Mandras woke up with a splitting headache and an odd taste in his mouth. His colleagues stood around him, whistling innocuously. Mandras last memory made him gasp, but not half as much as looking in the silver mirror and seeing a tall thin human with his features looking back at him. Where were the muscles, the heft, the dwarvenness?! He now looked like a thirty-pound weakling, mind you a lithe and dexterous one, but still…
Sylaire looked at him and shrugged.
The party filled him in on having recovered his body and brought it here along with Konrad’s and Rarder’s. Apparently, the elves were a bit loathe to reincarnate anyone, but were helping. However, there were only enough reagents to bring one back. Koko had tossed the knuckle bones and it came up Mandras.
In exchange, the party was tasked with tracking down a party of elves that had sallied into a spidery shaft to fetch reagents. The party was to bring back a dozen sets of spider web, intact, and the bodies of the elves, now presumed dead.
Mandras’ head was spinning. Casting through their goods, he equipped himself based on his new instincts and sensed abilities. A thief… paaah – should he change his name to Mandras Mouser…? What would the ancestors say?! He put on some old leather armour. He was given a falx +1, elven cloak and boots, his old ring of water breathing and a ring +1 with a panther engraved on it (which was claimed would allow him to turn into a cat and back once a day). He was also still holding the shield with the odd face on it – apparently it greatly enhanced armour, if only he could use it… on the other hand it would allow him to take on the likeness of anyone they had known for 6 hours… - not much use in a dungeon though…
They set off for the spider lair and entered it with trepidation, Koko using the magic sword to fly in and look around. They shinnied down the deep shaft on an elven rope and added their own, just to be sure. Taking the first horizontal passage they entered a room full of dead leaves and spider webs ten feet up on the ceiling. Hmmm… they walked on and Koko suddenly fell through a spider hole, landing in a web net. An Ettercap came through a lower passage and attacked him, but he promptly died when the combined weight of Harlen and Hats fell on him from above, weapons drawn.
The party entered the room the Ettercap had issued from and found little but a collection of bones… Mandras hung back, muttering ‘I really don’t feel myself today’ …