In tonight’s dnd session, the Magnificent Four completed their survey of the ancient abandoned ruin, finding an arcane machine that opened portals to various exotic, mundane, and unknown places above and below ground.
So they decided to crawl single file through hundreds of feet of claustrophobic spider tunnel choked with webs… until the sorcerer fell through a sticky patch of web and down into a spider lair.
Two in the group of spiders attacking bore the “improvements” of the Big Bad, having their heads replaced with glowing orbs powered by strange stones and metal armor bolted to their bodies.
After killing the spiders, the sorcerer set fire to the abundant layers of webbing in the lair, creating an unexpected inferno that the group ran away from…
…straight into Rona, the evil goddess Lolth’s abandoned pet spider, grown to a terrifying size and covered with Rona’s children. Rona was evermore tasked to fling her children out to the ends of the Underdark in search of her missing goddess.
After a careful, respectful conversation, the party learned that Rona was no fan of the Big Bad, as he ruined her children in his experiments and hindered her search for her goddess by having her children killed whenever his servants saw them.
Upon finding out that the party was there to find and kill the Big Bad, Rona allowed them to rest and heal in her nest and take whatever small-folk items her previous meals had left. When the party told her they were from the surface world, and that the surface world was no longer on fire, she gave the bard one of her children, requesting that the spider be brought up to the surface world, so Rona could learn of it.
It was an adorable, fuzzy, peacock spider.
The bard hates spiders, but still promised to protect the tiny spider with the group’s lives, naming the little arachnid Annabelle.
The Tome of Adventures 