Flynt reels from the blow and moves back from the hulking monster. Despite his pain and the creeping nausea he still whips his revolver around fires with blinding speed. The revolver's twin reports are almost deafening in the stone chamber.
As soon as the spider comes down it is greeted with the fast reflexes of the whole group. They spring into action with spell, blade and bullets. As quickly as it has appeared the creature hits the floor, straggling around with its last bits of life. It drops the strings to the imp which also collapse to the floor. The smaller spiders that are surrounding the imp ignore all the adventurers and dart off towards the now dead spider. They begin eating the blue spider starting with the ends of its legs.
Left in this area is the dead Eldred, the dead imp, the spider being eaten and the groove of a doorway at the end of the dead end. When the adventurers look up they see the darkness has disappeared, likely because the spider is now dead. There is several cross beams up top with a spider web between them. Several puppet cross boards and also several cocoons, protruding from them are the limbs of some dead humanoids. Larskall holds his hand to his mouth holding back the contents of his stomach. There are 8 cocoons in all, the spider must have been eating well.
Alþórel is instantly all business
"Nethan - would you care to perform a remote autopsy? Amelia, could you possibly get to those Cocoons? I don't wish to raise hopes, but spiders often prefer to eat live prey and it is possible some unfortunate is paralyzed up there. I shall look for auras."
Nethan looks to Al, "It may not be possible with all of the spider babies attacking the mother or whatever relation it is to the smaller spiders? Also keep in mind, once they had their fill with the large spider, they may place us back on the menu. My vote, is just to kill the baby spiders to take them out of the equation from both studying the large spider, checking the lair and cocoons for treasure, and since we are decent men and women, give the dead some sort of burial or last rights since I currently do not see any way to bury them here?"
"Yes. Lets start by killing the small ones. Sadly I don't think just wacking them with an axe is going to achieve anything." She is leaning on her polearm, recouping from the exertion of summoning the fire in her blood.
Calathar doesn't stop for talk. He takes Elise's suggestion, moves in and starts killing little spiders.
Dreyyn will assist Calathar, lemme know if i need to actually roll.
Flynt idly shakes spent casings from his revolver and takes stack of himself as the more musclebound members of the party seem intent on stomping the spiders to death. Hopefully, they would find a place to rest soon. Before complaining about his own injuries, however, he checks on Elise first.
"You in one piece, blondie?" He asks giving her a quick look over. He had traveled with her long enough to know channeling her gifts was a tiring process.
Alþórel continues to concentrate on his occult perceptions
Calathar and Dreyyn spend some time killing the smaller spiders now that they are distracted with food. After a good few minutes they kill the last of the little ones before they do too much eating. They got throug most of two of the big spiders' legs.
Meanwhile Alþórel casts detect magic into the rafters and finds that each cocoon has an aura. Alþórel doubts that there is someone alive in each one which means that the silk is probably the magical aura he is detecting.
Amelia climbs up to the rafters and tries to find out if there are any signs of life.
She fails to notice if anyone is alive from signatures from their limbs or noises so attempts to break a few of them out. The silk is relatively durable but they have time so it is easy enough to break them out at this point. The first few she breaks out the creatures inside, mostly humanoid, have perfect circular chunks of them missing and the skin around it looks melted. The skin has deflated around the bone as if someone drank the bodies through a straw. One that she breaks out however is a Knight of Ozem that is still alive, presumable one of the crew that entered. The knight collapses and she takes off her helmet gasping for air. The female dwarven knight has seen better days, her skin is run ragged and she looks malnourished. Kneeling on the rafters she doesn't look up at her saviour, she is too busy appreciating fresh air. Bits of her armour have been slashed through and there are puncture marks where something has pierced her armour. Occasionally she clutches her chest in pain.
Nethan is able to perform an autopsy now that the swarm of young spiders has been eliminated.
Alþórel rushes over to the knight with his waterskin
"Calathar!"
Nethan also concentrates to detect if there is any latent psionic activity as well. In addition to studying the creature, he checks if anything, including the webbing, can be saved for further experimentation, research, and maybe development.
Elise takes a quick look around before answering Flynt. "I can't seem to find anything of mine scattered about - so yeah, I'm fine. That little magic trick felt weird as a ballet with one of the spiky-gods goons. But it seems to be passing. How about you? Not missing anything I hope?"
After the checkup on the dead spider (the fact that it lost two of his legs is immensely satisfying - besides, it saved her the trouble to make good on her treat) Elise also makes her way topside. She looks from the malnourished dwarf clutching her chest to the empty fleshsacks of the previous victims and back with worried eyes. It didn't take a genious or god-spawn to see where this was going "Uhmmm - Neth, Alþórel, Calathar! You don't happen to have some way to thwart poison or acid, do you? Otherwise we are going to see how dwarf soup is made real soon!" With a afterthought she adds "How about you Larskal?" She hoped that the magic that allowed him to understand her speech still worked, or that someone would translate it for him.
Nethan looks to be in the zone for a slight moment and shows signs of releasing himself from the zone, he looks to Elise, "I apologize Elise, improving my alchemy skills is on my self-improvement list. However of course, it does not help us here at the moment since I can not brew any antivenom for our new dwarf friend. Dwarves are hardy folk from fighting their common enemies, perhaps she will resist it on her own?" Nethan turns back to the spider carcass and places his full concentration back into the large spider.
"I'll live, for now," Flynt said, clamping a hand against his leaking wounds and leaning against a wall as the others discussed the rescued dwarf.
"Gods above, did we forget a healer?" He suddenly said, a certain amount of dread in his voice.
"Doesn't look better. Should have picked up one last time I went shopping" she responds to Flynts inquiry. "But we still have that wand - I have some potions also - but neither will cure the cause, only ease the symptoms if we are in luck. But lets try the mundane methods we can first - and hope the dwarven resilience do the rest."
Elise sets down her backpack next to the knight and start going trough it and attempting to speak to the knight simultaneously. "Hello there! How are you? Can you hear me? Nod if you understand me atleast - no need to speak if it is tiring" Her words are spoken in a far softer voice then usual. She glances at the knight, trying to see if she responds in any way.
Meanwhile her hands finally find what they seek - a small package wrapped in parchment. It was her supplies for a rainy day but the dwarf looked like she needed them more. Carefully she opened the package and broke a piece of the chocolate bar within and offered it to the dwarf. Not long after she found her skin of mead and poured a small amount in a cup, diluting it with water as to not overpower the poor dwarves senses. "Here - drink this. I don't think it will ease your pain, but it will satisfy you of your thirst and soothen your dry throat"
"dwarves are hardy folk" Dreyyn says, stepping within earshot of the knight. "she will survive." he added, projecting his confidence outward as he would when leading troops.
Calathar turns to his old mentor, surprise in his eyes. "I am unharmed, old friend," he assures the elf.
"And no, we are not without a healer," he adds. Praying over Elise's wounds, he calls out to his grandparent for healing. "Great Gozreh, let this warrior's flesh be straightened, her wounds rebuked."
Nethan inspects the creature to see what he can find out about it and wonders if studying it would give him a clue as to why it is here.
The creature comes from somewhere that is riff with magic, its Chitin and webbing all have some innate magical signature. Furthermore the web itself seem to be able to carry basic magical spells along their length. It however is hard to use it for anything worthwhile as the spider silk like all spiders is very sticky and likely be a hassle to move or utilise.
Judging by how the spider fought it was an ambush predator. It was using the imp to bait the group close. It might have joined the fight earlier if the group got close to the imp. Similar to Large spiders it uses webs to its advantage, in this case to carry its spell like abilities along the silk. It might also explain how multiple spells were emitted from the different sets of strings.
The blue Chitin suggests it is a diamond spider, however more striking is the creature is extra planar. Some of the smaller spiders seemed to be 'jumping' similar to the zombies seen earlier. This creature is a phase creature not unlike the phase spiders from this plane. Like the behemoth this creature is probably an amalgamation of creatures from different planes of existence. Tar-Baphon seemed to have an interest in creating creatures for himself.
Larksall nods at Elise. "Aye, I am alright. That creature was different to what we fought on our way up. I hope we don't have to fight anything more like it, it reminded me of a creature we call loppe back home. Loppes are far larger though don't use that sort of trickery. The Keaeri clan use Loppe Chitin as weapon and armour. They have come to use magic through it similar to how we use magic through spirit bark."
The female dwarf thanks the group for water and healing. Whatever poison that might have been inside her blood has been eliminated with thanks to Dreyyn's Aura. Sitting down she says "Thank you all, whomever you are. I came here on Lionel's orders. I found a different doorway down to the others but on my own I fear I was not prepared for such a place. Killing undead was easy, however... spiders were not. I do not envy you having to fight that thing." She talks relatively slowly trying to catch her breath.
"You and me both, lady," Flynt grumbles, lighting yet another thin cigar from his seemingly endless supply and studiously examining his revolver for signs of damage.
Spirit bark eh? I guess that's what their blades are made of
"Right - we should probably take a minute or two to catch our breath and get to know each other then get to it. Amelia, did you see anything interesting in the other cocoons?" She gently pokes Flynts impressive wound "Maybe you should let Calathar take a look at that with the wand ... Would be a shame if you managed to catch something nasty from these cursed halls. From what I've heard, chests are hard to amputate properly !"
Calathar reaches for the wand.
"Of course. That was very brave, my friend."
"If you happen to have a little healing to spare, my friend, I think all of us are injured."
Looking like a kid with a new toy, Nethan eagerly navigates through the sticky wet spider innards, "Hmm, very interesting! This ambush predator is an extra planar Diamond spider which is similar to the phase spider but still very different. Both its Chitin and spider webbing are imbued with magical properties as it so demonstrated to us with the webbing making contact with us causing damage. In addition, as we witnessed, this spider manipulates the dead to lure in prey similar to the Alligator Snapping Turtle except of course the snapping turtle's "worm" lure is the turtle's own tissue." Nethan pauses, "I am going to see what I can preserve for later research and perhaps development? This way, we can continue on without further delay."
Nethan sees Calathar walking around with the healing wand to each party member, when he comes to Nethan, he nods his head and holds up 1 finger for only 1 charge of the healing wand, "Thank you Calathar for the heal."
Nethan then addresses the party, "Did we find anything on the corpses or in the cocoons?"
The female dwarf lets out a sigh of discontent "Well, at least going further into this place is better than being dead..." The dwarf wipes her brow. "The name is Ayla, wish I could have met you in better circumstances...". Ayla reluctantly rises and returns the water pouch. She dusts herself off before inspecting that the one dagger on her person is still able to be used. Content that it is still sharp she returns it to its scabbard.
Larskall is talking to his compatriots in elven about what the group has found and what might be happening. For this that understand elven the two others are getting worried and are advising Larskall that they should get back home at once and notify the 'Redleaf'
Most of the damage suffered from the spider is the legs being eaten off and some very clean holes left behind by Jeremiah's bullets. The rest of the spider is intact, the bag of holding can preserve any of this spider however only what could fit into the opening. So at this point it is up to Nethan to cut off the pieces he thinks he can fit into the bag.
Amelia has a look in a few more of the spider cocoons, unfortunately not finding anyone alive. Most of their equipment has also melted due to the corrosive acid used to digest them. However, left in one of the cocoons is a deck of cards. Perfectly preserved, lodged into the cocoon at about waist level. Whomever had it must of been carrying it on his belt. The cards are magical. [/ooc]
This set of cards changes the threads of fate around them, at the beginning of each day it sets the values of danger that can be changed on a whim from the first three cards drawn.
Heh - it looks like he would set up camp here for the week if we let him.
"Fascinating findings Nethan. Don't get stuck in there"
Even if her voice is filled with sarcasm she listens intently to the entire explanation of this new creatures capabilities and ecology.
"Any pointers on how we should kill it quicker if we had the luck to find another?"
"Shooting it seemed to work out pretty well," Flynt said, looking better after the application of healing magic.
Nethan nods at Flynt's comment, "I agree with Flynt, shooting it is very effective! The problem was penetrating the Mythic Darkness. Both Al and I are not yet capable of this. Our saving grace was when the spider became infuriated with Flynt and made the fatal mistake of descending out of the darkness. And as you know, it was all over for the Diamond spider in a blink of an eye. Oh I forgot to mention, the Diamond Spider also shows signs of genetic tampering which most likely came from Tar-Baphon's handy work." Nethan goes back to preserving and finds a way to make sure no spider blood or goo leaks on anything in the bag of holding. He takes some poison making sure not to get any on him or anything else. He takes a piece of chitin that will fit in the bag. He also takes some webbing and the spinneret(s) if possible.
Nethan smiles at Amelia, has her show him the cards, and without touching them, he begins to mutter some words under his breath, "Hmm, let's see? ... They are fate cards. You can change the fate of any friend or foe if you follow Fate's rules. Sounds like your cup of tea Amelia!" Nethan smiles again at Amelia, "However the cards are not tied to anyone, they can be used by all as long as Fate's rules are followed."
"In the King's Taldane, Nethan?" Flynt said, having very little patience for superstition and hocus pocus."They got a practical use?"
"Well, we made pretty good work of the spider. With Flynt luring them out, we can cut them down. I'll just be glad if we don't fight another of those behemoths."
Elise rolls her eyes at Jeremiah.
"Kungens Taldane? *tsk* Han som ikke dräper en Linnorm är ikke min konung."
"He said you shouldn't be playing cards with whomever has those cards. Or dice. Or anything else! Like fencing"
Nethan looks at Flynt and with a smile, "Flynt, you need a woman. You have too much pent up frustration in you. All joking aside, the cards work like this, once a day ANYONE may shuffle the deck and draw three cards. The face value of your card represents what fate your friend or foe may receive. For example if for some reason you are having problems shooting in future combat, the person who drew the cards may choose a card to improve your chances hitting the target with the next shot. In turn, let's say the behemoth is about to wallop me, the person who drew the cards may draw a card to change the behemoth's mighty blow from hitting me to missing me all together. The person who draws the cards must be within 150 feet of the friend or foe. Each time a card is used, it is expended for the day and can not be used until the next day drawing. In summary, you can change someone's fate in favor or disfavor three times a day."
"Hey ! Don't look at me!"
Elise gives both Nethan and Flynt an ugly grimace and laughs.
"Why don't we let someone whom frequently have to deal with misfortune and traps alone have the cards? And I'm not talking about Nethan's wingmanning here ... "
Nethan looks at Elise with an ear-to-ear grin and winks. Then nods, "I suggested to Amelia indirectly that she should keep the cards in my initial detection and abridged explanation of "The Cards of Fate" to her."