#(the first being 'goblin-sized???' but i am not going to commit that to wood)

[gillyburnsthings]

[silverlysilence]

A Somewhat Mythology Lesson for the Fae’s Sake

I am now seeing a lot of questions regarding the Fae and have decided to do another of my HoaDS Reference Material Lessons because this was one of the things I researched a lot. Yet again, I will add links to Wikipedia as it has the most basic and easily understandable information, but this time I will also be linking to various Wikia fandoms as I relied heavily on them for inspiration.

First off, Fae (both plural and singular form) also known as fay, fey, fair folk or the traditional fairy are a type of mythical being that does not have a single origin as they are a collection of folk beliefs from a verity of sources.  Some see them as a form of spirit, sometimes spirits of the dead, while others believe them to be demoted angels or demons, minor deities, or even as elementals.  They are not always small-statured winged creatures, as at one-point goblins and gnomes fell into their category as well.  Thus, there is a lot of conflicting information on the fair folk.

More often than not, the fae are usually attracted to those who are beautiful as well as wealthy and seek them out for various reasons.  They are masters of enchantment and tend to only care about themselves even when dealing with humans but fae can be persuaded for a price.  Traditionally, iron (and by extension, steel) is inimical to them and is often referred to as cold iron when used as a weapon against the fae.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairy

For Heart of a Dragon’s Soul, I relied heavily on both Merlin and Dresden Files as reference rather than relying on the folklore since that gave me a more narrowed down basis to work with rather than too much conflicting information.  However, as many of my readers have found out, I used the pixies from Disney Fairies for my Wyldfae as to not have to create my own characters.  I also stuck to using Fae(rie) for the fair folk in the series to distinguish them as different to Toothiana’s Fairies.

In most folklore, the two most prominent categories of fae are the Seelie Court and the Unseelie Court (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classifications_of_fairies) which I stuck with for the most part but incorporated the Wyldfae as well.  However, it should be noted, that the fae, no matter their classification, are still dangerous if crossed.  Something I adhered to in my writing as well since it paralleled the dragons who are also Creatures of Magic willing to work with the Hairy Hooligan Tribe but are dangerous creatures in their own right.  

The Seelie Court is the more beneficently inclined fair folk whereas the Unseelie Court, are more malicious in nature.  These courts are also referred to as the Summer Court and the Winter Court and in HoaDS, there is a reason for the difference between Seelie Court and Summer Court as well as the Unseelie Court and Winter Court. But I’m not sure how far I will go into explaining that as it is a part of the storyline I haven’t yet to post and carries potential spoilers (there is a reason I am the Norn of Silence after all, and that is because I don’t give spoilers if I can help it). However, just know for the most part, the Summer Court is the Seelie Court and the Winter Court is the Unseelie Court.  

The Seelie Court more often than not would seek help from humans and warn those who accidentally offended them, returning human kindness with favors of their own.  As stated before, they are still dangerous and were quick to avenge any insults to their persons. They also were prone to mischief by playing light-hearted pranks without realizing how the pranks affected humans.

The Unseelie Court, on the other hand, needed no offense to deem it necessary to bring down assault and often attacked travelers out at night.  Just like how the Seelie Court were not always seen as benevolent, neither were the fae of the Unseelie Court always malevolent as they too became fond of particular humans if they were viewed as respectful.  Though, those humans often times made into something of a pet, which reflected their darker aspects compared to the Seelie Court.

The last classification I use is that of the Wyldfae (inspired by the Dresden Files: https://dresdenfiles.fandom.com/wiki/Wyldfae).  These are the fae that are bound to neither of the faerie courts as they are oftentimes seen as insignificant in the eyes of the higher-ranked fae.  Though, in the event of a war, most Wyldfae will associate themselves with the side that they are most inclined.  For the most part, they lived in harmony in the Wyldfae Haven, home of Pixie Hollow and the Winter Woods before it’s fall.  Now, they mostly live in the Nevernever or have carved out a small place for themselves unseen by humans.

Now that classifications are out of the way, let's dive into fae ranks.  Here is where I will go into the Summer and Winter Courts as laid out by the Dresden Files as it gave me the groundwork for the fae hierarchy.

Sídhe (pronounced ‘shee’) literally means “people of the (fairy) hills”.  This comes back to the idea that fae were spirits of the dead since the ‘fairy hills’ were often burial mounts.  Furthermore, Sídhe was the original term for fairies in general but has since changed over time to refer to the nobility of the fae.

In HoaDS, the Sídhe are the nobility of the fae, the upper echelon which is not hereditary—though that can be a determining factor—but based on status and their abilities.  In short, they are powerful as fuck.  They have fought their way to the top and are still there because lower-ranking fae respect their rule and power but also because no one has managed to kill them off yet.

Originally, the Sídhe were made up of the Sídhe Elders which I envision are the Sídhe Kings of Old from Merlin’s time (https://merlin.fandom.com/wiki/Sidhe_Elder) who have seen the Great Purge and witnessed the Balance disturbed.  They might have gone a little insane from their immortality, they could have decided a purge of their own was needed, or they might have seen an opportunity to fill the vacuum of power left from the Great Purge (I’m not saying which), which lead to the destruction of Pixie Hollow and the beginning of the Sídhe War.

During the time of the Sídhe Elders, it was taboo to kill another Sídhe Elder and the punishment was death unless it was another Sídhe Elder that committed the murder.  In which case, the Sídhe who committed such an offense was cursed to live the life of a mortal in body and soul.  However, if the cursed Sídhe sacrificed a human of great worth, either royalty or one with great magical potential, they’d gain back their life as a Sídhe.

After the Sídhe War, both Courts have their own territories in the land of Faerie within the Nevernever governed by the three queens.  The eldest of the Queen, otherwise known as The Queen Who Was, is either Mother Winter or Mother Summer, according to the court she belongs to.  They hold no official power over the court but are extremely powerful beings as the former queens who were not killed during their reign.  The ruling queen, The Queen Who is, is often referred to as the Winter Queen or Summer Queen and she controls the courts. Lastly, the youngest of each court is the Lady Summer or Lady Winter, The Queen Who is to Come, and is considered to be a Queen in training. The rest of the Sídhe are akin to the Lords and Ladies of the court and take offense at not being referred to faerie rather than Sídhe because they are above normal fae.  (https://dresdenfiles.fandom.com/wiki/Faerie_Courts)

The Dresden Files also has a Winter King and Summer King, both of whom are technically Wyldfae but are associated with their respective seasons and are independent of the Queens.  In SoaD, the Winter King and Summer King are more or less the protectors of the Wyldfae. It is an alliance of convenience as the two are not truly their Kings but they call them that out of respect.

Dewdrop Faeries are the weakest of the fae.  They typically only have the magical talent for one type of magic, be it a certain element or skillset, but not much else as their magical reserves are quite low. Their size is in direct correlation with their magical capabilities, the more magic they have, the larger they are but if they expend all of their magic, the dimmer their light shines. The majority of which are Wyldfae since neither of the courts see the need to recruit such lowly creatures into their services.

Brownies are what some would be considered domesticate fae as they come out at night while the owners of the house are asleep to perform various chores and farming tasks.  However, they are far from domesticated as they only complete the tasks in trade for a bowl of milk or cream or some other offering for the brownie left by the hearth. They are easily offended and will leave their homes forever if they feel like they’ve been insulted or taken advantage of in any way.

The Wee Folk are less of a faerie rank and more of a generalization of all the small size fae which include Dewdrop Faeries, Brownies, and the likes.

Pixies are a step above Dewdrop Faeries in power and were the original creators of Pixie Hollow, hence the name. However, upon seeing their power and capabilities, the Sídhe from both the Seelie and Unseelie Courts swayed them to their side with promises of power, forever garnering them as loyal servants to the Sídhe.

Please let me know if this clears things up and if there is still any confusion that doesn’t count as a spoiler, I will do my best to answer.  Hope you enjoyed the lesson.

[bedlamgames]

Q&A #68

Today among others image sourcing, decidedly rare text events, words that may or may not be words, and when the next update is coming out. 

Anonymous: Typo with advanced lesbian trained slave message. >Your convent slave Gigi slithered her well trained well trained naughty tongue down Carmen's crotch and lapped at their fancy slit. The slaver basked in the sensations, idly twisting and pulling on Gigi's nipples whenever they felt that she could be licking more diligently

Cheers for the spot and will sort. 

Anonymous: Hi, I have a question, I've searched every possible setting in art source info and couldn't find any mention of this action - I am trying to find the source of the left human futanari oral/fuck performance on a slave and failed, google search on image also didn't help. Can you help with finding source or you aren't helping ith this kind of question (I can perfectly understand why). picture with hentai futa succubus sitting on a throne and slave under her, right is lucien's futa succ fucking elf

Nah, that’s an entirely reasonable ask. The art sources is something I’m committed to getting done, but I’ll also more than admit that it’s slow going so it’s something I’ve very happy to take questions on. First SourceNAO is an incredible resource that’s been superb for me being able to back track to where I found stuff in the first place. As for that source it’s ‘member.php?id=15603′ on Pixiv or usatarou if you’d prefer to search on one of the ‘boorus. 

Anonymous: Bug Report: I have a slave who is hungover, and the status never seems to go away, so she can't be trained. Order of events was she was a slaver, got sent on quick as you like and failed. I planted a couple hypnotic triggers and then turned her into a slave. She'd still show up in the summary of slaver activities at the end of a day before getting hungover, but now she doesn't show up in either the slave or slaver section of the report. 

First how could you enslave a lass when she’s still the worse for wear from the previous night? C’mon that’s just evil :D

Seriously thanks for the spot and will correct the oversight that made that possible. 

Anonymous: In the future, will we be able to pick what race our slavers will be on startup? Yea there's Harmony and Shun others, but like if I want to play a human female "Goblin Queen" and have a full team of goblin slavers or something like that. Maybe just a way to pick a prefered race as "higher chance of starting slaver being X race", with your leader's race picked by default.

That shouldn’t be an issue to implement if you want it. Will see if I can include it for the upcoming update.

Anonymous: The latest hotfix had this line. >-Additional text for getting a tattoo while having either of the biomancy senses upgrades. < Ho can you get those upgrades on yourself? You can't use biomancy on slavers, can you? Is it a failure state, like growing your own ass/breasts or losing positive traits? If so, that's kind of a pain in the ass. Deliberately failing biomancy attempts and save-scumming until you get the 'correct' failure is going to be a real waste of time.

It’s really not something that’s vital to see, and really not something I’d expect people to go out of their way to see via saving and reloading. Someone suggested it as something they’d like to see added and it was quick to implement so I figured why not. 

Anyway if we’re taking obscure text it’s got nothing on a part to take account of changing outfits involving a very unlikely outcome of the Wrapped in Webs assignments. There was a bug report that really amused me by it being so unbelievably out there that I just had to give it some love :)

The joy of the game I’ve always aimed for number one is replayability so I’m really not expecting everything in the game to be seen in one playthrough or even ten or twenty. 

Anonymous: Sometimes an assignment result have the image replaced with a video player. I can't make the video to play and theres no result text so I'm wondering if this is a bug. This just happened on a critical success recapture mission and I know the same thing happened on a mission in the plains. Cant remember which one though. Maybe Scavange Unattended.

That sounds like a definite bug where RAGS doesn’t recognise the image being requested. Any assignment you spot this on please can you let me know about so I can sort them out. 

Anonymous: I asked a slave to become a camp bitch and got this text "...Of course with their training they were never going to say no, IRREGARDLESS of what you might have suggested. Most of your text is right on track! But if irregardless were a word, it would mean ir(not)-regard(related to)-less(not). Is my slave not going to say no, not not regarding what I suggest? Help me stamp out this abomination unto English and keep up the good work! =)

Cheers and will sort. 

Anonymous: I recently did the sissy farm quest and crit it and got the keldan but when i went to estimate value it didn't have a + value for the breasts despite the description listing her as truly titanic tits, I then did some biomancy on her and reduced her breasts and it still said it was truly titanic, but started showing up as the +40 value, not exactly sure how that works unless the game tried to spawn her with tits a size larger than truly titanic and the game then didn't count it as having a +value

My guess would be it sounds like you have the right of it. Will sort it out. 

Anonymous: Have a bug with a slave-turned-slaver through the training route with version 0.7802. When I examine her, it displays her description (looks, manners, etc., both paragraphs) twice. If it matters, she's a Wood Elf, got her from a crit on the Everwood caravan assignment.

Huh, not one I’ve heard of before so that is very odd. Will see if I can work how that happened. 

Anonymous: eta. on the next build? if it's out only like 2 weeks I'd skip this one.

I’m aiming for by the end of next week though that might slip as I’m going to be away for the holidays from the weekend. 

ultrabloed: Hey there! Two questions that came up when I revisited your two most recent builds. 1: Any plan on finally getting importing old savegames to work? 2: Mind spilling the beans on what hypnosis can do by now? Remember ages ago it was essentially a weaker dominate without any actual features outside mission success. Has that changed? I tried looking into some changelogs, but didn't realy found out much at all.

I feel that’s always going to have issues given RAGS being RAGS but when I’ve got the base functionality completely nailed it should be a lot safer. 

Hypnosis you can use now to implant triggers in your slavers to get them to be more likely to agree during respect checks. I’m planning to use it later to implant hypnotic mantras in slaves and also to deal with some annoying mental traits like unruly and poor morale.