WRITTEN RECAP
Eldoria — Episode 15: Toward Helus
Episode Fifteen resumes on the road south after the Old Dudes finish off a pair of ettins.
Garth Maul has once again demonstrated that charging directly at the largest available monster is a reliable way to discover how hard it hits. Wenende patches him up, the party checks the bodies, and everyone agrees that after receiving 2,500 gold each from the Pentarchy they probably do not need to nickel-and-dime every oversized weapon lying on the road.
Some members of the party disagree with the principle of leaving perfectly good loot behind.
The journey continues toward Grey Mire.
The town sits where rivers converge, smaller and quieter than Shade Karn, and the party arrives with two connected goals.
First, find out why the bell at the local chapel has stopped ringing.
Second, locate Varic, the hermit who may be the only known person to have broken free from the Graven Sentinel transformation tied to the black ichor.
Before doing either one, Fars introduces Grey Mire to his developing musical obsession: a song about a broken wagon wheel.
By the next episode, residents will already know it.
This may be the fastest-spreading threat in the campaign.
The party finds Father Halver, the priest who asked for help with the chapel. He explains that the bell simply stopped ringing several weeks ago. When he investigated the chapel at night, he encountered something terrifying enough to drive him out.
The Old Dudes volunteer to investigate.
Zayon is particularly enthusiastic because the campaign has somehow transformed him into Lethadia's foremost amateur bell specialist.
The chapel initially looks merely abandoned and corrupted.
Then the party finds the portal.
Strange fleshy growths and tendrils have spread through the interior. A gate has opened into another place, and creatures are coming through it.
They are not ordinary undead or beasts.
They resemble the alien things the party glimpsed after activating the gate near the ruined temple: pale humanlike faces, long appendages and bodies that do not seem to belong in Eldoria.
For Zayon, the sight triggers something more.
For a few seconds he is somewhere else.
He sees a battlefield filled with similar creatures, as though the vision Varian gave him earlier is repeating or sharpening. Then he is back inside the chapel with the fight already underway.
The battle becomes one of the party's nastier encounters so far.
Creatures push through the portal while fleshy webs and tendrils grab at the heroes. Fars and Zewor become entangled. Enemies try to drag people toward the gate. Characters trade heavy blows at close range while spells and arrows try to keep the portal from turning into an endless source of reinforcements.
The dice briefly become absurdly friendly, with natural twenties appearing close enough together that even the table notices the streak.
Eventually the Old Dudes force the creatures back and kill the ones that made it through.
Among the bodies they recover an unidentified magical longsword that glows with a faint blue light. Wenende claims it for the moment, although nobody yet knows what it does.
Winning the fight does not fix the chapel.
The corruption remains woven through the holy site.
This is where Zayon's earlier preparation matters.
Back in Shade Karn he specifically obtained The Unbounded Ground, a text on reconsecrating desecrated places. Now he uses what he learned.
The party helps while Zayon performs the rites to restore the chapel.
As the ritual takes hold, the alien infestation begins to withdraw and dissipate. The corruption loosens its grip. The holy place becomes a chapel again instead of a wound between worlds.
Then they restore the bell.
Zayon ceremonially pulls the rope.
It comes loose and falls down.
After everything they just survived, the ancient multidimensional evil is defeated and the ordinary rope is what fails.
They tie it back on.
This time the bell rings.
Its sound rolls across Grey Mire, announcing that the chapel has been reclaimed.
Father Halver is overwhelmed with gratitude. He rewards the party with a small charm carrying several limited blessings that can be granted in moments of need.
The people of Grey Mire begin returning to the chapel, and Fars negotiates the opportunity to perform still more songs about broken wagon wheels.
The Old Dudes have completed the first half of their Grey Mire business.
The next morning, they prepare to find Varic.
He lives roughly half a day's journey outside town, alone in a hidden cave and with a very clear preference not to be disturbed.
That is where Episode Fifteen ends.
The chapel bell rings again.
Zayon's vision suggests the creatures behind the portal may be part of something much larger.
The black ichor still points toward the Basalt Throne and the Graven Sentinels.
And somewhere outside Grey Mire is a man who survived becoming one.
The Old Dudes are going to knock on his door next.