[Game Thread] Mall Maul!

Hannibal trumpets in terror. "Oh my! Aagh! Untongue me, you foul creature!" and scrabbles against the broken asphalt, trying to break free.

Liam screams and swings his billy club at the creatures tongue.

Sarah tries to stab one of it's bulbous black eyes with her scalpel, while Travis tries to whack it on the head with his crook staff.

Kurt tries in vain to free himself from the toad spider's sticky tongue. His companions try to kill the beast, but only Dope manages to land a blow. The monster is hurt, but still focused on eating it's prey. It reals Kurt in and sinks its massive fangs into him. Only Kurt's armor can save him now.

Nearby, Carlos has better luck wrestling with the tongue that grabbed him, and he manages to get free. His companions try to slay the beast, but none of them manages to land a solid blow. Still hungry, the toad spider tries to bite Pung - and succeeds! It is terrible bite. Will Pung's armor save him?

Hannibal trumpets and flails, but can't break free. Fortunately, his team comes to his aid. Liam and Travis both get in solid strikes, and just before it bites Hannibal, the toad spider breathes its last and dies. The last toad spider is also fixated on this group, until Callie comes in from behind and stabs her screwdriver deep into its flank. Bleeding profusely, the toad spider leaps back into its hole, closing the "door" behind it.

While the others are fighting for their lives, Cedric, Tammy, Isaac, and Lina move cautiously around the edge of the melee, looking for a safer way into the mall.

Berto and Kline both land hits on the toad spider near them, killing it. Scruffette and Rowana land blows on the last visible toad spider, but aren't able to bring it down. Doc and Dope Man, however, manage to finish it off.Now that you know what to look for, you can see that there are other "trap doors" in the parking lot, probably with giant toad spiders waiting underneath them. Seeing them for what they are, you feel you can avoid the rest of them and get to the front door.

Also, Tammy, Isaac, Linda, and Cedric seem to have disappeared. No sign of their bodies. They just aren't with you anymore.

Hannibal is shivering, which makes his trunk vibrate and undulate in a most unbecoming manner for a respected Historian. "I... I... thank you all for saving me from that horrid creature."

Liam just grunts in response, wiping spider goo from his billy club. He looks around at all the spider doors in the ground and starts to chart a path in his head that keeps them as far from each of the doors as possible

Sarah squeaks and shivers from the adrenaline rush, but is eyeing the toad spider corpses to see if there's anything that could be harvested (like venom glands).

Travis leans on his shepherd's crook, tips his cowboy hat and says "No prob, pardner". He's seen worse.

The group is now five smaller - having lost one to a grizzly end and another four to (hopefully) wandering off. It's not much trouble to get through the rest of the parking lot, though it is nerve racking. Eerie humming emanates from each trap door, but nothing else emerges.

When you get to the mall, you see two ways in. First, there are the obvious front doors. They probably used to be glass, but now they are just metal frames boarded over with wood and other pieces of metal. A very rusty chain is wound through the doors to keep them closed, but it looks like a solid tug might break the weak links.

The other potential entrance is the truck bay. Large openings where bay doors used to be reveal a large room beyond. Though shadowy, you can make out a door in the back of that room that presumably leads into the mall.

(In case there's a chance that Sarah could harvest some poison glands from the dead spider frog, I'm rolling an agility check).

Liam, relieved that they've made it past the trap doors, eyes the two entrances in front. "Hm... maybe the easiest way in, but maybe not the safest. Plus if we're plundering maybe we should go somewhere others haven't been already. Should we look around the side of the building?"

Hannibal, still shivering, honks a bit. "I don't know, is it any safer out here than it is in there? What if there's more of these spider things out here? I want to go inside."

Travis, looking calm as usual, says: "Whatever y'all decide."

Liam says: "Maybe the truck bay will have more stuff? He looks around at the other parties."

"The truck bay does make sense," Brie says. The others nod in agreement, and they follow 451's team in that direction.