Vortex Spider

The vortex spider keeps the general shape of the phase spider it descends from, but little else. Its thin shell is blue-gray, blotched with dull, waxy patches. That coloring only shows when the spider has been driven from its home, because it can shift its hue to match its web and the surrounding mist-smoke, whether it is creeping along the edges or resting in the tangled center.

Its web is spun from the mist-smoke of the time demiplane and toughened with pure temporal energy, which makes it completely invisible there. A detect temporal anomaly spell reveals it, and to that caster it shows up clearly even amid a vortex's roiling. Webs reach up to 50 feet across, too small to span any but the narrowest vortex, so most cling to a section of the vortex wall.

The strands are not sticky. Anything touching them is slowed as if by a slow spell, because time around it has been bent; since this is not the actual spell, a time mage's usual immunity to time magic gives no protection. The spider waits in a corner of the web, unseen by anyone who fails a save vs. rod/staff/wand, and that save is made at -4 when the web hangs in a vortex. Its bite does little damage, but the venom kills instantly unless the victim saves vs. poison at -2, and even a successful save costs 20 hit points.

Vortex spiders can live anywhere on the demiplane and sometimes string webs among its lifelines, but the vastness of the timestream makes that rarer. Vortices suit them better: travelers pass through constantly, the swirling mist hides the web even more, and the spider can scale the vortex walls vertically, which few creatures can manage. Prey includes careless time travelers, temporal dogs and the smaller temporal gliders. Slow-witted but no fool, the spider ignores large gliders and anything else too big to snare, and if a tether beast wanders into its web, it flees at once to settle elsewhere. Abandoned webs are rare, since the enchanted strands crumble quickly without upkeep.

Bones and belongings of past meals pile up in one corner, tucked out of sight so that visitors do not take fright. The spider grasps that these trinkets have value even though it has no use for them, and it sometimes hangs a tempting item where it can be seen from the vortex wall. Many adventurers have reached for that lure and met the web's owner.

Vortex spiders exist only on the time demiplane. Wizards suggest that, long ago, a colony of phase spiders was caught mid-phase in the eye of a gathering timestorm and stranded there. The castaways found a niche among the demiplane's hunters and hunted, and went on to flourish.