Basically the Shadowfell

Legend has it that if all the corners in a room are taken, an edgelord will instead open a portal to the shadowfell and go sulk there.

"Elves are human plus"
"Elves are planar cockroaches"
So that means humans are..
Oh...

The first time i found out about Acerarak, the DM gave him a Skeletor voice.
I've had a hard time taking him seriously since then.

Aight, now imma run the shadowfell as 1930’s gangster town, where their ain’t no magic but guns and bootleg whiskey.

Good 'ol Acererak...we got him good during Tomb of Annihilation.
When he appeared from a demiplane, our cleric decided to go through that same portal. Acererak shut that portal, trapping our cleric in his demiplane (basically, his office).
We fight Acererak, and the remaining paladin, bard, and fighter manage to beat him up fairly well. Our barbarian, meanwhile, is smashing an entire stockpile of phylacteries, leaving no possibility of Acererak coming back to life.
Acererak starts getting nervous, so he re-opens that demiplane to escape...and out walks our cleric.
Except our cleric had gotten REALLY old, complete with long grey beard. Turns out, time worked differently in Acererak's office, and our cleric had aged 30 years...he had sustained himself on tasteless food and water through his spells, and sheer lust for revenge.
Acererak wastes no time escaping; he flies through the portal, vowing that he will kill us all as soon as he creates a new phylactery, and shuts the demiplane behind him.
Our weary cleric drops to his knees, and our group rushes to him to help him.
We lament how we failed to kill Acererak, and we worry that all hope is lost.
Our now-feeble cleric, however, starts laughing hoarsely. Confused, we ask him what he's finding so funny.
Turns out, while the cleric was trapped inside Acererak's office, he did more than eat and go crazy...he kept on casting "Guardian of Faith", waiting for someone to open the demiplane again.
As soon as Acererak entered his office, gravely injured from our fight, the FIRST thing he saw was a massive celestial warrior brandishing a mace and shield of Pelor.
The LAST thing Acererak heard before being obliterated by this radiant guardian was:
" SUP NERD. WHERE'S MY MONEY?"
His dying screams echoing in our minds, Acererak was slain, and Chult was saved by a bunch of murderous assholes.

"Elves are like planar cockroaches"
Well that escalated quickly. Not that I disagree with your assessment

Runesmith: "Wait, can't we just use the mechanics of the world DnD takes place in to answer unsolved mysteries behind characters' lores?"
WOTC: Wait that's illegal

the Shadowfell is so cool. I’ve had this idea for a horror game where a strange creature from the Shadowfell manipulates the children of a large region of the Material Plane, stealing them to later be eaten and to feed on their happiness. he just wants to feel happy, like how he was when he was a regular man. I don’t know, what do y’all think?

Ah yes, the five emotions:
Angery
Hongry
Forever Alone
Lost
Wretched, but also kinda cute

Is basically Acererak next?

Hot take:
Shadowfell = Goth world
Vanilla "plain" = Poser world
Feywild = Prep world

Acererak, I know that you’re mad, I wasn’t the best necro-dad, but I still love you, you purple pineapple...
-Vecna, the Necro-dad

Two words:
Emo Feywild.

Now I'm sitting here wondering when he'll hit us with "Basically, The Astral Plane."

So… the Feywild is an Lsd fuelled Saturday. and the Shadowfell is a gloomy Monday?

6:21 That was unironically amazing.

6:26 every one knows aserak was a Canadian who made geese duh

"Haha, look at the funny man! He can't decide what he wants for dinner."
STOP LOOKING AT ME

3e/3.5 forgotten realms lore:
*deep meaningful long texts explaining everything in great detail*
5e:
*about 1 page for like 25 locations. Maybe a half or a whole additional page if lucky*

Our party defeated Acererak via our Druid casting feeble mind, and it somehow actually working, and then we just kind of left him there.

*Shadowfell:* where the goths, emos, Punk stars & Heavy Metal bands like to chill and hang out.

You seriously fucked my head with the enumeration that just goes 1-1-3 at 6:00.
Now please just pretend that was intentional, and not at all a fuckup in editing, kthxbye

...Visiting the Fortress of Memories to uncover the secrets needed to beat Acererak sounds like a pretty cool campaign idea.

"Elves are like planar cockroaches."
Thank you for this quote, which I'll be using every day for the rest of my mortal life.

1:31
De Blob? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in years...

You talk about the Raven Queen like her initial quest for power was pointless, but I'm pretty sure that Mordenkainen gave a motive. She began the ritual around the time when the Dark Seldarine (drow gods) split off from the Light Seldarine (elven gods). Being an elven queen, the soon-to-be-Raven-Queen wanted to become a goddess to be at a level where she could reunite the two elven pantheons. However, her ritual was accidentally sabotaged by a group of evil wizards who screwed up the ritual, turning her into the Raven Queen, sending them all to the Shadowfell, and turning the wizards themselves into the Nagpa (Skeksis knockoffs).

How to improve the Shadowfell in one move: replace the Raven Queen with David Bowie and the elves with Skeksis'

As a life long dwarf player your hatred of the knife ears pleases me.

Personally i see the Shadowfell as something like Dark Soul: lot of dead people, gloom and doom and demons at each corners

6:30 this is all really funny to me because in the last campaign I played, Acererak is just this really fun guy who loves making lattes, destroys stuff for fun (literally broke apart the surface of the world in this universe because he was bored), and is dating the party minotaur. It's all super fun to watch happen.

6:08
1. Finding what you've forgotten, or lost
1. Uncovering secrets kept by the dead
3. Confronting manifested fears or doubts
I see you also do not follow the studies of arithmetic

This is one series that helps me make my campaigns.

HOLD ON YOU ARE DOING BASICALLY THE PLANES!!! AWESOME!!! can't wait till the outer planes

4:21 that undertale references *_bonetrousle blasting in the background_*

Let's count to 3 with Runesmith. Ok, ready?
1. 1. 3.

The Feywild, the Material Plane, and the shadowfell are all the triplet children of the elemental planes. The Material Plane is the healthy one, but the Feywild and the Shadowfell lhave mania and depression, respectively.

Sooo basically Shadowfell is like Silent Hill's misty realm and its dark counterpart, the hell-like realm.

6:29
Uh, actually you know what? I'm good. You keep your secrets there, buddy hahaha I can relate. Just gonna walk away now and never look back. Bye

"Nightwalkers will 100% kill you"
Party necromancer: Hold my skull goblet

Yharnam is part of the Shadowfell. Change my mind.

Feywild Elves: OMG!! Its such a beautiful day, isn't it great~? WHAT A WONDERFUL DAY TO BE ALIVE~~!!
Normal Elves: Mmm. Yes, I must concur. This a very exceptional day to go on a stroll.
Shadowfell Elves: There is no point in this day, just as any other day. Just another reminder of our own short miserable existence.

I made the Raven Queen a powerful sorceress that Nerull, being the absolute jerkbutt he is, used as sort of a cosmic phylactory that while he went and fused with the Negative Energy plane. Elevating her to a god and him to something else. But she's also real clever and now he can't directly effect things and has no living cult anymore. So her motives are out maneuvering her evil undead ex.

Your Acererak is very different to Puffin Forest’s

So, what I got from this is... make a campaign that has the players eventually go to the fortress of memories to find Acererak's real name... or did I miss something here?

My favourite thing to do with the Shadar Kai is to take their emotionlessness and just run with it. They're not angsty or tortured, they literally don't give a shit about anything. Whenever the party runs into one, they act like your most apathetic coworker at a shitty office job. They have literally no passion or enthusiasm about anything. They're just kind of bored.

I looked up the stats for the nightwalker and a necromancy wizard at lvl 14 with command umdead can easly make one of these ther personal life sucking nightmare

"power is not a goal,it's a tool"
*INCORRECT*

If Acererak made his Phylactery before using it, then the knowledge of it is in there somewhere.
My guess is he either made his dungeon network AS the phylactery, or he just tossed it into the negative plane.

I feel like it would be better and more accurate to say: "the raven queen's fans tried to make her more powerful, but some of those fans were toxic and ruined it for everybody."

Does the ending perhaps foreshadow "Basically: Acererak"?

I recently came up with a Shadar-Kai character who I think is actually pretty cool and breaks the mold a little bit. Basically, their clan found a portal to the prime material plane in a cave and decided that they were sick of living in the Shadowfell. So they sent several of their members - including my character - through the portal to scout out this new world and find a brand new place for them to inhabit that is a heck of a lot safer and more peaceful than anywhere in the Shadowfell. They still worship The Raven Queen as their patron goddess though.

If dragons who get stuck in the Shadowfell turn all dark and shadowy, what happens to a dragon if it gets stuck in the Feywild???

This episode was so good. The comedy was on point, it was informative and you made some great bits. I totally agree on the elfs and the outro was amazing.

I like how he avoided saying 'sent into the shadow realm'

0:51 sponsored segment ends

i’ve had a really good idea for a campaign where there’s 4 kids and they’re wandering around after a night of fun, and a creature from the shadow fell takes one of the kids back to the shadowfell. the kids have to talk to different people who have different pieces of information like a teacher with info on the shadowfell and another psychic kid who knows about the creature, so they can finally take down the monster and rescue their friend.
lol

All the other youtubers are slowing their production speed but you keep churning out quality content relatively quickly, you’re awesome.

Psychonauts?
*I am the milkman...*

I recently did a one shot with my Gf and her sister, one of the characters was a wild magic sorcerer and pushed my own event that the first time she used her magic, they got pulled into the Shadowfell, because they we're at a Shadow Elf village in the real world. They fought the undead and found a mage who's died and had an idea that would allow you to pass between planes. Trying to find information and enemies was tough for 5e, so ultimately I got to do as I wish. Was fun and may add it into a later game as well! Great video!

6:30 Doot, where are you, Acererak is acting weird again. Go get your boss another drink.

I just love that critical role lore was referenced in this

The bit with the dungeon tiles on the bed was totally worth slightly crushing all those tiles! Hilarious. I did NOT expect that.

You caught on to exactly why I introduce the Raven Queen when running Curse of Strahd.

In my setting, the Raven Queen's death tore her identity from her. She gathers memories and ideas to wear them and fill the void. When she inevitably finds out they don't fit her correctly, she discards them (hexblade patrons!). Sadly, she can't retain what she's learned because she's basically a dead/undead god. She's got the worst mix of amnesia and Alzheimer's, and is one of the most tragic stories. She will never succeed unless she ceases to exist as the Raven Queen.

6:05 1, 1, and 3. That's some good counting right there.

In my first game, the party went here briefly after the party's sorcerer pulled the most badass exit, and pissing off the Cleric, by murdering the Raven Queen and taking her place, and in the chaos ended up leaving us there for a little bit as we tried to find a way out.
We fought duplicates of the party, controlled by us as well, and I learned to fear the cleric.

6:08 nice counting there

Perfect! Two weeks ago, I TPKd my party. Tonight we join our heroes in the shadowfell.

6:06 "or face your inner demons Like persona 5" *sad persona 4 noises*

Shadow fell or as I call it the
*Edgy Dimension!!!!!!!!!!!!* (Echoes)

DND: Yeah Shadowfell very spooky, evil creatures, bad bois!
WoW: Ok we take your idea and put fancy ,shiny angels in it.

Skulks were fun to mess with when we had someone playing a child character. Nice n spooky

*"SPEAKING TO A SEA OF ENDLESS, MINDLESS..."*
Me: °chews headphones faster°

I must have been hallucinating when I first read Mordenkainen’s Yellow Pages because I could swear the reason given for the Raven Queen’s ascension was “she was trying to stop the elven gods from fighting so much” which makes her kind of a tragic big sister figure who failed to stop mom and dad from separating. Then I just inserted the idea that her mind fragmented so hard from the ascension that she has to constantly collect supplemental memories or she’ll basically just cease existing

I love Demonac's take on the shadowfell since the sky has a 10 foot invisible ceiling that molds itself to the landscape, but the plane just goes down forever like the abyss

2:28
The plane of negative energy:
_"Both cosmological models described this plane as being an airless, featureless void of darkness with gravity being an individual choice. Somewhat paradoxically, both models also allow that structures existed on a landscape of sorts, either made of the physical, solid darkness,[1] or perhaps of elemental earth that could survive in regions of the plane (called doldrums) that did not exhibit the major-negative dominance trait.[2] The atmosphere was not vacuum but could not be used by winged creatures for propulsion, nor could it sustain life, yet torches and lanterns would burn for a short while before being extinguished.[2] Magical light sources worked as usual but visibility was extremely limited.[1][2] These characteristics led cosmologists to speculate that it was the energy-sucking nature of the plane that greedily devoured any life-giving energies rather than the complete lack thereof, but the difference is of interest only to sages. In practical terms, without protection from the negative energy and elimination of the need to breathe, death was only a few minutes away at best."_

Im literally running ToA with my group and that ending gave me actual chills😱😱

Those mad wizards on the coast, twisting reality to their one demented vision that only makes sense to them.

6:27
Wasn’t it canon that like Vecna destroyed the material plane in ascending to godhood, but then the Lady of Pain was just like ‘no’ and un-godified Vecna, and then remade reality. And that was in 3rd edition, which explained some of the incongruities between 2nd and 3rd, like kobolds going from Dog people/weird goblins to mini-dragonborn. You could just rule that she put Acererak back as a Lich, but didn’t make a pre-lichdom Acererak, so there isn’t anything there for him.

4:55 Mordenkainen's butchered the Raven Queen's lore to make her fit with the Realms, because in order to make a good thing fit in a bad setting you have to butcher the good thing rather than simply ignoring the bad setting.
See Nerull was the second god of death and the dead. He was the first mortal necromancer, and he killed Aurom the god of cycles of nature such as seasons, birth and death, etc.when they were weakened by battling some primordials. (Think gods v. titans from Greek myth) Nerull then bought off the less scrupulous gods with Aurom's other profiles. The good gods were horrified by this so they began plotting in secret to displace Nerull. He was also an asshole who scoured the world with plagues to bolster his undead army to fight the Primordials.
When a powerful *human* witch-queen died Moradin, Pelor, Corellon and the gang fortified her soul with even more awesome. Her soul shone really bright so Nerull picked her to be his queen. She then overthrew him. The other gods told her "Okay, you can be the shepherd of the dead, but you can't rule the dead because we don't want another Nerull." So she judges all people when they die, and sends them to their appropriate place. She also hates sentient undead. She also took the Fate domain from Lolth by helping Corellon fight her, and helped Kord and Bane kill their mom and took the Winter domain from her.
Also, the Shadar-Kai were humans in the shadowfell. I don't know why 5E made them elves.

*Acerorak speaking creepily*
Me: *laughs nervously*

I’m traveling back in time watching all the videos from the newest episodes to the oldest and damn I imagined Runesmith looking a bit different xdd

Dude ending was nice. I would say the experiment was a success

The Shadowfell is the homeland of all edgelords, and a recommended getaway by lord fredge of edge. It provides ample crevaces, glum caves, shadowy corners and isolated holes to brood in.

Time to run a short campaign now for adventurers trying to reclaim their memories
Thanks

Oh, so that's where ravenloft went. Good to know. Next up, need to find dark sun and spell Jammer

* immediately creates a party of 10 friends at lev 20 for the sole purpose of finding his reliquary and killing him

This was really cool and especially the ending. Now that's how you end a video :D

Im betting Acerack that boi be that one guy who escaped the doom of his 12th level casting empire by becoming a lich. He's just goin through a phase.

The spooky bit was cool and all, but it’s a super good question if you could find out who acererack is through the raven queen’s place.

6:50 My big Theory is that he is Principal Flutie From Buffy the Vampire Slayer and while eaten he re-popped away from the Hellmouth having absorbed the energy he needed. :D

Just got my copy of the Dungeon Craft box set and oooooohhhh BOI am I excited to put it to use. After looking through it I came back to this video just to use your link as I preorder their next one. I always wanted to use more physical stuff and get away from roll20 and other site since servers can be down and other things but every other thing like this is so expensive. Like miniatures are crazy but now I admit I may be entering a rabbit hole my wallet can’t escape from. Anyway great content loved the Xmas episode you just put out! Merry X-MÃS

Holy shit dude you've improved so much since your first videos in every way. Keep making stuff please

4:20 *the bone king, in the voice of John Mulaney*
NO THATS THE THING I'M SENSITIVE ABOUT!!

I have a crippling phobia of roaches and was not ready for that photo

Going to the shadowfell to find the mortal mind of Acererak seems like a good epic plot, he has a issue where any game with him will end dissapointingly because you either die or it doesnt count, now you can actually worry him.

He made a video just when I needed it

6:07 point number 1; point number 1 and point number 3

"I'll come for you in due time"
Nah that's good sleep wasn't really my thing anyway

So in my setting The Raven Queen was once the Seelie Fey queen who was betrayed by Titania. In what were believed to be her last moments she pulled her castle and loyal servants into the Shadowfell. She now resides there safe from the betrayer.