ooc | application | voidtrecker express

[kumoko]

Player Information

Name: Elle
Age: 32
Contact details: Evildoers on Plurk/Elle#2335 on Discord
Other characters: N/A

Character Information

Name: Nameless Spider ("Kumoko" is a fan-name)
Canon: So I'm a Spider, So What? / Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?
Canon Point: Leaving the Great Elroe Labyrinth (End of Volume 3 of the light novel)
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: CRAU from Voidtreckers! So, OU+???
Age: Two years old!

World Information: A high fantasy world upon which a game-like System has been imposed for reasons unknown; into which a class of Japanese highschool students is reincarnated following their unexplained deaths during a Classical Literature class. Kumoko, or the nameless spider that is the protagonist, is reincarnated in the Upper Stratum of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.

Personal History: Her story on the novel wiki

Personality: "Wow, now that I've crossed the line once, I really don't think anything of killing people, huh?"

A cheerful, take-it-easy kind of spider, Kumoko is a whimsical and chirpy personality in her own head. It's implied that her previous (pre-reincarnation as a spider) personality was a reclusive one - she jokes about becoming a hikikomori again once she can make a safehouse out of webs, and doesn't remember talking to anyone outside of her online games. When she imagines talking to people, she sees it as something intimidating - the mental images of those people swim in her mind, twisting and warping, faceless, into something scarier than just people. It's likely she has some manner of social anxiety, which doesn't combine well with being a spider that can't talk. On the bright side, she can write and understand Japanese, so there's something for the translation effect to grab onto.

Her personality gains her three 'Ruler' titles - parts of godhood - in her first year of life. Pride, Sloth, and Wisdom. Pride because she fled from stronger creatures enough as a baby that she refuses to do so anymore and forces herself to overcome any and all obstacles; Sloth because she'd really just like to make a comfy house and laze around there forever if she could; Wisdom because of her magical skills and her obsessive need to know everything about the world around her. If nothing else, Kumoko is intelligent. She is one of the few beings in the world that can shape and form the runes of a spell on her own without the System's assistance. She's a world-acknowledged genius in that regard, and a Q&A reveals that it's not due to any System-based hacks, but purely because her aptitude for it is so high naturally.

Three portions of godhood and extreme magical power, huh? How does she not run the world, you ask? Well. Putting it nicely, she's a careless, smug little creature who gets caught up in her own otaku-reference-infested internal monologue to the point that she forgets danger exists. Even when she has parallel minds controlling her body she manages to set herself on fire with her own webbing by shooting a strand without checking the direction and having it land in lava. She's brilliant, sure, a magical savant, but she's a total ditz. She gains power at an astonishing rate, but then forgets about important information or her own key abilities for entire chapters.

Thanks to being born as a spider and having to struggle to survive from the moment of her re-birth, Kumoko's morals are... inhuman. She initially thinks that she'd rather not kill humans, since she used to be one, but that mindset lasts right up until a human party tries to attack her and she kills them all without a thought or a twinge of guilt. Although she doesn't make a big deal about it, she will absolutely eat humans if one's just lying around. No point wasting meat, after all! Brutal pragmatism is the name of the game. She nebulously acknowledges that murder is wrong in theory, but really any 'good' decisions she makes in that regard is down to her laziness in not picking fights with anything that's happy to ignore her in turn. She admits to herself that the only reason she'd obey a law or rule is if breaking it was more of a pain. Amongst human societies she has a correctly chaotic reputation - one adventuring party doesn't attack her when she appears, so she heals their wounded members and helps them kill a monster before leaving. Another party burns down her web home, and she kills them all without another thought. She can be bribed into compliance with snacks, but her conscience might as well not exist. There's a reason she gets both the 'Demon Lord' and 'Saint' skills.

That said, some of that lack of morality may be due to System skills and titles that reduce and/or nullify feelings of guilt, so she may end up developing a conscience on the train. Who knows! Spoiler, she did.

It doesn't help that in Elroe she used the Skill Appraisal to gather info on everything she saw, which to monsters is the equivalent of someone screaming FIGHT ME. She doesn't know that, though, so as far as she's concerned, she hasn't yet met something (other than that one adventuring group) that didn't try to kill her within seconds for NO REASON, GOSH. Her expectations of interaction are totally abnormal, and adjusting to a scenario where she's expected to interact socially without fighting for her life gave her the equivalent of severe culture shock. She has severe PTSD from being in a series of constant life-or-death situations that she doesn't acknowledge unless she's drunk or mentally influenced in some way.

CRAU developments: If her first isekai was a cruel survival rpg with too many twists and a vicious learning curve, her second was a feelgood queerplatonic dating sim with a spider FL. Sure, the first day aboard the Express was Panicktown: attacked, yelled at, and then forced into an uneasy ceasefire agreement at repulsor-point while screaming internally. But. But! There was an alarming amount of No Killing Whatsoever, and she didn't eat anyone.

Well, not anyone in a hoodie, anyway.

But hey, this isekai has a translation cheat! Time to talk to people via awkward silk webbing spelling out characters! Some Voidtreckers ignored her, some ran from her, but some of her fellow victims made weird efforts to befriend a large, pointy spider that made screeching noises when approached. What's with that? Anyway, these cookies are delicious, and she's definitely not catching feelings for any of these supportive shmucks.

Wait, oh no.

Crap.

Where did all of these gift outfits come from? Haha, not her, that's for sure!

And so the genre shifted alarmingly to the left. Charming slice-of-life story, here we come!

Faced with a life where all she had to do was laze around, eat delicious food, and occasionally stir herself to face a week of mild combat (of which she did very little, if she could help it), the spider spent most of her time re-learning magic and sleeping. Thread-spelling upgraded to text-to-speech; a huge Roegadyn taught her tailoring, a tiny Au Ra mothered her to within an inch of her admittedly short spider life, and a host of grumpy elves threatened her and then adopted her. Human teenagers willingly hung out with her, only sometimes with the goal to obtain Cute Outfits. Mostly for videogames. The nameless spider gained an embarassment of names, and f--

fr--

friends???

But she was still a spider. So she bent her attention towards finishing the evolution tree she'd started in her second world. Ede Saine became Zana Horowa, and then Arachne-- after a year of Void travel, the spider gained vocal cords and opposable thumbs all at once. Armed (ha) with the ability to hug, and with two brains for extra processing power, she set about awkwardly bonding with everyone whilst redefining herself as a person rather than an ugly but harmless pet.

So, what's changed?

She's slightly more empathic, but only towards other Voidtreckers. Other Voidtreckers who've been nice to her, specifically. She's still a socially anxious recluse, but she can just about hold a conversation provided she isn't expected to make eye contact or remember the other person's name. Living safely aboard for a year means that she's secure in her role, and is far more territorial over the Voidtrecker Express than she ever was over any measly nest in the Labyrinth. Want to burn her train down? Then perish. Helping with Black and White squads, as well as providing general seamstress and healer services, are a natural result of this - they're her people, which means she gets to equip them. When she remembers they exist, anyway.

Key themes: Never waste food. A life without pride is empty. Everything will work out in the end, for sure.

Main Motivation: Keep up her excellent life on the Voidtrecker Express at all costs, take pride in being a Voidtrecker, don't get eaten by galaxy-consuming void monsters.

Skills: Within the boundaries of the System, she's truly frightening. She has a host of Titles that grant her supernatural abilities up to and including dragonslaying, immunity to soul-based attacks and being the epitome of magical power in the universe.

PHENOMENAL COSMIC POW- no way. Kumoko is a magical spider, after a year of struggling to learn it. She has Spatial Magic - teleporting herself and others, hammerspace storage, you know the drill. The generic fantasy spatial magic that she's wanted from the beginning that's a staple of cheat powers. She also has an affinity for darkness and poison magic, but her poison magic has levelled up to the point that she has healing magic from it. And Earth, and Wind, and... etcetera.

Outside of the System... she's a spider. Still, she's a monstrous spider from a world with plentiful magic, so it's not too much of an issue. While she can construct spells on her own (ie 'real' spells), she'd been using the System for so long that she didn't have access to any of her premade spells on the Express the first time. Instead, she had to reconstruct any magic she wanted from base principles. When she's learning to cast her own magic in her novel, she likens it to having to walk instead of taking a train. Manageable and pretty easy, but way more of a hassle than having it done automatically for you. Onboard the first time, she developed a large array of magic by watching other mages and generally experimenting with no real regard for her own life. She has access to elemental magic, healing magic, spatial magic, and thread magic (i.e. she can enchant and create spider silk with special properties). She's developed self-healing the hard way, by being exploded and having to regenerate most of her body.

Other than that, she's a unique, immortal spider-type monster with a human upper body, because on the Express she managed to force her own evolution twice. Her human portion doesn't have much going for it on the combat front, but spider-wise she's doing pretty well for herself; her front two legs end in sinister-looking scythes that are more than capable of slashing and piercing attacks, and her fangs inject a powerful poison on a bite. She's incredibly fast, but her durability/vitality is terrible and she has an insanely high vulnerability to fire. All of her other abilities were System-generated, and thus don't carry through into the game.

Even out of combat, her thread has a variety of uses. She can make it sticky, non-sticky, resistant, thick, thin, elastic... and she can weave it into adorable clothing or tricky traps if she needs to. She's had a lot of practice. She studied with Dread Thunderstorm, a master tailor, and spent a year aboard the train developing her skills as a magical seamstress.

Item: katy please

Sample: dread spider fashions

Notes: <3