In our latest video on "Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes," @ToddKenreck and I chat about the Raven Queen and the shadar-kai: https://t.co/7jYgqFYu7k via @YouTube #DnD @DnDBeyond

— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) March 2, 2018

promise to elves
of power possession fixed bodies a place
in the mortal world when she made this
promise elves began to fracture during
this time in the elves ancient history
it is said and this is a story we go
into in Morton Canaan’s ton of foes
there was a mighty elf queen who saw
this chaos that was going on among her
people among elves and she thought if I
could marshal enough magical power I
could not only ascend to godhood but I
could help restore order to our people
and order that at that time coral on and
loss seemed incapable of providing now
the timeline of this is a little murky
and we’re purposefully a little murky
about this because it has to do with
prehistory but the story goes that she
was successful marshalling her followers
who called themselves the shadow Kai to
start gathering this power and many of
her followers began to give of their own
power to her but there was a problem so
these evil wizards saw this magic being
channeled into their queen and they
thought maybe we can get some of that
and so while the Queen and the shattuck
I were trying to hatch this plan which
also because people might wonder well
what was in it
the Chateau Chi it sound like their
queen would get a great deal but here is
also part of what was in it part of the
promise is that with her power she would
open a pathway back to Arvin door for
elves because when coral on turned his
back on elves they were basically cast
out of their own heaven and so she was
saying essentially I will provide a way
a different offer from what Loaf offered
wolf offered power in the world this
queen offered a road back to heaven back
to Arvin door very enticing and so you
can understand why the shadow kai would
be willing to help in this effort but
they’re those evil wizards and basically
they looked at her and to them she was a
nice big magic battery and so they began
to try to draw from her the magic that
had been given to her and there was a
great catastrophe in the process she was
utterly destroyed but had so much magic
in her that she reformed in the shadow
fell as a new being the Raven Queen and
when she reformed there as this new God
her people came with her and thus the
shatter Kai became a people of the
shadow fell the people of the gloom
those evil wizards also had something
happened to them the magic transformed
them and the Raven Queen cursed them and
they became monsters who also appear in
Morgan Kane and stoma foes the Nakba
nanpa appeared in D&D way back in basic
D&D they are these humanoid sort of
bird-like people powerful with magic
sometimes they’re compared to the
Skeksis
in the Dark Crystal movie and again
there’s this bird motif having to you
know go along with the Raven Queen
because they’re also stories that
associate the Kangoo with the Raven
Queen but we’re here to talk about the
shadow Kai and so the shadow Kai they
with now the Raven Queen in this realm
of sorrow and gloom and colorlessness
they began to feed on the energy of that
place in many ways you can think of the
shadow Kai and the Aladdin as being
mirror images of each other the Aladdin
are the elves were the people of the Fae
wild who began to be shaped by its fame
a jerk
so in contrast the shadow Kai are the
elves who began to be shaped by the
sorrowful gloomy monochromatic magic of
the shadow fell like a ladrón they can
also teleport but they in terms of
aspect rather than having the vibrant
seasonal colors of the Aladdin they are
a people who are pale gray wear dark
clothes and are often inscrutable and
very dangerous and often are doing the
will of the Raven Queen who seeks to
collect secrets from around the
multiverse and hoard them in her
Fortress of memories fortress that is
endlessly enticing to figures like Vecna
who would love to get their hands on the
cosmic secrets that are safeguarded
there and so many shatter Kai roam
around the multiverse when they’re not
dwelling in the shadow fell to gather
bits of memory and various items of
historical importance to bring back to
their queen but then some break free of
this influence and become Wanderers in
the multiverse like many others and
that’s why
given that possibility Morden caimans
Toma foes gives you the option to play a
shadow Kai and the shadow Kai as I
mentioned have a teleportation ability
similar to a Landrum
but the rather than having a sort of
seasonal kicker like the Elad rune have
on dares once shatter Kai get to be
third level they have a resistance that
they gain when they teleport and when
they teleport they also become spectral
sort of like a ghost because again of
their association with the gloomy realm
of the shadow fell also because of
living in the shadow fell or being
descended from those who lived there
shadow Chi also now have resistance to
necrotic damage in our play test version
of the shadow Kai which we previewed and
unearthed Arcana that resistance ability
shadow Kai got at first level and
playtesters rightly pointed out that it
was very powerful and so we ended up
pushing that up to third level similar
to how a race like the tea fling or drow
get certain magical abilities from their
race as they reach higher levels so we
solved that particular balance issue a
similar way in the shadow Kai which we
also by the way did in the Aladdin
Aladdin start off with the ability to
just face step but it when they reach
third level then their season has the
ability to give them a little kicker to
spice up that teleportation now some
people wonder about the shatter Kai’s
origins because appropriate for a people
basically who live in shadows there have
been various tales over the years in D&D
about where these people came from when
they appeared in third edition D&D they
were described as a Fae people which is
again true of all elves at least
originally they all started out as a Fae
people but then when the shadow kai
reappeared in fourth edition D&D that
they thread in their storyline was not
emphasized
they still you know were these pale
people often in sort of goth we’re many
of them teleporting around but that part
of their story was not the emphasis so
now that we’re focusing on them once
more we wanted to revive their original
Fae heritage and clarify their
relationship to the rest of the elven
family now they have dwelled in the
shadow fell for long enough then in many
ways they are the least
Elfi of the elves and again I said that
they are like a they’re like the total
opposites of a ladrón Aladdin in some
ways are the most elfia valves and the
shadow kai are the least
Elfi of elves it’s almost like you know
they they can remember their very
distant ancestors who were a part of you
know the large elven family but the
shadow kai i think would rarely even
think of themselves as elves even though
they have that common ancestry because
they have so much more now a people of
the darkness now this doesn’t mean that
they are all dark entirely in their
souls it is possible to have a heroic
shadow kai particularly because the
Raven Queen herself is not necessarily a
force for evil the Raven Queen is
primarily a force of inscrutability a
being who will sometimes help the forces
of good in the multiverse and other
times might seem to be assisting the
forces of evil and other times not
helping either very much in a way like
Morgan Kanan who gives his name to this
book is a figure of the balance Morden
Kanan and is often said as this figure
who is terrified of either good or evil
becoming too powerful in
multiverse for fear that too much power
in any one camp could destabilize
everything and cause anihilation and so
he often pulls strings to sort of keep
the cosmic balance and in his mind keep
the cosmic existence in place some would
think that the Raven Queen might play a
similar role but again it’s difficult to
tell because she is such a figure of
mystery for when she was reformed in the
shadow fell after that original elven
queen was annihilated and and then
became the Raven Queen it’s unclear how
much of that original elf is still in
her and how much is she now an
embodiment of the shadow fell itself how
much is she actually a face of an entire
plane not unlike a figure like the lady
of pain and sigil who is a similarly
inscrutable cosmic force said by many to
be even more powerful than a normal God
because it in some ways is almost
inaccurate to refer to the Raven Queen
as a God the way other gods are gods her
origin is different the source of her
power is different she is tied more
intimately to a plane than most of our
gods are again it’s similar to how the
lady of pain is tied to the city of
sigil rather than kind of a free-roaming
entity which is much more typical for
the divine beings of the dandy
multiverse so there are a lot of juicy
mysteries around the Raven Queen and her
people the shadow Chi R similarly
mysterious and I think people will have
fun playing them once more than Cain and
stone the foes is out am I gonna play
one so I really like the shadow kai when
I’m not playing Ana ladrón I think it
would be fun for a change of pace to
play a shadow kai and I have and I think
I would want to sort of walk the
rope of playing this gloomy person
though who has like a heart of gold
who you know it’s sort of the the the
person in Gotham makeup who is actually
trying to save the world and I think it
would be a fun contrast and chatter Kai
aesthetically do have a number of things
in common with vampires
they are you know they’re pale they’re
often have a certain elegance to them
but in a golfy way rather than the again
the vibrant elegance that you might
associate with with people like the
Aladdin also something that’s an
interesting twist about the shadow kai
is when they are outside of the shadow
fell they have the youthful appearance
that you would associate with other
elves it’s just again very pale
so almost looking like vampiric elves
but when they are in the shadow fell
they actually look elderly which is very
unusual for elves because elves don’t
normally look old the way other
humanoids do but in that plane there is
something about it that gives them an
elderly cast wrinkles appear upon them
so many of them actually like to leave
that place especially those of them that
might be subject to a bit of vanity you
know it’s like whenever they go home I
look so old when I when I visit the
folks Thank You Jeremy Crawford for
being on D&D beyond you can learn a
whole lot more about the elves in Morden
Canaan’s tum of those which you can
pre-order right now Undine DB on comm
I’m Todd Kendrick thank you for watching
The Shadar-kai and The Raven Queen in D&D's 'Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes' https://t.co/41rbrBnOSM

— D&D Beyond (@DnDBeyond) March 2, 2018