Fukken Fairies

I have bemoaned the lack of the fantastic in fantasy settings before- a certain lack of subtlety which makes it all kind of obvious and trite. For instance, toward the end of my Druids post, or Fantasy Saturation. I'm looking into ways to implement the weird, while maintaining a consistent internal logic in the gameworld. It doesn't have to make sense to the players, but it needs to make sense to the one running the game.

The best resources for a DM are books which have ostensibly nothing to do with gaming.

I picked up a copy of "The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries." It is a sort of ethnographic account of folk beliefs concerning the unseen realm as understood by Celts. And damn, it is a thick book; a veritable corpus of belief.

Among these folk-beliefs is a certainty of the existence of the Gentry; a race of otherworldy nobility and warriors who abduct folk, body-and-soul and make them one of their number, or sometimes talk to lone travelers in remote glens or forest and impart cryptic warnings. That warning is usually something along the lines of "go home now and get there before dark."
There is little or no distinction between these "fairies" and the spirits of the dead. It is believed that those who die untimely deaths go to join the host of the Gentry. The have little interestit seems in old people or squares. It seems that to be "taken" by the gentry is synonymous with disappearing or dying unexpectedly.

Imagine living with an engrained, indubitable belief that the Gentry exist, but you can't see them most of the time. And the Gentry are only one order of the many unseen races. How creepy, Talk about an enchanted worldview.

This is all very odd to post-modern people like us because we are so materially focused. So we use this matter as fodder for our fiction. Modern pop mythology has transfigured the Gentry into the elves- an understandably xenophobic people who live in treehouses- A much easier notion to grok. And these mannikins are what we get handed to play D&D with.

A particularly interesting aspect of the Celtic folk beliefs (from the adventure-designer's perspective) is the variety of ways in which the fairies appear. Sightings happen only at specific times or places. They may go unseen, but may be heard or felt. It is often understood that they are all around, but are accustomed to being unseen. Though sometimes, they appear as specters, with a sense of urgency.
It is often possible to pass seamlessly into unfamiliar territory or to visit fairy-castles without even being aware that one has left the mundane world. Passage might happen only in the company of a certain person or creature, or while in the possession of some token.
The appearance of otherworldly creatures often depends on the disposition of the viewer: for instance, they might be viewable from one angle or position, but not another. The viewer might be enchanted, or have their vision altered in some ways which makes the invisible visible. When in trance or very ill; what we might interpret as a state of altered consciousness, people often report having visions of the fairy-world.

Component 2:
And then there's this: Carl Sagan explains the 4th dimension.

It seems that the Flatlander in this thought experiment is having nothing other than a super-normal experience; a voice from within, a touch from an invisible being, and a trip to an unseen dimension.

And these notions are starting to gel.
Also, Carl needs a better knife for his apple.