The last few weekends I have been camping out and working at a California Renaissance Faire, where friends and I do several music shows a day at one of the stages. I’ve done this on and off for a couple of decades, and it is still big fun. Running around in baggy peasant clothing all day, and getting cleaned up and into street cloths for nights of partying out in the woods and under the stars in this amazing village that gets recreated. It’s sort of my mini-burning man. One of the ale stands opens up around 8PM Sat night, and I often hit the bar scene, sucking down 3 dollar Bass Ales fresh from the tap, which is what I like to do when there is no particular party going on that I want to be at, or some girl I am trying to hook up with.
Last Saturday night I staggered back to camp with a few folk right after midnight, and we were sitting around the fairly quiet camping area having a beer and shooting the shit. Suddenly up comes an old friend of mine, shining his flashlight into his pewter Ale mug. Inside was a monstrosity exactly like shown in the picture above. A wolf spider, apparently, with its little baby monsters clinging lovingly to its back. It was around the size of your thumb.
Needless to say, I freaked. I normally like spiders, but this thing is especially brutal looking, and the babies were icing on the cake of fear. I’ve lived in California my whole life, and although not an avid camper I have had countless such weekends in the woods. As others around us freaked when they looked in the disgusto-mug, I thought about how I was going to go to sleep that night thinking about these bad mamajammas toting there tots around beneath my covers, or dangling on the tent ceiling 4 feet above me. In fetal position, that’s how.
So naturally one day I am going to have to have a giant version of this thing show up in a D&D game. But what would set it apart from other giant spiders? The ability to use the babies on its back as missiles, that’s how. Every round the mama could lunch one or two of these things, baseball sized spiders that could latch on to you and inject some nasty poison. Or hell, why could they not explode in a mist of deadly gas? Perhaps act as a firebomb on contact? I dunno, it’s D&D man. But in the game, those babies gotta do something besides look for a free ride from mama.
Each round, the baby spider swarm does an automatic 1d6+2 damage (no attack roll needed) as they devour their mama alive. When they're done with her, they're COMING FOR YOU!
ReplyDeleteYep, that's pretty horrific. I also understand that tarantulas turn cacti into what're essentially baby tarantula grenades.
ReplyDeleteI did something similar using the idea of a Surinam toad, to kind of spice up the ol' Type II Demon.
Gives new meaning to those stupid "Baby on Board" stickers!
ReplyDeleteFor extra cruelty in the game, have the giant mother fight the party with some of her legs, walk with other legs... and use her other legs to pick up the babies and throw them at the party.
ReplyDeleteI had a similar idea but with giant possums. The mother possum would swing out of a tree on its prehensile tale and grab and hold the unlucky character while here baby's would commence to swarm and bite. Never had a chance to use it - yet.
ReplyDeleteWe have wolf spiders here in MD that are (legs included) the side of your palm. When one of these get's dropped into my pool, or killed, the babies fan out in a huge burst. I'd imagine that a death effect would be pretty cool, Like a spider cluster bomb. It would even be a great surprise for the PCs if the babies were actually stored IN as opposed to ON her abdomen.
ReplyDeleteYep, that sounds like he had a little one. I'm in N-CA, and they get as big as your palm here too. One of my girls found one trying to come into our house one time. Now, every wolf spider is another mouth competing with all the goddamn black widows around here, so I didn't want to kill it. I knocked it off the wall into a box with a broom. Wow. Every square inch of the box was instantly swarming with little baby wolf spiders.
ReplyDeleteThe whole neighborhood heard my daughter's high-pitched scream. Yeah, it was her, that's right.