LMoP "Evil Mage" flew the coop

[Master O'Laughs]

So the Evil Mage early on escaped from the party. Where would be a good place to have him pop back up? Or would he leave to head back to Neverwinter, never showing himself again?

[leogobsin]

(Assuming you're talking about Glasstaff, and not the evil mage at Old Owl Well) You could have him go to Cragmaw Castle as a rendezvous point to get new orders from the Black Spider, so the players run into him there if they go there, or if not then the Black Spider could bring him down to help explore the mine and have him be a kind of 'mini-boss' there.

[Master O'Laughs]

(Assuming you're talking about Glasstaff, and not the evil mage at Old Owl Well) You could have him go to Cragmaw Castle as a rendezvous point to get new orders from the Black Spider, so the players run into him there if they go there, or if not then the Black Spider could bring him down to help explore the mine and have him be a kind of 'mini-boss' there.

Thanks. Both sound like excellent suggestions... and yes I was referring to Glasstaff.

[McSkrag]

So the Evil Mage early on escaped from the party. Where would be a good place to have him pop back up? Or would he leave to head back to Neverwinter, never showing himself again?


Based on the the RP recommendations for Iarno on LMOP p. 25, I played him as having a healthy does of greedy avarice and self-preservation. I would have him pop up again as a recurring antagonist in the adventure because that is more fun and interesting. You could assume the Black Spider learns of his failure and is not happy. So the Black Spider orders him to take some hobgoblins and ambush the party somewhere. It's also reasonable to assume he would show up at Cragmaw Castle to meet with King Grol and the doppelgänger.

Eventually the Black Spider will grow tired of his failures and order him to eliminate the characters "or else."

Hope that helps. >:)

[Master O'Laughs]

Based on the the RP recommendations for Iarno on LMOP p. 25, I played him as having a healthy does of greedy avarice and self-preservation. I would have him pop up again as a recurring antagonist in the adventure because that is more fun and interesting. You could assume the Black Spider learns of his failure and is not happy. So the Black Spider orders him to take some hobgoblins and ambush the party somewhere. It's also reasonable to assume he would show up at Cragmaw Castle to meet with King Grol and the doppelgänger.

Eventually the Black Spider will grow tired of his failures and order him to eliminate the characters "or else."

Hope that helps. >:)

Another great idea! Thank you!

[Cagede]

The Sorcerer King

[SiCK_Boy]

Glasstaff is a weak character who made the wrong choices, allying himself with a drow and a gang of bandits and goblinoids for the sake of learning to make invisibility potions. He clearly overestimated the Black Spider's power, thinking it would give me a way to reach heights of power that the drow cannot provide (and that he himself probably would not have enough ability to reach either).

He would not return to Neverwinter, as he knows (or strongly suspects) that the Lords' Alliance is on to his treachery by this point and he would be a wanted man. He still clings to the hope that Nezznar can help him, but the drow has no further need for him now that he's started exploring Wave Echo Caves. The doppelgangers are the only allies the drow cares for at this point (since they'll be key in him running the mine for a profit once he fully takes control of the Forge of Spell).

In my game, when Glasstaff escaped, I had him go toward Cragmaw Castle. (Players got a second chance to capture him as their was one PC coming to the manor ruins just as Glasstaff was exiting; the PC was the halfling rogue pre-gen character, so he recognized the bandit leader and tried to take him down, but the evil mage left in a hurry, using his invisibility potion to avoid detection by the time the rest of the party reunited outside).

My players just finished attacking the Castle. They had to retreat as they alerted the whole place, and Venomfang just showed up for his own revenge. As they were leaving, they saw (through the eyes of the wizard's raven familiar) the returning hobgoblin patrol, and noticed a man in long dirty clothes with a reflecting staff of glass. They immediately made the connection (Glasstaff roamed in the woods for some days before being found by Targor's patrol; since he seemed to know the Black Spider and the king, they treated him as a "friendly" prisoner, not binding him, but clearly keeping him under tight guard).

The wizard quickly made the decision to ally himself to the dragon when he saw the change in leadership in the Cragmaw tribe (Targor killed king Grol as the king refused to negotiate with the dragon; the doppelganger is still part of the group and is now disguised as a hobgoblin and looking for a way out of this mess to warn Nezznar).

The party is about to meet Iarno again as part of Venomfang's revenge (the wizard will be key in warning the dragon through a light spell placed on an arrow once the patrol locates the party), and I assume he will die as part of that encounter. If he somehow manages to survive, I'll probably keep having him show up at various points, always in poor shape and running from one bad situation to a worst one (think Saruman at the end of The Lord of the Ring).

I don't intend to have him level up, so as the adventure progresses, he will become weaker vs the party, further emphasising how pathetic his situation is. The only real "punch" he has left is the Scroll of Fireball, which he will threaten to use as a final act if cornered; once that is used up, Iarno will be done as far as being a threat to the party.

[MrStabby]

Glasstaff is a weak character who made the wrong choices, allying himself with a drow and a gang of bandits and goblinoids for the sake of learning to make invisibility potions. He clearly overestimated the Black Spider's power, thinking it would give me a way to reach heights of power that the drow cannot provide (and that he himself probably would not have enough ability to reach either).



Sounds like a character that could be fun to turn into a warlock.

If the PCs are invested in him you might want to hold back a confrontation this way if your players want to extend the campaign and you are happy to run your own content at that point you can seamlessly move into having another antagonist that the PCs care about. The "shortcut to power at an cost or allegiance" side of the character could be a good in character way of scaling them up to being more of a threat more quickly than progression of time might suggest.

[Estrillian]

In my group's play-through Glasstaff also escaped, but I didn't have him turn up at Cragmaw. My reasoning was that he wouldn't dare to go near the Spider having failed so comprehensively, and lost control of the Redcloaks. Instead he went in search of a new power base for himself, intending not to reappear until he had some muscle as backup.

To this end he went east and ended up with the roving Orc patrols, and my player's encountered him a second time at the Orc cave in the mountains. He narrowly escaped death at that point by using his last invisibility potion to flee.

Having been defeated by the players twice he now went crawling to the Spider for forgiveness, but the Spider was not forgiving. He killed Glassstaff, but replaced him with a Doppleganger, so that the next time the party thought that they encountered Glasstaff (in the mine) it was actually the Doppleganger. That Doppleganger version succeeded in tricking the party into taking "Gasstaff" with them, after which he KO'd a PC and ran off with the treasure from the forge.

It's a little more complex than that, given that I heavily modded the end of the adventure to lead into PotA, but that's the essence.

Not sure that you would want to pull the Doppleganger switch, but having Glasstaff roving the valley looking for new forces to claim makes perfect sense. He's arrogant as well as greedy. He won't turn up at the castle, or the Spider's lair, on his own. He wants followers to bolster his self-esteem and status.

[Unoriginal]

Did he actually learn how to make potions of invisibility?

This is pretty damn valuable knowledge. Maybe valuable enough that the PCs could spare him in exchange for a bunch of potions, and definitively valuable enough to be set for life in any country where people won't kill him he can flee to.

[SiCK_Boy]

Not really.

He has a potion in his "get away" bag hidden in the pool / water basin, and his laboratory contains notes and residues showing that he was trying to make invisibility potions using his apparatus, but it sounds like he was not very successful.