^

Lini was lost. 

The gnomish child had wandered off several times before, but this time was different.  He’d gotten himself trapped deeply within a cave full of spiders.  We had previously attempted a rescue but were beaten back by their sheer numbers.

We brought fire this time.

Our past efforts weren’t in vain.  Portions of the cavern still showed signs of battle and there were no signs of all the small spiders we’d seen before… until we entered a smaller tunnel lined with web.  A skull spider dropped down onto Karash’s head and lived a short life as a rodeo star.  Karash did his best to unseat this enemy but eventually accepted Naal’s “help”.

This help took the form of Naal smashing Karash’s head repeatedly against the wall.  It did the trick and the spider was soon at my feat.  One blow from my sword was all it took to end the skull spider, but the noise we’d made alerted all the others.  Soon we were swarmed.

An uphill battle ensued, and we were quickly wading through enemies and webs alike.  The combined efforts of Laucian and Salem pushed the bulk of the numbers back as Karash and Naal charged straight through.  Xenon and I did our best to keep our forces from being flanked as well as pick off any stragglers.

The battle eventually pushed into a much larger cavern as the last of the spiders fell to axe and flame.  We had only a moment to catch our breath before another, much larger spider, dropped from the ceiling.  Karash and Naal were quickly upon it but our faithful barbarian succumbed to some nasty stunning poison. I spent most of this fight face down in the dirt unfortunately.  A large spider beast had come out of the darkness and pushed me flat.  It sounded epic though.  The music of conflagration, weapons finding their marks, and somewhere… a hellhound barking.  I was only able to pull myself up in time to cast one spell before this giant monstrosity died.

We grabbed Lini, and a scroll from the momma spider, and fled the scene.  Once outside we did our best to collapse the cave entrance before marching through the night toward safety.  Back in White Moon we sought out Gi’Airmo to deliver the gnome and the scroll.

Families come in all shapes and sizes.