Escape from the Shadow Realm

A 6th level adventure for D&D

You’ve been swallowed by a wormhole to the Shadow Realm and need a way out. Fortunately, you emerged at the center of an enclosed fortress with its own planar gate! Un-fortunately, the gate is guarded and magically sealed. You’ll need to find a way to disable the seal and bypass the guards if you want to escape.

Oh, and did I mention that the fortress will be fully alerted to your presence if you don't move quickly? Better not take longer than 3 hours to escape, or the shadow elf captain might catch you!

What is This?

Escape from the Shadow Realm is an exfiltration adventure designed for 6th level D&D 5e characters. It has been written so that you can play the entire adventure within a 4 hour timeframe.

If you're reading 'Shadow Realm' and thinking, "Hey, wait, wasn't there a shadow realm mentioned in your last adventure..." then you would be absolutely correct! Escape from the Shadow Realm was inspired by the possibility of an adventuring party getting sucked into the portal to the Shadow Realm in my previous D&D adventure Quest for the Vorpal Sword. There is, however, no obligation or necessity for you to actually run both adventures sequentially.

You can use either the 2014 or 2024 rules to run this adventure. All monsters can be found by their bolded names within the 5.1 SRD or 5.2 SRD.

Printing Advice

You can print the tri-fold pamphlet using US Letter paper and a working printer. For settings, make sure double-sided printing is enabled with "Flip on the Short Edge" selected.

Attribution

The adventure is copyright © Riley Clark 2026. 100% human made :)

Map by Riley Clark.

Cover & Banner Artwork by Kim Holm CC 4.0.

Forked Section Dividers by Ramona, used with permission.

Google-docs tri-fold template by Hugh Lashbrooke. Modified for US Letter by Riley Clark.

This work includes material taken from the System Reference Document 5.1 (“SRD 5.1”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC and available at https://dnd.wizards.com/resources/systems-reference-document. The SRD 5.1 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.

This work includes material from the System Reference Document 5.2 (“SRD 5.2”) by Wizards of the Coast LLC, available at https://www.dndbeyond.com/srd. The SRD 5.2 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.