First off Im referring to 2nd edition Eladrin NOT repeat NOT the highly bastardized eladrin from 3rd edition let alone 4th edition SHUDDERS
An interesting note on the veil is that its out of RESPECT for peoples freedom of choice.
any interprutations on if it works ONLY on the prime, or does it apply, to a lesser degree at least, in Sgils hive ward, Demiplane of Dread or other mostly mortal settings?
PSMC II
and Warrior's of Heaven in a bit more depth.
Id be the first to agree that in places like Sigil, or Nidaveleir it shouldnt be QUITE as feirce as on the prime.
(on the prime it's 1,001 years banishment to Arborea for a transgression)
in Warriors of heaven it makes clear that any race of Celestials but Guardinals is under some obligation to attempt to hide themselves on the PRime
But I think that in general their should be a reason for a Eladrin working in the hive, to act as a tout, and guide a newcomer clueless out rather then Come in flash magic, when a group of knights of the post, come trying to kill him.
or why any celestial in Svartalfheim will prefer to hide amongst the soldiers and sport a Aid or PRayer, rather then come out in Celestial Flash.
Free will is a good explanation for the eladrin, they don't want mortals to follow them blindly awed by their appearance. It's possible that the eladrin pushed for this at the celestial parliament and several other races accepted the veil. Except Cirily.
Cirily?
Someone was pretty snide to warriors of heaven... curious an explanation for this?
Why dont most eladrin get casually caught because of "Detect magic"
Their should be a reason.
Cirily is a fallen, chaotic neutral firre eladrin detailed in Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. She runs a bigoted organization that teaches that primes should stay out of Sigil and the planes in general. She may not realize that she isn't good anymore. She lives openly and unveiled in Sigil, not bothering to disguise herself as another race. She doesn't have any obvious corrupted features like many fallen celestials do, so without divination magic, others may assume she's as good as any other celestial being.
Eladrins normally disguise themselves everywhere but their own realms and the realm of the Seldarine. Even in Arborea they seldom show their true faces. In the lands of the Olympian gods they pose as satyrs, bacchae, and nymphs.
I don't see any reason why divination magic can't identify veiled eladrins. It works on disguised fiends.
I hated Warriors of Heaven. If I sounded snide when mentioning it before, I apologize; I meant to sound revolted. To this day, I think it's the single most embarrassing piece of hackery ever published for D&D. Its crimes were legion, but I can never forgive its author for ruining eladrins. You think third edition bastardized eladrins? No, third edition saved eladrins by ignoring the worst parts of Warriors of Heaven. When 4th edition turned eladrins into just another, slightly more fey race of elves, it was only doing what Warriors of Heaven had already done ten years before.
Among its crimes:
- It gave eladrins, guardinals and asuras finite lifespans and age categories like demihumans. If they're mortal, then how are they celestials? How are they the equivalents of explicitly immortal fiends?
- Worse, it gave eladrins shorter lifespans than elves. How can eladrins who willfully violate their veil taboo be banished for 1,001 years if none of them live that long?
- It made eladrins and guardinals reproduce exclusively through sexual means. Sure, tanar'ri and yugoloths have that option, but they can also be made from petitioners (in the case of tanar'ri) and from the energies of their planes, making them clearly planar beings rather than powerful demihumans who just happen to live on the planes without their life cycles being connected to them.
- It froze every eladrin in the caste they were born in. A coure is born a coure and dies a coure; likewise with bralani, novieres, ghaeles, tulani, firres, and shieres. Even baatezu and modrons can evolve into more powerful forms with the permission of their superiors, but chaotic races should be all about adaptation and transformation. As with tanar'ri, eladrins ought to be able to evolve into other forms as they move to other environments and ascend to greater levels of understanding. To freeze them in one shape and role is overly lawful, overly feudal, and reinforces the idea that they're just exotic demihumans rather than personifications of benevolent chaos.
- Planescape sources had portrayed eladrins as an independent race with no allegiance to the gods, just as fiends didn't necessarily serve gods, while Warriors of Heaven required all celestial characters to have one or more divine patrons, which blurs the line between aasimon and other celestials.
- As mentioned above, Warriors of Heaven required all celestials to disguise themselves on the Material Plane, making eladrins less special.
- In general, it leaned too hard on faerie legends for inspiration. D&D has plenty of fey. What it doesn't have is a race that personifies chaotic good for all races, not just elves and fey. Their elfy, faerie qualities need to be severely deemphasized so that chaotic good dwarves, humans, and orcs can equally use them as rolemodels. 3rd edition did a better job in this respect, and Pathfinder is better still.
- Warriors of Heaven gave us poorly done PC stats for celestials instead of being the fluff-heavy book Faces of Evil was. Maybe that was for the best, because Christopher Perkins is terrible at writing fluff, and everything else.
- Warriors of Heaven mostly neutered the law-chaos conflict among celestials. They shouldn't have a Blood War in the upper planes, but law and chaos should be as important to archons and eladrins as good and evil are, or you've lost an important philosophical dimension. Hellbound had handled this much better.
- the book was just poorly conceived and unimaginative. The upper planes deserved better.
- That amazingly crappy and poorly researched chart of god realms in the back. If Chris Perkins had just invented new names for the various divine realms, all would have been well, but instead he often used the names of already existing planar features without bothering to read anything about them, and the results were often nonsensical or absurd.
I thought about the PC's meeting Cirily, do you think she has reasons for hate beyond the crowding and primes stealing planar jobs? Can't planars be clueless? Probably she or someone close to her has been exiled. Or something different so that her and PC's motives aren't completely opposite. I don't think other Planarists would have the same personal grudges.
They've met Cirily. After reading her description again, she seemed mostly concerned with Prime art - that probably means humans - but I added that she seeks a sensory stone with specific reigar memories - when they destroyed their homeworld with art. That would be a perfect item for her cause.
Also added a few barmy theories (lies) of the Planarists. One is that before the primes-mortals started polluting the planes with their beliefs no eladrin (or guardinal) died of old age. On top of that is another theory that what ever power collects the memories of dead mortals is not satisfied anymore with such small ''meals'', and plans to expand.
The second theory is that the rise of human population has caused imbalance in Sigil, is it possible that Sigil is now becoming a gate-town of the Prime? We know what eventually happens to them.
The third is that on some backwater prime world there's a war between the followers of Greek and Persian pantheons. Cirily's not happy about it because relations between guardinals and eladrins aren't that great anymore, groups friendly to these powers starting calling themselves agathions and azatas. It could be worse than the fall of asuras.
I kinda like the idea of it working beyond the Prime. Where's the Veil mentioned again? Is it in Planes of Chaos or the PSMC II?
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