The first big discovery was a pair of dead Webbers found side-by-side on a shelf of rock. They were cocooned in a thick layer of silk with their long legs jutting out.

The froggers lacked lasers and cutting tools, but their long fingers were grippy and dexterous. Using flakes of obsidian found in the vicinity, they methodically sliced and peeled away the silk to get access to the bodies.

The comparison to spiders was inevitable. A child with a crayon could have drawn a good likeness: two conjoined spheres like a headless snowman with twiggy legs that ended in nubby feet as if wearing oversized socks, altogether very Tim Burtonesque. The last pair of legs was different than the others. It had an extra joint but no feet, ending in a sort of Swiss Army knife of chitinous barbs, hooks, and blades. A thorax contained the mouth, limb sockets, and stomach while a much larger abdomen housed the heart, lungs, viscera, and all-important silk glands. The exoskeleton was a hide-shell hybrid like a leatherback turtle's, semi-rigid but able to flex and deform. It was covered all over in a thick coat of gray or dun hair. The circular mouth was located on its underside, leaving them completely faceless except for a pair of pedipalps that looked like drooping gourds covered in prickly hair. Perhaps they had some chemical sensing ability? They had no eyes nor any residual traces of ever having had them. The back end was distinguished by a circular cluster of spinnerets located above the anus.

The exoskeleton of one of the corpses had burst, spilling out viscera. The froggers were able to squirm in through the breach, squeezing between thick noodles of intestines and pancake lungs. They took inventory as they went, the onboard AI turning their tactile information into a 3D anatomical diagram. There was one organ they were desperate to find above all others. After surveying the abdomen, they squidged into the thorax where they finally located its brain. It was not what they expected. The Webber did not have a single or even a double lobe, but ten fist-sized brainlets arranged in a ring: one above each leg along with additional nodes at the front and back. Taken altogether, that was an impressive amount of neural matter for an arachnid. What did they use it for?

The dead Webbers were still being autopsied when a collection of airtight drumheads were discovered in the rift-wall less than a thousand feet up. Made of the same silky material as the cocoons, they were each about five meters in diameter and perfectly uniform. Sphincter-like creases emanated from their centers. Was this how the Webbers were gaining access to the rift?