I haven't updated this in three weeks and my browser crashed after typing this the first time. Grr, arrgh.

Week 1: It was my wife's birthday so I couldn't game. The guys played a one shot at 10th level. The next week I was welcomed with, "I died three times!" "I rolled a one on my Fort save and died!" "I didn't die!" "You were a coward and ran away on the second round!" "That green slaad raped us!" I did not ask for details.

Week 2: Back at the Nephil Fortress everyone except the beguiler went upstairs. The beguiler played with a gnoll patrol using low level illusions untill reinforcements came to open up some of the arrow slits into doorways. Then he went upstairs too. There were only two encounters upstairs, the room above the gate (barrels of acid) and the temple. The heroes made enough noise that they had to bash down the doors both times. A tipped over barrel of acid did decent damage but didn't get to dissolve any magic boots. The three shamen in the temple fell to Mass Whelm and Confusion (casters can dominate a fight if they want to blow out spell slots or the enemies are weak on a targeted save). The Vrock that showed up when the sorcerer fooled with the evil altar turned out to be a real threat though. With nothing but a single Mirror Image and it's melee attacks it did serious damage and took five rounds to take down. I totally forgot the spore's ongoing effect too, another 10d4 missed out on for two characters.

Again the players ignored any loot except the magic stuff. Just another Cobra Amulet and an Aquatic Charge Breaking Vermin Bane Large Scourge (+3 weapon, wrong size for PCs) in addition to the real Formello necklace. Then they buggered off.

So I didn't get to ambush them with a bunch of gnolls packing alchemical frost grenades. Anyways they made it back to Formello a couple days later. Got rewarded with the royal token so they can get into the castle and see the king, four 30 pound ingots of mixed adamantium and mithril, and a shrine to Jiyva. The lockdown mage-slayer fighter is worshipping Jiyva and they actually managed to bring back a stone chest (ogre packmule FTW!) containing an ice slime (grey ooze changed from acid to cold) and get it installed and consecrated in the Formello temple. Then the fighter sacrificed the scourge to his god. And yes this is how he gets piety points. Now the ingots are worth 30,000 gp in theory. In practice there isn't an alloy of mithril and adamantium so these are pretty useless unless separated and if the smith flubs that roll then all you end up with is worthless slag. There was inconclusive discusion about this.

In the end they stayed in town a couple days resting and (divine version) Identifying loot. The party decided to head west through the tunnels to the river on the far side of spider territory (PC map) and boat down to near Almaria and go to the Castle. They made the understandable mistake of thinking that they could get there via the Nephil lands because the words on the map obscure tha fact that Nephil lands don't connect to the arachnid area (DM map). Plus the warlock (taking the pack-ogre loot bag, NPC cleric, and the ranger who couldn't make it to game, plus one of the four reward ingots) decided to walk to Almaria.

"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Are you really sure?"
"Yes."
"You're going to be bored. Are you still sure?"
"Yes."
"Really?"
"YES!"
"Ok, your choice."

Week 3 (last week): The warlock was bored, it's a two week trip through pretty civilized territory. The ranger's player is working lots of overtime ar her job and couldn't make it again. But everyone else had fun.

Before they left (actually last week but I forgot to mention it) a Sending spell contacted the Psy-war and sorcerer from Solberg. It told them that he had located the blade of Demonslayer and that they should contact him to get a map. The Sending spell allows a response and this is what Solberg got; Psy-war "Ummm......", sorcerer "Dude, don't bother. I dropped the hilt in lava when the demons were chasing me." This made me have to stat up Solberg so I could see what he could summon/bind. Then our heroes left blindly trusting the government map of hostile semi-explored Nephil territory.

Invisibility (for the sorcerer's familiar), illusions, and Glibness got them across the bridge into gnoll lands and then back out again when the found out that it didn't connect. They then ended up in Fort Draco where Boutell is. Boutell is important because he's A) the only master smith in Exile, B) looking to get his anvil enchanted by an 11th+ level caster, C) in one of two places in Exile that can work steel, mithril, and adamantine, and D) once his anvil is enchanted he can make and repair magic weapons and armor. Anyway he smelted the mithril from the adamantium easily for a bargin price (he wants them to find him wizard to do the enchanting) and now the mage slayer has an adamantine duom with a mithril haft while the beguiler has an adamantine mace.

They crossed into spider territory. First up was dead and burned huge spiders. They didn't examine the bodies closely so they missed some clues. But they made up for it by throwing out an illusion of a chitrach ahead of them to "spring 'Int -' traps." What it got them was an escort of Giant Intelligent Friendly Talking Spiders (in chibi voices "You're cute!" "My name is Spider!" "Tee hee hee!" "Will you have my babies?"). After some consideration that it might almost be better if they were hostile and a mention of magic loot reward the party decided to go rescue some GIFTS's from the Areana.

I use standard Areana modified as follows:
Drop the shapechanging stuff as there's already enough to do.
Add three sorcerer levels to get normal Areana because 3HD isn't a threat to this party any more.
Add three more sorcerer levels to get Elder Areana, they use Phantasmal Killer to give the illusion of being a threat.
Choose Martial Study: Sudden Leap for all of them, because it's cool and useful.
Replace "sorcerer" with "swordsage," drop the poison, and up the physical stats to get a GIFT. This includes the innate spellcasting becoming innate martial maneuvering. Oh, and fix the skill set from caster to skirmisher.
Blammo! Easy spider enemies and allies that the players can respect.

And respect they do. Only one GIFTS will accompany them into Areana territory as a guide, that's to make things easy on me. The first encounter was a simple "from the ceiling" ambush by four large spiders, three areana, and one areana elder. The webs and Ray of Exhaustion combo really harshes on PCs without totally screwing them over and makes them hittable by stuff with +7ish attack bonuses. I dislike having to use lots of 25 Str and/or Wraithstrike enemies just to be able to hit and threaten a character. Plus the debuffing and Mirror Image, Blur, Displacement makes AC 14 to 18 enemies not a pathetic joke. Any way, the heroes wasted the encounter pretty well. Once the areana try to run the Sudden Leap and base 50 move works well but isn't an auto escape. And the mage slayer went down to Phantasmal Killer but piety brought him back, he rolled really really badly to die and only lost as much piety as he had gained for his actions in Formello.

The second fight was at the entrance to the areana lair. The spiders were waiting for them (flying bonfire beacon familiar) and the ambush soaked off a fair bit of resources, lots of spells spent. One Areana escaped into the lair so they waited ten minutes for the Ray of Exhaustion effects to wear off, then went in. If they had gone east (the lair is a big donut cave, mostly) there were two encounters with good loot before the back end of the cave with the imprisoned GIFTS. They went west, which is where I took the reinforcements for the front door ambush from, and there's really nothing in this half of the torus untill the prison bit. But they didn't get that far.

See there are these concealed 3 1/2' diameter tunnels at ceiling height and lined with webs, they lead to a central chamber with three Elder Areana and three Imps. The imps act as messengers and scouts while the elders never leave the chamber because they are the sort of "breeding core" of the colony. Plus the colony webby spellbook is um... web drawn? Drawn with webs? On the ceiling of this central chamber. Someone noticed one of the little tunnels and they sent the sorcerer in because he's the only one who wouldn't be squeezing in there. He encountered an imp and ran away. So the pyrokineticist went in and started fighting, and eventually everyone went in (sorcerer last). Surprisingly the imps did real damage, because of failed saves the pyro lost 7 points of Dex to poison. Then when everyone came out into the central chamber the Elder Areana exhausted and webbed him, the psy-war, and the mage slayer. The allied GIFTS webbed two of the Elder Areana and missed with all his maneuver attacks while the beguiler ran himself almost out of spells. The sorcerer wandered off to explore another tunnel towards the west side.

We left off there. People were destroying the web spellbook on the ceiling. The Elder that went down to a Whelm spell was killed, but the one that stabilized at -6 hp is still alive and unexamined. The mage slayer lockdown fighter is using his adamantine duom to cut blocks out of the wall and stop up the entrances so they can rest "safely." All four entrances and the only ways in or out of this chamber. In a dungeon with smart web slingers. I need to buff up on the suffocation rules, dungeoneering and survival skills, and effects of oxygen starvation.

Plus I need to stat a really really big trapdoor spider. They were warned about not going down that passageway (shortest path between Areana and GIFTS lairs) but... you know... players.

Ooh, and a song. Solberg is going to send a Deva to deliver a singing telegram to the party. The party lost part of the most powerful anti-demon weapon in six planes and they lost it to demons. The Deva is almost more upset than Solberg is. It's not going to be a very nice telegram.