Phandelver & Below is a pretty solid book at first and fifth glance. I haven’t read it all honestly. For whatever reason, I only played through small bits and pieces of the original 2014 campaign with my group, probably because I was excited to start on Hoard of the Dragon Queen instead.
And since the redux + expansion book deals heavily with Illithids and Far Realm crazy bullshit, it will fit right in with Spelljammer in my opinion. Especially since I’m melding Planescape right in with Spelljammer to establish my theme of Planejammer again.
I’ve decided to introduce a small frontier planet on the far edge of Realmspace called “New Toril.” Enterprising entrepreneurs from Toril (Forgotten Realms) have begun settling and developing New Toril which is ripe with valuable resources. The first colony on the frontier planet is “Phandalin” named after the village of the same name on Toril.
The Playing Characters in our Light of Xaryxis campaign will travel to New Toril and Phandalin in the next episode to drop off the refugees who made it off the planet on one of five Spelljammer ships as Astral Seeds consumed their planet of Athas.
Among the refugees are a number of NPCs who will appear in Phandelver & Below when we begin playing it in the future. This creates a simple and meaningful plothook for the beginning of the story “Meet Me In Phandalin.”
And I have already introduced Obsidian Shards to the Spelljammer campaign found within the wreckage of a Mind Flayer Nautiloid. Who says the Netherese Stones have to be all on one planet? Maybe the shards are spread out all throughout time and Realmspace.
(I can only assume that in 2024 WotC will publish a new book rehashing the Netherese boxed set from AD&D reintroducing time travel adventures to the D&D Multiverse. Why not have Vecna tap into the old version of the Weave that allows for 10th and 11th level spells? He could just go back in time and make sure the events of Die Vecna Die! never happened. And seriously, WotC let’s go ahead and expand One D&D back to the Old School days of BECMI where characters could advance to 36th level, preferably through multiclassing. The material is already there, just let it happen. I need a 20th level fighter multiclassed as a 16th level Wizard.)
I look forward to mixing in Phandelver & Below with Light of Xaryxis in future sessions.
Children of the Ampersand 
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