Dungeon Master's Guide

S HADOWFELL
• iven stood in the uppermost room of the central tower of
·is citadel-a fortress of shadows and dark stone carved in
-elief into the sheer face of a jagged peak . ... The starless
·tack vault of the plane's sky hung over a landscape of gray
nd black, where lived the dark simulacra of actual things.
hadows and wraiths and specters and ghosts and other
!.mdead hung in the air around the citadel, or prowled
~he foothills and plains near it, so numerous their glowing
~res looked like swarms of fireflies. He felt the darkness in
everything he could see.jelt it as an extension of himself,
and the feeling made him too big by half.
-PaulS. Kemp, The Godborn
he Shadowfell, also called the Plane of Shadow, is a
dimension of black, gray, and white where most other
color has been leached from everything. It is a place of
darkness that hates the light, where the sky is a black
ault with neither sun nor stars.
The Shadowfell overlaps the Material Plane in much
r.be same way as the Feywild. Aside from the colorless
landscape, it appears similar to the Material Plane.
Landmarks from the Material Plane are recognizable
on the Shadowfell, but they are twisted and warpeddistorted
reflections of what exists on the Material
Plane. Where a mountain stands on the Material Plane,
the corresponding feature on the Shadowfell is a jagged
rock outcropping with a resemblance to a skull, a heap
of rubble, or perhaps the crumbling ruin of a once-great
castle. A forest on the Shadowfell is dark and twisted,
its branches reaching out to snare travelers' cloaks, and
its roots coiling and buckling to trip those who pass by.
Shadow dragons and undead creatures haunt this
bleak plane, as do other creatures that thrive in the
gloom, including cloakers and darkmantles.
SHADOW CROSSINGS
Similar to fey crossings, shadow crossings are locations
where the veil between the Material Plane and the
Shadowfell is so thin that creatures can walk from one
plane to the other. A blot of shadow in the corner of a
dusty crypt might be a shadow crossing, as might an
open grave. Shadow crossings form in gloomy places
where spirits or the stench of death lingers, such as
battlefields, graveyards, and tombs. They manifest only
in darkness, closing as soon as they feel light's kiss.
DOMAINS OF DREAD
In remote corners of the Shadowfell, it is easy to reach
horrific demiplanes ruled over by accursed beings of
terrible evil. The best known of these is the valley of
Barovia, overlooked by the towering spires of Castle
Ravenloft and ruled by Count Strahd von Zarovich,
the first vampire. Beings of the Shadowfell called the
Dark Powers created these domains as prisons for