Silvana summoned the cloud ship and the party headed south to C-Ra to see if there was any word from Thorongil or Yves. After an uneventful few hours, several pale white sausage-sized maggots with little faces burrowed up out of the cloud. (Think larvae, only smaller.) Silvana, realizing that someone had planted a massively infested cloud above the dwarves to await her summons, started to bring the ship down (probably figuring their entry visas weren't expensive enough to include touchdown on the plane).
- Maggot 1:
- "Very clever, Champion. Fortunately, we are merely here as messengers, not to destroy you."
- Maggot 2:
- "We symbolize how even the purest good hides great evil."
- Maggot 3:
- "Within each of you, there lives a maggot like me. In time, it shall be freed."
- Silvana:
- "So you're merely hitching a ride?"
- Maggot 1:
- "We seek Good company today and little else."
- Silvana:
- "You said that you are messengers. Who are you representing?"
- Maggot 2:
- "We represent Evil."
- Ganeth:
- "Which one?"
- Maggot 3:
- "One could say that our mere presence is a message. One could also say that it is you who is hitching a ride on our ship."
- Silvana:
- "So what do you believe represents the purest good?"
- Maggot 1:
- "Purity exists only in the imagination."
- Maggot 2:
- "A more optimistic way of saying that is: `Everyone has the potential to do great evil.' We can help you live up to your potential."
- Silvana:
- "Are you guys a fortune screensaver or what?"
- Maggot 3:
- "We are but maggots on the totem pole. If you seek greater wisdom, you must seek deeper for the knowledge.
- Frankel:
- "On the contrary, every small part contains its whole."
- Ganeth:
- "So if purest good exists only in the imagination, and great evil hides in purest good, does this mean that great evil only imagines it hides?"
- Maggot 2:
- "A veritable ship of philosophers."
- Silvana:
- "So you believe that we are on the verge of committing some great evil?"
- Maggot 1:
- "Fear not, Champion, with open eyes you will more clearly see the Light -- and the Darkness. I fear that we must depart. You may have the cloud now. We have no desire to alight on your filthy plane."
The maggots disappeared like summoned monsters as the cloudship skimmed along ten feet above the ground. Silvana fired off a holy damage; there were lots of sizzling sounds from inside the cloud, but the cloud itself remained structurally sound. Then they rose again, and the rest of their trip was uneventful.
It's probably a sign of respect when the bad guys go to this much trouble to play with your head. At least, that's what everyone hoped.
The party checked in at Silvator's, where they found Yves and were introduced to Rogroc.
- Frankel: [to Yves]
- "Are you interested in partying with us still?"
- Yves:
- "I'm interested in Silverton. Spiders there too. You hate spiders, right?"
- Ganeth:
- "I don't hate anyone these days. Causes too much trouble."
- Silvana:
- "Hmm...`hate' in what sense? I dislike many of the things that these spiders led by Rakni have done to this plane. And as a younger adventurer I had quite a phobia about spiders, who are often associated with the drow."
- Frankel: [to Yves, after some prodding by Stealth]
- "You know what a drow is?"
- Rogroc:
- "Drow is when it not rain for long time."
Ganeth was still very concerned about the quest spell; when Frankel asked if there was a library around where G could research the problem, the party hit on the idea of trying to consult a local sage. Unfortunately, there was no particular reason to think that the C-Ra sages would want to either see them or help them, especially with local sentiment running against the West.
Silvator appeared and wanted to talk business, so he, Silvana, Stealth, and Ganeth disappeared into the back. Silvator was concerned about the West's intentions toward C-Ra and wanted Silvana to make a small speech about it at some point. (Apparently, there's some worry about the West wanting to take over C-Ra, and some talk about entering the war on Banzeel's behalf.) And he wanted to be paid for Yves' training (which wasn't a major problem). Finally, he wanted the party to take on a sensitive job: Some time a ago, Elbleem sponsored a group of adventurers on an anti-spider mission, and they brought back an a egg case. Elbleem is out of town, the case has hatched, eight baby spiders have started spinning a magical web, and Silvator wants someone to quietly deal with it. Silvana said they'd think it over.
The party again tried to explain to Yves why adventuring in Silverton seemed like a really bad idea by recapping their last visit there.
- Silvana:
- "When we went to the city we did the following..."
- Beeel:
- "1. Got attacked from all directions.
2. Ran away."- Silvana:
- "We had the party stoneskinned, two high-level friends (a mage and a thief), and a major distraction in the city, in the form of powerful demons who were successfully driven off. We made it to the beach. We were attacked from the water by 18 HD aquatic spiders. The beach was trapped; our thieves were working on bypassing stuff when we got attacked by a circle of spellcasting stoneskinned spiders. The place was encased by a webbing that seemed resistant to a high level mage's powerful fire magic. And we didn't even have to face the Void spider or the stoning spiders."
- Ganeth:
- "Basically, we bounced harmlessly off their defenses and ran like hell."
The party also explained Rakni's tit-for-tat policy, noting the incident with the void spider, the ambush at the dwarven caverns, and the attacks on G in C-Ra. While comparing notes, Ganeth and Yves realized that they'd arrived in C-Ra on the same day, and they were both staying at Silvator's inn on the nights G was attacked there -- but nothing has bothered Yves so far, and nobody knows why.
Yves eventually proposed a deal: Since liberating Silverton is going to require outside help, the party isn't well-disposed toward getting it from Asmo, the East isn't going to do it, C-Ra isn't going to do it, and the dwarves aren't going to do it, that leaves the West. If the West is willing to help Silverton after the war, he's willing to help with the war so the West will help him sooner.
Meanwhile, Frankel and Pepper went to join the Fighter's Guild. The locals were less than welcoming, but after Frankel beat one of the hobs in a duel (first to score three hits wins, no attacks with natural weaponry -- too bad the hob didn't consider the hoof parry angle), there were no further objections.
Silvana also did a sending to Clynthia.
- Silvana:
- "Updates on Banzeel cloud situation? Interested in doing anti-cloud mission. Unkown extraplanar seeded cloud ship with larvae. Continued ship use dangerous?"
- Clynthia:
- "Recommend cautious investigation of Banzeel proto demiplane. Speculate phenomenon of mortal origin. Larvae infestation noted. Not structurally significant at present so continue normal use. Clynthia"
And in a very roundabout way, the party ended up accepting the mission in Elbleem's warehouse. While Elbleem is about the epitome of merchant scum, he's the most powerful merchant in C-Ra, he'd probably be less than thrilled by the prospect of a quest spell decimating Banzeel, and he might have the contacts to find out more about what's going on there. Plus it's an anti-spider mission, which is good for Yves. Of course, there was going to be the usual retaliation problem, so the party's more distinctive members used polymorphs (by spell or potion, purchased half-price from Silvator) and some borrowed equipment to disguise themselves as the Mockingbirds (or was it Raptors? They never did get that sorted out), a new operative team in town.Person Cover ------ ----- Ganeth Atticus (half-elven fighter/mage) Silvana Nightwing (human thief-priest of the Dark River) Beeel 'Chuck (human kensai) Frankel Orr (hobgoblin fighter) Stealth Quash (human archer from the swamps) Rogroc Rogash (different name, different person, right?) Yves Yves (already an unknown, so felt no cover was needed)
As additional precautions, G had a message spell ready so the party wouldn't need to talk out loud and have their voices recognized, and distinctive weapons were covered with weaponblack (which Elissa wasn't happy about). Other precautions were taken to minimize the number of detectable high level spells in operation, hopefully adding to the illusion that this group was lower level than the party.
So the party got into its disguises and walked over to Elbleem's warehouse under cover of darkness, accompanied by Silvator. The plan was for them to bypass the main lock, head down some stairs to the target room (a 20'x20'x10' chamber), and kill the spiders with a minimum of collateral damage. After a little trip through Elbleems's well-kept garden, they were met by a large scimitar-wielding woman who'd handled the alarms and necessary pass phrases; she led them to the door to the lower (interesting) part of the warehouse.
Silvana went to work on the lock (the door seemed to be gnomish and carried a sizable static charge), and other precasting went off. Silvator took out a notebook and started jotting down tidbits for posterity. As soon as Silvana was done with the lock, the door was pulled open from the inside, revealing a ju-ju zombie (not one of Elbleem's) with a stinking cloud breath weapon. Beeel and Yves plunged into the darkness after it and killed it but ate a 10-die lightning bolt from further in for their trouble. Beeel then managed to close with the caster but bounced off its stoneskin and discovered that somebody's invented an electrical version of fire shield. Ganeth and Frankel, sensing a frontage problem with the stairway, dimdoored directly into the target room.
The spellcaster dimdoored out the following round, taking the darkness with it. The party was left with a caltrop-strewn stairway and a door; they were able to sweep the caltrops aside easily, but the door was more resistant. Yves saw a mirage-like figure near the door that vanished when Rogroc whacked it. Inside the door, Ganeth and Frankel squared off against an invisible imp in the darkness; Ganeth also heard some clicking sounds but couldn't identify the source. (They turned out to be the frustrated gnashing of bound spiders' mandibles.)
Silvana bypassed the wizard lock on the door, and Stealth scanned the room with bat sense. He noted "Atticus", "Orr", and the imp, as well as the spellcaster from before (a thin humanoid later dubbed the Thin Man), webs near the ceiling, eight unmoving spiders in a circle, and another ju-ju zombie headed for the door.
The main events of the rest of the combat were Stealth deciding that the Thin Man bore an uncanny resemblance to a vampire (which is not what G, who'd closed with him, really wanted to hear, though it could tie in with whoever the halflings saw in Lotus' crystal ball), a giant rat and ten smaller ones joining the fun, a bat jumping from the Thin Man to G and trying to possess him, the Thin Man going astral and trading places with a night hag, Silvana dispelling the hag, and the bat making a howling noise when killed.
As the first portion of the program ended and con light was shed on the room, the light caused the bindings on the spiders to dissolve, setting up the second combat of the evening. The baby Mr. B's took full/half/1 from slashing/bludgeoning/piercing weapons, were AC 0, bit for observed 9-13 damage plus paralytic poison, regenned as long as one of them was up, and exploded in a little burst of fire while any were up. Yves' sword also woke up when it hit a spider and started yelling in Orcish, which only G understood; Elissa was far from pleased.
- Sword: [Orcish]
- "Speak to me, worthy wielder, so that we may, in Gruumsh's name, rid the world of these foul creatures. Die Goblin Spiders, Maglubiyet is but a pile of dung when compared to Gruumsh!"
Of all the orcish deities, Gruumsh happens to be the most rabidly elf-hating. But why the sword was talking about goblin deities in the context of spiders was rather unclear.
Much damage and poisoning later, the party had killed the big spiders, though Yves' sword detected more in the web. (It also had a habit of calling them "goblin spiders".) Ganeth and Silvana did a controlled burn of the webs with burning hands, leaving a translucent spider on the ceiling. It seemed unable to phase out of the room, but it was able to animate two of the spider bodies as zombies. The party killed them all.
Frankel checked for tracks around the inner doors and found humanoid tracks (possibly zombies), rat tracks, spider tracks, and possibly a set of small ooze tracks running under one of the sealed doors.
- Silvator:
- "I was hoping that it was not that door..."
- Ganeth:
- "That door?"
- Silvator:
- "It would be best if we did not open that door. Let's just say that there are certain skeletons in that closet."
Silvator decided to stay behind and check on a few things, and the party headed back to the trading post.