Session 6: Tresendar Manor Looms
Played: Session 6 — July 21st Setting: Phandalin and the cellars of Tresendar Manor
Recap
A Feast, and a Purse
Toblen’s midday feast was everything a town’s first free afternoon in years should be — fresh bread, roast pork, a fiddle, three dwarves playing bottles — right up until Toblen crossed the room carrying somebody else’s money like it might bite him. A plain leather purse: 100 gold from Halia Thornton, “for expenses,” with one message passed along word for word: “The other hundred follows the correspondence.”
Grom named the trick for what it was — favors that arrive before the ask, the kind that ensnare — and Fleck agreed with the particular weariness of a man who has watched operations like hers work before. He didn’t elaborate. The party’s answer split the difference: keep the gold, but spend it, so there’d be nothing left to hand back. If Halia was buying loyalty, what she actually bought was crossbow bolts.
Sildar, meanwhile, pushed hard: the gang doesn’t know its tavern fell. That advantage has a lifespan.
Provisioning
An afternoon at the Lionshield Coster: a net for everyone, a light crossbow and forty bolts for Fleck (the shortbow got traded in), four javelins for Grom, an herbalism kit and a spear for Orla, and the spare blades sold off. The rooms at the Stonehill Inn now hold the overflow.
The Beer Gambit
Then the play of the night, and possibly the campaign. Rather than let the manor wonder why the Sleeping Giant had gone quiet, the party sent the manor an answer: two cases of beer and a note in “the Spider’s” hand — forged by Thea, whose noble schooling produced a facsimile indistinguishable from the genuine article — delivered up the hill by Grista herself, with Orla serving as the pack mule. The Redbrands took the beer, asked nothing, kicked the mule on the way out, and reported all was well. The party went to bed.
They woke at midnight, on purpose. Peak hangover window.
Into the Cellars
The front way in: a ruined manor with no roof and no guards, a kitchen stairwell, and a cellar with a murky cistern pool that is deeper than it looks and holds — something, down at the bottom. The party left it alone.
Fleck heard bodies stirring behind the north door. Thea filled the doorway with fog, and three Redbrands stumbled out of it into the worst night of their lives: one netted, one frozen and then finished by a brown bear that long-jumped the pool to reach him, one dropped by a sneak attack through the fog. The netted survivor talked — claimed Glasstaff isn’t in the manor (a man in a net will say many things), and after a persuasive dip in the cistern, gave up a secret door on the far side of the pool. He did not survive the night.
The Eye in the Dark
Newton went through the secret passage first, on scouting duty. Newton did not come back.
The party followed into a vast natural cavern split by a crevasse — and on the way in, something pried open Fleck’s mind like a footlocker. He went pale. He hasn’t said what it showed him.
The something was Ssarnak: a one-eyed aberration — a nothic, per Grom’s lore, the remains of a wizard who chased forbidden magic and got caught by it — crouched in the dark, turning Newton over and over before its eye like a jeweler with a new acquisition. It speaks directly into your head, one mind at a time, and it deals in a single currency: beautiful things and the secrets attached to them.
It traded honestly, for a horror: Glasstaff is “a wizard of medium power, no great mortal threat — but he will try to kill you”; his chambers lie at the back of the cavern; the north bridge is the safe one; and a hidden way north of the cavern leads down toward his office. Thea’s charm person slid off it entirely — whatever a nothic is, it is not a person.
Newton, however, stayed. The golden, ruby-eyed figurine remains Ssarnak’s “guest” until the party brings it something more beautiful. Negotiations concluded politely. Nobody’s hands stopped being cold.
The Crypt Wakes
Two doors led off the passage. Fleck picked the locked one clean, and it opened onto the Tresendar family crypt: three sealed sarcophagi, and six skeletons in rusted mail propped against the walls like a warning nobody read aloud. Behind the other door — unlocked — someone is whimpering, and someone else is banging on metal and yelling “shut up in there.”
Versace padded into the crypt, bear-first.
The dead stood up.
Initiative is rolled. See you August 22nd.
What the Party Walks Away With
- 100gp from Halia Thornton — advance on the correspondence job, promptly converted into nets, a crossbow, javelins, an herbalism kit, and two cases of strategically deployed beer
- The Beer Gambit — a drunk garrison, a forged “Spider” note somewhere in the manor, and Grista, accomplice
- Three Redbrands down in the cellar, and one secret door the dead can no longer keep
- Ssarnak’s intel: the north bridge is safe; a hidden way leads to Glasstaff’s office; Glasstaff himself — whereabouts unconfirmed
- Newton, held hostage by a one-eyed connoisseur, pending “something more beautiful”
- Fleck’s vision — whatever it was
- Six animated skeletons, mid-initiative, and an unopened door with someone crying behind it
Active Quests
- End the Redbrand threat — take Tresendar Manor — 200gp (Sildar Hallwinter, Lords’ Alliance); in progress, currently mid-swing
- Rescue Mirna and Nars Dendrar — believed held by the Redbrands
- Find Iarno Albrek — the missing Lords’ Alliance wizard — 50gp (Sildar Hallwinter)
- Retrieve Glasstaff’s correspondence — 100gp advance paid; 100gp more on delivery (Halia Thornton)
- Ransom Newton — Ssarnak wants something more beautiful than a golden newt
- Find Gundren Rockseeker at Cragmaw Castle
- The Spider — the IOUs, the wagon note, and now a nothic that works for the same payroll
- Tsernoth of Iriaebor — Sister Garaele’s Harper inquiry, pending
- Clear Wyvern Tor — standing 100gp bounty (Harbin Wester)
DM prep / session plan for this session: see DM notes.