Spirits of the Earth

__________________QUICK STATS
Name Aranea Minreth ("air-AY-nee-AY min-RETH")
Age Many Cycles
Gender Female
Species Spiderkin
Ethnicity Essyrni
Height 5' 2"
Occupation Assassin & Poison Dealer
Residence Essyrni

__________________IN-DEPTH STUFF

Physical Description
Aranea's gray skin often has her confused with drow, while the chelicerae flanking her mouth are often mistaken for tusks (such as those of half-orcs); this causes confusion until people see the black eyes above her more human-like eyes. Even then, not everybody immediately recognizes the black bulbs as eyes. Her more human-like eyes have black irises, though this is merely considered highly unusual rather than spider-like. The four large, spindly, segmented legs with deadly piercing tips that grow from her back, however, mark her clearly for what she is. These legs can wrap about her closely, allowing her to don a cloak that conceals them as needed; she often wears a hooded cloak that conceals both her spider eyes and spider limbs, leaving only her confusing skin color and chelicerae visible.

Aside from these features, not much really stands out about her. She does have purple shoulder-length hair that she parts to the right, keeping the left side of her head shaved, but this cannot be seen when she's hooded. Her ears are akin to those of a half-elf but are also concealed when she has her hood up. She has no eye brows, a fact that isn't immediately evident unless she has the hood down. She stands five-foot-two and has a stocky build but she is astonishingly quick and agile (see Magic/Abilities, below), making her a deadly combatant and allowing her to escape a situation with relative ease even if she has only her humanoid feet to carry her. She is left-handed.

Personality
Aranea is absolutely terrified of fire; she won't go anywhere near it if she can avoid it. She would actively seek a more difficult and dangerous path to avoid one that had fire anywhere upon it. She's nigh fanatical in her devotion to spiders and spider-kin, considering herself and them before all others - and them first; her selflessness in this regard is one of the few truly good qualities about her. She often travels by the name Min or Minny but she doesn't try to hide her chelicerae; she just prefers to keep the more obvious signs of what she is out of sight so as not to scare off her targets and potential customers.

Minny is bisexual but leans strongly toward women; she has to really like a man to be invested in him, and she doesn't go for the "good" types. She's drawn to darker and more "exotic" skin tones, and she likes her partners to be intelligent and at least morally ambiguous. Woe be to those with whom she has a falling out or considers enemies, however. She has a tendency to literally eat them alive.

Relationships
Pending

History
Pending

Magic/Abilities

• Spider Limbs: Although her four spider limbs are used primarily for climbing, allowing Aranea to scale almost any surface with ridiculous ease and speed, they can also be used for four deadly attacks. The limbs are powerful and can do some serious damage, but attacking in this manner is tiring as she's putting full force behind ever strike. The tips of these legs act like spears in battle, making these limbs similar to the stingers of scorpions but without the venom. In addition, the "thorns" along the spider limbs can help to catch her if she falls or rend the flesh of those they swipe. The limbs are armored except at their segments; the armor is equivalent to steel plate.
  
• Chelicerae: The protrusions flanking Aranea's mouth are coated in a necrotic venom that forces whatever it touches to begin decaying; however, the venom also has secondary effects that are more like poison if left untreated. Fever, dizziness, nausea, and muscle weakness or muscle spasms are the most common symptoms; if the poison is allowed to spread or more poison is applied, breathing will eventually become difficult and the body will begin shutting down. The localized necrosis takes several minutes to begin manifesting visibly with a single injection, and the poison may take as long as a half-hour to begin affecting someone due to its slow-acting nature. Death inevitably occurs within two hours of injection. If a victim is subject to multiple injections, however, this time frame becomes increasingly shortened; with several injections, death can occur within a half-hour. The venom sacs are stored in the space betwixt her eyes and the base of the chelicerae.
  
• Spider Eyes: Aranea's six additional eyes do not provide her with ordinary visual acuity. Instead, the four larger ones add to her visual acuity in darkness; if one or more of these are blinded in some manner, the removal of each one's functionality will significantly decrease her ability to see in the dark. With all four active, absolute darkness appears equivalent to bright moonlight; the caveat is that these four eyes only see in black, white, and shades of gray. The two smaller eyes, however, detect heat signatures rather than light; this allows Aranea to find living targets and other sources of heat even when all of her other eyes are blocked by something like fog or smoke.
  
• Spinnerets: Multiple sacs of an extremely sticky silvery-white fluid are stored in Aranea's neck, and a pair of spinnerets beneath her tongue allow her to rapidly spew webbing that is roughly as strong as steel but dissolves in about four hours; fire can burn the webbing but they'll cling to anything that touches or tries to cut through them. The sharp tips of Aranea's spider limbs do not stick to the webbing.
  
• Fleet: Aranea's reflexes are superb and allow her to move roughly thrice as fast as most people. She is extremely agile and fast on her feet, and using her spider limbs to run allows her to move fast enough that she almost becomes a blur. She is a little slower when using her spider limbs to climb or cling to a surface but her reflexes do not suffer in this instance.
  
• Immunities & Resistances: Aranea is immune the venoms of spiders and resistant to most other forms of venom. She is also resistant to most forms of poison and to date has never contracted a disease of any kind; as such, she may be entirely immune to most diseases or perhaps only highly resistant. Aranea also has somewhat thick skin and a high tolerance for extreme cold; she can release a lot of body heat very quickly if need be, making her well-adapted to life in the desert, and the pigmentation of her skin makes her resistant to sunburn.
  
• Spider-Friend: Aranea shares a deep connection with most spiders that allows her to communicate with and influence them empathically. She often has hundreds of spiders crawling about her person and hiding in her clothes; they will attack whatever threatens her as a massive swarm but can also act as many extra sets of eyes. This also allows her to communicate at a distance with others who can also communicate with spiders.
  
  The following abilities are magical in nature.
  
• Psychometry: Aranea can feel emotional energy when she touches animals, people, or various surfaces; focusing her innate magic on that emotional energy shows her visions. People give her flashes of their lives when she touches them, while objects and surfaces give her flashes of the events surrounding them. Touching a wall might show her who has passed by what has happened recently near said wall, for example; picking up a candle might show her a vision of the world around the candle the last time it was lit; touching a beloved teddy bear might show her memories tied to that bear. Touching a corpse usually shows the last moments before that individual died. Aranea's psychometry is always from the point of view of whatever she's touching. This allows her to use various creatures and even other people as scouts, whether they are willing or not, by focusing her psychometry specifically on recent events; it also allows her to investigate an area or object (or those personally tied to that object) in the same manner, even without the physical presence of other people or creatures.
  
• Scrying: Through deep meditation, Aranea can "send" her mind out either into the world around her or into the minds of others. This allows her to observe events as they happen, scout an area, or even probe someone's mind. She cannot "receive" knowledge of the past in this way if it doesn't exist in the mind of a person or creature.
  
• Astral Projection: Through deep meditation, Aranea can loosen the bonds betwixt her spirit and her body; doing so allows her body to roam freely. Her spirit, once freed, can move and act like a ghost. It is intangible, able to move through solid surfaces but mostly unable to grasp solid objects. Channeling magic, however, allows her a limited physical connection to the world; she can leave bruises or scratches upon someone's body, move objects, fly, become invisible, and even disrupt fires. Her spirit is susceptible to magic or abilities that would affect ghosts and spirits, and she grows weaker the farther from her body she is and the more time she spends projecting. If she spends too long projecting or travels too far from her body, she may not be able to return to her body and her body will shut down; she has never projected for more than an hour, and any length of time beyond a half-hour makes the danger begin to grow exponentially. Unfortunately, projecting also leaves her body unprotected unless she takes measures to guard it.
  
• Summoning Rituals: By sacrificing living creatures on an altar within a runic circle and placing a smaller runic circle nearby, Aranea can summon large and powerful spider-like beings for multiple purposes. The smaller runic circle absorbs ambient magical energy and acts as an anchor for whatever is bound within the summoning circle, preventing it from running wild once summoned; various herbs and other materials are typically burned to strengthen the anchoring runic circle, though this isn't necessary for every summoning. The creatures summoned are intelligent and mysterious, able to commit powerful magic to the summoner's purpose or provide knowledge otherwise inaccessible to her. They like making deals - nothing is free - and are willing to kill someone, steal something, offer information or insight, or perhaps do other things for the summoner if the cost is provided to them. These rituals are short-lived, as the creatures that are summoned aren't meant to remain beyond the reason for their summoning; some creatures may need to be resummoned if a deal is made and the cost is unable to be paid immediately. Such creatures rarely tell the summoner anything without a direct request, however; for example, knowing how to summon a very specific creature is knowledge that might need to be shared by that creature (as opposed to summoning any similar creature that happens to answer the summoning).
  
  Inventory
  
• Ironwood Crossbow: A light crossbow held and fired with one hand; requires a second hand to manually set and load it, however.
  
• Spider-Kin Venom: Small vials of Aranea's own collected venom for dipping crossbow bolts into.
  
• Crossbow Bolts x25: Tipped with steel and stored in her cloak.
  
• Ice Bolts x10: The steel tips of these bolts are etched with runes that cause them to erupt with "dry" ice when they hit something with great force; the ice spreads slowly for about a minute, freezing everything it touches, making wounds caused by these bolts particularly dangerous and painful.
  
• Shatterbolts x10: The steel tips of these bolts are etched with runes that cause them to explode when they hit something with great force; the explosion causes no fire damage but instead sends shrapnel in every direction within about five feet. Obviously, these can be particularly devastating to shoot someone with.
  
• Spiderbolts x5: The steel tips of these bolts are etched with runes that conjure several dozen tiny black spiders into existence when they hit something with great force. These spiders possess a stinging venom that is very painful but otherwise harmless. While a single bite might be painful, however, dozens of them all at once can be excruciating. Moreover, since the point of a crossbow bolt is to pierce the flesh and enter a target's body, this can cause numerous internal problems.
  
• Prized Throwing Knives x8: Carved of bone and set into hilts of obsidian, this set of knives has been precision balanced for throwing. The bone blades each have a sinuous double curve, limited serration, and are razor-sharp. The hilts have been polished and set with tiny onyxes, and a binding of alchemically strengthened spider silk with the tensile strength of steel wire helps to secure each blade to its hilt. Etched runes enchant the knives so that they can return to their owner's hand when the command word (salipzia) is uttered. The command word can be changed only with a special ritual, and the one who made the knives is long dead. These knives are hidden in discreet pockets of Aranea's cloak.
  
• Hooded Cloak: Plum-colored; the inside has fifty open sleeves that can each hold a crossbow bolt, with twenty-five of them resting to either side of the front of the cloak. The inside of the cloak also has several pouches of varying sizes and shapes, allowing its wearer to carry numerous items small enough to be held in the hand (e.g. vials, coins). The cloak itself is made from thick, sturdy wool and bears a relatively large hood; it has a polished steel clasp in the shape of a stylized spider.
  
• Alembic & Kit: Equipment & assorted tools (e.g. stirring sticks, measured vials, stoppers) for mixing potions & poisons; carried in Aranea's cloak.
  
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