Albus Rodarius Willow

Albus Rodarius Willow is a mage in the campaign Yeni Dünya ("New World"). He first appeared before Sticks in a tavern, naming himself Albus Rodarius, a mage of very high rank; he said that he had sent the mage Sesil and had been following events. His fuller name is Albus Rodarius Willow, also spelled Roderius, and Willow is the name of the tree.^{1 2 3 4}

At dinner he wore a fine robe and a large ring, with a staff standing in the air beside him, and bore the tattoo of the Archon, whose every mage is marked with a magical and unmistakable tattoo around the neck.^{5 6}

The blackmail

Albus summoned Sticks, his two companions and the doctor who sheltered them to dinner at the Safir Kadeh inn the next evening, and made it plain that coming was not a choice. If they did not do as he said, he threatened, he would report them to the city's forces with suitable evidence; his nobility and his word under a magical oath would be enough. He was seen talking amiably with the high judge.^{7 8 9 10}

He wanted them to learn where the professor kept the inscription and, if they could, to bring it to him. His plan was to press the professor into sending it out of the city in their care, and to make it seem taken in an attack. The task would last until the object was his; asked for a written assurance, he said one could be given only at the handover, and that until then this was, quite openly, blackmail.^{11 12 13 14}

He claimed that he had never ordered Sesil to kill anyone or to take the object by force, and that he had watched every moment and would go on watching. He told them to say nothing to the Coalition or anyone else, and repeated as he left that he would be watching.^{15 16 17 18}

What was said of him

Sticks bought information about him from a mage of about thirty, whose Archon tattoo was hidden under a scarf and who earned extra money, to pay his dues, by such work as lifting enchantments from stolen goods. According to him, Albus had lost his teaching post through his ties to the church and the nobility and had been lowered from Grand Master to Master, but kept his power through his inborn strength and his students.^{19 20 21 22}

Aquila, the informant said, was not yet a province, but was expected to become one once matters were settled, and a tower might then be founded to train children; it was talked about that Albus was courting the governor, or rival centres of power, in order to run it. The informant had first heard of his doings in the city six months before.^{23 24 25}

Such towers have a history in the Empire: ages after the Archon was founded, Emperor Falkread allowed it to set up affiliated training towers in other parts of the realm, over the protest of the Inquisition.⁶

The informant also said that the Archon's local representative did not want Albus there and would send him off on the first ship if she could. The head of the Archon's office in Aquila is Grand Master Sesil, a different person from the mage of the same name met on the road.^{26 27}

The professor said that he had heard from a half-elf envoy he knew at court of Albus's fall from favour, and read his presence in Aquila as a sign of exile and desperation. In the professor's view the Archon had the right to seize an object proven magical, as the church had for one proven holy, and the band's witness would count for little against a noble's.^{28 29 30}

The staged attack and the poison

Albus arrived in a hood, and a crow settled on his shoulder. He said that he had killed four men he had hired, and wanted the band to go to the professor as if those men had attacked them; the band then found four bodies. To deliver the warning in secret, a willow with four figures hanging from its branches was drawn on the back of a volume of Galevan's law returned to the professor, who later said that he had understood the threat from the drawing.^{31 32 33 34 4 35}

At a meeting the following night he showed a black liquid to be given to the professor, a poison called the Last Sleep which, he explained, had to be used within forty-eight hours and would weaken after a week. Sticks objected, and Albus agreed that it would serve as well if the professor were kept away from his work some other way. If that succeeded without the poison, he said, their debt was settled; if the poison was used, they were to come to him for payment.^{36 37 38 39}

Spoiler: Later eventsRevealSpoils: Yeni Dünya #5.5; Yeni Dünya #6; Yeni Dünya #7 · Say what you have read

As the professor was about to leave, the ground shook. Below the house the band found the pedestal inside the warding circles empty and six researchers dead, their bodies burned and melted; no one saw the thief. It was Albus Rodarius Willow who had taken the object. The professor called it a one-sided attack, though asked whether the deaths might have been an accident of the stone's power, he allowed that it was possible.^{40 41 42 43 44}

The rest of the agreed money, and a letter clearing the three, were to reach the band through a go-between, with no further meeting face to face; Albus did make the payment.^{45 46}

Departure and the house

Travis reported that Albus had left the city in haste, taking his valuable portable goods with him, and was not expected back soon; he first said that Albus had reached the mainland, then corrected himself that he must still be on the way.^{47 48 49}

The house he used stood among the harbour warehouses. Its defences lay in layers: a hidden door in the wall of the outer garden, an entrance door with fourteen locks that drew inward, and inside, it was said, a vault door of gnome make. He was not the first to build it, for the place had been enchanted before him.^{50 51 52 53}

Looking back later, his pursuit of the object carried to the Coalition, and the band's passage through his house and a painting to another city, were remembered as the start of their troubles.⁵⁴