Dryder

Confirmed capture/kill: Varies from league to league Reporting sighting & Getting out alive: Varies from league to league

Dryders are extraordinarily rare pokegirls, typically only found within Leagues that allow their existence. Though the breed has existed since the Revenge War, the most sensationalized cases are those that have evolved from Widows. That method is only possible during the Second Phase of a Widow's life cycle, when the Widow regains the knowledge and intelligence they had before. If they are aware of their limited lifespan and are capable of controlling their breeding instincts, they can forcibly rid themselves of all their poisons, ejecting them all at once through their various stingers. It is for this reason, that this powerful spider pokegirl is considered a menace in some Leagues.

Dryders stand between 5'9" (1.75 meters) and 6'4" (1.95 meters) on average, with skin in the monochrome spectrum of dark greys and blacks. The breed is considered busty, with around upper C to D cup chests. The breed's eyes (only two) tend to be compound but mimicking the shape of human eyes, typically colored red, black, brown, or the occasional green with other colors noted rarely. Hair color has been noted to be any in the visible spectrum, occasionally acting more as colored filaments than hair, which catch the light. The breed is metamorphic, able to shift between their Near Human taming form and their Tauric battle form, and are capable of choosing the arrangement of their limbs, though the head and torso remains unchanged. This has led to some Dryders being mistaken for Arachnaes, or other spider based pokegirls. The breed's battle form, of course, is that of a human upper torso affixed to a spider's body. Most Dryders have tauric bodies of the black widow spider, though some have been recorded as having bodies belonging to other spider species.

Though the breed's forms are modeled after spiders which almost universally have venom, these arachnid pokegirls are unable to produce any venoms, and indeed have no venom glands in their bodies at all. Instead, they rely on their thick silk, martial, and magical abilities to fight. They don’t gain any magic techniques intuitively but are quick studies, reaching their plateau as a midrange generic caster. Dryders naturally prefer to fight using their environment, often moving around the battlefield with speed and agility and using triplines and webs to move off of the ground. They like to set traps, both in official combat, and to capture prey to feed on. Tamed individuals learn new techniques rather easily, and many can adopt martial styles as taught by other fighting types.

Within a harem, these spider pokegirls tend to make themselves useful, aside from combat they'll often find a duty of their own that they're good at and will enjoy doing. The breed also has been recorded to have a maternal streak, as most individuals surveyed enjoy working around children or pokekits. Personalities run the gamut of introversion to extroversion, with no consistent themes among those studied.

Taming one of these spider pokegirls typically involves them reverting to their taming form, being in restraints (or bonds of their own silk) before being approached by their tamer. The necessity of the breed to be restrained is due to their strength, though some individuals may learn eventually how to control themselves. In all cases, tamers are advised to restrain their pokegirls for safety reasons, as taming fatalities are all to real. Most Dryders tend to adopt similar preferences to their tamers, much like typical pokegirls.

As stated previously, there are Leagues that have placed bounties on the Dryder due to their connection to the Widow as a matter of prudence. Studies performed on this controversial arachnid breed have shown that they have an extremely strong form of Immutable Form, repeated castings of spells such as Reduce or Enlarge have no effect. Indeed, even Royal Curse has proven ineffective under laboratory conditions. While liberals claim these studies to prove the breed is safe, most conservatives agree that when dealing with something that could possibly become a Widow, safety should be of the utmost importance.

Ferals tend to hunt by non-sticky webs, the filaments on the webs acting like an advanced version of Velcro, capturing their prey much like other spider types. The major difference is that without venom of any sort, much of the breed has adopted a similar practice as the Uloboridae family of spiders. In short, after capturing prey, the Dryder begins to wrap silk around their would-be meal. In a successive series of tighter wraps, the prey is slowly squeezed to death, though many asphyxiate before this occurs. This extreme wrapping is continued until the prey is crushed, at which point the feral consumes the silk cocoon filled with slurry.

There has been no recorded instance of threshold directly into a Dryder. The danger of the breed birthing Widow pokekits has not been as conclusive, as all pokewomen Dryders have birthed human children. Some researchers speculate that the breed has some sort of fail-safe recognition system within their womb, forcing miscarriages of pokekits, no matter what the breed. This is a theory at best, currently. Thresholding into the dreaded Widow breed due to Dryder ancestry is also inconclusive, and theories run from the venom melting the thresholder to full blown working threshold. Due to the possibility of any form of threshold happening, most of the scientific community agrees that once the Dryder becomes a pokewoman, it is prudent for them to not be bred. Some Leagues have introduced forced sterilization of Dryder pokewomen, in order to ensure this does not happen. Any information on specific laws and regulations regarding this arachnid breed should be consulted on a League by League basis.