The party woke form a celebration of their victory, over another vampire elite lieutenant, Cameron the razor. They had handed the broken hilt of his sword, his name sake to Reginald to hold as a trophy of sorts. It would probably become part of a weapon used against the vampires as an ultimate irony and insult to the dead vampire. Martin was certain of one thing trying to make an alcoholic beverage from the remains of a dragon was both a terrible idea. It was amazing that he could hold it down.

Alice's head hurt, she didn't know that you could literally enchant a spirit. Using an enchanted crystal submerged in the fluid to maintain the spell, now she did. you also had to drink it within five minutes of pouring it or the spell would be wasted. The bottle was now empty but lady Imoline had given her the enchanted crystal, it was good for another bottle or two and then she could recharge it with her magic.

Vivian and David were pretty close to each other in terms of condition. The ring of boars’ endurance David possessed allowed him a few more tankards of orange ogre ale, but he was still pretty wasted. Vivian remembered as much as she could, they had not insulted or propositioned any one. Though David had spent a lot of the evening trying to work out what a suit of ultramite armour and a tower shield of the stuff would cost, the estimates had ranged from a small city to around 1300 gold a princes ransom.

They ate a breakfast of grainy bread and thick porridge, a squire passed a letter to Vivian. “It looks like there is one final big quest in the area. A bit of pest elimination, then we take a week to rest up and start looking for assignments. There will probably be work in the harbour city, bandits sea life, the bishop mentioned that the trade would pick up so we might end up there”.

The pest elimination quest came from a specific place. Vivian was a little nervous, she took a deep breath and moved forwards. It was there second audience at the duke’s residence, he sat with his wife his war hounds surrounding him. He didn't seem at ease, an easy situation when you consider his brother had been plotting to kill him behind his back.

They greeted him, Martin made a blessing the mercenary's saluted and Alice curtsied. The duke began “agents it’s... I won’t say good to see you but … it’s complicated. I am conflicted you killed my father’s murder for that you have my thanks. and I can feel some closure about his death. But you also killed my brother, who was my father’s murder who would have killed me”. His shoulders dropped. One of his war-hounds the largest got up and looked at him barking questioningly. The duke patted the hound.

He started again “I thought that I would be able to do this, to settle matters to make it easier to move forwards, I have a request”. He paused David waited ten seconds “Yes what can we do for you”?

The dog nudge the duke, “Yes ... yes let us get down to business, you know the main road has had a few problems of late. A couple of smaller coaches and single carts have been attacked, it is about the thrall spider nest it’s in the woods”.

They had been into the woods and seen no spider. He saw there confusion. “The other side not the blood thorn woods. The spiders have been far enough away that we could comfortably ignore them. Now they have grown too large to ignore. They can be a useful resource, quite a few of you are wearing armour and robes made or padded with their tough silk”.

He looked around, “so Gavin and myself want a culling, including the queen. She is too dangerous but not the eggs and juveniles. They will rebuild in time, the strongest will evolve into a queen. The merchants will continue to harvest silk and the occasional monster tamer will pick up some eggs. They have to be getting close to level 50 especially the queen, we don't want demon spiders. So its 200 silver for them, please bring the head of the queen back as proof. The rest can be incinerated I don't want undead nightmare spiders after all”.

The duke pulled a piece of paper out of his robe he read the scratched notes, “Gavin also mentioned you might also want to recover some fangs for the poison and as much silk as you can carry. And apparently the legs, have some alchemical properties that they might pay for. Good day and happy hunting, you can turn the contract into the merchants guild direct”.

The Duke had one last request, “actually wait my daughter has expressed some desire to be a tamer so bring me back two giant spider eggs that have been purified and we can work something out”.

.

They noted the duke’s request and headed out form his residence. A short trip out of the town along the road and they were in the forest. When the merchant’s guild made regular excursions to harvest silk and spider parts they had mapped the area. The location of the nest was fairly oblivious, there were webs in the trees there were trees that had been uprooted and tied up blocking most of the light. They did get the trade guild to send a cart with them. A small cart with a donkey, minded by one guard with a sword and some padded armour.

The nightmare spiders were regular spiders that had been infected with the thrall taint. It had forced them to grow larger and larger developing a hive like mentality. They would act much like the thrall wolves or giant bats, establish a nest and keep growing larger awaiting for a vampire to turn up and conscript them.

The spiders were dark black, no sheen to their chitinous forms. They could climb but due to their size they were quite slow at doing it, unless they were moving up their own webbing. Martin looked at the approaching spiders, “they move fast there poison is strong and can paralyse but there hit-points are generally low. Most attacks we possess can kill them in one or two hits. There attacks are weak with no great strength to their fangs, the webs are very strong so don't let them swarm you”.

Five giant spiders approached them, each was about three feet high four to five feet across with the legs. They were quite a high level, for giant spiders. Martin fired into the first spider and it collapsed, its limbs trembled and it curled up into a ball. Vivian sent a regular iron arrow into a spider with a similar effect. The spiders tried to close the gap moving faster, David cut one down with a regular attack. Vivian got the last one with an arrow, they were not strong on the scheme of things. But the nest seemed to be massive, so the numbers would probably make up for the lack of each spiders individual physical strength.

They moved a few paces along noting the bodies of animals wrapped in spider silk, hare foxes maybe a few larger items. Ten more giant spiders approached them, they didn't seem too intelligent just rushing forwards as a group. They didn't last much longer, David managed to close the distance and kill two. Martin had his four barrelled pistol Alice used acid strikes and Vivian send a few cheap iron broad-heads into the mass of spiders, the recovery of ammunition a little reloading and they moved forwards.

They noted some larger creatures webbed up, deer boar potentially a horse or two it was hard to tell. They moved a bit closer to the nest, twenty five giant spiders dropped down from the tree's ahead of them. They must have stood on a web or otherwise moved something to have triggered them into attacking. It could have simply been there proximity. Alice used her electric strike spell hitting the group and killing about half of the spiders outright. She left the rest of the group finish off the rest. Martin used his four barrelled pistol, David closed to fight in melee and Vivian fired off her arrows it was bloody and quick. The spiders tried to jump forwards but were met will ether and iron arrow a steel shield or a pistol ball.

David looked about, “these things don't seem anywhere near as dangerous as their reputation”. Vivian looked about the forest towards the nest. “Most people don't have anywhere as much armour as you do, don't get cocky one good bite getting through would be all it would take and you would be feeling very different, begging Alice to cast cure poison on you”.

It was just then about sixty giant spiders approached the group, perhaps an act of higher tactical thinking or just dumb luck they attacked from all sides. Alice cast her physical shield spell then threw an electrical strike spell into the largest group of creatures in front of her. Then a similar attack behind her on that group. She held back with a healing spell and cure poison spell prepared.

Alice only used her electrical spell, as she didn't want to damage all the nightmare spider silk that they were planning to harvest. Also setting the woods on fire with all the silk might be a bad idea as they were in the centre off it. Martin emptied his pistols and switched to his throwing knives. David kept hacking away at the creatures and Vivian sent her arrows hurtling towards the creatures, starting with her cheapest arrows and slowly moving up to the more expensive ones.

They must have started to really thin out the defenders at this point. A wave of juvenile spiders attacked them, these creatures were only around a foot long still very large for a spider. The party were more than ready just squashing them with ease. Alice used the butt of her staff, Martin used his mallet. Vivian broke of a tree branch to use and David just stood on them, his reinforced hobnail boots doing most of the work.

They grimly noted quite a few other cocoons some of more human proportions others horses cattle. They would investigate them latter, when they had time for now they had one very large spider to deal with. The inside of the nest was quite big, literally a clearing in the forest that had been webbed into a dome. It contained the nightmare spider queen, she was massive ten yards wide and five yards high. She had a certain intelligence and watched the party. There were hints that she was on the verge of metamorphosing into a demon spider queen. Her shell cracking in places to reveal red chitin underneath, a faint glow. Her egg sacks were stuck up around the nest with a few baby spiders six inches across scuttling about. The individual eggs looked to be round four to five inches across.

What the spider queen was waiting for was quite obvious, she had somehow summoned the rest of her brood to defend her. There was a scuttling noise from all around. David looked over at Vivian, “this is your chance to break through we keep the rest of you and you deal with the queen”. Vivian nodded “thanks David I can do that”. It was Vivian's opportunity, the spider queen seemed to be smart enough to realise what was going on and rose from her corner charging forwards. Vivian put two mithral arrows into her legs with adrenalin power shots. The spider chittered and hissed in rage spitting poison and a glob of silk at Vivian, who had enough presence of mind to doge to the side and respond with an arrow deep into the spider queen's face knocking her off balance.

Martin was busy he had cast shield of faith, armour of faith grabbed his mallet and started swingeing. David was beside him while Alice kept a shield spell and illusionary allies up to give the spiders a lot of targets to aim for while distracting them. She focused on blasting large groups of the spiders with her area attack electric strike spell. Illusionary allies was quite the spell, each separate illusion reacted as if it was truly Alice. Each one cast a copy of the spell she was wielding and each one maintained their footing as if they were real. They effectively reacted to the environment making it hard to spot the original from the illusions, it was certainly enough to confuse the giant spiders.

The damage that Vivian was doing to the giant spider queen was immense. Her arrows disabled one leg after another, skewering the joints and embedding deep into its flesh. The spider was by no means defenceless able to spit webbing and poison. But Vivian stayed back from its comparatively short ranged attacks. The queen had a massive pair of fangs that would have dealt significant damage to Vivian, if she could ever get close enough to bring them to bare. The poison would have killed her very quickly, or very slowly if the queen wanted to paralyse her for a meal. Vivian had no intention of being webbed up. She avoided several obvious traps as the queen put down webbing then tried to heard Vivian onto it. The queen was used to fighting with a swarm of spiders at her beckoned call alone she struggled.

The rest of Vivian's team were taking care of the minions allowing Vivian to focus on this one creature. She got serious after disabling the queen's legs using her mithral and octium arrows. It was over in a short amount of time, she put one adrenalin power shot after another into the monster. She was no expert on spider anatomy, but the head had to have something vital in, so she just emptied her quiver into it. Ending with the three enchanted arrows the nightmare spider queen fell to the ground twitching and bleeding it was most definitely dead.

As the massive queen fell to her arrows Vivian felt a familiar sensation. The flow of time ground to a haul a message appeared in his mind’s eye. A special action has been performed feat of marshal strength has been achieved. You have defeated a worthy opponent your level limit has been increased to level 75. It had been a hard fought battle she was lucky to have survived it as that creatures was close to immobilizing or poisoning her a dozen times. She had punched through the level 50 barrier. David was the only one left that had not yet broken through.

“Grand master hear I come”, Vivian beamed there was a tiny bit of jealousy in David's eye as he patted Vivian on the back in congratulations. Still she would see him break through eventually. They gathered up there spent knives and arrows, Martin reloaded his pistols. Martin seemed to have a strange sense he was being watched and spent a long time preparing an special charge for his four barrelled pistol, one moment the sensation was there the next it was gone.

Now that they had decimated the nest of nightmare spiders they set about gathering ingredients and cleaning up the bodies. They first started to extract the fangs. After the first few spiders they just cut the entire head off. In that way they gathered a lot of poison. Silk was everywhere, they pulled down reams of it, bundling it up, especially the queens silk. They also cut her head off as proof of their victory. They harvested about a hundred spider legs before calling it a day. They grabbed four spider eggs for the duke, for his daughter’s pet spider project. Martin used purify on them to clear any taint. Vivian hoped he knew what he was doing. They left some eggs behind to regrow the nest.

There were six cocoons that appeared to be human, after they cut them down they would take them back to the cathedral for last rights and cremation. Six travellers who were not so lucky. From now on the merchant's guild would cull the spiders more often, so that they didn't get to the size that Vivian and the party had to face. Vivian looked at the queen spiders head, it was close to becoming a demon spider, a little more time and it would have been metamorphosing into something with brains.

There were still juvenile and baby thrall spiders six inches long wondering about the nest. They didn't attack they kept out of the way, there were still plenty of eggs the nest would eventually recover. They gathered up enough of the thick strong silk as possible wrapping it into bails, the spider queens head was dragged to one side. They then spent a considerable time piling the bodies of the dead spiders outside the nest. Finding a clearing without the chance of a fire to engulf the forest. The queen’s remains were a particular pain to dismember and drag out there. A little oil and a bit of silk to act as tinder and they had a blaze going removing the monsters remains.

When they were certain the fire would not spread they moved a bit further out of the forest, carrying the first bails of silk and other items to the cart. The level up hit them as soon as they were out of danger. Their eyes glowed and the force of the level up hit, their bodies and minds expanded. Alice reached level 55 she improved her illusionary allies spell. She would have seven false targets and the spell would last for another 50% longer than the basic level of the spell.

David was stuck waiting to perform a feat of strength which he would eventually achieve. Vivian gained two levels, it was a powerful opponent she put the levels into the shatter shield ability. She would be able to use this skill to counteract an opponent with a large or particularly tough shield. Martin rose to level 63 he pushed his general melee weapons skill up to level 8, a little more skill with his strikes a little more damage.

Alice had the bright idea of searching the cocoons for valuables, she checked over the bodies finding one which felt like there was some sort of magic item inside. Something that resonated with the power of a mage. She got Martin to cut the cocoon open it, was old and dry being left there for years. Some poor adventurer had the amulet on them, possibly a veteran with a subjugation quest it was hearsay. Martin dug around and found an amulet of some sort. Alice identified it as an Amulet of ruinous defence. A charm against sorcererus and necromantic magic plus 25 points of resistance to some of the nastier magic around.

David Vivian and Alice looked at each other. Alice looked at them, “if I didn't have the ability to sense magic and to appraise magical items you would never know what this is. I should add it to my defences”. Vivian put a hand out, “hold on you have a 100 point base spell resistance against any type of magic. I remember you said it when that vampire sorcerer tried to kill you with a spell”. Alice looked back at her, “so I have the lowest health out of the lot of us, a spell that could kill me outright you could survive”. Vivian shook her head, “you can use healing magic on yourself and you can cast shield spells”.

Alice held up the amulet, “It’s against necromancy and sorcery, my shield spells protect against physical attacks and elemental damage lightning fire and frost. This sort of magic I can’t stop it very well my shield spell just pops”. David looked at her, “it’s my job to be the biggest target on the battle ground. I am the one most likely to be targeted by magic users. I should have the amulet it would stop a necromancer or scorer affecting me right”? Vivian nodded, “he has a point you can resist this sort of spell, Martin can stop them with his holy symbol and I can intercept a spell with a shot. Not something I would want to try to often but it’s a recognised technique right, David should have the item”.

Alice gingerly handed the amulet to David, “I suppose Vivian takes your side, but she has a point you’re the only one without a defence against this type of attack”. Vivian looked at Alice questioningly, “I don't think that I take David's side all the time, most of the time I am the first one to shoot down his stupid suggestions to push things to far”. David looked at her, “my suggestions are not stupid”! She shrugged “maybe not so much now days, but there was the roast turnip soup, and the sword spade to name a few”.

He got embarrassed, “I was a lot younger then that was years ago”. Alice shrugged, “I am not an expert but how do you ruin turnip soup”? Vivian grinned “turn the turnips into ashes, he was on lumber hauling duty for a week after that”. Alice watched the amulet disappeared under David's clothes. She whispered under her breath, “I should have flipped a coin for it, he can’t win a bet to save his life”.

They had to rope all the bundles of spider silk to the cart, with the bags of spider heads the recovered bodies and the other bits and pieces. They should have gotten a bigger cart but it was too late now. They had to use a lot of persuasion to get the cart to move at a pair pace. With Vivian and David giving it a good push every so often as it threatened to throw an axil or over balance, eventually they were back at town. There first port of call was the duke’s residence. “Your back already, it looks like you made short work of the spiders. But then you killed the dragon so I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised”. They had a scrap of cloth and wrapped the eggs in them. Vivian saluted him then handed him the bundle. The duke looked them over holding them up to the light.

The duke beamed, “yes this is just what I needed, perfect project for my little girl”. His daughter hopped off the back of one of the huge war hounds and ran over to him, “Florence you remember you said you wanted a spider the same way daddy has his doggies, well first I show you how to incubate some eggs. Then we learn to feed them mice and then we might move onto rats”. Alice and Martin exchanged a look of hesitation, questioning if they had done the right thing. Still when the spiders hatched they would be a level 0 monster, a little alchemical trickery and they would treat Florence like there queen.

For delivering the eggs to the duke he gave them a little bonus of 4 silver. It would help their funds. They left him with the spider queen’s head as proof that they had completed their assignment. For decimating the nest and the head of spider queen they were rewarded with 200 silver coins. It would pay for a good chunk towards some mithral armour for David. With a short journey and a solemn refrain they delivered the six bodies that they found to the cathedral. One of the deacons and a priest started to attempt to identify the remains, against a list of a few travellers that had gone missing over the years. They got a thank you and a blessing from the priest for their efforts.

They returned the bundles of silk to the merchants craft hall. Gavin had a quick look at their efforts then left one of his clerks to finish the deal. The clerk slowly counted up the party's efforts, “eighty nine spider heads, more effort to get the poison out but a better overall yield. Let’s say the equivalent of 178 fangs, sixty two bales of spider silk various qualities one hundred and three spider legs. I can offer you 34 silver for the lot, I could offer more but it’s going to take us a lot of time to process the rough silk”.

Vivian looked round at the others, no one seemed to want to haggle. “Make it 35 silver and you have a deal”. Vivian held out her hand the clerk paused for a second then took it, “thanks for your efforts we will be harvesting the nest every six months from now on, so it won’t come to this again”. They delivered all the spider pieces to the trade guild another 35 silver for their efforts.

Another day another contract completed, not an unprofitable morning they had a further 239 silver to add to their funds. They might be able to afford some really good custom equipment after another month of this sort of work. One of the town guards waved to them, “could you see the sheriff we have a sighting”. They hurried over to the gate house to see the sheriff. They entered his office Melcher seemed slightly on edge. “I want you to investigate a sighting, some gathers looking for mushrooms, they saw a couple that avoided the sunlight and went back into a cave. Probably two scouts a thrall and a fledgling but they might be working for something stronger, when you go there be cautious hear is a map”.

The group left the gate house and the sheriff, when they left it was still fairly early in the afternoon, they had quite a bit of sunlight left. The journey was quick there were mushrooms in the clearing half their number already been picked. There were two sets of tracks leading into a cave, Martin felt his holy symbol twitch in his grip as they entered. Alice felt the tang of magic in the air. They got about thirty yards in. There was a man he was six foot seven inches tall. He wore black knee high boots black leather trousers, a white shirt a black doublet elbow length black fingerless gloves.

He wore an adamantine neck guard it sparkled a blue silver colour. It was his only piece of visible armour, his face was contorted into a fanged sneer. He had adamantine earrings rings and an adamantine rimmed monocle. His hair was long and black a white streak had been put in the centre of his hair probably using an alchemical product of some sort. His hair was waist length with an adamantine clasp holding it in a ponytail. He had a short ultramite dagger at his side, it remained in its sheath.

Beside him was a woman with a quill and paper, seemingly a scribe of some sort. She was five foot eight inches in simple grey clothes, she was pretty in a forgettable sort of way. She dressed conservatively and didn't look very happy. She dropped the paperwork and charged forwards, her clothing split into scraps as the werewolf took its full form eight feet of muscle and wrath. She barrelled into Martin before he could bring his pistols to bear. Her fangs sank into his shoulder, her claws wrapped around his right arm and tried to dig into his side. The werewolf activated some sort of ability and Martin could feel something spreading out through his body from the bite.

Even with the werewolf’s animal ferocity Martin had a lot of armour and a spare hand. He had the lion hearts hammer in his left hand, it was loaded with silver pistol balls two in the barrel in one go, point blank to the were wolfs temple. She let go off Martin the beast staggered back clutching its head shrieking and howling in pain. Martin used his divine favour blessing to stop his bleeding and charged towards his friends, these foes were far too much for them to handle at the moment.

The vampire already had David's sword arm in a tight grip, there was a twist and a ripping noise. David screamed in pain as blood seeped out of his armour, as his arm was twisted one full rotation despite the armour. The joint should not and could not move that way. Vivian was firing off her mithral tipped arrows, they bounced of this vampire like nothing. Alice had hit the vampire with an icy tomb spell, slowing him down he was still relentless. She cast illusionary allies and a physical shield spell. The vampire dropped David and moved forwards. Alice hit David with a healing spell then popped the vampire with an acid strike spell to the eyes, it didn't even faze it.

Martin charged forwards using his chain smite blessing, the lightning bolts didn’t even seem to irritate the vampire. It reached forwards pointing at Alice, her head twitched then her eyes rolled back. She collapsed down to the ground, her shield and illusion spells faded out of existence. Vivian went to shoot her bow with another mithral arrow, the vampire took a swipe at her. Vivian pulled back, there was a horrific moment as the vampires claw seemed to rip through her helmet and the front of her face. Sending a gush of blood and thicker material spraying over the floor. The force seemed to be enough to knock her out, as she collapsed to the ground like a bloody rag doll.

Martin activated his martyrs sacrifice and closed in on the vampire. He had his four barrelled pistol loaded with eight mithral bullets, an overload shot in each chamber. It was probably the strongest attack he had, Bismark was barely affected at point blank range he still staggered back. Martin activated Litany of blessings all his defensive blessings. He hit Vivian with divine favour he would see what could be done about her face, after he had saved her life.

The vampire got backup Martin used his blessing hand of judgement to knock the vampire back down. He dragged David back to his feet, David had his sword dangling from his mangled arm by a leather strap. He ran over to Vivian looped her bow over her arm and started to drag her unconscious body across the floor of the cave. Martin emptied every bit of thermite he had over the vampire.

He grabbed Alice her staff and followed after David, who was dragging Vivian across the floor with all his considerable strength, a death grip on hers with his one working hand. Martin charged away putting Alice over his shoulder. Finally after tense seconds they stagger out into sunlight, “we live” David panted, they moved away from the mouth of the cave.

Bismark stepped out into the light, a transparent aura boiling away surrounding him. Martin held his holy symbol smite on his lips. Bismark stepped back into the cave, he wanted to kill them but not enough to weaken himself chasing after them. Martin took one look back with his monocle, activating its ability. Bismark was an insurmountable opponent level 420 an ancient, still there were masters nearly twice his level. Bismark had four supreme skills, he did not need to use them at all to defeat four masters. They could have put up a better fight, if they had not had there formation broken by the werewolf, but then powerful vampires tended to have powerful servants on hand to defend them.

When they were very far from the entrance to the cave, Martin used his combat medic skill to appraise the rest of the party's injuries. “Are we safe I can’t feel my right arm it probably needs healing can you have a look please”. Martin removed David's armour piece by piece exposing the arm. David had unfortunately lost the arm, just below the elbow his forearm had been crushed and twisted into pulp inside the armour. The remains were wrapped up and placed in Vivian's backpack along with David's gauntlet. If Martin had not been so quick with the healing, David might have bleed to death from the injury.

Martin very carefully removed Vivian's helmet, it was damaged but repairable. It was the difference between a very serious wound and her losing her entire head. Martin used divine favour on her again. Vivian had lost both her eyes, crushed and ripped out by the force of the attack. She had a massive scar and a chunk missing from her nose. She started to regain her senses a few minutes later, “David is there a bandage over my eyes I can’t see anything”? She started to panic and reached up. David gripped her hand. She felt her face and started to sob, realising the enormity of the debilitating wound in one instant. Martin pulled bandage and wrapped it around her head, coving up her vacant mangled sockets.

Finally Martin turned to Alice, with the others he had some idea how to treat them. Potions that regrow limbs, the powers of a bishop even golem parts. Alice was completely unresponsive nothing physically wrong with her. Her mind was melted into slop. Martin looked at David he was holding Vivian comforting her. Vivian felt the end of his arm and he went silent. There was a gasp from David as he looked at Martin he moved back rapidly in fear.

Martin had been bitten by the lycanthrope body guard. There were quite a few extra hairs on Martins hands and his nails were starting to grow longer. As Martin looked down at Alice he could smell her mana infused flesh it smelt like lunch, this was not a good thing. David looked at Martin then at his sword. He started to breathe faster and faster. As in involuntary response to the threat Martin growled low.