The Spider Wasp Chronicles Chapter 1: A night at the spa
The Spider Wasp Chronicles is a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that a friend and I co-DM’d in 2012 in Japan. Starting with an adventure heavily borrowed from Faustusnotes (whom I would end up playing with years later), the story began growing in amazing ways. We created a big story surrounding the mysterious destruction of a town and the political games played between two races that continued to develop as the players rushed from one end to the other of the world we had built trying to stop a war and uncover the Spiderwasp. We played over the course of a year, meeting every 3–4 weeks. I chronicled each session, partly to give the players a refresher when we next met, partly because I thought the story was really cool. All the players were living in Japan at the time. Some were Japanese, some were not, and most were first-timers (we played in English). I mention this because a lot of the names and references are definitely influenced by Japanese language and culture.
Happy reading.
It is a normal night in Madrigal’s Rat and Parrot Inn. Kyle, an extremely attractive traveling bard, has been hired by the management and is sitting in a corner of the inn, strumming away at his lute. Oshanda, a black half-elven sorceress, is enjoying a classy drink at the bar. Vanya, an elven druid, is enjoying a mug of mead by a table as she strokes her lynx. Kobo, a halfling rogue, enters the inn, only to be pushed out of the way by a much larger, and much drunker, man. The man goes over to the bar and demands beer. He looks around and his eyes lock on Vanya. “You! It was you!” He throws his mug at the druid, but he’s had a few and his aim is off. Vanya throws her own mug at the drunk man, but crashes it against the bar, spilling beer on Oshanda, who is now paying attention. It takes Oshanda, Vanya, and the lynx to bring down the man and his fury to unconsciousness. Kobo has been watching the action from behind a table, while Kyle has stopped playing, irritated to have his performance interrupted.
A man in a black cloak enters the inn, looks around, sees the unconscious large man on the floor and says “you owe me a bodyguard.” Soon enough the adventurers find themselves contracted by the cloaked man’s liege, Lord Eruku, a mid-level nobleman from the capital, to be his bodyguards on his getaway trip to a spa in the Steam Mountains known for its healing qualities. On the way to the spa the cloaked man tells the adventurers that the village of Shallowshore has recently been destroyed, with no survivors, by an unknown elven princess, who has since been captured and taken to the capital. However, the large man from the inn, whose family resided in Shallowshore, had not known of the princess’ capture. This explains why upon seeing the elf Vanya, given his stupor, he had decided to take justice into his own hands.
Upon arrival they meet Heisig, the owner of the spa, a merry man who likes to have a drink in his hand at all times. While Oshanda stands guard at one of the gates, the others enjoy the Festival of the Dancing Fireflies, accompanied by an orchestra of chirping crickets and a beautiful sunset. A dying scream interrupts the party. Oshanda rushes over to the other gate to see the young guard being brutally murdered by two assassins, while a third runs off. Kyle trips one of them, Vanya entangles the other with her magic, and Kobo fires “warning shots” from the roof. They tie the assassins up for questioning. Upon threat of death, the assassins reveal to have been contracted by a mysterious person to recover a sprite that inhabited the spa. Heisig realizes that the pot in which he was keeping the sprite, safely hidden within the walls of the spa, is missing. Distraught, he tells the adventurers that this sprite is what gave the spa its healing qualities. Without it he is ruined, and he offers the adventurers a hefty reward to recover the sprite. The noble heroes demand a much higher reward, which Heisig agrees to. “Just get it back!”
The adventurers take one of their prisoners with them and set off in hot pursuit. Although they have been warned that there is an ambush waiting for them, the assassin’s comrades are hidden well enough that they walk into the trap anyway. It’s a messy fight, full of fumbles and near misses. The lynx and Vanya tear an archer apart, Oshanda puts one of them to sleep, Kobo tumbles his way to eliminate the wizard hiding in the forest. Kyle goes down protecting Oshanda, and is barely saved by Vanya, who first puts an arrow in the remaining archer’s eye socket, and then revives Kyle with the party’s only healing potion. The adventurers learn from their imprisoned survivors that the assassin’s camp is over the hill and across the river.
Although they are battle weary, wounded, and magically spent, they press on. Kobo wades through the ford and sneaks up to the camp, a number caravans encircling a campfire. The leader of the assassins is furious at the third assassin from the spa. The pot he brought back was empty, a fact which, the adventurers realize, Heisig must have known. Before the adventurers can fully digest this, Oshanda trips as she tries to quietly cross the ford, creating a loud splash. A second battle ensues. Oshanda redeems herself by putting two foes to sleep. Kobo and Kyle bring a swordsman down. Vanya, holding a bow, finds herself in hand-to-hand combat against another swordsman. Before things escalate even more, the leader of the assassins produces an orb and tells everyone to chill the f*ck out, or else he will blow everyone else up. The leader introduces himself as Bern, “problem solver. You have a problem with something, or someone, I can get rid of it for you.” Bern reveals that the person who hired him only identified himself as the Spider Wasp. He was promised a sizable fortune if he got the sprite. He’s smart enough to know that it might not be wise to return to the capital empty-handed, so at first light he will attack the spa and loot it till he finds the sprite. Feeling double-crossed by Heisig, but without knowing why, they offer to accompany Bern and two of his men back to the spa to find the sprite, in return for a share of the Spider Wasp’s promised fortune.
Bern and the adventurers reach the spa by noon. Lord Eruku and the cloaked man are safe, but Heisig is nowhere to be found. A cursory search easily reveals that Heisig has taken his few prized possessions and disappeared in a hurry sometime during the night. A deeper search reveals that Heisig had actually gambled away the sprite years ago, and had been scamming people out of their money since then by continuing to run this spa that didn’t actually have any magical healing properties. Bern leaves, unsure of his next move, but tells the adventurers to look him up whenever they next reach the capital. “Just ask for the Golden Glove.” The next day the adventurers escort Lord Eruku back to Madrigal, having earned nothing but the 5 gold pieces they had been promised by the cloaked man. The questions remain. Who is the Spider Wasp? Why does he want the sprite? And where is it now?
