Sending my Party Up Against the Dungeon Boss (With Just a Short Rest)

 For the past few sessions, my D&D party (the one I DM) has been fighting their way through a laboratory where an evil biomancer has been committing terrible atrocities. This is set in Ravnica, and my arc-plot is that there's a conspiracy to convert Ravnica's massive population into Phyrexians, which the party is trying to stop.

Thus, the first really big dungeon of the campaign has them traveling into Teveshen Laboratories, a Simic facility that is run by the rogue merfolk biomancer Tiburnas Lo'Sogra. The party is level 10, and breached the facility, going from Simic Hybrids and Krases to now fighting true Phyrexian monsters (many are re-skins of things like Karrnathi Undead Soldiers and Banderhobbs, though a fair number are total homebrew creations.)

It's the most arduous march of dangers I've put any party through, and while they opted to take a short rest at the beginning of tonight's session, I'm actually a little worried whether it was enough (the Barbarian is out of Rages, for example.)

Having first gotten into D&D by watching Acquisitions Incorporated, I'm mostly used to giant fights that happen months apart, and so I've now started to understand (after only what, five years of DMing?) that you can increase the challenge by simply stringing fights together without any obvious time to rest. Players will burn through resources early on and be running on fumes later.

I actually have no idea how the boss fight will go, which will be where we pick up on our next game this Saturday (my games alternate Saturdays and Mondays each weekend to allow people with tough schedules to play) after a cliffhanger ending this time. I think some players have been very conservative, holding some big fireworks in reserve, while others are pretty spent.

There's also the chance that the boss, who doesn't have a huge amount of HP, might go down relatively quickly (though there are some environmental challenges that will give him a buffer.)

Naturally, I want the party to succeed, but I also feel it would be appropriate to force the Grave Cleric to burn a Revivify given how climactic this fight's supposed to be.

We'll see.

Demons, Alternate Realities, and the Shadowlands

Shadowlands brings in a massive expansion to the lore of the Warcraft cosmos. Not just a realm of darkness akin to D&D's Shadowfell, the Shadowlands are the vast and eternal plane of the afterlife - where all mortal souls, good or bad, go after they die.

(Note, some spoilers are contained within here, related to what we see in the leveling experience. I'll put a cut here just in case.)

The Eternals of Shadowlands

 If you haven't watched Afterlives: Bastion, do so. It's on YouTube. You have no excuse.

Ok, done?

The Shadowlands are truly a plural set of realities - notably, when you journey to different zones in the expansion, the flight path takes you back to Oribos and then off again through a sort of waygate that takes you to a place called "The In-Between" before you reach the realm of the Shadowlands you'd been going to.

The cosmology of the Shadowlands is very different from what we've seen in the Warcraft cosmos up to this point. The whole saga of Old Gods, the Titans, and the Burning Legion is, for now at least, set aside for us to deal with things that we'd never seen before - the Eternals, which are sort of embodiments of the various realms as well as their leaders.

The four leveling zones each have their own Eternals leading them. Bastion has the Archon, Maldraxxus has the (seemingly absent) Primus, Ardenweald has the Winter Queen, and Revendreth has Sire Denatrhius.

Arguably, the Jailor fills the same role for the Maw, and its possible that the Arbiter is sort of that for Oribos.

So let's go down them one-by-one.

The Archon is a sort of archangel who rules over Bastion. The term Archon dates back to ancient Athens, and was used as a title for leaders of the city-state, which is fitting given the generally Hellenistic naming conventions in Bastion (notably, a lot of Christian terminology is based in Greek, such as terms like evangelist, episcopal, and even "Christ" itself, which is based on the Greek word "Christos," which was their translation of the Hebrew "meshiak" - aka "messiah," meaning "anointed one." In fact, Jesus as a name is just a Hellenization of Yeshua, which is the original version of the name Joshua.)

Having not yet completed any covenant campaigns, I don't know exactly how things will turn out with these characters, but while my initial viewing of the first Afterlives short made me question if the Archon was hiding something by dismissing Devos' concerns about the Maw runes carved on Frostmourne, Taliesin & Evitel's great (as usual) breakdown of the cinematic pointed out that, really, the Archon was just telling Devos herself not to pursue the matter, not that she wasn't going to look into it at all (though saying "Devos, your concerns are noted. This matter will be pursued, but you must return to your duties" would have probably been the better thing to say).

So far, thus, the Archon seems a bit distant.

The brainwashing elements of Bastion are one that I really want to explore further - if it's truly the annihilation of any previous identity, there's definitely a bit of a secretly dystopian aspect to the heavenly realm - sure, we don't want to be burdened by the sorrows of the past, but I, for one, would really prefer to remember my loved ones in the next life, especially given that the existence of an afterlife ought to mean I can see those loved ones again. On the other hand, it's also implied that one's memories are still preserved, and that perhaps a Kyrian can revisit them, but with a safe distance between them and the trauma they suffered in life, being able to view it as a record, rather than reliving it as a memory.

The Archon doesn't play a huge role at least in the leveling quests. So let's move on to Maldraxxus.

The leader of Maldraxxus is a being known as the Primus. And he's totally missing, as far as we know. Where he has gone, I don't really know, but his coordinating hold over the five houses has clearly crumbled. Maldraxxus is in total disarray when you get there, and one senses that the strong hand of the Primus kept the place functional.

But you, the Maw Walker (get used to hearing that like you heard "Commander" in Warlords,) discover a rune blade left behind by the Primus, seemingly for you to put down the traitors of Maldraxxus and restore the Undying Army to its rightful place as the Shadowlands' defense force.

Maldraxxus is odd because while it's super gross and seems like a kind of terrible place to wind up, it's actually one of the "good" afterlives. This is the place where the eternal warriors wind up - basically, the most badass soldiers in life, those who are always up for a fight, are selected to become the defense force for the Shadowlands. And there are actually three familiar figures we encounter that are part of this afterlife from our journeys in Azeroth (well, and Outland.)

Bearing the strongest resemblance to the Scourge, it's hard to recontextualize the Maldraxxi as good guys (though given the drama going on, in fact most of the surviving ones are bad guys at this point) and so I really have to wonder what the Primus is like in person, and not as disembodied whispers from his giant skull-headed seat at one end of the zone (I assume the giant skull-face is a statue of him, and not the Primus himself.)

Ardenweald is ruled over by the Night Fae, and I think what's striking about Ardenweald is that it feels the least like an actual afterlife. Which is appropriate, as it's more of an "interlife." The whole point of Ardenweald is to let dead nature spirits recuperate and regenerate before they are reborn into the world. We know that Cenarius went here after Grom killed him, which is how he was able to come back in Cataclysm.

The Winter Queen is the leader of the Night Fae, and as far as I can tell, she's a leader that we can more or less just trust (which is shocking, given that she's explicitly identified as Fae.) Ardenweald is suffering a great deal from the Anima drought, which has forced them to actually let some of the groves where nature spirits regenerate in Wildseeds to wither and die permanently. Just as the zone itself has its resources stretched out over the realm, the problem you face trying to speak with the Winter Queen in the quests here is that she is also stretched too thin, appearing only for moments when you first have your audience with her - without enough time to talk about anything.

Finally, we come to Sire Denathrius. It should come as no surprise that Denathrius turns out to be a bad guy, given that we already know he's the final boss of the first raid. Revendreth is, itself, very different from the other realms we encounter. While the other three are theoretically good places to find yourself when you die (though again, I think I'm just very definitely not the personality that would be happy to wind up in Maldraxxus) Revendreth is explicitly the second-worst place to turn up in the Shadowlands.

Revendreth is basically purgatory - your last stop to try to atone before they dump you in the Maw for all eternity. The methods the Venthyr use are pretty draconian, hunting them through a spooky forest, locking them away in crypt-like chambers for centuries, and generally just making things miserable for them.

But the good Venthyr of this realm stress that the ultimate goal is rehabilitation. Anyone who is a Venthyr was first sent here, meaning everyone here lived a life of monstrous crimes - the scale of which suggest that even someone like Gul'dan might be sent here rather than directly to the Maw (T&E in that same linked video speculate that the way it's supposed to work is that absolutely no one is supposed to go directly to the Maw - that you only go there if the Venthyr can't drag you kicking and screaming to salvation.) It makes Uther's punishment of Arthas feel that much more unjust - given that Arthas, while a rotten bastard, is definitely not the worst person in the Warcraft cosmos (and his soullessness during his most heinous acts is one hell of an extenuating circumstance.)

Anyway, Sire Denathrius is actually the most personable and affable of the Eternals we meet during our questing, welcoming us to his realm and eagerly thanking us for our help - at least until we find out that he's been hoarding anima and thus probably working with the Jailor.

Thus, this is the most high-profile traitor we know of, and which also means that if we are to restore the Shadowlands to its proper order, we'll need to somehow replace him (Prince Renathal, who I think is very intentionally meant to seem like Alucard from Castlevania, is the obvious choice to do so.)

How long Denathrius has been betraying his purpose is a good question, but under him, the Venthyr have taken to torturing souls not to save them, but to drain every last drop of anima out of them, and also to just kind of get off on the sadism.

There's a region of Revendreth that introduces familiar cosmic forces in really interesting ways called the Ember Ward. Here, the Light (not just light, but The Light) beats down upon the earth, scorching it and draining the energy of any venthyr who wind up here - while they can't die from it, they do seem to be driven mad by it, not unlike the Wretched or Withered. The aversion to the Light is obviously a reference to the Venthyrs' similarities to vampires, but it also opens up new story possibilities for us to really figure out how all the new stuff of the Shadowlands fits into the existing Warcraft cosmos.

Denathrius based the Venthyr on his own form, even though he doesn't totally look like them, but I really wonder, then, what his origins are.

The very idea that these entities are called Eternals suggests that they have sort of always existed. But I wonder how true that is. I'm not the first to point out that Denathrius, and his Castle Nathria, and the gothic nature of Revendreth, evokes the Nathrezim, those particularly important demons also known as Dreadlords whose trafficking with the void and the Old Gods (not the Old Gods we're familiar with, but at the Titan world Telogrus) was what drove Sargeras to embark on his universe-culling Burning Crusade.

We know there's a planet called Nathreza, which would seem to be their homeworld (though I remember maybe an earlier theory that they were from Xorroth) but I also really wonder if they have anything to do with Revendreth and Sire Denathrius - either they could be escaped and twisted Venthyr or Stoneborn, or perhaps Denathrius was actually a Nathrezim who somehow got the job of running a realm of the Shadowlands.

Or maybe it's just a coincidence? But that would seem too easy.

Rather than going into the Jailor and the Arbiter, I think I want to touch briefly on (there's room for a whole other post in this topic) the connection between the Shadowlands, the Burning Legion, and the Scourge.

Up until the announcement of Shadowlands, our explanation for the Scourge was simple - just demonic magic, only with an icy blue vibe instead of a burning green one. We were told that Kil'jaeden turned Ner'zhul into the Lich King, and that was how we got the Scourge. Simple as that.

But while it is definitely new lore (which doesn't necessarily mean a retcon!) we're now discovering a whole other plane of reality from which the Scourge drew its power.

We knew from Blizzcon last year that the Scourge got its forces (or at least a lot of its tactics and ideas) from Maldraxxus, which makes sense given the abomination-like constructs, the virulent plagues, and such. But we're also now really learning that Frostmourne and the Armor of Domination (if that's what it was called - the Helmet seems to be the real operative part) have runes from the Maw, and we know that we're going to be crafting legendaries using that same magic (always us with the super-dangerous magic!)

The Jailor must have been aware, if not complicit, in this happening. But I also really wonder how Kil'jaeden pulled this off.

Kil'jaeden, while a formal mortal, by the time he made the Lich King, was one of the most powerful demons in existence, basically sharing a number two slot with Archimonde (or a number one slot if Sargeras never technically counted.) We're told that no one has ever in all of history escaped the Maw before we did, though I suspect we're going to find out that this isn't actually true.

Was being one of the most powerful demons in the universe enough to let Kil'jaeden journey to the Maw and take some its power to create the Scourge?

I feel like the implication is that even for Kil'jaeden, that'd be a real feat.

I mean, to what extent did the Burning Legion understand the Shadowlands?

Yeah, this is a whole other post. Better wrap this one up.

The Mists of Tirna Scithe

 What an evocative name for a dungeon!

Anyway, despite this being the third dungeon you're supposed to go through (it being the leveling dungeon for Ardenweald,) I wound up hitting this first after the Necrotic Wake and Plaguefall left my options for LFG (given that you can level alts through the zone in any order, I assume that subsequent level-ups will just have them scale - I'm not really sure why they can't just have level-scaling the first go around, and just force you to do the zones in the story order.)

This is a dungeon that will be polarizing, as it has puzzle-like elements that are definitely not straightforward the first go around, and are also prone to griefing if you have a jerk in the party.

The first segment is rather straight-forward - you fight your way through Drust that are trying to subvert things within the area, ultimately facing one of those tall tree-like beings with the Drust guy who is dominating it - getting the tree-dude down to 20% will cause him to become friendly and stun the boss for a little, before the boss reasserts control.

The second part is going to be the rough one. Much like the Lost Woods in Ocarina of Time, you're presented with "rooms" in a sort of maze with walls of mist. You have to go through the correct wall, or the whole party gets sent back to the beginning of the maze (though once you get a mist wall right, the way clears permanently, so you don't have to write down which is the right way or anything.)

In theory, you're supposed to find the wall with the symbol that has no match among the doors you're offered - you need to ride up to a little stump for the symbol to appear. There were one or two times I could have sworn I went through the door with the unique symbol and still got teleported back, but I could have just been mistaken.

Anyway, the second boss is a fight against a playful fairy, who among other things, occasionally makes clones of herself with those same symbols. And I've got to be honest, I could not figure out how to pick the correct clone, because each seemed to have a unique symbol (maybe there was another clue I was missing?)

The final wing has you fighting engorged Gorm-insects on a dried-out branches leading to the great tree stump where the final boss resides. The boss is relatively straightforward, with some adds and a shield you have to burst down to interrupt her big bad ability.

While, like most of Ardenweald, the dungeon is very pretty, I'm a little at a loss to explain why, exactly, I'm there. Yes, the Gorm-mother is feasting on the essence of a wild god from some other world, but at least in the leveling quests, the Drust are built up as this insidious danger but then don't have anyone like Gorak Tul to actually represent them with a real personality. We know they're invading from Thros - another realm of the Shadowlands that we visit in BFA - but I really hope we get more of their story, because at the moment it doesn't feel like they have any real connection to the Drust we met in Drustvar apart from aesthetic and the name.

While I haven't done either of the Revendreth dungeons, both has a final boss who plays a major role in the quests of the zone, which is something I think they should always strive for with dungeons. This felt a bit like a grab-bag of elements to the zone with little bearing on the zone's actual plot - or if it did have such a bearing, it wasn't really presented very well.

The Maw: The Most Hostile Zone in WoW

 I always found Icecrown special.

From the very start, when Wrath was in its preview phases, Blizzard talked about how Icecrown was going to be this very hostile environment. The Alliance and Horde wouldn't even be able to clear enough safe ground to form camps, and forcing the quest hubs for each faction to simply be flying airships, constantly fending off frostwyrms as well as one another.

The Argent Crusade has to fight hard to defend their fort that's outside the actual Icecrown valley itself, pushing forward just enough to hold a single tower inside the icy region itself. Meanwhile, the Ebon Blade is much more daring, taking control of the Shadow Hold deep in Scourge territory.

And the rest of the zone is just undead monsters and frigid ice.

Admittedly, this effect is lessened by the presence of the Argent Tournament grounds, which is explicitly designed as a giant middle finger to Arthas, as well as a means for sifting through the troops sent into Icecrown Citadel to find only the most elite forces (just sending all your troops is a really bad idea when fighting a foe that can raise any soldiers it kills to serve them.) The Tournament is probably the weakest part of the Wrath expansion, and the oddly jolly atmosphere there is seriously at odds with the oppressive mood of the rest of Icecrown.

The expansion-long buildup to the fight at Icecrown Citadel is something I don't think they've quite pulled off since. We haven't had a final raid loom above us for a whole expansion since then - with the Dragon Soul tucked away in the Caverns of Time (despite not really being a time travel dungeon,) Siege of Orgrimmar only really exposed in the final patch, Hellfire Citadel not accessible until the final patch (you do get the intro in Tanaan, but can't see the actual building until 6.2,) Antorus hidden across the cosmos throughout Legion, and Ny'alotha not even remotely locatable until the invasions in Uldum and the Vale begin (hm, it just occurred to me that the Vale of Eternal Blossoms is the only zone to have the entrance of two expansion-ending raids, though you could argue more one and a half.)

The only thing comparable would be the Black Temple in Shadowmoon Valley, though that wound up not being the final raid after Blizzard realized they'd released too much of BC too early. Shadowmoon did certainly have a similar "this is the scariest place in the expansion" feel to it.

All this is to say that the Maw, I think, borrows a lot from the design of Icecrown.

We don't know that the Maw will house the final raid of Shadowlands. Indeed, there's some indication that the raid that follows Castle Nathria will take place there. But let's talk about the experience of the zone itself.

I should note here that I'm not talking about the max-level version of the zone. Given the XP nerf, despite having completed the loremaster achievement and a number of side quests, my Death Knight is still only about a quarter of the way into level 58.

But during your leveling through that main quest line, you'll make three visits to the Maw. The first is probably the longest, and takes place right as you begin the story of the expansion - before you even get to Oribos. Next, you go there toward the end of the Maldraxxus storyline. Finally, as part of the Revendreth story, you go there once more, this time getting a sort of preview version of Torghast, the procedurally-generated solo dungeon.

The Maw, in terms of lore, is Hell. It's the place where souls that are deemed utterly irredeemable are sent. You have to be a really, really horrible person to earn this honor (at least that's how it's supposed to work. I think Arthas really should have gone to Revendreth instead, where terrible sinners are sent to atone for their crimes. The only person we've met that I think is absolutely in the Maw is Gul'dan - and I'm really curious to see whether there are two of him or just one.)

And the Maw doesn't feel like just some dangerous adventure location, either. It really feels like a place you should not be, and they reinforce this in two ways:

First, you cannot mount. No, not just flying mounts. You can't summon any sort of steed here. You're on foot. This makes every distance meaningful, and means that any of the monsters you come across need to be handled in some way - it's not practical to just run away in most circumstances.

The second is that nothing seems to drop loot. For all the monsters you slay, your reward is not gold or even vendor trash. Your sojourns into the Maw are to complete your mission and get the hell out of there.

There's a part of me that almost wants them to prevent you from even using a map there - one of the things that makes Dark Souls and Bloodborne feel dangerous is the sense that there's no map - you're just lost in this nightmare environment, and I think the Maw could work with something like that (but in all honesty, I think that most players would revolt at that, so oh well.)

The enemies you face there are generally walking suits of armor or hooded spirits - nothing has anything recognizable as a personality.

I don't think we've ever seen anything like this in WoW. Even Antoran Wastes, while the heart of the Burning Legion, still had a sense of functionality, of purpose, and that it might feel at least useful to the demons that inhabit it. The Maw just feels like a place of cruel torment and despair.

I am, of course, very eager to see what sort of activities one actually does here at max level - clearly there needs to be a hook to keep people coming. But I kind of love how horrific it feels - it really raises the stakes of the expansion.

What I Want to See in a Ravenloft Campaign Setting Book

 I know that we only just found out about Tasha's Cauldron of Everything in the past week, and frankly, there's a ton of different gaming stuff I'm excited about this fall (I'm trying not to think about how nervous I am about the state of the real world. I'd love to be able to safely and considerately go to other locations without a mask on next year!)

But maybe it's because of been testing out the Revendreth zone in the World of Warcraft: Shadowlands Beta or maybe just because I'm super excited about gothic horror stuff, but I'm actually getting pretty excited about the prospect of a Ravenloft book coming out for 5th Edition.

Technically, this would be the second such book, as the Curse of Strahd adventure is, of course, also set in Ravenloft - its Castle Ravenloft is, after all, the namesake of the broader setting.

Before we talk about what I'd like to see in the book, let me get into what the setting is.

The "shadow realm" in D&D has gone through multiple iterations. But in the 5th Edition version of the cosmology (and starting I believe in either 3rd or 4th edition) we have something called the Shadowfell - which I believe was canonically a merging of the Plane of Shadow with some other elements.

Essentially the dark and dreary mirror to the Feywild, where the Feywild is bright, colorful, and filled with energy and emotion, the Shadowfell is drained, depressed, grey, and bleak. While it's home to many monsters, the biggest danger of the Shadowfell is despair - the place sucks the energy and will from people who come there, and leaves them as anxious, depressed, nervous wrecks. Sometimes, a person's negative emotions can take on the form of Sorrowsworn: monsters that embody these types of despair.

The Shadowfell itself, like the Feywild, is a mirror dimension of the prime material plane - a mountain or major city will exist in different versions in each realm, but with different characters, appearances, and feels. For example, where in the material plane on the Forgotten Realms there is the city of Neverwinter, the Shadowfell as a dark reflection called Evernight.

However, that's not quite the Ravenloft setting.

Existing in a sort of foam of dimensional bubbles on the border of the Shadowfell are several realms called the Domains of Dread. Each is a self-contained land surrounded by a dense, impassible (for most) mist.

The Domains of Dread are ruled over by the Dark Powers - godlike but mysterious beings whose exact nature and form are anyone's guess. It is the Dark Powers who choose individuals to the damnation that is becoming a Dark Lord.

Each of the Domains is "ruled" by its Dark Lord, such as Strahd Von Zarovich does in Barovia. While these individuals are theoretically in charge of their lands, and have a great deal of power over them, the truth is that they are actually the realm's primary prisoner. These are the individuals deemed by the Dark Powers to be so evil that they must be locked away.

The Domains of Dread torment these Dark Lords, forcing them into endless cycles of obsession, violence, and frustrated hopes. For example, Strahd is on an obsessive quest to take the reincarnation of the woman he killed his brother over, but even if he were to get her, he would only wind up killing her and starting the cycle anew.

Where adventurers come in is that the Mists sometimes drag outsiders into the Domains, and the goal of any adventurer who arrives there is to fight their way out by slaying the Dark Lord, thus getting a reprieve from the Mists.

The Curse of Strahd adventure more or less functions on that principle, but earlier editions placed the various demiplanes in geographical connections to one another, and allowed for the various Dark Lords to war and feud with one another.

In addition to the Dark Powers, there is a culture of humans known as the Vistani who are able to travel between the Mists, and are not bound by the curses that hold other inhabitants in these realms.

Ravenloft is not only potent for the danger and classic monsters it contains, but it also presents a pretty obvious campaign structure, at least before you get into inter-Dark Lord disputes.

The UA with the College of Spirits Bard and Undead Patron for Warlocks, if it's not simply for Tasha's, seems to suggest that we could get a Ravenloft campaign setting book. I'm all for this, and I think it would be a slam dunk on WotC's part, given how popular Curse of Strahd is.

So what would we like to see?

First things first, I'd like to talk about the Vistani.

The Vistani are a very clear fantasy counterpart culture for the Romani people - to the extent that in the copy of Curse of Strahd I have, they're literally referred to as "gypsies," which is a term is pretty outdated and should be retired. The Romani people have historically been oppressed and targeted with violence throughout history, and much of this treatment has been justified by legends of dark magic and curses.

Indeed, the connection between the "exoticism" of the Romani and the tropes of Gothic horror is the reason the Vistani exist in the first place, which makes it difficult to excise the stereotype from the setting altogether. As someone of Jewish ancestry whose grandparents survived the Holocaust, I know that I'd be pretty upset if some fantasy game were using "Jew magic" as a game mechanic centered around some group of people you can't really trust. (The use of Golems as a type of monster is something I don't feel quite as upset about, though I know there are some people do.)

I think the idea of a group of people who are exempted from the trapping nature of the Mists is a potent one for a fantasy setting. Indeed, I don't think basing fantasy cultures on real-world cultures is inherently wrong. But I do think that if you're going to base the Vistani on the Romani, you need to do your best to emphasize their humanity - we need to see that their culture is a rich and varied one, and that their culture itself is not some source of evil. At the very least, I'd make sure you had some Romani writers in the creative process to work on the project, as a member of a culture will be far better at identifying problematic characterizations than one who isn't a member.

Moving on:

Naturally, I'd love to see the two subclasses previewed in Unearthed Arcana featured in this hypothetical book as well. While there are some balancing issues to address (I really want to roll 2d10 for every eldritch blast hit, but I realize that might just be OP) I think the overall structure of both subclasses is phenomenally good. Plus, I love the idea of playing a game in which your demiplane's Dark Lord is your Warlock Patron.

Next, I obviously want a great deal of lore for the Demiplanes. Barovia is great, and makes for a good setting, but you can already explore that in Curse of Strahd. What I want is a broader view of not just other realms, but also details on how the realms are constructed so that DMs can homebrew their own demiplanes and Dark Lords.

Given its basis in Gothic Horror rather than Tolkienesque fantasy, Ravenloft tends to have mostly human characters. I think that's fine (I think people are too down on playing humans in fantasy games) but I had the following thought:

Maybe, either as wholly separate races, or as some kind of variant option, you could give people "monstrous character options." This would allow for player characters who are somehow related to the classic gothic horror monsters. For example, a player could be a Dhampir - a kind of half-vampire (one version of how they're created is when a vampire turns a woman who is pregnant, the baby is born with vampire-like qualities, but without its weaknesses.) This would also be a good opportunity to make more comprehensive rules on players as werewolves and other lycanthropes - perhaps creating new rules for resisting the curse's violent tendencies. To round things out, I'd also have some kind of ghostly variant - one option is that your character is actually a revenant (something they played with in other UAs,) or perhaps take the idea of being a "haunted one" more literally - like you've got a ghost that is haunting you.

Like most campaign setting books, we'd also want a big bestiary. In particular, I'd want some higher-CR monsters. I've found that genuinely scaring players when they're past level 8 or 9 is really tough. I'd love to have a vampire villain who can hold their own against a group of tier 3 characters. I also have a homebrew version of werewolves that really, truly, can only be killed with silver weapons or 6th or higher level spells, which I think could make them a lot scarier (and force players to regroup and rethink strategies.) Also, please give us some gargoyle variants!

Speaking of scaring players: I'd love to have a chapter dedicated to enhancing the scariness of your adventures - details and such to make things feel spookier. Among them, I think that some detailed rules on curses would be great - the spell Bestow Curse does have a special note that other curses can be inflicted, but it's sort of an open door for DMs. I'd love to have a section on building compelling and interesting curses (and perhaps giving them a way to persist beyond the simple use of a 3rd level spell to get rid of them.)

On the heroic side of things, I'd also maybe look into ways to incorporate some monster-hunting gear. I know there are already rules for doing things like silvering weapons, but it might be fun to create loot more in line with the 19th century feel of the gothic horror setting - like broader details for the use of firearms (gotta have those silver bullets when the werewolves come!)

Old-school D&D fans have not gotten a ton of classic D&D setting books in 5th Edition, and I think Ravenloft would both be very popular among veterans as well as new players.

Covenant Abilities: Death Knight Perspective

 As you level up in Shadowlands, you'll earn the various covenant abilities while running through the four leveling zones, allowing you to try them out before you make a pick.

You'll get two abilities in each covenant, one that is specific to your class, and another that everyone of the covenant will have access to. You generally get the class-specific one first, which you can figure out how to work into your rotation.

I've been leveling up my Death Knight (I think I've realized that I often level him up first in a Beta, but let my Paladin be the first in the live game) and thus have gained access to the DK abilities.

First, a note on abilities, which could be its own post: Remember when the transition from Mists of Pandaria to Warlords of Draenor saw abilities pruned? Well, say goodbye to empty slots on your action bars! I generally run with the full action bar and the one above it keybound to 1 through =, and then the row above is that with a shift, and those 24 aren't quite enough for every ability you might need quick access to in combat. While it's very exciting to have things like Raise Dead back as a Frost or Blood DK, it's also a bit overwhelming. Between Pillar of Frost, Empower Rune Weapon, Lichborne, Icebound Fortitude, Frostwyrm's Fury, Death Pact, Anti-Magic Shell, and Anti-Magic Zone, there are a lot of good damage cooldowns and survival cooldowns to make it through tough fights, but you're really going to need some space for them.

And that's on top of two new abilities you get for your covenant.

So let's go through them:

Kyrians:

DK-Specific One: Shackle the Unworthy:

This is a rather simple fire-and-forget ability that deals damage over time to the target and reduces the damage they deal to you. Spending runes while it's on the target reduces the cooldown, so if you have enough haste, you can keep this up nearly all the time.

General: Summon Steward:

You get to summon one of the little owl-people, who brings you essentially three healing potions and can play music for you. I suspect the music might help with some treasure/puzzles in Bastion, though I haven't found a use for it.

Necrolords:

DK-Specific One: Abomination Limb:

This is a 2-mintue cooldown that does damage to enemies near you and pulls them to within melee range. The animation here is more ethereal, so it doesn't actually look like you've got a third arm sprouting from your back, which is... a little disappointing.

General: Fleshcraft:

A decently useful soloing ability, you channel this for a second and get a damage-absorption shield that lasts until it's expended or for the two minutes it takes for the ability to cool down. Something you'll basically want to always have up if you can. The shield is increased if you do this near fallen foes.

Night Fae:

DK-Specific One: Death's Due:

This actually replaces your Death and Decay, and reduces damage dealt by enemies in the area while increasing your Strength, and allows some abilities to hit multiple targets (though I don't know if that's just replicating D&D's boost to Scourge Strike and Heart Strike.) Frost DKs do have Death and Decay once more, in addition to Remorseless Winter, so you'll be doubling up on AoE abilities. (I don't know how effective it'll be to cast Death and Decay itself as a Frost DK, but I imagine if you go Night Fae, this should be tuned to be worth it.)

General: Soulshape:

This is a bit like a Shaman's Ghost Wolf, transforming into an ethereal fox (I think you get other animal shapes if you work with the covenant,) granting 50% increased movement speed, and then getting a pretty quick cooldown (only 5 seconds or so) to let you teleport 15 yards forward (using other abilities causes you to drop the form. A decent option for classes without much in the way of mobility.

Venthyr:

DK-Specific: Swarming Mist:

A bit like Abomination Limb, this causes an AoE of damage around you, though it's on a shorter cooldown. You also get an increased dodge chance (10%) and every time it deals damage you get 15 runic power, making this a very solid defensive cooldown - I've often used it when I'm surrounded by bad guys and spammed Death Strike.

General: Door of Shadows:

This lets you target an area within range and, after a short cast, teleport there. While I don't know how effective this will be in combat (the cast time makes it only a little faster than just running) this will let you reach places that you couldn't otherwise, and I'm sure clever use could be very helpful in PvP and other situations in which your foes aren't going to be able to immediately react to your new position.

Right now, my plan is to base my covenant choices on what seems right for the character, rather than mechanical reasons. A such, I think my DK will probably go with the Venthyr - it doesn't hurt that Swarming Mist is maybe my favorite of the DK abilities.

Revendreth Impressions

 The final leveling zone (at least on your first playthrough) is Revendreth, the purgatorial gothic realm of vampire-like Venthyr.

Overall, I think this zone wins for story and artistic design (though Ardenweald comes pretty close in that second category.) You're brought into Revendreth and, naturally, mistaken for one of the sinful souls who come here. Revendreth is the purgatory of the Shadowlands, a place where horrible people who still have some potential for redemption go. The sins are purged from them through various... basically torture and torment.

The vibe here is 100% gothic horror, with dark forests, gothic architecture, and a sort of aristocratic sensibility among the Venthyr, who have weird little misshapen servants as well as gargoyle-like Stoneborn who act as soldiers.

You discover fairly early on that there's a rebellion going on, led by a Prince Renathal, and many of your early quests invovle a fight against the rebellion. Naturally, there's a twist to this, as you discover that Sire Denathrius is actually in league with the Jailer, and you have to go to the Maw to rescue Renathal and some other allies (giving you your first journey into Torghast.)

It was in this zone that I really started to feel the disempowerment of replacing epics with green leveling gear, though I also think that by speeding through the story quests, I'm a little underleveled for the content I'm doing - basically, I recommend doing your leveling dungeons and some side quests. The quests in Revendreth end with a scenario that is pretty brutal if you're underpowered, which also sadly ends with a cutscene that even the beta-specific "Captain Exposition" was broken for.

Still, having gotten the Shadowlands Loremaster achievement, I'm still only about halfway through level 57, which I suspect means that either the XP tuning needs work or they really want you to stop and smell the roses a bit to do side quests.

Revendreth naturally feels like a build-up to the expansion's first raid: Castle Nathria, which literally looms large over the entire zone.

I did feel that this zone felt a bit more interesting in terms of mechanics - for example, I figured out a little late that you could use the Venthyr all-classes ability to reach high-up platforms, which opened up some really interesting new possibilities for treasure-hunting - though as a combat ability, I think it lacks somewhat (that beings said, I think that's true for most of the all-class covenant abilities.)

Revendreth, I think, also had the most memorable characters of any of the zones, with a real feeling that you were building a group of allies. My favorite is the Mad Duke Theotar, with his obsession with tea, who is a soulbind option for those in the Venthyr covenant.

There was also a quest in which you were supposed to forge a letter, and because my Death Knight has Inscription, I got additional options for what to write (I don't think they actually make any difference, as it's implied that the person you're forging it for can't read, but still!)

Ardenweald Impressions

 The progression of zones in Shadowlands for your first playthrough is very clearly built along an alternating pattern - "pretty" and "scary." Bastion is heavenly, pristine (well, mostly) and seems like a pretty good place to turn up (I don't know about abandoning my identity, but if your only duty is to go fetch the souls of the dead and then hang out there, it doesn't seem like the worst gig.) And then Maldraxxus is a disgusting, fetid eternal battlefield that seems to be literally made of flesh, which feels like a punishment? Though I guess it gives people who are really obsessed with the glory of combat (living up to the ideals of Orcish culture, for instance) a somewhat Valhalla-like afterlife (though not quite Valhalla, as Odyn really built that - speaking of whom, I haven't yet seen that fire-beareded bastard... hm.)

After the grossness that is Maldraxxus, your next stop is Ardenweald, which swings far back in the pretty direction.

Think of Warlords' version of Shadowmoon Valley, the nicer, southern parts of Val'sharah, and maybe a hint of pre-fire Teldrassil and you'll get the general vibe of Ardenweald. This is a land of otherworldly but natural beauty, where it's eternally a sort of pleasant night time. The locals here are the Night Fae, (which is the name for the covenant.)

Following the revelations of Maldraxxus, the "clue" that sends you here is not quite as direct as it was for Bastion or Maldraxxus - you're there more or less because there's a lot of anima that flows through Ardenweald, and if the folks in Oribos need some, they want to go here for it.

However, as it turns out, Ardenweald is also in crisis, and they've been forced to allow parts of their realm - and the Wildseeds that house nature spirits awaiting rebirth - wither away.

Over the course of the zone, you fight against a group of Night Fae who have taken to wearing odd masks, possessed by some power that is draining the anima from the forests. As a player character who's paying attention, the "dark magic" that the bad guys are using is very familiar to anyone who journeyed through Drustvar. Similarly, it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to guess at the identity of a particular spirit who is afflicted by some kind of nightmare (though the "reveal" such as it is, has you reliving one of the most heartbreaking parts of Legion, but from a flipped perspective.)

There is definitely a sense of anticlimax here, as there is in all the zones, given that each has a story that awaits the Covenant Campaign to see its completion. While I think this should make for some great max-level content, it does make me wonder how well you'll be able to piece together the full story for each zone on a single character. I'm naturally planning to play several characters (see the name of the blog) but if my Paladin goes with the Kyrian (and you bet your bottom dollar that I'm eager to see where Uther's story goes,) it'll be weird not to see how stories conclude in the other zones until I've done them on my other characters.

Ardenweald is a zone I could really imagine spending a lot of time in (to be honest, the only one that I'm not really crazy about is Maldraxxus... I don't know, I was kind of hoping for more, like, endless storms and lightning.)

I have yet to do any of the dungeons, though through the main campaign quests I rather easily got directed to do the Necrotic Wake in Bastion and Plaguefall in Maldraxxus. I suspect that The Mists of Tirna Scithe is the leveling dungeon for Ardenweald, but unless I just missed some obvious quest marker, I didn't see it.

I'm now actually about halfway through Revendreth (maybe slightly more) and I'll have impressions about that when I'm done (overall good, though.)

I will say that while the zones are generally pretty cool, I'm not quite blown away by them as I was in, say, Legion. Now granted, we're missing a lot of cutscenes that could act as punctuation - there are epic moments that just aren't implemented yet.

But structurally, I think it wasn't until I got to Revendreth that I started to see some really interesting environmental concepts and variations on quest mechanics. I mean, this is still WoW, and you're still going to have to collect your twelve bear asses now and again.

I'm really curious to see how the pacing will feel on alts. Right now, I'm charging through the main "campaign" quests, which is basically one solid quest line through the entire expansion. 4/7 of the Revendreth story chapters completed, I'm now level 57, so I suspect that unless those last three chapters are each worth a whole level, the expectation will be that you do some side quests (I also haven't run any dungeons, which could be what makes up for it.)

Souls, the Light, Arthas' Culpability, and Uther's Greatest Sin

 Afterlives: Bastion dropped today, and boy is it a doozy.

The animated shorts that have been coming with each expansion since Mists of Pandaria are a showcase of Blizzard storytelling - while the game does a pretty good job of showing us what happens (though sometimes major events are only heard about) the Blizzard cinematic team is often seen as their MVPs, giving the Warcraft cosmos a truly epic feel.

We knew that Uther would be a soul we encountered in Bastion - while theoretically every dead NPC in the Warcraft cosmos (give or take those who went elsewhere than the Shadowlands after death - I don't know where Kil'jaeden is, for example, or even if he still is anywhere) should be there somewhere, we knew that each of the four major leveling zones we'd go to would have familiar faces, and as the classically heavenly realm for those whose life was dedicated to selfless duty, it made sense for Uther to wind up in Bastion.

But, as we see in Afterlives: Bastion, there's a hitch.

Uther dedicated himself to the Light. He was the most righteous and selfless figure in the Alliance, and was the very first of the Knights of the Silver Hand. As a paladin, he dedicated himself to the protection of his people, but also to the cause of Justice. For Uther, he felt that good could only be protected if evil was punished, and retribution was part of the equation of justice.

As the original paladin of the Silver Hand, it made sense for him to train Arthas Menethil in the ways of the Holy Light - the prospect of empowering a future king from a family known for its mercy and even-handedness (after all, it had been Arthas' father who proposed keeping the Orcs alive, rather than slaughtering them en masse) made total sense, and Arthas was a young man of heroic tendencies and righteous conviction.

Interesting, then, that all that was shattered due to the Scourge, which we now know to be bound to the power of the Maw.

The Scourge was a threat the likes of which no one had faced in ten thousand years. The Horde was, certainly, a deadly foe, but they were still people that could be defeated and imprisoned. The Horde was misguided, and empowered by demonic magic, but as a people, they were not irredeemable. Yet the Scourge was simultaneously insidious and outrageous. It was spread like a plague, hidden in tainted food, and the very people fighting it could be raised in its service - basically, any battle lost against it meant a double victory for the Scourge.

Uther had instilled in Arthas a notion of justice - that evil called for retribution. It was not merely enough to safeguard the innocent. A Paladin's job was to destroy the wicked.

And it was that lesson that was Arthas' downfall.

Arthas' first really questionable act was the Culling of Stratholme, in which he slew innocent people in an attempt to prevent them from rising as Scourge. This act was too far for Uther, but there was a kind of cold practicality that, while not very righteous, was not necessarily the wrong call - perhaps, had Arthas not fallen to darkness, the effects of the Culling might have saved Lordaeron.

Indeed, Arthas' act of culling Stratholme might have ended the Scourge in Lordaeron, at least for a time. But he insisted on following Mal'ganis' taunts and journeying to Northrend. He could not let Mal'ganis escape justice - that was what Uther had taught him.

Arthas' soul was torn from him when he took up Frostmourne, and we saw how he lost any sense of empathy or remorse. The Lich King was able to whisper to him, push him toward murder. We may not really understand how much of Arthas' act of patricide was directly commanded by the Lich King and how much it was something inherent to him, but either way, the Arthas that committed that act, and all the great sins that followed, was at best, only a part of him.

For nearly a decade, Arthas ruled the Scourge as Lich King. And countless heinous acts were committed in his name and at his command.

But this was the broken Arthas - the Arthas that had torn out his own heart to free himself from any vestige of a conscience. It was the broken Arthas who slew his father, and then, in an act of symbolic patricide, also slew Uther.

As we saw, Frostmourne did not only claim his life, but it wounded his soul. A part of it was torn away, absorbed by the blade. Meaning that what arrived in Bastion was, in fact, a broken Uther.

Uther had not expected Bastion. As Light-like as Bastion seems, it wasn't quite the same. He had meant to continue his service, fighting evil and dispensing justice. But to simply become some ferryman for the dead - this didn't seem right to him.

When Arthas finally fell at the top of Icecrown Citadel, Frostmourne was shattered. We don't know precisely what happened to his soul - did it return to his body? Was he made whole again, just before his life slipped away?

And if that's the case, the man who died at the top of that pillar of ice was not purely the evil death knight who had slaughtered his people, his father, and Uther. It was also the idealistic, misguided, but ultimately well-intentioned avenger of the Light. It was the boy who had been taught by the most righteous man in the world that Justice Demands Retribution.

Devos, moved by what Uther saw, was also frustrated by the inaction of the Archon. She hastily empowered Uther before he was ready, giving him the strength and wings of the Kyrian. And she pushed him to take his vengeance.

Claiming Arthas' soul at the moment of his death, Devos called Uther to toss Arthas directly into the Maw - no judgment, no analysis, and no time to think over what they were doing.

Pushed to this deed by Devos, and missing a part of his soul - perhaps the part of his soul capable of forgiveness - Uther dropped Arthas' soul into the Maw, calling it Justice.

But is this justice? Was Arthas truly irredeemable? Isn't it possible that Arthas' soul had just moments earlier escaped the prison that was Frostmourne, only to be condemned to the most hellish realm of the Shadowlands?

Matters of afterlife retribution are generally left to gods, but the Warcraft cosmos is one where it's unlikely there is any true arbiter of good and evil - if there is one, it might be the Arbiter, though the presence of Uther in Bastion seems like a mistake. It's pretty clear that Devos and Uther did not have the moral authority to condemn Arthas.

And was this breach, taking the Light's Justice into his own hands, the greatest sin Uther has ever committed? Is he, now, after a life of such righteousness, tainted by evil? Indeed, his soul was wounded before this act. Could that be what drove him to take this action? And can his soul be healed?

Let's talk about the Light.

The Shadowlands exist outside the Light and the Void, we think. All beings in the Shadowlands - beautiful and good or creepy and maybe evil - use death magic, powered by anima.

Followers of the Light look to be taken into the Light after death, much as someone in our world who believes in something like heaven expects to be welcomed into holy glory. Bastion is... sort of like that, but it's certainly not what Uther had in mind.

We've seen someone taken into the Light at death - Crusader Bridenbrad, who was literally carried up into the Light by A'dal. Does this act mean that Bridenbrad's soul never went to the Shadowlands? Did he become a Naaru, or perhaps did he simply merge with the Light, his own individual identity extinguished while his consciousness become one with the light of the universe?

Become one with the Light would mean that one could still serve the purpose of the Light - if you are there when a paladin channels the light to smite a wicked foe, you might still feel you are doing your holy work, just in a different way. I imagine Uther thought this would be his fate.

As Uther dies, he prays to the Light to save his soul.

Did the Light answer?

We don't know precisely what happens to a soul when Frostmourne slays the body, except in the case of Uther. In the short, we see as it is split in two, a golden half is sucked into Frostmourne while a ghostly blue one is taken up by the Kyrians.

Is it possible that the Light is what split it?

In his prayer, when he called upon the Light, did he initiate a tug-of-war between the Light and the evil magic of Frostmourne? And was the result a division of his soul?

The Light, as we know, generally serves righteous purposes, but also doesn't seem to be a really conscious entity itself - it can be wielded through loopholes and even a Naaru can engage in an evil act so long as it thinks it is doing the right thing (as X'era did when she tried to brainwash/dominate Illidan.) So doesn't it seem possible that Uther called upon its power, and the power wound up doing something very bad to him?

Uther's soul being damaged by Frostmourne is something I can totally accept as part of the lore, but that splitting might have been the doing of the Light.

And in so doing, it might have robbed Uther of his better moral judgment - he was left his righteous anger, but what of his capacity for mercy and forgiveness?

I have not yet played through any of the covenant campaigns. I'm stuck on a bugged quest roughly half or two thirds of the way through Ardenweald that I need to complete to continue the full story (I'm so eager to see Revendreth, guys). But I have the following predictions for future plots in this expansion.

I think we're going to find some way to redeem Uther, and reckon with his affiliation with the Forsworn. I think we might have to recover the piece of his soul that Frostmourne tore out, and I think that by merging Uther with his other half, literally making him whole, we'll give him the peace he deserves.

I think that we're going to find Arthas in the Maw, and I think we're going to have to find him the afterlife he actually deserves (maybe Revendreth?)

And I think there's no way we just reset the Shadowlands to the way things worked before.

Shadowlands Releases October 27th! Also, Afterlives: Bastion, Also, Some TFH on the Implications of Afterlives: Bastion

 Ho. Ly. Shit.

First off, let's get this out of the way: the expansion drops in exactly two months. That means we're likely to get the pre-patch within the next couple weeks or so. Very exciting, yes yes. But let's talk about this short, which I assume you just watched.

Holy Crap, guys.

Never did I expect myself to be on Arthas' side when it comes to his relationship with Uther. But we got something really, really big.

So, here's the thing about Bastion. The Kyrian are the psychopomps of the Shadowlands. A psychopomp is a spirit or deity whose role it is to take the spirits (in Greek: psyche) to the afterlife. Hermes and Charon could be considered these in Classical Myth, the Valkyries in Norse myth, and you could argue kinda sorta St. Peter in his conception as the gatekeeper of Heaven and Hell in Christian belief.

Mortal souls arrive in Bastion if they lived a selfless life of duty. Beginning as aspirants, they gradually purge their memories and old identities to take on a new life as a Kyrian - eventually ascending with angelic wings to perform their role.

Devos is one of the highest-ranking and oldest Kyrian, and when Uther the Lightbringer shows up in Bastion, she takes a special interest in him.

Uther, meanwhile, is confused as to why he's there. Surely he was meant to go to the Light, not this admittedly pretty realm. And he's stewing in rage and sorrow over what Arthas has done. For all his beatific serenity, Uther does feel anger at injustice, and Arthas' actions were the greatest crime and betrayal he'd ever witnessed.

So Uther resists the purging process, and furthermore, he feels that the Kyrian are mistaken if they think that evil is truly sealed away in the Maw. Despite it not being her job to help new aspirants (it's funny to think that Uther is just another poor schmuck in Bastion) Devos takes a special interest in Uther. She begins to question whether he was really sent to the correct afterlife - which is a big no-no in perfect heaven world.

When she finally coaxes Uther's memory from him, she discovers that the blade that he was killed with (Frostmourne) was, in fact, inscribed with runes from the Maw. That evil has escaped it, and is running rampant on Azeroth. Furthermore, she finds that even Uther's soul is wounded by the blade - it looks as if it was torn in two, with part of it trapped in the sword and part of it ascending (which explains how we were able to interact with him in Wrath - it also might explain why this version of Uther lacks that beatific, all-forgiving quality. Maybe it was lost to Frostmourne.)

Telling the Archon (the leader of the Kyrian) that this whole system is broken and flawed, Devos is spurned, and so instead she decides that she needs to make Uther an ally, giving him wings ahead of time and then traveling to Icecrown Citadel... at the moment we strike Arthas down.

As Arthas lies dying on the top of the Citadel, it is Devos and Uther who take his soul to the Shadowlands.

And they bypass the Arbiter, flying directly over the Maw, where Uther chucks Arthas' soul in there - no trial, no evaluation. Just damnation for all eternity.

Is it Justice?

Because here's the thing about Arthas. He's one of the greatest monsters ever to exist on Azeroth. But to what extent was he actually to blame? How much agency did he have?

Can he be held to account for things he did after Frostmourne ripped his soul away? After all, it's his soul that is being punished, not the body that committed those acts. Arthas' soul was present when he purged Stratholme, when he fought his way to Northrend and betrayed a group of mercenaries he'd hired - blaming them for burning his ships, which he had done to prevent them from being recalled to Lordaeron.

But he did not know what Frostmourne would mean for him when he took it up. Arthas was obsessed with vengeance and retribution, but surely such sins are the kind of thing Revendreth could iron out of a soul. The truly monstrous, apocalyptic vision he had did not come until Frostmourne had taken his soul.

So did he really deserve the Maw?

I think that very few people we've met in the Warcraft story actually deserve that fate. Gul'dan is the only one I'm certain of (I've always wondered if the reason that his village's chieftain hated him wasn't because he was weak, but because he could detect the evil lurking beneath the surface). Maybe Cho'gall as well.

But this makes Uther's actions - condemning Arthas without respecting the (admittedly flawed) authority who actually makes those decisions - a seriously problematic act.

And hey... isn't it shortly after that that Sylvanas first made contact with the Jailer?

We might have stumbled onto something here. Did Uther tossing Arthas into the Maw break death?

We know of two individuals who died relatively recently and are going to be showing up in Shadowlands. Lady Vashjj and Kael'thas Sunstrider are found in Maldraxxus and Revendreth, respectively. Both died pretty close to one another - Vashjj in Serpentshirne Cavern during BC, and Kael'thas in Magister's Terrace, also during BC, which just so happens to have been the expansion before Wrath of the Lich King.

Could Uther's act, defying the system of the Shadowlands, have been what broke the Arbiter?

That being said, it's pretty obvious the system was already broken. Kil'jaeden had clearly entered and left the Maw if he was able to create Frostmourne and the Helm of Domination. But damn if this doesn't really get the lore wheels spinning!

Maldraxxus Impressions

 With the fix to the Beta, I was able to finish the primary quest line in Maldraxxus.

Much like Bastion, you arrive to find that the ordinary way things are supposed to go has broken down. The bad guys in this zone are obvious from the beginning.

The order of the zones (at least for your first go) are very clearly designed to alternate between light and dark. While Bastion is a (mostly) pristine garden of a zone - with buildings and roads reminiscent of the Halls of Valor and Mac'aree - Maldraxxus is one of the grossest places we've ever been. The very earth itself seems to be made of rotten flesh (disgustingly, Skinners can actually harvest from nodes on the ground here... don't think about that too much.)

Yet the realm's purpose suggests that all this grossness actually serves a purpose. When invaders come to the Shadowlands - something that does seem to have happened from time to time, such as denizens of the Void - it is the forces of Maldraxxus that fight them off. All the plagues, constructs, and liches are actually there to serve as the Shadowlands' army.

Naturally, with the Jailer securing agents within the various realms we go to, things have gone sideways, and a civil war has erupted within the realm.

You fight for the House of the Chosen - one of five Houses that make up Maldraxxus' military services (the others, though two have been destroyed in the war, are the House of Plagues, the House of Eyes, the House of Rituals, and the House of Constructs.)

Meanwhile, the throughline of the zone's quests has you working to empower a runeblade left for you to find by the Primus - the original (but vanished) ruler of the realm.

I'll say that the zone actually feels markedly different from Bastion - where Bastion has rather discrete areas in which there is danger, and a lot where the things you fight are summoned in various cleansing rituals, Maldraxxus is dense with foes. You're going to be carving your way through literally armies of the undead here.

I don't know that the story is quite as thought-provoking as the one in Bastion - I can totally understand the standpoint of people who join the Forsworn - but if you want to fight Scourge-like foes, this is the place to be.

Notably, toward the end of the quests here, you return to the Maw (which unfortunately had a rather bugged quests that I had to kind of get lucky to finish) before a last chapter in Maldraxxus. While there aren't quite as many breaks from leveling zones in the questing in Shadowlands (at least so far,) as there were in Legion and BFA, it's cool to really make the Maw simultaneously feel like a real part of the expansion while also feeling decidedly more deadly (while you might find it annoying, and check in with me after a few months of this, the fact that you can't mount in the Maw actually makes the zone feel much more menacing and disorienting.)

Undead Patron and College of Spirits: For Tasha's, or For a Ravenloft Campaign Setting?

 I got very, very excited when, a few weeks ago, and Unearthed Arcana post went out detailing two subclasses that really tickled my gothic sensibilities. The College of Spirits gives us a Bard that can essentially be like a 19th Century spiritualist medium. Meanwhile, the Undead Patron admittedly steps on the toes of the Undying patron, though it really doubles down on the notion of some ancient lich, death knight, or vampire as a spooky, gothic patron.

Notice a theme?

I'd really love to see these subclasses show up in the upcoming Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, but I'll confess that there's a hitch: these were just released, and it's only a couple months before Tasha's is out.

It would still be great to see it in there, especially if I ever get back to playing Adventurer's League after the pandemic is over.

But I have my doubts.

However - all that being said, there's a potential silver lining should the subclasses not make it into Tasha's.

Given the deeply gothic nature of both subclasses, I suspect this could mean a Ravenloft Campaign Setting book.

So far, in 5th Edition, there have been five Campaign Setting books - Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica, Eberron: Rising from the Last War, Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, and Mythic Odysseys of Theros. Every one of these has brought new subclasses (Eberron gave us only subclasses to its brand new class, but that still counts!)

In fact, the only books apart from these to do so were the Player's Handbook and Xanathar's Guide to Everything.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything is clearly going to be a sort of sequel to Xanathar's (perhaps establishing an "Everything" convention, though I don't know how many more we're likely to get in 5th Edition.)

But while SCAG had several subclasses (that it seems very few people play,) generally, the convention has seemed to be two or three subclasses per book.

Add that to the fact that those two subclasses are both dripping with Gothic flavor, and you're already on the right track.

Next, consider that Ravneloft is one of the most popular D&D settings - Curse of Strahd (something we just had a session of tonight) is probably the most popular published adventure for 5th Edition. I think that WotC can be confident that a setting book for Ravenloft would be a big hit.

So this all adds up to make me feel relatively confident that a Ravenloft book could be the next big campaign setting we get, probably some time in the middle of 2021.

I'd love to get more direction on the lands beyond Barovia, as well as some details about the Dark Powers (maybe not enough details to make them lose their mystique, but enough to weave a broader mythos around the setting.)

Another thing setting books come with are monsters, and boy howdy am I always happy to have more spooky monsters.

With Artificers Coming to a Setting-Agnostic Book: Fitting Them Into Other Settings

 Artificers are the only class to be added to 5th Edition after the initial release of its Player's Handbook. While we've gotten many subclasses, and the unholy mess that was the Mystic in Unearthed Arcana, the Artificer brings its own unique class features to the game.

Included in the sourcebook for the Eberron campaign setting, Artificers are a perfect encapsulation of the setting's general vibe: where magic has allowed the world to attain a semi-modern (well, roughly mid-20th-century) level of technology, but via magic, instead of the physics and engineering we understand in our world.

Personally, I love it, which is why Eberron is probably my favorite official D&D setting outside of extra-planar stuff.

But while some of us are eager to fill our D&D games with anachronism and blend fantasy with light science fiction, some prefer that things be kept strictly in a medieval style. How, then, to reckon with Artificers?

They're coming: slated to be reprinted in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, complete with a fourth subclass (the Armorer,) I think if we haven't already, we should embrace the Artificer as a full-fledged and equal member of the 5th Edition class list.

But if you aren't quite so into the steampunk-y nature of the class, worried what its effect will be on your setting, what are you to do?

The thing is, I think that inventors and tinkerers have always been a big thing in the fantasy genre. Saruman was using black powder in Lord of the Rings, for example.

So I think the easiest way to limit the impact of artificers on your setting is to consider the individual artificer to be a rare exception - someone who is forward thinking and unique in their use of this magical technology.

But to take it a step further: I think that Artificers aren't as inherently steampunk as they first appear.

The fundamental idea is that the Artificer is using tools they have prepared to cast their spells. Your Faerie Fire, for instance, is not some ethereal, conjured energy, but is projected from some physical object you have on your person.

As such, I think you could go very, very far from the typical Artificer vibe on this.

Consider, for example, that you've got some sort of Norse myth-inspired setting. Perhaps rather than shiny brass grenades the artificer has prepared, instead, your artificer might have spent their long rest taking some stones and carving runes into them. In your culture, you're referred to as a "Runecarver," and use the magic of runes and stone to cast your spells.

The Steel Defender that battle-smiths get is very easily translated into a less technological device by simply referring to it as a kind of golem. Maybe your artificer was trained by ancient sages about the secret ways the gods first created life, and as a member of that mystical order, you have bound elemental spirits into a frame of metal (or you could just have it be stone or clay - something I think any DM would happily allow.)

An artillerist might treat their cannons as something less physical - not a mechanical, literal cannon that walks around on legs, but a floating arrangement of ethereal shards of pure magic, which can conjure forth blasts of energy that attack from afar. You might look more like a wizard than some oil-covered grease-monkey.

The new Armorer subclass obviously evokes Iron Man, and as such feels pretty futuristic. But the notion of magical armor is pretty universal in fantasy, and the armor you've built could easily look like a classic knight's plate, but perhaps it is etched with magic runes that allow it to change shape.

I think it's also worth noting that technology in general is omnipresent through human history - arguably, the thing that really distinguishes us from other animals is our use of technology. If Archimedes could build things like water screws and (possibly apocryphally) a concave mirror to focus sunlight and burn enemy ships, it seems that some kind of tinkerer should fit in any setting.

Still, I do think that the Artificer can look very different in different contexts, and deserves a place in even the most pre-technological settings (I'm actually really into that "Runecarver" idea.)

Class Feature Revisions in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

 One of the features announced with the upcoming new rules book for D&D 5E goes beyond subclasses, and alters the classes themselves.

We got an Unearthed Arcana article a while back that set forth some of these ideas.

One of the biggest new features is Spell Versatility, which applies to pretty much every class (classes that prepare spells get "cantrip versatility," which effectively makes this umbrella go over every magic class). Basically, when you finish a long rest, you can swap out a spell you know for another from your class spell list.

This is a pretty great way to let players experiment a bit with their builds and not feel like they've made some huge mistake for picking a cantrip or spell that looked like it would be useful, but isn't, actually (True Strike says hello!)

The Ranger has also gotten some profound re-works to their level 1 features - Favored Terrain and Favored Enemy can be swapped out for Deft Explorer and Favored Foe.

The former is a more broadly applicable set of bonuses to your environmental exploration capabilities, letting you clear exhaustion more easily, giving you a climbing and swimming speed, and a few other bonuses.

Favored Foe essentially lets you use Hunter's Mark like a class feature, and removes the need to maintain concentration on it (you get a limited number of uses, but it's still probably better than the number of spell slots you have, at least early on.) I'll definitely say that for the character I might multiclass as a Ranger/Barbarian, this change would be insanely welcome (as Raging breaks concentration on spells.)

Likewise, the Beast Master subclass has gotten a new replacement ability that lets you call forth a "Beast of the Air" or a "Beast of the Earth," which, along with scaling with your level, also lets you resurrect it easily, which I think should make the subclass a bit more appealing. Most importantly, you can have these attack with your bonus action, making the subclass feel a little more like, you know, people assumed it would.

Caster classes get expanded spell lists, and classes with fighting styles get new styles and get the ability to swap styles when they gain a level.

One new Warlock invocation that I think is important to note is Eldritch Armor - which is that you can use an action to touch a suit of armor and immediately don it, and you are considered proficient with it while wearing it. While I'm sure the idea here is to let a strength-based blade-lock (it's a Pact of the Blade exclusive) wear heavy armor, I also think there's some hilarious potential for larceny with this invocation - you could walk into a store filled with fancy magical armor and just "whoops" touch a set of +2 Adamantine Plate Armor, cast invisibility on yourself, and run the hell away. Still, this is an effective way to give Warlocks proficiency in heavy armor without requiring most to take two whole feats just to get there (Hexblades would need one.) Plus, it would mean that a Warlock of this variety would be an ideal defender if your DM is a stickler about not letting you rest in heavy armor - once the alarm bells go off, the warlock just slips the armor on for their first turn, bonus actions their weapon in hand, and they're good to go.

The big question I have about these features is how it will play at a DM's table. As a DM myself, I'm likely to just say that anything found in Tasha's is fair game, and if you want to use these features in addition to or in place of stuff from the PHB, I'll allow it.

But I do think that it will require some re-learning of class features for players and DMs. Still, after 6 years, it'll be nice to see some broken features and classes finally work well.

First Impressions of Maldraxxus

I was given to understand ahead of time, and it proves true, that questing through the leveling zones in Shadowlands is going to feel a little different. While you get a significant story and a lengthy quest chain, the game now indicates "main quests" as opposed to side quests. I charged through the Bastion story quests, and they were enough to get me about a quarter of the way up from 50-60 (well, I came in at 51, given that the intro quests in the Maw are just about enough to get you there.) There's still a huge chunk of Bastion (maybe half the zone) that I haven't seen, despite making it through the zone's primary story. My hope is that when you choose a covenant, the rest of that zone will be necessary for your covenant campaign - meaning it won't be just side quests that you can skip on every character. But we shall see!

After discovering the assault on the Temple of Courage (the setting of the Necrotic Wake dungeon) you follow the next clue to Maldraxxus.

Where Bastion is beautiful, sunny, and idyllic (if a little unsettlingly cult-y... I'm really eager to see more of the story there, because I honestly don't blame the Forsworn for not wanting to abandon their identities and memories. I mean, I feel like one of the main appeals of an afterlife is seeing loved ones we've lost once again, right?) Maldraxxus is... nasty.

The very earth you tread upon seems to be made of rotting flesh. Everything in Maldraxxus is bones, skin, flesh, and I guess maybe some steel - though I think their armor and weapons might just be bone.

We're told that this is the realm from which the Scourge pulled its power and minions, and it has some familiar aesthetics - floating necropoli, stitched-together abominations, and nasty skeletal warriors are everywhere.

But this being the Shadowlands, just because they're creepy doesn't mean they're evil.

You arrive in Maldraxxus right before the Theater of Pain, a vast arena in which combatants prove themselves against one another. As you go into the grand melee and prove yourself the most powerful fighter, once you are proclaimed the victor, you deliver the news about the incursion into Bastion, and the "Margrave" of the House of the Chosen backs you up while the other Margraves basically declare war.

Maldraxxus is where the army of the Shadowlands resides - and we hear about them fending off forces of the Void and (if I recall correctly) the Legion, and other extraplanar threats that even after over 25 years of Warcraft as a franchise, we're not really familiar with.

Of course, when things were working correctly, the Maldraxxi were just the rough-and-ready defenders of the plane. But in the midst of the anima drought, some have chosen to raid and pillage anima from elsewhere (probably also in some kind of arrangement with the Jailer.)

Unlike Uther, whose role in Bastion is still very much in development after its main quest line, the first familiar face in Maldraxxus is one you meet early - it's Thrall's mother, Draka, who has become one of the two Barons of the House of the Chosen (perhaps not surprisingly, the Shadowlands' military realm is pretty regimented.) Draka accompanies you on many of your quests here, as you discover a relic that the Primus - the original and seemingly long-gone leader of Maldraxxus - left, apparently for you.

I haven't gotten much farther than this because of some bugs (it's Beta, after all) but it's a profound tonal and aesthetic shift from the stuff you do in Bastion.

I will say that there's a lot in the quests of both zones that's sort of introducing you to the culture of the realm - both places treat you like a new recruit, as if you were assigned to that realm by the Arbiter. Maldraxxus is, by its nature, a more combat-oriented culture, but they're still looking to train and arm you much as in Bastion they were trying to have you purge all your psychological issues.

Much to my delight, the high-concept settings of these zones are introducing some really interesting philosophical questions. In Bastion, there's a sort of question of whether people who were selfless and self-sacrificing in life should really be fated to once again sacrifice and act selflessly in the afterlife. In Maldraxxus (and to an extent Bastion as well,) I find myself wondering what it means when someone dies in the Shadowlands. There are memorials to heroes of Maldraxxus who fell battling the Shadowlands great foes - but what does that mean? Are they just gone-gone, with nothing left of them except in others' memories? Or does death here send them to some kind of soul-recycling system (maybe Ardenweald?) where they get reincarnated? Or, perhaps a dead person who dies in Bastion gradually re-coalesces there? It's some real serious stuff to contemplate, which I love.

Anyway, I hope that whatever Beta build comes next fixes the issues so I can move on (I got a new weapon and I don't really want to just keep plugging away without a Runeforge on it) because I'm super-eager to check out Ardenweald and Revendreth.

Customizing Racial Features: Potentially One of the Best Changes Coming in Tasha's

 (Incidentally, I like to refer to the "So and so's" books simply by their "authors," which makes me feel like I'm some academic in a D&D world talking about some very obvious and important text where all you'd need to know is the author's name to identify it, e.g. "Volo's.")

In Tasha's we're going to be getting new rules for customizing Racial traits. I'm fairly sure that this is going to leave things like a Dragonborn's breath weapon in place, given that this is a defining physiological feature of their species. But the obvious thing to change is how ability scores are affected by racial choice.

I think the initial motivation for this change is one born of a greater awareness of how subtly our culture reinforces racist notions. While originally created to be disposable bad guys by Tolkien (as a Catholic, he struggled with the idea of a people who were inherently evil, which is why he made his Orcs corrupted Elves... which kind of sort of solved that issue, but also sort of opened some new cans of worms) over time, across the fantasy genre, Orcs have become a much more complex and broad group of people. And while they often do play an antagonistic role in fantasy stories, more and more storytellers are looking to explore them as having the nuances and complexities of a real group of people.

In Volo's Guide to Monsters, there were a few "monstrous races" in addition to options like Aasimar and Kenku, which included Orcs. Half-Orcs had existed in the PHB, but full Orcs were oddly mechanically different from them, built more on the conventions of how Orcs work in the Monster Manual.

And unlike other playable races, Orcs had a -2 to Intelligence.

Now...

The notion that any particular ethnic group is inherently less intelligent has been used throughout the ages as an excuse to put such people on a lower rung of society. (And the socioeconomic hardship from being on that lower rung tends to make things like getting a good education a lot harder, reinforcing the stereotype.) Races in fantasy are certainly more distinct from one another than ethnicities in the real world, but the idea of a group of humanoid people who are all dumb, violent brutes certainly rings a few unsettling bells given the way that real-world ethnic stereotypes portray certain groups of people.

Having the game mechanics double-down and actually reinforce that notion is even more problematic.

So it was quite welcome when the Orcs in the Eberron book were not penalized in terms of Intelligence, and their story portrays them in a far more nuanced and humane light.

Still, even "positive" racial stereotypes - like saying a particular ethnicity is smarter than most - plays into this same issue. The fact that Gnomes are just plane smarter than anyone else in the PHB carries with it some problematic associations as well.

But believe it or not, I'm not actually making this as my main argument against the way races currently work. While I think reexamining our culture's treatment of race is important - acknowledging both its artificiality as well as the damage it has done to our society despite this fact - I actually think this makes the most sense from a gameplay perspective.

In D&D, you generally want whatever your main ability score modifier is to start at +3. Sure, you can get along with a +2, but to actually max it out before you're in the high levels, you'll want to start at at least +3. And to do that, unless you're rolling your stats and get relatively lucky, you're going to need to pick a race that can boost that ability score by at least a bit. Taking the standard array or using Point Buy means you can, at max, have a score of 15 for that best stat. To get it to +3, you need at least one more.

As such, picking a race that doesn't boost that stat essentially signs you up to somewhat handicap your character.

Now, I know that a lot of players feel like this isn't such a big deal - you can play an underpowered character and still have fun. And I don't disagree with that.

But I also know that a lot of players would prefer to be able to choose a race that speaks to them while still making a "good" decision in terms of gameplay mechanics.

My hope is that we could see a rather simple system: you get 3 points to assign to any ability scores instead of the usual racial bonuses. You can put two of them into one score and 1 into another, or put 1 into each of three scores. That would be in line with the vast majority of existing racial ability score bonuses.

The massive benefit here is that there wouldn't be any "bad" choices for race - and you could instead build your character the way you see fit. I love the idea of an Orc who's a thoughtful, somewhat scrawny wizard, or a charming, deft Dwarven rogue. If I ever follow through on replacing my Eldritch Knight Dragonborn with a Wizard, I could use such rules to reroll the same individual (DM permitting, of course.)

Having really gotten my start in race/class styles of RPGs with WoW, I can tell you that it's really great to be able to pick combinations based on your own character concepts.

Genie Patron, College of Creation, and Armorer Confirmed for Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

EDIT: We have a release date: November 17th

 Thanks to a few preview videos from folks in the D&D online community, we've now gotten some reveals of actual content to be found in TCoE.

In addition to sidekicks, new spells, group patrons, and some new items, we've also got some new subclasses.

The Genie Patron went through two iterations in Unearthed Arcana. The second version gives you a bit of elemental oomph with your attacks, and also has a potentially super-powerful ability, which allows you to enter your genie vessel (like going into the bottle from I Dream of Jeannie, basically) which, at a certain level, grants you a short rest if you only spend 10 minutes there, and you can take up to 5 friends!

Seriously, if you hide it somewhere in the dungeon you're exploring, your party could get a quick short rest in, likely without any wandering monsters even noticing!

The College of Creation is basically some old-school Dinsey magic - all about animating objects and having them fight alongside you. Seriously, this is the most whimsical, lovely subclass.

There are a lot of elements of this subclass that have literal, visible but intangible notes floating around people. It's delightful. Also, you could play music that turns into a carriage for your party once you get to a high enough level.

Finally, the Armorer is basically if you want to be Iron Man. If that hasn't sold you: what about a set of plate armor you can wear under your clothes and that doesn't make it hard to sneak? How about shooting lightning from your gloves?

Man, this is making me wonder if Battle-Smith is still my favorite Artificer subclass...

Anyway: big caveat: I'm basing my understanding of all these features on the UA's they came in. We can expect a bit of rebalancing and re-working. But I can't wait to hear what other options are included!

And I just ordered it from my Friendly Local Game Store to pick it up when it's available.

Zendikar Rising Teaser

 The next MTG set will have us making our third visit to Zendikar, the wild, adventure-world with buried ruins and eldritch secrets... though the biggest secret obviously got revealed in Rise of the Eldrazi...

However, we get a little video of a Zendikar landscape undergoing the Roil - new shards of stone, new ladnscapes, form before us as we hear what I presume to be Nahiri narrating about her destiny.

Nahiri is a pretty interesting character, and one who is due to appear in the new set. An ancient Oldwalker who, with Sorin and Ugin, first lured the Eldrazi titans to Zendikar and locked them away, she grew enraged when the titans broke out and devastated her world.

Feeling that Sorin and Ugin had failed her (Ugin had the excuse of being dead, at least in that version of the timeline... how do alternate timelines work on other planes?) she decided to take revenge on Sorin by luring Emrakul to Innistrad, making her the arguable big bad of the Shadows Over Innistrad block (though, you know, Emrakul probably fits that role better.)

Anyway, Sorin and Nahiri, once close friends and allies, are now bitter nemeses. Can Nahiri be redeemed after she unleashed such horrors upon... a world where things were already pretty fucked up? And how will Nissa, another Zendikar native but who's way less murdery, reckon with her Kor plane-mate?

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything: New Rulebook for D&D 5E

 Well, we got it right (I won't say "I" got it right, as I'm far from the only one to guess at this.)

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything will be the new Xanathar's-like supplementary rulebook for D&D 5th Edition.

Let's look at the highlights:

New Subclasses and the Artificer:

The Artificer is getting published in a setting-agnostic book (AL fans rejoice) along with new subclasses for every class. If you look at the posts I made yesterday, you can see my thoughts on which UA subclasses I'd like to see make it in there.

New Character Options:

There will be new ways to customize class features (maybe making Rangers less terrible!?) as well as options to change racial features (I imagine like untying ability scores to races) and some new tools for figuring out your character's origins.

Group Patrons:

Presumably building on the Group Patron feature from Eberron: Rising from the Last War, this is an organization or powerful NPC that you can structure adventures around over the course of a campaign.

Spells, Artifacts, and Magic Tattoos:

The good stuff. Magic Tattoos are like permanent buffs that your character can get, and we all know what spells and artifacts are. The more the merrier!

Miscellaneous New Rule Options:

Sidekicks, supernatural environments, parleying with monsters, etc. It's an "Everything" book, after all!

Puzzles:

Dear lord will this be useful to me as a DM. I never put any puzzles in my dungeons because I am just not confident in my ability to make them. So this is a set of puzzles that you can just drop into a dungeon!

I'm very excited for this book. Xanathar's Guide to Everything is probably my favorite supplementary book they've come out with (well, give or take a Ravnica.)

I'm overjoyed to see the Artificer getting published in what is effectively (in part) PHB3 for 5th Edition. I'm just very curious to see which subclasses made the cut (and if there will be any others that we haven't seen yet - Paladins are a bit thin right now.)

Afterlives: The New Animated Shorts for Shadowlands

While we first saw this style of series with the Mists of Pandaria shorts detailing the journey of Emperor Shaohao, the format of focusing on a select number of characters really started with Warlords of Draenor. We then got Legion's Harbingers and BFA's Warbringers - all of which have been pretty spectacular. So here we go: Afterlives:

I assume we're seeing Uther as the main Bastion story and Draka as the Maldraxxus one. I'm really fascinated by Uther's lore here - the thought that this pillar of righteousness is struggling to come to grips with the reality of the afterlife (though I'm also a little curious to see how they explain his seemingly benevolent appearances as a ghost in our world.)

Anyway, these shorts tend to be big wins - BFA gave us the utterly jaw-dropping Daughter of the Sea dirge, and the amazing Azshara deal with N'zoth. So I have high expectations here.

Bastion Impressions

 On your first character through the Shadowlands, the first leveling zone you go to (after a roughly 1-level dip in the Maw as part of the introduction) is Bastion.

Bastion is the most classically heavenly realm of the Shadowlands. Its inhabitants are the Kyrian, angel-like winged blue humanoids whose job it is to ferry souls between the land of the living and the dead (the Val'kyr, it seems, are Kyrian rip-offs.)

Immediately when you arrive, there are a few red flags. The whole system there has new souls, known as Aspirants, shed their entire identity and memories of their past lives so that they can serve impartially in their duties.

While it's framed as a noble and moral path to take, I can certainly understand why some people have chosen to stray from this path.

The first few quests have you just go through the steps on the way to becoming a full Kyrian, but soon, the dark Forsworn (literally dark, like their wings are dark-blue) show up and attack the Temple of Purity, one of the important locations in the realm.

It becomes clear that the Forsworn are in league with the Jailer and the Maw, though it seems their leader is probably not forthright with that among anyone who's not in the inner circle - giving the familiar NPC we see there a little bit of plausible deniability.

The zone's primary story ends as you discover that the Temple of Courage is under attack - but not by the Forsworn, but rather the Maldraxxi, who were sent here to conquer Bastion and take what Anima they have there.

I actually like the way that the story plays out in this regard - we go to Bastion because of the Forsworn who we see working with the Jailer, and now it seems that the next step in the mystery will take us to Maldraxxus. I imagine subsequent quests will have us find some connection to Ardenweald in Maldraxxus, followed by a link to Revendreth in Ardenweald.

The zone is stunningly gorgeous - while I'd probably not want to lose my identity and memory to become a Kyrian, I wouldn't mind spending the afterlife in a place that pretty. There's a definite Elysian Fields vibe to the place, reinforced by all the Greek-sounding names.

Fairly early on, you get your class-specific Covenant ability to play around with here, and later, you get the Covenant-wide one, which is a bit more flavorful than a real combat ability. I think once you hit 60 and choose a covenant, you'll just use yours in any zone, but it's a nice way to let people try out the abilities before they commit. Likewise, you'll get a chance to hang out in the covenant's sanctum, which is a bit reminiscent of the Halls of Valor, (I really hope we get some answers about Odyn and to whom he gave his eye.)

Sadly, when I hearthed back to Oribos, the game crashed again - I've had crashing issues with the hearthstone in the past, so I'm hoping this is a one-off.

Shadowlands Beta First Real Impressions

 After moving my Death Knight to Stormwind and then re-copying him to the beta, I've manage to play through the introductory quests for Shadowlands, and have just arrived in the first zone (for your first character): Bastion.

The intro quests actually took me with zero rested experience all the way up to 51.

Spoilers ahead, so here's a cut:

More Wildeyed Speculation on the Tasha/Iggwilv Book

 Based on very thin hints, I've constructed a possible new D&D book. So just as a disclaimer/caveat: this is all profoundly speculative. While the hint about Tasha's hideous laughter does seem to strongly imply a book featuring her, we don't even know that it's specifically going to be another in the line of Volo/Xanathar/Mordenkainen.

And of those three, Volo's and Mordenkainen's are primarily monster and playable race books. Only XGTE was a true setting-agnostic sourcebook that focused on player options (though Xanathar's also has fantastic tools for DMs. The encounter-building system is one I've found vastly easier to use than the one provided in the DMG.)

So this could all be nothing. But if we do get another general sourcebook, what might we have in it beside subclasses?

Well, the monster books came with a fair amount of lore, largely building on the types of monsters found within their respective books. Xanathar's, on the other hand, had basically no lore and was all game mechanics.

I think 5E could probably use some more details about its planar settings - we've gotten a number of campaign setting books (though, you know, keep 'em coming. I want Ravenloft, Planescape, and Spelljammer!) But giving us more detail on the planes would be really cool.

In fact, I'd really like some books to flesh out the Inner planes. The Outer Planes are super cool, don't get me wrong, but the sort of gravitation force of the narrative potential of the Nine Hells and the Abyss seems to often leave the other outer planes left out of the fun. And the moral rigidity of the outer planes does inherently make them tougher settings to play in.

If we could get a Shadowfell/Feywild book, I'd be overjoyed. (Honestly, as a closet goth, I'd just freaking love a whole Shadowfell book. I know there was one for 4th Edition, which I've considered getting as a pdf on DM's Guild.)

But if we were to see a more mechanical-focused book, I suspect we might see something else instead:

One of the UAs that came out in the past year or so was a grand revision of existing classes. Various class features and PHB subclasses were revised or expanded. The thing that's tricky about this, of course, is that you're creating an alternate rules system - how does this affect existing characters, and what happens when two Fighters at the table are playing with different systems?

That being said, 5E in general is such a robust system that it'd be nice to see some tweaks to existing classes (Rangers, for example) without having to wait for a whole 6th Edition.

Naturally, a new collection of spells and maybe magic items would be really welcome. I'd actually like to see expanded random magic item tables as well, if possible.

Anyway, I don't know how long we'll have to wait for an official announcement, but if you can't tell from the three posts today, I'm excited.