Spider-infested ship turned back from Guam landing
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Summary

July 20, 2010: The Department of Agriculture of the U.S. territory of Guam has turned away a ship from its ports after stevedores began to unload it and discovered that the ship was infested with hundreds of large and thousands of smaller spiders. The officials said they didn't recognize the spiders, but said it wasn't native to Guam and thus didn't want them on the island.

The ship had last been in port in South Korea and contained housing units and accessories intended for a work force village for 18,000 temporary workers.

Source

Bibliography

Game and Story Use

  • Thousands of spiders of an "unknown type"? Okay, who let Atlach-Nacha (of the Cthulhu Mythos) out? And what was her spawn doing in South Korea?
    • Note that this is precisely the kind of weird stuff that Delta Green agents are sent to investigate.
  • Alternatively, perhaps this is a dormant werespider in "swarm" form (have any of the crew been missing? And once found, are their cadavers drained of blood?). If so, just preventing the ship from docking is unlikely to prevent her from going where she wants to go.
    • Or, given that spiders (were or otherwise) aren't great bloodsuckers (and weres aren't known for swarmshifting), it could turn out to be a ethnic minority vampire that shifts into a spider swarm rather than bats or mist…
    • And just what kind of power site is in Guam that she wants to visit?
  • For World of Darkness players, this might be the Azlu at work instead…
  • Maybe someone on accidentally summoned the spiders - perhaps as the result of a botched magical working and the spiders are simply making their way there as best they can.
    • Or maybe some magical item is attracting them.
  • Could be the result of a curse on the ship or (one of) it's crew.
  • The spiders could be accompanying someone - maybe a stowaway or one of the crew.
  • Perhaps these spiders have hatched out on the voyage - either from a mundane source like a consignment of fruit infested with spider eggs or, more horrifically, from a member of the crew1.
  • Or maybe the spiders are on the ship because it's infested with something else that they've been eating.
  • If any of the spiders made it to land (possibly by swimming or by "hitch-hiking" on an inspector or crew member), they would be an invasive species. Cue all the adventures you could have with a localized (and probably relatively minor) ecological collapse.
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