Iados was not present for this session; in-story, he has been nabbed by spiders and dragged off to God-knows-where. Let's get to the recap.
The party started off the session with three paths to explore - a tunnel passage in the fountain room, and two doors in a room to the south, past a web-choked tunnel. They entered the southernmost door first, and beyond they found themselves faced with a difficult battle against a pair of hulking zombies. The encounter didn't prove very painful for anyone besides Reed, who triggered a pair of pit traps and was nearly killed by the hulking zombies. He was brought into dying twice; the second time he had originally died from a crit, but after initially pronouncing him dead, I remembered the halfling second chance ability, and used it to wipe away the crit, leaving Reed simply dying instead of outright dead, as the 26 damage blow would've originally left him.
The party handled the zombies, and discovered the rest of the pit traps in the room - a total of four. They found another door at the south of this room, but this door was different; a steel door made in the image of a skeleton resting in a coffin, this door's skeleton bore a shield bearing Elven words on it. The words read: "A warning to defilers of Arathelon the Spider Lord's tomb - the Chamber of Cleansing lies ahead. Through its purity
only the dead pass - retreat now, defilers, or join the dead." The party chose to leave this
door for later, and went to check out the nearby eastern door in the previous chamber.
This room was completely dark, and contained a number of mushrooms. As soon as they lit a light, the party was attacked from the darkness - Erik was grabbed by a strand of webbing and dragged through a cluster of the mushrooms, releasing a cloud of spores which poisoned him. He was also dragged into a pit, which he found to be filled with zombies. The group then discovered what had attacked them - a large doomspinner spider.
This encounter proved to take a long time, as the pit obstacle was difficult for the party to traverse, and with 3 of the 4 of them being melee, Gwenn was the only one able to commit any real offense to the doomspinner spider. Things were made more difficult by the doomspinner spider's web blasts, which left Gwenn, Aludiana, and Reed restrained for much of the fight - Aludiana in particular was restrained for the entire length of the fight. After finally defeating the spider, the party opened the chest it stood on - though getting over there proved difficult for some, as Aludiana & Gwenn found the pit especially difficult to traverse with their low Athletics scores. They decided to extended rest on the other side of the pit, as Reed's diseases needed curing and he was out of healing surges.
During the night the party was attacked by an ambush spider and a pair of grasping zombies, but these proved fairly easy to dispatch, aside from the ambush spider's surprise attack on Gwenn, which nearly sent her into negative. This quick encounter out of the way, they checked out the tunnel back in the fountain room. With a trio of Nature checks, the party managed to navigate the tunnels and find their way into a widened passage full of spider webs. As soon as they touched the webs, a number of spiderlings flooded into the passage. These webs again required Athletics or Acrobatics checks, and Aludiana & Gwenn found themselves having more difficulties; the party eventually just decided to let the spiderlings come to them, and quickly wiped the beasts out. After clearing the tunnel of webs, they headed to the other side and found a hole leading down into what appeared to be a hatchery, with a bit of torchlight visible.
Deciding that this was a point of no return they didn't yet wish to cross, they headed back to the skeleton door, and opened it - as soon as they did, poisonous gas began pouring into the room, and they found the origin of the acidic smell they'd detected from the door earlier, as in the room beyond, the "Chamber of Cleansing", they heard the distinct sizzle of acid.
We ended the session here; next week looks to be very exciting, as the party will have to navigate the Chamber of Cleansing. Looking forward to seeing everyone next week!
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