The Skeliri Clan

Stone, Web, and Domain

The Skeliri hold the Varnhollow Peaks, where cliffs rise in steps and the air turns thin even in summer. Webs hang across defiles like drawn lines. They are not decoration. Each span marks control. Caverns cut at steep angles run under the stone. Some are old frost vents. Others were carved by magic from a past age. The Skeliri treat each mouth as a gate. They track tremors, set oil marks on ledges, and keep silent counts to move squads without voice. They do not post warnings. Outsiders do not get second chances.

Their city, Vel’Zherineth, hangs inside a narrow fissure. Floors are anchored to the rock with silk driven into drilled sockets and checked each week. Causeways carry a low glow from oiled threads so the silk does not dry and crack. Market ledges sell chitin plates, bone rivets, venom jars, and coils of coded line. Orders travel by wire-pluck through rafters; a short pattern can move a brigade. The Gutterhold Warrens pack grunts into pod-rooms with a sling and a hook. Above them, the Fangshear Coil trains the elite. Below, hard custody hangs in clear pods over the dark. The city is a machine. Every level serves a count.

The Skeliri call spiders kin and tools both. Broodvaults keep egg clutches on tension frames. Caretakers wear scent seals and guide spiderlings by taps and oil trails. Broods learn to hold still on silence and bite on count. The loss of a brood shuts trade and draws black veils across causeways. The loss of a grunt does not delay work. This difference is the measure of their values.

They claim to guard old tunnels and seal things that should not wake. When ley strain rises or deep stone sighs, they close passes and demand tribute. They deal with threats first and speak later. The Wardens of Rootwatch hate this and still accept it. The Skeliri move faster on their own stone than any patrol from the low country. When they reopen a route, tolls go up. When they keep it closed, bodies go missing near side ledges. They do not explain either choice.

Society of Control

The Spiralthrone Sanctum sits at the center of Vel’Zherineth. The Arachnomancer rules from there by decree. Fang-Priests carry law through venom rites and web-sign. Silkbound Ascendants enforce it with precision. Below them are weavers, brood-tenders, quartermasters, and recorders. At the lowest are grunts, thralls, and bond-debt workers pulled from raids or bought from smugglers. Names are duty marks that can be cut away. Pair-bonds are licensed for strong climbers and quiet minds. Children sleep in sling nests and learn silence before words.

Law is built to keep the counts. Edicts fix quotas for venom, silk, ore scrap, and dried meat. Rations rise or fall with those numbers. A grunt who fails a count loses food. A weaver who wastes silk loses fingers. A quartermaster who misrecords a coil loses the post and the tongue. Punishments are public. The Coilglass Cells are worse. Each is a clear egg of hardened silk steeped in resin and bound with thought-bending stitchwork. Prisoners hang over the dark and face the city. Loops of memory run until will breaks. The Skeliri call this truth-work. It is a policy choice, not a ritual of faith.

Rites use no open voice. Captives are lifted, bound, and presented to ancestral forms pressed into the inner coil. Outsiders who witness a rite do so once and then leave under guard or do not leave at all. The priesthood keeps debt ledgers in silk code stored in bone tubes. Those ledgers do not forgive. A wrong mark can bind a family in Naath to quiet service for a season. A correct mark can end a dispute by turning a hostage into a body that no one will find.

Markets move by tribute and leverage. Venom trades for permits. Permits trade for access to ledges where caravans can be taken whole. Safe-path cords appear in the right hands only after a bribe or a show of force. The Merchant Guild of Naath has learned this the hard way. Ransoms came back with empty eyes and steady hands that burned ledgers without cause. The Guild now writes its own losses when a name vanishes in the Peaks. The Skeliri count that as victory.

War by Trap and Silence

The Skeliri fight with traps, angles, and planned counts. They do not spend bodies when silk can do the work. Web curtains hang over drops and pull tight at the right mark. Wedge-stakes break ankles and throw targets into net-lines. Oil threads carry orders through the dark where speech would bring a swarm. Ascendants cross ceilings on palms and toes and strike a rear guard without a sound. Brood-guard spiders pin the exit while a rescue team steps into hair-thin lines strung at knee height. Fire is used hot and brief. Smoke draws swarms. Smoke eats air. They do not waste it.

Three approaches matter to everyone else. Glimvale Teeth is a ring of spires laced with lines strong enough to hold wagons and trolls both. It is passable only by contract or mistake. Skathrow Spine is a ridge track two paces wide with nest webs above the drops; Wardens marked it closed seasons ago and have not changed the mark. Needletrem Ravine is a slit where sound dies. A phase spider strings webs across cracks that do not keep the same shape. Lorekeepers teach one rule for the Ravine: no singing lines, no iron chains, no steel nails. Threads tied to wood shake less and save lives.

The Seekers take contracts into the Peaks only when there is no other choice: missing guides, lost carts, giants pulled too far south, goblin nests near low shrines. They carry oil that does not smoke, flat hooks, paired lines, and veils to keep silk off the face. They leave chalk signs that weather in a day. Their reports decide whether boards read open, risky, or closed. A “risky” mark raises tolls. A “closed” mark cancels charters and frees bonds without fines. Traders complain and keep breathing.

Season shifts decide pressure. Spring loosens shelves and triggers repairs that change the ground underfoot. Summer raises ley strain along green seams, and the Cloister posts red glyphs against spellwork. Autumn draws caravans, and Skeliri patrols grow thick. Winter locks routes. Avalanches cut webs and seal mouths. Goblins breed in warm cracks and spill out hungry. Wardens run burn raids near the low shrines. The Skeliri ignore goblins unless they foul tunnels or poison webs. When thaw comes, bones and rust show in drifts. The count begins again.

Against the Redfang Orcs, the Skeliri poison water bags and cut bridge-ropes only after the last ranks pass so the front runs into a cul-de-sac. Against Wardens and Seekers, they stage a false retreat and pull leaders into narrow chimneys where arrows cannot turn. They deny food and air. They take captives when useful and bodies when not. They kill fast. They do not call it glory. They call it work.

Knives Behind the Veil

The Naath Council holds a thin accord with Vel’Zherineth: no raids below the tree line, no silk traps within sight of marked shrines, no hunts during Warden funerals. The Skeliri break each rule when it serves their aims and then pay a price they pick: a captive returned, a year of quiet on a ledge, a crate of clean chitin. They do not bargain in good faith. They set bait, watch who takes it, and close a fist.

Their reach does not end at the cliffs. They seed Ezra’s boards with false contracts through front names to watch which Seekers chase coin over sense. They send “gifts” to the Merchant Guild—venom jars, safe-path cords, neat rope—that carry listening knots woven so fine they ride under the skin of the fibers. They lace drain channels in the Spindle with hair-thread spools that catch footfalls of named clerks. They plant agents in caravan crews as bound thralls with cut tongues and trained habits. A smuggler who brags today will be a body in a week and a rumor in two. They replace tools and pawns without fuss. They protect plans, not people.

The Lorekeepers and Wardens try to counter this with posted codes, clean permits, and patrol slates held close. It is not enough. The Skeliri want information more than coin. A copy of a patrol slate, a vote time, a planned route for a study walk—each fact binds the giver. Each bind becomes a lever. When exposure threatens, the Skeliri cut ties fast and shift the game to another ledge. This is not chaos. It is maintenance.

Past Vel’Zherineth lies the Hollow Below, a chasm without wind. Rune-webs cover its mouth. Some glow steady. Some fail and are rewoven by priest teams who work with eyes closed and hands guided by tap code. The Skeliri keep others from the rim, and even their own keep back from the old knots. Stories name the things below as the Graven: thoughts pressed into stone by giant rites that learned to bite. There is no proof that comforts anyone. Vel’Zherineth treats the Hollow as a lid that must hold. They keep a plan called the Severance Rite: a cut of anchor lines that will drop whole levels to blunt a breach. If that day comes, they will cut first and speak later. They will kill to keep the lid sealed and kill again to hide how close it is to failing.

When people in Naath say the Skeliri are evil, they are not speaking from fear alone. The Skeliri use fear as a tool. They plan with care. They kill as a first choice when it secures control. They keep ledgers on silk and names on wire, and they do not lose track of either. They are neighbors only by map. In practice, they are a standing threat that watches, counts, and acts the moment a line slackens.