An Anti-hero of sorts:Prologue to a Monster's Tale

Down from the foothills of the troll teeth range flows the ygdril river.  Northward it runs, through the whole Wilderglen, those miles and miles of emerald topped land-sea that holds many a wondrous sight under its treetop coverage, small ray of light illuminating patches of forest floor.  Quite near the beginning of the river's course, it hits what is called in these days the dwarven tower, a giant spire of solid stone that pierces the green waves and splits the water the main river continuing northwest while a small section meanders of to the northeast, descending into a vale of darkness.

Near where the river begins a series of waterfalls, each descending into the darker forest and caves below, the spider Azlock makes her nest.  An old lineage is hers, proud and noble in some respect, but her kind is feared by those who love the light.  An old wizard in his castle once listed back generations of her kind, from Gogleth the snatcher, daughter of Rekzim the impenatrable, to Nethalkhan, father of 1000 brood, the only male of their kind to have survived a mating.

Farther on down the vale, hidden deeper, more and more webs wrapped trees, covered caves, and hung in open air to catch any who wandered down into the depths.  Even for all the silken masking, Azlock could make out the massive structure of Silanon, the great tree.  Standing at the center of the vale, the river wound its way down to Silanon's great roots, feeding the tree and then diving deep down into the ground.  None have ever found an exit for that river, and few have returned to tell of the dark corridors, swamped with water that rush around with a fury.  Inside the tree itself the elves and the fey are said to have carved out a great city, cut off from all else and only reached through the treetop boughs that rise far above the rest, even from its depth in the vale.

None of this concerned Azlock much however as she sat in her web day by day, hunting the for food in the night.  This was until the meteor came.  Under the canopy of forest the burning light across the sky could not warn of anything new and terrible coming to pass, but the howl it made as it descended raised the whole of those in the land-sea from their slumber.  Azlock, young then, and still today by her kind's reckoning climbed up to peer at the sky that night.  A red streak trailing black smoke, seeming to glitter as pieces of glittering rock flew off into the night, raining down.  Surely such a force would level the forest, surely such a great terror descended from on high.  Yet off in the distance another light shined through the night, white and blue, building in intensity.  From atop his mountain, solitary as an island in the sea, a great ray of light reached out to greet this new and terrible visitor, reached out to stab and to break and to sunder.  The fury of sound from that meeting rivaled its force as the rock broke and scattered pieces throughout the forest.

Only on the following morning would Azlock find the strange riders who came flying down on that rock, red of skin, though painfully burnt to a dark grey in the scorching sunlight, some fled down into the caves in the ground, some were rallied and marched on that mountain they had come to destroy, and others were far flung to the west, but theirs is a different tale to tell.

The tale of Azlock goes on through the seasons her eight legs growing ever longer, her great ornamented webs growing thicker and more elaborate, and her eyes turning a deeper and deeper red.  Hers is a tale of much death, much hunger, and as with all of her kind, a tale of deadly romance.