Skin Weavers

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A Skinweaver can sense the world entirely through touch.

Overview

Skinweavers (Commonspeak), also Neogi (Farspeak [1] for no known translation), are an Eldritch species native to The Horizon region, The Pain Lattice. Their Commonspeak name derives from their characteristic use of silk-like webbing and living tissue, which they manipulate with extreme tactile precision to restrain, reshape, and dominate other creatures. Their Eldritch God is The Stone Dripping Blood.

Integral knowledge of Skinweavers derives primarily from recovered slave implements, battlefield remains bound in hardened silk, and testimony from liberated captives. Direct study is rare, as Skinweavers actively preserve prisoners rather than killing them, resulting in prolonged exposure and severe psychological trauma.

History

Skinweavers came into existence at the beginning of the Shattered Age, concurrent with the emergence of all Eldritch species following the destruction of the Orrery. There is no evidence of prior forms or evolutionary precursors.

Early Shattered Age records describe the sudden appearance of vast web-like structures spanning forests, ruins, and even open plains, often discovered only after entire populations had vanished.

Cosmology

Skinweavers are believed to be a Strange mutation of the Servitors of Destiny, once tasked with binding outcomes and enforcing inevitability within The Apparatus. With the collapse of the Grand Design of Destiny, this binding function appears to have been grotesquely repurposed.

Skinweavers are native to the Pain Lattice, a Horizon region characterized by interwoven thorn-growths, hardened silk structures, and vast web networks that respond to vibration and pressure.

Society

Power Structures

Skinweavers possess one of the most clearly defined social hierarchies among Eldritch species. They organize themselves through rigid master–slave relationships, both among their own kind and with captured creatures of other species. Dominance is maintained through physical restraint, sensory deprivation, and enforced obedience rather than brute force alone.

Economy

Skinweaver society is fundamentally slave-based. Captives are used as labor, raw material, experimental subjects, and status symbols. The number and condition of slaves directly correlates with an individual Skinweaver’s standing.

Spirituality

Skinweavers do not worship in any devotional sense. Their reverence for the Stone Dripping Blood is expressed through ritualized suffering, particularly acts that heighten tactile sensation or strip subjects of bodily autonomy. Pain is treated not as cruelty, but as proof of control.

Magic and Technology

Skinweavers employ advanced vibrational and tactile technologies based on silk-like webbing. This material can be tuned to remain soft and pliable or hardened to a metal-like rigidity. Web structures respond to vibration, allowing Skinweavers to sense movement across vast distances and inflict precise restraint or injury without direct contact.

Culture

Skinweaver culture is overtly brutal and tyrannical. Obedience, endurance, and the capacity to inflict suffering are prized traits. Mercy is regarded as weakness, and individuality among slaves is systematically erased through prolonged restraint and sensory manipulation.

Ecology

Skinweavers possess hairy, spider-like bodies, though their anatomy is distinctly alien rather than arachnid. Their limbs are elongated and jointed, covered in fine, sensory filaments that quiver constantly, giving the impression of a body perpetually listening through touch. While superficially reminiscent of spiders, their proportions and movement are wrong in subtle ways, lacking the symmetry and efficiency of natural creatures.

Their heads are long and eel-like, tapering into a flexible, serpentine shape. The mouth runs far back along the skull and is filled with razor-sharp, needle-like teeth, capable of puncturing armor, flesh, and hardened silk with equal ease. Skinweavers rarely bite to kill; the mouth is primarily a tool of restraint, intimidation, and pain.

Skinweavers possess an extraordinary sense of touch, far exceeding that of any mortal species. By maintaining physical contact with a surface, they can detect vibrations caused by movement, breathing, or even shifting weight at great distances. Webbing, stone, wood, and metal all function as sensory extensions of their bodies. In dense web networks, a Skinweaver can perceive the presence and approximate position of every moving creature simultaneously.

They do not rely heavily on vision or hearing. Instead, their perception of the world is dominated by tactile awareness, making escape or concealment nearly impossible once contact with their environment has been established.