Shadowfell

The Shadowfell, or the Shadow Realm, is one of the Planes of Existence in the Critical Role universe. The Raven Queen's icy realm of Letherna is tucked into a corner of the Shadowfell. The plane was also the home of Thar Amphala until that city was teleported by Vecna to the Material Plane.

Description
According to Eskil Ryndarien, the Shadowfell is a plane of negative energy, and elements of it are used to funnel the transition of souls from life to death or back. It exists as a mirror plane, much like the Feywild. There are elements that resemble Exandria, but altered.

Shadowfell is a badlands of cracked ground, jut up with spires of black and gray earth, and mountainscapes of ragged rocks. The sky is sunless, gray, and densely overclouded by shadows, "like it was perpetually amidst a distant forest fire", but there are sources of low light present. The smell of cold ash and iron dust is common to the Shadowfell.

The air is chilled like a "cold winter morning", it is not raining climate, and in general the Shadowfell has not "a lot of" heavy weather. The plane has occasional patches of dry, grass-like gray brush and some of the plants grow with a "fleshy-looking" vine.

Catha appears in the sky in both the Shadowfell and the Feywild, due to both the Material Plane's proximity to the other two planes, and the influence of the Moonweaver.

Points of interest

 * Thar Amphala: A city and a former base of operations for Vecna. Following the completion of the ritual atop Entropis, Thar Amphala was transported to the Material Plane, where the city remains in 812 PD.
 * Village accommodating Thar Ampala: Circular in shape, it encompasses the tower of Thar Ampala. The village was built "long time ago" here soely to gather worshipers of Vecna and is plain in its construction. Even before it was lifted on the sholders of an earth titan, half of its structures were already toppled and destroyed.

Inhabitants

 * Gloomstalkers
 * Hulking Horrors
 * Shadowghasts
 * Shadow demons

History
Ages ago, the silver dragon Karkethzerethzerus (Karketh for short) used the energies of the Shadowfell to annihilate a nation of wood elves and centaurs, turning that region of the Miskath Strand into a petrified woodland now called Strathfell. As of 836 PD, Karketh is a shadow dragon, and his evil fey minions like darklings and meenlocks travel through rifts between Strathfell and the Shadowfell. They do so through via the Border Ethereal.

Vecna and Thar Amphala
A century before the Calamity, the archmage Vecna achieved lichdom, amassed followers and undead forces, and with them disappeared into the Shadowfell, where they conquered the city of Thar Amphala and there built a tower called Entropis that served as his base. From there Vecna exploited the celestial solstice, a merging of ley energies, that gave him the power to open portals at a whim, so that his forces could strike with precision and retreat to Thar Amphala before retaliating forces could muster. Thus he overcame some old enemies and forced them to bend the knee, at which time he slew them and raised them as undead to serve him. One such rival, Kas, was offered vampirism in exchange for fealty as a Vecna's chief lieutenant, and Kas accepted.

Vecna forged for Kas a relic blade with a fraction of Kas's consciousness. In the months of terrorizing Vecna's enemies that followed, he became Kas the Bloody-Handed.

Then, Vecna's foes figured out how to reverse-engineer the celestial solstice. Just as Vecna was attempting to ascend to godhood with the Ritual of Seeding atop Entropis, a holy army led by Yos Varda attacked Thar Amphala. Yos Varda climbed Entropis and fought Vecna directly. Vecna defeated Yos Varda but was winded by the effort, and as Varda lay dying, Kas attacked Vecna with that gifted blade in an attempt to usurp the lich. The ensuing battle destroyed them both: all that remained of Vecna were his left eye and left hand, and all that remained of Kas was in that blade. Very few members of the holy army returned from the Shadowfell.

Centuries later, starting at least as early as 810 PD, Vecna's followers began setting up siphons at ziggurats to facilitate the collection of magic artifacts and ley energy to Entropis, gathering power that would be used in the ritual to resurrect the lich.

In, in 812 PD, Vox Machina chased a resurrected Delilah Briarwood into the Shadowfell, following their encounter with her in a ziggurat in Marquet. There they witnessed, from a distance, Vecna's rebirth atop Entropis. They fought a losing battle against Vecna and his lieutenants and had to flee into the Feywild. Shortly thereafter, Thar Amphala teleported out of the Shadowfell to Exandria.

Between Campaign 1 and Campaign 3
In the original Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting and in Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn, the benevolent fey of the Frostweald are using the forest as a refuge from a "Great Shadow" that has befallen their lands in the Feywild, possibly referring to an army from the Shadowfell.

In the Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, the adventure Unwelcome Spirits involves a shadow demon named Trush attempting a ritual from the Shadowfell, manipulating the veil between the Shadowfell and the Border Ethereal to possess a warlock. In the adventure hook Best Left Alone, an unearthed relic of the Shadowfell begins to summon gloomstalkers and shadowghasts into Xarzith Kitril.

Campaign 3
Ruidus does not naturally appear in the skies of the Shadowfell and Feywild, which mirror the essence of Exandria, however in Fessuran 843 PD, it was present within these realms.

The Cerberus Assembly and Otohan Thull were building machines delving into the powers of the Apogee Solstice in both the Shadowfell and the Fey Realm at the same exact place where the planes overlap with the leyline nexus. According to Planerider Ryn, the Cerberus Assembly and Otohan were less organized in the Shadowfell, and the location there less well defended. When Bells Hells returned from the Feywild, members of the Grim Verity were on the mission in the Shadow realm, scouting the site of the Malleus Key.

Trivia
The plane of a twisted Whitestone that Delilah Briarwood inhabits in 843 PD (Campaign 3) is similar to a Domain of Dread of the Shadowfell as described in Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft. These domains are innumerable, isolated demiplanes within the Shadowfell that each imprison an evil villain, called a Darklord. Each domain mirrors the Darklord trapped within by drawing on their crimes, failures, or impossible ambitions and twists their desires into ironic torment, to the point that the Darklord hates the domain. At the same time, the Darklord is the root cause of all suffering within the domain and has considerable influence over it.