At the beginning of this year, we speculated that the skazzerai (AKA space spiders) were going to play a big role in the new Craft Wars trilogy. If you’ve read Dead Country, you’ll know we were right.

If you haven’t read Dead Country oh my god get off this article, you will be spoiled to hell and back. Go read Dead Country NOW, by Seril and Kos it’s so good and also I wasn’t kidding when I said this article has so many spoilers. So many.

This article is the first of THREE, you lucky readers, deep diving into everything we now know about the skazzerai. It was meant to be one, but when we hit 5,000 words and had barely done any analysis it was clear that the sub-sections needed to become full blown articles in their own right.

So, this article covers what Tara has learnt about the skazzerai since the end of Ruin of Angels, and takes us to about halfway through Dead Country. BUT before we jump into the Dead Country of it all, we must issue an addendum to the first article.

In a recent reread of the series, we discovered four space spider references we missed the first time round. So, for completion’s sake, here they are.

In the choose your own adventure game, Choice of the Deathless, your character ends up the demon realm and describes what they see in the sky:

This may be a different plane with foreign stars, but the skazzerai are still there, waiting, watching.

We also missed two background references in Ruin of Angels, reinforcing that knowledge of the skazzerai in deep history has become embedded in myths around the world. Last time we focused primarily on what the Quechal knew about the space spiders, but the Iskari and Telomeri clearly have similar memories turned myth.

Spiders the size of mountains immortalised in religious tales, demonic many-armed monsters from deep space now part of a Hallowe’en style holiday… this sounds skazzerai-y to me!

And, finally, I missed a rather more in-your-face reference in Four Roads Cross, which to be completely frank I only noticed because Tara directly references it in Dead Country and I went back to check the details last night.

Oops? I was clearly too distracted by how cool Tara is in this scene to pay enough attention to what her defeated enemy had to say.

This is from Madeline Ramp, an associate of now-dead Alexander Denovo. We learn in Dead Country that Denovo had some idea of what was coming – and it seems he shared that with his colleagues.

Now that we’re all caught up, on to everything we learned abotu the skazzerai in Dead Country.

(Note that some longer quotes may have been cut down for ease in this article, so if you go back to the citation and see paragraphs I’ve skipped that’s why.)

What has Tara learned about the space spiders since Alikand?

Last time we saw Tara – and, actually, anyone in the Craft Sequence universe – they were fighting the Iskari Rectification Authority and the gods from the Wastes to defend the ancient hidden city of Alikand. As part of this battle, Kai went to space (yeah Gladstone doesn’t stay within genre boundaries, we’re getting into sci-fi territory in a marvellous way) and listened to what was out there.

That was two years ago. Since then, Tara has worked with Kai, the Twin Serpents Group and all her other allies to figure out what the hell is out there. To figure out what is coming for them.

Gladstone builds the tension from page one:

We don’t learn much about what the folder contains for a while, but we get tantalising hints throughout the first half of the book. Each gives us a little more information, or build a little more tension.

It’s been six years since the publication of Ruin of Angels, and I imagine most people aren’t as obsessive as I am to comb through the existing books for hints and clues (again, see “what’s the deal with the space spiders”) so I imagine more casual fans had less of an idea of what might be in this folder. This build up means that in addition to the gradually building dread and anticipation, readers get drip-fed clues or reminders about what came before. And, of course, Dead Country is advertised as a potential entry point to the series for new readers and thus must cater to brand new fans, casual readers of the first books, and the obsessive weirdos like me.

Have a whole bunch of quotes building the tension:

What’s in the folder? What did Kai hear in Ruin? What are the footsteps beyond the stars?

Almost exactly halfway through the book, we finally find out.

The memory crystal contains what Kai heard up in space, and the rest is the total of Tara’s research into what made that sound. Throughout history, people have shared stories of what they are, the spiders beyond the sky. There are cave paintings, reliefs in ancient temples, etchings and lithographs from throughout history. Essentially, the same evidence we quoted in the first article.

She knows that those ancient illustrations don’t necessarily mean anything – stories don’t have to be real. I’d argue, as you can see in part 1, that stories in the Craft world do tend to have a bit more reality to them than in our world. The process of storytelling and the sharing of beliefs through and between cultures can genuinely create something in the Domain.

But, in this case, which came first? The story or the spiders?

We know for sure now that the premise in the first article is correct. The skazzerai are out there, and are going to play a huge role in the finale of this Craft Sequence arc.

That doesn’t tell us that much, though. What do we know about them? More importantly, what does Tara know about them?

And, until later in Dead Country, that’s about all we (and Tara) know. The prehistorical record, such as it is, tells this story, but no specifics have been passed down. No written record, no factual truth as a Craftswoman may define it. A lithograph in Tara’s folder shows “a cave painting, in ochre and crushed beetle shells, of a tiny marble with brown continents, in the grip of an immense clawed shape like a spider or a hand, vast as suns” (120). Some people have written about these depictions before Tara, but it’s niche: “Her brow furrowed as she teased meaning from densely typeset articles in obscure journals” (137). But that’s it.

Quite what set Tara off on this journey isn’t clear. She says “I heard a rumour and went looking” (138), which could reference Madeline Ramp’s comment in Four Roads Cross. That’s Tara’s last on-page appearance before she shows up in Alikand a couple of years later; in between, of course, Cat goes to Kavekana, meets Kai and Izza, and the whole Blue Lady thing happens. I couldn’t find any references to skazzerai in Full Fathom Five (though we do get some nightmare spiders), meaning that Ramp’s comment is the last we hear about them chronologically.

There could, of course, have been interactions with the Iskari or perhaps the ancient goddess Firekeeper in between books, but this feels like a pretty essential thing to have off-page so I’m inclined to say the moment Tara’s referring to is the conversation with Ramp.

That was five years ago, in-universe. And despite Tara’s work, there isn’t a great deal in the black folder. This frustrates Tara more than anyone else:

One thing is clear, however. The skazzerai are existential threats to the planet and all life in the Domain.

That would be an unsatisfying place to end – frankly, it’s very little more than we could figure out from the end of Ruin of Angels. Luckily for us, this is still the set up of Dead Country’s plot. Whilst the book is in many ways a character study of Tara and grief and growing up and loss, it’s simultaneously an expansion of the story, a deepening of knowledge, and a tying together of disparate plots, places and people.

Which brings us to the edge storm.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to wait for the next article to get into that. Promise it’ll be quick (it’s already half written). And in the meantime, you can start re-reading Dead Country to remind yourself of all the glorious details.

What do you think? Let me know - and don’t forget you can subscribe to be the first to hear about new articles and fun projects in the pipeline.