Spider-spy

Spider-spies are large enchanted spiders, among the most successful living designs of the wizard-lords of a wizard-governed nation. Instead of thick, sprawling webs, a spider-spy strings lines of gossamer barely thicker than a human hair, able to cover a square mile for each of its hit points.

With their keepers they converse in soft chitters made by mouth and spinnerets, punctuated by leg signals.

These webs catch information rather than prey. When anything touches a line, the spy feels it and learns a remarkable amount at once: the creature's precise location, rough size and age, race, sex, mood (nervous, gloomy, smug and so on), general alignment as good, evil or neutral, magical abilities, and whether it has curse-born gifts. If the creature fails a save vs. magic, the spy also picks up its surface thoughts as with ESP. Spies are trained to ignore meaningless contacts such as a bird, cat or forest ray breaking a strand. Lines are so fine they are effectively invisible; detect invisibility reveals them, and a thief who suspects them can find them with find/remove traps.

A spider-spy is far too valuable to risk, so it is trained to run from any fight. Attacked, it chitters to warn its keepers and can also send a silent alarm along the ultra-fine strand usually tying it to its controller. If cornered, it bites, up to three times a day. The venom takes about five minutes to act; the victim must save vs. poison at +5 or die, and still takes 8 damage on a success. When several spies must fight together, one bites while its companions keep their distance and spray silk at the enemy.

Spider-spies work in groups of 2 to 5, always with an aranea controller close by, each group running a single network as large as nine square miles. One waits in the middle gathering news while the others patrol, fixing breaks and reporting to the controller, and they swap roles often. Aranea value their spy handlers highly and train them long, because speaking with the spiders is a demanding art requiring two or more nonweapon proficiency slots.

Spider-spies do not occur in nature, and their breeding is strictly managed. They eat small warm-blooded animals and large insects.