My recent Greyhawk sessions have been dominated by the brewing war between Ket and Veluna, which was provoked by the death of the High Priestess of Xan Yae on a trip to Veluna.

I’ve been drawing on some Kobold Press products to find foes for the characters, and I settled on using the advanced Shadow Fey found in the Creature Codex. Xan Yae, as the mistress of the Twilight, has a long-standing connection to the Demiplane of Shadows in my campaign, and integrating the Shadow Fey as a major part of that plane was very easy to do.

I drew the initial stages of this from a couple of encounters in Kobold Press’s Book of Lairs, where Shadow Fey attack from a ruined tower. The heroes then entered that tower on the Demiplane of Shadow, where I had a lot of fun: on the plane of shadow, the top (ruined) portion of the tower was complete, with the bottom part, which was complete on the Material Plane, missing.

Lots of fun travelling from the Material plane, to the Shadow plane, then back again. Eventually, they got through the tower – not an easy task! – and found the ruins of a great city around them. Investigating further, they discovered a meeting between forces from Ket, the church of Xan Yae, and the Shadow Fey. They disrupted the meeting – mainly by killing everyone they saw – then escaped. This little bit of violence didn’t help though – the Shadow Fey are now fully on the side of Ket, and it’s going to cause a lot of trouble in future sessions.

The Shadow Fey are tough. The combats were very difficult, especially when I started adding in other stuff. For instance:

• A dummy that assumes the powers of the last person to touch it then animates and moves to destroy the party (after a delay, so they think it’s normal!)
• An assassin that managed to get its assassination attack onto the Sorcerer of the group! The assassin (from Ket) was then banished back to the Material plane… upon which it just used the portal the players had used to reenter the Demiplane of Shadow and take on the group again
• Shadow elves stepping through shadow to follow the Shadow Monk of the group as he retreated when hurt…

It should be noted that I was using the higher-level Shadow Fey from Creature Codex. The basic shadow fey is CR 2, which is a little too weak for my APL 9 group, but the high-level Shadow Fey? Ooh, they’re scary. Steve Winter (who develops the monsters in the Kobold Press tomes) really believes in pushing their power. And they feel tough.

This section of the campaign has been a lot of exploration and combat, but not that much role-playing. I wander back and forward with my games on how much role-playing I include. These sessions have less role-playing than others, which is partly due to what I find easier, and also due to how we play – about three hours every two weeks (with more between sessions on occasion). There are sessions when there’s a lot of RPing, and I thought that this set-up might provoke some, but it ended up being a LOT of combat.

Back in the Material plane after killing all the shadow fey, and we had a side adventure with the second group of characters these players have. I allow players to have multiple characters active in the same campaign at once, although each player only runs one at a time. So, back in the main base town of the campaign, they’re finding shadow fey attacking!

Hmm. I wonder if my players can see the shape of this yet?

Our most recent session was as the higher level characters returned. And they discovered towns along the road being burnt and destroyed by marauding fey. I decided to have some fun here and do some miniature action – partly due to just picking up Tactical Maps Reincarnated, which I wanted to use.

And so, a very familiar road-scape came back into view:

These maps originally came out during the 3.5E days, and I used that road map a LOT. Having a new copy of it was nice, and some of the players have been playing with me for 18 years or so. They well remembered this map!

It wasn’t Shadow Fey attacking, though – instead, some of the Lich Hounds (from Tome of Beasts) plus a ghoul necromancer sent by Iuz. Yes, Iuz still hasn’t forgotten the heroes for setting fire to his port city! Every so often, the party meet undead forces he’s sent to kill them!

More maps came out, as the characters moved from location to location. Do you want a town? Here’s a town. How about a farm? Got that too. (There are a lot of specific maps in the product, but enough of a range so I could find ones I wanted).

Oh, and here’s a town the Shadow Fey have burnt, and they’re still there!

Running this last combat was brutal. I used a Shadow Fey that was invisible in dim or darkness… and it was overcast. A simple light spell would reveal him, but the players didn’t do that – although I did have fun saying he became briefly visible when a lightning bolt spell hit him!

Notice how spread out the characters are on the map? The fey used their teleportation abilities a lot, and the party were never sure from where they’d next attack. Early on, the melee fighters ran as quickly as they could towards the fey, allowing the fey to teleport away and engage the spellcasters from behind. There was a LOT of movement here.

Eventually, the party managed to defeat the Fey and find another portal to the Demiplane of Shadow. What now? Go through? Or go home and try and find a solution to the attacks?

I guess we’ll find out next session!