Domains of Delight are to the Feywild what Domains of Dread are to the Shadowfell: sequestered realms governed by powerful beings. Whereas a Domain of Dread is ruled by a Darklord, a Domain of Delight is ruled by an archfey—the most powerful of Fey creatures. An archfey gives form to their Domain of Delight, shaping it in ways unique to their personality. Some Domains of Delight are bright and cheery, while others are gloomy, but each one reflects the emotional state of its ruler. A Domain of Delight can be as small as a few acres or as big as a country.
This accessory helps you create Domains of Delight and the archfey who rule them, building on the information about the Feywild that appears in the Dungeon Master's Guide. The ideas, tips, and tables in this chapter are meant to spark your imagination. Use what excites and intrigues you, discard what doesn't, and make up the rest!
Feywild Features
The Feywild responds to unfettered emotion. It's not uncommon for flowers to turn and tremble if there's a heated argument nearby. If someone is filled with malice, their footprints might wither the grass under their feet or cause underground insects and worms to burrow to the surface. Birds chirp merrily in the presence of those who are joyous and squawk angrily at those who are perpetually dour. Nosy trees lean in to overhear whispers of conspiracy, eager for delicious tidbits they can gossip about later, and a rock might reshape itself to look like the creature that's happily sunning itself on the rock's surface.
Time and distance in the Feywild are mutable, as is the plane's geography. Roads are uncommon, and those that exist are as likely to change as the land around them. Because the distance between locations is not fixed and dilations in time are commonplace, a journey that took one hour yesterday might take three days tomorrow. Feywild natives are accustomed to the plane's mutability. For them, it's no more peculiar than the sun rising and setting on a Material Plane world.
Other features of the Feywild are described in the sections that follow. Think of them as a sampling of what the Feywild has to offer, for like the Material Plane, the Feywild is vast and diverse.
Seelie and Unseelie Fey
Seelie Fey and Unseelie Fey are two groups that often find themselves at odds. Seelie Fey cling to the trappings of civilization, value protocol, and uphold traditions. Unseelie Fey indulge their primal instincts, abhor adherence to protocol, and shun conformity. The two groups are not opposites morally or ethically; good and evil Fey can be found in both.
Seelie and Unseelie Fey gather in courts. The Seelie court is called the Summer Court, and the Unseelie court is called the Gloaming Court. Both courts stretch to the far corners of the Feywild, so their representatives can be encountered almost anywhere on this plane of existence. The Summer Court and the Gloaming Court are by no means the only great Fey courts, but they're the most wellknown to creatures on the Material Plane and the most widespread.
How the Summer Court and the Gloaming Court came to be is a mystery. Perhaps some Fey felt a deeper affinity with the natural world and chose to emulate it, while other Fey began to control nature, using magic to invent new ways of living. Whatever the case, innumerable Fey pursued these two paths, which became the two courts, and there have been squabbles between them ever since.
Each court tries to destabilize and demoralize the other. Both Fey courts have spies who dig up dirt, sow seeds of dissent, and cause mischief. Captured spies are either ransomed or made examples of in various humiliating, nonlethal ways.
Much of the gossip and chatter within the Feywild is fueled by the intrigue and drama between the two queens that rule the courts. Titania, the Summer Queen, is the regal and charismatic ruler of the Summer Court. Her court enjoys a tenuous peace with the unearthly ruler of the Gloaming Court, the Queen of Air and Darkness, who allows her kin to dabble in magic forbidden by the Seelie Court.
Conflicts between the Fey courts are often ritualized. Representatives of both courts gather in an amphitheater or field to have heated debates or energetic dance competitions that simulate combat, and these events are often laced with bawdy insults and lewd gestures. Only on rare occasions do things get physical, and even then, the Fey do little more than bite, scratch, and hurl mud at each other.
Every now and then, the two queens lock horns, causing tensions to rise throughout the Feywild. If only one of them can get her way, what would normally be a squabble can turn to bloodshed. But only the Fey queens can declare all-out war against each other, and it would take something extreme to have them abandon their relative peace and hurl their courts into violence and chaos.
The Summer Court and the Gloaming Court have nothing akin to a mutual defense pact, and the very thought of one is greeted by jeers on both sides. If a rising army of fomorians or some other threat endangers one court, it's widely understood that the other court will not intervene unless it, too, is threatened by the same enemy.
If you choose to align your domain and its archfey with one of the two courts, guidelines for how they're differentiated are given below.
Summer Court (Seelie Fey)
- Favors sunshine, butterflies, flowers, music, and singing birds
- Values ceremony and refinement (for example, proper ways of speaking, formal etiquette, and extravagant dinner parties)
- Favors elaborate, manufactured costuming with immaculate tailoring
- Harshly judges those who don't exhibit the proper etiquette (adventurers who commit social blunders make fools of themselves, might be labeled buffoons, and might be laughed out of court)
Gloaming Court (Unseelie Fey)
- Favors gloom, twilight, cobwebs, fireflies, hooting owls, and croaking frogs
- Values the intuitive and instinctual (for example, mystical rituals, visionaries, and firelit parties)
- Shuns the constraints of civilization (instead wearing only unfinished natural materials and sleeping under the stars)
- Dabbles in mysterious magic and rituals (adventurers can run afoul of curses if they don't follow the Unseelie ways)
Spells in the Feywild
Spells that manifest one way in the Material Plane might do so differently in the Feywild. A magic missile spell might take the form of a giggling sprite that materializes next to the caster, fires off a barrage of tiny, glowing arrows, and disappears in a puff of sparkling fairy dust. Here are some other examples of how spells can be cosmetically reinterpreted in the Feywild:
Crown of Madness
The crown is made from gingerbread with icing filigree and candy gems.
Find the Path
A pixie-like spirit appears and guides the caster to the desired location. The spirit can't be harmed.
Gust of Wind
The wind carries the scent of flowers.
Maze
The demiplanar labyrinth created by the spell resembles a thorny hedge maze.
Phantom Steed
The steed looks like a giant, fuzzy caterpillar.
Revivify
A creature restored to life by this spell wakes up wondering if their entire life was all just a dream.
Weather
Strolling across a meadow or walking across a desert in the Feywild is often no different than doing the same on the Material Plane, but sometimes the Feywild needs to feel otherworldly. Playing with something as simple as the weather is an easy way to remind your players that their characters are not on the Material Plane.
The Feywild Weather table helps you determine fun weather effects. A weather effect such as this usually lasts no more than an hour or three.
| d8 | Weather Effect |
|---|---|
| 1 | Flower blossoms rain from a sky filled with sparkling, pastel-colored clouds. |
| 2 | A grand fairy drama plays in the sky as a stylistically rendered illusion or a swirling aurora. |
| 3 | It rains tiny fruit tarts. They fall slowly and disappear just before they hit the ground. If caught from the air and eaten, they're delicious. |
| 4 | Fog rolls in and plays harmless tricks on the characters, giving them fog mustaches, fog eyebrows, and fog wigs of many styles—perhaps even fog cloaks or fog companions. |
| 5 | Snow begins to fall, and the flakes grow bigger over time. Flakes as big as dinner plates, wagon wheels, and even a waterwheel fall, but they're light as a feather. |
| 6 | The sky fills with iridescent bubbles that lazily fall to the ground. Giggling pixie children chase and pop the bubbles but turn invisible and flee if spoken to or approached. |
| 7 | A silvery rain lifts the spirits and brings a song to each heart that it touches. |
| 8 | A howling wind blows through the party, and each party member must roll a d8. Anyone who rolls an 8 has a trinket or some other tiny, nonmagical item (such as a coin) stolen from them by weather spirits. |
Domain Borders
As an archfey's power waxes or wanes, their Domain of Delight can grow or shrink. If their domain grows big enough to abut or overlap another archfey's domain, a territorial dispute can arise. Until this dispute is resolved, other Fey denizens of the overlapping domains must defer to both rulers. Such disputes rarely last long; in the end, one archfey is given sufficient incentive to move elsewhere, or the two archfey learn to live with each other (and other denizens of the region must answer to both).
An archfey whose Domain of Delight doesn't overlap with another archfey's domain can surround their domain's border with walls of shimmering mist or some other magical effect that hides the domain from view and, if the archfey wishes, prevents creatures from entering or leaving the domain without a key, a guide, a password, the answer to a riddle, the archfey's consent, or magic.
Feywild Guides
The Feywild has its own illogical logic that visitors from other planes can never fully grasp. A guide who is well-versed in the ways of the Feywild can save travelers time and frustration, possibly even their freedom and their lives—by helping them avoid or get around the illogical logic. While visitors are easily vexed by roads that lead nowhere and forest trails that double back on themselves, a capable guide can see the road through the road and the trail beneath the trail. In doing so, the guide sidesteps the confusion and leads charges safely to their intended destination. Conversely, a bad guide can easily get an adventuring party into trouble.
Use the Feywild Guide Names, Feywild Guide Identities, and Feywild Guide Quirks tables to create Fey guides on the fly.
| d8 | Name |
|---|---|
| 1 | Fetter |
| 2 | Fiddlebones |
| 3 | Moonray |
| 4 | Pip |
| 5 | Starlight |
| 6 | Stumpwick |
| 7 | Thistledown |
| 8 | Whisperwind |
| d8 | Identity |
|---|---|
| 1 | Friendly forest gnome (use the scout stat block, but change its size to Small) |
| 2 | Gloomy wood elf druid (use the druid stat block) |
| 3 | Flamboyant pixie |
| 4 | Happy-go-lucky satyr |
| 5 | Ultra-competitive sprite |
| 6 | Overly cautious treant sapling (see chapter 1 of The Wild Beyond the Witchlight for its stat block) |
| 7 | Giggly goblin warlock (use the cult fanatic stat block, but change its size to Small) |
| 8 | Humorless centaur |
| d8 | Quirk |
|---|---|
| 1 | Always hearkens back and compares things to "the good old days" |
| 2 | Can't tell a lie without wiggling their nose first |
| 3 | Never takes off their hat |
| 4 | Loves food and isn't picky about what they eat |
| 5 | On a secret quest that they can't talk about, except to remind others that they're "on a secret quest" |
| 6 | Afraid of something commonplace, such as heights, enclosed spaces, or bare hands and feet |
| 7 | Carries around a suitcase full of wigs, forks, ashes, glass orbs, left shoes, or something else strange |
| 8 | Full of folksy wisdom that usually starts with, "Papa always said..." or "Mama always said..." |
Fey Outlook
A Fey creature's outlook can be whatever you want it to be, but rarely do Fey ignore the importance of reciprocity, hospitality, and gifts. These concepts are discussed in the sections that follow.
Reciprocity
By and large, Fey feel strongly about quid pro quo and balance. If something is taken, then something of equal value must be given, and what a Fey considers to be of equal value is the big question. A Fey might steal a human's beloved pet and leave in its place a brightly painted wooden effigy, or the Fey might take some gold and leave a bundle of bright, yellow buttercups. These exchanges satisfy the agreement of reciprocity, and a Fey who makes them sleeps soundly at night, content that the exchanges were fair.
Hospitality
Hospitality is a pillar of Fey society. Treating a visitor to one's home with with courtesy and generosity is important to most Fey, but the visitor must show their Fey host the same courtesy and not act boorishly or demonstrate blatant impropriety. Rudeness breaks the bond of reciprocity and frees a Fey host from the obligation to be hospitable. But each Fey has different ideas about what constitutes rudeness; even an ill-conceived gift to a Fey host might be regarded as an insult and cause a hubbub, if not a revocation of the Fey host's hospitality. A trusty Fey guide can provide invaluable assistance in navigating such delicate situations.
Gifts
Connected to both hospitality and reciprocity is the giving of gifts. Fey are avid gift-givers (partially because they like receiving gifts), and their gifts are usually very thoughtful. Good gifts have sentimental value to the giver. For example, a beloved heirloom makes a fine gift to a Fey creature. A throwaway gift is an insult that flies in the face of reciprocity and hospitality.
Gifts provide a kind of balance that many Fey obsess over. If there is a perceived imbalance, a carefully chosen gift can set things right; this is why refusing a gift from a Fey creature can cause them consternation, as they're trying to right a perceived imbalance by giving the gift. But accepting a gift from a Fey can cause problems for the uninitiated traveler, as it can indebt them to the Fey creature: "I gave you a gift, so now you must give me one in return." It can also lead to the formation of an accidental fey contract, as discussed in the next section.
- Family ring
- Talisman sacred to your druid circle
- Favorite hat
- Piece of art that you made
- Trinket from the Material Plane
- Favorite dessert recipe
- Sensational, applause-worthy performance
- Haircut or bath
- Item that has outlived its usefulness
- Item you intended to get rid of
- Half-hearted performance
- Cursed, evil, or broken item
Fey Contracts
A fey contract is formed when a creature receives a gift (or the promise of a gift) from a Fey and is expected to give the Fey something in return. The gift can be almost anything, and the contract forms as soon as the gift is received.
Accidental Fey Contracts
A creature can accidentally stumble into a fey contract in a number of ways. The one bit of good news for the novice Feywild explorer is that most fey contracts can be broken with a remove curse spell or similar magic. Only the most powerful fey contracts are hard to break—ones woven by ancient hags, the queens of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, and other powerful archfey. Such contracts usually require a wish spell or an elaborate ritual to negate.
Here are a few ways one might become unwittingly bound to a fey contract:
- Accepting a gift from a Fey (prompting the Fey to expect something of perceived equal value in return)
- Stealing something from a Fey (creating a metaphysical imbalance that must be rectified)
- Taking the life of a creature that made a contract with a Fey (thereby inheriting the creature's debt to that Fey)
Accepting Gifts
Some Feywild guides recommend never accepting gifts from a Fey and, more importantly, never expressing thanks.
To accept a gift from a Fey is to enter into a contract with it, especially if the gift is received with gratitude. Effusive thanks increase the gift's perceived value, and the Fey will expect something more in return.
Stealing from a Fey
Even if a Fey creature is unaware something has been stolen from them, they sense that they have been deprived of something. This nagging sense doesn't go away until the Fey figures out what they lost and who has the stolen item. Moreover, the Fey might not want the stolen thing back, but rather something of equal or greater perceived value.
Taking a Life in Debt
Before taking the life of a creature in the Feywild, a wise individual makes sure that creature has no outstanding debts to Fey. Any Fey the creature was indebted to look to the killer to make good on the creature's unfulfilled debts.
Fey are understandably cautious when collecting debts from a person who is prone to violence. They usually make their demands at times when it's safest for them to do so, such as when the killer is bathing or in a crowded place.
Making a Contract
Fey contracts can be divided into two categories: greater contracts and lesser contracts. Greater contracts are made with archfey, ancient hags, and other powerful Fey spellcasters. Lesser contracts are made with Fey of all other sorts. Here are some examples of gifts Fey can bestow as part of a greater or lesser contract:
Price of a Contract
If you're not sure what a Fey expects to receive for a gift they bestow, roll on the appropriate Fey Desires table.
To collect something intangible, such as a creature's singing voice or the color in its eyes, a Fey must tap into the magic of the Feywild. In other words, it's the magic of the Feywild, not the Fey creature, that allows a character to claim what would otherwise be impossible to obtain. For this reason, a Fey can't claim such a thing unless they and the creature with which they made the contract are both in the Feywild.
| d8 | What the Fey Wants |
|---|---|
| 1 | One of your fingers |
| 2 | To take the next child born in your family and raise the child in the Feywild |
| 3 | The completion of three quests, each of which you must agree to before the contract is formed |
| 4 | Your everlasting fealty |
| 5 | The ruin or demise of the Fey's sworn enemy |
| 6 | A precious object (such as a rare, very rare, or legendary magic item) that was stolen by or belongs to the Fey's sworn enemy |
| 7 | An art object that is deemed priceless, such as a famous painting that hangs in a museum |
| 8 | Your youth (which the Fey can harvest and bestow on another creature) |
| d8 | What the Fey Wants |
|---|---|
| 1 | Your singing voice |
| 2 | A trinket that carries great sentimental value |
| 3 | Companionship (you remain in the Fey's company for an agreed-upon period of time) |
| 4 | The color in your eyes |
| 5 | The memory of your first kiss |
| 6 | The spring in your step or the sparkle in your eyes |
| 7 | A lock of your hair |
| 8 | Your name (requiring you to choose a new one for yourself) |
Breaking a Contract
The Feywild can punish a creature for breaking a fey contract, but the creature must be on the plane to be affected. The penalty imposed on a creature who breaks a lesser contract can be removed by any magic that ends a curse; a wish spell is needed to remove the penalty for breaking a greater contract.
The Breaking a Greater Contract and Breaking a Lesser Contract tables can be used to determine the magical penalty of breaking a fey contract.
| d8 | Penalty |
|---|---|
| 1 | You can't speak or cast spells with verbal components. Whenever you try to speak, you bray like a donkey instead. |
| 2–3 | You magically transform into an owl. You retain your languages, your ability to speak, and your mental ability scores (Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma). You otherwise have the statistics of an owl. |
| 4–5 | You can't attune to magic items. If you are currently attuned to one or more magic items, your attunement to those items ends immediately. |
| 6–7 | You are petrified. |
| 8 | An iron thorn is magically lodged in your chest. Every day, you can feel it move closer to your heart. If this effect is not ended within 3 days, you die and can't be revived for 5d12 days. |
| d8 | Penalty |
|---|---|
| 1–2 | Your appearance becomes more toad-like (warty skin, bulbous eyes, large mouth, and webbed digits). This transformation has no game effects. |
| 3 | You smell like swamp gas. No amount of bathing can rid you of this stench. |
| 4 | Your shadow does not match your movements, which other creatures find unsettling. |
| 5–6 | Your appearance becomes more rat-like (beady eyes, whiskers, small ears, pointy nose, little hands and feet, and a rat's tail). This transformation has no game effects. |
| 7 | You cast no reflection. Superstitious folk who notice think you're a vampire. |
| 8 | You are constantly surrounded by a small cloud of annoying but harmless flies. |
Fey Curses
Curses are common punishments among archfey and other powerful Fey creatures. An adventurer might be cursed for any number of reasons, a few of which are listed below:
- Offending a powerful Feywild denizen
- Entering a forbidden place
- Appearing in a fey court without an invitation
You can determine the curse's effect by rolling on the Fey Curses table.
| d8 | Curse |
|---|---|
| 1 | Your ears are magically replaced by a pair of soft, fuzzy donkey ears. Moreover, when you try to speak, you instead bray. |
| 2 | You gain 1d3 levels of exhaustion. Until the curse ends, these levels of exhaustion can't be removed. |
| 3 | Spells can't restore hit points to you. |
| 4 | The sound of pixie laughter fills your head while you are awake, drowning out all other sounds. |
| 5 | Anything you try to pick up or hold in your hands slips through your fingers. |
| 6 | Moonlight burns your flesh. You take 1d10 radiant damage when you start your turn in moonlight. |
| 7 | You are magically transformed into an animated wooden doll that looks like you. Your statistics are the same, but you are a Construct with vulnerability to fire damage, and you don't require air, food, or drink. Items worn or carried by you are unaffected. |
| 8 | Whenever you tell a lie, you lose the ability to speak for 1d8 hours. |
A remove curse spell or similar magic is usually enough to end a Fey curse on a creature, but some Fey curses are tenacious and resistant to all magic except a wish spell. A creature can also remove such a curse on itself by learning and performing a specific task or ritual, determined by rolling on the Ending the Curse table.
| d12 | Ending the Curse |
|---|---|
| 1 | You must carve your name into a tree, whereupon the tree inherits the curse's magic and dies. |
| 2 | You must drink the blood of a pixie or sprite while basking in moonlight. |
| 3 | You must speak the true name of the creature that cursed you three times in a row. |
| 4 | While standing in sunlight on an arched bridge over running water, you must beg the Summer Queen for her "fair blessing." |
| 5 | After filling your pockets with fool's gold, you must flap your arms and quack like a duck. |
| 6 | You must bury an executioner's hood (a black-capped mushroom found in the Feywild) in the earth and pour goat's milk over it while whistling. |
| 7 | You must be bitten by a faerie dragon. (It's possible any faerie dragon might do, or the faerie dragon might have to be of a particular color.) |
| 8 | You must leave a bouquet of eight black roses at the place where you were cursed, or you must give the bouquet to the creature that cursed you. |
| 9 | You must persuade a centaur to carry you on its back for eight miles. Before the centaur will do this willingly, it might demand a gift or service in exchange, or the completion of a quest. |
| 10 | You must obtain leaves or pinecones from three different species of treants and burn them in a campfire under a full moon while singing a particular campfire song. |
| 11 | You must bake a small cake and leave it on the doorstep of a forest gnome's abode. Only when the gnome eats the whole cake does your curse end. |
| 12 | You must persuade another creature to willingly take your name. If it does so, it inherits your curse, whereupon you are nameless and must choose a new name for yourself. |
Fey Abodes
Fey creatures live in abodes they fashion for themselves or repurpose for their needs. Characters might stumble upon these abodes in their Feywild wanderings. Use the Fey Abodes table to randomly determine a Fey creature's lair, or choose an option that works well for the creature in question.
| d20 | Abode |
|---|---|
| 1 | A pagoda overgrown with flowering vines that beckon visitors with pleasing scents |
| 2 | A crooked stone tower that has a moon-like orb of light circling its rooftop, which causes the tower's shadow to move like a clock hand |
| 3 | A decrepit mansion that is partially sunk in the middle of a bog |
| 4 | A rocky hill shaped like a sleeping satyr, with its open mouth forming a cave entrance |
| 5 | A windmill that walks around on giant crow's feet |
| 6 | A crumbling keep on a small island in the middle of a mist-shrouded loch |
| 7 | An old farm overgrown with giant pumpkins |
| 8 | A treehouse built in the boughs of a treant |
| 9 | A tower that used to be the trunk of a giant petrified tree, with rope bridges connecting it to the giant living trees that surround it |
| 10 | One or more houses in hollowed-out mushrooms |
| 11 | A gingerbread cottage with a frosting-covered roof, frosting icicles, chocolate doors, and gumdrop gardens |
| 12 | A musty, web-shrouded stone cottage surrounded by an orchard of awakened apple trees |
| 13 | A walking stone colossus with a tower for a head |
| 14 | A cave-riddled hill that walks around on giant stone feet |
| 15 | A walled garden filled with friendly critters, talking flowers, and grasping vines |
| 16 | A well-preserved elven tomb overgrown with moss, decorated with statues, and festooned with bird nests |
| 17 | A giant beaver's lodge |
| 18 | An inn or hostel carved into the foot of a hill |
| 19 | A dragon skull lying in the sand |
| 20 | One or more giant rusty helmets that serve as houses, surrounded by an ancient battlefield |