The Wild Beyond the Witchlight
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is an adventure for the epic fantasy Dungeons & Dragons, written by Stacey Allan, Will Doyle, Ari Levitch, and Christopher Perkins and published by Wizards of the Coast.
By Dave Pierson
Learn more about The Wild Beyond the Witchlight here
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Disclaimer: Dare to take a step into the dark backward and abysum of time? Know that Wizards of the Coast cannot be held responsible for those who enter the Feywild of their own accord. In the faerie realm, time gets twisted in knots. It might be months or years before you return to the real world. Enjoy the adventure while it lasts, and don’t be surprised if you encounter a few friends and foes from old editions lurking among the fey.
Wizards of the Coast, The Wild Beyond The Witchlight, 2021
“I’m late, I’m late, I’m late for an important…” hare raising adventure! Hey there all you homebrew DMs and adventurous folks, we are back with another new release from Wizards of the Coast – The Wild Beyond The Witchlight. Designed for players beginning at level 1, this adventure finds our heroes traversing into the Feywild to take on the Hourglass Coven; three hags who have carved up the domain of Prismeer. Using Milestone Leveling, your players could potentially be level 8 by the time they complete the many paths laid in front of them. Of course, we wouldn’t have an adventure in a new domain without introducing some new trinkets, backgrounds, races, and monsters for us to use.
##SPOILERS AHEAD##
Let’s start with the meat of the book, the adventure itself. Overall, the adventure is a wonderful standalone story perfectly made if you are looking for something different from your regular adventures. The story kicks off with players being provided with one of two included adventure hooks – “Lost Things” or “Warlock’s Quest”, both essential to the story and getting your players to the Witchlight Carnival. The carnival itself is fey in nature, visiting different worlds on the Material Plane every 8 years and, even more important to our players, provides a fey crossing, allowing travel to and from the Feywild. It’s from the carnival that our players discover the truth of what is taking place in the Prismeer and are invited to adventure forth and save the Feywild.
To assist the DM with the many paths that are laid out, the adventure books includes a Story Tracker, specifically designed for The Wild Beyond The Witchlight. For new and experienced DMs this is a great tool. It’s something similar to what I use to help myself, so not sure I would use it, but for those used to linear stories and need the tool, it fits the need. The story ebbs and flows and really is at the direction of our players to complete. So, for those of us that have or prefer homebrew settings, can The Wild Beyond The Witchlight be adapted to those settings? Absolutely. The adventure itself takes place off our Material Plane and can easily be incorporated and adapted to fit any setting and honestly, any level of player. However, keeping your players involved for 8 levels worth of adventure may be difficult, and you will need to be careful and watch for any adventure fatigue.
As I mentioned, with new adventures books, new tools are out there for both the DM and our players. For the players we have new backgrounds, trinkets, and playable races. The two new backgrounds, Feylost and Witchlight Hand, specifically are about being lost in the Feywild, and do feel specific to the adventure, but working with your player, you could easily adapt some of the traits to your setting. The two new races are coming right from a recent playtest – the Fairy and the Harengon (Rabbitfolk). The Harengon have interesting abilities inherent to being a rabbit, such as adding your proficiency bonus to initiative and being able to hop as a bonus action without provoking opportunity attacks. However, once again you would really want to work with your players to fully develop how they can be incorporated into your setting, especially since these aren’t typical races one would see on the Material Plane as adventurers. For the DM we’ve got some exciting new toys from new monsters to new magical items we can hand out. Also, we’ve got Role Playing cards that we can provide players to assist with playing NPCs and the map of the Witchlight Carnival.
Overall, The Wild Beyond The Witchlight is a silly, fun, and even dark at times adventure. It opens players up to new, rich domain that many don’t get to experience. It is one on the best adventures put out by Wizards of the Coast recently and I look forward to more.
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