ArcAnjl Adventures

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.

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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.

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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

A nursery with blood above the crib. A doll with its eyes plucked out. And behind a padlocked attic door, two children who have been cold and hungry for a very, very long time. The ghosts of Rose and Thorn lead the party down a hidden stairway into the house's true heart — a shrine where shadows hunger and chanting echoes through the crypts. Leona refuses to abandon Rose, no matter what it costs her. It costs her everything. The party makes a vow: no one gets left in this house. Not the children. Not her.

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

Deeper into the Durst house, the party finds a study whose bookshelves are lies, a hidden ruby that hums with connection, and a letter signed by a name that should frighten anyone in Barovia: Strahd von Zarovich. Then a distant harpsichord answers Fiadh's violin — and won't let her stop playing, even as her fingers bleed. Suits of armor wake. A figurine shatters and the lights go out. A little girl knocks at a balcony door locked for years, and when it opens, she is not a little girl anymore. By the end, one of their own turns on the party with someone else behind his eyes.

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

Dagger Ford's Fall Time Festival is in full swing — violin duets in the square, roasted chestnuts, blessings for the harvest. But the locals won't talk about the house on the hill, the one that appears with the mist and swallows anyone who goes looking. Five strangers-turned-companions walk up anyway. Locked doors, a family portrait with watching eyes, a warning written in blood, and a flaming skeleton in the library that objects violently to anyone reading the Durst family's mail. The house has been waiting for guests.

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