The Witchlight Carnival is a fairground of kaleidoscopic tents and wagons crewed by wondrous beings, including many denizens of the Feywild. This is no ordinary carnival; it uses magic to travel from world to world across the Material Plane, visiting each world once every eight years and setting up business on the outskirts of populated areas. The carnival spends a few days at each location, then packs up and moves to another location on the same world until the decision is made to leave that world and visit the next. The carnival includes a fey crossing, allowing travel to and from the Feywild domain of Prismeer.
The characters are free to explore the carnival as they please. There are many paths through this chapter, so it can play out differently each time you run it.
Before running the Witchlight Carnival, follow the steps below to help make the experience smoother:
Familiarize yourself with the layout of the Witchlight Carnival. The map that appears in this chapter is a smaller version of the carnival poster map.
Read the chapter and familiarize yourself with the carnival’s attractions. The characters can go anywhere at any time, so you need to be prepared for anything.
Prepare the tracking devices described in “Carnival Map.” You’ll need a d8 to track the passage of time and another token to track the carnival’s mood on the poster map.
As the characters explore the carnival, you can keep a record of key events using the adventure’s Story Tracker.
The characters have an ally in the carnival: a planeswalking gnome bard named Ellywick Tumblestrum. The characters don’t know Tumblestrum, but she knows them because her lute has magic strings that whisper secrets to her as she plucks them. These strings guided the gnome bard to the carnival and revealed to Tumblestrum that the characters’ fates are intertwined with the fate of Prismeer. She has bought a ticket for each character who isn’t a carnival employee. (The tickets are waiting at the ticket booth by the entrance.)
Tumblestrum can be found in the Feasting Orchard (described later in the chapter) and serves as a helpful guide if the characters need direction.
On the poster map of the carnival, use a miniature figure or some other token to mark where each character is located at any given time. If the characters split up, the tokens will make it easier to keep track of everyone.
The poster map has places to track two crucial elements: the passage of time and the carnival’s mood.
The Witchlight Carnival opens at dusk and runs for eight hours, ending just before dawn. When the characters enter the carnival, place a d8 at the start of the track in the upper left corner of the poster map with the “1” facing up. Move the die to the next space at the end of each in-game hour, and turn the die so that its uppermost face shows the hour that is now beginning. Don’t worry about managing things down to the minute. If the players (and their characters) seem to be having fun, you can slow down the passage of time to give them time to enjoy the carnival’s attractions. If the game starts to lag or if the characters spend a lot of time engaged in the same activity, advance the die to the next hour.
Three events take place every night at a particular hour:
Hour 1: Welcome Gifts. Small gifts are handed out to lucky guests.
Hour 4: Big Top Extravaganza. A midnight show gives the characters the chance to dazzle spectators and impress the carnival’s ringmaster.
Hour 8: Crowning the Witchlight Monarch. The carnival’s climactic event gives the characters a chance to meet the carnival’s mysterious owners.
Each event is detailed in the “Timed Events” section later in the chapter.
The characters’ actions in the Witchlight Carnival can affect the overall mood at the carnival. When the characters arrive at the carnival, place a token in the starting space of the track in the lower right corner of the poster map. This token moves right or left along the track as the carnival’s atmosphere changes for better or worse.
The text informs you when to raise or lower the mood. When the token is to the right of the starting space, spirits are high: colors appear more vibrant, flowers bloom around the fairgrounds, and shooting stars sweep across the clear night sky. When the token is to the left of the starting space, the mood becomes darker: the calliope music plays discordantly, the staff is tense, and stormy weather looms in the sky above the carnival.
The carnival’s mood is used to trigger an important meeting between the characters and the carnival owners. If the mood reaches either of the end spaces on the track, the carnival’s owners invite the characters to speak with them in their wagon (see “Meeting Witch and Light” later in the chapter). Characters who attend the Big Top Extravaganza can also receive an invitation to meet with the owners, even if the carnival’s mood isn’t in an extreme state.
When the hags of the Hourglass Coven took control of Prismeer, they gained leverage over Mister Witch and Mister Light. The hags know that Witch and Light are not the carnival’s original owners and have threatened to divest them of their status by orchestrating a reunion between the Witchlight Carnival and its counterpart in the Shadowfell (which would force Witch and Light to give up the former and return to the latter).
Terrified of losing their Feywild fair, the two shadar-kai have agreed to let the coven steal from anyone who sneaks into the carnival without a ticket. Witch and Light have tried to neutralize this situation by diligently checking all visitors for tickets, but some unfortunates inevitably slip through, making them targets for the hags’ thieves (see “Thieves of the Coven”).