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"You have a good sense of narrative, Writer. Lampshading the obvious trap likely means we will walk into a less obvious one. Irony."
Her faces scrunches up, scrunching up her tight mask with it. Some question has come to her mind.
"Though I'm not sure what happens if I lampshade you lampshading the trap."
She retreats inward after that last comment, perhaps trapped in a recursive loop of lampshading.
The sudden quiet works to her advantage as Black Midknight skulks at the back of the group.
Pick gapes a bit at Siulor, then squints hard at the tracks, then shuts his mouth with a little click. "Hmph," he mutters with a tugging on his beard. "Well."
He rubs at his jaw a moment, then says, "Why not circle the perimeter with an eye for folk ready to ambush us? If we find no one waiting to fill us with arrows, then perhaps we can investigate that little scene. But I tend to agree that if that fire ring was built as a trap, there's not like to be any real clues there."
"--where does our masked opera star keep flitting off to?" the old dwarf grumps.
Carefully, the group sets off to skirt the clearing's edge and look for ambushers, setting off on the path Torg had proposed. But as everyone creeps through the first patch of trees, the dwarves suddenly hold up hands in warning, and Siulor carefully avoids stepping on something as he steps into the space between trees. A rope - hidden, here, under the leaves. See? A snare, I use 'em all the time for rabbits and the like - but these were made to trip up something bigger. Like us.
On the lookout now, Siulor spots another snare to the north of the fire pit, and Pick manages to make out another couple of ropes weaving through the low shrubs and scrub. There is no sign of any people hiding in the patches of scorched trees or bushes...
Utterly focused on not stepping on one of the snares, Renato fails to notice anything untoward elsewhere.
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Black Midknight continues skulking at the rear of the group, still deliberating the narrative implications of lampshading.
Noting her master's lack of focus, Silver Starlight ensures she is especially observant. As she looks to the treetop to the northwest of the campfire, her eyes go wide and she begins pawing at Black Midknight for attention, sending empathic waves of alarm.
After barely stumbling into the crude trap laid on the floor (a noose, of all things), Torg scans prudently the surrounding area. The group quickly notices several more of the traps, but no living enemy. "Guess those were meant to make us lose more time... Or they're still hidin' somewhere." There aren't many places to hide apart from the trees, so he focuses on them. Suddenly, his eyes stop moving, fixated on a spot in the canopy of a nearby tree to the northwest.
"Giant spider", he whispers. "And a frickin' huge one, too. It's hidin' in the treetop there." Instinctively, the dwarf grabs for his crossbow, ensuring that it is loaded with a bolt, but he avoids making sudden movements. "If we hope to avoid fightin' it (and I don't fancy poisonous critters), we'll have to withdraw slowly or we might excite it into attackin' us."
If the others agree with his assessment, Torg will back away one step at a time, never looking away from the spider and ready to fire if it starts moving closer.
Siulor moves cautiously toward the fire pit, keeping an eye on his surroundings as much as possible while he continues to look for more snares. As he scans the ground to the right of the path, a slight movement in the branches of a nearby tree catch his attention. Torg's warning confirms his suspicions. As he turns his head slightly toward the creature, he searches his memory to see if he might be able to identify the species.
Meanwhile, Huan catches a whiff of squirrel that had passed through that area a short while ago, though the trail seems to end for some reason as it heads into the grass on the right.
Torg tries to back away from the tree and its inhabitant - but it's too little, too late. The giant spider sitting perched in the tree's branches (a surprisingly tight space for such a huge creature) begins to writhe and twist, preparing to whip its hindquarters toward the group. At the noise, Rhis lets out a tiny screech, tossing a dagger into the treetop (which bounces off the arachnid's chitin) and leading the supply-bearing pony toward the clearing's fringes.
Siulor curses under his breath before quickly drawing a javelin and launching it into the tree.
He sees his javelin sink in, though not very deeply. After he sees the beast's blood, he turns to the others, his expression grim. That, my friends, is an ogre spider. Keep out of its reach and avoid the webs. Do that, we'll be fine. Don't. Get. Bitten.
With those words, he whistles to Huan and moves back, trying desperately to get a safe distance from the monstrous arachnid.
Pick hisses in his beard at the sight of that really-very-big-spider. He starts backpedaling, avoiding the ropey web spots as he brushes past Renato and retreats to near a tree. He unslings his crossbow from his shoulder as he goes.
"Mind all those webs I pointed out when you get back from this beast!"
Torg hesitates for an instant when the gigantic arachnid starts moving. Instead of firing his crossbow, he starts singing a dwarven hymn in a loud, deep voice. Even though the intonations are harsh, the steady rhythm soothes the hearts of those who hear it.
"אָ שטיין פֿאָטער, אַז געמאכט די ערד
צוהערן הייַנט צו אונדזער סכנות
סטרענגטהען אונדזער געווער צו שלאָגן אונדזער פאָעס
און לאָזן אונדז ניט שטאַרבן שאַמעפוללי"
Hearken today to our perils
Strengthen our arms to strike our foes
And let us not die shamefully."
As the dwarf finishes, there is a barely noticeable flash of blue light and the party members suddenly feel as if their weapons had gotten lighter, granting them more control of their strikes.
Ogre spider: full, -4: 48/52
The spider thrusts its spinnerets forward, launching a gob of sticky webbing from its perch straight toward Siulor. But luck is on Siulor's side today, it seems - the spider's throw is hampered by her confined quarters, and the webbing falls to the ground in front of Siulor. While he's escaped getting caught up for the moment, though, the webbing looks to have lost none of its stickiness - it doesn't look like something you'd want to step in.
Letting out a loud, ominous hiss, the spider begins to move ponderously down the side of the tree, settling in place halfway down the tree's huge trunk and preparing more webbing to throw.
As the dwarf finishes, there is a barely noticeable flash of blue light...
The brief flash of light seems to catch on to Renato like a sheet caught in the wind, lingering around him for a moment longer than it should. In the pale glow, there is a brief impression of someone standing behind him. Not one person, but a seemingly infinite line of crowned figures stretching back towards nothingness. Renato doubles over, holding his head and opening his mouth as if to scream: instead, Torg's prayer is answered by a thousand distant voices. It is like the war cry of a vast army shouting in a hundred different languages at once, each echoing the Forgefather's blessing. The sound is empowering, filling every heart with the bravery of ancient heroes.
As if in a daze, the writer stumbles after Pick.
Having thoroughly examined the strange, disappearing trail of squirrel scent, Huan finally notices the spider as Siulor whistles a quick retreat. He moves away from he spider as quickly as possible, dodging any attacks that might come from the huge monster and moving past the younger of the two dwarves and taking a path around a concealed rope his master had pointed out to him. He does not stop his movement until he is safely at his master's heels, ready to spring forward to launch an attack or to protect his master from behind if needed.
Meanwhile, Siulor feels the empowering presence of Torg's faith. The strength seems to surge further as a chorus of voices emanates from Renato. Inspired by this divine blessing, Siulor draws another javelin, adds his own voice to the chorus of praises, and launches the javelin toward the shuddering carapace of the spider.
Once again, Siulor's javelin strikes home, drawing yet more inky fluid from the great arachnid.
After ascertaining his god's blessing, Torg levels his crossbow towards the spider and takes a shot. The mechanical noises of the reloading spring and gears are followed by the sound of a bolt burying itself in the trunk of a tree. Disappointed, the dwarf retreats away from the spider, careful to remain in a position where he is able to shoot it again.
Pick takes a small adjusting step closer, squinting darkly at the eight-legged horror. "Right, ugly, I've got your number."
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"Dark powers of the Void envelop me. Prepare yourself, creature."
Black Midknight waves a hand over herself, a shield of force disrupting the air as it comes into existence. Shortly after, the dark energy she called upon before charges her body.
She advances on the spider, taking up position below it.
Spider: 48/52, -7, -10; 31/52
Renato's choir of voices rings through everyone's mind. Bolstered by the lofty songs, Siulor tosses his javelin into the treetop and is rewarded when it thunks into the spider's side. Two crossbow bolts follow after the throwing spear; Pick's finds a chink in the spider's exoskeleton, but Torg's skitters off a branch and falls to the ground. Meanwhile, Black Midknight readies herself to enter the fray, brandishing her knife and standing at the tree's base.
The spider, meanwhile, whips its spinnerets forward again, this time at Black Midknight. But the spider's speed proves no match for the cloaked figure - she skips lightly away from the gob of silk, and it lands in a heap behind her and to the side. The spider lets out another menacing hiss, but this time elects to keep its perch against the side of the tree.
Torg's second shot is not any better than the first, as the bolt zooms past the giant spider into the foliage behind. "דראָסקאַר ס רויג," he swears loudly.
Since he seems unable to hit an elephant-sized target from less than 100 feet, the dwarf decides to move forward so that he can attack in close quarters if the spider descends from her tree. While moving, he replaces his crossbow at his hip, unsure of which weapon he'll need next.
Renato shakes his head to clear it of ghosts, and moves back towards the fray. He opens his mouth again, this time with purpose. The writer points at the monstrous arachnid, moving his lips as if passionately reciting something or giving a harshly worded order. Instead of the sound of speech, there is merely a sickening crunch as the spider's exoskeleton fractures below its thorax.
Encouraged by his continued success, Siulor draws and tosses yet another javelin and tosses it at the spider. "Die you foul beast!"
Pick slots another crossbow bolt into his weapon, grumbling under his breath about a clear shot, and circles around for a better angle.
Spider: 31/52, -5, -8; 18/52
Torg's bolt once again whizzes past the spider into the foliage beyond; Pick's crossbow is silent as he maneuvers to get a better shot; Black Midknight's starknife flies wide. But the writer and the hunter have better fortunes, it seems - Renato's wordless scream crushes the spider's carapace (though not so harshly as he had hoped) and Siulor's javelin once again strikes true.
And the huge spider seems just as single-minded in its hunt. Once again, it flings a gob of web at the masked woman, and once again her deftness confounds it; this time the strands splatter against the trunk of the tree below where the arachnid clings. With the masked woman proving more than a match for the webs, the spider finally crawls the rest of the way down the trunk, rearing up and preparing to strike with its dripping fangs.
As the beast lowers itself down from the tree, Siulor charges forward, drawing out his shortspear and holding it in an overhand grip, his shield up in front of himself. As he charges, he calls out to Huan. Huan, legs! The hound rushes forward, following behind his master until his master has made his attack, then moves around behind Siulor to take a bite at the spider's nearest leg.
As Siulor draws close to the spider, he lowers his spear-arm behind his shield and uses the extra force to drive his shield into the spider's cluster of eyes.
"Stupid... spiders..." Pick huffs as he keeps having to move for a clear shot.
He's trying not to hit Black Midknight, and the shot goes wide.
Renato flicks his right wrist, causing a silver-gilt wand to appear in his hand. The writer waves the implement with a flourish, sending a pale blue projectile at the enemy.
Spider: 18/52, -3, -3; 12/52
The spider's skittering legs manage to shuffle away from Siulor's shield and Black Midknight's starknife, while Pick's crossbow bolt goes wide for the sake of missing his new ally. But where Siulor's shield fails, his companion's teeth do not - they latch onto the spider's leg, giving it a savage shake. And Renato's burst of magic energy is unerring, darting straight for the arachnid's center and hitting with a splash of pale blue radiance. Torg skirts the sheets of web on the forest floor, pulls the ornate dwarven waraxe from his hip and takes a powerful swing; his axe strikes the spider's side, but its thick exoskeleton proves more than a match for the axe blade.
The spider continues its single-minded assault on Black Midknight, lashing out now with mandibles instead of webs. But her luck continues to hold out - the dripping mandibles land far wide of her as she skips aside with a flourish.
Siulor looks over at the companions fighting by his side and a feeling of camaraderie begins to swell within him. Siulor knows that, by themselves, he and Huan would never have been able to fell such an awesome foe, but with these new companions, they could take down even more terrible opponents. Now looking at them as fellow hunters, even the strange masked woman Black Midknight, Siulor urges Huan to move into a more tactical position to grant his allies a better chance to strike the spider down. He quickly signals to his hound and calls out a command, Huan, pack hunt! Her! Pack hunt! Her! Huan's ears perk up at the new command, and he immediately adjusts his position to set up behind the spider, directly across from Black Midknight. He moves slowly, cautiously, ready to leap out of the way in case the spider lashes out as he shifts. Once he is in position, he again takes a bite at another of the spider's legs.
As Huan makes his attack, Siulor simultaneously strikes with both shield and spear. He once again drives his shield into the spider, pushing with every ounce of his strength to try to drive the beast back into the trunk of the tree. Then he strikes out with his spear, hoping to find another weak spot in the huge creatures thick carapace.
Siulor's shield connects on its attack, but lacks the power to drive the creature back. The added weight of the spider drives Siulor's spear off point, and the spearhead only makes a shallow wound.
Pick slots another bolt into his crossbow, raises, and fires.
The crossbow string snaps and Pick curses impressively in Dwarven.
Renato looks on as his companions assail the beast, standing ready to bring it down before it has time to strike back.
While Pick's misfortune continues, Siulor, Huan, and Black Midknight don't share it - between them, they manage to bite, stab, and cut until the spider falls to the ground with a massive thud, ichor dripping from a handful of wounds and dust and ash billowing up from the ground beneath. The dust settles, everyone breathes a communal sigh of relief - and Huan lets out a few frustrated barks from behind the spider's still mass, calling to Siulor, who discovers his companion barking at the loop of another snare triggered beneath the hound.
As the dust settles, a small voice pipes up from behind the camp. Did you get him? Rhis moves out from her cover among the trees, leading Little Bit by the harness, with a nervous expression slowly turning to a smile. That...that was amazing! The way she - and the way he - She begins to exuberantly pantomime the spider attack, for all the world like a child playing soldiers, until she stops suddenly.
Hey - what's this? She bends over near the still-smoking fire circle and straightens again holding an ornately-carved length of dark wood, its etchings seeming to dance slightly beneath her fingers. A wand of some kind, maybe...no, wait, I'm sure of it. I saw him playing around with this sometimes...this is Cale's! Why he's left it here I don't know - maybe he dropped it or something, but I'm pretty sure it's his.
As Siulor moves around the massive corpse of the spider, he notices the triggered snare and pats Huan's head reassuringly to calm the anxious hound. He then reaches into a pouch at his belt and retrieves a small chunk of dried meat, which he offers to Huan with a few words of praise. Very good, Huan. That spider didn't stand a chance against you.
He and Huan then move back toward the path and check the campsite for any more clues about Cale's activities here--how long he stayed there, when he left, any other miscellaneous gear he may have left behind, etc.
Once he finishes surveying the campsite, he thanks Rhis for the information on the wand and for remaining true to her word about sticking with the group. Ye had quite an opportunity t' make an escape there, but you stayed. Thank you for that. He offers her a hand to shake, then stands and addresses the others. Seems like we know enough t' be moving on with. We know the path we need to take. Now let's get moving.
"Hang on!" says Pick, moving hurriedly towards the twitching corse of the oversized arachnid. "I want to do something first! Shouldn't take long!"
He drops his crossbow in favor of a sharp dagger, tongue sticking out in concentration as he approaches the spider. "Where are you hiding all your ickies, big ugly..."
The fight has ended and Torg knows that he should now reflect on the effectiveness of his group's individual members, but for now he is too annoyed at his own inability to damage the spider to think calmly. Wordlessly and with a scowl on his face, he returns to the tracks that Siulor noticed earlier and waits there for his comrades to depart.
Hey - what's this? She bends over near the still-smoking fire circle and straightens again holding an ornately-carved length of dark wood, its etchings seeming to dance slightly beneath her fingers. A wand of some kind, maybe...no, wait, I'm sure of it. I saw him playing around with this sometimes...this is Cale's! Why he's left it here I don't know - maybe he dropped it or something, but I'm pretty sure it's his.
Renato takes a quick look at the wand, humming faintly as he examines the magical implement.
"What an expensive plaything," he muses. "You can keep it if you wish, Rhis. I do not foresee us having much use for such a trinket..."
Seems like we know enough t' be moving on with. We know the path we need to take. Now let's get moving.
"Do we?" asks the writer. "We know that the Raven went in one direction, and the other trail is meant to lead us astray, but that does not mean it leads nowhere. If Cale was here, mayhaps he went in a separate direction. Or do the tracks indicate that there was more than one person heading that way? We should make sure..."
You find three distinct trails leading from the camp. The first is the most obvious - the trail leading from the fire pit across the Cauter, prints deep and easy to read, but all wrong for the Vernal Key's thief. The second is the path along the clearing's east edge, clearly concealed and matching the prints you and Pick found at the Inclusive Hall.
But the third isn't so much a path as a scattering - a loose dusting of prints leading from the fire ring into the fringes of the wood and heading in vaguely the same direction as the clear, false trail. It looks as if some of Cale's companions scattered this way when their work setting up the camp was completed, so their prints didn't spoil the illusion of the false trail. Numbers are hard to discern with their efforts to cover their tracks, but you spot some human-size tracks and one track surprisingly wide and heavy, too big to be human.
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Black Midknight saunters over to the starknife she threw and returns it to her belt with a twirling flourish.
She stares at Pick as he harvests from the spider, entranced by his disgusting work. She tries to look on with stoic indifference, but she can't help but flinch as she hears the squicks and glubs of spider fluids and flesh.
Silver Starlight takes a moment, knowing her master would be taking a moment to posture appropriately, to groom herself with the graceful nonchalance expected of a cat.
Black Midknight returns to Siulor's side, hunkering down next to him in a crouching position. She grits her teeth as she notices her back is getting stiff from all this crouching. The sacrifices she must make in the name being a proper hero.
"The Void speaks to me and it says to trust your judgment. I'll follow you from behind in the shadows."
Aye, you do that. Just be sure t' keep a sharp eye out and don't let the shadows hide anythin' from you. By the way, that was a mighty fine blow you struck there at the end. Well done. Siulor stands and communicates the entirety of his discovery to the party . As he concludes his report, he faces each member of the party in turn and asks, The only question now is which set of prints we follow. Seems like our thief has quite a few friends helpin' him on his way. Shall we follow the thief or his friends? Siulor then pauses for a moment to consider the paths and tries to make a guess at any major landmarks to which they might lead.
The thief's trail seems to be making straight for the closest bridge, one of the sturdier ones along the river's length; you've crossed it yourself several times and it's never shown any sign of weakness. The thieves' trails seem to veer to the south, where there's one of the few places shallow enough to wade across without (hopefully) drawing attention from aquatic predators.
Pick grins triumphantly as he holds up two glistening, disgusting glands from the spider's mangled body. "Haha! Mine now! I suppose there's no time to harvest the silk as well.... ah well, some other beastie..."
Humming, pleased with his bounty, Pick crouches by the side of the trail while others find the wand, and then he dips four crossbow bolts into the ichor released by the sacs.... veeerry carefully. The last sac, with just a little dib-dab remaining, he folds up in some cloth and stores it securely.
Pick smears a little charcoal from the firepit on the four poisoned bolts to set them apart from the others. "Excellent. Ex-cell-ent. Well then!
"We've path-the-first, and path-the-second, and whither is our quarry, as good Siulor says, hmn?"
He tries to help fill in Siulor's knowledge of the land around them, and where their two paths might lead.
"I propose we focus on finding the Calistrian," says Renato. "The thief has a lead on us already, so I understand if the rest of you would rather hunt him down as promptly as possible. However, confronting him without knowing his true motives might be unwise. He must have stolen the Key for a reason, and this might be our only chance to arm ourselves with that knowledge..."
The writer shrugs, running his fingers through his hair in resignation. "Of course, I will defer to the majority. This is a democracy, after all."
Torg prepares to speak out his mind, but he is cut short by Renato before he can utter a word. The writer's reasoning is identical to the dwarf, so he happily listens to the argumentation. The thrill of the hunt is back, and Torg's sub-par performance during the fight is relegated to the back of his mind, for later analysis.
"I agree with ya, human. Any knowledge we can gain now might be useful later to resolve the matter as peacefully as possible. Though it is entirely possible that the theft's motive is purely financial. I'm sure the artefact can be sold for a small fortune." The dwarf then turns to Rhis. "Do the tracks' direction match with the planned rendez-vous?"
Siulor paces back over toward the spider, his hand hanging by his side, touching the top of Huan's head as the hound follows beside his master. In total silence, he yanks out each of the three javelins with which he had pierced the beast's hide, then shoves each of them into the soil to cleanse them of ichor. He similarly clears the stains from his shield and spear, then returns all of his weaponry to their usual positions and takes a deep breath as he looks up into the tree from which the spider had defended.
Quite the twisted web this thief is weaving for us, eh? Heh, seems he could shake the tail off a dragon if he was so inclined. Well, I'm certainly not up for losing track of him entirely, but Renato and Torg have a good point. No sense in catchin' the bastard if we can't get back what we're after. Might help us t' know why he took it in the first place, wouldn't it? Well if we follow the Raven, we'll be sure t' cross the Kantele with no trouble, but there's no tellin' how far gone he'll be by the time we cross after him. We follow the pack, we may catch 'em quicker, but the crossing's not a sure thing, 'specially with the weather actin' up. S'pose they might be the easier quarry, though, and a bird in the hand's worth two in the bush, eh? Let's get after Cale and his mates.
The dwarf then turns to Rhis. "Do the tracks' direction match with the planned rendez-vous?"
Well, all the tracks're going west-ish, right? The rendezvous was on the other side of the river, so yeah, they're going the right way. It's actually to the north of us a bit, so I'm not quite sure why they'd be cutting off to the south...to keep from crossing the other guy's trail, probably, since we were brought out here to keep heat off him. She ponders the paths ahead for a few more moments. You said it was a ford they looked like they were heading toward? Well, I don't much like the idea of going swimming in this cold, but it's up to you guys. Cale's not much of a woodsman - if he went for the ford, likely there's a reason, even if it's just to keep the paths separate.