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Nerdarchy > Dungeons & Dragons  > D&D Flavour Shot: Dark Fey Portals

D&D Flavour Shot: Dark Fey Portals

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A Flavour Shot is a short description of game artefacts and phenomena for use by Dungeon Masters, Game Masters and Storytellers in their roleplaying games. Feel free to drag and drop these into your own games, and modify to suit. Let us know if you end up using them. Some will be portals to other realms, some will be magic items, others will be monster encounters. This time, it’s…

Dark fey portals

D&D fey Flavour ShotFey portals come in two flavours: neutral or good-aligned fey realm portals, leading to Druid Groves, Fey Glades and other demiplanes and secret locations, and the dark fey portals for the evil-aligned creatures. The latter lead to dark demiplanes and secret locations, as well as the Shadowfell, the realm that seems to be the basis of the upside-down/Vale of Shadows mentioned in excellent Netflix series Stranger Things.

Portals to these darker realms are usually found deep in dark dungeons or unhallowed outdoor areas. Fungi and evil creatures such as undead lurk nearby, along with plant-traps such as barbed and poisoned dangling vines. The presence of the portals causes strange and alien fungi and plants to grow, protecting and hiding the twisted denizens that try to break through such as meenlocks or some invented dark fey creatures (More of this in other articles).

 

D&D fey

Looking for some dark fey to dwell beyond the portal? Tome of Beasts has several cool creatures to fit the bill. Click the image and add it to your D&D collection!

The portals themselves are dark, putrid flat planes (planes, not planes… actual planes as in a flat object, not a plane like a plane of existence plane; although the root of the word is the same – you know what? It doesn’t matter) made up of a sludge-like substance that resembles what you might find under a fallen log in a swamp somewhere. It’s foul-smelling, it’s spongy and slick and has an oily residue. The point is it’s something that doesn’t invite further investigation.

 

However, should one push past the awful aroma and off-putting appearance and try to enter through this portal, they will experience one level of exhaustion. Coming out the other side, the character is breathless for a moment and covered in the same black sludge that comprised the surface and sides of the portal. The inside is simply pitch-black goo something akin to warm fat; it’s a liquid jelly that can be pushed through fairly easily but doesn’t accommodate much breathing or free movement, and still takes effort to move in.

This dark fey portal is now complete. An icky black portal that deals a point of exhaustion to move through. But what about the nicer ones? That’s something for another time…

Expand the world beyond the dark fey portal

feyYou can find all sorts of cool content to expand your D&D, Pathfinder or other roleplaying games at DriveThruRPG. If you use the coupon code DTRPG-Nerdarchy and get 10 percent off any order of $10 or more (usable once per customer). [This coupon code is applicable to digital products only.]

If you need even more dark fey for your game, check out another title from Kobold Press called, fittingly enough, Dark Fey. Lore about the fey courts, malevolent fey creatures, fey animal templates for an essential guide to the strange folk of old tales.

Click the image of the book’s cover or this link here to go to DriveThruRPG and check out all the cool stuff you can find.

Let us know in the comments below if you use or plan to use a dark fey portal in your game. What do you think lies on the other side?

And of course, stay nerdy!

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Drew Murray

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