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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5494011" data-attributes="member: 78116">Eberron: Dark ProphecyAfter the party had ventured through towns filled with murderous arachnids, to farms, to forests and now through this spider infested cave they had finally reached their goal: Arianne and the last of her spidery guardians awaited the party ahead. There was little time to mourn the loss of the other characters from the party, but they did drag Marhu from out of the water first. After salvaging whatever equipment they could, the party marched forth through the narrow cavern towards the ominous sounds of wedding music.After breaching a waterfall, the PCs were greeted with a horrifying mockery of a "wedding". Numerous townspeople had been cocooned in place, only their eyes exposed to look upon the ceremony at the "altar" - crudely made out of webs. There was even a webbed up gazebo like structure in the room as well. Of course there were a great amount of smaller spiders, two phase spiders and two deathjump spiders at the altar. Most horrifying of all, Arianne had tried to put the two hideous spiders into a fancy shirt and a dress! They looked horrible with their eight legs poking through holes in the respective clothing - a crime against nature AND fashion.Leonan, the man of her obsessions who she had abducted was also at the altar - drooling uncontrollably and probably not in command of all his mental faculties. Urik, the brother of Arden as well as Job who is Jebs identical twin brother were also "observing" the hideous wedding display as well. <img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/AWhiteWedding1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Arianne wasn't happy to see the party crashing her wedding and oh boy, if you've watched bridezilla before those women have nothing on this.You'll notice that this encounter starts with a "sea" of spiders between the party and Arianne, with a lot of innocent webbed up townspeople in the middle. This is to spread out the minions and make it difficult to get to the altar in a single turn. It also prevents the party from easily using AoE powers to exterminate the minions, because in their weakened state none of the townspeople will survive any hit that damages them. Arianne herself is a very strong leader, but has immensely poor attacks. Her basic attack for example gives herself a relatively clumsy slash with her own dagger - but she really needs her arachnid friends to fight effectively. She packs a aura 2, which grants a +1 bonus to attacks to all arachnids within the radius. Additionally, she can make arachnids take an extra attack as a minor action and cause them to frenzy. Frenzy damages the spider in question, but it allows it to attack every enemy adjacent to it in exchange. You should bear this power in mind, it becomes rather important later.The parties Wizard began combat by thwarting my carefully plotted tactics and blowing all the minions up on the first turn - albeit at the cost of a single townsperson. This shows the utility of a power that can rearrange enemies - hypnotic pattern in this case and then dumping an AoE on them.<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/AWhiteWedding2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> One villager for eight spiders, is that truly a fair price? IS IT TRULY?This ensured the minions had no significant impact on the combat, but the phase spiders and deathjump "groomsman and bridesmaid" were having none of that. Leaping or teleporting into combat, followed quickly by Arianne. Ryske rapidly dispatched one spider in almost a single blow, but then started to have an off day with her accuracy for the next few rounds. The spiders kept maneuvering around and under Ariannes direction, chipped away at the parties HP. A frenzied deathjump spider flailed around ineffectually before dying - an unfortunate sacrifice for Arianne's glorious day.After some time it looked like the combat would soon be over, especially as the parties new battlemind defender had a handy power that stopped the spiders slowing poison from affecting the party. This ensured nobody would get stunned by failed saves to phase spider venom! A very handy choice. However, with Squinter having summoned his zombie (Dretch) but leaving it to its own intrinsic action this caused a bit of a problem. Whenever you take a standard/move after not commanding the zombie he takes 1d6 damage, which was enough to drop him to chronically low HP. Upon the remaining phase spiders turn, it took the opportunity to bite him down into negative HP! Arianne soon moved in to take advantage of the situation, with the zombie starting his rampage taking out another townsperson. Here is where the combat got pretty interesting pretty quickly.<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/AWhiteWedding4.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Squinter goes down to the phase spiders deadly bite!The battlemind whacked the spider, bloodying the foul beast but not actually outright killing it. Tybalt had expended his healing reserves earlier in the combat, so could not heal squinter from his position. He took a shot at the deadly phase spider though and *almost* killed the foul beast - reducing it to a single HP! The drow rogue then went and I thought the battle was over at this point. Unfortunately, she rolled a 2 on the attack roll and the spider was spared - only just - :OArianne's next turn was now an interesting decision. The spider was doomed most likely on his next turn, but surrounded by 3 PCs. The obvious thing to do here was throw a frenzy attack on the spider - which was marked by the Battlemind - to deal as much damage as possible. The interesting thing with this is that the spider was adjacent to three PCs - including Squinter (who is on negative HP and dying!). This made an interesting scenario:<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/AWhiteWedding5.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> The set up for a dramatic set of attacks!In the first case, the initial attack would always be against the battlemind - this is because the spider is marked and this is at least one attack guaranteed. The rogue would be next on the agenda - I always attack conscious PCs first if possible. If the rogue was hit, the spider would suffer mind spikes effect and die before attacking squinter. On the other hand, if the spider missed the rogue he could then attack squinter - more than likely killing him :OGiven that squinter is unconscious, the +5 bonus to attacks and +2 from CA, combined with Ariannes +1 bonus to attacks essentially meant the spider missed only on a roll of 1 or 2. He did need to roll relatively well for damage, but if he did at least 9 points of damage that would be a third character death - in only two sessions! Now this wasn't an easy decision, but ultimately roleplaying this out dictated that Arianne would sacrifice the weakened spider for any opportunity she could to win. So frenzy it was and the attacks went like this:The battlemind was missed as the frenzied spider reared up and struck out with its fangs ineffectually! Unable to find a soft kink within his scale armor. It then swung around and slashed at the rogue and just missed by the barest of hairs. Ironically, the -2 penalty from the mark was the telling difference in this attack failing. Had the spider hit it would have dropped Ryske who was on a mere 4 HP, but it would have seen to the creatures death before attacking Squinter. Squinter was the final target and only a miracle - rolling a 1 or 2 or a poor damage roll - would save him. As it turns out the spider reared up over the fallen gnome and slammed its chelicerae right in - its final injection of poison just finishing the wizard off in death. Effectively they died together, even with the battlemind using mind spike there was no hope.At this point it's interesting to point out this situation came about due to a core difference between how different defenders work. The battlemind's mind spike is an immediate reaction, which means it needs to wait for the creatures attack to resolve before it works. This is different to the paladin, where the spider would have exploded regardless of what he did and a fighter - who would have got an immediate interrupt attack. Although I've often thought about this happening in theory, to actually see it happen in practice was quite interesting.Though it did make for a very exciting turn, I was actually a bit disappointed that another PC died. Especially as it was literally a last minute shot. Then again if you re-read the notes from the last game, it's worth noting that Marhu also died to a 1 HP monster that just managed to do enough to kill him. Maybe 1 HP monsters just want it more?In any event, without spiders to assist Arianne was extremely ineffectual and the PCs soon took their bloody - if costly - revenge against her. With her bloody death and the aberrant mark releasing bloody spider like creatures, she was literally consumed from the inside out. Nothing more than a bloody sac of skin was left and the control over the insects/arachnids she commanded ended - the horde scattering itself to the winds.At the end of that battle the PCs got a level to 4, but I was left in a somewhat awkward position. With half the original PCs now dead, I had to readjust a fair amount of treasure and now introduce another two characters! Thankfully I decided to introduce the other new character next session, which provide an opening to introduce the wizard players new character at the same time. I decided to leave the clean up and aftermath of this module to next session, where the PCs will have a month to do things to themselves and enjoy New Cyre's thanks for their heroic acts.Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of the true threat to Eberron...</blockquote>

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