Spider
Spider is a nearly mute Grower within Haven’s exiled druid pack, a shapeshifter who communicates almost entirely through plant manipulation and quiet action rather than speech. A skilled crafts mentor and battlefield support specialist, he uses his botanical magic for scouting, sabotage, shelter, and healing, proving indispensable in crisis after crisis. Reserved but deeply perceptive, he serves as a steady, trusted presence for those around him, quietly shaping outcomes and relationships far more than his silence would suggest.
Book 4.5: Unity
Spider is a Grower in Haven’s hunting pack, a nearly mute shapeshifter who communicates almost entirely through plant manipulation and action rather than speech. He participates in Frank’s initial capture and, once Frank is brought into the pack, teaches him tailoring and leatherworking, recognizing his aptitude and rewarding his dedication with a rare gift of precious tools. When Silver proposes testing Frank by abandoning him to almost certain death, Spider breaks his habitual silence with a single word, “Unreasonable,” and his objection sparks the pack’s wider resistance to her plan. After Frank and Silver return from the Chasm, Spider whispers something to Frank that visibly shocks him; the content is not revealed until much later.
As Haven prepares for the Knights of the New Republic’s siege, Spider serves as the pack’s plant-based scout and saboteur, sensing the enemy’s approach through nearby vegetation, creating camouflage for an ambush, and using vines to aid the pack’s infiltration past the player encampment. During the council’s debate over evacuation, he physically restrains Howl to keep him from contradicting Frank’s protective lie about the demon’s death. When the siege begins, he reinforces the meeting lodge and digs an escape tunnel to evacuate Haven’s children, working through visible exhaustion to also camouflage the Ancestor Tree’s location from the attacking players. Though wary of Frank’s new werewolf-like transformation, he still helps dig graves for the guild’s victims and casts the illusions that convince the Knights they are surrounded by a recovered druid force, aiding the evacuation of poisoned residents. In the aftermath, he tells Frank that Silver cared about him but didn’t know how to show it, revealing that his earlier whispered warning concerned Silver’s feelings and quietly helping bring the two together.
Status: Silent Grower and pack specialist, known for guarding his crafting tools jealously → Trusted confidant who helped bring Frank and Silver together and remains a valued Haven defender
Frank: Moves from stranger involved in Frank’s capture to mentor who teaches him tailoring, defends him against Silver’s harsh trial, and later reveals Silver’s feelings to him.
Silver: Publicly challenges her decision to abandon Frank to a deadly trial, breaking his usual silence to call it unreasonable.
Howl: Physically restrains him during the council meeting to preserve pack unity and protect Frank’s cover story.
Key quote: “Unreasonable.”
Book 5: Hellion
After Haven is abandoned, Spider, a stoic grower who communicates mostly through action and single-word replies, joins Silver’s pack in allying with Jason. He dismantles Haven’s tree gardens and shows quiet interest in Eliza’s botanical knowledge, then applies his plant magic to a string of tactical needs: growing cover for Jason’s construction project, guiding the Bone Borer safely underground when the tunnel runs out of plant life to manipulate, building platform and barricade structures against a fire-ant swarm, and cultivating phosphorescent algae for light in the underground cavern base.
His most significant thread begins when he senses a plant in apparent distress and reacts with suspicion toward Eliza, initially assuming she has harmed it; on realizing the plant is Brian, Eliza’s friend accidentally transformed and left dormant, he tells her, “Not gone. Only sleeping. I can help,” and guides her through a week-long resurrection process, pacing her through the mana-infusion ritual with instructions as simple as “Patience.” The process succeeds, and Spider continues afterward as a mentor figure supporting Brian’s ongoing development, coordinating with him in later fights to channel and enhance his plant-based power.
Spider is visibly uneasy when Eliza tests her Polymorph Potion on captured subjects, noting curtly that the ingredients are “mostly shifter blood,” though he continues supporting her research and later assists with further experiments without apparent objection. He also has a streak of practical resource conservation, refusing to distribute an elaborate potion for a routine task with a flat “Not worth it,” unmoved by the group’s criticism. In the campaign’s later battles he becomes an essential partner to Eliza in creating and directing the Blood Grove’s defensive plant growth, sustaining deep magical concentration under combat pressure while Brian shields him, and voices concern (“What’s happening?”) when an orbital bombardment threatens their retreat. The book ends with him entering the post-battle courtyard alongside Eliza and Brian, relaxed and confident.
Status: Alive — reserved member of Silver’s exiled pack, newly allied with Jason’s group → Alive — confident and settled within Jason’s inner circle after the siege
Eliza: grows from tentative shared interest in botany into a close, trusted research and combat partnership, strained briefly by his discomfort with her Polymorph Potion testing.
Brian: goes from suspecting Eliza of harming Brian’s dormant plant form to reviving him, then becomes his mentor and magical partner through subsequent battles.
Key quote: “Not gone. Only sleeping. I can help.”