TheMushroomLord

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

The Spider

Interacting: @Kronshi

The spider froze where she was as the terrible cry reverberated through her legs, panic flooding her as for the briefest of moments some primal fear of the creatures of the sky made her forget about anything else. In the second it took her to get a hold of herself, her main eyes had already swivelled towards the sky, frantically scanning for the source of the cry, even as the beat of her heart adjusted in preparation to bolt.

She almost did make a break for it when she saw the shape descending from the heavens, heading almost directly towards the group, but before she could make any rash decisions, the figure resolved itself in her vision and she recognised it as the winged human. The spider wasn’t sure if she could trust that one, but for now at least they appeared more person than bird, so she decided to regard them as the former for the time being. In any case, their unscrupulous features aside, she doubted they had been the one to make the terrifying sound.

When the first of the flames started to fall the spider almost didn’t notice them, the fire almost invisible to her save for a slight distortion in the air and vague greenish haze. When one of the flames landed mere feet away, the heat licking at her carapace, on the other hand, she suddenly became far more aware of them, finally forcing her gaze away from the sky and back to her surroundings.

Focusing upon the candle-like shimmers raining down from the sky, the spider was quick to realise that she would need to find shelter. What was there to cover beneath? Plenty… but what would insulate her from the heat and wouldn’t itself be at risk of igniting?

Through her secondary eyes, the spider saw the shaman raise her staff and do… something; she wasn’t quite sure what exactly, beyond a vague idea it had probably been magic and that it seemed to stop the flames directly above her from touching down. That was a promising start, and the spider immediately started scurrying towards the shaman, only to pause again a moment later when she saw others doing the same, a familiar fear rising within her as she imagined one of the comparatively gargantuan humanoids stepping upon her as they manoeuvred the limited cover.

Could she take cover under some of the existing debris? Maybe, but looking at the human construction she wasn’t confident such a shelter wouldn’t just collapse and crush her if someone stepped on it. What about a corpse, humans had pretty strict rules about what one could and couldn’t do to corpses and she was pretty sure stepping on them was on the taboo list, right? The spider could see a pile of blackened bodies and almost rushed for it, before she spotted the bald woman wading in and decided that she might have been wrong about the corpse thing.

Scanning about some more, the spider spotted a person lying on the ground near the edge of the barrier – not another corpse but a still-living person; the grey-skinned human she’d seen earlier. The thought occurred to her that she might use them as cover – surely the humans would be more reluctant to hurt one of their own – but she quickly decided that was probably a terrible idea.

Sure, unless she was really, really wrong about human rules, they probably wouldn’t be stepped on, but she was pretty certain there was also some kind of rule about creatures hating anything with more limbs than them, and spiders had more limbs than anything else – except for centipedes, but everyone hated centipedes.

Then again, it wasn’t like the man needed to know she was there… unlike her, the humans had no carapaces and instead wrapped themselves in clothes that they could not effectively feel through, and the grey-skinned man, in particular, had plenty of loose cloth she could potentially hide within.

She was still pretty certain that it was a terrible idea, but as she saw the man getting up and realised the opportunity was slipping away, the spider acted on impulse, scuttling over to the human and quickly sequestering herself beneath his coat.

At the same time as the spider hid herself away, her simulacrum – which had been following behind her all this time while acting out a pantomime of her true intentions – suddenly veered off course. For all the spell that governed the logic behind the illusion was a sophisticated thing, it was still largely reliant on her senses to guide it and without them its actions became confused.

Sensing the simulacrum straying off course through her connection to the construct, the spider hesitated only briefly before exerting her will and forcing it to a stop. She could feel that her spell was standing a good few meters away from her – almost certainly a decent ways outside the safety of the barrier – but at the same time, without peeking out from her hiding place she wouldn’t be able to guide it closer in any way that didn’t obviously reveal its nature as an illusion, and there was no way she was going to risk revealing herself now that her ride was up and about.

Well, it wasn’t like the construct was at any real risk of being damaged by the flames or whatever it was that had let out that shriek before, being intangible and all, so the spider simply directed the simulacrum to turn away from the shaman’s shelter and prayed that no one would think to question its actions.

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

The Spider

From the moment the spider had started paying attention to the others, she had felt overwhelmed. No small part of her wanted to interact with the people present, was desperate to introduce herself to each and every one of them and find out everything about them in turn… but at the same time, at that very moment, it was just too much.

There were simply too many of them. Too many ifs and buts and maybes for her to contend with in her mind.

So when an opportunity arose – the strange hairless woman whose attention danced from person to person, offered a greeting to the spider’s simulacrum – the simulacrum didn’t respond, simply shrinking back upon itself as the spider desperately tried and failed to think up an acceptable response to the greeting.

Only when the strange woman’s attention shifted once more, did the spider realised she’d missed her chance, her body and simulacrum both sagging with a warring mixture of relief and disappointment, not that she would make any move to rectify the missed opportunity; instead settling in to observe the other interactions happening around, all the while wishing that somewhat might deign to approach her simulacrum and at the same time desperately hoping that they did not.

The spider couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy as she watched a short girl manage to actually respond to the bald woman’s greeting. But it was the marble-skinned man who's words managed to properly catch her attention, as he asked a question that hadn’t once occurred to her.

Did she have a name? Obviously, not one that she could recall, but then, had she ever had one? From the single memory she could parse it seemed almost weird to think she might once have had one, but at the same time now that she thought on it, the spider felt almost as though something was missing; a hole where a name might go…

Before the spider could figure out any answers to the peculiar question, she was snapped out from her musings by the approach of yet more people. Once more she hoped that an opportunity to interact with them might arise, even as her subconscious mind undermined that very wish by edging her simulacrum away from their approach.

When the first of the newcomers – a pikeman with horns of a sort the spider didn’t think she’d ever seen on a human – announced his suspicions of the group and demanded they stay where they were, the spider decided that maybe this particular person wasn’t one she wanted to talk to. When he moved to threaten the lady that offered greetings – a motion so fast that even with her eight eyes the spider had to reposition herself to see where he went – she decided he definitely wasn’t someone she wanted to talk to.

At the very least, the other two newcomers seemed more agreeable than the pikeman, both acting to talk their more aggressive fellow down.

When the elderly woman – the shaman the spider presumed – managed to produce a gust of wind with a mere tap of her staff, the spider was forced to momentarily retreat back behind cover, wondering exactly how the woman had cast what was clearly a spell with so little fanfare…

At the same time, inadvertently responding to the spider’s actions and intentions, the simulacrum takes several steps back of its own, and to any observing close enough, they might notice that while the magical construct responded to the world around it – the sudden gust of wind whipping its clothes wild about – the world did not acknowledge it in kind – ash and debris passing unimpeded through its illusory body. Of course, from where she was sheltered the spider was unable to observe this phenomenon – though she’d hardly have been surprised had she been – nor did she notice the way the shaman looked right at her, if only for a moment.

Once the wind had died down and she felt relatively confident the shaman wasn’t about to start it back up again, the spider peeked back out of her hidey-hole and returned to her people-watching.

It was becoming increasingly clear that of those that had come to around the spider, like her, none of them seemed to remember their names, nor presumably much else of their pasts. The three that had stridden in from a little ways distance on the other hand apparently retained knowledge of their names and pasts, which seemed like a pretty important distinction to make. What was it that made the two groups different?

Was it just a matter of location? Perhaps some highly localised spell or phenomena had caused them all to lose their memories? The spider could certainly believe such a thing might be possible, but at the same time, the foul-tempered pikeman had seemed to indicate that the spider and her fellow amnesiacs had just shown up out of the blue, and their group was certainly disparate enough to call into question whether they’d been connected before now.

Ever so cautiously, the spider extracted herself from the safety of her cover, then when she was sure no one was walking by to potentially step on her, she scurried over to another patch of cover, before repeating the process several more times in an attempt to map out the area her fellow amnesiacs had arrived and to see if she could identify anything special about it.

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

They’ve got the whole busy with RL thing going on.

@ERode

Truely a fate worse than death.

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

Speaking of, did we lose Vertigo? They got accepted but never ended up moving their CS to the Characters tab.

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

The Spider

The spider’s mind swam with confusion as she came to in a place she neither recognised nor understood. Her memories – a disorientating mess of scattered pieces – refused to provide her with any context that might help her make sense of her current situation, or much of else at all for that matter, the disjointed fragments simply refusing to come together into something coherent.

With no clue where she was or what was going on, the one thing the spider knew for sure was that she was afraid. But that alone at least was something. She knew that she was afraid and she understood why this was so; she was a small pitiful thing stuck in a situation she didn’t understand and painfully aware of just how little she had to work with.

And so, she got to work.

Surrounded by giants that could surely crush her in an instant – whether by misstep or malice – the first thing the spider did was scurry for what shelter she could find. That, as it turned out, was some manner of charred structure, one she felt sure must have been built by humans, though for what purpose she could not imagine since it seemed ill suited for habitation, education, or storage.

While her memories were for the most part incomprehensible to her, one fragment stood out as relatively intact; a single anchor thread from which she might weave herself a path forward.

To start, she extruded her silk into a sheet – not a web in the traditional sense, but a canvas upon which she might do further work. From there she lay more silk atop the canvas, this time in intricately detailed patterns, and atop those she lay yet more patterns. Her work was fast – spurred both by the urgency of the situation and her own fears – but it was not careless or sloppy, and when she was done she stopped to check and triple-check for mistakes or imperfection, meticulously correcting those she discovered.

Only once she felt suitably confident that her creation was foundationally sound and matched the blueprint etched into her memories, did the spider start to hesitate, a new fear creeping up on her. This time it wasn’t the fear of the unknown or even her own potential destruction – perhaps somewhat nebulous but ultimately tangible fears – no, this fear was something far less concrete and rational.

She felt certain that her creation would enable her communication with the humans, in fact, it was likely the only way she’d be able to do so, and even lacking the memories to inform her motivations, the spider felt sure that she’d still want to do so even in the without the pressing need for her to understand and survive the current circumstances.

And yet, at the same time, what if the humans hated and rejected her? What if this was somehow playing her hand too far? What if…

Anxiety ate at the spider as she mulled over her dilemma. At the same time, as much as she tried to ignore it, part of her intuitively recognised that her indecision was not, in fact, indecision, so much as avoidance. She wanted to communicate, but she also didn’t. Objectively, using the spell was probably the right decision; the worst that was likely to happen would be it being dispelled, but then again, what if…

Had the spider been a human, she might have ended up making herself sick, but as it was, she was a spider and fundamentally lacked the physiological ties that characterised human emotions. Instead, she just stood, stock still, for several long moments as she tried and failed to think up an excuse that would hold water in her mind until finally she gave up and relented to her rationality.

Placing her forelimbs upon her creation, the spider pushed the bulk of her meagre mana reserves into the array, which gave no immediate response the spider could see but nonetheless catalysed a flurry of changes in the ambient mana, outside of the spider’s perception.

The changes propagated out from the array, extending out of the spider’s hiding place, whereupon a strange stuff began to form, rapidly contorting itself into facsimiles of blood, flesh, and bone, before finally assembling into the shape of a human woman; a simulacrum all but intangible to anyone and anything, save for light and mana.

To an outside observer, the illusory body would seem to simply stand there, entirely unresponsive for several long moments as the spider continued to procrastinate. Ever so carefully, so as not to damage the delicate functional threads, the spider peeled the tiny ‘web’ from the soot-covered surface she’d created it upon, folding it up into a tight package which she then proceeded to bind to the underside of her cephalothorax.

Only once she had done so and subsequently failed to think of another excuse procrastinate, did the spider hesitantly deign to peek out from her hiding place and assume control over her simulacrum, the spell intuitively interpreting her intentions to have the body nervously peer around at the humans present in a rough imitation of her true body’s actions.

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

@Redacted Before I forget to ask, how is language being handled? Do we all just know the local language or is there some sort of active translation effect?

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

@TheMushroomLord



Much better, move them over.

@Redacted

How did I manage to forget Kumoko until now? I am a fool!

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

Spider

????

Age of Death: — It's complicated.
Gender: — Female
Race: — Spider
Psychology: — Isolated. Wants nothing more than to experience meaningful interactions but is nonetheless terrified of what might happen if she tries.

⑇⑉What You Remember⑉⑈

Simulacrum

The nightwatchman glanced towards the spider sitting on the library wall, warily leaning away from the large arachnid despite the almost two meters of space between them. A moment later, he turned his attention to operating the building’s warding scheme, whereupon he seemed to quickly put the spider out of his mind, his focus shifting instead to grumbling under his breath about the wards being overkill and a massive pain in his arse; apparently either not noticing or unaware that those very same wards should have deterred any natural vermin, in addition to their security functions.

While she had by now come to see the guard and his nightly patrols as more of a mildly annoying obstacle than anything else, she did at least agree with him that the wards were annoying – if for completely different reasons. An obnoxious buzz incessantly pressing against the edge of her awareness and urging her to leave. She could see how it might be enough to deter her lesser kin, not to mention the difficulties it introduced to hunting, but she wouldn’t leave. Not yet. Not when she was sure she almost had it.

How long had it been? How many hours spent peering over the shoulders of unsuspecting students and eavesdropping on lectures?

The spider waited a minute or two, though her anticipation seemed to stretch it into eternity, then, once she was confident the guard wouldn’t be returning any time soon, she scurried over to a recess she had long since come to think of as her workshop, nestled between a shelf and a wall and empty save for what scraps remained of her previous experiments.

She began to weave, limbs twitching and tapping to a strange but practised rhythm, while her spinnerets got to work extruding silk into odd geometric patterns.

Minutes later, the spider moved back to observe the odd web she had created. It evidently wasn’t any kind of web a spider would naturally produce, and while not of any human-devised spellcasting system, one with the right expertise would no doubt immediately recognise the array for what it was.

She scuttled forward, the movement almost visibly suffused with her excitement and anticipation. And then she slowed, apprehension leaking into confident motions as she drew closer to the tiny web, grinding them down to a halt. She suddenly felt nervous; a feeling she’d grown accustomed to each time this part of the night rolled around.

What if… Maybe… No.

The spider steeled herself, pushing the unnecessary thoughts from her mind. The spider’s anatomy wasn’t suited to shaking her head as a human might, but her limbs twitched to much the same sentiment. Placing her pedipalps upon her creation the spider pushed her mana into the ritual and prayed for it to work.

For several long seconds nothing seemed to happen, and the spider seemed to almost visibly deflate in dejection. She was just about to start the process of dismantling and consuming the web – wary that her experiments might end up being discovered should she not – when she felt it; a twinge at the edge of her consciousness, like a fly struggling to escape from an entirely mental web.

Scurrying out of her workshop, the spider found a human standing just on the other side of the shelf; one that looked almost exactly like the guardswoman who’d left not an hour earlier. Tentatively the spider lifted one of its forelimbs and gave an approximation of a wave, and like a puppet controlled by strings, the ‘human’ waved back.

• [1] Possibly the foremost – and likely only – expert on structured spellcasting amongst spiders, she is capable of, through trial and error, adapting spells into a form compatible with her anatomy, using a combination of ritualism and web-based artifice. Being maintained by external silk bindings, spells cast using these methods are exceptionally stable but are vulnerable to damage to those bindings and can only be operated so far from them.
• [2] Through countless hours of observation and tinkering, she has adapted a spell to create an illusionary body. While the illusions produced by this spell are intuitive to control, doing so requires active concentration. Maintaining this spell is relatively easy, however, being a spider, she lacks the mana reserves to cast the spell more than once or twice every hour or so.

⑇⑉What You Don’t ⑉⑈

Hated Creature

Why did it always have to turn out like this? It wasn’t… She’d thought… hoped that… This time was meant to be different! Mairi was supposed to understand. But when she’d shown her friend the truth she hadn’t understood, instead, she’d seemed afraid.

…

The villagers had found her. How had they found her?! She couldn’t think of any way for an ordinary villager to track a single spider… Had some kind of monster hunter or diviner been passing through? Had [Pmrijmrcww•]…

The spider halted her line of reasoning. She could think about it later but now wasn’t the time. Right now, she just needed to run.

Knowing that for all her eight legs, the villagers could easily outpace her on foot and guessing that whatever means they had used to track her this far would probably divine her exact location sooner or later, the spider abandoned any attempt at being stealthy. Injecting her mana into a portion of the threads that crisscrossed her body in elaborate patterns, an ectoplasmic shell started to take shape around her, rapidly forming into a human guise that would by now be familiar to almost all the villagers.

As expected, it didn’t take long for the villagers to take notice, and despite breaking into a run she made it all of ten steps before the alarm was called. Made it almost twenty more before a force bold struck her in the back, flinging her artificial body forwards.

The spider’s heart dropped, and not just because the attack had caused her shell to unravel, dissipating almost as fast as it had formed. An ordinary villager would not have had the means to track her down, but her friends? The ones she’d trusted enough to teach magic to. They certainly would be.

The next spell to strike her was a weaker variation of the same spell. It was a common theme amongst variations of the spell that they were more suited for injuring as opposed to killing, but this one in particular was designed to stun rather than inflict anything worse. To the spider, as small and fragile as she was, the distinction may as well not have existed.

She died in an instant, her final thoughts on whether she was truly so undeserving of love.

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

@TheMushroomLord
Much better, I typically don’t recommend putting all of your eggs into one basket but that’s dialed back enough for me.

@Redacted

In hindsight, perhaps waiting until I was once again tired before trying to fix up the writing wasn’t my best thought-through idea, but it’s done now, and I think it’s at least a little better. Was there anything else I needed to fix or am I good to move her over to the Characters tab?

⇜ Deicide ⇝ [Dark Fantasy Isekai]

@TheMushroomLord

Everything looks good other than her skills being far too powerful for someone with minimal memory of their previous life. If your character had a spell book with hundreds of pages, they’ll be brought back with some rudimentary knowledge of magic and sparse memory of what was on a few pages.

In the sheet layout it says “ In detail, what does this memory teach your character about themselves, and below in the bullets list what skills these are expressed as. Players will begin with one memory, and as they progress they will accumulate more.”

You’ll gain more memories and knowledge as time goes on.

@Redacted

Fair point. That's my bad. I've paired back the spells to just the body double illusion, since using that is part of the character's core premise.

As for the other bullet, it was honestly only ever intended as a ribbon feature to explain how a spider managed to learn magic and to flesh out how exactly that worked, but being the genius I am, I apparently somehow forgot to actually write any of those details. I’ve changed it now, so it hopefully shouldn’t read as instant unrestricted conversion between human and spider spellcasting anymore.

Does the new wording fix the problem? In either case, I intend to do a proper editing pass once I've gotten some rest, but if there aren't any more necessary changes, that'll just be to make the memories read better rather than any qualitative changes.