Cobwebs and More Cobwebs (4/23/23)

We continue walking through the eastern exit where there are a bunch of cobwebs. The Belt found by Otto actually has the symbol of House Obsidian on it. Large cobwebs drape the corridors. Quinn immediately wants to leave, Otto wants to press on. Rosemary is staying stealthy. Tama is listening for other presences. Otto begins to burn the webs.
 
Eventually we come across multiple doors, one of which has a bunch of planks nailed to it. Tama hears a rustling behind one of the doors. Quinn wants to trick them and leave. Otto and Rosemary open the door and we find two cultists working by torchlight. They look up surprised and shout something about the Nameless One and we fight!
 
Quinn and Otto quickly dispatch the first two cultists. Tama hears two more rooms open, each with two cultists. His riding dog Laero waits alongside him. Tama is able to trip the first cultist to enter the room, takes damage from a second. A third hits Laero which launches Quinn into action as he hates jazz and animal cruelty. Rosemary is frightened by one of the cultists and begins to flee. Tama gets revenge by finishing off the cultist that hit Laero, Laero bites and kills another and Quinn critically stabs the last cultist.
 
As the party searches the bodies, Otto finds multiple chests filled to the brim with silver and other riches. Quinn wants to avoid the money being taxed by having us hide the riches somewhere. Otto believes we should turn the money in and have it taxed.
 
After some discussion, Rosemary opens the boarded up door so the party can investigate what lies beyond. Rosemary easily opens the door and we find that the room was left in a hurry, a very gruesome scene lies before us. Tama is not surprised as spiders descend on the party. As the party takes out spiders they explode with a sticky ooze.
 
Once the spiders are taken out, Rosemary and Otto work to investigate the scene. They find a whip that is pinging magic. Tama takes the whip.
 
Tama takes the leadership role and wants to investigate rooms and find out what is happening. We find a woman who is not breathing and was barely alive. After we stabilize her, she exclaims “it’s not real, none of it’s real”. The snakes brought her down and blew a black dust in her face and she had hallucinations of being saved by her family and she was eating dinner. But now she’s back here, how does she trust what’s real.
 
Her belly starts wriggling. Otto is familiar with this procedure and wants to open her up and heal her. Quinn plays “The Ballad of Goldcrest” to calm her down. Rosemary hands Otto a knife to cut her open and he has a sowing kit to sow her up. A snake comes out and the party works together to kill the snake while keeping her alive. The snake dies, and she stabilizes.
 
After making sure the girl is safe, we come upon a door with guards who tell us “The Mistress is here to see you.” Otto pretends he can’t hear them so they come closer and as they begin to repeat themselves, Otto charges and a fight begins. Otto takes out the guards and the party takes their robes and approaches the Mistress.
 
By this point Quinn has gathered a “reputation” and the party thinks he could woo the mistress, the Nameless One. The Mistress quickly wants to kill the party but keep Quinn’s “member” for herself.
 
The party begins to take out the guards as they head for the mistress. There’s a mysterious black cat that vanishes but is actually an imp! Tama goes to trip the Mistress but the Mistress trips him knocking him unconscious. As she goes to make the kill, Otto hits her. Rosemary hits the imp severely wounding it. The party eventually kills the imp and Quinn with surprising expertise, stabilizes Tama.
 
The dungeon quiets and they search the room to find 163 gold, 6 chests of silver pieces, a copper anklet plated with silver, a teak bowl on the table, a gem, and a wooden ring with a string stretched across it and three scrolls. We see something on the table that doesn’t match, it looks like an ornate scroll document (a black writ).
 
Otto touching the item gets a vision of his lost loved one and shudders. The item seems to be written in the Abyssal alphabet but not any recognizable language, it could be a code.
 
Rosemary finds a loose flagstone in the altar and a door opens up to the outside. Fresh air seeps through and the party ascends the stairs, carrying Tama’s unconscious body. Looking at the map they decide to head towards Mistwall.