Haven: Something New in the Spider Den

On June 7th, Year 13, a party of Citadel House Adventurers gather to investigate reports of new webs at the dome of the spider queen where the spiders were slain and scattered 8 years earlier.

• Chiron (TrS): Level 5 Human Ranger
• Morijn (HuS): Level 3 Orc Brawler
• Carl “Sir Mage-a-Lot” Shivenleaf (CoS): Level 3 Elf Magic-user
• Vedison (AdS): Level 1 Gnome Magic-user

They travel to Randall’s Grove (arriving on the 8th) where Randall isn’t present, but his stewards assure them that it is just the natural order of things that spiders should move into the dome and they aren’t harming anyone there. Nonetheless, with Jacob Pharoe interested in continuing to harvest the mushrooms at the dome, they decide to go and see what it is all about.

On the 9th, they make their way to the spider dome just a few miles from the grove and see it is a severely deteriorated state after 8 long years of decay. However, inside they see some new webs forming ramps up to trees and restoring parts of the dome. Something has clearly been at work here.

Morijn volunteers to be the one to climb the large tree the nearest ramp climbs to (meeting it about 80 feet up, maybe 15 feet below the dome itself). Morijn’s climb is successful, but as he gets above the web ramp, a bear with eight extra legs and a hard carapace attacks and Morijn dodges by dropping down onto the ramp where he gets stuck.

Down below, Vedison starts desperately trying to climb the tree to get into spell range while Chiron looses arrows and Carl misses with a bolt and struggles to reload. Despite great success fighting the bear off with his log and resisting its poison, Morijn eventually falls unconscious and the bear hauls him up the tree and through a hole in the dome out of sight. Seeing no chance of pursuing Morijn, Chiron flees the dome in horse legs, returning in haste to the grove to get the help of Snass.

Meanwhile at the dome, Carl and Vedison argue about what to do next after Vedison is severely injured falling from the tree. While they debate, the bear reappears, attacking Carl and immediately dropping him. Vedison responds with a couple of fast death beams that wound and frighten the bear enough to drive it away. With the bear gone, he stabilizes Carl and moves him to a defensible position, taking his crossbow and encharging the bolt with a fear spell in case the bear returns.

Chiron returns with Snass before the bear emerges again and while Chiron heals Vedison, Snass climbs the tree to look for the bear. He finds himself an a cocoon of web where he moves to free a web-encapsulated Morijn, finding him still alive. While he cuts him lose, the bear attacks by surprise again, but Snass is tough and fights off the poison before beating the bear to an unrecognizable pulp and dropping it from the tree.

With Morijn free, Snass feeds him some healing potion and gets him back on his feet before giving him an ounce of flying potion with which to descend to the ground. Snass takes a web sack of coins and other things and climbs down, leaving the other four to search the dome and returning to the grove.

The others collect mushrooms and pick through the bear’s shattered, furry exoskeleton for pieces that present any novelty before returning to the grove. Vedison levels up.

Something that’s been on the list of possible adventurers for years, but we finally needed it with no firm plans for an irregular collection of players. Splitting up the party vertically against a vertically mobile enemy proved pretty dangerous. “TPK” was said at least once, though it may have been after Chiron ran for help.