[Scenario Seed] Spider Armies

[Catsmate]

A quick idea, inspired by this story. Arachnophobes should leave now and not click on that link.

In the Peruvian rainforest lives Anelosimus eximius one of the rare social spiders who create colonies, in the case of A. eximius of up to fifty thousand individuals¹. They collectively create an maintain huge webs, up to twelve square metres in size, allowing them to efficiently catch and kill prey. Rearing and feeding of the young is also done collectively
So far they're just an unusual and interesting bit of natural history, albeit one that's rather creepy. But what if they're not a natural phenomenon?

Could their organisation be the result of some external influence? The genetic meddling of an crashed alien; the influence of a mysterious psionic crystal; the selective breeding programme of a stranded renegade Eight Leg fleeing Metebelis III and the wrath of the Great One; mutations caused by chronon radiation from a poorly shielded time machine; the possibilities are many.

• Magnus Greel mutated rats into guardians for his hideout; could the spiders (which were discovered in the 1880s) be the product of an experiment by another escapee from the fifty-first century?
  
• What happened to them? Perhaps their desiccated corpse is still there, wrapped in a cocoon of spider silk.
  

If they are a purely natural evolution, what happens if someone tampers with them. They're practically tailor-made for a Pulp era Mad Scientist's evil plan, just add a controlling intelligence and they fit right in. Or they could be a natural menace, evolving into a hive intelligence, discovered by the heroes who must save humanity.
They'd also be a useful addition to the arsenal of a Fu Manchu like villain, could be encountered by Percy Fawcett, or even turn up far from home (maybe that's why Williamson's tunnels were abandoned), a menace for Torchwood or UNIT to deal with.

• Question, has anyone used live spiders as a gaming prop, the GM of a CoC game I played in did this once with a borrowed tarantula...

Comments? Suggestions? Ideas?


¹ That's four hundred thousand legs and one hundred thousand poison fangs for the arachnophobes.....

[Hedgewick]

Jan 22, 2016 11:19:48 GMT Catsmate said:

Arachnophobes should leave now and not click on that link.

Understood. I'll catch the next one...

[CountClockwise]

I like the idea of a not racist fu-manchu villain with a spider army sounds pretty cool. There's a lot of wiggle room with alins like the Racknoss being undefined and with plenty of fertile ground. Perhaps they are social spiders with these web like structures (which could explain the Webstar)

I really have to read your scenario seeds more often as they have a beautiful amount of fertile ground to draw from and bing attention to weird and glossed over parts of history. I'll be sure to steal borrow some ideas from them for my games

[starkllr]

I'm not clicking that link. My automatic response to anything spider-related is: KILL IT WITH FIRE

That said, the spider army would be a great choice for any number of Whovian villains to utilize. Besides the possibilities you mention, what about the Great Intelligence? It might use the spiders the same way it uses the Yeti. Different tools for different environments, right?

Question, has anyone used live spiders as a gaming prop, the GM of a CoC game I played in did this once with a borrowed tarantula...

That would have been the last session for me with that GM, and also the last time I'd ever have set foot in their house! If it's got less than two legs, or more than four, you can keep it well away from me.

[Catsmate]

Jan 23, 2016 16:36:11 GMT CountClockwise said:

I like the idea of a not racist fu-manchu villain with a spider army sounds pretty cool. There's a lot of wiggle room with alins like the Racknoss being undefined and with plenty of fertile ground. Perhaps they are social spiders with these web like structures (which could explain the Webstar)

I really have to read your scenario seeds more often as they have a beautiful amount of fertile ground to draw from and bing attention to weird and glossed over parts of history. I'll be sure to steal borrow some ideas from them for my games

Thanks! Feel free to borrow away, I'll hopefully have time soon to update/lengthen a few of the PDFs.

Jan 23, 2016 17:20:20 GMT starkllr said:

I'm not clicking that link. My automatic response to anything spider-related is: KILL IT WITH FIRE

Don't Google "Baltimore Wastewater Treatment Plant" then. Or click on this link: An Immense Concentration of Orb-Weaving Spiders With Communal Webbing in a Man-Made Structural Habitat.
Though that incident (tens of millions of spiders colonised a water treatment plant and actually caused structural damage due to the weight of webbing) has some fascinating gaming potential.

Jan 23, 2016 17:20:20 GMT starkllr said:

That said, the spider army would be a great choice for any number of Whovian villains to utilize. Besides the possibilities you mention, what about the Great Intelligence? It might use the spiders the same way it uses the Yeti. Different tools for different environments, right?

Yep, that sounds good. Perhaps the Web of Fear was derived from spiders in some way? Or even caused by such creatures under the control of the Great Intelligence. It's be an interesting variation on that story with threats both huge and small to fight.

Jan 23, 2016 17:20:20 GMT starkllr said:

Question, has anyone used live spiders as a gaming prop, the GM of a CoC game I played in did this once with a borrowed tarantula...

That would have been the last session for me with that GM, and also the last time I'd ever have set foot in their house! If it's got less than two legs, or more than four, you can keep it well away from me.

She borrowed it from a zoologist at college and surprised us with it. A couple of people were rather freaked out but several had Hector crawling on them quite happily.
Then again one of the players was the son of one of Europe's leading experts on leeches... Now that was house people didn't want to visit.


Another idea, in the spider menace vein, is spiders in space. They'll inevitably accompany humanity as new worlds are colonised, but how will they change. There's the example of the Eight Legs of Metebelis III, mutated by psionic crystals, but what about spiders in free-fall? (Something that NASA tested a few years back).
Then there's the economic potential; spider silk is immensely strong, and has great potential in the field of material science, but is difficult to harvest in quantity. What about genetically modified giant spiders intended to be farmed as the source of this wonder material in the near future? What could possibly go wrong?