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Message: <blockquote data-quote="peteyfrogboy" data-source="post: 1179594" data-attributes="member: 5677">The Wavecrest Inn"Somehow we always end up back here," said Parika as they walked through the narrow streets of Scurvytown. "Are you sure we're going the right way?"Rachel checked her map. "Reed said that address was in this neighborhood." She looked around at the complete lack of signage on the twisting roads. "I guess we'll just have to trust him."As they traveled north, the rickety shacks and leaning tenements slowly gave way to buildings that once were beautiful. Chipped marble columns loomed over piles of trash, while the broken feet of fallen gargoyles clung desperately to the edges of roofs."This is even more depressing," said Nevroth."That it is," agreed Rachel. "Reed said that this neighborhood was once the equal of the Merchants' District. Money comes and goes, though, and it left this place in a hurry. Once squatters started moving in to the abandoned mansions the few that were still inhabited cleared out."They finally stopped at a set of worn marble steps leading to half a pair of double doors. The sign was long gone, but the number carved above the entry marked the place as the Wavecrest Inn.***The four companions went up the steps cautiously. They kept their hands near their weapons, except for Seraphim, who simply strolled along with her hands swinging at her sides. Despite the afternoon sun, the inside of the inn was dark and unwelcoming. The common room was stripped down to bare walls, and the air was heavy with the odor of unwashed bodies and a faint whiff of snakeweed smoke. A number of people roamed listlessly about the room or lay amid piles of flea-ridden blankets on the floor. Most of the inn's residents paid the newcomers no mind, giving them only a passing glance. A tired-looking woman approached Nevroth, shrugging her bodice strap off one shoulder. "Hey sailor," she said, smiling with a mouth full of rotting teeth, "looking for a good time?"Nevroth scowled and led the way toward the stairs at the far end of the room. The woman put her hands on her hips and spat in his direction. "Fine, get yourself killed. See if I care!"The stairs led up to a hallway lined with doors. A few of the doors were open, though no one seemed to be inside. Rachel glanced back down the stairs. "What do you think she meant by that?"Parika looked up and down the hall. "Nobody's been living up here. Maybe it's haunted?"Nevroth slid his sword blade in place with a click. "Maybe so." He checked the numbers on the doors, then pointed down the hallway. "22 is that way."They quickly reached the door they were looking for. It was closed, and Parika confirmed that it was locked. She took out the key, muttering, "This feels so unnatural." The key slid into the lock and turned smoothly. She removed the key and pushed the door open. The room beyond looked as though it had been completely undisturbed for the past century. Aside from a film of dust, nothing was out of place. The bed was made, the shelves were empty, a fresh candle sat on the bedside table.Parika looked inside. "Looks safe enough." She stepped through the doorway and disappeared.Nevroth's eyes widened, then he sighed and drew his sword. "Wonderful." He plunged ahead through the door, disappearing just as Parika had.Seraphim looked at Rachel and shrugged. "She's my friend." She stepped through as well, leaving Rachel alone in the hall."That's crazy."***As Parika entered the room, she felt no different, but the walls of the room suddenly began to glow with a dim yellow luminescence. In fact, everything in the room was glowing, including the man sitting on the bed pulling on his boots. He looked up casually at Parika, as though strange people appearing out of nowhere were perfectly normal."Are you here to turn down the bed?"Before she could answer, Nevroth appeared behind her, blades bared. Seeing that even this evinced no reaction from the room's resident, she shrugged. "Sure, we're here to turn down the bed.""Lovely," said the man, and walked out past them into the empty hall, which was also glowing. He closed the door behind him.Seraphim materialized before the door. "What's going on?""I have no idea," said Parika. She looked around the room. "First things first." She pulled the bed away from the wall and looked behind it. She tapped a board on the wall and felt it rattle. It pulled free easily, revealing a large sack inside the wall. Smiling, the thief pulled the sack out of its hiding place. Peering within, she saw that it was full of coins. It seemed lighter than it should be, but she stowed it in her pack regardless.Nevroth looked around the room. "Well, now that the important things are taken care of, how do we get out of here?"Seraphim opened the door and stepped out into the hall, then back inside. "That didn't work." They tried opening, closing, locking, and unlocking the door, but to no avail. As they were trying to decide what to do next, Rachel appeared inside the room."I waited for you to come back," she said. "I checked with your girlfriend downstairs, and she said the place is haunted." She looked around the room. "Doesn't look so haunted to me."Seraphim shook her head. "I think it's a transdimensional portal." She gestured up and down the hall, which was curved rather than straight. "The spatial deformities indicate a metaphysical translation rather than a direct temporal displacement." The others shared bewildered glances. The halfling sighed. "We're not in our world, and I don't think we went back in time.""Okay," said Nevroth, "so how do we get out?"Parika looked up and down the strangely curving hall. The walls seemed somewhat skewed as well, not quite meeting the floor and ceiling at right angles. The effect was vaguely disorienting. "We came in through a door; maybe there's a door somewhere else that leads out."They started moving cautiously down the hallway. Occasionally people would walk past them, glowing softly like everything else. The inn's anachronistic patrons seemed unperturbed by armed intruders in their midst, simply stepping around them.Parika stopped suddenly. "Did you see that?""See what?" Nevroth had been busy avoiding a glowing matron and her servant."It's gone now, but I think I saw someone peeking out from that room up ahead."Rachel shrugged. "We've seen a lot of people here. What makes that one any different."The half-elf nocked and arrow. "He wasn't glowing."They moved along the curving hall slowly. Up ahead the hallway forked, with the right hand branch curving in the opposite direction from the hall they were in. Parika silently pointed to an open door just before the fork. Nevroth leaned around the doorway. The room was as neat as the first one they had seen, with a perfectly made bed and nothing out of place. In the center of the room, however, crouched a man in ragged clothes, his hands held out before him like claws. Unlike the softly glowing people walking through the halls, he was dark, as though he were perpetually in a deep shadow. He said nothing, but hissed as he saw Nevroth.At the sound of hissing, Parika leaped across the doorway and took cover. She wasn't sure what to make of the strange creature, so she held her fire. "We should try to take it alive. It might know how to get out of here.""No... way... out!" it hissed.Parika shrugged. "Then again, maybe not."Rachel and Nevroth entered the room and tried to subdue the creature, but soon realized that it was ignoring their blows. It clawed at Rachel, but was unable to make contact. Seraphim had taken up a position directly across from the door. She held her hands out before her and uttered a few arcane syllables. Two fiery birds leaped forth from her hands, streaking toward the shadowy creature. They exploded in brilliant flashes, spraying black mist from the ragged man's body.Seeing that they were not dealing with a normal man, the others laid into him with lethal force. Their blows struck true, but weapons had little effect on the creature. Wisps of black mist trailed in the wake of their swords and arrows, but the creature seemed unperturbed. Turning its hollow eyes on Seraphim, it rushed out of the room. The nimble halfling dodged under his clawing hands. She stepped back and released another pair of arcane bolts, and the creature dissolved into nothingness.Parika entered the room, examining it from floor to ceiling. "There has to be some clue somewhere."The others joined in, looking under the bed and inside drawers, finding nothing at all. Rachel went to the window and opened the shutter. "Uh, is this important?"Nevroth and Parika joined Rachel at the window. Seraphim pushed a chair over and climbed up. Instead of a cityscape, the view from the window was a thick network of glowing yellow strands. The tangle started about an arm's length from the wall of the inn, and seemed to extend in all directions.Seraphim shrugged as she saw everyone else looking at her. "I don't have any more idea about this than you do."They returned to the hall, trying to decide which way to go. Parika looked each way, then slowly reached for an arrow. She nodded toward the left hand branch in the passage. "I think we should go that way." Down each of the other passages they could see another shadowy form advancing slowly. They didn't seem to be attacking immediately, so the four companions made their way down the one way left open to them. They reached a set of stairs in the middle of the hall that descended even as the passage continued to curve around. The two shadowy forms stopped at the fork in the hall and remained there.From the rear of the line, Seraphim called out, "Do you see anything up ahead?"Nevroth stopped as he came to the end of the hall. "Uh oh." The curving passage ended at a large square room, the mirror image of the common room they had seen back in the real Wavecrest Inn. All the original fixtures were intact, but the walls were festooned with a thick coating of the same yellow strands they had seen outside the window. Sitting in the middle of the room was an enormous spider, its bloated purple body perched atop mottled yellow legs. Ah, visitors. The voice sounded in their heads. The words were Tavian, but somehow their inflection sounded bizarre and unnatural."Spider," said Nevroth by way of explanation to those further back in the passage, not taking his eyes off the beast."What is this place?" asked Parika, eager for some answers.It is my... collection. Do you like it? Nevroth could see the thing's dripping mandibles rubbing together as it "spoke". I so rarely have visitors."It's very nice," said Rachel, "but we'd like to leave now."Leave? There was no sinister sarcasm in the voice, only an alien bewilderment. You cannot leave. It would spoil things.Nevroth looked back at Rachel, who shrugged and raised her cutlass. They rushed in, swords striking at the joints in the creature's shell. Nevroth stood his ground, while Rachel leaped back out of reach of the spider's fangs. The spider skittered backward. No, you must not go, it said. It rose up on its legs, towering above Nevroth, and arched its abdomen forward. A stream of yellow webbing spewed forth toward Rachel, but she dodged nimbly out of the way. Parika and Seraphim peeked around the corner, firing arrows and magical bolts past their comrades. Swords again shattered bits of the spider's carapace, drawing gouts of ichor from within. As Rachel withdrew once more to the doorway, she saw the spider rising up again. She prepared to dodge another web attack, but this time the spider sprayed the strands back and forth across the wall, quickly forming a glowing barrier that blocked both steel and spells.Seraphim jumped up and down. "Quick! Cut it apart! If I can't see it, I can't blast it." Parika and Rachel started sawing at the sticky strands.Within the glowing cocoon, Nevroth stood alone against the beast. He could see the poison dripping from its fangs and knew that no help could reach him in time. The manhunter smiled as he advanced on the spider. He had survived being alone before. Once more his swords struck at the beast, slicing and stabbing at the joint between its head and abdomen. As he sank his new blade into the flesh within, he could feel a sudden vibration up the arm to which it was attached. In the space of a heartbeat, the jointed segments of chitin fell apart like empty eggshells. As they clattered to the floor, the yellow strands enshrouding the room began to dissolve into bright light***When their vision cleared, the four companions were back in the dingy common room where they had first entered the inn. The residents stared and muttered, unused to people appearing out of nowhere. Swords were sheathed and bows shouldered. Nevroth's smile remained. "I don't think the inn's haunted anymore."Eager for better accommodations, several of the squatters started running up the stairs to stake their claims. Parika grinned at the thought of spending all their beautiful new money. She patted her pack, then patted it again. Her grin fell as she felt no heavy bag of coins. Cursing, she dashed toward the stairs, elbowing people aside as she ran.DM Notes:* A few days after this session, I realized that no one sustained a single point of damage during this entire encounter. I was trying to balance custom creatures on the fly, and I erred too far on the side of safety. Things will even out soon, as you will see.</blockquote>

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