The tadpole is a redundant plot point actually. It is irrelevant by the time you discover it is in stasis through Ethel / Omeluum and will (hopefully) become irrelevant after Moonrise. The reason you find Act 1 too long, I think, is because the primary antagonist is supposed to not show up until the very end of the Act. We really have no idea what the story is about yet, so everything we have done up to now is busy work.
This. There are other short stories in EA, some of them seem really good (specifically the hag plot. Unfortunately it's so buggy I never finished it), but most of them are mostly self contained. The big main plot is a big nothing right now.
