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"A Child of the Spider can’t walk among us for very long without revealing how … different they are."
Erskine Ravel, Skulduggery Pleasant: Last Stand of Dead Men
Children of the Spider
Madamemist
Madame Mist, a Child of the Spider.
Children of the Spider
Magic Type Adept
Power Creating spiders; transforming into a spider
Notable User(s) The Torment;
Madame Mist

Children of the Spider are mages that practice a peculiar discipline of Adept magic, giving them spider-related abilities.

Though the Children of the Spider are not actually related, they regard other Children of the Spider as family, and are essentially a group of similarly-minded mages. Known for their cunning and reclusive nature, the Children of the Spider believe that they are superior to mortals. For this reason, they attempt to manipulate the Warlocks into attacking the mortal world in 2013.

Known Children of the Spider are the Torment, Madame Mist, Syc, Portia, the Terror, and the Scourge.

Discipline[]

Mechanics[]

Children of the Spider have the ability to release spiders from their bodies. The Torment and Syc vomit black liquid that forms spiders with talons for legs, while Madame Mist's spiders have replaced her blood entirely, and emerge from her orifices. The Torment's spiders are the size of rats, but Syc's are smaller, as he is younger and less talented. Mist is able to create a second variety of spider - a small, white, venomous type - in addition to the larger black variety. It is unclear which of these abilities are considered standard, and whether they are available to all Children of the Spider. All Children of the Spider, however, appear to have a degree of control over their spiders, and are weakened slightly if their spiders are killed.

More notably, Children of the Spider are capable of transforming themselves into giant spiders. They do this by secreting black liquid from their eyes, nostrils, and mouths, which runs down their bodies and hardens into an armoured shell, and causes them to grow to at least twice their size. Their limbs lengthen, their hands become talons, and four additional legs tear free from their torsos. To complete the transformation, a third eye opens on their heads. These spiders are capable of scaling building and of vomiting spiders, and, though they usually 'chitter', they are also capable of speech. However, when flipped over, these spiders are effectively helpless, as they cannot re-orient themselves. It is implied by Saracen Rue and Gracious O'Callahan that not all Children of the Spider are capable of this; notably, Madame Mist does not appear to be able to.

Children of the Spider also seem to have enhanced physical capabilities, comparable to those granted by Enhancement. The Torment and Madame Mist have astonishing strength, the latter being able to throw Tanith Low around a room with ease, and Syc is the fastest individual that the experienced assassin Tesseract has ever met, implying that his speed has been augmented by his magic. The Torment also possesses unusual speed and agility, though it's unknown whether this has anything to do with his magic. The Torment also seems to be able to detect different varieties of magic in blood.

The Torment has demonstrated the ability to cling to a ceiling. It is unclear whether this is a magical ability similar to Wall-Walking, or whether he was simply supporting himself with his enhanced strength.

Nature[]

A Child of the Spider's magic is particularly unusual. It manifests itself in strange ways, typically through disfigurements that make the practitioner seem inhuman; as such, all Children of the Spider are easily identifiable as Children of the Spider, and even mortals are able to recognise that there is something unusual about them. Little is known of these disfigurements, save for Madame Mist's: her spiders crawl visibly through her skin, requiring her to wear a veil to keep this hidden.

The Children of the Spider themselves don't seem to consider themselves to be sorcerers in the same way as other Adepts, somewhat like Witches and Warlocks. The Torment seems to reject the label of 'magic' entirely, and the Terror and the Scourge distrust 'all sorcerers' yet apparently exclude Children of the Spider from this categorisation. Nevertheless, Children of the Spider are still Adept mages, just mysterious and poorly understood.

Curiously, the discipline has its own religion. Little is known of this, save that it is practiced in temples known as Temples of the Spider, and that Children of the Spider believe that their spider forms are 'beautiful'. The religion may also be related to the unusual names of the Torment, the Terror, and the Scourge.

History[]

TheTorment

The Torment.

300 Year War[]

The Children of the Spider fought against Mevolent during the 300 Year War, as they didn't want the Faceless Ones to return. During the War, they rescued Erskine Ravel when the latter was captured by Mevolent, and Ravel witnessed how they were forced to live in squalor to stay hidden from mortals and sorcerers alike. The Torment also prepared to strike against Baron Vengeous towards the end of the war to stop him from reviving the Grotesquery, but had no reason to do so after Skulduggery Pleasant apprehended Vengeous himself.

Planning a war[]

Following the war, the Children of the Spider dropped off the grid, and the Torment was regarded by some as little more than a rumour. Ravel, now convinced that sorcerers should rule over mortals, recruited some Children of the Spider such as Madame Mist to start surreptitiously killing Warlocks. By blaming the deaths on mortals, they artificially created a threat to the mortal world that would require sorcerers to publicly intervene. After encountering Skulduggery and Valkyrie Cain in 2009, the Torment becomes involved as well, and his home of Roarhaven becomes the base of operations for the scheme.

After the Irish Sanctuary is destabilised following the death of Mr Bliss, the Children of the Spider see the opportunity to accelerate their plans. They hire Davina Marr to destroy the Sanctuary, then offer use of a Roarhaven building to serve as its replacement, on the condition that Mist is appointed as an Elder. Mist is distrusted by the Sanctuary at large, distracting them from investigating Ravel, the new Grand Mage. The Children of the Spider also hire the assassin Tesseract to kill Marr in order to cover their tracks, but betray him when he kills six Roarhaven mages. Tesseract kills the Torment in response.

When the superpowered psychopath Sean Mackin is imprisoned by the Sanctuary, Ravel and the Children of the Spider release him, hoping that he will attack a mortal city, serving the same job as the Warlocks are supposed to. When this fails, Syc and Portia kill Bernard Sult on Mist's orders, starting the War of the Sanctuaries. As such, the Sanctuaries are too preoccupied to pay any attention to the scheming of the Children of the Spider, but the scheme itself backfires when the Warlocks realise that they are being manipulated and attack Roarhaven directly.

During the ensuing battle, Mist is killed by China Sorrows, and Syc, Portia, the Terror, and the Scourge are subdued by China and Skulduggery, presumably becoming incarcerated.

Later events[]

In 2020, a Child of the Spider is defeated in battle by Auger Darkly, Kase, Mahala, and Never, during one of Auger's many missions as a Chosen One. According to Never, the Child of the Spider nearly kills them, but they have been known to exaggerate.

Alternate timelines[]

In the Leibniz Universe, Mevolent wins the 300 Year War, and orders the Children of the Spider to begin worshipping the Faceless Ones. Most acquiese, such as the Terror, but several resist, including Madame Mist and the Torment. Mist and the others are killed, and the Torment is imprisoned in a small cage.

When Ravel is shunted to the Leibniz Universe, he seeks out the Children of the Spider, as they are his allies in his home dimension. He finds the Torment in the Temple of the Spider before being captured by the other Children of the Spider. Skulduggery and Valkyrie infiltrate the Temple and retrieve Ravel.

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