The official GemStone IV encyclopedia.
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| Attack Attributes
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| Physical Attacks
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| Ensnare
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222 AS
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| Bite
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212 AS
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| Special Offensive Abilities
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| Web
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Glowing an eerie, pale white, the albino tomb spider clambers through underground tunnels, grottos and caves in search of anything alive it can trap and consume. Its long, thin forelegs reach out to grasp and drag potential food back to the glistening fangs, while its shorter, muscular back legs propel it forward with surprising speed. Totally hairless, the albino tomb spider gazes around through the only bodily part that has any color--its oversized crimson eyes.
Hunting strategies
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Other information
An example of a giant albino tomb spider's web maneuver.
A giant albino tomb spider rises on its legs, tucking its abdomen beneath itself to aim its spinneret at you!
[SMR result: 41 (Open d100: 64)]
You dodge the webbing with such amazing finesse that you inspire all of those around you!
Behind the Scenes
The extension of the burial mound in The Graveyard appears to be rooted in allusions to H.P. Lovecraft stories. These spiders would correspond to the spiders who battled the almost humans from the Plateau of Leng. It is a subtle link between Shadow Valley and The Broken Lands. Since the word "Vala" is used as a language game in the story, it is worth considering Ungoliant as a destroyer of trees, given the unexplained webs in Shadow Valley. In this context Bandur Etrevion reflects Morgoth, brother of Manwe, considering the Etrevions are analogs of Set and Osiris.
Their presence in the frigid cold and placement between the waking and dreaming worlds may refer Atlach-Nacha, the Spider God associate of Tsathoggua from the Hyperborean cycle who resided in the Arctic. This extension of the Lovecraft mythos is possibly relevant for the Dark Shrine in The Broken Lands. Similarly, Robert Howard's mythos calls the serpent god Set instead of Yig, with the serpent men residing in Hyperborea after fleeing Yoth. They were the ones who brought the toad idols out of N'kai, possibly tying them in the underlying subtexts to the myklian.
The thread may come from "The Seven Geases" (as in "geas curse") by Clark Ashton Smith, where the protagonist is a human sacrifice following a progression of curses through the underworld. He is sent into the bowels of Mount Voormithadreth in the Arctic as a blood sacrifice to the toad-god Tsathoggua, who sends him to Atlach-Nacha, who sends him to the icy palace (with "mazy chambers" and "chill spirit of evil") of the antehuman sorcerer Haon-Dor, witnessing dragons flitting below, and passing a terrible serpent with fangs guarding the stairs. Haon-Dor sends the hunter to be experimented upon by the serpent men below, and ultimately on the ascent back up he plummets into the darkness when the web strands break.
References
| Near-level creatures - edit
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