It is foolish to assume that just because the God of Murder focused almost exclusively on the north, murder did not happen elsewhere. Where there is sapience, there
will be murder - but the deliberate influence of Kastheen and Terron had forestalled its arrival amongst the Mayura for some time. Fortunately, Tass' intervention had created a caste of Mayura being guided by neither god - the Sirens.
Atu was, for a brief moment, the single most important person in the Womb. He wasn't smart, he wasn't strong, his singing voice was terrible even for a standard Mayura, let alone a Siren, and he had the most annoying habit of asking stupid questions. For all these reasons he spent his life away from the flock, scratching out a living where he could forage and seeing more of the world. Every now and again, usually for mating season, he returned to the flock to try and win a mate. He always failed, usually beaten and beaten up by the stronger males. In his final mating season, he foolishly tried to fight the biggest, strongest of the Mayura for his mate. Most likely, the alpha had little intent of killing Atu, but murder was the result the same.
At the moment of his death, Atu was the most important person in the Womb - at least to the God of Murder. To a being whose purpose and abilities included the absorption of the minds of any murdered creature, Atu's relatively simple mind was like a comprehensive map of vast swathes of the South, miles of lush forest, fertile plains and dense jungle - to say nothing of the towering mountain ranges. A land of such plenty, such promise! How could he not have known about this?
In Atu's form, Shaq flew across the skies of the South, indulging in the feel of the warm currents across his sable wings. Of course, he could just step there, but flight! Flight was a thing that the northren who had made up his form had only ever dreamed about! Still, as much pleasure as there was to be had with this, business was at hand. Amongst the various spots of interest within the South, two stuck out in his mind as being the most opportune. He descended upon one now.
The valley was deep jungle, and Atu had only spotted it in passing the first time. Fortunate he had gone back for a second look at the webs. The webs were the first wonder. They stretched from branch to branch, tree to tree, endless silken curtains that buzzed with a thousand trapped insects waiting to die. At first Atu had wondered if there were giant spiders in the forest. That there was not was the second wonder. Hundreds of spiders no longer than a child's thumb had gathered together and formed a series of huge communal webs, larger than any one spider would care to manage. Shaq descended between them now and watched the struggling prey caught within.
"Such elegance," he breathed, as much to the northren memories within himself as to anything else. "A hunter, a killer beyond compare. Yet how do the northren act in a hunt? Rage and speed and strength, a desperate rush to catch and the glory of the kill. And yes - there is glory in that. But the spider? The spider has transcended the chase. It knows that patience, planning will get the kill. And there is glory in that also."
Dull brown, red-streaked piders descended from hiding places, falling upon the kills at the nest. There did not seem to be a clear order of precedence amongst those who came to eat and those who stayed - Shaq wondered if perhaps it was simply that there was enough food that some more sated would stay behind to let the hungry eat. And what a wonder, that also! To see in such an ordinarily solitary, selfish creature an understanding of the need for survival of the group as a whole. This, then, was the third and greatest wonder of all.
"Patience, planning and the power to work together for a common goal. Is this not the spark of sapience?" Shaq asked, albeit of nobody but himself. "And the perfect hunter, the perfect killer - and perhaps the perfect spy. Let us see if that spark can become a flame."
Shaq changed to his more familiar, favoured form of the young Silver and stretched out his hands, taking from the webs two spiders. He pinched a leg on each to make them bite him, and made use of the real divinity in his veins. When they had drunk, he spoke to them in a tongue of whistles and tapping his thumbs against his palms and they spoke back in the tongue he had pressed in their minds, making low or high keenings and tapping their clawed feet.
[Weave-Make-Self, Weave-Break-Self], he said. [Self know Change-All. You Same-See Change-See. You Choice-Have, You-Choice. You Choice-Have, Name-Choice.]
"<I am the Weavemaker and the Weavebreaker,>" he said.
"<I know the world will seem different now. You will see the same things in radically different ways. But you have choice and free will, and that free will defines you and all of your kind. To that end, you must choose your own names.>"[/i][Weave-Tremor-Self], said the first.
[Thread-Make-Self], said the second.
"<Embrace your life,>" said Shaq, laying the pair of them down upon a mossy stone,
"<but know that only one of you will mother the rest of your kind. To that end, you have a choice. Either the mother will be decided by which way a leaf falls to the ground, or it will be the one left standing before the leaf touches the ground.>"[/i]At that moment, a leaf broke from the canopy and began to fall. Weavetremor and Threadmaker both looked at each other with their myriad eyes. Weavetremor struck first, leaping and trying to crawl over Threadmaker but was thrown off. The pair separated and circled each other for a moment, tapping their legs in a threat display. But the leaf was still falling - it caught Weavetremor's eye and threw her off her guard. Threadmaker swept forward her legs and crammed Weavetremor into a tight ball. Weavetremor struggled, but with the advantage Threadmaker twisted Weavetremor around with inexorable slowness, wrapping her in a sheet of thick web from her spinners. With her opponent immobilised, Threadmaker didn't check to see if the leaf had even hit the ground - that distraction had cost her opponent her life. Instead, Threadmaker simply placed her jaws around Weavetremor's head and crushed. The life extinguished, she bit into the abdomen to give the venom time to digest her cousin's innards - no sense in wasting food.
Threadmaker turned to see Weavetremor standing behind her - save that Weavetremor's chitin was now black as night, save for the red streaks across it. Something told her that this was the Weavemaker, Weavebreaker. Specifically, that something was the spider talking in his 'voice'.
"<Survival is everything for you now - but your children will change that,>" Shaq promised.
"<You will surpass survival, and learn to embrace plenty and the developments that come with it. Your people will grow powerful, and you will learn to harness the ways that I can teach you - but not yet. For now, breed. Grow your people. I will return, perhaps at the eve of your life, perhaps long after you are gone, and teach you what needs to be known.>"The dark spider began spinning a line of thread, letting the wind catch it. It extended swiftly, until the line was long enough that the wind caught it and dragged the spider god into the sky.
Jack tinkers with a colony of communal spiders, uplifting them to sapience.Threadmaker has been altered in the ways specified below. She has one additional alternation. As well as her children attaining the sapience she has been granted, any infant spider that touches one of her webs will grow to sapience by maturity.
Spider Anatomy
Crushing Jaws (Modern Spider - Compare Primitive Spider, stabbing jaws.)
Necrotic, Paralytic Venom (Orb Spider - Compare Primitive, Hunting Spiders, much more potent venom.)
Internal Filter (Ridiculously efficient anti-parasitic filter in mouth. Prevents bacteria, larger viruses getting through, but only completely digested food can pass into stomach.)
Abdomen (The abdomen and gut can expand enormously to accomodate liquified nutrients from prey. A fully gorged spider can go for a few good weeks without fresh prey, assuming it leads a patient, low-movement lifestyle.)
2 main eyes, 6 secondary eyes.
Subhuman vision. (Orb Spider - Compare Hunting Spider, Suprahuman vision.)
Colour vision.
Suprahuman vibration sense. (Orb Spider - Compare Hunting Spider, Subhuman vibration sense.)
Thricobotria (Auditory hairs on legs.)
Subhuman distance hearing, Suprahuman location hearing. (Spiders cannot hear as far, but can pinpoint sound due to their spread of hearing organs.)
Chemosensitive Hairs (Hairs can smell.)
Human-level or Subhuman Scent
Taste not located in mouth - Spider rubs Chemosensitive hairs against prey to test edibility.
Short Tarsal Hairs (Orb Spider - Compare Hunting Spider, long hairs allow to grip onto water and surfaces with even a tiny trace of water and walk along them.)
Third Claw (Orb Spider - Compare Hunting Spider, two claws on end of leg. Third claw allows grip on silk. Potential but limited object manipulation ability when sapient.)
Hydraulic Motion (Spiders increase blood pressure locally to simulate muscle movement - capable of long jumps, but nowhere near as long as Jumping Spiders.)
Trachea, Book Lungs (Separate ventilation/respiratory systems, two book lungs, one trachea. Book lungs give a slower release of oxygen, trachea is good for high power work like fast movement.)
Single Chamber Heart (Less efficient than mammalian, but less distance to travel.)
Moulting (Sheds skin during growth and once per year upon maturation.)
Silk Glands (The number of glands between spider species varies. This species generously has 4.)
Glandula Aggregata - Produces sticky material for threads.
Glandula Ampulleceae - Walking threads.
Glandula Pyriformes - Attaching threads.
Glandula Aciniformes - Encapsulation of Prey.
Silk - Multiple Uses. Higher tensile strength than titanium steel. Much higher.
Webspinning - Large webs designed primarily to catch flying prey. Ground-based prey can be captured, but less efficient without redesign.
Cocoons - Young are often concealed in protective webs whilst eggs are incubating.
Encapsulation of Prey - Once caught in a fight or on a web, prey can have webs spun around it to keep it still.
Gliding - By letting a thread catch the wind and spinning it out to a long enough length, the surface area becomes sufficient for a spider to glide anywhere up to ten kilometres. Unfortunately, the spider doesn't have much control over where the wind takes it, but can try to land by retracting/eating silk until the wind starts lowering it again.
Pros
Suprahuman location hearing and vibration sense.
Webspinning and silk production ability.
Powerful venom. (Works better on mammals, insects. Still need eight, ten bites to kill/paralyse a mouse.
Negligible
Internal Filter (Helps prevent infection, off-set by primitive immune system.)
Uncontrolled gliding for distance travel.
Scent may be negigble or a con.
Cons
Subhuman distance hearing, sight.
No easily flexible manipulators - leg claws can grip webs, possibly small tools, but lack the dexterity of humans.
Size - much smaller than humans. Offset by abilities, but still a con.
Sapience has been granted.
Lifespan has been regressed to that of a more primitive spider, extending it to 25+ years to keep pace with other sapient races. (This is the lifespan of a tarantula.)
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Topic: Godhood III Play Thread (Read 38733 times)