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 20: Divide and Conquer

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

After a good rest and with weapons and armor temporarily enchanted by the Forge of Spells, the party continued to investigate the underground Wave Echo cave network.

We headed south from the forge room, down a level to a cave with glittering minerals in the ceiling, looking like a starry night sky. The room contained many skeletons and broken, rusted weapons and armor, but no apparent dangers until we entered a stone building constructed in the cave. Inside was a room – apparently a bedroom – heavily charred and blackened. Striver the dwarven cleric and I investigated a chest which contained an unusual heavy oily – liquid darkness, which swallowed all light and hid the contents. When we disturbed the darkness, the oily substance exploded out of the chest and attacked us with acid! We realised this was a creature made of an oily sludge and the others joined the fight.

Grigor the fighter and Fuzz the rogue’s bolts and arrows didn’t seem effective, the ammunition absorbed into the creature and lost. Fuzz’s burning oil trick seemed effective. Some attacks, such as my Shocking Grasp and Lady Atrasian the fighter’s sword seemed to only serve to split the creature into more creatures! Instead of facing one creature, we were now facing several and before long I was unconscious and dying on the ground. In response, Striver cast an incredibly powerful Thunderwave, causing massive damage to the creatures. Unfortunately, he was unable to avoid hitting Lady Atrasian. At almost the same instant he healed me, so I arose and cast a massive Fireball, cleverly sculpting the effect around the party. It took out half of the creatures and sufficiently weakened the others so that Grigor’s crossbow attacks could finish off the remaining two.

With the creature now defeated, we found a scorched and battered chest which contained three diamonds some electrum pieces. I collected several arcane tomes from the room, which oddly were not affected by all the fire and burning which damaged everything else – they must be magically protected.

After another short rest in the Forge room, the party headed back out again to the south, past the burned room and into the next cavern. It was filled with patches of giant fungus and green puff-balls, which I attempted to magically freeze. Other party members carefully picked their way through the clear parts of the cavern. Some of the puff balls popped, releasing clouds of poisonous spores – these filled the cavern and injured the party, so we rushed through and out to the south-west.

As we continued though the tunnels into a larger cavern, we encountered more skeletons of dwarves and orcs in a high-roofed cavern. As we entered, we were swarmed by a large number of bat-like creatures (stirges) which had been hanging from the high ceiling. Several of them latched on to various party members, draining their blood. After a short fight and some wielding of swords, Striver and I neatly resolved the issue with Shatter spells.

Feeling rather drained, we noticed some growling, shambling sounds coming from some hallways off the northern passage out of the cave. We engaged with ghouls in the northern hallways. Grigor got in some massive hits with his heavy crossbow before succumbing to the first stage of exhaustion. Fortunately, the other party members had things well in hand and the remaining ghouls were dispatched in short order.

As most of the party took a moment to assess the situation in the northern passages, wondering if more ghouls may be coming from that direction, I decided to enter some rooms off the southern hallway by myself. The party’s suspicions are well-founded, as more ghouls appeared from the north. Unsure of where I had gotten to, the remaining party members took care of the ghouls.

They shouted to me but in the echoing hallways it was hard to communicate over distance. Meanwhile, I encountered more dwarf and orc skeletons, these ones animating and attacking. I eliminated them all with a Fireball. The rest of the party heard the loud explosion from the south and then I came running up, looking smug and denying I found anything of interest. I explained only that “curiosity killed the skeleton.”

We continued north through another ancient barracks, again filled with the bones of dwarves and orcs. Striver investigated the remains and confirmed that they must be from the battle long ago, when dwarves and orcs battled for control of the mine. We continued through another door to the west into another network of hallways.

Suddenly mist-like arms reached out of the shadows, grabbing at us with their strength-draining, necrotic attacks. Greatly aided by our magically enchanted weapons and Striver ability to turn undead, we managed to defeat the shadow creatures without anyone falling.

After the battle, we assessed our condition – with several members having expended all their resources and with many wounds, we agreed to stick together and try to make our way safely back to the Forge room for a good and safe night’s sleep. We decided to take the route ahead back to the western path (where we came into the network) and around the northern path back to the Forge room. This avoided going back through the room with the damaging fungus spores.

Despite the agreement to stick together and avoid encounters on the way back, Striver couldn’t resist investigating a door we missed on our first time through this area. Unfortunately, he discovered a room containing more shadow creatures, which reached out from the door. After using our magical weapons to dispatch the creatures, we explored what appeared to be a more recently inhabited dormitory room. It seemed to have been in use as recently as a few days ago, but was now deserted and contained nothing else of note. Grigor and Fuzz expressed concern about their state of health and resources and once again, we all agreed to move together directly to the Forge room for some sleep and to recover.

As we found ourselves back in Wave Echo Cave itself (in the northeastern corner of the network), I couldn’t resist the urge to use a spider-climb spell to crawl around the walls. I ignored my friends’ discussions about the wisdom of this action in our current state and made my way, crawling above the surging waves, to another flooded chamber to the northeast. The rest of the party waited impatiently on the shore where the waves were breaking.

The continuous sound of the waves breaking masked the sound of me being attacked by a many-tentacled, one-eyed, stalagmite-like creature – a Roper – in the next chamber. The rest of the group were alerted to the action by the sudden flash and low roar of a Fireball. A scream was heard and they saw me being washed back into the first cave by the waves. Rather than use the chance to escape, I grabbed onto the walls just as tentacles reached around from the other chamber and dragged me back again. Despite their annoyance at me going off on my own yet again, the rest of the party didn’t want to lose their wizard/fighter and stayed alert for any opportunity to attack the creature. In the dim light in the distance, no such opportunity presented itself. The Lady Atrasian shouted encouragement while she worked on a plan to use a rope to rescue me, while Grigor shouted at me questioning my sanity and muttered obscenities to himself. Striver shouted encouragement, but was also unable to act and Fuzz attempted to find a better vantage point, but couldn’t see much either. The bangs and flashes of various spells suggested I was still alive and mounting some kind of attack. They heard me shout that I was doing fine.

Finally, Striver got a glimpse of the creature and launched a range of magical attacks on it, some more successful than others. He also prepared a light-enchanted hand axe to help the rest of us see into the chamber, but just as he was about to throw it, the creature dragged me back around the corner and out of sight again.

I finally rememberd I was carrying the magic staff and unleashed an astonishing nine magic missiles from it, all directed at the creature which again dropped me into the water – I was washed back into the first cave again. Lady Atrasian threw me the rope, which I grabbed, and she began pulling me back to shore. Much to everyone’s surprise, Striver then crawled out along the wall to the corner of the next cavern and summoned spirits to surround and protect him – he then finished the roper off with a spiritual weapon. Striver climbed back along to the wall to the party, dancing and celebrating his victory just as I smugly emerged from the water. Neither of us seemed to have learned any kind of lesson, much to Grigor’s frustration.

The party, almost spent, finally made back to the Forge of Spells, where I summoned the tiny hut where we could sleep and recover. Before we bedded down, Grigor reminded Striver and I of the importance of teamwork, sticking to the plan and all-importantly sticking together! He felt he didn’t make much of an impression on us. In the morning we re-enchanted our weapons in preparation for another day in the caves, possibly finally catching up with some old adversaries…

Next Session: The Final Confrontation!

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