Sorrow-Spiders
These little charmers sneak into the bedrooms of sleepers and bite their eyes off. They take them back to their nests and do...what? No-one's actually seen them eating the stolen eyes.
That old saying that spiders drink your tears when you sleep? Sorrow-spiders rip out the whole eye. Sweet dreams!
Burn the Whole City Down
Sorrow-spiders are horrific arachnids that grow to about the size of a cat. They infest quite a few corners of London, to the point that the Department of Menace Eradication often pays handsomely for sacks full of spider legs. Rooms full of sorrow-spiders are sometimes used for executions, especially for unfortunate players of the Great Game. The landlord of the Blind Helmsmen runs a spider-pit, where Londoners place their bets as spiders fight to the death. It turns out that sorrow-spiders can actually be tamed; apparently they can be quite intelligent and prone to ambition. Now, what is their ambition...
Spider-Councils
"Sorrow-spiders are already repulsive. Spider-councils are what happens when sorrow-spiders go bad."
Every now and a bunch of sorrow-spiders come together and combine to form a hulking spider-council. These monsters can grow even larger than a horse, and they often fester in the crypts of abandoned buildings. As it turns out, the sorrow-spiders actually bring these monsters stolen eyes, in which they lay their eggs. Spider-councils seem to value the eyes of those "blessed" with the Correspondence in particular. Also, they talk. A smooth, silky contralto, as one would expect.
There's no particular limit to how big these things can grow, all they need is more and more spiders. Well, okay, there is a limit, namely the that there can be only so many spiders in a spider-council before it becomes a grave understatement. These planet-sized groupings are called spider-senates.
Saviour's Rocks
"The sound of their constant motion is like pebbles on a beach..."
The Saviour's Rocks are perhaps the original home of the eye-stealing sorrow-spiders that plague London. They are certainly where they are most numerous. The few humans living in the Nativity, the only human settlement here, refuse to speak of spiders, only referring to them as their "generous neighbors of whom they will speak no ill." The humans donate eyes for the sorrow spiders to reproduce. During the Festival of Silk, humans are ...erm, sacrificed... to the spiders.
The spiders here formed an alliance with an avaricious Lorn-Fluke. The fluke would blind a zee-beast that knows the Correspondence, and the spiders would give it troves of secrets in return.
The group of islands that make up Saviour's Rocks is guarded by the Tree of Ages, a living ship of huge spider-councils, made from a complex series of deals the spiders struck and betrayed. There are other councils besides the Tree of Ages - for example, the Tree of Seasons, which is smaller. The largest and final council, the Tree of Eons, requires just one more betrayal.
