Wight Spiders

(from Shadows of the UK, page 178)

• more detail on Azlu; the Spider Host
• Wight Spiders
• Spitting Spiders
• Spinner-Hag; the Queen of Poison

Unlike the Spitting Spiders, the Wight Spiders are not a separate species, but a small society of Azlu that work together. They make their homes, as the
name implies, upon the Isle of Wight at the southern end of England. The island itself is a popular seaside resort since Victorian times, and has a rich maritime history.

This, however, is not why the Spider Hosts (which have dwelled here for centuries) call this place home. For one, the island is isolated, with only
ferries bringing people to and from the island. The Azlu can monitor traffic easily, and find it difficult to be surprised. Two, the Isle has a number of excellent places for the network of Hosts to hide — sea caves, beneath cliffs or out upon the Needles (the big rocky chalk formations that rise out of the ocean on the western side of the island).

However, the true reasons that many Spider Hosts dwell here are the fossils. The Isle of Wight is home to one of the most impressive fossil records from the
Cretaceous period in all of Europe, if not the world. A number of complete dinosaur skeletons have been found in the crumbling cliffs and constant land erosion. In a manner of speaking, this has unearthed what the Forsaken believe was once a kind of “burial ground” for ancient creatures. The bones that lie beneath the surface are not accidental, so they say. As such, this saurian graveyard offers an unusual number of loci (mostly small, but taken together it becomes a large network), many of which the Spider Hosts control. What few Forsaken claim territory on the Isle find themselves in a constant battle against the Azlu, which are smarter and better hidden than most Spider Hosts tend to be.

Of course, rumors persist that there is another, darker reason for the Spider Hosts to have interest in this island. Mages friendly enough with Forsaken claim to have seen fossils of things that didn’t come from dinosaurs. These fossils aren’t of skeletons at all, but of grotesque exoskeletons from what may have been some kind of monstrous arachnid. Whatever this creature was (if it existed at all), it’s dead now — but the wizards claimed that the fossils spoke to them in their minds, chittering and clicking in some kind of insectile language.

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