On A Roll

The Black Spider/Sweet Flips

The Black Spider

--

"Okay, um, Ruby," Elliot checked a page of notes, "no, Scarlett, right, that's your name, keep forgetting- you run down the tunnel and exit out into a huge room. A massive room that is, that almost seems like a quarry, almost seems like a pit, like a mining pit where they would dump the product down. That's on the far side of the room that the quarry is on. God, it's huge. It's a forty-by-forty foot hole in the ground on the far side of the room. It is actually bigger than the floor of the room itself. The only other exit in this room is a giant iron-wrought door. A huge production, you wonder how they got it in here. It is very, very big."

Ruby nodded thoughtfully at this. She was apparently getting very into roleplaying her character.

"How hard is she wondering that?" Del asked, who apparently was only there to derail the entire game.

"Does she need to roll to see how hard she's wondering?" Red chimed in, also there for mainly kicks and giggles.

Elliot rolled a die. "Um, fifteen. So yeah, she's wondering pretty hard." He cleared his throat. "Also in this room is the orc dude that you saw before, who is basically plastered to the wall with webbing. He has been totally webbed on, head-to-toe... oh yeah, except for his head. That's not covered. And across from him, about twenty feet away, is a Drow. A dark elf. Holding a staff that she has pointed at him. She's dressed in black robes; on the black robe she's wearing a tabard with a white spider on it- do you guys get it yet?"

There was a brief pause where everybody at the table exchanged glances.

"It's the Black Spider!" said Clancy, suddenly, and everybody immediately made ohhh noises of exasperated realization- the Black Spider was the villain that they had been hearing quite a lot about.

"The Black Spider's a ridiculous name!" said Ruby loudly, unknowingly starting off a long tradition of questioning unknown characters' pseudonyms. "Who gets named something like 'the Black Spider' at birth, that's just-"

--

"Actually, dear, that's not my birth name," interjected the Black Spider in a frankly ridiculous German accent.

Scarlett eyed her for a moment. "...I'm almost afraid to ask."

--

"Roll a Persuasion check if you want her name," Elliot said, rolling his eyes.

Ruby did, quite gleefully. "Seven- plus five for persuasion," she said. "Twelve. How's that?"

"Fine, I guess. Okay, so...."

--

"Oh, my actual name's Mrs Drisco, darling," said the Black Spider.

--

"Are you saying that Mrs Drisco has a terrible German accent, because I am so down for that-"

"Shut up and roll initiative."

--

--

Sweet Flips

--

"I cast Clairvoyance," said Red, consulting her list of spells. "And, umm. That lets me either see or hear what's going on in another room, so I guess I'm choosing to see what's going on behind that frozen door we can't get through."

"Do you need to roll for that?" Elliot wondered aloud.

"Don't think so, no." Red grinned. "I just need to concentrate. Okay, show me what's behind that door!"

--

Adaira closed her eyes and concentrated, humming a weird song that had no business being in the universe it was being hummed into. As she did, her mind's eye moved forwards and through the frozen door- as it did, it formed an image of what was going on in the room beyond.

It was completely frozen over, from ceiling to wall, but filled with what looked like evil ice robots, which wasn't actually the weirdest thing she had seen today. Within the room, two figures that she recognised were there, in the middle of it all, and they were doing a more than decent job of holding their own against all of the robots.

One, a short dragonborn, was firing off spells from his fingertips at the speed of light, with bursts of fire and lightning leaping out to incinerate any robot that got close. His general appearance was messy and most of his clothing was too, but he appeared to be having the time of his life.

The other was a tall half-orc who was running up walls, and leaping to the ceiling, and using his crossbow to obliterate the robots just as, if not more, efficiently than his companion.

To make a long story short, Blacker and Hitch were completely wrecking the robots.

--

"They're holding their own?" Red asked.

"Oh, definitely," agreed Elliot. "They're far more competent than you guys are."

"That's not hard," Clancy pointed out.

"Okay then," Red said. "In that case, I stop the spell and say-"

--

"It's empty, guys," announced Adaira, cancelling Clairvoyance and turning away from the door to face the rest of the party. "Let's try the other one."

There was a brief, unconvinced silence.

"That's weird," said Scarlett, crossing her arms, "because I could have sworn I heard you mutter, oh damn, sweet flip while you were doing your wizard-y concentration thing."

"It was a really sweet flip," said Adaira, and then realized what she had just said. "Oh no, I mean, uh... I was just talking about the ice robots."

"Ice robots?" Leitrum asked.

Adaira slammed an open palm against her forehead. "Oh jeez- okay, you didn't hear that, you didn't hear that, there's no way you could know that the ice robots are there, there's like six feet of solid ice between us and them-"

Del had already pulled her battleaxe out and was preparing to chop through the iced-over door.

"Oh come on-"