Hi all,

I previously posted some warts-and-all email summaries of the ‘Curse of Strahd’ campaign I ran in 2017-18, the ‘Tomb of Annihilation’ campaign I ran in 2018-19 and ‘Out of the Abyss’, a campaign I ran in 2020. CoS was the first campaign I sent summaries to players by email after each game (I was a bit lazy prior to that). Here’s another grand campaign that started out with a slightly warped version of ‘Lost Mine of Phandelver’, then rolled on to merge ‘Storm King’s Thunder’ and ‘Princes of the Apocalypse’ (it took the intrepid heroes to 20th level using experience points – yes, those antiquated things lol). Please note it was never called ‘Footfall’ in the beginning, as it was originally just going to be playing the Lost Mine, but I had some ideas along the way and the campaign grew as it went along in an ad hoc, improvised manner, adapting parts of Storm King’s and Princes to fill out the story. The main villain wasn’t even thought of until about three-quarters of the way through the 70-session campaign. Each session was approximately 5 hours (sometimes more) long. This campaign was also the first time I didn’t write all the summaries – some of the players were given that task and did so admirably! Most of the summaries appear here as they first appeared (with minor edits). If you’re a D&D fan you may enjoy them. And maybe even if you aren’t.

Steve 🙂

Part 19: The Enchanting Wave Echo Cave

(Transcription by Pieter, who played Aelfwyn the elvish wizard.)

The party awoke. Recharged, they went forth to explore more of the mine, only to find their passage blocked by a newly erected wall. While there were other, easier ways to go, Striver the dwarven cleric decided to break through – after all, if it was worth putting an emergency wall in, it must be worth conquering.

It took a while to break through the sturdy wall, during which Athena the owl familiar was sent via a sunken tunnel to scout the other side. Giant spiders and webs were everywhere in sight. As the party broke through the wall, the spiders attacked, but what surprised them the most was a giant fireball. They managed to dodge the brunt of the force, but it was a big blast nonetheless. Enraged that a drow wizard was doing to them what Aelfwyn the elvish wizard had been doing all along, he cast haste on himself and rushed forward, only to be blocked by a door held by a bugbear on the other side. Soon the door opened and bugbears rushed out. Aelfwyn blasted a fireball into the drow wizard. The drow released another fireball as he tried to flee, taking Fuzz the halfling rogue out. Lady Atrasian the fighter was quick to come to his aid and revive him with a healing potion. Aelfwyn used his Wand of Magic Missiles to unleash everything in a final charge and killed the drow wizard. A shattering thunderstrike boomed through the cavern, but as the battle raged, it was Lady Atrasian who struck the final blow that ended the battle. Another drow turned out to be a doppelganger, instead.

With the room cleared, the party took to searching and looting the bodies, finding a cache of coins and other items, along with some notes about Nezna, the Forge of Spells, the mine being invaded by an undead creature and so forth. Striver’s greed pushed him to steal gems from a statue of a dwarven god inside the room. As he did so, the ceiling started to collapse, crushing Aelfwyn underneath the rubble. The party rushed to dig him out in time, only to find out the gems were ordinary glass.

As they delved further, they found Striver’s cousin, Nundro, in a room nearby, suffering from the effects of torture. Striver tried to get him to sign away his share of the mine to him!

Athena flew ahead with Aelfwyn peering through her eyes, when she suddenly got blasted away. A floating skull in green flames was the last thing she saw. The party knew more danger was ahead and tried to prepare for it – a fireball made their plans go up in smoke. In the heat of the battle, firing arrows and spells, slashing and hacking away, the flaming skull seemed resistant to ordinary attacks, but fell fast enough. Then more of them appeared, throwing another fireball, almost killing the entire party. One more such blast and it would’ve been the end, so the party retreated to heal up and face them again later. Striver wouldn’t have any of it, though – staring death right in the face (quite literally, as it was a flaming skull), he rushed forth, called for the wrath of his thunder god Talos, and faced the foes. Grigor the fighter, not wanting to leave a man behind, aided him, killing another one of the skulls. Another fireball flew in, knocking out Grigor. At this point, the party decided to rush back in, but Striver took care of the last skull, healing Grigor afterwards.

The party wasn’t pleased with the risk Striver took, scolding him for it, and retreated to Nundro’s room to rest for the night, setting up a Leomund’s Tiny Hut for safety. To pass some time, everyone played cards, while Aelfwyn did something slightly more sinister…he took the severed head of the Drow wizard and flayed it, removing any flesh on it (to the disgust and unease of the party, who tried to tried to ignore this new bizarre behavior).

The next morning, the reinvigorated party moved on to search more rooms. In one, a strange creature addressed them. A floating eyeball, with extra eyeballs on tentacles and a big mouth, stuck inside an old, dusty, destroyed room. It asked to be released of its task, but as the conversation went on, it seemed the creature’s mind had retreated into itself, demented and confused. Striver tried to pretend argue he was its master, but even in its confused state, it was not swayed by his words, and finally attacked. Fortunately, the fight ended swiftly.

Spending some time in the room, looking around for anything of use, three items proved very interesting. First was a magic mace called Lightbringer, created to deal with the undead (given to Striver). Second was a magical breastplate called Dragonguard, designed to resist a dragon’s breath (given to Grigor). Finally, there was the legendary Forge of Spells, which seemed more mundane than one would think. The green flames pouring from the brazier still had some magic in them. It could enchant armor or weapons, making them more durable, but only for a little while, up to half a day at most. With this knowledge, and the knowledge more was yet to come in the mine, including Versh’arek, everyone started enchanting any armor and weapons that weren’t enchanted yet.

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