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Spiders . . . I’m really uncomfortable around spiders.

This is probably why I toss them in as scary swarming monsters.  They’re always big and give the heroes trouble.  The thing is that a giant spider gets boring even if you change up the species.  Webbing, poison, fangs, stabby legs, jumping, and those creepy eyes can only get you so far.  Sometimes, an author needs to take the icky monsters and make them a whole lot worse.

Well, Windemere has a bunch of monstrous spider species and I haven’t even started with those.  In fact, I’ve only done two types from what I remember, but I have others planned.  Here’s the list:

• Horned–  Giant spiders that live in mountains.  They have horns, which are very long and pointy.  Some varieties will be able to fire them, but they will not regenerate immediately.
• Winged–  A rare species found in heavy magic areas.  They don’t create webs because they are always flying around.  Their webbing is used to snag prey and build protective egg sacks.
• Acidic–  Spiders that spit acid and are toxic to the touch.  Found in magically corrupted swamps.
• Illusion–  An incredibly rare spider found in the deepest jungles and caves. They are solitary creatures and have the ability to create illusionary copies.  So, you think there’s a swarm of spiders, but only one is real and dangerous.
• Scorpion–  Yeah, I’m going to get lazy here.  Slap a part of one arachnid (scorpion tail) on the body of another (spider).  Not sure if I’m going to have webbing or poison come out of the tail.  Maybe it injects webbing into the skin of a victim.
• Aquatic–  Spiders that can breathe and swim underwater.  They don’t do webbing either, but create a cement to build coral-like structures.  So, prey can mistake one of their nests for a reef.
• Invisibile–  Self-explanatory and now I’m scaring myself.
• Arctic– Found in the colder regions, they do make webs, but these are not sticky.  They are horizontal and hidden above passes and on ice cave ceilings.  Icicles are gathered over time then the spider knocks them down to act as spikes to kill or injure prey passing beneath.
• Sand–  A burrowing type that operates similar to an ant lion.  It creates a sink hole and waits in the center.  Nothing too fancy since I believe there are real spiders that do this.  It’s just a really big one.
• Scaled–  A big spider with armored scales.  They aren’t that great at jumping, but they’re like eight-legged tanks.
• Dream–  This is a species found in the Dreamscape and they really don’t do much to threaten others.  They move within dreams to grab any food that materializes, but they usually leave people alone.  Only time they are a threat is if they are cornered, which is rare because most don’t notice they’re around.

That’s all I can remember and find in my array of notes.  Spider-Kind was one of many that took 4th place, but I wanted to do it because of all the varieties.  It really shows how a fantasy author can take one template and get a lot of mileage out of it.  This works great for monsters, which are the animals of your world.  After all, real animals have a variety depending on environment, so it should be the same here.

Thank you for sticking with me for these monsters.