Theradectans

The Theradectan are a spider-like race native to the light gravity world Atos, which resides in the Atargatis star system. Ideologically cautious and technologically advanced in the realms of signals intelligence, both technological and magical, they know of the existence of other far off advanced civilizations and are contemplating whether to reveal themselves to the universe at large.

Theradectan Character Template

Theradectans are built like a cross between black widow and tarantula spiders, with chitin-like segmented exoskeletons that have wide thoraxes, long abdomens, six legs, four short pincers emerging from their mouths, and two longer pincers on either side of the spinnerets. Each pincer has three claws which the spider uses to manipulate objects, grab prey, or manipulate silk. The lower set of pincers also contain needles which the spiders use to inject venom into their prey. They are also covered in short, bristle-like hairs, which have a variety of functions and vary in coloring, from black, brown, green, yellow, red, and white. The spiders also have six eyelid-less eyes: two large (6 inch wide) anterior eyes that can see fine detail and four smaller (2 inch) eyes, spread out to look up, down, and to the sides, that can only see movement and light balance. The average female Theradectan size is 5 feet long, 5.5ish feet wide, 4 feet high, while the average male is 4.8 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 3 feet high.

The average female Theradectan specimen is larger, has thinner legs, a larger abdomen, and long fangs that make it easier to deliver their stronger cocktail of venom. The average male is smaller, has shorter and thicker legs, smaller abdomen, shorter fangs, and specialized retractable syringes in their lower pincers that are used for reproductive purposes.

The average Theradectan is cautious, cooperative, and xenophobic in nature. This is primarily because of the hostile nature of their planet, which forced them to be defensive against any outside threats, like the late Accipiraptor dragonfly, that could disturb their homes and harm their relatively fragile bodies. As such, the spiders will use ambush tactics in their fighting as much as possible, limiting their exposure to danger to the final contact with their enemy/prey. They only use frontal attacks with overwhelming numbers or to lead their opponent into an ambush. Many Theradectan parables speak of the wisdom of this, but the most dramatic example of this is the Battle of the Kiez Pass, with the newly formed Neolath Regency exploding a series of nuclear landmines underneath the Robertin Empire's forces, ending the war and creating the Kiez Valley.

All of this is tempered by the equally powerful urge of the Theradectan to improve their position in life, whether that is through inventing new computer technologies or plotting and scheming in the planetary capital. This keeps their conservative society from stagnating and allows for the collapse of old empires and the rise of new ones.

The Theradectan’ brain sits behind their eyes, with a set of major nerve bundles connecting each eye to the brain individually. A large cord of ganglia runs below the spider's digestive system and through the length of the thorax, connecting to the legs and running back to the abdomen. The brain itself isn't as segmented as human's brains are and has less connections per neuron, though the average Theradactan brain contains more neurons than the average human, since it takes up a larger space.

Theradectan' bodies are contained in segmented exoskeletons, consisting of a thorax, an abdomen, six legs, four mouth pincers, and two spinneret pincers. The exoskeleton is made from a strong chitin-like material that keeps all of the spider's organs safe from the elements while giving enough flexibility to make rapid movement possible. The thickness of the chitin varies, between three inches around the brain and a sixth of an inch at the joints. The exoskeleton is also more flexible around the joints, to help ease movement. Because of their home world's low gravity, the chitin is effectively strong enough to protect them from harm nearly as well as human bone on a 1 g world. If breached however, the wound will scab over, but the exoskeleton will not seal fully until it is shed and the new one is grown underneath.

This happens every year at the local spring season and the new exoskeleton is soft and pliable at first, letting the Theradectan expand its organs to new limits before letting it harden for the new year. The empty space is slowly compacted again as the spider eats and the cycle starts again. Failure to moult can cause the spider to suffocate in its exoskeleton and stop adolescents from reaching maturity.

The locomotion of the Theradectan is driven by two systems: muscle fibers and hydraulics. The legs of the spiders are separated into seven parts, which are lined with muscle fibers that can slowly move the exoskeleton in both directions by themselves but are specialized to pull the legs closer to the body. This is due to the use of a specialized hydraulic system pinching the vein closed, pumping blood into the leg, rapidly pushing the limb away from the body. The spider then opens the vein and pulls back on the legs with their muscles, before starting the process all over again. The spiders can increase and decrease the pressure of their body in fractions of a second in their individual legs to move rapidly.

This system of locomotion lets the Theradectan move at top speeds of 40 mph on open terrain and not lose much speed in the jungle undergrowth of their homeworld, thanks to the all-terrain capabilities their legs gives them. They can also jump thanks to this hydraulic system, the females ten feet into the air and the males fifteen feet, by tensioning their leg muscles and pressurizing their blood vessels, before releasing all of the stored energy at once. All of this however comes at a cost of fragility. The hydraulics that provide the power of their muscular system can only work if their exoskeleton's integrity is kept intact. If it is breached, the pressure changes that the hydraulics rely on can't work and the Theradectan loses much of its speed and any ability to jump.

The Theradectan' cardiovascular system is driven by a set of ‘pseudo’-lungs set into the abdomen and a large four-chambered heart. Air enters and exits the lungs through slits on the front of the abdomen and enters into the lungs, which have a mix of features of book lungs and ‘regular’ lungs. Air gets drawn in by the lungs expanding, which draws air across narrow sheets of folded tissue, where oxygen is drawn from the air into the blood flowing through the sheets and carbon dioxide goes the other way, before the lungs contract, pushing the carbon-tainted air out. After going through the lungs, the blood flows into the heart, where it is circulated through the body through arteries and returns through veins.

There are 4 major blood vessels that come off of the heart, one going forward to feed the brain and forward pincers, one going back to feed the digestive system and spinnerets, and two going off to the side to oxygenate the leg muscles and provide hydraulic pressure. If the blood vessels are punctured, the blood of the spider has less platelets than humans do, which makes them more prone to bleeding out. Their heartstones are also located behind their hearts.

The eyes of the spider are important, as they are to any creature. Besides seeing, they are also how the creature knows how it is oriented, e.g. which way is up. This makes them vulnerable to visual disorientation, but they can't get dizzy otherwise, because they don't have other ways to sense balance or acceleration except for sight and contact with the ground.

Theradectan use the bristle-like hairs that are set across their body for a wide variety of purposes: from sensing pheromones to irritating predators. Their broadest function is sensing touch contact, letting the spider feel its surroundings. All of the hairs, regardless of their location or other function do this, though the ones on the legs and pincers are the most sensitive. It is through these hairs that the Theradectan can sense the movement of its prey from the change in air currents. Certain bristles perform other functions as well. Bristles set on top of the thorax are designed to detect sounds and vibrations, with the bristles being different lengths to be able to sense different wavelengths of sound.

Finally, bristles set in their lower set of pincers of the Theradectan allow the spider to sense chemicals that provide senses of taste and smell, as well as being able to detect pheromones that other spiders put into the air. This is very important, because pheromones are one of the main methods of communication, besides sound. Besides the different tastes and smells of their surroundings, the spiders can differentiate more than a thousand different pheromones. The other way the Theradectanes communicate is by vibrating their bristles on their upper set of pincers at high speeds, making hissing sounds that can carry for miles.

The mechanics of sexual intercourse of Theradectan are quite demanding on the part of the males. Once the males reach maturity and desire to mate, it will make a small sperm web and release a small quantity of semen on it. It will then extend its specialized pair of syringes, located in the lower pair of pincers, into the semen and suck it into them. This keeps it viable until a female that is willing to mate is found.

The mating ritual varies between the different cultures of the species, from elaborate dances that the males perform to weaving complex patterns of webbing and vibrating them at precise frequencies to create songs, but in any case, the goal is to lull the female Theradectan into a receptive state for insertion. If successful, the male then approaches the female and inserts his syringes into the opening into her genitalia, which are located on the lower surface of her abdomen. Once the semen is transferred, the male will attempt to get away from the female as fast as possible before she decides to eat him. Some cultures require the male to be eaten and during famines, the male is often consumed so the female is well fed to take care of the offspring, though this has become less common as civilization stabilized.

Three months after mating, the females lay twenty to thirty eggs in a silk egg sac ten feet across and guard it for six months. During this time, the female will tend to the sac, turning it over and making sure to keep it from deforming and act aggressively towards anything that approaches. Once the eggs hatch, the young spiderlings stay around the nest for a few days, with the mother tending to them while they live off the remains of their yolk sac before being assigned to a creche. Female spiders can have two or three pregnancies during their lifetime, due to reaching their version of menopause when they reach 43 local years (34.4 standard years) old.

Theradectan' venom is a cocktail of nerve agents that work to paralyze the captured prey by stopping the signalling of the prey's nervous system, which eventually shuts the respiratory system down, killing the target. The venom is created in specialized venom sacs in the spider's head and injected through a hollow tube in the spider's fangs. Female Theradectans have larger sacs, longer fangs, and more potent venom than males, as they are more concerned with fending off and/or attacking other spiders and need the extra weaponry. The spiders have some immunity to their own venom, extending the onset of paralysis and preventing death unless enough venom is injected into their body.


Female white Theradectan' venom has an additional poison in their cocktail that causes tissue around the bite to quickly (in 1-2 minutes) undergo necrosis, with the flesh around the bite dying and blackening. This is particularly fatal to spiders, with the dead chitin of their exoskeleton being unable to hold in their organs, killing the spider unless given medical attention. Non-white and grey Theradectans have no immunity to this venom and both white and grey spiders can resist the necrosis for a short time, increasing the onset time to 5-10 minutes.

The trademark ability of the Theradectan species is their ability to create webs of silk, which they use for various purposes. They use spinnerets, pipe shaped structures located in their abdomen, that they use to produce the silk. The tip of each spinneret is covered with hundreds of microscopic spinning tubes which the silk is spun. The silk hardens once it makes contact with the air and becomes silk, which has differing properties depending on how it was extruded. Theradectans also use their silk to create the sigils integral to using their form of magic. Silk is unlike other biological fibrous materials, as opposed to hair or cell walls which are built continuously, it is created on demand out of the spinnerets. The spinning happens when the fiber is pulled away from the spinneret, either by the Theradectan' legs or by its own weight when it is falling, though "spinning" is a misnomer, since no rotation occurs during the process. Interestingly, the faster the silk is extruded, the stronger the threads are. The silk dries in a straight fashion, thanks to the arrangement of the spinnerets and the chemistry of the silk itself.

The physical properties of spider silk vary between the types of silk that the Theradectan' create, but the characteristics of their most used variety of silk, structural silk, is the strongest and most durable type. It has the tensile strength of steel, at 1000 MPa, while keeping at about one sixth of the density. They can also extend up to five times its relaxed state without snapping. It also can stay structurally sound for years, resisting drying out in high heat, dissolving when it gets wet, or wearing down microbes. However, the silk can be broken down by the stomach acid of the Theradectan and the spiders can digest the old silk to be able re-spin it later. This allows the spiders to quickly demolish old webs and build new ones, without needing large meals before or during the construction process. The structural silk can hold their strength below −40 °C (-40 °F) and up to 220 °C (428 °F).

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