"Into the Wilde" (WWx02) is the second episode of Wildemount Wildlings, a three part miniseries set at Veth Brenatto's summer camp of the same name. Gub Gub the Flying Pig has kidnapped Beau and Yasha and it's up to the feckless OLGA cabin to rescue their counselors... all before curfew!
Synopsis[]
Announcements[]
- Tonight's episode is sponsored by Humblewood: Beyond the Canopy. Ashley and Marisha do the ad read, but get distracted by the alarming cuteness of one of its new species, the chinchilla-like rockburrow jerbeen.
- Critical Role will present an episode of EverythingIsContent on Tuesday 15 April 2025 running Humblewood 2 with players including Ashley and Liam O'Brien.
- The two-part miniseries Thresher will appear in the regular Thursday time slot starting 24 April 2025.
- Liam snuck in to boost the recent release of Critical Role: Der Katzenprinz & Other Zemnian Tales.
Introduction[]
The kids' focus group (Kestrel, Greta, Maximus, Allyn, Marlowe, Penny, and Ronin, known as the Dream Team) contributed ideas for a maze the party would encounter, including that it would appear as each person's favorite food and hold a businessman who would lecture the group if they went the wrong way. For a swarm of smaller beasts, the kids provided art for a possessed stuffed bunny that can hypnotize with its eyes, a "sonic scream" bat-like creature, a "vycan" werewolf/vampire hybrid, nice sharks with legs, and a bad therapist with creepy eyes.
Gameplay[]
With Beau and Yasha being carried off in the mouth of Gub Gub the giant frog, Yeza Brenatto hears Sky and Jessep's shouts and runs out to find out what's happening. The campers explain and Yeza uses the camp's tin can telephone system to try to locate Kai and Padmund, who are still in the admin building rifling through the files. They faintly hear the call and go to join the others at the supply shed, taking some of the files with them.
When Padmund hears that a giant pig creature has eaten two members of the powerful Mighty Nein, he immediately starts to run away, but the others eventually persuade him to remain with the thought of a holographic card of himself for his under-development trading card strategy game. Without a clear plan, they go to visit Mishi, the Curfew Creature, who admits that she knows where the giant pig went (because she sees everything that happens in the camp) but her belief in the right to privacy prevents her sharing that information. However, she is amenable to bribery and with the promise of a beautiful holographic gold foil trading card of herself in Padmund's new game, she tells them where the pig didn't go, leaving only one place it could be: the campers' cabins.
Fan art of Beau and Yasha panicking, by Elaine Tipping.[art 1]
Meanwhile, Beau and Yasha find themselves tied up (with cat fur rope) in a dark room after blacking out within the pig's mouth. When they strain against the rope, it emits an enchanted cat dander mist that poisons them, making it even more difficult to escape their bonds. They begin shouting for help.
At the same time, the campers have reached the cabin area, now covered in a maze of their favorite foods. They quickly realize it is an illusion, but Padmund tastes it since he is immune to poison. He gains 1d4 temporary hit points, but succumbs to homesickness and feels compelled to go further into the maze, where he hears the faint sound of the pig creature somewhere before him. Jessep also tastes the food and is compelled into the maze as well, going the same way as Padmund. Kai and Sky follow without eating, and the group is together when the floor falls out from under them. Kai and Sky save themselves from dropping, but Padmund and Jessep are at the bottom of a 15-foot deep pit.
Sky immediately uses her Nolzur's Marvelous Pigments to begin painting a rope. A flash of light at the bottom of the pit triggers a memory in Padmund of overhearing his father call him a potential liability if he stayed home part of the summer to work on his father's ship. The next morning, he told his parents he wanted to go to camp for the whole summer. Just then, molten lava starts to flow into the pit, but Padmund doesn't even notice, lost in his reverie. Kai tosses his 50 feet of hemp rope down to Jessep, but she is unable to pull the oblivious Padmund up with her. Sky's Firebolt fails to snap him out of it, as does Jessep's Sorcerous Blast. Sky has Kai hold one end of her magically-created rope and she goes down it but isn't strong enough to pull up Padmund, and the lava is starting to damage both Jessep and Padmund. Kai leaps down into the lava and uses his Ring of Jumping to hold Padmund and Jump out of the pit. As Padmund comes back to himself, he leaps back down into the hole (taking yet more damage), grabs Jessep with his mighty strength, and leaps with his amphibian leg muscles back out, while Sky climbs out behind them. All of them are at least slightly wounded by the time they're all back at floor level.
Kai slaps Padmund to bring him out of the enchantment making him think this is a good place to be, but Jessep is still affected. Kai can hear the pig monster ahead and they follow the noise, encountering a businessman whom Padmund immediately kicks in the head, causing him to disintegrate. Jessep finally shakes free of the compulsion urging her to stay, and they all push through a nearby door to the outside, where everything now appears perfectly normal, and follow the "Gub-gub-gub" of the creature to the Magic Meadow, a practice area for mages.
Meanwhile, Beau and Yasha are still tied up in their dark room, but their vision has started to clear and they can now see the room a bit. They notice a small table holding a very phallic statue of the Traveler, some Werther's, some jewels, and other strange items, including the swear jar from the camp now bearing a tag saying, "CLUE: to help you escape". They manage to extract it, and it reads, "In life and love, communication is the key. Only your true feelings will set you free." They bare their souls to one another, with Beau admitting her initial hostile front was born of self-doubt and insecurity, and that raising a child scares her. Yasha is sure Beau would do better than her parents did, but they're both nervous about whether they, and their child, would survive their lifestyle, although they know their friends would provide a lot of support. As they discuss, the ropes begin to glow and weaken.
Back at the Magic Meadow, the campers see various beasts wandering about, such as a possessed bunny, a vycan (vampire/werewolf), two nice two-legged sharks conversing with one another, a sonic scream creature, and a note-taking therapist. In the center is a shed holding magical items for practice purposes. Like most of the things they have seen today, the field has a strange, slightly light-bending magical field. Kai throws a bell, drawing the destructive attention of the sonic scream. Padmund casts Unseen Servant and Detect Magic to explore the shed and bring back some items. The friendly sharks, however, notice the not-invisible items being carried, and Padmund speaks to them to distract them. The campers manage to get a potion of healing, jug of slippery lard (creates the effect of a Grease spell), a spider pill (casts Spider Climb on the swallower), and a box of tea. The unseen servant also brings back one of Yasha's flower pressings. They convince the friendly shark guards to let them in the gates and dash for the shed, pursued by the various patrolling creatures. The stuffed bunny grabs Jessep, so Padmund pushes it back with a Gust and Kai kills it with a thrown dagger. All the campers make it inside safely.
Meanwhile, as the ropes loosen around Beau and Yasha, the pig creature lumbers in and attempts to eat them, but they evade as they free themselves. Suddenly, a door behind Gub Gub opens and a giant fork pierces through the pig, pulling it back into a room smelling of breakfast. Yasha faintly also hears the children and they both run toward the light.
The shed in the Magic Meadow is much larger on the inside than on the outside, but it appears that something large has destructively rampaged through it although Padmund's Detect Magic locates a potion of greater healing, and Kai finds a Mask of X-ray Vision as well as another page from Yasha's notebook caught in the hinge of a trap door. He tries and fails to pull it open, as does Padmund, and the noise is attracting the monsters, but Sky manages (without raging) to open it. The sonic scream breaks in and attacks, hitting the group with psychic damage that knocks out Jessep and Kai as everyone jumps down and Padmund closes the trap door behind them. They see a long underground tunnel before them, smelling of bacon.
Featured characters[]
Player characters
- Beauregard Lionett
- Jessep Nimblethorp
- Kai
- Padmund Pondhop
- Skullcrusher "Sky" Bloodforge
- Yasha Nydoorin
Returning
Mentioned
- Archibald
- Caduceus Clay
- Caleb Widogast
- Clara Lionett (unnamed)
- Jester Lavorre
- Kingsley Tealeaf (unnamed)
- Thoreau Lionett (unnamed)
- Veth Brenatto
Quotations[]
- Padmund: If we leave the building with [the files], it's stealing.
Kai: No, we're just borrowing them.
Padmund: Great point. - Kai: Those are the Mighty Nein, right? Some big heroes that you're a fan of, right?
Padmund: Yeah.
Kai: So if we take this pig down and we rescue them, what does that make you?
Padmund: The luckiest frog on the planet. - Yasha: (about the de-leveling potion they drank) Why did we do that?
Beau: I don't know! I've only punched like two, maybe three kids in the past.
Yasha: Yeah, maybe three. And that's not a lot. You could've punched so many more kids and you didn't. - Padmund: Oh my god. Sometimes explosive decisive violence without leaving any opening for trickery or malfeasance absolutely clears the way to a better world. I finally get what this camp is about.
- Beau: Maybe I've deliberately been drowning myself in work because in a way, taking down a corrupt magocracy across an entire empire that has been slowly controlling a continent for the past 100 years somehow feels easier than raising a child. [...] I think we've done almost every adventure that we possibly could have except for that one. And I wouldn't want to do it with anybody else.
Trivia[]
- Eden's flask has a picture of a young Sam Riegel on it, although is was shown in the Critical Cooldown not in the actual episode.[1]
- Sam confirmed that the children in the focus group that created the monsters and the maze are his children and their friends, for whom he runs a home D&D game.[2]
References[]
- ↑
Wildemount Wildlings Cooldown | E2 at 4:52 (subscription required) (Transcript).
- ↑ Wildemount Wildlings Cooldown | E2 at 1:44 (subscription required) (Transcript).
Art:
- ↑ Fan art of Beau and Yasha panicking, by Elaine Tipping (source). Used with permission.