Chitine

Chitines are an obscure race of humanoids from the ancient days of Dungeons & Dragons, who keep managing to creep on by through the slow tide of editions changing, despite almost nobody remembering them.

Chitines are small creatures who essentially resemble a blending of human and spider, rather like ettercaps or aranea in their hybrid form; though the precise details have changes from edition to edition, mostly in terms of how hairy they are, the basics always remain the same, presenting chitines as looking like humanoids with an extra pair of arms, an extra length & joint in each arm, multifaceted eyes, and horizontal mandibles growing out of their mouths. Dwelling in dark places like the Underdark or really creepy and overgrown forests, Chitines live simple lives of hunting and prayer; they are devout worshippers of Lolth, dedicated to earning her favor, and needless to say this doesn't make them good company. About the nicest thing that you can say for chitines is that they absolutely detest the Drow, and constantly strive to hunt and kill them in hopes of usurping their place as Lolth's favored children. Naturally, the drow don't approve of this.

The irony of it is that chitines are generally portrayed as being drow creations; the result of experiments at blending humanoid (or elf, in 5e) slaves with spiders to create a superior workforce, which of course went tits up on them. Exactly why this is the case was left undiscussed until 5th edition, when it was stated that despite invoking her divine power to keep the original creatures alive instead of collapsing into a puddle of goo, the drow never ceremonially dedicated the resultant creatures to her, and she punished them for this outrage by subtly arranging for the chitines to rebel.

This rebellion was fostered by the cholodriths, an entirely seperate species of mutant female chitines. With an instinctive connection to Lolth's power, giving them the spellcasting abilities of a 4th level cleric, these are the sacred leaders of the chitine tribes, inspiring them with sermons about how they are Lolth's chosen people and driving them to glory in the Spider-Queen's name. Cholodriths have changed a lot over the editions: when they first appeared in the Ecology of the Chitine (Dragon Magazine #233), they were described as resembling unusually large female chitines with completely hairless bodies, dark gray skin, non-faceted eyes, and elf-like ears so long that they resemble horns. When they reappeared in 3rd edition (Monsters of Faerun), they were depicted as giant albino spiders with the head of a mandibled, faceted-eyed female elf and its front two limbs mutated into humanoid arms, although it retained the oversized/horn-like ears of the previous edition. 5th edition retained this appearance, only with a more hideously spider-like face and gray instead of white.

Likewise, the status of cholodriths has changed between editions; from sterile mutant priestesses in 2nd and 3rd edition, 5th edition changed them into the "queens" of the chitine race; regular chitines are worker & warrior drones, sexless and incapable of breeding, whilst the female cholodriths produce all of the eggs that support a tribal-colony, rather like ant-queens.