Occasionally, my brain does strange things with syntax. Such was the case when I recently became aware of the peacock spider. If we have peacock spiders, I asked, why can’t we have spider peacocks?

So in my headcanon, the spider peacock is now a thing in the 7th Sea game setting.

It started out as a Montaigne attempt to breed a mute peafowl that would be decorative without disrupting garden parties with its shrieks. The result wasn’t a mute bird, but rather one with raspy, rattling vocalizations – sounding, quite frankly, like a woman being strangled rather than one being knifed. As if that weren’t enough, the breed’s plumage lost much of its coloration, becoming silvery grey and the dark red-brown of dried blood. This might have been the end of the experiment if not for the elaborate patterns on the fowl’s tailfeathers, which resembled unique, intricate spiderwebs when raised in full display.

While a few eccentric Montaigne do still keep flocks of these “spider peacocks,” the primary market for the breed is, unsurprisingly, Vodacce. There, they are cherished pets, allowed to freely roam their owners’ estates. Some Vodacce believe that spider peacocks also can sense when a sorte strega tugs the strands of Fate in their vicinity, and that their ubiquity in certain nobles’ presence is more than simple ornamentation or ostentation.