Glade, called Glade of the Forest and afterward Glade of the Jungle, was a Wood Elf sorcerer of draconic blood from The Blackthorn Forest and one of the five adventurers who answered Syndra Silvane’s call to Port Nyanzaru.123 He served the expedition as its shaper of earth and bodies and its keeper of teleportation circles, and he carried the Heartwell Vial into the Tomb of the Nine Gods.456 He survived the expedition and remained in Chult afterward.7
Glade, over the body of the Boy
“Sometimes you leave friends in the forest, and sometimes you step around them to find new paths.”8
Description
Glade was a Wood Elf who stood five feet nine inches, slender, with tanned skin, long ears, forest-green eyes and wispy, curly dark brown hair. He wore traveler’s robes in the colors of local plants, hung with twigs and leaves.
From the fifteenth of Eleasis his right hand was grave-cold to the wrist, and plants leaned away from it.67
Personality
Glade habitually spoke in metaphors drawn from the forest, which his companions did not always understand.910 On being possessed by Kubazan he declared that he felt like the strongest tree in the forest, as the forest is fed by the water.11 He woke from a beholder’s sleep ray with a cry of “The Forest!”12 The Boy told him, “You’re even more weird than I thought, Glade.”10
He was attentive to companions in difficulty. He remained at the Boy’s cage while the others searched the room,10 and he reassured Inete when she was afraid to go further into the Tomb.13
He enjoyed performing and entertained the party on the road with a show about dragons and houses.14 He smoked a twenty-year-aged leaf he called Heirwon, and spent his nights in contemplation of soul magic.
Abilities
Glade was a sorcerer whose magic came from draconic ancestry.115 The ancestry gave him a knowledge of dragons and allowed him to parley with one.316
His magic first showed itself in the shaping of earth,1 and he used mold earth for engineering throughout the expedition. Examples include steadying the ground during a rescue on the jungle road, a bridge of rope and dirt on Firefinger, and a working sewer for Camp Vengeance.171819 In the Tomb he used earth magic to block one of the spouts of a wine trap.20 He was later able to cast move earth.21
He frequently cast polymorph on himself and his companions. The forms he used included giant apes, tyrannosaurs and baboons.52223
He could operate teleportation circles, and used those at Kir Sabal and The Bastion to move the party across Chult.4247
Within the Tomb he made repeated use of telekinesis, with which he halted machinery, retrieved objects from trapped rooms and stopped a stone juggernaut.25262728 Other spells he was recorded casting include earth tremor, detect magic, haste, dispel magic, shield, mage hand, draconic spirit, sunbeam, sorcerous burst, blink and disintegrate.2924303132121033
While possessed by Kubazan he had strength far beyond his own.11
Possessions
- Ring of Spell Turning and Wand of the Blackthorn Forest, taken from a statue made in his likeness beneath the throne of the lich known as the Hungerer.34
- The Bloodwell Vial, which became the Heartwell Vial. See History.
- A fist-sized geode with a core of trapped starlight and volcanic veins, which he woke holding after a night of visions in the Bastion.35
- Two stone golem cores, one from the Yuan-ti warehouse in the Harbor Ward and one taken on the way out of the Maw Below,365 and a manual of stone golems taken from Withers’ office.20
- A magical shield recovered from the undead tyrannosaur in the Refuse Pit.22 His shield was the Scale of the Sun-Weaver, a slab of petrified scale from his ancestor.
- The Bracers of Archery, the vessel of Kubazan.11
- The Eye of Zaltec, a flawless fist-sized ruby.28
- A pot of soil, able to grow all, the Boy’s gift to him.8
- The Living Orchid Necklace, which opened every petal when the Tomb fell.33 It was a Blackthorn orchid on a vine whose petals wilted when he was wounded.
Relationships
Aurellion the Sun-Weaver, a gold dragon, was his ancestor.
Savriel Tirinath confided in Glade that she did not expect to leave the Tomb alive, and that she was already struggling to keep up.9 She had witnessed his working at the river of souls and confirmed his reading of its magic.6
The Boy gave Glade the instructions for the green gate and recited to him a saying of Glade’s own: “Sometimes the most beautiful scenery on the forest path is the one who walks by your side.”10
Inete lied to Glade about a Zhentarim sigil he asked her to identify,37 and a hag impersonating her cost him a thousand gold pieces.3839 She strengthened him with enhance ability while he held the blades of the wind tunnel.25 He carried her body out of the Cradle and to the camp where she was raised.337
Takhesis Calva was the companion Glade tried to reach when he grew distant. During the party’s first rest in the Tomb, Glade tried to speak with him and was answered, “The dungeon is perfect in its design.” Takhesis was taken from the party that morning.40
Tyde Caller of Sorceries’ Sundries advised Glade on golem cores and took the commission to remake his vial. The two shared a reverence for nature, his for the forest and hers for the sea.37414222
Vogal received Glade’s magical help in his duel with Tharn Veilthorn, in which Glade cast a spell that rendered Tharn’s gauntlets inert. The gauntlets were how Tharn healed himself during the fight, and with them working he would likely have won the battle of attrition he had forced on Vogal. Vogal bought him a gift in thanks and remained unaware of how far the help had gone.3643
Taenae named Glade as her favorite when the voice in the lake asked.16
Asharra was impressed by his magic when he woke the circle at Kir Sabal,4 and Sister Silas by his engineering at Camp Vengeance.19
Wongo spoke by telepathy to Inete, Glade and Taenae in his tomb, calling them his pets.25
Kubazan possessed Glade from the fourteenth of Eleasis until the Tomb fell.1133
Drakar and Urzok, gladiators of the Grand Colosseum, were hired by Glade to defend the Bastion and to teach him the shield.44
History
Before the expedition
Glade was born into The Collective of the Blackthorn Forest, in the clearing after which he was named, and was raised by its guardians. His magic appeared in adolescence, and as a young adult he used it to defend the Collective and tend its trees. He left after a few decades, when he found a tree of his childhood blighted and pulsing with necrotic energy, and he regarded the journey as a way of protecting his home. He took the name “of the Forest” on the dock as he departed.1 His own account is given in full under Backstory.
Chult and Valachan
On the thirtieth of Mirtul, 1492 DR, Glade and four others accepted Syndra Silvane’s commission to find the source of the Death Curse and were sent by her magic to Port Nyanzaru.2 On the sixth of Kythorn he and Vogal paddled the canoe at great speed to escape a threat that Vogal had scouted.14 On the seventh he destroyed the canoe in rapids on the Tiryki River with earth tremor, cast in an attempt to steady it.2945 He and Vonara fell into the river and were saved by Taenae in the form of a giant octopus, and both nearly died in an ambush by su-monsters afterward.29
At Ataaz Muhahah the party was taken into the mists of Valachan, where each woke in a stranger’s body.46 Glade’s was Atzi, a squire of Lathander, who obtained a salve for the chest pain of Mazati, the body Vogal wore,47 and was burned to death beside him by a mage on the second day. Glade woke in Chult with the others.47484
At Kir Sabal he convinced Asharra that he understood the workings of the monastery’s dormant teleportation circle, then proved it by waking the circle and sending the party to the Aldani Basin.4 At Camp Vengeance he wrote the Book of Wellness with Taenae and Vogal and dug the camp’s sewer, which had visibly reduced its sickness by the time the party returned from the Aldani Shrine.1949 In the sunken library of the shrine, on the night of the thirtieth of Kythorn, he and Vonara took heavy damage from crushing water pressure and slam attacks.50
Port Nyanzaru and the Bastion
In the city Glade found the magic stone that had projected a false tavern around Taenae, and found on it a sigil of a snake eating a coin, the mark of the Zhentarim.5137 In the Grand Souk he tried to have his Bloodwell Vial improved and was sent on to a specialist, who quoted 2,500 gold pieces to upgrade it or 5,000 for a new one; he bought nothing that day.37 He ordered a custom outfit for the gala with the others.41 At the gala of the twenty-third of Flamerule he and Vonara accused Jessamine of a poisoning. She fled. The poisoner was in fact an agent of Ras Nsi, and Jessamine’s flight delivered her to the Yuan-ti.5242
On the twenty-fifth, after Takhesis and Taenae were killed in the Maw Below and returned by their patrons, Glade turned himself and Takhesis into giant apes and broke a way out.5 On the twenty-seventh, crossing the Gorge of Teeth, he answered the voice that asked whether his flight served Order or Chaos: Order, the balance of nature.53 At the Sunken Temple he found the Eye of Ubtao in the mechanism of the scales, which gave the party control of the temple.54 That night he dreamed of a shipwreck cove and woke holding the geode.35
On the thirtieth he asked the merchant prince Wakanga O’tamu for help with Alice’s wound.55 That evening he went down into the ziggurat of the Temple of Euphoria with Vogal, Takhesis and Vonara, and found notes on the origins of the Black Breath and on the temple’s purpose, the cultivation of necrotic rot to feed the Beggar King.56
On the thirty-first a night hag impersonating Inete tried to steal from Green Things, Potions & More in his company. Glade tried to haggle the furious shopkeeper down, was refused, kept the matter from the guards with a display of magic, and paid a thousand gold pieces in damages. The hag turned invisible and fled when he questioned her.383957 On the second of Eleasis he and Taenae cleared the Refuse Pit of the Temple of Euphoria, where he cut the heart from an undead tyrannosaur. He gave the heart and eight thousand gold to Tyde Caller to remake the Bloodwell Vial, and made plans to train with the shield he had recovered.22
The settlement at the Bastion was founded as Tawb on the fourth of Eleasis.58 He sat on its ruling council and kept the Bastion’s teleportation circle, archive and meditation chamber.
Omu
Before the journey south the party grew suspicious of Takhesis’s sword, and Glade’s detect magic found nothing in it that confirmed the suspicion.24 He keyed the Bastion’s circle to Kir Sabal, and there he, Vogal and Takhesis called on Princess Mwaxanaré.24 In the Valley of Embers he obtained directions to Omu from the dragon Tamborus.3 In Omu he, Vogal and Takhesis intercepted a detachment of Thayans, and he cast haste on both of them.30 He took part in recovering the puzzle cubes of I’jin and Wongo, entering Wongo’s Shrine as a baboon with Inete, who conveyed its inscriptions to him by charades.5923 Alice was sent back to the Bastion by his circle.59
In the Fane of the Night Serpent he posed as a convert, kept his gear, and in the part of a guard escorted Vogal, Inete and Taenae to the prisoner pits. The slave revolt was armed with weapons that he and Takhesis had smuggled in.6061 Afterward he borrowed Vonara’s broom, scouted the Fane, and found the ten-foot breach made by the tyrannosaur known as the King of Feathers. He sealed it with move earth, trapping the beast inside with the remaining Yuan-ti. He also recovered an arrow coated in rotflesh, a poison native to Chult.21
The Tomb of the Nine Gods
The party entered the Tomb on the thirteenth of Eleasis.31 Glade dispelled a magical darkness, walked into a trap while inspecting the Tomb’s vegetation and turned it aside with shield, and in Obo’laka’s tomb fetched papier-mâché masks with mage hand and wore one to cross the room safely.31 In the wind tunnel he held the adamantine blades still with telekinesis.25 The mummy of Wongo ignored the fighters, pinned Glade, screamed “YOU ARE IT!” and tried to force its mace into his hands, which he resisted.25
On the second level a gray slaad freed from its circle ambushed him and wounded him badly.15 On the third level he drew the dial out of the statue in I’jin’s tomb by telekinesis while Inete directed the path.26 At the rite in Kubazan’s tomb he sacrificed a mouse, then took up the Bracers of Archery and was possessed by Kubazan.11
In the maze of Unkh on the fourth level he inserted the green key while the sarcophagus glowed purple, losing the key, and in the fight that followed he and Vonara twice revived Ersklan Ghostfang before he was killed.62 That night he and Vonara found each other in the maze and fought a living minotaur until Inete and Raiketsu joined them, and he took the first watch of the rest that followed.63
On the fifteenth he signed Withers’ contract with the rest of the party, recovered the scarlet and the pearl-white crystal eyes from the third level by telekinesis, and fought the beholder Belchorzh with telekinesis, draconic spirit and sunbeam.2732 When he touched the Mirror of Life Trapping it tried to draw his soul in, and he resisted. He then shattered it with a sorcerous burst, which freed Savriel Tirinath and sent silver shrapnel into Glade, Taenae and Vonara.12 That afternoon he dispelled the invisibility on a door in a grandfather clock that Inete had found.45
On the fifth level a skeleton gardener gave him the last of the skeleton keys, its own skull. A knock then came from inside his pack. It was the Bloodwell Vial, forgotten there since Omu, with Tyde Caller’s note still folded around it: “It needs to drink from death that flows… You’ll know the place when the heart knocks.” He held it for a minute in the river of souls that ran down through the Tomb. The vial became the Heartwell, which beat faster the nearer it came to the Soulmonger, and his right hand was left permanently cold.6
On the sixteenth he stopped the juggernaut with telekinesis, holding it until it withdrew into its vault, and received the Eye of Zaltec.28 On the fifth level a turn of the controls sealed him, Savriel and Vogal in the acid cog for an hour, which they spent resting and arm wrestling.16 On the sixth level he completed two of the five trials of the green gate: he worked the lever behind the glass of the triangle door by telekinesis, and passed into the square door’s room by blink, where he and Taenae pulled three spell pages out of the air. A dust mephit’s death burst caught him, Raiketsu and Vogal on the way out.10 When the Boy began his working, Glade told the party that the child was bringing them into a pocket dimension.8 The rest that the Boy gave the party restored the sixth circle of his magic.8
The Cradle
In the Cradle the Heartwell Vial pointed at the Soulmonger, and Glade’s explanation led Taenae to identify it as the source of the Death Curse.64 When Raiketsu struck a strut and the shadow took him, Glade cast telekinesis, too late to stop it.64 He and Taenae together broke one of the three struts that held the Soulmonger.64
When Takhesis rose on wings of ice, Glade was the only one of the party frightened. He and Inete each cast disintegrate at Takhesis without effect.33 After Takhesis beheaded Inete, Glade lifted her body with telekinesis and carried it through the arch as the Cradle was destroyed.33 As the party left the Tomb the Heartwell Vial beat once and stopped, and a golden shape looked back at him.33
Epilogue
The party woke in the jungle before dawn on the seventeenth of Eleasis. Glade was the first to stand, and he carried Inete’s body to the camp, where Sister Silas raised her. He and Taenae could not help with the casting and instead made her the warmest welcome they could.7 At the camp the others each went to someone who was waiting for them; Glade stood alone.7 The party planned to return to Tawb by his teleportation circle and to carry the whole camp with them.7 The vial was warm and no longer beat.7
Glade did not return to the Blackthorn Forest. He set off in search of the next quest, no longer Glade of the Forest but Glade of the Jungle, a protector of Chult as a whole, perhaps having felt his ancestral spirit drawn there.7
Appendix
Notes
Behind the screen
Glade’s backstory calls the forest’s ancient guardian a bronze dragon. In the campaign that guardian was Aurellion the Sun-Weaver, a gold dragon.
Glade’s reading of dragon lore on the fifth level of the Tomb was a natural 20, rolled with advantage for his draconic blood.
The saying that the Boy recites back to Glade was written by Adam at Patrick’s request, so that it would be authentically Glade’s.
After the finale Patrick ruled that Glade’s cold hand was a permanent character trait, his right hand never able to feel the warmth of the forest as it once did.
Backstory
The following is Glade’s backstory as written by Adam, his player, in full.
The forest whispers, and a child is born.
The Collective of the Blackthorn Forest welcomed Glade into the world when the weather was mild, the small clearing after which he was named was already lush with growth and life. It was in this peaceful and protected meadow that Glade grew up, raised to appreciate and honor the life sprouting all around him by the rotating group of guardians that helped raise the children given to the Collective.
As Glade’s ears began to point with adolescence, something odd began to occur. As the young wood elf worked diligently in the garden, his guardian noticed that the earth beneath his fingertips would seem to move mere moments before his hands would touch the ground. These were the first signs of what would become young Glade’s signature spell, though the magic that flowed through his veins held power far beyond the simple moulding of earth.
Magic users in the Collective were few and far between, but the dwellers of the forest had old stories of an ancient guardian, a towering bronze dragon as wizened as the tallest trees, and how the generations of the forest were speckled with its descendants.
Glade spent his young adulthood building his innate magical skills and using them to aid the Collective. More than one band of would be robbers found themselves running away from pine-nettle shaped magic missiles; and the great Blackthorn trees seemed to grow taller and stronger every season after Glade massaged their roots with giant tremors in the earth.
One night, after Glade had spent the twilight hours trying to weave his magic into a spindly hand of branches that could pick fruit off the highest trees, a rustle outside caught his attention. As he watched leaves blow past his window, Glade could swear he saw a flash of gold veins shine quickly in the moonlight. His interest peaked, Glade rushed out into the night, following where the wind would take him. The gold veined leaf would flit in and out of view, always at the edge of his vision, leading him deeper and deeper into the forest. When the moon had just reached its highest point Glade suddenly stopped cold, all thoughts of the gilded leaf gone, for he had just laid eyes on something he had never seen in the forest before: death.
Things died in the forest all the time; such was the way of life. But what Glade saw before him was something far other than the decaying remains of a woodland creature, or charcoaled splinters of once beautiful greenery taken by forest fire. Glade sank to his knees as he looked upon what used to be one of his favorite trees to climb as a child, now shrunken and mangled with blight. And Glade’s natural connection to the arcane seemed more a curse to him in this moment, for he felt this once great pillar of his upbringing, a symbol of his forest, pulsing with a dark, necrotic energy.
• • •
Glade stood in front of the gathered Collective in the early dawn’s light; faces that helped raise him, faces he had protected for years, looked back at him with mixtures of pride and sadness. They had worked tirelessly to help gather the supplies now strapped to his back, to weave the travel cloak that adorned his shoulders when he told them his plans to leave. And though he had attended many parting rituals during his few decades in the forest, he never thought he would feel called to leave himself.
Glade reminded himself that he wasn’t abandoning his home as the small port town at the edge of the Blackthorn Forest came into view through the trees. By embarking on his journey, Glade was protecting his home. And he could feel great magic and adventure that awaited him at the end of this mystery.
“Wot’s the name fo’ the ticket?” Glade was torn from his thoughts as he handed a copper coin to the boatswain. Waves lapped against the dock, and the wood elf felt out of place without trees towering above him.
“Glade…” The answer came instinctively, the only way he had ever been addressed by others in the Collective, the single syllable that named the small clearing where he was born. That thought made him look over his shoulder one last time, where he could still see a dark green canopy now almost distant past the town and the shore.
“Of the Forest.” He added as he turned back, deciding to carry his home with him, if only in one small way.
Appearances
Session 1 to Session 5 · Session 7 to Session 33 · Session 35 · Session 36 · Session 38 to Session 54 · Session 56 to Session 91