The Isle of Wight

Shaped something like a diamond and lying just off the south coast of England, the Isle of Wight was a kingdom in its own right in historical times. In the 19th century, Queen Victoria made it her summer home, and it became the vacation spot of choice for fashionable Victorians. Today, tourism is still the major engine of the island's economy, focusing on the chalk cliffs, beaches, historical castles and palaces, and dinosaurs. Speaking of the last, by geological quirk, the Isle of Wight is one of richest fossil beds in the world, with Cretaceous-era bones and footprints all over the western half of the island.

It is these last that the Azlu are most interested in. Traditionally, the Spider Hosts have been weak in mainland Britain, a fact attested to by the benevolent role of the spider in British folklore. The ones on the Isle of Wight, however, are numerous, organized, and well-entrenched, taking advantage of the fact that one can only reach the Isle by ferry to turn it into a kind of Fortress Azlu. No one is entirely sure what the Azlu are doing there, but the few who have visited the Isle of Wight and returned indicate that the Azlu are guarding something by the cliffs.

Phoenix, a Swansea mage belonging to Carmarthen Consilium, claimed in 1906 to have stumbled across a beach grotto not far from Newport containing more Azlu than most British Uratha will ever see in their lives. The Spider Hosts were, however, quiet and did not behave in a threatening manner. Her hasty retreat was caused by the rasping voices that began to speak in her head, coming from the things the Azlu seemed to be guarding: three objects, which looked, for all the world, like the fossilized exoskeletons of enormous spiders.