An ongoing adventure in Helisto - the story so far ...
Investigating the mention of Spider People to the north of Sigurd's Seat, in the Great Marsh on Helisto, found on an ancient scroll, the party set out on four bosk wagons with an escort on the North Road to the fishing village of Tangaroa. A burned out quarry wagon and two charred corpses are found on the trail. A small party of Urt people are seen in the jungle as they approach the Tangaroa stockade and the wagons hasten into the stockade as the gates are opened. Chakka the Headman of Tangaroa is none too pleased to see them but leads them to the Meeting Hut.
In the Meeting Hut, Chakka, flanked by a score of Tangaroan Warriors, accuses Talarius of inciting the Urt People to attack them by allowing Burt Burt ( an Urt Person the Island befriended ), to bring organisation to the Urt tribes. He commands that Aiken be held hostage until Talarius orders the Island's forces to exterminate the Urts. Things are looking nasty until Dyani and some of Her Taluna Warriors intervene and by good fortune the Urts choose that moment to attack the stockade. Chakka, seeing the Urts as the greater threat, tells the party to leave and musters his forces to repel the Urt incursion. By dusk the wagons are encamped by the great swamp where Chakka had confirmed the Spider People can be found. The lack of activity in the North Watchtower seems strange but will be looked into come the dawn.
As the light fades a fire is lit and guards are set to patrol the camp. A strange green glow is seen in a part of the marsh below but there is not enough light to investigate it. Suddenly a scream is heard from the wagon where Aneesha and tasha are. It was tasha's scream at the sight of one of the Spider People peering into the wagon. It had eluded the guards somehow and escaped from the camp just as easily!
As dawn breaks one party goes down to the marshes while another treks up to the North Watchtower to investigate the apparent lack of Watchmen on duty and a small group of guards keep a watch on the camp. Spider tracks are found at the edge of the marsh but before they can be followed a cry is heard back in the camp. One of the guards there, Ludros, has vanished into thin air!! A general search of the camp is made and suddenly Coatup, a senior seaman from the Herlit, shouts ... " Come look over 'ere! Solved the mystery I did!"
Coatup has discovered a large camouflaged flap covering a hole big enough to get a bosk down! He climbs down it with CrickleBack ( another of Helisto’s ‘NPC’s with attitude!’ ) and they stumble across Ludros, healthy, but trussed up in a web! The tunnel descends and the trio appear through another hidden door by the marsh’s edge, much to the surprise of the others who have returned to tracing the spider track. Just then a tinny like metallic voice is heard, coming from behind a large clump of reeds. Two Spider People appear and explain that they hid Ludros ‘ ... because he was being stalked by someone like you’. After more enigmatic conversation that seemed to indicate that the mysterious Arader, a man Helisto has had many dealings with, was the ‘stalker’, one of the Spiders turns to the other to say ‘come Nar, our work here is done, We will watch over you while you are in the swamp’. As the party push deeper into the jungle covered marshes they suddenly realise that now Aneesha has disappeared!!
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