Session 13: Facing the Arachnomancer

Riya was the first to react. Using her slippers of spiderwalking she raced up the wall and onto the ceiling, closing with the arachnomancer before he could react. She knocked him back with a flurry of blows that would have stunned a normal person. He took the blows, smiled cruelly at Riya as he wiped blood from his lips, and turned and ran the other direction along the ceiling. As he approached the mysterious orb, he leapt downward into the air. His arms closed around the orb and he suddenly vanished in a flash.

PPP, recognizing that the arachnomancer, had cast dimension door, decided to take a gamble. Grabbing Kiki nearby, he swooshed his cape of the mountebank theatrically and vanished in a poof of smoke that left the smell of brimstone behind.

Two of the spiders shot webs at the party while the remaining two moved to attack. Zhang was caught in the web but was able to tear free with his powerful strength. As the party closed into combat with the hideous arachnids, the ground began to shake and stone fell from the ceiling. One stone struck Mid on the cheek and she felt a drop of blood roll down her cheek. It seemed like the tomb was beginning to collapse and this time it wasn’t an illusion. One by one, the adventurers disengaged from the spiders and began to run for the exit portal.

Meanwhile, PPP and Kiki had teleported back to the entrance of the tomb. They saw the arachnomancer on the deck of the drow ship, frowning at them. He ran his hands alonside his wrists muttering words and loud explosions echoed behind him from the ice wall, spraying the cavern with ice. Kiki and PPP averted their eyes from the explosion, but when they turned to look, a giant block of ice had separated from the opposite ice wall and was sliding diagonally down and away from the ship.

Realizing that the ship was their best chance of escape, Kiki and PPP moved to engage the arachnomancer. PPP moved closer, using the pillars of the temple as cover. Kiki attempted to close with the arachnomancer. As she did so, the arachnomancer held out his finger and began mumbling arcane words. Kiki’s mind was temporarily clouded and confused, wanting to give into any demands the arachnomancer made. Then she shook her head. She remembered being mind controlled before and would never let it happen again. With a cry of rage, she moved forward to strike.

The arachnomancer was momentarily surprised by Kiki’s resistance, but quickly recovered. He ducked below decks with Kiki quick on his trail. Inside the ship, he moved toward the helm of the ship, but seeing Kiki was still on his trail, he turned and said “enough of this play.” He then began to transform, his body elongating and his hands and armos extending into arachnoid legs as more legs sprouted from his body. Kiki found herself facing a fearsome giant spider. It lurched forward and bit at her. She could feel the poison coursing through her system, but fought back, using her shield to knock it prone before striking. Slowly, she drove it back into the command room of the ship. PPP joined in the fray, striking the spider with thunderous noise and psychically damaging words. As they battled, they began to hear the faint sounds of things hitting the outside of the hull.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party had made it to the portal and one by one had used it to teleport to the entrance to the tomb. The shaking continued in this cavern. They could see the large exit carved into the ice on the other side and sounds of battle from within the ship. Reverting to her urchin days, Riya decided to make a hasty exit. She ran to the ship and then leaped from it through the hole on the far wall. Landing as gracefully as a tiger, she suddenly started sliding down on the ice that was slanting diagonally down. She was able to keep her balance, but her momentum was quickly carrying her toward the opening on the other end and a fall of unknown height. Thinking quickly, she dug her wakizashi blades into the ice to slow her slide, eventually coming to a halt a few feet before the edge of the ice cliff.

The rest of the adventurers momentarily watched Riya’s acrobatics with a quizzical expression and then charged forward to join the battle below decks. As the first of the adventurers made their way below deck and into the command room, they saw Kiki take a bite to the shoulder from a gigantic spider. She seized up from the poison coursing through her system and fell prone onto the floor. At that very moment, PPP pointed his hand at the spider and whispered strange and alien words. The spider reared up and gave a strangled inhuman cry and collapsed to the ground. Slowly, its shape reverted to that of the drow arachnomancer, now lying unconscious and possibly dying. The orb rolled to a stop on the ground.

As several people rushed to Kiki’s aid, Terlis ran to the lifejammer helm. The sounds of debris hitting the ship were getting louder and it seemed that if action wasn’t taken quickly, they would all be crushed under tons of ice. Terlis saw a helm attached to some sort of wires. Intuiting its purpose, he grimaced in anticipation and put it on. Immediately he was hit by a sharp pain in his head that radiated out toward the rest of his body. Quickly it subsided to a dull ache, but Terlis knew that it was slowly sucking his life force. The ship seemed to lift a little, energized by his life force. Terlis put his hands on the black orb of the helm and steered the ship out of the cavern and into the ice tunnel. Zhang ran up onto deck and threw down a rope to collect Riya on the way out.

The ship came out in the original excavation tunnel which did not appear to be in danger of collapse. Kiki and the arachnomancer were both stabilized. As the party watched the ice collapse and bury the tomb of horrors they had just barely escaped, they felt a shadow come over them and looked up to see another ship descending into the tunnel. It was the current guards of the ice asteroid, coming to investigate the disturbance. After some tense moments, the party was able to talk down the guards who were surprised to find them on a drow arachnoid ship. They explained a little of what had happened, but left it somewhat vague, including the fact that they had a prisoner in their possession. They insisted that they could only give full details to Baroness Uda. The guard captain was initially quite suspicious, but eventually acquiesed to the honeyed words of Clancy. He agreed to tow the party’s new ship back to the Rock of Bral where they could explain themselves properly.

As towing arrangements were prepared, the party was finally able to let down from their frantic and desperate adventure. When Terlis put his hands on the mysterioud orb, he found that his viewpoint was momentarily transported to a point above the ice asteroid. Three faint lines of energy extended out from the orb about a mile or so and then vanished. This pattern was repeated at irregular intervals, forming a flickering, that was identical to the light flickering at the orb’s center. Puzzled, Terlis used his arcane skills and magic to further understand the orb. It gave a strong hint of abjuration magic. It also seemed to give those who stayed in its close proximity for a length of time a certain preternatural sense of forewarning.

As the caravan of ships began their voyage back to the Rock, the party woke the arachnomancer and began to interrogate him, with Clancy taking the lead. After much questioning, it became clear that he knew nothing about the actual nature of the orb he sought. He was resentful of his place in drow society and had come to beleive that finding the orb would be his “ticket” upward, but he had no actual knowledge of what it could do. He indicated that he would be deeply in the party’s debt should they decide to let him go, rather than turn him over at the Rock. The party discussed the issue privately and seemed to be leaning toward freeing him, but decided to sleep on it.

As each member of the party drifted off to sleep in the gently rocking vessel, a strange and shared dream came to them all…

A Strange Dream

The jungle heat is sweltering even this early in the morning as you quietly clean up the camp you made the previous night. Your campsite was at the edge of a cliff-face that looks out over a vast swamp. About a mile in the distance you can see the ancient ziggurat rising out of the swamp.

It has been five years since Kali’s forces swept down from the void to invade Oerth. The great empires of the world rose to defend themselves, but without a united front, they were separately overpowered and driven back. The great cities of Oerth now lay in ruin and resistance to the invasion is scattered and disjointed, led by guerilla resistance fighters like your own ragtag band. You all came from somewhere else and you are here together fighting for your lives and a future for Oerth because of what fate has put in your way.

According to the locals in a nearby village, this Ziggurat is the lair of an important commander for Kali’s forces in the region. If you can bring that commander down, you hope you can destabilize the region enough to promote greater resistance and maybe even drive a wedge in Kali’s domination of the planet. Its not much, but its all you can offer at the moment. As the sun rises higher in its arc, you look toward the ziggurat and consider how to approach it.

In this dream, the adventurers were not themselves. Each one of them had become a member of a ragtag band of survivors in a dream out of place and time. What awaited this group in the foreboding ziggurat?