Road to Auer Session 7: He Was A Drider Boy, He Looked Like A Spider Boy

Our next session began with the party weighing their options. They had rested for a few hours and discussed many courses of actions. Quiggles, Balziros, Gorg, Nonne, Longshot, and Terror stood just outside the enemy base and decided to head back to the surface and get help. They backed their way out of the tunnel and found the way behind them had flooded, the tide had come in. Through their various means they traversed the waterways back the way they came. They found the chasm Bob had climbed up and set about making their way back towards the surface. As they met up with Bob again, they asked him about the chamber across the chasm, he told them he had not gone across but it seemed spooky and only was used by the One Who Walks in Shadows. Needing no more facts the group chose to make their way across the chasm to the spooky place, forgetting everything about heading to the surface. They told Bob to watch over their revolution for them and crossed the gap. 

They walked web coated tunnels, finding strange almost fiberoptic webbing intermingled with the normal giant spider webs. They came to a large chamber with a tunnel leading out on the other side. The entire chamber was webbing and, on the ceiling, they could see what appeared to be a cocoon or a hut of some sort. Strange piles of web covered bones had the thicker webbing leading up to the ceiling web cluster. The group debated setting the whole place on fire and the ramifications of cavern oxygen levels with that much flame. During the discussion Nonne threw a rope tied spear into the web structure and yanked it down. The group froze as the structure shattered and a blood red fiendish choldrith screamed at them. Combat was had, the creature seemed to have some elemental resistances and was able to distract the party for a few rounds before succumbing to their multiple attacks and spells. they searched the wreckage and found surface coins.

They continued for a few hours down the path and eventually made it to a dwarven mining site with four skeletal duergar dwarves. Balziros used turn undead and the skeletons fled deeper into the mine. The group followed at a normal pace after them and eventually found an entire dwarven duergar city that had been flooded. They could see traces of the filament webbing across the city, even on the ceiling. The buildings were still mostly intact, many were stone with dark gold embellishments. The noticed the water in the streets was only about knee deep and there were skeletons under the water. Under closer investigations they noticed the skeletons had a hole in the top of their skulls, as if something either broke out of the skull, or something else pierced through it.

They made their way to the largest building they could find, which turned out to be the town center. The building itself was about forty feet tall in a fifty-foot-tall cavern. They walked up the front stairs, forced the doors open, and walked through the wreckage. Broken shelves, moldy tomes, broken bits of masonry, were moved aside so the party could pass through. Eventually they found a central hall or throne room. Seated on an ancient throne was a skeletal dwarf. The group entered the chamber and went to check on the corpse. They watched as it rose from the throne like a marionette. The group looked up to see a large spider with a human torso coming out. The fight with the drider began.

They quickly severed the strands supporting the dwarf king corpse and got into position, the drider was on the ceiling and would be an issue. The group had accidentally lined up, half of them were in lightning bolt formation. The Drider dropped down, blasted them, and climbed back up the wall while readying a longbow. Two large spiders also came down into the chamber to vex the party… but did not last long. The group launched spells and arrows at the drider and he returned fire. Terror launching elemental blasts, Longshot casting hunter’s mark and shooting at the beast, Gorg and Nonne making short work of the other spiders, Quiggles blasted away, and Balziros hurt the drider with Toll the dead. The drider grew tired of the fray and fled out a hole in the ceiling. Nonne scrambled up after him and saw the drider was climbing on the ceiling and was already making great speed. Nonne grabbed one of the filaments on the ceiling and yanked on it. 

The filament sprang like a guitar string, knocking the drider by chance. The drider fell from the ceiling and through a building. Nonne cut the filament and swung down, letting go to fall onto the drider, impaling it with his great sword. The group followed on the ground and could see the damage to the building. It turned out to be a flooded bakery and moldy flour surged into the air around the building. As a group they laid into the drider and finally Terror let loose magic missiles that ended the threat. The group collected themselves and started looting the shop and drider. They found a magical folding boat, a ring of protection, and a potion of mind reading. They holed up in the ruins of the bakery and we ended there for the night.

We now hit the point where our store we played at was forced to adjust its hours with the virus and hopefully in the future we will be able to play again. It has been an honor to game with the kind folk that chose to play at my table for the last four years over these four campaigns. For a few of them I was their first dungeon master and I am always happy to introduce people to this amazing hobby.