Episode 2: "The Split Oak"

A shovel first, then a shipment. Before the road can even begin there is a grave to fill — and a bard who would much rather sing over it than dig. Then two days north through the Grovefields, chasing a gnome's stolen cargo to a split oak deep in the trees, where hard men are camped around a wagon that was never theirs.

A dwarf plans the fight the way he plans everything: loudly, and with a warhammer. A half-orc in a priest's robes melts into the treeline, daggers first and prayers never. A bard is certain he can talk this one out — and for once, nobody lets him. What starts as three marked positions and a clever plan becomes a close, ugly thing among the roots, and when it's over the little gnome has his cargo back and the bard has learned that winning does not always look like something a man wants to remember.

Told fireside, to two children who would much rather hear about a golem, this is the second disaster of Nex Nexus.