What They Don't Tell You About The Ettercaps - D&D

this revolting creature resembles a cross between a gangly human and a bloated spider it has long slender arms and legs protruding from a rounded fleshy body it has a spider's head with a pair of bulbous black eyes coarse dark hairs cover its ungainly body alongside a massive pot belly filled with the remains of your adventurer friends it just ate today we're going to talk about the adder cap a by beetle spider creature for once not actually associated with lol or her spiders in fact the beginning of the other cup race has long since been a mystery until today but before we get into that let's talk about our sponsor today this video is brought to you by hellofresh america's number one meal kit look guys we live in 2021 and we are very close to 2022. we gotta get in with the times the reality is that nobody got time to go to the grocery stores anymore and delivery is where things are at now did you know that the average trip to the grocery store takes 41 minutes and that is if you know 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monster manual actually tells us ethercaps are humanoid spiders that tend feed and watch over spiders the way shepherd oversees a flock of sheep they layer deep in remote forests fine strands of silk stream from glands in an ethercap's abdomen letting it shoot sticky strands of webbing to bind and trap or strangle its victims you can also use this weapon to fashion elaborate snares and nets which often festered its lair nothing particularly new here for a hybrid between a humanoid and a spider so far in here they tell us that the other caps use stealth to hide while their targets get trapped in their cunning web traps it does specify though that they design their traps so that people actually die in them not just get stuck that's actually very important and it is very easy to miss they don't expand on that at all but we can talk about it later and here they talk about how intercaps essentially ruin the forest in which they layer by turning them into web infested glooms where spiders and other terrible creatures roam and then lastly the other caps are enemies of the fae it says here that they happily entrap the sprites and pixies and then devour them not much that dryads can do against them either since their webbing is just that strong but that's about it a very short lore entry there over here we can see that they're actually fairly intelligent for a visual monstrosity but otherwise just very standard stuff just what you would expect it can easily climb walls and ceilings you can locate objects and creatures that touch its webbing and that is not affected by the sickness of his or other webs down here we can see that they do share a common feature of many spiders which is of course powerful poisons their bite deals poison damage though it doesn't quite seem to be as deadly in this stat block the poison just seems to be more like a nuisance if anything some natural claw attacks and then an ability to spew webbing at a distance is a form of attack they do give us a neat trick here that other caps can do which they can form weapons out of their very own webbing in particular a club which does allow them to grapple target with its stickiness but that's about it just a short page description nothing too particularly crazy but now we should enter the crazy let's talk about what they don't tell you about the other caps the first question that one should have about really any monstrosity in the world of dungeon dragons is where does it come from every creature has its start somewhere and you know humanoids and normal beasts generally happen through evolution and or godly creation aberrations come from other worlds outsiders like devils and angels come from other planes but monstrosities in particular generally are just normal creatures that have been distorted with magic which implies some magical shenanigan must have happened along the way and that makes them interesting now you're gonna like this because you definitely did not see this one coming otter caps are in some ways what happened to druids that venerated spiders a long time ago technically you could say these are rare spiders that simply lost their humanity the story claims that centuries ago the veneration of spiders within druidic sects was not quite as rare as it might be today of course spiders being just another facet of nature it makes sense to venerate all beasts as a druid in one way or another but there are certain problems with spiders that are not generally found in many other beasts a druid that wall shapes into a bear to live among them can cohabitate very happily with them without harming the environment if you well shape into a wolf then you do have to you know hunt a game and kill other beasts but you can do so while maintaining the ecosystem not a problem the issue that started to transpire was that the druids that were wall shaping and living at spiders were starting to act upon and enjoying the act of cannibalism that is actually very prevalent among the arachnids it is not a hidden fact that druids that spend too much time in their animal shapes will start behaving more and more like the animals even while they are no longer well shaped and so well you can see where this is going druids started practicing cannibalism even outside of their wild shapes becoming more and more lost in their dark practices the story then claims that druids that would fall for this line of spider living would be approached by fiends the records don't really show exactly like what kind of creature this could be some say that it might have been some kind of corrupted servant of mishka the wolf spider a demon we talked about in our video on the abyss or really any other kind of arachnid fiend but in any case the fiends would promote more and more spider behavior and the druids would accept and the reason they would accept is because typically druids that commit acts against nature which you can reason that cannibalism is they lose their powers remember that druid magic is divine magic it comes from the gods and when a druid does not behave well they lose them so these druids would be very easy pickings for these kind of fiends who would not just offer them power but would also offer them something closer to what the druids wanted than druidic magic could ever do these fiends taught them how to live like spiders in their humanoid forms how to imbibe poisons how to talk to spiders how to live in weddings eventually the fiends would offer the magical potions that would modify their shape into a more spidery form and after decades and decades of this those druids would slowly turn into something that today we would recognize as something close to the other caps these creatures would eventually leave these communities or betray the fiends and then go out on their own and throughout the centuries they simply would procreate and forgot about their past and completely lost their humanity and so now you have what is essentially a were spider and that's the story and this is why the creature doesn't quite have all the legs that a spider would and why it walks around upright it is also the reason why behind this very large mandibles there hides a row of human-like teeth you probably didn't know that either now that we're at it let's actually talk about their physiology this always seems to be your guys's favorite topic and mine too of course other cabs have a normal looking mouth or they devoid a flesh which comes back to their human roots inside they have a tongue that forms the shape of a tube which they use to drink the bodily fluids of the creatures that they kill before eating other caps typically drool a bunch of enzymes onto the body of their meal in order to decompose it and then allow for their arachnic body to digest it the fangs of the other cab are extremely flexible and actually allow for the manipulation of small items in fact technically they are so adept at using their fangs that you could literally count them as a third hand for the creature the arachnik body allows the creature to perform shockingly impressive feats of slate of hand especially so when you know as you would imagine knitting and then creating traps and objects using their webbing when it comes to reproduction the human part and the arachnid part both work in concert other caps have sex the human way the normal way but then the female produces an inseminated massive spider egg that is laid externally inside of this egg are scores and scores of tiny tiny error cap young the egg will be about two to three feet long and then will be completely covered in sticky webs meant to protect them and then generally they will be hung in clusters with more eggs along the ceilings of structures or the walls of trees or any other form of elevated object the eggs will hatch in about 3 months worth 30 to 80 tiny and half-formed other caps babies will spread out it is nightmare fuel now these babies are a menace and are extremely dangerous because when they come out they come out in a literal swarm of bloodthirsty hungry spider monsters and remember these spiders are cannibalistic in nature they will one hundred thousand percent eat mom and dad and all the brothers that they can and so what other caps do is they make sure to catch a very large prey in order to sacrifice it to the babies this could be an elk or a human or any other kind of creature of decent size they will make sure to leave that creature alive since of course as you can imagine other caps prefer to eat live prey they're kind of messed up that way and then they hang that person or creature very close to the eggs that are about to hatch now if there are no humans or elk or any suitable food sources to be delivered to the babies and sacrifice then the other cat parents have to literally just abandon their lair for days or else risk getting eaten by the swarm most babies are not meant to survive and in fact the vast majority will die due to starvation the elements cannibalism from their brothers and sometimes even from just getting eaten by their very own mother as a snack hey look it happens the amount of food that a typical eater cap requires is so intense and there's such a large amount of other cup babies that are born simultaneously that survival is near impossible for each of the individual babies and so after their numbers have dwindled considerably and presumably only the strongest babies are left then the mother will pick no more than 3 of them in order for her to raise protect and personally feed until they reach about 4 years of age and become mature the rest of the babies will certainly die other cabs live for about 50 years and they never really stop growing so a very old error cap becomes very very large but those are very rare since they're always out there attacking things and eating things and they generally live a very violence full life so they tend to die earlier now you guys know that i do tend to be generally harsh on the fifth edition monster manual whenever they leave something out but generally it tends to be for nerdy reasons like lore that might not be that crucial though sometimes it does feel like they really dropped the ball hard header caps are supposed to have the same poison as giant spiders do i mean like that's that's their whole thing the whole thing is that they're partially giant spiders themselves the venom of an adder cap is in fact technically supposed to be even more potent than a giant spider and that's why it is supposed to be extremely valuable a single ounce of other cap poison is meant to go in the open market for about 1 000 gold pieces but when you look at the fifth edition entry you will notice that the poison is actually quite terrible it does 18 points in damage and it has a low chance of leaving you poisoned now this is what the poison is supposed to do look at this the giant spider poison does 2d a damage and has a chance of leaving you poison but the important thing is that if you're poisoned then you become paralyzed upon being reduced to zero hit points that is the real kicker see the whole point of the poison in the first place is not to deal damage the other cap doesn't care about damage what the other cab actually cares about is eating its meal alive because that's how spiders and other cats enjoy it it's kind of a big slip up there i think now in terms of food theater cap will eat any meat regardless of any type of creature from which it comes as we mentioned before even including its own kind when the error cap eats it attempts to devour the whole creature in one single sitting as much as it can inner caps rarely ever go back to a previous kill in order to finish it they just eat as much as possible the first time around and then leave and their physiology actually allows for this kind of behavior by granting them a very expensive stomach to accommodate all that food which is actually why the other cap looks the way it does if you see their big bulging beer belly is there for a reason it's not just to make the creature look quirky or silly it does have a purpose see rarely you will find that things don't have explanations it doesn't really happen that often when a creature looks funky or has like a weird thing about itself generally there is a reason for that to be the case it's just that the monster manual doesn't always give you the context for example the lore states that an ettercap can eat an entire deer in a single sitting which is like unbelievably insane now let's talk about their psychology quote the other cap's mixed arachnid humanoid brain sets a natural limit on its emotional and intellectual capacity rooted in their collective consciousness however is a connection to arachnid life that extends far beyond shared appearance a holdover from the druidic rites that ultimately inspired the race's creation at our caps feel instinctually obligated to serve as a kind of warden to all arachnid life and to increase their own numbers excessive sentiment results in survival risks other error caps are only needed for breeding and thus groups of other caps larger than a pair are rare they believe that life and death serve as the only real tangible truths and thus they do not recognize any deities or other moral codes religion and higher thought do not place victims in the web in some extraordinary rare conditions a particularly intelligent error cap usually a female appears and gathers a large number of other caps and other arachnids around her these leaders are often motivated by destructive humanoid incursions and great loss of arachnid life to strike out from their webs and stalk prey back to its home these forays can lead to whole humanoid communities besieged by swarms of weather caps monstrous spiders spider swarms and other arachnid monstrosities end quote now in the eyes of a normal spider another cap is also just another spider there's nothing particularly unique or special about an editor cap in the eyes of a spider except for the fact that the other caps produce a form of pheromone that makes spiders feel high it gives them a strong sense of euphoria which of course makes spiders want to live close to and tag along the other caps and with the other cat being able to communicate with spiders it does kind of allow them to to basically manipulate them in whatever way they want because the spiders would want to follow them because they get high now that is something that the mastermind would not tell you now another thing that you probably didn't know about ethercaps since it was kind of left out of the monster manual is that they do indeed have the ability to speak common now not all of them necessarily do since it is a language that too many of them have been lost but some of them in fact do in particular on the you know large communities of other caps that might reside instead of a massive sprawling complex of tunnels they call it the old tong and will actually be the language they will use in order to speak to one another or to trick people into walking into their web traps but of course those other cavs that do not have access to the language instead they communicate with one another using a series of high pitched chittering noises shrieks and violent actions now even though error caps tend to be fairly solitary most of the time they do have those big sprawling communities though when i say community i don't necessarily mean that they like live close to each other see other caps they they link their layers together via webbing and so a big cave system could be like miles and miles long and all of it connected be a wedding so technically they are kind of a community in the in the sense that they share webbing together but these layers could be miles apart the webbing though is very important since any creature that touches it immediately alerts the other caps since the webbing produces these very like small vibrations upon being touched and is mostly imperceptible to the human eye but an error cap which is resting on a part of the webbed system would be able to sense the vibration and be able to know exactly where in the entire sprawling complex you are very specifically located so be very careful there if the vibrations are massive as in like you know if there was like an entire soldier's squad that had been sending to the caverns to quell the other cat population many of them could answer the call together alongside the spider servants and wreak havoc now of course as the monster manual mentioned the other caps are notoriously good at creating traps and i would be remiss not to mention that in at least some way we do have some examples of traps that they can set there's the baited limb and poison spikes quote the most intelligent header caps have noticed that a humanoid creature wrapped tight in weps and suspended as bait from a weakened tree limb often attracts other humanoids the victim moves out onto the limb which breaks dropping him and the bait into the other cap's web the trap is even more effective if the bait is left screaming for help and the ground is planted with sticks covered in the other cap's poison end quote then there's the dancing dead man quote other caps create dancing dead men by filling humanoid husks with rocks wet leaves and liquid webbing once attached to a strong web and place to swing onto the victim's path the device behaves as a pendulum-style giant sap that burst upon hitting the target covering it in web's end quote so there it is a short and sweet video on the other cap i hope you guys enjoyed it but last thing i do want to mention before we finish the video which is crucially important okay is that generally speaking when you read these monster manual entries on the other cab they will tell you that these creatures shoot their webbing from their lower abdominal area however the reality is that they shoot it from a gland that rests quote near the anus end quote i am here to give you guys the lore okay i am here to give you guys the truth and i will not pass up on reading the word anus on the first edition monster manual and somehow not using it on my video you are all welcome i would like to thank my patreon supporters barry mask and 5v magic shop morgan johnson rusty rayne duck feeder the great codini omega scales terry colb benjamin busters falkie 951 or doryx abim kurshaps lawrence's thomas haunt nathan mccomb soulless writer lost crusader stalia olaf cleb jd green treb 909 tony rc famine 52 george fartland silver in mind trevor hess the living guild pack streeblo nattora shura brian camp chad aiga john the wicked shane and sam skinner stephen herbert johnson the wizard's vault james the perverted shoddycast horrorbound jessie feliciano munchkin mania baruch and simon landreville for supporting me on patreon at the 25 level if you would like to support me as well then please please head on over to patreon.com to support thank you guys for watching thank you guys for being here thank you for all of you being awesome and i'll see you all next time

Channel: MrRhexx

Views: 167,106

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Id: olHl4-5nKsM

Length: 21min 9sec (1269 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 27 2021