Blood & Webs - An Alternative Ecology For The Ettercap For Dungeons & Dragons

I'm an unapologetic AD&D first edition Fiend Folio fan & user of all of the insane monsters within that incredible game book. The monsters in the Fiend Folio have served me very well & perhaps a bit too well. I've used all them from the first time I got the book & thumbed through it again & again for hours on end.



Among my absolute favorite Fiend Folio monsters is the Ettercap created from the life blood verse of Tolkein's Bilbo Baggins Hobbit. The Ettercap is a humanoid spider monster with the features of an insane man & the abilities of a spider. They are expert poisoners, web & trap builders, & very sneaky as well as stealthy in the extreme.
Wiki lists them as; "An ettercap is a race of bestial spider-men aberrations in the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game" But there's some very interesting fiddly bits & pieces about the Ettercap. First they are found in temperate locations such as forests, swamps, etc. & they are a nightmare in their home environment. Imagine making camp under the large noses of something like this.


They have an AC of six & there's a thirty percent chance of encountering them in their lairs which are going to be an obstacle course of webbed booby traps, dead falls, trip wires, & possibly even webbed poison walls. They attack like ninja using the natural terrain to their advantage & they keep loyal pet spiders. Even though their intelligence is low they are very cagey & cunning using pack tactics to take down larger groups of adventurers.
Adventurers don't actually stand a chance against these things because of the traps they lay & the fact that their senses are so keen. Ettercaps are going to strike at night & we can draw several conclusions from Russ Nicholson's Fiend Folio artwork.

First there are the eyes which seem to indicate binocular vision on these humanoid spiderlike beings & that huge nose. So we've got a monster with low light vision & a keen sense of smell. The claws are massive & look razor sharp along with the claws on the feet perfect for climbing trees & maneuvering through their forest environment.
But where did the Ettercap come from to begin with? There are several theories in mythology over the years strongly connected with much of the lore of Dungeons & Dragon's later editions. But I've got my own campaign origin for these monsters for they are the spawn of  Arachne the spider goddess  of Greek mythology even though her origin goes back much further. The most popular story of Arachne comes from the poet Ovid;
"

One version appears in the Metamorphoses of the Roman poet Ovid.

In this version, Arachne was a shepherd's daughter who began weaving at an early age. She became a great weaver, boasted that her skill was greater than that of Athena, and refused to acknowledge that her skill came, in part at least, from the goddess. Athena took offense and set up a contest between them. Presenting herself as an old lady, she approached the boasting girl and warned: "You can never compare to any of the gods. Plead for forgiveness and Athena might spare your soul."

"Ha! I only speak the truth and if Athena thinks otherwise then let her come down and challenge me herself," Arachne replied. Athena removed her disguise and appeared in shimmering glory, clad in a sparkling white chiton. The two began weaving straight away. Athena's weaving represented four separate contests between mortals and the gods in which the gods punished mortals for setting themselves as equals of the gods. Arachne's weaving depicted ways that the gods had misled and abused mortals, particularly Zeus, tricking and seducing many women. When Athena saw that Arachne had not only insulted the gods but done so with a work far more beautiful than Athena's own, she was enraged. She ripped Arachne's work to shreds and hit her on the head three times. Terrified and ashamed, Arachne hanged herself. Then Athena said, "Live on then, and yet hang, condemned one, but, lest you are careless in future, this same condition is declared, in punishment, against your descendants, to the last generation!" After saying this she sprinkled her with the juice of Hecate's herb, and immediately at the touch of this dark poison, Arachne's hair fell out. With it went her nose and ears, her head shrank to the smallest size, and her whole body became tiny. Her slender fingers stuck to her sides as legs, the rest is belly, from which she still spins a thread, and, as a spider, weaves her ancient web."^[4] This showed how goddesses punished mortals who dared to insult them."

There is mythological evidence that the goddess had prophetic abilities & the abilities to divine the affairs of the gods. Her children inherited her bitterness toward the gods & their chosen heroes. She was consigned to the underworld. Rumors abound of  Arachne being consulted by numerous dark gods, arch devils, demon lords, & many lower world powers some escaping her wrath barely. Many others  gaining knowledge only to be consumed by her crazed lust & insane hunger for the supernatural blood of the gods.




Her children were consigned to the furthest reaches of the planes & outer dimensions . The Ettercaps were   locked away from humanity for a time but they made war upon humanity. The bitterness of the Ettercap tribes knows no bounds even today. They still lurk on the outer fringes of the wildernesses & wastelands of many lands even to this day. Ettercap mercenaries & assassins were renowned in supernatural circles for their violence & ferocity in military operations of sabotage.


Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley from 1894 edition of Lucian's True History of a battle between the People of the Moon and the People of the Earth using giant spiders.


The Ettercap tribes have deep ties with the spiders of Leng in Earth's far future Dreamlands & with the spider creatures of Zothique. The Ettercap have a strong but murky tie with the spider goddess Atlach-Nacha as she is served by several tribes of the monsters. These worshipers are of slightly more dangerous variety of the Ettercap  as they share the hatred of being disturbed from their devotion to their spider goddess. Her divine work of bridging the waking world & the Dreamlands is seen as all consuming. The Ettercaps of
Atlach-Nacha are some of the best trap makers & engineers in existence. They may be summoned by a monster summoning spell but must be paid with a live student of the arts & an offering of at least 780 gems worth of treasure before they will entertain a temporary assignment.



Image from https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/1c/cf/c834b870cad7e7bc145a6ca5bf38.jpg Gallery: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0050571.html

These creatures are sometimes employed by certain forbidden cults to create divine traps & divine dead falls in the name of their forbidden gods. Some divine dungeons & strange ruins taken over by these horrid cults often have supernaturally consigned dungeon engineers who built & maintain the tricks & traps.
These Ettrcap live for the day when the Earth will be cleared of humanity & they can once again take their rightful place under a blotted red sun.

Slicing Deeper Into UK2 The Sentinel By Graeme Morris For Your Old School Campaigns

"Not even memories of past glory live on in the gentle hills around the village of Kusnir. Today its people have more concern for commonplace things, like the harvest, trade, and the threat of death in the night!

Kusnir is beset by a skulk.

The attentions of such a creature are a curse on any community. Streets and alleys which ring to the voices of children by day become fearful, shadowy places by night. Men go abroad armed and in groups, while women and children stay behind locked doors and even there are not safe. But life goes on. The lot of the peasant is always hard, what cannot be prevented must be endured and, of course, things could be worse.

Much worse. The skulk has begun to visit the village more and more often. Sometimes it kills, yet just as often it spares a victim, leaving clear signs of what it might have done had it wished. Its visits are now marked by strange and illegible symbols scrawled in blood on the walls of the buildings. The people are worried, helpless, and desperate. Desperate enough to welcome adventurers.

This adventure can be played alone or as the first adventure in the two-part Alderweg series. "

When it comes to modules that have a rolling hills sort of history with my experiences with AD&D 1st edition UK2 The Sentinel By Graeme Morris is at its  center. This module is aimed at the lower end of PC levels starting with 2-5 & in the second part of the of the two-part Adlerweg series we get The Gauntlet we get the PC's bumped up to levels 3-6. So its an interesting mix of PC's levels right off of the cricket bat.  This is classic Graeme Morris, who co-authored UK1 all over with his passion for plundering the Fiend Folio & Monster Manual for many of his gem like encounters within 'The Sentinel.' This brings a weird English sensibility to the U.K. series which for some is too their taste & not so with other dungeon masters. To run this module takes a steady hand on the dungeon master's part.



There is a lot of investigation, sorting through encounters, clue gathering, piecing the myths & legends of the local area. U.K.2 is a location centered adventure with the action taking place within the confines of the local countryside locations  including the village of Kusnir, an old xvart lair, and a lake-side villa.Its worth noting that this isn't a hack & slash module, there is a lot of investigation work by the PC. The fact that U.K. 2 relies on the Monster Manuel II & The Fiend Folio makes this a great gateway drug for players who haven't experienced the U.K. series with its quirks, twists, and turns sure there hack & slash encounters.But this is a module rooted in thinking or your going to gutted & easily murdered several times over.
Also if your like me & sick of seeing 'Drow' as PC races, on the cover of every other 5th edition adventure, etc. & you want to get into a mythological AD&D style race that fits the bill closer to Celtic & Robert Howardian elements?? Let's quickly talk about the Xvart which is a rather nasty humanoid race;'Xvarts are bald, blue-skinned humanoids with orange eyes. They are 3 feet (0.9 m) tall and usually wear loose cloth doublets. Xvarts live in hilly, cavernous regions, and are usually of chaotic evil or chaotic neutral alignment.' This race makes an excellent stand in for the Drow & they're far closer to the source material
I've used Xvarts as the souls of reincarnated Celts who couldn't move on to their final rewards after being killed by the Roman occupying forces during the time of Caesar for a Lamentations of the Flame Princess game in an England Upturn’d game.  I digest here but not really because the Xvart's lair provides the PC's with some really nasty insights into the ecology of these little bastards.


Understand that this is classic Graeme Morris hear & some of the encounters are way over powered for the PC levels suggested. This is an old school module in every shape & way here, they're not worried if your PC gets a bloody nose or impaled on a half orc spear. The gloves are off & the module will come at your party swinging in certain parts. The cartography is one of my favorite parts of U.K. 2 The Sentinel, the maps are clear, concise, & done by the same cartographer who would later go on to work with Warhammer Fantasy first edition. The artwork is passable for the time period which is the latter half of the TSR classic era.

So can U.K.2 The Sentinal be used with modern retroclone systems? In a word yes. This isn't a perfect module by a country mile but its deeply entrenched in both AD&D monsters & Celtic lore. This is a thinking man's adventure with lots of opportunity for killing on the PC's part but they'll just as likely to get slaughtered. U.K.2 The Sentinal would make an excellent Dark Albion inquisitor's introduction adventure taking place in the back waters of Albion. The monsters of fairy are rising up as the events of the Rose War begin to bring supernatural elements & powers to a boil. There several encounter areas that could lead to fairyland & bring real trouble for a party of adventurers. There's an implied connection between The Plane of Shadow & Fairyland sort of off stage in U.K.2 in the plot line & gaming elements of U.K. 2 in my mind. This makes it a good bridge gap into Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition with its mix of encounters with giant bats, an iron cobra, kenku, needlemen, sheet ghouls, a sheet phantom, a stunjelly, witherweed, boat loads of xvarts. Could there be a doorway into Hyperborea's underworld that leads into the realms of the night hags as detailed in U.K.2?



For Lamentations of The Flame Princess I can easily see U.K. 2 being moved right onto the English countryside with little issue. Set during the beginnings of the Pike & Shot era. This adventure could easily be placed at the beginning of one of the numerous skirmishes that happened before  the Hundred Years' War. The DM would have to twist & turn some of the elements to be a bit more bloody,surreal, & downright dangerous. But let's face it. You can easily refer back to real world mythology & pop culture to give all of the monsters a bit more of the LoFP treatment.
UK2 The Sentinel By Graeme Morris isn't perfect nor as widely regarded as part II but there's enough meat here that it stands on its merits and its a damn fun module to run! For now keep em rolling & I hope you all make your saves!
More to come folks!