Nicholas Tamark

UP: Atlantic

    I was strolling under the boughs of the Yew trees last eve, enjoying the night air, when I heard a shout of pain followed by someone running towards me through the brush. A man ran by in obvious pain, and was being chased by a dread spider! Stunned that this creature was inside the town's borders, I almost forgot to run as it turned toward me to attack. I somehow managed to outrun the eight-legged beast, and quickly notified the local Town Crier. Curiosity got the best of me, and I headed back toward where I saw the thing.

    As I headed north out of town, I heard more sounds of struggle farther ahead, near the Yew Mill. I approached carefully. The Town Criers worked quick. Several people had tracked the spiders back to the Mill. I watched as black widows and dread spiders poured from the doorway of the Mill, poisoning and killing as they came. The warriors fell back initially, but as more and more people arrived, they started returning the death strokes and eventually gained access to the Mill. I followed closely behind.

    Now, the Mill is a rarely used place, but I knew as soon as I saw the size of the huge webs that it was more than dust that made them. There were still a few dread spiders crawling about, and I noticed several black widow spiders protecting one of the back doors. Looking over their body, I caught sight of a giant white spider, a White Widow! Apparently she had set up a nest back there and was hatching spiders even as we stood there!

    The death toll was high, but eventually all the spiders lay dead, even the White Widow. Some of the spiders had rare wheat sheaves stuck to them, apparently from crawling about the Mill. The warriors were about to leave as the bodies started to decay, when they noticed in the corner of the room a few cocoons. Deciding to cut down the unfortunate corpses in those wrappings, they dropped the first one to the floor. It cracked open and revealed all sorts of treasure, scrolls, gems, and items! There was a greedy scramble for the other cocoons, but they held nastier surprises. Out crawled even more spiders from the other cocoons, killing the first few surprised treasure hunters, but eventually falling to the warriors of Yew.

From the Town Cryer - The Journal of Ultima Online, Thursday, May 6th 1999