[Notes for the run of December 2, 1999.] We advance up the "tunnel" formed by the forest looming over the stream. The stream current takes up only about half the distance between the walls of trees, but we suspect the stream occasionally floods, flushing out the area between the oppressive ranks of trees. In any event, we travel quite far without finding any sign of spiders. As we enter the presence-draining area, Paris's badge starts glowing. She also draws her sword, but it doesn't glow at first. As we go deeper and the feeling of dread grows, the badge glows more strongly, and the sword begins to glow as well, but neither does anything to protect the rest of us from the forest. So Mia casts her light-plus-protection spell, and we feel much better. Alexis thinks about what she learned of the previous expedition, and notes that, though the dread caused Ravel Pensky's group to panic and run into the center by mistake, once they got there they seemed to recover some presence of mind. So she judges that the effect won't get so strong as to overwhelm Mia's defense spell. We don't have much of a plan, but we continue forward hoping we'll think of something once we get close. Calais notes that Paris's badge doesn't glow most of the time while within Mia's spell, so he asks Rhori to stay alert for if his badge stops glowing, which might indicate that we've come to an area where we don't need the spell any more. Eventually Rhori spots a strand of spider web running from one forest wall across the stream to the other. He points it out to us and we prepare to go under it, but Calais looks more closely and sees other strands, starting low and going up to the right. After some examination, he points out the part of the stream with the most clearance, and digs out some extra room, so we manage to get through without touching any webs. Hobbes is not thrilled to crawl on his belly in the mud, but does it. A bit further on, Rhori notices something brush his helmet. There are strands of web hanging from the trees overhead. He's about to ignore it and continue, but sees more webs dangling nearby, so he decides to stop and wait for the party. A moment later, Hobbes warns him to look out. The party -- and Rhori out in front -- is suddenly surrounded by several nearly transparent spiders, so hard to see that they seem to appear out of nowhere. A moment later, the area around each spider goes black. The area around Mia stays lit, but the rest of us are fighting in darkness. Paris is trained to handle that, but the rest of us are rather handicapped. We knock off a couple of legs, but are mostly ineffectual. Mia tries to dispel one of the dark areas, and comes very close, but fails. Fortunately the spiders don't attack all that well, either, and gradually we manage to whittle them down, though Rhori gets bitten once or twice. Their poison seems relatively mild, though. Rhori and Hobbes dispose of the two out front. Paris kills hers, and its darkness goes away; she heads over to help Calais. Suddenly the dark area around the two of them disappears, but there's no dead spider there. It must've skedaddled somehow, presumably either teleporting or using its near invisibility (we can't be sure which). Paris heads over to the last dark area and impales the last one. We check the remains and find four silver cards. We decide to start moving more quickly, with Rhori pulling back to be inside Mia's circle, and Calais and an invisible Hobbes joining him at the front of the march order to help watch for traps. After a while, Rhori hears Hobbes grumble over the mindlink about stepping in dogpoop again, and suddenly Calais sees a lion-shaped figure to his right, partially covered in webs. The party hears chittering in the trees. It sounds like the sound the tree spiders made that we fought when we found the pit spider on our previous visit. We get ready for battle, and a moment later several spiders drop out of the trees, though we still hear more chittering overhead. Some of the ones that dropped down are bright orange, which Rhori realises means they're probably more venomous. The chittering gets very loud, and several of us take stun damage from the sound [ego attack]. Anton tries to flash the spiders, but his foot gets stuck in something and his aim is thrown off. He flashes Paris, Mia, and Alexis, though Paris is unaffected. (Her badge glows for a moment.) Rhori warns Hobbes not to let these bite him, then rushes forward. Lucas, knowing that Rhori can see in the dark, tries to cast darkness over the spiders, but he too fumbles and centers it on himself, covering various party members in a smoky haze. (Alexis, being flashed, doesn't notice.) Paris and Rhori rapidly dispatch three spiders. Hobbes is confused by Rhori's orders, and eventually decides to roar. Fortunately it does in fact mostly affect the spiders and not the party. Calais, who had started to switch to his combat helm, drops both it and his armored cap, and starts rummaging for the wax and such that he brought along to use for earplugs. But before he can finish, the battle is over. No more cards this time, though. At Rhori's suggestion, we take some venom samples from the orange spiders. Calais finishes fashioning earplugs and distributes them. Anton apologises for flashing the party, and determines that Paris was not affected. (Paris had never mentioned before that she is protected from such spells.) We continue on, and come to a place where there's a large mass of webs arranged vertically, blocking the path. Alexis says it doesn't sound like anything she remembers from the survivor's report. We back off a short way, and Lucas casts a spell to set the webs on fire. A bit of it sort of melts away, but the rest of the web doesn't catch fire. Through the hole we can hear a waterfall, which Alexis remembers as a landmark indicating we're very close to the castle. We light a torch and burn away some more webs to make an opening we can get through. Calais clambers quietly up the ledge and sees, not very far ahead, a dark castle shape, just being lit in the glow of the full moon. There are four corner towers and a central tower, with streamers of web running down from it to the corners. He notices that, although he's out of Mia's light, he doesn't feel the oppression of the forest. He goes back and tells Mia she can turn off her spell, so the light won't give us away. Anton turns invisible and goes up to watch. He notices an occasional glimmer of light along the streamers. After a while, he thinks he sees the top of the central tower -- or something large there -- moving. He comes down to tell us that, and also takes the opportunity to cast magic sight (down where his incantations are less likely to be overheard). He goes back up to look again, and realises that the glimmers are a spell in the process of being cast. Indeed, the oppressive feeling appears to be completely gone everywhere; it's in the process of being recast. He can even hear a sort of rhythmic clicking and chittering that could be an incantation. We figure we'd better be done by midnight, which is a few hours away. Anton comes back and describes what he's learned. He asks for two of the cards we've gotten recently, so he can boost his magical endurance. Calais obliges. Mia casts Magic Sight so she can follow Anton while he's invisible. Calais gives one of the booty bags to Alexis in case something happens to him. We agree that we should take just one egg, though, since part of what makes it suitable as an orb is its unique nature. We creep up. On the walls (sometimes on top, sometimes on the side), we see spiders with shiny legs, obviously the sword-legged ones we were warned about. We go up along the stream, and find where it enters the castle. The water is deep enough there to admit some of us, but nobody wearing real armor can get through it. Anton steels himself and crawls in, still invisible, to have a look. There's some light inside, and there are pale spiders going about their business without noticing him. The whole building resonates with a sort of clacking, which distracts the bard in him for a moment, but then he remembers what he's there for, and looks around. He's in a "building" fronting on the courtyard, with the central tower across the court. He examines the pale spiders, and thinks they might be blind, though he's no expert. Each of them is carrying some lumpy thing (not eggs). They seem to be moving in time to the clacking rhythm, but at this point, so is he. He comes out to tell us what he found, and we start stripping off our armor so we can make it through, since the passage is too long to dredge out. He turns on magic sight and goes back for another look. Inside is intense with a sort of dark green magic. We all crawl in. The pale spiders move around us when necessary, but do not seem to give us any other notice. We see the central tower has eight bigger sword-legged spiders up on the sides, and the queen is moving up and down in time to the clacking. Anton's magic sight sees that her eyes seem to project red beams, like searchlights. He makes sure we duck out of sight when her gaze passes by. Rhori notices one spider, dragging an orange streamer, and suddenly sees it on the other side of the courtyard, over by the central tower, but he didn't see it cross. He mentions it to us, and we figure it's some sort of teleport. Maybe if we follow a spider carefully enough we can teleport across and avoid having to cross the open area. The next time a spider approaches (and Anton says it's clear), Alexis tries following it into the courtyard, and suddenly she's in another archway. She looks back and sees the party (except Anton) on the far side of the court. Paris follows the next spider, and she and Alexis scout a bit while Calais and Rhori wait for two more. They find the center of the tower is hollow. Above them is the red hourglass belly of the queen. Below is a pile of eggs; occasionally a new one drops in. Calais and Rhori make it in, and Rhori braces Paris while she leans out over the hole and lowers Calais, his feet tied to a rope. He notices that the eggs on the bottom are hatching, so he goes for one near the top. He manages to scoop up an egg in a bag without being noticed, and Paris hauls him back up. Back at the edge of the courtyard, we wonder whether capturing a pale spider will let us use it to get back across without having to be out in the open. (None of them are travelling in that direction.) Rhori smacks one, and we notice a tremor in the rhythm of the clacking. We decide to run for it, as those who were waiting spot one of the big guard spiders starting down the tower toward us. We dash to the hole. Calais and Alexis make it out first, grab most of the armor, and keep running. Anton and Mia are next; Mia asks if we're sure we shouldn't wait, and we say yes, so they grab the rest of the armor and run. As Lucas and Paris come through, they find a normal guard spider coming down the wall to attack them. They grab shields and attack it. It strikes back, and they find it is able to attack all adjacent opponents at once, but fortunately it misses them. Paris hits it solidly and finds that it also has armor as strong as the armor she wishes she were wearing. Rhori is the last to reach the hole, and dives into it just as the big guard spider was about to catch up to him. The spider is too big for the hole, and Rhori wriggles through. Outside, Paris manages to connect with the spider's head, stunning it just in time for Rhori to finish it off. Lucas warns that he sees more coming. They bolt. Rhori tells Paris and Lucas to run on ahead and give support for the weaker group. Anton, looking back at the castle, sees the red eyes of the queen looking out at him with intelligence -- and hatred. (Dun-dun-DUN!) He also sees all the other spiders mobilising to come after us, and it looks like the spiders are as fast as the slowest of the party. We race for miles. Rhori drops his armor and shield so he can carry Anton and Mia, whose recoveries (even boosted by waybread) are not up to the marathon. We come to the place where there were criss-crossed webs across the stream. Paris, in the lead by now, runs into it and gets stuck in the webbing. She starts to work her way free of it, as a pit spider comes out from the side. Calais runs up to the spider, which swings at him but misses. Calais strikes the spider a mighty blow, and is sure he did some damage to it, but it's not stunned (by 27 stun, yow!). Alexis hits it also, but not for as much. Both swing again, hitting again; this time Alexis's blow hits in the head, killing it. Then the second spider, hitherto unnoticed, hits her from behind. Paris, having finished shredding the web, smacks the second spider. On the second swing she crits it in the head. Paris heals Alexis's wound, but Alexis can tell the venom will be doing more damage over time. She thinks she'll live, though, so we continue running. We're almost to the edge of the forest, when a bunch of the teleporting (or maybe invisible) spiders appear. But as they start to attack us, arrows start flying out at them. Hobbes is scared, until Rhori tells him to turn visible so the elves won't shoot him by accident. Mia heals Alexis's poison damage. Paris asks Mia to check Rhori's injuries as well. Then we go back to the elves' place and collapse.