Drider

The first fleshwarping process mastered by the drow remains both their most successful and most infamous: the drider. Fusing the body of a drow with that of a giant spider, driders are a sexually dimorphic fleshwarp-the only fleshwarp known to be able to produce young. While female driders have the upper torsos of elegant drow women with mouths featuring sharp poisoned fangs, male driders have hideous, mutated countenances that further blend the humanoid form with that of a spider; the difference in appearance is perhaps a reflection on the matriarchal nature of drow society. In combat, all driders are equally dangerous.

Although the fleshwarping process was originally intended to be a punishment for drow who fell from grace, the significant powers and strengths gained from the horrifying transformation are attractive to some drow, and an increasing number of lower-ranking citizens in drow cities volunteer themselves for the painful procedure. In return for mandatory time serving as a guardian, soldier, or other public servant, such volunteer driders are later allowed to lead their own lives, typically in caverns located in a city's periphery. The painful truth is that for most driders, they do not live long enough to see this reward, for the drow have a penchant for working their fleshwarped slaves to death or deploying them in deadly war missions in which survival is a only a remote possibility.

Most driders use arcane magic, but driders who use divine magic are well known, while a rare few use occult or primal magic. A drider's innate spells remain the same regardless of the magical tradition, but those who use different types of magic as prepared spells may well have entirely different spells prepared than the drider presented below.

Some creatures, notably drow, are not happy with merely killing their enemies. They revel in the total degradation of their foes through the horrifying transformative technique known as fleshwarping. Though the fleshwarping process was not created by the drow, many believe they perfected it. The drow torture their enemies in vats of churning magical reagents, reshaping their flesh and psyche alike into horrid and monstrous things. The reconstitution of flesh results in countless variations of fleshwarps, and the following are just a couple of examples of these horrors.