Spider [Dark Sun]

These huge, revolting spiders have oily black hides blotched with deep purple or red and faces that look disturbingly human. They are intelligent and live underground in small tribes, and the cleverest can speak the common trade tongue of merchants.

In a fight a dark spider strikes with two forelegs for 1d10 each and bites for 1d6 plus Type F venom: a failed save vs. poison means instant death, while a successful one negates all damage. Tribes set web snares and then fall on trapped foes together, often with psionicists luring victims in. Hunting parties of warriors, sometimes led by psionicists or casters, creep up on sleeping creatures to bind them in silk and carry them alive to the queen, but anything that struggles is poisoned and eaten on the spot.

Each tribe has distinct castes. Warriors are the most common, and one in five of them is a little brighter and has limited psionics. Mage spiders, also smarter than the rest, use life-draining wizard magic of up to 6th level, 20% of them have psionics too, and together with the psionicists they form an elite that commands the warriors. Above all rules the feared queen, a 6th-level psionicist who also casts as a 6th- or 7th-level life-draining wizard. Her Type E venom kills on a failed save and still deals 20 damage on a successful one.

Psionicists have the clairsentient sciences clairvoyance and clairaudience with the devotions radial navigation, know location, know direction, danger sense and feel sound, plus the telepathic science mind link with psionic crush, mind thrust, ego whip, contact and false sensory input. The queen has all of these and adds the psychometabolic science life draining and the devotion expansion.

Dark spiders have no natural predators but often anger their neighbors. Young hatch from silk sacs in a nursery chamber within the lair. Assassins pay well for their venom, and the spiders occasionally trade silk for live food; some merchant houses reportedly supply slaves for that purpose in exchange for the valuable silk.

Mountain spiders look like ordinary spiders apart from their great size and coloring, which soon after hatching shifts to match the local rock. They den in small caves on cliffs and mountainsides and snatch birds and other creatures that stray close. They are highly intelligent and love to bait travelers, often setting bright metal just inside a cave mouth where the sun will make it flash.

They prefer ambush. The bite deals 1d8 and carries a potent Type O venom that paralyzes in 2d12 minutes unless the victim saves vs. poison. About 10% are psionic, with domination, mass domination, psionic blast and mind link among their telepathic sciences; mind thrust, invincible foes, id insinuation, empathy, awe, attraction, ego whip and contact as telepathic devotions; body weaponry (producing insectlike weapons) and catfall from psychometabolism; and danger sense and sensitivity to observation from clairsentience.

Their tunnels are thought to join into a network, and they may have a loose tribal society of smaller packs, but no thinking creature has ever crawled those passages to find out. They feed on living flesh and blood and especially relish wounded rocs. Assassins prize the venom, and a skilled priest or wizard of either path can turn it into a potion that cures paralysis.

These small spiders vanish into silt, swim through it with ease and attack unseen from below the surface, swarming anything that enters their patch. Their bites matter less than their venom, which deals no damage but paralyzes any victim who fails a save vs. poison at +2. The effect fades after 2d6 rounds, yet most victims have been bitten so often by then that the swarm has already devoured them.