"Rodi tried it, but that's not saying much. I don't know that they'll have better success with frozen fingers here either. Unless Ben can warm this up, maybe we should go back to the other door and try harder."
Rodi thinks he can possibly disable the cold trap.
Rodi tries!
With an ingenuity that confounds those of you watching, Rodi makes a quick countdown check of a few points around the bars, then quickly and precisely scratches through a few etched runes you hadn't even noticed before. The cold aura on the bars quickly dissipates.
Rodi then goes to work on the lock. After a minute with his tools, there's a satisfying click... but the gate does not open. Instead, the lockbox itself opens, revealing a second padlock inside. This lock blocks access to a third lock. This last obstacle holds the chains in place that keep the bars from sliding open.
Rodi grins. "Locks inside locks, inside locks! It's magical!" They get back to work.
The Keg wipes a bead of sweat from his brow, "Hoo boy, Rodi. Keep it up!"
Rodi spends another minute working at the next lock. He nearly breaks his tools in the padlock, but backs off for a moment, takes a deep breath, then proceeds to deftly open the padlock.
The remaining lock, the one keeping the chains in place, still confounds him.
"You can do it, Rodi!" The Keg removes his hat and fans himself, taking a couple steps back and forth behind the rogue.
"You got that, Rodi?" Mikos asks as he waves Keg to keep still and not distract the working rogue.
Encouraged by the others, Rodi wipes his brow and continues to work. There is a metallic twang as he ever-so-nearly gets his tools jammed in the complex lock, but he freezes and slowly extracts them intact. After a calming breath, Rodi re-attacks from a different angle -- this time with good results. Another metallic noise, but this time the locking chain falls away and the metal bars retract towards the ceiling!
You shove open the door behind the bars. Beyond is a large room with a wide hole in the center of its floor. A heavy, welded steel ladder descends straight down from the lip of this shaft. The extent and depth of the space below are concealed behind many crisscrossing, whitish-gray spider webs filling the pit.
There are doors to the south and west. Both are propped open with chunks of broken masonry.
"More spiders... take care."
The Key advances with shield up and rapier out.
"For their sake, I hope not," Mikos rasps with a scowl. His hands are tightly wrapped around the falchion's grip as he follows Keg around to the southern door.
Move around the pit and to the southern propped door.
Mikos peers into the room.
The web-choked chamber remains still and eerily quiet, as sounds are dampened by the thick webbing. The Keg and Mikos circle the pit to the southern door, finding a corridor turning to the west.
The webs in the pit shudder, although there is no breeze. Not even a zephyr.
Mikos'"spider sense" tingles. "Really big spider inbound. Fire in the hole, Ben." He readies to strike any nasty bit that pokes out of the pit.
[Ooc]assuming first hits, second misses]
"Light them webs on fire!"
Mikos spots the spiders and calls them out. The rest of you see them but a moment too late.
A moon spider unravels from the mass of webbing in the northeast corner. It springs down and snaps at Rodi.
;
The webs in the pit surge upward as a much larger and grossly bloated spider crawls up from the darkness.
Mikos swings at it, but the falchion clangs off the hard chitin of its carapace. It lurches, half over the edge of the pit, and bites Mikos with its venomous fangs.
;
Mikos suffers a much bigger bite from the much bigger spider and fights against the venom to kill the thing.
"Gurk!" Rodi supplies helpfully.
Rodi shrugs off the poison and decides stabbing is always a good option.
for damage!
for damage!
for damage!
The Keg raises his shield and then casts sound burst on the spiders in the room.
The Keg casts, hitting both spiders with a sonic thump. The burst damages the smaller moon spider terribly, and it stops attacking momentarily.
Ben casts three force missiles next, blowing the moon spider to pieces.
Rodi, suddenly no longer threatened, rushes in to fight the spider queen. He stabs it in its bloated flank once, but his rapier cannot pierce the thick carapace a second time.
Feeling the spider's venom setting in, Mikos uses his remaining strength to continue attacking. After bouncing his falchion off it twice, the third strike makes an effective cut.
The moon spider queen attacks furiously, snapping its fangs at Mikos, The Keg and Rodi in turn.
;
;
;
Fangs as big as short swords pierce Mikos' scale armor and pump more venom into his body. ;
Mikos attempts to strike again at the eight-legged freak, but cn barely keep the falchion at mid-height. He shakily steps back twice through the door to take cover behind the corner.
The Keg dodges the spider and then curses watching Mikos get harmed and takes a quick opportunity to shove some herbs on the warrior's wounds and then uses some battlefield medicine. He ends by raising his shield against the spider's possible next attack.
; crit success! Gain +4 on your next saving throw
; success! Gain HPs
Rodi dodges the bite and slashes back at the spider!
for damage!
for damage!
for damage!
The Keg administers some battlfield aid to Mikos, helping to fend off the spider's poison.
Ben pauses, suddenly caught up in the moment.
Rodi attacks, stabbing as fast as he can, but cannot pierce the spider's carapace.
Mikos makes a weak attack and falls back.
The spider queen crawls the rest of the way out of the pit, oozing ichor from its several wounds. It angles away from Rodi, leaving him on the far side of the pit, but stays engaged with the Keg. It snaps at him with fangs dripping both venom and blood.
;
;
Mikos grimaces as Keg takes two vicious bites. "What are you doing? Fall back!" The warrior leaps forward to attack the spider.
Rodi hustles around the pit, avoiding its edge to come at the spider from the other side! (Two moves!)
for damage!
The Keg throws his shield up deflecting a lot of the first blow but then gets caught flatfooted by the second bite and the spider pumps its venom into the dwarf's arm.
The tough little bastard pushes off and quickly sucks the venom out of his arm and spits it to the ground.
"Ya gonna need to be tougher n' that to bring down this dwarf!"
Regardless, the Keg takes a wild strike with his rapier stabbing deep into the spider's abdomen and then makes a tactical move back per Mikos direction with his shield raised.
"Ya, get sum, ya stinky vermin!"
Though gravely wounded by the queen spider's bites, Keg's doughty dwarfen resilience fends off the powerful venom.
He counterattacks with perfect timing, just as the great spider stands tall to strike again. The Keg's rapier drives deep, causing a veritable cascade of ichor. The spider screeches, thrashing as it loses hold of the edge and falls backwards into the pit.
A few seconds later, you hear a terrible crunching impact, then all becomes silent.
Mikos chuckles as Keg shakes off the venom and kills the spider. "I guess giant spider poison doesn't stand a chance against all the bad hooch sloshing inside you. I just hope we don't need to go down in that pit. It's going to be a mess at the bottom." Mikos takes in the view of the room behind him.
Keg stomps his feet and then does a little kick dance, shaking his sword and shield, "Yeah! Ha Ha!"
He takes a swig of ale and then wipes his mouth, "Let's keep on"
You continue on. The western and southern doors leads into converging corridors. The north doorway in the western corridor is crudely blocked with rubble on this side (the far side is the entrance chamber).
To the south is one last door, also propped open with broken bits of masonry. The large chamber beyond is filled with gray webbing. Huge cocoons of spider silk hang suspended in the webs, and the webs crawl with countless hundreds of tiny, pale spiders.
Upon seeing you, the spiders immediately grow agitated and start to move about frantically.
The Keg takes 10 minutes to address his wounds.
; CRIT SUCCESS!
; gah!
OR
Once that is accomplished, the Keg will light a torch and start to chuck it into the spider web room and then he checks himself, "Oi, ya think those cocoons might be some of the folks that have gone missing. Dem dwarves mebbe?"