Ahoy there,
You debated your options and chose to push on through the spider-thing-haunted forest. Soon enough, the disturbances in the webs around you converged into three monster-spiders that followed you in a “V” formation, keeping their distance and causing you to use up magics as they harried you. Yet finally they closed in, stealthily, and it was only Boamund's final shouted warning that prevented utter surprise again. They leapt down from the webbed treetops around you and attacked. It was another bitter fight: Boamund was crippled, then Bog (after heroically saving Boamund from being carried off; using his frost-flail to break the spider-monster's treetop web and cause a fall) was envenomed and paralyzed. So the fight was left to Fraud and Miguel, with two of the monsters left, one badly injured from its fall. Fraud took one down and Miguel (to his own surprise!) finally got a lucky blow in on the wounded monster's body to fell it, too. It had been very close, with that foe nearly defeating Fraud. But you'd won again, albeit at much cost. Together, Miguel and Fraud fashioned a travois from a carapace and tree branches and carried the two comrades out of the swamp, thankful that for now your enemies seemed absent and silent. They spotted an old, web-shrouded ruin and avoided it, noting it for future reference.
You camped outside the forest at twilight, on the edge of the Spider Swamp's northeast extreme. Fraud, exhausted and wounded, collapsed so Miguel, still feeling energized, was left on guard. He was surprised to hear and then see, as he awoke Fraud, a familiar swamp-spider approach the camp later that night. It was the same three-black-striped-legged spider that you'd first met at your settlement many years ago, and which had tended Aria's Well after Inyana's death. Amazingly, it had made its way this far north, even further north than the Spider Temple. Bog awoke just then, overcoming the paralytic venom at last, and was pleased to see one of these friendly creatures of darkness. Through talented singing, Fraud was able to establish rudimentary communication again with the 3-banded spider. It explained that there was much danger and enemies and concern, and it agreed to lead you by a thread back to safety in the swamps.
The 3-banded spider brought you to what turned out to be a second “Spider Temple”. Here, dozens of the wolfish swamp-spiders had been joined by some other varieties, new to you, including some translucent, leggy “ghost-spiders”. This hub of activity was like none you'd seen before amongst spider-kind, with so many spiders and webs. Their commotion was centred on a muddy sinkhole fed by numerous small waterfalls from the swamp. The big trees around the sinkhole were festooned with web-globs hat held things. The sinkhole was again crossed by a “web-bridge” that led to a dead patch of wildflowers. You recalled that the small “god-spider” of the Spider Temple lived on such a flower, and by thrumming the webs and repeatedly working on communicating, you learned some things:
1. The god-spider here was dead and they didn't explain why, but had not replaced it yet (and could?); this was leaving them weak.
2. They were battling the monster-spiders, which had returned to Giraine after centuries, and seemed to have come from Mostali ship(s). But these “enemy-kin” were now joined by others again, including spider-people or spider-monsters, which were more intelligent and unpredictable, and hunted humankind specifically (for slaves and food); but did not get along with the swampspiders. All of these new enemy-kin served the “master”, whom these spiders did not recall (their god-spider would have), and there was a war of alternating raids, but this spider-temple was safe for now; a stronghold of sorts. The enemy kin were described as slaves or parodies of Aranea and Gorakiki's power.
3. The 3-banded spider tried to explain that there was sadness amongst the swamp-spiders that they'd given you the dragonbone key to unlock the Library, when they'd forgotten it was their job to actually guard it from this happening. But your quest to the Mostali ship and recovery of Buquaim's spear had granted them some power and god-spider abilities(?), so it was not all bad; even though the key's removal could not now be undone.
4. You were welcomed to stay here in safety, and even return, if you helped (and continued to help) the swamp-spiders. They complained of the monster-spiders' rampant destruction, and the advancement of a “front” of the enemy-kin through the swamps into Giraine, not limited to Good Toad Food. The monster-spiders did not congregate in groups like the spider-people did, and your killing of 6 of them did not quite dent their numbers; but anything helps… especially as the monster-spiders' wanton destruction does not seem to extend to their fellow enemy-kin. Perhaps it was interesting to learn that the monster-spiders, whose chitinous armour includes stucco bits of metal or stone, have some Mostali nature.
5. The swamp-spiders were aware that the world was changing in the Hero Wars and were taking part actively now. They were worried about what role you played in all this, but still saw you as allies (for now?). With some convincing while you rested for the remainder of Sea Season 1623, you got the spiders to help Boamund: they released the remains of a former sorcerer foe of the spiders from a tree's web-glob and gave the old chainmail to him. How nice! (he is now decked out like an Old Seshnelan…)
Eventually healed from your grievous wounds, you told them of the old, web-shrouded ruin and they became excited- the description was of a spider-people stronghold. And so you were “invited” to tackle it as help to the Swamp-spiders, enlisted into this “Spider-War”. So, in Fire Season 1623 you headed back there. The ruins seemed to be remains of an old Second Age Seshnelan settlement, mostly destroyed but with some of the rubble stacked in haphazard piles and adhered together with extensive sheets of webbing to form strong, sticky, wall-like barriers enclosing a central space of more intact ruins. The forest thinned out around the ruins, with thick webbing threads continuing from the treetops into the ruins. A path wound through the rubble, about 6m wide and with web-cobbled walls at least that high on average. You cast magics and entered.
Boamund missed spotting a tripwire trap inside the passage and that thread set off a deadfall of rubble walls from around you. You all dove clear except for Bog, who had his right leg pinned and slightly broken. As Fraud tried to free him, scuttling humanoid spiders with four arms and bearing entangling web-weapons and Bladesharped battle-axes executed an ambush: several threw Disrupt spells at Boamund, and web-things at him and Fraud, while Miguel traded Multimissile arrow fire and Fraud helped Bog escape the rubble. Exiting the passage, Fraud met an awaiting spider-creature who swung with its axe but he disarmed it. Boamund joined him in that fight and soon they, eventually joined by Bog, chased it around and brought it down, but it had bitten Fraud and he felt its venom starting to surge…
Meanwhile your success in killing two other of the five spider-folk, and Miguel's missile fire, caused the remaining two foes to beat a retreat deeper into the ruins. The rubble had been cleared from a main area, exposing a dusty, dirty courtyard of sorts. Some old, crumbled pillars were visible that hosted husks and skeletons of humanoids bound between them. Scraggly, wiry vegetation poked out where it could, but most surfaces off the ground were covered in shiny webs. There were more passages through the walls across the plaza to your right and left, and then a cluster of what seemed like 2 or 3 buildings in the plaza's centre, where the spider-things seemed to have fled to.
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