The bell is ringing and the ground is shaking. The party breaks into the church cellar and finds not a cultist but a villager - Holloway, the town farrier - sitting in a trance with a giant maul across his lap and one hand on the bell. Aelion reads two lines of Draconic off it before the magic fades: "What sleeps must stay sleeping. My gold stays hidden," and "Forgive what you cannot know. Forget what you cannot bear."

Waking Holloway turns into an experiment nobody meant to run. Standing inside the ruined church he remembers that the town used to be called Morning Rise, that the ruin was a temple of Lathander, that he has two brothers named Grady and Dunnick - and that he is a farrier who is fairly sure he hates horses. Walking him home, the party watches every one of those memories drain back out of him. It isn't the bell holding him together. It's the church. Which raises a colder question: who taught this town that the church is evil, and that they must never go there?

Back at The Last Lantern the spell starts visibly cracking. The tavern keeper remembers a miner she shouldn't. La Maestra sings about Morning Rise and one man throws his cup into the fire - Easter Ashwell, one of the twelve, who lays out how the church took the mine after somebody found a vein of pure gold, how the paladins came, and how every other faith was turned away at the door. Lavius names a dead man out of the parish register, and a woman who has been a widow for thirty years finds out about it in front of a room full of strangers - and tells them her name is Violet.

Then Aelion raises the old toast. Everyone answers except three people, who look around the room startled at everybody else.

And then Easter leads them down into the mine, past rows of burned miners that La Maestra is certain were killed by dragonfire rather than any mine fire - to a door the foreman never came out of.

Mourningfall is a homebrew D&D 5e gothic mystery, played on Foundry VTT. An actual-play recap - no dice, no cross-talk, just the story.

arcanjl.com

Rain, a harvest festival, and a house that only turns up when it wants something.

Five strangers arrive in Daggerford on the one night a year the town is worth visiting. There is music in the square, a widow playing flute in the downpour, a dollmaker giving away his best work, and a stablemaster who has burned thirty-two marks into his stable wall and will tell you exactly what they count.

There is also a house on the hill. It appears once or twice a year, usually around the festival. The people who walk up to it do not walk back down — or they do, and they do not last long afterward. Ask five townsfolk and you will get two stories: one about everyone who vanished, and one about the man who came back rich. Both are told with total confidence.

Balasar Amberflame is looking for his father. Genji is looking for the man who burned down his monastery. Lucy is looking for a cure, and for the woman she believes caused the sickness. Remi is looking for honest work and alchemical supplies. Beowolfe Scornbow is mostly trying not to fall asleep.

None of them came to Daggerford looking for a missing child.

That happens anyway — and by the time they reach the top of the hill, every window in the house is lit, and someone is watching them from an upper floor.

THE PARTY

Balasar Amberflame — dragonborn paladin, Oath of Glory

Lucy — tiefling bard

Genji — bugbear monk

Remi — forest gnome artificer

Beowolfe Scornbow — human ranger

Curse of Strahd, D&D 2024 rules, run on Foundry VTT.

New episodes on Tuesdays.

arcanjl.com

The blood test in the cellar ends the only way it could: with a father paying for it. Donavich gives his life to buy his son back, and Doru walks up out of the dark human again — orphaned, filthy, and suddenly the priest of Barovia at twenty years old.

Then the sun goes down, and the village finds out what a miracle costs.

The nightly siege comes early and comes worse: thinking ghouls that eat while you're still standing, and something riding its own cloud of rot that kills the grass where it drifts. The east barricade holds. Parriwimple — the armorer's enormous, delighted nephew, who calls the party's kobold paladin "baby dragon" and means it as the highest compliment — does not.

And into the aftermath rides a man named Rahadin, who speaks for the master of this realm, and who explains, politely, that a god reached into Barovia last night and Strahd noticed. The party is marked. But there's a way to make all of it stop: hand over Ismark's sister Ireena. She'll live as a queen. His word on it.

Then he looks at a portrait of an orc cleric's missing son and says the boy's name out loud.

The episode ends in a house with a broken window, a burgomaster in pieces on the floor, two puncture wounds behind a young woman's ear, and howling somewhere out in the dark.

An actual-play Curse of Strahd recap — no dice, no cross-talk, just the story.

arcanjl.com

The Rusted Fist is born in a tavern — out of spite.

Episode one of a brand-new campaign in MCDM's Draw Steel: the game with no d20, no missing, and a physics engine that treats goblins as ammunition.

A bleeding blacksmith named Ashley staggers into the inn begging for help — goblins have taken her daughter. The polished, professional Gilded Hand asks whether she can pay, hears "no," and walks out. Four newcomers take the job instead, and name themselves the Rusted Fist on the spot.

The trail leads to an old tomb. Outside it, Hank takes a spear between the ribs and laughs about it, Trian Redleaf kills a goblin and beats a second one with the corpse, Mia Gnarls learns what it feels like to be the party's damage sponge, and Alecs Angico — who is definitely not Nicolas Cage in disguise — starts bowling goblins through their friends with his mind.

Inside: two dozen more goblins, a burning brazier that becomes a weapon, a bard cut down and singing a healing limerick from the floor, and faded frescoes of a legendary silver chalice said to turn the weak into mighty warriors. Which might be exactly why the goblins took Ashley's daughter.

Then a red light down the hall, one step too far, and a trap springs as the credits roll.

An actual-play recap — no dice math, no cross-talk, just the story.

In this episode:

• What makes Draw Steel different — 2d10, tiers, and why you can't miss

• Meet the Rusted Fist: Trian, Mia, Alecs, and Hank

• Ashley's plea and the Gilded Hand's refusal

• First blood outside the tomb

• The offering room and the minion tutorial

• The Revitalizing Limerick, performed live at the table

• The silver chalice, and the party's theory about the kidnapping

• One square too far

Played on the Codex VTT.

arcanjl.com

The morning after the mine rescue, Mourningfall celebrates — until the party notices the rescued miners haven't aged a day in thirty years, and their memories of the time below are simply gone. Aelion toasts the tavern with a line from the dead priest's burial register, and the whole room answers in unison: "We remember. We endure."

Then a woman nobody notices walks out of the tavern, pulls a maul from an illusory tree, and lets herself into the ruined church — and the bell rings, ending every reunion in the street like a switch was flipped. Her name is Maris Bell. Her husband Thomas just came out of the mine. The evidence he found down there? She lost it. It's in Owlin's pocket, and it mentions "what men call an egg."

The chase for a fleeing figure leads to a cave and to Tamsin — the barmaid the whole town forgets — who hates paladins, claims she spent her own youth and life force shielding the villagers under Mother Vee's direction, and names the thing below: a dracolich. Dormant, not dead. Aelion swears a sacred oath never to harm her, and she steps out of thin air to hold him to it. Then she lures Owlin into the church ruins, borrows his cloak, knocks out a sleep-immune elf, and vanishes into the sky — leaving him with a spreading rash and the ground beginning to shake.

An actual-play recap of Mourningfall, a homebrew D&D 5e gothic mystery played on Foundry VTT — no dice, no cross-talk, just the story.

arcanjl.com

The Mists finally let go — and drop the party at the gates of Barovia, a village under siege. Zombies come every night at sunset. Half the town has fled. The rest are held together by Ismark, a young man doing his sick father's job badly, and a strange new ally: Cassius, an ex-soldier paladin who wandered into Barovia and just... started helping.

Inside the Blood of the Vine tavern, the name Strahd von Zarovich is spoken for the first time — and a hooded wine merchant who defends the "lord and master" turns out to wear a face nearly identical to Fiadh's. Then the barkeep coughs blood, and two puncture wounds change the whole night: a vampire has been feeding inside the walls.

The trail leads to a wrecked church, a sobbing priest, and the truth beneath the floorboards — Father Donavich's son Doru, who went to the castle to kill the sleeping devil and came back half-turned. The episode ends in the cellar dark, blood in the air, fangs bared, a father shouting a blessing through the floor: one boy's soul, balanced on a knife's edge.

An actual-play Curse of Strahd recap — no dice, no cross-talk, just the story.

arcanjl.com

⚠️ Players: if your DM is running Mysteries of Mourningfall, these episodes contain spoilers.

Behind a cot in a cellar, a crack opens into the mine that was sealed thirty years ago — and something down there just took a breath. Descending, the party finds claw marks among the pickaxe scars, bones too large to think about, a scorched mark in the shape of a wing, and an eggshell fragment inscribed with a name: Salmira. Preserved, guarded, forgiven. Undead miners still work the dark, a possessed foreman has been writing Nora's name in his own ichor, and the thing calling itself the Overseer offers a trade: the captured townsfolk live, if the paladin dies. The party's answer saves the town from its undead — but the forgetting remains, the bell still binds the flock, and whatever sleeps beneath the mountain now knows they're there.

Mourningfall is an original gothic mystery D&D adventure written by your DM — run it at your own table: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578165/mysteries-of-mourningfall-part-i-the-hollow-beneath

🎲 ArcAnjl Adventures brings professional DM-run D&D campaigns to life as story-driven audio.

🎙️ How it's made: a real DM, real players, and real dice — our sessions are narrated into podcast form using AI (Google's NotebookLM). The stories are 100% from the table.

📺 Watch scenes from this campaign: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLTngCZSQGVU

🌐 Videos, podcasts & more: arcanjl.com

⚠️ Players: if your DM is running Mysteries of Mourningfall, these episodes contain spoilers.

The town bell has been kept oiled for thirty years — and no one remembers climbing the tower to do it. Over a game of dragon chess, the town drunk reveals how he broke the pattern: he forgot his wife's name, felt the wrongness, and held on until the resets stopped. The magic isn't in the soup; it's in the bowls. The forgetting isn't grief; it's design. In the crypt beneath a ruined temple, the party finds where the town's dead have really been going, a ledger counting 214 souls "given to the mountain" — and the bell itself, inscribed in Draconic: remember as we permit, forget as we demand. Then the door slams, the bell cracks, and something enormous far below lets out a breath it's been holding for thirty years.

Mourningfall is an original gothic mystery D&D adventure written by your DM — run it at your own table: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578165/mysteries-of-mourningfall-part-i-the-hollow-beneath

🎲 ArcAnjl Adventures brings professional DM-run D&D campaigns to life as story-driven audio.

🎙️ How it's made: a real DM, real players, and real dice — our sessions are narrated into podcast form using AI (Google's NotebookLM). The stories are 100% from the table.

📺 Watch scenes from this campaign: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLTngCZSQGVU

🌐 Videos, podcasts & more: arcanjl.com

⚠️ Players: if your DM is running Mysteries of Mourningfall, these episodes contain spoilers.

Thirty years ago, the mine burned, half the village with it, and the town of Mourningfall gathered its grief around one phrase: "We will remember." But in the tavern called The Last Lantern, the memories won't stay still. Nobody pays for anything and nobody notices. The hearth burns the wrong color. A mounted skull on the wall is growing fresh flesh. And when a woman named Nora is "taken" — the way people in this town get taken — Mourningfall's answer has always been the knife. Tonight, a paladin proves there's another way. By closing time, the town is calling them heroes... and the barmaid who laughed for the first time in years has vanished.

Mourningfall is an original gothic mystery D&D adventure written by your DM — run it at your own table: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578165/mysteries-of-mourningfall-part-i-the-hollow-beneath

🎲 ArcAnjl Adventures brings professional DM-run D&D campaigns to life as story-driven audio.

🎙️ How it's made: a real DM, real players, and real dice — our sessions are narrated into podcast form using AI (Google's NotebookLM). The stories are 100% from the table.

📺 Watch scenes from this campaign: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLTngCZSQGVU

🌐 Videos, podcasts & more: arcanjl.com

In the flooded crypts beneath Death House, the party breaks open the beast the letters warned about — and finds what's controlling it from inside the ribcage. When it dies, the house decides no one leaves. A collapsing escape. A father's ghost blocking the stairs until a child's voice pleads "Papa, let us go." Front doors that open onto a road that should not exist. And then the quiet part: graves dug beside a ruined tower, a hymn played for its own sake, a grizzled veteran standing alone over the grave of the girl he trained. For the first and maybe only time, the Mists give something back. Welcome to Barovia.

The Mists Never Forget is a Dungeons & Dragons: Curse of Strahd campaign run live on Foundry VTT.

🎲 ArcAnjl Adventures brings professional DM-run D&D campaigns to life as story-driven audio.

🎙️ How it's made: a real DM, real players, and real dice — our sessions are narrated into podcast form using AI (Google's NotebookLM). The stories are 100% from the table.

📺 Watch scenes from this campaign: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYt-7e699a2I

🌐 Videos, podcasts & more: arcanjl.com