My ongoing Greyhawk campaign has spent many weeks (months) running through Courts of the Shadow Fey, an adventure by Wolfgang Baur originally written for a previous edition of the system, and since then released for other rule sets. I’m using the 5E version, which follows Kobold Press’s strategy of making the monsters a bit more dangerous than you might expect from their Challenge Ratings.
The basic plot of the adventure is that the Shadow Fey (who live in the Plane of Shadow) claim the town the characters are in (Brusington, in this instance), and the characters need to find the court and advance through its intrigues until they have enough status to see the Queen and get her to reverse this decision. In my version of the adventure, the Shadow Fey are doing this in co-operation with the invaders from Ket, who are still a little annoyed that their High Priestess got killed while visiting Veluna.
There are two groups of PCs in my game at present. One group is dealing with Ket while the others are in the courts. And this adventure is taking a LOT of time.
Honestly, I think it’s got several structural problems – it’s both too linear and not linear enough! But the bits that work are excellent, so I try to focus on them.
Along the way, the characters have been struggling with the rule of “don’t thank the fey”. I think, strictly speaking, this isn’t part of Courts of the Shadow Fey, but I’ve read a lot of fey-related fiction recently (special mention of the works of Seanan McGuire and Sarah J. Maas), and I’m having fun with that. The players know not to thank the fey, but they can’t stop themselves from doing so. Each session begins with the characters reminding themselves of the rules – and then almost immediately breaking them.
What happens when that rule gets broken? Well, interesting things!
Of course, trying to work out what things happen is occasionally a bit challenging. The basic idea is that by thanking the fey, you’re acknowledging that you owe that fey a favour. That favour might be collected immediately, or it might hang over the character for some time.
The first time it happened, Greg’s Druid thanked one of the goblins – one of the lower ranks of the courts. The benefit that the goblin took was all of Greg’s magic, so he was no longer able to cast spells, although he could still shape-shift.
Then, as they attempted to retrieve something from the stables, Greg tried to intimidate the goblin stablehands by assuming the form of a giant elk. The stablehands were prepared: they threw over Greg an enchanted bridle so that he could no longer change shape!
The enchantment of the bridle also prevented it from being easily removed. So, Adam’s divine sorcerer, “Cedric the Amazing” rode Greg-as-elk for the next little bit, as they completed the quest they were on. This was one of those multipart quests: To recover A, you must first complete B. So, the expedition to the stables was the “B” part, and, having completed that, they were granted some special apples that would allow them to complete the “A” part of the quest.
Greg, being Greg, decided that he’d eat the apples. Giant elks get hungry, right? So, Adam, riding on his back, cast shocking grasp to dissuade him. Unfortunately, Greg was on only a few hit points – he was the primary healer, and unable to heal due to the goblin’s curse. So, Greg was knocked unconscious and fell over. Adam fell off the elk, taking falling damage (giant elk are big!) and fell unconscious himself. Adam was the secondary healer and hadn’t healed himself! So, the rest of the party then debated whether they were going to use their precious potions of healing on the two, or just leave them there unconscious. (They eventually healed them).
There are a lot of NPCs with whom to interact in the adventure, although it’s rare that I’ve felt confident about how to role-play them. (The adventure isn’t helped by its organisation. Honestly, the organisation of it gets 1/5 – putting statblocks in the text is an AWFUL idea when you’re dealing with an adventure that can be as non-linear as this one).
However, a couple that did catch my players’ attention were Lishekki the Chained (an elf courtesan) and Sir Brightspur, an elf duellist. Brightspur befriended Martin’s PC and arranged with Martin to duel – in which Martin agreed to lose – in order to impress Lishekki. Unfortunately for the young elf, two things went wrong.
The first was that Martin failed to throw the duel. It wasn’t intentional. We decided that the fight had to at least “look good” so that Brightspur would make all his attacks with advantage and Martin would make all his attacks with disadvantage. The dice gods favoured Martin and not Brightspur. The match ended in a draw, which would have failed to impress Lishekki. However, there was another problem!
The second thing that went wrong is that Lishekki didn’t see the fight. Why not? That’s because Paul’s PC (Sacre Bleu – a rogue) had decided to woo Lishekki for himself and was doing a much better job of it than Brightspur had. So, at the time that the duel was taking place, Paul was distracting Lishekki with words of endearment that she quite enjoyed. Brightspur was distracted by the fight not going his way, so didn’t realise this, but it’ll be interesting to see his reaction when he DOES realise that he’s been betrayed!
Meanwhile, ever so slowly, we’ve been advancing the actual plot, which concerns the mysterious madness of the King of the Shadow Fey. The characters met with Akyishgal, the Demon Lord of Roaches, who wanted them to obtain for him part of the royal regalia. Because the characters are working to stop the Shadow Fey, this didn’t sound so bad – except, of course, it’s being asked by a Demon Lord! Then, they’ve been asked by an Angel slumming it in the court (Revich, the Blind Seer) to stop the Demon Lord. The characters are tending more towards helping the Angel than the Demon.
I’m not sure if we’ll get any more sessions this year, as the holiday period creates much disruption, but the hope is that we’ll be reaching the end game in the next couple of sessions. After that, we’ll return to our OTHER set of characters, who were dealing with the threat from Ket!
If you’re interested in getting Courts of the Shadow Fey for yourself, be aware that it’s full of good ideas, but requires a fair deal of preparation and creation of additional material to shine. I’m very happy to be running it, but I think it needs more work than many other adventure products.