The Wood Wide Web

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Low/medium adventure to be played on Tuesdays at Chez Smith in Mangere Bridge

A short elf, (Faith sized and DAs as Fae Elf) from Zeyland, has made her way to the Guild in order to recruit low level adventurers to investigate strange goings on as requested by the Guardian of the Forest. She also desires to join the Guild.

Players

• Grizelda Female giant rune mage (scribe)
• Pierre Male halfling illusionist
• Kerry Female human celestial mage (party leader)
• Marco Male human earth mage
• Fathom Male human water mage

(Note: This may turn into a series of mini-adventures as this was originally intended to be a short adventure)

Scribe Notes

Chapter One - To Zeyland We Will Go

1 Meadow 814
Our employer was called Elana Moonwatcher. She was a short elf who came from Zeyland in the far south. She did not understand money. After talking to Guild security she offered greenstone, obsidian and mithril and possibly knowledge of ancient magics as reward. Apparently her people were banished to the south by the tall elves in the long ago wars. Their leader was an elder mage named Lady Gwen. They wanted us to evict the giant spiders that have infested part of their forest and filled it with webs. Elana was some kind of astrologer, and she complained that the sky here in Seagate was upside down. And there was a new star in the sky over Zeyland. The spiders were stopping her people from getting to the village by the big lake where the rainbow fish live. And there were volcanoes in Zeyland. And the earth was prone to shaking. And there were chickens as tall as me. And great big bouncing mice. And big eagles. But not rocs or elephants. There were also dragons in the southern mountains. And dwarves. The big spiders were only halfling sized. Some of the elves that were living in the spider area have changed. And now worship something called Lloyth or something beginning with M

Elana had a long distance portal thing, called a wyrmhole. It was an ancient magic and would get us to Zeyland quickly. We could get back via Rangiwhero.

Marco: I’m a ranger, so what kind of forest is it? Employer: Well, it’s a carnivorous forest…

We spent the rest of the day organising greater enchantments, skin changes, restoratives and so on, most of which I had to pay for. We settled on a ten per cent greater from Aaron on magic and combat for all of us. It fell to me to summon my efreeti and ride to Slippery Rock to see the witches about the skin changes and restoratives.

Grizelda: If they’re scared of a giant riding an efreeti, they must be new to the area…

After dinner Marco collected his tigers from various places around the guild where they had been stoned and stored. They were unstoned and then bound, fed and skin changed.

2 Meadow 814
In the morning, Elena was yawning a lot. What had she been doing all night? Marco instructed the tigers that we were not food, and neither was the employer. Then we set forth. We had to walk six miles. Elena had never seen a horse or a cow before. When I asked her how she had got to the guild she pointed to the sky. It seemed that she had literally dropped in. We came to a barn where the farmer was expecting us. Guild security must have set this up. Then Elena started her ritual, placing a hexagon of crystals on the wall. Meanwhile Marco skin-changed the tigers. Which confused them a bit. For one thing they could not roar… when they tried, they mewed!

As Elana finished, the portal appeared, creating what looked like a vertical pool of water on the water. Then all we had to do was walk through it. Or, in my case, bend over and shamble through it. She warned that it would only last 38 minutes. One by one we stepped into the portal and fell through a magical tube that dumped us without ceremony on the damp forest floor. It was dark, not yet dawn. And now we had to walk some more. About twenty miles. After a while we ran into some more short elves, who were a hunting party. One made a rune portal by just planting a rune stick. We had a bit of an argument about how rune portals are supposed to work. The little elf glared at me. Little elf, big giant… not so intimidating. Anyhow, I did learn that the bees counted as a single entity for this kind of magic, because we popped through to the village without trouble. And then they offered breakfast. Broiled fish, eggs, mushrooms, sweet potatoes and fern fronds.

Grizelda (of her bees): They will bee-hive!

Chapter Two – An Interrupted Party

We chatted about getting home over breakfast, and Elana confirmed that she would be able to get us to Rangiwhero, and we explained that there was a portal from there to the Sea of Grass.

Employer: We homed on the greatest source of magic…

Grizelda: You found the Guild Vault.

Employer: We are somewhat surprised that it hasn’t collapsed into a magical singularity.

Grizelda: Well, it is very singular!

As we eat we saw elves moving along the rope walks through the Elven city above us in the trees. Elena tells us about the big flightless birds in the southern forests. The elves here are more faerie-like, and have the faerie allergy to cold iron. They also have old and different magic to ours. Her star-wings look like the night sky with scattering of stars. She pointed out a clearing among trees where we could make camp. As we looked for fish in the nearby stream, a small faerie creature flew towards us, and introduced herself as Krista, and turned into a somewhat larger elf. She explained that she was a Fae mage… who do nature magics. Marco started chatting to the dragonflies. They believed there were dragons sitting on the fire mountains. There were trout in the stream, so Marco and Fathom set down to fishing as we talked to Krista, about the spiders. They thought that a previous group of tall folk had gotten rid of the spiders, far to the north, where the humans were. But they hadn’t got them all, or this was another problem altogether, and the spider problem was now much worse that it was before. And some of the elves have turned to the dark. The spiders had the ability to spit webs and were poisonous. They had grown great webs across the forest, but Krista was not sure if they were intelligent. They seemed to communicate with each other through the web. A mind mage tried to contact them, but she went crazy and ran away into the forest. The elves have some good healers – which will be useful. The real problem was that we didn’t have much to fix mental problems or charms, and some of the elves in the villages in spider territory may be under the influence of vile enchantments. Tomorrow we would be meeting the Guardian of the Forest, who was a Treant.

After lunch, just as we were thinking about a nap, there was another arrival in the form of a glowing ball of light that turned into another winged elf. She introduced herself as the Lady Gwen, leader of the elves here, and truly ancient, old enough to remember the long ago War between the Elves. She was pleased we were going to do something about the spiders because they would be here within a week or two. The webs were tall enough in places to be enough Grizelda’s head. She has lost contact with the elves in that area. They have assemblages of talents and spells instead of Colleges. We discussed making herbal powders and potions to aid with combating the spiders. It was not impossible that the elves that had turned to the dark, who call themselves Aurae, were turning into some kind of drow. Before she left, she invited us to dine with the tribe that evening. We passed the afternoon fishing and sleeping.

A group of elves that looked like forest guards came to collect us near sunset, and led us through the forest. There were lights in the forest. It would seem that the elves had been decorating. They showed us a fungus that looked very like a truffle. We were seated at the high table with the Lady Gwen, who was looking very regal in a dress that scintillated in the fairy light. They had found a tree trunk for Grizelda to sit on. There were even elf children, more than I had ever seen. We were just about to start when a dishevelled looking elf burst into the clearing crying out to the queen, “They are coming, we cannot stop them!” He was sweating heavily. As we stood up, and readied our weapons, he drew a dagger and called out “Die, usurper queen!” And stabbed the queen. She dropped. I hit him, and he too fell to the ground. As the royal consort went to aid the queen, the possessed elf assassin’s body began to move, and from his back emerged a spider the size of my hand, which leapt upon the consort, as I squished it with my club. The elven healers and Kerry went to help Lady Gwen, as another spider was spotted up in the trees, watching. It was soon full of arrows, and I cut promptly it down. They preserved the assassin’s body, for their Queen to resurrect later. After asking permission of the Custodian of the Records, an elder elf who was now in charge, we examined the corpse, and it looked like somebody had opened a wound in his back and inserted the spider. It appeared that it was not my blow that killed him, but a spider bite. There were spider eggs secreted around the body. He was also under some kind of spider magic, and there was a mind-sapping poison in his bloodstream. Mind College counterspells would help against this poison. One of the elven mages put the corpse in some kind of stasis effect. His spirit was there, and was sorry. He seemed to understand when I said that it was not his fault. The spider had the aura “Watching Spider” and a fading magic.

We returned to our camp to rest, and were undisturbed except that it rained heavily around midnight. Just before that I saw a peculiar flightless bird with a long beak come snuffling out of the bush. It was the kind that was sacred to the elves, so we left it alone.

3 Meadow 814

At dawn it was still raining. We were awoken by unfamiliar, but nevertheless pretty bird songs. Elena and Krista turned up around breakfast. We decided to go hunting for spiders up the river, after casting many spells in preparation. Back towards the city, we saw a great many elves moving around, obviously on high alert. We spotted a cable running from the city through the forest. An elf was in the air tracking it. Then we saw a spider making its way along the cable towards the elven city, laying another cable. And then a second spider across further. An elf shot it with fire magic. Pierre attempted to enchant the trees. There was a dryad in that tree… and the tree cooperated. It started to shake violently. The spider webbed Pierre, and then Kerry and I shot it… my bolt carried it flying through the air some distance away. Kerry and Fathom cut the dryad and Pierre free. We went to check on the dead spider, and as we did so a bolt of lightning shot down another spider. From the dying aura of the dog-sized spider I shot, we learned that it had been somewhat sentient, but I could see no spirit. My bolt was somewhat corroded, so we tested one of my special silvered dwarven bolts in its blood – which appeared to be unaffected. I divined the spider, and got the impression that it was a web-spinning spider, and part of a larger whole. Lady Gwen joined us, and told us that the spiders appeared to be creating a giant web across the forest. There were nodes and spiders sitting on them. Lighting magic was especially potent because it seemed to propagate along the threads.

Chapter Three - Spiders go Squish!

3 Meadow 814
We learned that the spiders are light-aspected, since they are active during the day. Crista had been sending out pixies to scout. They had learned that the webs extended up the river, becoming increasingly denser as they went. When he examined the strands of the web, Marco found there was a glassy fibrous core to it. They tried a number of alchemical methods, but only very strong and dangerous liquids such as aqua fortis had any effect, and then only slowly. Meanwhile, I summoned an efreeti, and told it to “break that” pointing to the web. He grasped the strand, burned through the outer leathery coat and pulled the inner threads like toffee until they broke. I shortly discovered that the most effective trick was to saw through the inside, and then get the efreet to finish the job. Predictably, this had the effect of attracting arachnoid attention… four spiders, one stopped by a Wall of Darkness Kerry had cast, one ran away, one remained on the web, while another attacked on the ground. Fathom cast fog, and I mounted my efreet and charged the spider on the web.

Grizelda. “I’m flying into battle on an efreet – it’s a yo-do-ho moment!”

The spider on the ground webbed Pierre and Fathom, catching Fathom. I attacked and missed. So did my efreet. I landed in the tree, and he flew past and ended up on the ground. Not a great start. But I made up for that, by thumping it clear out of the tree. Meanwhile, Pierre and Kerry had killed the other one. Then we extricated the unfortunate Fathom, and finished off the one by the wall. We formulated a plan to attack the nearest node, putting a Rune Wall around it first. Kerry slowly turned into a half-panther half-person, and Marco into a half-tiger half-person. So we headed into the forest and there was more and more web. And found a spider sitting on the node.

I shot at it, but somehow it dodged. Then Pierre shot and nearly killed it. Two more appeared beside us, and the efreet and I hoed in with our weapons. Fathom made a fog… although it burned off quickly around the efreet which was now aflame. Pierre made an illusory wall of fire between us and the other spiders that we could now see beyond – one of which was truly enormous. We hurt the nearby spiders so much that they promptly phased out and retreated to get healed.

Grizelda: I could make small flammable objects burst into flame…

Marco: There’s only Pierre and we don’t want to burn him!

The big one approached and made threats in Fathom’s head. I made a rune wall around us. Kerry made blackfire on the big spider so that it ran away, making more threats. We set about destroying more and more of the web, as we made our way to the river, where we concealed ourselves under the water. Except the efreet and Pierre hid him inside a rock. As darkness was falling, a boss spider appeared, above the river. So we shot it, hoping to bring it down. But didn’t do much, so we ducked back under the water, as a bunch of short elves came out of the bushes, and shot at us. Pierre and I noticed a heat source coming down the cliff towards the efreet’s hiding place. I commanded the efreet to grab it and throw it to me in the river. Which he did. And I grabbed it – it was an elf, in a black spider silk suit, with weird oriental weapons. Fathom put water-breathing on him so he didn’t die. We took him captive and took him back down river to the elven city. It was really late when we got there. We learned that he had been listening to the spider voices, and was now a zealous follower of the spider god. One of the elves cast fascination on him, but that really didn’t help much. He had a magical amulet that was an Amulet of Health.

Chapter Four - Too Many Spiders

4 Meadow 814

We are awoken at dawn by a voice crying of fire and spiders… sounding more than a little crazed. We hastily arm ourselves as we listen to the voice.

Marco: It sounds a couple of sandwiches short of picnic… Someone: Maybe missing the entire lunchbox! Keri: Or at least a couple of paddlers short of a canoe!

It was another elf, looking a bit bedraggled, covered with bits of forest, and his skin scratched all over. Fathom offered it fish for breakfast. He carried on rambling about the webs, spiders and so on. Pierre deduced that his brain was scrambled as if by krrf, but there was no krrf in his system. Possibly something from the forest? I fetched Elena and she said that he was the mind mage who tried to read the mind of the forest. After a while he calmed down a bit, but we still couldn’t get anything sensible out of him.

After breakfast and purification, I sent about ritually controlling the mad elf, so that he wouldn’t hurt himself any more. He kept on rambling about the beautiful priestess, the messenger. Then Fathom tried binding water, and summoned a water spirite named Nix, who promptly tried to seduce him. Then Elana warned us that summoning things around here might have unexpected results. Then we went to visit the forest guardian, an ancient treant who lived some miles away. We set off on foot, and walked through the forest until we came to a large clearing in which stood a giant tree. Elena addressed it and it awoke and opened its eyes. It said that we were the promised ones and asked us what we had found out. As we began talking about the spiders, the mad little elf, whom I was carrying in a baby sling, starting babbling. The treant told us to bring the mind mage closer and it reached down a branch to him. It recoiled and then tried again, more slowly. As he ministered to the elf, we were suddenly set upon by dark elves. Kerry got in the first whack with her axe. They hit back and one scored on her. But she got her own back, and then the cats went into action. Fathom cast fogs around them so they could not see. Then Pierre told the trees to shake, and one took an arrow from Crista and fell out of the tree. The cats play with elves, and the elves don’t do so well. One came back with an elf in its mouth, looking very pleased with itself. After trying to thump mine twice, I dropped my club, closed on her with my gloves, and wuss-slapped her into submission. We relieved the dead of a couple more of those health amulet, and some four healing potions.

The one who got cat-treed wanted to talk. She said that her priestess wanted us captured so she could talk to us. We asked her if that was the beautiful elf priestess we’d been hearing about.

Captured dark elf: The one with legs that go up to… Grizelda the giantess: Are they as long as my legs? Captured elf, looking up: Er… no.

The treant let go of the mad elf. He explained that the source of the problem is one of his kind, an ent-wife who had turned to the dark. She is somewhere to the north, beyond the big lake. The captured elf offered to guide us, since he was apparently a less than willing convert. The one I was sitting on had a right collection of nasty weaponry, garrotte, hatpins etc. Pierre (looking at the elf assassin’s weapon collection): Watch it, you could hurt someone with those…

It seems that we must somehow contrive to deal with the corrupted treant and the dark priestess, and quickly. We gave the elf assassin to the treant and he showed her the truth, so she began to cry. We learned that there are dark-skinned humans somewhere to the north. There was much discussion of how to do something about the corrupted treant without actually killing her. We were given a seed from this treant just in case. One method might be to attack its roots. Or we could try to get the spriggans to help us access some underground caves. And then we returned to the city. Fathom had a word with Nix whom he had left on watch. She had seen a spider heading into the forest, but wasn’t clear as to where it had come from. Krista turned up with a bunch more irritating little fairies. They suggest that the spriggans might be bribed, or won over with flattery. They are also stupid, so illusions might work. The faeries might be able to get some blue pixie dust that might cure the corrupted treant. Then they, thankfully, all went away except the one called Silvermist. They came back later with a dust fairy carrying some of the blue dust, which he thought might work.

Awards

Experience points (2 sessions) - before racial tax

Fathom	Grizelda	Kerry	Marco	Pierre
2700	4800	4600	4800	4900
Experience spent during game
0	0	0	0	0
Experience to Spend
2700	4800	4600	4800	4900
Lucre (in Silver Pennies - after 10% Guild Tax - before loot):
0sp	0sp	0sp	0sp	0sp
Arcane Points Earned
0	0	0	0	0

Please note that the EP includes the scribe note awards. Usually only awarded to the official scribe but, if any other character adds their own stuff to the scribe notes, they are also eligible for this award and will be rewarded accordingly.

Stuff for the Seagate Times

Quotes

• Elena - And you've got a North Star that everything revolves around
• Pierre - Engalton
• Elena - Ah - so it's named Engalton

• Grizelda - I'm a rune mage (in her accent)
• Marco - What's a ruin mage? A mage that ruins things?

• Marco: I’m a ranger, so what kind of forest is it?
• Elena: Well, it’s a carnivorous forest… (she meant to say coniferous)

• Elena: We homed the portal in on the largest concentration of magic
• Grizelda: Ah .. you found the Guild Vaults
• Elena: Yes. We were rather surprised that it hadn't collapsed into a magical singularity
• Grizelda: It is rather singular

Other Notes

Place Names

This is a list of the elven placenames with Polynesian equivalents

• Mountains
  • Amon Amarth = Ruapehu
  • Erebor (Lonely Mountain) = Taranaki
  • Ered Lithui = Tongarero
  • Orodruin (Mountain of blazing fire) = Ngauruhoe - Place of Power for Fire Mages

• Rivers
  • Anduin (Long river) = Whanganui
  • Sindilair = Mangapurua - tributary of Anduin
  • Sirion (Great River) = Waikato

• Others
  • Felegion (Cave of stars) = Waitomo - Place of Power for Celestial Star Mages
  • Honlin (Heart lake) = Taupo
  • Hithaeglir (Misty Mountains) = ? - spine of mountains down the Southern Island

• Elven Settlements
  • Avallone = ? - City near stone circle in valley in the foothills of the southern half of Hithaeglir, Said to be the first city.
  • Formenos = Te Kuiti - Closest elven settlement to Felegion
  • Caras Galadhon = ? On the banks of the Sindilair
  • Tavrobel = on the west coast of Honlin