Hardcore Heroes: Episode 36

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== Synopsis ==
The passage describes a chaotic series of events involving a trio of adventurers who face a series of escalating crises in the city of Redport. After a seemingly mundane breakfast at an inn, Malakai is attacked and nearly killed by assassins, leading to a violent confrontation that ignites a massive fire, resulting in numerous casualties. The party members scramble to evade the law, with Malakai and Kain managing to escape by transforming into magical creatures while Van hides in a cemetery. They eventually regroup, but tensions remain high as they deal with their stolen loot, the whereabouts of their carriage, and the threat of capture. Malakai orchestrates a daring heist to recover their treasures from the town’s lighthouse keep, and they plan to meet up in Clydesdale, while Van takes a slower route. Amid the turmoil, Malakai offers Jeeves a chance to retire comfortably, reflecting on the chaos that has unfolded.
==Recap==
=== Saturday, 1509-11-19* ===
Party wakes up in an inn in Redport. One by one the trio go down to eat breakfast and chitchat. Kain and Van tell Malakai what they talked about with Tyrus yesterday and then ask Malakai what he did, but he only gives an excuse of an answer. They discuss scrying on Newfort, selling their loot and enchanting the bejeweled sword with a Continual light spell to boost it's value. 
Van also proposes looting the gryphon towers library of its books at some point. 
They ask Jeeves for any rumors he's heard and he retells them bunch of them about the innkeeper's wife. 
Malakai proceeds to scry on the main square of Newfort. There he sees town in what seems to be normal operation, civilians walking around, guards patrolling, some protestors. Afterwards Van goes up to his room to collect the sword for Malakai, but ends up memorizing a spell forcing the other two to entertain themselves by making masturbation jokes. Eventually he comes back down with their whole treasury and Malakai unlocks it. With a lot of onlookers Malakai takes out their bejeweled sword and places it on their table where he proceeds to enchant it with the light spell. He orders Jeeves to clean up his room and then gets up to leave saying that he's going to Sithlidyn, the elven mage in town that runs a spell component shop.
While the other two are talking about some semantics Malakai walks onto the street, but not long into the walk he is stabbed from behind by an unknown assailant. He whirls around wildly to see two men with knives in their hands coming for him. One of them immediately goes down to a Colourspray, but a 3rd one comes out of an alleyway and tackles Malakai down to the ground. Next round the two party members in the inn notice the sounds of violence somewhere outside so Van charges out mostly just seeing people gathering around a circle where the assumed fighters are. In a moment of panic Malakai casts web from his cloak intending to crawl out from the grapple, but basically entangles about 120 feet of the street. Kain also runs out of the inn, but plants face-first into the web. Malakai starts stabbing the guy that's stubbornly still hanging onto him. Ignoring Kain's yelling about not putting fire anywhere near the web one unfortunate random civilian does so and the whole street goes up in a burst of max damage flame. 
Likely more than 100 people die including 2 of the rogues that assaulted Malakai minus the fighter that had been grappling Malakai onto which he promptly falls upon like a mad dog, stabbing him in the neck as he screams “What did you do?!”. Van takes the wizard by shoulders and starts leading him back to their inn, on the way there noting people beyond the range of web ogling the carnage that's left behind. 
They quickly make their way inside the inn to grab Jeeves and their treasure chest. Malakai turns invisible intending to follow behind the carriage while Kain futilely tries to distract all the occupants of the inn-room from the party appearing as the obvious perpetrators of the carnage outside. Van instructs Jeeves to head towards Clydesdale together with Kain who stabs off his Stoneskin charges to make himself less suspicious. On his own Van tries to find a spot where to turn into a tree and escape whatever search parties might come after him. The carriage successfully goes through the crowd without guards taking them in due to Kain having not been on the street at the time. However the gates are closed due to the bells going off so Jeeves and Kain are left waiting. 
Sometime later guards come snooping around the gate, they loosely describe the parties appearance and their equipment, but since Kain wears the fairly common hide armor and doesn't have Stoneskin on anymore he is simply questioned. He doesn't answer the questions quite convincingly however and the guard takes him to the inn to be identified by eyewitnesses. A random man literally screams out the confirmation, damning Kain to the guards. Immediately two guards try to grab him from behind and go to drag him to the sheriff's station while the captain takes Jeeves by the collar. Partway through the process Kain breaks out of the guards hold and tries to free Jeeves, but fails. Surrounded he chooses to sprint into an alleyway barely dodging a lunge by a guard and continues running with Malakai stalking after the whole procession. Unfortunately the captain manages to get a strong hold of Kain and he ends up stopped in his tracks at which point Malakai casts Mirror image and then reveals himself by casting Magic missile on two of the guards. Blood drawn the guards deem appropriate to attack both Kain and Malakai, next round Malakai downs 2 of the 3 guards while more are approaching and once Kain finally manages to push off the half dead captain polymorphs into a pegasus and whisks both of them into the sky. 
After about half an hour of flying Malakai sets down and once he transforms back into himself he is immediately jumped by Kain demanding to know what happened. Cursing he explains the general gist of it and they both calm down a little. Realizing that both Jeeves and the carriage with their treasure is in town they try to find a spot near the shore where Malakai might rest so that he can memorize the expended spells. 
Meanwhile, still at Redport Van de-transforms from his tree form and finds a nook in the cemetery he was hiding at to Nap himself. He is almost found by a random peasant, but they don't bother him. 
Malakai and Kain sit around behind a bush, frustrated that it's still early outside and Malakai cannot actually take a long rest Malakai starts worrying that the town guards are going to take Jeeves and hang him. Without any way to get new spells and low on existing ones Malakai decides to consume his recently begotten potion of vitality and begins the memorization process. 
Back in Redport Van-Healsing wakes up from his nap and begins sneaking along the edge of the city. He walks for a while plotting to use his Windborn spell to catapult himself over the wall, but thinks better of it and goes to wait in the abbey where he memorizes some more spells, but just before he's done a small crowd of laborers with shovels approach the building. He turns around to greet them, but he is met with gaped mouths and an frantic retreat apparently Van's description having made its way around the city. Immediately he goes back to the wall and jumps over it with his prepared spell. 
On the other side of the wall he hears commotion so without taking a break he jogs westward in the direction of Clydesdale. Once he gets near ocean he begins seeing a small cloud of dust being kicked up by a posy of riders whom apparently have found his tracks. Van finds himself a vegetated spot between two hills and turns into a tree. From his spot he notes two other parties of horsemen skidding the edges of the hills. For a whole hour the horsemen keep going back and forth, apparently miffed by the disappearing tracks until finally they appear to leave the area where Van's tree is. 
At a different spot in the Wake County Malakai dishes out Invisibiliies and Stoneskins taking about 6 hours for the whole process of casting and memorization. By time he is done it's already dark and he Polymorphs himself, but doesn't leave before he re-memorizes the same spell again. 
They fly back to Redport and find a spot near his fathers beloved's hut he helped kill. Malakai instructs Kain that if they doesn't meet up within 24 hours Kain will turn visible and he should have a plan to leave city ready just in case. 
First he turns into a bird and checks out the gallows, not seeing Jeeves there he goes to find the spot where they left their carriage, but doesn't see it either. With Van's tree gone and him not being able to find the guard house he goes to Zinleys shop which he infiltrates as a polymorphed spider. In the quiet shop he re-memorizes Polymorph, twice, and transforms himself into an attractive woman. On the street he realizes he still has Stoneskin on, he runs back to Zinleys shop, cancels Stoneskin, re-memorizes spell and goes back out in his attractive woman form. 
On the street he gets some information where the guard house is so back he goes into bird form and finally makes it to the station. 
There he sees 8 guards playing cards, he inspects the room without getting too much attention, finds window do a secondary room with only 1 guard and goes back to Zinleys shop where he casts and relearns Invisibility plus a Sleep, plus another cycle of Polymorph. 
Back at the guard station he infiltrates the 2nd room in which he Polymorphs into a person. Opening the doors reveals stairs that lead underground ending with another set of doors. Behind those doors is a long corridor populated by jail cells with one of the last ones containing a heavily beaten Jeeves. He enters the cell that has Jeeves, takes him in his arms, casts Invisibility and Dimension doors outside in the street. 
He makes his way back to Zinleys shop, dragging unconscious Jeeves with him and with the key that he stole when he looted the place enters the shop. There he leaves Jeeves on the floor and plots how to get back his chest. 
Meanwhile, Van tries to make his way towards Ratburg, the village they saved from were-rat invasion. Not being proficient with directions or having ever approached the village from this direction Van spends a few hours flailing around the countryside without success, so he ends up sleeping next to the road instead. 
Back in Redport, Kain is still hanging out on the wall where he planned to meet Malakai while Malakai feeds a healing potion to Jeeves to resuscitate him. Confused and freaked out Jeeves wakes up from unconsciousness, still missing a few teeth and hair. Malakai calms him down and even apologizes for the whole situation he helped create. From Jeeves he gets that the guards took their carriage down to the docks so with a final warning to stay quiet in case someone comes into the shop Malakai leaves for the docks.
The wizard casts Locate object on one of the crowns they had in their magical chest and then flies around the town as a polymorphed imp. Eventually he pings the crown at the lighthouse keep, apparently the lord of the town having looted it from their carriage. 
Malakai zeroes in on the 4th floor of the lighthouse keep, but none of the windows seem to open so he is forced to go from the first floor. Luckily no one seems bothered by a random spider crawling around and he makes his way to the 4th floor successfully. The floor below the room where the crown is seems to be the barracks of the keep with 11 soldiers inside. The 4th floor itself appears to be the storage with one separate room which is likely the treasury. 
As a spider Malakai sneaks into the treasury room and sits down with his magic candle. In the room it appears that the lord just had the loot dumped into his own treasury. Malakai finds the crowns on top of a mound of gold and with what appears to be relatively safe space casts detect magic and intends to memorize his spells once more. 
Unfortunately there appear to be no magic items here, so he just stuffs all of the stolen items in his bag plus some more for a total of 39 pound of precious items. With a Strength, Dimension door and a fly spell he makes his way back to Zinleys shop to collect Jeeves. There he memorizes Polymorph other again and as a pegasus collects Kain on the walls of Redport. 
=== Sunday, 1509-11-20 ===
Flying as a highly mobile magical equine Malakai makes it to Clydesdale a lot faster than Van does. There they cancel their Stoneskins and find the usual inn where they stay at and wait for Van to show up.
Van meanwhile rents a farmers cart and lazily makes his way to Clydesdale. 
Back at the inn Malakai has a sincere moment with Jeeves asking him if perhaps he would want to retire by now. He offers him enough gold to live his life out comfortably. 
== Experience and changes. ==
*Dates are extrapolated from a previous mention of an exact date.
Category:Hardcore Heroes Episodes