Session 18
Web of Danger
Party: Coine, Dorian, Flynn, Urzein, Vaelen and Zalos
Short Synopsis:
The adventurers travel to the Monastery of St. Alban with the merchant Rashid al-Khem. They traverse the swamp by barge, then through the forest by wagon. Along the way, they raid a den of spiders to get silk.
As they continue along, Rashid goes missing. Vaelen believes that he may be trapped in Shadowfell.
Long Synopsis:
The merchant Rashid al-Khem asks the adventurers to escort his caravan (including himself, two wagons and four others) to the Monastery of St. Alban because tales are being spun about the dangers along the way. For a fee, the party agrees to hang out with the caravan as protection.
First, they take a barge through the swamp, then they take wagons overland through the forest. Along the way, the party was lured by the value of spider silk (large bundles worth 250 gold pieces) and threaded their way to a nest of giant spiders.
Coine tried to spin a peaceful solution, but the spiders did not buy the spin. Dorian launched *eldritch blasts* at the spiders, while Coine and Urzein fought off the smaller spiders. Flynn summoned his *spirit guardians* a cut a swath through a tangled mess of spiders. The situation gets stickier when two giant spiders emerge to attack Vaelen and Zalos. After a few moments, the spider’s flimsily woven defense collapsed.
As the party investigates the silk pouches, Coine saves a dying man who had come from the Monastery of St. Alban. The dazed man appears to have a few strands loose. He warns against going to the north because “it listens” and he is heading south to avoid the “bells”. The unraveled man claims that the monastery spoke to him. They find a scrap of paper that says: “The monk said that rest would come after the third vigil.” The man wanders off.
After two days of further travel, the party awakens to find Rashid missing. One of the caravan workers, Asaad, claimed to hear Rashid’s voice and wandered off. The party managed to catch up to him to see an enormous frog-like monster almost ready to eat Asaad, but it sinks down into the muck and disappears.
Later that night, Vaelen tells the group that he suspects that the threads of another reality pulled Rashid into Shadowfell…
