Are faeries just parasitic p-zombies without any true identity ?
Here's the first few lines of definition from wikipedia
A "philosophical zombie" (or "p-zombie") is a being in a thought experiment in philosophy of mind that is physically identical to a normal human being but does not have conscious experience. For example, if a philosophical zombie were poked with a sharp object, it would not feel any pain, but it would react exactly the way any conscious human would.
Dealing with this in medieval paradigm,
Faeries are not humans: they have no souls.
Faeries are not animals: they are intelligent in a way more like humans than animals.
Faeries are neither angels nor demons, as both have/are souls.
Faeries are able to make moral and ethical choices, although following a code that is not the same as humans.
It seems Faeries are in their own class of being.
Or, to put it in game terms, they have Intelligence, not Cunning, so they have something like consciousness.
I think the answer might also vary in accordance to the Faerie's cognizance. Most faeries don't really know or understand what they are. An incognizant and narrowly cognisant faerie acting the role of a bandit or a Dwarven King don't necessarily know they are "acting" or "pretending". For all they know, that is who they are and have always been and will likely never change said roles, only perhaps "improve upon them" if they are narrowly cognizant (Dwarf miner climbing up the social ladder to become a King, if his stories and interactions with humanity allow such).
Much like a human's behavior might be influenced by a variety of external factors, so too would it be for these sorts of faeries; it's just that for them, said factors can largely be narrowed down to stories being told about them, even if they don't realize it.
I do however think that they are not wholly without identity and have personalities of their own that would bleed into whatever their "role" might be. Say that we have 2 regions with stories of a faerie queen that generally paints them in the same light. But if you were to meet both, they are probably not gonna be completely alike.
It should be noted again that this is a subject of heavy debate in the setting as well and should be fairly hard to determine the true nature of Faeries, with the whole "actors" angle perhaps being an in-universe theory. Imo it is often best to just treat the Faerie exactly as what it pretends to be; the distinction feels a bit redundant most of the time.
Often yes. That's one clear option in the rules. Many faeries have as much inner life as a television character when the television is on is switched off.
As a further step, some faeries seem to demonstrate panpsychism. The Aura is the faerie and it codes its memories into matter as it moves through space, creating the body that mortals interact with. As such you can argue that those aren't pure p zombies because they demonstrably have an external motivator beyond the physical. That the motivator may not amount to a soul equivalent brings them to the oaradigmatic Church position on animals.
Hi thank you for the answer, sorry for the late reply
My take on cognizant/semi-cognizant and the role of story is that it is very advance knowledge of Faerie nature. One can have a high level in Faerie lore that covers vast knowledge of myths, legends, faerie types, weakness and strength, but not necessarily an insight into ture Faerie nature and the role of stories in a Faerie existence. This is something so obscure, even alien - it is akin of metagame knowledge within Mythic Europe.
If you want to introduce the full Faerie concept, I would propose you a short campaign in three steps, ideally with PC who don't know much about faerie. It will allow them (and you) to get acquainted progressively with Faeries, stories and the concept of cognizant:
Base story: a farmer with a nice orchard comes to the covenant: "Master, a strange thing is happening to my apple trees. Ya see, instead of becoming, nice, fat apples, they are scrawny, and look. like that." He then put on the table three of such apples, the size of big walnut, brownish-green, wrinkled. And when looking closer, it looks like a kind of "folded" crab. And suddenly, the crab stretches its claws, more legs sprout/unfold and the little bugger starts to run away.
After research/analysis, the mages find out that the orchard is probably being claimed by the Knight of Claw & Fruit, a faerie. The whole orchard is falling under his control and his power is akin to a faerie curse. It is difficult to dispel, but there is a non-magical way to get rid of the Knight's curse.
If the Knight is defeated, his helmet (the shape of crab shell) can be used to brew a potion that can be used to lift the curse and the claim set by the Knight.
However, the Knight is a powerful foe in combat, his shell-armor seems to protect him well against mundane attack as well as magical spells, even bouncing back some of them. The PCs might lose their first fight.
More research will let them discover that the Crab-knight armor is very sensitive to apple-cider vinegar (which is "rotten" apple juice, the anti-thesis of nice, healthy apples), so if the Crab-knight is doused with apple-cider vinegar, his resistance, his armor will melt away, turning him into an easier foe to fight.
(I let you stats the Crab-knight according to your character strength, but ideally, it is an adventure for young mages, powerful mages should be able to overcome even the enhance protection of the Knight, just by their raw power).
First adventure - Discovering faerie
The purpose is to have the characters discover in-game faeries, as antagonist.
Run the scenario as summarized. Ideally, a faerie lore of 2-3 would help find leads to some cues and solution of the problem. Do not introduce the concept of cognizant faerie yet, just use faeries as regular protagonist. Allow the character who did most of the research/experiment related to faerie, faerie curse to get a nice boost of faerie lore XP, maybe to the next level. NPCs characters can help with finding the cure, the weakness.
Second adventure, a few years later - Discovering recurring stories
A farmer, from another village, or better a Redcap coming from several villages away talked about strange apple turning to small crabs.
It is so specific, that the mages have little doubt that it is the a similar case, if not the same one. When they investigate, every thing looks similar, except the look of the crab is different, it looks more like a crayfish, the name of the Knight is the Knight of Shell and Bloom. He looks different, but still close enough to the other knight. Him or his armor have a scar or a hole where the final blow was given.
And the solution is the same. Exactly the same. The adventure should be much easier to solve than the first time, because they are a few years older and they already know what to do. And to their surprise, it works perfectly. The knight is flustered, even frustrated that he is being dispatch so easily! To the point that as the final blow is given to the Knight, he might let go "But how did you know ? Did we already fight ? I feel deprived..." and then expires.
Now, open the door to the faerie specialist to dig into more obscure faerie lore tome to discover the concept of stories, giving glimpse of what is the nature of a fae and their needs for human interaction as character. Understanding that by jumping to the conclusion is like reading the first and last chapters of the story, bypassing all the others chapters, leading to a boring, short story. Most NPCs will only be able to offers info on curses and solutions, but only one or two would confirm that, yes, there are recurring stories, it is in fact more common than what people thing, but it is hard to fathom why.
Third adventure, a few years later, or even just the following year - becoming an actor-accomplice
The faerie expert might be looking to test his understanding - it could be a way to get initiation into some interesting virtues/abilities (like Puissant Faerie Lore, or initiating Faerie Magic, possibly even Free expression), and maybe you could allow that to happen outside of a Cult (depending how much you introduced your players to Mysteries and if you have or not access to HoH supplements).
So this PC is looking for clues for the next time the Knight wants to claim an orchard. He has understood enough that if he makes this story epic, grandiose, somehow, Faerie will reward him - not the Knight, but somehow the Realm of Faerie - his knowledge (NPCs or books) is a bit fuzzy on what/how it really happens, but he knows he is onto something.
So when the PCs confronts the Knight, he find out that he needs to make it looks like an heroic quest: once he is in the soon-to-be claimed orchard he makes a big show of swearing that he will "Defeat the evil that lurks in the roots of this land, claiming the work of an honest man and depriving him of what would feed his family. He will not let a honest man be drag into misery.".
Then he challenged the Knight to a duel, that he will loose (ideally, without dying himself - the Knight takes the challenge seriously, and although he is not a murderous maniac, is still a powerful foe as long as he has not been weaken). Then, once defeated, the PC swear to come get his revenge within a season, when the harvest is due. They might even agree on a wager set between the Knight and the PC - valuable item, promise of becoming the squire of the winner for a year and day, etc.
As the PC recovers, he might come a few times to the orchard, threatening the knight, remembering him of his promise to defeat him, even making an event of the next duel, inviting villagers or other sodales: giving an opportunity for the Knight to shine!
Then the second duel happens. The first few rounds seems to be in favour of the Knight until the PC pulls out his secret weapon (the vinegar) evening the fight - if the PC seems to have enough control, making looks like the combat is going back and forth until he manages to defeat "his valorous and beloved enemy" and winning the wager.
By allowing the Knight-Crab to have his fifteen minutes of fame, he is becoming more powerful (gaining vitality) and in return, the PC(s) are getting some form of boons, like the helmet of the knight, beside allowing to brew the potion to clear the curse contains vis, or the orchard will blooms twice a year, with an exceptional winter crop, for seven years.
Now, the faerie expert has validated his hypothesis and get understanding of the nature of faerie. Maybe he understands the final words of the Knight-Crab "Until we meet again...", gathering that the Knight-Crab could have become semi-cognizant and somehow knows that he can setup similar stories, but this time requiring different solutions, not claiming orchard, but possibly mines or fishing spots.
But he is also becoming more powerful, stakes becoming higher: what if instead of fishes or ore, he is starting to claim the sons or daughters of miners/fisherman. Finding his weakness becomes more difficult, more dangerous... etc.
At this stage, the PC understand the real nature of faeries, their needs, but also the danger they can represent, the benefit he can harness from them, but also that by making them more powerful by playing their game, by their rules, eventually he is creating more powerful and potentially dangerous threats for him or others. He can start looking at ways to short-cut stories weakening them, but also potentially alienating them (be careful of the Code and endangering the Order), he could also try to manipulate the story and change their role ("Ho thou, foul beast-knight that lurks into the ground, gnawing at the roots of three, foul serpent akin to the one who casted away Adam and Eve from the Garden, I will defeat you" - then suddenly, the Knight-Crab could become a dark faerie, snake-looking, more sinister, possibly poisonous - such attempt to change the nature of a faerie could be another challenge to discover more powers and keep progressing in initiation of Faerie Mysteries).
By staging this discovery both in-game for PCs and players, it will avoid to have a big info dump for the faerie expert (because he has 5 + Puissant in Faerie Lore) at early stage, and having to explaining him every time there is faerie of what he could do. Let the players "live" the understanding and discovery process.
Even if he has already 5 + Puissant during the first adventure, he will only allow him to find cure and weakness faster, but not understand the "behind-the-seen motivation" (after all, even most faeries are unaware of that).
When the second adventure ends, uses his high-level of expertise to suggest a theory (if the player does not formulate it himself). And possibly how he could leverage this knowledge by turning a simple story into an heroic one - if it would be proven true. Hints at greater rewards than simply vis.
Finally, at the third story, once the PC/player is enjoying is newly found power, hints at the consequences of making a more powerful faerie and the concept of cognizant/semi-cognizant faerie.
I am under the impression that some people are very upset by this version of Faerie, whereas, IMO, it isn't supposed to be in-game knowledge, just a tool for the SGs on " how to create faerie stories / roleplay faeries".
Characters may have widely different interpretations, even if this leads to the same conclusions. For example, a Pagan character may believe that ( and this is a very modern / common take) Gods draws their power from worship, and thus conclude (as some people here have hypothesized) that the Christian God is just more powerful because of his sheer number of worshipers, and that a return in power of the Old Gods would be possible, if only more people would praise them.
Without saying I am "very upset", I was and am still annoyed by this version of Faerie. As SG, I found it made and makes my life more difficult to create story with faeries as antagonist, so most often than not, I ignore the cognizant/storie aspect of it. But once in a blue moon, I get inspired and used those aspects of the Faerie to design a very specific and more convoluted story.
In short, yes, these concepts can add more layers and more tools to design story (as the short synopsis I provided above), but more often than not I choose to ignore it, as should any SG who see faeries would be nice antagonist for a story: the cognizant/vitality things does not need to be embedded in every story involving faerie, just when one feels like doing it.
I really like this version of the faerie, where a highly-cognizant faerie is closer to the players than to the player characters. I try to be very historically accurate with my saga, but with thee faeries, I have much freer hands and occasionally break the 4th wall. I also use cinema and theatre terms much more when describing faeries, to highlight that they are just playing roles, and major humanoid faeries, I describe as famous actors and actresses, to reinforce their not-like-the-mundane-worldness.
Guess it is a good thing ArM is set in ME rather than the modern world. Other wise you would have faeries running around as John Wick, John McClane, John Rambo, James Bond (all 7 of them), the Predator, Xenomorphs, and pretty much every other movie or comic book character of note.
There are some modern urban myths that stretch back that far. I'm pretty certain redcaps have, for example, offered lifts to phantom hitch-hikers
I've seen phantom travelling companion stories from pre-modern tales. I don't know if they're medieval, but I don't see why there wouldn't be a phantom knight escorting a band of travelers (or phantom travelers finally making it to their destination) or suchlike.
Yes! Often such companions even turned out to be Christ or a just deceased saint. The archetype of such stories is Luke 24:13–35.
I personally quite like the Vitality bit, just not the story-bit. My faeries are "nothingness given form". Spirits from beyond Creation that gain all their powers and character from vitality given to them by humans (or given to faerie lords, who then hand them down to lesser faeries).
So - yes to glamour, and seeming, and vitality, cognizance, and all of that. I think there are lots of cool ideas there. But no to faeries not existing when people are not looking, faeries wanting to act a part in stories or to replay stories, and so on. That's just not to my taste.