Here There Been Goblins; Be There More?
Moist turned into a spider and went down first.
AC retrieved his torch and followed. Ubys came after them. The webs went on for a long time and they smelled wrong. AC put fire to them. Moist called up his Phoenix.
The cavern opened into a high room with a sound in it. Clinking metal on stone.
You'd heard the road-stories about a War-Spider named Marrow-Gnaw. This was him. Elephant-sized. Blades on his legs — bolted to the chitin, dark with use. He webbed Ubys in the first round, ran past AC, past Moist, and tore Ubys for twenty-three points before anyone could move.
Moist sang heat into the metal of one of the spider's blades. AC called up Hell — the shadows answered, halving Marrow-Gnaw's movement, anchoring him within thirty feet of AC. Ubys cast a Cure Wounds on himself, slashed Marrow-Gnaw with his Khopesh, and teleported thirty feet away with the Raven Queen's blessing, leaving the spider clawing at empty stone.
By round four AC put two strikes through the spider's maw — fifteen and fifteen, fire trailing off the blade — and Marrow-Gnaw, Bandit Spider of the High Road, fell.
Ash smoldered out of the wound.
A swarm of smaller spiders emerged from the corpse. Ubys hit them with a Guiding Bolt; Moist's Phoenix burned through them and teleported him and AC clear. Moist thorn-whipped the stragglers, and the hole stopped moving.
You picked through the lair.
A potion of healing. A skull with three gold teeth. A leather pouch of mixed coin.
Then Ubys crouched by a body and lifted a chain off it. The pendant on the chain was the symbol of Helm — the Watcher, who the Knights also serve.
The man on the floor was Nathaniel. Probably. You weren't going to make any of you say it out loud.
You took the body. You took Marrow-Gnaw's head and one of his legs as proof. You took a Short Rest, stitched the worst of the bite-wounds, and walked back out of the dark.
(Sixty feet across the cavern, behind a section of wall Moist noticed only on the way out, there's a secret door. You wrote it down. You did not open it.)
Next session: meanwhile, on the surface — a woman you used to know, in chains.