WizKids’ Spider Dragon Mini Leaps From The Pages Of ‘Vecna: Eve Of Ruin’
by Anton Kromoff
Welcome to the table,
Spiders unnerve me. Something about the way they move, the way they can fold up and creep into small spaces, the way they used to drop down on me in the hospital when I was a kid. They’d crawl all over my face and body while I was on meds that made it hard to move. Those things created a really warlike relationship with the web-spinning, wall-walking, tiny terrors that roam our world.
This sense of unease stretches into fantasy and fiction as well, making books like Charlotte’s Web and Anansi Boys feel more like pro-spider propaganda. Books like Homeland, Exile, Sojourn, and anything else Drizzt features in, as he fights back against the spider-queen Lolth, was an instant favorite of mine.
So imagine my horror and slight delight when I was flipping through the recent Dungeons & Dragons book Vecna: Eve of Ruin and I run across Ker-Arach the Spider-Dragon.
To catch everyone up on Vecna: Eve of Ruin, this high-level adventure delves into the complex and twisted relationship between Vecna, a lich of unimaginable power, and his former ally Kas, a vengeful vampire with access to every dark secret Vecna ever tried to hide. The two, once companions, and possibly lovers, are now mortal enemies, with Kas poised for revenge after being tossed to the ethereal winds.
This D&D adventure spans key locations across the multiverse, offering players the chance to explore incredible set pieces, uncover fascinating lore, and engage in epic combat. All that, while trying to stop the Whispered One from becoming an omnipotent god to reshape all realities in his own twisted image.
One of the many monsters players might encounter is Ker-Arach, a Spider Dragon with a web made of ultra-strong, sticky silk. Within the adventure, Ker-Arach serves as a macabre tourist attraction for devotees of Lolth, indifferent to the minions scurrying about but more than willing to engage the party when they attempt to retrieve one of the pieces of the Rod of Seven Parts. The writing in this adventure is brilliant. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you definitely should.
My pals at WizKids have dropped another amazing mini for the Vecna: Ever of Ruin set in the form of the aforementioned web-walking horror. The Spider-Dragon miniature is a truly diabolical site to behold. The absolutely brilliant team thought up the structure of this thing over at Wizards of the Coast offices. It smacks of that flavor of old-school weirdness that brought us icons like the Beholder and the Slaad.
The body of this thing is a wingless Black Dragon, but it has multiple eyes like a spider and its body presents with eight spider-like legs. This horror also has a lashing tail with a stinger that does not have poison in the stats, but I 100% built it into the game and am just waiting for my weekly party to come upon it.
The scale works so well because it feels like it makes sense in the space it occupies. When compared to the normal medium-sized minis this monstrosity really feels like it fits the space it takes up on the table.
If you want to pre-order your Spider Dragon miniature you can do so at this link.
Until next time, this mini is creepy but somehow strangely cool, a true horror movie made manifest by the designers at WizKids and the brilliant minds over at Wizards of the Coast.
