Drider

Driders are drow that have been transformed from the waist down so they have the body of a spider. The transformation is typically a punishment for failing a test of Lolth.

Description
Driders were created from drow in an agonizing process. From their waist up they retained their form, from the waist down, their form changed into that of a spider. They grew physically stronger but kept all magical and other abilities and skills they learned during their lives.

Driders are centaur-like creatures, appearing as drow from the waist up, with their lower portions replaced by the abdomen and legs of immense spiders.

Their digestion changes and they must drink the blood of living creatures for sustenance.

Personality
Driders were bloodthirsty. They kept their memories and personalities.

Physical abilities
Driders developed a poisonous bite, that sapped strength of their victims and paralyzed them for ten to twenty minutes. This poison had a different way of delivery. Driders could deliver it by spitting it on their weapon. Used this way, the poison turned into a sticky coating on the weapon.

Driders could climb in similar fashion as spiders did and could do so in reliable fashion.

They also had a penchant for hiding and sneaking.

Their darkvision had a shorter range than the ones of the drow.

Magical abilities
All driders could inherently cast clairaudience/clairvoyance, dancing lights, darkness, detect good, detect law, detect magic, dispel magic, faerie fire, levitate, and suggestion once per day.

They could also cast normal spells like clerics, sorcerers, or wizards. Those who cast spells like clerics could cast spells from two of the Chaos, Destruction, Evil, and Trickery domain. Their sorcerers often learned the spells, daze, detect magic, ghost sound, invisibility, lightning bolt, mage armor, mage hand, magic missile, ray of enfeeblement, ray of frost, read magic, resistance, silent image, and web.

They also had a resistance against magic, but it was much lower than that of a drow.

Society
Driders were created from drow in an agonizing process. Only drow could be turned into driders.

when a Lolthite drow reached a certain level of power, that drow underwent the Test of Lolth administered by Lolth herself. Those who fail this test but survive were turned into driders by the Spider Queen.

The second category of drider origins were drow mages. Part of the duties of Lolth's clergy was to ensure that their idea of society was kept free of dissidents and mages were put under general suspicion. Once they reached a certain level of power, they were abducted and then subjected to a test of loyalty called the Test. Failures were turned by a Lolthite priestess into a drider with magical energy channeled directly from Lolth.

The third category of driders came about when Lolth summoned a drow she considered promising to the Demonweb Pits. They were subjected to a test by the Spider Queen and when they failed, they were turned into driders and send back.

Once turned into these aberrations, driders left their homes in shame for they were outcasts in drow society.

A drider was found either alone, in pairs or in troupes consisting of one or two driders and seven to a dozen monstrous spiders.

Driders spoke Common, Elven, and Undercommon.

Driders were the bogeyman of drow society—the ultimate warning to obey the will of Lolth. Dark elves and drider despised each other, but they often lived in close proximity, with the drow using driders to weed out the weak.

Drow held driders I low esteem. Driders left the drow cities by themselves when they turned into driders to live as hermits or hunters but sometimes came back to the city's fringes. They were tolerated there as a representation of Lolth's will and as a remainder for the fate of failure to live up to the Spider Queen's standards.

Ecology
Driders still maintain the spells and special abilities they had developed as a drow, thus there can exist any character class of drider. They retain intelligence and memories. This makes them bitter, spiteful creatures. Some hunt for magic powerful enough to undo the transformation. Later in Sacrifice of the Widow some driders find out that they are the Chosen of Selvetarm and the Children of Lolth.

Trivia
The term "eight legs," a reference to a drider, was used among the drow as a threat.

Appearances

 * Computer Games:
 * Eye of the Beholder
 *  Menzoberranzan
 * Neverwinter Nights
 * Pools of Darkness
 * Pool of Radiance
 * Secret of the Silver Blades
 * Treasures of the Savage Frontier