Sun Spiders
Sun spiders are the fastest-running small hunters of the Glassbelt and the Rimward floors, and the most feared beyond their harm. They are not quite spiders, though everyone calls them so. They chase shade, which means they run straight at a walking person’s shadow and will crawl into a sleeper’s, and the tales told of them at crossing fires are far worse than anything they do.
Appearance
A sun spider is as long as a hand from jaws to tail, and its legs spread wider. Its body is pale tan to reddish brown and covered in long, fine, golden hairs. It seems to have ten legs, because the long feelers at the front are held out and used like legs. Its head bears two enormous jaws, like a pair of pincers set side by side, nearly a third of its length. It runs with startling speed in bursts, stopping dead and starting again, and makes a faint rasping hiss by rubbing its jaws when cornered.
Habitat and Range
They live across the Glassbelt Interior and the floors and rims of the Rimward Basins, in stony and sandy desert, ruin fields, and the stones around wells and shelters. By day they shelter under stones or in burrows.
Behaviour and Temperament
A sun spider hunts at night and in the early morning, running down beetles, scorpions, lizards, and small rodents and tearing them apart with its jaws. It has no venom. In the heat it dashes from one patch of shade to the next, and any moving shadow is shade, so it races after travellers, and after their animals, and stops where they stop. It does not hunt people. At night, drawn by warmth and insects, it comes into camps and under bedding.
Life Cycle
A female digs a burrow, lays up to a hundred eggs, and guards them, sometimes feeding the young. They grow through several moults and live about a year.
Uses and Dangers
A sun spider’s bite is painful, can tear the skin, and may fester if not cleaned, but it is not poisonous and does not kill. The real harm it does is fright: a spider racing after a walker’s heels has made crossers run in the heat, and a pack beast shying from one can throw its load. It eats scorpions, which is a mercy.
Lore and Belief
The tales at crossing fires say that sun spiders chase people to eat them alive, that they numb a sleeper’s skin with their bite and feed all night unnoticed, and that a pack beast’s belly can be found hollowed out by them in the morning. None of it is true. Goblin salvagers tell such tales to newcomers on purpose, and laugh when they run. Old crossers say a sun spider following your shadow is a sign you have walked into the noon heat when you should be resting, which is the one true thing in the stories.