D&D 5E The Next D&D Book is JOURNEYS THROUGH THE RADIANT CITADEL

We peered, poked, squinted, flipped, and enhanced the teaser image that WotC put out last week, and it turns out we got it right -- the next book is, indeed, Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel.

Wraparound cover art by Evyn Fong​

Through the mists of the Ethereal Plane shines the Radiant Citadel. Travelers from across the multiverse flock to this mysterious bastion to share their traditions, stories, and calls for heroes. A crossroads of wonders and adventures, the Radiant Citadel is the first step on the path to legend. Where will your journeys take you?

Journeys through the Radiant Citadel is a collection of thirteen short, stand-alone D&D adventures featuring challenges for character levels 1–14. Each adventure has ties to the Radiant Citadel, a magical city with connections to lands rich with excitement and danger, and each can be run by itself or as part of an ongoing campaign. Explore this rich and varied collection of adventures in magical lands.

• Thirteen new stand-alone adventures spanning levels 1 to 14, each with its own set of maps
• Introduces the Radiant Citadel, a new location on the Ethereal Plane that connects adventurers to richly detailed and distinct corners of the D&D multiverse
• Each adventure can be set in any existing D&D campaign setting or on worlds of your own design
• Introduces eleven new D&D monsters
• There’s a story for every adventuring party, from whimsical and light to dark and foreboding and everything in between

Slated for June 21st (update - I just got a press release which says it's June 21st "in North American stores"; I'm not sure what that means for the rest of us!), it's a 224-page adventure anthology featuring a floating city called the Radiant Citadel. The book is written entirely by people of colour, including Ajit George, who was the first person of Indian heritage to write Indian-inspired material for D&D (in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft). Around 50 POC writers were involved in total in various ways.

The Radiant Citadel is on the ethereal plane and is carved from the giant fossil of an unknown monster. A massive gemstone called the Royal Diamond sits at the core, surrounded by a bunch of smaller Concord Jewels, which are gateways to the Citadel's founding civilizations. DMs can link any world to the citadel by placing a Concord Jewel there.

The Citadel, unlike many D&D locations, is more of a sanctuary than a place of danger. The book's alternate cover features a Dawn Incarnate, a creature which is the embodiment of stories and cultures.

D&D 5E - Here's Radiant Citadel's press release

Dropped in my inbox a short while ago, if you want the official announcement. It's the same info as in the news article on the front page. Dungeons & Dragons Invites You to Explore the Radiant Citadel Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is a new collection of short adventures set in wondrous...

www.enworld.org

The adventures are as follows:

• Salted Legacy
• Written In Blood
• The Fiend of Hollow Mine
• Wages of Vice
• Sins of Our Elders
• Gold for Fools and Princes
• Trail of Destruction
• In the Mists of Manivarsha
• Between Tangled Roots
• Shadow of the Sun
• The Nightsea’s Succor
• Buried Dynasty
• Orchids of the Invisible Mountain

UPDATE -- the press release contains a list of some of the contributors: "Justice Ramin Arman, Dominique Dickey, Ajit A. George, Basheer Ghouse, Alastor Guzman, D. Fox Harrell, T.K. Johnson, Felice Tzehuei Kuan, Surena Marie, Mimi Mondal, Mario Ortegón, Miyuki Jane Pinckard, Pam Punzalan, Erin Roberts, Terry H. Romero, Stephanie Yoon, and many more."

Regular cover by Even Fong

Alternate Cover by Sija Hong​

 

[Parmandur]

You seem to be discussing the philosophy of existentialism and similar.

But the concept of consciousness is ancient, relating to breath, blood, light, and so on.

Phenomenology is pretty recent, but breaking the linkage between "conciousness" and "life" is reverting to the historical norm.

 

[Yaarel]

There is no proof in the real world that souls actually exist, but suffering is universal.

The word soul means consciousness. Heh, at least I know I am conscious. I assume you all are too. By definition we ARE souls.

If we create a kind of AI that possesses a seat of consciousness, then the AI too would be a soul.

 

[darjr]

The word soul means consciousness. Heh, at least I know I am conscious. I assume you all are too. By definition we ARE souls.

I stand with my soulless Barovian compatriots.

you can keep your ectoplasm

 

[Parmandur]

The word soul means consciousness. Heh, at least I know I am conscious. I assume you all are too. By definition we ARE souls.

When I sleep, I breath and live, but I am not throughly aware (conscire) of my surroundings.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

To the degree that this might be interesting for the D&D concept of "soul" for gaming purposes, Genesis 1.24:

Literally,

"And divinity said. The land must bring out the soul of an animal, (each) to its (own) kind."

וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, תּוֹצֵא הָאָרֶץ נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה לְמִינָהּ



For D&D too, animals have souls.

I view the D&D terms "soul" and "ki" to mean the same thing. Both imply the capacity of consciousness (including psionics) and physical motion.

The point of animism is, rocks and rivers are conscious minds (thus can potentially exert psionic influence).

There is a mysterious quality of the material plane that can entangle consciousness within the perspective of a material body. The body makes possible an individual consciousness (Hindu atman) that is distinct fom the infinite consciousness (Hindu brahman).

I think you have to separate what you understand by "having a soul" and what the Ravenloft authors intended by that. Because it's pretty clear that they did not intend that the soulless people should be incapable of suffering and not matter.

My take on it is that souls cannot originate in the Shadowfell. Any soul found there must have originated on another plane and become trapped. Thus, most of the population of the Shadowfell are shadow people, fashioned from the raw substance of the plane, rather like elementals (you don't see many elementals in the afterlife). They have minds and bodies capable of suffering, with the added tragedy of not knowing that they are not real people. By your definition of soul, that means they have one. But by the author's definition, they do not, because they do not have a part of their essence that can go to an afterlife.

 

[Azzy]

That really depends on what one defines as a soul: according to a more traditional and coherent definition of a "soul" (the form of the body) any moving, breathing organism with continuous existence has one by definition. If the inhabitants of Ravenloft have no "soul" that would mean then that they are not actually living organisms with a continuous existence, hence incapable of feeling or suffering.

But that definition isn't one that would be recognized by most people.

 

[Azzy]

The word soul means consciousness.

Nah.

 

[Parmandur]

But that definition isn't one that would be recognized by most people.

You'd probably be surprised: that is the definition used by the world's largest religion, and the largest American religous body. And it's not exclusively ao, either, it goes back several thousand years.

 

[Yaarel]

When I sleep, I breath and live, but I am not throughly aware (conscire) of my surroundings.

That is why the ancients associate sleep as a form of death.

 

[Parmandur]

That is why the ancients associate sleep as a form of death.

Poetically, not biologically.