D&D 5E Two New D&D Books Revealed: Feywild & Strixhaven Mage School

Amazon has revealed the next two D&D hardcovers! The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is a feywild adventure due in September, and Curriculum of Chaos is a Magic: the Gathering setting of Strixhaven, which looks like a Harry Potter-esque mage school, set for November.

Amazon.com: The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: A Feywild Adventure (Dungeons & Dragons Book) (9780786967278): Wizards RPG Team: Books

Amazon.com: The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: A Feywild Adventure (Dungeons & Dragons Book) (9780786967278): Wizards RPG Team: Books

www.amazon.com

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is D&D's next big adventure storyline that brings the wicked whimsy of the Feywild to fifth edition for the first time.

The recent Unearthed Arcana, Folk of the Feywild, contained the fairy, hobgoblin of the Feywild, owlfolk, and rabbitfolk. UA is usually a good preview of what's in upcoming D&D books.

Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos (D&D/MTG Adventure Book) (Dungeons & Dragons): Wizards RPG Team: 9780786967445: Books

Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos (D&D/MTG Adventure Book) (Dungeons & Dragons) [Wizards RPG Team] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos (D&D/MTG Adventure Book) (Dungeons & Dragons)

www.amazon.com

Curriculum of Chaos is an upcoming D&D release set in the Magic: The Gathering world of Strixhaven -- a brand new MtG set only just launched.

Strixhaven is a school of mages on the plane of Arcavios, an elite university with five rival colleges founded by dragons: Silverquill (eloquence), Prismari (elemental arts), Witherbloom (life and death), Lorehold (archaeomancy), and Quandrix (numeromancy). You can read more about the M:tG set here.

You will be able to tune into WotC's streamed event D&D Live on July 16 and 17 for details on both, including new character options, monsters, mechanics, story hooks, and more!

D&D 5E - Here Is The Full & Alternate Cover Art Of The Wild Beyond the Witchlight

Here is the cover art for The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, the hardcover D&D product revealed this weekend. Cover art by Tyler Jacobson Alternate cover by Hydro74 https://www.enworld.org/threads/two-new-d-d-books-revealed-feywild-strixhaven-mage-school.680500/

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - And Here Is Strixhaven's Cover Art!

It's not just The Wild Beyond The Witchlight's cover art being revealed today! We also have Magali Villeneuve's cover art for Strixhaven: Curriculum of Chaos! Strixhaven is an upcoming D&D setting based on the recently released Magic: the Gathering world, and features a mage school -- as Theros...

www.enworld.org

 

[Yaarel]

It also resonates with the fairy-themed Art Nouveau and Pre-Raphaelites of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

That said, real life fairy tales may have been recorded down in the 1800s by the Grimms and Lang etc but they vastly predate them, some even having roots of thousands of years of age (like "The Smith and the Devil").

The fairytales of the 1800s are often moreorless in place by the Renaissance, 1600s.

But the Medieval stories that sometimes inspire them are often quite different.

Britain, Scandinavia, France, and so on often underwent dramatic changes in the folklore.

Compare the British small fairies of the 1800s, who werent really a thing before the 1600s.

The various kinds of Scandinavian Troll of the 1800s have continuity with, yet differ from, the various kinds of Jotnar before the 1400s.

 

[Tonguez]

So Zybilna - Fey, Fiends and Shadakai. Fey Lord of her own Domain of Wyrd

 

[Demetrios1453]

When they tested Centaurs and Minotaurs for Ravnica, a decidedly non-Hellenistic Setting, they billed the UA as "Hellenistic Options," which was true from a certain point of view, but also intentionally misleading.

I'm going to be a pedant here, but I assume you mean "Hellenic" and not "Hellenistic", unless you are referring to centaurs and minotaurs as they were portrayed solely between Alexander's death and the Roman conquest of the Greek eastern Mediterranean...

 

[Morrus]

View attachment 137818

There is an official frogfolk race, the grung and the bullywood, bullywugs.

Second time asking — could you let us know your source for this image?

 

[Parmandur]

I'm going to be a pedant here, but I assume you mean "Hellenic" and not "Hellenistic", unless you are referring to centaurs and minotaurs as they were portrayed solely between Alexander's death and the Roman conquest of the Greek eastern Mediterranean...

It's all Greek to me.

(I'm so sorry, you are right, but I couldn't resist. Kyrie eliason)

 

[Marandahir]

The fairytales of the 1800s are often moreorless in place by the Renaissance, 1600s.

But the Medieval stories that sometimes inspire them are often quite different.

Britain, Scandinavia, France, and so on often underwent dramatic − sometimes unrecognizable − changes in the folklore.

Compare the British small fairies of the 1800s, who werent really a thing before the 1600s.

The various kinds of Scandinavian Troll of the 1800s are quite different from Jotnar and Dvergar before the 1400s.

Absolutely. And the Scandinavian Troll was really in a continuum with the Draugr (undead/zombie/vampire) and the Dwergr (dwarves, dark elves) and the Alfar (elves). Fairy creatures, undead, giant monsters, and goblins of the dark places of the world - forests, caves, cellars, etc - are to some extent interchangeable; their specific traits and names differ from story to story. There's a reason why the TV Tropes page says ALL TROLLS ARE DIFFERENT - what measure is a Troll is pretty much impossible to say because our understanding of the term Troll is still influenced by the multitude of fairy stories that have used the term in different ways. Meanwhile the TV Tropes page "All Dwarves Are All the SAME" is a reflection of the ubiquity of the Dwarf miner-warrior archetype that's been codified in modern fantasy by the simultaneous creative iterations of the concept from the minds of Walt Disney and J.R.R. Tolkien.

This isn't just a Norse myth thing either. The Welsh term "Ellyllon" could mean elf or fair folk in the terms of like Tolkien's elves or the archfey of D&D, it could mean ghost or spirit, it could mean devil with horns and pitch fork. The Indic term Yaksha could mean nature spirit or hungry ghost (and indeed, in Japan, Yashas are another term for vengeful ghosts of the natural world… sometimes). The lines of the beings from the Perilous Realm are vague and fuzzy at best, defined most prominently by their perilous nature to those from this side of the veil.

It's in that sense that D&D's divisions of Feywild and Shadowfell, of Nine Hells and Abyss and Grey Wastes and Arborea and Celestia and Elysium, it actually feels a bit constrained and lacking truth in the old stories. It seems like a way to diminish their power by codifying and providing bounds to the tales. And of course it is - DMs need bounds of genre to lean into specific tropes and not get lost in tropes that would veer their campaign in a different direction and storymind (especially given the sheer ability of players to go right when the DM has designed stories for straight, left, up, down, and backwards).

 

[Demetrios1453]

Second, it's entirely possible that the cover is a placeholder like the Eberron cover was (or it wasn't and they changed their minds, who knows). And we actually haven't really confirmed whether this cover is actually legit, unlike the Amazon stuff. Whoever found it isn't saying how they got it.

I was literally about to point out to those who don't like the cover that we've had several placeholder covers before.

 

[Marandahir]

It's all Greek to me.

(I'm so sorry, you are right, but I couldn't resist. Kylie eliason)

I'm going to be a pedant here, but I assume you mean "Hellenic" and not "Hellenistic", unless you are referring to centaurs and minotaurs as they were portrayed solely between Alexander's death and the Roman conquest of the Greek eastern Mediterranean...

Did they even call it Hellenic Options? I just opened my copy of the UA article and can't find the term Hellenic or Hellenistic anywhere in the article…

Also, Hellenic is just the term that the Greeks call and have called themselves for thousands of years. I believe Demetrios is referring to the League of Corinth, also know as the Hellenikos? But Hellas was a term in use long before Filippos II of Makedon.

 

[Parmandur]

Did they even call it Hellenic Options? I just opened my copy of the UA article and can't find the term Hellenic or Hellenistic anywhere in the article…

Also, Hellenic is just the term that the Greeks call and have called themselves for thousands of years. I believe Demetrios is referring to the League of Corinth, also know as the Hellenikos? But Hellas was a term in use long before Filippos II of Makedon.

I checked, too, and they just name check that they are Greek myth options in the text. Which is both true and misdirection. I think Crawford may have played up the Hellenic element on Twitter at the time. I definitely remember a lot of social media butthurt about the Centaur not matching the MM version, and Crawford kept pointing out that it is a different Centaur...because it was a different creature from a different universe, as it turns out.

 

[Demetrios1453]

It's all Greek to me.

(I'm so sorry, you are right, but I couldn't resist. Kylie eliason)

No problem, as I said, I was being a pedant in that.

Although a Hellenistic setting would be a refreshing change from typical pseudo-Greek settings. Far less city-state petty wars and more Game of Thrones cutthroat fighting between huge kingdoms to emulate a conqueror's legacy and gain control of the known world...