Lawful counterpart to Sidhe

[Sam Baughn]

Originally Posted by Polkageist

Gnomes, dwarves (not the tolkien kind), and brownies are part of that world, aren't they?

Dwarves are more Germanic / Scandinavian than Celtic (but the boundaries between the two cultures are fuzzy and the gaps we have in our knowledge of both mean there is plenty of room for speculative parallels in their folklore).
Brownies were associated with Celtic areas, but I think they only show up in the late medieval or early modern period, after considerable mixing with Germanic and Romance cultures (but may have earlier origins which aren't in the historical record).
Knockers (and some variants of the bwca / bucca) are more dwarf-like (i.e. subterranean) and seem to come from about the same places (indeed, they are even more strongly linked to Celtic areas in Britain, at least) and time as brownies.
Gnomes, as far as I know, were named by Paracelsus but based on things from Greek mythology. Certainly there doesn't seem to be any Celtic link.

[Rolando]

You may make roman gods and culture represent Order.

Humans may be balance or mortals caught in the middle. Even then romans favor more order compared to the celts.

The roman pantheon is very orderly and hierarchic, in comparison to the older religion and specially the sidhe.

You may get some inspiration in the Roma Archana and gets some of that "civilization and technology against magic and wonder" feel.

If you don't want to get the romans involved you may use civilization, technology and reason as a counterpart to Chaos.

No need for a species of order (like say, angels), but reason, logic and technology is the force that is fighting against chaos and the Sidhe want to keep humans dreaming instead of awaken by sciences. Maybe as creatures of chaos the sidhe are afraid that if humans forget about them and stop believing they will fade... that is a common idea in victorian fairy tales too, that as humanity started the path of sciences the good folk was displaced into folk tales instead of reality.

[patchwork]

The two I've seen used to good effect are the long (Chinese dragons) and the annunaki (Sumerian....things). The choice between them, I'd say, depends on whether nature or humanity is the primary battlefield; the long are mostly imposing order on the natural world, which includes humans but isn't centered on them, while the annunaki are bringing and imposing law and cities on humans. So is this an anthropocentric conflict or nah?

If you're determined to hew to "celtic" culture rather than introduce things from other cultures, you could just use Christian angels as the embodied expressions of Law.

But what will the Sidhe, as agents of Chaos, actually do in the story? Tempt humans into the forest and offer them "gifts" they really shouldn't accept? Conduct wild rides and hunt and eat anybody out alone? Tear down castles and replace them with hedge mazes just because they can? Drive people mad whether they "deserve" it or not? What does the conflict that humans are stuck in the middle of actually look like? From that, we know what the Sidhe's adversaries must do, which is a useful step on the way to knowing what they are.

I'll also note in passing that Chaos pretty much never thinks of itself as Chaos. Usually it calls itself Freedom, or Opportunity, or Self-Expression. And it very probably lives by rules just as much as Law does, they just tend to be the rules of story and trope instead of physics and economics.

[Inky]

Two different lots of fairies would fit in quite well in a story that's supposed to resemble Celtic myth. The idea of humans caught between different fairies fighting over something the humans don't entirely understand is a recurring feature in Celtic myths. For instance, in "Pwyll Lord of Dyfed" in "The Mabinogion", Pwyll agrees to take the place of Lord Arawn of Annwvyn in a duel with another Otherworld chieftain called Havgan. I don't think Pwyll ever does find out what that was all about. (There's a theory among historians that it's got something to do with the symbolic killing of summer by winter and then vice versa. But that's not apparent in the surviving version of the story.)

If you go with the fairies representing chaos alone, traditionally, I'm not sure fairies are portrayed as chaotic so much as representing an at least equally fixed but different set of laws (perhaps natural forces and the seasons) which humans sometimes don't understand or don't want. But you can make it different in your story.

Robots or cyborgs wouldn't make sense if the setting was ancient times or the battle is supposed to have been going on like this since ancient times (unless the robots weren't built by humans but by ancient aliens or some such, or maybe *are* the ancient aliens.) When is this game supposed to be set? I haven't read Moorcock myself, I only had a quick look through the Wikipedia entry.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Inky

Two different lots of fairies would fit in quite well in a story that's supposed to resemble Celtic myth. The idea of humans caught between different fairies fighting over something the humans don't entirely understand is a recurring feature in Celtic myths. For instance, in "Pwyll Lord of Dyfed" in "The Mabinogion", Pwyll agrees to take the place of Lord Arawn of Annwvyn in a duel with another Otherworld chieftain called Havgan. I don't think Pwyll ever does find out what that was all about. (There's a theory among historians that it's got something to do with the symbolic killing of summer by winter and then vice versa. But that's not apparent in the surviving version of the story.)

If you go with the fairies representing chaos alone, traditionally, I'm not sure fairies are portrayed as chaotic so much as representing an at least equally fixed but different set of laws (perhaps natural forces and the seasons) which humans sometimes don't understand or don't want. But you can make it different in your story.

Robots or cyborgs wouldn't make sense if the setting was ancient times or the battle is supposed to have been going on like this since ancient times (unless the robots weren't built by humans but by ancient aliens or some such, or maybe *are* the ancient aliens.) When is this game supposed to be set? I haven't read Moorcock myself, I only had a quick look through the Wikipedia entry.

Sticking strictly to Irish influences, you'd actually have the Tuatha De Danaan as the representatives of Law while the Formorians were Chaos. If you wanted to go with the insect people...well the Scots Gaelic for "bee" is seillean

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

If you wanted to go the insect route I would suggest making them mostly human with some minor insectlike traits for symmetry with the the sidhe. Compound eyes, antennae and a hive-like social structure.

Along this route, what do your Sidhe look like? You may want to see if there's a way you can put your Order beings on the opposite end. This isn't saying that if Sidhe are pretty the Order beings should be ugly, of course (although it would be an interesting subversion to align goblins with Order). Rather, if your Sidhe look like humans with animal characteristics - larger ears, sharp teeth, antlers, tails, wings, fur, hooves, etc - their opposites should be like humans with a lot of animal characteristics removed - no hair (or reduced hair, and only on the head), no finger/toenails, etc. Arguably, something that looks like the Greys could work, although that goes back to the "ugly" end of the spectrum. You might also take some inspiration from the angels from the Diablo franchise, who look like animated suits of armor (as opposed to the more monstrous/animalistic demons). I'd also suggest, given they are embodiments of Order, perfect symmetry - not just externally (which, particularly if they are attractive, may run into Uncanny Valley territory), but internally as well, with organs either located dead-center (and being symmetrical themselves) or having mirror images.

Note none of the above is suggested with any ancient mythological basis (Greys are arguably part of modern mythology, of course), but then, I don't think the insect people from fantasy settings have much of one either.

[Anders]

This is all very interesting. Keep the ideas coming, I'm reading.

[Sam Baughn]

Originally Posted by Rolando

The roman pantheon is very orderly and hierarchic, in comparison to the older religion and specially the sidhe.

We don't really know much about Celtic religion and folklore before contact with the Romans, but what accounts we do have suggest it was actually fairly structured, with strict castes of holy men who had very well-defined functions and had to be well educated, including at religious centres some distance from their homelands.
Roman religion and folklore also had plenty of 'chaotic' entities. Bacchus, Discordia, and fauns are all as mad as anything in Celtic myth.
As far as I know, we don't really have much evidence of Celtic stories about otherworldy but non-divine entities like the sidhe before the Celts converted to Christianity. They probably had some folklore about such beings, because virtually everyone does, but it is far from clear how much the versions recorded in medieval literature correspond to much older stories from before conquest by the Romans, and how much was taken from other cultures (such as the Romans') or simply made up in the 'dark ages'.
On the other hand, that does mean that the sidhe (I'm just going to use that as short-hand for all the not-quite-human creatures in late Celtic myth) are pretty much ideal for matching up against Roman myth or early Christianity. Indeed one reason why the sidhe may seem 'chaotic' is because the stories we have of them are 'filtered' through the perception of the Christian writers who recorded them, and likely thought of the sidhe as at least somewhat demonic.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Along this route, what do your Sidhe look like? You may want to see if there's a way you can put your Order beings on the opposite end. This isn't saying that if Sidhe are pretty the Order beings should be ugly, of course (although it would be an interesting subversion to align goblins with Order). Rather, if your Sidhe look like humans with animal characteristics - larger ears, sharp teeth, antlers, tails, wings, fur, hooves, etc - their opposites should be like humans with a lot of animal characteristics removed - no hair (or reduced hair, and only on the head), no finger/toenails, etc. Arguably, something that looks like the Greys could work, although that goes back to the "ugly" end of the spectrum. You might also take some inspiration from the angels from the Diablo franchise, who look like animated suits of armor (as opposed to the more monstrous/animalistic demons). I'd also suggest, given they are embodiments of Order, perfect symmetry - not just externally (which, particularly if they are attractive, may run into Uncanny Valley territory), but internally as well, with organs either located dead-center (and being symmetrical themselves) or having mirror images.

The idea of them looking like humans, just with an unnerving symmetry works for me. It is true that the pointy ear thing originated as just a special case of each faerie having a animal-like physical trait that could be hooves, or a tail, or whatever.

Of course the cyborg idea already would be making them as far from any version of sidhe as it is possible to imagine.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Polkageist

Gnomes, dwarves (not the tolkien kind), and brownies are part of that world, aren't they? They could fulfill the lawful part of things, in terms of highly valuing structure and rules in their society.

Haven't read Moorcock so I don't know much about how he does his chaos/law split so I had to google it. From what I can get from that chaos seems to embody unpredictability and a degree of impulsiveness. Couldn't find much on law, but I would assume it would be the opposite of that.

Kinda tricky to have all Sidhe rep chaos, because that's a huge class of otherworldly creatures ranging from the helpful to the harmful.

I think they are more neutral. If I remember Gnomes like to stay out of the way and Brownies are fairly humble house elves.

I think the counterpart would be White Ladies and the like. The breeds of Good Folk who are solemn and dignified and don't go in for babynapping.