DM: Espada (Trial DM)
Play by Post
Session Title: Creeping Concerns
Date: 15/05/2025. 1500 UTC.
Levels: 1-4
Risk: 6
Dates: 15 May 2025 to 05 June 2025
Party:
Omelette/Merana/Wizard 3, Fighter 1
tiffthatsit/Wynlee/Cleric 3 (Temporary Character)
Calmseeker/Xavier/Druid 4
TheOddity/Shargram/Barbarian 4
Qarlynd/Raq/Swordmage 4
Summary:
The party helped clear out arachnids that had overrun her home. The party had to travel south to fight spiders and eventually a drider. Xavier likely got cursed by the drider or possibly Mofit. Mofit disappeared but did not seem to be in trouble. Xavier kept intermittently getting visions of Mofit and the drider.
Day 1:
An old alchemist woman named Mofit asked us for help in clearing out spider creatures that had overrun her home. The party travelled with her to the southwest along the road. Mofit had a sharp tongue and tended to ramble at times. She led us back to her house.
There was a strange hill that didn’t appear to quite blend in with the surrounding area, but we decided to keep moving as we wanted to resolve Mofit’s issue first.
I also found a satchel with an iron key inside. It was left on the side of the road. I held onto it.
The night was peaceful overall.
Day 2:
We moved east and entered the Small Folk Forest. The canopy blocked most of the sunlight, and soon we found ourselves surrounded by egg sacks that likely belonged to spiders due to the webs that covered the trees. Spiderlings scuttled across the ground as well.
We managed to intercept giant spiders and spiderlings that tried to ambush but were noticed just in time, and battle ensued. We managed to slay them without too much trouble, but one thing of note was that whenever fire was used (like myself using Create Bonfire or Merana using Burning Hands), the webs were lit up very easily and spread very quickly, requiring us to take efforts to extinguish them. Merana and Raq thankfully used Ice Knife spells to extinguish the rampant fire. We also saw bodies with eggs laid inside of them.
After a few more hours of travelling in the forest to the east, we arrived at Mofit’s home, which looked desolate. Mofit did not give that many relevant details about our enemy but did give us a potion of greater healing. The home was surrounded by webs and egg sacks that Wynlee looked over. Based on what she could recall from her studies in nature, no natural spiders infested this quickly or laid eggs inside of humanoids. These spiders were either being influenced or controlled by something else or were from the Abyssal Plains, which is where demons originated. This caused me great concern as demons and spiders were a deadly combination. These spiders were no mere beasts.
While looking around our surroundings, we encountered a female drider. Her grey skin and gaunt expression made her a disturbing sight to behold. The monster attacked us with a longsword and its sharp fangs.
- Shargram and Raq managed to fight it in close quarters with their claws and longsword respectively.
- Wynlee tried summoning a spiritual weapon of a mace to fight.
- Merana shot fire bolts.
- As for myself, I shot luminous arrows and guiding bolts that seared the creature with radiant light of the stars. This seemed to draw the dire and attention of the drider the most as she kept leering at me, despite attacking Shargram and Raq more.
Merana managed to finish off the drider with her Burning Hands spell. As the drider fell, she kept glaring at me and spoke its last words.
“Enjoy breathing while you can light bearer, this is far from over.”
-The female drider’s last words.
After Merana put out the fire that her own spell had caused with another Ice Knife, we realised that Mofit had disappeared. She had only behind her shawl that had another potion of greater healing and a note written in a language we could not read (back in town, an adventurer named Zoren told me it said “Until next time,” in Abyssal). I got the sense that there was more to Mofit than met the eye (like many people on the island).
Once the drider bodies were looted and we managed to harvest eggs that were explosive but were valuable in terms of material wealth once collected, we headed back to town.
That night, during my trance, I received a disturbing vision of Mofit with a spider…
Day 3:
The party continued to make their way back to the town of Port Mirandia. While walking back, the journey itself was uneventful, but I received another disturbing vision of Mofit and a spider.
With help from Merana, I used my insight to recall that the drider died smiling, which may have caused me to get haunted by these images or entities. It was hard to say for sure whether the drider or Mofit may have caused this.
As we managed to make it back to Port Mirandia at night, I received one last vision of the drider. This one was the most disturbing one of all (so much so I had trouble eating and drinking anything for a while afterwards…), and it all but confirmed by fear that I was afflicted by a magical bane from the drider or maybe Mofit. I wonder if the future will provide more insight into this matter… Perhaps the stars can enlighten me.
