The Webs

Introduction

At the lower boundary of Arborea is stretched a most fantastic landscape - the Webs. Wrought mainly by the enormous Telatextrices, these vast structures form a realm of trembling silk, suspended between the colossal trunks of the great Trees, and layered so densely as to constitute a near-impenetrable barrier. Here dwells a prodigious multitude of creatures, each adapted in strange and singular ways to life upon the threads. In the end, all that lives above descends to this place, for the Webs are the terminus of Arborea's great cycle.

Continents of Silk

When contemplating the Webs, one must first take a moment to reckon with their staggering scale. They span the breadth of the known world - a vast and terrible blanket woven of silken fibers, some hundreds of spans in length. These strands are anchored to the titanic Trees of Arborea, whose trunks may stand a thousand spans or more apart. Each thread crosses and tangles with thousands of others, forming a labyrinth both broader and deeper than the eye can easily comprehend.

This landscape of silk is neither barren nor still. Great palatial mounds rise above the primary sheets - domes and spires of interwoven thread that cast immense shadows below. Thousands of tunnels and caverns open into their depths, forming a world as intricate as coral and as treacherous as ice. Unlike the firm ground of other realms, the Webs are ever in motion; even the lightest touch sends ripples coursing outward for astonishing distances. To the creatures attuned to such vibrations, these movements form a living map, each tremor a note in the endless song of silk.

And what a host of life it shelters! An entire ecosystem has adapted to this suspended and perilous world - predators and prey, scavengers and symbionts, all dwelling together in the gauzy shadows below the canopy of the Trees. It is a realm where nothing is still for long, and every heartbeat reverberates through the woven continent beneath one's feet.

Life Upon the Strands

The region of Arborea wherein the Webs are found lies far below The Clouds, and what little light penetrates the canopy above is weak and diffuse. While the upper reaches of Arborea dwell in a green-tinted gloaming, the depths are perpetually cloaked in shadow - an endless night that shapes all life upon the silken strands. Few plants can prosper here, and those that do almost invariably supplement their meager photosynthesis through predation. The beasts that dwell upon the Webs are accustomed to long intervals between their meals; many will lie motionless for days, or even entire seasons, before springing suddenly to life to seize whatever morsel fortune has delivered to their threads.

And such fortune is inevitable, for in Arborea, all things must fall to the Webs in time. Every leaf and twig, every discarded bone, lost feather, or half-eaten meal is drawn downward by the insistence of gravity, to alight upon the vast silk below - a perpetual rain of matter, a banquet dispersed across the world. All of it is caught, held fast in the mesh. For every fallen fruit, every empty shell, every trace of waste from the realms above, there exists within the Webs some creature evolved to thrive upon that bounty.

The Telatextrices

Many of my readers, I am certain, will already have formed an image of these famed weavers of the Webs, drawing upon analogies from the creatures of their own worlds. I will not presume to guess the particulars of those imaginings, but I feel confident in asserting that they are, in nearly every respect, quite inaccurate. Permit me, therefore, to offer a concise description of the true form of the Telatextrix, which I shall elaborate upon more fully in a later chapter.

The body of the Telatextrix is elongated and divided into many segments, each bearing a pair of limbs - twenty pairs or more in mature specimens. Several of these serve the purpose of locomotion across the silken expanses, while others are adapted for delicate manipulation, granting the creature a dexterity rivaling that of any tool-using race. This manual prowess is further augmented by a formidable telekinetic faculty. To witness a Telatextrix at its weaving - safely distant, of course - is a sight both wondrous and unnerving: strands of silk drift and intertwine in midair, directed solely by the invisible agency of the creature's mind.

Its body is clad in a dark, lustrous carapace from which extends a dense array of fine sensory filaments. These delicate hairs tremble at the faintest current of air or vibration of silk, granting the Telatextrix exquisite awareness of all that transpires within its vast domain. At one end lies its bulbous head, surmounted by four pairs of black, glassy eyes that glimmer eerily in the dimmest light. Beneath these orbs are complex, interlocking jaws capable of delivering a potent venom - a substance that not only subdues the victim but also begins the process of digestion, rendering the flesh into a nutrient fluid easily imbibed.

An adult Telatextrix may measure six spans or more in length and bears upon its posterior several spinnerets, each specialized for the production of silk of differing thickness, texture, and resilience. Through these organs, the creature weaves both its palace and its snare, the one indistinguishable from the other to all but itself.

The People and the Webs

To the People of Arborea, the Webs are at once a peril, a blessing, and the final destiny of all living things. To approach too near is to court destruction, for formidable predators dwell upon the strands, ever ready to seize any creature or craft that strays within their reach. Foremost among these are the dread Telatextrices, whose telekinetic grasp is said to extend for many spans. They are notorious for drawing the unwary downward into their tangled realms, there to be consumed at leisure. Yet even these terrible beings serve an essential purpose, for the Webs they maintain act as a bulwark against greater horrors still. The denizens of the Deep Dark, imprisoned beneath that vast silken barrier, are held at bay by its strength. On the rare occasions when some massive branch punctures the Webs, the creatures below emerge into the upper world, spreading terror and ruin until the breach is repaired - an event that impresses upon the People the necessity of the Webs' continued integrity.

To the People, too, the Webs represent the ultimate conclusion of existence. Funerary rites most often culminate with the consignment of the dead to the silken expanse, mourners descending as near as safety permits to ensure that the bodies of their kin fall cleanly to their destined rest. In the art and literature of Arborea, the Webs stand as the great terminus - the end toward which all stories flow. Many of their epics conclude with a descent into those shadowed depths where all things must one day come to rest. Even their conception of time bears this imagery: they imagine themselves forever falling through its dimension, the future lying beneath them while the past recedes above. Thus the Webs, both feared and revered, are woven deeply into the very thought and culture of the People, as inescapable as gravity itself.

Preternatural Powers

As we near the conclusion of our examination of Arborea's structure, dear reader, we must once more draw back from the particulars of the world between the Clouds and the Webs, and strive to grasp it as a whole. Our attention now turns to the final topic of this section: the twin preternatural forces that suffuse Arborea - the psychic powers of the mind and the magical powers of the spirit. These forces - such as the pervasive telepathy we have already encountered - are among the cornerstones of life in Arborea, and must be understood if one is to understand this extraordinary realm.