"HuMu, I think you have the right of it. We need to have a look at the rest of this place, put an end to its use, and then get out of here."

Kursak planned to destroy this thing as best he could, but first he needed to have a look at what else was in this cave. He made his way to the northern passage, calling for Rain to lead the way if she wished.

Frilia scrambled to get in front of Kursak as the group made its way towards the northern passage, bow in hand.

With a nod, rain at the side of frilla, she too had her bow in hand, ready to explore the north passage.

Kursak, Frilia, and Rain headed toward the northern passage.  Humu alternately hopped and waddled back to the main chamber, where Hannah sat with the makeshift sacks Rain had constructed from the clothing in the spider-pit.

The northern passage was short, ending in a rocky wall.  Your darkvision allowed you all to spot a deep chasm that split the floor just before the wall.  In the dim light, it was impossible to see how far down the chasm went, but the rift ran from wall to wall of the northern tunnel, and spanned about 5 feet across.

---

Map: https://i.ibb.co/v1MGSw6/Ettercaps-Cave-NTunnel.png

the tabaxi looked at the wall with a frown, then down the chasm. "Can any of you make light magic onto a item, like an arrow or stone?  I'm curious to see how far down it goes and what's down there."

"Stand aside, young one."  Humu was using his old man voice again.

The kenku whistled a complicated tune, and the little bird lights fluttered to life once more.  The four of them shot forward, and then down into the chasm, the multicoloured lights reflecting off the rocky walls  The birds got at least 120 feet down before they winked out of existence, the range beyond the wizard's capability.  Even at that distance, there had been no visible end to the chasm.

Frilia looked at the light bird disappear in the darkness and frowned. She looked at her companions before turning around away from the chasm "Well, I propose to check the other passage to see what we can find there. We can always come back here after."

True to her word, the gnome fighter moved toward the other remaining passage.

Kursak merely grunted his agreement before leading the way toward the eastern path.

Rain looked on as Humu sent the birds of light, with a smile. "Neat trick." She muttered.

As they flew and faded, she whistled. "Damn.....deep hole" She turned to the others and nodded

Kursak, Rain, and Frilia ventured down the eastern path, while Minho and Felix rejoined Hannah, Shera, Humu, and Klaven gathered in the central cavern, organising the treasure Rain had found into the sacks she'd managed to craft.

The eastern tunnel made a small turn to the left before swinging back around to the right, and opening into the chamber where Felix had encountered a pair of spider swarms.  Little blackened bodies dotted the floor liberally.  Beyond the chamber, the tunnel continued past a few collections of rubble, and then twisted around to the left again.

As soon as the trio entered the second tunnel, the temperature dropped precipitously.  Breath steamed in the air as they walked, and the sound of moving water could be heard.  As the rounded the corner, the source became evident: a small stream of water poured out of a crack in the wall of the cave, spilling into a small pool no more than ten feet wide on the south wall.  At the center, directly under the waterfall, a large white egg sat upright, propped up by small grey stones around it.

---

Map: https://i.ibb.co/6sQbwj8/Ettercaps-Cave-All.png

Rain looked at the egg and held her hand up. She looked at Frilla and Kursak and moved forward towards the egg, looking for any traps or surprises. Rain knew the danger of animals, but she was a tabaxi, and the egg made her curious.

First she touched the water lightly, then made her way to inspect the egg.

Frilia looked at the egg, then widened her scan to look for threats, before going back to the egg. "Moradin's bottom, that thing is bigger than I am! Now I want an omelet, what type of egg is that?"

Rain flapped her hand at the gnome, frowning. "That's no omlette egg Frilla. I may be mistaken, but i think...." She got to the egg and reached out gingerly, picking it up. The egg was weighty, but solid, and though the cold was present, she had been cold before.

She blinked as she held it. "Damn me....it's a dragon egg!" The tabaxi was excited by the notion.

Frilia took a few step forward, still scanning for threats, until she accidentally touched the cold water, realizing something about the environment. "Who in their right mind would try to incubate an egg in this cold? The hens at home carefully regulate the temperature their eggs are kept at.... Oh no.... we need to destroy it now! The only dragons I know that likes cold are white dragons! It's evil! "
This message was last edited by the player at 09:11, Wed 26 Oct 2022.

Rain looked at the gnome. "Firstly, we don't know what kind of dragon....it may not even be a full dragon - it may be a drake.  Secondly, it might have been placed here to stop it growing. It might be as much a prisoner than anything else."

She grasped the egg and started making its way back. "It may not hatch, but something like this could be worth a bit to a collecter.  And, if it does hatch, it may be goodly, and then aide us. " She sighs. "it shows signs of being evil, i'll kill it myself"

Hannah stared at the egg in Rain's hands. "I never would've expected to find something so beautiful in such an ugly place..."

"It may help, it may hurt. I've studied life and death for some time, but not from the standpoint of draconic eggs. Either way, I do not think it should be left here, unless we are to destroy it. It's - " When Rain grabbed the egg and began hauling it off, Kursak turned to Frilia and shrugged, "Alright, then."

As Frilia tested the water, she found it to be quite warm -- even pleasant.  The egg, on the other hand, quickly gained a layer of frost as the water which was still on the shell quite literally froze as soon as it was removed from it's resting place.

As the group returned to the central chamber, the egg remained bitterly cold in Rain's hands.  The Tabaxi was hardy enough that it didn't cause damage, but it was far from comfortable.

Once the party gathered in the central chamber, the enormity of the place seemed to grow on them.  Bodies littered the cavern, and the floor was slick with blood.  The silence seemed to invite the question:  What next?

---

OOC: What next?  This is pretty much the end of what I'd planned for this chapter.  I'm willing to "brush with broad strokes" over any actions from here and get set to move into Chapter 2.

Items still on the agenda:
* return to Tra'aelaia and report the job done
* Felix has an open deal with Tra'aelaia -- if he can explain how the abominations were able to byoass her wards, she'll give him some much-desired personal information.
* return to Asarius, talk to Khaturr.  He wanted to know what happened to his man Agostin.
* a long rest is probably on the cards as well.

You guys tell me what you to do (even if it's not on the list), and we'll take it from there.

The gnome fighter looked at the carnage in the main chamber and then at her companions, most of them beat up. Kicking a spider carcass, she looked towards the room with the chasm, then at the egg in the tabaxi's hands, debating if it was worth the risk of destroying what was probably an evil dragon before getting an arrow in the back from the talented archer. Since she would likely die now instead of later trying to stop the beast, she already planned to tell Rain "I told you so!" when it would most likely occur. Shrugging, she turned to Kursak. "I don't know how we could destroy all the tubing in that chamber of horrors, unless we hack and slash it all with our weapons, my meager magic will not be enough to do the deed faster. Hannah, how's your sword arm?"
This message was last edited by the player at 02:05, Fri 28 Oct 2022.

Rain, her bow at her back and the egg in hand, came to the others, and making room, in her pack, packed it in making sure her extra clothes were padding for the egg. she caught the question of the gnome and sniffed. "We could use oil and burn the damn thing....oil runs down and coats the sides, then fire it."

Hannah rolled her shoulders and stretched her arm. "Not a scratch on it"

Rain was all for the destruction of the cave. She however was more intrigued by the egg - so she left the destruction of the place to them. With the egg in hand and more coin in her pouch, she made for the entrance, waiting for the others to see what they would do. She placed the on the ground, closed her eyes and placed a paw on it lightly, absently humming a tune her father used to sing.

She frowned, taking her hand off, sensing that the egg was more attuned to cooler weather than warm. She smiled. "So.... cold, huh?' she muttered.

she sat, crossed-legged and thought about the egg.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:38, Wed 02 Nov 2022.

Frilia got her own sword out then grinned towards Hannah. "Then let us see what we can do to reduce the size of those monstrous bowels while Rain and 'Sak figure out how to burn it all down. "

Shera finished her task of packing what she could, but she knew better than to try carrying too much herself. She most certainly wasn't the strongest of the group and with her lack of dark vision she felt pretty well useless but with her torch in hand she kept an eye out ever vigilant for signs of danger or of her allies return.

---

20:50, Today: Secret Roll: Shera Draxalia rolled 9 using 1d20 with rolls of 9.  Perception roll.

The plan decided, the party set about the destruction of the cave's grisly contents.  Body parts -- far too many to even begin to try reassembling them to determine an exact body count -- were freed from webbed cocoons, dragged to the centre chamber of the cavern, and set alight using one of the many torches.  From there, Humu coaxed the fire bigger and brighter and hotter using his tiny little fire magic.  Hannah, Frilia, Minho, and Shera set about with blades, cutting the ropey tubes which decorated the walls and ceiling of the various tunnels, bringing armfuls of the sinewy material back to be thrown atop the fire.

There wasn't much they could do to plug up the chasm at the back of the north tunnel, but the sinkhole at the bottom of the northeastern tunnel Hannah plugged up with several larger boulders and a rock cairn was built around it.  It wouldn't keep out anything determined, but it was what could be done.

The trip back to Tra'aelaia's glade was quiet.  Night had fallen, and the webbing still spread thickly enough through the canopy to block out the pale light of Catha, the white moon.  The Vermaloc wildwood was eerily silent; much of the wildwood's nightlife had been devoured by the spiders and it would take some time for them to recover.

The dryad met the party at the edge of her glade, still miraculously free from the webbing.  She took the news of the ettercaps demise with an alien composure, and a wickedly terrible smile, even as she assured the party that she would set additional measures in place to ensure that even if the spiders were to return, they would face stiff resistance to any resumption of their work.  Later, she took Felix aside for a private conversation.

Night deepened, and with it, the party came to a rest and saw to their own needs.  The half-goliath Kursak spent several hours in prayer to the Raven Queen.  He lit a fire in a small brazier, kneeling beside it with a single black feather pressed to his brow.  After some time, he cast the feather forward, into the flame, which flared a brilliant white.  The feather hung in the air for a moment, suspended by the updraft of the flames, and all the colour bled from the feather until it, too was as white as the flame beneath.  Then, with a surge or heated air, the feather spiralled up and into the night, vanishing into the black sky.  Moments laters, a single flap of wings high up in the branches of Tra'ealia's tree could be heard.

The cleric continued his meditations, seeking divine guidance on the unexpected presence of the dragon egg in the spider's cave.  Any answers he received were for him alone to consider, and he eventually settled in for a night rest.  [Private to Kursak:  He didn't know what he expected to receive, if anything, as he asked in his private thoughts about the dragon's egg.  But the image that appeared in his mind's eye was that of a set of scales, balanced evenly.  A drop of blood fell on the one side of the scale, brilliantly red and vibrant, and the scale tipped in that direction.  Time passed, and a drop of black blood fell on the other scale, and it returned to balance.  More drops fell, faster and faster, until it was impossible to determine which fell more often, or which had more.  In the end, the meaning was clear: the actions of one's doing determined the weight of one's worth, not the nature.]

Morning came, and with it, the call of birdsong.  One or two, and a stiff breeze blew through the woods.  Dewdrops and mist hung on every spiderweb in sight, turning the glade into the inside of a brilliant red and white geode.  Here and there, a strand of webbing had torn free from its mooring and hung limply.  The forest had begun its reclamation.

Asarius was two days journey from the logging camp, and it rained most of the way, though not heavily.  Two armoured ogres stood guard at the entrance to the southeast gates of the city, each wielding a giant long-handed axe.  They looked bored as the party passed between them into the City of Beasts.  Asking about, the party located Khaturr in a tavern called the Amber Anvil.  The bugbear was in the midst a card game when he spotted the party walk in.  He folded, threw his cards down and gestured for them to join him at the bar.

"So, you made it out alive, did you?  Did you find what you were looking for?"  Conversation continued from there.  The hobgoblins had reported Agostin dead when they returned, and he didn't hold out hope for the man.  Apparently the owner of the logging business was distraught, but Agostin had only been a nephew, not a son, and... well, life went on.  Khaturr was set to return to the camp with a more heavily armoured host in a few days time.  With the assurance of the party that the spiders had been dealt with, he could depart sooner and with fewer men.

"You seem like a capable lot," he finished.  "If you're looking to make a real name for yourselves, you should head on up to Jigow for the Festival of Merit.  Anyone who's anyone will be there, either to win the prize, or to impress potential employers.  A good set of horses will take you there in a couple of weeks."

---

OOC: This closes Chapter 1.  It is assumed that you'll find a reason to go to Jigow (travelling with the others is certainly reason enough).  I'll be tapping each of you in Private Messages for your level progression plans.  Once most people have completed their leveling, I'll kick off Chapter 2 (which officially begins the Call of the Netherdeep).
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:54, Fri 04 Nov 2022.