Clean up

In a single day, you have ended the nascent war between Drux and yourself. It has not come without cost though. You are utterly drained, barely able to more. You are **** to let your body rest, but there are still matters that require your attention. While a sizable portion of Drux's forces now lies entombed before you, there are still black spiders that remain. They may not be able to seriously challenge you, but they could still be a thorn in your side. You have to strike now to take advantage of the confusion caused by the loss of their leader.

You send Hrax and sizable contingent to secure Drux's hollow. However, it only takes them a few hours before they return, bearing astonishing news. The enemy is, for all intents and purposes, no more. The lack of leadership has affected the black spiders worse than you expected. Almost all of Drux's most loyal followers followed him into your trap. The remaining spiders have no particular stake in this fight. When they heard of what happened from the forest spiders, half of them surrendered on the spot, while the rest ran for it.

You send Hrax and a few others to hunt these runaways, while you detail another group led by Blix to occupy Drux's hollow, and start clearing it out. The forest spiders may choose to resettle there someday, but for now, you want all traces of Drux erased from existence.

As the two detachments carry out their tasks, you supervise the rest of the forest spiders as they add further reinforcements to the prison containing Drux. While you are relatively confident Drux and his forces will never be able to escape, you see no point in taking chances.

There is also the additional concern of heroes. During the initial planning of your trap, Dana raised the concern of heroes accidentally opening the prison. She informed you of heroes' general tendency to pry at anything out of the ordinary in the hopes of reward. The last thing you want is for some idiot hero to come bumbling along and release Drux.

In that regard, you have taken several measures to ward against calamity. First among them, the spiders weave a cautionary message into the web covering the dome, and use red berry juice to stain it. The message reads: "Warning! Filled with angry, giant spiders. No treasure, little XP."

At least, that what Dana tells you it says. Neither you, nor the spiders can read. The spiders are simply copying a pattern she has scratched into the dirt. According to Dana, this should be sufficient to ward off all but the most stupid of heroes. Not having a very high regard of heroes' intelligence in general, this provides little comfort.

What gives you more confidence though, is the thick layer of dirt with which spiders cover the prison. Using the soil produced from your initial preparations, you bury the prison under several feet of earth. At first you were worried the weight of the dirt might cause the dome to collapse and kill those held beneath it, but Thex assures you that webbing supporting the dome is designed to handle the pressure. Given that he was able to construct a single sheet of web that could bear the weight of Drux's army, you trust his judgement.

To ensure the spiders trapped inside will be able to breath, tubes of stiffened web with a semi-transparent, net-like covers are inserted into the dirt. There's no need to create breathing holes in the dome itself. You and Thex had spent some time developing Barrier and webbing that could contain a struggling prisoner while still letting air in. Blix and a few of your more fervent follower were happy to serve as guinea pigs. May their temporary sacrifice never be forgotten.

Once the spiders are done, no trace of Drux's prison remains. While there is a gentle slope to the land, there is no obvious mound or hill to mark the position. In addition, all the openings for the breathing tubes have been disguised to look like rabbit or fox holes, and a thick layer of mast and debris has been spread over the ground. Currently, there are no trees or underbrush growing there, but that will come in time. Hopefully, all memory of Drux's final resting place will be lost as it becomes indistinguishable from the forest around it.