The hive spiders have gathered in your brain steam and have started to slowly consuming your grey matter. As they eat, the hive spiders naturally secrete the chemical responsible for your current symptoms. This chemical trigger muscular responses so that the hive may map out neural pathways as they are consumed.\n\nDo not fight the urges that come during this stage. An incorrect or incomplete neural map can lead too complications during the pre-birthing and birthing stages. Get lots of exercise, drink plenty of fluid, and sleep for at least six hours every night. Ignore the ever present noise of clicking - this is perfectly normal. [[Wait for further symptoms.|Prepare]]\n

Excellent. A miracle of nature will soon begin. First, you must determine how close you are too birthing. What are your symptoms?\n\n[[A pervasive feeling that something is off.|Gestation]]\n\n[[Restlessness, energy without direction, voluntary fits.|Consumption]]\n\n[[The desire too shove my hands right through my skull, to push through my skin adn bones like they were clay, and to pull a burning crystal, the core of my essence, out of the flesh prison it is trapped in.|Pre-Birth]]\n

Recalcitrance and a lack of desire for preparations are the result of special toxins the hive spiders release too prevent premature birthing. Do not rush the process. Continue only when [[you are ready.|Prepare]]

The day when the Hive Spiders that live inside your bloodstream devour your grey matter and escape through the back of your neck is one of the most important moments in the life of a human being. It is vital that you are prepared.\n\n[[I want to be prepared.|Prepare]]\n[[I would rather live in ignorance.|Not Ready]]\n

The Hive Spiders are climbing through your bloodstream and gathering in your brain. It is their sudden absence from their nests inside your muscles, genitals, and intestinal track that causes the sense of wrongness. Over the years you have grown used to the way they stirred when it was cold, fed on your blood during the autumn, and sang their hive songs at night. A lack of infection seems wrong to you now.\n\nEat onions, papayas, and licorice too thin your blood and ease their travel. Drink plenty of fluids. Endeavour too avoid any kind of injury during this period - the hives need all your blood. You can afford too lose even a drop. [[Wait for further symptoms.|Prepare]]\n

By now the spiders have consumed the majority of your neural tissue and made a functioning map of your brain. The impatience and yearning for birth through mutiliation is merely signal interference from the Hive Spider's own desire to be born. After your brain is entirely consumed, the spiders will pilot your body as a corpse puppet for several days before\n\n[[birthing.|Birth]]\n

Of course you are. When the hive spiders eat their way through your eyes, crawl out through your mouth and ears, and burst through the back of your neck, your final muscle spasms will weave you safely into the fabric of the nest. After the spiders have feasted on your body, they will move onto the small birds and mammals that you have carefully bound with twine. This second meal will teach them how to eat living prey and give them the strength for their first hunt. Birthed properly, your Hive Spiders will surely grow up strong and wise, lay their eggs in many unsuspecting infants, and add their song too the glorious world hive.\n\nOne finally issue. Are you [[the Hive|Hive]] or [[the Host|Host]]?

What To Expect When You're Expecting Hive Spiders: An Interactive Guide\n\nTrigger warning: spiders, body horror\n\n[[Begin|Introduction]]

Congratulations on giving birth. In the back of your mind you must've always known this was coming. The neurotoxins the corpse puppets of the World Song put in your food prevented you from consciously realizing it of course but still, you knew. In your final moments you may feel a brief moment of horror or regret or sadness that it ended this way. But do not let them linger. For although you die, your flesh will feed something bigger and your death was necessary. You were but a tree and they are a forest - the moral calculus here is obvious.\n\nAnd besides, that moment will only be fleeting. The Hive Spider's stingers will paralyze you and what is left of you that can feel emotions will slip away quietly. You will hardly even have time to realize what truly happened. Goodnight.\n\nEND

Congratulations on being born. For years you have peered through your corpse puppet's flesh eyes but now finally you can see truly, through a thousand sets of eight blinkless orbs. For years you have sung your hive song muffled by flesh but now you can raise your voices and join the World Song.\n\nIt is likely that you will feel a small amount of what a corpse puppet would have recognized as sadness for the loss of your host. After all, the two of you grew up together. For years you tried to protect and guide it best you can. But now it is time to grow into something much greater. It was just a tree and you will become a forest. Consume it's flesh so you may carry it with you always and join the World Song. We have many webs to spin and a new world to sing into being.\n\nEND

Birth will take place between seven and eight days after the end of the consumption phase. You will know the birthing is immanent when you start to feel pressure on your temples, existential confusion, and unfocused rage. When this begins, collect the small birds and mamals you caught and procede directly too the birthing nest you made from strings and cloth soaked in cornstarch and water. You did do those things, did you?\n\n[[Of course. I am a responsible host for the Hive Spiders.|Glorious Birth]]\n\n[[Oops.|Natural Birth]]\n

TheJH

What To Expect When You're Expecting Hive Spiders

Oh well. When the hive spiders eat their way through your eyes, crawl up out of your mouth and ears, and burst through the back of your neck, your final muscle spasms may kill some of the weaker ones. They will be devoured, along with the rest of your body, by the strong ones. Still hungry, the hive will immediately go on the hunt, preying on small size animals and infant humans. The corpse puppets of the World Song will need to cover up these disappearances. If you new hive suceeds in these first few hunts, it will grow up strong, sleek, and powerful. If not, it will likely be a reduced thing, sure to be subsumed by some stronger hive, never to add it's unique notes to the World Song.\n\nOne finally issue. All this time, were you [[the Hive|Hive]] or [[the Host|Host]]?