Session 5: The Redbrand Reckoning
Played: Session 5 — July 11th Setting: Phandalin and Conyberry
Recap
An Invitation from the Miner’s Exchange
The morning after the swearing-in, the Redbrand bodies were still being carried off the temple steps — and the sobering arithmetic had settled in: the fourth man from Graul’s crew was never found. He ran for Tresendar Manor, which means Glasstaff now knows exactly who the party is.
Over breakfast, Toblen passed along a message: Halia Thornton, guildmaster of the Miner’s Exchange, wanted a word.
Halia received the party in her office and made an offer with no wasted breath: 100 gold for Glasstaff’s correspondence — every letter and paper in his possession — delivered to her when the party takes Tresendar Manor. The party countered at 500. She declined without blinking, observing that they were going in anyway.
Sildar later gave his opinion of the arrangement, and it came with a name attached: Halia is a member of The Zhentarim — the Black Network, traders in arms, secrets, and stolen goods. By his reckoning she has been quietly carving out power in Phandalin’s vacuum for years, and the Redbrands are simply the newest obstacle to her operation. His advice ran to two words: don’t trust her. The party’s working plan: collect the correspondence regardless, and decide who gets it later.
The Lady of Conyberry
Before facing the manor, the party wanted healing potions and answers — so they made the half-day journey east along the Triboar Trail to the ruins of Conyberry, to keep Sister Garaele’s appointment with the banshee Agatha.
In the shadowed remains of the town, Fleck knelt and presented the silver comb with full courtly formality. The air went cold — and then less cold. Agatha, pleased by the gift and the manners, granted her audience. Asked “Where is the spellbook of Bowgentle?”, she answered:
She traded it, more than a hundred years ago, to a necromancer named Tsernoth of the city of Iriaebor — and where it has wandered since, she neither knows nor cares.
She kept the comb. The party kept their lives, which by all accounts made them the first visitors in years to manage both. They were back in Phandalin late that night.
The Harper at the Shrine
Sister Garaele was frankly amazed — her own attempt to approach Agatha had nearly killed her. She paid the promised reward: 25 gold and three potions of healing, and then paid the party something rarer: the truth. Garaele is a member of the Harpers, the quiet network that trades in information and favors done for the right reasons. The party has earned her trust, she said — and her network may have use for people who can walk into a banshee’s parlor and walk back out. She will ask her contacts what became of Tsernoth of Iriaebor.
A Tense Breakfast
Sildar’s patience, meanwhile, had thinned. He was blunt the next morning: the party had left town for a full day while Phandalin sat under active Redbrand threat — and Gundren Rockseeker is still out there, likely at Cragmaw Castle, getting no closer to rescued. The party defended the detour — potions and intelligence before a siege — and the argument was going nowhere productive until Trilena arrived with breakfast and ended it by force of hospitality.
The Sleeping Giant Falls
Then the party went to war. The plan for the Sleeping Giant: barricade the kitchen door with barrels to seal the back exit, walk in wearing captured red cloaks, and take the gang before it could wake up properly.
Inside: five Redbrands passed out among the tables, three more upstairs. The entrance was less quiet than intended — barrels are loud, and so are floorboards — and the room came awake swinging. What followed was the loudest thing to happen in Phandalin in years:
- Versace, in brown bear form, hit a Redbrand with a claw swipe so catastrophically hard that he left the ground, hit the ceiling, and kept going — crashing clean through the boards into the upper floor, where his crewmates were still scrambling for their boots.
- Grom bellowed a divine command — “GROVEL” — and put Redbrands face-down on the floor, following it with warhammer work.
- Thea flooded the stairwell with fog to blind the upstairs crew — and at the height of the fight, something stranger happened: the air behind her tore, and for a moment she lifted from the floor entirely, soaked in a pale light that closed her wounds as everyone watched. She had not called it. She could not explain it. It was gone before the fog was.
- Fleck fixed one ruffian with a look that ended the man’s war on the spot — he threw down his sword and surrendered.
- Orla, in boar form, ran down a prone Redbrand tusks-first.
When the fog cleared: six Redbrands dead, two taken prisoner. Grista the bartender, as it happened, was nowhere in the building — wherever she was that morning, she missed her tavern’s liberation entirely. The party found the tavern’s coin box behind the bar — and put it back where it was. It was hers, not theirs.
Phandalin heard all of it. By the time the party stepped back into the daylight, a crowd had gathered — and for the first time since the Redbrands came to town, the town cheered.
Questions and Answers
The two prisoners were questioned. Under some very direct persuasion, they gave up what they knew:
- The manor holds fifteen to twenty Redbrands, with men coming and going.
- Glasstaff keeps to his chamber in the caverns below, brewing potions.
- There are two ways into the hideout: stairs inside the ruined manor itself, and the tunnel in the forest.
- The hideout is trapped — the south bridge over the crevasse is rigged to fall, and there is a trap door in the secret passage.
- Something else lives down there: a one-eyed monster that Glasstaff keeps under his control.
The less cooperative of the two did not survive the questioning. The other was delivered to the jail at the Townmaster’s Hall, where Townmaster Wester accepted the town’s first Redbrand prisoner with visible discomfort.
Toblen declared a midday feast at the Stonehill Inn in the party’s honor. The manor on the eastern hill — and whatever waits beneath it — is next.
What the Party Walks Away With
- Agatha’s answer: the spellbook of Bowgentle went to the necromancer Tsernoth of Iriaebor, over a century ago
- 25gp and three potions of healing from Sister Garaele — and an introduction to the Harpers
- 45gp from the Sleeping Giant’s upstairs strongbox
- Two IOUs signed “the Spider” and a note: “Two more wagons from the south. Same as last time. — G.”
- A Redbrand cloak for every party member
- A Redbrand prisoner in the town jail, and his intelligence on the manor: 15–20 men, two entrances, a rigged south bridge, a trap door in the secret passage, and a one-eyed monster
- The first open cheering Phandalin has given anyone in years — and a feast at the Stonehill
- The Sleeping Giant: cleared
DM prep / session plan for this session: see DM notes.