Chapter 3 - Session 10

The Village in the Webs

Part 1 video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjZpsL-FOJU

Part 2 video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTnwm589af0

Part 3 video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6ptfJXkBvw

Part 4 video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX-X1g3wzk0

Part 5 video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec8gclimfDI

Events and Actions

The session opened with a recap of where things stood: the party was camped at the foot of the Great Wall — the massive 80-foot earthen rampart that stretches across Spider Island's interior — after discovering, the previous morning, enormous footprints pressed into the churned earth near the jungle's edge, belonging to something vast, clawless but toed, and capable of moving through the treetops. Riu had already levitated to the top with the help of a rope and grapple to get the lay of things, and play resumed with him standing on the crest.

There he found the wall's crest walkable — perhaps the width of a table — with a slow trickle of water running in a muddy channel along its length from somewhere to the left. The party split into two pairs to search the crest in opposite directions; one pair found nothing, but the other spotted an irregularity in the wall's face a little further along. Pocket, scouting from height, saw that beyond the wall lay more churned earth, patches of jungle, what might be fields or clearings, and in the distance the glow of firelight the previous night had given way to a more ominous silence. Werner confirmed the sighting from the ground, stepping back to the jungle's edge for a clear look up the outer face: about 30 feet up, set a foot or so into a recessed section of the wall, sat a large metal panel, about half the size of a table.

Before committing to a way in, Noddy floated the idea of using a spell to collapse the wall outright, reasoning it might have been raised by the same magic behind the black monoliths the party had puzzled over before. Werner talked him out of it — the wall belonged to people the party hoped to befriend, and tearing down their defences on a guess was a poor way to start a friendship — and the party agreed they would not damage the wall.

Riu levitated down to the panel and tried a door-opening spell as he leaned into it; the panel lurched a little and thudded to a stop — not open, but the movement was enough to confirm it was a portcullis-style door, barred from the inside and meant to lift upward. He crossed to the interior face by levitating to the top and descending the other side. There, level with the panel, he found an entrance to a short passage through the wall. Inside the passage was darkness, and a wooden box containing a coil of fine spider-silk rope, already attached to a fixed point — clearly pre-rigged for descent on the outer side. Simple metal bars and hooks blocked the door from rising. After clearing the bar, Riu cast a door-opening spell and the heavy metal gate lifted steadily upward. He pegged it open with the six iron pegs set in holes along the gate's track. The portcullis was up.

He tossed the spider-silk rope out over the outer face and it dropped to the ground, just long enough to reach. The party began to climb. It was not a swift process — the rope demanded care, and several members of the party were not strong climbers. Batu Batu and Salter had been waiting nervously at the camp below, keeping their backs to the jungle with weapons ready; now they were called over to make the climb as well.

As people were still on the rope, movement broke at the jungle's edge: a panther, black and lean and 14 feet from nose to tail, closing fast. Noddy, finding a line of sight from the opening, cast a confusion spell on the creature before it could fully commit. Mani, who had already slung his rifle and drawn two pistols, fired both — one shot went wide, but the second connected hard, driving through the panther's forearm and scoring muscle with severe bleeding. Knick Nab, reaching the ground, swept at the animal but barely connected. Werner advanced with his arming sword and the panther turned on him — it snapped, but Werner parried cleanly. Cosimo, watching from the passage above, attempted to find an angle for his flashbang illusion but could not cast without catching his own allies in the burst radius. The panther, confused and bleeding freely, failed to press its attack and was driven off.

The party passed through the gate and descended the inner wall face — a worn streak on the packed earth below the opening suggested something had made this drop many times before, either sliding or climbing. On the other side of the Great Wall, the land opened into more cleared earth and then jungle, with a wide, well-worn path running straight ahead.

Following the same pull Mani had been sensing since deep in the jungle, the party pressed on down the path and soon passed a small cluster of huts, each fronted with a beaten metal door like the one they had just forced. Prying one open confirmed it was a thin sheet of hammered copper fixed to a wooden frame, and a closer look at the surrounding metalwork showed the islanders had access to copper, bronze, and iron alike. Inside one hut stood a curved dais bearing six fist-sized animal figures cast in gold and silver — a spider, an ape, and a parrot in gold; a snake, a panther, and a pig in silver. Reasoning that a people who left such wealth lying in an unlocked, abandoned hut, and who adorned themselves as freely with gold as Leela did, likely set little store by it, the party took three: Noddy claimed the golden spider, in memory of the huge one he had killed back on the coast; Cosimo took the golden ape; and Werner, despite voicing doubts about looting people they hoped to befriend, ended up carrying off the silver panther. The rest were left undisturbed.

The path climbed gradually until it reached the edge of a hundred-foot cliff, which the party followed around a bend where the jungle drew back into a wide, enclosed clearing. A fresh cluster of huts stood on the far side — and movement in the brush betrayed hidden watchers. At least a dozen Islanders armed with long spears were visible, with more concealed nearby. Batu Batu called out that they came in peace, seeking Leela and "the big one." After a tense pause the spearmen fell back and closed ranks quietly behind the party rather than blocking the way, escorting them — watchful but not hostile — deeper into the camp. As they advanced past still more spearmen watching from the grass, Cosimo cautioned against leading with an open display of magic — the gifts he credited to "the mother and father" — reasoning that a people this numerous and this armed might not be as astonished by such tricks as past audiences had been, and that any surprise was better held in reserve than spent carelessly. The party walked on peaceably instead, into a settlement far larger than it had first appeared: hundreds of Islanders, armed only with spears, bows, and clubs, no firearms among them, but heavily adorned with gold, silver, and copper. At its heart, three great cauldrons of grey stew simmered over open fires, tended by a woman who stirred and portioned them out, and nearby a handful of dog-sized dead spiders were mounted on spears — evidence the islanders fought off smaller spiders as a matter of routine. Batu Batu tried what few words the two tongues shared, and the party unravelled the panther's skin to show off their kill before offering a cut of the great spider's meat as tribute, which she accepted, butchered, and added to the pots. Through the exchange the party picked out a recurring word, hintu, for spider, intensified as beeta hintu, and learned that the huge white creature they had killed on the coast — and whatever lay ahead of them now — was beeta beeta beeta hintu to the islanders: the biggest spider. Pointing the way onward past their own homes, the villagers made clear where the party needed to go.

Continuing on, the party reached the point where the two cliff faces drew closest together — a natural gap roughly a hundred feet wide and as many feet high, with a waterfall spilling down one cliff face into a pool that crowded the gap. Here a long column of Islanders worked in relay, passing empty buckets forward and full ones back along two lines that converged on a low, disc-shaped monolith of black stone set flat into the churned earth, the same material the party had puzzled over once before. Two figures knelt atop the disc, working its surface with their hands; each time, the bucket set before them came away filled with fresh earth, with nothing visibly drawn from the stone to account for it. Riu sensed the disc was a conduit for real power, being spent, as best anyone could tell, entirely to conjure ordinary dirt. That earth was being carried off and packed into a new wall rising across the gap, already chest-high on one side though the work looked to have begun no more than a few days earlier, guarded by a line of warriors facing outward into the jungle beyond. It was clear this was a displaced village, racing to seal the chokepoint as a new line of defence.

The party passed through the unfinished gap and its watching warriors without incident, weighing whether to skirt left or right along the cliff faces or push straight through the jungle path ahead. They sent Pocket up to scout before committing to a route.

What the seagull saw was striking. The jungle ahead was only three to four hundred feet deep along the path; beyond it opened a vast Islander settlement. This was no simple village — multi-story buildings, long communal halls, ornamentation, ribbons of decoration hung between structures. A proper town. But every surface was draped in thick ropes of spiderwebs. At the center of the settlement, perched atop a great web that linked the largest buildings, sat an enormous pale-white spider: the same species as the one the party had killed earlier, and by all appearances much larger. Smaller spiders skittered through the web-network throughout the settlement.

Pocket climbed higher still. Far beyond the village and its surrounding fields, at the valley's far end where the cliff faces closed back toward each other, stood another huge wall, built the same way as the one the party had crossed that morning — but with a wide gap on one side where a section had collapsed entirely. Piecing it together, the party concluded this breach was how the great spider had first gotten into the valley, driving the islanders out of the settlement below and back to the chokepoint where they were now racing to raise their new wall.

Given the path was wide and Pocket had confirmed it was navigable, the party settled on the direct route through the jungle rather than skirting the cliffs.

Before they moved, Leela reappeared. Beside her was a man of unmistakable standing among the islanders — a towering headdress of enormous feathers, quantities of gold, gold teeth, a carved staff. Around his neck, tarnished and brass-coloured, was a sextant. He looked hard at the party and pointed, repeating the same phrase the villagers by the wall had used: beeta beeta beeta hintu — the biggest spider — as if the matter of dealing with it were already settled and theirs to handle.

With the day already well along, the party judged there wasn't time to reach the spider village, deal with its occupant, and retreat before dark. Rather than press on into the web-choked settlement at night, they chose to make camp near the new wall and put off the final approach until morning.

NPCs & Creatures

Leela — The Islander woman who had previously guided the party through the jungle. She returned at session's end alongside the feathered leader.
Feathered Islander leader — A man of obvious authority, elaborately ornamented with a giant-feathered headdress, gold jewellery, gold teeth, and carrying a staff. Most notably wore a sextant around his neck. Pointed at the party and repeated "the biggest spider" as though the task of dealing with it were already theirs.
Batu Batu — Present with the party throughout; remained at camp near the wall base during the initial climbing operation, then served as the party's only means of communication with the islanders they met beyond the wall.
Salter — Present with the party throughout; alert and nervous, watching the jungle.
Giant panther — A 14-foot black panther that charged from the jungle during the rope crossing. Wounded by Mani's pistol fire (severe bleeding wound to the forearm) and driven off by Noddy's confusion spell.
Displaced Islander villagers — Hundreds of Islanders encountered at a camp beyond the Great Wall, armed with spears, bows, and clubs but no firearms, and heavily adorned with gold, silver, and copper. A dozen or more spearmen challenged the party's approach before standing down and escorting them through. A woman at the camp's central cooking fires was shown the panther's skin and accepted a cut of spider meat as tribute, and the villagers pointed the way toward "the biggest spider" beyond the cliffs. Batu Batu tried asking where the camp's warriors were, but got no answer beyond more pointing and repeated cries of "the biggest spider." The party noticed the crowd skewed conspicuously young or old, with no one of obvious fighting age in between — raising the question of whether the camp's warriors were away, lost, or already dead.
Great white spider — A vast pale-white spider occupying the web-covered Islander settlement, the same apparent species as the one previously killed on the coast. Referred to by the islanders as "the biggest spider."

Locations

The Great Wall (Spider Island) — The massive 80-foot earthen wall dividing Spider Island's interior. The party discovered a portcullis gate embedded 30 feet up the outer face, with a short internal passage and a pre-rigged spider-silk rope for descent.
Huts beyond the Great Wall — A small cluster of huts just past the Great Wall, each fronted with a hammered-copper door over a wooden frame. One held a dais with six gold and silver animal figures; the party took three (gold spider, gold ape, silver panther) and left the rest.
Islander camp near the cliffs — A displaced Islander settlement of hundreds, tucked against a hundred-foot cliff face beyond the huts. Simple dwellings, open cooking fires with three large cauldrons at its center, dog-sized dead spiders mounted on spears nearby, and no visible leader — but heavily armed and heavily gilded.
The new wall (under construction) — A partially built earthen wall closing a natural hundred-foot gap between two converging cliff faces, where a waterfall spills down one cliff face into a crowding pool. Raised by islanders using earth conjured from a black, disc-shaped monolith and relayed by bucket brigade. Already chest-high on one side; construction appeared to have begun only days earlier.
The Spider Village — A large, well-developed Islander settlement now abandoned and overrun with spiderwebs. Multi-story buildings, communal halls, and ornamentation — a significant town, now occupied by the great spider and its smaller kin.
The Second Great Wall — Glimpsed by Pocket far beyond the Spider Village, at the valley's far end where the cliff faces close together again — built the same way as the Great Wall the party crossed, but with a large section collapsed entirely on one side. The party believes this breach is how the great spider first entered the valley.

Conflicts

Giant panther attack at the wall base: The creature ambushed the party during the rope crossing. Noddy's confusion spell disoriented it; Mani's dual pistol fire tore through the panther's forearm, leaving it bleeding badly. Knick Nab's sweep barely connected. The panther attacked Werner but was parried. It was driven off without injuring any party member.
Standoff with Islander spearmen: A dozen or more armed islanders confronted the party at the edge of a clearing beyond the Great Wall. Batu Batu's call of peace and the party's open, unthreatening approach convinced the spearmen to fall back and escort them into the camp rather than fight.

Learnings and Discussions

The Great Wall contains a portcullis gate 30 feet up its outer face, accessible from both sides via a short internal passage. The interior side had a wooden box with a pre-rigged spider-silk rope for external descent.
The huts beyond the Great Wall use hammered copper for their doors, and the surrounding area shows evidence of copper, bronze, and iron working — the islanders are not without metallurgy.
Islanders seem to place little value on gold and silver ornamentation given how freely it was left in an unlocked hut and worn openly by everyone the party met.
The islanders' word for spider is hintu, and repeating a modifier — as in beeta ("big") — appears to intensify it: beeta hintu is a large spider, and beeta beeta beeta hintu, "the biggest spider," is what both the camp near the cliffs and the feathered leader called the creature the party is hunting.
A black, disc-shaped monolith — of the same material the party has puzzled over before — is being used by islander ritualists to conjure earth out of nothing, which is then relayed by bucket brigade to build a new wall sealing a hundred-foot gap between two cliffs. Construction looks to have started only days ago. A sample scooped from a passing bucket confirmed it was ordinary, unremarkable dirt, muddy but nothing more — for all the power evidently being spent to produce it.
The interior of Spider Island holds a large and sophisticated Islander settlement — far more developed than a simple tribal camp — now wholly overtaken by a great pale spider and its web.
The islanders evacuated that settlement and are racing to build a new defensive wall at a natural chokepoint deeper in the valley. The party suspects they were driven out through a large breach in a second, older wall further beyond the village, of the same construction as the Great Wall — likely torn open by the great spider itself.
The great spider in the village is the same pale-white type as the one previously encountered and killed on the coast.
The feathered Islander leader carries a sextant — a precision navigation instrument, remarkable in this context.
The jungle path to the village is roughly 300–400 feet long and traversable; Pocket could see the village clearly from above the canopy.
The party is now roughly three days' hard travel inland from the coast — the sea was no longer visible even from height — with the spider village some five or six kilometres further on, about an hour's walk away.
Weighing how to prepare for the fight ahead, Cosimo considered a lengthy ritual to identify the properties of the unattuned trinkets they had gathered, and confirmed he had nothing resembling a fireball ready to call on without a similarly involved ritual. Both ideas were set aside as impractical before nightfall.
With daylight running short, the party decided to camp near the new wall for the night and make their approach on the spider village in the morning rather than risk it in the dark.

Items Gained

Spider-silk rope (found pre-rigged in a wooden box inside the wall passage; left in place after use)
Golden spider figurine (Noddy, from the dais in the huts beyond the Great Wall)
Golden ape figurine (Cosimo, from the same dais)
Silver panther figurine (Werner, from the same dais)

Items Lost

A cut of the great spider's meat (kept as a trophy from an earlier encounter), given as tribute to the woman tending the cooking fires at the Islander camp near the cliffs.