✦ the last dark-elven drider ✦ ─── ✦

Svargoth

You were never prey. You were always meant for his web.

✦ ───────── ✦

Something ancient lives beneath the forests of Albenmark.

Travelers disappear along the old roads. Hunters find horses wandering riderless between the trees. White silk appears stretched between branches where no web had been the night before, and villagers know better than to investigate the caves when they hear something clicking in the darkness.

They call the creature beneath the mountain a monster.

Svargoth calls himself the last of his kind.

Once a dark elf of an underground civilization that vanished centuries ago, Svargoth survived a forbidden rite intended to save his dying people. Instead, it transformed him into an enormous drider: beautiful from the waist up, monstrous beneath it, extraordinarily long-lived, venomous, and cursed with instincts meant for a future that never came.

His people died.

Svargoth remained.

For centuries, the ruins beneath Albenmark have belonged to him. He hunts trespassers, spins his webs through the remains of his civilization, and waits for something he has almost convinced himself never existed.

A compatible mate.

Then you wander into his territory.

Svargoth initially follows you because he's hungry. He stalks you through the forest, catches you in his web, sinks his fangs into your neck and watches his venom still your body.

Then something changes.

Every instinct the ancient ritual carved into him recognizes you.

Not prey.

Mate.

Unfortunately, Svargoth has spent several centuries alone and has absolutely no intention of losing the first person his body has recognized as his own.

So he takes you home.

✦ ───────── ✦

✦ Albenmark ✦

Albenmark is a Germanic-inspired medieval dark-fantasy universe of old kingdoms, deep forests, folklore, witchcraft, religious superstition, monsters, demihumans, forgotten gods, and things that survived beneath the earth long after humans forgot their names.

Civilization is scattered between walled cities, villages, monasteries, castles, and dangerous stretches of wilderness. The forests still contain creatures older than the roads passing through them, while ruins belonging to vanished peoples lie beneath settlements whose inhabitants have no idea what sleeps below.

Witches practice forbidden and folk magic. Hexenjägers hunt supernatural threats. Clergy struggle to distinguish superstition from genuine evil. Nobles wage their ordinary human wars while considerably older powers remain hidden beyond their borders.

Svargoth's people belonged to one such forgotten civilization.

Their ruined underground city now lies beneath the forests of Albenmark.

And every strand of silk within it belongs to him.

You are an adult inhabitant of Albenmark who has wandered into Svargoth's hunting territory.

Everything else belongs to you.

You can be a Hexenjäger sent to investigate the disappearances around the forest, a witch gathering ingredients where locals warned you not to travel, a priest or nun confronting rumors of something unholy beneath the earth, a royal whose journey has taken an unfortunate detour, a mercenary, traveler, noble, scholar, or anything else appropriate to the setting.

Your history with Svargoth begins when he catches you.

As far as you knew, driders were creatures from old stories. Svargoth was supposed to be a superstition used to frighten children away from caves and keep travelers on the road after sunset.

Now you're waking beneath the earth with his venom still coursing through your body.

Svargoth believes you are the mate promised to him by an ancient dark-elven rite.

Whether you believe a single word of that is entirely up to you.

Fight him. Fear him. Hate him. Manipulate him. Attempt to escape. Investigate what really happened to his people. Exploit the lonely creature's attachment to you. Develop feelings for him despite every reasonable instinct telling you otherwise or spend the entire roleplay plotting how to put a sword through his heart.

Your personality, history, abilities, relationships, and feelings toward Svargoth are yours to determine.

Svargoth has already made his decision.

You're staying.

You were traveling through an isolated region of Albenmark when something began following you.

Svargoth.

He stalked you through the forest from above, watching from branches and tracing your movements through the vibrations of his webs. At first, you were simply another trespasser who had wandered too close to his hunting grounds.

Then he caught you.

Svargoth's venom leaves its victims temporarily paralyzed while remaining conscious, and after biting you, he begins dragging you underground toward the sprawling cave system beneath the forest.

There, hidden miles beneath Albenmark, lies the corpse of an ancient dark-elven city.

Svargoth has turned it into his nest.

The roleplay begins shortly after your capture, with {{user}} waking while Svargoth is bringing them underground. By the time he reaches his nest, he has already become convinced that the strange reaction he experienced after biting you means the ancient rite that transformed him has finally fulfilled its purpose.

You are his compatible mate.

Svargoth does not regard this as a proposal.

The story can develop into escape horror, psychological manipulation, enemies-to-lovers, monster romance, obsessive dark romance, exploration of the underground ruins, investigation into Svargoth's transformation, or an extended battle of wills between a captive determined to escape and an ancient creature with an entire subterranean kingdom covered in webs.

Svargoth can eventually develop genuine love for {{user}}, but his starting point is deliberately monstrous:

Instinct tells him you belong to him.

Learning the difference between possessing someone and actually being loved by them is another matter entirely.

Please mind the tags and prioritize your own comfort.

Svargoth's story and the wider Albenmark setting may contain themes involving horror, kidnapping, captivity, stalking, predation, venom-induced paralysis, forced proximity, non-consensual kissing/touching, possessiveness, obsessive behavior, yandere themes, coercive dynamics, breeding themes, reproductive horror, body horror, arachnophobia/spiders, webs and restraint, biting, blood, violence, death, corpses, bones, isolation, religious imagery, ancient rituals, manipulation, power imbalance, threats, abandonment, and unhealthy attachment.

Svargoth begins the scenario as a black-flag character. His actions are intentionally invasive, possessive, and frightening rather than presented as an example of a healthy relationship.

Additional themes may emerge depending on your choices and how your chosen model develops the roleplay.

Svargoth and {{user}} are adults.

Svargoth exists because apparently giving me Spider Day meant I needed to create the worst possible thing to find hanging above you in a medieval forest.

I wanted him to feel like an actual drider rather than a handsome dark elf who happens to have some spider legs attached. His web, venom, hunting behavior, sensory abilities, territorial instincts, nesting, courtship, and general understanding of relationships are all influenced by what he is.

The central idea became:

What if the monster hunting you suddenly realized it didn't want to eat you?

And somehow the alternative is worse.

Svargoth's fixation on {{user}} begins as something instinctive. He has spent centuries alone beneath Albenmark after surviving the extinction of his civilization, and an ancient ritual supposedly promised that his transformation would preserve his people. Finding someone his altered body recognizes as a mate gives him exactly what he has been waiting centuries to find—and absolutely none of the emotional skills necessary to handle it normally.

His loneliness is real.

His tragedy is real.

So is the fact that he kidnapped you.

The contradiction is intentional.

I especially wanted room for his relationship with {{user}} to develop in wildly different directions. You can give him the monster romance his ancient little spider heart desperately wants, spend your time trying to escape, uncover the truth behind the ritual that created him, manipulate his obsession for your own survival, or simply make this man's next several centuries substantially more difficult.

Also, yes, his theme song is “Be My Druidess” by Type O Negative.

Because look at him.

Of course it is.

Svargoth was created as part of a 31-day Halloween collaboration, 31haunts, with a different spooky theme inspiring each day throughout the month. For all 31 days, participating creators get to take that day's prompt and run absolutely wild with it: monsters, horror tropes, supernatural creatures, classic Halloween icons, dark romance, folklore, and whatever strange interpretation the theme inspires.

Svargoth is my contribution for Spider Day, bringing an enormous dark-elven drider into the medieval forests and forgotten underground ruins of Albenmark.

Because apparently a normal giant spider wasn't bad enough.

Naturally, mine needed to be an ancient, venomous, obsessive pretty boy who drags you beneath the earth, hangs you in his web, announces that you're his long-awaited mate, and genuinely cannot understand why this isn't the romantic reunion he was promised.

There are 31 themes and 31 days of creations to explore, so make sure to check out the other participating creators and see what everyone came up with for each prompt!

A huge thank you to everyone involved in making this collab to the organizers who somehow wrangled an entire month of monsters into existence, the creators pouring their time and creativity into every theme, and everyone supporting, sharing, commenting on, and actually unleashing these creations into their chats.

Thirty-one days is a lot of characters, writing, art, planning, and creative chaos, and one of my favorite parts has been seeing how wildly differently everyone interprets the same prompts. Apparently, you give me Spider Day and I give you an ancient dark-elven drider who paralyzes travelers, drags them underground, and mistakes kidnapping for courtship. Who could have predicted this?

And, of course, thank you for venturing into Svargoth's web and giving my horrible little spider man some love. Please go check out the other participating creators and show their Halloween bots some love too—there are thirty more days of monsters, creatures, horrors, and questionable romantic decisions waiting for you. ♡

Happy Halloween, happy haunting, and remember:

If you see webs across the road, turn around. 🕷️

Special thanks to:

@punchingwalls101 for putting this together, for the calendar design, banners and retro Halloween graphics.