"Well, Frum agrees with you, anyhow," Banny says to Alicia's firm declaration that the church is haunted. " 's funny. He was tellin' me just last night all about how Sawyer-- not our current Sawyer, his old man-- was th' one to try an' house the sick folk here... an' how Sawyer fell off the cliff, later. 'Fell.' Or jumped... I dunno, seems like it's a small world, everything all knotted up together..."
Banny moves forward, looking at the ground as she walks-- if there has been recent foot traffic, she hopes that the old ruined, blackened ground might show some prints of passage.
Alicia glares over her shoulder at Marikel as she walks. "I've seen the ghosts in the old ruins. There were no ghosts in those tunnels; but I know the Plague House is." She leads the way through the porch and to the first set of doors inside, then gestures for Marikel to lead the way with a flourish.
Marikel meets Alicia's gaze coolly.
"Seen them? What did they look like? A kid with a sheet over his head?"When Banny has checked for tracks, he opens the first set of doors and strolls casually into the church.
Alicia hangs back a bit, clearly expecting ghostly images of burned corpses to pop up from the beds and scream at Marikel with flaming mouths and cinders dripping from their bodies. She's hoping for it, actually, especially with how the uptight cleric repeatedly dismissed her first-hand experience....
As the group nears the ruins of the church, they can see into the room at the northwest corner though the gaping hole in the wall. Past fallen beams, jumbled bricks, and debris of all kinds, a staircase leading up toward what was once a second floor can be seen and appears mostly intact.
The charred and weatherbeaten doors of the main entrance are as high as the gnome's head off the ground, behind the barely discernibly outline of the former porch. Tall and narrow windows on either side of the doorframe are broken out. Above the doors, the bottom third of a rose window still contains some pieces of stained glass which gleam colorfully in the sun despite the years of grime and neglect.
Banny approaches the front doors carefully, looking for tracks or footprints, but finds no signs of recent passage. Marikel strides up behind her and pulls open the front door. After somewhat awkwardly navigating the huge first step, he strolls into the entry hall. The floorboards are weathered and charred, like the front doors; shafts of bright sunlight fall through several holes in the roof, illuminating patches of the floor and walls in the musty interior. There are doors on both right and left; directly ahead, Marikel can see that the back wall of the church has almost entirely collapsed, revealing the dark stone of the massive boulder behind it.
Marikel steps forward and opens the doors on the right, looking round the area for any thing out of the ordinary.
"Maybe this was a waste of time," he mutters.
Marikel pushes open the doors to reveal a room whose stone walls and floor are blackened from flame. It was once clearly the sanctuary of the church -- there is still a stone altar at the front of the room -- but now it's furnished with a double-row of bare and scorched wrought-iron bedframes where once pews for the faithful must have been arrayed. In the opposite corner of the room, he can see a closed iron door.
Despite the fire, the sanctuary/infirmary appears to be the most structurally sound part of the building: the four walls are all standing, and the roof is mostly intact, with only a few holes. Even the stained-glass windows high in the opposite wall aren't completely broken out. Given these facts, the room is somewhat dim and shadowy.
Banny hesitates at the rear of the group, reluctant to leave the sunlight and fresh air behind, but following anyway. Marikel's words make her shrug.
"Dunno. --you know, when we get back up topside, I'm gonna go investigate that top-tunnel further," she says, her mind not really on the church, even as she climbs up and inside with a bit more difficulty due to the high step to get in. She absently offers the gnome a hand up if he's coming in too.
"I was assumin' the tub-tunnel was gonna connect, up to that one-- but it if doesn't, then figurin' out where that one ends... or begins, rather... is important. Cuz it's a straight shot up that cliff wall right into Trunau's heart."
Banny wanders a little into the hall, peering around.
"There was another tunnel...?" Marikel's voice catches.
He sighs.
"We'll have a quick look here. It shouldn't take long... unless we meet a ghost."
He briefly glances to Alicia before heading to the door on the left and opening that one too.
Banny can see that the entry hall ends in an unworked stone wall at the back of the building. It seems that the builders used the huge boulder at the foot of Bloodmarch Hill to provide the church with natural defenses from the north.
Leaving behind the sanctuary, Marikel continues down the hallway. As he approaches the door on the northwest wall, he can see around the corner that the back of the church is in much worse shape than the southern walls. Like the western corner, the northern corner is largely collapsed, and what remains of the steeple has tumbled down on top of the stairs that once led up to it, leaving it open to the sky. Marikel knows from Tyari that the bell was salvaged from the old church after the orc raiders were repulsed and is the one that sounded the alarm before dawn this morning. There is a door in the northeastern wall which is partially blocked by rubble.
He opens the door to reveal a narrow corridor that takes a sharp turn to the southwest. Natural light filters around the corner.
"Yup," Banny responds cheerfully, either oblivious to Marikel's dread over it... orrr being cheerful about it either way. "You really must not wanna go in 'em if you forgot us talkin' about it," she says good-naturedly.
She wanders up while she speaks, peering around the other corner of the old burnt-out building.
Banny moves to the corner and peers around. She discovers another set of double doors immediately to her right and an iron door directly southeast. The end of the ruined hall opposite the collapsed steeple is more intact physically, like the sanctuary/infirmary, and thus largely in shadow. A charred cabinet and bookcase are shrouded in cobwebs and littered with the husks of insects thankfully far smaller and less undead than the beetles in the tunnel. The dwarf's sharp eyes also pick out a few bones the size of a rat or chipmunk scattered in the debris on the floor near the iron door.
Banny wanders down to the door, drawn by the little bits of the bones she can see peeking white through the rubble. It makes her think of the hunk of marmot, for some reason-- she doubts they're connected, but she still has the odd sight of the tub, and the hunk of rotting meat within, at the forefront of her mind.
She toes aside a bit of rubble, trying to expose the small bones, and peers with half-hearted curiosity at the charred cabinet and bookcase, but her shoulders rise in a shrug. "It don't look like anybody's been poking in here in a long while. S'all covered with webs."
Banny moves cautiously around the corner. Just before she gets to the bones on the floor, she notices something: in addition to the cobwebs strung from the walls to the dilapidated furniture and from shelf to shelf of the bookcase, there is another web, an enormous one stretching from floor to ceiling in front of both the cabinet and the bookcase. She doesn't see a spider, but the web is still intact and in good shape, indicating it's been recently maintained.
"Oi," says Banny, gesturing to the others. "Big bleedin' web here. Steer clear of it unless you wanna get web all over your face."
She tilts her head at it, squinting. "...Big web," she repeats, realizing it goes all the way to the ceiling. "Must be a good-sized spinner. 'Course, it also helps show nobody's been through this anytime recent... they'd tear it up, and I doubt a spider could rebuild a web this big since last night."
She has no interest to get web all over herself, so she turns around, wandering back to the other half of the room and looking over the door and the floor, again scanning for any signs of recent disturbance on the fire-damaged floor.
"How big?" Marikel asks worriedly. He pulls his sword out and heads towards the web.
"If there's kids playing round here, the last thing we want is one of them getting bit."
Banny arches a brow, but shrugs and nods, fair enough. "Dunno, didn't see the spider, but if it has a web that big it's got to be good sized."
She squints up at the ceiling with its holes, glancing around to make sure there's no melon-sized spider ready to drop down on their heads.
This end of the hall is dim and shadowy; even with Banny pointing out the web, Marikel is squinting to try and discern it. Before he succeeds, however, a glistening substance shoots at him out of the corner. It floats like gossamer in the air but sticks like glue when it touches him with a surprising tensile strength. Now he and Banny can both see, in the darkness and cobwebs at the top of the cabinet, a massive spider the color of the natural stone wall.
"There it is," Marikel mutters, seemingly unperturbed.
He struggles forward against the web and swings at the creature with his sword.
Miffed by Marikel's ignoring the haunted sanctuary, she scowls and follows after the cleric and dwarf. Still fuming, she barely notices the glistening webbing ensnaring Marikel, let alone its source. "Stop playing with the wildlife," she sneeringly chides, moving closer and drawing her rapier. She tenses, as the entire place gives her the creeps.
Banny swears in Dwarven as the spider turns out to be very much present, after all-- striking Marikel with a string of sticky webbing.
When Alicia catches up and speaks, Banny throws a look back over her shoulder at her. "You'd rather we just left it for the next kid to wander down here?" she asks shortly. "Maybe your friend Ruby, or whoever?"
Banny turns back to the spider, looking it over for a moment to judge where best to hit it, then steps in and tries to drive a fist up into the chitinous carapace of the arachnid.
Marikel still doesn't see the enormous web Banny found, even as he walks right into it. Spitting the sticky stuff out of his mouth, he swings his sword wildly at the spider on top of the cabinet but succeeds only in knocking free a handful of splinters from the rotting wood.
Banny manages to avoid the sheet of webbing, as she steps forward and deals an uppercut to what ought to be the arachnid's chin as it greedily eyes Marikel.
The spider, apparently feeling that Marikel is the lesser of the two threats, crawls down the nearly-invisible strands of its webbing and bites viciously at the dwarf, who nevertheless easily ducks the venomous mandibles. Alicia can clearly see it now: it's enormous, its leg span nearly as tall as Banny.
Round 1:
The emergence of the spider catches Vhailor's voice in his throat, and is followed by a dry swallow that leaves a painful raw feeling behind. Carbonel (being less the fool) offers a hiss and leaps from the gnome's shoulder, keeping himself in a relatively safe position.
Hands shaking, he calms himself a tad by squeezing down firmly on his quarterstaff - the smooth and firm wood giving him more assurance than it really should. He steps around the corner and a faint squeak ensues "Anything I can do?"
Carbonel, who would be barely more than a mouthful to the oversized arachnid, displays the better part of valor by staying safely around the corner, while Vhailor inches nearer the fight.
Alicia's eyes widen as she catches sight of the spider. "Iomedae's brass breastplate!" she exclaims, and charges at the spider.
Ali charges up next to Banny and drives the point of her rapier into the bloated arachnid.
" 's bloody big enough, innit?" Banny blurts as she gets a real glimpse of the spider's size, now that it's unfolding from its nook on the bookcase.
"Can you cut yourself free, priest?" she says to Marikel, as she attempts to smash a few of those legs against the charred wood with her fists.
Marikel attempts to ignore the web and continues to swing at the spider.
Hindered by the sticky web, Marikel swings his sword awkwardly and misses the spider entirely.
The dwarf, however, follows up the impotent attack with a quick flurry of punches, which leaves the arachnid's carapace bruised and dripping with fluid like overripe fruit.
The spider, self-preservation overriding its hunting instinct, cautiously retreats back up its web away from the women who are hurting it.
Having not received a reply to his initial query, Vhailor stands mutely and dumfounded... while Carbonel settles against the wall to lick at his paw.
Alicia steps after the overgrown spider, jabbing once again with her thin rapier-blade. "At least it's not a ghost," Ali says grimly.
"Indeed. Though it may be responsible for some of the stories."
Marikel swings wildly at the spider again, still hampered by the webs but perhaps trusting to his strength to achieve more than his accuracy.
Alicia tries to squeeze closer to the cabinet in an attempt to stab the spider once more and blunders into the nearly-invisible webbing just like Marikel did earlier. Her jab fails to reach the retreating spider, as does Marikel's slash with his longsword.
"If you dunno how to make yourself useful, I sure don't know what to tell you," Banny mutters over her shoulder to Vhailor.
"Yer some sort of magician, aren't you? Well I don't know what spells you got rattlin' in your skull, so I figure you'd ought to know better'n me what you can do. I guess you could chuck a rock if nothin' else occurs to you."
With that, she tries to smack the lowest bit of the spider again, cursing the shortness of her limbs. She at least manages to land a glancing blow.
Blinking once, then a second time Vhailor shifts his staff to one hand and seeks an appropriate missile from the floor of the ruined building. Assuming an approximately aerodynamic rock is found, he then attempts to fling it towards the spider's swollen abdomen...
Banny throws another punch, but the spider has drawn its legs in close to itself defensively and just manages to evade the blow.
Vhailor picks up a piece of debris from the floor and throws it in a long arc that misses the spider completely and rattles off the top of the charred cabinet.
The spider gathers itself for a burst of speed and retreats up its web, then across the ceiling, over the heads of the party until it reaches the broken edge of the roof. It hesitates there a moment, as if daunted by the bright sunlight.
Seeing the spider flee, Ali struggles with the webbing entangling her to retrieve a dagger from its sheath, then tosses the blade at the too-distant arachnid form.
Ali's dagger clatters to the floor without endangering the spider.
"Hold still, Miss Alicia."
Marikel takes his sword to the webbing about Alicia, attempting to free her before himself.
Marikel finds the webbing to be resistant to his blade, seeming to stretch and bounce back rather than cut through. While he breaks some of the sticky strands adhering Alicia to the web, she is not yet freed.
Banny swears as the spider scurries out of range. Damned vermin. She turns and takes a short step towards the spider , bends to snatch up a chunk of debris, and chucks it as well-- figuring that by the time she managed to get a rock into her sling, the moment would be gone.
The hunk of fire-twisted metal she found clatters harmlessly off the wall, nowhere close to the spider. "Oi! Yeah, run!" Banny grumps at the arachnid.
Seeing that the others have continued to throw what they can, Vhailor bends and picks up another missile for futile projection...
Rock:
...finding his aim even worse upon a second attempt. As the spider scuttles away he bites his lip and looks to Marikel and Alicia entangled.
Chased by both Banny's and Vhailor's ineffectual missiles, the spider disappears around the edge of the ceiling to the rooftop, undoubtedly in search of a dark hole somewhere until nightfall.
Carbonel chooses this moment to emerge from the corridor with a nonchalant air, coiling in around Vhailor's feet. The gnome continues to eye the entangled ones and asks "Can you cut your way out?"
"That's what I'm doing. Get that thing before it takes one of the kids."
Marikel slashes again at the webs entangling Alicia.
Alicia gives Marikel an annoyed look and starts the process of disentangling herself. Soon enough, she is free and turning a triumphant look on the similarly-entangled cleric.
While Marikel is still maneuvering his longsword, Alicia manages to extricate herself from the spiderweb.
Banny just turns and looks at Marikel-- caught in the webs as he is-- her head cocked to one side. "It's up on th' roof, priest. Unless you're plannin' on prayin' I get angel wings, there ain't no way I'd climb fast enough to catch it. It's not like it's gonna bite a kid in th' next minute. Let's cut you out, then worry about cleanin' out vermin."
Banny draws her rarely-used axe, coming over to chop at Marikel's entangling restraints.
Banny's two-handed swing cleanly severs the sticky strands anchoring Marikel to the web.