The Beast Fears Fire - Dear Boyfriend, We can Make Your Girlfriend Scream Louder than You Can.

The Spiders

The northeast corner of Crickton is the southeast corner of the Senlin Teigou, a forest that no one has really mapped all that well and extends east to the coast and north to the taiga. Technically, it's part of Murren, but things don't always work out that way, and anyway, it has a government of its own.

There's a forest just to the west of where the Surlycrow Plateau juts down and cuts off northwestern Crickton from northeastern Savel. In the Savelish highlands, there is also a forest, much smaller than the Teigou, but home to a tiny nation of its own. These nations don't get a lot of recognition on maps or in the halls of power of most countries; Murren had diplomats in these two and several others, which were considered as part of the case for the western kingdoms to go to war with Murren.

The objection the west had to Murren was that these nations are composed of spiders. About a dozen different species around the world, 50-60 kilograms of #nope a piece, sentient, conversant, strict carnivores and apex predators. And some of them are really hairy. And all of them have all those legs...

Beyond the aesthetic terror the spiders cause (they find humanoids a little weird, and a few squeamish souls do find them distasteful and even frightening, it's not quite as widespread as arachnophobia is among humans), they are alien and while no more threatening, on average, than our fellow sapient vertebrates, they aren't any less threatening, and almost all of them possess some sort of venom as a weapon.

Spiders can use the languages of the sea (in fact, their language is primarily Neritic and Littoral in sign, using their pedipalps), and vocalize using the spiracles on their bodies. This, of course, gives a single spider a chorus of hissing whispers for a voice, and that helps nothing in terms of interspecies comfort.

There are about seven species that live together in relative amity in the Teigou, and two that have frequent feuds in the Savelish highlands. Crickton attempts to have regular relations with both nations, but finds it hard to staff the diplomatic posts, and occasionally tough to guard spider diplomats. That said, Money spiders are starting to make inroads in the northeast through trade. Almost all of the great spiders possess specialized hairs on their pedipalps which make them as dextrous (though not as strong) as human hands. That's right, they can open doors. Hell, they can pick locks, and with their vastly superior sense of scent, hearing and touch (to make up for their abysmal vision - again, there's no mechanical difference), they're usually better at picking locks than most accomplished locksmiths.

:D

Playing Spiders

Of course you can. Things to remember:
Spiders can climb on just about any surface, including ones that are upside-down.
Spiders can manipulate objects as well as a human can with their pedipalps, but they don't have quite the strength in them to wield weapons other than crossbows and black powder weapons effectively, and the latter are quite risky for them to operate.
Spiders possess the following Gear, which they cannot lose, choosing 1 as a D8 and the others as D6s.
-The Silk in my Abdomen
-The Venom in my Fangs
-The Strength in my Carapace
Spiders have an ability determined by their classification, which you must take.
Spiders do not heal very well. All Harm they suffer has to be treated by someone who has the Miraculous Healing Ability. They can recover 1 harm per week otherwise.
Like Wolves Spiders are subject to the What's for Dinner and Walking Man's Road Moves. Unlike wolves, spiders don't need to make that move for manual manipulation of things, but they do for all social interactions, including intimidation (they tend to be too frightening to actually intimidate people normally).