Renforth

The owl wizard of Ponterford, a Mage's Society member who runs a scrupulously legal magic shop out of the hilltop tower the locals call "abandoned." Born to a lesser noble family and naturally gifted from childhood, Renforth has — by the party's read — had "the easiest life imaginable," and shows it: socially inept, lonely, and prone to over-sharing, but warm, honest, and an extremely capable multitasker. He is served by ghostly unseen butlers and gates his door with a bell on a silver platter rather than a lock.

(Heard "Renforth"; Silithane once addressed him as "Raphael," likely a slip.)

Session 33 (debut)

• Met when the party rings the bell his invisible butler presents on a platter and pantomime-agrees to a sign of ~20 banal rules ("a wizard cannot decurse pigs").
• Runs everything above-board: identification slips, notarized cross-signatures, and full pedigree/creation paperwork under every item — the first legal magic shop Fenric or Silithane has seen outside the proper Society. His main customers are other "majors."
• Asked by Lash about the missing children, deadpanned the session's darkest clue — they aren't missing, the children "have all been returned in slightly less good condition" — then declined to say more ("I lack the social capabilities to handle such a topic"). See The Snatcher.
• Mused with the party (taken with his lawful operation) about their notion of founding a settlement — talked over laws, fair wages (a child's labour is worth an adult's, he insisted), and needing an accountant and steward.
• Sold the party a spree of armour-class gear (rings, pants, boots, gloves, belts, cloaks, Magra's plate chausses) — ~2,000 gold, worth +1 town reputation.
• Taught Silithane the spell to conjure a permanent tower in exchange for copying Shadow Blade into his own book; warned to only raise a tower on land one owns.
• Explained the walking-tomato mess as Doug Dillinger's doing (a generic plant-growth charm misused on prize tomatoes after Renforth warned him not to), and named the rival wizard Malgamar at the dead Speak Moderately.
• Mistook Jex's casual dinner invitation for a date, consulted a "how to socialize" grimoire, and agreed to dinner at 8 at his own house — the party's newest friend.

Session 35

• Hosted the dinner. Put on a little tuxedo and college pin and served the party a five-course dinner with his ghostly servants — wildly out of order (third, fifth, first, second, fourth) — and earnestly fed "the child" Lash apple juice with every course because a propaganda poster said children like it.
• The unwitting spy lecture. Shared his foolproof method for spotting Varian agents — their names are always one sound off ("Gutricia," "Pimothy," "Paved") — delivered straight to Silithane, an actual Varian spy, whose party he praised as "one cloth above the average Laewendas agent."
• Blamed the wandering trio for the screaming wyrm: three out-of-towners who bought him near-empty of potions ~2–3 weeks ago and stole a telekinesis wand (worth 5,000–7,000 gold) from under his sink. Gave Silithane the wand's item card and offered to trade him a servant-conjuring scroll.
• Converted Lash to ethical eating with his "everything is alive" philosophy and sold her a Goodberry wand (8 berries/day, the whole party's food) for 1,000 gold — 100 down, 900 on her honor. Named the will-writer Edgar Wiley and the elder-race site near Lambert's Crossing.

Session 38

• Diagnosed the Guardian. Thalia brings him a foraged vegetable bouquet; he pours Silithane's memory-coin into a scrying bowl and matches the Beast of the Woods to a thick-shouldered treant/dryad — but insists such a creature "should have venoms of no kind." His theory: it has laced itself with mushroom poisons, mutated by the war's one-sided lumbering (loggers who once replanted now "just take").
• Meets Tony (gets tongue-whipped, mistaken for an ant); the wards keep his tower ant-free. Still cheerfully over-shares and over-helps.

Session 39

• The 1 AM house-call. Roused from bed in Ebenezer-Scrooge pyjamas by the wheelchaired, venom-poisoned Silithane, he lends an Unseen Servant ("Joffrey") to push the chair home and agrees to teach Silithane the Unseen Servant spell in the morning (inks and papers required, no scroll to buy). Floated as a partner for the party's ethical "fake tree" scheme (wizard-made seeds for Horibus to grow).

Session 40

• The morning quartermaster. Hosts Silithane's pre-raid scroll-and-ring trades — buying his surplus Dark Vision scroll, sorting the party's rings of protection, and being on hand as the postmaster's puzzle egg is opened (a +5-ft unarmoured-movement ring) — and hands over the promised Unseen Servant now that Silithane is off the wheelchair.

Session 44

• The downtime quartermaster. Buys most of the cave's magic items and the Staff of Lightning (~2,400 gold), and takes the looted fire grimoire off Silithane in exchange for erasing Lash's ~1,000-gold IOU — losing nothing he can't eventually resell.
• Enchants the hat. For ~300–500 gold (his time plus "arcane stem-cell dust" and the small risk of his tower exploding on a botch), he adds a no-vanish thorned net to Thalia's Hat Man's hat, turning it into a storage container that holds objects up to ~10-ft-ladder size.
• The wizard's workshop. Hosts Silithane for weeks of spell-scribing, declining to buy spells he already knows but happily fearful of necromancy (won't touch Speak with Dead). Sells Lash an animal-affection ring.