As we continued deeper into the crypt, Lidda continued to find my reaction to the spiders funny.
"The fire was useful, don't get me wrong, it's the fact that you went and burnt every inch of the ceiling to make sure you got them all, and then acting all calm again afterwards."
I gave her a look. "They were huge! Like, people eating size. You don't want them getting out, multiplying, and devouring the village." The thought of a swarm of a thousand of those massive spiders would probably be the kind of thing that would return to me in the dead of night when I try and sleep. Sure, logically I knew that a lot of the spider babies would probably eat each other (hopefully), but that's still not a fun thought, and probably an ecological disaster. I dunno how fast those things breed, but if it's anything like normal spiders there would be far too many of them far too quickly, and that's not something I ever want anywhere near me.
Scepticism radiated off of her. "They're spiders. You get them."
What? "You're telling me spiders that big are just, around, all over the place?"
Lidda shook her head, exasperated. "No, they're... We're near woodland, you get spiders. Most of the spiders are little ones, ranging from really tiny to the size of my hand or whatever. But sometimes, they eat enough or whatever needs to happen..." She waved a hand at Sabrina, who considered for a second before replying.
"Spiders or other insects are not an area I've studied, I'm afraid."
"Well, something happens, and they get bigger. They tend not to go into villages, they just stake out a section of forest and web it up, eating the animals that wander in. Just avoid big webs when you're going through the woods and you're fine."
The absolute fuck? What kind of fucked up Mirkwood type shite was this? "And that's just a thing? At any point when you're walking though the woods, you can just walk into some webs and be eaten by a giant spider, and that's just a thing around here?"
The scepticism had escalated to full on confusion. "Yeah? People don't go wandering into the wilderness for a reason. There's all kinds of shit that'll kill you out there. How sheltered are you?"
I just awkwardly shrugged. "I spend most of my time in cities. Or spent, I guess."
I let the conversation trail off as I thought. I guess it makes sense that a D&D world (I was pretty sure it was at least some form of D&D world, between the spells and the Pelorian (Pelorite? I should probably ask what the term for a worshipper of Pelor is), although the jury was still out on which one) was a deathworld of some kind, but I was kind of expecting it to be from high level spellcasters, dragons, or other high CR shite, not just 'there's a fuckton of low CR stuff out there'. Reflecting on it, I can understand it, low level stuff being more common than high level stuff makes sense, but 'spiders can just become massive and eat you' is a hell of thing. My strategy of taking all of the stuff to make me harder to kill at low levels is looking better and better by the second.
As I ruminated on how fucked up the place I'd landed in was (fuck me, I'd been dropped in a forest. How close had I been to being spider chow?), we ventured further in. The corridor widened, and large stone slabs started to appear on each side of us. I wasn't sure what the technical name for them was (biers, maybe?), but they were about the right size to hold a human(oid) corpse. All of them were empty, with only the occasional long-dried stain or strand of webbing to indicate they'd ever been used.
The corridor ended abruptly by expanding into a large room. Rows upon rows of the stone slabs lined the room, each with a body resting peacefully atop them. My attention was grabbed, however, by the large figure in the middle of the room.
It was weirdly thin and elongated, as if every aspect of the being had been stretched up. Their jaw jutted forwards, fangs sticking up almost up to their porcine nose. It was attached to a long and flat head, more like that of a horse or dog than of a human. Not a gram of fat was on its body, their wide shoulders narrowing immediately to an almost gaunt chest, every muscle standing in stark prominence. Unnaturally large feet ended in claws, rather than nails, and even standing upright their knuckles dragged across the ground. Grasped in one enormous hand was a slightly rotten shaped piece of wood, a club as big as I was.
We stared at the creature for a moment, before Zahri breathed out a single word.
"Ogre."
Fuck me, that's what I get for tempting fate. I couldn't remember what the CR of those things were, but I was pretty sure that it was 'too fucking high' right now, especially as that club looked like it could pulp me without really noticing I was there.
Thankfully, the ogre hadn't noticed us yet, allowing us to pull back and whisper to each other.
Julie looked Zahri in the eyes. "Can we kill it?"
"No." Well, that answers that question, I guess.
I must have made a noise of some sort, as all eyes turned to me. I held out for a moment under their expectant faces, but I crumbled.
"We couldn't kill it now." I prevaricated. "We're low on spells, injured, and I dunno how many of you were poisoned by the spiders. But if it's down here, it's probably a zombie, not a live one, given the lack of food, the fact that there's basically no reason to live here, the spiders that we behind us, and so on, which means it's dumb, and we can take advantage of that." The fact that it had yet to notice us was probably a good sign it wasn't intelligent. "It'll be stupidly strong and tough, but slow and clumsy. We'd die in a straight fight, but we could just, you know, not do that. If we trapped the area beforehand, oil, grease, ballbearings, things like that, we could get it to slip and keep it on the floor. If we had a bunch of oil flasks, we could throw them and light it on fire, and then slowly kite it out, chipping away at it until it died. It'd be risky, but possible."
The expectant faces had become a mixture of confused and considering. Apart from Sabrina, who just seemed curious.
"Kite it out? I don't think I'm familiar with that phrase." She enquired, hands patting for notes before accidentally jostling something, causing a noise. We all froze, ready to move, but the ogre stayed motionless.
"Kiting is the act of moving very slightly faster than an opponent, staying just out of their reach while pelting them with ranged weapons while they can't respond. It only works on very specific enemies, mainly enemies who can't use ranged weapons and can't plan or tactic their way out of it, so mainly undead." I considered for a second. "And constructs too, I guess. It's a strong tactic to use in those situations, though."
It was Lidda who chipped in after that. "So you know a lot about undead, and strategies about how to fight them?" She went to fold her arms in front of her, but stopped before her bow touched anything.
Explaining RPGs and video games seemed like a hell of a thing to do right now, and I couldn't really think of a way to summarise them in a way that would make sense to a fantasy world that didn't sound insane. Maybe if I had a while to think about it, but the ogre in the next room added a certain pressure to even the most innocent actions.
"I'm a scholar. I enjoy learning things. I've sat and listened to experts discuss the best ways of killing particular monsters." Watching youtube videos counts, right? "I never thought I'd really get to use them in a physical way." As opposed to a computer screen or rolling dice. "And it's not undead specific, I know of tactics for a few things. Reducing mobility is a decent strategy for fighting a lot of different things, you'd be surprised how many fights can be made a lot easier by slathering the floor they're standing on in grease." Balance was one of those skills that was useless, until it was suddenly very, very important.
After my explanation, Julie turned back to Zahri again. "Do you think that plan would work?"
Zahri tilted her head to one side for a second, before shrugging. "Maybe. Risky, though."
"If it stays down here, and the graveyard above stays safe, then we've technically done our job anyway, right?" Lidda didn't speak with a lot of confidence.
"It depends on what our employer thinks." Julie went to tap her fingers against the hilt of her sword, before stopping herself. "Well, we don't have any of that stuff with us anyway, so nothing to be done today. We can go back and bring it up with him, and possibly look into purchasing some of that stuff." She nodded towards me. "There's no point sticking around, though. Let's get out of here."
As we turned to leave, Zahri's shield caught on her armour, and made a noise. It wasn't a loud noise, more of a dull thunk than anything else. As we froze, though, we could hear movement behind us. In some ways, it was worse that it was an undead than alive. With a creature that size, that looks like that, you'd expect to hear heavy breathing, maybe, or a noise of excitement as it noticed prey. The only noise the ogre made was the dragging of the club across the ground, and the quiet clicking of the claws on their feet against the ground.
We'd already starting moving when it had stopped playing a statue, but as it raised its club, taking a chunk out of the stone slab that had happened to be in the way of it, what had started life as a quick jog accelerated into a run.
I found myself in the unenviable position of being at the back of the party. This wouldn't have been so bad, were it not far the short legs of the halfling, and the heavy armour worn by the fighter and cleric. Despite the slow, lumbering movements of the ogre, the sheer length of its legs kept the distance between it and the party members in front of me the same. The stone slabs and the occasional kink in the corridor kept us from going into an all out sprint, sticking us uncomfortably close to the horrific murder corpse behind me, while the lack of any other path in this place made losing the bastard impossible.
As we kept moving, and the sudden adrenaline rush in my system very quickly made itself known, it took a surprisingly short amount of time for me to decide to risk my life in exchange for small amounts of damage on this thing. In retrospect, it was probably the discussion on kiting that we'd just had. I wasn't doing anything stupid like trying to fight the thing twice my size in melee, but slowing down to spit fire over my shoulder seemed like an effective, if still risky, thing to do. The zombie was faster than I was when I was breathing at it, but slower than if I focused on running, leaving a small gap where I could slow down, spit a couple of plumes of fire at the damned thing as it reached the edge of my fire's range, and then speed up again.
Ahead of me I could hear the rest of the party desperately shouting ideas at each other as they ran. I couldn't make many of the ideas out, over the roar of my own fire and the pounding blood in my ears, but I was pretty sure I made out Julie shouting the word 'trap'. It's nice that they were going for my plan, but it might be a little late now.
I was slowly scorching the skin and flesh away from the front of the beast, but I knew it was unsustainable. All I needed to do was misjudge distances once, or start slowing down from tiredness, and it could hit me. If it did that, I was dead. It was terrifying, but at the same time, somewhat intoxicating. I could understand adrenaline junkies now, I thought. That notion of being on the razors edge, where a single misstep could result in total doom, hit so much harder now I was seconds from death.
As we ran through the ash and body parts that was all that remained of the spiders, the giant cadaver blundering after us, the ladies in front of me seemed to have decided on some kind of plan.
Lidda banked off to one side of the corridor as Julie shouted at me to "Just run!" when I went to slow down for another blast of flame. I briefly considered keeping to my current strategy, but decided to trust that whatever they were doing might have a better chance of success than the tactic I'd been using so far. Worst case scenario, I could just go back to the over the shoulder fire blasts.
As I sped back up, we reached another kink in the corridor. Sabrina was waiting near-ish to the other side, and as I ran past her, she started making hand motions, a tiny pouch in one hand and a candle in the other. They both disappeared as a reddish glow appeared behind me. As the wizard turned around and started doing her best to catch up with me, my brain made the connection. Summoned fire beetle to slow it down, good thinking. That should buy us some leeway.
It was only when we made it further down the corridor, and found the rest of them waiting in the middle of the corridor, and specifically Lidda fiddling with some kind of mechanism in the wall, did the details of their plan come together for me.
As I caught up, Sabrina hot on my heels, and the inhuman mass of muscle too close behind for me to be truly comfortable, the majesty of Julie's plan became evident. Or it would have, at least.
"Lids, anytime now. Lids. Lids!"
"I know! Give me a... now!"
The majesty of Julie's plan finally became evident as the ogre made it close enough that it started raising its club to swing before it plummeted into the pit trap. I guess if you can't make your own traps, store bought is fine.
My assumption had been that the plan was to get the ogre into the pit, and then close the lid on it, trapping it there. Given the way Lidda fiddled with something, and whatever the spring mechanism was starting firing, pushing the pit closed again, it seemed like a safe assumption. The problem seemed to be that no one had informed the ogre about it.
The sheer bulk and size of the damn thing stopped the pit (cover? Lid? Ceiling? whatever) top from closing, the slab of stone slamming into the raised arm and club of the monstrous thing, hitting it with enough force to splinter the wood of the club and cleanly snap the fingers and wrist of the ogre. As the remains of its weapon fell from its hand, it reached up to the edge of the pit with its other hand and started to pull itself up after us.
Shite.
On the one hand, continuing to run was probably the best thing to do here. On the other hand, we didn't have the benefit of distance that we'd had before, and with no more summoning spells to slow it down, the only thing that would buy the others time was one of us. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, and all that.
I stepped up to the edge of the pit, and as it slowly pulled itself up, I breathed a great gout of fire down on the undead, hoping that the damn thing would finally drop and die.
It did not. What it did instead was swing up with its other hand, in an action that would have turned me to paste had it still been wielding a club, but instead was a open-handed slap delivered with enough force to snap both my thigh bone and shin bone in my left leg, along with pulverising my kneecap, and sending me flying backwards.
I bounced across the floor a couple of times, in excruciating agony, before rolling to a stop. I made the snap decision that discretion was the better part of valour, and passed out.