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]

Per the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"A soul, Aristotle says, is “the actuality of a body that has life,” where life means the capacity for self-sustenance, growth, and reproduction. If one regards a living substance as a composite of matter and form, then the soul is the form of a natural—or, as Aristotle sometimes says, organic—body. An organic body is a body that has organs—that is to say, parts that have specific functions, such as the mouths of mammals and the roots of trees."

Aristotle - Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics | Britannica

Aristotle - Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics: Aristotle regarded psychology as a part of natural philosophy, and he wrote much about the philosophy of mind. This material appears in his ethical writings, in a systematic treatise on the nature of the soul (De anima), and in a number of minor monographs...

www.britannica.com

 

[Yaarel]

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.

The interpretation that shadowy mist form consciousnesses, creates the same ethically objectionable scenario as the Wall of the Faithless, where innocent souls suffer.

 

[Parmandur]

I wonder if the two Adventure-less Gazateers were intended not to have Adventures, it if the writers had deadline troubles and were only able to finish Gazateers? Or if they are more robust Gazateers on purpose, to allow for DM creation of material, as in the Ravenloft book.

 

[Scribe]

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

Well as I get older, that seems all kinds of wrong.

 

[Yaarel]

Poetically, not biologically.

We moderns call it poetry. Not the ancients.

For the ancients, that is how they understood the universe to function.

Sleep is a form of death, nonconsciousness.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Until the PCs come in hot like Navy Seal Bodhisattvas and free some souls from the cycle.

Strahds curse is awareness of the banal repetition that he can't escape, even in death.

now there is a character idea, would it be too much of a stereotype if it was a monk or should I go paladin?

 

[Yaarel]

Well as I get older, that seems all kinds of wrong.

Heh, dont be in too much of a hurry to sleep with your ancestors!

 

[Azzy]

People can use whatever nonstandard, theological, or philosophical definition of "soul" they'd like for personal use, but convincing me that the authors of Ravenloft were using that same definition is going to require effort.

 

[Parmandur]

People can use whatever nonstandard, theological, or philosophical definition of "soul" they'd like for personal use, but convincing me that the authors of Ravenloft were using that same definition is going to require effort.

Of course not, that's part of why their approach is incoherent. Invisible spirit juice is part of that bubblegum Americanism that forms the cultural backdrop of the writers, doesn't mean I need to be limited by their parochialism.

 

[Yaarel]

Per the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"A soul, Aristotle says, is “the actuality of a body that has life,” where life means the capacity for self-sustenance, growth, and reproduction. If one regards a living substance as a composite of matter and form, then the soul is the form of a natural—or, as Aristotle sometimes says, organic—body. An organic body is a body that has organs—that is to say, parts that have specific functions, such as the mouths of mammals and the roots of trees."

Yes, and this "life" is conscious life.