Oh boy here I am again with a character I played for D&D.
A good friend of mine really wanted me to play D&D with him again, I DM’d for him, his girlfriend, and a couple of other friends pre-pandemic and kinda still through it. He wanted to run a Witchlight campaign and I was on board. Knowing Witchlight is all about the feywild and faerie nonsense, I wanted to create a character that generally fit that kind of whimsy. I then remembered that I wanted to try making and playing a magical boy ala transformation sequence and everything.
Name: Pyxis
Age: 22 (chronologically)
Race: Dhampir
Class: Druid, Circle of Stars
Gender: Male (He/Him)
Alignment: Chaotic Good
So, Pyxis is a Circle of Stars Druid. I chose Circle of Stars because it seemed like it would be the best fit to play a magical boy due to the star motif and wild shapes can be flavored as transformation sequences. Pyxis, was, in short, a himbo. Yes, another himbo I have played. We did the Point Buy system for our stats, so his Wisdom was pretty high as well as his Constitution. Charisma and Dexterity were decent. Strength was okay. Intelligence was low, just like in good old himbo fashion. Any time I would cast a spell, I would flavor it with a bit of starry magic goodness. His race was also a dhampir, so I also got to play a bit of a vampire too. Sparkly vampire all the way.
The DM was going off of the module and so we started off at the Witchlight Carnival, where shenanigans ensued almost immediately. The party consisted of myself, our fairy Phantom Rogue named Moth, our harengon Gunslinger Fighter named Bigwig, and our water genasi Tempest Domain Cleric Kailani. Moth had a running gag, due to her being so small despite being the oldest in the bunch, that she would trick people by saying she is “this many” and the player would usually hold up 3 fingers, implying she is three-years old. Bigwig was our tired and old man babysitter who seemed to age at least a decade every session. Kailani and Pyxis were sharing one brain cell the whole time and it was wonderful.
Before we started the campaign, the DM asked that everyone tell him something their character has lost that was important to them. These things could be an actual object or metaphorical. For example: Bigwig lost his sense of family and belonging. I made it that Pyxis lost his ability to dream, which is why as a dhampir he feasts on dreams. Though this wasn’t incredibly important, it did play a role in the campaign later on.
While I don’t remember exactly EVERYTHING that happened, I will highlight some of Pyxis’ key moments, and other shenanigans from the party because it was fun. Also, there are going to be spoilers for the Wild Beyond the Witchlight module.
Kailani and Pyxis, sharing one brain cell, went to a little fairy attraction in the carnival in which they got shrunken down and were able to play hide and seek with some fairies as well as ride upon a ferris wheel powered by a corgi and hamster. Kailani being the animal lover doted on the Corgi named Squash.
The Witchlight Carnival had a ballot to see who has made the carnival so much fun. The DM had given us a piece of paper and told us to write down the name of the character who has enhanced the carnival. Pyxis wrote Kailani, Moth wrote Pyxis, however Kailani and Bigwig wrote Moth (Kailani’s player told me she forgot Pyxis’ name and so she wrote Moth instead). The announcement would be happening later at the big top so at this point we didn’t know who won. This was also us trying to figure out a plan to steal a pocket watch from one of the heads of the carnival. The plan was to have Moth shrink down even more, she hides under the stage and during the performance during ceremony, she would fly and sneak out and steal the pocket watch. We had everything lying in wait until it was announced that Moth needed to step on stage to be crowned the Queen of the Witchlight Carnival. This is when we all looked at each other and immediately said, “Oh fuck.” We managed to scrape past it by shenanigans of fog cloud and making the audience cheer for Moth. Moth poofed onto the stage (returning to normal size) and got her crown. This was after Moth had quickly given the pocket watch to Kailani who tossed it to Bigwig who ran out of the big top so fast with Pyxis keeping guard and following behind. So with Moth being crowned
After falling into the actual feywild, the group was encountered harengon bandits, one led by Agdon Longscarf who is also a prince. We fought and Agdon had hit Pyxis with a branding stick which caused Pyxis to not be able to see Agdon. Luckily with arrows stuck in the harengon, Pyxis was able to pinpoint where he was and so Pyxis shot him with an incredibly powerful (crit) guiding bolt. The DM asked if I wanted to make it non-lethal, but since Pyxis couldn’t actually see how Agdon was doing, Pyxis accidentally killed Agdon while screaming, “Shooting star arrow!” This caused the bandit lackeys to walk away in shame and our fellow harengon to get sad. Pyxis did try to take Agdon’s scarf, to which it wouldn’t come off.
The group had encountered a little fairy dragon who called Moth, Kailani, and Pyxis “your highness” because Moth at the Witchlight Crown, Kailani just made a crown of water, and Pyxis had a candy crown that he had won at the carnival.
While visiting a hag, we helped her with small tasks. One was that her pool was clogged and wouldn’t fill. Pyxis was jokingly called the pool boy as he was trying to figure out what was happening. Turns out, it was a gelatinous cylinder clogging the pool and we fought it. Guiding Bolt is truly wonderful. Pyxis also got a moving lilypad that operated as a vehicle for the group so that was nifty.
Soon after that gelatinous cylinder, we were asked to help stage a coup by bullywugs. This essentially meant that a bullywug went up to the current ruler “tripped” and stabbed the ruler in the eye. The group simply stood there and laugehd at what was happening.
As we traveled through the Feywild, we enjoyed the company and saved a little hopping and sentient mushroom from being eaten. Ever since, it will show up every so often with its joyful tune of, “Please don’t eat me! Please don’t eat me!”
Pyxis ate some fey candy which made his feet play musical notes, froth at the mouth, and make anything he touched be splattered with color. This was all very timely for when the group was to meet with one of the hags.
Pyxis befriended a sentient oil canister named Squirt that wanted more boggle oil. So Pyxis tried to find boggles just to literally wring them for their oil to give to Squirt.
We were asked to come up with a tragedy to perform for a hag. The plan ultimately came down to everyone was in love with each other and jealous rages and sadness killed one another.
One of the most damning fights the group got into was against a bunch of shadows. I had rolled Woe on Pyxis’ Cosmic Omen for the day so when he was being attacked, I used a lot of the Woe rolls just to not get hit. In this same fight, Bigwig had been hurt so much that his strength was reduced all the way to 0 and killed straight out. It was quite the emotional moment for all of us. However, Kailani, being our ever dutiful cleric revivified Bigwig and we were fine.
At the end of the campaign, Pyxis was invited to stay with Tasha in her keep to which he happily accepted and was truly the “pool boy” by the end.
Pyxis was incredibly fun to play. Similar to Haku, playing a himbo can be a very fun time. Pyxis was very strong in combat due to guiding bolt. He very often went before Bigwig, so Bigwig would have advantage which helped out quite a lot. Pyxis also had a habit of giving goodberries to people.
I really enjoyed playing as a Circle of Stars Druid. I haven’t really played a Druid prior, but I would want to play a Circle of Stars Druid again because I had such a good time. They have a lot of cool abilities and being able to cast guiding bolt a certain amount of times per long rest without using a spell slot was really helpful. Choosing which constellation shows up on you when you become your Starry Form was really cool, I mostly used Archer for the damage and didn’t find a whole lot of uses for Chalice or Dragon. Cosmic Omen was also really cool because it can turn the tides of a roll pretty quick.
So…I wrote the majority of this months ago and forgot to post it. In the interim, Pyxis has been resting as a character in my personal vault of heroes that are resting for all eternity. That is until my DM friend said he wanted to do a Witchlight reunion one shot. At first it was a joke, now it’s probably going to be a reality. And I’m all here for it. While the one shot hasn’t happened yet, I am very excited to see if it does happen. I would love to bring back Pyxis as he is in his pool boy era. So if the one shot does happen, I will update this post!
If you would like to see Pyxis’ character sheet, you can check it out here: https://ddb.ac/characters/62137474/H02rCY
Your Fellow Geek 