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.
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.
The @Witchlight Carnival opens at dusk and runs for Seven hours, ending just before dawn. Start the campaign at Dusk. 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 overall mood is high, spirits are high: colors appear more vibrant, flowers bloom around the fairgrounds, and shooting stars sweep across the clear night sky. When the overall mood is low, the mood becomes darker: the calliope music plays discordantly, the staff is tense, and stormy weather looms in the sky above the carnival.
The @Witchlight 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”). 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 Hourglass Coven steal from anyone who sneaks into the @Witchlight Carnival without a ticket. @Mister Witch and @Mister 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”).