Iarno “Glasstaff” Albrek
A wizard of the Lords’ Alliance, sent to Phandalin roughly a year ago to help bring order to the frontier town. He was never missing. He was Glasstaff — founder and master of the Redbrands — the whole time. Captured by the party beneath Tresendar Manor, Session 7.
What’s Known
Sildar Hallwinter sent the party looking for him with a description and 50gp:
“Short. Dark-bearded. Maybe thirty-five. A real wizard — not a hedge-trick artist, the genuine article. He came south for the Alliance about a year ago. Said he was going to put eyes on Phandalin and make sure the town didn’t fall apart. We haven’t heard a word from him since the second tenday after he arrived.”
Sildar feared Iarno was dead, or a prisoner of the gang terrorizing the town. The truth, as the party now knows, is that Iarno was the gang: he arrived, recruited local toughs and outside muscle, took up residence in the manor cellars, stopped writing his reports, and had his men call him “Glasstaff” after the dusky glass staff — etched with stylized feathers — that never leaves his hand.
The few townsfolk who remember Iarno describe him as quiet, businesslike, and curious about the town’s records. Harbin Wester recalls Iarno asking about Phandalin’s tax rolls in their one meeting, and assumed he had simply returned to Neverwinter when no follow-up came.
The Evidence
On the desk in his quarters, sealed with a spider in red wax: a letter from the Spider, addressed to Lord Albrek, warning him that strangers were coming to Phandalin — “capture them if you can, kill them if you must” — demanding any dwarven maps in their possession, and signed off “I’m counting on you, Iarno. Don’t disappoint me.”
His own papers corroborate it in his own hand: an unsent reply to “my lord of webs” complaining that he was promised the town, and a share of what the forge yields; an apothecary order signed ”— G.” in the same hand as the wagon note from the Sleeping Giant; and an older note from the Spider reminding him that the bugbears in his cellar answer to the Spider, not to him.
He runs the Redbrands. He does not run the bugbears. He has never, apparently, been in charge of anything that mattered.
How He Was Taken
Warned by an unseen familiar, he fled his quarters through a secret door with his scrolls in hand — and ran straight into Orla in the crevasse cavern. A giant spider’s web held him; the party beat him unconscious. He never offered to surrender.
Status
- Prisoner of the party — unconscious, webbed and tied, carried on Versace’s back (bear form) as of the end of Session 7
- Taken from him: the Spider’s letter and his correspondence, two spell scrolls
- Sildar does not know yet
Connections
- Sent by: The Lords’ Alliance
- Searched for by: Sildar Hallwinter — who called him “the genuine article”
- Alias: Glasstaff, leader of The Redbrands
- Patron: the Spider
- Base: the cellars beneath Tresendar Manor (fallen)