As you can probably tell from the title, this episode is not arachnophobia-safe. Here's last time.
Our heroes have successfully bought some time for the town of Port Serpentslice; the mysterious ghost ship Messenger having sunk into the waves whilst the heroes go looking for its target, the other ghost ship Skartorius. The heroes head to the local tavern to have some drinks and consider their next move. The problem they have right off the bat is that all they know about the Skartorius' location is "the Kanawalla desert" and like, that's a quarter of the continent. Akala has heard stories of the Skartorius, but nothing that would help narrow down how to find it.
They decide to ask around, figuring that the residents of Port Serpentslice might have heard something more specific, and indeed, they wind up talking to a woman named Gheta. Gheta is the first mate of a ship called the Julana, and tells the heroes that she's actually seen the Skartorius and would be willing to guide them to where she saw it. But perhaps they could help the Julana with a little job?
The Julana's crew harvests spider silk in the Pits of Haal, volcanic tunnels infested with peraka-i, giant cannibal spiders. The work is lucrative, but dangerous, and they'd love to have a bit of backup for their upcoming job. The heroes aren't crazy about the idea of going into tunnels full of man-sized venomous spiders, but they admit that it's a job that they can handle, and they need Gheta's help.
On the morrow, they leave on the Julana. Everyone is jocular and game, but they don't sugarcoat the danger - it's typical for a few of the crew to get dragged off and eaten. Eithne makes some wax figures and binds into them a "ward vs spiders" spell, and hands a few out to the crew. She also casts a spell on a couple of Jengo's arrows, which will cause the arrow to split into multiple arrows when its arc reaches its zenith.
After a couple of days of sailing, they arrive at their stop on the western coast of Mu. They disembark and the harvesters don their face wraps (to combat the sulfurous smell) and gloves (to prevent getting stuck to the silk). They enter the tunnel and the harvesters get to work, while the heroes brace and wait. They don't have long to wait.
The spiders boil up from apertures into the tunnel and start swarming, but the spells that Eithne has prepared work - they don't keep the spiders away entirely, but they have trouble pushing their way through the barriers. Jengo fires arrows and lays spiders low, while Akala discovers that if they maim, rather than kill, a spider, the other spiders attack it. Eithne throws blades of force and then plugs holes with ice to reduce the swarms. Imani lays out with her mong, preventing the spiders from entangling harvesters and compatriots.
The battle is intense and Eithne and Akala suffer a couple of painful bites, but the heroes keep the spiders off the harvesters long enough for them to fill their sacks and fall back to the ship.
Once there, they clean the bites with oil from an amphora (which also contains a small, drowned spider, but the stuff draws the gunk out of the bites and makes them feel better almost right away). Gheta has the the ship set course on a river going east into the continent, and tells them that they're going to the First City.
The First City isn't actually a city, it's the ruins of one, remains of civilization bleached clean by centuries of sand and erosion. No one actually lives there, but Gheta informs them that it's infested with ghosts (and probably scorpions). But it's there that she saw the Skartorius.
With that cheery thought in mind, the heroes sail on!
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