The Legend of Vox Machina Ep. 5

You can watch this episode right here.

On the run from the town guards, the heroes break into Gilmore's. Gilmore is on the premises, so the adventurers do some shopping - enchanted arrows, holy water, etc.  The others steal a horse-drawn wagon, and the group is on their way to Whitestone.

Keyleth and Scanlan go through Delila's book. They see notes and a drawing about a ziggurat.

Passing through a fog-laden forest, Vex notices something stalking them. It turns out to be a pack of monstrous wolves with prehensile tongues. One snatches the book along with Scanlan, and runs.

Keyleth actually uses wall of thorns to create a bridge over a chasm, which is very clever.

Vex fires an enchanted Hank arrow that blows up a wolf.

The wolf, and the cart tumble over a ledge. They think Scanlan's gone, but he rises up from over the edge on what looks to be a Bigby's hand spell. The group's sack of magic items, however, falls and is apparently lost or destroyed.

The lone surviving wolf still has the book and gets away.

The wolf returns to the Briarwoods, who are having a family over for dinner, if you catch my drift. The book is back in Delila's hands.

Scanlan messes with a magic scroll that turns him into a frog, then a zebra/unicorn, and then a female half-elf.

Elsewhere, Pike visits a temple of her god. Oh good, I thought we might not see her for a few episodes. She meets with a cleric at the church. Pike thinks she is cursed, but the cleric tells her,"The Everlight accepts you as you are."

Gathered around a camp fire, the group shares stories of their weirdest monster kill. I am still not ready for the full frontal nudity on this show.

We learn that Whitestone was at one time a bright place that was built around the massive Sun Tree. The group looks down on Whitestone now to find that the city is dark and full of boarded-up buildings. The Sun Tree's leaves are gone and the branches are twisted. It's a fun idea to have a city with a "sun tree" be taken over by vampires, very cool backstory for Percy.

Percy wants to find Keeper Yennen - a holy woman. Emerging from the fog of the dark city is some kind of giant, which the adventurers hide from until it passes by. 

Gazing up at the Sun Tree, they spot a family hanging from it. The victims are dressed as the adventurers - hanging from nooses.

Thoughts

Good episode! Very Ravenloft-y. I like the city, the villains are cool, and I loved the chase encounter with the wolves. I love chases, but they can be hard to run in D&D. In this instance, you'd have to just flat-out say that the wolf snatches the book, because if it doesn't, you've got no chase encounter.

As a DM, you're in a spot where you have to choose to either be a bit railroad-y, or just see if the wolves can pull it off. Personally, as a player, I'd be fine with the DM being a bit railroad-y in this instance because the encounter is awesome.