Ghosts of Saltmarsh (#16) - The Emperor of the Waves II

Day 23 continued - aboard the Emperor of the Waves

Navda scouted ahead, he crept down the stairs to below decks, but just scant moments later we heard a cry of alarm. He had become entangled in an almost invisible web. Dharion cautiously approached the entangled rogue and began to cut him loose, but within moments of Navda's arms becoming free a giant wolf spider dropped onto him and bit him. A sling stone from me and a Firebolt from Gladreth killed the arachnid.

Thinking that the danger was over, we began to cut Navda free again but another of the weird gribblies we had previously seen in the cabin on the deck dropped down and sprayed Navda in the same gossamer thin web. Luckily, we were prepared for this and Navda was able to break free almost instantly. I attacked the beast with my mace, but Druss clove it in two with his great sword.

We passed through the curtain at the bottom of the stairwell, and filed into the main area below decks, only to be confronted with a huge swarm of smaller spiders, scurrying hither and thither. They spotted us and made for us so we had to use every means possibly to squash them before they bit us. Unfortunately, our encounters with their giant cousins were not at an end, as another wolf spider dropped onto Dharion. Luckily he was able to finish it off before it caused the party any greater concerns. Drakkon and Navda finished off the spider swarm between them soon after.

Whilst we regained our breath, we decided to carefully burn away any webs we could see and take stock of our surroundings. Around the main corridor/room we were in, we could see six doorways and a hatch in the floor directly below the grate above. We decided to investigate the doors one-at-a-time starting with the one in the left wall, and determined to move around them in a clockwise fashion.

More action aboard the Emperor

A quick look at the large hatch in the floor before we started showed us that it appeared to have been unused for some time. 

The first room was full of leaf litter into which was intermixed a fair amount of human bones. We ignored the grisly contents and after a little searching found a stone-tipped spear and a small wooden shield with a spider-like design on it. We decided to take these items with us and resealed the door.

The second room's door was difficult to push open, much like the door on deck above us. The room was again full of webs, which made progress through the room very slow. We burned the webs as we went and eventually found four cocoons hanging from the ceiling. We decided to cut one down to see whether they contained innocent victims or more spider-like critters that we would need to destroy.

Unfortunately, the cocoons contained grotesque blue-skinned beings with four red eyes, long tongues, and very sharp teeth. As soon as the first was cut open, the other cocoons began to wriggle. Not liking this one bit, I decided to use my Burning Hands spell to destroy them if I could. As fire seemed to have a goodly effect upon the spider webs elsewhere on the ship, I thought that maybe this would be no different. My hunch turned out to be sound as the spell I cast upon the two cocoons within range caused the demons within untold pain as they struggled free from their bonds.

A frantic melee erupted wherein Druss killed one of the beings just before I was struck unconscious by another.

From the tale told after the fight, the demon that struck me down Rampaged and also almost killed Drakkon, but the barbarian struck back at it and killed it. Navda shot the third one and the final demon was killed by Drakkon. Gladreth's Shocking Grasp spell appeared to do very little damage to the demons, so she spent most of the rest of the combat trying to revive me.

Once the demons were destroyed, I was finally brought round and given a Healing draft. I regained my wits and said a Prayer of Healing to restore the rest of my companions.

We searched the room and I was able to find a pair of gold earrings and a jewelled necklace; both appeared to be worth some money.

The third room appeared to be a wrecked bed chamber. The bed and dresser were in pieces and there were more webs everywhere.

Navda realised that clearing out the ship was going to take quite a lot longer than the three hours we were allocated, so he returned to the deck to instruct the dwarf rowers in the jolly boat to return to their ship and inform the captain of the situation.