Chapter 3 - Session 11

The Hatching That Wasn't

Events and Actions

The session opened with the party established at the neck of the hourglass-shaped island interior, having crossed the Great Wall in the previous session. Pocket's aerial reconnaissance had already confirmed the situation ahead: the great pale spider, the same species as the one killed on the coast but vastly larger, had occupied the central building of the islander village, removed its roof, and was periodically lowering its abdomen through the opening to deposit eggs. The building's interior was packed with egg sacs and tiny newly-hatched spiders. The spider had not moved from its perch since the party's arrival.

Before the assault planning began in earnest, Werner examined the feathered islander leader's sextant more closely. The leader, who had appeared alongside Leela at the session's end, allowed Werner to handle the instrument while keeping a hand on its spider-silk lanyard. Werner confirmed it was a proper navigation sextant of northern manufacture — the adjustment knobs were loose, indicating it had been actively used rather than stored. He returned it with a gesture of thanks.

Through pantomime and the handful of islander words accumulated over previous encounters, Werner communicated a need for rope. Leela understood, departed, and returned with three coils of fine spider-silk rope, each approximately fifty feet long. Werner also asked Batu Batu for a suitable pot; the only one Batu Batu had on hand was a small tin pot, plainly too light for the job. Leela caught on and led Werner to a communal cooking hut instead, where the party found a proper iron pot — large, with a hanging loop and a lid, intended to be suspended over fire. Additional islander vocabulary was established through this exchange: molly for small, and approximate forms for yes (ano or I) and no (nayo or nay).

The bomb was assembled from the pot, packed with cannon-grade gunpowder and shrapnel — the party's grenade positioned inside with its fuse exposed through the lid, sharp fragments chipped from a stone Leela intuited was needed and fetched herself, and bits of iron and knives found in the hut. The result was a heavy, thirty-pound improvised bomb. Batu Batu was assigned to carry it during the approach. Riu would decide where it was placed.

The battle plan called for two groups. The first, including Riu, Batu Batu, and Salter, would approach the building through a concealed corridor — Cosimo would cast an illusion making their approach look like undisturbed scenery. The second group, including Mani, Werner, and Knick Nab, would advance openly from the flank to harass and distract the spider with harpoons, blades, and musketry. Werner would throw harpoons attached to the spider-silk ropes, tying them off to buildings to restrict the spider's movement. Noddy would cast confusion on the great spider from range while Pocket maintained surveillance. Cosimo would add a blinding flash and illusory distraction as opportunity permitted. The party also weighed torching the entire web-choked village outright, but held off — everything was interconnected by silk that would carry fire unpredictably, and burning out the islanders' homes risked the goodwill they had been cultivating.

The party moved through the jungle toward the village in mid-afternoon, burning through web barriers as they went. Fresh webs smouldered slowly, while older ones caught more readily; in either case the path was cleared without significant resistance, and small spiders scattered from the flames rather than pressing an attack. At the edge of the field before the village — a stretch of upright poles, formerly used by the islanders for drying, now thick with silk and spider activity — the party built a bonfire at the base of one of the poles as a rally point, piling on dry brush until it would burn for the better part of an hour: a visible, defensible fallback position to retreat to if the assault went badly or the party got turned around in the webs. Pocket confirmed from above that the smaller spiders in the field were occupied catching flying insects rather than watching the approaches. They were not on guard.

Cosimo cast the concealment as a stationary illusory tunnel roughly eighty feet long, its outer surface mimicking the surrounding ground and scenery so that nothing outside could see in — a single casting that needed no ongoing concentration and would hold for about a minute. Before committing to the approach, Noddy swept the nearby buildings with a spyglass; no second great spider was visible anywhere in the village, only the medium and small ones the party already knew about. The bomb-bearing group moved through the illusory tunnel toward the building. The flanking group advanced with torches lit. Leela, who had been following without announcement, suddenly loosed a blood-curdling war cry and charged straight at one of the medium spiders clustered near the approach, drawing its attention and creating an opening at a critical moment. The fight erupted immediately.

Noddy cast confusion on the great spider while maintaining concentration, and the effect was visible and immediate: the creature's legs became unsteady, its enormous white body swaying. Cosimo conjured a brilliant flash of light in the form of the sun descending directly onto the spider's eight-eyed face. The creature's eyes blinked ceaselessly, its legs buckled further, and it swayed without apparent purpose. Cosimo followed this with a fantasm — a twenty-foot rhinoceros beetle, its carapace blue and trimmed in gold, crawling up the building's outer wall, spreading its wing-cases, and rearing toward the confused spider. The great spider gave no sign of registering the apparition at all.

Werner drove a poisoned harpoon into one of the great spider's legs, then moved to tie the trailing rope off inside a nearby building — a metal door with a bar on the inside made it look defensible. The building was already occupied: movement in the dark at the back resolved into the gleam of too many eyes, two more spiders lurking unseen. Werner dropped his torch inside, possibly setting the interior alight, and backed out and barred the door behind him rather than fight blind, continuing the fight with his rifle from outside instead. The great spider fired a web strand toward Noddy, which missed. Mani engaged the medium spiders moving in on the flanking group, trading blows while Leela fought beside him with fierce effectiveness — she drove her hand axe hard into one spider, staggering it and dealing significant damage, before taking a painful slash across the ribs in return; later in the same fight she caught a second medium spider with a crushing blow that shattered one of its legs and sent it flying, killing it outright. Knick Nab brawled with the smaller spiders, taking a sharp bite early and later a hard strike that cracked a bone in the back of his hand and left him bleeding, but landed a solid blow of his own that crumpled one of the medium spiders to the ground. Cosimo, between his illusions, lashed out at the spider harrying Knick Nab with a directed force spell. Salter fired his musket into one of the medium spiders, wounding it, then picked up a second, dropped rifle to keep firing. Batu Batu attacked the spider threatening him with meat cleavers and was nearly bitten in return, but its strike went wide entirely.

Riu opened the nest building's door and stepped inside. The entire ground floor was compromised — egg sacs everywhere, baby spiders crawling in the masses of silk, the staircase to the upper floor buried under it. He briefly considered lifting the cauldron bomb straight up with telekinesis, but it was too heavy for the spell to carry, so he began cutting and hacking his way up through the webs by hand instead, cloaking himself in a shadow spell for concealment as he climbed. Partway up he shifted to levitation, rising the rest of the way to the platform where the great spider hung suspended, and set the cauldron bomb directly beneath its abdomen. He lit the fuse with his torch and leapt clear with a burst of magic, landing fifty feet away.

Werner, at range, fired his musket at the great spider and struck it squarely in the head. The round drove through to the brain. The spider convulsed, its legs shaking under it, and slumped forward — settling directly onto the cauldron below.

As the fuse burned down, the party scattered for cover — Cosimo ducked behind a large tree, Mani pulled Leela clear of the blast radius, and the others put buildings and distance between themselves and the cauldron. The fuse ran to its end. The building erupted. A great fireball lifted the structure apart, debris fanning out in every direction. From within the conflagration came a shriek. Baby spiders blasted outward across the village, many trailing fire. The village fell quiet except for the crackle of burning material and the distant hiss of things landing in the dirt.

Leela, who had never witnessed anything resembling a gunpowder detonation, was completely undone. She screamed, spun around looking at the party with an expression of pure terror, and ran. The party surmised she would recover — the shock appeared to be from the explosion itself rather than any injury — but she was gone.

As the dust settled and small burning shapes rained down through the smoke, the impulse to spread the fire further into the village was there for the taking — but the party caught themselves before committing to it. The great spider, for all its size, did not appear large enough to have punched the eighty-foot breach in the Great Wall on its own, and torching their own vantage point over a threat they couldn't identify seemed unwise. Whatever had made that opening was something else. What that something was remained entirely unknown.

NPCs & Creatures

Leela — Assisted in gathering materials for the bomb, fought alongside the party during the assault (downing one medium spider outright with a crushing hand-axe blow), and fled in terror following the explosion.
Feathered Islander leader — Present during the planning phase; allowed Werner to examine the sextant before departing.
Batu Batu — Carried the cauldron-bomb and fought smaller spiders with his meat cleavers.
Salter — Fought with the flanking group and wounded a medium spider with his musket, then picked up a second dropped rifle to keep firing.
Great white spider — The enormous pale spider nesting in the central building of the spider village. Disoriented by Noddy's confusion spell, blinded by Cosimo's sun-flash illusion, confronted by Cosimo's beetle fantasm, impaled in one leg by Werner's harpoon, shot through the brain by Werner's musket, and destroyed by the bomb.
Medium spiders — Several engaged the party during the assault; at least two were killed in the fighting and more were destroyed in the explosion.
Small spiders — Present throughout the jungle approach and village perimeter; scattered from fire rather than attacking directly. Large numbers were ejected from the nest building by the explosion, many burning.

Locations

The Spider Village — The large islander settlement overtaken by the great spider. Beyond the residential huts, Pocket's earlier reconnaissance had picked out a cluster of larger buildings off to one side, topped with chimney-like stacks and fronted by slag heaps — evidence of some industry distinct from ordinary dwellings, left unexplored this session. The party fought through the village's web-covered streets. The central nest building had a ground-level door and, on its exterior, a ladder leading up to a small platform, ordinary features of island construction now overtaken by web and spider activity. It was destroyed in the explosion.
The Jungle Path — The several-hundred-foot stretch of jungle between the island's neck and the village. The party burned through multiple web barriers during the approach.

Conflicts

The assault on the Spider Village: A multi-phase battle involving the whole party against the great white spider and numerous smaller spiders.
Knick Nab was bitten by a small spider (minor wound, 5 hits) and struck by a medium spider (cracked bone to the back of the hand, 14 hits, bleeding, at −5 to activity), but felled one of the medium spiders outright with a solid strike of his own.
Leela took a slash across the ribs from a spider (7 hits, at −5 to activity), then downed a second medium spider outright with a crushing blow that shattered its leg and sent it flying.
A medium spider's bite at Batu Batu went wildly astray, sparing him a hit that round.
Cosimo split his attention between the great spider and the smaller ones, striking one of the spiders harrying Knick Nab with a directed force spell.
Multiple medium and small spiders were killed in the fighting.
The great spider was killed by the combined effects of Noddy's confusion spell, Cosimo's blinding flash and beetle fantasm, Werner's harpoon, Werner's killing musket shot to the head, and Riu's bomb.

Learnings and Discussions

The great spider had removed the roof from the central building of the village and was depositing eggs inside. The interior was thick with egg sacs and newly-hatched spiders of wolf-spider size.
The feathered islander leader's sextant had its adjustment knobs loosened, indicating it had been recently and actively used rather than carried as an ornament.
Additional islander words were established: molly (small); ano or I (yes); nayo or nay (no).
A spyglass sweep of the village's buildings before the assault turned up no second great spider — only the medium and small ones the party already knew about.
The smaller spiders appear to lighten in colour as they age rather than staying one shade: hatchlings are solid black, maturing through brown and yellow before reaching the great spider's pale white — size and power apparently increasing together with the shift.
The great spider showed significant vulnerability to Noddy's confusion spell and Cosimo's blinding flash — both visibly impaired its activity.
Riu's telekinesis magic proved unable to lift the finished cauldron bomb — at roughly thirty pounds, it was too heavy for the spell to carry, forcing him to climb and cut his way up through the nest by hand instead.
The great spider, despite its scale, does not appear to have been capable of punching the eighty-foot breach in the Great Wall. Whatever created that opening is something larger or differently capable, and remains unidentified.

Items Gained

Three coils of spider-silk rope (approximately 50 feet each), provided by Leela.

Items Lost

One grenade (used as the bomb's initiator).
Cannon-grade gunpowder (consumed in the bomb).
One large iron cooking pot (taken from the islander cooking hut and destroyed in the explosion).