Glaugust Challenge 3: Dracula!!!!('s fuckass little spider he namedropped)

"There are always mysteries in life. Why was it that Methuselah lived nine hundred years, and ‘Old Parr’ one hundred and sixty-nine, and yet that poor Lucy, with four men’s blood in her poor veins, could not live even one day?....Do you know all the mystery of life and death?.... Can you tell me why, when other spiders die small and soon, that one great spider lived for centuries in the tower of the old Spanish church and grew and grew, till, on descending, he could drink the oil of all the church lamps?" -Dracula

Vampires love these things. Dracula especially kept a horde of them, everyone knows this. Big, fat spiders, stubby and black with rounded abdomens. They like ceilings and crevices that they can half-drop out of before using their strands of webbing to reel themselves back up, like mobile bait at the end of a fishing pole. Some say they're any spider that sips on a bunch of lamp oil, others that they're a separate breed. No better than a normal large spider in a fight, perhaps less. Instead of a venom attack they just inject kerosene into you though, or whatever it is they last drank. Also usually pretty bad. And needless to say you don't want to set one on fire in the same day you wouldn't a water balloon filled with lighter fluid.

What gives them a reputation though is their nigh-supernatural capacity to ambush, stalk, and otherwise avoid the attention of people while they go about their business. You would think it would be hard for a football-sized arachnid to crawl around a place people live but they manage it. I think waking up at 3 am to like drink some milk or something only to find a huge spider guzzling the half-dried wax from the bottom of your candle-holder might be a top ten worst experiences that are not immediately fatal.

The thing is that, as we all know, vampires are not fond of fire and can do without light, and stuffing their lairs full of things that make it harder to bring both is always a good move. Symbolically and culturally (for what passes for culture among transient blood-suckers), a wretched beast that drinks things it isn't supposed to, massively outlives its peers, gets big and strong, and emerges (so it is said) from the most strange and ambitious of its kindred certainly has a kind of relatability to it among some aficionados. Perhaps imagine if you will a purse puppy version for your aspiring vampire to tote around like a chihuahua and huck as molotov if they are heartless and the situation is desperate.

Genuinely though these delight me, did you know its based off of a real report where some monk said he found one and shipped it off to the emperor of Austria? Anyway consider them for your games as a terrain obstacle, low-level party nemesis, or marketable plushie.

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