The Mountain of the Spider King

Multi-armed dervishes and pale-skinned bandits haunt the Black Shale Road that runs through the coastal foot­hills connecting Gethamane to Grieve and the sea routes to Fajad. The wealth of the West flows east along this vital road, toward Cherak and Whitewall, along with tribute-caravans belonging to houses Sesus, Ledaal, Nellens, and Ragara. Fewer make it through each year, their wealth carried away into the darkness beneath the earth.

The mountains above the Black Shale Road are honey­combed with abandoned mines. Aum-Ashatra, the Spider King, has made them his own. Aum-Ashatra dwells in the utmost depths of the tunnel system, an ebon-skinned youth reclining on silk cushions amidst gleaming treasures seized from the Great Houses, his six arms raised in meditation. Spider-blooded grandchildren attend him, and speak with his voice. The Spider King takes in refugees, exiles, and disenfranchised families that he finds on the Black Shale Road, granting them the shelter of his geothermally-heat­ed tunnels and sharing the bounty of hidden alpine valleys and peat fens cradled deep in the mountains, accessible only by paths winding deep through ancient granite.

In addition to farming the land beyond the mountains, Aum-Ashatra’s people have greatly extended the old tunnels. Now they run to countless lonely hillsides up and down either side of the Black Shale Road. The folk of the tunnels launch lightning raids from these warrens before vanishing into the hills. The tunnels are a maze of dead-ends, traps, and cave-ins waiting to be triggered, and are strung from end to end in Aum-Ashatra’s webs—as soon as a punitive force enters the tunnels, the Spider King feels the vibrations and mobilizes a response. Poisoned spears and a great many-limbed terror push intruders into dead-end tunnels, where they’re entombed behind tons of cold stone.

[Will]

Multi-armed dervishes and pale-skinned bandits haunt the Black Shale Road that runs through the coastal foot­hills connecting Gethamane to Grieve and the sea routes to Fajad. The wealth of the West flows east along this vital road, toward Cherak and Whitewall, along with tribute-caravans belonging to houses Sesus, Ledaal, Nellens, and Ragara. Fewer make it through each year, their wealth carried away into the darkness beneath the earth.

The mountains above the Black Shale Road are honey­combed with abandoned mines. Aum-Ashatra, the Spider King, has made them his own. Aum-Ashatra dwells in the utmost depths of the tunnel system, an ebon-skinned youth reclining on silk cushions amidst gleaming treasures seized from the Great Houses, his six arms raised in meditation. Spider-blooded grandchildren attend him, and speak with his voice. The Spider King takes in refugees, exiles, and disenfranchised families that he finds on the Black Shale Road, granting them the shelter of his geothermally-heat­ed tunnels and sharing the bounty of hidden alpine valleys and peat fens cradled deep in the mountains, accessible only by paths winding deep through ancient granite.

In addition to farming the land beyond the mountains, Aum-Ashatra’s people have greatly extended the old tunnels. Now they run to countless lonely hillsides up and down either side of the Black Shale Road. The folk of the tunnels launch lightning raids from these warrens before vanishing into the hills. The tunnels are a maze of dead-ends, traps, and cave-ins waiting to be triggered, and are strung from end to end in Aum-Ashatra’s webs—as soon as a punitive force enters the tunnels, the Spider King feels the vibrations and mobilizes a response. Poisoned spears and a great many-limbed terror push intruders into dead-end tunnels, where they’re entombed behind tons of cold stone.