see then is that the presence of monsters and how people respond to these monsters would affect their religion, psychology, and of course their social norms and behavior in what are sometimes opposing ways.

This is good though, because it gives us the opportunity to imagine many diverse methods responses to monsters and cultures in fantasy worlds.

It would be impossible in a single video to discuss every way in which culture is altered or could be altered by disasters and wars, but in many ways it is simply enough for you to write something believable and if you are world building hobbyist, it can be fun to simply journal and daydream how your cultures would adjust to a world filled with monsters.

Cozy Random Encounters for Fairies and Fairy Art

2025-01-10T01:34:00.000-08:00

Random Encounters

You can get a free pdf and other cozy ttrpg materials including cozy 5e and dnd on my https://tyhulse.itch.io/

Although you should always feel free to simply create a scenario and or character to encounter, these are some options that will hopefully help to stir your imagination. Some of these random encounters might lead to solutions to challenges you have, while others might present new challenges, and still others are simply things for you to take a moment and write or talk about.

Either draw a Tarot Card and Roll a 6 Sided Dice.

Or Roll a 6 Sided Dice, draw a regular card, and roll a 6 sided die again.

Ace of Wands or 1 and Ace

1. You run into the ruler of the forest looking for someone to play cards with. You can win a new thing you can do in your playbook or a pet bumble, squirrel, or fish that gives you a +1 on your Find Score.

2. You smell a rich and delicious bread at the borders between two lands. If you mention how delicious the bread smells, you will find some left on a plate with butter for you by the fairies. Perhaps these are fairies you could make friends with.

3. You notice some pixies watching you as you travel.

4. You meet a giant snail which knows where some berries or herbs or some place of beauty is. It offers a trade to show you. What do you chat about while it plods slowly through the forest towards your goal?

5. Someone is injured, how did this happen and how can you help, or what fairy can you seek out to help?

6. Someone is injured, how did this happen and how can you help, or what fairy can you seek out to help?

Two of Wands or 1 and Card2

1. Some trolls play loud music while you are trying to sleep.

2. You meet an old fairy who is anxious to share a story with you.

3. Puck shows up to stir up some chaos

4. A giant toad babysitting his pollywogs is worried about the shrinking water level. He asks you for help getting the water to raise a little. Perhaps some of the pollywogs engage in mischief with you, as they don’t fully understand what is happening and want to play.

5. There is a charity auction.

6. Sick animals are coming into town causing trouble, but they need help.

Three of Wands or 1 and Card3

1. A fairy wedding is going to be held in a place that is supposed to be empty, especially a church or kitchen just before sunrise. These fairies might ask you for help setting up and taking down for the wedding.

2. Invisible fairy children playing pranks.

3. Puck wants to hear some folk tales

4. A cricket whose ability to play music has been damaged. He’s worried that he won’t find someone to love before the summers over.

5. It is raining while it is sunny, creating a huge rainbow.

6. Raccoons get into your house/camp and wreak havoc.

Four of Wands or 1 and Card4

1. A fairy in disguise, trying to buy things with gold that will later turn into leaves.

2. A cold fairy asking to share your fire with you. They don’t understand fire much and so you must explain to them how to avoid getting burned and keep an eye on them, so they don’t get too close or hit by sparks.

3. You get lost because of some pixies and have to ask for directions

4. The spirit of the land on which you are living comes to talk to you. Do they need something or are they just curious about the witch in the area?

5. You notice how stunning the stars are on a clear night

6. A fairy joins in with a village dance, startling people with its wild dancing and laughter.

Five of Wands or 1 and Card5

1. A curious fairy that shows up to silently watch people work.

2. A fairy who punishes troublemakers and leaves gifts for those who do good deeds.

3. A broonie seeks help with the harvest, will provide help to cure plant and spirit ailments.

4. A visitor from your past comes to call.

5. A visitor from your past comes to call.

6. You come across a farm that’s been overgrown, perhaps the farmer is sick or having trouble clearing and planting their field.

Six of Wands or 1 and Card6

1. A fairy asks you to fix a broken object like a pot or kitchen knife.

2. You encounter some fairies dancing. If you join, a week or entire event passes in the hour you dance with them.

3. Goblins called Tattybugs have been ruining the gardens of a human village.

4. You find a human in the woods with a quirky hobby.

5. You come across a flower filled meadow. Perhaps there is a herb within it?

6. You come across a large cluster of forest flowers such as violets.

Seven of Wands or 1 and Card7

1. A fairy confronts you with a riddle. Takes a token if you get the wrong answer and gives you one if you get the right one.

2. You come across a cottage of people you don’t realize are really fairies until some bears or stag beetles who can talk comes to visit them.

3. You discover a small crystal ball that always shows some silly, embarrassing, goofy moment from the past present or future. Often of people from distant lands who you don’t know.

4. You discover a children’s hide out or fort a bit deeper in the woods than might be safe.

5. You stumble across a grotto filled with mushrooms and moss.

6. You stumble across a grotto filled with cave paintings from times long past.

Eight of Wands or 1 and Card8

1. The fairies make you think you are walking through a forest, when you are really walking in circles, until a helpful someone tells you what’s happening.

2. A fairy gathering food, get a Serendipity if you help.

3. A hut walking around on chicken legs, where Baba Yaga lives.

4. You discover a gorge in the forest filled with talking giant snails and moths. Perhaps you can make friends with one of them.

5. A fairy gathering herbs to make a potion. Get a Serendipity if you help.

6. A giant snail is moving their babies to a new location but needs some help as there are too many of them for it to easily carry at once and it doesn’t want to leave some behind.

Nine of Wands or 1 and Card9

1. There is a meal or feast which the wild fey join, even though they talk to no one.

2. You hear the fairy’s song underneath the ground and see them peeking out windows in a hillside that vanishes when you get close.

3. A banshee approaches you who is hungry for conversation after watching over their living family without speaking to someone for quite a while.

4. You come across a crumbling stone wall.

5. You run into a chap person who travels around selling odd little books of folk stories, salacious gossip, and minor adventure tales. You begin talking about stories. They have a book they think you might be interested in.

6. A hearth fire spirit talks to you, telling you about something you might be interested in and gives you directions to it using riddle 1.

Ten of Wands or 1 and Card10

1. You are invited into a fairy court, where you can’t understand anything the fairies say, but you can tell they are all friendly as they hand you herbs, potions, and objects with unknown magical powers.

2. Learn music from a cheerful fairy by surrendering something you care about.

3. A forest guardian plays a prank on you

4. Children collecting fireflies.

5. Children out looking for elves, just to do it.

6. Learn to weave from a serious fairy in exchange for your help cleaning their cottage for a time.

Page of Wands or 1 and Jack

1. A fairy gives you advice on how you might help someone in the place you are headed towards before vanishing.

2. A headless spirit which seeks to chase you somewhere you didn’t expect to go, but where you were needed more.

3. A headly kow pretends to be a treasure in order to try to get you to pick them up, so that they can startle you.

4. Someone throws a party. What are they celebrating?

5. Someone throws a party. What are they celebrating? At the party, a zwerg joins in with the dancing, then after having fun gives riddle 3. Perhaps there is something interesting to find if you follow these directions.

6. A goblin causes some mischief, tells you a crude joke, and gives you advice on how you might help someone, who you either know or whom you will meet soon. Their advice is to look for something by using Riddle 2.

Knight of Wands or 1 and Queen

1. An old fairy that asks for some food gives good advice if you show kindness.

2. Fairies that fly up into the air, accidently carrying you with them on an adventure to explore human homes and markets where you can act as a guide, explaining the things they see and potentially become friends.

3. There is a niskipuk on someone’s eve, listening for possible gossip

4. You find an injured animal, perhaps a fairy can help you heal it.

5. You are asked to play hide and seek by some fairy children.

6. You help someone who has to cook a large meal, or perhaps a fairy who can’t cook but wants a hot meal. There are many fairies in lore who didn’t have the magic of cooking, this being primarily a human gift.

Queen of Wands or 1 and King

1. Some fairies teach you how to wander aimlessly, yet somehow end up where you want, so that you can never truly be lost.

2. You overhear a fairy’s song that causes you to realize something you thought of as mundane is more beautiful than you ever would have noticed otherwise.

3. A pack of blink dogs which follows you home, blinking to prevent being left behind if necessary.

4. You end up spending the night at a friend’s house.

5. A troll that has many heads which are debating the meaning of some trivial bit of gossip, or perhaps some aspect of a popular book.

6. A royal cat comes to live with you for a while. They may not speak at first, as they enjoy simply living as a cat.

King of Wands or 2 and Ace

1. You discover a little nook where a fairy lives and will occasionally throw food at those passing, in hopes of starting a food fight.

2. A helpful house fairy has recently grown troublesome, and the people who live with it are worried they might have done something wrong.

3. A helpful house fairy has started panicking, as they need something which is to be found at riddle 4, which they can’t quite figure out.

4. There is a new baby born in the town. What is their family like? You might seek out a fairy to provide a blessing for them. When pondering who should give the blessing you are given riddle 5.

5. There is a new baby born in the town. What is their family like? You might seek out a fairy to provide a blessing for them. When pondering who should give the blessing you are given riddle 6.

6. Someone built a new home and some, not quite domestic fairies, quickly moved in. Their house fairy needs help convincing these interlopers to leave or act more friendly.

Ace of Cups or 2 and Card2

1. A fairy that causes you to become introspective about your own aspirations. Gain a token if you share your thoughts.

2. A lonely fairy that causes trouble so that people pay attention to them.

3. There is a dragon hosting tea for some of the forest fairies, perhaps you can attend?

4. You spend a day baking pies and or breads.

5. You spend a day baking pies and or breads.

6. A lonely fairy that causes trouble so that people pay attention to them.

Two of Cups or 2 and Card3

1. The poppet of a mundane object or idea causes you to be amazed by something that you used to think of as ordinary. Gain a token if you explain your new perspective.

2. A fairy that will tell your fortune by rolling knucklebones.

3. Pixies are sneaking into kitchens and adding spices to the food without anyone knowing what they’ve done. Sometimes they cause mischief by making the food taste funny and sometimes they make it taste better.

4. There is a confused dog like fairy trying to herd rabbits because it thinks they are sheep.

5. You go to the top of a hill to watch the animals below and recenter yourself.

6. You go animal spotting by a lake to relax.

Three of Cups or 2 and Card4

1. Gain a sense of euphoria about the state of things. Gain a Serendipity if you share your thoughts on why things are beautiful.

2. A fairy which plays a song that reminds you of your childhood. Discuss the moment it reminds you of, get a Serendipity if you do.

3. The cats are hosting a dance in the forest, and they want every witch and fairy to attend. What is a cat hosted dance like? Do they play games? What kind of music do they like? Do you meet anyone interesting?

4. You get roped into decorating for a festival.

5. You get roped into helping someone decorate their new home.

6. A cat wants to have tea with you, should you prepare a delicious little meal and tea it will give you riddle 7. If you can answer and follow where it leads, what do you find?

Four of Cups or 2 and Card5

1. Tattybugs (goblins that look a little like potato people) or other fairies filching crops. You might be able to teach them how to help farms prosper so there is plenty for all.

2. A fairy that needs you to babysit its children for a time. Get a Serendipity if you do.

3. A puppy of a fairy dog who can blink from one place to another decided your backpack would be a fun place to be.

4. You come across someone who is lost.

5. You come across someone who is lost.

6. A fairy appears for a moment to give you riddle 8, telling you that there is someone lost who can be found if you follow it.

Five of Cups or 2 and Card6

1. You see a strange fairy city. It vanishes after just a moment.

2. A bright fairy market where the fairies are trading things that can always be done from their playbook in return for other things that can always be done from someone else’s playbook

3. You go berry picking. Do you go with anyone?

4. You go berry picking. Do you go with anyone?

5. You discover a young, enchanted boar which can tell the future.

6. You meet a fairy who offers to teach you the art of fortune telling by looking at the flight of birds.

Six of Cups or 2 and Card7

1. You notice a fairy in disguise, trying to buy things with gold that will later turn into leaves.

2. Discover that if you walk around a monastery counter sun wise three times you end up in fairyland. Or perhaps a child discovers this by accident and gets lost.

3. A dryad whose tree is in a courtyard near a popular dating spot has started trying to help people fall in love and will even secretly play matchmaker.

4. Some fairies steal something from you

5. A bridge collapses and people need help figuring out how to get across the river that is filled with troublesome water fairies now.

6. Some fairies steal something from you.

Seven of Cups or 2 and Card8

1. A kitsune or some type of fairy in the forest offers to help you get magical ingredients from the woods if you take it on as an apprentice for a time.

2. A young giant wants to play with you like a doll.

3. A group of fairies is obsessed with trading items and they keep showing up trying to trade things with you. What isn’t exactly important, they are in part just playing at merchanting.

4. Some giant honeybees build a hive near the village. They are going to need a lot of help finding enough flowers to create the honey necessary to feed their young and perhaps share with the village as well.

5. Some fairies offer to take you into fairyland for a year and a day to learn their secrets. If you go you emerge later with moss growing in your hair, a sign that you aren’t entirely human any longer.

6. You encounter someone who is really good at skipping stones in the lake.

Eight of Cups or 2 and Card9

1. A group of baby dragons is playing at building their horde by gathering interesting looking rocks and other bits and bobs.

2. You see a unicorn. It leads you to something beautiful or someone in need of help.

3. You discover a strange café that was never there before.

4. A sudden storm catches you out in the wild.

5. A sudden storm catches you out in the wild. The wind whispers riddle 9 to you. Will you follow it through the storm, and if you do, what do you find?

6. There is a spring or summer flower festival, a winter icicle festival, or a fall puddle and leaf viewing festival.

Nine of Cups or 2 and Card10

1. A giant primordial deity pauses in the woods to look at you. What do you feel in that moment?

2. Young fairies want to hear a story from you, they gather just outside of sight while you’re camping and call out.

3. A fairy child wants to play. Perhaps they come down the chimney one night or jump out to startle you while you are walking.

4. Find a patch of herbs.

5. Find a patch of herbs.

6. A fairy keeps stealing milk from the cows. Perhaps they have a little fairy who is sick and needs human food to grow stronger. You are going to have to talk to them to find out what is happening.

Ten of Cups or 2 and Jack

1. You find a lost fairy child.

2. A fairy child has snuck away from their mother and is using illusions to play with some human children. The child is clearly enjoying the attention and adoration.

3. A fairy wanting to play a game of riddles, they are extremely bored after spending a long time alone in the wilds. Choose a random riddle for it to tell. If you can’t figure it out, it will give you the answer. Perhaps this will help you in the future.

4. You’re invited to dinner, by who, what is dinner with them like?

5. You’re invited to dinner, by who, what is dinner with them like?

6. A boat or horse race being hosted by the village you are in and has drawn huge crowds from all over.

Page of Cups or 2 and Queen

1. You meet a fairy who makes your food taste better.

2. There is a fairy who is angry about something small, but which seems big to them.

3. A tree you are passing whispers your name.

4. You take a stroll when you find something strange, what is it?

5. You take a stroll when you encounter a little pack of buffardello singing riddle ten, and about the treasure hidden at the end of it.

6. There is a spring or summer flower festival, a winter icicle festival, or a fall puddle and leaf viewing festival.

Knight of Cups or 2 and King

1. Fairies singing a song, they grant you a minor wish or heal a complaint if you respectfully join in.

2. You awake to find a fairy braiding and tying knots in your hair.

3. You join a barn dance. Who do you dance with?

4. You join a barn dance. Who do you dance with?

5. A minstrel is wandering through town. What type of music do they sing?

6. A minstrel is wandering through town. What type of music do they sing?

Queen of Cups or 3 and Ace

1. A fairy gives you a potion to deliver to a sick person in a nearby village.

2. You discover a small pool of water that heals one hurt, physical or emotional.

3. Mermaids ask you for some apple pies.

4. Mummers come to your door, are you prepared for them? What do they do?

5. Mummers come to your door, are you prepared for them? What do they do?

6. You are invited to attend a moon viewing party.

King of Cups or 3 and Card2

1. You find a beautiful feature of nature and its spirit which leaves you with a sense of awe and wonder

2. A wise old dragon which shares a philosophy you never knew about before.

3. You encounter an old and eccentric fortune teller in an out of the way tower or hut.

4. A little fairy wants to show off a spell they’ve learned, in this case the ability to make flashes of light appear when they hum a song.

5. Some tragedy strikes the village and a fairy tells you Riddle 11 to find the solution.

6. Some tragedy strikes the village

Ace of Swords or 3 and Card3

1. A dragon which seeks to help gardeners who are growing flowers.

2. A fairy that turns you into an animal for a little while, to help you remember that you are part of the natural world.

3. Some moon rakers smuggling plushies to avoid the taxes on them. They have some fairies helping them.

4. A passing scholar is asked to give a lecture, and there is a lot of excitement building up to the event.

5. People are preparing for a parade of some form.

6. People are preparing for a parade of some form.

Two of Swords or 3 and Card4

1. Discover a forgotten history of an ordinary person. Gain a token if you share this story and how it relates to you.

2. Something that taps you invisibly on the shoulder and helps you feel its silent support when you need it.

3. There are some young zwerg playing pranks on weddings

4. Someone is hurt and they come to you for help.

5. Someone is hurt and they come to you for help. They were given riddle 12 by a fairy to find a solution.

6. There are some young zwerg playing pranks on weddings

Three of Swords or 3 and Card5

1. An old fairy which brings a lantern to help you see when you are in the dark, but never says a word.

2. A fairy in disguise who has a drink too many in a tavern and accidently reveals what they are to those who they didn’t want to know.

3. A young lutin trying to become a knight

4. You take up a new craft, sewing, carving, etc.

5. You take up a new craft, sewing, carving, etc.

6. You encounter some people whose dream selves have taken a wispy, but somewhat solid form and are walking around the village. They can’t find their bodies and need help, even if they don’t yet realize it.

Four of Swords or 3 and Card6

1. A fairy dances in front of you, while you are walking, making you uncertain about your path.

2. There is a fairy who gives advice to people on how to find love.

3. You discover some clothes and realize that there are witches you didn’t know about that turned into animals to go have a party with the fey. They’ll be back for their clothes eventually.

4. Someone comes to you because they have lost something.

5. Someone comes to you because a goblin has snatched something from them. When you seek help from a tree it tells you to travel along riddle 13.

6. You meet some fairies who are sneaking into people’s cellars to get drinks and hold secret celebrations. They invite you to join them.

Five of Swords or 3 and Card7

1. You encounter a fairy in a ruin that is morning what once was.

2. You encounter a dragon in a maelstrom that asks something of you.

3. You encounter a fairy singing a raunchy and embarrassing ballad

4. People have decided to invent a new holiday. Why and what preparations are involved? Does everyone agree that it should be a holiday?

5. You witness some people dancing in a village square.

6. You witness some people dancing in a village square.

Six of Swords or 3 and Card8

1. You witness a fairy dance and or song that grants you a new zest for life. Gain a token if you say what you are going to pursue.

2. A fairy who can fix nearly anything that is broken if you leave it on their mound with some food.

3. Fairies need a human to join them in playing a sport that is similar to field hockey with spells.

4. You go to get a drink at a café, pub, what kind of place is it?

5. You discover a pub keeper who is a changeling, they can tell fortunes by watching the foam disappear on a drink. They give you riddle 14.

6. You discover a strange but beautiful smelling herb that small fairies flock to. What do you think it might do? Is there someone you might be able to ask about it?

Seven of Swords or 3 and Card9

1. A fairy shows you where to go while they are in the form of a bird, rabbit, or bumble.

2. A little fairy pretends to be something big and scary because they are afraid and uncertain.

3. A fairy steals someone’s hat or similar object to get them to give chase, giggling when they do.

4. You visit someone just because. What do you talk about, do you eat or drink anything?

5. You visit an old witch who lives deep in the woods. Do you know them? What do you talk about? They give you riddle 15 after your conversation.

6. A giant caterpillar hasn’t been able to get enough food to make their cocoon and transform into a giant moth.

Eight of Swords or 3 and Card10

1. There are rumors of a fairy in an old tower that comes if you call them while standing by a fire to perform a single service of a specific type.

2. A Fairy that whispers a new way of designing a tool or invention to you. Or perhaps riddle 16.

3. A dobby tried to help a cattle farm by milking the cows, but accidently let all the cows out of their pens. They need your help getting them back in.

4. You are working on a potion and need help from someone. Who do you seek help from?

5. You are working on a potion and need help from someone. Who do you seek help from?

6. An owl nests above you, either in the eves of your home or dorm, or in the tree where you are camping.

Nine of Swords or 3 and Jack

1. A fairy gives you something someone lost and asks you to return it. They may not know who lost it.

2. There is a hill where you can fall asleep for a whole year. When you wake up you don’t need to sleep again for six years.

3. You see an old wizard creating illusions with the smoke from their pipe in order to confuse bees and get their honey.

4. You are invited to dinner, who do you eat with, do you enjoy spending time with them?

5. You are invited to dinner by an odd little fairy. Do you enjoy spending time with them?

6. A poppling of the well has taken on a new roll to help people, what is it and how might you help them?

Ten of Swords or 3 and Queen

1. You find a place where you will be younger when you set foot on it, only to age again when you leave.

2. You find a place where people can’t stop laughing with joy while they are there.

3. A fairy that was caught out in a storm, having lost strength from Fey Ricketts they need to be warmed and fed. They might live with you for a few days or even a month before they get their strength back.

4. Mummers come to your door, are you prepared for them? What do they do?

5. You decide to host a dinner. Who do you invite and what do you make.

6. You decide to host a dinner. Who do you invite and what do you make.

Page of Swords or 3 and King

1. A fairy stuck on one side of the river, unable to cross without someone’s help.

2. A song writer, poet, artist, or some other creative comes to you for advice.

3. A fairy from the forest asks you to deliver a message to one of the fairies living as a cat in the village. What is the message and who are the fairies?

4. Unable to sleep you take a walk at night and notice something about the village you hadn’t before.

5. Unable to sleep you take a walk at night and overhear some fairies talking about something to be found if riddle 17 is followed.

6. A bard has been invited to play a festival for some fairies, they are nervous about going alone as this is one of their first actual paid performances, they ask you to join them.

Knight of Swords or 4 and Ace

1. A fairy calls out a warning that a storm is coming. Now you must warn everyone else and help them get ready.

2. Haunted Bathroom

3. You go to an elegant fairy dance. What is this like? Who do you talk to?

4. Bear cubs crawl in through a window left open a crack and are wrecking merry mischief in a kitchen. This can be at your house or someone else’s, who asks you for help.

5. A storm rages through the village, making it difficult to go out. How does it make you feel? How do you help with the aftermath?

6. A storm rages through the village, making it difficult to go out. How does it make you feel? How do you help with the aftermath?

Queen of Swords or 4 and Card2

1. A fairy needs help watching over their sheep, for a troll keeps showing up to carry them off.

2. A dobby has been guarding a treasure for over a hundred years and doesn’t realize the owner is never coming back. Bored he seeks some sort of release and starts causing trouble.

3. You discover a grove of dryads which need someone to take their acorns and plant them in a new grove. Do you agree to help? Where do you plant the new grove of trees?

4. You are sitting by a babbling brook when someone comes along who is trying to write poems, or perhaps play in the water. Who is it, what happens?

5. You discover an old, ruined castle.

6. Without realizing it someone has built a stable over some fairies’ underground home. The fairies need your help convincing the owner of the barn to move it so that the horse snookum stops raining down on them.

King of Swords or 4 and Card3

1. You meet a dwarf who can turn into a spider and spread dreams, which are sometimes nightmares and sometimes pleasant.

2. Buffardello keep tickling people’s feet right as they are about to fall asleep

3. Someone comes asking to be your apprentice. Who are they? If you accept, remember to include them in some of the scenes or entries from now on.

4. You encounter a sky ship, the captain invites you on board for a bit, perhaps to talk about the local area or your travels.

5. You lose something.

6. You lose something.

Ace of Pentacles or 4 and Card4

1. The Countess of Mice is upset by a spike in the number of feral owlcats roaming around.

2. Bearbeavers are damming up a stream and flooding a small village

3. A fairy comes to you seeking some pastries.

4. You decide to bring a gift to one of the fairies? What are you bringing and who are you bringing it to?

5. You gaze at some tea leaves with friends, what do you see? What do they see?

6. You gaze at some tea leaves with friends and discover riddle 18.

Two of Pentacles or 4 and Card5

1. A poltergeist moves the toilets into a classroom, and the desks into the now flooding bathrooms.

2. A fairy trading for spells and items that cause mischief for a target and the user. So, if the items are used to curse someone to have flatulence, the user will have it too, if they curse someone to have an itchy nose at the worst moment, their nose might itch right as they are drifting off to sleep.

3. Meet a traveling house fairy without a home. Are they now feral and need to find a place like a berry patch to settle, or are they looking for a human home? What happened with their old home?

4. You discover a witch who is trying to start a dairy where they milk moose. Moose milk is richer than cow’s milk and is said to have healing and strengthening properties.

5. You catch a glimpse of someone who might need help in your tea leaves.

6. A bored fairy interrupts you to play something. They give riddle 19 as part of the game, but you feel that it was perhaps directions? What to, you’ll find out if you follow it.

Three of Pentacles or 4 and Card6

1. A magical skunk sneaks onto campus. It can appear and disappear, and seemingly squeeze under doors. Worst of all, it is constantly climbing into bed with people. What is happening? Is the question on everyone’s mind, along with “is vinegar or tomato juice better for getting the stench of skunk out of your hair?”

2. A pair of dwarves is arguing over ownership of a magical item, and they want you to settle it.

3. A new witch moves into the village. Who are they and what kind of magical service do they provide? You might invite them over for tea and cookies, or whatever other meal you prefer.

4. A new artist breezes into the village. Who are they and what is their art like? – You might seek out a nymph to help provide them with inspiration

5. Someone gives you a gift. Who, what, and why?

6. Someone had a dream they can’t shake, in which they were told to follow Riddle 20, but they don’t want to go alone.

Four of Pentacles or 4 and Card7

1. There is a magical garden of mushrooms which has gotten out of control and now mushrooms are starting to grow everywhere.

2. The trees, flowers, and grasses are moving about the forest as a prank to cause you to walk in circles.

3. The people need a new well dug, perhaps you can find a giant who would be willing to help.

4. You find a pile of old swords rusting in the wild.

5. A child has gotten lost in the woods, and you are asked to help find them.

6. A child has gotten lost in the woods, and you are asked to help find them.

Five of Pentacles or 4 and Card8

1. Baby unicorn learning how to dimension door, it’s still clumsy at it and might end up teleporting anywhere in range.

2. A Fissure with strange magic that makes giant animals small and small animals giant, so that squirrels are the size of deer and deer the size of squirrels for about a square mile of area.

3. Some pixies want to play a game with you.

4. You meet a druid who is tending to the forest.

5. You take a moment for yourself, to sit and reflect on things.

6. You take a moment for yourself, to sit and reflect on things.

Six of Pentacles or 4 and Card9

1. Everyone received a letter detailing their most embarrassing moment. No one knows where the letter is from, and many people don’t want to talk about it.

2. Some pixies stole a wagon wheel and are taunting the driver.

3. The villages water has become polluted with flotsam from the forest after a storm. Perhaps you can find and talk a dragon into helping purify and clean it.

4. A magical creature moves into the corner of your hut. Do they become a pet, a friend, or are they just passing through after a bit?

5. You overhear an interesting conversation. Do you join in?

6. You overhear an interesting conversation between a hag and a giant, in which the hag tells the giant about riddle 21.

Seven of Pentacles or 4 and Card10

1. You are invited to a poetry reading at a sylvan dragon’s lair by accident.

2. You are asked to check on an elderly witch who lives in the forest, perhaps to carry some Christmas or other holiday treats to them.

3. The cows have gotten sick. Perhaps you can speak to a nymph about helping to heal them.

4. You find a fairy which wants to swap folktales and stories.

5. Someone has lost their pet.

6. Someone has lost their pet, while searching for it in the woods you meet a bigfoot like creature who gives you riddle 22.

Eight of Pentacles or 4 and Jack

1. A traveling theatre troop wants to get your input on an aspect of their performance.

2. A popular song gets stuck in your head. When you mention it, everyone around you says its stuck in their head as well. Soon you come to realize something invisible is wandering around humming the song.

3. The decorations used for a festival have all been water damaged. Perhaps you and or the fairies could help make new ones.

4. Some bogles throw mud pies or slosh water on you from the treetops.

5. You have an accident and are hurt.

6. You have an accident and are hurt, during which you have a vision of a beautiful being who gives you riddle 23.

Nine of Pentacles or 4 and Queen

1. You come across a tailor teaching a giant how to restitch a massive hole in their pants. They need a much larger needle to do this. Perhaps a dwarf, cyclops, or blacksmith could create such a needle.

2. A troop of confused fairies have entered the human world for the first time from the deeper wilds of fairyland. They want a guide to help explain all the odd behaviors and things they are seeing.

3. A wildfey thinks it’s funny to chase and rile up the village animals, especially the sheep and cows.

4. Some goblins invite you to dine with them on snails, honeyed crickets, fish algae, and other things of their swamp.

5. You discover a small place of beauty?

6. A nymph is seeking someone to become a beekeeper. Perhaps you would want the job or could help her find someone to take it.

Ten of Pentacles or 4 and King

1. Someone was gifted a magic potion by one of the fairies. They ask you what it is? Who are they, what is the potion and who gave it to them?

2. One of the fairies has caused a bit of bother for one of the villagers. What happened and how do you help?

3. You find a vine that is dangling down from the clouds.

4. A new teacher comes to town in the middle of the year, and they seem a little quirky.

5. You have a disagreement with someone in the village. What is it about and what can be done to resolve it?

6. You have a disagreement with someone in the village. What is it about and what can be done to resolve it?

Page of Pentacles or 5 and Ace

1. Some birds follow you, chittering merrily, soon you start to hear occasional snippets of conversation in their chirps, as they talk about you, not just your present but bits of your past and possibly your future. They likely also reveal the location of some hidden treasure. Perhaps through riddle 24.

2. You are caught in a sudden magical storm and invited to stay in a cottage you’ve never seen before.

3. The spirit of someone who just died comes to you to talk.

4. You find out about a maze of hedges and brambles created by a colony of mice. They are said to have gathered many secretive folktales.

5. Gossip sweeps through the village. What is it about?

6. Gossip sweeps through the village. It comes in the form of riddle 25.

Knight of Pentacles or 5 and Card2

1. Children covering trees and houses in brightly colored yarn, perhaps as decoration or perhaps as mischief.

2. A scarecrow has made friends with the local birds and is now feeding them the farmers crops on purpose.

3. A market faire opens, either in this village or a nearby one and everyone goes to it.

4. A market faire opens, either in this village or a nearby one and everyone goes to it.

5. An old hermit comes into town, their cabin is beginning to fall apart, and they don’t want to cut down any of the trees around it, so they are seeking a way to get bricks out into the forest.

6. You meet a beekeeper who has been having trouble with something going after the honey and hives which is hurting the bees.

Queen of Pentacles or 5 and Card3

1. A dobby wants to help you with various tasks, which they obviously mess up in some way, but they may still provide help in another.

2. You encounter a magical mirror standing in the forest.

3. You are asked to babysit the children of a sick sylvan. Which one, how does that go?

4. A child shows you something interesting they discovered.

5. A child shows you something interesting they discovered. Perhaps it is a spring that is singing riddle 26?

6. A former knight passes through town, not certain what to do with their life now.

King of Pentacles or 5 and Card4

1. There is a cauldron that creates dreams hidden somewhere in the forest. Something has gone wrong with it and it is now giving out nightmares. Find it and if you can, fix it.

2. There is a magical dog which can help the now sickly crops grow. See if you can find it in the woods and get it to follow you with treats, back to the farms.

3. A fairy child sneaks into the human town to play with the local children.

4. You meet someone who has an interesting perspective on religion and or philosophy. What are their ideas, and what do you think about it?

5. You make an offering to some fairies. Who are they and what are you seeking?

6. You make an offering to some fairies. Who are they and what are you seeking? Perhaps they give you riddle 27 in return.

The Fool or 5 and Card5

1. A magical food cart has food so delicious it keeps attracting troublesome spirits.

2. A horse headed fairy has run past the castle warning of an impending fire. People believe that a tiny dragon might have nested somewhere flammable. It needs to be found and moved to a safer location.

3. The children have begun playing some game around your house, perhaps they are sledding off the roof into the snow below, perhaps they are making piles of leaves, perhaps they are simply playing hide and seek.

4. The children have begun playing some game around your house, perhaps they are sledding off the roof into the snow below, perhaps they are making piles of leaves, perhaps they are simply playing hide and seek. Perhaps there is a changling with them who gives them riddle 28.

5. Someone who lost their job is trying to start a company making pastries from wild berries, the problem is that the wild fey keep flitching the berries they are picking.

6. A giant toad tried resting on someone’s roof but fell through and is now too large to get back out the door, plus their roof is ruined.

The Magician or 5 and Card6

1. A spice dragon has been seen nearby. They breath out a delicious and highly prized but painful powder, instead of fire.

2. You receive a divination reading that tells you about a forgotten secret of the region you are in.

3. You meet someone on a journey of their own.

4. You meet someone on a journey of their own.

5. You discover some interesting plants, herb, berries, either tasty or with magical properties.

6. You discover some interesting plants, herb, berries, either tasty or with magical properties. Perhaps eating them allows you to receive riddle 29.

The High Priestess or 5 and Card7

1. A gnome has made a potion which has gone awry, it is now crawling about eating other potions and magical ingredients and using this magic in bizarre ways, such as transforming flowers into angry pink bumble bees, or changing people’s voices. The gnome gives you a secret way to stop the living potion in return for your silence on who created it. They’ll also pay.

2. A giant from the deep fairyland has stumbled into the human world. This giant doesn’t really understand houses and when they smell something delicious inside, they’ll simply pull the roof off to grab it. Try to explain to them that houses are a little like animal dens, and they can’t just go pulling them apart, you may need to subdue them a little first as they aren’t in the best mood.

3. An animal comes closer than normal to you, perhaps it even gets into something in your house or camp. What is it and how do you react?

4. An animal comes closer than normal to you, perhaps it even gets into something in your house or camp. What is it and how do you react?

5. Some fairies accidently ended up with human cows in their herd, and they can’t touch or go near the cows’ droppings that have been piling up in the stables.

6. A ghost has been haunting a house, what might they want?

The Empress or 5 and Card8

1. An owlbear cub following a nervous looking person who is glancing around the trees wondering where the mother might be.

2. A portal to another world has opened up under a child's bed or in their closet.

3. People are excited about an upcoming sporting event. What is it?

4. People are excited about an upcoming sporting event. What is it?

5. People are excited about an upcoming sporting event. What is it?

6. Some local children have been taught to turn into hares by a fairy.

The Emperor or 5 and Card9

1. People’s shadows are breaking away from them and gathering in the forests or other out of the way places.

2. Buffardello are haunting a house

3. You feel a swell of nostalgia, what brought it on and what do you remember?

4. You feel a swell of nostalgia, what brought it on and what do you remember?

5. You need to clean out your home or packs which have gotten out of order. What is something that you have which is precious only to you?

6. You need to clean out your home or packs which have gotten out of order. What is something that you have which is precious only to you?

The Hierophant or 5 and Card10

1. Buffardello are giving people strange dreams

2. Buffardello are making it windy in random locations, such as hallways, kitchens, classrooms filled with loose papers.

3. A gift giving festival is coming up.

4. A gift giving festival is coming up.

5. You get invited to a game night.

6. You get invited to a game night.

The Lovers or 5 and Jack

1. You meet a tomte who is trying to prepare for Yule.

2. You meet a nymph who has taught many heroes in the past and is wondering what to do with themselves now.

3. A hungry sylvan comes to you.

4. A hungry sylvan comes to you. Perhaps in return for food it shares riddle 30.

5. You experiment with making a new poultice, magical soap, treat, or potion. What are you trying to do? What ingredients does it need? Who do you ask for advice? Does it succeed?

6. Some birds nest in your attic or show up to try to sneak crumbs of food as you eat.

The Chariot or 5 and Queen

1. You encounter an almgeister herding some deer.

2. You spot a faun playing music

3. An item of clothing wears down, you need to get a new one.

4. An item of clothing wears down, you need to get a new one.

5. Some animals randomly encounter some magic that gives them the gift of speech, confusing them as much as everyone else.

6. You meet an impoverished young person out to seek their fortune.

Strength or 5 and King

1. A unicorn leads you to someone in need of help

2. A banshee wants you to help one of her relations

3. A walking holiday in which people hike out into the wilderness and picnic is coming up.

4. A walking holiday in which people hike out into the wilderness and picnic is coming up.

5. A unicorn leads you to someone in need of help

6. A banshee wants you to help one of her relations

The Hermit or 6 and Ace

1. A nixie shows you to their village beneath the lake.

2. A nixie wants to get a hold a good needle not made with iron.

3. Festival with more intimate family feasts, does someone invite you to join them? Do you invite someone to join you? If no, what do you do?

4. Festival with more intimate family feasts, does someone invite you to join them? Do you invite someone to join you? If no, what do you do?

5. You are invited to join a spinning and or sewing circle.

6. You see an unusual sylvan you’ve never heard of before.

Wheel of Fortune or 6 and Card2

1. Moon dragon seeking to watch animals and people the way some people bird watch.

2. Aqua dragon needs help cleaning their pond, as human filth has gotten into it.

3. You are reminded of some past mistake. What brought on that memory, what was the mistake?

4. You are reminded of some past mistake. What brought on that memory, what was the mistake?

5. A hobbit has moved into a little cavern nearby and wants help gathering healing herbs so it can begin aiding the sick of the region.

6. A pregnant fairy needs a humans help to safely give birth. Her husband comes looking for someone trustworthy who can provide this aid.

Justice or 6 and Card3

1. A young Ashwood dragon seeking to play

2. You encounter the Sidhe singing a mournful but beautiful opera. What are they singing of?

3. A festival filled with music and theatre is coming up.

4. A festival filled with music and theatre is coming up.

5. You encounter a lost baby dragon crying for its parents.

6. A fox and its cubs move in under your house or come near your camp. The parents are leery of you, but the cubs love to try to scratch things from you or pounce on your feet.

The Hanged Man or 6 and Card4

1. Ashwood dragon wants to find a way to attend a feast in the human village without anyone knowing about it.

2. You encounter a Quiet Lantern Fairy.

3. The Ruler of cat asks you to take care of a wild fey child

4. A dragon is calling out a loud song, searching for a possible mate.

5. Preparing for a village wide feast, do you help, if so, how?

6. Preparing for a village wide feast, do you help, if so, how?

Death or 6 and Card5

1. Aqua dragon resting on the shore, needs someone to help them comb their hair

2. Hearth dragon gives you a lost knickknack in hopes that you can return it to the owner.

3. A Nixie talks to you enthusiastically about a hobby you never considered trying until now. Perhaps the nixie can help you get started.

4. You wander a little close to the den of an owlbear and are chased off.

5. You go shopping, what are your favorite local shops?

6. You go shopping, what are your favorite local shops?

Temperance or 6 and Card6

1. Sylvan dragon knitting sweaters for the local animals, perhaps it needs help or more yarn at least.

2. A Sylvan dragon tells you some tales about a local hero.

3. The Royal ruler of the cats in a region is preparing for a parade

4. You are invited to visit a local noble. Why did they want to visit with you? What do you talk about?

5. A celebration with display, such as large bonfires, bright lanterns, fireworks, etc.

6. A celebration with display, such as large bonfires, bright lanterns, fireworks, etc.

The Devil or 6 and Card7

1. A lutin comes to you when you are feeling pensive

2. Thorn bush fairies snag you as you try to walk past

3. Perchta needs help fixing a wagon wheel in which she was carrying the spirits of children.

4. A person in the village asks you to babysit their children. Perhaps you take them for a stroll through the woods, how does that go, do you see any animals or perhaps fairies.

5. You are asked to perform a ritual to bless the village or crop.

6. You are asked to perform a ritual to bless the village or crop.

The Tower or 6 and Card8

1. You encounter an Abada who is training some squirrels to help it with tasks around the forest.

2. You come across an Abada’s massive tree, which is so large it seems impossible.

3. An elverfolk offers to take you for a flight on a giant moth

4. Someone new arrives in the village, a minstrel, a theatre troop perhaps? Who are they?

5. Someone new arrives in the village, a minstrel, a theatre troop perhaps? Who are they?

6. A giant moth is looking for a safe place to lay their eggs.

The Star or 6 and Card9

1. A waldgeist needs a place to stay with their sick child for a while.

2. Trow jumps unexpectedly into a dance, startling everyone and making them laugh.

3. Elverfolk want to dance with you.

4. A find a wind-swept bluff.

5. You take some time to find serenity. Where do you go to reflect? What do you ponder?

6. You take some time to find serenity. Where do you go to reflect? What do you ponder?

The Moon or 6 and Card10

1. You encounter some Wichtelmänner seeking to find someone to give a gift to.

2. You encounter a small roadside food booth. What do they serve? What do you talk with the proprietor about?

3. You find a cottage of zwerg and someone they are taking care of who has to hide out from the world for a while.

4. You come across an artist who is trying to find inspiration in goblindom.

5. The mayor invites you over for tea.

6. The mayor invites you over for tea.

The Sun or 6 and Jack

1. A mermaid wants to hear about the world beyond the ocean or river.

2. A mermaid warns you of a coming storm, and offers to show you a cave to shelter in.

3. Hearth dragon shows you a hoard of unappreciated treasure such as the tossed out drawings of children, sweaters made by women who are don’t understand modern fashion, etc.

4. The water has become dirty, perhaps there is a dragon who could help purify it.

5. You have a vision of the past of the place you are in, which stirs up strong emotions in you.

6. You have a vision of the past of the place you are in, which stirs up strong emotions in you.

Judgment or 6 and Queen

1. A mermaid is sneaking into town to sing in a choir

2. You meet a Tiddy mun, the spirit of a swamp which no longer exists playing in a puddle

3. You meet a Hearth dragon who wants to talk about the people of the village, either to tell you about them and if you know anything, to hear about them.

4. Some strange footprints appear in a village that make everyone uneasy. What did they come from? No one knows, but perhaps you can find out.

5. You come across an artist who is trying to find inspiration in fairydom

6. You hear a rare wizard and witches’ faire is going to be in a neighboring region, you may want to visit it to try to learn something or purchase something.

The World or 6 and King

1. A shaggy urisk wants to show you something interesting

2. Zwerg seeking to bless gardens to thrive

3. Zwerg having a party, one of them falls into the river

4. A giant turtle with an island of plants on its back is worried about a squirrel that has built a nest in one of the trees, for he needs to dive to the bottom of the lake for a moment.

5. The fairies want you to play a sport with them against a rival clan.

6. The fairies want you to play a sport with them against a rival clan.

Cozy TTRPG System

2024-11-15T18:26:00.001-08:00

I am expanding my two most popular books on itch.io, and turning them into a single comprehensive guide.

Cozy Oracle System

This book provides you with a method to play TTRPGs without a gamemaster or to expand journaling games such as “Last Tea Shop” or “Apothecary”, which often offer very little support to help you go beyond just a few random encounters.

In addition, this system is meant to help you turn every game into a journaling game, while injecting slice-of-life and cozy moments into any RPG so that you can journal the downtime of your favorite TTRPG character, and or their retirement. Want to play 5e, Pathfinder, Dungeon World, Wanderhome, Fiasco, and more by sitting down and writing creatively? Great!

You can also use this system to play cooperatively, by helping you build the world and quests around you as you play, by inspiring you to discover what happens to your character.

If this sounds complicated, don’t worry, solo roleplay is deceptively straightforward, which is good, because in TTRPGs the simple solution is often the best one.

See the free version

Dialogue System

Expanding TTRPGs beyond simple charisma and persuasion. My hope is to provide you some possible tools and information that will help you expand upon conversations and interactions with characters in TTRPGs. I developed this system of dialogue for TTRPGs and Journaling RPGs by studying the psychology of charisma and the archetypes from slice of life, romance, and cozy mysteries.

Why do witch’s fly on Broomsticks?

2024-10-18T14:08:00.000-07:00

In the modern world the notion that witches ride on broomsticks is so iconic we perhaps only occasionally think how odd it is. For once witches could fly without any help or on the backs of animals such as goats or were carried by the fairies and other beings. The first mention of a person using a broom to fly comes from a witch trial near the end of the Medieval (it was the Early Modern when most of the witch trials were conducted). In 1453 a priest was forced to confess to flying on a broom to meet the devil, but no one can know for certain why he or later depictions of witches involved brooms for certain.

There are three sources of speculation I will discuss but none are absolute matches as there is no direct path to be found anywhere between the reasons witches road brooms and their use of brooms or broom like objects in rituals.

First and is that in Classical Rome brooms were used as rituals for to drive away Sylvanus by a person who represented a household deity in a Roman ritual (Dorcey), Cleanliness was generally important to protecting people’s homes, if a house was dirty, or didn’t have clean water a vampire could enter it without permission. Fairies too would give blessings to houses that had been swept but become dangerous and feral if a house was left unsweapt. Within this world of cleanness having the power to drive off evil, and dirtiness having the power to corrupt good or invite evil, the broom had very specific power.

Thus, brooms were frequently used by magical ritualists to gain the support of good fairies and to drive off evil fairies. Given the fact that many people would be hired or kidnapped by the fairies to do work for them, such as watching children and cattle, or cleaning their homes the broom might have been a tool that many people picked up before traveling/flying to fairy land.

Another idea comes from Carlo Ginzburg's book “Deciphering the Witch's Sabbath” he states that certain people would send their souls “to the realm of the dead, in the shape of an animal, on the back of animals or other magical vehicles. The gandus or wand of the shamans of Lapland resembles, on the one hand, the horseshoe-shaped wand used by the Buryat shaman and, on the other, the broomstick on which the witches claim they rode to the Sabbath. The folkloric nucleus of the Sabbath — magic flight and metamorphosis — seems to derive from a remote Eurasian substratum."

In essence it seems that the broom might have been a stand in for the idea of horses, an idea which comes from the Uralic people who lived in places like Hungry, Livonia, and Siberia. Certainly, many fairytale motifs were passed between the Uralic people of Easter Europe and the people of Central Europe. For example, the idea of certain witch like creatures being blind (as in Hansel and Gretel) and being tricked with a chicken bone is present in Sami story, as well as a story from Mari-El, in addition to the German one.

Certainly, fairies in Scotland would often fly by crying "Horse and Hattock" and people could follow after them. Although a stick wasn't always involved in this it could sometimes be. In his article on the Trolls and Hillfolk of the Finns and Picts, Alan Bruford states that "the reference to riding on a bulwand (mugwort or dock stem) is a local interpretation of the 'horse.'"

It's important to remember at this point that witches were often believed to send their soul out of their body to go to fairyland, to meet with the fairies, the devil, to follow some divine being, etc. This was a symbolic and spiritual world and a wand, a weed, or a broom could have contained the spirit of a horse for use in this world, or could have been turned into a horse in it.

It might also be that the broom was seen as a weapon used by evil witches when battling the good werewolves and witches, as Ginzburg also mentions that: “In 1692 at Jürgensburg in Livonia an eighty-year-old man named Thiess… confessed to the judges interrogating him that he was a werewolf. Three times a year, he said, on St. Lucy’s night before Christmas, the night of St John, and of the Pentecost, the werewolves of Livonia go into hell, ‘at the end of the sea’ (he later corrected himself: ‘underground’), to fight with the devil and the sorcerers)… the werewolves pursue the devil and sorcerers, who are armed with broomsticks wrapped in horse tails…. At stake in the battles was the fertility of the fields: the sorcerers steal the shoots of the grain, and if they cannot be wrested from them there will be famine.”

The Benandanti, witches from Northern Italy, would send their souls from their bodies and carry bundles of fennel stalks in their battles against evil witches and the devil in order to protect the fertility of the land. Their enemies, evil witches, fought using Sorghum, also known as broomcorn because they were used to make brooms. Sorghum was generally considered a lesser grain (millet), although it could also be a weed if it grew in the fields of more desirable crops. It is difficult to say, however, which came first, the use of it by evil witches or the use of brooms and while Ginzburg mentions the evil sorcerers using sorghum stalks in his book on Benandatai, he doesn’t mention this connection.

This brings us to a last point, what has become the most popular claim, that witches rode brooms in connection to a fertility ritual. This was written in a book by an anthologist but they gave no sources for this idea and I have yet to find any original source. This doesn’t mean that such sources don’t exist exactly, but no one who mentions this idea cites any original source. As a result this idea is purely speculative based on their own wishes and the general old obsession with the idea that everything involved fertility rituals. But spiritual belief was often much more complex than, everything is about fertility. Even those things that were about fertility were often related to more than just this idea. For example, it is true that the shamans of Siberia would frequently travel to the spirit world to guarantee a good run of salmon, a large flock of geese, or large herds of reindeer, thus their wand like objects might have been connected to fertility rituals in this sense, but in another they often represented a horse or other spirit animal which they rode up. At the same time the other two mentions of the broom in actual lore connected it to something used by the sorcerers who were trying to destroy the crop, rather than the witch figures who were fighting for the fertility of the land. In Rome and among the fairies the broom was literally connected to cleanliness and used as a way to drive off or protect against evil spirits, vampires, gods that were acting feral, etc. In this sense the broom was connected to the idea of fighting against disease, rather than fertility.

Sources:

Peter T. Leeson, Jacob W. Russ, Witch Trials, The Economic Journal, Volume 128, Issue 613, 1 August 2018, Pages 2066–2105, https://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12498

Dorcey, Peter F. (1989) The Role of Women in the Cult of Silvanus. Numen Vol. 36, Fasc. 2 (Dec., 1989), pp. 143-155

Ginzburg, Carlo (1966) The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Routledge.

Ginzburg, C. (2004). Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches' Sabbath. United States: University of Chicago Press.

Bruford, Alan, Trolls, Hillfolk, Finns, and Picts: The Identity of the Good Neighbors in Orkey and Shetland, from the book "The Good People: New Fairylore Essays" edited by Peter Narv ez

Owlbear Cubs Story and Game

2024-05-18T13:05:00.000-07:00

A free coloring book, picture book, and game.

Deep in the forest adventure awaits you and your friends, not as valiant knights nor powerful wizards, but as cute owlbear cubs on a mission to fill your bellies before the icy grip of winter comes.

In this game you'll take on the role of fluffy owlbear cubs, using your cunning and teamwork to filch food from witch's cottages, fairy celebrations, pirate ships, and other locations.

The woods are waiting, and winter is coming!

Owlbear Cub Picture Book

Owlbear Cub Coloring Book

Owlbear Cub Game

Free Fairy Encyclopedia and Other eBooks

2023-11-02T03:12:00.002-07:00

I've posted a number of ebooks online for Free and am going to post more as time goes on.

"Fairy Encyclopedia"

Many of the fairies and spirits mentioned within this book come from regions where information on the fairies isn’t readily available in English elsewhere. A few of these include; Mari-El – In the heart of an ancient forest which was so vast and isolated it allowed the people within to remain the last pagans in Europe. For the people of this land never converted to Islam or Christianity, and so to this day they still value the spirits of the forest. Their woodlands are filled with a dizzying array of spirits, from bathhouse spirits that appear as shooting stars to spirits which always run and move backwards.

Coloring Books

Pooh in Fairy Land and Christmas Gnomes Part 1

Wander Witch, a Journal TTRPG

Puck: Fairy Lore

2023-05-05T14:43:00.001-07:00

by Ty Hulse

I've posted a large encyclopedia of fairies on Google Books for free. "Fairy Encyclopedia"

Today I would like to talk about Puck.

You know the ruggedly handsome man who helped women with their chores and of whom they had many naughty stories.

Or as Buccola put it,

"Nothing pleases Puck more, Latham claims, than to make the morning fire, sweep the house, grind mustard and malt, draw water, and help the maids with breaking hemp, bolting and dressing flax, as well as spinning…. Robin Goodfellow was typically depicted with a huge phallus and a broom. It takes little present-day imagination to come up with reasons why early modern women might have sat around the fire over their darning sharing tales about a figure with such attributes….

That’s right women sewing and spinning loved to tell stories about a huge fairy man who could help them with their chores.

Puck is connected to the Robin Goodfellow and the hobgoblins, “rough hairy spirits, which do domestic chores…. Useful as they are they are easily offended and often mischievous. They are not exclusively domestic, but are often associated with streams, pools, and rocks…”

At this point it is worth looking at a related fairy from Puck’s Anglo-Saxon homeland, the Puk or Niskepuk. These stories evolved elsewhere and so don’t represent an original Puck but the similarities in their characters are interesting. Here Puck were often wild fairies that people would bring into their homes by building them nests out of straws or logs with holes in them, they could then capture or offer the fairy some food, often butter or oatmeal to live with them. Those homes with these fairies would prosper, beer brewed better, cattle thrived, household choirs got done quicker, and everything seemed to generally go well.

That said, inviting a wild fairy into your house is a little like inviting a wild cat into your house. I mean it can go great most of the time, but every once in a while, the mood for mischief will strike, and the cat will pounce on your keyboard while you’re trying to type, or scratch up some of your furniture. Further, niskepuk could steal from the neighbors, but they would fight the neighbor niskepuk if it tried stealing from you.

Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” it is interesting to note that the fairy and Puck introduce him differently. For the fairy mentions that he is the one who frightens maidens, steals the cream from milk, makes it harder for butter to churn, and beer to brew properly, causes people to get lost. Yet, she also mentions that those who call him Hobgoblin will have their work done by him and good luck.

Puck, however, speaks of making Oberon smile and of punishing those he feels have violated some fairy morality. He takes the shape of a roasted crab apple in a gossips drink, so that he can bob and cause her to spill ale on herself. He also takes the form of a three-foot stool in order to cause those telling sad or boring stories to fall, so that everyone will laugh and have a marrier time.

Within these lines we can see the push between Puck’s multiple natures. He is a mischievous trickster on whom bad things were blamed, a helpful figure which was believed to bring fortune, and of course a moralizing figure.

Contrasting their wild fairy nature in chapbooks, Robin Goodfellow was often said to be the half human child of the fairy king Oberon, who was granted the power of shapeshifting by his father. Which adds a fun layer when watching him cause Oberon trouble during Midsummer Night’s dream.

It’s difficult to say how early this aspect of his character was added, if it was a purely literary device.

During this time there was a spike in literacy and Yeomen began writing about the fairies. These writers knew the fairies “well from their mothers and grandmothers, and their new readers knew them, and loved them because they were familiar… they appealed to the court as well as to the country, and the fairy vogue was made.”

Further, in the past, people didn’t want to display too much knowledge of fairy lore which could have led to charges of heresy. When this changed, people wrote more regularly and honestly about the delightful aspects of fairy nature.

At this time the English world had been turned on its head as it went through rapid changes as well, the religious assumptions were being reexamined. The English Civil War had beheaded a king, holidays like Christmas had been outlawed by his non-king successor.

People were grasping for something, what people often grasped for during times like this was in part spiritualism and fairies.

During this time people began to focus on the more frolicsome, frivolous and tiny side of fairies.

“a little school of friends among the poets, Drayton, Browne, Herrick, and the almost unknown Simon stewards, caught by the deliciousness of Shakespeare’s fairies, and coming from counties where small fairies belonged to the folk tradition, amused themselves and each other by writing fantasies on littleness.”

Nimphidia and the Wedding of a Fey

The fairies are hopping,

The small flowers, cropping,

And with dew dropping,

Skip thorow the greaves

At barly break they play

Merrily all the day

At night themselves they lay

Upon the soft leaves

The idea of tiny frolicsome and whimsical fairies didn’t begin at this time. Rather these aspects of their nature were emphasized.

Another aspect of Puck was emphasized early on, but faded later, that of Puck as a moralizing figure. Like most house fairies he hated laziness and certain bad behavior writers used Puck as a way teach people the importance domestic morality.

Over time this was replaced, however, with a focus on whimsy and mischief.

A Fairy Encyclopedia by tyhulse

Cozy Enchanted Village Story Card Game by tyhulse

Gnome Mythology

2023-04-11T10:06:00.004-07:00

I have a much longer article about the gnomes or zwerg as they are called in Germany in my discussion on Snow White. Also, I answer some of the most common internet questions about gnomes at the end of this article.

“Once a woman was suffering through a difficult labor alone, when the zwerg that lived underneath her home appeared and served as her midwife, easing her pain and helping her give birth. (Franz Leibing, 1868)”

This little memorate of a fairy living underneath a German lady’s home, who has clearly come to care about her, illustrates perhaps the most important thing about the fairies, they are humanities neighbors. Garden gnomes or Gartenzwerge, as they are known in Germany from which they came, were named such because they didn’t live in some distant land, but because they frequently inhabited our gardens. Here these zwerg could bless the crops to grow in abundance or could steal the peas, as they so frequently did.

The German folklorist Grasse (1868) noted that in Wilstermarsch Germany: "Every morning, the housemaids would spill milk for the underground people. Beer and crumbs from the table were also offered to them in a similar way. If the milk wasn't offered, the underground people would steal it.

People wanted them happy, for everywhere they went they caused the beer brewed better. In Alversdorf, the underground people would steal pots and kettles, and cause other mischiefs. Yet they also blessed people's cattle to never become sick [cattle were a primary means of wealth, so this mattered a lot]. They also left magical pots for people which caused the seeds held in them to grow faster, milk gathered into them to churn richer, and water held in them to make those who drank from them healthier"

It makes sense that humans would share their food with the zwerg, for fairies needed human food in many tales, or at least food prepared using human ovens and or utensils.

These zwerg were mischievous to be certain, and could even be dangerous, for as with all fairies and humans there was a contrast between individuals. On the whole, however, they were helpful creatures, not just of the woods, but of the more beautiful lands around our homes and villages.

the Zwerg were constantly seeking out human food and cooking tools. This connection through food helped to form strong bonds between the humans and the fairies. In one story;

A zwerg would frequently borrow a pot from a farmer. Once when she came to borrow the pot to boil some potatoes the farmer noticed that she was pregnant and mentioned he would be interested in standing godfather for the baby. Later the zwerg’s husband came and formally asked the farmer to be the godfather to his and his wife’s child.

Later the farmer grew nervous about the prospect of being a fairy’s godfather and went to the pastor for council. The pastor told him that he had to stand godfather, since one couldn’t rescind the offer to do so. So the farmer went to the baptism of the baby zwerg and the feast in the mountain. As he was leaving the zwerg asked him to look behind the door, where he found garbage, which they asked him to sweep up and carry home with him. Annoyed he did so, but to his joy he discovered that the garbage had turned to gold when he got home.

Zwerg gave people blessings in return for the food and drink that they shared. Yet, because they were our neighbors they might also share their food with people. It was common for a man to be plowing at the edge of his field, in the middle of nowhere, when he smelled some delicious cakes being cooked. He commented on how much he would enjoy those cakes, and when he’d plowed back to the same spot he found a plate with an offering of the cakes upon them, which he ate and thanked the zwerg for the meal.

I find these tales of humans interacting with the fairies like neighbors absolutely enchanting.

A few final notes

In addition to gnome zwerg is often translated into dwarf in English. As in Snow White and the Seven Zwerg.

The zwerg’s red hats are what they use to turn invisible, so when they stole people’s peas, the people would use sticks to try to knock their hats off so they could see them.

Breaking these zwerg down is more complex than we have time for, and so it will need to be done in a future video, along with the darker side of zwerg and dwarves.

Learn more about Snow White and the Seven Zwerg

What are gnomes? - Gnomes are zwerg in German fairy tales, the same as the 'dwarves' who helped Snow White. They are a synchronization of Norse dwarves and Celtic fairies.

What do gnomes do? - Gnomes obviously do a lot of things, although they love dancing and celebrating. Indeed, they seemed to have so much fun most of the time that some people wished to marry a gnome and be happy, and some people even did marry gnomes. They would often give good presents to their nieces and nephews after this. Some gnomes liked to mine, many would bless gardens, or on occasion steal from them. Because of the diversity of the things they did it is difficult to come up with a comprehensive answer for "what do gnomes do?"

What is the story behind gnomes? - If you are wondering about garden gnomes, the story is that gnomes or zwerg as they were called, could bless gardens to grow better, but also might steal form them. If you are wondering about the Dungeons and Dragons and World of Warcraft gnomes, the story behind gnomes is that they were spirits created by alchemists. It is this connection with alchemists that makes them tinkers and researchers in these games. Keep in mind that garden gnome is actually a bad translation of zwerg, so the alchemical gnomes and the garden or fairy gnomes have nothing to do with each other in mythology.

What is the meaning behind gnomes? There are many, as the zwerg that gnome was translated from could be tutelary spirits of the land, they could be a separate set of magical people, they could be semi-divine beings in old pagan religions.

Gnomes what are they? I feel like I've answered this already.

What is the meaning of garden gnomes? It is difficult to say what the original meaning was. They started being made in the 17th century, a time when many people began to amuse themselves by writing stories of fairies and decorating with fairy related items. So it may just be that someone thought they were fun decorations, a call back to the folklore of creatures that helped people in their homes, gardens, and farms.

10 More Things You Didn't Know About Vampires

2023-03-30T01:47:00.023-07:00

By Ty Hulse

"In Popeca, vampires are said to be at their worst before Easter"

The blood drinking, milk curdling, lords of the dead who haunted the living in a terrifying parody of what people believed to be good and decent.

It's important to remember that there isn't one type of vampire, but many regional variations. Irish vampires might ensnare someone's mind to get them to do as they wanted but in many other places vampires were more likely to crush someone to death. These "things" about vampires then are, as with all things regionally specific.

1-December is the time of vampires, for there were a series of Holidays starting in November and ending in early January in which they were most likely to come out, sometimes in the form of owls, or mice, or many other animals. In Romania they would all go to the cross-roads and battle each other in a huge night long fight.

2-Vampires might also fight each other over hunting territory like any territorial animal. There are stories of one vampire chasing someone into another vampires territory, at which point the two vampires fight over who gets to feed on the victim for so long the sun came up and the vampires collapsed, returning to being corpses, allowing the person to escape.

3-Romanian vampires would sometimes cut their victims faces into a permanent smile, putting them on stakes, and positioning them in such a way that they were most likely to scare the living. One girl thought her friends had survived a vampire attack and waved to greet them happily, only to discover the horrifying truth moments later.

4-In many places there were people who were born as vampires. Really anyone who was born under weird circumstances could be a vampire. In 19th Century Greece if the elder child began to grow sickly a mother might suspect that their youngest was a vampire. These living vampires would send their souls from their bodies in the form of a bluish flame, an animal, or person, to search for blood. They would also drain cows of their milk and blight fields, just as any undead vampire would.

While they were outside their body they were vulnerable, for if anyone moved their body they would die.

In one story from Transylvania a women fed some poor soldiers some porridge. When they'd finished they went to find and thank their hostess, and in the attic they found her with seven other bodies laying down. Afraid they fled. Looking back they saw seven lights descending on the house. These were the souls of the vampires returning to their bodies.

5-People were more likely to accuse those they knew of being vampires than to accuse strangers. This is because vampires were most likely to attack family members and friends. They did this as a subversion of Christian covenants (evil starts at home).

6-If a vampire could kill his whole family, then the entire village within seven years they would be able to move to a new country, become human, and have another family which would become vampires on their deaths.

7-Some vampires might return to their families and continue to live as they had in life (secretly) they would chop wood, do field work, care for children, spin thread, whatever they'd done in life. Yet they were likely either abusive or dangerous to the neighbors, as women would at times ask their children to kill the vampire (the reason the children were asked isn't always given)

8-People would sometimes burn a suspected vampire, mixing its ashes into a drink to give life energy back to the people the vampire had stolen it from. Others would pass through the smoke of a burning vampire to gain protection against evil. If one bone of the vampire remained unburned, however, the vampire would grow back from it.

9-Vampires could enter unclean homes, homes without clean water, homes in which there was no one, or homes which weren't holy without an invitation.

10-Many times vampires could ask objects inside a home to let them into the house. Agnes Murgoci wrote in her book on Romanian vampires that "All lamps may be put out and everything in the house turned upside down, so that if a vampire does come, it will not be able to ask any of the objects in the house to open the door."

especially thread which was spun in the moonlight (at night). It was therefore dangerous to spin any or sew at night as that gave the vampire an ally within your house...

By the way it might interest you to know that many factories run 24 hours a day, so many of your clothes would be made at night.

With that pleasant thought, sleep well.

11-If a vampire could make you sneeze three times in a row they would have power over you.

Goblins Mythology and Fairy Tales

2023-03-13T15:17:00.008-07:00

The folkloric nature of goblin is so amorphous as to be impossible to pin down. This is because people began to use it in a fairly general way, to mean one of many different possible fairy creatures, but despite the often-frustrating ways which the English language often mixes words around there does seem to be a group of beings from which many of the ideas of ‘goblins’ sprang. These are tutelary deities, that is fairies of the household, which have been driven from their home, and or wild fairies that people tried and failed to domesticate.

Etymologically the word has two possible origins, one was used to describe traitors and demonic spirits, the second was used to describe household spirits, protectors of rooms and perhaps especially the bed chambers. In this one of the goblin’s folkloric ancestors, the kobold, is well known for its wild and raucous laugh. More than this they were also well known for stealing treasure from neighboring households.

William Sayer’s in their article on the origins of goblins states that:

An Old English protector of rooms can have been both evicted from the home to the wilderness and burdened with a derogatory foreign name. There the goblin survived but surely with an irreversible darkening of mood.

While I state that goblins were likely former domesticated fairies, it is important to keep in mind that household and forest beings were often intermixed, such that forest fairies often became house fairies and vice versa, what’s more it wasn’t always clear which one was dealing with. Robin Goodfellow, or Puck, who dwells within the woods, also dwelt within the home and helped with the cleaning. Pixies were at once a fairy of the moorlands and of the farms, who helped with the threshing and rewarded those who kept their homes clean.

There are perhaps five types of household spirits of interest here.

First are ancestral spirits who continue to live within a house and or with a family.

The second are tutelary spirits that are either connected to the house or the land it is on. That is, the soul of the house, the spirit who owned the land before a house was built, etc. One child, for example, was attacked by the spirit of a tree which had been cut down to make a house.

The third type is the fairy from the wilderness who is invited into the home to become a house fairy.

Third are the fairies which live near the home and help with domestic tasks but are still, essentially wild such as the pixies of Dartmoor.

Finally there are the deities of domestic things, such as the fairies of weaving, or which are involved in churning butter, caring for cows, etc. Even Zeus falls into this category, as he would take the form of a snake to protect homes and so might be found dwelling by a person’s fireplace.

These are, of course, likely intermixed with unrelated fairies such as the zwerg and knockers of mines.

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Loki and the goblins

One of the easiest ways to understand ‘domestic goblins’ is to examine Loki as there is so much written about him. Loki in folklore was a house fairy, seemingly very different from the mythological portrayal of him. As Eldar Heide put it: “It seems there were two Lokis. One was a vatte 'domestic spirit' living under or by the fireplace, helping farmers with the farm work and attracting wealth to the farm. The other, the mythical character, was very different but still derived from the vatte.”

Eldar Heide has an engaging article explaining the connection between Loki, the Nordic house fairy or Vatte, and the trickster character of folklore known as the Ash Lad. These Ash Lads and the Vatte would upset the natural order of things, aiding the peasants against the wealthy and kings. This would explain why the mythology we have, which was told and penned down by the wealthy disliked a figure like Loki, after all, robbing from the rich as Robinhood did, or overthrowing the judge as Loki did, might be all well and good for a peasant but it is an evil act in the mind of the nobility.

The ash lad is a dirty boy from a poor family who seems lazy, small, and weak. A dreamer who thinks in unusual ways he prefers to stay at home by the fire, but when forced to go out into the world he turns out to be extremely clever and able to trick powerful beings in order to get what he wants. They also, inexplicably, end up in the court of a King where traditionally they would seem to have no business being, just as Loki found himself in Odin’s court, despite being an outsider. More than this he became Odin’s blood brother.

The king in folklore promises the Ash Lad half the kingdom in return for his help, but then when the ash lad completes the quest the king tries to backpedal on his word, before finally having to give in. "It is understandable that the king is unwilling to accept as his son-in-law and successor on the throne a dirty, ragged, poor low-born boy who is comfortable with effeminacy and humiliation and who is supported by oddballs and hags, and animals from the wilderness. Accepting the Ash Lad amounts to a revolution."

Everyone assumes the Ash Lad will fail because they are so odd and don’t exhibit what would be thought of as heroic traits, but instead they succeed because of their oddness and non-heroic character. He succeeds because he negates the hierarchy and the snobbish establishment. The otherworld is an inversion of the human world, and so while the Ash Lad has trouble navigating or understanding the human world, they are the only ones who can succeed in getting treasures or rescuing someone from the other world.

Many kings would attempt to negotiate with these magical and spiritual outsiders in Germanic lore. Indeed, Odin became blood brothers with Loki, perhaps as a way of getting Loki to help maintain Odin’s vision of the world and his power. Loki in this case being primordial force or spirit that Odin sought to domesticate to obtain power, the way many will seek to domesticate and sometimes forcibly tame fairies to serve as house fairies. This worked for a while, Loki saved the gods on many occasions, helping them out of serious jams and aiding them in obtaining great treasures the way helping spirits often aided shamans. But as is so often the case the trying to tame wild spirits can backfire, and so it was the Loki would inevitably betray and destroy Odin once he failed to keep up his end of the bargain (Warner).

Just as Loki was an outside spiritual force brought into the home of Odin, house fairies were often spiritual forces brought into the home. Just as Loki often went on adventures with Odin’s son Thor, so too did house fairies often adventure with the children of the house, but this often turned out bad for them, as Loki often suffered in adventures.

House fairies and Ash Lads like Loki used cleverness and cunning and wit to obtain treasures for the house. Yet like Odin their family would eventually betray them by acting immorally (notice Loki’s criticism of the Gods), by acting too self-centered and certain (notice his attack on the judge), or by not feeding them properly.

Loki can be thought of as a lesson on how to treat and avoid mistreating a house fairy, for fear that they should become a goblin. For make no mistake, while some house fairies were ancestral spirits, many if not most were still wild beings that had entered people’s homes, more than this they were spiritual beings and such beings are very ambiguous.

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Spiritual Beings are Ambiguous Beings

Household fairies in Germanic lore were often thieves who stole from the neighbors, and in Slavic lore they were often dangerous to the neighbors. It is possible that their thieving nature originated as a desire to steal from one’s wealthier neighbors and as fear that someone’s neighbors would steal from them. Fairies, as Perkiss points out, are often a reflection of our dark desires and sins. That is, we accuse them of that which we wrongfully did or want to do. So, people loved their house fairies but often feared the fairies of others. There are numerous stories of these fairies stealing from neighbors, trying to smother house guests, etc.

Fairies and ancient deities were ambiguous figures in general. That is, they could act in ways that were both good or bad depending on their mood and relation to the person they were encountering. We must first recall that Zeus would protect people as a domestic deity, but in many stories, he would also assault them.

Consider also Sylvanus, the god of farms and woodlands in Roman lore, who was so beloved that he was one of the most venerated deities in Rome, however, people also had to keep him away from women giving birth for he would harm them and the child. Or Hermes, the god of shepherds who would come down the chimney to snatch children away. Fairies and deities in lore have always been associated with both danger and wealth. What else could we expect from nature which gives us food and predators?

As I have pointed out in the past fairies and deities are frequently their own opposites, having multiple souls that can be both kindly and dangerous and we certainly see that with house fairies. In one Welsh Story, a bwca (house fairy) was insulted by a servant he’d thought was his friend, he attacked her then turned into a bogle, a monstrous goblin fairy, haunting houses and causing trouble for years before finally finding a new friend who could help him settle, then when their new friend died, they turned back into a destructive bogle.

Household fairies were often capricious, in part, because they existed in a precarious world in general, torn between humanity and fairyland. We see the danger of this in the story of “Puss in Boots”. After inheriting nothing but his father’s cat a young man says; “but for my part, when I have eaten up my cat, and made me a muff of his skin, I must die of hunger."

Jacob Grimm presumed that the cat in question was a house fairy, and this makes sense for a number of reasons, and this moment certainly shows the precarious situation house fairies could find themselves in. Although eating them likely didn’t happen often in lore, there are certainly stories of them being threatened with knives or beaten and banished from homes in tears.

Peeves, Dobby, and the Goblins - It is interesting to note that goblins can often be thought of as poltergeists or the house fairies from the borderlands between Scotland and England called dobies. That is, they are the spirits of a building, place, or ancestral spirits who grow troublesome, or house fairies that are troublesome.

The Underground Others – It is likely that there were fairies who dwelt underground and loved shiny things or were associated with treasure for longer than people have cared about gold. Whether the zwerg (dwarves) of Germany, the Shirte of the Nenets in Northern Asia, who have beautiful beaded objects and silver and lived underground, or the little people of Yupik lore in Alaska.

These little peoples most often lived underground and could be associated with industry and mining, or among hunter-gatherers with hunting luck and food. Yet they were also tricky and would put people under their spells, deceive people, and of course steal from people’s food stores. They often had animal features or twisted features that appeared ugly to human eyes, although some could be beautiful, they were all strange.

These others, or underground people, don’t have to have a common origin per say, although they might. They could, also however, come from the fact that they tap into something that many cultures, from Africa through Asia and the Americas find engaging. They are one of our most important and oldest pieces of folk religion and folklore, because they have emotional and psychological value, because they offer us truths.

As has always happened people spin false tales about the goblins specifically and fantasy in general. These new tales are as damaging as any spun by the nobility and kings of old. Rulers who clung to power by claiming that the others of lore were demonic figures, were against the heavens, represented something people of their and our day despised. Those in power have always disliked goblins and the underground people, perhaps because they refuse to be controlled.

This isn’t to say that goblins aren’t dangerous, or that they are safe and good. Goblins are of value because they aren’t safe. They warn us of mistreating those who are helpful, they give us symbols of rebellion, they poke fun at the status quo, they offer us the psychological and emotional benefits of horror stories, and so much more.

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Still Wild

House fairies aren’t tame, they are supernatural and often wild entities. Say a curse word around one and it might just burn down the home in revenge. Get in a loud argument and it might just give you a disease out of spite.

So, what are goblins? Well, in this iteration they are fairies and deities when they are acting destructively as part of their ambitious nature. Or they are house fairies who have been wronged and turned destructive, or they are wild beings which someone attempted but failed to tame. Rather than a species of being then, they can be thought of as an aspect of spirits.

However, Goblins are also Trickster Beings. Something I will explore more in future articles, along with their more violent and funny natures.

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Wanner, K. J. (2009). Cunning Intelligence in Norse Myth: Loki, Óðinn, and the Limits of Sovereignty. History of Religions, 48(3), 211–246. https://doi.org/10.1086/598231

Heide, E. (2011). Loki, the “Vätte”, and the Ash Lad: A Study Combining Old Scandinavian and Late Material. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 7, 63–106. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45019150

Sayers, William. “The Dispossessed House-Spirit: The Etymology of goblin and Some Thoughts on its Early History”

Positive Psychology: Cute Art

2023-03-09T17:21:00.007-08:00

By Ty Hulse

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The greatest value of art is in helping people emotionally and psychologically.

Although often derided by art critics as kitsch, cute works of art have power to change the way people think, feel and act, and most often for the better.

Research into cute imagery by Steinnes, Blomster, et al. (2019) has found that cuteness evokes emotions of kama muta, which media psychology has shown can cause people to act more caring and kindly towards others, while also reducing stress and anxiety.

When paired with a strong active message such as “Recycle Now” cute art increases the likelihood people will take action (Wang and Patrick, 2017).

Of course, anything that can illicit feelings so easily in others can be hijacked for other purposes. A cute brand logo makes people more likely to forgive a company that does something wrong (Septiantoa and Kwon).

And “exposure to cuteness leads men to be more risk-seeking and women to be more risk-averse.” (Li, Yuan & Yan, Dengfeng)

What’s more it’s been shown that people work better when they can see pictures of cute things and are more likely to respond carefully to questions when there is a cute picture on the survey form, or on a test.

There are almost no works of so called great art which have such a powerful and immediate psychological impact on the viewers, and certainly few would actually cause people to act more kindly towards others.

There is a reason, after all, why so much of the internet thrives on cute.

People have a powerful desire to protect that which is small,

Cuteness, seeming to have a will of its own, also demonstrates aggression by imposing demands. For example, it may demand that we allow it to submit to us. Its immediate visceral impact is often counteracted by the viewer’s sense of having been manipulated, arousing the viewer’s suspicions. It desperately awaits our evaluation of and interaction with it. It is a supplicant awaiting our judgment, a judgment that will give it power over us. Cuteness thereby engenders its own discipline by enforcing particular behaviors of the viewer; in turn, it engages and disciplines its viewer. Its disavowal of power is one of its powers. (Elizabeth Howie)

Cuteness therefore engenders primal emotions, which likely explains why cuteness is so often used in relation to objects of religious art. Claire Maria Chambers points out that Korean Buddhist temples have figures of small chubby monks and “temple devotees ritually bathe a statue of the Buddha as a small boy.” In America Precious Moments toys have become important to a number of Christians. These cute, innocent figurines, often include spiritual and biblical quotes. They are like children but better, “they also sincerely express experiences of comfort, love, and community in the face of the difficulties that the riddle of faith presents for thousands of consumers around the globe.” (Claire Maria Chambers)

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Cute is for Adults

While we associate cute things with children, adults are more likely to have the need for nostalgia and the level of stress necessary to fully appreciate the emotions that cuteness elicits.

Cute things reduced stress in work environments. While children do homework that might require this, adults are often much more likely to suffer stress and anxiety in their daily lives.

Cute art can relax those who are stressed, anxious, and fatigued.

Both cuteness and awe have been shown to be connected to increased levels of prosociality and a sense of connectedness to others…

cuteness has been linked to stress reduction and, when paired over time with another stimulus, has also been shown to increase the quality of positive experience with paired stimuli.

….Awe has also been repeatedly linked to stress reduction specifically, but is also linked to more negative affect than cuteness…. Both awe and cuteness however, have the potential to contribute to an upward spiral in positive affect through repeated exposure.

There are exceptions, however, as with all things. Those who work in healthcare or as online content moderators can suffer from ‘compassion fatigue.’ As a result online moderators who are forced to spend long periods of time caring and struggling with the worst of humanity become more anxious and stressed when seeing something cute as the need to protect builds stress in them.

Still, the presence of such strong emotional reactions shows how readily these images can have a physiological impact on those who witness them.

So, yes, cute images have power, even if many would deride them.

☆ Author links open overlay panelYuanLiaDengfengYanb

Li, Yuan & Yan, Dengfeng, 2021. "Cuteness inspires men’s risk seeking but women’s risk aversion," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 239-249.

Wang, T., Mukhopadhyay, A., & Patrick, V. M. (2017). Getting Consumers to Recycle “NOW”! When and Why Cuteness Appeals Influence Prosocial and Sustainable Behavior. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 36(2), 269–283. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44878341

Too cute to be bad? Cute brand logo reduces consumer punishment following brand transgressions Author links open overlay panelFelix Septiantoa Junbum Kwon

Awe Versus Aww: The Effectiveness of Two Kinds of Positive Emotional Stimulation on Stress Reduction for Online Content Moderators CHRISTINE L. COOK, National Chengchi University, Taiwan JIE CAI, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA DONGHEE YVETTE WOHN, New Jersey Institute of Technology, US

Steinnes, Kamilla & Blomster Lyshol, Johanna & Seibt, Beate & Zickfeld, Janis & Fiske, Alan. (2019). Too Cute for Words: Cuteness Evokes the Heartwarming Emotion of Kama Muta. Frontiers in Psychology. 10. 387. 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00387.

Evaluation of Kawaii Feelings Caused by Stuffed Animals to Reduce Stress Michiko Ohkura, Hina Arashina, Takafumi Tombe & Peeraya Sripian

Toys and Children in Lore-building and Worldbuilding

2022-12-26T20:01:00.003-08:00

Toys and children's games can be a fun and interesting piece of your worldbuilding and lore-building puzzle, allowing people to feel a connection to fun and sentimental moments within the societies you have constructed.

Take the pewter knight on display at the Muesum of London, for example. This is one of the earliest examples of a mass-produced toy, at the time it came out it would have been relatively rare and a signal that the world was changing to allow such mass production, and that wealth was growing to the point where multiple parents could buy such toys for their children. As with today's concern about video games, there may very well have been concerns about children receiving such gifts and talk of wasteful spending. Certainly, there were concerns about the inordinate amount of time children spent reading in the early days of chapbooks and penny dreadfuls.

The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
Medieval toy knight from about 1300

More than this, however, how a children in your world plays with toys, and what toys are available can help show bits of your world's history or current political climate.

In the Medieval most of the knights for children to play with were on horseback, despite the fact that making these horses required more metal and more work to create. Obviously, peasant children at the end of the Medieval and into the Early Modern dreamed of being knights, rather than foot soldiers or archers. This makes sense, but only because most of us know enough about history to know that knights were the cool heroes of stories.

Imagine a world in which archers were the most popular toys, as might have been the case in early Japan, when samurai used bows more frequently than swords. Or a world where wizards, griffin riders, warrior clerics, are greater than knghts.

If there are a lot of 5e style druids in your world, horses might only be used for logistics, as it would be far too easy for a druid to get horses to throw their riders and cause chaos in the ranks of those who they are supposed to be helping. In such a world horse rider would be the boring job in the military and children might dream of being foot soldiers. The point is, the toys children play with, while a background element could help you include interesting bits of lore in your world that get people to think.

A simple scene of a mother buying something for a child, or child pleading for them to buy something can be used as a way of letting the characters know what is important in a village.

Market stalls being on the street can provide the player's many opportunities to overhear conversations and see things that can contribute to their understanding of the world.

Knight Puppets for fighting around the end of 12th century

Just as interesting for lore-building are children's rhymes. According to one theory for example, the rhyme "London Bridges Falling Down" comes from a song about a Viking raid which goes;

London Bridge is broken down. —
Gold is won, and bright renown.
Shields resounding,
War-horns sounding,
Hild is shouting in the din!
Arrows singing,
Mail-coats ringing —
Odin makes our Olaf win!

While this as the origin of the other song is debatable, both rhymes are interesting and can potentially point to interesting history and so can make for fun background elements.

You can see a few more links to Medieval toys below.

You can also see a 14th century example of a ceramic knight at https://previous.bildindex.de/bilder/MI07850c07a.jpg

or another from Strasburg

A fancier version of you knights, likely owned by the children of the king Maximilian I in 1500 can be seen here

Halfling Cultural Dimensions for Worldbuilders

2022-12-18T16:30:00.005-08:00

Halflings take pleasure in simple things that most everyone else recognizes as good but which most don’t think is enough to fill their lives; such as their gardens, a calm evening in their parlor, good food, and simply doing their job. More than any other genus halflings love their homes, families, and their place in the world. This means that few of them ever leave the place where they live, yet some are struck by a desire to wander and explore the world. These halflings especially can come to enjoy treasures collected and won through luck and skill. Such treasures might include seeds for plants, a folk songs or recipes from distant lands, as much as any treasure that could be sold.

Halflings feel close bonds to the other members of their community and will rarely seek to make waves which might disrupt the lives of others. Their willingness to simply accept things as they are, their lack of the obsession with creating, inventing, permanence or success that other genus have leads others within their communities to frequently feel a sense of repressive boredom.

The halflings are joyful, however, and enjoy things that can bring what they see as authentic joy, such as family and entertainments, however, and are frequently especially skilled at stories, plays, and songs. As such they are hospitable and cordial, desiring to maintain stability and avoid confrontations which could lead to a shattering of the peace. They will, in most cases, simply endure unpleasantness until it goes away, but if the thing that makes them uncomfortable doesn’t seem likely to pass they can react with cunning and violence as needed.

Cultural Dimensions

Halflings have their own unique cultural dimensions which reflect the deities that created them, their traditions, and most especially their natural luck.

You can learn more about the Cross-Cultural theory of cultural dimensions and how to use it in Worldbuilding here.

In general, however, the members of a culture are surveyed with their numbers for each dimension being averaged, telling us where on the dimension the culture is. For example, a halfling on culture which scores a 70 on the Ambling Dimension would be very ambling, while one which scored are 30 would be contented.

The purpose of these dimensions is to help make it easy for you to quickly think of new cultures allowing you to give different personalities to various halfling villages.

I have created one of these sets of dimensions for Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, and Seelie Goblins on my Patreon.

Ambling – hearth

All halflings take pleasure in simple things, good food, restful squishy chairs, pleasant company, and a fun book being some of their many delights. They rarely ever seek wealth or fame, as ambition for its own sake isn’t something they want and it would be hard for them to imagine simply being happy playing in mounds of gold like a dragon when they could instead lay in the heather with a picnic of delicious cheeses and wines. Of course, their desires do require some effort, and the type of effort they enjoy going to is a major part of their culture.

Ambling Halflings enjoy the pleasures of the natural world and things that come from the outdoors. They might spend a lot of time breeding the perfect apple trees and delight in eating the apples straight from the tree or dried in the sun, reserving things like pies for rare occasions. They enjoy ambling through the wood searching for the perfect blackberries to mix with simple farmers cheeses and honey.

Hearth Halflings enjoy the pleasures of home. They enjoy being inside, and so many of their projects and foods reflect this. Their projects generally tend to focus on their homes and the gardens immediatly near them. They will spend a lot of time with friends, playing games and the like.

Comfotable – Avidness

Halflings love their homes and simple beauties, but the amount of emphasis they put on each of these is an important reflection of their culture.

Comfortable Halflings enjoy working and relaxing in their homes or the fields and forest near them. They like nothing more than to simply putter around the house or the nearby wilderness, nibbling on some fruit or cakes and seeing that everything is just so. When they make a quilt, they do their best to make certain it is snuggly and comfy, because that is what they want out of it, after all, something they can curl up in without worry.

Avid halflings love to discover and create beautiful things. They are more likely to spend time exploring, looking for the prettiest spot and prettiest moment they can, rather than simply relaxing by a stream. What’s more it’s not enough to simply have a snuggly quilt, because they enjoy the process of making it as much or even more than using it, and so will find ways to drag out the time it takes to get all the little details right so that when it’s done they and others can forever see the beauty in it, and they can remember the process of exploring the quilt as they created it.

Cordial – Enthusiastic

Halflings are friendly and kindly hosts. Within their own communities they don’t usually just say hello, they engage those they see in conversation, clasp hands, and likely hug.

Cordial halflings tend to enjoy pleasant conversations with very little substance. Indeed, happiness to them comes from avoiding anything that might cause discomfort. When they meet a stranger or friend they’ll ask them about foods they like, particularly good meals they had, terrible rainstorms they might have been caught in, or beautiful things they’ve seen.

Enthusiastic halflings believe in actually getting to the heart of who a person is, that’s how friendships are formed. They might ask questions like; When was the last time you cried and what were you crying about? Or What do you do for fun? Why do you enjoy it? Many who aren’t aware of these halflings culture will feel ambushed by their probing questions and the way they will often share intimate details about their life unprompted.

I absolutely need feedback and your thoughts on this so that it can be the best resource possible for worldbuilders.

Cultural Dimensions for Worldbuilders

2022-12-18T16:25:00.000-08:00

One of the most used and studied Cultural Psychological theory, Greete Hofstede's cultural dimensions are a series of six aspects of culture which span across human nearly all human societies. These dimensions act as an easy way to understand aspects of a culture and have been some of the most researched and best attested to theories in Cross-Cultural Psychology.

This is advantageous for worldbuilders because it provides them with new ways to think about the cultures they are building. Playing with these dimensions, along with histories, and the elements of culture can provide you with innumerable different cultures to populate your worlds.

The cultural dimension are based on Numerical Scale of 1 to over a 100. For example, if a culture has an 80 on the individualism vs collectivism scale, the members of it will tend to be individualist in their thinking, while a culture that scores a 20 will be more collectavist, while those that score 40-60 would tend to be more in the middle of this cultural dimension.

As a cross-cultural psychologist I would ask that people avoid ethnic bias. It is a mistake to presume that any cultural dimension is better than another, the different dimensions have allowed those who display them to survive in different situations. This is why research has shown that people who grew rice and people who grew wheat have different cultures based on the requirements for growing these crops. That is Fiszbein, Jung, and Vollrath found in a comprehensive study of the US that farming higher labor-intensive crops was highly associated with collectivism, while low labor-intensive crops was associated individualism. So cultures that grow rice tend to be more collectivist because rice requires more labor and the management of complex waterworks which benefit a community; “Traditional rice farmers dealt with the labor demands by forming reciprocal labor exchanges. A legacy of rice production therefore yields collectivism, and a depressed drive to innovate... the close cooperation within a village suggests that benefits from innovation are rapidly adopted by the entire village. Thus, the benefits of innovation are largely external to the innovator, reducing the incentive to exert effort in this direction.” (Zhu, Ang, and Fredriksson)

Wheat, on the other had tends to be a more individual activity and so encouraged individualist cultures. This is tendency is increased by the raising of cattle as a secondary source of food, for people would have to set out on their own or in small groups “to secure water and grass for the herd in distant locations. This increased their interaction with strangers and encouraged trade which fostered the exchange of ideas. Such exposure to novel ideas and the opportunity to trade new innovative products in larger markets should have heightened the focus on innovation effort. The lower labor input requirements also imply that wheat farmers are able to attend to their own plots with less help from other villagers than is the case for rice farmers.”

The Six Dimensions

Power distance index (PDI): This is the extent to which people accept an unequal distribution of power. That is, how much they accept control from their parents, a ruler, nobility, bosses, or others in positions of power. Workers in high power distant societies often want their managers to act as benevolent dictators, rather than as friends. Further, a lower number in this dimension indicates that people are far more likely to question authority.

Individualism vs. collectivism (IDV): For many this is one of the most difficult dimensions to understand and a lot of mistaken ideas have sprung up about it so I caution you to be careful trying to apply this to the real world.

Collectivist cultures have strong ties and loyalties to their families and ingroups, whom they seek to help, even to the detriment of those outside this group.

Collectivist cultures are more likely put their family's and group's desires above their own desires, and as a result they would be more likely to take on the role their parents or other members of their group wished them too, rather than trying to express their own identity.

Individualism, with its emphasis on 'self-actualization' may come in part due to more frequent encounters with strangers and members of an outgroup and less reliance on a large ingroup. This might explain a study by A study by Deborah Cai & Edward Fink which found that individualist cultures are more likely to attempt to avoid conflicts all together, while collectivist cultures are more likely to try to compromise. On the other hand, both are equally as likely to try domination as the way to get what they want when conflict arises.

In Short:

Collectivists will tend to put more emphasis on the rights of families and communities over those of individuals. They tend towards rules which promote unity and will seek to work and cooperate with others and tend to be self-sacrificing.

Individualists see individual rights and the ability to choose the role one wants in society as important. They value their independence.

Whether you mean to or not the themes of this cultural dimension are likely to creep into your story one way or another. Case and point, individualism can be thought of as the Disney Animation Values in which Ariel, Bell, Merida, etc. seek to follow their own dream, rather than accepting the role society, their parents, or both have placed on them. That is, these stories feature an individualist character stuck in a more collectivist society which they feel is repressing them.

Of Disney's "Mulan" the researchers from Jining Medical University in China State that;

The American version of Mulan adds some American individualistic features. When the emperor heard the news of the Xiongnu attack, he ordered the general to post a recruitment notice throughout the city, and said: "Small soldiers can also make great achievements." The emperor's words show the importance of personal ability and strength. In the battle with Chanyu, Mulan saved the emperor, at this time Mulan's personal strength surpassed the others, which proved that the small soldiers mentioned by the emperor could also make great achievements. The layout of this plot highlights the individualism of the United States. American individualism believes that competition is more exciting than cooperation, and individual glory transcends collective glory. During the battle with Chanyu, Mulan did not follow the orders of the general, adhered to her own point of view and finally won the war. American individualism emphasizes the consciousness of "oneself", the individual will transcend the collective will, and believes that the individual has the right to fight for the protection of his private ownership and to adhere to his own views and beliefs. This cultural feature focuses on individual will and achievements and respects individual decision-making. (Lei Wang, Bing Han, and Guofei Xu)

This isn't bad, per say, the best films and books reflect the culture which made them. Still, it can be useful when trying to depict different cultures in your story to realize that they would value different things.

Uncertainty avoidance (UAI): This is societies willingness to accept uncertainty. Obviously, countries with a high uncertainty avoidance will tend to have strict codes of behavior and guidelines that dictate how one should think. They believe that there is one truth which dictates everything. Those with a low degree of uncertainty avoidance will accept differing ideas and are more accustomed to ambiguity.

Masculinity vs. femininity (MAS): Masculine societies in this case prefer heroism, assertiveness, and believe that one should be rewarded for their success. In counter to this are cultures which seek cooperation, modesty, and believe that those who have struggled should be cared for.

Here again we see a clear connection between the environment people needed to survive in and the cultural traits they exhibited. In this case cultures in more temperate climates tended to be more masculine, while those in "In cooler climates with prolonged winter, meeting basic needs for food, safety, and security is much more demanding, which promotes intense parental care for the family." (Hofstede) Similarly, men in cultures in extremely hot climates such as that of the Aka pygmies and the Batek of Malaysia will provide a lot of fatherly care for their children.

These differences might be accounted for by the fact that more extreme temperatures require parents to spend more time and resources caring for their children, as Hofstede proposes. On the other hand, war tends to be easier in moderate climates, thus the threat of raids might encourage masculine cultures. If true this dimension could be thought of as environmental vs physical dangers.

It is important to realize that while many tend to think of the care giving and cooperative nature of femininity as akin to Collectivism, cultures like Sweden can be very Individualist and Feminine, while China is Collectivist and Masculine.

Long-term orientation vs. short-term orientation (LTO): Cultures with a long-term view attempt to adapt and solve problems pragmatically. Those who have short-term orientation value traditions and steadfastness in the face of adversity.

Indulgence vs. restraint (IND): Indulgent cultures allow people the freedom to gratify their natural desires, to enjoy life and have fun. While cultures that show restraint have strict social norms.

Dimensions within a Fantasy World

Exactly how these dimensions work within the cultures of your fantasy world is obviously up to you and in many cases, it would be impossible to know exactly how a magical environment filled with vampires, demons, dragons, giants, etc. would impact people's culture. Would such creatures force people to stay closer to home, thus making them more nurturing, or would it force the parents to be 'tougher'? Obviously, only you can answer that question based on the nature of the threat and of course the story you are telling but asking the question will hopefully give you ideas for your world.

In addition to human cultural dimensions, I have worked to create seperate elven, halfling, dwarf, goblin, and gnomish dimensions. Obviously, you are free to change, ignore, or use these as you want, it just could be useful to think of how their cultures might work.

Fairy Tales and Fantasy for Artists - Fear and the Sublime

2022-12-08T19:00:00.000-08:00

Index Romantic Desires: The Philosophy of Fairy

"THE FIRST and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is Curiosity. By curiosity, I mean whatever desire we have for, or whatever pleasure we take in, novelty. We see children perpetually running from place to place, to hunt out something new: they catch with great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before them; their attention is engaged by everything, because everything has, in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it." (Burke, 1757)

Burke’s treatise on the Sublime had a huge influence on artists and writers. The Enlightenment and Industrialism dominated the ‘learned’ thought of the time, and then he came along and argued that darkness, obscurity, things that causes us awe and terror and which are beyond our understanding are perhaps more valuable than logic. Being frightened and made uncomfortable by a piece of or literature “was regarded as a positive experience” as such “Sublime art could not be achieved by slavishly following rules, but rather was an experience that existed above and beyond rules in the realm of artistic imagination.” (Christine Riding and Nigel Llewellyn) The point was to break with what gave people comfort. Loose and wild brush work, wild imagination, and terrifying subject matter were all aspects of the sublime.

It is rather ironic that a large part of what fueled the rise in supernatural literature during second half of the 18th century was the rise in consumerism and wealth which allowed a burgeoning middle class to purchase stories to read. And while the enlightenment figures bemoaned consumerism and the reading of books which would lead people to have fantastic ideas, the reality is that the middle and lower classes of Britain and Europe in general didn’t give up on their belief in magic for a long time. Thus allowing them into scholarly conversations was bound to lead to discussions of ghosts and fairies that the figures of the Enlightenment derided.

Into this debate came the artist Henry Fuseli’s painting of nightmares tormenting a woman in a dramatic pose. Fuseli’s paintings are works of counter Enlightenment and some of the earliest rejections of the Industrial Revolution. Many artists of this time began to believe that rationality harmful and would hurt humanity. Facts would, in their mind, destroy morality and certainly social norms changed dramatically following the Enlightenment.

Fuseli flipped the art world on its head by depicting “immoral pagan motifs because he fully realized the fantastical potential of Northern European legends. Therefore, he has been labeled a Romantic Classicist, straddling both of the major styles at the end of the eighteenth century. Similar to other Romantic artists, Fuseli was intrigued by the idea of the sublime, that which is not aesthetically beautiful, yet still appeals to the viewer’s inner psyche and invokes strong emotions. He was likely familiar with Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Inquiry into Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, which was published in 1757, not long before Fuseli started his artistic career. He had a great intellectual curiosity and was exposed to many different philosophers and writers while traveling across Italy and Germany, inspiring his eccentricities. He represents both a true scholarly genius, as evidenced by the literary sources of his oeuvre, as well as an innovative artist, illustrating enigmatic and passionate works. His art mainly focused on the Gothic Sublime - rather than classical Greco-Roman themes - deeply rooted in fear and sensationalism.” (Caroline Giepert Professor Spieth)

Fear and sensationalism would dominate fantasy literature for a long time, and arguably still do, as most of the movies made with fantastical elements are likely horrors, with ghosts, demons, and the like. Certainly pulp magazines and the earlier penny dreadfuls, in which many of the genres of fantasy were established, sold copies based not only on sensationalist art but their sensationist covers.

This painting is important for another reason, because it helped bring about the idea that a painting could have nothing to do with a myth, history, or real person or place. Rather this painting came from the artists own mind, something that hadn’t been done in British paintings for quite some time before.

Fantasy Cultures for Worldbuilders & 5e - Ogma De

2022-12-07T01:02:00.003-08:00

by Ty Hulse

A land where fate is spun can never be fully settled, for the faeries and demons are strong within its moors, forests and homes. Huge swaths of this land are still ruled by tribes and kingdoms of giants, with which the people and gods must treat and go to war. Ogma De breaths with magic, the fey here are a part of daily life, for each house has one hiding within, who sneaks out at night to help with the cleaning, freeing the people to do other work.

Life Among the Fairies

A giggle causes Ellis to pause just before placing her fresh baked apple pies to cool on the windowsill. She knows better than to strain her eyes to see the pixies that are certain to be out in the moonlight. They are likely invisible, but more importantly, they don’t like to be seen. Instead, she speaks gently into the darkness, telling them that the pies are still too hot to eat, but makes certain to offer the pixies a slice when they cool. Pixies are much like her toddler nephews; they need to know that there is a reward for good behavior, or they are certain to get into trouble.

Before the first house was even built, the ever-curious pixies of the village of Wickerdown had discovered the wonders of fresh baked bread, rich butter, and—best of all—the apples that humans brought with them. Shy as they were, this was an opportunity that they couldn’t pass up. They have been a part of the villager’s lives for hundreds of years. As a result, Ellis learned from a young age that if she offered the pixies bread and the last slice of pie, they wouldn’t cause her too much trouble. Just as important, they would aid and protect her. When she went out to harvest apples in the orchard or wild mushrooms and berries, her basket would fill with pixie plucked food as long as she was always generous with them.

A few whispered chants and butter would churn easier as the pixies used their magic to aid in the natural process. If she told the pixies she was going out on an important date, the wind wouldn’t muss her hair and the mud might not splatter on her dress when a wagon went by, for the pixies would protect her. Perhaps, most important, however, the pixies can use their magic to keep apple blossoms warm if there is a spring frost, to help the apples grow larger and to keep the fungus and worms from the trees. Thus, the crops are larger thanks to the presence of the pixies.

So, although she’d never seen a pixie, they were still very much a part of her and everyone in the village’s life. The pixies are invited to the village’s wildest celebrations—feasts in the nearby castle or the village square. Here, they are entertained with stories from the table they are given in a private box, set on a pedestal above the crowd so they can watch people while still hidden. Children, being children, will often show off in front of these stages, showing how they can stand on one foot, or acting especially silly, or telling jokes they’ve heard.

Occasionally, Ellis and her friends will play a game, going out among the rocks where the pixies live and writing letters on the ground. They will then ask an invisible pixie to push a rock around to answer their questions. The pixies, skilled at spying as they are, and skilled at divination, know much of what is happening in the world. Of course, there are limits to what private secrets they will reveal, and they don’t necessarily know everything. Not to mention the fact that they can find amusement in pranks, so one must always be careful with the ‘knowledge’ they provide.

Once in a while, the pixies will seek a person out—usually a child—to share an adventure with them. Such an adventure might be as simple as playing a prank like swapping someone’s cheese for soap or as dangerous as stealing some treasure from an ogre. Most often these adventures involve playing pranks on other pixie clans. Obviously, if they are caught doing this, they will be punished—although usually the punishment is unpleasant but mild.

The pixies of Wickerdown aren’t the only community of their kind in the area, however. The wild moorlands where people bring their cows have them, and only the cattle herders are able to work with these. So, when Ellis goes onto the moors or into the woods, she must be careful, lest the wild pixies play some prank on her or try to carry her off. Further, the pixies from neighboring villages will often enter Wickerdown to play pranks and cause mischief, tickling people’s feet in their sleep, for example, just as the Wickerdown pixies will cause mischief in those same neighboring villages.

Dangers of Ogma De

“Never enter a home before releasing a dog into it, for a devil or Hexen will always try to take root in a building the moment it is emptied.” -Advice for Surviving Ogma De

The village of Wickerdown, like all of Ogma De exists in a nervous world of malignant spirits, dangerously cruel fairies, and giants that seem to revel in causing pain. When Ellis was ten, a greedy giant smashed through the roof of her house and began grabbing herbs from the pantry, as well as the pair of sheep her family kept inside to distract such a monster from grabbing the people. Each human constantly carries a concealed knife so that the giants will grab the sheep first, to avoid the sting of iron, giving the people time to hide, run, or organize some defense. Or simply so that the giant, satisfied with the sheep for their meal, will leave the humans alone.

In addition to the hexen wyld and giants, everyone will have encounters with orc bandits from whom they will have to flee, fight, or bargain with. Even Ellis has done so, offering to make some marauding orcs butter and to cook them a meal of the cow she was tending, in return for her life. The ability to bargain with or otherwise influence their enemies is the secret to the survival of the people of Ogma De.

Fairies too, while frequently allies with people can be dangerous. In the early summer, parents will often hide those children who might be taken by the fairies to be trained as soldiers for their armies. Nor is it unusual for a group of fairies to shoot a person with invisible arrows, to place curses, or simply kill and even drain the blood of a victim. Some of these fairies are local to a region, but many are from neighboring lands, and so choose to raid what the perceive as enemies.

The worst dangers are usually kept at bay by the local gods through the use of motes of magic, gathered from the wild places. This is one reason why horrors hover just beyond the bounds of civilization and the common areas for forging. When the dangers start to grow greater than the tutelary deities can handle or the motes of magic begin to ware down adventurers are hired to fight the worst of it or find new magic to keep the village safe.

Society and People of Ogma De

The people of Ogma de venerate and fear the fairies more than the otherworldly or even the primal deities. They view the world as being made up of a series of spirits, which live in everything, and which each have their own purpose and goals. Thus, fate isn’t spun by grand and powerful beings, for they can’t control the overwhelming number of spirits in every plant, animal, object, and emotion. Rather fate is something that is negotiated between individual spirits and beings. That is, between a person and the bow they hold, the deer, they hunt, the pixie that lives in the rock by their home, the hob that lives in their fireplace, and a myriad of other beings.

For the Ogma de, life is about being amiable and accommodating to the fairies and spirits, while also being willing to stand up for oneself. It is the former point that allows the people of Ogma de to negotiate with the orcs, as often as they fight them. Outsider’s typically only see the battles, however, and so think that the Ogma de revel in battle, even with the supernatural world. The people of Ogma de, of course, learn to distinguish between the soft and hard negotiating positions. They always start with sweet words, pies, and similar tactics. They are, however, willing to cut down the tree of a fairy whose goals work against theirs, or to pull a dragon from its roost and chain it.

It might be said that like the fairies, the people of Ogma de are defined by switching between extreme emotions. They almost always try to start gentle, even in dire situations, but can shift quickly to vindictive and furious. It makes sense that the Ogma would react calmly to nearly everything, for this is the best way to calm the fairies who are such an important part of their lives. They not only feel the fairies’ presence, but frequently hear and even see them, dancing on the hills and moors around their homes. Each household has learned a few secrets from the fairies, passed on from parent to child. One house might have a secret that allows them to churn sweeter butter, another to make candles that burn a little brighter, or to spin more beautiful thread. These secrets help bring a family closer to their patron fairies, and helps them find more success, but it also binds them to the fairies’ whims and to a specific task.

Despite the closeness of the fey, few people truly understand them, any more than they understand the true complexity of nature or the inner workings of their own bodies. The fairies are simply there, and everyone has theories about them, everyone loves to gossip behind closed doors or share fairy tales that grow with the telling as any good fish story should. Yet only the Elderich, the Witches, the Priests, and perhaps a few others truly understand the politics of fairyland.

Foodways

Lush berry and herb filled moorlands, timberlands rich in acorns for feeding pigs, a wealth of tidewater resources such as seaweed and shellfish. Gathering food in the Ogma De system is a source of spirituality, a way to connect the fairies of the world around them, as such the people of Ogma De seek to taste their wild and free spaces of their homeland in every meal Because of this the people of Ogma De have a history of mixing the wild foods of the moorlands, where they commune with the fairies with the foods they farm in their fields and orchards. This can mean eating woody and earthy herbs like wild thyme and burdock root, but it can also mean eating sweet blueberries, lingonberries, and blackberries.

The propensity for mixing wild plants into their food means that outsiders often comment that the people of Ogma De eat as if they were in a famine, cutting weeds to fry with wild herbs, mixing seeds, berries, and wild plants into their breads and pies. That said, its important to keep in mind that much as the people of Ogma De might like wild foods, fairies obtain substance from foods grown and prepared by humanity, further there isn’t enough food in the moorlands to feed the many village of people by themselves. Because of this the people of Ogma De, as with most humans need to industrialize their food, with large fields of grain (barley, wheat or oats) and vast orchards of fruit (primarily apples but also blueberries and pears). Their desire to commune with the natural world by harvesting wild plants is simply a supplement to this.

The desire people have to set off into the natural world, mixed with the fact that people often carry their food to a neighbor’s house so that families don’t have to eat alone, means that much of Ogma De’s cuisine is highly mobile. Stuffed breads, small pies that can be carried in a pouch stews so thick that they can easily be carried in jars, and anything that can be easily wrapped in a fabric pouch being common. These foods are also useful because it is easy to leave them out for the fairies. It isn’t an uncommon sight to see someone placing a little pie under a blueberry bush or in a field of clover and chickweed.

The philosophy of foods meant to remind one of the wilderness clashed with the ideas of the Sword Duchies which, once long ago, conquered much of Ogma De for a time. The people of the Sword Duchies tend to frown on breads stuffed with wild plants, thinking of that as a prevue of the poor and desperate. Instead, they add spices from distant lands, or which are difficult to get, to their foods as often as possible. From this the Ogma De developed a taste for cakes, cookies, and of spiced pies, as well as complex sauces for their meat dishes. They further came to love the heartier, frequently heavy foods of the Sword Duchies, and have developed many pies sausages, and meat and bread stews of their own design.

After the Scattering the people of Ogma De began to admire the people of the Silver Peaks, which they were dropped into this new world beside. They have since begun adopting many of the flavors of pickled and spiced foods from these lands, thus one might have a pork pie, with salt and miso preserved wild herbs, in addition to the more traditional pork and herbs with blueberry mustard.

Some typical food the PCs might encounter:

Creamy, herb and apple pie

A mix of wild herbs, creamy cheeses, apples, wild berries, and honey or sugar. These are often baked in tiny dumplings so that they can be put in a pouch with people when they go out onto the moors or into the fields and orchards to work.

Blueberry, mustard, bacon sauce.

A sauce made of spicy mustard, blueberries, and a bit of bacon which can be drizzled over meat dishes, or used as a dip for dry breads.

Moorland Bread

Ground walnuts and hazelnuts, herbs, burdock root, and dried berries, mixed with flour and baked into small, round loaves of bread. Sometimes bacon and cheese are stuffed into the center of these loaves as well.

Beef stew, heavily spiced with cinnamon, cloves, mace, and dried blueberries.

Apple and pork pie

Spicy apple mustard for dipping chicken, duck, and other fowl.

Relationship with the Seelie Goblyns

The Seelie Court of fairies found themselves in greater need for mortal assistance here than most other lands, and so the zoomorphic little animal people’s especially the raccoon and fox like kitlyn have become a common sight in the villages and along the moors. Indeed, there are a few humans and seelyn villages have started mixing, with the seelyn living below the human houses. Humans have quickly found this arrangement especially beneficial, as the Seelyn tunnels are a safe place for them to flee in case of giant attacks and so their basements often contain doors into these tunnels. The seelyn for their part have come to rely on the humans bold and often brash willingness to engage with the wider world directly. Human merchants, diplomates, and knights frequently act on behalf of their shyer, more home bound fellows.

Religion

The people of Ogma De venerate a group of local fairies as a pantheon of divine beings first and foremost. Next they venerate the fairies and spirits outside of this pantehon as a constant part of life. Only then do they venerate the larger pantheons of Ogma De, of which there are three. Worship in Ogma de is typically a very public and noisy affair, with people holding public performances, where they tell tales and quote the divine beings. They then go to sacred groves, rocks, or springs where they sing and make offerings to those who visit or are enshrined within these.

Exactly how they worship depends largely on the personality of what they are venerating. For example, Dryads are quiet spirits, and so only a few people go to worship them at a time, and do so in a quite and respectful manner. On the other hand, the whole village will go and splash in the water to swim with the River Hag which they venerate, or will dance in the forest that their gods frequently visit.

The Village of Wickerdown’s local Pantheon of Gods

Wickerdown’s local pantheon of gods is ruled over by Kowan Pix, a pixie which takes the form of an owl. When the people first arrived in this land a hexen wyld ruled the land, and kept stealing the life from people’s crops in hopes of driving them to cannibalism, some people gave in and are still living in the wild places under the direction of the hexen wyld. Most, however, chose to starve until the pixies took pity on them. Kowan Pix took the form of a deer to lure the hexen wyld from its home, allowing the other pixies to steal back the life that had been taken from the crops.

With so much energy released into their orchards and fields at once the people prospered, and with the help of a mote of magic Kowan Pix was able to keep the hexen wyld from doing as much damage as they had before.

For their part in the plan Kowan Pix was named leader of the local pixies.

Kowan Pix is a pragmatist who is more likely to see morality in terms of what helps a people to survive. That is, what is right is being able to take care of one’s family, community, and those who have had a bad bout with fate.

Kowan Pix’s children

Kowan Pix had a number of children as a result of their encounter with the hexen wyld. These make up the next four most important local deities.

Karow Ewik (Apple Deer)

Appearing as a deer with multiple mask like faces, including one on their back, their haunch, and the place a face normally goes, Ewik is the goddess responsible for helping the apples grow and the deer to flourish. In addition she is also a psychopomp, guiding spirits of the dead to their place in the afterlife.

Karow Ewik steals Motes of energy from hexen wyld, and gives them to the Ogma to grow apple trees, and in so doing instilled it with some of his essence, as well as the essence of the hexen wyld. From this energy the spirit of the apple orchards was born. While each orchard still has its own genii and deus, Karow Ewik is the queen of all the spirits of the orchards.

Pell Lowsow (Witch herbs)

Often heard muttering to herself, in the ditches beside the road and the brambles at the edge of the village and fields, but almost never seen. Pell Lowsow is the goddess of border lands. She helps keep watch for the hexen wyld, devils, malign spirits and other dangerous beings which might attack Wickerdown. She also insures the growth of wild herbs such as thyme and mint in the common areas.

Because of the difficulty of her job she teaches other people, who don’t normally fit into society how to be witches so they can watch for these evil spirits as well, so that they can feel a sense of purpose while living apart from the village.

Heambol

Goddess of Swallows, humor, dating, and home.

Heambol is Kowan Pix’s daughter from a time he spent living as a swallow in order to steal from a vampire. Originally she was simply a goddess of the swallows, but because they often nested in the eves of people’s homes she became a guardian of human homes as well. Here, under the eves, while it was raining or after night had fallen, people would often stand to tell jokes and meet with their dates, further expanding Heambol’s area of interest.

Wickerdown

Seellin

Regions Within Ogme De

Start here East Daggermoors

The people of Daggermoor venerate the many types of pixies more than any other fairy, which means they value serenity and creativity, alongside valor and humor. They enjoy trying new things, within reason, which is why they have so many different types of fruits and herbs planted from distant lands. They are a mix of raiders from the Land of Daggers who conquered their small region of Ogma De many years ago, and one of the more aggressive and stoic people of Ogma De. Yet somehow the culture born from the two groups learned to enjoy calm moments, and the beauty of a manicured world.

The people of Daggermoor give the most respect to those who succeed through creativity, rather than through brute strength. They are, after all, heavily influenced by the pixies, to which end they also enjoy jokes, and mostly benign pranks.

Being somewhat pixieish in their nature, they tend to live clustered together, in small, honey-colored stone cottages squeezed together between orchard trees, separated only by thin herb gardens and connected by a gravel covered road so thin that only a single cart can trundle down it. Almost no large pieces of wood are ever used by them, for fear of offending the fairies, instead the thin branches, especially from willow are used to make the wicker furniture, baskets, roofs, and even doors and pillars of their homes.

Thanks to their close relationship with the Pixies, the people of Daggermoor are able to produce far more in their small orchards than would normally be possible, just as their few cattle are able to provide them with lots of butters and cheeses. This gives the people of Daggermoor additional time to think of riddles and pranks, that would amuse the pixies and each other. They also have plenty of time to sit and relax, while learning something new.

History

The first king of Daggermoor, Cerker was a ranger who used his knowledge of the monsters within the forest to lead the resistance against the invading Empire.

The first king of Daggermoor, Cerker was a ranger who used his knowledge of the monsters within the forest to lead the resistance against the invading Empire. The dynasty he founded was advised by the druidic and bardic councils, and after generations the king became more a figure head than ruler. When the next conflict came, his son, Emmert, took the throne. When the Empire invaded again, Emmert led the revolt with courage and skill. He died in battle before the empire forces could completely overrun Daggermoor.

On the border of the Empire, Daggermoor has spent much of its history fending off and preparing for invasions. As a result they turned their magic towards summoning and creating monsters who could defend them and strike fear into the empires soldiers. The most famous and popular of these creatures are the nightmares that prowl the borderlands, seeking to spread fear and sow the seeds of horror tale. Some say that the nightmares themselves are merely monsters created by some wizard or dark creature, but most believe that they are the children of darkness sent from the abyss to wreak havoc upon the world.

Geography and Locations

Daggermoor is a land of extensive heather filled moors and brambles, with only a few batches of trees and small, gently sloping hills, making it ideal for raising cattle and picking wild berries.

Greenteeth River

Named for the large number of hags which make it their home, this is the largest river in Ogma De, running from the Nocturn woods down to Dawnstead, making Greenteeth River an important and busy trade route, with over half the population of Daggermoor living along its shores. Because of the hags within, typically only large boats dare ply its waters, and only a few people, said to be descended from the hags within, can fish in it. Even then they must make careful offerings of black cattle to do so. Further, many are rumored to work side jobs as thieves and pirates along this river, sneaking about trading barges and stealing what they can without raising the alarm.

Baranmoor

A cold, perpetually foggy and rainy moorland, said to be home to a castle of the Winter Court of fairies, it is a place of constant spring, of blooming flowers and fat – never quite ripe yet – berries. The people who live around it have developed a number of sour berry pies, using beet sugars from the Northern Sword Duchies to sweeten them.

In addition to the more kindly fairies, however, these moors are also home to wraiths and headless undead, as well as elves who have turned to foul magics in an attempt to return to fairyland, and have since come to enjoy placing curses on people. Those who step onto the moors often start by stripping and turning their clothes inside out and saying a prayer to the gods of the moors. They will repeat this action every hour, as a means of staving off the curses and keeping the undead at bay. Although, this doesn’t always work and sometimes adventurers must be hired to rescue those who have been spirited away on this moor.

Red Tor

A fairy castle which looks to human eyes like towering reddish grey rocks. It is forbidden to approach the Red Tor, but adventurers have been spirited away there for parties with the fairies, where they are asked to recount tales of their adventures in far away lands. Such adventurers might also be hired by the fairies within to help them fight Unseelie rivals, orcs, giants, or devils.

Wickerdown

A typical village of honey colored homes, and a population of just a few hundred. Wickerdown has recently ended up on the wrong side of a dispute with a clan of giants, although no one is certain what they did to make the giants so angry, and it is probable that the giants have gotten them confused for some other village or are simply inventing a pretext to loot them of their cattle.

Equalar Wood

Home to kingdoms of horse loving pixies, who have stolen a number of the animals over the years and now raise them in the forest meadows. A few of the horses of Equalar Wood have taken on strange properties, and are invisible in the shadows of trees, and are able to speak the fey language. The forest is also home to a scheming family of green dragons and spriggon bandits that serve them, as well as the chimera’s which crave the flesh of horses, both of which the pixies seek some way to drive off.

Neighbors Peace

The land of Neighbors Peace is intermingled with the Nocturn Wood, so the hours of daylight are sporadic and short, such that one never knows for certain when sunrise or sunset will come, and even when the sun is out a few stars are still visible in the dim sky. The fairies here are also more feral than those in most of the other lands of Ogma De, with many of these fairies having developed a taste for blood. Even so the people of this land have formed a generally beneficial peace with these fairies, in much the same way a lost child might with a pack of wolves that inexplicably adopts them. To reinforce this positive relationship the people call themselves and the fairies neighbors and peaceful, thus Neighbors Peace.

The ‘Peaceful’ are generally outgoing, and enjoy the company of others in their large round homes where three to six families can live. It isn’t uncommon for families to own part of two or three homes so that they can shift from one home to another, both to form strong bonds with every family in the village, but also because the ‘Peaceful’ tend to avoid conflict as their primary means of resolution. That is, they will move into another home, rather than engage in an argument with someone.

Because of the danger from fairies and the uncertain hours of daylight their gardens and orchards are so small that they must import most of their food. Most of the ‘Peaceful’ earn a living by sitting in circles and lending energy to processing motes of magic that help make food grow sweeter. These motes of magic are then sold to places that grow fruit and sugar beets. They also make candles (some of which have enchantments allowing their light to act as a work of art for festivals). Another common items floor mats from rushes, mostly for trade with neighboring peoples as these don’t have enough market value to trade extensively.

The Peaceful people’s work means that they spend a lot of time inside playing card games, in which one person acts as a designated dealer, while the others can keep their hands free to continue their work. Such games include games similar to solitaire, except with a point system for those who see the next move first. The people tend to avoid doing anything that would be interesting to watch, in order to keep from attracting potentially hungry fairies. Additionally, each house keeps a few small cows, from which they can extract blood to offer the fairies when they feel one’s presence or one makes itself known by rapping on the furniture.

Almost half the people of Neighbors Peace are Gnomes, with a number of others being part gnome and part human, so they tend to be highly creative, figuring out new ways to make baskets, process their motes, prevent and deal with tooth decay, art from the light of their rushes, and most of all, to play card and board games.

Encounters and Adventurers

Although they are outgoing and friendly, the Peaceful are also reserved, calm, and softspoken, a common joke being that they could put any monster to sleep simply by talking soothingly. Negotiations and discussions with the Peaceful will tend to take longer than many have patients for, as they tend to spend a lot of time thinking through their words and steering conversations away from business and similar topics, and towards games and leisure. This is partially because they have a tendency to think of business and such matters in the form of games, but also because they are careful about making direct promises with strangers, as they dislike lying, even by mistake.

Outside adventurers to the Neighbors’ Peace will usually be treated to a meal of a variety of sweets and hard cheeses while the leaders of a village explain to them which fairies and other creatures they should avoid hurting and antagonizing. After all, a vampire might be helpful to a village – most of the time, or a giant might have formed a treaty with them and they need to make certain that these treaties are honored as best they can. Beyond this adventurers are often hired, either to enforce treaties against faithless monsters, or to try to force them to enter treaties. Killing a large group of monsters is usually a last resort, as the Peaceful people have to maintain the image that they want to get along with their magical neighbors.

Food

The fact that most of the trade between Neighbors’ Peace and the outside world happens with nations that grow foods like sugar beets, means that the Peaceful buy a lot of sugar, and so their foods tend to be very sweet. Hard candies made from spices or ice creams made from fruits are popular, as are cookies and cakes. Most of these foods are incredibly sweet, and brightly colored as their obsession with the artistry of light tends to translate into making pastel foods.

Not all their food is sweet, however, as they also enjoy hard, sharp cheeses, or cured and aged meats with boar being the most commonly consumed meat, as hunting is an important pass time for their warrior and wizard classes.

War

Their small numbers and propensity towards games and illusions, and their treaties with a variety of dangerous magical creatures means that it is difficult to predict exactly how the Peaceful people will fight a war when they are forced to do so. They might use vampires to kidnap their enemies and giants to dig ditch traps, or Ettercap and giant spiders to weave webs along the ground which can be hidden with leaves. What is predictable, is that they will most often try to capture as many of their foes as they can, in hopes that they can exchange those captured for a treaty. On the rare occasion that they are dealing with a monster who doesn’t care about their troops they will often bargain with the troops for their surrender directly, or act much more ruthlessly if they need to.

They have a larger than normal number of illusionists and warlocks, allowing them to use powerful tricks.

Religion

The primary deities, fairies, and spirits of the Peaceful people are those connected to the swamps, as it is from the swamps that they gather the reeds they use to make the candles, which makes up for the lack of a powerful sun deity in the region.

Important Locations

Sleepers Patch

A small grove of trees which sits in the middle of the Neighbors Peace, but where it is always night. There are rumors of a ruin of great treasures in the center of it, but those who step in invariably pass out, and stay that way for years at a time, before waking up as if they had only slept for a few moments, unaged despite the passage of time, they wonder out of the woods to discover the world has changed without them. There are Peaceful who have gone into these woods on purpose, in hopes of escaping a bad situation, but they typically wake up only a few days later, after things have gotten worse for them.

Meadow of the Stars

This is a meadow where you can see the stars, even in broad daylight. Because it is one of the rare places of dry ground, it has become a popular place for picnics and the like, and indeed, there does seem to be some force which keeps monsters out of the meadow. Many think it is perhaps a deity to the stars, but no amount of veneration or coxing has gotten it to reveal themselves.

Crabs Fen

A fen that fills to overflowing with freshwater crabs every fall, although not enough to replace candle making and magical mote processing as the primary profession, these crabs have helped this to become one of the most populated regions of Neighbors Peace.

Gurrdbury

Living on the edge of the giant’s kingdoms’ some of the villages of Gurrdbury have been conquered and are now ruled over by the giants themselves. The people fight frequent battles against and alongside these larger beings, forging strong bonds among themselves and their neighboring villages. There are many tales of heroic and cunning people becoming kings after overthrowing a giant, or wealthy after robbing one.

The people of Gurrdbury are sentimental, while being grounded and no nonsense about their work. Perhaps most important to them, however, is the belief that everyone should have the right to learn to fight from traveling archers or spell masters, for they believe that knowing how to fight for one’s family is the only way to maintain freedom. Because of this even when they are conquered by giants, the giants must continue to give them some rights or risk being overrun in a revolution.

The people of Gurrdbury are prone to revelry and exceedingly strong bonds of friendship which are often formed in the crucible of battle. For them learning to fight isn’t just a right but a responsibility, for individual rights and a fair society can only be obtained if the leaders know that everyone can fight for their rights. The people of Gurrdbury rarely ever farm, instead, choosing to herd animals, so they can trade meat and cheeses for grain and other farmed foods.

Important Locations

Bramble of Spears

The sight of the bloodiest battle between the people of Ogma De and the Empire of Swords (now broken into the Sword Duchies. Although won by the Empire, this battle broke their strength and forced them to withdraw from Ogma De for the last time. The number of souls wondering the battlefield made it a major recruiting ground for the fairy courts, seeking the spirits of heroic people to join their cause. It is said that there are so many dead here, not all of them have yet been claimed, and thankfully so, for after the events of the Scattering this was once more the sight of a battle between the Eldritch Horrors and people of Ogma De, and this time many of the heroes of old came to fight alongside the human defenders.

Because of the Bramble of Spears significance to the history of Ogma De, it has become home to one of the only known locations of an Eldrech council. Further, numerous courts of fairies claim it, and many battles have been fought between them over it, their wars occasionally spilling out into the surrounding villages.

Ankheg’s Fields

Clusters of trees growing among fields of wild rye make this the perfect home for the bane of cattle herders, the ankheg. The giant insect like beasts have created numerous nests in the hard clay and chalk hills around here. The danger they pose would normally cause cattle herders to avoid this land, but the cattle that eat here grow larger than normal, encouraging some people to take the risk, and to hire adventurers to protect their cattle or reduce the number of ankheg nests in the fall, when they take the cattle here to get fat before winter.

War Wizards Academy

Established as a joint venture by the people of Dawnstead and Gurdbury to train and experiment with training eldritch knights, arcane tricksters, and other forms of martial casters, many of which are unique to this academy.

Reaver’s Rocks

A series of rocky outcroppings from which people who have turned bandit, along with their spriggand and fairy allies, are able to launch raids on Dawnstead and Gurdbury. Reaver’s Rock is mostly lawless, not recognizing the authority of priests or mage families. Instead they are led by warrior witches who have proclaimed themselves servants of the free fairies.

Knockermoors

A land rich in copper and silver, the Knockermoors are primarily populated by dwarves, with human villages clustered near the mines. These human villages focus on farming for food to trade with the dwarves in return for metal goods that they can then sell to the rest of the world. The dwarves, like the humans above, tend to get along well with the fairies that populate the caverns, who respect their work ethic, skill at making beautiful things, and rock solid and pragmatic view of tradition.

Their relationship with the fairies, especially those of the Raven, have tended to make these dwarves much more careful about the future. They spend a lot of time performing divinization rituals to learn about the wider world and to understand their next moves.

The Dwarves connection with the fairies had made them a bit more whimsical than most of their kin, such that they feel the desire to play random pranks on the people of the surrounding villages. These pranks can include the typical, making stairs creak at night or putting a leaky bowl of water in the rafters so that people think their roof is leaking when it isn’t. The pranks can also include positive things, like finishing someone’s work for them when they go to bed so that they are confused in the morning. As the people of Knockermoor have grown use to such activities, the dwarves have started using fairy paths to go further afield, especially into the Sword Duchies.

The humans of Knockermoor have taken up many of the traits of the dwarves they trade with, being stoic, and pragmatic. The cold weather and poor soil limits what they can grow, making buckwheat and peas their most common crops. In addition they raise a number of pigs and goats, making sharp cheeses with the milk of the latter. This simple faire reflects the generally reserved attitude they have towards life. For them, beauty comes form what is solid,

Locations

Wyvern Hall

A break away cavern of dwarves who have decided to return to their more primordial roots. The dwarves of Wyvern Hall have taken up worshiping a Wyvern turned deity, and become feral raiders who threaten the dwarves and humans of Knockermoor.

Nathro Mountain

An important pilgrimage site for giants who travel here from all over Ogma De and even more distant lands. It is these later giants who cause the most trouble, for after a series of wars with them, the people of Knockermoor made a treaty to leave the giants offerings to their gods alone, in return for their acting relatively peaceful while here. The giants who aren’t a part of Ogma De aren’t a part of this treaty, however, and so will sometimes go on religious frenzied raids after visiting.

Nathro is the name of the largest giant who ever lived in Ogma De, and this mountain is said to be his funeral mound. His ghost has become a deity and is said to still walk the mountains around it. In life Nathro had attempted to conquer and subjugate all the mortal races, before needing to be slain by a god of the old world. His followers all plan wars to conquer more territory for themselves and force others to kneel before them.

The Callmark Meadows

Home to what are perhaps the most cheerful kingdom of fairies in Ogma De, people bring the injured, sick, and even the dead from all over the world in hopes that the fairies will heal or reincarnate them. It is difficult to know who the fairies will bless, and most go away disappointed, yet strangely at peace with the fate that brought them here.

Kansimoor

The people of the Kansi Pantheon of deities. The Kansish people value safety and individual wellbeing above all else, things they think are best achieved by supporting powerful paladins and clerics who can keep them safe from the fiends and giants that rove their lands. Unlike most of the other people in Ogma De they have thus formed a highly stratified society, with a large divide in power between rulers and peasants, in the belief that most people taking on a servitor role to the strongest among them can encourage the strong to feel responsible for those they are meant to protect.

The Kansish Paladins and Clerics view their role as being heroic, rather than as sacred stewards, and so will typically hire sheriffs and aldermen to manage most of the affairs of the country for them, while they go out to fight the monsters that threaten their land. They do have a sense that their position is a gift from the divine, however, and so will often overrule these managers with little actual knowledge of the situation, trusting that their automatic inclination is correct. As a result, Kansimoor is both one of the most secure lands of Ogma de, despite the fact that there are so many demon portals, but it is also one of the most poorly managed. For example, rather than the government building things like bridges, the bridges here, when built are often constructed by an enterprising peasant to charge tolls or a group of peasants as a form of charity for their village. In either case, the lack of funds for such endeavors means that these bridges are often rickety, and many streams have none at all, requiring people to wade across the cold waters.

Locations

Brie Ekka Bridge

A slip of land connecting Kansimoor to Brie Ekka, the land still ruled over by devils. The Bridge is populated by a series of forts established by the Priests and Eldrech to keep the devils and their servants from crossing into the rest of Ogma De. Although this is an uneasy place, wars between the devils and Ogma De have been rare enough that a few Kansi villages have sprung up here to act as trading and farming hubs for the many warriors based here.

Thrush Bay

Although the bay is teaming with fish, it is the presence of gold that draws people to this land, not so much gold that rulership of this land has been heavily contested, but enough to bring an influx of pirates from the North Sea seeking to retire to gold hunting intermixing Kansi farming villages with eclectic boom towns. The presence of these semi-retired pirates has of course lead to an increase in banditry, especially when the pirates find that making a fortune searching for the meager gold of Thrush Bay is uncertain at best.

Thistledown

The largest city of Ogma De. Originally Thistledown was a place for mercenaries from Ogma De to seek work protecting ships on leaving Dawnstead to enter the pirate filled North Sea. It didn’t take long for people to realize that they could make a fortune building pubs to cater to the mercenaries and the ships stopping to pick them up. Soon after the merchants came, making Thistledown the main hub for trade between Ogma De and the outside world.

Ogma De has joined the Gilded Cities relatively recently, both so that it can use the reputation of the league to expand its finance industry, and because the rest of Kansi was beginning to look upon them as a potential target to raid and carve up. It is hoped that the protection of the Gilded Cities will prevent an attack from those seeking to gain the wealth of the growing city in a few nights of looting.

Ravenmoor

The Raven goddess has foretold the end of the world will happen when there are wars but no kings and traditional moralities break down,

The Ravenairs name their land for the symbol of their most important goddess, for she sometimes sends people wisdom and prophecy on the wings of ravens. There goddess is obsessed with modesty, hard work, and tradition. Thanks to the prophecy that they shall all die when these things are lost, the people of Ravenmoor tend to be stoic in the face of personal concerns, self-aggrandizing, and calmly pious. They have a tendency towards mysticism, with people frequently meditating with the aid of repetitive activities or gentle music. For knowledge, especially secret and mystical knowledge is one of two things they hold most dear.

A close second in importance is a sense of belonging, that is of being part of a much larger whole. Most of the people of Ravenbur farm in groups and work in cottage industries, citing in circles in the evening. Thanks to their rich lands they are the largest exporter of food in Ogma de and so are able to form large armies, which help make this one of the safest lands.

Adventurers

The people of Ravenmoor see it as their duty to aid and instruct would be adventurers, even from foreign lands. Because of this they often give easy tasks that could be handled by local armies to young adventurers, making this a good place to gain experience.

The Raveniates are quick to help these young adventurers with foresight they gain through divination spells and meditation, as well as instructions on the nature of the metaphysical and spiritual world. It isn’t uncommon for an adventurer to have spiritualists sit down, uninvited, with them in the pub and begin offering advice.

Locations

Gindon

The second largest city of Ogma De. Gindon is home to large groups of craft people. However, thanks to the tariffs placed on ships sailing on the Silver Peaks side of Ogma De, most of their goods have to be brought across land to Dawnstead. This extra cost has caused a number of the craftspeople in Gindon to go out of business or simply leave. The city has been trying to join the Gilded League to counter the power of the Silver Peaks, but the League is worried about taking on a member that practically guarantees they would have to go to war with the Silver Peaks.

Some of the leaders of Gindon have started secret talks with the Grey Assembly, hoping that they might offer some solution to the city’s problems.

Ethereal Slopes

Frequently misty, the slopes are one of the largest growers of oats in the world. They also play frequent host to young red dragons, looking to raid the Silver Peaks or other neighboring lands. The people of the Slopes tend to ignore these dragons, so long as the mischief they cause happens elsewhere, making this a relatively safe place for such dragons starting out. The presence of red dragons has also drawn young copper and brass dragons seeking to battle against their rival.

Thunder Swam

A marsh filled with trolls and lizard folk, as well as an eldritch horror that has been licking its wounds from the battle after the Shattering. The Horror frequently captures animals and creatures of the swamp and twists them into unique aberrations that are sent to haunt the human realms. Most, of them, however, end up simply hiding in the swamp from their creator, choosing to hunt pray that enters the swamp, rather than leaving.

Government of Ogma de

There are five forces which rule over Ogma de, the first is the warrior class, known as the Uchelwr. Second are the priests, third are necromancers known as the eldriche, fourth are the witches who work with the fairies, and finally there are the villagers themselves who establish some of their own laws.

Uchelwr

The nobility of Ogma De, the Uchelwr aren’t a unified force. Rather they are an aristocratic warrior class which each own their own plots of land. They can set some of their own rules for living on and using their land, and charge fees and rents to the people to live in or visit the villages they own. They are obligated to do their best to protect those who live on and visit their land, that is, anyone from whom they’ve collected a fee. Their power is limited, however, for if they don’t seem to be strong enough to protect people, or overtly cruel the priests can and will replace them.

Priests, also known as the Dryw

The real law within any villages are the priests known as the Dryw. The Dryw meant to oversee an individual village or city are chosen by circles of Dryw which exist in each region. These priests act as judges and executives, determining the laws for each village, with permission from the order they are a part of, which doesn’t give permission to change the laws lightly.

In order to become a priest a child must pass oral tests with one of the regional priests that travel to each village once a year in search of new recruits. A child who passes these tests will be apprenticed with the priests in their village until they are old enough to go and learn from the order directly. After this, they will be appointed to various tasks within the order, until they have enough experience and skill to be appointed leader of a village or to join the leadership of the order itself, although not all of them ever achieve either of these two goals.

Elderich

The Elderich are a council of necromancers who speak with the heroes of the past, and sometimes call forth their ghosts to aid the people in times of need. Being able to speak with the great heroes of the past gives the Elderich a lot of power, allowing them to overturn and even banish a priest who is seen as being unfair. Generally, they live outside of and above the politics of Ogma De. Dwelling instead in isolated places, and will normally only speak to elected village councils that come to visit them. Or on rare occasion they will travel to speak to a village council, providing messages from the ghosts. When they do this, they imbue the council with absolute authority over the affairs of their village, for a short time.

Witches

The people whom the fairies have chosen to deal with directly. Most witches begin their careers when the fairies snatch them up and take them into fairyland. The cunning folk have no specific authority, but the fairies will become angry if they feel their chosen representatives are being disrespected. Thus, people will tend to at least pay lip service to respecting the witch’s ideas.

Although the witches are necessary, and even beloved, they are also greatly feared. There are stories of people waiting for hours outside a cunning persons house for help, too afraid to knock, but too desperate to leave.

The Village Council

Because the villages are relatively small, the councils which they choose to represent them and to oversee the care of orphans and the elderly, aren’t chosen during specific elections. Rather, whenever a majority of people wants to replace someone who is on the council with someone else, they may do so. Of course, the council typically has very little power and mostly acts to organize charity and caregiving for those in the village who need it, as laws are overseen by the priests. The council’s actual power only comes if the priests act out of line, in which case they can go to the Elderich to discuss their concerns, or when the Elderich grants them more power for a short period of time. For the Eldrerich will only tell their secrets and give instructions to village councils, so when they have a message from the heroes of the past this is given only to the village councils.

History of Ogma De

The fairies were fading, being hunted by the devils that had taken control of the mortal realm just outside the doors to fairyland in Northern Ogma De. Some of the fairies surrendered to the devils, choosing to exist as servants to these dark powers rather than being hunted. Others still sought help further afield and discovered the primordial halflings and humans, still living as wild creatures. They took these mortals in and taught them, so that they could act as allies against the devils. Still other fairies left their homes entirely, entering the mortal realm, they became the elves and the gnomes. These new peoples aided the fairies in driving the devils back.

But the powers that had allowed them to fight the devils made them dangerous to the fairies. And mortals are nothing, if not faithless. They soon proved nearly as dangerous as the devils had been. So it was that the fairies went into hiding, for at least it was easier to hide from the mortals than it had been from the devils. And because the devils and other evils were always searching for a new way to take the mortal realm, the fairies could not fight the mortals, they still needed them, so an uneasy and often broken peace was formed between mortal and fairy.

As the people of Ogma de moved south, they encountered more fairies, who having heard the need to fear them, hid in advance of their coming. Still, these fairies too found an advantage to having the humans around, as they enjoyed their food and worried less about the occasional raids from fiends, which the mortals were good at fighting.

With the support of the fairies the people of Ogma de thrived, forming into hundreds of small collections of villages, ruled over by the warrior families whose ancestors had led the battles against the devils. Occasionally these families and villages would unify to fend off raids by fiends, or large empires and foreign raiders. These moments of unity were always temporary, however, for the Eldrech and Priests prefer that no family become powerful enough to make themselves into Emperors.

The Scattering

The Scattering dropped Dawnstead and the Silver Peaks between Ogma De and their traditional enemies, the Empire that broke apart into the Sword Duchies. Once the years of battle with the fiends and eldritch horrors that occurred immediately after the Scattering had ended, the people of Ogma de found themselves without their traditional enemy, free to focus on each other. The result was decades of war between the villages. This chaotic time allowed the lands of the Silver Peaks to take control of the sea between them, such that the Ogma de fishers on that side of their land must pay a tax to kingdoms in the Silver Peaks, in order to fish the waters right off their shore.

The wars between the Ogma De ended just a few decades ago, when the giants found a rift into their land, and came in mass, establishing their own small kingdoms and raiding the human lands. Although an uneasy equilibrium was quickly formed between humans and giants, skirmishes between the two are frequent enough that wars between human villages have become relatively rare.

Alphonse Mucha and the Art of Cultural Identity

2022-12-06T23:39:00.005-08:00

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Alphonse Mucha and the Art of Cultural Identity

by Ty Hulse

The 19th and early 20th Century was defined by the idea of nationalism, or more specifically the search for a common identity with other people's who spoke the same language or had similar histories. Romantacism as an art exalted passion and emotions above enlightenment values of logic and the social good. The romantic artists loved fairies and magic, primarily as it was associated with folklore. The Brothers Grimm were inspired to collect German tales and lore based on this idea, in hopes of unifying the many German nations into a single whole. They were frequently in conflict with kings and nobles

Certainly, Alphonse Mucha, famous in Paris for helping create the Art Nouveau would join a movement of artists and idealists seeking to bring independence to his Slavic Czech homeland. He believed that art inspired by the fantasies, myths, and folklore of the Slavic people could help inspire a revolution. He was inspired to this end while in Paris, as he said;

“It was midnight, and there I was all alone in my studio… I saw my work adorning the salons of the highest society or flattering people of the great world with smiling and ennobled portraits. I saw the books full of legendary scenes, floral garlands and drawings glorifying the beauty and tenderness of women. This was what my time, my precious time, was being spent on, when my nation was left to quench its thirst on ditch water. And in my spirit I saw myself sinfully misappropriating what belonged to my people. It was midnight and, as I stood there looking at all these things, I swore a solemn promise that the remainder of my life would be filled exclusively with work for the nation.”

After this he left Paris, returning to his Czech homeland in order to create art that would inspire his people, including a series of fantastical paintings inspired by Pan-Slavic writings. Pan Slavism was a cultural movement that stated in the middle of the 19^th century. While his art was revolutionary and a call to overthrow the Austrian government, Mucha could discuss them in terms of fairytales to avoid the ire of the authorities.

The public was lacking something. It was obvious that it needed to breathe fresh air and find peace and harmony. The existing harmonies were exhausted, empty, taken over from old Renaissance motives, and people were glad to quench their thirst for beauty with a new draught. It seems that it was the refreshing new Slav element they were looking for. Posters were a good way of educating a whole population. They would stop on their way to work and derive from them spiritual pleasure. The streets became open-air art exhibitions.

The goal of these movements was largely positive, to escape the repression of dictators. In order to achieve these ends people created a falsified history and mythology. For example, they sought to portray the Slavs as peace loving, as having been over taken by the violent warrior Germanic people. This, of course, ignores the fact that the Slavs were only in Western and Central Europe because they had fought to displace the people who were already there. In order to create their new cultural identities, many people invented many of the fantasy elements and even the myths we still cling to today. The idea of a preexisting earth mother being one such myth.

Obviously the people who were being oppressed at the time deserved the right to escape repression, what’s interesting for us is that the fantasies people created were able to trump reality, because fantasy and lore are powerful forces.

Mucha described his posters in the following terms:

I must choose a technique which doesn’t take too long. . . .This is why I think oil painting is too technical and not suitable for expressing ideas. In oils the technique is always visible, and this I don’t want . . . if it is broadly painted it’s just shallow virtuosity, unworthy of serious subjects. And if it is too meticulous and naturalistic, the harsh colours will kill the idea and the whole thing looks terribly heavy handed and forced. My work must be like sudden shouts without any bravado technique, honestly felt and honestly expressed, with no showing off, no acrobatics of the brush. I think I will do it like the tragedy of the German Theatre, only better and more seriously worked out, with the main stress on drawing, while the colour, harmonious and natural, should be subordinate. Now I’m looking for a method and I think I have found it. Contemporary oil technique has nothing in common with the Slav spirit. . . it is French, or Dutch, perhaps even German or Italian, but not Slavonic. We must start from a completely different angle . . . not painting because … we get satisfaction from effects of light and colour, but because . . . painting is a more direct way of conveying feelings. And these feelings must remain the principal object while technique and colour must be subordinate. This is my new approach . . . and perhaps I’ll be able to do something really good, not for the art critics but for the improvement of our Slav souls.”

Epic Significance: Placing Alphonse Mucha's Czech Art in the Context of Pan-Slavism and Czech Nationalism Erin M. Dusza (2012)

“Mucha’s advertising posters reflected a new mythology of modernity: the desire for universal harmony and happiness.”

The Image of Homeland in the Works by Alphonse Mucha “Madonna of the Lilies”, the Poster for “The Lottery of the Union of Southwest Moravia” and the Poster for “The Slav Epic Exhibition” Yuliya S. Zamaraeva*, Kseniya V. Reznikova and Natalya N. Seredkina 2020

Art of Djer-Kiss: Pleasure, frivolity, and aesthetics

2022-12-06T23:06:00.000-08:00

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Art of Djer-Kiss: Pleasure, frivolity, and aesthetics

by Ty Hulse

The 1920s was still haunted by the ghost of “The Great War” which had ushered in modern mechanized warfare with the birth of tanks, chemical attacks, bomb carrying planes, and the disease filled trenches that nearly killed Tolkien. This time, after the war, came to be known as the Roaring 20s, and a frivolous generation. In truth, however, the people of that era were in fact running, trying to escape the horror and, in many cases, the shell shocked post-traumatic stress of a war that had left many of the old values dead beside those they loved.

In 1917, near the end of the war which must have seemed to go on forever a pair of girls photographed what they claimed were fairies. Their photographs caused an emotional and psychological stir in society that lingers to this day.

It was a period when the majority of the population had lost a close relative in the first world war, and understandably there was a consequent surge of interest in manifestations of other worlds and the after life such as spiritualism, theosophy and the fairies. Edward Gardner, who discovered the fairy photographs, was a theosophist, and Conan Doyle, who had lost his son in the war, was a committed spiritualist. It is perhaps this sense of desolation following the losses of the war, and the desperate search for signs of an afterlife (Postmodern Fairies by Helen Nicholson)

It is into this world the Djer-Kiss released a series of ads featuring whimsical and beautiful paintings of fairies, one of which promised a return to “pre-war prices” below a celebration of white, dancing beauties. The fairies, like many such paintings are surrounded by a circle of dark wilderness, yet within their circle is a purity and brightness. Yet it isn’t a full circle, there is a gap opening up in it, not one that faces directly towards us, but one that is moving towards us, where the fairies have parted in preparation to invite us, the viewers, in.

Featuring fairies in this way wasn’t an accident, fairies had often been a symbol of hope. In a early 19th Century German memorate a young woman, struggling with her hard Industrial Era job asks her friend; “Wouldn’t you like to marry one of the fairies?” as they hear the sounds of the zwerg reveling in the hill beneath their feet. For many, fairyland must have seemed a type of heaven, which is likely why graves in Ancient Greece sometimes read that the children’s spirit would now be able to play forever with the nymphs.

We see this sort of desperate hope for purity, for a sort of heaven and peace in these paintings. They beg us not to return to the war that was, to move forward towards a better world.

Another ad features fairies swinging joyfully on vines. In some ways this is reminiscent of the paintings of the Rococo period. Like the 1920s the aristocracy of the early 1700s would ponder what happiness is and like the 20s they seem to have ultimately come to the conclusion that what makes someone happy is what feels good. That what is good is to enjoy life. Have romantic trysts in which you playfully let one man look up your skirt, while being pushed on a swing by another. Dress frilly and bright. Travel, eat, drink, and enjoy beautiful things.

Because of the decadent and sexualized nature of the Rococo it is often depicted with a naughty, sexual twist. Much as the fairies had often been thought of. There was, after all, a history of men and women dreaming of beautiful fairy lovers. Further, fairy decadence and celebration, like the Rococo had often been depicted with a mischievous edge to it, such as in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Fairy Tales and Fantasy for Artists - Cute Sweaters

2022-12-06T21:18:00.003-08:00

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Christmas Sweaters. Love and Cuteness. The Voice of the Voiceless.

by Ty Hulse

When many people wish to express love or affection, they turn to something cute such as teddy bears given as gifts on Valentine’s Day. Another example are Christmas sweaters historically knitted by an aunt or Grandmother. The first Christmas sweaters weren’t ironic or ugly, they were artistic expressions by people who had spent much of their life with a limited ability to express themselves. Handmade cute sweaters reflect a desire to care for others. They are knitted by loving hands, often as a present. In this they reflect both the desire to love and to be loved and on some deep level we realize this, this is why people wear them when the maker comes to visit, because they are demonstrating this affection or at least comforting the creator with a forced display of affection.

Rather than trying to understand the aesthetic or emotions behind these works of art, however, society derided the creators, regulating them to kitsch to later be used as the butt of jokes. It is common for people to deride and belittle cute art without ever trying to fully understand its function in people’s life. This is the danger of creating cute art, that it will be not only misunderstood but wrongfully derided.

It is rather amusing to read art Critics who support an industry of artists selling art for thousands or even millions of dollars, deriding the happiness that a teenager or elderly person can get from giving five dollars for something to place on their shelf or hang on their wall. Kisch, in essence, means that many people with little money are able to take joy in it – while ‘high art’ means something that only a single wealthy person owns and few well ever enjoy. I imagine the wealthy art collectors take joy in their million dollar painting, while kicked back in a leather chair while sipping on cognac that costs more than an average person’s yearly wages. I don’t have a problem with this, joy is joy, after all. Still, why would we ever seek to take that opportunity away from the teen sitting on their bed, with a cookie they shouldn’t be eating there, staring silently at the affordable art around their room as they contemplate their life and future? Or the elderly person, rested in a mechanical chair, pondering the world that they’ve been a part of while absently staring at the knickknacks they’ve chosen to represent themselves.

Fairy Tales and Fantasy for Artists - Index

2022-12-06T20:56:00.001-08:00

Intro

Romantic Desires: The Philosophy of Fairy -p2

Geeks, Wild People, and Fairies - p3

Heroism and Fantasy - p4

Playful and Whimsical Art and Stories - p5

Djer Kiss - Fairy Illustration and Advertising

Dragons: The Need for Altruism and Heroism - p6

Heroic Fantasy and Strength - p7

Cuteness, Love, and Protectiveness - p8

Horror: The Sublime Through a Dark and Uncertain World - p10

Awe and Transcendence in Fantasy - p11

Politics and Philosophy - p12

Greed, Heroism and Longing for Connectedness - p13

Villains, Antagonists and Foils - p14

Psychology and Media - p16

Why Do People Rewatch and Reread Stories? - p17

Understanding Fairytales and Fairy Mythology - p18

Our Fairy Neighbors - p19

Common Fairy Traits - p20

Understanding Fairy Mythology -Fairy Tales and Fantasy for Artists - p18

2022-12-06T20:31:00.017-08:00

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Understanding Fairytales and Fairy Mythology

by Ty Hulse

The sun is setting and you are so hungry its difficult to think, despite the inedible leaves you stuffed yourself with in hopes of staving off the pains of starvations. That’s when there’s a knock at the door. On answering you discover a tiny man with a goose’s foot, a fairy! Your first reaction is to slam the door in the fairy’s face, for you have heard stories about fairies eating people’s brains, known people who died when ‘scared to death by the fairies’, or have been carried off to work for the fairies forever. But you hesitate, you are starving and you have also heard of fairies making people wealthy beyond belief and granting people food and success.

What to do when someone encountered a fairy was once a serious question that people pondered frequently.

Because of this fairytales are frequently stories of people’s encounters with the otherworld and their moral often is how to react when one encounters a supernatural entity or finds themselves in a strange and enchanted land.

Emma Wilby states that;

Most people today would consider themselves to have little or no knowledge about early modern familiars. In reality, however, the basic dynamics of the relationship between a cunning woman or witch, and her spirit ally, is easily recognizable to all of us, being encapsulated in narrative themes running through traditional folk tales and myths from throughout the world. Classics such as Rumpelstiltskin, Puss-in-Boots, the Frog Prince and so on, are representative. In these tales the protagonist usually finds themselves alone and in some kind of trouble, when a supernatural being appears suddenly before them and offers to help in some way. These fairy stories and myths originate from the same reservoir of folk belief as the descriptions of familiar-encounters given by cunning folk and witches in early modern Britain.

Fairytales are frequently “closely tied to rituals, customs, and beliefs of tribes, communities, and trades. They fostered a sense of belonging and hope that miracles involving some kind of magical transformation were possible to bring about a better world. They instructed, amused, warned, initiated, and enlightened.” (Zipes)

Many fairytales have these magical encounters between animal spirits or fairies and humans, and so could potentially provide us with some of the general rules for surviving and thriving because of such an encounter. That said a large part of the challenge of understanding fairytales is that a single fairy tale might be made up of motifs from multiple eras and lands, not all of which the teller even understands.

Motifs, like used bricks, can be recycled into new tales of different types. Fairy tales are veritable catalogs of ancient beliefs and practices, some – like the acceptance of fairies or the belief in magic healing wells- that were active well into the twentieth century. Other motifs – like gaining control over a supernatural being by discovering and pronouncing his name (as in ‘Rumpelstiltskin’) or foreseeing the future through the magic gift of understanding the language of birds – died out long ago as generally accepted beliefs but live on in fairy tales. (Ashliman)

Many of these ancient motifs come from religions and mythologies of other places and times, that were forgotten or never known in the place where the story was being told. Because of this people have long had to search for their own meaning to many of the strange events in fairytales. The Anthropologist Tehrani and folklorest Desilva used a number of techniques borrowed from biology to show that many fairytales are likely more than 5000 years old, and have their origin North of the Black Sea, rather than the parts of Europe where they were collected in the 19th and 20th century. If this is true it would mean that many of the Motifs in the stories collected by Grimm come from a place thousands of miles from Germany, and five thousands or more years before the stories were collected.

This is part of what makes fairytales so exciting and freeing for the fantasy writer, because they allow writers and artists to use their imagination. So, while it can be interesting and inspiring to dig into older interpretations and meanings of a fairytale it can also be fun to come up with as many odd ideas about it as you can. Take “Ella Enchanted” or “Shrek”. In each of these the fairy godmother is a sort of species which comes to grant a gift to every child born, or they are a celebrity peddling in wishes and ‘Hollywoodesque’ dreams. In the original fairytale the ‘Fairy Godmother’ was likely a fairy who had been friends with Cinderella’s mother and so had stood as her Godmother, just as humans and fairies often acted as godparents for each other. This ‘original’ understanding of the motif, however, doesn’t fit with the plots and themes of “Ella Enchanted” or “Shrek” who choose instead to come to their own understanding. This is one of the big advantages of fairytales, their motifs can be interpreted many ways to fit new story ideas and social changes. Still, it can be worth it to try to understand and find inspiration in the original motifs.

Why people rewatch films - Fairy Tales and Fantasy for Artists - p17

2022-12-06T20:31:00.016-08:00

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Why Do People Rewatch and Reread Stories?

by Ty Hulse

A Valuable question for any entertainer to ask is; “why do people seek to reexperience a story by rereading or rewatching it, or by watching its sequels?” People don’t simply seek entertainment for its own sake, rather they seek to experience specific emotions during specific moods. (Vorderer, Klimmt, and Ritterfield, 2004.)

The seeking of these emotions is more than just a desire to feel something, it is a way of balancing one’s psychology, which is the risk one takes when making a sequel. Since people watch a film or read a book to feel something specific, it is likely that they engage with sequels to feel the same thing they did when they participated in the original. Because of this a sequel that doesn’t instill the correct emotions will be rejected, as it will have failed to help people deal with the stress, depression, sorrow, boredom, etc., that people needed to deal with, and so will leave the viewer’s needs unsatisfied and possibly cause them to be more stressed and depressed than before they watched it.

While we have discussed the three primary psychological gratifications [hedonic, transcendent, and eudaimonic] that people will seek out, Mood Management Theory indicates that people seeking emotional experiences will usually prefer an intermediate amount of emotions, rather than to feel extreme emotions. That is, as Zillmann’s (1988) research found, people will seek to avoid states of boredom and high arousal or stress. Thus, people who experience stress will often watch something calming, such as light comedies or travel shows. This is where rewatching films such as Princess Bride or even Star Wars can be useful, as the films familiarity can allow people to relax while still alleviating boredom through emotional arousal.

What this means is that the most rewatched films, stories, and even video games tend to be the ones that aren’t overly emotionally stimulating. The same appears to be true about mental stimulation. It is likely that people want worlds that are compelling enough to get us to wonder and consider them, but not so complex that we have to struggle to understand them. This has certainly been found to be the case with the philosophies a movie espouses as well. Movies that explore broader philosophies, which leave people with room to discuss and ponder what the story and world are saying, but aren’t overly complex or ‘preachy’ are more likely to be successful. Specifically, Oliver, Hartmann, and Exploring found that the best philosophies for movies to explore are often ‘that life is a fleeting gift that we should enjoy rather than squander it’, ‘that there is virtue in our inner beauty,’ ‘that human endurance can prevail,’ ‘and we should have faith in our own convictions.’

None of these philosophies leave much room for disagreement, in large part because they are so open ended that while they might be emotionally meaningful, they aren’t complex or specific to any one ideology in the most common American cultures.

Take, for example, what a person being interviewed about why they rewatched Forrest Gump stated: “The overall theme is that you don’t have to be smart, rich, or famous to have an important life. If you have a good heart and live to do good for others, you can find reward in everything you do.”

The first psychological lesson—from Mood Adjustment is that you don’t need to create a high-minded drama, as these likely have no more value than a comedy or light action movie. Lucas Nielsen, in his journal article Marvel Films as Effective Cinema Therapy, states that “These episodic films and the content of superheroes provide a form of therapeutic benefit in coping with trauma and establishing trauma narrative.” In other words, the repeated positive emotions associated with strength and triumph of good over evil can help in therapy, so it would make sense that these things can help people in general. This same thing is true of video games. Those who are feeling stressed prefer easier, low demand video games, while those who are bored prefer to play higher demand video games.

According to the statistical company FiveThirtyEight the most rewatched movies include;

1 Star Wars

2 The Wizard of Oz

3 The Sound of Music 58

4 The Lord of the Rings (series)

5 Gone With the Wind

6 The Godfather

6 The Princess Bride

8 The Shawshank Redemption

9 Harry Potter (series)

10 It’s A Wonderful Life

11 Forrest Gump

11 Grease

13 Dirty Dancing

14 Pulp Fiction

14 Titanic

16 The Lion King

16 Pretty Woman

18 Casablanca

19 The Matrix

19 The Notebook

21 Star Trek

21 Finding Nemo

23 Goodfellas

24 Pride & Prejudice

25 Caddyshack

25 The Avengers

As one should expect these movies would provide people with a goodly mix of emotional gratifications.

More than personal gratifications, however, Patricia, Et al. found in their research on the most rewatched films in Portugal that the most sought after gratification was the social aspect, or as they put it, “because it inspires me to talk about the movie with others.”

This is an interesting finding, although not entirely surprising, that the films people enjoy the most aren’t happy or sad, they are the films that people can easily talk about. This is a second reason that fantasy and sci-fi films have an advantage. The worlds of these films and the world they create invite people to speculate on, to ponder, and question.

When it comes to the three most popular fantasy books for youth of the last couple of decades; Harry Potter’, ‘The Twilight Saga’ and “The Hunger Games’, Garmon, Glover, and Vozzola found that young people reread and rewatched these stories primarily because they satisfied entertainment and sensation-based gratifications. According to this idea people are most likely to want to engage with something which makes them happy, whether that is music, film, or games. Such entertainment allows people to forget their responsibilities and worries for a time. Nearly as important, in the sensation dimension, people prefer films and stories that include intense and powerful stimuli. Such films are often fast paced, and filled with action scenes, quick pace funny moments, or any moment which provides a level of vicarious excitement to the viewer.

Psychology and Media - Fairy Tales and Fantasy for Artists - p16

2022-12-06T20:31:00.015-08:00

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Psychology and Media

by Ty Hulse

Above all else, art is about emotions, for the emotions in tales can provide real psychological benefit. Indeed, it can be argued that people seek out entertainment primarily to fulfill psychological needs, as well as to feel emotional pleasure. (Raney Et Al.) Studies have repeatedly found that people use entertainment as a way of regulating and intervening in their emotional states (Eden, Johnson, and Hartmann, 2018) and that doing so can have not only psychological and social benefits, but also benefits to productivity as well. Reinecke and Trepte (2008) found that “those suffering from low arousal [boredom] performed worse on cognitive tasks” than those who alleviated this boredom by playing videogames for a few minutes. Reinecke et al.’s later studies (2011) found that video games were generally very effective at satisfying our needs for mastery and control, where as other activities were better suited to calming down.

Just a few other findings include the fact that;

“viewing cute images improved performance on tasks that required carefulness” (Nittono Et Al). Chen, Hu, and Plucker found that positive moods can help with certain types of creativity, while Miller and Benoit found that horror could help with others. Christensen and Scrivner point out that horror has been used by some as a way to deal with anxiety and that some individuals with PTSD have used horror to aid in their emotional recovery.

It should be obvious then that telling and hearing stories can have huge emotional and psychological benefits, in ways that sometimes don’t make obvious sense and have little or nothing to do with the morals, themes, text or subtext of a story. A fairytale or fantasy story may not have a subtextual or overt moral that we can find, rather its purpose could be entirely emotional.” (A Worldbuilder’s Guide to Understanding Fairies and Fairytales)

The value of emotions in art and stories is why psychologists can use fantasy tales in therapy. According to Nielson (2007);

the emotional release, possible due to a clear narrative, is mentally healthy but also connects to better physical health, as a result. The narrative is critical to releasing these emotions in an effective manner where one’s role in their trauma can be understood and therefore promote personal growth in oneself

Many of the stories mentioned for helping people in therapy include fairytales or fantasy stories. For example, Doctor Wolz states that therapists have used Lord of the Rings to help patients because “One of the themes that attracted my attention in the Lord of the Rings is that of personal evolution. Each one of the members of The Fellowship is simultaneously a participant in two quests: one which revolves around the destruction of the ring, and another which revolves around the confrontation of demons/fears that obstruct that character’s personal growth.”

Again Nielson points out that:

The superhero concept is naturally very therapeutic in its storytelling and characters, due to their usual archetypical standards of simplicity in good vs. evil conflicts. This is partially why children have a strong reaction to superheroes in stories, therefore suggesting that they will be effective in cinema therapy.

Stories in which characters overcome obstacles after struggle and have emotional arcs can all be extremely beneficial and such struggles and arcs are often built into the world. Lawrence and Jewett (2002) have found that there is psychological value in fantasy worlds that aren’t ambiguous, that have clear cut evil empires, so that the good characters can easily defeat the problems of the world. This isn’t to say that there isn’t value in darker and more ambiguous worlds, but it is also worth pointing out that there has been found to be important psychological value in worlds where heroes can have “pure motivations, a redemptive task and extraordinary powers” (Lawrence and Jewett, 2002).

Given the psychological value of stories one shouldn’t mistake engaging with stories for emotional reasons as a quest for blind happiness. Strizhakova and Kremar (2007) did a study of the types of movies people watched when feeling different emotions and found that;

In general, those who felt angry and bored chose fewer dramas; those who felt calm chose more comedies, and those who felt energetic chose more action movies but avoided crime dramas and comedies. Those who felt nervous, however, chose more–not fewer–horror movies. In addition, those who felt sad chose more–not fewer–dramas and crime dramas but avoided dramatic comedies. Rather, sad people seemed to gravitate to serious films.

In other words, people likely choose different stories at different times based on their mood and psychological needs. Thus each type of film and game offers something different to help people in different moods reach a more optimal state. After all, there are many ways which a story can fulfill someone’s psychological needs, but in general they have been broken into three categories: Hedonic, Eudaimonic and Transcendent. Not every one of these gratifications is necessary to making a show entertaining (and most stories likely don’t gratify people in most of the ways possible), but people who have a healthy mix of emotions from each category will tend to have a higher sense of well-being. (Raney Et al.)

Hedonic Motivations involve seeking out pleasure and happiness. These emotions are usually found in fun and exciting stories.

Eudaimonic motivations include seeking out a deeper meaning—feeling a sense of elevation and connectedness with the self and others.

Eudaimonic entertainment commonly involves stories that address difficult aspects of the human condition, such as life struggles, death and suffering, and portrayals of human virtue such as kindness, helpfulness, love, and connection… Admittedly, eudaimonic films for example rarely generate the top box office revenues. However, they are more likely than hedonic fare to receive critical acclaim. (Raney et al.)

Transcendent gratifications come from entertainment that makes people gain outward focused insights as opposed to eudaimonic entertainments which are mostly inward focused. In other words, transcendent entertainment “takes the audience member beyond personal benefits to a greater understanding of their interconnectedness with others or with a higher nature. Increased appreciation for and understanding of shared humanity and values of moral beauty, hope, courage, and humility.” (Raney Et al.)

Hedonic

Every mammal plays games, or put another way, every mammal seeks to learn through fun and pleasure. This is what hedonic well-being is, pleasure, happiness, fun, carefreeness, relaxation, and enjoyment, and along with this a lack of emotional pain and stress.

Entertainment, which allows people to work through and roleplay emotions in their mind can act as the ultimate sandbox for people to mentally explore experiences and feelings. People seek out entertainment for three types of escape; sociological – that is stresses related to work, social psychological – stresses related to negative social interactions with others and the world, and individual – that is to help improve individual mood and psychology. This use of entertainment to escape and increase well-being is of particular note to fantasy artists, given the value of digital games and fantasy for escaping. “Several studies have found that escapism and being immersed into a fantasy world to be relevant motivations of players. Especially complex games like online role-playing games are often used for escapism-related motivations like immersion/fantasy.” Games and fantasy “provide an optimal environment for pleasurable escape from the restrictions and difficulties of the real world.” )Video Games and Well-being Press Start 2019)

This might explain why the most successful MMORPG is ‘World of Warcraft’, an artistically somewhat cartoonish game with moments of tongue in cheek lore, because the whimsy of the art is able to contribute to the hedonic pleasure people feel when playing this game. In any case, researchers have found that sadness is often best relieved by playing video games.

Of course, pleasure isn’t the only purpose of entertainment, after all horror, vast landscapes, and tragedies are all important works of art that people frequently seek out. Studies have found that films that cause people to feel moved “elicited more reflective thoughts, which in turn predicted individuals’ overall positive experience of the film” (Bartsch, Kalch, and Oliver).

Transcendence

Transcendent gratifications come from a feeling of spirituality induced by entertainment and art such as is found in the original ‘Star Wars’ films, ‘Avatar, The Last Airbender’, ‘Lord of the Rings’, and more. Transcendent art and media causes people to care and think about others and increases their feelings of a shared humanity, values, spirituality, moral beauty, courage, hope, humility, and feelings of awe and wonder, as well as feelings of connectedness with nature and higher powers. Transcendence can have a positive impact on someone’s sense of well-being, while promoting authentic happiness. At the same time transcendence also causes people to care more about others, increasing their generosity and kindness.

Psychologists have identified a number of forms of transcendence. Elevation, the feeling we get when we encounter moral beauty. Admiration that comes from witnessing an achievement or skill that inspires and energizes the viewer. Gratitude, that comes from witnessing not only good deeds, but also by witnessing a character who is willing to show gratitude. Thus, an audience is often more likely to feel positive emotions when a protagonist is helped and thankful rather than when they can accomplish everything on their own. Viewing gratitude is important because it increases altruism but also helps people feel greater levels of life satisfaction.

Perhaps the most important aspect of transcendence for artists is awe. That is being made to feel small and insignificant because of amazement, wonder, the beauty of nature, or fear. Such feelings of awe and wonder can reduce aggressive behavior. Images of nature can help to induce awe, which perhaps helps to explain why scenes of nature were shown to improve psychological well being, increasing "feelings of affection, friendliness, playfulness, and elation."

The stress reducing effects of nature art can help improve patient outcomes in hospitals, among other things. “For example, adult patients in a procedure room reported better pain control when exposed to a nature scene. Murals (as distraction) resulted in a significant decrease in reported pain intensity, pain quality, and anxiety by burn patients. Breast cancer patients reported reduced anxiety, fatigue, and distress during chemotherapy when exposed to VR intervention displaying underwater scenes.”

During quite moments in a game people can feel a similar sense of transcendence as a result of the art and the emotions related to the games scene, as well as its music.

The power of transcendence induced by beauty may very well be the biggest reason that the film “Avatar” had the biggest box office of all time. The use of such beauty to move people is obviously important to artists, just as the use of spiritualism to help people feel transcendence is important to fantasy and related stories. “Avatar: The Last Airbender”, “Star Wars”, “Lord of the Rings”, and many more have all used some form of spirituality to help make us feel a sense of transcendence.

Such transcendence leads to feelings of appreciation which Oliver and Bartsch (2011) found “is most evident for meaningful portrayals that focus on human virtue and that inspire audiences to contemplate questions concerning life’s purpose.” Similarly, Janicke and Rambasubramanian found that “while personally chosen favorite movies can be enjoyable from pleasurable and hedonic aspects, these films also gain appreciation from rich spiritual content”. The belief in the spirituality being depicted isn’t necessarily important to a person’s feelings of transcendence; after all, it is likely that very few people believed in ‘the force’ exactly as it is depicted in ‘Star Wars’ yet the emotions elicited by it, as well as by moral and hopeful behavior with Star Wars films, helped people enjoy the films more.

Eudemonic Well-Being

Eudaimonic entertainment creates emotions of appreciation, rather than pleasure, such entertainment addresses struggles, death, suffering, and sorrow. More than this, however, Eudaimonic entertainment shows us human virtues such as kindness, love, connection, helpfulness. These are the gratifications that lead more to appreciation of the 'artistic’ merit of a piece of art than enjoyment of it. Such potentially negative emotions are most effective when mixed with positive feelings that lead to feelings of bittersweetness and poignancy.

The psychologist “Ryff distinguished between six different contours of well being: mastery (successfully mastering the challenges of life), autonomy (experiencing self-actualization and inner freedom), personal growth (developing and expanding as a person), self-acceptance (having a positive attitude toward oneself), positive interpersonal relationships (being able to love and build up intimacy), and life purpose (finding a goal and meaning in life).”

People will often turn to entertainment that makes them feel sad, especially when such sorrow provokes deeper thoughts on the meanings and deeper purposes of life. Stories such as the final moments of “Avengers End Game” when Iron Man sacrifices himself and the funeral which follows in the movie leave us feeling both sad and strangely warm. Such experiences in entertainment help us feel more connected to and caring towards others, as well as making us feel more cared for. In a strange way these sad moments can help impart a sense of control on us, helping us feel more free.

We don’t enjoy these sad moments exactly, rather, we appreciate them. Such appreciation of stories comes from a perception of deeper meanings and of course feelings of being inspired. The stories that help us to feel this appreciation more often tend to show complex moralities and imperfect characters whose own values and morals can be very different from our own. Thus, the reason people can so strongly appreciate and even enjoy antihero narratives. The morally ambiguous antihero or even villain who acts as the protagonist in a show can help audiences experience things they otherwise wouldn’t and can allow them to explore deep and meaningful philosophical questions.

People don’t necessarily identify with the ambiguous morals on display, nor do they come to an agreement with them. Rather, people frequently disengage from morals that are so far from their own. Instead people will tend to engage with the positive aspects of these characters; even if these are their intelligence, their willingness to get things done, etc., rather than moral aspects of their character.

Meaningful entertainment can help motivate people to become better, even increasing their levels of spirituality and hope. Tragic films have even been show to lead to a reduction of anxiety and self-efficacy for as much as four weeks after.