Arachoa Moonspinner Lore: Official Story
‘The ivory radiance of the full moon is the soft white silk of the Moon-Spider, wrapping the whole world in its embrace. The slow and beautiful creeping of eight slender legs upon the skin is her caress and her ministry both. Attend, attend, unto her silent song!’
– Tx’chu, acolyte of Arachoa
Arachoa is a high priestess of the Cult of the Fang, worshippers of the ancient, massive insects who dwell deep in Durham Forest. Rumor has it that she is one of the few Dark Elves to have ever encountered the Moon-Spider, her mistress and the grand Insect Lord who commands the night, and survived. Seemingly charged by them to spread their influence, she draws mortal followers to herself with mind-influencing pheromones, subtly manipulative chitters and chirrs, faint magical radiance, and the word-of-mouth efforts of those already enthralled by her dangerous, mysterious beauty and presence.
Those who wander to her domain find a dreadful, awe-inspiring web-cathedral consuming a huge clearing in the deep wood. Silk-shrouded statues – or possibly cob-mummified victims – stand watch over altars and pulpits, where tributes of food and corpses swarm with smaller spiders of all kinds, and sickly-sweet incense wafts through the still air. Through cloying scents and skin-crawling caresses, soft clicking and murmurs, sigils traced in the air and webs woven in cryptic, mind-twisting patterns, Arachoa teaches her initiates of the Insect Lords. Then she bids them go forth to spread the word, and to lay ambushes against the Lords’ enemies.
They have established dozens of lesser web-shrines all across Durham Forest, each imbued with residual traces of Arachoa’s mesmerizing presence. These shrines draw worshippers, where Arachoa’s acolytes indoctrinate newcomers while awaiting a favorable moon-phase when they say Arachoa will bless them with a personal visitation.
The spread of Arachoa’s ministry has not gone unnoticed. In addition to numerous Dark Elven princelings decrying her ‘radical’ and ‘heretical’ beliefs – while in truth only objecting out of fear and jealousy – Swarmspeaker Zyclic has denounced Arachoa to his own followers. He, too, feels his power base is being subverted by Arachoa’s efforts, and that the mantle of the Insect Lords’ favor might slip from his shoulders.
However, the two have a common enemy in the cults of Siroth-worship that are flourishing in Durham, and so they maintain an uneasy truce, united against those they label heathens. In return, Sirothi cultists have waged a ferocious shadow war against the Cult of the Fang, murdering acolytes and burning Arachoa’s web-shrines wherever they can.
Doing so, however, is fraught with danger, for few can outwit Arachoa and survive her assaults if they blunder into one of her ambushes. But those strong enough to resist, and those who are able to attack her in open battle, discover a horrific secret that she carries. She can transform her Dark Elven form into that of an arachnoid hybrid, sprouting an extra pair of bladed limbs and growing thick, chitinous armor.
In this form she is even more fearsome and more than capable of holding her own against those who think that brute strength can deal with someone they perceive to be a ‘skulking weakling of a Fang Cultist’. Such is the power of one whose body and soul have survived an encounter with an Insect Lord, and received their twisted blessing.