19th April 2019
Player
Ewan
Charlotte
Tim
​Jay
​Dec
Character
Shamos
Berta
Tiny Tracey
​Valtius
​Clint
Alton Cracksmasher
Info
Level 3
Level 3
Level 3
Level 2
​Level 1 (new character)
Level 2 (forcibly recruited)
Our first session in a couple of months! On Good Friday too!
  • 2 months of pesky real life got in the way!

As always, the session began at the gates of the legendary Castle Torrog. The party descended to the edge of the shallow valley, west of the Edion foothills. The party spotted the old tower with a goblin lookout on the roof and gave it a wide berth and turned south.
  • Boring! They should do more stupid things - it's a lot more entertaining... for me!

The party had agreed to return to the quarry and explore the crack in the rock they had found on their last expedition there. The journey took a day and a half.

This was mostly uneventful, during the trip they rounded a gently bend in the old road and spotted a pair of bugbears also heading south; the bugbears had not noticed the party and kept going south.
The party kept their distance - and their eyes on the bugbears. After a while the bugbears left the old road, turned south-west and at last sight were seen heading towards the forest.
  • Probably a good call on their part. I doubt that 2 bugbears pose much of a threat. But the rewards are minimal and are a bigger waste of time than it's worth.
The next day at noon the party arrived back at the quarry; a quick scout ahead revealed that the quarry had once again been infested with giant spiders.​
After some discussion it was decided they should attack. The party doggedly entered the quarry and entered into the fray once more!

This time the spiders were more spread out across the quarry floor, consequently 3 of them got into melee range with the the party quite quickly.
Berta took point here and bore the brunt of the first attacks. She stood her ground but despite her dwarvish resilience was soon at risk falling prey to the giant spiders' venomous poison.
​Alton and then Tiny Tracy joined the clash.
  • Despite both Alton and Tracey being melee fighters, they held back in the opening rounds preferring to rely their less effective ranged attacks.

  • 2 things were different about this fight in the quarry.
  • The random change is positioning meant the spiders got to the party quicker and were a bigger threat.
  • The 2 spellcasters held off using their 1st and 2nd level spells, wanting to preserve them for whatever waited beyond the crack.​
  • I guess they were worried of what the poison would do to them.
  • It was bad news for Berta!
  • Even worse as eventually Alton and Tracey had to join the fight anyway!
​But it was too little too late and Berta was taken down.
  • D'oh!
Then one-by-one Alton and then Tracey were also laid low by spider-venom.
  • Perhaps going into melee quicker might have thinned the numbers enough to lessen the effectiveness of the spiders.
  • Although this brings up an interesting point: The players know that they'll probably be going against enemies that deploy poison. Are there any preparations they can make beforehand to mitigate this. I don't know what their exact abilities are. But hey don't seem to think about it?

Eventually Clint had to charge into the fray and with a useful cleric spell stabilize the wounds of all 3.The giant spiders were eventually defeated, but only half of the party were still standing.
After this it was decided by the party to take a short rest and they retreated beyond the boundary of the quarry and into the dilapidated, but somewhat defensible old metal shed-like buildings.
  • Yep the usual '1 hour rest, 100 foot away from the last fight' strategy.
  • At least they don't have the gall to look surprised when their rest was interrupted!
  • Speaking of which.

However, during the rest, 2 spiders emerged from the crack and moved in to the quarry.

​Despite the best efforts of the party to hide, they are spotted by the giant spiders who rapidly scuttled in to fight.
  • I did give the party advantage of their stealth rolls.
Unluckily for the spiders, the party had opportunity to pepper them with ranged attacks before they drew too close and it was a mostly easy fight for the party.
  • Meh.
​After their rest the party entered the cave network. They found it to be a rocky and rough place filled with spider webbing
Cautiously the party proceeded along the tunnel until it opened up into a largish web filled cavern.
The party carefully scrutinised the cave and found 3 spots where the ground looked strange, the could not determine what was strange about it.
A discussion was held and it was decided that they would set fire to the webbing to clear the area. This was done and they retreated away from the risk of choking and blinding smoke, electing to take a long break and come back later. 

The next morning they returned to an acrid stink that filled the air. It wasn't enough to hinder them and they searched the cave. The 3 spots that they were suspicious of were actually depressions in the cave floor, they surmised that these may have contained 'trapdoor spiders'. Other than the remains of the fire, there was nothing else in this room.
  • If Moses had ever descended from the mount with the 10 commandments for RPG tactics. The 1st, 2nd & 3rd commandments would have been; 'Thou shall use fire to solve all problems.'.
  • The 4th commandment probably would have been; 'Thou shall shall not covert thy neighbour's fire. Thy shall bring plenty of thine own fire.'.
The party pressed on to the first exit on the left. This was another corridor that opened into another cavern. The party had noticed that the fire had not reached as far as the room and in the bottleneck of the corridor, a firebreak had been created by clearing the webbing.
  • There's an intelligence behind all these giant spiders...

The party checked this room. Disturbingly, they found numerous heavily webbed corpses hanging in the webs here, of woodland animals and the occasional goblin. There was little else to be found here, so the party pressed on.
  • It was actually the giant spider's larder.
The party entered another tunnel, the party discovered that the webbing became thinner and eventually disappeared.
The party were now in a large normal looking cave.
  • When the webbing thinned out, the players began getting suspicious. No webbing meant no spiders. Why?
  • Good instinct, there's a ambush waiting in the cave.
Once again, the party looked around and spotted a earthy looking mound, which in a rocky area, seemed to stick out like a sore thumb.
  • Their perceptions rolls allowed them to spot the mound, but wasn't good enough to spot the hidden threat.
Tiny Tracey suspiciously threw her javelin into the mound - with no result.
So the party approached the mound.
  • Here we go!
As they did so, a pair of grey worm-like creatures with tentacled beak mouths (disguised as rocky features) pounced and attacked the party.
  • These are Gricks, they gain advantage when hiding amongst rocks due to the colour of their skin and they like to ambush their prey. Disturbingly, they use their tentacles to drag prey close and then attack their beaked mouths.
Even though they were ambushed, the party responded well and managed to dispatch their worm enemies without too much incident.
  • They finished off the Gricks quite quickly: But the party was well aware that they had to use a couple of memorised spells to do this - Shamos also spent a couple of sorcery points. 'In the previous engagements, the 2 spellcasters had managed to avoid using any spells other than cantrips.
  • The spells were 'The big guns' as they themselves called the spells.
The party proceeded to search the mound and found treasure and loot that had belonged to previous victims of the creatures.
After this, the party had to leave the caves unexplored and retreated back to Castle Torrog without incident.
  • ​The quarry has a high respawn rate. Giant spiders will respawn in the quarry in 1d6+2 days, the party intends to return to the quarry in 7 days. So it's most likely that they will encounter giant spiders again.
  • I think that they're aware that they must manage resources for several encounters without having the luxury being able to take a lot of breaks.

End of session eleven.