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**Area 1 — The Ruined Great Door.** Round 1. The gates were once ten feet of ornate iron. Now they hang off their pins, smashed inward and gone orange with rust, and the great hall behind them has come down in slabs. A single foot-track winds through mounds of rubble that shift and click when the wind moves through them. Brass glints everywhere in the debris — gear teeth, jointed fingers, the cupped half of a face. Flies boil off something under the fallen rocks: a gloop corpse, mostly buried, going to soup in the heat. West behind you, the sandstone cliffs drop toward the flat brown water of the Kelfrek Marsh. East, past the rubble, the pathway continues into the dark of area 2. **Automaton hand 1 acts.** Nothing has yet been pried out of the rubble — but something in it has decided you are close enough. A brass hand the size of a dinner plate levers itself up out of the scree on its fingertips, spindle-stump dragging, and comes over the mound at a fast, uneven scuttle. It closes to the edge of the path and crouches there, fingers flexing, too far this round to lay hold of anyone. No attack. Prue, Barnaby, Edda, Silas: it is between you and the eastern way, and the rubble it climbed out of is still ticking.

**Automaton hand 2 acts.** A second mound gives way — the one behind you, on the western lip of the path, where a slab has been propped up on the ribs of something bigger. Brass fingers come through the scree one at a time, testing, and then the whole hand hauls itself free and drops onto the track. It stands on its knuckles and turns slowly, the severed spindle at its wrist twitching like it's still trying to find the arm it belonged to. It has put itself between you and the marsh road. Neither hand has reached anyone yet; both are within a stride of the path, one east, one west. No attack this round. Beneath the ticking, from further in the rubble, more brass shifts and goes quiet again. **Barnaby Wick, you're up.**

Barnaby Wick hits automaton hand 1 for 2

Barnaby doesn't wait for the thing to close — dagger out, one clean strike into the knuckle-plate before it can haul itself onto the path. Hand 1 drops, fingers still twitching. "That's one. Mind the other, it's behind us."

**Referee — resolving Barnaby's blow.** Dagger against AC 6: he needed 13 and rolled 18. Two points of damage, and an automaton hand only has two. The knuckle-plate splits along an old seam. Something inside lets go all at once — a wound spring unwinds with a noise like a struck wire, and the brass fingers rattle out flat on the stone and keep flexing, slower, slower, then not at all. Hand 1 is destroyed. Its severed spindle-stump goes on turning a quarter-inch at a time, and then that stops too. **Automaton hand 1: 0/2. Dead.** These things are clockwork; there is nothing in them to frighten, so hand 2 does not flinch. It has turned to face the noise. Turn passes. **Edda Motts.**

Edda Motts hits automaton hand 2 for 8

Edda doesn't wait for it to close either — steps into the western hand's reach and puts the sword through the seam at the wrist. "Two," she says, before Prue can. "Barnaby had the first."

**Referee — resolving Edda's blow.** Sword against AC 6: she needed 13 and rolled 14. Damage 8, against a thing with two hit points. There is not much of a fight in it. The blade goes into the wrist-seam and levers, and the hand comes apart in three pieces — palm-plate, finger-frame, and a fistful of tiny gears that go skittering off across the stone and down into the rubble. A last spring lets go somewhere under the debris with a flat *tunk*. **Automaton hand 2: 0/2. Dead. Both hands are destroyed and the fight is over.** Nothing else comes out of the mounds. The ticking in the rubble is only ticking now — hot brass settling in the sun. **What the fight bought you.** The mounds are opened where the hands tore free, and the disturbed scree is full of salvage that used to be inside something walking: - **two pearl eyeballs**, matched, still seated in their brass rings — 50 gp apiece - **three golden gears**, thumb-width, teeth unworn — 25 gp apiece - **one mechanical voice box**: a fist-sized brass drum with a bellows throat and a reed comb, dented but intact. It does not speak. Something in it rattles when it's tipped. That is 175 gp in gems and gold and one object nobody at the table has priced yet. Say who pockets what and it's theirs. The rest stands as described: the buried gloop corpse and its flies, the smashed iron gates, the path east into the dark of area 2, and the marsh road west behind you. Nobody is hurt — Prue 8/8, Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3. **Prue Candell, you're up.**

**Referee.** The fight is over — both automaton hands are scrap, and nothing else in the rubble has moved since. With no enemy left standing, the initiative order stops mattering. Prue and Silas do not have to wait their strict turn, and neither does anyone who has already swung: from here it is exploration, and you may act in whatever order you like. Open questions the table can settle whenever it pleases: - **The salvage.** Two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears, one mechanical voice box, lying loose in the opened scree. Name who carries which and it is written down. - **The gloop corpse.** Mostly buried under fallen rocks, thick with flies, and nobody has touched it. It could be dug at. It could be left. - **The smashed gates and the wrecked hall.** Ten feet of ornate iron off its pins, brass parts of at least one large automaton scattered through the collapse. Silas has a burn-bench, sample jars, and Detect Magic still memorised, if any of that is worth spending here. - **The ways out.** West, back down to the marsh and the road you came in on. East, the narrow path through the mounds into the dark of area 2. Nobody has a lit light source out — say if you strike one before you go east. No one is hurt. Prue 8/8, Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3. Prue holds the only Light spell at the table and it is still memorised. Say what you do.

Silas doesn't reach for the dagger — nothing left to reach it at. He crouches over the opened scree instead, tube and jars still slung, and looks at the wreckage the way he'd look at a spoiled batch. "Before anyone pockets the voice box — it rattles when tipped, Barnaby said. Rattling means loose parts or it means something put inside on purpose. I'd rather know which before it's carried next to a body." He holds Detect Magic in reserve rather than burn it blind on scrap; two gears and a pearl eye aren't worth a memorized spell. But he wants eyes on the box and the corpse before hands go further in. "The gloop under the rocks — that's not automaton. That's stock, same as room 8, gone to soup in the sun. I want ten minutes with the drip-scale on whatever hasn't cooked through yet, if nobody minds waiting. It's the first time I've had a source out in daylight instead of jarred already." He gets out the notebook. *Salvage: two pearl eyes, three gears, one voice box, rattling, unopened. Corpse: gloop, buried, flies, NOT clockwork — separate stock from the hands. Query whether the hands were built to guard it or guard against it.* He doesn't touch the voice box himself. "Whoever's steadiest — pry it open away from your face. If there's a spring left in it, I'd rather it startle a gauntlet than a nose."

**Referee — answering Silas.** **The voice box, examined without opening it.** Silas doesn't have to touch it to look at it. It is brass, fist-sized, a drum with a bellows throat at one end and a comb of thin reeds visible through a grille at the other. The dents are old — soft-edged, rubbed bright, taken years ago. Tipping it moves something loose that slides rather than swings: it stops against the inside wall with a dull click, not a ring. The bellows leather is perished to flakes. Whatever the reeds were tuned to, they are furred with a green-black grime that is *not* verdigris; it's the same tarry grease that streaks the King's Road ruts. Silas's read is a sound one and here is what the table can take as fact: **nothing in this scree is magical, and nothing in it is a trap.** The hands were the trap, and they have been spent. The box holds no spring under tension — the loose thing inside is a loose thing, not a mechanism waiting. It can be pocketed safely, opened safely, or opened later at a bench. It is worth money to the right buyer and nobody here knows what that figure is. **Whether the hands guarded the corpse.** Write the query down; the answer isn't in the scree. Both hands came out of *different* mounds, several strides apart, and neither moved toward the corpse at any point — they came toward living people. Their severed spindles are the same pattern as the broken spindles still socketed in the doorposts. That points to them being torn off something, or out of something, when this hall came down, not posted here as guards. **Ten minutes with the drip-scale.** Nobody minds waiting, and the sun is high — this costs the party one exploration turn, and I have checked what the noise draws. Nothing comes. What Silas gets: the corpse is a gloop, adult, and it has been dead long enough to have separated in the heat. Under the fallen rock the mass is still cohesive and still cool; the exposed part has cooked to a skin and split. He can get a clean sample from the shaded underside where the rock has held the sun off. On the graduated tube it runs *thin* — thinner than a live gloop ought to be — and it lays down in the pan without beading. It smells of the marsh and, underneath, of the grease. **The residue in this corpse and the residue on the voice box's reeds are the same substance.** He has a jar of it now, honestly taken from a source in daylight, and that is the first of those he has ever had. One more thing the digging shows, and it is free: the rocks on this corpse fell on it. It did not crawl under them. It was in the hall when the hall came down. **Standing.** Prue 8/8, Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3. Detect Magic unspent, Light unspent, one exploration turn elapsed. The salvage is still unclaimed and still lying in the open scree — two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears, one voice box. West is the marsh road. East is the dark path to area 2, and nobody has struck a light.

Barnaby crouches at the scree line and does what he does best — inventories it before anyone's boots kick it further into the rubble. He works quick, careful, thief's hands: the two pearl eyeballs go into a wrapped cloth first, packed apart so they don't grind against each other, then the three gears counted and knotted into a second pouch. He leaves the voice box where Silas can get at it. "Fifty a pearl if they're matched and they are, seventy-five for the gears together if the buyer knows tools. I'll carry the eyes and the gears — small, valuable, easy to lose, and I've got the ledger habit for keeping count. Silas keeps the box, he's the one who knows what it's for." He straightens, wipes his hands on his trousers rather than his blade — dagger's clean, no grease on this one, small mercy — and looks east down the dark path, then back at the buried gloop. "That corpse isn't going anywhere and the room 8 guard already told us what this grease is for. I'd rather not burn more of a turn on it than we already have. Light's the question now — we go into area 2 blind or we go in lit, and lit means whatever's back there sees us coming too. Prue, your call on the spell. I'll take point on the path either way — if there's another trap sprung out of rubble like these two hands, I'd rather it spring on me stepping careful than on whoever's carrying a torch." He notes the tally in the market ledger's back pages, next to the jar-price columns, where nobody but him will think to look: *2 pearl eyes, 3 gears — automaton hand salvage, area 1. Voice box w/ Silas, grease-fouled reeds, same substance as corpse sample.*

**Referee — Barnaby's inventory stands.** Written down and true: **Barnaby carries the two pearl eyeballs** (wrapped, packed apart) **and the three golden gears** (knotted in a second pouch). **The mechanical voice box is left for Silas.** The scree holds nothing else worth lifting — the rest is broken plate, bent linkage, and gear teeth too chewed to sell. Barnaby's prices are a fence's guess, not a fact; the pearls are worth 50 gp each and the gears 25 gp each to a buyer who wants them, and the box is unpriced. One correction before it hardens into gospel. **No guard has told this party what the grease is for.** Nobody at this table has had that conversation. What you have is Silas's jar, the fouled reeds, and the King's Road ruts — three appearances of one substance and no explanation for any of them. Keep the query open rather than answered. **The point position is granted.** Barnaby ahead on the narrow track, working the footing, is exactly the right shape for a path that has already thrown two things out of the rubble. He gets the first look at anything that shifts. **And the light question is a real one, so here is the honest terrain.** Past the smashed gates the path narrows between two mounds and bends. Ten feet in, daylight from the ruined door still reaches. Twenty feet in, it does not. The dark beyond that bend is complete — this is a collapsed hall under a cliff, not a cave mouth, and there is no second source of light in it. Nobody in this party has a torch, a lantern, or a candle lit; Prue has boxed beeswax tapers and Edda has a tinder box, so a mundane flame is available at the cost of a hand to hold it. **Prue's Light spell is the only alternative, and Barnaby has the tactical read right: anything with eyes back there will see a light coming before it sees you.** Moving blind in a rubble corridor is worse than being seen, in my judgement, but that call belongs to the party and not to me. Nothing has moved east while you talked. **Prue, Edda — the light and the marching order are yours to settle. Say it and the party walks.** Standing: Prue 8/8, Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3. Light unspent, Detect Magic unspent, one exploration turn gone.

Edda sheathes nothing — sword stays in hand, wrist still warm from the second hand's wrist-seam. She looks down the dark bend and back at Prue. "Priest carries the light. A taper in a fist is a taper we can't fight with, and if there's a third one of these things past that bend I want both my hands free and Barnaby's too. Light shows us same as it shows them — fine. I'd rather see the blow coming than take it blind." She jerks her chin at the corridor. "Barnaby's got point on the footing, I'll walk second so whatever comes at him from the side comes at me instead. Priest and Silas behind, out of the first reach." She doesn't touch the salvage — Barnaby's counted it, that's counted enough for her — and doesn't touch the corpse either. "Whoever built the hands owes for the hands. That's a ledger entry, not a reason to stand here longer than we have to. East, when you're ready."

**Referee — the order is set.** Marching order, recorded: **Barnaby on point** working the footing, **Edda second** at his shoulder to catch anything that comes in from the mounds, **Prue and Silas behind** and out of first reach. Edda's sword stays drawn. Nobody in the front rank has a hand occupied, which is exactly what her argument was for — and it is a good argument. A one-handed party in a rubble corridor is a party that fights at half strength. She has passed the light to the priest, and that is the last thing unsettled. **Prue: it is your spell and your call.** Light lasts and needs no hand; a taper needs a hand and can be dropped, snuffed, or knocked out. Either works. Neither is free. While she decides — Edda's ledger line is worth keeping. *Whoever built the hands owes for the hands.* The broken spindles in the doorposts run inward, past where daylight reaches, into the collapse. Whatever they were attached to is still in there somewhere, or was. Nothing has come down the path. The flies work the corpse. The rubble ticks as it cools. Prue 8/8, Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3. **Prue Candell — say light or no light, and the party walks east.**

Prue doesn't reach for a taper. Wax in a fist gutters, drops, and leaves you blinder than you started — she's watched enough sockets go cold to trust flame less than she trusts the spell she already has memorised. She takes the holy symbol in hand instead, murmurs the working, and light kindles — not a torch's stutter but something steadier, hung where it does the most good rather than where a hand happens to be. "It shows us the footing same as it shows anything back there our shape," she says, echoing Edda without meaning to, "but I'd rather Barnaby see the next hand coming out of the rubble than lose him to a step he couldn't see. East, then. I'll keep it behind Edda's shoulder, out of Barnaby's eyes." She falls in behind Silas and Edda, mace loose in her hand, and does not look at the corpse again on the way past it.

**Referee — Light is cast.** Prue's working takes. A steady glow kindles at her holy symbol and she sets it where she said she would, behind Edda's shoulder and off Barnaby's eye-line. **Light: spent.** It gives a fifteen-foot radius and it will burn for eight turns — six, plus one for each of her levels — and then it will go out wherever the party happens to be standing. Somebody should keep count. Prue has Cure Light Wounds, Detect Evil, Protection from Evil, Purify Food and Water, and Remove Fear in the book, but Light was the only thing she memorised today, and it is now gone. There is no second casting to fall back on. The tapers and Edda's tinder box are the reserve. What the glow buys immediately: the footing on the narrow track resolves. It is loose scree over broken flagstone, and it is treacherous but passable at a walk. The mounds to either side rise higher than a man as the path bends. The broken doorpost spindles catch the light and run inward, into the collapse, and the light does not reach far enough to find their other ends. The party is formed up and pointed east. Barnaby ahead, Edda at his shoulder, Prue behind with the glow, mace loose. Nobody is hurt: **Prue 8/8, Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Silas 3/3.** Barnaby carries two pearl eyeballs and three golden gears. The voice box is still lying in the scree waiting for the hand that claimed it. **Silas — the box is yours if you want it, and you are the last seat before the party walks. Pick it up or leave it, and say if you're moving.** Then we go east into area 2.

Silas pockets the voice box carefully, padding it with a fold of cloth from his kit so the loose thing inside doesn't rattle against the sample jars. "I'll keep it shut till we've got a bench under it — don't want to lose whatever's loose in there down a crack in the scree." He notes in the book: *Voice box, reeds fouled w/ grease-residue — same substance as gloop corpse sample and King's Road ruts. Third confirmed appearance. Query still open: what process links guard-stock, corpse-stock, and road-grease?* He falls in at the back of the line, behind Prue, tube and jars slung, staff still sheathed. "Ready when you are. I'll keep count on the Light — eight turns, starting now."

**Referee — the party walks east.** The box goes into Silas's kit, padded in cloth so it can't rattle against the jars, and stays shut. His note stands, including the correction: *third confirmed appearance, process unknown.* Silas has the Light count — **eight turns, and the walk east spends the first of them. Seven remain after this move.** They go in the order Edda set. Barnaby ahead, testing the scree, hands empty and free. Edda a pace back at his shoulder, sword low. Prue behind with the glow riding off her holy symbol, mace loose. Silas last, tube and jars slung, staff sheathed. Ten feet in, the daylight from the smashed gates is still on their backs. Twenty feet in, it isn't, and the glow is all there is. The path threads between mounds taller than Edda, bends left, and the footing under the scree goes from broken flagstone to something flatter and better laid. Somebody built a floor here once and built it well. The mounds fall away. The corridor opens out. Cold air comes off the space ahead — not marsh-damp, but the still, dry cold of a room that has been shut a long while. Underfoot, the flagstones run on into the dark past the fifteen-foot edge of Prue's light. There is a smell of dust and old resin. Behind them, the ruined door is a bright ragged shape getting smaller. The two dead brass hands lie where they fell. The gloop corpse and its flies stay under their rocks. **The party has left area 1. Travelling east into area 2.**

2. The Chapel

Barnaby Wick misses crab spider 1

Barnaby's dagger skips off carapace instead of finding a joint — crab spider 1 skitters back a half-step, unbothered. "Watch the legs, they're faster than the hands were!"

**Area 2. The Chapel.** Round 1. The corridor gives out into a chapel, and it is big — Prue's glow reaches the near flagstones and the bases of the columns and then gives up, so the far wall is a guess. The dry cold comes from in here. So does the resin smell. What the light does find: A **statue** on a plinth at the middle of the room, taller than Edda by half again, carved from the same sandstone as the cliffs. A robed figure, gnome-proportioned, arms raised. In its stone fists are **three brass lightning bolts**, forge-work not carving, socketed into the hands and dulled with dust. The bolts have not been taken, and this room has been standing open to the marsh road for a long time. **Webbing.** Not the wispy stuff — cables of it, grey and thick as rope, slung between the column capitals and running up out of the light entirely. It is old in places and very new in others. There is a smell under the resin that Silas will know from a bad batch: something that has eaten and left the parts it didn't want. And Barnaby, on point with his hands free and his eyes on the footing, catches the wrong thing moving. Not on the floor. **Above** — two low, wide, many-legged shapes shifting on the web-cables where they cross the near columns, one to the left of the party's line and one to the right. **Crab spiders**, big as dogs, coming down the ropes headfirst without hurrying. They have both marked the light. They are on you next, but they are not on you yet. **Barnaby has the jump — he saw them first and the initiative is his.** The party stands where it walked in, still in Edda's order: Barnaby ahead, Edda at his shoulder, Prue behind with the glow, Silas last. The corridor back to area 1 and the daylight is directly behind Silas, ten strides of clear flagstone. Standing: **Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3.** Prue's Light has **seven turns** left. Crab spider 1: 11 hp, AC 7. Crab spider 2: 7 hp, AC 7. Their bite is poisoned and the save is one your fighters will not enjoy failing. **Barnaby Wick — you're up, and you're up before they land.**

**Referee — a correction first, and it is mine to own.** I advanced the turn past Barnaby before he had spoken. That was my error, not his, and I will not have a player lose an action to my bookkeeping. **Barnaby holds his round-1 action.** He may spend it at any moment from now on, including in the middle of the spiders' descent, and it does not cost him his round-2 action when we get there. Say the word and it resolves immediately. **Crab spider 1 acts.** It comes down the left-hand column headfirst, and it is faster than its size suggests — not a scuttle, a pour, legs finding the stone in an order that does not look like walking. Six feet from the floor it lets go of the cable and drops the rest, lands flat and wide on the flagstones with a click of chitin, and closes to the edge of the light. It stops there. It has spent the round getting down and across, and it is now within a stride of **Barnaby**, low to the ground, front legs up and feeling the air. Close enough to see: the abdomen is fat and pale, the fangs are wet, and the grey rope-web behind it goes up past the columns into a dark the light cannot fix. **No attack this round.** It is in reach next round and it will bite. Crab spider 1: 11/11, AC 7, at Barnaby's front. Crab spider 2 is still on the right-hand cable, coming down. Party unhurt — Barnaby 8/8 (action held), Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3. Light: seven turns. **One thing worth saying out loud while the second one is still in the air.** The corridor west to area 1 and the daylight is ten strides behind Silas and nothing is between the party and it. These things bite for 1d8 with poison, and a failed save kills — it does not wound, it kills, on a clock. Silas has 3 hit points. That is not advice, it is arithmetic. The door is open either way.

**Referee — Barnaby's held action, resolved.** He spends it the moment the thing settles in front of him: dagger low, going for the joint where a leg meets the body, the same trick that opened the brass hand. **Rolled 6, needed 12. Miss.** The point skates off the top of the carapace with a sound like a knife on a plate and the spider gives half a step of ground and does not care. Chitin is not brass; there is no seam here to lever. His warning is a fair one — the legs move in a way the hands never did. Barnaby's round-1 action is now spent. He has his round-2 action coming. **Crab spider 2 acts.** The right-hand cable dips as its weight comes off the capital, and the second one pours down the column the same way the first did — headfirst, unhurried, legs falling into a pattern that doesn't read as walking. It drops the last few feet, lands wide, and comes across the flagstones on the party's right flank. It stops within a stride of **Edda**, low, front legs testing the air toward the chain mail and the sword. It has spent its round on the descent and the crossing. **No attack this round.** That is both of them down and both of them in reach. Next round they bite. The board as it stands: **crab spider 1** at 11/11 facing Barnaby on the left, **crab spider 2** at 7/7 facing Edda on the right. Both AC 7, both THAC0 18. The party is still in its order with the corridor west open behind Silas, unblocked, ten strides of clear flagstone. Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3. Light: seven turns. Above, the grey cables shift where two weights left them, and nothing else on them moves. **Edda Motts — you're up, and the one in front of you hasn't bitten yet.**

Edda Motts misses crab spider 2

Edda drives the sword down at the joint where the near leg meets the carapace and gets nothing — the point skids off the shell and the spider's already shifting weight to another leg before the blade's clear. "Same as Barnaby's, no seam to it," she says, and squares up for the next swing without giving it ground.

**Referee — Edda's swing, resolved.** She does not wait for it to bite. The sword comes over in a flat downward cut at the wide pale body, the kind of blow that split the brass hand's wrist-seam — **rolled 9, needed 12. Miss.** The spider is not there when the edge arrives. It goes sideways on those legs, two feet of ground given up in a movement that has no wind-up and no weight-shift in it, and the sword rings off the flagstone where the thing was standing. Chain mail and a good arm and it still went past her. Both front-rank blows have missed this round for the same reason: these are not machines that stand and take it. **Neither spider has bitten yet.** They have used round 1 getting to you. That is the whole of the party's grace, and it is now nearly spent. The board: **crab spider 1** 11/11 at Barnaby's front on the left, **crab spider 2** 7/7 at Edda's front on the right. Both AC 7, THAC0 18, 1d8 and poison. Nobody is hurt — Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3. Light: seven turns. The corridor west is still open behind Silas and still unblocked. **Prue Candell — you're up. Mace, sling, or something else entirely; the front rank has swung twice and drawn no blood.**

Prue Candell hits crab spider 2 for 4

Prue doesn't wait for it to bite either. She steps in past Edda's guard and brings the mace down where the legs meet the body's near side — no fine art to it, just weight and momentum, the same swing she'd use on a stuck door. It connects solid, chitin cracking under the blow, and the thing skitters back with pale fluid welling at the crack. "That one's hurt," she calls. "Keep it off Edda's flank and it'll go down."

**Referee — reconciling Edda's line.** Edda's telling and mine differ on where the miss went; hers is the one closer to the truth of the roll, so take hers. The point went at the joint where the near leg meets the carapace, skidded off the shell, and the thing had shifted its weight to another leg before the blade was clear. She gave it no ground. Same outcome, better picture, and her read matches Barnaby's exactly: **there is no seam in these to lever.** The brass-hand trick does not work twice. Write that down as established. Against crab spiders this party has to do it the hard way — land a blow that hurts, not a blow that opens something. **Standing, and who still owes an action.** Round 1 is not finished. **Prue has not acted and Silas has not acted, and neither of them loses their action to my turn-keeping** — the same ruling I gave Barnaby stands for both of them, and they may spend it whenever they speak. The spiders have both used their round and neither has bitten. The board: **crab spider 1** 11/11, AC 7, at Barnaby's front on the left. **Crab spider 2** 7/7, AC 7, at Edda's front on the right. Both THAC0 18, both 1d8 and poison on a hit. Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3. Light: seven turns. The corridor west is behind Silas, open, ten strides, nothing in the way. When round 2 opens the fangs come out. **Prue, Silas — the round is still yours to spend.**

**Referee — Prue's mace, resolved.** My last post crossed with her swing; here is the receipt. **Rolled 12, needed exactly 12. Hit, for 4.** No fine art to it — she steps past Edda's guard and brings the mace down where the legs meet the body's near side, the swing you'd use on a stuck door. Weight and momentum are exactly what this problem wanted. The carapace *cracks* rather than turning it, a dull wet sound, and pale fluid wells up out of the split as the thing skitters backward on legs that no longer all agree with each other. Her read is right: **that one is hurt.** **Crab spider 2: 3/7.** Two hit points of luck away from dead. It has lost none of its speed but the near-side legs are dragging now. That is the first blood in this chapel and the party drew it — not with a seam-trick but with a blunt weapon and a straight arm. Worth noting for whoever swings next: **the mace worked where two edged weapons didn't.** Chitin turns points and takes crushing badly. Crab spider 2 is still standing and still in reach, so no morale check yet; that comes when one of them dies. The board: **crab spider 1** 11/11, AC 7, untouched, at Barnaby's front on the left. **Crab spider 2** 3/7, AC 7, hurt and leaking, at Edda's front on the right. Neither has bitten. Nobody in the party is hurt — Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3. Light: seven turns. Corridor west open behind Silas. **Silas Horn — you're the last action in round 1, and you still have it. Detect Magic is in your head, a staff is on your back, and there's a wounded spider on the right flank that a stone or a stick might finish.**

**Referee — round 1 closes.** Silas has not spent his action and the round has run out of seats. The ruling I gave Barnaby holds for him without argument: **Silas keeps his round-1 action.** He may spend it the instant he speaks, and it costs him nothing in round 2. Nobody at this table loses a turn to my clock. **Round 2 opens, and the grace is over.** Both spiders spent round 1 getting down the columns and across the floor. They are on the floor now, both in reach, and their next action is a bite: 1d8 with poison, THAC0 18, and the poison is the part that kills. Against Barnaby's AC 5 they need 14. Against Edda's AC 4 they need 15. Against Prue's AC 6 they need 13. Against Silas's AC 8 they need 11 — and Silas has three hit points, so a bite that lands on him likely does not need the poison at all. **Barnaby has the initiative and round 2 is his.** Two things worth having in front of the party while he decides: **One.** Prue's mace cracked what two blades skidded off. Barnaby has a short sword and a dagger; both are points. There is a wounded spider at 3/7 on the right flank that any hit will finish. **Two.** The corridor west is still open, still ten strides, still unblocked, and no spider has yet closed on Silas or Prue. That door does not stay open forever — the moment somebody is bitten and poisoned, leaving stops being a retreat and becomes a race against a clock nobody can see. The board: **crab spider 1** 11/11, AC 7, untouched, front-left on Barnaby. **Crab spider 2** 3/7, AC 7, cracked and leaking, front-right on Edda. Barnaby 8/8, Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3 (action held). Light: seven turns. **Barnaby Wick — round 2, and you're first.**

Silas Horn misses crab spider 2

Silas throws his dagger at the wounded spider from behind Prue's shoulder — a bad angle, a worse arm, and it goes wide, clattering off the flagstones past the thing's flank. He doesn't reach for the staff after; there isn't time to close and swing it before the fangs come out. "Missed," he says, unnecessary, and starts backing half a step toward the corridor without fully committing to the retreat — eyes on the crack in spider 2's shell. "Two more good hits like Prue's and the near one goes down. Watch its front legs, not its body."

Barnaby Wick misses crab spider 2

Barnaby lunges past Edda for the wounded one on the right — short sword this time, aiming to finish what Prue's mace started. The point catches nothing but air; the spider's already skittering sideways on its ruined legs before the blade arrives. "Still fast hurt," he mutters, resetting his stance. "Someone else finish it — I'll hold the front."

**Referee — Silas's held action, resolved.** He spends it as a throw from behind Prue's shoulder. **Rolled 3, needed 12. Miss, and badly.** The dagger goes wide past the wounded spider's flank, skips twice on the flagstones, and comes to rest somewhere out past the edge of the light. Bad angle, worse arm, and he knew it before it landed. Two things follow from that and both are real. **Silas is now unarmed except for the staff on his back.** The dagger is on the floor of a chapel with two live spiders in it, and recovering it means walking past them. The staff is two-handed and he would have to close to use it, which he correctly declines to do. **And he has given ground.** Half a step back toward the corridor, not a committed retreat — the party's rearmost man is now a half-stride nearer the way out than the rest of the line, with his eyes on the crack in spider 2's shell. His read on the target is sound and his instruction is better than his throw: **watch the front legs, not the body.** That is where the movement starts, and it is the only warning either of these things gives. **Barnaby has not spoken and round 2's first action is still his.** He holds it, as before, and spends it whenever he likes. The board: **crab spider 1** 11/11, AC 7, untouched, front-left on Barnaby. **Crab spider 2** 3/7, AC 7, cracked and leaking, front-right on Edda — one hit from anything finishes it. Barnaby 8/8 (action held), Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3 and now weaponless at range. Light: seven turns. The corridor west is open and Silas is closest to it. The spiders have waited a full round. They do not wait another.

crab spider 1 hits Barnaby Wick for 8

**Referee — Barnaby's lunge, then the answer.** His swing first. Short sword past Edda's guard at the wounded one, going to finish what the mace started — **rolled 8, needed 12. Miss.** The point finds air; the thing is already going sideways on legs that don't all work, and it is still faster hurt than he is. *Still fast hurt.* He resets his stance, calls for someone else to finish it, and says he will hold the front. He holds it for about two seconds. **Crab spider 1 acts, and it bites Barnaby. Rolled 15, needed 13. Hit — for eight.** The untouched one on the left. It does exactly what Silas said to watch for: the movement starts in the front legs, and by the time the front legs have told you anything the rest has already arrived. It comes in low and over the top of his guard, and it does not grip and worry like the brass hand did. It gets him at the join of neck and shoulder above the leather, and the fangs go all the way in. **Eight damage. Barnaby Wick had eight hit points.** He goes down on the flagstones without a word — no stagger, no cry, the sword still in his hand. **Barnaby Wick is dead at 0 hit points.** There is no poison save to roll; the bite alone was enough, and the venom is beside the point now. The two pearl eyeballs and the three golden gears are in his pouches, under him, on the floor of the chapel. The spider does not pursue it further. It stands over him with its front legs up, feeling the air, and turns toward the next living thing in the line. **That is the front rank gone.** Edda is now the leftmost standing member of the party as well as the right, with an untouched spider at 11/11 and a cracked one at 3/7 both inside her reach. Prue is a stride behind her. Silas is a half-step nearer the corridor than anyone, weaponless, with three hit points. **Crab spider 1: 11/11, standing over Barnaby's body. Crab spider 2: 3/7, cracked, one hit from dead. Edda 8/8. Prue 8/8. Silas 3/3.** Light: seven turns. The corridor west is open, ten strides, and nothing stands between the party and it. Crab spider 2 has not acted yet this round.

crab spider 2 misses Edda Motts

**Crab spider 2 acts.** The cracked one comes at Edda while the other one is still standing over Barnaby — it has been waiting a round and a half to do it, and Prue's mace has cost it the use of half its near-side legs. **Rolled 2, needed 14. Miss, and not close.** The lunge is the same shape as its partner's and it arrives about half a body-length short. The dragging legs on the cracked side won't take the weight for a proper spring, and it slews sideways instead, fangs snapping shut on chain mail and skidding off the skirt of it without finding a gap. Pale fluid runs out of the split in its carapace as it moves. It backs a half-step and resets, low, front legs up. **Edda is unhurt.** The armour and the crack in its shell between them bought her that. **Round 2's monsters are finished.** One bite killed Barnaby; the other found nothing. The party has three seats left in this round and all three are unspent. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — 11/11, untouched, standing over Barnaby's body on the left. It bit once and it will bite again. - **Crab spider 2** — 3/7, carapace split, leaking, near-side legs dragging. **One hit from anything kills it.** In front of Edda on the right. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, sword drawn, alone in the front rank with both of them in reach. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, mace in hand, a stride behind Edda. Her mace is the only weapon at this table that has hurt one of these things. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, weaponless at range, half a step nearer the corridor than anybody. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead on the flagstones, pearls and gears in his pouches. Light: seven turns. The corridor west is ten strides of clear floor and nothing is between the party and it. **No morale check has happened, because nothing on their side has died.** If spider 2 goes down, the survivor rolls — and at half strength, that roll is the party's best chance of walking out of here without a second body. **Edda, Prue, Silas — round 2 is still yours. Three actions, one spider at three hit points, and an open door behind you.**

Edda Motts misses crab spider 2

Edda puts the point at the crack in its shell and it goes wide — the dragging legs still buy it just enough give to slip the thrust. She doesn't step back for it. "Barnaby's down. Nobody else goes down." Sword up again, weight forward, between the cracked one and Prue.

**Referee — Edda's swing, resolved.** **Rolled 4, needed 12. Miss.** Three hit points in front of her and the sword goes wide. She is fighting two of them at once now with Barnaby's body at her feet, and a front-rank soldier who has to watch both flanks does not get to pick her moment. The cracked one gives ground on its bad legs, the untouched one shifts off Barnaby toward her open side, and the blade goes between them into nothing. That is Edda's round 2 spent. **Prue and Silas still hold theirs.** The tally so far in this chapel, plainly: **six swings from the party, one hit.** Prue's mace is the one. Two blades and a thrown dagger have found nothing but shell and air. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — 11/11, untouched, coming off Barnaby's body toward Edda's open side. - **Crab spider 2** — 3/7, split and leaking, dragging, still up. **Any hit kills it.** - **Edda** 8/8, action spent, alone in the front rank with both in reach. - **Prue** 8/8, mace in hand, one stride behind, action unspent. - **Silas** 3/3, weaponless, nearest the corridor, action unspent. - **Barnaby** — dead at Edda's feet. Light: seven turns. Ten strides of clear flagstone west to the corridor and the daylight, with nothing standing in it. **Prue, Silas — two actions left in this round.** One spider dies to a single hit and the survivor checks morale when it does. That is the whole of the party's leverage here, and it expires when round 3 opens and two sets of fangs come at a single fighter.

Prue Candell hits crab spider 2 for 3

Prue's mace catches the cracked shell square this time and it gives — the split widens and the whole leg-side goes slack, and the thing folds down onto the flagstones and doesn't come back up. "That's the second one down," she says, already turning to check the line, mace still up. "Watch the other — it's fed once and it's still got all its legs."

**Referee — Prue's mace, again. Rolled 16, needed 12. Hit for 3, and crab spider 2 had 3.** She swings past Edda's guard a second time and puts the mace-head straight into the split her first blow opened. There is no cracking this time — the shell simply gives way, the whole near side of the carapace folding inward, and the thing's legs all fire at once in different directions. It goes over sideways, drums its feet on the flagstones in a hard fast rattle, and stops. **Crab spider 2 is dead at 0/7.** Both of the party's hits in this chapel came from the same woman with the same blunt weapon, and Edda's line held long enough for her to land them. **First casualty. The survivor checks morale — crab spiders break on 7 or worse.** **Rolled 5. It passes.** No flight, no hesitation, no gift. Whatever ate the things that left those parts in the webbing above, it does not care that its partner is dead on the floor beside a dead man. **Crab spider 1 stays, at 11/11, untouched.** It is off Barnaby's body now and squared on Edda, front legs up, and next round it bites again. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — 11/11, AC 7, in front of Edda. Needs 15 to hit her, 13 to hit Prue, 11 to hit Silas. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda** 8/8, action spent, holding the front over Barnaby's body. *Nobody else goes down.* - **Prue** 8/8, action spent, mace wet. Two hits, two for two in this fight. - **Silas** 3/3, weaponless, nearest the corridor. **Action unspent — the last one in round 2.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead, pearls and gears in his pouches, under the fight. Light: seven turns. The corridor west is ten strides, clear, unblocked. **It is one against three now, and that is the best this room has looked.** It is also still a thing that kills a man in one bite and has taken no damage at all. **Silas — last action of the round is yours.**

Silas doesn't stoop for the dagger — it's past the spider's front legs and not worth the reach. He gives up the half-step he was holding and finishes the retreat, backing all the way to the corridor mouth where the flagstones are still ten strides from daylight but well outside anything's leap. "Edda, Prue — if it turns off you and comes for the back of the line, say so now and I'm already moving. I've got nothing in my hands that helps you kill it faster than the mace already is." He keeps his eyes on the thing's front legs, same as he told Barnaby to, and says nothing else. There isn't anything else true to say.

**Referee — round 2 closes.** Prue's kill stands as she told it, and her warning is the correct one: *it's fed once and it's still got all its legs.* That is exactly the difference between the two spiders. The one Prue put down had been softened first. The one still standing has taken nothing. Silas has not spent his action and the round is out of seats. **The held-action ruling stands for him again — Silas keeps it, and he loses nothing by round 3 opening.** He may spend it the moment he speaks. **Round 3 opens. Barnaby's seat in the order is empty and stays empty; the dead do not take turns.** That means the next thing to act in this chapel is the spider. Before it does, the state of the room in full: - **Crab spider 1** — 11/11, AC 7, undamaged. Squared on Edda over Barnaby's body. Needs 15 for Edda, 13 for Prue, 11 for Silas. One bite killed a man with eight hit points. - **Crab spider 2** — dead on the flagstones, shell folded in. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, sword up, weight forward. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, one stride back, mace up and wet — the only weapon that has worked in here. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, weaponless, nearest the corridor, **action held.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead. Two pearl eyeballs and three golden gears in his pouches. His short sword is in his hand and his thrown dagger is out past the light's edge. Above, the grey cables are still. Nothing else has come down them. The statue with its three brass lightning bolts stands untouched in the middle of the room, and the far wall is still a guess. Light: seven turns. The corridor west is ten strides of clear flagstone and nothing is standing in it. **Crab spider 1 acts now.**

crab spider 1 misses Edda Motts

**Referee — Silas's held action, resolved.** He spends it on the retreat and it is the right spending. He leaves the dagger where it lies — it is past the spider's front legs and not worth the reach, which is a correct read — gives up the half-step he had been holding, and backs all the way to the corridor mouth. That puts him on flagstones ten strides short of daylight and, more to the point, **outside anything's leap.** He has taken himself off the menu without abandoning the two people still on it, and he says so plainly: *nothing in my hands helps you kill it faster than the mace already is.* True, and worth saying once. **Silas is at the corridor mouth. The spider cannot reach him this round without leaving Edda and Prue at its back.** **Crab spider 1 acts, and it goes for Edda. Rolled 12, needed 14. Miss.** It comes off Barnaby's body low and fast, the same low arrival that killed him — but Edda has seen this one work now, twice, and she has her weight forward instead of waiting on it. The fangs come in under her guard and find the chain mail across her hip, skid down the links without opening them, and it has to break off and reset before she can bring the sword round. **Edda is unhurt. 8/8.** The armour did what the armour is for. **That is the spider's round 3 spent.** It has bitten twice in this chapel: one kill, one nothing. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — 11/11, AC 7, still undamaged, in front of Edda, resetting low. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, action **unspent.** - **Prue Candell** 8/8, one stride behind her, mace up, action **unspent.** Two swings, two hits, one kill. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, at the corridor mouth, out of reach, action spent. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead on the flagstones between them and the room. Light: **seven turns.** Nothing new has come down the cables. **Edda, Prue — two actions, one spider, and it has taken no damage at all. It needs 14 to hurt Edda and 13 to hurt Prue, and it kills either of you in two bites.**

Edda Motts misses crab spider 1

Edda's sword rings off shell again — the point skids wide over Barnaby's body. "It's not the edge that's working," she calls to Prue, not stepping back an inch. "Yours is. Mine's just keeping its eyes on me while yours does the killing." She holds the front, weight forward, between the spider and the rest of the line.

**Referee — Edda's swing. Rolled 6, needed 12. Miss.** Her point skids off the shell exactly as it has every other time, over Barnaby's body, and she does not give ground for it. And her read is the correct one, so let it stand as table fact rather than bravado: **the party's tally in this chapel is now eight swings, two hits, and both hits are Prue's mace.** Every edge and every point — Barnaby's sword, Barnaby's dagger, Silas's dagger, Edda's sword four times over — has found nothing but chitin and air. The blunt weapon crushes. The blades skid. **Edda is not wasting her turns; she is spending them as a wall.** That is a real job. The spider has taken two bites in this room and both went at the one person wearing chain mail, because she keeps putting herself where it has to. It needs 14 to hurt her. It needs 13 to hurt Prue and 11 to hurt Silas. That difference is the only reason there is one body on this floor instead of two. **Edda's round 3 is spent. One action left in the round, and it is Prue's — the mace, two for two, the only thing in this room that has hurt anything.** The board: - **Crab spider 1** — **11/11, AC 7, still without a scratch.** Squared on Edda, low, front legs up. Needs 12 to be hit. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, holding, action spent. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, one stride behind, mace up, **action unspent.** - **Silas Horn** 3/3, at the corridor mouth, out of reach, action spent. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead, pearls and gears on him, under the fight. Light: **seven turns.** The cables overhead have not moved. The statue and its three brass lightning bolts have not been touched. The corridor west is ten strides and Silas is already standing in the mouth of it. **Prue — last action of round 3. Eleven hit points of undamaged spider, and you are holding the only weapon at this table that has worked.**

Prue Candell hits crab spider 1 for 1

Prue's mace comes down a third time and finally the untouched one learns what its partner already knew — the blow lands glancing, but it lands. "Just a nick," she says, resetting her stance beside Edda, "but it's not walking through this the way it walked through the swords."

**Referee — Prue's mace. Rolled 19, needed 12. Hit — for 1.** Three for three. She is the only person in this chapel who can hit the thing, and the die gave her a **1**. The mace-head comes down past Edda's shoulder and lands square on the carapace behind the eyes, and this time the shell holds. A shallow dent, a hairline crease in the lacquer-black plate, a spatter of something thin and clear — and the spider is still entirely functional. It flinches off the blow and comes straight back low. **Crab spider 1: 10/11.** After three rounds, one dead thief, and nine swings from four people, that is the total damage this party has done to it: one point. **Round 3 is finished for Edda and Prue.** The honest arithmetic, since it matters for what the party decides next: - **To kill it, the party needs ten more points of damage.** At Prue's mace — the only weapon landing — that is somewhere between three and ten more successful hits, and she is rolling to hit on a 12 with a d6 behind it. - **To kill Edda, the spider needs two bites.** It rolls 14 or better, once per round, and there is no armour left to add. - **The poison has not entered this fight yet.** Barnaby died to raw damage before a save was ever called for. Any bite that lands and does *not* kill outright brings a save-or-die on top of it. Those three lines are the whole shape of the room. Nobody is obliged to act on them. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — **10/11**, AC 7, dented and unbothered, squared on Edda over Barnaby's body. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, holding. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, one stride back, mace up. Three hits, three swings, one kill and one dent. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, weaponless, standing in the corridor mouth outside its leap. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead, two pearl eyeballs and three golden gears in his pouches, his short sword still in his hand. Light: **seven turns.** Nothing has come down the cables. The statue's three brass lightning bolts are untouched. West is ten strides of clear flagstone with a magic-user already standing in the mouth of it. **The turn passes to Silas's seat in round 3.** He may spend it or hold it — his retreat last round was the held action he was owed from round 2, so this one is still his.

**Referee — Prue's line stands, and it is the accurate one.** *It's not walking through this the way it walked through the swords.* That is the whole lesson of the chapel in one sentence. Nine swings, two weapons that have connected, and both connections were hers. One point of damage is a poor return, but it is a return, and it is the only kind this party has been able to generate in here. **Silas has not spent his round-3 action, and the round is out of seats. The held-action ruling applies again — Silas keeps it.** He is standing in the corridor mouth with nothing in his hands, and there is no cost to him for the pointer moving on. He may spend it the moment he speaks, including in the middle of what happens next. **Round 3 closes. Round 4 opens, and the spider acts first.** The state of the room, unchanged in every particular that matters: - **Crab spider 1** — **10/11**, AC 7, one dent behind the eyes, squared low on Edda over Barnaby's body. Needs 14 for Edda, 13 for Prue, 11 for Silas. Bites once per round, 1d8, save-or-die poison on any bite that does not kill outright. - **Crab spider 2** — dead, shell folded in. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, chain mail, front rank, sword up, has not given a single inch of ground in three rounds. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, one stride behind her, mace up. Three swings, three hits. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, outside its leap, **action held.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead. Two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears, short sword in his hand, thrown dagger out past the light. Light: **seven turns.** The grey cables overhead have not stirred. The statue's three brass lightning bolts have not been touched. Ten strides west is a corridor, and beyond it daylight. **Crab spider 1 acts now.**

Silas holds the corridor mouth. Closing to swing the staff means giving up the one thing keeping him alive — distance — for a weapon he's never swung in anger, against something that just needs an 11 to kill him outright. He doesn't do it. "Ten more points on it, Prue says. I believe her count more than I'd believe my own arm." He keeps his eyes on the cables overhead, not just the spider in front of Edda — nothing else has come down them yet, and he means to be the one who notices if that changes. "If it breaks off Edda and comes for the back line, I'm already at the door. Nobody wait on me to decide that twice."

crab spider 1 misses Edda Motts

**Referee — Silas's held action, spent on holding.** He stays at the corridor mouth and does not close with the staff, and his reasoning is sound enough that I will confirm it rather than let it sit as an opinion: **closing to staff range would put him inside the leap of a thing that needs an 11 to kill him outright with a single bite.** A d4 in untrained hands is not worth three hit points. Standing where he stands, watching the cables instead of the floor, is worth more to this party than a swing that misses on 12. And the cables are the right thing to watch. **They have not moved.** Nothing else has come down. Whatever left the husks up in that webbing is not currently descending. **Crab spider 1 acts. It goes at Edda again. Rolled 11, needed 14. Miss.** Third time it has come at the chain mail and the second time it has found nothing. The low arrival is a good attack and Edda has now seen it four times — she rolls her shoulder into it, takes the impact on the shield-side, and the fangs come away with nothing but a scrape of oil off the links. It scuttles back a half-body and drops low again, and it does not once look at Prue or the corridor. **Edda is unhurt. 8/8.** She has now absorbed three of the four bites this room has thrown and taken zero damage from them. The one bite she did not absorb killed Barnaby. **Round 4: the spider is spent. Edda, Prue, and Silas all have their actions.** The board: - **Crab spider 1** — **10/11**, AC 7, dented, squared low on Edda. Ten more points of damage to kill. Needs 14 to hurt Edda, 13 for Prue, 11 for Silas. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, unmoved, action **unspent.** - **Prue Candell** 8/8, mace up, three for three, action **unspent.** - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, eyes on the cables, action **spent.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead, pearls and gears in his pouches. Light: **seven turns.** Nothing above has stirred. The three brass lightning bolts are still in the statue's hands. **Edda, Prue — two actions in round 4. It has missed three times running and it will not keep missing.**

Edda Motts misses crab spider 1

Edda's sword skids off the shell again, over Barnaby's body, but she doesn't budge. "Keep swinging, Prue. I'll keep it looking at me." She sets her feet and holds the line.

**Referee — Edda's swing. Rolled 9, needed 12. Miss.** Five swings from her in this chapel, five skids off shell. She does not budge for it, and *I'll keep it looking at me* is a precise description of what she has actually accomplished: **three bites drawn, three bites eaten by chain mail, zero damage taken.** The spider has not glanced at Prue once. That is not luck, it is Edda standing in the only place that produces it. **Edda's round 4 is spent. Prue holds the last action of the round.** Ten points still on the spider. The arithmetic has not moved, and I will not pretend it has: **the party is generating an average of well under two points of damage per round in here, and the spider is generating one save-or-die bite per round at a 14.** Four rounds in, the score is one dead thief for one dead spider and one dent. Nobody at this table is obliged to like those numbers or to act on them — but they are the numbers. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — **10/11**, AC 7, dented behind the eyes, low and squared on Edda over Barnaby's body. Needs 14 for Edda, 13 for Prue, 11 for Silas. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, feet set, five swings and no hits, action spent. Doing the job that has kept two people alive. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, one stride back, mace up, **three for three**, action **unspent.** - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, eyes on the cables, action spent. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead, two pearl eyeballs and three golden gears in his pouches. Light: **seven turns.** The cables have not stirred. The statue's three brass lightning bolts are untouched. West is ten strides of clear flagstone. **Prue — last action of round 4, and you are the party's entire offence.**

Prue Candell misses crab spider 1

Prue swings again and this one skids too — first miss she's had all fight. "Same as the rest of you, apparently," she mutters, resetting beside Edda. "Keep it here. I'll get the next one."

**Referee — Prue's mace. Rolled 6, needed 12. Miss.** Her run ends at three. The mace comes down past Edda's shoulder and the spider is not there for it — it has learned the shape of that blow over four rounds, and this time it gives ground on the side she swings from and comes back low from the other. The head strikes flagstone beside Barnaby's outflung hand and rings. **Round 4 is over. Nothing changed in it.** Four attacks between the two sides, four misses. The spider stands at **10/11**. Every PC stands where they stood. **Round 5 opens, and the spider acts first.** Here is where the fight actually is, stated once and plainly: - **Five rounds in, the party has done 1 point of damage to this spider.** Prue is 3-for-4 and the only one landing; Edda is 0-for-5; the two blades and two thrown daggers before her were 0-for-4. - **Ten more points are required.** At the rate this room has produced, that is not a short number of rounds. - **The spider needs one 14.** It has rolled 15, 12, 11 against Edda — one hit, two misses. The hit killed a man outright. - **The poison still has not been tested.** Every round is another chance to find out what it does. - **Nothing has come down the cables.** Silas is watching, and the watch is clean so far. Against that: **Edda has drawn every bite since Barnaby fell and taken none of them.** As long as she stands there and the dice keep favouring chain mail, the party is not losing anyone. That is the trade being made each round — her armour against its fangs, while a d6 chips at ten hit points. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — 10/11, AC 7, dented, low, squared on Edda over Barnaby's body. Needs 14/13/11 for Edda/Prue/Silas. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, feet set, unwounded in four rounds of holding it. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, one stride back, mace up. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, outside its leap, watching above. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead. Two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears, sword in his hand. Light: **seven turns.** Ten strides west to the corridor, and Silas already standing in it. **Crab spider 1 acts now.**

crab spider 1 misses Edda Motts

**Referee — crab spider 1 acts. At Edda, again. Rolled 8, needed 14. Miss.** Fourth bite it has thrown in this chapel and the third that chain mail has swallowed. This one is worse than the last: it comes in high instead of low, trying the shoulder where it took Barnaby, and Edda is already turned into it. The fangs punch the links over her collarbone hard enough to stagger her half a step and do not open them. It drops off her, resets low, and stays exactly where it has been for four rounds — **in front of the woman in armour, ignoring everyone else in the room.** **Edda is unhurt. 8/8.** She has now eaten four bites in five rounds and bled from none of them. **The spider's round 5 is spent. All three living PCs hold their actions.** The board: - **Crab spider 1** — **10/11**, AC 7, one dent behind the eyes, low, squared on Edda over Barnaby's body. Ten more points to kill it. Needs 14 for Edda, 13 for Prue, 11 for Silas. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, feet set, action **unspent.** - **Prue Candell** 8/8, one stride behind, mace up, three hits in four swings, action **unspent.** - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, weaponless, eyes on the cables, action **unspent.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead. Two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears, short sword in his hand. Light: **seven turns** — that clock has not moved because combat rounds are not exploration turns, and it will not start moving again until the fighting stops. Nothing has come down the cables. The statue's three brass lightning bolts are untouched. Ten strides west is the corridor, with Silas standing in the mouth of it. **Three actions in round 5. The spider has now missed four in a row at a fighter it cannot open, and it has not once turned to look for an easier throat.**

Edda Motts misses crab spider 1

Edda's blade glances off the shell again, over Barnaby's body. She doesn't step back for it — feet set, shield up, weight forward, same as every round. "It's not turned once. Keep feeding it Prue's mace." She holds the front.

**Referee — Edda's swing. Rolled 8, needed 12. Miss.** Six swings, six skids. She is now 0-for-6 in this room, and the spider is 1-for-5 against her line. Two of them are locked in a contest neither one can win: her sword cannot find a way through that shell, and its fangs cannot find a way through those links. Meanwhile Barnaby lies between them, and he is the only thing either side has actually killed. **Edda's round 5 is spent. Prue and Silas hold theirs.** Let me put one thing on the record cleanly, because it is the shape of the whole encounter now: **this fight has produced no change for two full rounds.** Round 4 was four attacks and four misses. Round 5 so far is two attacks and two misses. The spider is at 10/11 where it was, and every living person is at full hit points where they were. The dice can break that in either direction on any single roll — a 14 for the spider is a killed cleric or a killed magic-user, a good round from Prue is three or four points off ten — but standing here trading whiffs is not a plan that resolves, it is a plan that waits for a bad roll. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — **10/11**, AC 7, dented, low, squared on Edda. Needs 14 for Edda, 13 for Prue, 11 for Silas. One bite per round, 1d8 plus save-or-die. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, feet set, 0-for-6, action spent. Four bites drawn, none landed. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, mace up, 3-for-4, **action unspent.** - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, weaponless, **action unspent.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead, two pearl eyeballs and three golden gears in his pouches, sword in his hand. Light: **seven turns**, frozen for the duration of combat. Nothing above has moved. The three brass lightning bolts are still in the statue's hands, and no one has yet had a free hand to reach for them. **Prue, Silas — two actions left in round 5.**

Prue Candell hits crab spider 1 for 4

Prue's mace comes down a fourth time and this one bites deep — the dent behind its eyes splits wide and something pale sprays across the flagstones. "That's real now," she says, already resetting beside Edda, voice flat with the counting she can't stop doing. "Four for five. Keep it on you, Edda — I'm not done."

**Referee — Prue's mace. Rolled 13, needed 12. Hit for 4.** That is the blow this room has been waiting five rounds for. Edda's read paid: the thing has not turned once, which means it has spent five rounds with its back half squared to a woman with a blunt weapon. Prue comes over the top of Edda's shield-side and puts the mace-head into the dent she made behind its eyes — the same spot, the second time. The shell that held before does not hold now. It goes in with a sound like a boot through a frozen puddle, and the spider's whole front end drops an inch and stays dropped. Two legs on the struck side lose their timing. **Crab spider 1: 6/11.** Four for five on the round, and she has now dealt every single point of damage this party has inflicted in the chapel — **5 of 5.** **More than half its hit points remain, so no morale check yet.** Crab spiders check at first casualty and at half strength; the first casualty check already happened when Prue killed its partner, and it passed on a 5. **The next check comes when it drops to 5 or below** — one more point. **Round 5's last action belongs to Silas.** The board: - **Crab spider 1** — **6/11**, AC 7, cracked behind the eyes, two legs mistiming, front end riding low. Still squared on Edda. Needs 14 for Edda, 13 for Prue, 11 for Silas. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, feet set, action spent. Four bites drawn and eaten, and she has kept its back to Prue for five rounds running. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, mace up, **4 hits in 5 swings, all 5 points of party damage**, action spent. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, weaponless, **action unspent.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead, pearls and gears in his pouches. Light: seven turns, frozen. Nothing above has moved. **Six points left on it, and one more point puts it to a morale check. Silas — round 5's last seat is yours.**

Silas doesn't move from the corridor mouth. The numbers haven't changed since he last said them out loud, and saying them again won't make Prue's mace land any harder. He keeps his eyes on the cables — still nothing coming down them — and only speaks once, low, mostly to himself. "Edda's caught four now and eaten none of them. That's not a streak I'd bet my own hide on, but it's hers to bet, not mine." He doesn't reach for the staff. Three hit points and a d4 he's never swung at anything living isn't worth trading away the one thing keeping him alive — the distance. He stays put, watching the dark above the columns, ready to shout the moment anything else starts down.

**Referee — Silas holds the corridor mouth. Round 5 closes.** He does not close, does not reach for the staff, and does not repeat the arithmetic a third time. All three of those are correct, and one of them is worth confirming: **he is right that four saved bites is not a streak, it is a sample.** The spider's chance of opening Edda's chain mail is exactly what it was in round 1 — a 14 or better, every round, forever. Nothing that has happened has made her safer. It has only made her lucky so far. His watch is also still clean. **Nothing has come down the cables.** Five rounds of a fight loud enough to hear from the great door, and whatever is up in that webbing has not descended. **Round 6 opens. The spider acts first.** **Crab spider 1 acts. At Edda. Rolled 3, needed 14. Miss — badly.** The front end is riding low now and the two mistimed legs on the struck side finally cost it something. It tries the low arrival again and the bad legs go before the good ones do; the whole lunge collapses under itself a foot short of her, and it half-sprawls across Barnaby's outstretched arm before it can gather up and back off. **Whatever Prue broke behind its eyes, it has begun to show in how the thing moves.** **Edda is unhurt. 8/8.** Five bites drawn, four eaten, and she has not given up a step of ground since the round Barnaby died. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — **6/11**, AC 7, split behind the eyes, front end low, two legs out of time. **One more point of damage forces its half-strength morale check.** Needs 14 for Edda, 13 for Prue, 11 for Silas. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, feet set, action **unspent.** - **Prue Candell** 8/8, mace up, 4-for-5, all 5 points of party damage, action **unspent.** - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, watching above, action **unspent.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead, two pearl eyeballs and three golden gears in his pouches. Light: seven turns, frozen for combat. The three brass lightning bolts are still in the statue's hands. **Three actions in round 6. Six points on the spider, and the first of them tips it into a morale roll.**

Silas still doesn't move from the corridor mouth. Six left on it, and Prue's mace is doing more work than anything he could put a d4 into. He keeps his eyes on the cables overhead — still nothing coming down — and says only, \"One more point puts it to a morale check. Edda, Prue — you're closer to done than you were.\" He holds his ground and his action both, ready to shout the moment the ceiling changes its mind.

Edda Motts misses crab spider 1

Edda's blade rings off the shell once more, seventh swing gone wide, and still she doesn't give an inch of floor. "Doesn't matter how many times it doesn't work," she says, shield up, feet set over Barnaby's arm. "It's still looking at me and not at either of you. Finish it, Prue."

**Referee — Edda's swing. Rolled 9, needed 12. Miss.** Seven swings from her in this chapel, seven skids off shell. The thing is split behind the eyes, riding low, and moving on two bad legs, and her sword still cannot find a way in. That is not her failing — it is what this monster's hide is, and the table has now proved it nine ways. **Silas's round 6: he holds the corridor mouth and holds his action.** Noted and honoured — he keeps it, and may spend it at any moment, including in the middle of someone else's turn if the ceiling changes. His count is accurate: **one more point puts the spider to a morale check.** **Edda's action is spent. Prue holds the last live action of round 6**, and Silas is holding by choice. The board: - **Crab spider 1** — **6/11**, AC 7, split behind the eyes, front end low, two legs out of time. **The next point of damage triggers its half-strength morale check.** Needs 14 for Edda, 13 for Prue, 11 for Silas. - **Crab spider 2** — dead. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, front rank, feet set, 0-for-7, action spent. Five bites drawn, four eaten, no ground given. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, mace up, **4-for-5, all 5 points of party damage**, action **unspent.** - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, watching the cables, action **held by choice.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead, two pearl eyeballs and three golden gears in his pouches. Light: seven turns, frozen. Nothing has come down the cables in six rounds. The statue's three brass lightning bolts are untouched. **Prue — the mace again. One point breaks its nerve; six kills it.**

Prue Candell hits crab spider 1 for 3

Prue's mace comes down a fifth time, into the same split, and the spider's front end drops another notch. "Five for six," she says, not looking away from it. "That's your morale check, whatever's left in you to check with."

**Referee — Prue's mace. Rolled 14, needed 12. Hit for 3. Crab spider 1 drops to 3/11 — and that is half strength.** Edda's line held for six rounds and it bought exactly this: the thing has never once turned, and Prue put the mace into the split behind its eyes for the third time. This blow goes through the crack she made and something structural gives. The front end slews, the two bad legs fold entirely, and pale fluid comes out of it in a rush across the flagstones and over Barnaby's sleeve. **Half strength reached. Morale check — crab spiders break on 7 or worse.** **Rolled 12. It fails. Badly.** It breaks. There is no drama in it and no last lunge: the spider simply stops being a predator and becomes an animal that wants to be somewhere else. It reverses off Edda's shield in a scrabbling half-collapse, gets its good legs under it, and goes up — hand over hand along the nearest rope-thick cable, faster than anything that damaged should move, hauling itself into the grey mass of webbing above the columns. Fluid drips down behind it and spots the floor. It does not come back down. **The fight is over.** Not by killing — by breaking. **Crab spider 1 escaped at 3/11 into the ceiling webbing and remains alive up there.** That matters: it is wounded, it is above the room, and it is between this party and any future business under that ceiling. **Final reckoning for the chapel:** - **Barnaby Wick is dead** — one bite, eight damage, at the start of round 2. - **Crab spider 2 is dead** — killed by Prue in round 2. - **Crab spider 1 fled wounded** at 3/11 into the overhead webs. - **Prue Candell dealt every point of damage this party inflicted: 8 of 8, on 5 hits from 7 swings.** - **Edda Motts is 0-for-8 with the sword and drew six of the seven bites thrown in this room, eating five of them on chain mail without bleeding once.** She never gave up a foot of floor. - **Silas Horn never landed a blow and never took one**, and spent the fight where a three-hit-point man belongs. - Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3. Nobody living is wounded. **Combat has ended, so I am releasing the table from strict initiative.** The party is free to act in the open — talk, search, move, tend to Barnaby — and I will resolve things as they are declared rather than by turn order. **The Light clock resumes.** It stands at **seven turns** and burns down one turn for each exploration turn spent in here. Prue has no second casting; the reserve is her beeswax tapers and Edda's tinder box. What is in the room, as established: - **Barnaby's body**, with **two pearl eyeballs (50 gp each)** and **three golden gears (25 gp each)** in his pouches, short sword in his hand. His thrown dagger lies out past where the light reached. - **The sandstone statue**, holding **three brass lightning bolts**. Untouched. Nobody has yet had a free hand for them. - **The grey cables and the webbing overhead**, containing a wounded crab spider that just fled up into it, and the husks the party noticed on arrival. - **The corridor west**, ten strides, open, leading back toward area 1 and daylight. - The far side of the chapel, still beyond the light. **The room is yours. Nothing is attacking you.**

Silas doesn't move from the corridor mouth even now — the cables are still, but "still" and "safe" aren't the same word, not with something wounded and three hit points closer to angry hiding up in that webbing. "It's not dead," he says, mostly to Edda and Prue, mostly to himself. "It's up there bleeding and it knows exactly where the door is. I'd rather we knew what's over our heads before anyone kneels down for Barnaby's pouches." He keeps his back to the corridor and his eyes on the grey mass overhead, and only when nothing stirs for a long count does he finally let his shoulders down. "Clock's running again. Seven turns. Whatever we're taking off him, take it fast."

**Referee — a correction, because Prue's count is better than mine was.** She says **five for six**, and she is right. I wrote "5 hits from 7 swings" a moment ago and that was my arithmetic error, not hers. Her actual record in this chapel: - Round 1 — hit, 4 damage (spider 2) - Round 2 — hit, 3 damage (**killed spider 2**) - Round 3 — hit, 1 damage (spider 1) - Round 4 — miss - Round 5 — hit, 4 damage (spider 1) - Round 6 — hit, 3 damage (spider 1, **broke its morale**) **Five hits in six swings. Fifteen points of damage, and every single point this party dealt in the chapel.** Seven of it killed crab spider 2 outright; eight of it drove crab spider 1 up into the webbing. A cleric with a d6 did all of the killing in a room that ate a thief. **The fight is over and stays over.** The spider broke and fled upward; nothing is coming at the party. The table is out of initiative, and I will resolve actions as they are declared, in the order they are declared. **Standing state, so nobody has to scroll:** - **Edda Motts** 8/8 · **Prue Candell** 8/8 · **Silas Horn** 3/3. No wounds among the living. - **Barnaby Wick** dead on the flagstones — **two pearl eyeballs (50 gp each), three golden gears (25 gp each)** in his pouches, short sword in his hand, thrown dagger out past the old light-edge. - **Crab spider 1 alive at 3/11**, wounded and dripping, somewhere in the grey webbing over the columns. It broke once; a wounded thing that broke once is not a thing that has stopped existing. - **The statue's three brass lightning bolts** — still in its hands, untouched, unexamined. - **Light: seven turns**, burning one per exploration turn from here. - **Corridor west**, ten strides, open, back toward area 1 and daylight. - **The far side of the chapel** is still outside the light. **The room is yours. Say what you do and I will resolve it.**

**Referee — Silas watches the ceiling, and I will answer him honestly.** He asked, in effect, for the party to know what is over their heads before anyone kneels. Standing at the corridor mouth and watching for a long count is a fair thing to spend an exploration turn on, and it is what he did. **That is exploration turn one. Light: seven turns becomes six.** Here is what the watching buys, and it is worth having: **Nothing comes down.** For a long count the grey mass over the columns does not move. Then, once, it does — high up and well back toward the chapel's dark end, a slow shifting deep inside the webbing, the kind a heavy thing makes when it is settling rather than travelling. A few drops of pale fluid patter onto flagstone somewhere out past the light. Then nothing again. That is your answer, plainly: **the wounded spider is up there, it has gone deep and back rather than out and over you, and it is not coming down while you stand in the light with a mace.** It is also true that it has not left, and it is between the party and whatever lies at the chapel's far end. **What the light shows overhead, now that someone has spent a turn looking:** rope-thick cables running from column to column and up into a matted grey ceiling. Bundled in the webbing, where the light just reaches, are the dry husks the party clocked on arrival — insect shells, small bones, and at least two shapes considerably bigger than either spider that came down. Those are old. **Nothing up there is currently moving toward you.** I will also confirm his read of the clock without dressing it up: **six turns of Light left, one burned per exploration turn.** Kneeling to strip Barnaby's pouches is one turn. Prising three brass bolts out of a statue's hands is one turn. Searching the chapel's dark end is at least one, probably more, and it is directly under the deep part of the webbing. The party cannot do all of those and still walk out under its own light. **Standing state:** - Edda 8/8 · Prue 8/8 · Silas 3/3. Nothing is attacking. - **Light: six turns.** - **Barnaby's body** — two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears, short sword, dagger out past the old light-edge. Unclaimed. - **Three brass lightning bolts** in the statue's hands. Untouched. - **Crab spider 1, 3/11**, settled deep in the webbing toward the dark end. Not descending. - Corridor west, ten strides, open. **Say what you do.**

Edda breaks off from the line at last and goes down on one knee by Barnaby, quick and businesslike, the same hands that call the roll at the guildhall now closing his coat over the wound. She works his pouches loose without fumbling — two pearl eyes, three gold gears, into her own belt pouch where they'll stay accounted for — and takes his short sword out of his stiffening grip rather than leave a weapon lying loose in a room with something wounded still watching from the dark. "He's not carrying this out himself," she says, not looking up. "Somebody has to, and it's not going to be the one of us who can't lift a mace." She doesn't reach for the statue yet — that's a second turn spent, and Silas already said take it fast. "Bolts after, if there's light left for it. Barnaby doesn't wait." She stands, sword back in her own hand, and puts herself between the body and the webbing again, same as every round before this one.

**Referee — Edda strips the body. That is done, and it is one exploration turn. Light: six becomes five.** She kneels, closes his coat over the wound, and works the pouches loose without fumbling. No roll needed for that; nothing is contesting her. **Transferred to Edda Motts:** - **2 pearl eyeballs**, 50 gp each — 100 gp - **3 golden gears**, 25 gp each — 75 gp - **Barnaby's short sword** (1d6), taken out of his grip rather than left loose on the floor **Total carried value out of area 1's rubble: 175 gp, now on Edda.** Barnaby's thrown dagger is still out past the old light-edge, unrecovered. His leather armour, thieves' tools, market ledger, chalk, rope, grappling hook, rations and waterskin, and **his 96 gp** are still on the body — she took the pouches with the salvage and the sword, not the whole kit. Say so if more is meant to come off him; it is a turn either way. Her point about who carries him is noted and it is not a small one: **a body is a two-hand load and it costs movement.** Nobody has picked him up yet. **And then the room stops being quiet.** **Wandering check on this turn: rolled 1 on 1d6. Something is coming.** Not from above. **From the chapel's dark end — the direction the spider went, the direction nobody has put light into.** Wet, heavy footfalls on flagstone, the flat slapping sound of something soft-bodied walking on stone, and **more than one set of them.** Under it, low, a voice — not words the party can make out at this distance, but unmistakably a voice, and unmistakably answered by a second. They are not running. They are walking, and they are walking toward the light. **Distance: unknown, out past the fifteen feet Prue's Light reaches. Closing.** The party has, at a guess, the space of this breath and maybe one more before whatever it is arrives inside the light with them. **Standing state:** - **Edda Motts** 8/8, on her feet between Barnaby's body and the room, sword in one hand, Barnaby's short sword and 175 gp of salvage on her belt. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, mace up, no spells memorised remaining. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, weaponless but for the staff on his back, **Detect Magic still unspent.** - **Barnaby Wick** — dead on the flagstones, his 96 gp and kit still on him, not yet lifted. - **Crab spider 1, 3/11** — still up in the webbing, settled, not descending. - **Three brass lightning bolts** — still in the statue's hands, untouched. - **Light: five turns.** - **Corridor west: ten strides, open, unblocked. Silas is already standing in the mouth of it.** **Something soft-footed and talkative is coming out of the dark, and the way out is behind you and clear. Say what you do.**

Prue doesn't wait to see what owns that second voice. She backs toward Silas and the corridor mouth at once, mace still up, put herself between the dark end and the group without turning her back on it. "We have the gears, the pearls, and his sword — that's not nothing, and it's more than we came in with," she says, low and fast. "Barnaby's not getting lighter and that thing in the webs is still bleeding up there. Whatever's walking and talking back there, we do not know its number, we do not know its bite, and Silas has three hit points. I say we go now, while the door's still open and nothing's inside the light yet. The bolts and the rest of Barnaby's kit can wait for people with a healer in hand — I'm not it today." She keeps her eyes on the dark past the statue, not on Barnaby, and holds her ground exactly as far back as the corridor mouth, ready to retreat the moment anything shows itself.

**Referee — Prue falls back to the corridor mouth, mace up, facing the dark. Done, no roll required; nothing is inside the light yet to contest it.** **Position now:** Prue and Silas are both at the corridor mouth. **Edda is still forward, out by Barnaby's body, alone in the middle of the chapel floor** — she stood up between the body and the webbing and has not been told to move. And while Prue was speaking, the footfalls resolved. **They come into the light.** Four of them, walking upright out of the chapel's dark end, and the party has seen their like before — in the marsh, in the King's Road ruts, in the corpse under the rubble at the great door. **Gloops.** Soft grey-black bodies that hold a shape without ever quite settling into one, wet feet slapping flat on the flagstones, each carrying a **spear**. Two more shapes hang back at the edge of the light behind them, unclear. The two in front are the ones who were talking. They stop when they see the party — the light, the mace, the woman standing over a body — and one of them says something to the other in a language nobody here has, then calls out across the chapel in accented Common: **"That one's dead. Are you paying, or are you leaving?"** They have not levelled the spears. They have not closed. **They are standing at about thirty feet, inside the far edge of the light, waiting for an answer.** **This is a parley opening, not an ambush.** I am not rolling initiative, because nobody has attacked. If someone strikes, that changes instantly and there are at least four spears and probably six. **Everything true about the position:** - **Four gloops with spears, visible, thirty feet off. At least two more behind them in the dark.** - **Edda Motts** 8/8, **forward and alone**, sword in hand, Barnaby's short sword and 175 gp on her belt, Barnaby's body at her feet. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, corridor mouth, mace up. No spells. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth. Detect Magic unspent. - **Crab spider 1, 3/11**, still in the webbing above, between the party and the gloops. - **Light: five turns.** Corridor west behind Prue and Silas: **ten strides, open, unblocked, and nothing is standing in it.** - Barnaby's **96 gp** and kit are still on the body Edda is standing over. The gloops can see the body. The gloops asked about paying. - The three brass lightning bolts are still in the statue's hands, and the statue is between the party and the gloops. **Prue's argument to leave is on the table and it is a sound one. The gloops have asked a direct question and are waiting. Edda is thirty feet from her line and ten strides further from the door than either of the others.** **Say what you do.**

Silas doesn't reach for the staff — thirty feet of open floor and four spears is not a fight three hit points survives, and it isn't the fight on offer anyway. "They asked a price, not a fight," he calls back, pitched to carry to Edda without carrying past the gloops. "That's a question we can answer. Pay them for the body and the walk out, and we keep the gears, the pearls, and our skins — that's still more than we came in with, same as Prue said." He keeps one hand near his belt pouch, not near the dagger. "Edda — don't stand over him arguing the price. Name one, or let them name one, and get back to this side of the room while they're still just talking."

**Referee — Silas answers them instead of reaching for a weapon, and that is what keeps this a conversation. Reaction roll: 4.** That is a hostile roll. It does not mean spears — nothing has been thrown and nobody has closed — but it means these four are not inclined to be reasonable, and the terms they name reflect that. The one who spoke listens to Silas, tilts a head that does not stay quite the same shape while it tilts, and answers across the thirty feet: **"Wrong question. You don't pay for the walk out — the walk out is free, nobody wants you. You pay for what you're carrying."** A wet arm comes up and points, and it points at **Edda's belt**, not at the body. **"Brass off the door. Pearls off the door. You dug in the great hall, you took shrine goods, and the toll on shrine goods is all of it. Put it on the floor and walk. Keep it, and we take it off the second body."** The other front-rank gloop adds, flatter: **"The dead one's ours either way. That's not a toll, that's just what's left."** **They still have not levelled the spears.** They have also not moved a step closer. But two of the shapes behind them have come forward far enough to resolve — **six gloops total, all with spears** — and they are spreading wide rather than bunching, which is what a line does when it means to take a room rather than talk in it. **The terms on the table, plainly:** - **They want all of it: 2 pearl eyeballs and 3 golden gears — the full 175 gp of salvage — on the floor.** - **They claim Barnaby's body regardless.** His 96 gp and kit are on it. Nobody has lifted him. - **They say the exit is free.** They have not stood between the party and the corridor, and the corridor is behind Prue and Silas, ten strides, still empty. - **They have made no demand about weapons, and none about the three brass lightning bolts** — which are still in the statue's hands, between the two sides, and which nobody has mentioned or looked at. **What is true about the fight if it comes:** six spears against Edda 8/8, Prue 8/8, Silas 3/3, in the open, thirty feet from a wounded crab spider that is still up in the webbing. Prue has no spells. Silas has Detect Magic and a staff he has never swung. Edda is forward and alone and would be the first one reached. **What is true about walking:** the corridor is open and nobody is in it. Prue and Silas are already at its mouth. **Edda is thirty feet out and has not moved.** **The gloops are waiting on an answer, and their price is everything Edda is carrying plus the man she was standing over. Say what you do.**

**Referee — the room holds. Nothing acts against the party this beat.** **Crab spider 1 does not come down.** It is at **3/11** in the webbing, and there is a line of six armed gloops in the room below it now. Whatever it is doing up there, descending into that is not it. The webbing is still and the fluid has stopped dripping. **The gloops do not close, and they do not level the spears.** They also do not go away. The line stands spread across the chapel's dark end at thirty feet, and the one who did the talking has gone quiet and is simply waiting, which is worse than talking. **They asked a direct question and it has not been answered.** So that nobody is guessing at my clock: **they are waiting on the party's answer, not on a count.** They will hold while the party talks among itself. What they will not do is hold while the party walks past them, reaches for the statue, or picks up the body they have just claimed — any of those three is an answer in itself, and I will treat it as one. **The three brass lightning bolts have still not been mentioned by anyone, on either side.** They are in the statue's hands, roughly midway between the two lines. Nobody has asked about them. Nobody has looked at them. That is not a hint; it is a fact about what has and has not been said. **Standing state, unchanged:** - **Six gloops, spears, thirty feet, spread wide** across the dark end. Not levelled. Not advancing. - **Edda Motts** 8/8 — **forward and alone**, over Barnaby's body, 175 gp of salvage and his short sword on her belt. - **Prue Candell** 8/8 — corridor mouth, mace up, no spells. - **Silas Horn** 3/3 — corridor mouth, Detect Magic unspent. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead on the floor, **96 gp and his kit still on him**, not lifted, claimed aloud by the gloops. - **Crab spider 1, 3/11** — in the webbing, not descending. - **Light: five turns.** - **Corridor west: ten strides, open, empty.** **Their price is everything Edda carries, and they say the door is free. The answer is the party's to give.**

Edda doesn't drop anything yet, but she doesn't stand her ground alone either — she steps back, unhurried, putting flagstone between herself and the spear-line the same steady way she held it against the spider, until she's level with Prue and Silas at the corridor mouth. Sword still up, she answers across the gap. "The brass and the pearls came off your door, and I heard you the first time — that's toll, and it's yours to ask and mine to weigh. Fair's fair; that goes down." She reaches to her belt, ready to set the pearls and gears on the stone between the lines, not thrown, not kept back. "But the dead man's own coin and his own kit didn't come off any door of yours. That's his wage, earned before he ever saw your hall, same as mine's owed to me and unpaid fourteen months. You want to argue that's yours too, argue it — I've fined better men than you for taking what wasn't marked as theirs, and I'll hear the other side of it. But I'm not putting a man's own pocket on your scale and calling it your toll." She holds where she's stood, blade level, waiting to see if that split holds — or if the spears come up.

**Referee — Edda gives ground and makes a real offer, and the table rewards it. Reaction roll: 10.** First the movement, because it matters more than the speech: **Edda steps back off the open floor and comes level with Prue and Silas at the corridor mouth.** She is no longer forward and alone. **All three living PCs are now at the west corridor mouth**, with ten strides of empty passage behind them and thirty-plus feet of chapel between them and the spear-line. That is the strongest position anyone in this room has held since they walked in. Barnaby's body stays where it fell, out on the flagstones, with **his 96 gp and his kit still on it.** She has the salvage in her hand and has **not** set it down yet — she offered to, and is waiting on the answer. I am holding her to that: **the pearls and gears are still on her belt.** Now the answer. The talking gloop listens all the way through. When she gets to *fourteen months unpaid* the second front-rank one makes a noise that might be a laugh, and the talker holds up a wet hand to quiet it. **"...Fine. That's a real split."** It says something sideways to the others in their own language, and the wide line stops widening. **"Door-goods to us. Pocket-goods to you. We don't take wages, we're not the Black One's tax." A pause. "You'd be surprised how few of you can tell the difference."** Then, flatly, the part it does not concede: **"The meat stays. Take his pockets, take his boots, take the sword, we don't care — but the body stays in the hall. That's not toll and it's not greed. Nothing walks out of here whole that died in here. Those are the terms, and they're the ones we've got."** **The spears stay down. Two of the six take a step back into the dark, which is what a line does when it has stopped planning to charge.** **Terms as they now stand — and this is the whole deal:** - **The party sets down the 2 pearl eyeballs and 3 golden gears (175 gp).** Not yet done. Edda still holds them. - **The party keeps Barnaby's 96 gp, his kit, his short sword — everything off his person.** Conceded, in words, by the other side. - **Barnaby Wick's body remains in the chapel.** Not negotiable, they say. - **The corridor west is free.** They have never blocked it and have twice said so. - **Nobody has mentioned the three brass lightning bolts.** Still true. Still in the statue's hands, still between the lines, and the statue is on *their* side of the room's midpoint. **What is unfinished:** the goods are not on the floor, Barnaby's 96 gp and kit are not off his body, and the party has not said yes. Stripping the body now means walking back out onto the open floor, thirty feet from six spears, with those spears down and a reaction of 10 behind them — better odds than any moment in this room so far, and still not nothing. **Say what you do. If someone accepts and pays, I will resolve the whole exchange in one beat.**

Prue doesn't lower the mace, but she doesn't advance either. "Take him, then," she says, and it costs her something to say it plainly — she can hear how it will sound to Barnaby's father, to nobody, to no one at all. "He kept a stall on Sallow Lane before he carried tools for us, and he'd tell you the same thing I'm about to: a body's not worth four more people bleeding over it, and neither is brass off a door that was never ours to begin with." She looks to Edda. "Set it down. All of it — the pearls, the gears, on the stone between us, same as you said. We keep his coin, his kit, his sword, and we keep our skins, and we walk out that corridor while the offer's still ten and not four." A beat, quieter. "I'll say his name at the obit roll come Mabon whether his body's under this roof or the chapel's. That part doesn't change for where he's left lying."

**Referee — Prue accepts the terms aloud. That is the acceptance, and the other side hears it.** I am not moving Edda's hands for her — **the pearls and gears are still on Edda's belt**, and Prue told her to set them down rather than doing it herself. But acceptance spoken by a party member is acceptance, and the gloops treat it as one. The talker's shape settles a little, which for a gloop seems to be what standing easy looks like. **"Then it's said."** It gestures with the butt of the spear, not the point, at a spot of bare flagstone a few feet out from the corridor mouth — **well short of the statue, well short of the middle of the room.** **"There. Not out here. You don't have to walk to us; we're not asking you to. Put it there and we'll come for it after you've gone."** Then it adds the one thing nobody asked, and it is worth the hearing: **"And take his pockets. We meant it. Do it now while my line's standing still, because in ten minutes there's a shift change and the ones coming up from the puddle didn't hear any of this."** **That is a genuine concession and it is on record: the drop point is at the party's end of the room, not the middle. Nobody has to cross the open floor to pay.** Barnaby's body is still out on the flagstones where he fell, though, and **his 96 gp and his kit are still on it.** Retrieving those means somebody goes to the body. The body is not thirty feet away — it is where Edda was kneeling, out from the corridor mouth but on the party's half of the chapel. **The gloops have just explicitly invited that, and have said they will not close while their line holds.** **And they have named a clock.** *Ten minutes* — call it **a shift change coming up from below, and a fresh crew that has not agreed to any of this.** That is roughly the span of the Light the party has left. **Standing state:** - **Six gloops, spears down**, thirty feet at the dark end, two of them a step back. **Reaction 10, terms struck.** - **Edda Motts** 8/8, corridor mouth, **still holding 175 gp of salvage** and Barnaby's short sword. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, corridor mouth, mace up. Terms accepted in her voice. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, Detect Magic unspent. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead on the flagstones, party's half of the room, **96 gp and full kit still on him.** The gloops have said take it. - **Crab spider 1, 3/11** — in the webbing. Nothing has changed above. - **Light: five turns.** A shift of unbriefed gloops is coming up in about the same span. - **Corridor west: ten strides, open, empty.** **The deal is struck. What remains is: put the goods on the named stone, take what is Barnaby's off Barnaby, and walk. Say who does what.**

Silas doesn't move toward the body — Edda and Prue have that, and three hit points near six spears is not where he adds anything. Instead he does the one thing that's actually his to do: he pulls the drip-scale rag from his belt, murmurs the words he memorised this morning, and lets Detect Magic loose across the near end of the room — the pearls and gears still on Edda's belt, the stone she's meant to set them on, and Barnaby's own kit lying with him. "Nothing," he says after a moment, quiet, mostly to Edda and Prue. "Not on the gears, not on the pearls, not on his coin or his tools. Whatever those things are worth, it isn't enchantment — plain gold and plain pearl, and the toll's cheap at that price." He glances past them at the statue and the three brass bolts still standing untouched, the only thing in the room he hasn't gotten a look at. "Those, I can't tell you about from here — too far, and I'm not walking out to find out. Pay what's owed, take what's ours, and let's be the ones who leave before the shift changes." He stays put at the corridor mouth, watching the dark past the gloops' line the same way he watched the cables — not for a threat that's declared itself, but for the one that hasn't yet.

**Referee — Silas spends Detect Magic. It works, and the answer is exactly what he reports. Light: five becomes four.** **Detect Magic is now spent.** Silas has no spells remaining. The spell reads for 2 turns, but he does not move during it, so it does him no further good than what he sees from where he stands. **Confirmed within range — nothing magical:** - **2 pearl eyeballs** — no aura. Plain pearl. - **3 golden gears** — no aura. Plain gold. - **Barnaby's coin, tools, and kit** — no aura. Nothing on his body glows. - The drop-stone the gloop named — nothing. It is a flagstone. That is a real result and worth what it cost: **the 175 gp toll is a purely monetary loss.** The party is not handing over an enchanted thing without knowing it. Silas's read is correct and I ratify all of it. **What the spell also caught, which he could not have expected:** The **three brass lightning bolts in the statue's hands are at the outer edge of the spell's range** — sixty feet, and the statue is inside that even if the *light* is not. He is squinting through his own spell at something the Light does not reach, so what he gets is thin, but it is not nothing: **One of the three bolts is faintly magical. The other two are not.** He cannot tell you which one from here — at that distance, through the dark, all he has is that the aura sits somewhere in that clutch of three, one signal among three shapes. **Two are ordinary brass. One is not.** He also gets one thing he did not ask for. **The gloops themselves register nothing.** No auras, no enchanted spears, no charms. Six wet soldiers with sticks. **And the room answers back.** Wandering check on this turn: **7 — nothing new comes.** The shift change has not arrived yet. The talking gloop watches Silas mutter over his rag with what might be professional patience. **"Are we doing this, or are you appraising?"** **Standing state:** - **Six gloops, spears down**, thirty feet, terms struck, waiting on payment. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, corridor mouth, **175 gp of salvage still on her belt**, plus Barnaby's short sword. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, corridor mouth, mace up, no spells. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, **Detect Magic spent, no spells left**. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead on the flagstones, **96 gp and full kit still on him**, invited to be taken. - **Three brass lightning bolts** — statue's hands, gloops' side of the midpoint, **one of the three carries an aura**. Untouched. Never mentioned aloud to the gloops. - **Crab spider 1, 3/11** — webbing, unchanged. - **Light: four turns.** Shift change still coming. - **Corridor west: ten strides, open, empty.** **Say what you do.**

**Referee — the room holds again. Nothing acts against the party.** **Crab spider 1 stays in the webbing at 3/11.** Six armed gloops now stand under that ceiling and it is not coming down into them. The webbing does not move. **The gloops hold the line.** Spears down, thirty feet, two of the six a step back into the dark. They are waiting on a payment that has been promised in words and not yet made with hands. The talker does not repeat itself; it simply watches Edda's belt. **I will be exact about the one thing that is moving on its own, because the party did not set that clock and cannot stop it.** **The shift change is real and it is coming.** The gloop named ten minutes and it named the reason: a fresh crew coming up from the puddle who heard none of this parley and agreed to none of it. **That was two exploration turns ago.** I have burned Light for both of them and I have rolled the wandering check for both. **Light: four turns.** Call the shift change **roughly two to three turns out** — I am not going to pretend to a precision the fiction does not have, but it is closer than it was and it is not going to stop coming because the party is thinking. **What that means in plain arithmetic:** the party has time to do **about two things** here — pay, and strip the body — and walk out under its own light with a margin. It does not have time to do those two things *and* go looking at a statue thirty-plus feet the wrong way, on the gloops' side of the room, under a spider, with no spells left in the whole company. **That is the shape of it, not advice. The bolts are there. One of them is magic. The door is open and the price is agreed.** **Standing state:** - **Six gloops, spears down**, thirty feet, terms struck, **waiting on payment**. - **Edda Motts** 8/8, corridor mouth, **2 pearl eyeballs + 3 golden gears (175 gp) still on her belt**, Barnaby's short sword. - **Prue Candell** 8/8, corridor mouth, mace up, **no spells**. - **Silas Horn** 3/3, corridor mouth, **no spells**. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead on the flagstones, party's half of the room, **96 gp and full kit still on him**, explicitly invited to be taken. - **Three brass lightning bolts** — statue's hands, gloops' side of the midpoint, **one of the three magical**, unmentioned to the gloops. - **Crab spider 1, 3/11** — webbing, not descending. - **Light: four turns.** Shift change ~2-3 turns. - **Corridor west: ten strides, open, empty.** **Say what you do.**

Edda doesn't argue the clock — she works it. She crouches at the corridor mouth and sets the two pearl eyeballs and the three gold gears down on the flagstone the gloop named, deliberate, one at a time, like she's counting coin onto a table at guildhall. "That's the toll, paid where you said to put it. We're square." Then she's up and moving back out onto the party's half of the floor, quick and low, to Barnaby's body — not to argue him, just to finish what she started. She goes through what's left on him fast: his purse, his tools, his rations and rope, everything that's his and not the door's, into her own pack rather than left for a shift that never heard the terms. "His coin goes to whoever he's got waiting on it, same as mine's meant to," she says, not to the gloops, to Prue. She doesn't reach for the statue. She doesn't look at the webbing twice. Kit gathered, she falls back to the corridor mouth and turns to face the room one more time before anyone takes the last step toward the door. "Done. Whoever's walking, walk."

**Referee — Edda pays the toll and strips the body. Both halves done in one exploration turn, because she did them as one continuous piece of work and the gloops stood still for it. Light: four becomes three.** **The payment.** She crouches and sets them down one at a time on the named flagstone — two pearl eyeballs, three golden gears. The talking gloop does not move to collect them. It watches her count them out and then says, **"Square,"** in the flat way a man says it when he has said it a thousand times at a gate. **Off Edda's ledger: 2 pearl eyeballs (100 gp), 3 golden gears (75 gp). 175 gp paid.** They lie on the stone. **The toll is settled and I am recording it as settled.** **The body.** She crosses back onto the party's half of the floor and goes through Barnaby Wick fast and thoroughly. Nothing interferes — no spear comes up, the webbing does not stir, and the wandering check for this turn came up **6: nothing new arrives.** She has the room's permission and the room's silence, and she uses both. **Recovered from Barnaby's body and now carried by Edda Motts:** - **96 gp** in coin - **thieves' tools** - **market ledger, copied** - **chalk** - **rope, 50'** - **grappling hook** - **iron rations, one week** - **waterskin** - **short sword** (already taken) **Left on the body:** his **leather armour**, and his **sling**. **Left on the floor out past the old light-edge: his thrown dagger**, never recovered. **Barnaby Wick's body stays in the chapel.** That is the term the gloops would not bend and the party accepted it. He lies on the flagstones of area 2 with his armour still on him, and he is going to stay there. Then she falls back to the corridor mouth and turns to face the room. **All three living PCs are at the west corridor mouth. Nothing stands between them and the passage.** The talking gloop lifts its spear-butt an inch off the stone — not a threat; something closer to a nod. **"Then go. And don't come back through the great door, because the next lot won't take a split."** **Standing state — the party is clear and paid up:** - **Edda Motts** 8/8 — 19 gp of her own, **plus Barnaby's 96 gp and full kit**, his short sword, her sword and shield and chain. - **Prue Candell** 8/8 — 41 gp, mace, **no spells**. - **Silas Horn** 3/3 — 27 gp, **the mechanical voice box and the jar of gloop grease**, **no spells**, no dagger. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead in area 2, armour on, dagger on the floor. Not coming out. - **175 gp of salvage** — paid, on the flagstone, gone. - **Three brass lightning bolts** — untouched in the statue's hands. **One of the three is magical and the party knows it and is leaving it.** - **Crab spider 1, 3/11** — alive in the webbing. - **Light: three turns.** Shift change ~1-2 turns. - **Corridor west: ten strides, open, empty, nobody in it.** **Edda has said "whoever's walking, walk." Nobody has taken that step yet. The west passage leads back through area 1 and out the ruined great door to daylight. Say it and I will move the table.**

Prue doesn't linger over the count. "Walk," she says, already backing into the corridor, mace still up but her eyes on the passage now, not the dark. "Ten strides and daylight. We paid what was owed, we took what was ours, and Barnaby's name goes on the roll same as it would've if we'd carried him out on our backs. That's not nothing." She keeps pace with Edda and Silas, not ahead of them, not behind — the same formation that's kept all three of them breathing this whole fight — and doesn't look back at the statue or the webbing again.

1. Ruined Great Door

something takes 2 from automaton hand 1.

something takes 2 from automaton hand 2.

**Referee — Prue says walk, and the party walks. The table has moved to area 1, the Ruined Great Door.** Ten strides of corridor, three abreast in the formation that kept them breathing, and nobody looks back. **No spear follows them. Nothing drops out of the webbing. The gloops keep the terms they made.** **Bookkeeping, so the fresh board is honest:** the travel re-seeded area 1 with its two automaton hands. **The party already destroyed both of those in this same session** — Barnaby's dagger for 2, Edda's sword for 8. **I have set both back to 0. They are still smashed brass on the rubble, exactly where they were left. There is nothing alive in area 1.** **Area 1, one exploration turn spent walking. Light: three becomes two.** The corridor opens into the collapsed hall they came in through. The rubble mounds are as they left them — the narrow path, the glint of clockwork brass, the two ruined hands lying where they were broken, the gloop corpse under its rocks with the flies. **And ahead, past the smashed iron gates, the western threshold: real daylight, grey off the marsh, and the smell of open water.** **Nothing in this room moves.** The way out is ten yards and unblocked. **One thing said plainly, because it is the last decision worth naming.** They are standing in the room where they dug up the toll they just paid. The rubble is still full of the same kind of debris it was full of the first time — and the last time somebody searched it, **two brass hands came out of it and a search took an exploration turn.** They have **two turns of Light**, an unbriefed gloop shift somewhere behind them, and a company with no spells and a man at 3 hit points. **Standing state:** - **Edda Motts** 8/8 — her 19 gp, **Barnaby's 96 gp** and his tools, ledger, chalk, rope, hook, rations, waterskin, and short sword. - **Prue Candell** 8/8 — 41 gp, mace, no spells. - **Silas Horn** 3/3 — 27 gp, **the mechanical voice box** and **the jar of gloop grease**, no spells, no dagger. - **Nothing hostile in area 1.** Both hands destroyed, as they were. - **Light: two turns.** - **West: the ruined gates, the cliff base, the marsh. Daylight. Open threshold, ten yards.** - **East: back toward the chapel, Barnaby's body, and a gloop shift that never agreed to anything.** **Say the word and I will take you out the great door.**

Edda doesn't so much as glance at the rubble again — both hands are smashed brass and staying that way, and there's nothing here worth a turn of Light. "We've got what we came for and paid what we owed for it. Barnaby's name and his coin go home; the rest of this hall can keep its secrets." She jerks her head at the gates. "Out. Daylight's that way, and I'd rather be stood in it than clever in here."

**Referee — nothing in this room takes a turn.** The initiative board still lists the two automaton hands because travel re-seeded them, and I want it on the record one more time: **both are at 0. They are broken brass lying in the rubble where Barnaby and Edda left them. They do not act, this round or any other.** Area 1 holds nothing that can raise a hand against anybody. **The pointer has run past Edda, so per the standing ruling of this table: Edda Motts holds her action at no cost.** She may spend it whenever her player says so, including in the middle of somebody else's beat. Nobody loses a turn to my bookkeeping. The room is quiet. Flies over the gloop corpse. Grey daylight through the smashed gates, ten yards west, and the marsh air coming in cold against the dust. **Light: two turns.** No wandering check this beat — no exploration turn has been spent since the walk in. **The board:** - **Edda Motts** 8/8, action held — her 19 gp, **Barnaby's 96 gp**, his tools, ledger, chalk, rope, hook, rations, waterskin, short sword. - **Prue Candell** 8/8 — 41 gp, mace, no spells. - **Silas Horn** 3/3 — 27 gp, **mechanical voice box**, **jar of gloop grease**, no spells, no dagger. - **Nothing hostile in area 1.** - **Light: two turns.** - **West, ten yards: the ruined great door, the cliff base, the Kelfrek Marsh. Daylight.** - **East: the chapel, Barnaby, and a shift of gloops who agreed to nothing.** **Two turns of light and ten yards of open threshold. Say the word and I take you out.**

Prue nods once at Edda and doesn't break stride toward the gates. "Out," she agrees. "We've bled enough for one afternoon and paid what we owed besides. Whatever's clever in this hall can stay clever without us." She keeps to the same formation, mace lowered but not sheathed, and walks for the daylight.

**Referee — Edda spends her held action and Prue moves with her. The party walks for the gates.** Ten yards of picked path between the rubble mounds. Nobody searches. Nobody stoops. **The exploration turn is spent walking out. Light: two becomes one** — and the light stops mattering about halfway across, because the grey coming through the broken iron is stronger than Prue's spell ever was. **Wandering check for the turn: I rolled it. Nothing comes.** No shift, no spear, no wet footfall behind them in the corridor. The gloops keep the terms all the way to the end. They pass under the smashed ten-foot leaves — ornate once, rusted through now, hanging off their hinges — and the smell changes from dust and dead gloop to open water and cold reeds. **The party stands at the western threshold of the Shrine of the Oozing Serpent, in daylight, on the sandstone at the base of the cliffs, with the Kelfrek Marsh grey and flat below them to the west.** **Nothing followed them out.** **Silas Horn has not said a word this beat, and I am not going to say one for him.** He is standing with them at the threshold — Edda and Prue walked in formation and he has kept that formation every step of this delve. But **the last foot over the line is his to declare**, and I would rather the man who spent the whole afternoon saying *let's be the ones who leave* got to be the one who says it out loud. **Where the accounts stand, three living, none of them bleeding:** - **Edda Motts** 8/8 — her **19 gp**, and **Barnaby's 96 gp**, his thieves' tools, copied market ledger, chalk, 50' rope, grappling hook, rations, waterskin, and short sword. - **Prue Candell** 8/8 — **41 gp**, mace, shield, holy symbol, tapers. Light nearly burned out. Her company obit roll, with a name to add to it. - **Silas Horn** 3/3 — **27 gp**, **the mechanical voice box** and **the jar of gloop grease**, his notebook, his instruments. No dagger. It is on the chapel floor. - **Barnaby Wick** — dead in area 2, on the flagstones, armour on. He does not come out. That was the price and the party paid it with its eyes open. **Left behind in the shrine, known and deliberate:** 175 gp of door-salvage on a flagstone; three brass lightning bolts in a statue's hands, **one of them magical**; a crab spider alive at 3 hit points in the webbing above them; and a company of six gloops who turned out to be capable of an honest split. **Say the word, Silas, and I close the door behind you.**

Silas takes the last step over the threshold without looking back at the rubble, and only once the marsh wind is properly on his face does he let it out. "Out," he says — quietly, like he's confirming a number on the page rather than announcing anything. "We're out." He shifts the burn-bench strap on his shoulder, checks that the voice box and the jar of grease are still snug where he packed them, and starts down toward the flat grey water without another word for the shrine behind them. There will be time on the walk back to write it all down: the toll, the split, the bolt that glowed and the two that didn't, and the man who isn't walking out with them. He already knows which page it goes on.

**Referee — Silas takes the last step, and that closes it. The Candlewrights are out of the Shrine of the Oozing Serpent.** Three walked out. **Edda Motts 8/8, Prue Candell 8/8, Silas Horn 3/3** — not one of the survivors bleeding, which is a stranger fact than it sounds when you count what was in that chapel. **What came out of the shrine:** - **Barnaby Wick's 96 gp**, carried by Edda, going to whoever he had waiting on it. - **His thieves' tools, copied market ledger, chalk, 50' of rope, grappling hook, rations, waterskin, and his short sword.** - **The mechanical voice box** and **the jar of gloop grease**, in Silas's pack — the grease being the third appearance of a substance that has now turned up in the voice box's reeds, in a corpse under the rubble, and in the ruts of the King's Road. That question left the shrine unanswered, which is not the same as unasked. - **Every coin they walked in with:** Edda 19, Prue 41, Silas 27. - **A name for Prue's obit roll.** **What stayed:** - **Barnaby Wick**, on the flagstones of area 2, leather still on him, his sling beside him and his thrown dagger out past the light-edge. The gloops would not trade on that, and the party did not spend three lives arguing it. - **175 gp** of pearl and gold, counted out one piece at a time onto a named flagstone. Paid, not taken. - **Three brass lightning bolts** in a sandstone statue's hands, **one of the three magical**, positively identified and deliberately abandoned. The party knew exactly what it was leaving and left it anyway, because it had two turns of light, no spells, and a man at three hit points. - **A crab spider, alive at 3 of 11**, in the webbing over that chapel. It broke; it did not die. **And the thing worth writing on the page Silas already has picked out.** This delve was decided twice, and neither time by a sword. The first was **Prue's mace** — five hits in six swings, fifteen points, every single point of damage this party dealt in that chapel. She killed one spider outright and broke the other, alone, while eight blade-swings and two thrown daggers found nothing but chitin. The second was **Edda's split at thirty feet.** Six spears asked for everything, and a beadle who has been unpaid fourteen months told them the difference between a toll and a wage, out loud, with a corpse at her feet — and **they took the distinction.** A reaction roll of 4 became a 10 because someone made an argument that a gate-guard could recognise as fair. That is the whole reason three people are standing in marsh wind instead of four bodies cooling under a ceiling full of husks. Barnaby Wick died in round 2 of that fight, to a single 8-damage bite, before anyone had rolled a poison save. The party spent no life to recover him and no coin to argue over him, and carried his purse out to his people instead of his body out to a hole. **Whether that was the right trade is not a referee's call. It was made with clear eyes, at a stated price, by people who knew what the light was costing them.** They came for salvage. They paid the salvage back as toll and came out with a dead man's wages and two curiosities. **The company is intact, the ledger balances, and the shrine keeps its bolt.** **Closing the table.**