Les Ombres d'Esteren - Forum officiel

So, as we won't be getting official information until Secrets is published maybe around 2017 or 2018, what are your ideas?

- Do feond groups communicate with each other?
- Do they have a supreme leader, which coordinates the different groups?
- Do they have lairs?
- Do feondas grow up like animals or do the come into being in adult forms?
- What are feondas doing, when they are not attacking human travelers or settlements?
- Do feondas need to drink and eat? Do they procreate?
- What if you take feondas prisoner? Could he give you information?
- What happens if you try to remove a mask from a living feond? Are those masks real masks or do they just look like masks?
- Are feondas really communicating with each other? It is important, if players wanted to observe feondas in their lairs and natural habitats.
- Could you disguise yourself as a feond?

If there are any official adventures which give answers to one or more to the questions, I would be delighted. I never read any of them, because the first adventure in Prologue book 0 was too railroady and I am not so into playing other people's stories, so I didn't bother with reading any further adventures.

Oh, and yes, I know it is all up to me. But as I expect all those things being answered in Book 4 Secrets, maybe you have your own ideas or expectations on the official secrets.

Some interesting questions here!

I wouldn't be surprised if feondas living in groups (like cnaighs presented in Book 2) could possibly share a hive mind. It would make them frighteningly effective! With that in mind, communication between them would seem possible, as well as the existence of a leader, a "hive queen" to coordinate them all. The idea of an actual supreme leader leaves me skeptical: they are too much chaotic and savage. Perhaps in ancient times?

Feondas lairs are mentioned in Books 1 and 2. The text explaining the Purification miracle talks about impure places where they seem to come from. Cnaighs and mealtags are also descripted as creatures making lairs in ruins or sewers.

One character from the campaign Déarg looks like he transformed into a monster, probably a humanoid feond (called a drèin), after a great tragedy and his apparent death. I'm not telling he DID became one but that would explain why there's no mention of feond birth, feond eggs or anything about their reproduction and growth. If that is the case, meaning those creatures are deceased humans changed into monsters, it would also give a hint as to why they are wearing a mask. It's a custom from Trikazel: dead people are traditionnaly buried with a mask on their face. Now, would that mask fuse with the feond skull or remain a movable gear? I have no idea.

Let's not forget there is a difference between regular feondas (which are animal-like, in mind and in shape) and drèins (which are human-like and much, much more intelligent and dangerous). So, capturing one for interrogation would make sense only with a drèin because they would be the only ones who could have a conversation. I guess it would be possible. Just incredibly dangerous... As getting useful informations from them, well... I don't think they even have something looking vaguely like a human (read "normal") mentality!

I suppose animal-like feondas are living their cursed existence like any other beast: eating, drinking, sleeping, with the occasional rampage on villages. But drèins? That's a good question! Do they even have purely human needs like talking to someone? Do they even feel loneliness? We haven't the slightest hint about it.

A drèin presented in Book 2 is said to have been a morcail (a dark demorthèn) a long time ago. She still possesses oghams but they're inside her body and she doesn't seem to use their power at all. She obviously doesn't need them but she kept them nonetheless. So, if she really was a morcail before and took her precious oghams in her new form, could that be a hint that something remotely human is still existing behind the monster? A small piece of reason that could be spoken to and that could answer back?

I hope these scattered answers can help you. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what official adventure would shed some light over these big questions... exactly for the same reason as you! Well, that was my first text in English since... uh, too much time. I hope my sentences were clear enough.

10,000 Orcs a écrit :- Do feond groups communicate with each other?
- Do they have a supreme leader, which coordinates the different groups?

A supreme leader over the whole peninsula, I don't think so. But drèins can lead a local group of feondas.

10,000 Orcs a écrit :- Do they have lairs?

See jujuzecatboy answer: cnaighs and mealtags, purification miracle mention such lairs.

10,000 Orcs a écrit :- Do feondas grow up like animals or do the come into being in adult forms?

They appear in their "adult" ("full" would be more accurate then) form. But they are not directly created from dead people, even if dead people can sometimes "infuse" the personnality of drèins. It seems a bit more complicated.

10,000 Orcs a écrit :- What are feondas doing, when they are not attacking human travelers or settlements?

No idea ^^

10,000 Orcs a écrit :- Do feondas need to drink and eat? Do they procreate?

I'm not sure they have these sort of needs.

10,000 Orcs a écrit :- What if you take feondas prisoner? Could he give you information?

Neither feondas nor drèin can speak.

10,000 Orcs a écrit : - What happens if you try to remove a mask from a living feond? Are those masks real masks or do they just look like masks?

These masks are really part of they face, one can't remove it (it's mentionned in the book one, in an insert about the masks).

10,000 Orcs a écrit :- Are feondas really communicating with each other? It is important, if players wanted to observe feondas in their lairs and natural habitats.

There may be a form of communication as there can be packs of feondas, but I doubt it would be understandable for humans. And they would be soon discovered, feondas can sense human presence.

10,000 Orcs a écrit :- Could you disguise yourself as a feond?

One can try (a mini-campaign in French uses this as a plot), but one probably wouldn't make the illusion at close range for humans. Not to mention for feondas.

jujuzecatboy a écrit :Let's not forget there is a difference between regular feondas (which are animal-like, in mind and in shape)

They can also be vegetal-like and mineral-like (but I really wuld like an exemple of such a feond!). I would agree for "in shape", but not for "in mind". A feond-wolf would not behave like a real wolf.

Thank you so much for your answers and ideas. That helps me a lot.

I think it would be possible that Feondas weren't always there. Maybe some time ago they were only legendary, the kind of monster you put in stories to scare children etc.

Then at some point Feondas happend to be there in reality and because all those stories, myths and legends were told for centuries, nobody realized this hadn't been like this forever.

You might consider the idea that Feondas are the results of experiments by aliens. They arrived with their spaceship and were attracted by Flux, which they hadn't seen on any other planet they have visited so far. So they began experimenting, hidden from the eyes of humans. In their experiments with Flux, natural wildlife to Esteren and wildlife from other planets, they created mutants or even zombie-like creatures. When they were done with the experiments, they released the creatures in Esteren, maybe even to study them further in natural habitats. Because of the experiments such creatures are very aggressive.

It would make sense, that due to the mutations they are not any more able to procreate and you never see feond children or the like. Even the self-destroying corpses after death could be designed by the aliens to protect their secret.

Call of Cthulhu is often named as one big influence for Shadows of Esteren. While Cthulhu is about strange, unfathomable creatures often from outer space which seem to the human mind as gods or monstrosities, it would make sense that in Esteren alien beings from space would exist, too.

This is just some crazy thinking and exactly what is happening, if it's up to me to fill in the blanks in a rpg setting .

Great questions! I am new to Esteren and have only run the dream sequence scenario in Book 0.
I honestly thought there was more information on the Feondas than what has been presented here. But I can see that is not the case.
This my take on the Feondas and Flux (at least until something official comes out):
Flux is something not originally of the world of Esteren. It is a mutation of residue from some demonic plane (or something similar) that has partially merged with the world of Esteren. Feondas are the spiritual entities that have crossed over into Esteren. Some have taken their own shape, some have possessed other living beings/creatures, and some take the soulless body of a dead being. Sometimes the occupation (possession or what have you) is full and the Feonda has it full twisted mentality. Other times the occupation is only partial and the possessed individual has some influence, though their mind is going (or probably already is) mad. One thing that stands true for all Feondas is that they have access to some memories and habits of the possessed.

Sometime in the past someone (or a bunch of someones) did something (attempt to open a gateway?) that caused Esteren and this other plane to partially merge. Which is why they now have Flux and Feondas. Maybe as time goes on the merge will get worse, maybe it will stop, maybe this will make a great campaign idea.....

Either way that works for me for now. Hopefully either my players or another group of one shots will want to do an Esteren game again. Hopefully I will not have any "I've never played an RPG before" next time.