D&D 5E Official Candlekeep Mysteries Announcement & Info About 'The Canopic Being' Adventure

The official announcement of the book that was revealed yesterday includes an image of the alternate cover. Clint Cearley did the standard cover and Simen Meyer did the alternate cover. It looks like this isn't the book spearheaded by Kate Welch and featuring Marisha Ray and Deborah Ann Woll, as they don't feature on the list of designers. The hardcover book will be available on March 16th...

The official announcement of the book that was revealed yesterday includes an image of the alternate cover. Clint Cearley did the standard cover and Simen Meyer did the alternate cover.

It looks like this isn't the book spearheaded by Kate Welch and featuring Marisha Ray and Deborah Ann Woll, as they don't feature on the list of designers.

The hardcover book will be available on March 16th for $49.95, and the alternate cover will be available from local game stores. Instead, the press releases describe it as a "New Book Full of Short Adventures from Up-and-Coming Designers".

1.jpg


An anthology of seventeen mystery-themed adventures for the world’s greatest roleplaying game.

Candlekeep attracts scholars like a flame attracts moths. Historians, sages, and others who crave knowledge flock to this library fortress to peruse its vast collection of books, scribbled into which are the answers to the mysteries that bedevil them. Many of these books contain their own mysteries—each one a doorway to adventure. Dare you cross that threshold?

Candlekeep Mysteries is a collection of seventeen short, stand-alone D&D adventures designed for characters of levels 1-16. Each adventure begins with the discovery of a book, and each book is the key to a door behind which danger and glory await. These adventures can be run as one-shot games, plugged into an existing Forgotten Realms campaign, or adapted for other campaign settings.

This book also includes a poster map of the library fortress and detailed descriptions of Candlekeep and its inhabitants.

Adventure writers include: Graeme Barber, Kelly Lynne D’angelo, Alison Huang, Mark Hulmes, Jennifer Kretchmer, Daniel Kwan, Adam Lee, Ari Levitch, Sarah Madsen, Christopher Perkins, Michael Polkinghorn, Taymoor Rehman, Derek Ruiz, Kienna Shaw, Brandes Stoddard, Amy Vorpahl, and Toni Winslow-Brill.

candlekeep-key-small.jpg



WotC's announcement on Facebook includes additional writers not mentioned on the product page -- Hannah Rose, and Chris Lindsay. I asked the company who does WotC's press stuff and they confirmed that they contributed but not as authors.


The Canopic Being
One of the adventures, by Jennifer Kretchmer, is called The Canopic Being. It's 10-12 pages, designed for a single session.

Like all the adventures it starts in Candlekeep, the greatest library in the Forgotten Realms, and features a dungeon located in Tashalar far to the south of the Sword Coast. As a wheelchair user, Kretchmer's adventure is a dungeon crawl beneath the earth, filled with fantasy elevators and ledges accessible by ramps.

The word "Canopic" refers to ancient Egyptian vases or jars often used during the mummification process. Canopic jars store and preserve the body's internal organs.
 

log in or register to remove this ad


log in or register to remove this ad



Charlaquin

Goblin Queen (She/Her/Hers)
Except the Yawning Portal didn't even work on that level: this one can be a useful hub.
It could, but it was kind of a stretch. The idea was that the adventures in the book were all tales told at the Yawning Portal. What I did was had them be flashbacks. In “the present,” the characters were all at the Yawning Portal, reminiscing about their past adventures together.

The Candlekeep thing will probably be a stronger framing device though.
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend
It could, but it was kind of a stretch. The idea was that the adventures in the book were all tales told at the Yawning Portal. What I did was had them be flashbacks. In “the present,” the characters were all at the Yawning Portal, reminiscing about their past adventures together.

The Candlekeep thing will probably be a stronger framing device though.

Yeah, love that book, but the Yawning Portal connection was... tenuous.
 

Stormonu

Legend
Interesting read, I feel a little better about this seeing this isn't going to be a bunch of whodunnits but more of a "what's going on here?" or a "have you ever heard of this item?"

And were I one of the writers, I would have pitched:

"Mordenkainen's Atlas of the Ape Isle"

Uh, how'd this get here...?
 

Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
Interesting read, I feel a little better about this seeing this isn't going to be a bunch of whodunnits but more of a "what's going on here?" or a "have you ever heard of this item?"

And were I one of the writers, I would have pitched:

"Mordenkainen's Atlas of the Ape Isle"

Uh, how'd this get here...?
Moving the Isle of the Ape to the Forgotten Realms is a lot better than all the Greyhawk dungeons in Yawning Portal, since it's a demiplane.

It would fit the page count, too, since it's a very simple adventure, just very high level one.
 


Nathaniel Lee

Adventurer
I like the alternative cover, but it seems so different from the other alternative covers of the past. Ideally, they'd all be done by Hydro74, but even with different artistic takes, it seems odd that the design approach for this one would be so different (it almost looks like a "leather cover" sort of style) than the others. I'm definitely still going for the alternative, of course. LOL
 


Remove ads

Remove ads

Top