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Spider home ...

Ick.  How could these spiders think to move into this thing?  Guess they figured it was a secret place based on a spider's web, but ick.  This level was nasty.

We had started in the alley ways.  Then advanced to abandoned plazas and other outdoor places.

On this level, we found ourselves starting in a walled garden.  As the city had given way to vampirism, the people had lost any need or desire for gardens, giving them over to spiders and snakes and who knows what else (though I was sure we would find out).  There was a lot less moss to be seen.

This level we started running into more ghouls, they seemed to be fighting with the spiders for possession.

There were the spiderkin, of course,  Some of the gardens also had the twisted spider dryads, gone mad with the foulness of the world.  There were also some large spiders, I'm not sure what kind they were, but they looked like really large black widow spiders.  Those came in several sizes, as well as a centipede like creature (about the size of a pony or twice the size/length of a Saint Bernard) that the spiders seemed to have tamed or at least dominated.

This was much like the last level, only the grisly remains were fresher, and by this time the vampires were not as hungry for flesh as they were for blood and power.  As a result, the bodies that stirred to life were more likely to be zombies. There were also left over skeletons from when they had begun to animate the bones of their victims. The good thing was that bones pretty much quit coming to life.  The skeletons shuffled around and you could see them before they sensed you.  Left over enchantments and second grade equipment.  At one time the city's masters had thought to replace their army with skeletons until they discarded them.  Here they were.  The zombies were pretty obvious too, after a while.  If it had flesh on it and was still, it was going to rise as a zombie.  If it had flesh on it and was moving, it was a ghoul.  The ghouls were finishing off the last of the bones that weren't petrified.  Some were the "toxic waste" of the type of sorceries that were going on, the others were those who had embraced the beast -- it made them unpalatable to vampires (a dog ghoul repulses vampires -- they are just unpalatable) and it gave them a life style and a place in the city's underclass. Encounters this area: Random wraiths, attached to ruined gardens.  1d6+1 points of damage to the focus dispels the wraith, but not easily walked around, twisting in place. Moss Trolls (on this level too, but very few). Tree Trolls Spiderkin -- exploring males light skirmishers recon patrol Zombies Hungry Dead (Zombies) (like ghouls, except they crave the flesh of the living instead of the dead). Enchanted Zombies with arms, armor. Ghouls Dog Ghouls (beast+undead) (pretty much interested only in eating zombies, but they won't hesitate to make fresh corpses if pushed wrong, not to mention they eat the other kind of ghoul). Undead Animations  (chaos+undead) (hungry for flesh, dead or alive) Sentient undead ghouls.  These are those who have embraced failed kar manta shrines and who have been cursed with an inability to continue on the kar manta path, a hunger for human flesh and chaos taints. Ghouls, 1d2 chaos taints, 1d3 kar manta powers (1d3 force for each power), INT of 2d6+5.  These were a real shock and a real fight Spiders Spinneret Spiders (giant black widows, 2d6+6 SIZ, 3d6+12 SIZ, and 4d6+12 SIZ_ undead wolf spiders (animated zombie creatures, like wolf spiders except POW=1, all cutting weapons do half damage). web spiders (these cast webs). Spider/Dryads Giant Bugs Centipedes Final Encounter Giant Spider Dryad, with several wood trolls and female spiderkin Guards a chaos shrine.  Breaking the chaos shrine opens the pathway to the heart of the first three levels and the gate to the next set. Guarding the path is the shrine's spirit, a Chaos Demon in spider form, inhabiting a body based on a ghost crab from the China Sea (these crabs are also known as spider crabs and have a size of over 12" across). It uses webs and the web traps.

I'm going to spare you the talk about fighting our way through this mess.

Ick.

But when we thought we had finally beaten the mess, and the foul heart at the center, we realized we hadn't.

That was a real shock.  Guess finding yourself caught in webs that you can't burn out and that trap your hands, while a chaos demon is coming for you to suck out your life and your soul counts as a real shock.

But, Ariel could still call her knife.  You could see her wince as it drew blood.  And that kid's enchantment left him free.  He was pretty brave for just a little kid.  Ariel used her hide spell to hide him and gave him the knife and her gold ring.  As the creature came closer, the kid struck.  I didn't think he had it in him.  The knife struck true, and then Ariel called it to her, through the demon.  It was connected to her dragon talon rune and the antichaos force of it blasted through the spider, pulling it towards her through its own web as sleet and fire sparked about it (we weren't just sitting there waiting to be eaten.  When my one salamander got caught by the webbing too, we both decided to let rip with spells when the thing got in range).

The kid was running for it, and I don't blame him.  The demon finally exploded in a wave of gore and muck.  Frozen muck, I might add, that sleet spell was still running hard.  I was pouring out everything I had in fire at the thing as it came closer, trying to keep it back, while the knife bored through it in a blasting wave of energy and the poison kept burning into it.  The demon had started quiet as death, but as the poison began to take, it began to scream.

Eventually we caught our breath.  The knife came to Ariel and she cut herself free, then cut me free. I pulled the salamander back into where it had been bound.  We worked our way out of the web.  No wonder the spiders had seemed so driven.

I was really hoping that things wouldn't get any grosser.

We did find a magical cap that seemed to hide whoever wore it, and that had some healing bound into it.  We slapped that thing on the kid, while he lectured us about how this demon had been summoned by one of the factions in the city that had sought a different path than vampirism (though one just as evil) and how it had escaped my Mom since it was not the target of her wrath, and because it was already hiding in the city's hidden ways.

When the city fell, it decided it would grow into the web and reform the city in its own image.

Ick.

All the time the kid was talking he was scooping up whatever metal and other items were left from previous victims.  He had a sack full of gold and stuff that made him look like Santa Claus.

I fould three strands of amygdalin aureus in the web and wove them into my hair.  Ariel found several that were swallowed (that has to be the right word) into her staff, along with some of the web.  The rest of the stuff we let the kid gather up.

We crossed over the "bridge" (I'm not sure what to call it, kind of like a tunnel, kind of like a bridge) as the webbing started to fade to ash.  I think if we had only known the way, we could have used this point to leave the maze easily, but April spotted a pathway out and we found ourselves on the surface.

Would we return to see what else was down there?  Who knows.  Two days in that underground "h e double ll" and I was ready for a real bath and the trip back to the city.  I was hoping the horses were still there.  I'd had enough of spiders.

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