kukuruyo

In truth, arachnes are composed of multiple sub-races, but they all share some similarities. All of them are some kind of spider humanoid similar to an existing or pre-existing animal spider. The quantity of spider or human in their bodies varies between sub-races, but all of them have some spider and some humanoid feature. All of the sub-races can breed between themselves, but reproduction on arachnes is quite peculiar.

If a sub-race mates with an arachne of his same sub-race, they produce several offspring of the same sub-race. If a sub-race mates with another sub-race, they produce a single egg with a crossbreed child, capable of reproduction by himself. If a male arachne mates with a female of other race like humans, nothing happens, but if a female arachne mates with a male from other race, they produce female offspring of the arachne sub-race. Also there’s a problem with arachne reproduction, when mating another arachne, females sometimes have the instinctive reaction to kill and eat their mate. This makes casual sex a no-no for arachne males, and sexual interaction is produced almost only on romantic relationships, when the female will try to stop her instincts from killing her mate.

That two particularities, the killing and the female-only birth on sex with another race, makes arachnes to have much more females than males, as sex between the same race is not as common as other races, and sex with other races create females. Also, there are individuals on some sub-races that voluntarily try to have sex only with humans in order to produce more females.

Many of the arachnes are very carefree on interactions with other races; their mind seems similar to one of an intelligent dog, their instincts work in the wilderness and between them to help them survive, but when mixed with people they are like pets, they are happy helping and playing with humans, and doesn’t know much about society. In fact, if provided with food and treated well, some of them can be had as pets.

Trying to make an arachne stay when she doesn’t want to can be problematic though, since they are strong, fast, and possibly venomous. But as they don’t cause trouble on most places, villages usually let them stay, although they have an eye of them, if only because they doesn’t know much about property or laws.

Not all arachnes are like that though, there’s some sub-races with aggressive behavior, like the desert “camel arachne”, and some sub-races that have developed human intelligence. While this last part doesn’t have to mean anything negative, it creates an unpredictable factor than other arachnes doesn’t have. A “huntsman arachne” is always friendly and helpful towards humans and everyone on a land populated by them knows it, but a “black widow arachne” have human intelligence, and thus every individual can be either friendly or hostile; and in fact there’s a small faction of arachnes that believe on humanoid monster superiority over humans and can be quite dangerous, some of them even force humans to mate with them to create more female offspring of their kind.

There’s only about 20% of arachnes with human intelligence, malice or aggressive behavior, but that’s enough for some people or villages to not trust them and their integration varies much on each land. Asmara has many problems with camel arachnes and since arachnes usually don’t commerce they don’t want anything to do with them. On the other hand, on Nion pa, arachnes have helped humans for generations, even before the essence weapons, to kill monsters and make their villages safe. Even if at the beginning it was simply to get more food killing a bigger monster with the help of humans, in the end it became a symbiotic relationship in which humans gave food to arachnes in exchange of protection, like a warding dog. Nowadays many arachnes live in shrines and are revered as good spirits, people make offers to them to get good luck while they play with children, an image that would be impossible to imagine on the empire, where arachnes are hunted down on sight.

Each sub-race of arachnes has its own elemental affinity.

Some relevant Arachnes are: Aradne, a lone spider from Monster girls on tour; Inosha, a member of the Supreme team in Guild adventure, and the Aracnis team in Guild adventure