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While waiting for Mithril to think on her response, Natalia immediately gets to work. It's clear she's in her element as she feels around the walls of the cave, muttering to herself as she makes strange hand movements over certain features. Finally she climbs up a few feet on the side of the cave, attaches a piece of chalk to the loaded bolt on her hand crossbow, and fires it repeatedly at the wall at different angles, marking the angle of fire each time. The chalk marks the exact spots where the bolt hits.
Finally, Natalia nods, satisfied with her work. She perches the crossbow on a small ledge inside the cavern, at the exact angle and secures it. Tying one end of her copper wire to the trigger, she leads the other end across the cave entrance. Anyone who enters the face will trip the rope and make the crossbow fire. Before pulling the wire taut, she rubs dirt and mud over it to conceal its appearance. The last step is to pop open one of the vials, and carefully pour the spider venom on the crossbow bolt.
All finished, Natalia stands back with her hands on her hips. "Crude, but works," she says. "Still...Need alarm."
Spoiler
Zman, did I jump the gun here? If I did, I can just delete it.
Miriam watches Natalia do her stuff and she is truly impressed by the rogue knowledge of traps. "I think having Whiskers on the look out makes the most sense."
"If I feel his fear it may from be a false alarm. He fears a hawk more than an orc. For no orc would go out of it's way for a snack, but a hawk would for a meal."
"Maybe, but a hawk is less likely to come in here than an orc. He's your companion, though." That's about all of Kurt's rather lame commentary on what to do.
Natalia says as she calibrates the angle of the crossbow, "Hawks in here? And...How complex to feel?" Though if Mithril really doesn't want to send out Whiskers, she won't force her.
Miriam evaluates the situation "We cannot afford a false alarm. If Whiskers cannot differentiate from a fake threat to us like a orc and a real threat like an ogre mage, we cannot entrust the watch to him. We need another solution."
Valen interjects, "If anything finds us here, it defeats the purpose of hiding. I'd be content with knowledge of any threat, so we may act accordingly."
Miriam weights the options before siding with Valen "If they find the cave and the holy weasel does not tell us about them, it will dangerous. But it is a risk worth taking. May be."
"...Stay safe," Natalia says, scratching his head.
Assuming the party decides to delve deeper into the cave, she says, "Mine added to...What's here. Search, make only mine left. I hope. Keep us safe." As they walk down the corridor, Natalia begins carefully looking for traps.
As the group, led by Natalia move around the first bend they at greeted by a straight dark tunnel lit only by he torchlight. Our and Shiny can "see" the general direction beyond the light, but nothing useful.
After maybe twenty or thirty feet down the tunnel Natalia, her eyes out for traps, feels a sticky substance cross her brow as she become entangled in a thin yet strong webbing.
"Nnnrrr!" Natalia grunts as she tries to force herself loose, but to no avail. Calming down a bit, she asks the others, "Spiders?" as she tries to slip her way out of the web instead of using brute force.
Brushing off the remainders of cobwebs from her clothes, Natalia pulls some of the thin white strands until they snap. She levels her crossbow and looks up and around the area, whispering, "Spider, thinks we're flies...Kill trap with fire, make us fire flies?"
As Natalia struggles in vain, Shiny nods knowingly and whispers, "You're lucky I'm around - Shiny Tanglenot, cobweb expert and pipe connoisseur. I've seen these webs before- they come from the Octavian Octorazor, the only spider that digests its prey outside of its body. The spider has enough webbing to circle the continent three times, is so fast that it can be dropped off a cliff and weave a parachute on the way down, and the only things that can kill it are are loud noises and boredom."
Once Natalia removes the web on her own, Shiny nods again with a satisfied smirk. "Looks like my work here is done."
Mithril had been walking silently, a tense expression covering her face. She did not being split from Whiskers and could feel waves of loneliness being traded back and forth. That and the act of adventuring into the cave. She almost bumped into the rest of the group as Natalia got caught and freed herself from the web. Quietly she offered a suggestion. "We can probably burn the webs down, it may annoy the residents but we would clear the path and make it safer." She had done so in her parents cellar once, admittedly on a smaller scale but it had worked either way.
Seeing Mithril so tense, Natalia walks over to the wizard with a smile and her torch. Placing a comforting hand on her arm, the rogue says, "Watch weasel, smart weasel. Keep us safe," then hands her the torch and asks, "Burn dark and fear and grasping threads. You...Do the honors?"
It is unlikely that setting fire to the web would do much more than Natalia's' struggling already had. As far as you can tell the entire tunnel is not filled with webs, though there will likely be more as well as the denizen of this tunnel.
Miriam swallows hard. "Spiders? Why always spiders?" She imagines the eight legs and the fangs of a giant arachnid and shivers.
"Let's burn the web as we progress but I would advise that a warrior takes the lead. If one of these eight-legged freak is waiting for us, Natalia would likely have no chance."
She stops and sights as she breaks the news "And bad news. I am no anti-poison spell prepared ...."
Kurt takes the lead, as they move down the winding tunnel Kurt runs into and manages to easily free himself form to more spiderwebs while moving around a third.
Spoiler
Knowledge Nature on the Spiderweb
DC10 tells you that they don't feel quite right.
DC15 tells you they are old
In a poor attempt to make Miriam feel better, Natalia says, "Poison weakens strength...I use grace...hurts me less." Of course Mithril and Shiny have less to lose from this kind of poison as they don't use blades at all, but rather she get poisoned than them.
She stays close to Kurt, searching for traps as he disentangles himself from the webs. They burn them as they go.
Miriam looks at the web and something bothers her. She finally says "I might be a simple stupid farm girl with no knowledge of nature but don't these web look ..... old?"
She stops and gets angry at herself "Let me rephrase. I might just a simple cleric of St. Cuthbert ......"
She ends the sentence in her head " ... and I hate you Calric for what you did to Mary and me and probably others ....."
Spoiler
No skill in knowledge so she takes 10, the max for basic knowledge
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