Arachnae Bioware

[Thrythlind]

I'm going to put my original write up for d20 Modern (minus stats) in a reply...maybe two dependent on character limit


Changes for Dresdenverse:
The Arachnae of Arachnae Bioware are actually descended from a variety of spider-based scions and spirit folk.  Primarily these would be shapechanging goblin-spiders that escaped their eradication at the hands of the samurai in Japan and ended up breeding with humanity in Russia and China.  Up until recently, the heritage has remained muted, but some magical effect has, in the recent past caused them to express into a large group of scions and changelings.  While the Chinese/Russian ethnic groups are strongest, the Arachne would consider spider-scions that hale from descent of the Greek Arachne as well as the African Anansi spirit as well as others.  In fact, the Arachne as a whole probably lack enough supernatural knowledge to know precisely what they are.

Alignment in Dresdenverse: In general, a basically isolationist neutral, neither wanting to harm those around them or stick their neck out to help others.  Katya Chin's connections with humans means that her faction might be a bit more leaning toward taking part in the world.  Ms Chin would almost be a mirror of Marcone in attitude, willing to kill to protect her people and work behind the scenes as well as make alliances.  Some of the other factions of the Arachnae are more likely to follow one of these philosophies: total isolation, interaction in secret (currently most popular), pre-emptive attacks, cooperation.

Power Scale in Dresdenverse: They'd be big enough to get in the news occasionally, but not so big or in fad that people really pay them much attention.  They probably have more of a public splash than Monoc due to their background in fashion, but less of an impact in business and supernatural affairs.  They are not heavy hitters overall...maybe Fellowship of St. Giles level power.

Templates:

Face

Faces appear to the naked eye as if they are as human as everybody else save for some mild differences.  They are the Arachne most end up dealing with.  Faces are not the most common Arachne, and are in fact rather uncommon, but they are the ones that handle the human employees that the Arachne must deal with now.  Katya Chin is a face and the current recognized leader by most of the Arachne, though some believe that she is a figurehead and get annoyed when she acts otherwise.  Faces tend to have an urge to prove themselves useful and often interact with humanity on a more regular business.  Most of Katya Chin's assassination teams are faces, for example.  As such, despite lacking some of the same level of power as their relatives, it is the faces who can be considered the most dangerous of the species.

Musts: A high concept that describes their species such as "Arachne Assassin" or "Public Face of the Arachne" or something of the sort.

Spider Walk (-1)

Spinnerettes/Webbing, bought as Rituals focused on Crafting: webbing (-2)

Options:
Some faces may have learned combat applications of their webbing, buy that as Channelling: Webbing (-2)

Important Skills: Deceit and Empathy are highly important to faces for the most part, other skills will show up based on their specific task (assassin, manager, public relations, celebrity, etc)

Minimum Refresh Cost: -3

Weaver

Weavers have two human eyes with red irises and six eye-spots set in pairs up from their forehead.  The first feature most people notice about them, however, are their six-arms.  Weavers are the calmest of the Arachne and tend to be split between crafters and spiritual leaders.  They come across as very friendly, even if they dislike a person.

Musts: Must have a high concept that relates to their species or breed.  "Arachne Priest" or "Weaver Philosopher"

Spider Walk (-1)
The Sight (-1)
Webbing crafting as per Faces (-2)

Options: Some Weavers might be have true talent in the magical arts or else you can say their spirituality comes from True Faith abilities.

Important Skills: Rapport and Conviction, in addition levels of Fists or Might might represent the advantage of having multiple arms.

Minimum Refresh: -4

Hunters

Hunters have thick skin that invariably gives them the appearance of being heavily muscled.  They are incredibly strong and have large, multi-faceted eyes.  They tend to have a large variety of skin colorations, including mutli-colored patterns.  Hunters, like most Arachne, are private about their life, in addition they are reserved and very cautious.  They are also aggressively protective of people they consider friends.

Musts: Must have a high concept that relates to their species or the company.  "Heavy Hitter for Arachne Security" or "Hunter Bodyguard"

Spider Walk (-1)
Claws (-1)
Inhuman Strength (-2)
Inhuman Toughness (-2)
Catch: Toxins (+1)

Options: Some might be venomous.

Important Skills: Endurance, Alertness, some combat skills

Minimum Refresh: -5

Spiders

Spiders have the upper body a human being and the lower body of a spider.  They tend to be hyperactive, very tactile and affectionate.  They are the most bizarre, by human standards, in both mind and body.  Spiders have little concept of tact and are rarely disturbed by anything.  The majority have a very scientific outlook and a fervent interest in the natural world.  Several claim they can understand spiders, insects and other such creatures and seem to have an empathic connection with them.

Musts: Must have a high concept that relates to their species such as "Spider Mortician" or "Hive Mistress"

Echoes of the Beast (-1)
Webbing as Faces (-2)
Spider-walk (-1)
Inhuman Speed (-2)
Claws: Venomous (-3)

Options: Some might eventually learn to manipulate their insects and spiders more completely via magic of some kind and gain Channeling or Rituals in that regard.  Others might learn combat applications of their webbing as Faces and Weavers can.

Important Skills: Lore and Scholarship, learning is their primary desire, Survival might also represent their naturalistic attitude.

Minimum Refresh: -9

[Thrythlind]

Arachne Bioware

Arachne Bioware started out as Arachne Designs (So wonderful even the gods are jealous) about fifteen years ago.  They were among the first companies to make mass use of spider-silk.  Their products included mass-produced items priced for the common consumer on the street, extra-tough active-wear for athletes and custom, hand-crafted gowns and suits for the wealthy.  They still produce the highest quality spider-silk products.
Arachne Designs is still one of their most profitable branches, but they have branched out into other things such as spider-silk based body-armor and are rumored to be working on a synthetic paper that is much easier, and definitely more tree-friendly, to produce than traditional paper.  No one is certain exactly how they manage to produce the materials they use for their products, but most assume that there is some sort synthesis going on.
They run a large number of private schools that have somewhat mysterious acceptance standards.  Their students come from a variety of backgrounds and financial statuses, and the majority are related to Arachne employees.  They go past primary education and run a series of technical colleges for future Arachne employees as well.
Arachne also owns large tracts of seemingly undeveloped wilderness territories around the world, mostly forests, mountains and areas with lots of caves.  These areas are protected with a ferocity that many save for their homelands.  Few outsiders are allowed inside.
The schools and the fanatically protected privacy and sanctity of their wilderness regions has sparked many rumors about the group.  Some suspect them of being a front for a sort of spider cult.  Others suspect that some very dangerous genetic research is going on behind the scenes.  Some of the few that look beyond the Arachne clothing label wonder about their motives.
There are some grains of truth to the rumors.  Some of Arachne’s employees do worship spider imagery, but not all of them, and it doesn’t necessarily give advantages in the company, which is currently run by a Russian woman named Katya who has a reputation for being less than religious herself.
It is also true that Arachne is interested in hiding the results of an unethical genetic experiment: themselves.
Arachne is aptly named since the majority of its members are a new race produced as a side-effect of a particularly horrible bio-weapon that had been released out of spite by a renegade scientist.  The original bio-weapon was a disease designed to splice arachnid DNA into humans producing bizarre mutations that were, more often than not, lethal.
The major outbreak of the disease occurred in regions of the then Soviet Union and China, but it spread into minor outbreaks throughout the world.  All told, several hundred thousand were infected and eighty percent of them died.  The majority of the remainder were painfully mutated in severely debilitating ways.  A veritable handful, a few thousand, survived by evolving into something else.
 
The world at large never learned the truth of the disease.  The raw numbers of the major outbreaks were hidden by the Soviet and Chinese governments and the mutations were kept under wraps by all the official governments.  The disease was found to be very easy to vaccinate against and was soon eliminated.  The creator died by exposure to his own weapon, and his research into it was lost.
The evolved survivors, predominately Soviets and Chinese, mostly vanished into the underground.  The governments of those countries originally thought to use them as super-weapons, and then learned that they could reproduce with normal humans and sought to eliminate them instead for fear of further contagion and corruption of the gene pool.  A handful of the handful escaped.  The survivors of other countries went through similar problems, though mostly it was local civilians running them out more than government forces.
After several years, when most of the Arachne had come together, Arachne Designs came out as a front for the Arachne race.  They found it easy to produce spider-silk, as each of them are natural producers of the silk.  Arachne Designs proved incredibly successful, and they started expanding to their current situation.  They’ve had a relatively easy time avoiding infiltration.  It is easy for the Arachne to ferret out non-Arachne simply by discrete examination of the underside of a person’s wrist.
Arachne Bioware exists to make life easier for the Arachne race.     The wilderness areas are inhabited by Arachne and the schools are attended by them.
They are loyal to outside organizations only so much as that helps their goal.  They are almost a nation in and of themselves.  As a whole, they only want to be left alone to live, though there are individuals with other motives.  That general goal, however, means that the company avoids making a stir whenever possible, even if they feel something needs to be changed.

Katya Chin

Fifteen years ago, Katya Chin was introduced to the public as one of the teenage models in Arachne Design’s catalog.  With her unique mix of Russian and Chinese looks and her natural talent and skill for presenting herself quickly led her to becoming a well known and popular face for several years.  As the company expanded into bio-technology research and land purchases, she began to represent the company in all manner of situations.  She continued to move up, eventually being placed as the CEO of Arachne Bioware.
Most people believe that she=s a personable and photogenic figurehead meant to distract people from the real people behind the company.  Only a few people outside the company know that she is a very canny and calculating woman with a firm head for business, negotiation and understanding when to let people do their jobs and when to interfere.  Even fewer know that she was one of Arachne’s best security agents for eight years.
Katya was born while the Arachne were still scattered and on the run, avoiding executioners and ignorant fools.  She’s been a thief, a warrior, and a spy, but her prime role has always been to act as the eyes, ears and mouth of the Arachne among humans.  She has lost friends and family in the effort to obtain security, and has always been one of the most dedicated of her people.  As a result of her years of conflict she is somewhat paranoid and overprotective of her people.
 
Miss Chin is never seen in public without her bodyguards, Erica and Takeo.  The public sees them as large, muscle-bound and tattoo-ed thugs wearing intimidating mirror-shades.  The few people that have noticed that their Atattoos@ are natural skin coloration and that their eyes are not human have either not been believed or not believed what they saw themselves.
The only thing Katya is more dedicated to than her people, is her daughter, Lisa.  Lisa is a thirteen year old newly metamorphosed Spider currently in one of Arachne Bioware’s schools getting excellent grades.  Lisa is all that Katya has left of her family.  Her parents both died before she was fifteen and her short-lived marriage was ended when her human husband fell victim to what authorities determined to be random street violence (Katya has her own suspicions but no firm clues as to specific identities).  She wishes desperately that she could have more time with her child, at the same time, she wants to keep Lisa away from her and the decisions she is sometimes forced to make.

Arachne Bioware in Campaigns:

Shadow Slayers: There are two options.  Either the Arachne are another group of evil shadow creatures with an agenda (a secret organization of spider people does make a good villain, after all), or else they are a native, if recent, species that is likewise threatened by the Shadow.  In the latter case, the Arachne are not protected by the obscuring nature of the Shadow and most might not even be aware of the invasion of Shadow.  If they are aware of the invasion, the Arachne as a whole will be unwilling to risk exposure to help fight it as long as it doesn’t come to their door, but individuals might be.

Agents of PSI: Technically, Arachne are moreaus, accidentally created moreaus, certainly, but still moreaus.  Such a large group of moreaus, acting so organized would attract a lot of attention from government groups of all sorts.  Of course, it is very possible that those Weaver spiritualists include enough psionicists to put off some people from discovering them.  In this world, they might extend their intense protectiveness to more traditional moreaus as well.

Urban Arcana: Like with Shadow Slayers, you can assume that the Arachne are actually a supernatural race from across the shadow, or else a native shadowkind produced by a sort of magical curse rather than a genetically engineered disease.  They can also be as they are described, a genetic mutation.  If they are created by a genetic concoction, then they do not fade away when they die and bodies might sometimes have to be recovered before they’re exposed.  They are still obscured by Shadow since it is a psychological situation not a magical one.  Arachne Designs’ clothing would be insanely popular with Drow elves.  Arachne Spiders would consider driders to be a terrible abomination.  Many Weavers would be Acolytes and many Spiders would be Wildlords or Mages.  Faces would include a lot of Arcane Arrangers and Glamourists.

 
Evil Spiders: Let’s face it, a secret organization of spider people makes a great evil threat.  It is really easy to switch from this reserved, neutral group of people trying to protect themselves into a more evil and plotting group with a sort of hive-mind personality.  They might even be seeking to replace humanity.  Of course, that might include such things as killing off human women (human men can still sire Arachne, women can’t), or trying to recreate the original transformative disease/curse that created them.  In Urban Arcana, they would try to manipulate the drow to serve them.

Good Spiders: Instead of this neutral existence, the Arachne actively seek to improve the lives of people around them.  Perhaps their Weavers have become aware of some great threat to their world.  The current version is not far off this and only expanding their activity would be necessary.

Hunter of Beasts Campaign:

The Arachnae are not human, at least not anymore. They are an unintentional side-effect of a biological attack unleashed where Russia and China shared borders by a madman known as Dr. Spyridon Corens.

The largest outbreaks were in Russia and China, but smaller outbreaks occurred in other countries around the world, probably carried over the winds by birds or other freak chance. Arachnae history texts refer to it as the worst epidemic that never officially happened.

The disease, a crafted weapon far ahead of its time, randomly spliced spider genetics into the human genome. For most people, this produced a long painful death and unsightly tumorous growths. A small handful survived with useless, often crippling mutations.

The Arachnae are the handful of the handful that responded to the virus by evolving to make it ineffective.

The then Soviet Union and the new government in China collected the survivors and attempted to treat some, but mostly kept the plague secret and buried the truth. When they saw the abilities of the Arachnae, there was some initial thought to use them as super soldiers of a sort, but that ended quickly.

When each government saw that the Arachnae were fertile and could breed with humans, the attempt was made to eradicate them to protect the genetic purity of their people.

A few dozen escaped.

For the first five to ten years of this new species' existence, they lived individually, skirting from shadow to shadow and surviving on the fringes of humanity. Eventually some thought to search for others and slowly a few dozen gathered together and managed to reach the United States unnoticed.

Once they had a collection of groups, the hunters seeking them (slow to realize they'd gathered together) were slowly eliminated. They organized, with the human-seeming Faces acting in public to make purchases and do business while the Hunters acted as guards and Weavers and Spiders acted as researchers and craftsmen.

Then they started to make the effort to erase their existence from the awareness of their hunters. By a combination of feigned deaths and defeats and a few selective assasinations, both the Soviet Union and China came to the conclusion that the spider problem was taken care of.

In the meantime, they had started to learn how to weave their natural silk into clothing and sell the results under the label name "Arachnae" a reference to Greek myth that they thought would be more palatable to Americans than anything Chinese or Russian. The clothing proved popular and slowly a company was built.

The name of the company became the name of the species.

Katya, became a model for the first line of teenage clothing ever produced by Arachnae Designs, fifteen years ago. At the time she was twenty five years old, but was billed as seventeen. Before her position as a model, she was responsible for most of the last set of assassinations the Arachnae engaged in.

Her mix of Russian and Chinese features was very appealing to Americans seeking exotic beauties and she quickly became a national celebrity. Originally she was only supposed to be a figurehead, but she had greater expectations for herself and for her people.

Using her growing influence and position as the literal face of Arachnae Designs, she worked herself quietly into positions of greater and greater authority and slowly built the fashion company into a small but many varied corporation that was becoming more and more self-sufficient and less dependent on the world at large.

Katya Chin built Arachnae Bioware by almost pure charisma and she exists as a veritable legend to the Arachnae at large.

However, despite her push to make her people safe and self-sufficient, she herself married a human and had a child with him. Her husband, Eric Daniels, died three years after the wedding, shortly after his daughter first hatched.

Katya Chin has her own suspicions about the murder, which the papers recorded as a tragic case of drunk-driving, but has kept any investigations on the matter silent for now in the interest of her people's well-being.

Most of the current generation has not had the same troubles their parents and grandparents did. They go to schools designed to accomodate them and grow up expecting and hoping to metamorph into one of the four sub-species.

They are not growing up freaks in their minds, instead they are normal. However, their parents have been unable to hide from them that they cannot go out into the public. At least not most of them.

Most of them spot the real worry in their parent's eyes and are satisfied with what they have. But occasionally some stretch the safety protocols.

Arachnae females have a human gestation period, but lay eggs rather than give live birth. They average two eggs per pregnancy, though one egg and three eggs are not uncommon, and lay about two months after conception. This high rate of birth is why they have grown in number so quickly in the last 60 years.

The children hatch about seven months later and appear to be, for the most part, human. Somewhere between age 10 and 14 most Arachnae will instinctively form a cocoon and undergo a metamorphosis into either a Hunter, a Weaver or a Spider. About two out of every ten will never enter a cocoon and live through life as a Face.

Children often exhibit personality traits of their future sub-species long before metamorphosis, but it is unknown whether personality traits shape the metamorphosis, or whether a future metamorphosis shapes the personality, or whether it is just coincidence.

Business:
Arachnae Designs is the seed that the corporation as a whole grew out of. The most unique thing about the clothing lines was that most of them were spun from what was claimed to be spider-silk. They were thus as comfortable and attractive as regular silk clothes and much more resilient. In addition, the process Arachnae Designs developed to synthesize the silk is apparently extremely inexpensive, and, as a result, so are many of their products.

Chitin is responsible for most of the law enforcement and combat applications of their discoveries. For the most part, these are protective applications such as body armor. The other major application are still experimental "tangler" guns and grenades.

Gossamer deals predominantly with medical research. The three largest departments are virology, toxicology and microbiology. They predominately research antidotes and vaccines for a variety of diseases. However, they've had only small specific successes at treating specific poisons and diseases. Gossamer has produced a series of emergency, self-adhering bandages, however, that are embedded with antibiotics and chemicals to encourage swift healing.

Tapestry is a small media division that has produced a few small independent films and video games in the past five years.

Notable Films and Video Games:
Arachnae - a superhero story based on the idea of the original myth. The basic premise is that Athena gives Arachnae human form again in order to stop a James-Bondish evil organization bent on world domination. There were 2 sequels both released direct to DVD, there is also a videogame.

Survivors Trust - a low-budget film with decidedly heavy impact that presents the disturbing story about the aftermath of biological weapons attack where the survivors were slaughtered to prevent a feared second outbreak of the disease.

Chimera Life - a sims-style video game targetted at fans of anthropomorphics. Players design their own hybrids/furries and run them through life sims-style. Players can share their favored creations online.

The Attila Initiative - an RPG game in a Final-Fantasy style where Atilla the Hun has come back to life and is seeking to conquer the world. The heroes, mostly archetypical types drawn from American movie formulas, move to stop him.

The Athenian division represents Arachnae's public relations and legal department. They also overseer a series of private schools for the children of select Arachnae employess as well as several wilderness preserves. This is the branch of Arachnae Bioware most people are aware of.

The Cocoon division handles food, housekeeping, maintenance. medical and other such general needs. In fact, Arachnae Bioware employs such a diverse array of occupations, growing ever more broad, that they are becoming more and more self-sufficient from society.

Arachnae employs incredibly disciplined security forces, though they don't seem to have anyone with known military or police training to provide a foundation for such a security force. Typically government entities are impressed with Arachnae's security personel but still usually are better trained and equipped.

[Thrythlind]

and sorry if anybody gets annoyed with me converting stuff from my old settings here....it's one of the ways I get familiar with a system

anyway, comment as desired

[Deadmanwalking]

I'll give it some more detail later, but just to start with: Claws (Venomous) is actually -3, the -2 for Venom is on top of the base -1.

[Thrythlind]

ah aha