Formal writeup submission. Proofread, improved formatting and added a picture.
Children of E
Name: Children of E, or Chaos Children, is the official designation given to the monsters by the Black Sun. Generally, 'E' is believed to stand for 'Entropy', and the creatures are colloquially known as 'Chaos Children'. However, the deliberately ambiguous title actually refers to Evarista Nitrozian, the actual originator of this chaos-touched species.
Habitat: Chaos Children can primarily be found in and around Ravok. They are not extremely common in the city proper, but present a hazard on the lakeshore, as well as the surrounding roads, swamps and forests in northern Sylira. Unlike most other arachnids, they have no particular preference for a type of environment, and live wherever they can reliably hide and hunt.
Origin: The creatures began appearing after the city of Ravok was attacked by an arachnid monster in the late autumn of 516 A.V. The creatures are the offspring of said monster, left behind before the parent vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. All of this is common knowledge in the city, hence the name of the creatures.
Physical CharacteristicsAll Children of E are arachnid invertebrates with a vague resemblance to golden silk orb-weavers. Most of them have eight legs with yellow and black stripes, a similarly striped abdomen and a black cephalothorax. However, the similarities end there, and so does the uniformity. The chaotic energies involved in their original conception has scrambled their genetic makeup, often far beyond common sense. Each specimen possesses one or more strange and unnatural characteristics. The diverging features can range from subtle and inconsequential to outright reality-defying. No two Chaos Children are the same.
On average, a Chaos Child is about 5 cm long, excluding legspan. The smallest specimens are less than 1 mm in length, while the largest are about 10 cm. Most females fall above the 5 cm average, while most males fall below. The tiny spiders are in practice more dangerous because they can enter a person's body unnoticed, usually when the person is asleep, at which point the victim is at the complete mercy of whatever abilities the Spawn has.
Their diet depends on the size of the spiders. Larger specimen tend to be carnivorous, while smaller lead parasitic lifestyles on, or in, something else. The Children have a voracious appetite and will target the largest prey they can afford to attack. Single hunters usually do not target humans or other large creatures, but groups of several cooperating Children with a diverse set of abilities do so eagerly.
They reproduce as most spiders do, but gestation and incubation periods are somewhat shorter. Depending on the size of the spider, it can take a Child from one week to one year to reach maturity, with larger specimens developing slower.
Social StructureChildren of E do not have any patterns of social behavior and no social hierarchy. If two or more spiders meet, they tend to cooperate loosely when hunting or protecting offspring, but would generally not make any last stands for anyone other than themselves. Most spiders have at leas one sharp sense that they can use to detect potential mates, sometimes over large distances. In the wild, Children integrate themselves into any ecosystem that can accommodate for them, pushing out any other arachnids and claiming the niche for themselves.
Females show much ingenuity when choosing a location to lay their eggs, looking for places that are both safe and close to potential food sources. They are also clever enough to exploit the structure of man-made buildings to find inaccessible spots where their young can safely hatch and disperse across the building or settlement. Tiny specimen enjoy climbing inside of a larger creature and lay their eggs there, providing excellent safety and food supply for their young, much to the distress of the host.
Encounter GenerationOOC: To determine the nature of an encountered specimen, first roll 1d100, where the result is the specimen's length in millimeters. Second, roll 1d18 to determine a characteristic feature. Roll more than once for more features. Rolling the same feature more than once results in stacking where applicable (ex. two 4 would give multiple tails, and two 16 would give near-instant regeneration). The current feature list is a starting package of sorts; adding more variants is always encouraged.
1. Improved Silk: This spider can generate more and stronger silk than usual, and is much more generous in its use. It may spin gigantic and extremely sticky webs, booby-trap doorways and objects, and use elaborate silk kites to become airborne even if it would normally be too heavy to do so.
2. Improved Venom: This spider can generate more and stronger toxin than usual, and is much more generous in its use. It may cover its web in venom, deliberately poison food or use other indirect means of getting the venom into its prey, or even fire globs of venom as projectiles. Venomous properties and effects during contact of skin include a burning sensation that slowly eats away the skin if not washed off. Cysts will form and pus often resulting in the venom spreading. The topical area will itch severely. Venomous properties if ingested: very slow internal hemorrhaging which can result in catastrophic organ failure.
3. Improved Legs: This spider has more, longer and stronger legs, which are equipped with a large number of ball joints instead of the usual pin joints. The legs can bend at nearly any place and angle, making them as flexible as tentacles for practical purposes.
4. Tail: This spider has a scorpion-like segmented tail protruding from the back of its abdomen. The tail has a long stinger at the end. The venom glands in the tail are different from the ones in the creature's mouth, and thus its sting will have different effects than its bite. These effects cause temporary paralysis of the area stung. If multiple stings incur it is possible that the full body will be paralyzed.
5. Jaws: This spider has unusually large and strong jaws, with the lower jaw running along most of its torso. By default, it has a set of tiny but razor-sharp teeth that can shave off soft tissue easily. To deal with harder surfaces, the creature can eject a set of four larger fangs, two on each jaw.
6. Claws: This spider has a crab-like pincer at the end of one or more of its legs. The pincer is strong enough to instantly sever fingers, noses and other protrusions. Larger spiders are capable of crushing through armor. It also allows the spider to move and hold onto objects more easily.
7. Voice: This spider can imitate vocal sounds produced by other creatures, usually with impeccable accuracy. When dealing with humans, this is usually used to imitate cries for help to lure prey, roars of intimidation to scare away dangers, or other ways to confuse or misdirect.
8. Smoke: This spider has an organ that can produce smoke of various colors and textures. This is usually used to impair vision, attract or distract attention, or to communicate across large distances.
9. Smell: This spider can release a colorless airborne chemical with an extremely strong odor, usually but not always foul. The odor can be intense enough to cause nausea or even loss of consciousness in humans.
10. Grinder: This spider can produce a horrible grating noise, along with a shower of sparks, by rubbing its legs together. The noise is extremely intrusive and, with enough exposure, deafening. The sparks can be used to misdirect or communicate in the darkness, and also present a serious fire hazard.
11. Bioluminescence: This spider can make any part of its body glow in the dark at will, or produce a series of bright flashes to blind and disorient. More notably, it can spin bioluminescent silk, which it uses to construct breathtaking visual arrangements to deceive or communicate.
12. Breathless: This spider mysteriously doesn't need oxygen to stay alive. It cannot be drowned or suffocated, and the lack of need for respiratory organs leaves more room for muscles and other useful tissue, making it stronger, faster and tougher than an opponent could expect when judging by size alone.
13. Autonomous propagation: This spider can produce offspring without the aid of a mate, and has greatly reduced gestation periods, possibly able to lay several batches of eggs per day.
14. Acoustic vision: This spider has an extremely fine sense of hearing and the ability to produce ultrasound. It can 'see' around corners and obstacles, easily recognize persons by their voice or heartbeat, and otherwise have complete auditory awareness in a large radius around itself. When underwater, this radius expands even further.
15. Electrogenesis: This spider has organs to generate and sense electricity. It projects an electromagnetic field which it uses to detect living organisms nearby, as well as manipulate metal objects in a short radius around itself. It can emit brief but powerful electric discharge to attack anything it touches, or anything close by if underwater.
16. Regeneration: This spider can regenerate lost bodyparts in a matter of chimes. The regenerated organ may have different properties from the original one.
17. Chlorophyll: This spider has a bright green body with green-and-yellow striped legs. It uses sunlight to acquire energy and is not directly aggressive towards humans. This type of spider reproduces not by laying eggs, but by implanting parasitic seeds into other lifeforms. The seeds slowly merge with the host and seize control of various organs, controlling the host's behavior by forcing unnatural physiological needs on them. Once control of the reproductive organs is seized in this way, the offspring of the host will be born with a new seed already in them. Humans usually become victims by accidentally swallowing such a seed.
18. Sapience: This spider is capable of abstract thought. It has a human-like mental capacity and its aura is as large and complex as that of a human. It understands human speech but lacks the means for verbal communication. Someone who can get around this obstacle, such as a telepath, would be able to converse with it. It tends to be less directly aggressive than its feral counterparts, but is perhaps more dangerous than any of them, on account of its intelligence. It can even learn magic if it finds a means to do so.
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The skill levels can be doctored by the mods.