Since we spent the first half of this volume of Dungeons & Dragons in the past, I thought it made sense to break the summary into two parts. We’re now back in the present, with our heroes trapped in the Feywild.

I’m not pumped about the word “Feywild,” which originated in 4th edition D&D along with its counterpart, the Shadowfell. However, I guess they’re catchier than the previously-used “Realm of Faerie” and “Plane of Shadow.” More importantly to Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro, they are trademarkable terms that the company can monetize.

In game terms, the Feywild and Shadowfell were meant to be more accessible than they used to be, allowing for lower-level adventurers to travel the planes without requiring high-level magic or bespoke magical gates. Almost every setting decision in 4th edition D&D was to create a world (and multiverse) full of perils where adventurers would find fights anywhere they went. So far, Fell’s Five are carrying that spirit with them well.

So You’ve been Banished to the Feywild…

Of the companions, Adric, Khal, and Varis have been to the Feywild before. But Bree needs a quick orientation.

Khal’s logic seems pretty solid to me. Furthermore, a plane without dwarves is something I don’t care to be part of.

The portal ripped a hole in time and space, so the adventurers don’t know if they are even in their own time. Adric doesn’t worry too much about that, though…he just wants to keep moving before something nasty finds them.

The gang finds a river, which is a good thing because the laws of commerce apparently still apply even in a fey realm. Rivers meet roads, which lead to settlements. Unfortunately for Khal, the river is too wide to cross easily and thus requires the crew to build a raft.

Not far down the river, the group finds a gnome fleeing from some angry fey. Khal quickly leaps to the rescue.

The rest of the group, on the other hand, looks appetizing to a dweller of the river.

Khal battles some quicklings, Bree goes to save the gnome, and the rest deal with the alligator-thing. Bree’s rescue is unorthodox: she shoots the gnome in the leg so a quickling can catch him, then ambushes the quickling. But she still gets results.

Once Tisha has tended to the gnome and Adric has shooed Bree away, they group learns that the quicklings serve someone called the First Lord…likely the same entity that the cyclops back in the Prime Material Plane worked for.

The First Lord is a fomorian, which is a giant warped by an ancient curse. In 4th edition D&D, they are native to the Feywild. That differs from older (and newer) editions, and is another example of how 4th edition upended traditional D&D lore that folks were used to.

The gnome is not terribly grateful for the rescue, however, as he leads the group into an ambush.

And thus our heroes are rendered unconscious. Again.

The Importance of Good Bait

Our heroes awaken tied up and hanging upside down. The gnomes are preparing to flee, leaving their captives to the mercy of the First Lord. Khal tells Quincy, the treacherous gnome who led them into the ambush, that he should stay and fight, but Quincy has a better plan.

Adric warns Quincy that he needs to let the group go immediately or he’ll die. Quincy mistakes that as a threat, but it’s really a warning.

Adric can feel vibrations along the rope holding him, which is how he knows something is on the tree branch above him.

That something? A displacer beast.

The First Lord’s forces were quicker than Quincy expected, but Adric sees an opportunity to escape in the chaos. Unfortunately, his best option is Bree, and she seems to have already cut herself loose and run off.

The adventurers are left to fight displacer beasts and bloodthirsty gnolls, but the battle is a short one. The enemies fall quickly thanks to the intervention of a very powerful spellcaster.

Yes, Juliana’s father has been tracking Adric through the Feywild. On the one hand, that means the group is saved. On the other hand “saved” is often a temporary condition.

Daddy Dearest

Juliana’s father, Toveliss E’Teall, is very powerful and very arrogant. Thus far, we haven’t really been given proper context as to why Varis dislikes eladrin. Toveliss is here to showcase all the flaws of those Feywild-dwelling elves.

Toveliss easily dispatches the First Lord’s gnolls and shows no regard for the gnomes they were attacking. Adric, on the other hand, refuses to leave until the gnomes have escaped–very big of him, considering that the gnomes would not have returned that favor.

After the battle ends, Khal is not as forgiving. Luckily for Quincy, Adric’s cooler head prevails.

Toveliss takes the adventurers across an invisible bridge to the hidden city of Cydaria. We learn that Toveliss was the one who tore off Copernicus Jinx’s arm, but the full story on that will remain a mystery.

Khal expresses disdain for what he calls frivolous eladrin architecture. Toveliss counters by explaining how impregnable the city’s defenses are. That seems like tempting fate, but any dramatic irony you may be expecting is not to be realized–Cydaria is just a stopover as the plot progresses.

Sadly, while the companions made it through the unstable portal to the Feywild just fine, the eladrin they recused didn’t.

Toveliss speaks of the Guide of Gates, which was last seen in Al’Bihel. Of course, Toveliss doesn’t exactly have pure motives.

I’m very glad that Juliana was the first eladrin we met in this comic. If Toveliss had come first, it would have soured me on all eladrin. But as it is, we can see why Juliana broke away from her father…and why the supremely arrogan Toveliss blames Adric for that rather than looking to his own flaws.

Wilderness Perils

Shortly after leaving Toveliss, the adventurers come across a dryad’s grove. Now, in older editions a dryad was a beautiful fey spirit that was generally peaceful but could occasionally charm travelers and make them her servants. In keeping with the idea that every creature is a potential combat encounter, 4th edition changed them a little bit.

I could go either way on dryads, but I think I lean more toward the earlier editions where they weren’t obvious foes. The idea of using pleasure as a weapon makes them a different encounter than, say, a shambling mound.

(On the other hand, I have to laugh at AD&D 2nd edition’s classification of dryads as chaotic good, when they would occasionally enslave a man for a period of 1d4 years.)

However, this particular dryad is overcome by something other than violence. Khal provides the fey with a gift: a poem that he has never recited aloud about him and his love.

Khal notes that the rhymes are better in dwarven. We’ve heard of Khal’s talent at poetry before, but not seen it in action. This is a good example of showing an ability rather than just informing an audience that it’s there.

Uninvited Guests

The group makes their way to Al’Bihel without further incident. They expect to see an ancient city that is as beautiful as it is deadly, but it seems that the First Lord got there ahead of them.

The group needs to get inside without fighting the entirety of the First Lord’s army. That’s no problem for the sneakthief Bree, but the rest have to disguise themselves as servants in service to Tisha. After all, as Bree would be quick to point out, the tiefling looks like she belongs in an army of monsters.

Tisha bluffs the hobgoblin by claiming that she brings an important message for the First Lord and that speaking it aloud would mean that the First Lord would have to kill the hobgoblin for overhearing. It’s not the cleanest of bluffs, but it works.

Tisha’s not a natural conwoman, though, and her stomach does funny things once the group has been left alone.

Bree, on the other hand, is in a more natural environment, infiltrating the fortress.

Of course, sending Bree alone to recover an ancient treasure is a risky move in and of itself. Let’s see how it pays off for our heroes…

Distractions and Diversions

Tisha meets a rakshasa servant of the First Lord and claims that she and her group were hired to steal the Guide of Gates. Naturally, the rakshasa decides to kill them, but Tisha elaborates by explaining that her crew is just the backup in case the actual thieves fail. Elsewhere in the city, Bree adds some veracity to this claim by starting a fire.

Tisha offers to reveal where she was to meet the thieves in order to cover their escape. In return, she demands safe passage back to the Prime Material Plane and a chance to review the research on the Guide of Gates. Before the rakshasa provides anything, though, he goes to double-check that the artifact is safe.

With some mishaps.

After making sure that the Guide is still secure, the rakshasa decides to give Tisha half of what she asked for up front: a chance to interview the First Lord’s wizard about the artifact. However, that wizard is an old acquaintance of the group’s.

It’s Trasgar, who was last seen trapped in Al’Bihel after he enables Adric’s escape. Now blind, Trasgar nonetheless recognizes Varis by voice. Tisha lies that Varis is merely a guide she hired and that nobody else in the group is connected to that fateful night at Al’Bihel.

In case you’re wondering if being trapped for years in the Feywild has humbled Trasgar, it hasn’t.

With Trasgar distracted and Tisha learning about the Guide of Gates, the rest of the group runs off to reunite with Bree and steal the artifact.

Things Go Sideways

After setting the fire, Bree snuck into the castle and followed the rakshasa as he made sure that the Guide of Gates was secure. This bit of subterfuge allowed her to see what defenses the vault has. Unfortunately, she’s slow to tell that to the rest of the group.

My biggest problem with this infiltration is that the art doesn’t complement it well. All we see of the hallway leading up to the vault is a straight corridor with nothing for Bree to hide behind. She jumps down from somewhere off-panel to join the group, but it would have been nice for the art to support the idea that she could hide somewhere other than thin air.

Meanwhile, Tisha learns that Trasgar knows someone she knows.

This is another breadcrumb to the plot we never see resolved: Tara is Tisha’s sister, and the warlock has been tracking her for years. Sadly, this series was canceled before she ever got to find her.

Adric tries to diable the golem in the vault by using the passcode “Al’Bihel” like the rakshasa did, but the golem attacks anyway. As it does so, it starts spouting something in Elven.

And meanwhile, the rakshasa comes to the realization that maybe it wasn’t a great idea to leave a bunch of strangers unsupervised while thieves sun rampant through the area.

Bree steals the Guide of Gates while the rest of the group fights the golem, and then Adric accidentally says the deactivation code…which just happens to be the name of the eladrin spirit he spoke to earlier.

The rakshasa finds a disabled golem and a looted vault. He storms up the Trasgar’s quarters, but finds Tisha’s “bodyguards” fast asleep.

In retrospect, it was pretty stupid not to keep a guard at the door.

The guards search the group, but the guide isn’t on them.

Always eager to help, Tisha suggests catching the thieves at the place she was supposed to meet them… which just happens to be the glade of the dryad Khal impressed earlier.

Bree sneaks out with the Guide of Gates by hiding inside the disabled golem. So when it goes to the trash heap, Bree is home free. I guess it’s nice to have an explanation of how she snuck out this time, as opposed to her disappearing into thin air like she normally does.

Going Home

With the Guide of Gates in hand, Fell’s Five can complete their transaction with Toveliss…but will they?

Adric throws the Guide to N’ehlia, Arcane Lord of Al’Bihel. How did he know that N’ehlia was the Arcane Lord? Because the golem was speaking Elven, the language of its creator (although, in 4th edition, shouldn’t that language be called “Eladrin?”), and because saying N’ehlia’s name shut the golem down. Toveliss could have found out N’ehlia’s identity as well, but he never asked his name and didn’t care about the eladrin spirits for anything beyond bargaining chips in his quest to get the Guide of Gates.

And, speaking of the Guide, N’ehlia disposes of it outright.

Destroying the Guide really cements its role as a Maguffin–it served no functional purpose in this plot beyond being an object of desire for the various factions in the story.

Toveliss now dislikes Adric even more than before, so it’s a good time for the group to hitch a ride back to the Prime Material Plane.

Adric is not terribly happy to find out that Copernicus Jinx, who sent him to Al’Bihel in the first place, knew the Arcane Lord of the city. But it’s got to be a coincidence…right?

Whew…that was a lot. Luckily, it’s all wrapped up nicely…or is it? Tisha seems a little troubled…

As it turns out, Tisha may have secretly betrayed Adric to a powerful wizard who holds a grudge. But…we’ll never know what comes of that. This is planting for something that never had a payoff due to the short lifespan of the book.

And, speaking of…we’ll deal with the last volume of this comic in the near future!

Images: IDW