Of Silver Nuggets and Brain Spiders

We followed the passage way to a solid looking steel door, the surface of which was covered with ominous looking scratch marks, presumably from doomed miners. The door was locked but the key that Krisanna had found earlier fitted perfectly, so we went through into a large chamber with bunk beds. It looked like a safe and comfortable room except for the skeleton hanging from a noose - yikes!

After cutting down the unfortunate miner who had had a tragic demise, Krisanna investigated a burlap sack which contained a curious device with poles that slotted together and a bronze sphere that could be suspended from them. Krisanna poked it for a while but couldn't get it to do anything interesting. Orla found a wrapped up tube that we thought might be some sort of dynamite which could come in handy.

Krisanna heard something come from the tunnel and quickly shut the door, locking it for good measure. We could then hear scratching from outside then went away. It seemed that we were not alone in the mine! We opened the door and spotted fresh scratch marks in the steel.

We followed the passageway to the east, where we could smell fresh air, but with an ominous chittering glass like sound coming from another passage. We tried sneaking past but Makander fell flat on his beak creating a racket - fool of a duck!

From out of the passage came a horde of brain spiders the size of spaniels on spindly legs with crystal fangs that were sharp enough to scratch metal. In the panic, Orla somehow managed to shoot an arrow into Bastonn! In turn Bastonn also managed to fumble his attack, getting his sword stuck in a spider. Fortunately the remaining spiders scuttled off into the darkness.

The tripod seemed to be pointing up the other passage way, so we followed it to the north into a debris filled area with broken tools and mining spoil, and beyond that a tangle of dead bodies. One of the miners was clutching a silver nugget the size of a small child!

As we were mentally calculating how rich we were, the bodies started to move - were they zombie miners? Even worse than that, they seemed to animated by something inside them! Fortunately the horde was no match for Orla's rapid arrow fire, but then their heads exploded unleashing a swarm of tiny crystal spiderlings. Both Makander and Krisanna panicked and were unable to stop spiders from creeping into their brains, reducing their intelligence. Some swift stomping and bashing flattened the swarm but our heroes were left with headaches. Bastonn split the ingot into manageable chunks so we could carry them out.

We followed the fresh air again into a vast cavern. Krisanna investigated a perfectly circular pit, seeing spiders crawling up from the depths. This was the time to use the dynamite! The stick tumbled into the depths and then a vast fireball exploded upwards catching Makander full in the beak - oh noes!

Some swift healing from Bastonn helped patch up the severely singed duck, but he was looking in a sorry state.

We killed two spiders who were wrapping up a bat, and followed the fresh air which led to the ventilation shaft, where we also found a strange fossil, but somehow made our way back up to the surface.

We used Aodhan's magic boat to get back to town as quickly as possible to see if the doctor could cure our brain spiders. Makander recovered (mostly) but Krisanna was left in a coma!

After sticking her in a somewhat ramshackle sweat lodge she eventually recovered but seemed to have permanently lost some of her skills (and she wasn't great at bushcraft and languages to start with).