Question about Aesthetics of Weaver Creatures

[TempleBuilder]

Hi. I’m not usually on WoD stuff, much less Werewolf: the Apocalypse stuff, but over the years, I’ve picked up bits of common knowledge. Lately, I’ve been curious about Weaver stuff, and thought I’d ask y’all because I was having problems finding info on my own.

Anyways, what do Pattern Spiders actually look like? Like normal spiders? Or more like fractals?

Are there more weaver type spirits?

Does weaver influenced tech have a particular look?

I’ve heard than humans can become “Drones”. Does that take the form of cybernetics, or just a person without “imperfections”?

Edit: Sorry if there is a better place for this thread, didn’t see a general question thread.

[MyWifeIsScary]

The same spirit can change from location to location IIRC. A pattern spider in the deep woods might look very much like an organic spider, while a pattern spider in some bleeding edge tech realm might be made of holographic energy fields. Local species of spiders might influence things too.
-Art generally tends to show very mechanical/robotic spiders. Corrupted spirits are shown to have rust.
-IIRC the scorpion spirit had glass surfaces.

-it'll probably look more advanced but that could mean anything between overly designed and ultra sleek. Again, more factors would be put into this than just the weaver's will.


Drones are generally people without imperfections but just as there are many types of formori there's probably room for many types of drones. A person who became a cyborg before they became a drone likely merges more with the machine.

[Heavy Arms]

There are lots of Weaver spirits besides the pattern spiders, but most of them are just mindless "drones" doing things to maintain the Weaver's control over a part of the Umbra and thus aren't really something that gets much attention. It's also in keep with the Weaver's role in the Triat that it doesn't make a lot of its own spirits rather than taking over ones the Wyld makes. W20's Umbra book does a decent job of showing how technology leads to an explosion of new Gaian and Wyld aligned spirits that over time get captured in the Weaver's systems.

This also plays into how Drone work. Drone (which don't have to be human) are the Weaver's equivalent of fomori and other possessed (Kami for Gaian spirits, Gorgons for Wyld ones). Unlike other possessed, Drones aren't captured by a specific spirit. Instead they get infected with the One Song, a form of psycho-spiritual computer virus that starts to rewrite them into a Drone. As this specific form of possession goes along, it moves from rewiring the brain to doing a renovation of the physical body as well. This generally means an external appearance of "perfection" though this is contextual to function. A Drone made for infiltration is going to be perfectly average and nondescript because it's job is to blend in, not be a stunningly beautiful example of its species. Function is also important to the process for things like how much their insides look anything like a biological creature, or how much individual personality they're allowed to keep.

[TempleBuilder]

Thanks for answering!

The same spirit can change from location to location IIRC. A pattern spider in the deep woods might look very much like an organic spider, while a pattern spider in some bleeding edge tech realm might be made of holographic energy fields. Local species of spiders might influence things too.
-Art generally tends to show very mechanical/robotic spiders. Corrupted spirits are shown to have rust.

Oh, I see. Kinda like drawing from resources that are around. So, in a hypothetical realm without spiders, it would look like something shaped into a spider? So for example, in Antarctica it looks like ice and research base materials made into a Spider?

-IIRC the scorpion spirit had glass surfaces.

Scorpion spirit? I get reason pattern spiders are, you know, spiders because they bring order with their webs, but why a scorpion? Was it a warrior spirit?

There are lots of Weaver spirits besides the pattern spiders, but most of them are just mindless "drones" doing things to maintain the Weaver's control over a part of the Umbra and thus aren't really something that gets much attention. It's also in keep with the Weaver's role in the Triat that it doesn't make a lot of its own spirits rather than taking over ones the Wyld makes. W20's Umbra book does a decent job of showing how technology leads to an explosion of new Gaian and Wyld aligned spirits that over time get captured in the Weaver's systems.

I actually never considered that the Weaver wouldn’t make the majority of its tools. That’s interesting. So, I guess many of its tools are converted or “worked” natural materials and the like, like a tree spirit becoming a lumber spirit, or a sand spirit becoming a glass spirit.

Drones are generally people without imperfections but just as there are many types of formori there's probably room for many types of drones. A person who became a cyborg before they became a drone likely merges more with the machine.

This also plays into how Drone work. Drone (which don't have to be human) are the Weaver's equivalent of fomori and other possessed (Kami for Gaian spirits, Gorgons for Wyld ones). Unlike other possessed, Drones aren't captured by a specific spirit. Instead they get infected with the One Song, a form of psycho-spiritual computer virus that starts to rewrite them into a Drone. As this specific form of possession goes along, it moves from rewiring the brain to doing a renovation of the physical body as well. This generally means an external appearance of "perfection" though this is contextual to function. A Drone made for infiltration is going to be perfectly average and nondescript because it's job is to blend in, not be a stunningly beautiful example of its species. Function is also important to the process for things like how much their insides look anything like a biological creature, or how much individual personality they're allowed to keep.

So I guess the drones focused on “recruitment” are probably the ones allowed the most personality, and normal forms? Does the One Song have many infection points, or does it have to be personally administered by the appropriate weaver spirit?

[Heavy Arms]

Oh, I see. Kinda like drawing from resources that are around. So, in a hypothetical realm without spiders, it would look like something shaped into a spider? So for example, in Antarctica it looks like ice and research base materials made into a Spider?
Scorpion spirit? I get reason pattern spiders are, you know, spiders because they bring order with their webs, but why a scorpion? Was it a warrior spirit?

I think you might be over-stressing the "spider" thing here. The Weaver, whether converting an existing spirit, or building a spirit, borrow from what work. The Weaver has an affinity for arthropod-esque designs because not only are they ancient, they're timeless. They're exceptionally functional designs. Spirits themselves are going to run a gamut from direct material inspirations, to much more metaphysical inspirations. To the Weaver, it's the utility of such things. Lots of legs are better than few legs, because it's more stable. Hexapods can run exceptionally fast because six legs allows a far more efficiency motion than four or two legs can accomplish. More limbs means stable efficient movement and having specialized limbs for things like manipulating objects or wielding weapons. Lots of "simple" compound eyes capture far more details than two camera eyes do (esp.with the whole optical inversion that happened in animals that creates a giant blind spot in camera eyes because the optic never has to go through the retina and attach inside the eye, rather than attach to the back of the retina on the outer surface of the eye).

The Weaver's spirits are so frequently shaped the way they are because it's just good "physics." They don't need all these extraneous parts that Gaian spirits hold onto to keep their material association with real physical animals. They're shaped or made towards efficiency at their function.

So I guess the drones focused on “recruitment” are probably the ones allowed the most personality, and normal forms? Does the One Song have many infection points, or does it have to be personally administered by the appropriate weaver spirit?

Recruitment isn't really a thing the Weaver bothers with in that regard. The One Song is both the easiest and hardest form of possession to avoid. It's the spiritual reflection of the urge to just click accept without reading the EULA, the way you can spend hours on social media without realizing it, and get hooked on microtransactions. The system's that humans create to keep ourselves jacked in is what lets the One Song creep into people's minds. It's just waiting for people's brain waves to be in just the right state where they'll click yes one more time. All you have to do? Is close the app. Turn off your phone for a bit. Uninstall rage-cycle feeds. Unplug for a bit.

Of course, just like a spider's web, no matter how easy it is to say "just don't fly into the web," if it was really that easy, spiders wouldn't still be around. The Weaver doesn't need to recruit, or inject the One Song into people. People will agree to it all on their own as long as the Weaver keeps the systems in place to tempt them into it.

[Black Fox]

I've always thought using the term "spider" for Pattern Spiders and other Weaver spirits was unfortunate because it implied certain natural spirits were more Weaver aligned, when Weaver spirits are actually they're own category of spirits divorced from non-Triatic spirits of the natural world of Gaia. So in my chronicles I've come to interpret the term "Pattern Spirit" very liberally. They are called "spiders" because they have certain features reminiscent of spiders as opposed to actually being literally spiders in shape. They are symmetrical, multi-limbed, etc. but you shouldn't take the spider comparison too far.

It also means that Garou (and other Gaian Changing Breeds) view of things like "Spiders" and "Webs" when it comes to the Weaver might be more of a result of their minds interpreting what they are seeing in terms of their experience of Gaian spirits. Spiders who create patterns in their webs, and eusocial insects have certain associations in their minds, and they impose that when they encounter the Triatic spirits of the Weaver. Somebody else (like Technocratic Mages) might interpret the same phenomenon differently. To be perfectly honest, if I had to pick a real world animal species that embodied the Weaver, I would probably select ants instead of spiders... but ants don't weave and spiders do.

As a result, I've often visualized different Weaver spirits to the PCs in other ways. They are essentially spirits that impose Order upon the Chaos of the Wyld to create the world as we know it. That is part of the normal Chaoskampf of mythology. Marduk, Odin, Zeus, etc. do the same thing. So I use many classicaly based "ordering" spirits as well as things like spirits that appear like mythological culture heroes, conquistadors, fractals, symmetrical figures, mathematical figures, explorers, etc. to represent the same. Such spirits may have the same powers as Pattern Spiders or other Weaver spirits. "Pattern Spiders" and the such (like Geomids), in their imagery, are just generic imagery that is useful when more evocative figures don't make sense.

My views don't correspond to canon, but neither do they truly contradict them. I use the canonical images when they make sense, and use other images (but perhaps keep the same game mechanics) when I feel they are more appropriate.

If you are looking for additional Weaver spirits than appear in the Corebook, then sourcebooks like the various Umbra books and the Book of the Weaver and Book of the City have many other examples.

[MyWifeIsScary]

I might've read somewhere that in the sea, the weaver is represented primarily by crab spirits, owing to the lack of spiders. They also have eight legs but I also think it fits because crabs can be very orderly. The wyrm liked cephalopods for some reason IIRC.
The scorpion was a combat spirit (Chaos monitor I think maybe?) it remember it being a little underwhelming stat wise. Hunter spiders overshadowed them for me at least.
There were a few weaver spirits that were geometric shapes.

[Heavy Arms]

Crabs, like spiders, are one of those time-tested evolutionary designs that just... works. Crabs are such a successful body-plan that - just like spiders - there are lots of animals we call crabs that are not true crabs (hermit crabs are, for example, not crabs). Also like spiders, crabs occupy almost ever niche in the ocean beside mega-sized predators (which isn't to say the larger active hunting crabs are things you'd want to tangle with any more than some of the largest spiders). Basically, where there's life under the waves, there's either crabs or things that look like crabs; and they're always key parts of their ecosystems. So like spiders they represent a very primordial and very enduring normalizing effect on their environments.

Though crabs have 10 legs, it's just that in most species their front two legs become specialized.

[MyWifeIsScary]

Though crabs have 10 legs, it's just that in most species their front two legs become specialized.

If you think about it like that, we humans have four legs with two very specialized. Spiders have two little arm things in addition to their 8 legs, right next to the mouth. So both crabs and spiders have 10 limbs.

[Heavy Arms]

... if you really want to try to out nitpick here... if you include highly modified leg stem cell precursor based head limbs in addition to their primary limbs, crabs have 18 limbs (their four head pairs are antennae, mandibles, and two sets of maxillae) while spiders have 12 (a pair of pedipalps and a pair of chelicerae).

Shall we move on, or are you at least going to Google before getting into an anatomical morphology waving contest?

[voidshaper]

I've always thought using the term "spider" for Pattern Spiders and other Weaver spirits was unfortunate because it implied certain natural spirits were more Weaver aligned, when Weaver spirits are actually they're own category of spirits divorced from non-Triatic spirits of the natural world of Gaia. So in my chronicles I've come to interpret the term "Pattern Spirit" very liberally. They are called "spiders" because they have certain features reminiscent of spiders as opposed to actually being literally spiders in shape. They are symmetrical,

I've always played it so that the visual representation of spirits are in part influenced by the observer, because I think at best spirit 'bodies' are vague abstractions of their, well, spirit.Spiders lend themselves well to Weaver aligned spirits (industrious, simple but efficient), as do other arthropods, especially eusocial ones.
The books play it more or less literal. Book of the Weaver has brief prelude how Weaver spirits should not be thought of like mundane spiders, and then goes on to describe them as mostly mundane spiders. I recall Pattern Spiders once being described as having a silvery body, but that description may come from Exalted, not sure.

That said, the more abstract Weaver spirits are a good opportunity to go wild with descriptions. I like to go Escher / Cyberpunk / Mathematics with them, especially if they are data spirits.

[CTPhipps]

... if you really want to try to out nitpick here... if you include highly modified leg stem cell precursor based head limbs in addition to their primary limbs, crabs have 18 limbs (their four head pairs are antennae, mandibles, and two sets of maxillae) while spiders have 12 (a pair of pedipalps and a pair of chelicerae).

Shall we move on, or are you at least going to Google before getting into an anatomical morphology waving contest?

Please don't criticize other posters.

[11twiggins]

Regarding the rusting of Weaver spirits, it's interesting to note that it's hard to tell whether the Wyrm is corrupting the Weaver, whether the Weaver is infiltrating the Wyrm, or whether the two are practically symbiotic. A city is an endless monument to death, pollution, corruption, and at the same time it can often be a bastion of the fixed, static, stifling confines the Weaver likes.

Another aspect of the Weaver that gets overlooked are names; Ananasi aren't too big into names. A Werespider born Dave might be Dave, a Werespider born as the hungriest black widow of the bunch may have a functional name they use for communication or many aliases. They won't be introducing themselves at a spider-moot as Dances-The-Web, Wolves-Are-Flies or whatever. Perhaps if they have a friendly interaction with a Garou they might use a name the Garou would be more partial to, but they aren't obsessed with naming stuff. Nor is Queen Ananasa.

You know who is? Grandma. The Weaver's insanity includes an obsession with naming and categorizing. Reflect this in the behaviour of more intelligent and sapient Weaver creatures. Putting things into boxes, oversimplifying even. The Weaver isn't perfect rational logic; she wishes she was. Though a genius, she's ultimately as insane as the Wyrm. Her and her creations can fall into being what people colloquially call "overly logical".

[Father Enoch]

I picked up the book of the Weaver on DTRpg (I don't know why since I've never played Apocalypse, but I did) and I see a lot of stuff that reminds me of the God-Machine.

Maybe you could mine some art or material from Demon: the Descent or the God Machine chronicles.

[Saur Ops Specialist]

Regarding the rusting of Weaver spirits, it's interesting to note that it's hard to tell whether the Wyrm is corrupting the Weaver, whether the Weaver is infiltrating the Wyrm, or whether the two are practically symbiotic. A city is an endless monument to death, pollution, corruption, and at the same time it can often be a bastion of the fixed, static, stifling confines the Weaver likes.

In-character, sure. Out of character, we're outright told that the Defiler aspect of the Wyrm finds it really, really easy to slip between the webs and corrupt things, compared to the outright wild tearing of the Beast of War or the hungry, hungry munching of the Eater of Souls. The Weaver recognizes that these bits of rogue pattern are twisted and tries to purge them when they're detected, but it's still a case of one of the beings born of the Wyrm's psychological fracture managing to make the world worse.