Drider

The Empty Hunger
Driders are born from being hollowed out by stimuli, from a crash that never quite ended and a hollow hunger for social activity and connection that can no longer be filled.

They hunt by making encampments, traveling circuses of revelry. Hidden brothels and theaters. Cafes and opium dens, churches and arenas. They populate these places with puppets on threads and string, glamoured to appear alive and well. They crave the contact of people, and occasionally they snatch a patron and pull them up into the rafters to feed. Eating fingers, limbs, and a few other appendages over time. Stitching up the wounds. Slowly keeping someone alive over months.

Occasionally a patron of a drider’s nest will be slowly hollowing out from the experience. Growing less and less connected with their fellows as they revel. Eventually they can stare uncaring or even cheering as a drider descends on a new victim or dismembers a long held one.

When this has happened they are ready. The Drider (or Driders if the nest is growing large) can make them a cocoon, place them in it (probably after eating a few limbs as a snack) and fill it with a venom of apathy,longing and hunger. Later (the time varies) they will have finished metamorphosis and this cocoon will birth a new drider who will continue the festivities. Starting small and slight compared to their ‘parents’ but growing larger and stranger as they devour and ensnare others.

Newly hatched Driders often can pass for humans, while older and larger ones must hide and interact via their puppets.

Driders will readily snare and dismember one another if prey is scarce, or simply inconvenient. The limbs do not always grow back, but new ones can be fashioned from silk and the bodies of their prey (or stolen from other driders) and then filled with their venom until the limb respond as if alive.

Many elder drider are nothing but bags of bones, silk and skin filled with venom and spiders. They are no less hungry, powerful or malicious.