Author: Plemency

Druidic Abominations! Crossing Men With Spiders

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09/02/228 ASU

Mercenaries are an annoying reality of modern warfare. There are millions of aliens with an axe to grind against the Protectorate, so they’ll join or fund warbands who’ll follow us around and harass us every time we do anything.

Biomancy is a very common form of aether manipulation which involves changing physical forms. Growing plants and healing wounds are forms of biomancy, but some take to mutilating sentient life for their own ends.

The Sararit Coven is combining these practices and has made the spider mercenary guilds.

Each fighter is paid handsomely, but they undergo dark alterations to fit the Sararit Coven’s brand.

Wiry muscles, strong and explosive like a spider’s. Multiple arms are common, though usually they only add an extra set so they have just 6 limbs, not 8. Extra eyes and faster reaction times are frequent additions. Their fingertips frequently have pores that secrete sticky spider webbing.

The kind of humans who accept these transformations are either desperate for money and soon desert to take advantage of their new strength, or have a bitter hatred of elves and will fight us tooth an nail every time we meet on the battlefield.

We’ve met these mercenaries on Relgan, Arcadia, and Vrakoli so far. Their strength may rival young peldaks, but they’re nothing compared to the might of venerable elven muscle. It would take a thousand humans to slay an elf that survived the Vampire War, but maybe just two dozen of these spider freaks.

But what the spider hybrids have is a freakish resilience. In recent battles on Vrakoli it was reported by several peldaks that they decapitated a hybrid, only for them to reappear weeks later with prominent scars around their necks.

Some aether scholars suggest that this might be necromancy, not biomancy.

Spider Drop In Settlements Of Southern Erdashu

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08/08/219 ASU

The Lwazi Peninsula in southern Erdashu on Planet Relgan has been subjected to a nightmare scenario for anyone with arachnophobia or basic sensibilities. The Sararit Coven of Tomchaka enacted a plot using the newly invented hot air balloon technology. They floated high above the cities and villages of Lwazi and offloaded massive bags of squirming, screeching insects. Wind currents took them far and scattered the writhing mass across the city

The spiders they used were generally small and light weight; they easily survived the fall from hundreds of feet up.

The streets of Lwazi were immediately plunged into chaos. Agitated spiders that ranged from the size of pinkie nails to fully outstretched hands suddenly landed on the unsuspecting populace, biting and skittering. One young woman had a dozen small ones fall into her recently done up hair. A man had a larger one land on his face and it’s terrible multi-eyed, mandibled face was right against his eye, ensuring him a perfect view of every detail.

The populace panicked, the poor spiders themselves were confused and scared. But it wasn’t the type of enemy what few peldaks lived in the region could slay.

None of the spiders were venomous or particularly aggressive, and most fled into alleyways or nearby forests. The death rate across the territory was three. One was an elderly woman who died of fright, one tripped in shock and hit his head on a raised staircase, and the last young lady was run over by a startled, runaway horse.

Their names were Betsy Udel, Don Garthow, and Heller Devson.

It’s estimated that at least 20 hot air balloons took part in the vicious assault on our citizens, however only four in the city of Pinket were caught in time, and 12 individuals were taken into custody.

Spider Coven Gains Ground In Tomchaka Politics

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03/04/218 ASU

The ongoing cleanup against the Mammoth Spiders of the Ashari Tundra has taken the lives of over 70,000 peldaks, and the Sararit of the United Tomchaka Covens couldn’t be more delighted with the outcome. They extensively propagandized our casualties, took full responsibility for the creation of the tames mammoth spiders, and saw their membership swell as a result.

With the recent redistribution of the UTC’s High Coven, the Sararit went from 1 representative druid to 27. Still a minor voice in UTC politics, but a metioric rise and they have every incentive to keep going.

They’re calling for subtle hostility against the Peldak Protectorate, not openly declaring war but gifting proxies with new spider models through which they can attack the Protectorate rather than risking a direct confrontation. We would either have to give up the peninsula on Southern Erdashu, or invade them, which the UTC thinks they could win.

Domestically, the Sararit Coven is exporting newly refined Titan Spiders, built for the heat and humidity of the equitorial UTC, and druidically castrated to prevent the exponential population growth. The main buyers have been non-druids populations in the UTC and their vassal states as, reportedly, druids are wary of giant beasts only kept docile with magics they don’t yet understand.

The Sararit are also buying property and my contacts report they’re preparing to use small, hand-sized spiders to produce vast quantities of silk for the UTC’s weavers. They aren’t just a political and military force, they’re integrating themselves well into UTC society. That’s how all the largest covens retain their influence. It’s one thing to create a novelty, it’s another to create a large network of permanently allied druids.

They have 8 years of tricks to pull and threats to conjure before the UTCs next round of redistributing votes.

The Kalkurn Spider Riders’ Desperate Assault

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11/02/214 ASU

The Kalkurn Tribe recognized the 68th and 69th Legion’s slow, methodical campaign across the Ashari Tundra would slowly starve the ever-growing swarm and cause the desperate mammoths to turn on their masters. They had to act while they still could.

Their plan was to gather their vast horde and head west to break the 68th legion, then feast on the settled lands while the 69th marched across the continent.

780,000 mammoth spiders took part in their gambit. 60-70,000 house-sized spiders, 710,000 of zemtak size, commanded by 12,000 kalkurn. Just 118,000 peldaks stood between them and the west.

The 68th Legion bravely met them in the Canrias Foothills. Thoroughly outnumbered, the legion fell into 10 circles, facing out five ranks deep as the swarm overtook them. They fought, slashed, stabbed, and slaughtered, the rear ranks fired volleys and arachnids fell by the thousands. The soldiers rotated to keep fresh, and after six hours the corpses formed mounds that funneled spiders into kill zones. Diminishing returns forced the kalkurn’s retreat.

With 100,000 fewer warbeasts, the horde tried circumventing the elves to push west, but the 68th intercepted them.

The battle of Obrebi Forest depleted our muskets’ ammunition but we cut down another 80,000 before they retreated.

The Kalkurn diverted 120,000 spiders to keep us busy while their main force continued into the Styxer Countries. We eliminated the distractions and chased them to the coast.

The swarm poured over the walls of Gunderwel, but the locals and logistics troopers of the 68th retreated to vast stone temples and held them long enough for the veterans to arrive.

The slaughter that followed broke their chance to dominate Ashari. Half the Kalkurn were dead, the mammoth spiders reduced to 1/10th, and the survivors fled to ransack surrounding villages, but the legion is hunting them down.

Newly Minted Legions March To Exterminate Infestation

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04/12/213 ASU

The 68th and 69th legions have assembled on Relgan’s Ashari continent and have already left to relieve the battered anti-spider task force, who performed brilliantly.

The 68th Legion will begin in western Ashari, in the Styxer countries, and will push towards central Ashari.

The 69th Legion will begin in Ganget, a vassal of Great Tendor that exists to it’s north-west, linking the subcontinent to the rest of Ashari, and will push north.

The 37,000 veterans of the task force still in the region are ordered to split and regroup with the invading legions. They’ll provide invaluable information of the terrain and the best tactics to dispatch large groupings of spiders.

The goal is extermination, hunting every mammoth spider they can through overwhelming force. The local tundra nomads are not being annexed into the Protectorate and will be free to return to their ancestral lands once the infestation is cleared. This is a humanitarian mission, not expansionism.

The campaign is expected to last for five years, but may be extended for as long as necessary. The task force signed treaties with 46 displaced nomadic groups that confirm our pledge to leave their lands once the job is done in exchange for aid. The legalism of the text means nothing to the illiterate nomads – all they know is an oath was sworn on our honor as elves – but it ties our hands and will prevent us from sticking around indefinitely.

Resupply to the legions will be directed through the Western and southern states, who also have our word that we won’t overstay our welcome.

The legions are not all cavalry, and the mobile phase of the war is over. Their advance will be slow and methodical, and they’re ordered to torch the tundra as they pass to starve the mammoth spiders out.

Wartime Spotlight: Mobile Warfare On The Tundra

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20/13/212 ASU

It was to be the last battle before winter set in on the Ashari continent and made campaigning possible.

Two hard years of fighting, raiding, burning fields and sectioning off stragglers. A glorious campaign by any metric, 70,000 peldaks and their zemtak against no less than 200,000, maybe 300,000 spiders. Barely 10,000 mammoth spiders had riders, however. The mounts multiplied faster than the kalkurn, even with the tribe recruiting members from fallen tribes.

The campaign has seen intense fighting across over four million square miles. The peldaks travel in strong packs, while the spiders are scattered and uncoordinated.

The mammoth spiders are incredibly strong, quick, and agile creatures, but their caloric needs are immense and they’re too straightforward to understand tactics without being guided by their riders.

Zemtak are devilishly clever and get extremely motivated when facing alien cavalry.

Neither mount will get skittish and break. The spiders because they’re too brutish to worry when war birds are clawing them apart, and zemtak because they’re too prideful to show the lesser cavalry of the galaxy their tail feathers.

The elven riders are armed with long halberds and muskets. The optimal strategy is to skirmish with their muskets to pepper the mammoths, then charge in with the halberd’s spearpoint at the mammoth side, not their fierce mandibles. When locked in melee, the zemtak claw at the spiders while the peldaks swipe and chop their long, weighted halberds, typically trying to sever legs. If all four legs on one side are hacked off, the spider turns worthless.

The Kalkurn Tribe has so far steered clear of the fighting, mostly directing their mammoths forward and preventing their casualties.

The swarm has yet to breach any major populated regions thanks to the efforts of our brave defenders.

28,000 elves have died in the fighting.

Anti-Spider Task Force Departs To Ashari Tundra

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07/01/211 ASU

Relgan’s 16th, 17th, 18th, 37th, 46th, 50th, and 62nd stationed legions stationed legions have each donated 10,000 peldak cavalry and consolidated them in the port city Teloquian in mid-western Ashari. These 70,000 trained zemtak riders are heading north to battle the mammoth spider riders of the Kalkurn Tribe while High Command musters troops for a 68th and 69th legion.

The 63rd legion did not donate troops as they garrison the Lwazi Peninsula and the United Tomchaka Covens is waiting for their chance to reclaim it.

The leader of this task force will be the Hetman of the 17th legion, Sir August ‘Talon’ Kordeski, as he has experience with commanding large formations of zemtak and Sir Kornel ‘Druid Hammer’ Kiskonski, Hetman of the 18th, will protector Great Tendor’s northern frontier.

The goal of the task force is not to destroy the Kalkurn Tribe outright, though that would be ideal, but to stem their growth and delay them from reaching major population centers before new legions can arrive and end the threat for good. Sir August has been granted broad powers in pursuit of this goal, even beyond the usual authority that comes with Hetman.

Talon may not violate the peldak honor code to destroy the spider riders, however he may conduct diplomacy with the local tribes and form nearly any deal with the full backing of the Peldak Protectorate. The laws of safeguarding his own troops are also being wavered for the duration of the conflict, and each peldak rider has been informed of this. They all volunteered regardless.

With how quickly the mammoth spiders can multiply it won’t be long before their horde reaches millions of beasts to slay. It might reach a point where they can breed faster than we can kill, unless they starve in the tundra.

The Coming War With The Tundra’s Spider Riders

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18/13/210 ASU

200 scouts of the 18th Legion departed the port city of Teloquian two years ago with orders to verify the rampant mammoth spider rumors. The nomadic tribe kalkurn supposedly rode these beasts into battle against rival nomadic tribes, and were on course to unify the tundra peoples once again.

Only 38 scouts and 44 zemtak returned this past week. With them travelled 300 survivors from the many tribes slaughtered by the kalkurn, mostly women and children.

“It’s far worse than the rumors claims,” Lieutenant Iwan Cyrus said in his report. “We heard they had 3,000 riders, but it’s no less than 50,000. Some mammoth spiders are roughly the size of a zemtak, but others are like that titan spider I heard about in southern Tendor. The size of a two-story house, the kalkurn had harnesses on the thing’s midsection, 10 nomads rode it into battle, firing arrows. And they aren’t lumbering beasts. One jumped 50 feet in the air and landed right in the middle of our formation, and when the rider died from the rough landing, the beast went berserk and started lashing out without thought. We need full mobilization; these things aren’t going to stop. Even if the Kalkurn Tribe doesn’t want to expand, though I’m sure they do, their mounts would force them. There’s barely any food in the tundra, and the number of mammoth spiders grows by the day. They’re going to expand, and expand, and eventually they’ll swarm into Great Tendor.”

Time is of the essence for dealing with this, and the legions stationed on Relgan can’t afford to sit around and wait for the Lord Protector to summon a new legion. They need to act decisively to handle this crisis or at least halt it until another legion can be sent.

United Tomchaka Covens Integrates Spider Coven

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02/03/210 ASU

Relgan’s western continents, Huilapole and Erdashu, are dominated by the United Tomchaka Coven, a representative government where power is shared among large, formal druid covens, and votes are appropriated to those covens based on their relative power and prestige. Each coven will send representatives to the High Coven in the capitol, with more powerful covens sending multiple druids.

The High Coven is reorganized every four years to keep representation as accurate as possible.

These covens dominate social and political life. Non-druids, and druids not affiliated with a registered coven, are second class citizens.

Four months ago, the High Coven was reorganized, and one of the new represented covens is the Sararit Coven. It translates to ‘Spider Coven’.

All covens release literature and reference material to attract wayward druids, and Sararit’s extensively referenced their many usages of spiders, their successes in manipulating hordes of spiders at once, and their belief that practical study works best.

We have long suspected that a hidden coven of druids have been causing repeated crises in Great Tendor, and the Sararit Coven seems to be the strongest suspect. Though their membership numbers and influence only gives them access to one vote in the High Coven, the concern is that they’re an openly hostile faction and might grow to become a strong voice in one of Relgan’s Great Powers.

In the first century of the Protectorate Era, we annexed a peninsula on southern Erdashu. It had historically been a UTC vassal, and they didn’t appreciate us muscling in on the rightful UTC sphere of influence – both western continents. The High Coven has repeatedly passed laws and resolutions reaffirming their desire to kick us out of the west, and we believe the Sararit Coven seeks political capital from opposing us abroad.

The Spider Riders Of The Ashari Tundra

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09/01/209 ASU

Relgan’s Northern Continent, Ashari, from where the subcontinent of Tendor is attached to the south, has pockets of civilization along the coasts, and then a largely uninhabited icy tundra that extends to the north pole. The tundra nomads have historically raided their settled neighbors on the local variant of horses – which have six legs rather than four – and the many tribes of nomads have been a constant source of tension for the Protectorate.

But the nomads have started trading their six-legged mounts for those with eight.

Giant, horse-sized spiders with docile and obedient temperament. Each one strong enough that, when attached with a harness and a rope, it would take 15 horses on the other end to pull against a mammoth spider. But the mammoth spiders are so competitive that, if they lose, they’d quickly turn around eat the horses that embarrassed them in front of their master.

Only one tribe in mid-western Ashari, the Kalkurn Tribe, has been reported with the mammoth spiders so far. The tribe’s numbers only amount to about 3,000 riders, but they’ve already begun subduing their neighbors and expanding their territory to feed the ravenous swarm they’ve unleashed across the continent.

The Kalkurn Tribe is said to operate at least 500 miles north of the port city Teloquian in western Ashari. The news of these spider riders comes through multiple layers of intermediaries and travelers, and technically nobody spreading the tales have seen the conquering bands themselves.

That being said, it fits with what we know of the Spider Coven so there’s no reason to question the accuracy of these rumors.

The Protectorate is organizing a task force to travel north and investigate. If true, our return to nomadic politics will be forced as we can’t just ignore the threat of these mammoth spider mounts.