Spelljammer: Light of Xaryxis

An adventure in the Spelljammer setting for fifth edition (5e) D&D and characters 5th to 8th level.

This adventure comes as part of the Spelljammer box set. I’m not sure if you can buy it separately?

What is Spelljammer?

Spelljammer is a setting published by TSR in 1989. It takes D&D and moved it into space. With characters traveling between worlds in magical spacecraft. The idea sounds great and is super inspiring, the actual published adventures never really clicked with me. I guess my vision of D&D in space is different from what TSR envisions?

Fast forward to 2022 and Wizards of the Coast have brought this setting back for 5e in a box set: Spelljammer: Adventures in Space. The box set includes three books and a Spelljammer dungeon master’s screen:

• Astral Adventurer’s Guide – Character classes and races, Spells, Spelljamming and the physics of traveling through the astral space, Spell jamming ships, and The Rock of Bral a city in wild space.
• Boo’s Astral Menagerie – A bestiary of creatures found in wild space.
• Light of Xaryxis – An adventure set in wild space.

This review will just discuss the adventure: Light of Xaryxis.

Light of Xaryxis

The Light of Xaryxis is an episodic adventure told 4 parts with three or four chapters in each part. It’s very much an “adventure path” this is not a sandbox or open world situation. The characters need to ride the plot train! I think this is a great adventure for that type of adventure. If you’re looking for a sandbox type adventure this is not what you want.

If you’re looking for a story arc that you can follow this is for you! Each chapter ends with a cliffhanger and often follows with a plot twist. It’s fun. The writing is pretty good but very much in the WotC 5e style.

Here is an outline of the book:

• Introduction: Wildspace Awaits!
• Adventure Summary
• Part 1: Seeds of Destruction
  • Chapter 1: Astral Rain
  • Chapter 2: Attack of the Star Moth
  • Chapter 3: Treacherous Salvage
• Part 2: Terrors of the Void
  • Chapter 4: A Friend Indeed
  • Chapter 5: Living on the Edge
  • Chapter 6: Grave Alliance
• Part 3: Chaos in Doomspace
  • Chapter 7: Trust Issues
  • Chapter 8: Arena of Blood
  • Chapter 9: Discord and Diplomacy
• Part 4: Saviors of the Multiverse
  • Chapter 10: Space Invaders
  • Chapter 11: Crowning Moment
  • Chapter 12: Light of Xaryxis
• Conclusion
• Further Adventures

Wild Space

Science is hand waved and the environment of space travel is subject to the rules of “wild space.” This is not a hard science environment! The rules for Wild Space make sense but are also a little goofy and possibly game-able by your players.

For example any object in space has its own gravity field with an up and a down. For example a boat would have gravity in a conventional sense with down as you would expect. Outside the boat you would float free. The rules also point out that the underside of an object has the opposite gravity.

It sounds like you can walk on the underside of an object. The scenario describes some flying monkeys that can jump off the top side of a boat, falling below the deck plane, they use the reverse gravity of the underside to fly under the boat and come up on the other side.

With a little imagination this brings up a lot of questions to which there are not a lot of hard answers. For example:

• Q: If two spell jamming vessels meet what happens with the gravity fields?
• Q: What if two vessels meet at different orientations?
• Q: How large does an object have to be to exert a gravity field? The book suggests that debris from a destroyed ship will provide flotsam that characters can cling to.

There is also some description of how objects produce an air field. Somehow spell jamming boats provide an unlimited supply of air, but smaller vessels do not. Again it’s all confusing and brings up more questions the closer you look at it.

When running this adventure I did my best to avoid focusing on the physics of wild space to avoid going down a confusing rabbit hole.

The Adventure

The adventure is told in an episodic style inline with classic science fantasy like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, or John Carter. It has all of the classic tropes like Space Pirates, rescuing Princesses, an evil empire, rebels, spacecraft traveling through the universe and visiting strange planets.

I think the players enjoyed the adventure overall but some of the chapters were better than others. The chapters are run in a linear path. This is not so exciting. Might be good for a convention game? Within a chapter there is sometimes room for players to make choices, and this is where the adventure is at its best.

The adventure begins with giant crystal stalks bursting from the ground and the characters being rescued by an NPC with a ship that happens to fly into space. This is the weakest point of the whole story for me. There are no plot hooks to choose from and really no way to fit this your current campaign situation. Unless you are willing to say your whole world has erupted in massive crystal stalks growing into space.

The idea of massive crystals growing out of the ground is great for comics but I feel it would leave too big an impact for long campaign. It asks questions like: What happened to all of the massive crystals, are they still there? How did this affect the geography? Is the crystal valuable, how did that affect trade? I’m probably over thinking. The real point is that this is the adventure begins with a world altering event. You either have to hand wave it or be prepared to follow it up with some explanations.

Soon after heading into wild space the players discover an apparently abandoned Spelljamming ship. It’s like a little dungeon in space, this is where the adventure is at its best! Its familiar territory can be represented on a 2d grid. The monsters are new but the environment is familiar.

From there the adventure follows the characters to a settlement on a giant asteroid in space. There is a city on the top side and farming and more on the bottom. There is a dock on the edge with many Spelljamming ships. This again brings up questions about how gravity works. If there is gravity on the top and the bottom, could you dock your ship upside down? What if your ship was oriented 90 degrees to the dock? The last question is sort of answered by the rules with the explanation that smaller object adopt the gravity of a larger object, but this explanation only brings up more questions.

The adventure continues with NPCs procuring a spell jamming ship, fighting some space pirate vampires, and more. Most of the encounters are good, and plots are entertaining.

The players visit several worlds along the way. Many of these worlds are minimally fleshed out. One world is full of raging Tarasques.

NPCs

There are more than a few NPCs to keep track of. Many of these have some interesting “color” and personalities. This has its pros and cons. If you like the NPCs and I liked most of them, then they are good for your game, but you will have to keep track of them. If you don’t like them then this could pose a problem since many of them are core to the plot.

NPCs in general can add a lot but also detract. Including a powerful NPC can create a problem in combat, do they help the players? And if they do will that throw off the balance? When you have four players and you as the DM is player four NPCs it can take the focus away from the players and increase the feeling of being railroaded, which might not be fun for everyone.

Balance

The game is pretty well balanced. The encounters played out well, there was no huge threat but a few encounter were tough. This will obviously vary depending on your players and the number of characters.

Conclusion

If you are looking for a game that might surprise your jaded players this might be a good choice. If you are looking for something to fit into an ongoing campaign this would need a little work.

I ran this and I and my players enjoyed it. The sequence and pacing were fun. The ending was satisfying but leaves the players in the middle of wild space or returned to their world, covered in massive crystalline towers. I had to hand wave that.