Enter the Hollow
In Tales from the Table.
Enter the Hollow was a campaign for Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition that I ran for twenty-one sessions between January and July 2020. Beginning with a mysterious event where the entire population of a city disappeared, the players quickly found themselves up against a group of shadow people from a dark realm, hellbent on completing a ritual enabling them to take over the entire material plane. To make matters worse the shadow people would possess the rich and powerful to further their nefarious goals. No one could be trusted.
Throughout the story, the players were emotionally traumatized by a false hydra, made a heroic sacrifice, defended a city from a tarrasque, sailed to the end of the world, and had an epic final battle on top of a volcano. Just the way a D&D campaign should be!
Enter the Hollow was my first proper homebrew campaign. I had run one before for a couple of friends in college, along with a module, but it was nothing serious. They didn’t want anything serious. This time it was different. This time it was six players who were there to play D&D and nothing else. I daresay it was the best group I’ve played with so far. Unfortunately life happens and we’ve just about become Theseus’s D&D group at this point. Oh well.
Anyway here’s some highlights from the good ol’ days of Enter the Hollow. Enjoy!
The Ballad of Sir Garner
This is the story of Sir Steven Garner; A bizarre man who met an even more baffling end deep in the deserts of a faraway land. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. This story begins with a player named Gustav. A childhood friend of mine and by far the one who’s played at my table the longest, he always takes detailed notes and rarely misses a session. A great player in every regard except one:
An Incident at the Bathhouse
Once upon a time, a group of adventurers entered a public bathhouse for a friendly chat with one of the patrons. The events that followed weren’t quite what I had expected.
The Tower at the End of the World
Thinking back on all the games I’ve run, the penultimate session of Enter the Hollow must surely claim first place as my favorite. Derivative as it may have been it turned out very memorable, with the fantastical location of the tower, and the high tension that arose despite the lack of any real combat. It truly captured the magic of the game in a way that has been hard to replicate.