When a Star Falls is an adventure for players who want a balance of the three pillars of adventure: combat, exploration, and social interaction. Centering around a prophesized falling star, this celestial journey is one of six remastered first edition adventures found in Quests from the Infinite Staircase.

Read on to learn more about who prophesized this event, why the fallen star is so important, and the people and creatures players can encounter on the path to the quest's resolution!

Warning! This article contains minor spoilers for When A Star Falls.

• When a Star Falls Adventure Overview
• Monster of the Week: Memory Web
• When a Star Falls Adventure Hooks
• Come for the Prophecies, Stay for the Gold

When A Star Falls Adventure Overview

Character level: 4 – If the table is using story-based level advancement, players reach level 6 by the adventure’s conclusion.

Location: Players will visit several locations in the Tegefed Mountains and its surrounding hills and moors.

Themes: Intrigue, Hope, Betrayal

Adventure Premise

A prophecy has predicted that a star will soon fall from the sky and land in the Tegefed Mountains. The Elder Sage from the Tower of the Heavens, a place where commoners and kings alike visit to seek prophecy and wisdom, sent several of his most trusted subordinates to visit a Druid in the mountains and ask for her help in charting the star’s path. From there, the Elder Sage hopes that his tower hands can acquire the fallen star and bring it back to him.

The adventure begins with the players encountering a strange creature that killed the Elder Sage’s allies and stole their memories. When the players defeat this foe, those stored memories are released; the players are suddenly aware of a quest left incomplete, and a star destined to fall.

Players will soon discover that the Tower of the Heavens is not the only party interested in the falling star. Communities of hunters, Derro, deep gnomes, and a lone Druid all live in the Tegefed Mountains, and some have had their interest peaked by this divine event.

Fork in the Road

When a Star Falls gives players agency over what path to take and what areas to visit first.

Once players have absorbed the memories of the envoys from the Tower of the Heavens and seen the star fall, they must choose where to go next. They can continue the envoys’ journey and visit a local Druid, travel directly to where they think the star landed, or visit the Tower of the Heavens.

There’s no right answer! Players can take whatever route they wish, and DMs can enjoy the surprise of not knowing what happens next. This open-world progression also makes it more fun for a DM to run the adventure again and again, since the story will be different each time.

Variety, the Spice of Adventuring

Some adventures focus primarily on combat, exploration, or roleplay. When a Star Falls is a fairly balanced experience that provides plenty of all three and allows players to choose when to tackle which encounter.

This adventure has five main locations that players can visit (though they won’t have to visit all five to complete the adventure), and each provides a distinct experience. Some encounters will encourage the players to play nice, make friends, and be charming. Other areas are full of enemies that take a "kill first, ask questions never" approach to strangers. Some locations, like the Tower of the Heavens, are designed to allow the party to con, charm, sneak, or fight their way through as they prefer.

When Your Memories Aren’t Yours

When this adventure was originally published in 1984 by TSR’s UK branch, it introduced players to a unique twist on "You all meet in a tavern." With When A Star Falls, writer Graeme Morris introduces a particularly unpleasant creature called a memory web that feeds on (you guessed it) memories and when defeated, instills nearby characters with the information it recently ate. After you’ve described the memories imparted by the web, encourage your players to consider how their characters feel about what they’ve seen. They will suddenly remember conversations they never had and recall sentiments that aren’t theirs; do the characters feel a kinship to these fallen tower hands now that they know what it was like to live in their shoes?

Monster of the Week: Memory Web

Giant spiderwebs have long been an obstacle for adventuring parties, blocking their paths through forests and caves. On a good day, the web is abandoned and can be easily burned away or cut through. On a bad day, a giant spider or ettercap lies in wait nearby, triggered into action by the slightest touch of its web. On a very bad day, the web is actually a sentient Aberration that feasts on your mind.

A memory web is a twisted life form infused with eldritch energy. It appears as an unremarkable spiderweb, albeit one spun by a monstrously large spider, until it springs towards an adventurer and engulfs them.

Memory Web Tactics

Remember that in this adventure, it is the defeat of the memory web that kicks things off. Accordingly, your aim when running this monster should be to make the fight as scary, challenging, and interesting as possible, but you shouldn’t expect the memory web to be victorious.

Try to surprise a character and use the Ensnare ability immediately, Grappling the target. Then, use Drain Memories as your Bonus Action every turn to deal Psychic damage and impair the target’s ability checks and attack rolls. These abilities together deal an average of 12 damage every turn, enough to make the ensnared player nervous but not enough to kill them quickly.

The memory web’s most challenging trait for the party is a passive one: Damage Transfer. If your party blasts the memory web with magic or slashes at it with a sword, it transfers half of the damage it takes to the grappled creature. Your party will eventually defeat the memory web, but how much do they harm an ally in the process?

When a Star Falls Adventure Hooks

Artist: Néstor Ossandón Leal

When a Star Falls begins with the party encountering a living memory web and being infused with its memories. But what brought your party to that place and time, and what motivates them?Quests from the Infinite Staircase provides DMs with a few possible answers:

Nafas the Noble Genie

Quests from the Infinite Staircase introduces Nafas, an optional group patron and powerful genie who lives in a mystical plane called the Infinite Staircase. From this liminal dimension, players can flit from world to world and embark on wild adventures.

Nafas, in his role as a cosmic genie, hears the desperate wish of Shalfey, the prophetic sage who leads the Tower of the Heavens. Shalfey sent some of his most trusted tower hands to acquire a star that was predicted to land nearby soon, but Nafas knows that they are unlikely to be successful due to the memory web that awaits them. Nafas asks the adventurers to find the fallen star and give it to Shalfey, then politely shuffles them off to the mountains to begin their search.

Seeking Answers

If you or your players aren’t interested in using Nafas as a group patron and quest starter, there are plenty of ways to get the party to the Tegefed Mountains.

The Tower of the Heavens is a famous home of prophets and sages. Travelers who visit the Tower and bring gold may ask the sages a question. Most people who visit ask questions about themselves and their own fate, but your players may decide that their character is more interested in discovering secrets of the universe. Other players may decide that their character is drawn to the Tower not out of curiosity, but out of desperation.

Whatever the reason your players want to visit the Tower of the Heavens, I bet they weren’t expecting to do it with a head full of stolen memories from the tower’s sages!

It’s the Right Thing to Do

This next idea isn’t from Quests from the Infinite Staircase, but if you are running a campaign with a good-aligned adventuring party, you can let the party’s personality and desire for justice be the hook into the adventure. If your party’s characters are altruistic, empathetic, or have a strong sense of duty (most good heroes probably have at least one of these qualities), then the sage’s memories alone will likely compel them to action. When you describe the memories that the memory web left in their minds, note the fallen sages’ sense of dedication, of urgency, and of unfinished business.

Come for the Prophecies, Stay for the Gold

In When a Star Falls, players can encounter sages in a tower, a Druid in the woods, hunters by the lake, Derro in the mountains, and deep gnomes in their forge. As such, players can acquire a variety of treasures—if they can find it.

Most locations are hiding several stashes of gold, and a few uncommon magic items are available throughout the adventure. The Druid Derwyth may share Potions of Healing if the party befriends her, while the hunters of Therno Lake can provide information. Some defeated foes bear spellbooks, wands, Spell Scrolls, or magic rings.

With such an open-world format, this adventure can feel like a treasure hunt. Wherever you visit, you’ll come across opportunities to find various types of loot!

Preorder Quests from the Infinite Staircase Today!

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Damen Cook (@damen_joseph) is a lifelong fantasy reader, writer, and gamer. If he woke up tomorrow in Faerûn, he would bolt through the nearest fey crossing and drink from every stream and eat fruit from every tree in the Feywild until he found that sweet, sweet wild magic.