Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is an anthology of standalone adventures Dungeon Masters can inject into their campaigns or run as one-shots. The adventures take characters across the multiverse and include challenges for characters from levels 1 to 14. Each ties back to the Radiant Citadel, an ancient city found deep in the Ethereal Plane.
Co-lead designers Ajit George (writer on Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft) and Wes Schneider (senior game designer for Dungeons & Dragons) lead a diverse team of writers, editors, and artists to bring 13 new adventures and 11 new monsters to life. Each adventure found in the book ranges in tone—from the whimsical to the horrific—and takes characters to civilizations yet to be discovered in D&D.
What Is the Radiant Citadel?
The Ethereal Plane is a hapless and misty realm that borders the Material Plane. Travelers who become lost in this immense place may stumble upon an ancient city built from a massive fossil that snakes around a gleaming crystal of impossible size. This is the Radiant Citadel.
Constructed by over two dozen civilizations of old, the Radiant Citadel serves as a beacon of hope for the lost, the displaced, and the inquisitive. The city functions as a throughline for the character's adventures, similar to how the library of Candlekeep served as a starting point for the adventures found in Candlekeep Mysteries.
What sets the Radiant Citadel apart from Candlekeep, however, is that it is setting agnostic. “Rather than just being a normal city, [the Radiant Citadel] is floating out there in the multiverse, in the plane that is forever one step away from reality. Pretty much wherever you are in the Material Plane, you have the ability to access the Radiant Citadel," said Schneider. This makes it easier for DMs to tie their existing campaigns into the adventures found in this new book.
From the Radiant Citadel, characters will travel to vastly different civilizations throughout the Material Plane that have been inspired by real-world cultures and mythologies. If they wish to explore the Radiant Citadel, DMs will have a gazetteer to reference that outlines the city and its peoples in great detail. Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel also includes gazetteers for other locations.
New Locations to Discover
A wynling flies above the Dyn Singh Night Market. Art by Evyn Fong.
Beyond the relative safety of the Radiant Citadel, characters will face challenges in unique locations throughout the Material Plane. No matter whether a campaign is set in the Forgotten Realms, Eberron, or somewhere else, each location presented in these adventures can be dropped in. This allows DMs to flesh out their favorite campaign settings with ease. Similarly, DMs will be able to satisfy different players' tastes, whether they prefer facing off in light-hearted contests or facing down bubbling unrest.
The 1st-level adventure in Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is "Salted Legacy." Written by Surena Marie, the adventure is a comedic mystery that takes characters to the bustling Dyn Singh Night Market. There, they discover an intergenerational feud between rival vendors after mysterious cases of vandalism and theft occur. To solve the mystery, characters will need to earn the trust of those who work the market. To do so, they'll need to complete a series of challenges. "These challenges range from a spicy pepper eating contest to a timed cooking challenge where players have to battle and defeat giant prawns in order to make prawn patties,” said Marie.
Players with a taste for horror will enjoy Erin Roberts' 3rd-level adventure, "Written in Blood," which will have their characters investigating a haunting during a celebration held on swampy farmlands. Mario Ortegón's 5th-level adventure, "The Fiend of Hollow Mine," takes characters to San Citlán to investigate a magical disease and an owllike fiend that terrorizes locals.
Purchase Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel
The Dungeons & Dragons adventure anthology takes players to new locations and introduces a hub for multiversal campaigns. Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel released on D&D Beyond on July 19. You can pick it up today in the marketplace.
What Is D&D Beyond?
D&D Beyond is an official digital toolset for fifth-edition Dungeons & Dragons. Players who join D&D Beyond can quickly create characters and take them on the go with the D&D Beyond App. You can even roll dice directly from your character sheet using the app or from your browser. The toolset handles all of the math to make playing the game easy. DMs will find tools to build and run combat encounters, manage their campaigns, and create and discover homebrew content.
D&D Beyond is free to join, but if you sign up for a subscription, you'll be able to create unlimited characters and even share books you've purchased with players in your campaigns (Master-tier only).
Michael Galvis (@michaelgalvis) is a tabletop content producer for D&D Beyond. He is a longtime Dungeon Master who enjoys horror films and all things fantasy and sci-fi. When he isn’t in the DM’s seat or rolling dice as his anxious halfling sorcerer, he’s playing League of Legends and Magic: The Gathering with his husband. They live together in Los Angeles with their adorable dog, Quentin.
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Posted Mar 23, 2022Can we cool it with all the preorders and this is available now articles. I get it, because money, but like it used to be fun to read other articles. Now I'm just annoyed and skip to my resources as fast as I can.
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Posted Mar 23, 2022We are 100% ON BOARD with more released small adventure compendiums. A lot of us are super busy adults (gross, I know) and our groups don't get to meet often for an immersive campaign. Shorter stories that can be assigned to a troupe as Missions or Investigations in a central region are a GIFT. Thanks for this new release. Pre-ordering NOW.
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Posted Mar 23, 2022I second this motion!!
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Posted Mar 23, 2022It's hard to say -- the project lead Ajit George is Indian (by way of Texas), a social justice activist for poor people in India, and in their announcement tweet they made a big deal about how this project is entirely made by quote "black and brown people", including most of artists and editors. He also implied that the book may be as much a platform for representation and activism, as it is an adventure book. It's also supposed to be set in a mythical India--no word if this is just one adventure, or all the adventures. It would be nice if this page mentioned:
The hype about PoC, which they downplay here.
Is this all set in India, or varied cultural settings?
A page count and estimated retail price
A preliminary list of titles, level ranges and theme/tone for each of the adventures, so we can see if they fit in our game world.
As far as a new way to get to the Ethereal Plane, maybe the PCs could find a door in Sigil? (hint hint) :)
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Posted Mar 23, 2022Really looking forward to a multiverse adventure but something is bugging me.
Isn’t it a little weird, that the city which is “floating out there in the multiverse” is located on the plane that boarders only the inner planes?
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Posted Mar 23, 2022This looks pretty dang awesome!
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Posted Mar 23, 2022Varied settings. Some are influenced by mythologies from Persia, Korea, Philippines, Southern US, Mexico, etc.
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Posted Mar 24, 2022So cool! Can’t wait for the release. My players would love this.
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Posted Mar 24, 2022Stay tuned, methinks.
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Posted Mar 24, 2022Planescape, Dragonlance, Spelljammer, Dark Sun for folk sake. Give us 5e new age updates for campaigns of the old age... Everytime you make a new edition. It's not like you've written any modules for Ravnica or Theros... was never a fan of Forgotten Realms setting...
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Posted Mar 24, 2022I agree, but beyond isn't owned by WOTC who publish the books. Commenting this here isn't going to get noticed by the designers, let alone acknowledged.
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Posted Mar 24, 2022Is this planned to work with Forgotten Realms Adventures League Campaigns?
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Posted Mar 26, 2022It just means its connected to all the material worlds like elemental planes, Eberron and Toril but not the spiritual planes like hell. They have been connected through the ethereal before so its not unusual. I wouldn't expect consistency with outer planes because in some books some of these material planes don't have the same outer planes like Eberron .
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Posted Mar 27, 2022It really sounds like a watered-down version of Sigil stripped from all the uniqueness and flavor. I'm still excited for multiplanar adventures, but I hope it won't be something of Strixhaven quality.
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Posted Mar 27, 2022What don't you like about Strixhaven? One of my current campaigns is in Strixhaven and Edward Merryspell has been having a blast with it.
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Posted Mar 27, 2022That is a lot of cuddly mascots.
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Posted Mar 27, 2022He liberated them from awakened shrubs that had been stealing from students; one of them (the Witherbloom one) is currently attached to his chin to replace his beard after it fell out getting too close to the Snarl (in addition to briefly gaining god-like powers via multiple spell boosting effects, an aura of flower petals, nearly killing a fellow student with an accidental 5th level magic missile, and involuntarily turning invisible). Not sure if that's in the book, but my DM opted to use the Wild Magic Surge Table and I rolled a 2 and got ridiculously lucky on the 10 additional rolls.
Like I say, having a blast so far. 😁
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Posted Mar 27, 2022I wonder if this will be RP driven like Wild Beyond the Witchlight or more well rounded adventures using all 3 Pillars of Play.
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Posted Mar 28, 2022Which d&d world is this in?
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Posted Mar 28, 2022The world-building is an uninspired rip-off from Harry Potter. It didn't deliver any promises about being a sourcebook. Silvery Barbs is quite an unbalanced spell.
It also has a half-baked and windy plot where your actions for the vast majority of the campaign don't matter.