Airachnid

Airachnid is the name of two fictional characters in the various Transformers universes.

Beast Wars
The titanic Arachnid was designed by Tarantulas to function as a gigantic mobile fortress for the Predacon forces on Earth. Powerful, well-armed, and able to shoot webs to capture Maximals who attempt to flee before him. Tarantulas based its artificial intelligence on his own personality program. Not surprisingly then, Arachnid's rudimentary mind quite enjoys the cruelty of playing with his Maximal prey.

Toys

 * MicroVerse playset Arachnid (1997)
 * Arachnid was released as part of the MicroVerse line, Hasbro’s miniatures line meant to compete with Galoob’s "Micro Machines" (before Hasbro’s purchase of Galoob). It transforms from a spider into a treaded base unit with a gun emplacement on a posable arm and gripper claws. Its abdomen opens up to reveal a landing strip and volcano-like hangar for two insectoid mini-vehicles. It came with two micro-figures, Megatron (in his gator body) and Razorbeast. There are two variants; some use yellow plastic for the mini-vehicles and other accessories, while later releases use bright green plastic.

Transformers: Prime
Airachnid is a twisted, spider-like Decepticon who traumatized Arcee by killing her partner Tailgate in front of her very eyes. She is apparently a homage to Blackarachnia. Her "beast mode" is actually her second robot mode in which the rotors can be unfolded and extended to be used as spider limbs for crawling. She is voiced by Gina Torres.

Animated series
Arachnid is introduced in the episode called "Predatory". She did not have a true vehicle mode until she confronted M.E.C.H. in the episode "Crisscross". Airachnid is an enemy of Arcee because she killed her partner Tailgate. While Airachnid joined the Decepticons, she states that she likes to "work alone". In fact, after the "great exodus" (the event where the Transformers left their home planet Cybertron), Airachnid left the Decepticons and started hunting alien species, leaving them extinct.

In the episode "Predatory", she crash lands on Earth and comes across Arcee and Jack. After a quick battle, Airachnid traps Arcee with her web and pursues Jack, intending on making him her next trophy. After a long chase back to her ship, she and it are blown up by Jack and she is defeated afterwards by Arcee. The defeated Airachnid then drills into the ground and escapes.

In "Crisscross", Airachnid, wanting revenge on Jack and Arcee, lures and traps Silas with a fake distress call. She then offers a partnership: they find and bring Jack to her and she will give them Arcee when she's done with them both. M.E.C.H. holds up their side by kidnapping June, Jack's mom, and luring Jack and Arcee to a temporary M.E.C.H. facility. Arcee is knocked out by M.E.C.H. and Airachnid toys with Jack and June. However, Arcee is able to escape M.E.C.H. and save the humans. But when Airachnid is about to overtake her, Agent Fowler shows up with back-up (Jack stole Silas's walkie talkie and contacted him) and forces her to retreat, but not before she scans his helicopter and acquires an Earth alt mode.

In "Metal Attraction", she stumbles upon Breakdown retrieving an artifact that she tries to take for herself. After fighting with Breakdown, Arcee, and Bulkhead (even joining up with the former to tag-team the latter two), she is defeated and taken back to the Nemesis by Breakdown. She rejoins the Decepticons to avoid Megatron's wrath for leaving them before.

She next appears in "Partners" where she seemingly points out many of Starscream's mistakes when she talks to Megatron. He teams her up with Starscream to find the Harbinger and retrieve the weapon known as the "Immobilizer". She betrays Starscream and uses the weapon on the Autobots, until Bumblebee destroys it. Then she retreats to the Nemesis where she blames the destruction of the weapon on Starscream. However, Megatron doesn't care about the Immobilizer, as he is now furious with Airachnid because she abandoned Starscream and allowed him to be captured by the Autobots; with Starscream, they could know everything about the Decepticons. Unknown to them, Starscream escaped capture and became independent.

In "One Shall Fall" and the 3-part season final "One Shall Rise", Airachnid, now in charge due to Megatron's last order before he left for Earth, tries to order an exodus of the Decepticon fleet, claiming that Megatron has abandoned them (and possibly been driven insane by his Dark Energon shard) and that they must leave in order to survive. However, Soundwave overturns her order by defeating her and forcing her to yield. When Megatron returns with Orion Pax, she is not among the Decepticons welcoming back Megatron.

In "Orion Pax, Part 1", Airachnid questioned Megatron's idea about letting a former Autobot (Optimus Prime) have access on the ship. Later, when Arcee came aboard the Nemesis to find Optimus, Airachnid wanted to fight Arcee, but Megatron held her back. He didn't want it to affect his plans involving Optimus, as Orion Pax, decoding information that Megatron needed. Soundwave was sent instead to get Arcee off the ship.

In "Crossfire", Airachnid offered to employ her tracking skills in finding more artifacts; Megatron instead had Dreadwing and Breakdown try to kill her. She webbed the former to a tree and dismantled the latter. Not long after, she encountered an Insecticon which she was able to control. After an encounter with Starscream, she lured Megatron to an abandoned energon mine and set the Insecticon on him, watching the fight until she was attacked by Arcee. The Autobot pursued her as she burrowed away, but Airachnid managed to ambush her foe. She was prevented from terminating the helpless Arcee by Starscream, and instead had to flee, but this fortuitously led her to stumble on a whole Insecticon hive.

In "Armada", after a chain of events lead Airachnid to discover the coordinates of Megatron's warship, the Nemesis, she awakened her Insecticon army from their stasis pods to attack and kill the Decepticon leader. Ratchet managed to pinpoint her location from the subterranean signal of the multiple Insecticon awakenings, and the Autobots dispatched to her coordinates. As a portion of her Insecticon army engaged Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, Airachnid led Arcee to the Insecticon hive. Here, Arcee valiantly fought Airachnid, deciding against terminating her, but instead forced her enemy back into a stasis pod, locking her in stasis, and putting her body in Autobot custody.

Toys

 * Prime Revealer Deluxe Class Airachnid (Not Yet Released) 2012