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Message: <blockquote data-quote="alsih2o" data-source="post: 810876" data-attributes="member: 4790">The wind rushed from Finns lungs as Ry tackled him. Thabyra puts her hands together in front of her in what would have been a desperate defensive posture in anyone else. Thabyra invoke Balcla’s name and flames shot from her fingertips. The whole of the prairie took on the rank odor of burning spider fuzz. As Thabyras eyes adjust from the bright flame she saw Rinneys dagger sticking from the huge spiders back. All day staring at the endless horizon worried about what might be waiting for them and now this thing, smoking and reeking in the tall grass. Fin looked back to the hulking corpse lying right where had been standing.   Fin was quick to his feet and drawing his bow while the rest stared in disgust at the beast. He fired and brought everyone’s attention back to the present as they heard the sickening thump of his arrow penetrating another spider chitinous shell. His arrow pierced through the vile arachnid and pinned it to the turf. Each face whirled forward as several erupted from the ground, each springing from a tunnel well hidden in the tall grass by a woven mat lid.   Ryssa leapt forward to defend her master and felt yelped in pain as the awesome speed of the spiders strike left her reeling, green viscous fluid draining from the wound and trailing back to the canids leg. Thabyra was hit too; her pale chubby leg swelled with the oozing liquid, she felt her stomach turn and her legs buckled slightly.    Chaos ensued….the dodgy spider moved with amazing speed, always a few inches ahead of Ry’s club, always just leaving where crossbow bolts struck the muddy earth. Sling stones pushed the fine dust into the air as they bounced off the spiders thick shells, then Thabyra struck deep and hard, driving her spear thru another spider with one of Rinney’s daggers in its back. It slumped lifelessly with its 4 front feet just inside the entrance to its hidden tunnel. Ryssa lashed out, wounded but undeterred, biting deep through a spiders hard shell, crunching it to splinters and strewing its stringy innards around her head and the open field.    Once everyone felt safe that all of the spiders were dead attention turned to healing the injured, and talk of what effect might still yet come form their bites. Thabyra healed those she could in Balcla’s name and Tavania was still gathering for a poultice when Rinney mentioned that someone should see what was down one of the tunnels.   Thabyra pried back the lightweight lid with her spear and threw a stone lit by Balcla into the pit. The cool air inside the tunnel brushed their faces as the looked inside. Some 7 feet deep and 3 feet around, the hole was smooth-walled and ended somewhere beneath the thick coating of bones on the bottom. Tavania hesitantly stepped into the whole, bracing herself on the sides as the bones beneath her feet crumbled and settled. The ridges furrows of their brows marked them as Shokta. A few small animal skeletons were interspersed. She filtered through the bones with her spear, finding a small leather thing with a polished river rock hanging from it. It bore a symbol she had never seen, a raven on a bison’s back, and she threw it out, following close behind.   “I don’t think there is much here to see, and I think it best we move on, predators bring scavengers on this country, and I don’t want to be here when something else shows up”   Poultices were placed on the bitten, who continued to feel weak stomached and frail and the walking continued.       Approaching dusk the party was drawn to a stop. Slowly appearing before them, not visible form more than 80 feet away, was a sprawling rift valley. Here in this ocean of grasses was a 300 foot deep chasm in the earth. The valley spread for 3 miles in front of them and out of sight on either direction. Looking down into the valley the tops of the mature hardwoods formed a nearly perfect green carpet, and as Balcla set in the southern sky behind them, slowly stealing his light form the valley floor, they could make out bees.          At least 100 enormous, goat sized honeybees were converging on a single tall oak less than a mile away, and 150 feet below. They decided to make camp and deal with this problem by the light of the next day.</blockquote>

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