Tarot card this morning was 8 of wands – stay on your toes. Seems apt, given the circumstances. I was previously separated from the party and kept trying to lose the group of 8-legs following me. I finally managed it, then heard the familiar screams of Anister and Bancroft as I doubled back to rejoin them. I started towards the screaming, but heard chittering around me. Four attacked me. Two bit me, but didn't get a good enough hold to inject poison. I was barely breathing, so I ran until I lost them, then squatted in the brush and hid. I tried to keep moving, but they swarmed me.

I woke up suddenly, seeing Bancroft and Anister talking to some half elf half spider on the steps of a ruin. She was holding the green mace. Oh look, we found the ruin. She said I was lucky I was with them or she would have fed me to her children. I bit my tongue so I didn't say what I was thinking. If they eat me, I hope they choke and die. Bancroft made the mistake of telling the creepy spider elf about Clarisse, and she sent the spiders after her. She mentioned that she dreamed of the mace, and we brought the mace, so we asked if we could investigate the ruins. She said it was just an old elven temple to Sylvanus, but she could provide us with shiny things if that's what we were looking for. She offered us two lovely elven short swords worth 10 gp each. She mentioned there was an army of goblins camping in the mountains.

We took a nap in the temple. Upon inspection in daylight, the altar of the temple had long ago been smashed, and there was a stairway leading down that was filled with rubble. The spider elf talked to Bancroft privately for a while, presumably about boring religious stuff. I just stood around and eyed the spiders. Spider lady is crazy, and I don't trust her “children” to not get hungry. We mentioned coming back to excavate, but spider lady said no, this was her home. Supposedly she taught Bancroft the word “peace” in spider in case we wanted to come back. I'm skeptical he can remember a spider word.

We started back to town, but I had to swear to Sylvanus to avoid being blindfolded with webs on the way back, to hide the location of the temple. There was no way in hell I was getting any more spider webs on me. Gods don't mean much to me, so one is as good as another. This involved a whole ritual where branches were woven with webs to make an effigy holy symbol, which I shoved in my pack. Maybe the green man will help my prophecies and fortune telling. We made it back to town without incident. Clarisse made it in the day after. She told a story about hiding in rotting logs, running from spiders, trolls, moving hills, and goblins dressed as spiders.

We went to Mazzah to see if the shortswords are magic.