The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: Chapter 2 -Hither

The fog that covers the land cannot hide the stench of the swamp or the corruption caused by the Hourglass Coven.

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The characters have finally reached the Feywild in this 5e Dungeons & Dragons adventure. From the broken Queen’s Way, they will look down upon a land shrouded in fog with the heavy stench of decay wafting up from down below. Hither is a land covered in a swamp and that is the way Bavlorna Blightstraw likes it.

Hither feels unclean as the characters make their way across it. Make sure to remind them that they are traipsing through thick mud or swimming in fetid water. Every place that they go is rundown or neglected. The only respite is on the sentient hill of Telemy (it gets weird here in the Feywild) or at the Inn at the End of the Road.

The chapter begins with a quick overview of Prismeer as a whole and the special rules that govern it. I used Sir Talavar to introduce the Rules of Conduct to the characters so they could use them to guide their actions moving forward. I printed out the rules for the players to have on hand at all times. Both you and the players should adhere to these rules unless otherwise stated. Everyone the characters meet follow the rules even the hags, though the hags like to bend the rules so that they can still get what they want.

The hardest part of this adventure is constantly conveying the weirdness of the Feywild to your players. The good news is that the adventure has plenty of encounters that can add to this disconcerting feeling.

Until the characters reach Downfall, the main antagonist of the early part of the adventure is Agdon Longscarf and his herangon bandits. The characters are introduced to this nemesis soon after they descend off of the Queen’s Way as they are threatened by herangon that were singing a song in tribute to their leader. Not only did I read the song lyrics to my players but I handed them the lyric sheet afterward. I wanted them well aware of who Agdon was well before they met him.

Once the characters reach Downfall, then the heart of the adventure is found. I played up the paranoia and the crazy constant succession of rulers in the Soggy Court. The bullywug heads on spikes talking defused what was a bit of a grisly scene, but was an excellent lesson in how strange and weird the feywild can get.

I have to say I am so impressed how combat is not a big focus in this campaign thus far. I can see some DMs and players not enjoying this campaign if they really enjoy combat. The groundwork is being laid for some rather epic fights where the players can plan their attack strategy well in advance, but for now they will have to deal with the hags and their minions in a non-violent way.

Witchlight continues to impress me with the storytelling. As the DM, it is labor-intensive to keep up with all of the moving parts, but it is gratifying to play them out. My more experienced players are really enjoying the adventure and my new players are learning that D&D is not all about the fighting and there are other tools in the toolbox other than a sword or a magic missile.

The characters’ first foray into Hither was very good. I believe I will have to revisit Hither in later parts of this adventure because their work here is not done yet. There are still more NPCs to meet and quests to be completed. I will have to do a review of the whole campaign once it has been completed, for now, know that Hither provides plenty of adventure and intrigue for the players and their characters to deal with as they make their way across it for the first time.

Resources

Map of Downfall - https://www.reddit.com/r/wildbeyondwitchlight/comments/q8liyh/downfall_80x74_map_high_res_version_in_comments/

I projected the map onto a large screen and zoomed to 313% which showed about a 40’ diameter of the map, which is how far the characters can see due to the fog in Downfall. This worked great to give a sort of claustrophobic feel to the map and kept the players from going straight to Bavlorna’s cottage.

I bought the miniatures of the NPCs that will travel with the party from Miniature Marketplace. The enemies bought as singles are rather expensive, but oddly enough the NPCs that join the party were rather cheap. Clapperclaw comes with both of his heads. I should have warned my players because one of them thought they had broken the miniature when they picked it up and the head fell off.

How it Played

We completed the chapter in roughly eight hours. I made a script that I loosely followed to get through the beginning half of the chapter. There were certain random encounters that I wanted to introduce the characters to during their first trek across this swampy land. These encounters included the Inn at the End of the Road, the Mud Merphits, and the Stream of Visions. The stream only makes sense during their first visit to Hither (they’ll be back to this boggy land).

Tuth’s ability to fly did allow the characters to rescue Sir Talavar without having to fight the snakes. Salamancer’s player guessed the mud mephits’ riddle to keep that encounter from erupting into a fight (the table exploded in laughter as soon as that happened – it was an awesome moment). By the time the characters reached Downfall, the only combats that the characters had were with the herangon bandits. The party sunk the boats of the herangon which thankfully silenced the bagpipes as the rabbits were more interested in keeping from drowning rather than playing. Agdon was defeated but not killed and became the Door Dash of Hither (not all enemies will meet a violent end).

For the Downfall portion of the adventure, I made a list of the main NPCs along with their main goal to keep track of the large cast of characters. I was worried that the players would start a fight with the bullywugs when they entered Downfall, but the players were quick to talk and not so fast to fight. Everyone that the characters met kept pushing them to go and talk to the king. The players (or more specifically Salamancer) decided to back Illig’s revolution to take over from Gollup the XIX.

Salamancer is like having a two-year-old in the campaign. Every time a new NPC is introduced to the party Salamancer’s player gets a huge grin on her face and starts asking a series of questions. I now look straight at her right after a new NPC is introduced.

The leveling up is fast and furious at the end of this adventure if you use the milestones provided in the book. The party will meet Bavlorna near the end of this section and will be moving on to Thither soon afterward. I have characters move up at the end of a session rather than doing it in the middle. So, I had the characters level up at the end of the session where they met Barlorna for the first time and will most likely move them up after their first session in Thither.

Eventually, the characters will have to take care of the Hourglass Coven, but it won’t be during their first visit to Hither. Bavlorna will have the characters running errands for her while the players try to discover what happened to Zybilna.

What I Changed

Nothing. I changed nothing.

I do want to talk about Bavlorna and the hags in general. If your players enter her cottage with the idea that they will have a fight, then they are going to have too much to deal with. Hags are a handful for higher-level parties and will be too much for a bunch of second-level characters. Bavlorna has a mission for the characters to steal a portrait of Skabatha from her sister’s lair. They have eight days to go to Thither, find the painting, figure out how to steal it, and return it to Bavlorna. I plan on having the stealing of the painting be the next milestone.

Don’t think of Witchlight as a straight line. The characters will go back and forth between the sections of the splintered realm of Prismeer. They will have to work with the hags before they can eventually defeat them. The characters will need to travel back and forth between the splinters to finally become powerful enough to fight the hags. They can also use their time gathering intel on the hags’ lairs along with any weaknesses that they have or what kind of schedule the hags keep. The party can also gather allies to help with the fight that will eventually come.

It won’t be possible to have the hags fight each other, but the party can use the animosity between the sisters of the Hourglass Coven to their advantage. A short-term alliance with one of the hags to cause problems for one of the other hags could be to the players’ advantage.

My Ratings

Ratings are not about quality, but quantity. A low number means very little or none of something, while a high number means that it is the main focus of the adventure.

Roleplaying: 8

There is still a heavy focus on role playing during the players’ first time through Hither. The bullywugs in Downfall are less about combat and more about the dialogues you can have with them.

Combat: 2

There is very little combat in this adventure and much of it can be short-circuited to bring it to a swift and non-deadly conclusion.

 Exploring: 6

There is much to see and a lot to learn while in Hither. Not the typical dungeon crawl, but plenty of doors to open and ground to survey.