With the first cave fully explored and yielding nothing but dead ends, the party needs to find a way to get up to the second cave. This one is a solid 250ft above the riverbed, meaning that it’s going to take a little bit more than a wing and a prayer to get up there.
Climbing directly up the cliff will be difficult; Krask is really the only one with half a rat’s chance of scaling the rocks directly. With Fyn out of Teleports, and out of range for a dimensional step, the options are certainly limited. After careful (read: insanely lengthy) deliberation, Fyn decides that he could summon some giant wasps that would happily carry the party to the next cave in their celestial arms.
Unfortunately, this means that Richard is left behind. There’s no way that these wasps can carry an 800lb wolf in the allotted time in addition to the party members.
Spiders, Spiders Everywhere
The next cave is literally crawling with activity. The entire floor is covered in a creeping, writhing mass of centipedes and other insects. Fyn creates a harmonious quartet of dancing lights, which illuminate the entire area with bright light. A dense, thick mass of webs blocks off the northwestern passage.
As the party approaches, three massive spiders descend from the webbing. Thousands of skittering spiders crawl through the arachnid shells, indicating that these aren’t your average everyday spiders. These are deathwebs – undead aberrations animated by a hulking mass of other spiders.
Barnaby wastes no time and charges up to the lead arachnid. The spiders animating the shell swarm the halfling, but Barnaby isn’t affected by the paralyzing poison that these monsters are known to carry. With so many targets, the deathweb scurries over to Fobias and Trace, lashing out with its devastating pincers.
Krask, afraid of more spiders emerging from the webbing, lights up one of the everburning torch and hurls it into the tangle of webs. As the webs ignite and begin to melt, smoke starts to fill the enclosed area. Time to look up the smoke inhalation rules!
Since these spiders are hitting hard, the party shifts gears into damage-dealing mode. Fyn unleashes magic missiles and Trace smites the inherent evil of the undead abominations. Barnaby is a real all-star, dishing out multiple critical hits. As the last spider falls, the party waits for the smoke to subside before investigating further.
Using his keen senses, Krask locates a secret tunnel leading back in the direction towards Jorgenfist. If he hadn’t burnt up those webs, it’s very possible that he would have missed it. Bottlecaps all around!
Spelunking for Secrets
The tunnel system is narrow and no place for a wolf. Hopefully Richard doesn’t mind gnawing on some wyvern flakes for the foreseeable future, because he’s going to be on a straight diet of carrion.
Several smaller tunnels shoot off from the main drag, eventually causing some confusion as to which tunnel is the ‘primary’ passage. At one of these intersections, Krask notices a red cloth heaped on the floor against the wall. Fyn the Ever-Impulsive sits down on it, immediately staining his Korvosan robes with sticky, wet blood.
This head-covering can only be one thing: a red redcap cap.
After this discovery, the party is much more cautious about their approach in these tunnels. It only takes another quarter-hour of navigating the caves before Fyn hears a pair of voices conversing in Sylvan.
They’re talking about being relegated to this section of the caves by someone, and they don’t seem happy about it. You see, there are only so many rats in the world and, contrary to eating wyvern flesh, the taste of rats isn’t the most desirable meal.
That’s the moment that Krask has the bright idea to put his medusa mask over his face and run down the tunnel to hopefully scare off the two creatures. The problem? There are more than two.
Krask is face-to-face with five redcaps who hear the yelling and come angrily bolting down the tunnel!
Who are the redcaps so upset with? Where does this tunnel lead? Have we finally seen the last of that overpowered Richard fellow?