Would you say that replacing angels and demons (from archetypal standpoint) with giants and fey is a workable idea?

Would you say that replacing angels and demons (from archetypal standpoint) with giants and fey is a workable idea?

The idea in my setting that they were primordial spirits who obtained purpose and a power to reason. The giants awoke first and shaped the world, yet in the end were prideful and desire to govern it. What-would-be-fey rebelled and thus obtained a reason of their own.

I have nothing against angels and demons, it's just that for some godforsaken reason I completely forgot to make lore for them in my otherwise well established setting and now am thinking how to do (or not to do) it.

Why wouldn't it be?

Because angels and demons have very strong archetypal roles - enforcers of the divine will and rebellious tempters. If I replace them with something that, while similar, has strong thematic differences, it can leave a vacuum that my players may find sloppy.

For instance, the giants in my example would NOT be conduits of the divine (although definitely of divine nature) and thus a role of godly heralds will be left vacant. On the other hand, fey do not possess the same degree of utter malice as demons do, depriving me of a quite convenient source of baddies for PCs to slaughter.

>giants don't serve as divine will
>what is the titanomachy

>fey are not rebellious tempters
>what is every faerie tale

I think you're good.

>fey do not possess the same degree of utter malice
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
oh
oh god
no
stop
read some faerie tales, please. I'm not trying to be mean but ho-lee shit.

No need to be condescending. My faeries are VERY mean and cruel and definitely not to be fucked with. What do they not posses, however, is the pure desire to unmake/subjugate the world that an average player expects of demons. Besides, because I am a massive fey fag, I do not want to make them like this.

As for the giants, I thought of the examples you have given; the problem is my setting's context. If you allow me:

>Times immemorial
>The World creates spirits of pure thought, who spend millennia engaging each other in dialectical debates
>Eventually some of them obtain purpose and become the first giants, start to shape the material world.
>At some point, other spirits rebel and become the first fey
>A destructive war on a planar scale ensues
>The World gets pissed and almost wipes both from existence
>The giants retreat into their stormy domains above the clouds, never to be seen again
>The fey escape into the world under the lake and become what they are known as - mostly cruel tricksters and nature spirits, nowhere near the power they used to be
>The World, seeking a fresh start, saves a bunch of intergalactic refugees that escaped an unnamed threat and they settle on the world, becoming its first inhabitants
>Seeing their dismay and suffering throughout the millennia of the journey, the World splits itself into gods, to serve the world's new inhabitants

So you see, the giants actually predate the commonly worshiped gods. Which puts me in a creative pickle.

I am quite interested in teegee's opinion on this so I will bump once or twice before giving up.

And just one more time before I let it die

You don't really need a setting in which the opposite forces of Good and Evil are at a constant stake against each other.
I see no reason why this couldn't work.

All this lore sounds good, user, don't doubt yourself. Sure, there won't be exact parallels to Holy and Demonic forces, but Giants vs Fey is a more unusual twist on it, so it'll feel fresher. Angels and demons are overdone, anyhow.

Oddly enough, it's not terribly different from Dawn War from 4E.

But more on topic: you don't NEED angels and demons. Greeks didn't have any, neither did celts or aztecs. It's totally fine to have a conflict that isn't about Good and Evil but about differences in opinions and values.

And you do have providers of force-of-nature tier will and tempters. Those are both sides.

>Dawn War
I will check it out. I am not familiar with 4E setting sans the very basics of the Points of Light.

And yeah, I agree with your proposition that sides in a cosmological conflict should not necessarily be Good and Evil - on these facts it looks like Authority and Defiance. Plus there are also beings of pure reason - the original creations of the Will.

In any event, it's just something I am making for the world consistency. The world's main mythology occurs after these events and they are barely known to normal people.

I also wonder what would the cosmology look like for this arrangement. So far I have the following in mind:
>The celestial heavens, where the Giants retreated
>The world under the lake, where the Fey Queen reigns
>The depths of the earth, home to beings unimaginable bey men
>The underworld - which I have no idea how to develop

For these kinds of settings I like making different worlds semi-separate, having them extend each other.
What I mean is, you can't really see cloud castles from the ground, even if the clouds close to horizon. But if you climb a very tall mountain (or a magic beanstalk) you'll appear in the space of the Giants, even though the castle stands on the same cloud that you've seen from down below (omitting the speed of the clouds to make a point here)
Same with fey (witch rings and moon bridges on water) or the men of the hills

For the underworld you could do some research for celtic version of the concept since your other parts resemble it.
From what little I understand of it, it's not really under anything, it's a place where dead are taken by a psychopomp (compare to more well known taking Arthur to Avalon).

Isn't giants+fey Norse mythology 101?

Giants are really unrepresentated in settings

Please note that the Norse ones love illusions(after my own heart), and are really powerful.

Fey are just fey

I would like giants being more than taller evil men, for once.

And they could fit a nice order/chaos dichotomy with fey.

Giants vs Elves sounds like a wonderful time OP

Not really. Angels and giants don't really have the same role, and aside from occasional similarities in behavior, neither do demons and fairies.

Greeks pretty explicitly had daimons and kakodaimons.

>Big awe inspiring thing that might serve some sort of giant king, be generally honorable, and offer to protect your village in exchange for tribute

>Tiny annoying thing that lives in a hidden place, loves stealing and tricking people into bad deals

Yeah, no similarities at all

Maybe YOU should read some fairy tales. Changeling: The Lost isn't a good primer for actually existing folklore

I like this idea and may steal it in the distant future for a game ill run one day.

>What do they not posses, however, is the pure desire to unmake/subjugate the world that an average player expects of demons.

Well, why do you feel you need that? You seem to have a strong idea for what you want the supernatural in your setting to look like, and there's plenty of scope for your fairies to cause problems for the players, which is all you really need out of them. Why worry about making them fit one box or another?

For what it's worth, I don't think of the archetypal demon as a creature that wants to destroy or conquer the world. They're much more interested in people, and how to damn their souls.

>Greeks pretty explicitly had daimons and kakodaimons.

They had the concept of "spirit" and "malicious spirit". It's not quite the same as christian angels and demons.

You could just have fey in general replacing angels/demons. They're sufficiently ethereal to be mistaken as divine/damned beings. Giants could just be a primordial race to humans.

This would be an especially strong motivator for giants to be giant assholes, since they would think they have literally divine right. If the origins of the species were still shrouded in mystery to make their right more ambiguous, it could lead to some interesting situations with faith-based characters.

>be generally honorable, and offer to protect your village
Now you're just going on your own definitions of giants.

This works pretty well, but rather than use them to replace angels and demons it just seems like you wrote their own space for giants and fey.

>The little good folk possess the same degree of utter malice
Read more fairy tales. This whole "fairies being dicks for the sake of being dicks" is a fairly new thing. Most fairy tales depict fairies as being kind to kind people and being dicks to dick people

The concepts of personal guardians and malicious spirits are pretty analogous to the modern Christian "guardian angel" and "demon".

Giants don't have much definition beyond 'be huge'.

In Celtic Christianity, fairies were actually angels that didn't join Lucifer's revolt on either side. They fell from heaven due to negligence, but weren't evil enough to fall to hell and landed on Earth instead.

This. A lot of fae are pretty decent if you're not an asshole, although their definition of what constitutes being an asshole isn't always right in line with our own.