You end up deciding to accept an offer from Halia Thornton (guildmaster at the Miner’s Exchange) to eliminate the leader of the Redbrands, a band of ruffians who have been extorting and bullying everyone if Phandalin for the last two months. This leader is known as Glasstaff and Halia wants you to bring her any correspondence found on him or in his quarters. She wants this job done discreetly.

Threftor has discovered that his aunt’s son knows a secret way in to the Redbrands’ lair so you follow his directions and head down a hidden tunnel in the woods, emerging in a large cavern split by a deep crevasse. After briefly fighting the strange, flesh-craving one-eyed telepathic beast guarding the room you negotiate with it and it tells you where to find Glasstaff.

Locating a secret door in a store-room you surprise Glasstaff in his bedroom and manage to capture him without a fight. A note from the Black Spider leads you to believe that he is probably Iarno Albrek, the Lords’ Alliance contact that Sildar was looking for. He reveals that the family the Redbrands kidnapped is held in the slave pens, but his directions are vague. You leave him bound, gagged and guarded by Enderman.

While trying to find the pens you stumble into a Redbrands guard room and barely manage to defeat them, with Threftor and Joe both being knocked unconscious. Capturing one of the thugs, you eventually return to Glasstaff and get him to lead you to the slave pens through another secret door and a crypt guarded by skeletons.

Entering the slave pens the unlucky Threftor is once again surprised by hidden Redbrands and taken down. A tense stand-off – with Joe threatening to kill Glasstaff and one of the thugs threatening to finish off Threftor – ends in a close fight with only Balrag and Hadron left standing. Freeing Mirna Dendrar and her daughter & son, Hadron uses the last of his healing and you all take a brief rest after locking all the doors.

The sound of a door being battered down ends the rest and you manage to escape through the crypt only for Balrag to fall down a pit trap. With some clever use of rope you manage to get everyone – party, captives, freed slaves and all – across just as the batterers break down the door.

Returning to the large cavern Threftor leads the way across one of the bridges over the crevasse. Fortunately for him, he doesn’t weigh much. Unfortunately for Mirna Dendrar’s daughter Nilsa, her weight is enough to collapse the rigged bridge and after tasting freedom for only a few scant minutes she plunges to her death. Mirna starts screaming the place down which brings shouts from the other end of the cavern; Balrag lifts her bodily and you all just manage to make it out in time before the other denizens of this place – who, after battering down the locked doors, had been investigating the now-empty slave pens – arrive.

Experience

You gained 162 xp mid-session and you get 254 more for negotiating the trap, bringing Iarno back to the town master, freeing the slaves and negotiating a truce with that telepathic one-eyed thing in the crevasse room; a total of 416 each. I’ll give Enderman (Martin’s wizard) a quarter of this since he was played by Ben for some of this session and was present in a ‘look after the bound prisoners’ role for the rest.

Balrag, Enderman and Joe started on 350 whie Hadron and Threftor – being new – started on 300. That brings you to:

• Balrag: 766
• Joe: 766
• Hadron: 716
• Threftor: 716
• Enderman: 454