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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Amaroq" data-source="post: 1270334" data-attributes="member: 15470">Issue #3: The Spider Goblins. Episode 2 of 12When the search party is ready to concede that there is nothing more to find, and Miriel is rested, Stone calls, “Chuck, come down!”As Chuck comes back down, Paks asks, “Miriel, can you re-consecrate the crypt?”“No,” the priestess answers, “I have not progressed that far in my studies.”  After a brief moment, with a regretful look on her face, she suggests, “Shall we open the other door?”“I’ll stay upstairs and watch the prisoners,” Saraya says, and takes Chuck’s place in the tower.We all head over to check out the other room, with Stone in the lead and Miriel hanging behind in the first room. Stone attempts to open the door, but it's quite stuck. Goldpetal helps, and despite the elf’s slight stature, his assistance makes the difference. The door opens onto a ten foot wide corridor that goes down about forty feet. On the left hand side, spaced five feet apart, there are cells with rusty, broken bars. Goldpetal shoots a sling down the hall and hits the far wall, but nothing else happens. Stone explores the first cell, finding nothing but bones and ancient trash. The cells have clearly not been used for many decades. They are about five feet wide and ten feet deep. In the second cell we see a skeleton. Paks gets an uneasy feeling. Without an explanation, the tall woman draws her sword and readies her shield, facing the skeleton in the second cell, but does not enter. Goldpetal and Fergus continue walking down the hallway, looking through the cell doors. In the third cell, they see nothing of interest, but in the fourth, there is another skeleton.Stone finishes his exploration, and walks further down the corridor. He sees the skeleton in the fourth cell, and begins walking towards it. Goldpetal steps closer, watching Stone’s back as he steps into the cell. As the half-orc crosses the threshold of the cell, the skeleton stands up and attacks him! It misses, but Stone leaps back towards the main corridor.Two skeletons come out of the last cell, the sixth door down, and attack Goldpetal, who was standing just to the right of the door of the fourth cell. One of them hits the elf, and Goldpetal staggers. Fergus steps up to Goldpetal’s side, and swings his great sword at one of the skeletons. He hits the one which had wounded Goldpetal, and it shatters beneath his mighty blow. The sword continues through, but misses the other skeleton. Goldpetal draws his scimitar. His first blow misses, and he gives ground a little. The skeleton Paks is facing also stands up and comes out to attack. This is exactly what she had been expecting, and she sidesteps its clumsy swing easily. Her first blow with her long sword shatters it.In the fourth cell, Stone punches his, hitting with both fists, and it explodes into dust. He catches the skull, the only remaining intact bone, before it falls, and tosses it against the wall, where it, too, crumbles to dust.Chuck draws his bow and knocks an arrow, but waits in the doorway, in case any worse threat appears behind the skeletons. Miriel steps past him, moving down to the base of the stairs to see what's going on. The remaining skeleton steps forward, pursuing Goldpetal, and slashes him with one claw. It rends a wound across his chest, and the elf screams, collapsing in a fetal position around the wound. Fergus steps around Goldpetal’s body and swings, but misses. Paks and Stone hurry over to help, but neither can hit.  Paks’ blow is wild, and she almost flings her sword aside. Chuck tries to shoot at it from the doorway, but with his shot obscured by his friends, he aims high, and his arrow flies off into a cell. The skeleton swipes at Fergus, and re-opens the horrible wounds he had received at the claws of the ghoul. The highlander slumps to the ground. Paks steps over the bodies of her friends, putting herself between the injured and the skeleton, and misses again. Finally, Stone circles around it and gives a powerful kick roundhouse kick, which connects with the ribcage of the skeleton. It flies off of his foot and hits the stone wall behind it, shattering into dust. Paks drops to her knees to find both Goldpetal and Fergus unconscious and bleeding. “Miriel!” she calls, “Hurry!” She begins bandaging Goldpetal’s injuries.Miriel runs across the room and kneels beside Fergus. “Madriel, please heal this man,” she begs, and the wounds begin to close beneath her hands, though Fergus regains consciousness. Stone steps to Goldpetal, who appears to be catatonic. He pulls out our last healing potion, and again he and Paks administer the vial to a fallen comrade. The elf wakes up, and his wounds have healed completely. Fergus and Goldpetal have a brief rest, and the remainder of us catch our breath.  After a few minutes, Chuck says, “Let’s search the room, then.”Miriel nods, but she has made numerous healings in the past day, and looks very tired.  She says “It’s a good idea, but I need to rest to regain some of my energy.”  She goes upstairs to rest with Saraya and the prisoners.The rest of us search all the cells. We find nothing else, but we make sure to smash the bones as we go, lest they become animate behind us.  Finding nothing in the cells, Paks and Goldpetal search all the walls on both sides, knocking on the walls to search for hidden doors, but they find nothing. We have explored the entire space, and there seems nothing left to do. We head upstairs.“Let’s take the smugglers back to town,” Miriel suggests. The prisoners again argue to be let go, but we keep them bound and tied. Stone makes sure that Delonia remains unconscious, not wanting to take any chances with a rogue mage. If she as much as moans, he punches her in the temple, and knocks her out again.We start to head out along the road, to the north. As we walk, Saraya and Chuck explain the plan that they learned from the smuggler, during Saraya’s interrogation.  The smugglers were trading slaves and weapons for something unknown, in chests, from the ratmen in the swamp. At the moment, they were waiting for a boat, which would bring the next exchange for them, and take their next load. The boat, they said, was due to arrive at the next new moon.As we head towards town, it starts to rain. The road becomes muddy, and the smugglers are uncooperative, so we get back to town well after dark: cold, tired, hungry, and soaked through. We’ve missed dinner.</blockquote>

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