Oh Christ why am I doing this again
The first sentence of the segment reminds me why I took so long to get back to updating this review.
quote:
Elegant yet chillingly dispassionate, the Spinner-Kin are the poetry of enigma.
God. Anyway, they apparently have the nickname (sorry, 'arcane title') of the Arnae, which is probably supposed to be a bastardization of Araneae. Howeever, googling Arnae gets a rather hysterical urbandictionary.com definition.
quote:
Having an unquenchable lust; not being able to stop screwing your partner; sex addicts.
Changing Breeds, everybody.
Anyway, the 'hat' of the Spinner-Kin is basically being short-lived, creepy, eternally ready to spring on opportunity, and always minding the future while working in the present. They're all very slim, the men rarely taller than five feet and the women able to reach six or more (I wish I could say that this was just due to gender dimorphism in spiders, but, uh...we'll get to it.) Animal form ranges from horrifying swarms of normal-sized spiders to cat-sized tarantulas that would probably make me shit out all my internal organs in terror.
Spinner-Kin live for about five years after their First Change, leading to an almost fanatical devotion to seizing the day. This usually expresses itself in being endlessly social, but some of them go all emo and skulk around. They also have little use for families, being rather universally shitty parents or spouses who give little guidance to their children. They rarely have friendships or spouses, seeing the connections as too fragile and meaningless, or that people worthy of such attention are competition.
Arnae live all over the globe, with several examples of pretty cool adaptations spiders have made (underwater air domes from silk, now nowhere is safe!), though it does imply they also live in Antarctica which I'm pretty damn sure they don't. Spider eating habits are also mentioned, and some are apparently chiefly cannibals like several spiders. I'd be less inclined to call this retarded if it weren't for how preposterously rare Changing Breeds are supposed to be. A spider shifter who could only survive by eating spider shifters would probably starve to death shortly after their First Change. They also mention Werewolves genociding them when they're discovered while ranting about Hosts, stating that this means they simply must strike first when discovered.
This is where they bring in the Azlu from nWerewolf, if only to distance themselves from them. For the unaware, there's a pair of very distinct spirit breeds (by default) in nWerewolf, called the Azlu and the Beshilu, who are referred to as Spirit Hosts. Beshilu start as tiny rats, and Azlu as tiny spiders. They operate by infesting the body of a human being (the heart with the Beshiu, and the brain/nervous system with the Azlu), and killing them while consuming their body and spiritual energy to reproduce. Soon, the corpse either pops into a tide of Azlu/Beshilu, or fuses with the spirit to create a horrible hybrid abomination that wants only to continue growing and serve the agenda of the Hosts.
The Beshilu want to rip down the barrier between Spirit and Flesh to reunite the two, not particularly caring that this would be horrendously catastrophic to both sides, as it would allow the Beshilu to recombine into the Plague King, an ancient, blind, disease-ridden rat spirit killed in prehistory. Meanwhile, the Azlu -who are also descended from a powerful spirit from prehistory - want to strengthen the boundary between Spirit and Flesh until both are strangled off, starving reality of definition and starving the Shadow of Essence, its lifeblood. To paraphrase from one of the books: "Do realize that this will happen? Yes. Will it be bad? Probably. Do they care? Not in the slightest." Some think they're insane, some think they arrogantly believe that they'll survive the catastrophe, but most just shrug their shoulders and say "Fucking spirits, man." They weave their webs because that's what they're supposed to do, God damn it, so stop interfering or they'll eat you.
I bring all this up to show what good setting background is like, by the way. The book does to just go "Spinner-Kin think they are vulgar abominations and give the good spider-people a bad rap" which is what spider-spirits do in the normal setting anyway.
Anyway, moving on. Females always take the natural leadership role and focus mostly on Physical attributes while men focus on Mental and Social. In case you weren't already catching the drift from this chapter, one of the example character concepts is dominatrix. At least they didn't say anything about using webs for that.
quote:
Stereotypes
Man: Bulbous and deaf are these. They could not hear the sound of the Web singing from their actions if it was as loud as the Bells of Saint Michael's. However, they are fun to watch.
Mages: Invest your days toward the Fates, or do not. Dabbling in the sticky oil of the Universe is a game only for children and suicidal flies. (They forget that Fate is actually a very, very, very powerful Arcana for Mages, methinks.)
Vampires: For all that they have a delicious sense of style [sic], they completely lack the manners to know when they should leave the party.
Werewolves: Does doggie want to play in the big sticky net? Good boy! (I'll admit this one made me smirk.)
Now to the breeds. It's a weird mix of good and bad this time.
First, we have the Nanekisu, or the Eight Knives. I really haven't made up my mind on how I feel about these guys. The breed originated in the Mediterranean, though they eventually spread across the globe. Their expertise is two-fold: information brokering, and murder. They hunt for the Truth at all times, preserving it while cutting away any falsehoods. Some set themselves up as syndicate crime overlords, some as assassins or spies, and some are simple archivists in libraries. They endeavor to be experts in whatever field they specialize in.
All Nanekisu have a silver-white scar vaguely resembling a hand on their undercarriage in animal form (which was apparently cut, if you keep reading) and Warform, which is a huge teeming mass of spiders in the shape of a colossal spider.
To get information from the Nanekisu, you have to pay a price in blood by fighting one in combat. The more valuable or secret the information is, the stronger the warrior you must face is.
Now we get to the part that I'm still undecided about : this breed is apparently joinable. A spider-shifter can, if they defeat a Nanekisu in combat, ask to become one. They are then given a challenge: if they allow themselves to be poisoned to death, and the ritualist will revive them as a Nanekisu. Simply accepting is passing: all supplicants are accepted if they submit.
Here's the really weird part: the breed is apparently a collective hive-mind. The text says they still have their own souls and bodies, but one mind apparently drives the Nanekisu in all their manifestations. You could read this as something from them all being 'themselves' with a sort of mental construct co-operating with them all, to a vast and alien hive-mind formed of the minds of all who have submitted to it using the shells of supplicants as puppets to enact its will, or some mix between the two.
The latter is really fucking cool, but it also steps pretty hard on the toes of the Azlu and doesn't entirely mesh with the whole spider thing. Ants, sure, I'd buy this in a heartbeat, but spiders? I see where they're going with the information gathering/web of influence thing, but it still doesn't quite click with me.
Anyway, mechanically, the Nanekisu are actually pretty Goddamn frightening, being lightning fast and having Nine Lives. I actually can't get mad at this implementation, though, because the fluff behind it is excellent (albeit stolen directly from the Azlu); the component spiders of the body break up, book it, and try to reform elsewhere.
So I guess the moral of the story is that if you find something cool in Changing Breeds they probably stole it from another line.
Next up are the Carapaché, the Recluses and tarantulas. They have a lame creation story about Fate and Light and Darkness and Who Is The True Monster and yadda yadda. People who transform into Carapaché are almost exclusively South American, and often undergo their First Change when stuck in colossal jungle spider webs. They are exclusively of the Wind Dancer Accord, and are a bunch of shamans and autistics who are cripplingly shy and afraid of human contact. No, seriously. They all but use the word autism. Anyway, they tug on the threads of the web of Light and Darkness to...uh, I have no idea, bring it into balance? Make sure one wins? Basically they're the "insufferable cryptic old wizard doing random bullshit for a butterfly effect" archetype.
They are all painfully skinny and of Latin descent, who hate clothes because it makes them think of the webs they were caught in during their First Change. Their Warform is a giant fucking tarantula that spins webs, which they acknowledge isn't the case, but most people don't discuss biology when being eaten by a tarantula the size of a Volkswagen.
Mechanically, they're very, very fast, venomous, and sneaky.
In Other Species, we have two more, the first being as
-meets-White-Wolf as you can get.quote:
In the grand towers above Hong Kong and the vaults below Singapore, a fatal game of Go has been waging for nearly 1,300 years. Open the wrong door in Beijing or turn your head in San Francisco just a moment too soon, and you may see one of the 10,000 secrets of old Qin. Neither Communists nor emperors nor Western oafs could untangle the web of the C'hi Hsu, a venerable breed whose alchemies stop the tread of time. In the centers of those webs sit vampiric spider-witches whose arts stave off the frailty of their kind.
So yeah, Chinese vampire lich spider people, because why the fuck not. C'hi Hsu might be intended to mean Mystic Webs, but whatever. Arnea must pass 1,000 tests presented by a master of Five-Web Magic to learn the secrets of immortality, who usually sit around ordering people to do something while mandating that all their visitors must fast for three days and have precisely seven different smoke perfumes on them at all times while in their presence. This is not a joke, this is a thing.
To save the rest of the writeup: think "oVampire political circlejerk" and that is what the C'hi Hsu do all the time.
Mechanically, they're boring as hell, too, aside from being preposterously fast.
Lastly are the Sicarius, toxin-crafting dominatrices that have pretty much the same stats as C'hi Hsu.
You think I'm joking, don't you?
quote:
Legends claim that Poison was once the concubine of Sleep. Dressed richly in the fever dreams and delusions of early Man, she wooed Him into a false peace. She brought wakeful dreamers into states that mimicked dreaming and death. Sleep had more territory with which to travel due to her ministrations. He fell for Poison's affections. Unfortunately, this is a legend for spiders. Poison acted as a female should. Sleep has never forgiven Her. He sent dreams from beyond the Web to his children to bind her in the hatred and death of Man. Forever in the darkness, She has grown mad. The Sicarius are Her voice. How organized madness can be if hate leads the way.
Sicarius have worked for centuries to prefect the magic of toxins. From herbalists to pharmaceutical chemists to the lethal red back spiders, these Spinners hone painlessness into pain. Understanding the power of sex as well, they are hauntingly alluring. In their bravest shape, these "spider queens" arch a full eight feet in their slender yet formidable arachnid forms. To see a Sicarius in her full glory is to finally understand hopelessness in love.
Until the turn of the 19th century, no males were born under the venom of Sicarius. Now still rare, males who are so blessed must constantly prove themselves useful and keep a watchful eye on the affairs of their betters. Some Sicarians believe that the breed's toxins had grown too weak to pass on without the male counterpart. Many others still resent that implication....
Misandry, misogyny, bad mythological writing, callbacks to the everpresent lolmadness in oWoD, cringe-worthy sexuality, and the implication of the spider form invoking some emotion of love/sexuality.
CHANGING BREEDS, EVERYBODY.
Next time: Ursara. I pray that we get through this without a gay joke.
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