Close Encounters

Upon the request of a well respected if not somewhat senile older gentleman, I set out to investigate the site of an unidentified object that came crashing through the astral plane onto our plane of existence. He wanted us to mine the meteor for a rare material called Starmetal, that he promised he would reimburse us for hauling as well as a hefty upfront payment. As I am ever curios about the mysteries of the universe and this mission while requiring some brawn, of which I am not the best, would still prove to be an enlightening endevor. So, at once, after confirming the trajectory of our quarry, we set out to find the fallen star.
 
Our journey took us, at length, more than a day to traverse to the site of the impact. We came upon it in the afternoon of the second day after our guide had gotten himself temporarily bewildered in the forest. The site was a large hole and just from being in close proximity of the thing I could feel myself become uncomfortably warm. It was during my cursory examinations of the object that we again heard the child's laughter. I say again, because we had previously been assaulted by the jovial cries of a young child the night before entering the forest. Its voice startling my watch companion so much so that he rousted the rest of the crew to relay his concerns to them. After a brief investigation, we could find no signs of any life other than our persons in the immediate area and so we resumed our rests. Disconcerting laughter aside, my initial investigations found that not only was the object a source of magic, but that it was also of a type and spell that does not exist in our known areas of expertise. That is to say that the standard spells for reading and identifying magical properties revealed an undeterminable source for this mysterious object.
 
Although I voiced my concerns at this and urged my compatriots t act with caution, I did not stop them from beginning our original purpose of extracting the precious metal. Oh, how I wish I had.
 
While they set about digging in the general area and breaking the large rock, I tried to busy myself with further methods of identification and assisting in minor things to the extent of my abilities. After a time, the pickaxe being wielded by one of our more impulsive members struck as if striking a solid metal mass and we discovered that, underneath the layer of ore and rock there had been hidden a smooth red object. This discovery seemed to excite my peers as they dug away the rest of the debris with earnest. Once the thing was uncovered we saw that it resembled a large red egg. Despite my urgings, Occulo decided to place his hand on the egg and described it as giving him a cooling sensation. He was very excited and became possessive of the egg when I asked him to put it down multiple times , as we did not know the extent of its magical capabilities. I do not know if it was then that he lost himself to it, or if it was just an eccentricity of his personality, but it was when we found the object that things took a dour turn.
 
After having breaking up the asteroid debris and gathering it together on a makeshift sled that we had built of the local foliage we settled down to rest before our long trek back to our town. We would not sleep restfully though as we were beset upon by malicious spirts. The apparitions seemed to the presence of the dead, but they were of no race that I had ever before encountered or heard of. They wailed as they reached for us, attempting to steal our lives for themselves. I quickly cast a spell to decipher their speech to see if they were trying to deliver a cryptic message. They screamed baleful apologies to us and interested that our souls were what they needed. We had no choice but to fight for our lives against them.
 
Barring the fight our night passed with no further events and we rose to journey back with our loads. We made the journey back quickly and were light of feet and energized upon our arrivals home. Whereupon we immediately sought out the old man. We found him easily enough and began to engage with him but where perplexed when he paid us no mind. This greatly vexed one of our members who drew forward as if to shake him back to his senses, only to have his hand disappear within him! We tried to interact with various people and things only to find that nothing would give or react to our presence. Some of us briefly feared we had perished in our sleep, while I surmised that we were somehow transported to the ethereal plane against our will. We quickly discovered that we were not, in fact, dead and that I was most likely correct when Occulo spoke something that sent us all into immediate action. "We never woke up." We all suddenly realized the implications of his words and cold chills ran down my spine at the thought that I knew when he had spoken it, that it was the truth. A ghost appeared to us again and spoke "Watch your back." They had said this before as we fought them off the night before, but this phantom only gave the warning and disappeared. I quickly turned my back to the group and asked if they could observe anything. Their shocked silence was deafening and I apprehensively turned back around to them while they affirmed my suspicions. I quickly took stock of someone else and I saw it, fliting through my periphery, a tendril had attached itself to all of our backs and they all seemed to stretch back along in the same direction, back to the way whence we had come. Nazhim was the first to act upon this revaluation and sprung into a full sprint back the way we had come. This bolstered all of us into action and I ju8mped upon the sled that Jor pulled, with our ghost meteor, so as not to fall behind. We made excellent tie back as we soon realized that our unconcious minds held infinite stamina. We arrived back at the campsite only to make another discovery that made me hold in an involuntary shudder. We weren't there.
 
Our bodies were gone. In their places deep dragging marks left on the ground. Nazhim again ran ahead and fund the egg, surrounded by our unconscious bodies, wrapped into sacks with the tentacles going from us to the egg as it had multiplied in size, seemingly from feasting on our bodies! Nazhim fired a quick shot that flew wide while Jor took aim and struck the egg with magic as it burst open revealing the hideous monster inside. A large bulbous head of a newborn baby attached to the body of a gigantic spider with legs ending in sharp points. As the child screamed we were awoken. Each within our sacks and had to fight to break free of them. We managed to regain ourselves and fight the abomination until Nazhim's arrow struck it through its hideous eye socket and it ceased moving.
 
With our remaining energy, each of us looking sunken and starved, we pushed ourselves back to town, now certain that we were whole again. We came upon the old man, who asked us what had happened to us for to take us so long to return, and upon commenting on our physical states I regaled him with th events of the encounter, sparing no detail, until he was wholly convinced of what had transpired. I set myself to sleep in my tent for the foreseeable future.