Alex's Blog - 10 Lharvion 998 evening

Spiders. Of all the things that decide to come looking for food it had to be spiders. Damn things scare me. I could deal with a beholder (probably) or a Dolgaunt or a Illithid. But not spiders. *eewww*

So, there was a disturbance outside the inn, myself - that strange heron guy (odd looking curved two ended sword), the unassuming local Gatekeeper initiate girl (Saffron - flower by name, flower lover by nature, or so i thought) and Zebadire, that Tharashk house member (wizardry type - often see him with his nose in a book) all sprung up to check out the problem which kind of thrust us together somewhat. Sure I'd seen Heron in action before, had spent a bit of time with Saffron and generally ignore the house lackey as much as I could, so at least it wasn't a surprise.

We fought off the first wave of spiders through combined arms, magics and guidance from the Silver Flame. Saffron, as flowery as she is was quick to get down and dirty, she can use that Scimitar she carries quite well. Herons swings that sword like its a huge chopper - he also likes to take orders which made us work very well as a team. I wonder what his outlook would be if he knew that he was being guided by the Sliver Flame, something tells me that the Valenar wouldn't particularly like that idea. Oh well.

We found out that the daughter of Dog and his wife had been taken (small target probably, easy to carry and good source of food) So after getting some kit together, including a couple of horses and Saffrons pet wolf (big thing, growled a couple of times at me.) we tracked the spiders into the Eldeen forest. Waylaid by more spiders and a couple of, what Zeb described as "Sentient Spells" - something to do with the last war and magical energies. Its all beyond me really, they "die" (loose term i imagine, i bet its more their energies released back to the cosmos) just as quick.

So we ended up at a spiders hole. Well we dispatched the guard ("What do we do?" asked Heron, "Lure it out" says I, so he does. The thing lasted 3 blows from the elf's sword. Neat) then dropped into the hole.

Inside the hole we were confronted by what seemed like a typical burrowed out lair. Of course im no dwarf so its difficult to tell just how natural or unatural the caverns were. At least they didnt scream "Khyber", that would'nt have been pleasant. We advanced cautiously long the curve of the passage, of course since most of us are fairly blind down in the darkness the spiders constantly got the drop on us, and on numerous occasions we were hit from all side by those large, hairy, eight legged monstrosities. . Then on our wanderings, we still hadnt found any bodies at this point, we stumbled across a large chamber filled with fungus or mushrooms. Our resident nature loving Woman said "Fungus". Well ive never seen a fungus hurt anyone so i trot across the chamber looking for spiders. You can bet I was suprised when a dark fungus got up, trotted across to me and gave me a right slap across the face. Woah, moving fungus that hurts!

Well it may have hurt but it soon went down under the onslaught from Heron. (That two bladed scimitar thing looks unweilding to me but he really knows how to carve things up) I toed the thing a couple of times whilst throwing the odd reproachful look at miss driud girl. She didnt really get them (must be the damn helm. I might have to address that but that means getting my hair dirty. Men simply dont realise how hard it is to clean long hair when its matted in blood and brains. Besides that isnt a good look to anyone but a 6ft orc barbarian, but they go for anything.) After we had dealt with the fungus we continued onwards, eventually coming to an odd cave in. Heron spotted a hand sticking out of the wall. Well it was more a gauntlet that on inspection had finger in it. "Give me a hand" says he tugging on it. So we had a good pull and tug, levering the wall at the same time until the whole skeleton collapsed out of the wall. Dwarf of some kind though with no obvious clan marking. The only thing surviving was a potion bracer, a rather nice - but naturally useless Waraxe (of the dwarf kind) and a strange compass thing (according to the house lackey at least) that doesnt work. After a mumbling for a few mintues "Artifact" announces Zeb, "My identify isnt getting much". "Right" thinks I, "Incompetant finger twiddler more like. The Silver Flame would tell me what it was at the right time I imagine, if its important. If not then a curio is all it is. I noticed our finger twiddler stuck it in his pouch."

moving on we came to a chamber of sleeping spiders. Heron climbed up and coup-d'grace'd one with a nice blow. Trying to follow suit i woke one up (damn armour) but quickly we overcame the chamber full.

Once we had dispatched the sleeping spiders we continued onwards. Finding passages that linked back to areas we had been through we traveled along a new path. A few moments after we did so, we were ambushed by more spiders. Though this time we also had outside help in the form of a Shifter - Gereint I believe he is known. He is somewhat more barbaric than the shifters in Highbarrow but an effective battle companion. I just hope he is more tolerant of the Flame than some of his more zealous brethren.

We found ourselves in a large chamber full of webs and cocoons. Several small spiders were present and we again set about dealing with the vermin. However it seemed this was the lair of the mother of all spiders. This huge, hairy, ugly, smelly thing dropped from the ceiling to attack. I cringed as we attacked and through force of arms and the will of the Flame we defeated the thing. One particular spider had tried to flee down a rear passage. We followed that forcing it to drop its meal and attack.

The missing guard, Dogs Daughter, a sheppard (Gereint was chasing sheep and sheppards apparently) were found to be alive, though they had been impregnated with spider eggs. That is a horror I wish to never see again, as Saffron removed the eggs I could picture a thousand little spiders errupting from the body and eating the person alive. (shudder). Spiders, I hate them.