Glospiker

Biology

Reproduction

Glospikers reproduce sexually, with retractable sex organs located under the spinnerets. In order to reach the partner, a male's penis hugs their body to an extent, outstretching down and forwards.

Babies are born through eggs laid by the female in clutches of varying sizes, usually 5 eggs or more. Each egg is roughly the size of a human hand, hatching into a glospiker of similar size. Babies can either stay with their parents (if they hang around) or attempt to fend for themselves if they hatch alone - either one can result in a healthy giant spider.

Capable of interspecies breeding.

Diet

Glospikers are a carnivorous species, usually preying on wild animals such as deer, or smaller. They either trap them in webs they have spun, or actively hunt them - sometimes a combination of both where the glospiker attempts to scare their prey into the web.

They are generally hesitant to eat sentient beings should they happen to cross paths, with some either trying to keep them away from their webs or aiding them in escaping.

Baby glospikers have been known to seek out nectar as a sweet treat, though adults are sometimes seen trying to suck some of that sweet stuff. It's a guilty pleasure.

Magic and Abilities

Physical skills and abilities

All glospikers are skilled climbers, able to hook onto almost any surface. Their size also allows them to wrap around trees, too! They also have an excellent if unwieldy (to the unpracticed) jumping ability, which can be used for hunting if applied properly.

Glospikers are able to spin sticky webs out of the back of their abdomen for a variety of purposes, such as the traditional web-building. A thick enough glospiker web is able to ensnare almost anything, though it takes a great deal of time to set up and even more time devoted to maintaining them; more communal uses for web building involve cloth-work and use in sewing and weaving. The silk fibers themselves are extremely strong, durable, flexible and thick. The amount produced on a daily basis depends heavily on their lifestyle and whether they actively hunt prey or spin trapping webs - the gland is developed with practice.

Many glospikers - but not all - have venom sacks connected to their frontmost fangs. This venom paralyzes those bitten at alarming speeds, though unless the target is small enough it is rarely fatal. Solitary glospikers are often more likely to have venom with them compared to those living in some sort of community.

Magic

Being skilled web creators and weavers, glospikers are naturals at picking up dreamweaving. It's a common practice among the species.

In addition to dreamweaving, the species as a whole is talented with enchanting tapestries, clothing, other objects, or even entire areas with engraved magical symbols, branching off of their natural weaving skills. The effects of these blessings vary from design to design, with some examples being helping a traveler be luckier for a safer journey) or enchanting a container so food holds better in it. While simpler, basic designs are common knowledge throughout the species and easily learned, more complex, larger and stronger effects require a more specialized and practiced set of hands.

Culture

Glospikers tend to live in small, tight-knit communities where it's rare for any of the spiders to not know one of the others. Due to this closeness, many glospiker settlements view the raising of their young as a community affair; it's rare for more than one glospiker pair per settlement to have young at a time. They are a monogamous species, and often weave elaborate gifts for would-be mates that they grow attached to.

The area surrounding a glospiker settlement can be identified with relative ease, if you're observant - a common tactic employed by communities are large trap webs designed for wild animals, hidden with foliage or magic. Different members rotate in checking and collecting from the webs, though if something is sapient enough to ask not to be eaten they're usually helped out of the web - they are a peaceful folk.

Their housing is often hand-built using their own silk supported by collected branches or other similar materials.

Glospiker language is comprised solely of clicks, chitters and chirps to accommodate their features making other means of communication difficult, and is completely foreign to anyone not extensively familiar with them as a species. It's not impossible for outsiders to learn the language, or even speak it with outside assistance and tools (such as with the use of clickers or similar devices). Similarly, it's not impossible for glospikers themselves to learn how to speak other languages, though without extensive practice they often come across as stilted and awkward.