Shackled City, Chapter 3: Flood Season – Feb. 5th
After we defeated the slaad, Hawk cast a spell which would allow him to find hidden doors and he found one along one of the walls. Hawk and Jax cautiously opened the door and moved in down a dark hallway. We all slowly moved in, alert for traps.
This hallway curved and came to a dead-end. Again Hawk casted a spell which helps him detect secret doors and indeed there was a secret door at the dead-end. We went through that door and came to a long shadowy hallway with several doors. Because we are keeping to our right, we opened the first door to the right.
The room opened up into a web-filled tunnel. Because we last heard about the wands being delivered to a halfling who was visiting with spiders, we decided that we should continue down this hallway. As we went in, we noticed that the webbing is non-sticky but is very soft, muffling our steps. This tunnel led to a fork going north & south. We opted to keep to our right and continue down the south tunnel.
As we worked our way down the web-filled tunnel we came to the threshold of a large & webbed cavern. There were thick webs everywhere. Despite our better judgement we decided to go in. Hawk and Jax led the way, keeping to the right. As they moved in (I was bringing up the rear) we heard the sound of a siren as two human-sized spiders ran up to Hawk and Jax. Nevercry got stuck in some webbing as in this cavern are thick strands of sticky webbing everywhere.
Tom, Goldie, and I finally managed to free Nevercry. At the same time, Hawk and Jax managed to take out one of the spiders. After that, a much larger spider ran up and tried to bite Cree but missed. With Nevercry freed, I ran up & hit the spider. Hawk went invisible. Tom and Cree swung at the large spider. Another much larger spider ran up to me just as two ‘regular-sized’ spiders ran up to Goldie and Nevercry.
I used my recently-trained decisive strike ability to swing really hard at the large spider and managed to kill it. Tom and Cree ran over to the other two smaller spiders and killed them as Jax and I killed the other large spider. We actually got pretty lucky because someone noted that spiders can inject you with poison if they manage to bite you. Somehow we all managed to escape harm in this encounter.
Hawk and Jax searched around the cavern and found a potion along with a crumpled note in the empty nest of a large spider:
“Skaven, wands for ransom. Don’t lose these. Tarkilar and I have some of them as well.
-T”
Hawk suggested that this may be signed by Triel. We also think that Skaven must be the halfling. We didn’t find anything else in the cavern and continued working our way through the tunnels. We reached another smaller chamber and Tom announced that this must have belonged to a very large spider – larger than those we fought earlier. We searched really hard and found an empty webbing pouch. Tom also thinks that this nest was used as recently as a couple of days ago.
We continued down the cavern and came to a normal room with four smaller spiders which we easily killed. Through the door in that room we came out into the hallway and continued to our right. The next door to our right was locked. It looked to be locked and apparently was locked very well. Hawk and Jax tried for many minutes to open the door but were unable to. Finally someone realized that the door was wizard locked and that we would need someone like DaVid to open it.
So we continued down to the next door and they opened it. Tom shouted something about skeletons and ran inside. I ran after him. I ran up to a skeleton and killed it with my bludgeoning fists. Jax was attacking the other skeleton while Hawk and Jax were attacking the zombies. Goldie was singing songs to inspire courage. Hawk killed one of the zombies with his deadly arrows. Jax and I were having a hard time hitting the last skeleton and Goldie sent Nevercry to attack the remaining zombie. Nevercry bit the zombie very hard and it died. Tom ran up and killed the last skeleton.
After we removed the threat, we searched around. We found four potions and two notes.
The first note said,
“The gnoll creeps me out. I mean even more-so than before.
Yeah since that accident, he looks like he’s dead and his mind isn’t far behind.
He looks at me like food. I want a transfer to Skaven.”
The second note said,
“Did you see that fire giant visit?
Yeah, I almost shit myself.
See you next week when I’m on day shift.
-L”
The zombies and skeletons appeared to be former alleybashers and hillfolk. We went through the door and exited out to the beach of the fluorescent lake.