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

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Those were after they were posted here and neither indicates the source. I want to confirm the source of the image. Did it actually appear on Fantasy Grounds website briefly? Or did somebody mock it up?

@LuisCarlos17f where did you get this image?

Seems like only @LuisCarlos17f can answer that, and they're not telling.

 

[Parmandur]

Seems like only @LuisCarlos17f can answer that, and they're not telling.

He seems to be Patient Zero here.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My source was a Spanish-languange blog. "el descanso del escriba", and this said the source was a twitter account, found by a mistake of Fantasy Ground.

* In a list of D&D demiplanes, in a web of Planescape, there was something like "the demiplane of the awe", something like the opposite of Ravenloft, as if it was been created by the producers of My Litle Pony. This could allow kidfriendly mash-up of forgotten Hasbro franchises, for example the moondreamers would be a group of gnomes who watch the zone to stop possible invasion from the realm of the nightmares.

 

[bedir than]

Looks like news-ish at 9a Pacific each day this week.

 

[Yaarel]

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).

The main link between the later Troll and the earlier Jotnar are the Risar. The earlier Jotnar included both the goodlooking Risar who personify certain mountain cliffs, and the hideous Thursar who personify dangerous icy features. Keep in mind, while some Jotnar reached giant size, most of the earlier Jotnar are human size. Where the Risar are in a sense spirits of the surface of the earth who wield magic, they came to roughly equate the British concepts of fairyfolk. The Scandinavian term Troll (literally meaning "enchanter") and the British term Fairy (literally meaning "fate" speaker) became roughly equivalent. Meanwhile the pan-Euro literature, accelerating from the 1300s onward, continued to influence the indigenous worldview.

As Troll, the earlier Risar and Thursar intermingled coming to be understood as members of the same Troll family. Thus various animistic personifications could appear in either beautiful versions or hideous versions. Meanwhile ugly ones could correlate with foreign Ogre and beautiful ones correlate with foreign Sidhe.

The later beautiful Troll such as Huldrefolk including the river and waterfall animism, are mainly remixes of the Risar mountain animism, but recall the various animistic Jotnar of earlier times.

The Dvergar as formations of rock and mud animism mainly merge into Troll. The blending is especially evident when only the earlier Dvergar could petrify in sunlight, but later various kinds of giant Troll could petrify in sunlight as well, sometimes permanently, sometimes temporarily during daytime. It is hard to not imagine a literal hybrid. The Dvergar are originally human size and humanlike in appearance, but German versions of short grotesque Dwarves also intermingled, thus likewise both blended into Troll of various appearances.

The Alfar seem to vanish because the indigenous culture equated these animistic sunray spirits with, and merged them into, the skyey Christian angels. Alfar experiences started to become angel experiences.

The resurrecting Baldr merged with the Christian concept of Christ, thus vanishes. But other skyey animisms, such as Odinn and Thorr, remain part of the later folklore. These earlier skyey animisms were already dangerous for humans to encounter personally, but the later stories lose sight of their positive natural aspects. Meanwhile, the Christian devil becomes part of the fairytales too, and stories about it and Odinn often seem interchangeable.

Generally, Christianity interpreted the Aesir sky animisms to be "gods", similar to German Wotan and so on, thus forbade them as idolatry. Christianity tended to demonize them, except for Baldr. But Christianity didnt really care about − or didnt really know what to do with − other natural traditions of animism. Thus the later Scandinavian experiences of Troll appear to maintain the aboriginal animistic sensibilities of prehistoric Scandanivians, largely intact.

 

[Parmandur]

Listen, I'm not saying that trolls, Elves and Fairies were all just misunderstood aliens...but could they have been, as ancient astronaut theorists believe???

 

[Parmandur]

Looks like news-ish at 9a Pacific each day this week.

Hubba hubba.

 

[Marandahir]

The main link between the later Troll and the earlier Jotnar are the Risar. The earlier Jotnar included both the goodlooking Risar who personify certain mountain cliffs, and the hideous Thursar who personify dangerous icy features. Keep in mind, while some Jotnar reached giant size, most of the earlier Jotnar are human size. Where the Risar are in a sense spirits of the surface of the earth who wield magic, they came to roughly equate the British concepts of fairyfolk. The Scandinavian term Troll (literally meaning "enchanter") and the British term Fairy (literally meaning "fate" speaker) became roughly equivalent. Meanwhile the pan-Euro literature, accelerating from the 1300s onward, continued to influence the indigenous worldview.

As Troll, the earlier Risar and Thursar intermingled coming to be understood as members of the same Troll family. Thus various animistic personifications could appear in either beautiful versions or hideous versions. Meanwhile ugly ones could correlate with foreign Ogre and beautiful ones correlate with foreign Sidhe.

The later beautiful Troll such as Huldrefolk including the river and waterfall animism, are mainly remixes of the Risar mountain animism, but recall the various animistic Jotnar of earlier times.

The Dvergar as formations of rock and mud animism mainly merge into Troll. The blending is especially evident when only the earlier Dvergar could petrify in sunlight, but later various kinds of giant Troll could petrify in sunlight as well, sometimes permanently, sometimes temporarily during daytime. It is hard to not imagine a literal hybrid. The Dvergar are originally human size and humanlike in appearance, but German versions of short grotesque Dwarves also intermingled, thus likewise both blended into Troll of various appearances.

The Alfar seem to vanish because the indigenous culture equated these animistic sunray spirits with, and merged them into, the skyey Christian angels. Alfar experiences started to become angel experiences.

The resurrecting Baldr merged with the Christian concept of Christ, thus vanishes. But other skyey animisms, such as Odinn and Thorr, remain part of the later folklore. These earlier skyey animisms were already dangerous for humans to encounter personally, but the later stories lose sight of their positive natural aspects. Meanwhile, the Christian devil becomes part of the fairytales too, and stories about it and Odinn often seem interchangeable.

Generally, Christianity interpreted the Aesir sky animisms to be "gods", similar to German Wotan and so on, thus forbade them as idolatry. Christianity tended to demonize them, except for Baldr. But Christianity didnt really care about − or didnt really know what to do with − other natural traditions of animism. Thus the later Scandinavian experiences of Troll appear to maintain the aboriginal animistic sensibilities of prehistoric Scandanivians, largely intact.

Yup! I'd note that in other regions, local deities only escaped demonization by the local monotheism of choice by becoming diminished into human heroes, while still retaining elements of their mythological personas. We see this in the Irish and Welsh traditions, where entities that retain all or most of the characteristics of the gods worship in older insular inscriptions and throughout the continental Celtic and Belgic domains are treated as Christian or at the very least ethical pre-Christian heroes fighting against giants and dragons and faeries and whatnot. And of course we see the incorporation of concepts like Wodenaz and the Wild Hunt into both the folkore of Halloween and Christmas. We see this phenomenon throughout Europe with the rise of Christianity, and we see a similar reaction to the old mythic stories in relation to the rise of Islam (those that don't get demonized get Sainted or the hero-folktale treatment).

But this isn't really just an Abrahamic religion thing to do; it's what most religions end up doing to their predecessor cultures. We can see how Zarathustranism does this with various RigVedic deities like Indra who are to this day worshipped by the related Hindu religions. We see how Buddhist sects have done this with various local religions. In Japan, it's unclear how much of their Shinto mythology is actually indigenous to the islands and how much were imports alongside Buddhism; the oldest Shinto texts post-date Buddhism in the Islands, and there are clear throughlines from Proto-Indo-European archetypes like the Chaoskampf of the Hero and the Dragon or the Dawn Maiden *Hausos to Susanoo and the Yamata no Orochi or the Dawn Goddess Uzume (herself even etymologically linked directly to Indic form Ushas; side-note that the Greek is Eos, the Roman is Aurora and the Germanic is Easter).

My point is that it's not so clear cut and as D&D writers, game masters, and players, we have the room to play in that limnal space and explore the lines of religion, mythology, hero stories, fairy tales, horror and weird fiction tropes. We're operating in that successor state. Heck, even the Marvel Cinematic Universe owes its existence to the Weird Fiction genre stories of the last century, when the lines between Sci-Fi and Fantasy were very much in doubt). This is our New Mythology, we can embrace it.

 

[Yaarel]

Listen, I'm not saying that trolls, Elves and Fairies were all just misunderstood aliens...but could they have been, as ancient astronaut theorists believe???

Heh think of it the other way around.

Humans have spiritual experience.

There is no difference between sightings of space aliens as aspects of our modern worldview, and the sightings of trolls and flying witches as aspects of the medieval worldview.

 

[Remathilis]

Giving the fact that WOTC strongly believe in crossing over DND and MTG, since we are at the third iteration, I suppose there is a real positive feedback from these products. But can you observe this? Do you see a large fan movement? Do you see a lot of people playing in this crossover settings? What is your perception about?

Oh, nothing personal about MTG/D&D crossovers, I own Theros and Ravnica. I'm just not interested in a Harry Potter magic academy.