WRITTEN RECAP
Eldoria — Episode 5: Songs Of Stone And Scroll
Episode Five takes the Old Dudes to the ruined temple Bravaro sent them to search for a ritual censer.
A storm rolls across the region as they approach, turning the old stones into exactly the kind of place sensible people would avoid after dark.
The party is not composed primarily of sensible people.
Before they can even get inside, they run into owlbears prowling the ruins. The creatures provide a violent welcome, and the fight reminds everyone that “random wildlife” in Eldoria may involve several hundred pounds of feathers, claws and bad temper.
Once the owlbears are dealt with, the party enters the temple.
The place has been abandoned for a very long time, but abandoned does not mean empty.
Old crypts and sealed chambers tempt the group into doing what adventurers always do when confronted with warnings, burial sites and architecture specifically designed to keep things closed.
They open them.
Undead rise.
The party fights through dead guardians and searches deeper into the complex. Secret passages and hidden rooms begin to reveal that the temple's final occupants were involved in something much more dangerous than ordinary worship.
Eventually the Old Dudes find the censer Bravaro wanted, along with additional valuables and documents.
The documents are the important part.
A journal belonging to the temple's high priestess, Velithra, describes rituals devoted to a forgotten progenitor god and repeated attempts to summon or control a being named Norak. The entries become increasingly desperate. Whatever Velithra was doing, it was not going according to plan.
There is also a summoning chamber.
And around that summoning chamber are lanterns and candles.
This is the point where every warning in the journal should probably matter.
Fars lights them.
Not one.
Not a couple.
All of them.
The table immediately realizes that this may have been a poor decision.
Scott's defense is essentially, “It was dark. I was just trying to help.”
There is also an admission that impulse control may be an issue.
The ritual space awakens.
Whatever had been sealed here is no longer sealed.
When the party returns toward the main chamber, they find a small horned figure in robes sitting comfortably on the old throne. He laughs with the unmistakable energy of an emperor who has been waiting thousands of years for somebody else to make exactly this mistake.
It is Norak.
He thanks them.
Velithra, he explains, believed she could summon and control him. Instead, the ancient conflict around the progenitor gods left him trapped here when the temple was abandoned. The wards and ritual structure kept him imprisoned for millennia.
The Old Dudes have just turned the lights on and let him out.
Norak offers them a reward for their assistance.
He will allow them to leave alive.
There is a moment when the party considers whether accepting that offer might actually be the most intelligent thing they have done all night.
They came here to retrieve a censer.
They found it.
They also uncovered a high priestess's forbidden journal, disturbed crypts, fought undead, killed owlbears and released an ancient supernatural being who had been imprisoned since a forgotten age.
Somewhere in Shade Karn, Bravaro is probably going to have questions.
Episode Five ends with Norak free and the Old Dudes standing in the temple realizing that, for once, the dangerous thing they unleashed cannot be blamed on a bad die roll.
They lit the candles themselves.