Unaware players take Ilthane's egg with them!

[Viconus]

My players have just acquired Ilthane's egg from the Lizardfolk's lair, in hopes of using it as a bargaining chip with Ilthane. They're heading back to Blackwall Keep, not even close to suspecting it of being filled with Kyuss worms. I'm wondering when the best time would be to spring the hatching on them. The players flew over the eggs to avoid destroying them and I wanted to reward them for that choice by not having it burst when the eggs were nearby. Also, it was getting late and players wanted to go home.

This time, I plan on having the battlemage rescued from the lizard lair, Marzena, being infected with a slow acting worm as she rests in the basement. That will do the trick of acquainting them with the worms.

[Jam Falcon]

My players did the exact same thing. What I decided to do was use the encounter with two trolls on the way to the Free City from the beginning of HoHR, and make sure that the player carrying the egg was attacked by the trolls. The egg would be broken, and the next round worms would crawl out all over the character. The trolls would be disgusted and scared away by that, opening up a window for diplomacy (my party actually managed to get them to join in the arena in Champion's Belt to try and get revenge on Auric and Khellek), and it gives the party a rather terrifying introduction. I put a pond just off the side of the road at the fight, so that the character could jump in and wash all the worms off quickly – had she not taken that or thought of some other method, I would have had the worms attempt to infect her, although probably just like a single worm, since it was their first encounter with them.

That said, your plan sounds good too. I think there were also a couple of other threads on here about this topic, so I'd recommend searching and taking a look at those too, and see which one you think will work best.

[wordelo]

I had a group take the egg while i was playing so I didn't know what it was until I took over the age of worms campaign (DM sucked and quit) at the HoHR quest. so when they were on a boat to meet manzorian I had the egg "Hatch" burst out of the bag of holding they had and infected some crew members. that was an interesting encounter.

the group I'm playing with now made a deal with the druid lizardfolk, killed the leader guy, and never needed to go into the egg chamber.

they warned the druid about ilthane, and that she is bad news. he entered the layer and attempted to study the egg, the kobolds wouldn't let him so he killed them studied the egg and with his knowledge of nature found that there might not be a dragon in there. he cracked it open and worms came out infected some lizardfolk guys, the guy already infected turned, infected some more, but eventually was able to quell the infection. he took all of the treasure there and "mailed" it to the PCs as a thank you for the warning for had the worms been unleashed onto the eggs that would have been very bad.

They don't know this yet, but Ilthane came back expecting an army of undead lizardfolk, but found that plans had been ruined so she killed the whole lizardfolk tribe.