Part 1 – A Lorra Legs

After Bastiaan semi successfully released a book of your legendary deeds, you are all on a books tour
making a few extra coins alongside your adventuring. The tour has become a bit tedious, but you are
headed to a place called Harken after setting up a signing at the local Tavern through your contact
Aunt Ratal.

On your arrival, you are met by a keen young dwarf called Barnabas. He’s followed you around on
the tour and desperately wants to join the team. Unfortunately, it doesn’t feel like much of a team
at all at the moment. Euphronius is now drinking heavily and has turned from Pelor. Bastiaan’s
writing career seems to have already come to a swift end as his follow up book on transfiguration
isn’t selling well. His rival, Molard Magicko, stealing his sales. Ester Ester has taken up teaching and
only goes adventuring during the holidays. Edna is maturing like a bit of cheddar and still misses her
son deeply.

It feels as if this might be the last stop on the book tour for a while…

You arrive at Harken, it is a run down village looked over by Harken Manor. The houses are boarded
up and only the market place seems alive with villagers. You head for the tavern, Cliffside Brewery
and Inn. Ros Rellyn welcomes you in, but he has no knowledge of your book signing and there is
nothing in the diary. Someone has made a mistake! Sister Eckel, a priestess of Pelor, enters the
tavern to buy some chestnuts. She introduces herself and tells of the Pelormas tree decorations. She
invites you along and Ester Ester is keen to see the pretty lights. You also purchase a few handfuls of
chestnuts as these are meant to protect you from the swarms of spiders that have begun to attack
the village at night. Sister Eckel questions Euphronius’s loss of faith and encourages him to try and
find the light of Pelor again. She invites him to the church of Pelor in the village.

After a quick altercation with some of the local kids and some mud balls, you head to the woods to
help decorate the Pelormas trees. They twinkle in the darkness of the forest. The suns of Pelor glow
on top of each tree. The church choir sing some hymns for you, but this seems to attract the
attention of some spider rider cultists. Bastiaan takes them on first and commands them to stop in
their tracks. One of the spiders resists the command and attacks Bastiaan, injecting venom into his
leg. Euphronius steps in to heal Bastiaan whilst the rest of the team take on the remaining spiders.
The cultists wear spider face masks and black robes with a red spider icon stitched into the fabric.
One of the spiders gets away. Barnabas gets messy, covering himself in boar poop and manages to
befriend a wild boar. They ride after the spider. He loses the trail about a mile north of the
crossroads. He senses he must be close to the spider lair but knows that running off on your own
usually ends up with missing kneecaps. He turns back. The choir are safe and the team turn back and
head for the Harken Manor, suspicious that the Lord and Lady of the Manor must have something to
do with the spiders… (they definitely don’t).

You come up with an elaborate ruse that you are ghost hunters looking for the Privy Poltergeist of
Harken Manor. Bastiaan disguises himself as Magicko. Lady Harken allows you in as she is a fan. She
is well kept and wears elegant gowns. She shows you to the lavatory. It’s the nicest one you’ve ever
seen. You are allowed to wander the manor but the guards keep a close eye on you. Edna searches
for any animal ornaments and shoves them in her bag. She also finds some baby food in the kitchen
which she begins shovelling into her mouth. Ester hears poetry coming from the pit below the loo,
Bastiaan gets a little too close to the toilet bowl and is hit with a POONAMI. Ester begins to try and
pull the toilet porcelain seat away to see what is below whilst Barnabas discovers a family room with
an untouched crib and some baby clothes that have never been worn. One of the guards confesses
to Euphronius that there is a ‘special (sexy time) arrangement’ between the guards and Lady Harken
and that none of the guards have seen Lord Harken for many months.

The team begins to put the pieces together. Edna hip-smashes the Lord’s writing room door down
(whilst noshing on some banana and crab meat baby food) to reveal the headless body of Lord
Harken still frantically trying to write his poems at his writing desk. Meanwhile, Ester pulls the toilet
seat away and looks down into the poo pit. There is a rotting, poop-covered head below. The head of
Lord Harken!!

Euphronius reaches out to Pelor once again. He attempts to resurrect Lord Harken. The poo covered
head floats up from the toilet pit. Lady Harken witnesses the head of her husband float by her and
she goes mad, tearing out clumps of her own hair. The head makes its way to the writing room
where it is reunited with its body. Lord Harken lives again! He tells of how he had always put his
writing first and that his wife went mad with the desire to have a child. He claims that he had always
been clear that his writing came first. He discovered that she was sleeping with the guards and he
threatened to kick her out of Harken Manor. She killed him and chopped off his head. Throwing it
down into the toilet pit, lost with the madness of what she had done.

You talked with Lady Harken, who Euphronius attempted to heal of her insanity and cure of her
infertility. He was unsure of the success of this… Lady Harken claims that Lord Harken had promised
a family, that he had paid for the family room and all of the children’s clothes and toys but always
put his poetry first. After years of feeling ignored and unloved by a man who only cared for his
poetry, she began to try other ways to have a child… the guards were happy to help. Still she could
not get pregnant. Lord Harken found out about the bedroom meetings with the manor guards. He
threatened to take everything away from her and so she did the only thing she could in that moment
of desperation and killed him.

Edna gave Lord Harken some sex tips hoping that the couple mend this broken relationship, but Lady
Harken seemed scarred by the experience and was ready to leave the Manor.
You seemed pretty happy to leave it there and get back to the spiders…

The village bell began to toll. Night had fallen and the spiders had come! From your vantage point
atop the hill, you could see the spiders begin their attack at the market square. More concerning was
the Tarantula that was as big as a house! You dashed down to the market and got to work. Edna got
stuck in and began chopping away at the big boy. Ester, realising that the spiders hated light, cast an
orb of illumination. The small swarms of spiders quickly scurried over to the orb to cover it,
protecting the giant tarantula. Bastiaan hit the big boy with lightning whilst it chomped and stomped
at the party, injecting its paralysing poison into all that it could. Barnabas attempted to lob some
lamp oil at the big boy but ended up dousing himself. He was not deterred and turned himself into a
walking fuel bomb by attaching jars of lamp oil all over his body. Bastiaan cast a dancing spell on the
spider and its 8 legs began to boogie like there was no tomorrow. Barnabas managed to take a
glimpse into the spider’s mind and saw that it was being controlled by some cult leader wearing a
much larger spider mask with glowing red eyes, behind this figure was the symbol of the red spider.
He then tried to run underneath the big boy spider but was stomped on by a big, hairy dancing leg.
The lamp oil went everywhere, splashing all over the spider aaaand over Barnabas. Barnabas knew
this was just the sort of stupid shit his father would do and gave Ester the nod to light him and the
spider up. Ester grabbed a flaming torch and threw it at them both. Barnabas felt the flames burn his
flesh but managed to roll out of there, mud coating him, stopping the flames and acting like a
soothing afterburn cream. The big boy spider however was now a dancing inferno. This became
short work for Edna to finish off. With a well-placed chop she cut the spider’s arse in two and the
huge bastard collapsed in the middle of the market.

The last few spiders were stomped on by the villagers and all was calm again for now. The villagers
cheered for their new heroes and it felt good to be battling side by side again.

You all went for a post battle pint at the tavern. Ros had looked into your cryptic booking and had
rearranged the letters of Aunt Ratal to spell Tarantula! He was pretty sure that someone had used
the book signing to bring you all to Harken and that the spider problem may be because of you!!

And so endeth part one!

It is very difficult to pick an MVQ. You all kicked butt and roleplayed amazingly well. It was too darn
good seeing the group dynamics play out again.

Most brilliant quote (MBQ?) of the session though, goes to Bastiaan: “Well, I think we helped…”
after spending nearly 2 hours unbottling the Harken family dramas and resurrecting a gaslighting
asshole before just walking away to let them sort it out themselves. Perfect!