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Rakbura's spell goes off and the spider nearest the door sinks to the ground, unmoving.
"ATTACK!" Brian yells, waving his steel in the air as if whipping up a cavalry brigade for a glorious charge.
"They are obviously not going to come out here, so we must needs take the fight to them! However else shall we liberate whatever secrets have fallen into their web o'er the years?"
Aletta didn't see any particular rush, and would have been content with a mind sliver attack of her own. The cantrip was on her lips, about to be enunciated, when first Eamch and then Brian implored her to bring black iron down on these disgusting, oversized, fly-catchers. They didn't understand; she really, really hated spiders.
She charges into the fray.
Tapping his long practiced meditative studies, Savas holds his breath for several seconds to avoid inhaling any of the toxic gas that manifests in the air around him and nullifying the spiders magic. To escape the cloud, he steps up between Brian and Aletta and with two hands wrapped around his staff jams it into the spiders midsection.
He tries to follow up with a quick kick, but steps in the gore of the first spider thing killed. His foot slips and it is all he can do to avoid falling backward into the muck.
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Rakbura launches another mind sliver against the "spider" that attacked Aletta, and it writhes in pain. Karhu fries another of the "spiders", but it is not yet dead and keeps coming. Eamch's dart plunges into the spider nearest the door. Aletta strikes true, but Brian, in his battle madness, mistimes his attack and the spider-thing is able to avoid it. Savas the monk steps in between Brian and Aletta and slams his staff home into the spider fighting the young tiefling, killing it!
The remaining spider-thing bites at Brian, it's snapping mandibles only barely missing the bard!
([color=red]Fail[/color])
Status
Spider 1: -22 hp, faerie fire, fighting Brian
Spider 2: Dead
SPider 3: Dead
Karhu continues to invoke flame and throw it at the remaining spider, still glowing with Faerie Fire.
Yet another cantrip!
Aletta pivots and hacks at the remaining spider.
"That was rousing and icky," says Aletta. She doubles back to the closet for a towel with which to clean her blade. Then steals another one for future engagements.
Karhu moves in to inspect the room, casting detect magic if needed. He says, ”Yes, definitely icky—and unexpected…Spellcasting spiders is not something I have ever encountered, especially not ones with human-shaped hands.”
Rakbura wonders if the spellcasting hand-spiders could be more accurately called something else than 'spellcasting hand-spiders ...'
"Unusual creatures indeed." Savas says kneeling down to take a closer look at one of the things to see if it resembles anything he may have seen or heard about over the years.
Recalling the words of their host he suppresses a shiver. "Perhaps they are a warning for us not to fail in our task." He says stepping back with a growing sense of revulsion. "The most likely explanation would be they are...were...folk such as ourselves. Brought here unwillingly and somehow transformed by the dangers lurking within this cursed place."
"Or by our very bored hosts."
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"Wait there are towels?" Brian exclaims, rushing to get one. "Never can't find a use for a towel."
Now properly towel-armed, he stands next to Savas and making hmmmming sounds as he helps identify the unusual spiders.
Eventually he gets bored and just gives up. He decides to stick with what he's good at and starts rummaging around the room, looking for phat loots.
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"Well that was awful and horrifying," Brian quips, wiping off the yucky spider and web-gore on his new spanky towel. "If all of the rooms are gonna be like that, I'm going to writing a very stern letter to my travel agent. 'Spiders too large and look like they may have been people. 2 stars out of 5. Would not be mysteriously kidnapped here again.'"
That done Brian heads to the next-door door and listens intent, checking for both traps and inhabitants.
Savas follows Brian back out into the main hall and moves to see what might be beyond the next door along the northern wall.
Karhu looks into the room and focuses his detect magic spell, looking for nasty surprises both magical and mundane—the whole place looks like a trap of some kind to him.
Savas shakes his head as he looks into the room. "There is nothing in that chest worth walking in that muck." He says, nose twitching with the smell coming off the slime covered floor.
"I say we move on to something other than the broken privy system."
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"Oh come on guys! Where's the fun in that? I mean, it's so very obviously a trap I couldn't describe a more obvious trap. Okay, lemme just toss in some stones and we'll see what happens."
Brian picks up some pebbles and starts tossing them at different, random spots in the room while thinking about what kind of creature would keep a lair like this.
"Somebody blows their nose and you want to fight it? Be my guest," Aletta says to Brian.
"How about some quid pro quo?"
”I detect sources of magic in the chest—enchantment and necromancy. It might be worth our time if we can bypass whatever trap this is.” says Karhu.
"The trap could be our assumption that it's a trap," Rakbura points out as he turns over every nasty arcane slight of hand he might expect of this - although honestly he too thinks that it's a trap.
Savas stands well clear of the door, ready to assist inside should a trap or other hazard be revealed.
"I will give it a try, as long as no one sees any traps or foes within," offers Karhu, preparing to move into the room towards the chest.
Other than making sure the loop around his waist can expand if needed, Karhu compiles, saying, “Thank you.” He steps gingerly into the room, pausing just beyond the threshold as he enters, looking for any threats before he heads over to the chest.
Karhu will immediately stop and move back from the slime. ”Thank you, Rakbura,” he says somewhat shakily, ”How can one bypass such a slime?”
Savas pulls a flask of oil from his pack and then slices a length of cloth from the nearest tapestry with his dagger. Stuffing the cloth into oil until short end sticks out of the flask. Lighting the rag from the nearest sconce, he quickly tosses the now burning flask hard into the center of the room to see if the makeshift fire bomb has any effect upon the slime.
”Ah, excellent,” says Karhu, flame blossoming in his palm. He throws balls of flame, one after the other, at the slime in the room.
"Uff, that smells worse than a devil taking a sh--well, you know." Aletta waits for the thing on the ceiling to decide it's had enough of this nonsense, although she has no idea what to do about it.
Savas grabs and holds a cloth over his nose and mouth while the slime burns away. Not liking the look of the oddly black ceiling, the monk nocks an arrow to his shortbow. Kneeling down within the door frame, he lets the arrow fly into the center of the darkness, hoping the shaft simply shatters against hard stone rather than the soft snick of stell entering flesh.
Aletta hates fighting things that do not stand and fight her back on equal footing. "We could come back for it once we solve the curse. If we can't accomplish that, then we're not going to have much use for whatever it is anyway."