After the cremation of the bodies, the party continues its trek through the Shudderwood, following the Silent Path. After about two hours, the forest around the path thins, and a brisk crosswind scatters concealing drifts of pine needles across the trail.
As Althamis leads the party, something feels off, as his keen eyes catch one falling leaf, which leads his vision up into the trees, where he sees the start of an ambush! He sees three hideous purple creatures trying to hide against the tree. Their faces are like those of a spider and their hands are sickle-shaped claws! He quickly yells out and Tania and Voyla see the threats also. Kerzan, on the other hand, is blocked by the taller figures in front of him and is unaware of the danger.
Althamis launches one of the MW daggers in his hand at one of the purplish creatures.
"Ambush!"
She casts Magic Circle Against Evil on the group.
Surprise Round:
Althamis' dagger finds its mark against one of the creatures, who slips off the tree.
Two creatures in the trees launch their webbing at Tania and Kerzan, while the one on the floor charges Althamis, but the shifty half-elf ducks and dodges the creature's sickle-like claw, leaving the beast off balance.
The two in the trees launch webbing at the party, with one of them hooking the halfling.
"Argh! What madness is this?! Take THIS!" shouts Tania as she barely evades the poorly aimed jet of webbing and pushes her longspear straight up at their assailers.
The trek through the ominously picturesque woods lights up Kerzan's imagination and slowly his thoughts trail off from the grim subject of their last encounter into a fanciful web of reminiscing about his past discussions with Professor Lorrimor on his adventures in Ustalav... Until he suddenly finds himself stuck in an actual web!
"Aieee! What's going on here - did we stumble into a spider lair?! Get this stuff off me!"
He tries to open up his coat to get to his extracts, but the mass of sticky threads gets in the way.
Voyla takes a 5' step towards the creatures, closing on Kerzan too, and fires against the creatures in the trees.
If Tania skewered my enemy, Althamis draws a dagger as he moves at any that fell out of the trees when plucked by Voyla's arrows.
In the surprise round, the only enemy available to Tania is the spider creature who attacked and missed Althamis, so the Brawler indeed kills it with her spear!
Voyla's first arrow connects, causing the creature to fall out of the tree, but her second arrow hits the tree. Then Althamis moves in and cuts it, but it still lives.
Round 1:
The creature attacked by Althamis in turn attacks the paladin with claw, claw, bite routine, but the agile paladin is able to deflect all of the attacks harmlessly:
The second spider creature in the trees lets go of the webbing on Kelzar, turns and looks to the forest, and clicks with its spider mandibles. It then climbs down the tree to help its friend, as it moves and flanks the paladin.
Voyla fires again, trying to prevent Althamis from being flanked, trying to drop the first spider creature (and then the other is she does it in the first shoot).
Kerzan abandons his attempts to clear off the webbing for now and focuses on trying to recall if he has ever seen the spider creatures described somewhere.
Now more confident in knowing what they are up against, Kerzan resumes the attempts to break free from the icky webbings.
Tania frowns as the creature clicks at the wood behind them. Certain that her companions have things well in hands, she turns to the forest and scrutinizes the area in case something darker lurks there.
Voyla's first arrow pierces the wounded spider-creature's creature, instantly killing it. Her second shot misses again.
Tania hears the branches breaking, as something is coming, something big. I will assume she readies an action with her longspear.
Althamis smiles at Voyla for getting rid of the flanking buddy, and then armed with his two daggers goes to town on the remaining spider-thing attacking high and low, as he was taught:
Althamis' graceful swipes slash the ettercap's chest, knee, and neck and it keels over dead, after the paladin's attacks. Meanwhile, something quite big does come through the bushes, a towering spider the size of an elephant! Its legs have spiky joints and its face is vaguely humanoid. Worse yet, riding this monstrosity is a giant ettercap, twice as tall as the three ettercaps you just killed, armed with a longspear!
"That's a big spider..." Althamis was glad he was immune to fear.
"Guyyyyyyys!!!" warns Tania as she takes in the impossible size of the spider.
She presses, more on instinct than anything else, for her minds screams to flee. Her longspear flashes, aiming for the spider's forehead, hoping to draw enough gore to blind it.
Tania tries to blind the huge spider but the beast just brushes her attack off and bites her hand, nearly ripping it off and injecting its venom into her bloodstream. She cries out in pain as the venom affects her musculature and nervous system.
Round 1:
The large ettercap rider clicks its mandibles and tries to skewer Tania with its longspear, but misses poorly.
"Tania! Oh no!"
Voyla extends a finger against the rider.
"You fiend! You will pay! I pronounce judgement against you!"
Upon seeing the huge spider and it's suitably large rider, Kerzan is not able to contain his amazement.
"Wow, would you just look at that specimen!"
But once the fight resumes and his allies are in danger, Kerzan's common sense returns to him and he shouts out helpful advice to his friends.
"Forget about the spider! Aim below the rider's eyes! Not between - just below!"
-Posted with Wayfinder
Seeing Tania in trouble, Althamis races across the ground and into the spider's threatened area and slashes the spider with his dagger.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Round 2: Bad guys
The ogre spider focuses on Althamis, who just struck it, while the ettercap jabs his spear at Tania.
Tania feels retched. Between the bite, the poison and the stab, she's got one of the worst beatings ever. But she is far from down. "All right then, this is how you like to play?"
Bolstered by Kerzan's advice, she leaps and slams her elbow at the giant ettercap, hoping to take the beast out of commission.
"Be careful!"
"Yeah! That'll show'em! You go girls!"
Kerzan claps his web-covered hands in excitement as his friends land solid blows against the insultingly large ettercap, and has to spend the next few moments unsticking them.
-Posted with Wayfinder
Tania's spin kick crushes in the spider's face, as it moves back confused in pain. Voyla's arrows then finish the creature off, as it collapses on its back, dead. Althamis can finish it off or something else.
With the immediate threat gone, Kerzan can finally fully devote himself to wriggling out of the webbings.
He approaches his companions, giving each one a small ceramic vial from
his countless pockets. "I'd like you to have these infusions in case I'm incapacitated again and cannot hand them out in combat"
After that is done,Kerzan unstraps his crossbow from his shoulders, determined to hold it readied for the rest of the journey.
"Even though ettercaps are aberrations of nature, they still have limited command of language. Perhaps we could interrogate that creature to find out if it is involved with the cultists or at least has seen them?"
Voyla helps Kerzan out of the webbing.
"Your wit invaluable as ever, my friend. Hold still and we will get you out of there in no time!"
She kiss him in the cheek while getting the vial.
"Thank you! You weren't incapacitated, you help us a lot even while trapped, which I couldn't have done."
Althamis praises Tania for her knockout of the ettercap. "Now, we can question it." The paladin waits for the creature to wake up and tries to inquire about the ambush and its master, if it has one.
Voyla will also try to Intimidate the creature.
"Talk, fiend, and maybe we will let you go alive! By Desna, today might well be the day your luck runs out, unless you cooperate."
Tania walks up to the tall ettercap, trying to hide the pain in her every limb and stands menacingly, longspear pointed at the aberration's throat.
Kerzan tries to keep his composure, but his cheeks flush bright red as he busily approaches the huge spider's corpse and focuses attention on inspecting and harvesting its webbing glands while his companions are interviewing the prisoner.
The ettercap's mandibles click horribly but then, surprisingly, it responds in Common, [b]"You cannot scare a servant of the Weaver, she will avenge me and flay the flesh from your bones!" Voyla and Althamis keenly catch a small subtle look that the giant ettercap gives briefly over his right shoulder before raising up to attack, despite its gravely wounded states. However, it is quickly struck down and killed by the party, who was aware of the duplicitous nature of such beings.
When you look in the distance in which the ettercap briefly glanced, you see a three-story crumbling watchtower in the distance, perhaps a 1/4 of a mile away. Voyla also discovers the ettercap and spiders' tracks also originate from the same direction as the watchtower. You find no treasure or magic on any of the ettercaps. Follow?
Tania looks at the tower and sighs: "This is a bad idea..."
"We need to check."
She gets his Cure Light Wounds wand and starts healing Tania and Althamis.
Althamis heals himself with his Lay on Hands, curing points of damage.
"I think we need to kill the ettercap's Master Worm, which lives in the tower, so it will stop harassing and feeding off travelers in these woods. We must end the threat. Tania, can you aid us in your weakened state?"
Althamis picks up this thrown daggers and is ready to head to the tower upon an affirmative response.
Tania rolls her eyes. She never got used to Althamis's antiques. Then, finally processing the paladin's words, too often womven in his tone, she asks with a sly smile: "Master Worm!? Where did you get such a silly idea? These are spider- Spider-things, nay?"
"And yes, I can help. Just not that well..." she adds, wincing from the pain and the frustration.
Voyla checks on Tania.
"Be careful, my friend. I feel bad that we are not able to help you right now. If you think is too much, we can retreat, heal you and return later."
"Pff! I'll be fine, just not great..." replies Tania as she waves Voyla's concerns away with her crimson-gloved hand.
"I still think it's a bad idea. It's not our job to keep the roads safe. Our job is to get the Way out of the way!"
"I fear we can't ignore it. If we don't clear the evil out, who will. And if we don't, who will be their next victim?"
"This Weaver must be a powerful and cunning creature, if the ettercaps are willing to die for it so blindly. What if that hidden master has some ties to the cult, and the ettercaps are just unwitting puppets? I feel compelled to investigate! But perhaps Tania would do well to be careful and keep her distance."
Voyla follows the tracks and leads the reluctant party to the site of the abandoned watchtower. The soft, haunting melody of a harp drifts through the air, emanating from a ruined stone watchtower in a small clearing. The tower stands about three stories tall; blood ivy and grayishgreen lichen blanket the stonework of the tower’s crumbling exterior, while passing winds whistle softly through its darkened, gaping windows.
"This music is so pretty... The hair on my feet tingles!"