From the Stars Without Number Compatible – Alien Database
Legs. If the bite is a successful hit and the target is not paralyzed, the brain spider can make four additional attacks with its legs. The brain spider can deliver this attack at the end of the turn.
Poison. The bite of a Brain Spider injects a paralyzing poison. The target must make a Physical/Constitution saving throw or be paralyzed for 1d4 hours.
Psionic (Graft Objects). The brain spider can merge its legs with a physical object, weapons, tools, computers, or everything that is not living matter. Once merged, the brain spider can use the object as an extension of its own body or mind. A melee weapon can substitute one or all of its leg attacks. A computer may become the extension of its mind, thus granting limited control over the machine and the software. An armor may increase its protection and armor class. The brain spider can perform any possible action with the object it has merged with, provided the DC is not above 7. The brain spider can use this psionic power once per scene.
COMBAT & TACTICS
Brain spiders are patient and passive predators that feed on brains or brainlike tissues of any life form that possesses at least a basic form of thought. Animals, semi-intelligent and intelligent life forms are all potential targets. A brain spiders attempt to sneak and bite the target, waiting for the poison to paralyze the nervous system. If the poison fails, then it attempts a last swarm of attacks with its legs. The brain spider attempts to flee if the target is not incapacitated after the first round of combat.
DESCRIPTION
Brain spiders measure from 1 to 2 meters, from the head to the end of the abdomen. Most specimens have from two to four pairs of legs and a couple of pincers placed at the end of an elongated neck. The main nervous system is located inside the abdomen, where the psionic ability forms.
HABITAT
Brain spiders evolve on wet and rainy planets, rich in biomass and biodiversity. Subterranean caves at tropical latitudes are the favored places where brain spiders build their nests and colonies. Brain spiders tend to avoid contact with advanced and/or intelligent beings and are the object of hunting due to their
rare psionic abilities. Laboratories are willing to pay a good sum of money to obtain an intact specimen.
BIOLOGY
Brian Spider’s biology is complex and advanced by most standards. Xenobiologists consider the brain spider a sort of failed intelligent being, claiming that at some point of its evolutionary path, it could have developed a sort of advanced intelligence, but its psionic abilities have prevented the leap because the creature had already become competitive in its environment, thus making intelligence an unnecessary
tool. Nevertheless, brain spiders are somewhat attuned to employing technology, even if the explanation of how they can use it is still an object of speculation. Some scholars suppose that, at some point, a strain of brain spiders fed upon an advanced intelligent being and absorbed a portion of the prey’s knowledge,
and then transmitted this basic knowledge to the next generation of brain spiders, and so on. The implication of this claim are worrying the scientific community because this would imply that a brain spider is capable of expanding its knowledge and passing it from generation to generation. Others scholars
wonder what could happen if one of these creatures manages to devour the brain of a psionic being.