WRITTEN RECAP
Eldoria — Episode 14: The Bell Still Rings
Episode Fourteen opens in the middle of two assassination attempts happening at once.
The Old Dudes have split across Shade Karn. One group is helping Lady Alara near the fountain. The other is trying to keep High Marshal Kalin Stonefist alive on a nearby street.
Both targets are badly hurt.
Kalin is poisoned.
The assassins are still coming.
The fight becomes a race between damage and healing. Every time the party seems to stabilize one side of the battle, another attacker gets through somewhere else.
Kalin, wounded and fighting from his knees, still manages to cut down one of the men trying to kill him.
Then an assassin lands a natural twenty with a crossbow.
Kalin drops.
For a moment, the conspiracy is one good follow-up strike away from succeeding.
The Old Dudes keep him alive.
Lady Alara's fight is no cleaner. She is nearly overwhelmed as the party, Ember Watch guards and surviving allies close on the assassins. Some killers die where they stand. Others flee into alleys as the plan collapses.
By the end, both members of the Pentarchy are alive.
Gregor and Lyra are not on the streets with the assassins. They attempt to escape elsewhere but are captured and taken away in shackles.
The plot has failed.
During the fighting, Fars receives a magical message from Arthias telling him to come alone the next day to the Foaming Trout.
That meeting opens an entirely different part of the campaign.
Arthias explains that the black ichor appears connected to the Basalt Throne, a secretive order long associated with creating transformed warriors called Graven Sentinels. The practice supposedly stopped years ago after an internal schism.
Someone seems to have restarted it.
More troubling, Val may be connected to the Basalt Throne and is not necessarily who she appears to be.
Arthias gives Fars the name of a man called Varic, a hermit living outside Grey Mire. Varic is extraordinary because he apparently broke free from the Graven Sentinel transformation. If anyone can explain what the ichor does and who is using it, he may be able to.
That thread has to wait for one more piece of Shade Karn business.
The Old Dudes and Bravaro are summoned to the Citadel of the Pentarchy.
Gregor and Lyra are formally tried for treason and attempted murder.
Lyra defends the philosophy behind what they did. Gregor remains defiant, staring at Kalin Stonefist and arguing that Lethadia has become weak under leaders who value peace over strength.
The court is unmoved.
Both are sentenced to death by quartering and imprisoned until the execution.
Then the tone changes.
The Pentarchy publicly recognizes Bravaro and the adventurers whose investigation exposed the conspiracy and whose intervention saved Kalin and Alara.
Each member of the party receives 2,500 gold pieces.
They are granted land outside Shade Karn, giving them the opportunity to establish a permanent base.
They also receive gold badges granting permanent access to the Glimmering Heights, the elite district where they previously needed special permission simply to enter.
The Old Dudes have gone from answering a strange advertisement outside Bravaro's shop to being publicly honored by the rulers of Lethadia.
Naturally, somebody immediately starts shopping.
The party also visits the Worm's Maw and considers available adventuring work. One notice concerns Grey Mire, where the bell at a local chapel has mysteriously stopped ringing and Father Halver has asked for help. Another concerns a strange cave exposed near Netherford after heavy rains.
Grey Mire is the obvious choice because Varic is nearby.
One trip can advance both the black-ichor investigation and the chapel job.
The group heads south on what should be roughly a six-day journey.
Three days in, giant ettins attack.
Garth Maul does what Garth Maul does and charges straight into them.
He is immediately whacked several times.
The Old Dudes recover and kill the giants quickly, but it is a useful reminder that political heroes still take damage exactly like everybody else.
Episode Fourteen ends on the road to Grey Mire.
Gregor and Lyra have fallen.
The bell in Shade Karn still rings.
But another bell has gone silent to the south, and the mystery of the black ichor is leading the party toward something older and stranger than a political coup.