Ahaha. All cult up.

Malakar attempted to summon the spirit of the dead Aranea so we could find out what she wanted. It didn't work, and it will be another week before he can try again. Which means lugging around two oozing, stinking half-Aranea corpses. Well they ain’t goin’ in my rabbit hole—I’m not going to fight nausea every time I pull something out!

Two visitors in two nights is like a giant sign saying “Time to Move”. Fortunately we’re all literate and before long we were settling in to a new inn. Almost surprising, really—common-sense isn’t generally the first thing that comes to mind when I think about Upworlders.

Two paths were still evident: back to the magic college to find out more about Little Miss Spider; or Basc Trading Company to find why someone was shipping poisons and potions secretly, and find out whether it really was the least imaginative name that cultists of Bascerone could come up with.

We tried the magic college first and that was a dud. Beyond noting that she was the best student he’d ever seen the master had never noticed anything about her since he adopted her. The whole thing sounds suspicious but if he’s lying he’s had a lot of practice so we’ll have to let that go for now.

Which leaves the Basc Trading Company, or whatever they call themselves. As before, we sent Livia in to set things up. She told them she’d come into some money and was looking for a way to increase it. They told her that Annie Basc would come to see her to discuss options.

Sure enough, a dark-haired woman came to meet Livia, and invited her to come back to the warehouse to finalise the details. She took Obegard with her, and the rest of us hid nearby. Sure enough it went sour almost immediately—apparently she’d seen through Livia’s story.

Fortunately for us after slapping on some manacles they brought Livia and Obegard outside and straight down the narrow alley where we were immediately able to trap them. The fight was short and bloody; mostly on their side. One of the guards we didn’t kill spilled his guts and told us that underneath one of the crates in the warehouse was the entrance to a hidden temple, where there were maybe a dozen more guards, the warlock that had slipped away from our ambush, and a visiting priest of Bascerone.

In for a copper, in for a gold as they say so it was back into the warehouse, pull aside the crates, and down the stairs. Just round the corner was the warlock, but he idn’t seem to have done much since to raise the alarm and it was only a few seconds before he was dead as well.

We checked one direction and came across a barracks and a bedroom, neither of which was occupied. Looking the other way there was a door in a “temporary state of security” and once that was remedied things got somewhat hairier.

We’d found the temple, and hovering over the altar was some weird sphere. Dearthen made for the priest straight past the gaping guards, and then the weird sphere sprang forth of its own volition and burst into a mass of tentacles blocking the entrance to the temple. How very inconvenient.

Didn’t slow us down that much though. Malakar called down some divine flame on the guards, then Woe, Livia and Malakar did that magical jump thing into the temple. The guards had closed in around Dearthen and he called some power from his axe and as it flashed fatally around him the guards all fell.

The tentacle-thing moved over to engulf Malakar, and I took the opportunity to slip past on the other side. It tried to engulf me as well, but I dodged past and then moved in to attack the priest.

Suddenly the priest’s appearance shifted and his face sprouted tentacles. He leapt on Dearthen, but then someone magically switched Dearthen and Erson. Erson is usually pretty good in a cuddle, but I dunno what’s gonna happen with this thing, so I think I’ll stick here and see if I can trim those squiggly whiskers.