D&D adventure ‘Wages of Vice’ explores greed and grief in the Radiant Citadel
Your heroes arrive in Zinda, the capital city of N’wari, and it’s a festive atmosphere. It’s time for the March of Vice, a Carnival-like celebration where revelers sweep their sins and vices into the sea. It’s loud and colorful. There’s street food and rides and a huge Mardi Gras-style parade. And then they trip over a dead body.
That’s the basic hook for “Wages of Vice,” a fifth-level D&D adventure written by T.K. Johnson in the upcoming Journeys through the Radiant Citadel. Throughout the adventure, players will encounter betrayal, political assassinations, the dangers of a plutocratic ruling class, an avaricious new guildmaster, labor organizers, and a vampiric Boo Hag.
The eponymous Radiant Citadel, a massive floating city in the heart of the Ethereal Plane, provides the launching point for new voices in the world(s) of D&D. The Radiant Citadel was founded long ago by peoples from 27 different civilizations, mysteriously abandoned, and then rediscovered by 15 of those civilizations. The city is a vibrant setting in its own right, but it also creates connections to the Material Plane through something called Conchord Jewels that link the Radiant Citadel to new peoples and places D&D’s official settings haven’t explored yet.
Wizards of the Coast welcomed writers to bring their own stories to Radiant Citadel and celebrate their “lived heritage and our communities, not just racial but cultural as well,” said Johnson. Everything from the festival to the Boo Hag to the setting of Zinda and N’wari draws inspiration from Johnson’s own family history in places like Louisiana and the Caribbean, along with Gullah Geechee folklore.
“I was very pleased to be on a project where we got to celebrate our identities instead of making
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