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Story Hour
Erkonin (Campaign #2) [Session 45: Rajalmin's Agent]
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<blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8055966" data-attributes="member: 7016699"><p><span style="font-size: 15px"> Session 4: Spiders In The Forest</span></p><p></p><p></p><p>Dramatis Personae:</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel - Wood Elf Ranger</p><p>Elama “Lamie” Galanodel- Wood Elf Cleric (Tempest)</p><p>Vinya Anar - Wood Elf Monk</p><p>Elderon - High Elf Wizard (Loremaster)</p><p>Marxine Deepfoot - Dwarf Fighter</p><p></p><p>GM: - Everyone Else</p><p></p><p>(Note: Mia's player was out this evening, so Mia was feeling poorly and not really engaging much with things. She stayed in the inn when she had the opportunity, working on recovering.)</p><p></p><p></p><p>We spent the night in the village. Marxine asked if there was anything of value out here or further along the road. The villagers said that there really wasn’t -- just some forest for logging and some okay farmland. The track we’d followed from the main road ended at this village.</p><p></p><p>Which left us wondering why the Crazy Preachers had even come in this direction. But maybe “crazy” is reason enough.</p><p></p><p>We then spent the night in the village, and it passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>6 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 7)</p><p></p><p>We decided against taking the Crazy Preachers’ horses - the villagers said they could use them and we have Comrade and White Horse.</p><p></p><p>We headed back down the track toward the main road between Tash and the Knot. After we left the village, Vinya pointed out that at least 2 of the beachball-grues were still out there (because 5 burst out of peoples’ chests in the first village and we only had three at the village we saved).</p><p></p><p>The day and the night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>7 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 8)</p><p></p><p>We proceeded back to the first village without incident, getting there around mid-day. Vinya called out and peeked in the empty houses, in hopes that some of the villagers had run away into the forest and returned, but that was not the case.</p><p></p><p>So we continued on our way, making camp at the same place we’d stayed on the way out. Mia, not feeling well, slept through the night, and we set our watches to let her do so.</p><p></p><p>On the first watch, Elama, Vinya and Marxine were all totally surprised by three grues that attacked Marxine from out in the darkness.</p><p></p><p>Two of them hit, one grabbing onto her leg and the other attaching itself to her face.</p><p></p><p>Lamie walked past the sleeping party members to get into the fight.</p><p></p><p>Lamie: Yo! Wake up!</p><p></p><p>Then she cured Marxine of some of the damage. Marxine hit the one on her face and then did an action surge and hit it again, critting it and killing it. It imploded in on itself, as these things do.</p><p></p><p>Vinya hit the one on Marxine’s leg with her quarterstaff, then kicked it off. It disappeared into itself as it flew out into the woods.</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel woke up and, grabbing her sling, shot the third one and hit it. Elderron, waking up, firebolted it. But the two hits didn’t drop it, which left it free to attack Vinya. Lamie then stepped in with her sword and attacked it.</p><p></p><p>We all looked around and waited a bit with our weapons ready, on edge. This was the first time we’d seen the beachballs unaccompanied by cultists or Crazy Preachers or big dudes with tentacle arms.</p><p></p><p>But nothing else came out of the woods and eventually we proceeded with our night’s rest. And the rest of the night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>8 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 9)</p><p></p><p>The next morning we continued on our way. We noticed that the woods seemed quieter -- the animals were behaving more normally and it all seemed like things were better. And nothing happened to us the whole day back to the main road.</p><p></p><p>We got to the main road when there was still a bit of light left. There had been traffic on the road and the mud had dried out, so we weren’t able to make out the tracks of the wagon we’d been backtracking. However, the road only goes where it goes, so following along the road isn’t hard. Hopefully we’ll find some sign if the cart entered or left the road and didn’t just come straight from Tash (though we know they were Tashite merchants before they went crazy).</p><p></p><p>Once at the main road, we continued on the way to Tash for a mile or so before making camp, just to get away from the crossroads.</p><p></p><p>The night passed without incident.</p><p></p><p></p><p>9 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 10)</p><p></p><p>The next morning, Elderron sent Oda flying up to see what he could see. What Oda saw was a cart on the road toward the Knot. It looked as though it went by while we were off on the side track rescuing the village. He saw another caravan coming our way from Tash. We would encounter them later in the morning.</p><p></p><p>Marxine: It’s a good sign there is still traffic on the road.</p><p></p><p>We continued on. After a few hours we encountered the small caravan of two wagons that Oda had spotted. There was one wagon with gnomes riding on it and a couple of goliaths who appeared to be guards, but the bulk of the people were humans. They were flying a Tash flag and a flag from a human merchant family. Marxine recognized the flag, though she wasn’t personally familiar with the family.</p><p></p><p>They all appeared to be fine and reported no problems on the road.</p><p></p><p>Vinya told them about the cart that was attacked by bandits a week and a half or so ago.</p><p></p><p>Merchants: What happened to the bandits?</p><p></p><p>Vinya hemmed and hawed about telling them that they’d been turned into monsters that we’d killed and getting into all the crazy business.</p><p></p><p>Vinya: Well, um at least some of them are dead.</p><p></p><p>That just alarmed them. Elderron stepped in and was no more reassuring.</p><p></p><p>Marxine then spoke up: We tracked them to a village and killed them.</p><p></p><p>That put them back at their ease.</p><p></p><p>We asked about traffic on the road and pointed out that from what we could tell there had been no one travelling between The Knot and Tash for something like a week. They said they hadn’t really thought about it, but that was weird, even with traffic being lighter at this time of year.</p><p></p><p>We then thanked them and wished them safe travels.</p><p></p><p>Marxine: At Tash we can ask if a caravan or cart has gone missing.</p><p></p><p>(Reminder: The cart we’re on did not have any flags, which the traders use to identify where they’re from, which merchant house or group they’re with, etc. It would have had them when they left Tash, but they were not in the wagon when we got it at The Knot.)</p><p></p><p>Around nightfall we got to a village, Tormul -- it had an inn, with a tavern attached, and a shop that seemed a bit bigger than we expected for a roadside hamlet. Seeing people move around and interact, the vibe of the town seemed largely unstressed.</p><p></p><p>We went to the tavern for food (and beverage) and to arrange for rooms for the night.</p><p></p><p>At the tavern, we spoke with the owner, a human woman named Barluta. We told her that we were heading from the Knot to Tash and had noticed that there’s not much traffic on the road.</p><p></p><p>Barluta: Yeah. It’s a bit slow.</p><p>Vinya: Any idea why?</p><p>Barluta: We haven’t heard about problems on the road. Some of the villagers here have had problems out in the wood. A couple of weeks ago we found that a section of the woods was covered with spider webs and really quiet. A couple of our teens saw big spiders and swarms of smaller spiders.</p><p></p><p>Well, that was interesting, but not immediately related.</p><p></p><p>Vinya: Have any of the travelers coming through talked about a machine?</p><p>Barluta: Some crazy dwarves came through a couple of weeks ago raving about something. They wanted to talk and when I wouldn’t let them they got belligerent. They got driven off by the shopkeeper, Tessixylin.</p><p>Vinya: We want to talk to the shopkeeper</p><p>Barluta, to Marxine: No offense, ma’am, but when dwarves go bad they go real bad.</p><p></p><p>Marxine, Elderron and Vinya went to talk to Tessixylin, who was a dragonborn, six and half feet tall and thickly built with mottled reddish scales. The shop carried a lot of general goods, including weapons and some armor, and a few scrolls. They also had a one foot long rod that could extend into a 10 foot pole. Vinya bought that because it seemed as though it might be handy sometimes.</p><p></p><p>We asked Tessixylin about the crazy dwarves that had come through. She told us that they had no flags flying on their cart when they arrived. They kept talking about “Something came to me”.</p><p></p><p>We asked about the spiders and the teens who saw them. Tessixylin said that she could have them come around to the tavern to talk to us if we wanted, which we did.</p><p></p><p>We then returned to the tavern, rejoining Aldalómiel, Elama and Mia (still feeling poorly) for some food. The teens showed up after dinner, introducing themselves as Jellan and Castrus.</p><p></p><p>They said they’d seen the spiders a day or two ago. They’d gone looking because the villagers had friendly relations with a couple of pixies and sprites out in the woods and hadn’t run into them for a couple of weeks. So they went to the area where they could often be found looking for them. And about 2 hours from the town they found lots of spider webs and saw some swarms of spiders. When they saw a spider the size of a horse, they fled.</p><p></p><p>They gave us directions to find a path into the woods that led in the right direction.</p><p></p><p>Elderron: We’re following something weird and this is weird. We should check it out.</p><p></p><p>We all agreed to that.</p><p></p><p>We then went to our rooms in the inn and rested for the night, enjoying the comfortable beds.</p><p></p><p></p><p>10 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 11)</p><p></p><p>The next morning we left Mia sleeping soundly and the horses in the stables and headed down the path that Jellon and Castrus had pointed us to.</p><p></p><p>After an hour or an hour and a half, we started seeing spider webs in the trees, first just clusters and globs in the trees, then thick sheets that came all the way down to ground level. Elderron shot one with a firebolt, just to see what happened, and it burned along, but didn’t set the forest on fire. The trees in fact, looked healthy and alive.</p><p></p><p>Marxine and Elderron cleared the way ahead of us, Marxine using her axe like a machete and Elderron firebolting, so we could walk without continually walking into spider webs.</p><p></p><p>Lamie was in the middle of the group looking around in a paranoid fashion, Scooby Doo style, occasionally trying to wipe webs off her arms and face.</p><p></p><p>We knew there were spiders in the woods, but we didn’t know which specific direction they’d be coming from so we were all surprised except Aldalómiel when five spiders came out of the woods from different directions to attack us. Stocky, wolf-sized spiders.</p><p></p><p>One of the spiders bit Lamie and Aldalómiel shot one and this was looking like it was going to be a long fight, then Elderron cast sleep on three of them, thinning the crowd against us, Vinya then dropped hers, kicking it out into the woods, and moved between the sleeping spiders and Elderron and Elama, to protect them. Aldalómiel and Marxine took care of the other one that wasn’t asleep. That left just the three sleeping spiders, and we dispatched them one by one.</p><p></p><p>We continued deeper into the spider forest, with Marxine and Elderron clearing the way of webs again. We weren’t surprised to see three spiders the size of horses 15 feet up in the trees. Well, we <em>were</em> a bit shocked at how big they were but not surprised that they were there and attacking us. They appeared to be a larger and more imposing variety of more or less normal looking spider.</p><p></p><p>Elderron started things off by magic missiling one. Aldalómiel shot a different one with an arrow. Marxine pulled out her handaxe and threw it, hitting the third one. Vinya shot an arrow at the one Elderron had magic missiled and dropped it. It fell out of the tree with a bit of a splat.</p><p></p><p>That was a good start to things -- then the two remaining spiders shot out webbing, hitting Aldalómiel and Marxine and restraining them in their webs. Ew. Lamie tried to pull Aldalómiel out of the webbing and failed. Fortunately, even restrained in the web, Aldalómiel was able to fire her bow and do a great deal of damage to one. Marxine threw another handaxe at the one that had webbed her and did it a big chunk of damage. Vinya shot at the one that Aldalómiel had hit and dropped it, leaving just the one.</p><p></p><p>It skittered down its webbing and attacked Marxine, but missed despite her being caught up in the webs. Elderron cast another magic missile on it and left it looking badly hurt but not dead. Lamie tried to free Marxine with no success. Aldalómiel tried to free herself with no success. Finally Marxine, still restrained in the web, attacked the spider with her greataxe and dropped it.</p><p></p><p>Working together we finally got Aldalómiel and Marxine out of the webs and took a short rest. While we were resting, Lamie tried to see if her sacred flame spell would set the webs on fire. It didn’t, alas.</p><p></p><p>After our short rest, we continued proceeding, not convinced we’d found everything wrong with the forest here. Our suspicions were confirmed when we noticed that the webbing was getting thicker and denser as we went along.</p><p></p><p>All of a sudden we passed through the thickest of the webs into a clearing with none. There was, however, a dead guy in the clearing.</p><p></p><p>We all wondered what was keeping the spiders at bay in this clearing, because we could see webs in the trees all around it. The corpse was kind of strange as well -- he was clearly dead and there was shiny stuff around his body.</p><p></p><p>Marxine: No one in the village was upset about someone being missing?</p><p></p><p>While we were pondering that, two humanoid figures with spider faces came out of the woods. Ick.</p><p></p><p>Lamie: It’s like a Spider...man.</p><p>Elderron: I’ve heard of these. Ettercaps.</p><p></p><p>While we were processing that information, someone nudged the corpse with a toe and a swarm of spiders poured out of the dead body. Ew!!</p><p></p><p>Other spiders came out of the woods into the clearing. In all there were 2 of the ettercaps, 1 swarm of spiders, 2 of the wolf-sized spiders and 1 of the horse-sized spiders.</p><p></p><p>Marxine took the brunt of the first round of attacks from them -- getting bitten and poisoned and the spiders swarming over her, but didn’t take much damage from it all.</p><p></p><p>One of the ettercaps spat webbing on Elderron, restraining him, and the other ettercap missed Marxine with its webbing. They were both still in the trees, along with the giant, horse-sized spider.</p><p></p><p>Lamie, with the verbal component “Ew! Ew! Ew!” cast sacred flame on the swarm on Marxine.</p><p></p><p>The extra-giant spider spat webbing at Aldalómiel, but missed her. Vinya used her quarterstaff and a kick to take out one of the merely wolf-sized spiders, then moved between the extra-giant one in the trees and Elderron. Marxine attacked and got a good hit on one of the wolf-spiders.</p><p></p><p>The swarm got into her armor and bit her badly and dropped her. Dammit! The ettercaps came down out of the trees and attacked -- one missed Aldalómiel and the other missed Elama. Aldalómiel, dropping her bow and drawing a sword, did not miss. Neither did Lamie, who attacked with her sword. She then used healing word on Marxine.</p><p></p><p>The horse-spider attacked Vinya and got a hit. She attacked it with her quarterstaff and a kick and did a good chunk of damage to it -- she didn’t drop it, but she left it looking bad.</p><p></p><p>Marxine got her second wind and attacked a wolf-spider, dropping it with some prejudice.</p><p></p><p>Elderron cast frostbite on the swarm, still covering Marxine, and hit, doing some damage and leaving it chilled and weakened and less able to attack effectively.</p><p></p><p>The ettercap on Lamie bit her, injecting poison with its spidery mandibles -- lightning crackled out of the wound and into the ettercap. It screamed.</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel drew her other sword and attacked the other ettercap twice and hit it two times, but it didn’t fall. It didn’t even fall after Marxine hit it with her greataxe. Though it was looking rough.</p><p></p><p>Elderron cast frostbite on the swarm on Marxine again. It moved when Marxine moved but couldn’t get any meaningful bites in because of Elderron’s spell.</p><p></p><p>The ettercap that Marxine and Aldalómiel were fighting attacked Marxine and did a small amount of damage. The one on Elama hit her with its claws for a small amount of damage as well. Those two combats were close enough to one another that Aldalómiel was able to move to get a flanking attack on the one on Lamie and dropped it, then she turned to attack the one she’d been fighting with her second attack and hit.</p><p></p><p>Lamie, who’d been getting beaten up, disengaged and moved away screaming something about spiders and nightmare fuel.</p><p></p><p>Marxine moved away from the swarm and attacked the ettercap, but missed it. Which left an opening for Vinya to first drop the horse-spider with her quarterstaff and then do a flurry of blows on the remaining ettercap, dropping it as well.</p><p></p><p>Elderron cast frostbite on the swarm, now just swarming on the ground, leaving it chilled and less able to attack effectively. It moved to Elama and swarmed over her -- she was now living the nightmare that had been merely fueled thus far -- but didn’t get any good bites in.</p><p></p><p>Aldalómiel attacked the swarm on Elama and, with her swords, scraped the spiders off, killing them.</p><p></p><p>We looked around and no more spiders came out of the forest at us.</p><p></p><p>So we searched the dead guy and the shiny stuff on the ground around him. The dead guy was an elf -- apparently he got ambushed by the spiders. He had a couple of short swords, a longbow and six arrows. He had clearly been dead for a few weeks and was very dessicated.</p><p></p><p>He also had:</p><p>8x50gp gems (one for each of us and two left over for future disbursement</p><p>Potion of Fire Giant Strength (which went to Marxine)</p><p>Pristine, elf-sized scale mail that seemed lighter than it should be. On investigation this turned out to be mithral scale mail. It went to Elama.</p><p></p><p>Searching the webbing, we found the cocooned bodies of a couple of pixies and sprites, thoroughly desiccated and drained. And long dead. And some coinage.</p><p></p><p>1600 cp (266 each with 4 left over)</p><p>1200 sp (200 each)</p><p>30 gp (5 each)</p><p></p><p>Elderron cleared away a lot of the webs, and with a bit of exploration we figured out that this clearing was the center of the spider infestation. The ettercaps may have been dispersing from elsewhere. They are known to attract spiders to themselves.</p><p></p><p>This was a good thing to do but it didn’t give us any leads on our mission to find what happened to those normal merchants to turn them into Crazy Preachers.</p><p></p><p>We went back to the town to tell them that the spiders had been dealt with but that sadly their fey friends were gone.</p><p></p><p>We found Mia in our room in the inn, hopefully starting to feel better, and stayed the night there.</p><p></p><p>When we wake the next morning, we will be third level.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prabe, post: 8055966, member: 7016699"] [SIZE=4] Session 4: Spiders In The Forest[/SIZE] Dramatis Personae: Aldalómiel - Wood Elf Ranger Elama “Lamie” Galanodel- Wood Elf Cleric (Tempest) Vinya Anar - Wood Elf Monk Elderon - High Elf Wizard (Loremaster) Marxine Deepfoot - Dwarf Fighter GM: - Everyone Else (Note: Mia's player was out this evening, so Mia was feeling poorly and not really engaging much with things. She stayed in the inn when she had the opportunity, working on recovering.) We spent the night in the village. Marxine asked if there was anything of value out here or further along the road. The villagers said that there really wasn’t -- just some forest for logging and some okay farmland. The track we’d followed from the main road ended at this village. Which left us wondering why the Crazy Preachers had even come in this direction. But maybe “crazy” is reason enough. We then spent the night in the village, and it passed without incident. 6 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 7) We decided against taking the Crazy Preachers’ horses - the villagers said they could use them and we have Comrade and White Horse. We headed back down the track toward the main road between Tash and the Knot. After we left the village, Vinya pointed out that at least 2 of the beachball-grues were still out there (because 5 burst out of peoples’ chests in the first village and we only had three at the village we saved). The day and the night passed without incident. 7 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 8) We proceeded back to the first village without incident, getting there around mid-day. Vinya called out and peeked in the empty houses, in hopes that some of the villagers had run away into the forest and returned, but that was not the case. So we continued on our way, making camp at the same place we’d stayed on the way out. Mia, not feeling well, slept through the night, and we set our watches to let her do so. On the first watch, Elama, Vinya and Marxine were all totally surprised by three grues that attacked Marxine from out in the darkness. Two of them hit, one grabbing onto her leg and the other attaching itself to her face. Lamie walked past the sleeping party members to get into the fight. Lamie: Yo! Wake up! Then she cured Marxine of some of the damage. Marxine hit the one on her face and then did an action surge and hit it again, critting it and killing it. It imploded in on itself, as these things do. Vinya hit the one on Marxine’s leg with her quarterstaff, then kicked it off. It disappeared into itself as it flew out into the woods. Aldalómiel woke up and, grabbing her sling, shot the third one and hit it. Elderron, waking up, firebolted it. But the two hits didn’t drop it, which left it free to attack Vinya. Lamie then stepped in with her sword and attacked it. We all looked around and waited a bit with our weapons ready, on edge. This was the first time we’d seen the beachballs unaccompanied by cultists or Crazy Preachers or big dudes with tentacle arms. But nothing else came out of the woods and eventually we proceeded with our night’s rest. And the rest of the night passed without incident. 8 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 9) The next morning we continued on our way. We noticed that the woods seemed quieter -- the animals were behaving more normally and it all seemed like things were better. And nothing happened to us the whole day back to the main road. We got to the main road when there was still a bit of light left. There had been traffic on the road and the mud had dried out, so we weren’t able to make out the tracks of the wagon we’d been backtracking. However, the road only goes where it goes, so following along the road isn’t hard. Hopefully we’ll find some sign if the cart entered or left the road and didn’t just come straight from Tash (though we know they were Tashite merchants before they went crazy). Once at the main road, we continued on the way to Tash for a mile or so before making camp, just to get away from the crossroads. The night passed without incident. 9 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 10) The next morning, Elderron sent Oda flying up to see what he could see. What Oda saw was a cart on the road toward the Knot. It looked as though it went by while we were off on the side track rescuing the village. He saw another caravan coming our way from Tash. We would encounter them later in the morning. Marxine: It’s a good sign there is still traffic on the road. We continued on. After a few hours we encountered the small caravan of two wagons that Oda had spotted. There was one wagon with gnomes riding on it and a couple of goliaths who appeared to be guards, but the bulk of the people were humans. They were flying a Tash flag and a flag from a human merchant family. Marxine recognized the flag, though she wasn’t personally familiar with the family. They all appeared to be fine and reported no problems on the road. Vinya told them about the cart that was attacked by bandits a week and a half or so ago. Merchants: What happened to the bandits? Vinya hemmed and hawed about telling them that they’d been turned into monsters that we’d killed and getting into all the crazy business. Vinya: Well, um at least some of them are dead. That just alarmed them. Elderron stepped in and was no more reassuring. Marxine then spoke up: We tracked them to a village and killed them. That put them back at their ease. We asked about traffic on the road and pointed out that from what we could tell there had been no one travelling between The Knot and Tash for something like a week. They said they hadn’t really thought about it, but that was weird, even with traffic being lighter at this time of year. We then thanked them and wished them safe travels. Marxine: At Tash we can ask if a caravan or cart has gone missing. (Reminder: The cart we’re on did not have any flags, which the traders use to identify where they’re from, which merchant house or group they’re with, etc. It would have had them when they left Tash, but they were not in the wagon when we got it at The Knot.) Around nightfall we got to a village, Tormul -- it had an inn, with a tavern attached, and a shop that seemed a bit bigger than we expected for a roadside hamlet. Seeing people move around and interact, the vibe of the town seemed largely unstressed. We went to the tavern for food (and beverage) and to arrange for rooms for the night. At the tavern, we spoke with the owner, a human woman named Barluta. We told her that we were heading from the Knot to Tash and had noticed that there’s not much traffic on the road. Barluta: Yeah. It’s a bit slow. Vinya: Any idea why? Barluta: We haven’t heard about problems on the road. Some of the villagers here have had problems out in the wood. A couple of weeks ago we found that a section of the woods was covered with spider webs and really quiet. A couple of our teens saw big spiders and swarms of smaller spiders. Well, that was interesting, but not immediately related. Vinya: Have any of the travelers coming through talked about a machine? Barluta: Some crazy dwarves came through a couple of weeks ago raving about something. They wanted to talk and when I wouldn’t let them they got belligerent. They got driven off by the shopkeeper, Tessixylin. Vinya: We want to talk to the shopkeeper Barluta, to Marxine: No offense, ma’am, but when dwarves go bad they go real bad. Marxine, Elderron and Vinya went to talk to Tessixylin, who was a dragonborn, six and half feet tall and thickly built with mottled reddish scales. The shop carried a lot of general goods, including weapons and some armor, and a few scrolls. They also had a one foot long rod that could extend into a 10 foot pole. Vinya bought that because it seemed as though it might be handy sometimes. We asked Tessixylin about the crazy dwarves that had come through. She told us that they had no flags flying on their cart when they arrived. They kept talking about “Something came to me”. We asked about the spiders and the teens who saw them. Tessixylin said that she could have them come around to the tavern to talk to us if we wanted, which we did. We then returned to the tavern, rejoining Aldalómiel, Elama and Mia (still feeling poorly) for some food. The teens showed up after dinner, introducing themselves as Jellan and Castrus. They said they’d seen the spiders a day or two ago. They’d gone looking because the villagers had friendly relations with a couple of pixies and sprites out in the woods and hadn’t run into them for a couple of weeks. So they went to the area where they could often be found looking for them. And about 2 hours from the town they found lots of spider webs and saw some swarms of spiders. When they saw a spider the size of a horse, they fled. They gave us directions to find a path into the woods that led in the right direction. Elderron: We’re following something weird and this is weird. We should check it out. We all agreed to that. We then went to our rooms in the inn and rested for the night, enjoying the comfortable beds. 10 Marroin 749 (Campaign day 11) The next morning we left Mia sleeping soundly and the horses in the stables and headed down the path that Jellon and Castrus had pointed us to. After an hour or an hour and a half, we started seeing spider webs in the trees, first just clusters and globs in the trees, then thick sheets that came all the way down to ground level. Elderron shot one with a firebolt, just to see what happened, and it burned along, but didn’t set the forest on fire. The trees in fact, looked healthy and alive. Marxine and Elderron cleared the way ahead of us, Marxine using her axe like a machete and Elderron firebolting, so we could walk without continually walking into spider webs. Lamie was in the middle of the group looking around in a paranoid fashion, Scooby Doo style, occasionally trying to wipe webs off her arms and face. We knew there were spiders in the woods, but we didn’t know which specific direction they’d be coming from so we were all surprised except Aldalómiel when five spiders came out of the woods from different directions to attack us. Stocky, wolf-sized spiders. One of the spiders bit Lamie and Aldalómiel shot one and this was looking like it was going to be a long fight, then Elderron cast sleep on three of them, thinning the crowd against us, Vinya then dropped hers, kicking it out into the woods, and moved between the sleeping spiders and Elderron and Elama, to protect them. Aldalómiel and Marxine took care of the other one that wasn’t asleep. That left just the three sleeping spiders, and we dispatched them one by one. We continued deeper into the spider forest, with Marxine and Elderron clearing the way of webs again. We weren’t surprised to see three spiders the size of horses 15 feet up in the trees. Well, we [I]were[/I] a bit shocked at how big they were but not surprised that they were there and attacking us. They appeared to be a larger and more imposing variety of more or less normal looking spider. Elderron started things off by magic missiling one. Aldalómiel shot a different one with an arrow. Marxine pulled out her handaxe and threw it, hitting the third one. Vinya shot an arrow at the one Elderron had magic missiled and dropped it. It fell out of the tree with a bit of a splat. That was a good start to things -- then the two remaining spiders shot out webbing, hitting Aldalómiel and Marxine and restraining them in their webs. Ew. Lamie tried to pull Aldalómiel out of the webbing and failed. Fortunately, even restrained in the web, Aldalómiel was able to fire her bow and do a great deal of damage to one. Marxine threw another handaxe at the one that had webbed her and did it a big chunk of damage. Vinya shot at the one that Aldalómiel had hit and dropped it, leaving just the one. It skittered down its webbing and attacked Marxine, but missed despite her being caught up in the webs. Elderron cast another magic missile on it and left it looking badly hurt but not dead. Lamie tried to free Marxine with no success. Aldalómiel tried to free herself with no success. Finally Marxine, still restrained in the web, attacked the spider with her greataxe and dropped it. Working together we finally got Aldalómiel and Marxine out of the webs and took a short rest. While we were resting, Lamie tried to see if her sacred flame spell would set the webs on fire. It didn’t, alas. After our short rest, we continued proceeding, not convinced we’d found everything wrong with the forest here. Our suspicions were confirmed when we noticed that the webbing was getting thicker and denser as we went along. All of a sudden we passed through the thickest of the webs into a clearing with none. There was, however, a dead guy in the clearing. We all wondered what was keeping the spiders at bay in this clearing, because we could see webs in the trees all around it. The corpse was kind of strange as well -- he was clearly dead and there was shiny stuff around his body. Marxine: No one in the village was upset about someone being missing? While we were pondering that, two humanoid figures with spider faces came out of the woods. Ick. Lamie: It’s like a Spider...man. Elderron: I’ve heard of these. Ettercaps. While we were processing that information, someone nudged the corpse with a toe and a swarm of spiders poured out of the dead body. Ew!! Other spiders came out of the woods into the clearing. In all there were 2 of the ettercaps, 1 swarm of spiders, 2 of the wolf-sized spiders and 1 of the horse-sized spiders. Marxine took the brunt of the first round of attacks from them -- getting bitten and poisoned and the spiders swarming over her, but didn’t take much damage from it all. One of the ettercaps spat webbing on Elderron, restraining him, and the other ettercap missed Marxine with its webbing. They were both still in the trees, along with the giant, horse-sized spider. Lamie, with the verbal component “Ew! Ew! Ew!” cast sacred flame on the swarm on Marxine. The extra-giant spider spat webbing at Aldalómiel, but missed her. Vinya used her quarterstaff and a kick to take out one of the merely wolf-sized spiders, then moved between the extra-giant one in the trees and Elderron. Marxine attacked and got a good hit on one of the wolf-spiders. The swarm got into her armor and bit her badly and dropped her. Dammit! The ettercaps came down out of the trees and attacked -- one missed Aldalómiel and the other missed Elama. Aldalómiel, dropping her bow and drawing a sword, did not miss. Neither did Lamie, who attacked with her sword. She then used healing word on Marxine. The horse-spider attacked Vinya and got a hit. She attacked it with her quarterstaff and a kick and did a good chunk of damage to it -- she didn’t drop it, but she left it looking bad. Marxine got her second wind and attacked a wolf-spider, dropping it with some prejudice. Elderron cast frostbite on the swarm, still covering Marxine, and hit, doing some damage and leaving it chilled and weakened and less able to attack effectively. The ettercap on Lamie bit her, injecting poison with its spidery mandibles -- lightning crackled out of the wound and into the ettercap. It screamed. Aldalómiel drew her other sword and attacked the other ettercap twice and hit it two times, but it didn’t fall. It didn’t even fall after Marxine hit it with her greataxe. Though it was looking rough. Elderron cast frostbite on the swarm on Marxine again. It moved when Marxine moved but couldn’t get any meaningful bites in because of Elderron’s spell. The ettercap that Marxine and Aldalómiel were fighting attacked Marxine and did a small amount of damage. The one on Elama hit her with its claws for a small amount of damage as well. Those two combats were close enough to one another that Aldalómiel was able to move to get a flanking attack on the one on Lamie and dropped it, then she turned to attack the one she’d been fighting with her second attack and hit. Lamie, who’d been getting beaten up, disengaged and moved away screaming something about spiders and nightmare fuel. Marxine moved away from the swarm and attacked the ettercap, but missed it. Which left an opening for Vinya to first drop the horse-spider with her quarterstaff and then do a flurry of blows on the remaining ettercap, dropping it as well. Elderron cast frostbite on the swarm, now just swarming on the ground, leaving it chilled and less able to attack effectively. It moved to Elama and swarmed over her -- she was now living the nightmare that had been merely fueled thus far -- but didn’t get any good bites in. Aldalómiel attacked the swarm on Elama and, with her swords, scraped the spiders off, killing them. We looked around and no more spiders came out of the forest at us. So we searched the dead guy and the shiny stuff on the ground around him. The dead guy was an elf -- apparently he got ambushed by the spiders. He had a couple of short swords, a longbow and six arrows. He had clearly been dead for a few weeks and was very dessicated. He also had: 8x50gp gems (one for each of us and two left over for future disbursement Potion of Fire Giant Strength (which went to Marxine) Pristine, elf-sized scale mail that seemed lighter than it should be. On investigation this turned out to be mithral scale mail. It went to Elama. Searching the webbing, we found the cocooned bodies of a couple of pixies and sprites, thoroughly desiccated and drained. And long dead. And some coinage. 1600 cp (266 each with 4 left over) 1200 sp (200 each) 30 gp (5 each) Elderron cleared away a lot of the webs, and with a bit of exploration we figured out that this clearing was the center of the spider infestation. The ettercaps may have been dispersing from elsewhere. They are known to attract spiders to themselves. This was a good thing to do but it didn’t give us any leads on our mission to find what happened to those normal merchants to turn them into Crazy Preachers. We went back to the town to tell them that the spiders had been dealt with but that sadly their fey friends were gone. We found Mia in our room in the inn, hopefully starting to feel better, and stayed the night there. When we wake the next morning, we will be third level. [/QUOTE]
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Erkonin (Campaign #2) [Session 45: Rajalmin's Agent]
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