Spiders of dreams and gears.

Plague wheels spider  Init +1; Atk bite +1 (1d6); AC 16, HD 2d10; MV 25’; Act 1d20; SP Mucous injection (see below) takes no damage from blunt weapons or poison; SV Fort +2, Ref +2, Will +0, AL C.

A large (16 inches across) jeweled spider, seeming wrought of metal and gemstones, surprisingly light as it scuttles up your body and onto your face.

The spider rides your face at night, filling your head with a lightly paralytic gooey substance (that is nearly indistinguishable from snot) that over the next d7 saps you (daily) of d2 Sta, d2 Str and d3 Pers; if caught early in many societies this will likely go unnoticed as just another bout of illness.

Anyone else will find that they die in their sleep on the relevant night.   Their consciousness however does not wander far afield.  The sixteen glass ‘slats’ mounted (eight to a side) along the ‘spider’s’ thorax are galvanic-orichalcum treated glasstel soul storage crystals.  The deceased’s consciousness and soul remain within, sleeping though dreaming of life as a predatory spider.  

D3 nights after the deceased died, unless measures have been taken with the body, it is possible the spider will suggest the remnants shift up into their next form.

At that point a mysterious and bizarre ‘clockwork infection’ sets in.  Over the next day period, the body slowly grows an assortment of gears, springs, and pulleys within the body, wrought largely of the deceased’ own tissues, until by nightfall the body is such that the spider can puppet.

Owing to its extraplanar origin (somewhere between the Clockwork Doom and the land of Nightmares likely) it takes absolutely no damage from blunt or piercing weapons. Only slashing and energy attacks will inflict normal damage upon one of these creatures.   Further the spiders are immune to poison, including gas attacks. They require neither air nor food.  

Note also, the mucousy proboscis is AC 8 when exposed and must be exposed for a round before and a round after penetrating the head of a sleeping person.  Inflicting so much as four points of damage directly to it will render it useless; double that will remove the proboscis and assembly completely.

Plague wheels spider-zombie  Init as spider; Atk +1 by weapon or +1 fists  (1d3 plus 1d4 from metal spikes that extrude on a hit); AC 12 (as deceased), HD 2d8 (never more than host organism however); MV 25’; Act 1d20; SP  immune to mind control, sleep, or mind influencing attacks and effects; SV Fort +0, Ref +0, Will +0, AL N.

Unless freed from their ‘glass’ housing, the souls will remain perpetually trapped within the spider’s corpse, even after it’s destruction.  Any magic, super-science, psychic or psionic attempt to move that soul may be successful however anyone so returned to their somewhat rotted, gear infected corpse would likely (DC 22 and higher! Will save to avoid) go mad with the constant sound of their own, constant and grinding mechanical processes while attempting to inhabit a fever heated but nonetheless rotting organic brain……...