To me, the most disappointing thing about D&D comics is that they don’t last. The stories tend to be fun, the worldbuilding is nice, and the cast of characters is usually great. But licensing issues or low sales often lead to the cancellation of a series within a couple of years.

This is the case with the 4th edition Dungeons & Dragons comic, which is an especially big shame because the second arc spends time introducing our heroes’ backstories. Write John Rogers really created a story that had room to grow, but situations beyond his control prevented the seeds he planted from fully bearing fruit.

Still, it’s a fun ride while it lasts. With that said, let’s jump into the middle arc of this series, “First Encounters.”

Through Time and Space

When we last left Fell’s Five, things had gone badly.

Having stopped an invasion from the Feywild but torn open a planar rift in the process, Adric finds himself reliving moments from his past. As is standard for stories like this, the things he remembers will play a role in the adventure about to come.

In the past, a young Adric is successfully cheating at cards until Captain Jinx announces the cheating to his competitors. A bar brawl ensues, and Adric and Jinx flee the scene.

The reason Jinx blew the con? Because he wants to hire Adric for a job.

The job is the time-honored adventuring profession of caravan guard, which we all know to be as good an excuse as any to get from one deadly place to another in a D&D world. Adric’s new companions include a wizard named Trasgar, a serving boy named Justin, and an apprentice named Philomena.

There’s also Drey Harrick, the only other real guard. Since the caravan is bound for some ancient ruins, Adric notes the obvious: they are woefully understaffed should something dangerous occur.

But I’m sure nothing bad will happen, right?

Getting to Know the Crew

The trip begins easily enough, allowing Adric to learn a bit about his companions before disaster strikes. This includes Justin, who is on the path to become a hero because of destiny and certainly not because he got kicked out of the orphanarium where he grew up.

Drey calls this a “live-birth problem,” but doesn’t get to expound upon the benefits of eggs before he and Adric notice a very upset dwarf in the middle of a river. Why is the dwarf upset? Because something large chased him into the water.

The creature is a bulette, or land shark, and I have mixed feelings about its 4th edition design. On the one hand, it is huge and terrifying. On the other, this design makes it look more like a natural burrowing animal (which does make sense) while downplaying its sillier shark-like appearance from older editions. I’m kind of a fan of the bulette that has a big ol’ fin sticking out of the dirt while it hunts.

Trasgar hides away during the fight, protecting something in a small chest. Philomena gets in a good shot with a burning hands spell, surprising herself by casting a spell successfully. Even so, the crew has little hope of putting the hungry beast down until the dwarf convinces Adric to lure him back to the river.

The dwarf is none other than Khal, meaning we’ve just seen the first meeting between two of Fell’s Five. Drey hires Khal on the spot despite Trasgar’s objections, because the crew can’t handle another dangerous beast without help. Adric tells Khal what he figured out on his own: Trasgar is taking them to a lost city. Khal notes their direction and tells Adric that there is no lost city where they’re going.

Adric takes wild goose chases and suicide missions pretty well as long as he’s still getting paid. I guess in a D&D setting where everything from the wildlife to the furniture wants to eat you, you’ve got to laugh so you don’t cry.

The City of Stairs

Naturally, Trasgar isn’t really mad. Instead, he has pinpointed a place where a city from the Feywild appears in the Material Plane for one night every ten years. His mission, which he should have explained from the get-go: enter the city of Al’bihel, loot its magical treasure, and be out by dawn.

Aside from the obvious courting of danger, the biggest flaw I see in the plan is that a place called “The City of Stairs” sounds downright exhausting.

Trasgar assures everyone that his research indicates the city is completely abandoned. However, Adric makes note of a semantic loophole.

Trasgar’s arrogance leaves everyone into a trap that he could have avoided if he had listened to his apprentice.

Out of good ideas, Adric goes with a bad one: take a hostage and go from there.

And thus we have our next meeting: Varis starts as a foe to Adric. Moreover, we discover that his lover Juliana met him at the wrong end of a sword.

An Interrupted Standoff

So Trasgar’s “abandoned city” is currently being explored by eladrin, plus the elf Varis.

For those confused about the different between eladrin and elves, it’s a 4th edition-ism. Older versions of D&D had multiple elven subraces, including high elves (which Juliana would have been) and wood elves (which Varis would have been). In 4th edition’s reimagining of D&D, they decided to split them into two different races. Eladrin are magic-y elves who live in the Feywild, while elves are woodsy hunters.

As with many things in 4th edition, the change had some logic to it but never caught on with diehards, so 5th edition rolled things back to the subraces of old.

But enough about game minutiae…Trasgar tries to negotiate with the eladrin and inadvertently reveals the real reason he’s in the city: he’s looking for the Guide of Gates.

Adric reminds the eladrin that he has a hostage, but they’re willing to let Juliana die to protect the Guide of Gates. This prompts Varis to switch sides, because he’s more interested in protecting the princess than guarding a forgotten artifact.

Noises from below interrupt the standoff. At first believed to just be eladrin scouts killing anyone left at the wagon, it soon turns out that something else is the culprit.

Heh. Look, I’m not saying I want to get disemboweled, but if I ever do I hope my last words are a dramatic, “I am being disemboweled HORRIBLY!“

Everyone rushes downstairs to find that something has killed human and eladrin alike. Adric bemoans the loss of Khal, saying, “I really liked that dwarf.” Drey responds to accusations of human treachery with a dry, “Yes, my men slaughtered yours, then disemboweled themselves.”

Varis notes that the earth has been churned, and on cue hooded monstrosities burst up from the ground. This leads everyone back into the city, with the monsters in hot pursuit. Drey takes a serious wound and things look bleak, but at least Khal proves himself a survivor.

In short order, the standoff is reduced to a handful of survivors: Adric, Drey, Juliana, Justin, Khal, Philomena, Trasgar, and Varis. They barricade themselves in a room with only one door and have only moments to regroup.

But a dire situation with only moments to live is the perfect time for some exposition!

The History of Al’Bihel

Khal describes his part of the fight, where one of the creatures knocked him through a wooden door and promptly exploded.

Philomena, blinded in the battle, recognizes the item by description: a sun bomb. It was created by the eladrin as a defense mechanism against the drow, who are dazed by bright light.

Interestingly, Philomena describes eladrin as “high elves” and drow as “dark elves,” highlighting the biggest flaw in 4th edition’s “no subraces, just races” approach. When something has four decades of history behind it, keeping everything but the name only leaves people calling it what they’ve always called it.

A drow army laid siege to Al’Bihel, and the eladrin tried to open a portal that could move the entire city out of the Feywild.

The creatures attacking the group are the drow inside the city, who were warped by planar energies. And what became of the eladrin? Nobody knows for sure.

It’s an interesting story, to be sure, but Khal is not impressed.

History is great, but all that really matters right now is getting out. And, sadly, that means making a sacrifice.

Escape

Tasgar says he can’t climb more stairs, which gives Adric a plan to escape. Unfortunately, escape requires them to open the door, which means that the warped drow will attack instantly.

One of the reasons I like long-running series is that you can eventually try almost any storyline. Had this book lasted longer, it would have been cool to see an alternate universe where Drey survived or an story where the adventurers met his spirit. Sadly, it’s time to say goodbye to this noble dragonborn.

As he prepares to sacrifice himself, Drey tells Adric about the curse the human bears.

Justin describes the group’s location as they flee, and Philomena guides them to the Arcane Lord’s chamber. There, Adric finds the way out.

Teleportation circles have been around in D&D for a long time, but 4th edition leaned on them as a significant world-building tool. The designers of the default 4th edition setting decided that the world should be wild and untamed, with deadly wildernesses between the few secure cities of the setting. But cities need trade, and caravans would be infeasible in such a deadly world. Thus, most major cities have teleportation circles to allow safe travel from one point to another. Luckily for our heroes, the same rules hold true in the Feywild.

The Arcane Lord’s chamber also has rates of sunbombs, making it a deathtrap for the approaching drow. Trasgar opens the portal, which confuses Juliana–after all, she could have done the same.

Adric wants everyone to survive, but if someone has to stay behind he’ll pick Trasgar, who got them into this mess in the first place.

Everyone except Trasgar escapes as the drow arrive, and then the chamber goes boom. And we return to the modern day.

Not to sound like a broken record, but I really wish this series got more time. We never know why Bree stabbed Adric (though we can certainly guess), we don’t discover how Jinx lost his arm, and we never see Justin or Philomena again. There was obviously an intent to cover those stories at some point in the future, but licensed products don’t allow for carefully-plotted tales.

Anyway, this flashback has gone on long enough, so let’s join our heroes in the present.

The bad news is that the group is in the Feywild with no way home.

This isn’t the happy, carousing-with-nymphs kind of Feywild, either. In 4th edition D&D, everything wanted to kill you. So the group needs to find a way home, hopefully without getting eaten by a dryad or something.

This is just the first half of the “First Encounters” story, but there’s enough going on that this seems like a natural place to take a break. We’ll find out how the heroes return home (or if they do) next time.

_{Images: IDW}