As D&D moved into the 21st century, it started focusing less on trying to tell a broad swath of fantasy stories and more on trying to create a unique identity for itself as a brand. You could see that starting with 3rd edition ending the halfling-as-hobbit motif, and you can see it in the way the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons presents its opening storyline compared to how 2nd edition’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons did it.

This is the cover of issue #2 of Dungeons & Dragons, which kicks off the “Shadowplague” story. It could basically be a movie poster about a superhero-esque fantasy story, complete with the “edgy” half-smile of the main character. (In fact, this could basically be concept art for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.)

This is the image from “The Gathering,” which shows the part in a more straight-on fashion. There’s some personality there, with the dour dwarf, the serious paladin, and the smiling archer, but you could basically put it on the cover of any fantasy novel.

For better or worse, the “Fell’s Five” comics followed Wizards of the Coast’s vision of D&D as a brand, rather than as a vehicle for the fantasy genre at large. The 4th edition comics are faster-paced, full of sarcastic dialogue, and generally designed like an action movie. These work together well and make it one of my favorite RPG comics, but I sometimes wonder if the reason the comic didn’t last very long is because the good times it offers can be found in virtually any other action-oriented media of the era.

Into the Fire

In keeping with making this comic feel like an action movie, we start in media res, with Adric Fell and Bree Three-Hands fighting zombie orphans. Through narration, Adric breaks the fourth wall and says, “To be fair, you’re coming in late.”

We flash back to earlier in the day, with the group enjoying some time at a tavern. (The tavern is called The Staggered Goat, but sadly won’t become a regular feature in this comic like Selûne’s Smile was in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.) Khal has received a love letter from home, but is despondent because it’s not long enough.

Tisha signs a contract joining Fell’s Four Five, and zombies attack not a moment later. This provides a good opportunity for Tisha to learn how her time with this group will go.

Bree, meanwhile, takes a somewhat racist view of the new horned companion.

The zombies escape through a hole in the floor, but then turn back into normal, now-dead, humans.

All of this action occurs over one minute, tops. But, in true D&D fashion, the city watch shows up to make life miserable for our heroes. The rapid response leaves them looking like murderers, and they are immediately brought before the Lord Warden.

The Heart of the Matter

Our heroes are charged with disturbing the peace, destruction of property, and murder. Not a bad rap sheet for somebody who just blew into town. Bree, ever the quick thinker when it comes to saving her skin, tries to shift the blame to her new patsy, Tisha.

Bree failed her Bluff check.

A gnome named Copernicus Jinx interrupts the proceedings. As Adric’s commanding officer in his military days, Copernicus is fond of our fearless leader. Adric is quick to note that being one of Copernicus’ favorites is not a good thing.

Copernicus wastes no time in cutting open one of the victims, removing the corpse’s heart, and using his magical arm to divine the truth.

Tisha comments on what a kind gift the arm was, but Adric notes that Juliana’s father was the one who ripped off the gnome’s old limb.

Copernicus determines that the “zombies” were infected by energies from the Shadowfell. That’s the new plane in 4th edition that sort of mashes up the old Plane of Shadow and the Negative Energy Plane. It’s also a name that has stuck into 5th edition, no doubt because “Shadowfell” can be trademarked and “Plane of Shadow” cannot.

The discovery does little good, however, because moments later everyone who is not a member of the group becomes corrupted by more Shadowfell energies.

Fell’s Five is unaffected by the energies because Copernicus had been tracking the phenomenon earlier and warded the adventurers. Adric is ready to go down swinging at his former CO’s side until the gnome mentions that he sent Juliana ahead in the investigation and that she is now in danger. That causes Adric to immediately jump out a window and steal a wagon, making his way to her as quickly as possible.

As Bree notes, Adric’s got a bit of a crush.

Dwarven Work

Adric and Bree take the streets, while Khal, Tisha, and Varis take an underground route to the same spot. Khal is immediately impressed by the architecture, which he identifies as “dwarven work.”

The tunnels lead to a smuggler’s cave, where a doppelganger is engaged in a magic ritual.

Khal attacks the doppelganger, disrupting the ritual and starting a fire. Adric and Bree spot the burning orphanage and rush in to find Juliana engaged with zombie orphans…which means now we’re all caught up.

The fire causes an explosion down below, which stops the children from being all zombified. Tisha tries to take out the doppelganger, but the creature hits on her weak point…and leaves us with a little mystery to explore later.

The doppelganger escapes, but so do Khal, Tisha, and Varis (with only one of them stabbed!). They meet Adric, Bree, and Juliana after Bree “finds” a boat they can escape on.

Bree patches Tisha up, showing off again that 4th edition D&D doesn’t rely on clerics for healing.

Fell’s Five leaves Jinx and Juliana to clean up the mess back in town. Meanwhile, they go hunting the doppelganger, only to run into a complication: the doppelganger came across a caravan under attack from orcs and took a new form. So now the group has a caravan pinned down by orc raiders and a shapeshifter running loose somewhere in the chaos.

A New Plan

As Khal explains later on in this comic, Adric doesn’t come up with good plans, but he comes up with fast plans. In an adventure, the latter is more valuable. In this case, with the doppelganger hiding in the caravan and carrying an artifact that allows him to channel energy from the Shadowfell, Adric decides to resolve matters with the orcs in a very direct fashion.

If Adric wins the battle, everyone goes free. If he loses, the humans surrender their caravan and give up half their number as prisoners.

Hey, it’s a better option than “everybody dies.”

The orc chieftain, Gruhn, gets to choose the weapons for the duel. Adris thinks this will work to his advantage because he’s trained in all the traditional orc weapons.

That’s another subtle switch in edition styles. 3rd edition D&D was all about specialization–fighters were expected to pour feats into their chosen weapon. Although 4th edition fighters could specialize in combat styles, they had a much broader range of weapons with which they were effective.

Unfortunately, none of those fighting styles cover Gruhn’s chosen weapon.

Not only does Gruhn have talent with a rock, but Adric is using this fight to stall the orcs. That means that, as the battle goes longer, the bigger and stronger fighter is likely to win. And that’s not Adric.

In game terms, Adric is stuck in a hopeless combat. So all he can really do is come up with an insanely stupid bit of improv and hope the GM buys it.

Yeah, that’ll do it.

Enemy Found

With Grunh off-balance because of Adric’s kiss, the tide of battle turns. Unfortunately, the orc priest goes against orders and sounds the attack.

That decision goes poorly for the priest, who gets an arrow to the eye in the ensuing battle.

The arrow comes from Varis, who was using the time Adric spent fighting to find the doppelganger. And he discovered the truth when he found a dead orc priest stripped of his clothing.

The battle dies down, but Gruhn openly wonders why he shouldn’t just slaughter all the humans anyway. Bree bluffs, successfully this time, that there were two doppelgangers, so Gruhn would be stabbed in the back during the fight.

With the orcs gone, Bree easily finds the most valuable thing left behind: the artifact carried by the doppelganger.

As Khal mentioned, it’s dwarven work.

Eladrin are the 4th edition version of high elves, who live in the Feywild (another trademark-able plane name). And there’s a fey heart inside each world key.

As happens far too often, the world key is part of a set. In this case, there are evil cultists trying to open a planar portal in some nearby dwarven ruins. And thus, without having a chance to catch their breath or even receive thanks for saving the caravan, our heroes are off to a new site to get into more trouble.

Heading Down

Tisha and Varis take point at the dwarven ruins, where a pair of shadar-kai (humanoids from the Shadowfell) stand watch. Varis does a simple test to see how many of them there are.

I kind of think it’s funny that orcs are apparently immediately identifiable by the arrows they shoot. I guess that goes back to the black-feathered arrows from The Lord of the Rings, but it’s funny to me that a guy from another dimension can see an arrow and immediately go, “Orcs!”

Varis is a bit off in his estimation, though. There are reinforcements; they just fight better in the darkness because the shadows allow them to teleport.

The crew gets off the stairs as quickly as they can so they won’t get ambushed. Unfortunately, that just means the shadar-kai trigger a trap that floods the chamber at the bottom.

Luckily, Bree is on the job.

The fellow trying to sneak up on her doesn’t fare well.

Bree triggers an exit from the trap which dumps the group into a ventilation shaft.

I like the nod to the fact that people can’t really just live in deep underground chambers like D&D shows so often. There has to be a way to get air to the surface and vice-versa. This is a part of dungeon design that typically gets overlooked.

It also gives a ventilation shaft crawl, which basically cements my comparison to this comic (and, by extension, modern D&D) as an action movie with fantasy trappings.

Time for Backstory

A swarm of giant bats separates the group, leaving Khal and Tisha in one tunnel and the rest of the group in another. The quiet moment allows us to learn a bit more about our dwarven paladin and tiefling warlock.

Tisha, meanwhile, is adventuring to avenge the deaths of her parents.

What she doesn’t tell Khal is that her sister Tara committed the murder. Unfortunately, we won’t get a chance to see the end of that particular mystery. There was obviously something more planned, but the comic ending after only 18 issues put a damper on things.

Interlopers

Adris, Bree, and Varis don’t get to reflect on their past, because they have to deal with a flaming skull that keeps saying they’re going to die. But it doesn’t mean that in a bad way…

The actual interlopers are shadar-kai, originally brought to the dwarven ruins to protect it from intruders but now dedicated to something else.

The shadar-kai have been tasked to rebuild the portal…and they have done so. As the adventurers observe, a cyclops steps through the gate.

To Stop an Invasion

So now our story reaches its climax, with two worlds–the Feywild and the Shadowfell–set to invade the Prime Material Plane. You’d think that they would have come up with a new word for the Prime in 4th edition, but they deliberately avoided a lot of world-building details, including the name of the planet our heroes are adventuring on.

The cyclops is using eladrin slaves to allow his army to pass through the portal, but it’s not working well enough to allow a sizeable force through. This is probably why the doppelganger was running around with a world key of his own.

As a show of force to cow the slaves into compliance, the cyclops kills an eladrin slave, providing another heart that can be used to forge another world key and stabilize the portal.

Also, the cyclops seems to have a better Perception bonus than our heroes expected. He notices the adventurers hiding in the control room and sends a force to kill them.

Adric asks the flameskull how to destroy the stronghold, but the flying skull insists that the dwarves built it to last forever. He seems very convinced in the truth of that indestructibility until Varis makes a point.

Adric’s newest plan comes in multiple parts. First, he sends Bree back to the surface to get help. Second, he sends the flameskull to follow Bree and kill her if she abandons the mission. Third, he and Varis go to blow up the forge.

Meanwhile, Khal and Tisha have a fight with a carrion crawler that seemingly leaves Tisha dead. Khal confronts the cyclops and tells him he made one fatal mistake. The giant doesn’t take that well.

Tisha, believed dead, actually recovered and freed the slaves.

The forge goes up thanks to Adric and Varis, but unfortunately that cuts off Bree’s escape.

With everything filling with lava, the adventurers and slaves make their way to the portal. Too bad Adric still has a world key in his pocket.

And so our story comes to a cliffhanger ending.

As mentioned, I quite like the adventures of Fell’s Five, and my only regret with this comic is that it didn’t get more stories. But it is very different from the AD&D comics of the 1990s. The pacing is much faster, and we don’t have as many quiet moments with the characters. All the chaos in this entry occurred over the course of five issues, and the adventurers never really got downtime.

While I love the humor and the fast pace of the action, I do miss seeing the heroes during their off-hours at Selûne’s Smile or aboard the Realms Master. But that’s the nature of modern comics; there’s much more action and much less time to slow down and take things in. It’s also the nature of 4th edition D&D; very rarely did we see art that showed adventurers traveling or enjoying themselves at a tavern. Instead, the edition was almost wall-to-wall with action scenes and big combats.

Despite the lack of quiet time, there is some good character-building coming up, as our heroes hurtle through time and space toward their next adventure.

Images: IDW Comics