- I know it's not even September yet, but it's always October in my heart. I don't know about y'all, but I was definitely one of those kids who got really into dark, occult stuff at what was probably an
inappropriately early age. I remember being really into the concepts of changeling children and fairy rings that trapped you inside or forced you to dance
until you went mad or died. Some people grow out of stuff
like that, and other people become professional Dungeons
& Dragons YouTubers. (suspenseful music) So when Kobold Press sent me
their "Book of Ebon Tides" for a sponsored video, which is a book all about the Plane of Shadow and the fey and other creatures that reside there, I didn't even really want
to make a video about it so much as I just wanted
to drop everything and run a whole dark fey campaign. But life is short and D&D is long, and they are paying me to make
a video, not run a campaign, so instead of just doing a book review, I thought you could come along with me as I outline the concept
for an entire D&D campaign set in the Shadow Realm. In this video, we will flesh out a party of four player characters using the races and
classes from the books, we will link their stories together, and we will plot out
their first adventure. Hopefully this will not just show you what this setting book is capable of but also give you a
little insight into how I as a DM weave together
player character backstories and develop the tone and
initial arc of a campaign. Let's get spooky!
(spooky music) Gimme a quick 20 seconds
for the essential details before we jump into the campaign. Kobold Press sponsored this video so I can talk about two new books that they have released:
the "Book of Ebon Tides," the "Book of Ebon Tides," which is a Plane of Shadow
campaign setting for 5e, and "Tales From the Shadows," a collection of 14 dark fantasy adventures
set in the Shadow Realm. These books were Kickstarted last year for more than four times
their initial funding goal, so if you order them now,
you're also benefiting from all the additional materials that their stretch goals added on. You can pick up both books in hardcover and/or PDF at the link in the description. (eerie music) Let's imagine a party of
four player characters ready to adventure together
in the Shadow Realm. Up first: a wayward human,
once lost in the shadows. (foreboding music) Kenna Talward was once a
human, before she lost her way. Many mages use the shadow roads to travel quickly between distant places, but when Kenna paid
one for such a passage, she strayed from the path and found herself lost
in the Shadow Realm. A memory thief found
her wandering the woods, weakened by shadow corruption. She was an easy target. The thief siphoned some
essential memory from her, though she knows not which, only that there is a
hollow place in her now. She sometimes feels a deep, aching grief that leaves her weeping
without knowing why. Whatever her loss, the Mother
of Sorrows was drawn to it. She offered Kenna a bargain:
give herself to the shadows and become immune to their
corrupting influence. She would be granted arcane power so that she could avenge her suffering in the name of the Mother of Sorrows. But before she can take that vengeance, Kenna will need to recall
what, exactly, she has lost. When I read that sometimes
people get trapped in the Plane of Shadow by straying from the path of a shadow road, my fairy tale obsession
came out in full force! The shadow roads are a really
key part of this setting, so let's go over what
they are really quick. The Plane of Shadow is, by
nature, constantly shifting. This is what the ebon tides
from the title refers to: not an actual ocean, but
the tide-like ebb and flow of the shadows, which take
landmarks and settlements with them if they're not anchored somehow. It's the shadow roads that anchor them, tying them to other places
through a magical binding. These roads are also accessible to some magic adepts
from the mortal world. They can be used as methods
of convenient travel, stepping into the shadows in one place and out of them in another place far away. However, straying from
the path along the way leaves the traveler lost
in the Plane of Shadow. Of course, a mortal trapped in the plane of shadow will eventually
become corrupted. This corruption can cause
a creature to be weakened in various ways by bright light and eventually turns
them into a shadow thrall who refuses to willingly leave the plane. If your player characters aren't
native to the Shadow Realm, they have to make charisma saves for every week that they spend there, taking levels of shadow
corruption when they fail. Since I'm imagining an entire campaign set in the Plane of Shadow, it's important that a
human character be able to withstand this corruption long-term. One way to do that is to
make Kenna an umbral human, a human who has been twisted
by exposure to shadow. If this happens over generations,
it creates a changeling. But if it happens through
a sudden transformation, it creates a type of umbral human called, somewhat satirically, the Gifted. But who or what transformed
Kenna into one of the Gifted? Well, y'all know I'm a
sucker for a warlock, so the Mother of Sorrows warlock patron immediately caught my eye. But it wasn't until I was flipping through the monsters section of the book that it all fell into place. See, shadow fey themselves
don't experience the same emotions and passions
that other creatures do, but they find those feelings fascinating, so they've built a robust trade market for emotions as consumable goods. Part of this market
are the memory thieves, humanoids who have been trained to capture the memories and
emotions of other creatures so those feelings can be sold to the fey. The Mother of Sorrows offers
her warlocks vengeance for their suffering, but
she was specifically born of the suffering of parents
who have lost children. I think it would be super
interesting for Kenna's player to know that she had lost some core memory but not what that memory was, and over the course of the campaign, it would be revealed through the guidance of her patron that she
is, in fact, a mother and it was her memory of her
child that was stolen from her. Of course, as much as I love a good surprise backstory twist, all this would be dependent
on the player being okay with the DM keeping backstory secrets and with themes of parenthood
and family separation. That would be some key
session-zero conversation for a game like this. Once Kenna learns the truth,
her new quest can be finding and potentially avenging her lost child. There are also a bunch of
new spells in this book, and the warlock list is full of cool ones, like Blade of Blood and Bone, which lets you draw a dagger or shortsword made of your own bone from
your body and attack with it, which is very "Locked Tomb" of them. Also, there's a fifth-level
spell called Feast of Flesh that causes an enemy to
cannibalize its allies. It's very fucked up. I love it. Krix was perfectly content as
one of the many shadow goblins peopling the city of Fandeval. By day, he scavenged floating memories from the waters of the Black River Styx, and by night, he drank himself stupid in whatever filthy tavern was nearest. Once, during a drunken brawl, a gaunt-looking old man bit Krix. He woke the next morning with a fever which wracked his body for
days until, finally, he died. But as the fever sweat
cooled on his waxy skin, some form of half-life raised him. This newly reborn Krix
found himself ravenous. He suddenly hungered for living flesh and, even more strangely, for the very shadows
that infused this plane. The more of this dark magic he consumed, the stronger he grew. Sometimes he would be filled with rage, and the raw shadow would
seep from his body, enshrouding him in darkness. His hunger grows every day, and Krix Hollowgut is beginning to realize that he may need to leave Fandeval in order to truly sate it. The darakhul race is not new
to the "Book of Ebon Tides." It's actually part of the Midgard setting, and it's also detailed
in "Tome of Heroes." But while these undead have to hide their nature in other settings, they enjoy relative freedom
in the Shadow Realm, even building out their
own massive civilization called the Twilight Empire. Since the darakhul all began
life as a living creature, the subraces are each associated
with an existing race. By making Krix a shadow
goblin before he fell sick, he gets several shadow
goblin racial traits, like size, language, and walking speed, and a shadow goblin specific
skill called Dark Deed, which can frighten another creature. There's a goblin city
in the Plane of Shadows called Fandeval, which lies on the banks of the Black River Styx
where it meets the Shade Sea. Many of the goblins there work
as boat builders or fishermen or run market stalls at the waterfront. The intense hunger of the darakhul felt like a great companion to
the new barbarian subclass in this book, the Shadow Gnawer. These barbarians actually
consume raw shadow energy and use it to manifest magical abilities, from creating a smoke screen that gives other creatures
disadvantage on attacks to regaining hit points
from feeding on the shadows. While most who take this
path absorb shadow magic to protect others from it, some just want to feed on that energy, which felt right for Krix. Now, one of the major
downsides of playing a darakhul as a PC is that you have to
consume raw meat every day to satisfy your hunger for flesh. And while that meat
could certainly be that of an animal rather than
a person, the book says that living flesh is pretty
scarce in the Shadow Realm, so a starving darakhul might be tempted to do a little murder. And while they may be little
assholes, the shadow goblins of Fandeval are described
as having strong communities with their friends and families,
so if Krix found himself sometimes considering taking
a bite out of a neighbor, I think that the remains
of the shadow goblin inside him would want
to seek out a solution, such as, for example,
the crackling forests. These alien trees, not native
to the Plane of Shadow, seem to be made of bone and
cartilage rather than wood. They bleed a thick, stinking black sap that most creatures find revolting. The darakhul, however, have
found that it nourishes them just as well as living flesh. They cultivate these
trees as a food source in the Twilight Empire, making
that a worthy pilgrimage for Krix to pursue to start
him off on his adventure. From the moment Onyxclaw was born, the other bearfolk recognized the cub's affinity for the darkness. Their ash-gray coat, covered
in strange black markings, identified them as Shadowborn. Like other such cubs, Onyxclaw had a natural resistance to the effects of the shadow, but also what many of
their community thought of as an unnatural attraction to it. When they traveled to the Hawthorne Grove to train amongst the
other bearfolk druids, Onyxclaw's connection to
nature took an unusual form. Like their fellows, they
could assume the form of a wild creature, like
the twilight-purple deer or dark-furred squirrels
that make their home in the Shadow Realm's forests. But sometimes, they would shift instead into a mass of living shadow. The bearfolk pride themselves
on being a bastion of light in a dark place, but for
Onyxclaw, who craves the shadows, no satisfaction can ever be
found in these protected glades. Only out there, amongst the shadows, can they find their true purpose. Bearfolk, like the
darakhul, are also a race originating in Kobold
Press's Midgard setting, but in the context of the Plane of Shadow, they work towards fighting
back the shadow corruption and creating safe communities
to act as a source of light for both their own kin
and wayward travelers. They are very much painted as
noble defenders of the light, present in the Plane of Shadow specifically to fight against its nature. However, over the centuries of carving out their druidic communities
amongst the shadows, the bearfolk born on this plane have slowly become influenced
by their surroundings, leading to the Shadowborn subrace. Bearfolk with this distinction
are born in shades of gray, have darkvision, and can
hide and be stealthy easily in dim light or darkness. While it must be a benefit
to bearfolk warriors to be less threatened by the
darkness, I can't help but feel like the Shadowborn would be treated a little warily by a culture like this. If their whole purpose
is fighting the shadows, they've gotta be at least a
little mistrustful of a creature that seems to have a
natural affinity for them. Many bearfolk train as either druids or Shadow Gnawer barbarians in
order to defend their groves, so it makes sense that
Onyxclaw would join many of their fellows in pursuing
a druidic tradition. And there's a perfect new druid subclass in the "Book of Ebon Tides":
the Circle of Shadows. Druids in this circle get
access to some additional spells and have the option to wildshape
not just into an animal but into an umbral form,
which is basically a shadow. At later levels, they can
raise and command shadows as separate creatures and
even create magical darkness. In the description for
the Circle of Shadows, it's noted that while
other druids might fight to preserve some sort of natural balance, druids in this circle recognize that all things eventually
return to darkness and therefore don't see
darkness as something that needs to necessarily be fought. This seems like it would really clash with the core goals of the
bearfolk in this realm, which makes for great motivation to push a player character like Onyxclaw out of the nest and into
an adventuring party. There are a number of new druid spells in this book as well, like Hibernation, which lets you put another
creature into a healing sleep, or Deep Roots of the Moon,
which actually allows you to create a shadow road of your own. Also, since the Shadow
Realm is its own plane, it has some of its own beasts, which are mostly just variations on animals on the prime material plane but could still be really
fun for flavoring wildshape. (soft music) The Eventide family line
held only a minor position in the vast shadow fey
Court of Night and Magic, and though Aravni, the
youngest Eventide daughter, may claim that it was divine calling that led her to become a road warden, only a fool would fail to note
that the profession carries with it a level of respect and prestige that can only elevate the Eventide name amongst the other nobles of the court. By committing herself to
walk the roads each spring, repairing and restoring
these essential bindings that anchor the Court,
preventing it from being lost to the ebon tides, Aravni has opened doors for herself and for her family. So far, the revelry and indulgence
of her newfound position in shadow fey society
has seemed a fair reward for the drudgery of
maintaining the shadow roads. But there are dangers that
Aravni has not yet faced outside the protective walls of the Court, dangers that may heavily
outweigh the nights of gaiety and gossip. You didn't think I was
gonna build an entire party for the Shadow Realm without
having a fey in it, right? The fey courts are a huge
part of the Plane of Shadow. There are more than a dozen
courts outlined in the book, and that doesn't even include
the mysterious lost courts that have been unmoored and
swept away by the ebon tides. I love a good fairy court as
a setting, and having a player who belongs to one of those
courts sets up a campaign to have at least a few
adventures within its walls, which would be a lot of fun. But something has to take a court noble out of their cushy
lifestyle and into the world for a dangerous adventure, which is where the road wardens come in. Since the shadow roads are so essential to the safety and function of the cities, courts, and settlements in this plane, naturally the people who
defend and maintain them are highly necessary and highly respected. The book notes that the
attempted sabotage of roads through tearing up paving stones, changing the terrain with magic, or breaking the enchantment of their binding points is common. Road wardens don't just stop the roads from natural decay, but also from attack. A cut road can set a settlement adrift, perhaps never to be located again. Making Aravni a cleric also made sense because the Plane of Shadow
has its own pantheon. Among others, this
pantheon includes Sarastra, the Queen of the Court of Night and Magic, patron of the shadow
fey, and original shaper of the Shadow Realm as it exists today. It's reasonable that
a member of this court might dedicate themselves
not just as a vassal to their queen but as a
conduit for her divine power. Just like the other casting classes, there are some brand-new cleric spells, including Drayfn's Bane of Excellence, which cancels an
opponent's next natural 20, or Grim Harvest, which allows
you to capture the energy of a dying or recently dead creature and use it to your own benefit. I also think you could
start off a player like this with a cool weapon or armor as part of their role as road warden, and there are plenty of
really exciting new items, magic items, weapons, and armor
in the "Book of Ebon Tides." For example, you could
give Aravni Umbral Armor, which hides your tracks
and makes you hard to hit with ranged attacks as long
as you're not in bright light. You could totally just
call that the uniform of the road wardens from
this court as a fun way to tie a unique item into
that character's story. Speaking of items that Aravni might have, as a shadow fey, she has likely purchased memories and emotions in consumable form, which could definitely lead to
some interesting interactions with Kenna once they're
in a party together. There's a list of memory philters, like the Philter of Boundless Joy or the Philter of Righteous Anger, that award temporary benefits to specific ability checks,
attacks, and other actions. (mysterious music) So that's the party: Kenna
the umbral human warlock, Krix the shadow goblin darakhul barbarian, Onyxclaw the Shadowborn bearfolk druid, and Aravni the shadow fey cleric. In this case, I created
all those characters, but let's assume for a moment that my players have instead
come up with these PCs and it is now my job to figure
out how to interlink them and set them on a path
together towards adventure. First of all, some of these characters
might naturally clash. It's likely that Kenna, who was victimized by a memory thief, will not
get along well with Aravni, who probably downs memories
like shadow fey White Claw. And if Krix ever attempts to take a bite out of a fellow party member
in a moment of hangry weakness, I could see some really hard
feelings developing there. So the first thing I'd want to do as a DM is establish connections between characters and shared goals. I've been known to
require that every player at the table choose another character to establish an existing
relationship with, just to give the party a
starting point for a bond. In this case, perhaps Onyxclaw would run into Kenna on the road
and decide to take her under their protection,
thinking her vulnerable and having been raised in a
community that aids travelers. And since Krix used to scavenge memories from the Black River Styx,
perhaps he sold these to a merchant who supplied
the Eventide family with philters, giving him a sort of distant business
connection with Aravni. As for a party-wide connection, in a place as dangerous
as the Shadow Realm, survival can be a very
motivating shared goal, particularly if characters are cut off from whatever safety or
protection they're used to. Kenna is probably in a constant
state of defensive fear, Onyxclaw has just left
the safety of the grove for the first time, and Krix
is both a first-time traveler and a danger to himself,
so that just leaves Aravni. So one of my first steps as
a DM would be to find a way to cut Aravni off from
her access to the court, at least temporarily,
perhaps by means of exile. This would give her a reason
to ally with the others. But before we do that, it's easy enough to throw them all into a
deadly situation together to get some good ol'
trauma bonding started. This is where "Tales from
the Shadows" comes in. That's the collection of 14 adventures set within the Plane of Shadow. Since these adventures are written for an array of levels from one to eight, you could very easily work your
way through them one by one, shaping a campaign around these
individual, episodic quests or even finding your own
way to create a thread that links them all together. Or if you want the freedom to
build your own campaign arc, these adventures could still
make a great starting point. Personally, I really like
to shape a campaign arc around the player characters'
goals and backstories, so with this party, I
would want to make sure that the campaign brought Kenna to reclaim her lost memories, brought Krix to the Twilight Empire, enabled Onyxclaw to find
or create a community that accepted them, and reunited Aravni with her family and her court. Even better if I could tie
some of these together, perhaps locating Kenna's bottled memory in the Twilight Empire so
that location is relevant to more than one character. But first, we need a starting point. As I was reading through these adventures, there was one that really struck me as a great starting point
for this party in particular and seemed like a good way
to bring everybody together. It's called "The Weeper in Shadow," and it's written for a party
of third-level adventurers, which is actually perfect, because assuming I'm not playing
with any brand-new folks, I like starting at third level because everybody is a little less squishy and has some more exciting abilities. In this adventure, players
hear tales of a living, malicious forest called the Wombweald. Most times, the Wombweald
sleeps, but when it awakens, it births a horrible monster
called the Weeper in Shadow. This forest, like any
location that isn't anchored by a shadow road, drifts
on the ebon tides, so no one is ever quite sure
where it is while it slumbers. But the signs of its awakening have been spotted in the Queen's Wood near the Court of Night and
Magic, and as a road warden, Aravni has been sent to investigate it. The others are on the road, too. Kenna received cryptic direction from her patron to travel this way, Krix passes through this area on his way from Fandeval to the Twilight Empire, and Onyxclaw could've been
sent this way by the bearfolk, having also heard of the
threat of the Wombweald, the exact kind of corruption and darkness that they train their warriors to fight. If the horrible screams
of the wood's victims don't motivate the players to investigate, Aravni could receive a Sending
from her road warden captain requesting an update and, upon
receiving it, could be told that the awakening is more
advanced than they thought, they won't have time
to send reinforcements, and Aravni is authorized to contract any capable-looking nearby
travelers to help her drive off the threat under
the promise of later payment. Once they've completed their adventure and slain the Weeper in Shadow, they will of course need
to stick with Aravni long enough to retrieve their payment. Of course, since the
Wombweald isn't connected to a shadow road, their triumphant return might deposit them far
from where they entered, keeping the party linked
for the journey back, at which point I would probably bring in the whole exile plotline for Aravni, maybe that she was framed
for something by some noble who has beef with her or her family, binding her together with
the rest of the party, none of whom have any true
allies except for each other. And we're off! They could go all sorts of places and pursue all sorts of goals, forging friendships
along the way for as long as the players could keep
their Saturday mornings open. That hits a little close
to home to be funny. All of this is just one
example of the kind of campaign that you could run with these
books, but you don't even have to set your entire campaign
in the shadow plane. You can dip in and out of
it just like any other plane for a single adventure or a short arc. This book makes a great
addition to the Midgard setting, which it shares some races,
gods, and other concepts with, but it can also be linked to any setting that has a shadow plane. If you wanna pick up
the "Book of Ebon Tides" and "Tales from the Shadows," make sure to check out the link in the description. You can get them in
hardcover, PDF, or both. How about you guys? Would you play in or DM a campaign set entirely in the shadow plane? Let me know in the comments,
and if you wanna learn more about more of Kobold Press's
third-party content for 5e, check out this video that I made all about the "Tome of Heroes."
