An Age of Sigmar short-story by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Web of Ruin was released in 2023 but re-released in the free ‘Black Library Celebration 2025’ anthology available in English, German & French either from a local Warhammer store or free from Black Library with most purchases.

This coincides with World Book Day (6th March), and as avid readers ourselves we will be marking this occasion by reviewing all 4 stories in the anthology – and encouraging reading of course!

From the book:

The Tarantulos Brood are Slaves to Darkness who seek out mutagenic substances to uplift their mortal forms and grow ever closer to the sacred shape of their spidery god. In order to reach the top of their power structure they must demonstrate that they can wrangle the most deadly arachnids into servitude. Follow as one Broodkin seeks out his Chaos tained prey.

When Warcry was released Warhammer Community put one of the models from the Tarantulos Brood on the Rumour Engine… and all the Gloomspite players thought that we would be getting new spiderfang grots… or something. Because spiders were always a Destruction thing. To say that the Destruction community was ‘not happy’ with a Slaves to Darkness unit taking their spiders would be an under statement.

Well Adrian Tchaikovsky brings us a story from the Tarantulos Brood as they are ambushed (unsuccessfully) by a Grot Shaman and are told of the location of a Arachnarok spider who is close to death. The Brood can’t resist and force the Grot to lead them to his spider… who will emerge victorious.

This is another great short story, and has characters that even those new to Age of Sigmar will be able to understand. There are humans worshippping Chaos via a Spider God and Grots (goblins) trying to ambush them and then stop them reaching their version of a Spider God – and Arachnarok Spider (although Tchaikovsky never uses this term).

Could this be the revenge Destruction want from their false spider brethren, or will Slaves to Darkness arise triumphant?

Whilst this is a good story, I again have to question why it was in the compilation for 2025… a quick look at the Games Workshop website to see Warcry and the game itself is ‘Online only’… oh dear!! but you can’t even buy the Tarantulos Brood – they are discontinued. Weird!

But the star rating is for Adrian Tchaikovsky’s writing, not the strange editing decision.

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— Declan & Eeyore