26th April 2019

Player
Ewan
Charlotte
Tim

Character
Shamos
Berta
Tiny Tracey
Alton Cracksmasher
Tarkus
Dziadeklupus

Info
Level 3
Level 3
Level 3
Level 2 (forcibly recruited)
​Level 2 (new character)
Level 1 (forcibly recruited)

Session 12 was only 1 week after session 11!

As always, the PCs began their adventure at the gates of Castle Torrog. They descended the mountain path into the shallow valley below.

They completely ignored the old tower, didn't care about the goblin look and were eager to return to the quarry.

• ​Yeah, they've well and truly learnt to avoid the tower.

The journey south took 1 1/2 days and they arrived at the quarry by early afternoon.

The party scouted the quarry and found that there were 5 spiders.
​
The quarry had been repopulated, although with less spiders this time.The party entered the quarry and the spiders scuttled across the quarry floor to attack.

• The quarry has a fast respawn rate, it take a maximum of 8 days for giant spiders to reappear here.

​
It took the giant spiders 3 round to reach the party at the other end of the quarry. The party took the opportunity to loosed a few volleys of ranged attack at the spiders. They managed to kill one spider before they got closer.
When the spiders closed to within 30 feet, they launched their ranged webbing attack: This was very effective as both the front line fighters (Berta and Tracey) were webbed up and restrained.

• The party had completely forgotten about the webbing ability and 5 spiders got to target the 2 frontline fighters.
• To be fair, the party had tried to thing the numbers before melee... But their damage rolls were crap!

Berta managed to break free of her webbing (although her action for the round was consumed), Tracey was not so lucky. She took a hit whilst in the webbing. A round later, she breaks free and the tide of the battle slowly turns in their favour, eventually the spiders are eradicated.

​The parry then re-entered the caves. In the intervening week, webbing had returned to the caves - although not so thicky or extensively.

The party followed the tunnel until it entered the cave with 3 other exits and which had previously contained 3 trapdoor traps. Now there were just 3 giant spiders. The spiders attacked the intruders into their caves.

• The respawn rate in the caves is slightly faster than outside, the inside should always be populated before the outside.

Fighting is harsh and Tracey is knocked unconscious, but the party is victorious.
After some discussion, the party retreat to a defensive spot they found last session and took a short break.

During this time, the party spotted a pair of giant spiders exiting the caves and scuttling off west out of the quarry and presumably down the path. This left the party confused and suspicious, suspicious that the giant spiders were calling reinforcements.

• The quarry has 2 random encounter rolls, independent of each other.
• If the party spend some time at the quarry, they may encounter this second activity. If they spend long enough, then it's guaranteed they will see the activity.
• The second activity in question is hunting: The PCs saw some spiders going off to the woods to hunt some woodland prey or a goblin or 2.
• Still, it fuelled their mild paranoia, so good!

Anyway, after their short rest the party returned to the cave.

This cave has 3 other exits: In the previous session, the party had taken the 1st exit on the left and usually they follow the 'always left' philosophy. But on this occasion they decided to go right!

This led into a dead-end and the now slightly burnt skeletal remains of a man. Amongst the remains was a large number of amount of money and the ashy remains of something once made of paper...

• So; way back, just before session one of this campaign, I gave one of the players half of a torn map with a clue to a 'buried treasure'.
• Can you guess where I put the other half of the map?
• Up in smoke!. Well, they can still get to the treasure, but it more likely they'll do it via luck then their map skills.​

The party looted the remains, returned to the previous cave and went through to the final exit. They encountered a T-junction and took the left exit to the west.

They entered a cavern they had not encountered. Looking into the area they spotted that both the east and west walls had areas that were smooth and glistening, almost appearing wet.

• Hmm, suspicious to be sure.
• But also... interesting.

Shamos and Alton advanced to the western wall to investigate.

• Hooked!

As they drew close, suddenly tentacles whipped out and attacked! 
The grey masses on both walls dropped to the floor and coalesced into 2 pairs of oozes.

• The grey ooze was infact grey oozes - 4 of them!

Shamos wondered on why he had decided to position himself in melee range of something potentially (and ultimately was) dangerous. A fight ensued against the oozes and the party quickly discovered 2 things. 1. Oozes are resistant to certain types of damage. Hitting and being hit by an oozes causes acid damage, to weapons, armour and people. Tracey remarked on how her 'Ring of Acid Resistance' proved useful against the oozes.

• It turns out that grey oozes have these pesky and very irritating acid attack.
• Every time you strike a grey ooze with a metallic non-magical weapon, it gets a -1 penalty. When the penalty reaches -5, the weapon is broken.

• AND; if you are wearing metal armour and get hit by a grey ooze, your AC drops by 1. If the armour bonus drops to 0, then the armour breaks.
• Players don't half grumble when they're watching their weapons and armour sizzle into oblivion!

Soon enough the oozes were defeated. The party the decided to search the cave. As they were doing so, they head noise behind them, to the east, where they had come from.

It was spiders, Lots of spiders.

• Searching an area triggers an encounter roll.
• Rolled a 20! Double encounter size, this means that 8 giant spiders are coming for them instead of 4.

The party fled blindly to the west and ended up in the cave that once contained the gricks and still contained the now looted mound. They were hesitant and decided to search the cave, in the time they spent doing this, it seemed the number of spiders had increased.

• Yep, even though they're being chased and wanted to flee, they stopped to search.
• Another encounter roll, another 3 giant spiders joined the spider-posse.
  

The party fled the caves entirely.
They then decided to return to Castle Torrog, the journey home was uneventful.

• A bit more of the spider caves explored.
• ​Giant spiders are proving a formidable foe at this level, I think the poison is pretty dangerous, anyone who lacks resistance to it is at risk of being put out of the fight really quickly.
  
• Will the party try to find a away to manage this?

​End of session twelve.