#my shoops

Ghoulspiders: A specialized morph of the species inhabiting areas adjacent to radioactive minerals, they direct their host towards deposits of these minerals with a form of neurological impulse towards pica. The host often expires well before the arachnid reaches full maturation due to the poisoning involved.

The Ghoulspider is actually quite peaceful for its species, much less aggressive due to the fact that its radiovoric nature means it does not require meat for sustenance, only consuming plant matter now and again for various necessary matter it may transmute into nutrients. It is, of course, deathly toxic to those individuals who become adjacent to it, but this is not due to malice on the creature’s part.

Certain individuals have bred them as a weapon of terror, in tactics that no doubt international criminal courts will be working out for years to come.

Nightmare Spiders: These are perhaps the most troubling of all the forms of this creature, as they do not keep court in conventional matter, but rather in ectoplasmic-etherial ones. It is said the evolution of this species came from the infection of a powerful psychic human with Horrid Spider eggs, who went mad before his astral body was able to wrest control from the infectious creature, and which took on a warped form akin to this creature before the mental fusion simply scuttled away to infect more.

Born from the psionically sensitive, it feeds on fear and weilds enormous psychic powers despite having no true physical body except the wispy immaterial on the ethereal plane, which is the only place where it may be injured aside from the much less likely route of inter-dream combat. While they appear tiny on the etherial plane, they are gargantuan in their realm of nightmares, where they feed, and at times may deign to reproduce.

High Spiders: These creatures are only slightly larger than the usual spiders they take after, but are distinguished by their human-level intelligence, distinctive colors, fanciful dress, and quite civilized manners. They dress in gorgeous adornments; in particular those that conceal their human half; and they speak in adorable squeaking tones.

The resin and web constructed cities they make boggle the mind, and their heavily alchemy/magic-based technology is simple, yet brilliant, and they hold quite the excellent parties and are generally quite friendly; genteel souls. Their only flaw; their great shame as a species; is that they must kill sentient beings to reproduce still.

They do say they only use the dying and those who would be killed anyway, and they do make a good try of doing so. Emphasis on the word try…

Tomb Spyder: Not resting in human skulls, this legendarily royalty-bred type was created by kings to nest in the mystical alchemist-summoned Brazen Heads [Writer’s Note: Those were an actual historical myth, go look them up] to guard tombs and store the knowledge therein for reconstruction should the tomb fade or disappear.

Their floodlight-eyes can illuminate, reveal that hidden by magic, or simply blast with a mixture of holy and unholy energies that round down to morally ambiguous blasts. They are dedicated to their job, and will relentlessly hunt those that defile their dwellings, though if one comes simply seeking knowledge, they are completely willing and eager to grant it; aside from that which their masters commanded them not to reveal...

Mountain Spiders: A subspecies incubated in the Languedire Mountains, where great stone heads of rare minerals grow naturally like plantlife, this species has been able to peacefully incubate within these stone heads, integrating themselves with their geology to create an incredibly efficient metabolism and a shockingly high; if unorthodox; intelligence via neural integration with the heads’ mineral structures

They are approximately the size of the ancient sauropods, and wander slowly, grazing on vegetable and animal alike, but peaceably. They do tend to make a point of avoiding sapient beings, leading to speculation that they may be sapient themselves. But, if they are, they keep it to themselves. They don’t seem to have much to say.

War Spiders: A sub-species of the High Spiders, these were a warrior cult sickened by the “soft” lifestyle of their brethren who left to return to their roots of killing, who it is said trained so deeply that their bodies merged with the armors and weapons they so fetishized.

They want not for heads to birth in, for that is a part of the price almost always consistent in their work as mercenaries. Their skills with their inbuilt blades is beyond compare, and the way they integrate their chitinous and steely tissues with their host head further than other species has granted them frightening regeneration beyond other species; along with enhanced growth to roughly the size of a small car.

Merchant Spider: There is only one Merchant Spider, an individual who is said to be a rare color morph of the High Spyder. She is friendly, a brilliant conversationalist, and will rob you blind if you let her. Do not trust her.

Integra Spiders: A species that suggests there may be a better way for the Horrid Spider Race, this subspecies represents a full integration of the human form and the spider’s, the spider’s sentience being symbiotic with the original rather than subsuming it, and giving the humanoid form all the Spider’s typical abilities combined with human resilience; albeit altering it into a body type more akin to the pictured chitinous; thicker; hermaphroditic form no matter what the previous sex of the host was.

The merger is almost always willing, by those who are outcasts in their communities, and the individual consciousnesses tend to perceive each other as akin to siblings; and tend to work towards their own; independent goals; which they can far more easily accomplish than any other human due to being near immortal. Many have cited the idea that they “breathe through their skin” as the reason why they so often shun clothing, but this is often viewed as an excuse, given by those individuals who prefer nudity for other reasons.

Spider God Sacrifine: Said to have uplifted the species from near extinction, this being lives like a heartbeat in the minds of all his species; constantly moving and hunting so quickly as to be invincible; with a hall of heads of lesser gods said to lie at the core of the world below the Languedire Mountains that he changes like shells.

He acts through his worshippers sometimes through subtle implication; sometimes through direct control, though even the High Spiders who shun him hear his heartbeat and hear his hunger in their minds, imploring them to gnaw, to kill.

God Spider Metabond: The first of the Integra Spiders, borne from a woman who hated Sacrifine and from the egg of the first High Spider Queen before she was slain by agents of Sacrifice through multitudes of molts she has grown into her gargantuan form.

She is rushing too, across the globe, to find a better way, but has only truly been seen when fighting Sacrifine, where they stop, two great forces clashing unbending, and when in the minds of all the Horrid Spider species; the heartbeat stops in their minds, and they can see something better in the distance…

Welp, while I didn’t win, or even get shown as a runner-up, I figured I might as well use the opportunity to show off all my Spider designs and, for the first time ever, the full worldbuilding deets there!

And, while the original picture/asset belongs to the creators of the Horrid Spider, all original elements, concepts, ect are hereby released under a CC-BY 4.0 License, Free TO Use As You See Fit in any way, as long as I, Thomas F. Johnson, am credited as their creator!