Dark Ritual, Interrupted 

May 4, 2020

The group pauses for several heartbeats but then decide they need to keep going after the one that dared to fireball them.  Stepping further into the cave, Raz follows the intruders scent for a hundred feet before it disappears.  Raz takes some time to sniff around and realizes that the person is a shape shifter and it included scent.  He figures out that the shifter went to the ceiling in the cave, which he can still just make out a foot above him.  As they keep moving forward, Drewgan and Shyrrik hear something behind them.  A multi limbed creature rushes toward them, trying to scare them.  Sadly, Cerberus gets hit by it and runs off, yelping.  The rest turn to attack.  The creature has some resistance to their weapons but not so much that they can't get through it.  Then the other two show up.  

The new ones also have multiple limbs.  Once has a short sword in six hands and rushes Shyrrik!  The other is able to cast different spells at the same time with the limbs!  Spells and arrows fly.  Shyrrik is on the defensive but still hitting with his shots, even as he defends against a flurry of attacks!  The creatures go down quickly and then Raz turns back to get the scent.  Drewgan turns into a giant cat and is able to pick up the scent as well.  

The floor of the caves is soft, almost like moss.  Looking at it, it's layers and layers of old webs and remains.  The group doesn't want to think about that.  Every once in a while, stepping on the floor causes a flurry of tiny spiders to flee the area, sometimes going up a boot!  The cave smells musty and the light shows how big this cavern is.  Eight foot ceilings and big rooms.  The group can't think of that as they keep going forward.  

The scent takes them past several tee junctions in the cave, moving forward and deeper.  The dwarves think the floor is slightly inclined down but nothing serious.  Another tee intersection and Raz and Drewgan turn into it this time.  More webs.  Lots and lots of web.  They disrupt a cluster of webs across the cave and hundreds of palm sized spiders rush around the group, sometimes over their boots and even higher.  

The next cave reveals more and again someone muttering that the master can't be interrupted and the intruders must be stopped.  However, except for one lucky shot by the creature that mutters, these are soon dealt with.  As they are searching, very quickly, there isn't much to salvage in the spiders.  The next big room sees more spiders!  One is made from swords, daggers, sabres, and other weapons.  Raz tries to slow it down with Entangle but it's sword limbs just cut through the floor as the floor tries to grasp it.  The large undead spider isn't as lucky and gets caught on the entangle.  Both go down quickly.  

The sword spider catches the interest of several, who start combing through the weapons.  Volhoric recognizes some quality weapons and starts dividing them out.  Marcus can tell that several are magical and points those out.  When Raz screams Volhoric glances up, looks back down at the weapons, and then gets up and moves off.  

Raz was keeping watch at the south end of the large room, while Shyrrik and Cerberus watched from the north.  When the caster appeared, Raz knew it was foolish but he didn't want another big spell!  He yelled and charged after the human, hitting him again and again.  The human defended well enough that no strike fatally wounded him but wore him down.  And then Raz ran out of steam before he could finish him off.  The human stepped back and started casting but Raz took a deep breath, screamed again, and followed!  He missed and watched in horror as all the wounds he'd inflicted heal.  He shouted several curses.  And then noticed everything else in the room.  

A misshapen creature yelled out about sacrifice and protecting the master.  Webs flew from his fingers, taking away Raz's retreat.  The big spider stopped long enough to bite Raz, taking him to a knee.  Then several spiders moved to the webs, acting as guards.  Raz stood, slowly and painfully, but he wouldn't go down without a fight.  

The group rushed to the south part of the cave to get to Raz.  The webs flew and covered the cave.  Volhoric lit a candle and started them on fire but it was going to take time and near suicide to go into the burning webs.  They had to wait.  Marcus readied his wand, Shyrrik had his bow, and Drewgan, still in cat form, waited for his chance.  The flames took a long time to burn away, revealing spiders and other creatures.  And in the back, the group could see Raz defending himself against three spider creatures.  They rushed inside!  

Raz kept getting little hits on himself.  He defended against the one on his left, and the one on the right scored a hit.  He tried to shake things up but they sliced and sliced.  

Volhoric got into the cave first and nearly paid for it when a spider bit him hard.  He still managed to keep going, stepping off to the shadows, hoping for his moment.  

The human came forward, leaving the altar where he beseeched Malar to come, and flung another fireball.  Cerberus went down and Marcus hurt from it.  Shyrrik ran to Cerberus and bandaged him up.  Then grabbed his bow again.  They would pay for hurting his dog!  They pressed forward against the spiders, That's when the human made his mistake.  

The rest ran into the cave and engaged the spiders and other creatures.  Raz stumbled back after one of the creatures on him went down.  Dakxer cast a healing spell, and Raz felt his wound lessen.  He might not be up to full but he figured he could take care of the ones who had been harassing him!  

An altar and an idol stood in one corner.  Raz could see the bodies of people, dead off to the side.  They were fresh as well.  Blood smeared the altar and pooled around it, the faint scent of it hung in the air.  The human again moved forward, ready to cast a spell.  Raz tried to shout but couldn't completely take his eyes of his own opponents.  He need not have worried.  As the human passed Volhoric, Volhoric let him get another eight feet away.  Raz watched as the shadows seem to drop from Volhoric, as if he wore them like a cloak.  A flick of Volhoric's wrist sent the dagger into the base of the human's skull.  The human choked a bit then pitched forward, dead.  

The party cleaned up the rest.  Without their leader, coordination from the spiders and others disappeared.  They did pause for a few minutes, letting Drewgan and Dakxer heal them.  

Dakxer, Drewgan, and Marcus stared at the altar.  They could feel the power that had been built up around it.  This human had charged it up with all of the deaths but they didn't know why.  Carefully, over ten minutes, they slowly released the energy back into the ground, harmlessly.  When all of the energy was finally dispersed, they sighed in relief.  

They group wanted out of the caves!  More tiny spiders were still crawling everywhere but they stopped on the way out, getting some poison sacks and other goodies they found.  They trudge past the fields, the bodies of the ants and other creatures lying there.  That seemed like weeks ago.  When they get to Martin's farm, he welcomes them fondly and wants to hear it all.  After they explained what they found, he gives them the 5000 marks as a reward and insists they stay the night.  He orders a feast started, for all, and honors them that night.  

3600 xp  

Loot (We can do identifying next time):

Three doses giant spider venom

Two doses Hellwidow venom

Two doses Ogre Spider venom

Two doses Phase Spider venom

Three magical bracers

Ten potions

Five wands

Several masterwork weapons.  (Really a mix of many types and a matter of saying what you want to have found.)

Two magical daggers

Magical long sword

magical short sword

Magical cloak

Plus Martin gave them the 5000 marks and two potions of Cure Light Wounds each.  

GM Notes

• I wasn't able to use a lot of special abilities of the monsters because they took them out too fast!  
•  That's a sign of good tactics, so it's not bad.  I'm just disappointed a few abilities weren't used.   
• I tried to stay focused but missed several places where I could describe things better, so am doing that here.
• Sadly, had some issues with people connecting to d20Pro.  Not sure which side it was on. 
• I think d20Pro worked out well.  We were able to use it for the players who were late and that worked well. 
• This also allowed a bit more combat than I might have done but it works well and on much bigger maps.   
• I would say the bad thing was a lot of ones were rolled!  I think it's about the same reaction. 
• I really liked the fight where Raz rushed ahead.  I think that's going to be memorable, as compared to the points where the spiders almost got to use their special powers!   
• I do use a silver standard. 
• I'm using pennies to describe copper, marks to describe silver, and crowns to describe gold. 
• I think the characters are already powerful enough that they would mostly use crowns but I like using marks.  Not only is it a higher number but makes sense.
• I also don't use a decimal system.  It's easy but not realistic. 
• I did switch over to using a lot of different rules, again for the fun.
• I gave them full move and attacks.  They still have iterative penalties on attacks, so that works for PF1 and it's more fun to have all their attacks.
• I do criticals if they hit by a huge amount as well.  Again, it's fun.   
• I did sign up and use zoom and I liked how well it worked for this. 
• Pretty solid connection and we could all see each other.
• I'm still figuring out my monitor configuration and how to arrange things, so at the moment, I do miss zoom texts.
• It allowed me to use Syrinscape, so I had a constant spider scuttling sound going until the final battle, where I made it quiet.  Worked well! 

BACK