WRITTEN RECAP
Eldoria — Episode 2: Stonebridge Secrets
The Old Dudes begin Episode Two with Bravaro's assignment still hanging over them: travel west into the Slobbering Glades, find the lizardfolk shrine, and recover the Jade Fang of Zarn Quill.
They have already managed to turn a livestock-stealing ogre into a farmhand and survive a bandit ambush, so naturally the road gets stranger from there.
The party gains another traveler, Garth Maul, a Goliath fighter whose preferred approach to danger is generally to stand very close to it and hit it until it stops moving. With another giant-sized warrior in the group, subtlety is becoming less and less likely.
Not long afterward, the party hears an ominous buzzing and discovers giant wasps along the road. Fars, confronted with an enormous nest of angry insects, decides that the appropriate response is music and attempts to match their buzzing with his bagpipes.
This does not establish diplomatic relations.
The wasps attack.
The fight becomes the party's first real lesson in dealing with enemies that can simply fly over the enormous armored men and attack whoever looks easier to sting. Spells, arrows and weapons start knocking wasps out of the air while the group tries to avoid becoming portable incubators. Eventually the nest comes down with them.
Somewhere along the way the Old Dudes leave behind a warning that amounts to “Wasps this way,” because apparently public service is important even while wandering toward a cursed lizardfolk shrine.
The terrain grows wetter and more miserable as they enter the Slobbering Glades. Roads become trails, trails become patches of slightly less hostile swamp, and the party finally reaches the site Bravaro described.
The lizardfolk are not interested in visitors.
A warning in Draconic tells them plainly to leave because they have entered a sacred temple. Bravaro had encouraged negotiation, and the group does make an effort. They talk. They try to offer the strange barter goods Bravaro provided. They look for a way to recover the Jade Fang without turning the entire tribe into enemies.
Then they notice the black ichor.
The substance stains the lizardfolk and seems connected to a disturbing change in their behavior. Whatever is affecting them, it is not simply territorial anger. The creatures are aggressive, corrupted, and unwilling to let the outsiders approach the shrine.
Negotiation breaks down.
The Old Dudes do what Old Dudes eventually do.
They fight.
The temple erupts into violence as lizardfolk close from multiple directions. The party has to force its way through defenders while trying to determine whether these creatures are guardians, victims, or both. The Jade Fang is there, just as Bravaro promised, but taking it means crossing a line the tribe explicitly warned them not to cross.
They take it anyway.
That turns the mission from retrieval into escape.
More lizardfolk begin closing in. The party has what it came for and has no interest in discovering how many defenders live in the swamp. Someone points out the increasingly obvious tactical solution.
Run away.
The heroes flee the shrine with the Jade Fang while angry lizardfolk pursue through the glades. This is where Wenende turns ordinary adventuring equipment into the star of the session.
Ball bearings hit the trail behind them.
Three pursuers go down.
Then caltrops are scattered across the route, and the chase becomes a swamp version of Keystone Cops as the remaining lizardfolk are forced to slow down or shred their feet trying to keep up.
It is not heroic in the traditional sense.
It is extremely effective.
Jay rewards the idea with inspiration, and the party gets enough distance to avoid being immediately surrounded again.
For the moment, they have escaped.
They also have far more questions than they started with.
The Jade Fang is real. The lizardfolk really were guarding it. The warning around the artifact may also be real. Worse, the black ichor coating the defenders suggests that something else has reached the Slobbering Glades before the party did.
Bravaro asked for an artifact.
What the Old Dudes are bringing back is an artifact, evidence of corruption, and the possibility that they just stole something dangerous from people who may themselves have been victims.
Episode Two ends with the party still in hostile country, carrying the Jade Fang and putting as much swamp as possible between themselves and the lizardfolk.
The mission was supposed to be simple.
Eldoria is already making it very clear that “simple” is not going to last.