D&D 5E Everything You Need To Know About Witchlight

Todd Kenrick posted a video summarizing a press conference which listed many of the things you need to know about The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. The video is below, but I've bullet-pointed the key items if you can't watch it right now.

• The Witchlight carnival is a mirror of the carnival in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. Shadar Kair are in charge of the feywild carnival and someone else in charge of the Ravenloft carnival. If these two carnivals meet the ownership shifts again and it is part of the plot that Mr Witch and Mr Light do not want to trade the carnival back.
• The carnival will go to multiple worlds. Inspiration actually came from things like Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes; Mr Light is a reflection of Mr Dark from that movie.
• There's a map of the Witchlight carnival laid out like an amusement park map.
• Time is a component of the adventure. Time moves very differently in the feywild and the shadowfell. Expect time hijinks!
• The Witchlight carnival is a way of getting into the feywild itself.
• There are domains much like the dread domains but these are called domains of delight. Each is controlled by an archfey that has power over each of these domains.
• Some art included the Palace of Hearts of Desire, and they showed a treant called Little Oak who has a tree house built into his back and children live in that tree house, plus a displacer beast kitten named Star.
• This adventure will be a very light hearted. Any challenge in this book can be solved with combat but also in a non violent way. Talking your way out of things etc.
• The carnival has attractions and NPCs like a mermaid, a mime named kendlefoot, a Kenku that's up to to to to no good. Also classic characters from the D&D animated series. On the map there is a rollercoaster identical to the rollercoaster in the intro to D&D the animated series. This can imply that that entire amusement park was the Witchlight carnival in disguise.
• Playtesters loved the game you can play in the carnival.
• There's 'custard damage'.
• Player options include new backgrounds. The Feylost and Witchlight Hand. Plus the fairy and herangon (rabbit folk) races.
• Warduke, Strongheart, and Kellek from the cartoon.

 

[Parmandur]

From the previews, we're only getting the one Domain of Delight. That's being sold as representational
They're not going to do a second Feywild adventure
Domains of Delight might as well be the only feature

They're probably working on a Setting similar to Ravenloft, though.

 

[EthanSental]

I’ll probably pick this up just for Warduke more so than anything else…then find out I enjoy the other parts too!

 

[Magister Ludorum]

“These violent delights have violent ends​

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,​

Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey​

Is loathsome in his own deliciousness​

And in the taste confounds the appetite.​

Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;​

Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.”​

This domain seems very whimsical. I don't know that all future domains of delight will be this seemingly light-hearted. I believe that we will see a setting based on the feywild similar to Domains of Dread.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

a mime named kendlefoot

This is going to turn out to be Tasslehoff Burrfoot muted by a curse and people are going to lose their minds.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Name me one monster in 5E so far that's Immune/Resistant to that!

Clowns.

 

[Remathilis]

From the previews, we're only getting the one Domain of Delight. That's being sold as representational
They're not going to do a second Feywild adventure
Domains of Delight might as well be the only feature

Yup, just like how Barovia was sold as representational of Domains of Dread in Curse of Strahd.

The fact that this book is the NEXT book after Van Richten's Guide tells me that there was a lot of parallel development between domains of dread and delight, and we might not have to wait 4+ years between the sample adventure and the full book like we did with Ravenloft...

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Not feeling it
Feels like they decided to make the Feywild the opposite of Ravenloft. But domains of dread are not the only feature of the Shadowfell

It feels very Disney. Very sanitized fairy tales

When I think of fey, I go to Seanan McGuire, Jim Butcher, Sussanna Clarke and Neil Gaiman
Amoral fae of the seelie and unseelie courts

I'm hoping the final product won't be quite as innocent as the previews so far make it seem. Iggwilv, the author of the Demonomicon, is apparently in the adventure in some capacity, and in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything one piece of art showed her attended by redcaps aka murder fairies.

So far it does seem like a big tonal shift from 4E's Feywild, where more emphasis was put on it being equally wondrous and dangerous (the modus operandi of even the friendliest archfey detailed in 4E, Tuxil the Trinket Lord, boiled down to him appearing to lost travelers and offering to guide them to safety in exchange for offerings of magic items; the archfey mentioned the most in 5E so far, Titania, is also most often mentioned in the context of why an entire race of fey were cursed by her). However, given that Feywild Hobgoblins are apparently being saved for a later book (I think that's what was said in one of the preview videos, anyway) perhaps something more akin to Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft is in the works.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

the archfey mentioned the most in 5E so far, Titania, is also most often mentioned in the context of why an entire race of fey were cursed by her)

Could you point me to these mentions? I haven't heard it before so it's probably not in a book I have.

 

[Weiley31]

What's delightful for the Fey is absolutely not delightful for others in the Fey's definition of "delightful."

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Could you point me to these mentions? I haven't heard it before so it's probably not in a book I have.

From the entry on Darklings in Volo's Guide to Monsters:

Ancient legends speak of a seelie fey who betrayed the Summer Queen. His true name has been stricken from history, but the stories call him Dubh Catha ("Dark Crow" in Common). So great was the Summer Queen's wrath that she cursed every member of his house.

The Killing Light.
The Summer Queen's curse causes a darkling's body to absorb light, and doing so wizens the creature, much like the effect of rapid aging. For this reason, darklings cover every part of their body with clothing when exposure to light is a risk. The light a darkling absorbs over the course of its lifetime explodes outward when the darkling dies, incinerating the creature and much of its possessions.

The entry on Fomorians doesn't explicitly mention that she was involved with cursing the fomorians, but the lore says the fey came together to curse them, and she's the greatest of the seelie fey.

Fey Curse.
The elves remember when the fomorians were among the most handsome of races, possessed of brilliant minds and unrivaled magical ability. That physical perfection did not extend to their hearts, however, as a lust for magic and power consumed them. The fomorians sought to conquer the Feywild and enslave its inhabitants, claiming those creatures' magic for themselves. When the fey united to defend their realm, the fomorians fought them and were subjected to a terrible curse.

One by one, the giants fell as their bodies were warped to reflect the evil in their hearts. Stripped of their grace and magical power, the wretched horrors fled from the light, delving deep beneath the world to nurse their hatred. Cursing their fate, they have ever after plotted vengeance against the fey that wronged them.