The Feywild is a vast, dangerous plane brimming with wild magic, clever creatures, and untouched wilderness. All of these aspects make it a wonderful setting for D&D's forthcoming adventure, The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. But you don't need to wait for the book's release before you take your player characters to the Feywild. Here are two short adventures set in the Plane of Faeries: "Pixie Trouble" and "A Bargain With a Hag."
Pixie Trouble
This adventure can be used to introduce a party of four 1st- to 3rd-level player characters to the creatures and mechanics of the Feywild. The adventure assumes the party is traveling outside of any major settlement. Read the following to kick things off:
After a long day's travel, you crest a hill and spot a simple town of a couple dozen wooden houses with straw roofs. They line the main road as it makes its way westward toward the Eldergrove Forest.
As you draw near, you find that the road is devoid of people and carriages. The windows of the ramshackle houses have been haphazardly boarded up. It is silent here, except for the clinking of charms that hang at the front door of most of the houses.
The townspeople are distressed because their children have been going missing from their beds. On each of the last five nights, one child has disappeared without a trace.
The party can gather this information from a townsperson that can be found hastily boarding up a window on the side of their house, or from the town's barkeeper, a male dwarf named Rowan, at The Wandering Fellow’s Inn. Rowan also explains to any adventurers that there is a 25 gp reward for each child that is safely returned to town.
Whoever fills the party in on the situation will inform them that they have seen flickering lights coming from the Eldergrove Forest. However, no one has gone off the trail in the forest in recent days and returned, except for Arveene, a female half-elf scout who lives in town.
What’s going on?
While in the Eldergrove Forest, Arveene unwittingly passed through a fey crossing into the Feywild and discovered a glade where a curious iridescent flower grows. She plucked it and — without issue — returned home with it. She now keeps the flower in a vase on a table by her front door. The act of vandalism upset a group of pixies that reside in the glade. They followed Arveene back to town and have now taken to luring children to the Feywild as revenge.
The pixies are generally good-natured and have bonded with the children they have taken. They play hide and seek, eat the delicious fruit of the Feywild, and enjoy each other’s company. Unfortunately for their parents, the pixies don’t have a strong grasp on the passage of time in the Material Plane. If the children are not rescued, they could be in the Feywild for what will be years or decades on the Material Plane.
Tracking the tiny tricksters
If the players go to Arveene’s house, they will find she is not there and that the front door is locked. She is out in the forest looking for the children.
The pixies can be tracked back to the feywild crossing in a number of ways, including:
- A player who makes a successful DC 10 Wisdom (Survival) check can trace the pixies’ path back to the fey crossing.
- A player who makes a successful DC 10 Intelligence (Nature) check can see signs of a feywild crossing nearby. The crossing can be found with 1d4 hours of searching.
- A Horizon Walker ranger can magically sense the fey crossing with the 3rd-level Detect Portal feature.
If the player characters fail these checks, roll a d100 for a random forest encounter. After the encounter, the player characters are approached by Arveene, who overheard them while searching for the missing children. She is appreciative to learn that others are helping search for the children and will lend her aid. Any ability checks made to track the pixies or discover the fey crossing are made with advantage.
The pixies’ glade
Once the party manages to find the fey crossing, read the following, adjusting as needed based on how the characters found it:
The trail you follow leads you deep into the Eldergrove Forest, far off from any man-made paths. It ends just before two ancient trees that have grown into one another, creating a circle with their trunks.
A successful DC 15 Intelligence (Arcana or Nature) check will reveal that this is likely a crossing to the Feywild. A detect magic spell will reveal that the area around the trees’ trunks are magical. Upon passing through the trunks, read:
You feel a subtle shift in the air accompanied with vertigo. Looking around, you notice that the colors of the forest appear different than before. The greens of leaves and blues of wildflowers stand out more boldly than they did just a moment ago. You can also hear faint sounds of rustling and giggling that was not perceptible before.
Now that the party has entered the Feywild, they can hear the pixies and children playing. A successful DC 10 Wisdom (Perception) check will reveal a human female child behind a nearby tree. She appears to be in good spirits and motions for the party to quietly approach.
If the party decides to be aggressive with the pixies, 2d4+2 sprites fly out of the woods to defend the pixies as they flee. This aggression toward the fey is a slight against the Seelie Court and the party will need to destroy the fey crossing by chopping down the trees to avoid further repercussions against the town.
If the party is diplomatic, the pixies will tell the party that they want the flower Arveene stole returned. Once the situation has been righted, the fey will return the children and no longer bother the inhabitants of the town.
Returning from the Feywild
Time flows strangely in the Feywild. (See "Time Warp" in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.) When the party returns to town, they learn that 12 hours have passed, no matter how much time they have spent in the Feywild.
The children also forget the experiences they had with the pixies after passing through the fey crossing (See "Memory Loss"). The townsfolk won’t believe the stories the party tells about pixies and the Feywild, believing that they are trying to bolster their reputation with tall tales. They graciously pay the reward of 25 gp per child, however.
A Bargain With a Hag
This encounter is intended for a party of four 5th- to 7th-level player characters who are seeking a particular piece of information. This information could be the location of an exotic component needed to craft a magic item, a secret that could bring down a high-ranking official, or something else. In their search for it, they learn that a crone in a nearby swamp has the information they are looking for and that she will part with it for a price.
How long it takes for the party to arrive at the crone’s hut is up to you. For ideas of creatures that the party might encounter on their journey to the hut, roll a d100 and consult this swamp encounters table, ignoring any encounters that involve a green hag.
Once the party arrives, read:
Among the pools of stinking, stagnant water and brambly shrubs sits a small, dilapidated hut on a set of stilts. A steep, narrow staircase leads up to the hut’s front door and a flickering, green light emanates from the window.
Auntie Agnes Greenteeth
The hut belongs to Auntie Agnes Greenteeth, a hag who is disguised as an old human woman. As people are typically quiet about their dealings with hags, whoever told the party about Auntie Agnes will leave out the fact that she is not as she appears.
Auntie Agnes uses the statistics of a green hag with the following changes:
Innate Spellcasting. The hag’s innate spellcasting ability is Charisma (spell save DC 13). She can innately cast the following spells:
1st level (4 slots): identify, ray of sickness
2nd level (3 slots): hold person, locate object
3rd level (3 slots): bestow curse, counterspell, stinking cloud
Auntie Agnes, like other hags, is a vile creature that wants to drain the happiness out of other creatures for her own enjoyment. She will not offer a deal unless it benefits her or negatively impacts the other party in some way.
When bargaining for information, hags will often trade for valuable magical artifacts, powerful pieces of secret information, or tasks they want carried out. Auntie Agnes has a task she would like completed in exchange for the information the party seeks, but she would also be willing to trade for an item that is very rare or rarer.
If the party is aggressive toward the hag, she will not make a deal with them. If they attempt to attack her, she will cast stinking cloud and then sneak away using her Invisible Passage ability. Angering a hag comes with ramifications. If the party gets on her bad side, Auntie Agnes will trail the party and make their lives miserable.
The hag’s bargain
Auntie Agnes wants the party to sneak into a nearby fey crossing, enter a glade protected by dryads, and steal water from their sacred spring. She tells the party that the spring water is a good base for her potions. She provides a flask that allows the party to bring the water back to the Material Plane.
What she doesn’t tell the party is that the flask is actually a modified bag of holding that will absorb all of the water from the spring. The fey forest surrounding the spring relies on the water's magic to remain healthy and will begin to die if the spring is drained. Once the flask has been filled, it can’t absorb any more water and can only be emptied by Auntie Agnes.
Entering the dryads' grove
Getting to the dryads' grove is easily accomplished by following these instructions provided by Auntie Agnes:
"An hourlong journey west of here will bring you to a copse of trees. Wait for midnight and then pass through the trees to enter the dryads' grove.”
As the player characters travel through the swamp, roll again on the swamp encounters table. Once the party arrives at the trees and follows the hag’s instructions, read:
As you step through the skinny, leafless trees, you are greeted with the smell of clean air for the first time since you entered the swamp. Looking around, you find yourselves in a dark, quiet forest. A pale beam of moonlight ahead reveals a pool of calm water, its surface so smooth you can see the stars reflected from the sky.
Around the pool are a group of five humanoid-looking creatures with leaves for hair and bark for skin. They sit at the pool’s edge, singing softly. Their sweet song, though quiet, reverberates around the clearing as the trees sway softly to the melody.
The party can now choose how to proceed. They can attempt to lure the dryads out of the clearing with a distraction, sneak up to the pool while they aren’t looking, or attack them to drive them away. If the party members bargain or attempt to be stealthy, the flask absorbing all of the water in the pool will draw the dryads' attention and make them furious.
If the party decides to hand the flask over to the dryads, the fey ascertain the flask's properties and kindly ask the party to leave. The dryads have encountered a hag on more than one occasion and believe the flask belongs to one.
When the party is ready to leave, they can do so by walking back to the point where they first entered through the fey crossing.
Concluding the adventure
If the party successfully brings the flask back to the hag, she will provide them the information they seek. Unfortunately, the cost of their actions stretches far beyond the anger of the spring's dryads. The pool they drained was protecting the forest from the evil influence of the hag. With its power destroyed, Auntie Agnes can inflict her will upon the forest and turn it into a vast, stinking swamp.
Once the fey forest has been turned into Auntie Agnes’ domain, its malicious energy starts to spill over into the Material Plane. Over the next year, settlements in the area around Auntie Agnes’ swamp are devastated by disease, poisonous gas, and bloodthirsty creatures.
The Wild Beyond the Witchlight is D&D's next big adventure storyline and is now available for preorder on D&D Beyond! It brings the wicked whimsy of the Feywild to fifth edition for the first time and offers new characters, monsters, mechanics, and story hooks suitable for players of all ages and experience levels! Master-tier subscribers can share their books and other compendium content with friends in their campaigns!
Mike Bernier (@arcane_eye) is the founder of Arcane Eye, a site focused on providing useful tips and tricks to all those involved in the world of D&D. Outside of writing for Arcane Eye, Mike spends most of his time playing games, hiking with his girlfriend, and tending the veritable jungle of houseplants that have invaded his house.
First. These look fun! The hag one feels like a no win situation, though. Maybe the dryads should be able to offer the party the answer to their question.
Wow! These are great, thanks!
This is great. I miss the Encounter of the Week series that used be posted. Keep these coming!
Maybe the party forces the Answer out of a hag? You do not have to necessarily follow it.
Auntie agnes is a nice and creepy name.
Yup.
I did a hag deal once... ah how wonderful it was.
I started it off as funny. The hag was joking around, addressing everyone as "darling" or "honey", and had a clear crush on the half-orc barbarian.
I then introduced some more unsettling elements. She openly insulted various party members, locked them in the house, made obvious references to her guard animal, and knew unnerving amounts of info about everyone.
Finally, things really hit the fan and she entangled the rogue (who insulted her), actively summoned her guard animal, and was only placated when the aasimar gave her half of their soul. They got out alive, but the hag then used the would to give them a supernaturally powerful enemy, kidnap their child, and finally crash the feywild into the material plane.
They're currently trying to get out of this mess, and the hag is still a BBEG.
I'm having SO MUCH FUN!!!
Edit: Also, is this an Encounter of the Week or something different...
Wow. This is fricken AWESOME. I hope there will be more mini-adventures like this, it reminds me of the old ”Encounter of the Week" series, which I was really missing. This is your best article yet Mike! Double thumbs up!
Excellent article. Please bring us more encounter-style articles in the future. Love this type of content.
Quite neat the hag encounter is interesting creating a no-win situation if the players follow the path but knowing my group they would do something ridiculous that I would have no way of punishing them for it. Players am I right?
need to point out a mistake. When referring to Auntie Agnes's spellcasting ability, it appears that it is not innate spellcasating, because it uses levels and slots. Also how many dryads are their?
the bargin with a hag adventure seems like the best of these free adventures and can make a great set up into a homebrew fey campaign
I hope this means we might be bringing stuff like encounter of the week back. No hate to the new staff, but in the Haeck days DDB had much more content like Running Monsters, DM's guide, and Spell Spotlight, which were fun an applicable. Now we just get a new book every other day and maybe an article telling you to buy it. I guess the site as a whole is in kind of a growing period since they don't really have one head writer. But I like this article, looking forward to more like it
I don't like no win situations. I'm a single dad, ex-military with two deployments, and am working as a Paramedic. I've seen far too many no win situations in my life. The hag adventure feels this way. It does remind me of an adventure similar in tone I threw together for my friends. The party had been hired to retrieve a sample of soil from the "Sacred Grove" so their employer could have his own little nature temple at home. Of course, he was evil. He was planning to use the soil to create a magical back door into the sacred grove so he could corrupt the grove and enslave the druids who tended the grove. While infiltrating the Grove, the party was captured by the druids. Upon hearing the story, the druids hired the party to double cross the BB. They returned the soil, but when the BB used it to gain access to the Sacred Grove, the druids and the party were waiting in ambush.
That's kind of the point of Hags, and really making deals with the Fae in general. If you follow the straightforward route, you loose.
Fae are masters of the Xanatos Gambit
These are great!
Will there be a series of mini-adventures building up to the new Feywild adventure book release, similar to the "Road to Avernus" series that was super popular?
I think the point with the hag's bargain is to lead into a further campaign that will take the party through some levels and end off with some hag boss battle.
I like how this gives me more than one story so if I have a diffrent level characters than one of the stories I can still play. This is one of the best articles yet!
Inspiring, useful adventure seeds, thank you!
Epic, I love them, I will probably use some ideas for my campaign <3