Was posting something on Xitter about spiders and cool things, and went searching through my Google+ archive for something I'd written back in the day and found this old hunk of gold. Figured seeing as we lost so much when G+ closed down it was worth a repost here. Might do some more of these....
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| photo by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos |
So I had a run-in with one of these guys yesterday. We've bought a house in the Upper Blue Mountains but couldn't move in this year cause of special needs schooling for one of our boys. But I'm doing the maintenance on the house while we rent it out, and while carrying rubble from A to B, saw a redback poking out of its hidey-hole positioned far too close to the front door for my liking. Kids n' stuff. So as she (the big ones are always shes) broke Article 4 of The Human-Spider Covenant (Being Seen Sticking Fangs Into Prey) she had to go.
The nest was at ground level underneath the outward projection of a rain gutter running down the wall, so there was access from either side, and I stuck a nice long stick in to clean it out. And out she came: the biggest Redback I've ever seen. And I felt like a bit of prick for squashing her, but yeah it's a risk I'm not willing to take. And I had to do the eggsacs in too (more on that in a bit). So apologies to the Spider Spirits but obviously if she's that big then things are good in spiderland (and there are lots of other awesome spiders around the place, especially the little Jumping Spiders, which I love).
And then suddenly there's another redback out the other side. Quite surprised (both of us, I believe). Just as big. More apologies to Spider Spirit, but pop (and really it did).
Anyway the point of this heroic tale of Jez vs The Land of Poison and Fire is that it got me thinking about monstrous encounters (it was a long drive home) and how to take what I saw and what I read up about redbacks last night (cause curious) and make the encounters more complex and varied.
I'm of little doubt that some if not all of these ideas have probably been brought up before, but eh. I feel compelled. I'm also bitter that +Ian Johnson took his blog down cause he wrote two amazing posts about how to run giant spiders as pure murderfreaks (in fact +Reynaldo Madriñan if you speak with him can you ask him if I can repost them? they were really great).
So yeah:
Tag Team. The first thing that I noticed was that there were dozens of ants hanging out in the spider's lair. Not as food (though I'm sure a few get picked off for snack time) but as live-in cleaners and scavengers, picking up the husks of the dead and polishing off what the redbacks couldn't devour. I don't know what direct benefit this offered the redbacks - maybe it kept their webs cleaner for longer so the spiders didn't need to spend as much energy in replacing their webs? - but clearly there was some sort of mutually beneficial arrangement. Obviously the ants wouldn't rush out to defend the spiders against humans, but against smaller foes (and redbacks do have then, see below) maybe? D&Ding it up, there should be more symbiotic arrangements between different types of monsters. I keep thinking of kobolds and dragons (it's an easy one) co-habiting, the dragon gets cleaned and their lair tidied, and probably worshipped while it's at it which is always nice, and has a cohort of guardians to protect it while it slumbers, and in return they get protection plus scraps from fallen heroes and other foes.
Hunter Hunter. This is for the aussies... but you know how we generally like daddy long leg spiders cause they're a) harmless to humans b) eat mozzies? Well it turns out they actively hunt redbacks. Their long narrow legs are hard to hit with the redback bite, and they get a huge reach advantage over the smaller redback, so they are usually first to hit with a web attack that entangles the redback. I haven't seen any daddy longlegs up at the house, I'm thinking of bringing a catch of them up next time. ANYWAY. the idea here is predator predators, and the idea that they fear something that's actually quite innocuous to humans. The hunterhunter could be interacted with by the adventurers, convinced to attack their common foe.
Dimorphism. Female redbacks grow up to 14mm in body length, males only up to 4mm. Really common among spiders and insects. I like the idea of the adventurers slaying a monster, thinking that they've done an awesome job finishing off the beastie, only to find the much much larger female emerging to find her mate in pieces. I did this once, where some space explorers crashlanded on an alien world, and encountered some aggressive large xenos that they dispatched pretty quick... only to find they'd killed a gang of cocky teens, and the adult of the species were suitably bigger and angrier.
Boltholes. Most creatures would rather avoid a fight than pick one, (unless they're hungry, hunting or fucking funnelwebs) and redbacks usually have boltholes in their webs that lead to places of safety. Monster lairs should have them, too.
Bizarre eggs. I find the near perfect spheres of redback eggsacs strangely artistic, and maybe monsters lairs should be strewn with bizarre geometric things that turn out to be full of little monsterbabes.
Sexual cannibalism. Redbacks are one of the few spiders that practice sexual cannibalism ("I'm gonna eat you out tonight, honey") and it's not a case of "fuckfuckfuckIhopeshedoesn'teatmethistime". Instead males actively encourage the females to eat them by positioning themselves near the mandibles. How to gameify this? no idea, but eh, it's weird (but not as weird as the hermaphroditic Glaucus Sea Dragons, who try to eat their mate's genitalia first to see who gets to be the dude in this coupling).
There's More Than One. Seriously this was the thing that tripped me up most. Finding the second one after I thought the job was done. Which is weird, cause most of the info I read up on last night said that females will fight and eat each other. I guess the ecology around the house was rich enough that they didn't have to. But if you have a monster plaguing the area, not letting on that there's more than one until after the party has spent all its resources taking down the first one will screw them good.
Poisons and How They Should Really Work. A redback bite is powerful enough to liquify the innards of its prey within 20 mins, affect a human for several days (and the bite is often not noticed at the time). None of this Save vs Poison or lose 2 points of Con. If you got bit by a giant redback and you fail your save, the inside of your sword arm should be jelly within 2d6 rounds. Permanently. Also the bite of a redback causes profuse sweating in a localised area around the bite. If a monster of arcane origins manages to bite you, weird arcane shit happens to the bite area for several days.
Anwyay that's all I got. Redbacks suck (but no-one's died from a redback since 1956) but they're horribly awesome, and I wish Peter Jackson had used them as the inspiration for Shelob instead of the stockier spider he went with!
Originally posted on G+, 1st Feb 2016.
