....From the small one-story house Garrett and Bavic were attacked by a swarm of tiny spiders. The spiders were smashed quite handily. With Riva and Thaile along as well, we explored the rest of the newly built house, and smushed some more spiders along the way. In one of the two bedrooms, we found a young girl wrapped in a cocoon of spider web. Her name, we discovered later, was Louise. Lissia was overjoyed to see her, although she was worried about her condition. I gave her a small healing spell to stabilize her until we could tend her better.
The next house was a two story house, with it’s windows and shutters wide open. We noted that webs went into open second story windows as well as ground floor ones. Garrett, Thaile, and Riva moved forward toward the front door, burning webs as they went. Tieran stayed a bit back to watch for other movement as I moved to the back of the house to see what might be there.
In the main room of the two-story house a small fire still smoldered in the hearth. There were a table and chairs, a stair leading to the upstairs, and three doors to the back of the house, two open, one closed. Webs were everywhere.
I reached the back of the house and found a shuttered window. I rapped upon with my staff to see if anyone was inside. A man answered the rap and said that he, his wife, and their baby were inside, safe.
About this time, Thaile, Riva, and Garrett had reached the inside of the house. As they began to burn more webs, the little bitty spiders attacked again. Riva and Garrett despatched them pretty quickly. When we got to the back bedroom door, we let Gerald, his wife, and child out, to be taken over to Lissia and Louisa.
In one of the back rooms we found a few tiny spiders which fled and a large cocoon, soon determined by Garrett to contain a live pig. We set it free, but it didn’t move much. Must not have taken the spider's venom well.
Then, being the foolish creatures we are (since we had had our backsides kicked by spiders before at Keproc), we ascended the stairs. Riva went first and was immediately swarmed by spiders, he was covered with the disgusting little buggers! (Note: If I NEVER see another spider as long as I live it will be too soon!!!) We worked on burning and killing the spiders as they attacked us. Tieran was picking them off with his crossbow, he was very much the archer that day, making the impossible shot over and over again!
Anyway, we fought for a while then made a strategic retreat down the stairs before heading back up and finishing them off. Oh, and it wasn’t all little bitty ones either, some of them were two and four feet across!
In the upstairs we found four more cocooned people. Two children, ages two and three, sadly, were dead. Their parents, Mikhail and Amelia were alive, but very weak.
As we came down, we were told that several were still missing and needed to be found. We did some healing and went on to check out the rest of the farm after sending Farmer Gerald and Lissia to Three Oaks to fetch help.
House number three was the largest yet. Inside, we found very few webs and killed two spiders and then rescued Aunt Harriet from the back bedroom. We also found a number of cocooned chickens, a few rats, and a dog, none of which could not be saved.
While Garret and Riva were taking care of the spiders of the Big House, I decided to be helpful (and kind of stupid) and start clearing the webs from the kitchen. Well, it seemed to be going pretty well until the two big spiders jumped out and bit me. I ran as the others came and cleaned them up for me. Again, Tieran was making shots he normally would only dream of!
We worked more on clearing the kitchen and finally found a mother and her 12 year old son, both weak but alive.
Checking another underground building we found the door jammed and Uncle inside, alive and well and hopping mad about the attack by the spiders! Four people were still missing and probably in the barn or the pig pen, both of which wer covered by even more webs than the houses.
We led the Uncle back to his family and told them all what we had found. While we were talking, I realized where the spiders had come from...we had been attacked by spiders at Keproc, so we knew there were some there, but we had not disturbed them in a way to destroy their homes. However, we also knew that Laiden and his group were going into a supposedly secret and heretofore unexplored area.....so, perhaps they were routed by Laiden. The uncle agreed, saying that he had seen smoke from that direction the previous afternoon.
One mystery solved!
