Glandir Tatsu

Glandir Tatsu came from a small forest village where survival gave everyone a duty. He was one of the few who lived through its destruction; his brother left to build a life elsewhere. Resourceful, self-taught, and already close to the natural world, Glandir entered the Academy as a ranger in Perennus Albion's class. He wanted power he could use immediately, not a long academic career.

His verchoix revealed an affinity for shadow, while his unusual familiar seemed to bend fate in his favor. Glandir built his own magic from whatever the Academy's grimoires could teach him. He learned to teleport between shadows, fire shadow arrows, and conjure Shadow Weapon in an instant. He could also turn the dead into shadow soldiers, though powerful corpses were harder to command.

He practiced illusion with less restraint. One false troll made another mage throw a fireball into an Academy wall. Another illusion fooled Perennus long enough for Glandir to enter his rooms and steal one of the professor's suits from a wardrobe full of Perennus-themed clothing. Outside the Academy, Glandir killed criminals in Vlad, marked the bodies in red, and tried to infiltrate their organization. Aldor used his information and joined first.

Criminal dwarves eventually captured Glandir, bound him, and gagged him. Unable to cast, he drew on his ranger magic and transformed his jaw into a weapon strong enough to sever the restraints. His impatience remained dangerous. During the class's mission on Brazzant, an urgent message from Eden pulled him away. He left the Academy for good. When the Psychic Skarde later confessed to massacring 128 people in Eden, Glandir tried to execute him. Gyllyn and Aldor stopped the killing blow.

His power was always outrun by his nerve. Trapped in a labyrinth ruled by the Minotaur, Glandir rebuilt its walls as illusions in his own style while Aldor pretended to smash them. The Minotaur fled its own home. Later, before the court of Markus Telus, Glandir produced the creature's head from a bag. The real head had been incinerated; the illusion was enough to turn the intruders into celebrated heroes.

During the war for the Ark, he fought through shadow rather than force. He blinded Polymarch with binding darkness, intercepted his retreat with poisoned arrows, and tried to claim the body afterward. Polymarch resisted, but Talus and four mercenaries rose as shadow soldiers. Glandir was one of the five apprentices who later brought down Archon.

He eventually left the wars and settled in Eden with his daughter. His shadow servants guarded the village so well that mountain giants avoided its territory. They could not stop her sleeping sickness. Glandir spent a year in the Underdark living on toxic mushrooms and scorpions while searching for a drow remedy mentioned in a Kaz'Nakaram archive. He found it only after Gyllyn punched the sole priestess who knew the formula through a wall; Armure restored her, and she gave Glandir the cure.

Glandir is the only person known to have defeated Cauchemar inside a Phantasm. He reasoned his way out of a perfect dream, then took the dragon's realm from him: a world made of shadow answered to the master of shadows, and every monster Cauchemar conjured became another soldier in Glandir's army. Cauchemar had to stab his real body to end the contest. He promised to remember Glandir Tatsu's name.