Misscliks: Seaborn: Chapter 1 Episode 3

__NOTOC__
==Recap==
===SO WE BUILT OUR DOCK IN THE SAND... (Day 8: 1509-04-12)===
Valuton; the next day. Mayor Donabella Trumpete approaches the party, laying out the village's problems; the dock needs repairing, farmers need to gather spices and dyes to be able to trade and grow for next season, and an abandoned mine that needs to be explored. Algrund's expertise in engineering suggests to him that the docks should be a priority. The group descends to the shoreline to investigate the situation. It seems the villagers attempted to construct a dock the night before, but it floated free. Algrund makes some suggestions, and the group helps out to get new pylons sunk and secured for the new dock. Dark Albert is suspicious about the dock's previous failure, and sits up that evening to watch. He unfortunately dozes off in the middle of the night.
===Day 9: 1509-04-13===
The next morning. Once again, the dock's pylons are floating. This time, however, a trident has been implanted into the sand. Drawing a crowd and rumors. Brian the Fisherman claims he called it - that he had seen a mermaid a week ago, despite there being no mermaids in this part of the world before. After a lot of discussion about Detect Magic, Algrund uses said spell on the trident, which unsurprisingly is non magical. 
The group intends to set a watch that night, after reconstructing part of the dock. The children of the village want to stay up and keep watch out for the merman, but Bruno uses his position as Sheriff (along with the myth of the Sea Wolf) to get the children to comply with a curfew.
In the early hours of the morning, Algrund spots one of the pylons shaken loose and pried from the seabed. He creeps closer as one by one the pylons are rocked free. He doesn't spot any mermaid, though obviously something is messing with the dock. Albert is a little dismayed at Algrund's inaction, but states that he has a plan for tomorrow.
===BY SPEAR AND FANG (Day 10: 1509-04-14)===
Morning comes, and as the group gathers and moves down to inspect the damage, they instead find two mermen standing on the beach, one with a barbed spear, and the other with a trident, looking intimidating. Bruno calls out to the mermen, who respond in a language they don't understand. The party lays down most of their weapons, approaching cautiously. Albert negotiates agreeing to use magic to communicate with them through sign language. He casts Comprehend Languages, but it only allows him to understand, not speak the mermen's language. It seems they are uncertain where they are. The storm that passed through disturbed the currents of the water and have apparently transferred the merpeople far from their home. During the exchange, Albert gives the mermen the map he recovered from the boat, and as a peace offering of sorts, Bruno offers them a ham sandwich and a happy bongo tune. With an apparent agreement to speak again tomorrow, the mermen return to the sea.
The villagers express annoyance and reject the idea of moving their dock - after all, they were there first! Maribel suggests that perhaps if the merpeople can be returned to their original home, they would be able to build the dock again.
With the rest of their day free, the group decides to head to the abandoned mine and see what they can find out there. Maribel declares her name to be Maribel Tyre Koboldbane, which no-one calls her. Arriving at the entrance of the mine into Mt. Gol, they note smoke rising from the opposite side of the mountain. Signs of habitation around the entrance of the mine show that someone has been excavating here more recently than it was abandoned. Maribel leads the way, heading into the right of two shafts. Using her flint and steel, Maribel lights a torch to light their way. A short ways into the shaft, it abruptly ends, with a location somewhat similar to the other mine, complete with cave painting of the scary face. A bird of some description has been cooked and/or burned in an alcove nearby. Maribel supposes that it is a ritual sacrifice to the creature/deity depicted.
Returning to the fork, the group travels down the left path. After a few hundred feet, the shaft becomes more cluttered with rock, and Maribel's horns disturb a few spiderwebs. Bruno advises caution, as spiders are known to be venomous. (EL: I'm... not entirely certain the spiders WERE venomous before Trump mentions this...) The shaft narrows somewhat more, reducing Maribel's efficiency with a halberd. She draws her longsword instead. They eventually come to a thick, blocking spider's web covering the shaft. Albert draws the correlation between the possibility of the cave painting being of a giant spider. After some discussion of using either kobolds or animals as bait, Maribel tosses her torch into the spiderweb, which blazes brightly and combusts well. As they are fumbling to get another torch lit, Algrund notices giant hairy legs reaching out towards the party. They quickly back away, getting the torch lit.
Regrouping themselves, the group aligns themselves to go back down the tunnel towards the spider. However, when they come across the place where their torch was, there is no spider. Bruno uses one of his dead lizards, giving it to Maribel to throw down the tunnel as bait for a trap.
Combat: How To Kill Your Friends Part II
Combat with the spider is immediately abandoned when Albert drives an arrow straight into Maribel's knee, almost rendering the berserk minotauress unconscious. The spider gives chase, managing to bite into Algrund's neck, as he's slower than the others. It however cowers when Algrund begins swinging his torch.
Maribel is rather understandably upset, venting her anger on a few nearby trees. Algrund, who was unable to regain spells due to being on watch last night, cannot heal her, and so Maribel rips part of her tunic off to use as a bandage. Bruno tries to inspire the group to return to the cave and finish off the spider, offering himself to lead the charge, but eventually sanity prevails, and the group returns to Valuton.
The villagers are immediately concerned that Maribel's injury is from another kobold attack, but Albert explains the situation. The Mayor inquires after the mine. They explain that the spider is blocking access to most of the mine. When they inquire after some oil to burn the spider out, Mayor Trumpette suggests Magden's shop in village. After a bit of haggling that goes nowhere fast, paying 1s for a flask of oil, and filching another while Magden is distracted with the purchase of the first. 
With this expense coming out of Maribel's pocket, Bruno goes to Mayor Trumpette to inquire after a salary. She comments that she has been using all of the village's money to rebuild (EL: Although... to whom she has been giving it remains undisclosed, as there have been no traders come to the island without a dock...). She agrees to a small salary as soon as trading can begin again. When he hears of the deal, Albert suggests applying the principle of ‘finders keepers' to anything they find on their adventures until trading begins again. Bruno reveals the stolen oil flask, improving Albert's outlook on the bard.
===ONCE MORE INTO THE LIGHT (Day 11: 1509-04-15)===
The next morning. The sun rises, as does our group, with the mermen expected to return for discussions. This time however there are two dozen instead of two, men and women both. Albert once again casts Comprehend Languages. They bring fish from the sea and an agreement to allow the construction of the dock, as long as the village can provide somewhere they can live as well as trading for supplies; nets, tridents, knives, and the like, offering jewelry and pearls in exchange. 
Brian the fisherman says he might know of a place the merpeople could populate, and he and a man named Marshall decide to go and check it out for a day. The blacksmith pipes up, saying that the village is short on usable metal at the moment, making forging tools difficult for the mermen, but he's willing to get trade going.
The group returns to the mines, to see if they might find a source of metal to help things along. Entering the mine shaft once again, they find signs of the creature's ichor from where it's previous wounds have dripped. The ground beneath them has been covered in spiderweb. They lay out some oil on the ground as a trap, and wait. After nearly 15 minutes, the form of the spider can be seen crawling around the corner.
Combat (?): Fighting Blind
The spider is hit immediately by Algrund's Light spell, cast directly into its eyes and turning it into somewhat of an arachnid disco ball. It retreats, drawing the group around the corner. Albert, leading the way, steps into the spider's web trap, falling flat into it. Maribel quickly decides to oil up her feet, which prevents her from getting stuck to the web. Bruno and Algrund set about freeing Albert, which takes some time. Bruno lights the webs on fire once the oil-soaked members of their party have retreated, but manages to singe himself when the air lightly combusts from oil fumes.
The spider has backed up into its home, a chamber to the side of the shaft that once was a sleeping chamber. Albert and Bruno send arrows in, the spider blinded cannot dodge, and ends up being speared.
With the immediate threat taken care of, the party investigates this cavern. A large cocoon or egg sac occupies a good bit of space, and oddly bereft of spiderwebs is another area like the others with a stack of rocks and a cave painting of a large scary monster face. Scraps of burlap are around. The bodies of kobolds litter the ground. Among them, the group finds a steel dagger, a bronze dagger, two stone spears, and a few bags that appear to be intact, stacked near the stone pile. Maribel retrieves them, taking a bit of time on account of the spiderwebs. The bags are very heavy, and seem to contain raw ore. The kobolds must have been busy. Bruno demonstrates his magical ability by creating a hissing, shrieking noise behind Albert, but fails to produce a strong reaction from the elf. 
With the room looted, the party decide to set the place ablaze and burn up the spider and it's cocoon. The only way forward from here is through a greatly reduced tunnel, most likely formed by kobolds. Algrund, being the only one who can really walk down the tunnel, explores a little ways, but finds nothing of note at first. As he turns to leave, he spots... what he thinks is a light at the end of the tunnel. Bruno and Albert join Algrund in the tunnel, the former two needing to crawl. It's a long tunnel, almost a mile long. 
Reaching the other end, they find a wicker ‘cap', and beyond that, open air. Algrund peeks out, hearing chanting. Peering down, he observes kobolds dancing around a pyre, on which another kobold has been tied to a post. A kobold in a mask steps forwards, and lights the pyre. It appears this is the third such kobold to have been done. The shaman kobold waves his hands, raising two cobras from baskets, and kisses each before throwing them onto the burning pyre.
Not really wanting to engage a large number of kobolds and their shaman, the trio retreat through the tunnel and consider blocking up the tunnel, but rationalize that the kobolds likely don't want to be in the mine with the giant spider, or would be able to dig through whatever obstruction was placed there, and so decide to leave it be and head back to village.
* Recap from EtoileLion on reddit. Editoral notes are theirs.
Experience: 1575 exp (total 2905 or 3005?)
Level Up:
*Albert to level 2 Thief, Wizard says same
**HP +2 (4 hp total)
*Bruno to level 3 Bard
**HP +4 (12 hp total)
*Algrund Strongaxe to level 3 Cleric (double level up)
**HP +10 (13 hp total)
*Maribel to level 2 warrior
**HP +8 (22 hp total)
Category:Misscliks Seaborn Episodes