The door appears to be an otherwise normal iron-banded wooden door. There is a handle on this side, though it is not clear whether it opens in or out.
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Elian watches passively as Fedorean proceeds to immediately begin pawing at the only recently deceased. Glad that he can understand his companions once more, he looks at the woman. "We shouldn't leave her body here to rot... the poor soul. Who will help me build a quick cairn with the rubble at hand?"
Elian leans his spear and shield against a nearby rock and begins to arrange the still warm corpse into a peaceful position...
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Halkale listens to Elian talk about not leaving the woman to rot and wonders if Elian understands what happens to the dead, or more to the case, the recently undead. He then shrugs and helps Elian build the cairn.
As the cairn is completed, Halkale wipes off his hands, looks at Elian and says, "Carrion birds and animals gotta eat, same as worms. Hopefully, we aren't burying all the dead we come up on, take us forever to get that Katana."
He pats Elian on the back before he trudges up the hill to the door.
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Fedorean takes the masterwork thieves tools and puts them away, and then tucks the extra dagger into his belt, pockets the opal, and sets the bow and arrows aside in case someone else needed them. Not seeing anything on the women to identify her, helps Elian and Halkale bury the wretched thing. Realizing that she too must be a rogue by the tools she carried, and feeling just a little uneasy at the thought of himself becoming a Ghoul he says a little prayer.
"Alright, now lets see whats behind door number 1 shall we?"
Fedorean Climbs back up the hill, and studies the door trying to discern whether its booby trapped or locked.
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Once he takes a few moments to recover from the rage, Drogan accepts that no one else is taking the shortbow and arrows, and picks those up. He has just slung the arrows over his shoulder when he sees the vial flying through the air. He catches it and stows it in his pack. Drogan helps with the cairn for the ghoul for even though he wished to end her unnatural life, it is another thing entirely to honor the dead. He says a small prayer to Pharasma to judge the creature fairly.
Drogan picks up his shield and straps it back onto his arm. He watches the elf check out the door.
The door reveals no traps or locks, and when pulled open, swings freely, with only a little protestation from rusted hinges. Flakes of rust fall away in fact, but the structural integrity of the door remains sound enough.
Inside is a dark corridor, but even from the light leaking in from outside you can see the passage only proceeds ten feet before joining another corridor at right angles.
Attached to the north wall at this corridor junction, facing you is the relief carving of a giant face. The relief is that of a Qadiran man with a billowing beard. His eyes are closed, and his lips are parted, as if he were blowing out a flame. His lips frame a deep hole in the wall. The paint once adorning the relief is chipped and faded, but traces of its brilliant blues and pristine whites are still visible here and there. On the man’s forehead is a single Kelish word, carved in a flowing script.
As you approach the face, you are able to see up and down the corridor that passes it.
Peering off to the East, the corridor continues 25 feet where it opens into a room in which you can see what look like thick webs in the gloom. 15 feet along the East corridor on the North wall is a door.
Peeking around the corner to the west, there is a wide room to the North. The Elves and Half-Elves in the party can see the opposite wall, an opening to the North-East, a door in the North-West corner, and a slick of some kind of clear fluid on the West wall.
The word on the face reads: Air
No traps are apparent.
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As the party goes deeper into the darkness, Anya takes a foot-long rod () from her pack and rakes it across the stone. It begins to glow as it is struck, and she holds it aloft like a torch. Looking up and down the hallways, she takes tentative steps toward the door to the north. "I wonder what's behind this door...."
The door does not appear to be trapped, nor can anything be heard through it.
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Before Opening the door Fedorean stops and says:
"Hey, let me scout ahead and see whats in this other room before we move through the door, I'd hate to leave some treasure behind, or a clue to where this Katana is, and Guido and I are also looking for those trade agreements"
Fedorean sneaks to the end of the hall and takes a quick peek around the corner to see whats in the room with the webs doing his best to stay hidden and silent so as to remain undetected from anything that might be in the room.
Fedorean peeks into the room and sees; The room is fifteen feet wide and more than thirty feet long, fading into pitch blackness unless he brings a light with him.
This long, narrow room is choked with webbing, festooning the sides of the room such that only a five foot wide section down the middle of the room is free of it. Within the webs are a number of what appear to be small, dead humanoids with dark, scaled skin, each wrapped in a cocoon of sticky webbing.
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Anya creeps along behind Abasi, peering over his shoulder to look into the room. She shudders. "Looks like really big spiders live here, to me," she replies, her sunrod held aloft and overpowering Abasi's lamp with its brightness. "Want to take a peak inside, Fedorean? You're the scout, after all." She half-smirks.
With the added light, everyone can see to the end of the room which turns out to be forty feet long. The webs continue to the back wall, but a door is visible on the East.
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"Alright Ill scout up ahead, but with all these webs Im going to guess there is a fairly large spider here somewhere.. Fedorean chuckles
"Ill search the room and see if i can find it, Abasi, yes come with me and be ready to kill it if it pops out at us"
Fedorean readies his Short sword and and silently starts to move down the open section of the room, he stops to check out the cocooned corpses as he goes by to see if he knows what they are and if they hold any loot.
Guido applies fire to the webs closest, and they do indeed burn easily, but it quickly becomes apparent that they burn too quickly to spread on their own and will need to be burned five feet at a time.
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Fedorean moves into the room slowly, keeping his eyes peeled for any signs of movement in the webs, when he comes to the first cocoon, he uses his short sword to cut the webbing free from its victim, looking at the remains he tries to identify what sort of creature it is, but not knowing much about such things, thinks that maybe one of his companions would be better equipped to tell.
A small, scaled Humanoid is revealed when Fedorean frees the corpse from its wrappings.
Out of the corner of his eye, Fedorean sees something move deeper in the room. Suddenly appearing out of the shroud of webs, a spider the size of a man emerges with shocking speed and is moving to attack! Halkale and Elian hear the commotion and are able to react.
A
H
F
Ab
D
E
Fedorean, Elian and Halkale may act in the Surprise Round.
Fedorean
Spider
Halkale and Elian
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Drogan follows the rest of the party, keeping an eye at the back in case that ghoul had a friend. He watches Fedorean look and listen at the door then move to the room at the opposite end of the corridor. Paying as little attention to the carving as the rest of the party, Drogan tenses with anticipation of combat at the astonished gasps of surprise and clicking of a bug's exoskeleton.
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" Ah!...There's our little friend Now!!"
Says Fedorean as the 8 legged beast comes ambling down from its web. Fedorean takes a running start at the Spider and just as he reaches it jumps into the air and attempts to flip over the Beast in attempt to get behind it, setting up a flanking situation as his companions come into the room.
"Lets see how well you like my sword in your eye!"
Fedorean yells at the Spider as he attempts to drive his short sword into the beasts eye mid-Jump.
Anya, your initiative is; so you will be acting after the spider in the surprise round.
Drogan and all:
Movement through the web-filled squares (shaded on the map) requires a DC 12 Strength check, which allows the PCs to move through the squares at half speed, or the webs can be cleared by attacking them. The webs have 2 hit points per 5-foot square and have DR 5/—, or can be cleared with fire with a standard action.
The spider, seeing a tasty morsel so close, does not hesitate to attack with its bite!
The spider's fangs barely slip past the nimble Elf's armor.
..and the spider's poison fails to overcome his resistances.
Anya, Halkale and Elian
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Reacting with surprising deftness for the surprise written on her face, Anya sketches the air with arcane gestures and a terse word in a forgotten tongue. With a final flourish of her hand, she stretches her fingers forth in the spider's direction, and a bolt of purple energy knifes its way through the air to embed itself in the giant spider's chitinous hide.
Halkale's training with the Longbow allow him to place a precise shot into the spider's thorax. (7 Damage)
Anya's spell strikes the spider unerringly. (12 Damage)
Elian
The spider, struck by arrow and magic, does not quite understand where the hurt it is receiving is coming for, but it knows there is an enemy in front of it, and it rears up to bite at the Elf.
Its fangs strike swiftly, but the Elf is faster, and it misses.
Initiative
The rest of the party are up.