Campaign Log -- More of Day Three

The 9th day of the month of Obad-Hai
The 110th year of the second Ravensblood dynasty

Makpov starts beating on the statue with his morningstar. The repairs aren’t very sturdy, so he easily bashes some large bits off.

“This’ll be fine,” says Tamarie, smiling serenely in her unnatural optimism.
“Yeah, we’re all going to die,” replies Quimarel. “I mean, it’ll probably be fine.”

They decide to get out of there before someone comes and sees them beating up the image of the god, so the three of them head to one of the other doors. It’s old and mostly rotted wood, and they push it open to find a scriptorium filled with broken desks and crumbling scrolls. Quimarel tries to read some of the scrolls, but their condition is far too poor. They search around the room to try and figure out what this ancient city they’ve found might be, but all they can gather is that all the furniture is goblin-sized, and the words they can make out on the scrolls seem to be somewhat akin to the modern Goblin language.

There are two doors out, and they pick the northern one. There’s a noise coming from behind it that doesn’t remind them of any language or any sound they’ve heard coming from a beast. They try the other door.

[Quimarel rolls Perception]
GM: You hear --
Hiddlebatch OOC: [completely incomprehensible sounds as a result of trying to tell the others something and eat snacks at the same time]
GM: -- that. You hear that.

In actual fact, all they can hear is the sound of muffled snoring. Quimarel makes another Perception check, and guesses that the people making the snoring noise are much larger than she is, but smaller than Makpov. Makpov suggests that he could sneak in there and lick them, inflicting his hallucinogenic saliva upon whomever the room contains. The others seem strangely on board with this, and try to open the door as quietly as possible. On the other side is a human chain gang, sleeping -- much like the goblins Hiddlebatch found itself chained to earlier that morning.

The characters who have lived in the Capran Protectorates for some time are more or less unfazed by this. A common sentence for criminals in Capra proper is several years’ hard labor in the Protectorates, so there are similar chain gangs working the nearby farms and digging out a mine not far to the north. This one just happens to be working for someone else -- and the jury is out on whether these are sentenced Capran criminals or just some folks the Kech kidnapped.

The team further debates the merit of applying hallucinogenic saliva to see what happens, but eventually Quimarel just shakes one of the humans awake.

“What -- blarg -- agh -- whaddayouwant?”
“Who are you?”
“Huh? Who are you?”
“We’re, um, a local rescue group.”
Sense Motive checks are rolled and failed.
“Um, hi. My name is Vinnheim.”
“How did you get down here?”
“Well, me and my… people here were doing our normal kind of… trade route… thing… nearby, We were just north of Noroiras… then these weird hairy people in robes jumped us, and we woke up down here.”

Sense Motive checks are rolled and failed. The prisoner’s inconsistent accent is discussed by the players, who declare that he sounds like he’s from “the Mississippi of Russia”.

“Hey,” says Vinnheim, “can you let us out? We had to kill this big spider thing yesterday because it was living in this room that the bosses wanted to check out…”
“Do you know the way out of here?”
“Well, there’s a big hole in the ceiling of the cavern over there. That’s probably the way out.”
The players are disappointed that there isn’t another exit.
“So, since you’ve been killing off the things infesting these rooms, you know which ones are clear and what’s in the ones that aren’t?”
“Yeah. Well, in the immediate area.”
“If you help us find who we’re looking for, we’d be happy to let you out.”
“Sure. Who are you looking for?”
“An employee of mine. She’s a gold-scaled kobold.”
“Oh, I have seen one of those down here. She’s in a different chain gang.”
“And also a racist priest with giant butterfly wings.”
“No, I think I would remember that.”

Tamarie picks the locks on the humans’ leg irons. As the humans get up and move towards the door, the group spots a dead insect/arachnid/crustacean thing in the corner, larger than anyone in the room except Makpov.

“Whoa,” says Quimarel, “how many of those are down here?”
“I think there are still a couple around.”
“And… do you know what the thing we heard on the other side of that door is?”
“Oh. You don’t want to go in there.”
“So you do know what it is.”
“Kind of?”
“Can you describe it?”
“No.”
Here the group stops moving and stares at Vinnheim until he explains. “It’s invisible.”
Cue chorus of “WHAT?!”

Hiddlebatch’s player, who ran a one-shot with a phantom fungus encounter a while back, chimes in at this point to warn them off, abruptly realizes she’s metagaming, and starts going, “No, I mean, I don’t know what it is. You should totally go in there.”

Vinnheim mentions that it also killed and ate a group of ten goblins yesterday, and they decide they’re not going to mess with that. He says that it’s actually a major concern for the bosses, because they thought they found something in one of the rooms around here, but when the invisible thing moved in, it made this part of the complex too dangerous for them to enter. At the suggestion of loot, the players begin planning strategies for getting past it, all with a distinctly pyrotechnic bent. Basically, they immediately decide that the best solution is to light the thing on fire, and then all their plans are about the best way to light things on fire with their current inventory.

“Oh,” says Quimarel, “you said my kobold was on another chain gang. Where are the other chain gangs?”
“I think the one she’s on is digging out a wall near here.” He leads them back to the large cavern where they started, and indicates a sizable building that’s about ¾ unearthed. “On the other side of that.”
“Mind sticking around until we find her?”
“Uh…”
“Just to make sure we can all get out.”
“I guess?”

Makpov decides the solution is to seduce this man. Whether Makpov has any kind of grasp on the situation is questionable. He makes his Charisma roll, as his player attempts to imitate “seductive” theme music.
Vinnheim is somewhat surprised, but rolls with it. “That’s very tempting… sir… but I think we’re going to have to put that on hold. Matter of life and death and all. Maybe we could get a drink later, though.” He goes back to his guide duties, and indicates a pair of double doors set into the large building. “Those doors will get you there, but you want to be careful, because I hear some of those spider things are making a nest in that building.”

Quimarel looks to her companions. “How do you feel about killing some spiders?”
Tamarie has some trademark optimism ready. “They’re real big, but I bet we can do it! Yeah!”

Quimarel begins formulating a plan that involves sending the former chain gang in first. The humans weren’t allowed to keep their weapons on them when they weren’t being watched, but she suggests they might be able to hit the spiders with the chains from their leg irons.

“Makpov,” she says, “you’ve got two weapons. We can give… Vinny here one of them. Would you help us if you were way better armed, Vinny?”
“... suuuuuuuuure.”
“He’s got a battle axe and a morningstar. Which one would you be more comfortable with?”
“You know, I think I can use an axe if it comes to it.”
Makpov decides to be motivating in his own innuendo-laden way. “Yeah you can.”

Quimarel OOC: Makpov is a motivational tool.

“Vinny, do you have any idea of approximately how many spiders are in here?”

GM: Let me check my notes… I say out of character, because the slaves don’t have notebooks.
Quimarel OOC: He barely has pants.

Vinny thinks there are only a couple.
Quimarel continues to pump him for information. “What’s the best way to kill them?”
“Hit them a lot? I don’t know; I’m not an expert combatant in spider-killing.”
Tamarie is skeptical. “You should be -- that’s what you do!”
“Not originally! Not until… um… I don’t know how long it’s been, because it’s always dark down here.”

Quimarel begins strategizing. “Okay, I’m small and fragile and my only decent weapon is this light crossbow, so I’m not going to be in the thick of this.” Quimarel’s strategies tend to focus around making sure nothing bad happens to Quimarel.

Vinny suggests that they just try to sneak through and avoid getting eaten by spiders altogether. “Not that I’m not willing to fight a spider!” The others decide this is a good plan, and go over to listen at the door. They can’t hear anything, so Quimarel opens the door as quietly as possible. Inside is an ancient ruined ballroom of some sort, with marble floors & wide open spaces & highly-decorative pillars. At the point where the pillars meet the ceiling, there are two spider-things crouched in a huge web, more or less motionless. There is some discussion regarding whether spiders sleep, and then they decide to “hug the wall and move quietly” until they get through.

Excuse me -- I will have you know that I am of the order Solifugae.
So knock it off with this "spider" business.

The highest Stealth check in the party is a 10 -- their feet echo on the marble floor, and the spider-things start descending. For the first time this session, the battle mat is unrolled and set up.

Tamarie: I have a real good feeling about this.

The spiders get to act first, and they spend their turn reaching the ground.

Quimarel immediately instructs Makpov to pick her up and run for the door they’re trying to reach. “I move slow, but I won’t weigh you down much.”

Quimarel OOC: On my character sheet, my weight is listed as “fuck off”.

They then begin hurriedly trying to decide what they should do now that their plan of "don't get eaten by spiders" looks to be on the verge of failing.

Quimarel OOC: What does Mending do?
GM: Fixes things.
Quimarel OOC: Does it fill in holes?
GM: Yes.
Quimarel OOC: If I cast Mending on the web, would it encase the spiders?
GM: No. That’s not fixing it, that’s making it do something it’s not designed to do.
Quimarel OOC: There are holes in the web.
GM: In the same way that there’s a hole in the wall called a “door”, yes.

Quimarel, riding on Makpov, fires a crossbow bolt and misses by a mile. Makpov uses her turn to run to the door. Tamarie and Vinny runs after them. The spiders follow. Vinny is closest to the spiders, and one of them bites him. Its enormous mandibles tear a gaping wound in his side, and he collapses.

Tamarie OOC: WHAT?!
GM: He had, like, four hp.
Tamarie OOC: FOUR?
GM: He’s just some guy.
Tamarie OOC: But he fights spiders and stuff!
GM: Yeah, they lose a lot of people doing that.
Quimarel OOC: We collected a redshirt!
Tamarie OOC: Get that axe back from him.
Makpov OOC: Yeah!
Quimarel OOC: And lick him real quick, so his last moments are trippy.

The other spider bites Makpov, doing significantly less damage. Luckily, they are nonvenomous. Quimarel gives the door a quick once-over for traps, then Makpov opens the door and runs through it. Tamarie follows, and closes the door behind them.

They find themselves in another large open cavern, with a goblin chain gang over at the edge. The chain gang also contains the kobold, Krich the Xenophilic, and a halfling that is probably her client, Alton Brambleforth. A Kech is guarding them, and he turns towards the noise.

“Who are you people?” he demands. “What are you doing down here?”
Quimarel attempts to think fast. “We’re here to save you.” She fails her Bluff check.
“Um… no. Guards! Guards!”
Makpov tries the same lie. “No, really, we’re here to save you.” It doesn’t work any better the second time.