Bilo-Spider Colony
A Bilo-Spider Colony is another offshoot of the shadowborne creatures—akin to shadow crawlers, but even more unsettling in their social and psionic complexity. Each colony is composed of five to six males and a single massive matriarch, whose presence dominates both the nest and the battlefield.
Behavior and Abilities
Bilo-spiders are innately psionic and draw from the Thought Control discipline. Their signature technique is Bilocation, which they twist into creating arachnid doppelgangers—shadowy spider-forms that confuse and harass intruders.
All colony members can fire restraining web projectiles, trapping enemies in adhesive strands that limit movement and make them easy prey.
The Matriarch
The colossal matriarch is vastly more powerful than her brood. She commands an enhanced suite of psionic abilities:
Bilocation
Frighten
Neural Overload
At the start of combat, the matriarch summons two doppelganger shadows of herself. These echoes persist until she is slain or stunned, relentlessly advancing toward their chosen prey. Their movement is slow but inexorable, creating constant pressure and denying safe positions.
Gravelmaw Ambusher
The Gravelmaw Ambusher is a subterranean trap predator that inverts the hunting strategy of the classic ceiling-dwelling barnacle (Half-Life). Instead of dangling tendrils from above, the Gravelmaw lies buried beneath the ground, camouflaged as a harmless patch of rubble or compacted dust. Only the slightest irregularities—hairline cracks, a faint rhythmic tremor—betray its presence, and even these can be noticed reliably only through Trap Detection.
Behavior and Hunting Method
At rest, the creature remains motionless under a thin crust of earth and stone. When a passerby steps within reach, the Gravelmaw erupts upward with startling speed, its circular mouth ringed with keratin hooks snapping shut around the victim’s lower body. This violent ambush:
Inflicts immediate health damage from puncturing barbs and crushing pressure.
Damages armor and footwear, scraping and tearing against its abrasive bite ring.
Leaves the victim Dazed, losing movement and action points at the start of combat.
If the target is not killed outright, the Gravelmaw drags them downward by several centimeters, pinning them in place and exposing them to further danger.
Swarm Response
A Gravelmaw Ambusher rarely hunts alone. Once it has successfully snared prey, the disturbance causes nearby traplings to burst from the soil and swarm the immobilized victim. Their bites are weak individually, but in numbers they can shred unprotected flesh and overwhelm even well-equipped explorers.
The Gravelmaw’s ambush is not merely a trap, but a signal—a subterranean alarm that brings the entire brood into a feeding frenzy.
