Campestris: Sing a Song With a Swarm of Shrooms From The Wild Beyond the Witchlight!

The Wild Beyond the Witchlight marks the return of campestris to Dungeons & Dragons. These loveable mushroom-like creatures find joy in music and last appeared in second edition D&D’s Monstrous Compendium Annual: Volume I, which was released in 1994. Similar in appearance to the more commonly-known myconids, campestris are less evolved, lack limbs, and resemble toadstools with faces. They can be cute, a la Toad from the Mario games, or mildly creepy and psychedelic, making them ideal monsters for a Feywild adventure.

Campestris have always been known for their tendency to sing, albeit not very well. The fifth edition version of these shrooms maintains this skill. The Wild Beyond the Witchlight even provides a stat block for a swarm of campestris in case you need a horde of mushrooms to drive your adventuring party nuts with off-tune melodies!

An adventure is better with friends!

Master-tier subscribers can share books they've purchased on D&D Beyond with friends in their campaigns. That means when The Wild Beyond the Witchlight releases September 21, you and your friends will be able to enjoy the book together and play with all-new character options, including the fairy and harengon races.

Monster preview: Campestri

Campestri

Campestris are happy-go-lucky mushroom-like creatures with few cares or worries. They are captivated by music, though they can’t distinguish a well-played performance from a bad one. If anyone plays an instrument or sings in the campestris’ vicinity, the little creatures will happily sing along, each in an obnoxiously nasal falsetto, as they dance and caper
around whoever is making the music.

Source: The Wild Beyond the Witchlight

With only 2 hit points, a campestri isn’t going to be too hard to squash. Nevertheless, it can still be a nuisance thanks to its Mimicry trait, which lets it imitate any voice or song it has heard in a nasal falsetto. Second edition provided some amusing advice on how to represent this in a game — for instance, if a character sings “Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow,” a campestri would relay that as “Murray hada weedleam, hoose fleas was wideasno!”

Aside from horrendous singing, the campestri can Head Butt for a measly 1 point of bludgeoning damage and use its Spores action to release mushroom particles in a 5-foot radius. On a failed DC 10 Wisdom saving throw, anyone in the radius is incapacitated and suffers from halved speed for 1 minute.

Campestri statistics

Campestri statistics

Monster preview: Swarm of campestris

If you want more than just one yodeling fungus to confound your players, then a swarm of campestris will do the trick. This mass of mushrooms retains the Head Butt and Spore actions of a campestri, but ups the ante on both. Now, the Head Butt deals 10 (4d4) bludgeoning damage, or 5 (2d4) if the swarm has half of its hit points or fewer. The spores, meanwhile, stretch out 20 feet around the swarm instead of 5 feet.

Like other swarms in fifth edition D&D, the swarm of campestris is resistant to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage, and has immunity to a variety of conditions. It can also occupy another creature’s space and move through any openings large enough for a campestri.

With its additional capabilities, a swarm of campestris proves a greater bother in combat. Once initiative kicks off, the swarm will unleash its Spores — potentially slowing everyone in the vicinity — before bouncing from one foe to the next with a flurry of Head Butts, all the while singing frightful falsetto garbles. Creative Dungeon Masters could even ask players to make Constitution saving throws when confronted with the warbles of swarms of campestris, possibly resulting in the deafened condition on a failed save.

Swarm of campestris statistics

swarm of campestris

Playing with campestris at your table

Campestris could make for amusing non-player characters (NPCs) or familiars and have great potential as alarm systems against intruders. Just imagine an adventurer with an affinity for plants camping out in the wilderness with a happy-go-lucky campestri buddy nearby. If any would-be bandits or monsters approach, the campestri could be trained to shoot out spores and shout “Who goes dere!” in a nauseatingly shrill voice, keeping the adventurer safe from a surprise attack. An important forest grove or the backyard garden of a rich noble’s mansion could similarly be guarded by campestris.

Players going up against campestris might want to bring a bard or two along to distract the mushrooms with an enchanting musical performance. For a less subtle approach, consider befriending a bullywug who’ll be more than willing to gobble up these toadstools with nary a second thought!

For an adventure hook involving campestris, see below:

The exiled druid of Dimbranch

The hollowed-out swamp tree is covered in goopy vines and layers of polka-dotted fungi, but there’s no mistaking the door and window carved into its husk. This has to be Bolga’s home, and there’s no telling what tricks the exiled druid has up her sleeve. Gripping your sword close, you carefully step on the patches of dry earth leading up to the tree, keeping an eye out for any swamp crocodiles that might be lurking beneath the water.

Suddenly, all of the mushroom layers on the tree come alive, and a chorus of shrill voices belt out: “INTRUDDERS AIN’T WELCOME IN DE HOUSE OF DE SPORE, YOUSE LEAVES NOW OR BE SHAKEN TO YER CORE!”

Patches of yellow mold have sprung up everywhere in Dimbranch, a village named after its surrounding forest, which has thick, overbearing trees that rise overhead and paint everything in dim light. Inhabited primarily by gnomes and halflings, Dimbranch has a decently sized druid community. Locals suspect that the mold infestation was caused by Bolgra Omphalo, a mushroom-obsessed druid. Bolgra was recently exiled for performing rituals on bodies dug up from the town graveyard. The village elders will eagerly hire adventurers who are passing through the area to hunt her down.

Parties who take up the task learn that Bolgra now resides in a particularly dreary swamp several miles away, and has a small army of campestris guarding her home against intruders. Adventurers must either sneak past these shrooms, befriend them, or ask a group of swamp-dwelling bullywugs for assistance. Even if they make it past the campestris, they’ll still have Bolgra’s four myconid sovereign bodyguards — who appear to be undead — to contend with!

Diplomatic heroes might be able to win over Bolgra and get her to explain that she was exiled from Dimbranch for her so-called “deviant” beliefs as a Circle of Spores druid. As revenge, she has infested her former home with yellow mold patches and refuses to forgive those who discriminated against her unique views on life, death, and rebirth. The players can choose to carry out their original mission of bringing Bolgra to justice — or perhaps ally with the druid instead and lead a legion of campestris to lay waste to Dimbranch!

Shrooms that’ll grow on you

Campestris are versatile creatures that can bring comic relief or surreal psychedelics to any campaign. Whether you’re running The Wild Beyond the Witchlight adventure or simply hoping to create a fun NPC with a toadstool cap, there’s no doubt about it — campestri are some real fungis. (Sorry, I had to fit a mushroom pun in here somewhere.)

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Jeremy Blum (@PixelGrotto) is a journalist, gaming blogger, comic book aficionado, and fan of all forms of storytelling who rolled his first polyhedral dice while living in Hong Kong in 2017. Since then, he's never looked back and loves roleplaying games for the chance to tell the tales that have been swirling in his head since childhood.

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