The Fair Folk

Discussing all things Ravenloft
Ryan Naylor
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 1285
Joined: Thu Jun 24, 2004 10:55 pm

Post by Ryan Naylor »

DeepShadow of FoS wrote: Rereading the MM for upcoming game, and it hit me: anyone else think Simon here was the inspiration for a certain bogeyman who lives at the end of the White Road?
I can tell you he's not. Mr. Fox is folklore. With a dash of Roald Dahl.

But these things all draw on the same well of culture, so it's not surprising one thing seems to lead to another.
User avatar
DeepShadow of FoS
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 2916
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2003 1:43 pm
Location: Heinfroth's Asylum

Post by DeepShadow of FoS »

Ryan Naylor wrote:
DeepShadow of FoS wrote: Rereading the MM for upcoming game, and it hit me: anyone else think Simon here was the inspiration for a certain bogeyman who lives at the end of the White Road?
I can tell you he's not. Mr. Fox is folklore. With a dash of Roald Dahl.

But these things all draw on the same well of culture, so it's not surprising one thing seems to lead to another.
I didn't mean inspiration for you, Ryan. Obviously you couldn't have been inspired by a character written after DT&DL. :wink:

I mean I think Simon is a good candidate for the in-game origin of Mr. Fox. Like all bogeymen, Mr. Fox originated from a sinkhole of evil, a sinkhole where a child was abused and/or murdered. I nominate Simon as the source of the Mr. Fox sinkhole.

But now that you mention it, what folkloric sources did you use for Mr. Fox? I'd love to have a look at them.
The Avariel has borrowed wings,
The Puppeteer must cut the strings
The Orphan Queen must take the throne
The Queen of Orphans calls them home
Ryan Naylor
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 1285
Joined: Thu Jun 24, 2004 10:55 pm

Post by Ryan Naylor »

Oh, I see. In-game inspiration not out-game.

Anyway,

There are two parts to the Mr. Fox idea: the man who goes around giving out toys to children that cause awful things to happen to them, and the Man at the End of the White Road (as it were), who marries innocent young women and then murders them.

The fact that he comes in two distinct halves is because I took two different ideas and mashed them together.

The giving out toys idea almost entirely comes from Roald Dahl's The Witches. I don't know specifically where he got the ideas from, but modern folklore (that is, urban legends) are full of the Strangers With Candy idea, and the concept goes right back through The Brothers Grimm to even earlier. If you look at it one way, Zeus' gift of Pandora and her box to Epimetheus in Greek mythology is pretty much the same thing. The Serpent in the Garden of Eden is definitely the same thing. Stephen King's Needful Things covers much the same ground, so I pay homage to him by appropriating his description of Mr. Gaunt's bag as a description of Mr. Fox's.

For some reason, Evil Gifts are everywhere: things you want but shouldn't have. I suppose it's because children need to be taught not to wander off with people who offer them gifts, and that's something that (a) hasn't changed throughout history, and (b) all parents worry about, which hasn't changed throughtout history either.

The second part is the story of the Robber Bridegroom. Mr. Fox is named Mr. Fox in the version in Joseph Jacob's collection of folklore, but the Robber Bridegroom comes from The Brothers Grimm, and Wikipedia tells me that Shakespeare alludes to Mr. Fox as well in Much Ado About Nothing.

It's rather like the story of Bluebeard, and almost exactly as I presented in the entry. A young woman (i.e. a girl, if we're going to be historically accurate about these things, because a lot of these "women" would actually have been somewhere between 14 and 17) marries a man who tells her to meet him at his house. He's marked the way with ashes (but I like the poem The Highwayman, where the road was a strip of moonlight, so that's how we got the White Road). She turns up, finds out he's going to kill her, and uses her quick wits and natural pluck to escape. Which, of course, doesn't happen in my version. Neil Gaiman wrote a poem version of this, but I can't remember the title.

So, fundamentally I drew on Jospeh Jacob's collections of fairy tales, because I got an illustrated version when I was a kid that scarred me forever, but they're very similar to the Grimms' versions.

I think children everywhere have similar fundamental fears: dismemberment, kidnapping, parental abandonment and so on. They're the root of a lot of these stories, and I tried to incorporate them as much as I could into the bogeymen to give them an authentic feel.
User avatar
DeepShadow of FoS
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 2916
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2003 1:43 pm
Location: Heinfroth's Asylum

Post by DeepShadow of FoS »

Ryan Naylor wrote:Oh, I see. In-game inspiration not out-game.
Yeah, but that part I'm not so clear on: DTDL states that the Gleams clued into the bogeymen because the stories had no geographical origin, no sign that these stories had disseminated from place to place via travelers, etc.

BUT

DTDL also states that all bogeymen all have a geographical origin (the original sinkhole), and they can only visit places where their stories have been told. Hence, they spread only as their stories are spread.

So if bogeymen tales have an origin point, and they spread in the same manner as other stories, how did they stand out?

+++++++++++++++++++++

More on topic, I'm wondering what other denizens the Market might have. I just can't see Duke Gundar kicking back with a hag and swapping stories; it just seems out of character. OTOH, why wouldn't such a villain make all possible use of a resource like this? I think the Market would appeal only to certain types of critters. Hags I can see doing a brisk trade in deadman's candles, and evil wizards and liches would be all over the spell component trade. Fey are obvious, and yet something tells me that the Bogeymen would be absent, perhaps conspicuously so. For some reason, I imagine an enterprising fey taking it upon him/herself to make purchases on behalf of powerful vampires, including DL's, and delivering the goods personally, so they don't have to trouble themselves.
The Avariel has borrowed wings,
The Puppeteer must cut the strings
The Orphan Queen must take the throne
The Queen of Orphans calls them home
User avatar
NeoTiamat
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 4119
Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 5:00 pm
Gender: Male
Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Post by NeoTiamat »

DeepShadow of FoS wrote:More on topic, I'm wondering what other denizens the Market might have. I just can't see Duke Gundar kicking back with a hag and swapping stories; it just seems out of character. OTOH, why wouldn't such a villain make all possible use of a resource like this? I think the Market would appeal only to certain types of critters. Hags I can see doing a brisk trade in deadman's candles, and evil wizards and liches would be all over the spell component trade. Fey are obvious, and yet something tells me that the Bogeymen would be absent, perhaps conspicuously so. For some reason, I imagine an enterprising fey taking it upon him/herself to make purchases on behalf of powerful vampires, including DL's, and delivering the goods personally, so they don't have to trouble themselves.
Well, you're right. First off, the Market only appeals to pretty specific kinds of entities, usually the ones who are more sociable or less paranoid than others. Secondly, there is the fact that the Market is something of an invititation-only institution, so not everyone would be invited (I think in fact that the really powerful entities, such as Strahd and Azalin, or Meredoth, might also be conspicious by their absences, since they're strong enough to actually challenge the Minister of Fear). There's also the fact that, at least as-written, the Market is a demi-domain, which means no Darklords need enter. Since yours is somewhat different on the global mechanics, I'm not entirely sure how that would work out.

All that said, I'm sure that at least some enterprising Fey or mortal has come up with the concept of home-delivery for the more powerful or the more paranoid. :twisted:

Demographically, I think the majority of the Midnight Market (some 60%) is faerie of one sort or another. Some fey would just naturally gravitate here, faerie of gold or money or trade, faerie of knowledge, but others also. I can just see a pack of redcaps lounging around and offering assassination or torture services in exchange for shiny stuff. Hags I personally consider as Fey-ish entities, though there would certainly be plenty of them too.

Another 10-15% is going to be undead, mostly vampires (who love the eternally night schtick) or more intelligent ghouls or wights (the ones who can restrain their urges). Liches would be present, though liches are sufficiently rare in general as to attract attention. You probably would not find much in the way of spectres or ghosts or such, they tend to be tied too much to the past, and not much in the way of mindless undead, though the idea of someone selling zombies, or using a pack of skeletons as porters, appeals.

A further 15-20% is going to be mortals, I would think. The main advantage for mortals comes from the fact that at the Market, they can meet with otherwise very dangerous creatures on relatively safe terms. Plus due to the nature of the place, most of the mortals who shop or sell are usually going to be of a somewhat malevolent or unscrupulous bent. Evil wizards, as you said, or people like Simon who think they can make a profit.

As for the remainder, that's just the odds and ends of the Demiplane. You won't find many werewolves, but some might get into the business like Conall. The Created are rather rare inherently, but one who is both reasonably intelligent and has a service or goods to provide might enjoy the ability to walk amongst people who really don't care what it looks like. You might have some aberrations, perhaps a trio of Mindflayers from Bluetspur shopping for fresh brains, or the Skum emissaries of some Aboleth-lord from the deeps.

The Market could also be a good place to use some of the myriad humanoid races that D&D has come up with, with a slightly Gothic sheen on them. Perhaps a kuo-toa in a foul-smelling robe offers the PCs secrets from the lost ruins of Shay-Lot, cheap, yes, for only a little favor, yes.

Ultimately, the Market is admittedly a stylistic deviation from standard Ravenloft. It can be eerie and unnerving, but it is creepy in a somewhat different way than, say, Strahd's castle is creepy.
Ravenloft GM: Eye of Anubis, Shattered City, and Prof. Lupescu's Traveling Ghost Show
Lead Writer & Editor: VRS Files: Doppelgangers; Contributor: QtR #20, #21, #22, #23, #24
Freelance Writer for Paizo Publishing
User avatar
RShini
Agent of the Fraternity
Agent of the Fraternity
Posts: 75
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2009 10:22 pm
Location: Spokane

Post by RShini »

NeoTiamat wrote:though the idea of someone selling zombies, or using a pack of skeletons as porters, appeals.
I got an image of someone using the walking dead as a sort of grisly street entertainment - an unliving Tableau of the Danse Macabre, mocking sketches of the mortals.
"When they open the door and see a ten foot cockroach, they sigh in relief and mutter 'glad it's not a twenty-foot tall cockroach" - or something like that, Stephen King, Danse Macabre
Ryan Naylor
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 1285
Joined: Thu Jun 24, 2004 10:55 pm

Post by Ryan Naylor »

DeepShadow of FoS wrote:
Ryan Naylor wrote:Oh, I see. In-game inspiration not out-game.
Yeah, but that part I'm not so clear on: DTDL states that the Gleams clued into the bogeymen because the stories had no geographical origin, no sign that these stories had disseminated from place to place via travelers, etc.

BUT

DTDL also states that all bogeymen all have a geographical origin (the original sinkhole), and they can only visit places where their stories have been told. Hence, they spread only as their stories are spread.

So if bogeymen tales have an origin point, and they spread in the same manner as other stories, how did they stand out?
No one else has ever mentioned that. It's not a mistake. I'm being subtle.

The issue is one of unreliable narrators. First, the story is being told by the mad son of one of the Gleam brothers, who was only a kid when the events in the story happened. Is he telling the truth? Is he misremembering? Is he deliberately using stories to attack the bogeymen as a whole?

After all, knowing what he does about bogeymen, it's pretty irresponsible to be telling people about them and spreading their stories.

Say the bogeymen could originally travel wherever they wanted, although they were still shaped by the stories told in that area. As I said before, some things are universal, so it would make sense that the fey life force can slip into whatever local form the appropriate story has.

So to fight them, bogeyman hunters use the stories against them. The book gives rules for bards doing so. I like to think that they've hit upon the idea that they can fight all of the bogeymen at once by telling stories about the bogeymen as a whole, codifying them, making them knowable and raising people's awareness of them.

As G K Chesterton said, "Fairy tales do not give the child the idea of the evil or the ugly; that is in the child already because it is in the world already. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey.
The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St George to kill the dragon."
User avatar
The Giamarga
Evil Genius
Evil Genius
Posts: 2313
Joined: Wed Jan 19, 2005 7:11 pm
Location: wandering

Post by The Giamarga »

Did any of you guys ever Take a look at Mystic Eyes Games' Hunt the Rise of Evil line? (See also this post for links and reviews) It is a very bogey, fey, Brothers Grimm campaign world, where the PCs essentially live in the faerie tales and it comes with high praise...
Post Reply