Hardcore Heroes: Episode 28

__NOTOC__
== Synopsis ==
As the party leaves the ruined village, Malakai, Randy, and Kain express doubts about the possibility of bullywugs massacring 200 villagers without any survivors. Suddenly, they are attacked by bugbears, resulting in Randy's death. The rest of the party fends off the attackers, and Malakai uses magic to defeat them. After looting the bugbears and crossing a river back to Shirebrook, Malakai sneaks into a crypt to retrieve an amulet while Kain seeks property to buy, fearing he may not return home. Malakai identifies the amulet as allowing the wearer to see hidden things. The next morning, they inform Corni's father of Randy's death and head to Windshire, where Van uses a spell to speak with Kain's deceased mother. She provides little information about her death. The party later discovers a cavern filled with bones through a scrying spell, suggesting a powerful creature's involvement. Back in Shirebrook, Malakai interacts with wizard apprentices and their teacher, Tim, on a ship and later explores more about the ship's captain and passengers. Accusations of spying arise, but Malakai deflects them. Van investigates the cult behind the village disappearances, leading to theories about their hideout. The party continues their search, consulting a cartographer and stonemasons to narrow down potential locations.
==Recap==
=== Sunday, 1509-09-18* ===
Still in the ruined village party begins to make their way back to Shirebrook. 
Malakai expresses his doubt that bullywugs could have slaughtered 200 people and then completely covered the whole scene up. Randy actually agrees with him since the area is known to be dangerous and the villagers would have defended themselves. Kain joins in as well, mentioning that at least a few more villagers ought to have survived besides Randy. 
The party recons they should make it to Shirebrook by sundown when suddenly the forest parts and bugbears charges into them. Randy gets splattered in a single hit from behind while rest of the party shrugs off all of the attacks thanks to Stoneskin or the bugbears simply missing. Malakai buffs himself with a Mirror image while Van increases his strength. A quick dispatches 2 bugbears, scimitar another then the next round a summoned Shadow owlbear decimates the bugbears ranks making them flee for their lives. 
Van manages to disbelieve the owlbear while Kain still sees a huge badass threat which promptly begins to hop up and down on its hind legs by Malakai's command. 
Kain loots the dead woman's things while the other two call him desperate for it. Turns out however the bugbears had about 200 gold on them total which does make Van and Malakai raise an eyebrow. 
Short walk later they wave down a fisherman who annoyedly ferries the party to other side of the river, back into safety of the town.
=== Monday, 1509-09-19* ===
Malakai wakes up early and casts Invisibility on himself then goes to the crypt of the Valmont family. He locates the closest point on outside of the walls and Dimension door's inside into complete darkness. Using the light stone he turns around to see the amulet still on the corpse. The amulet has a silver base with a pale blue gem inside of it and a silver chain to hang it by, Malakai takes it and goes back to the inn where he begins to Identify it. 
Kain meanwhile treks out into town with his heavy gold sack and searches for where he might find some property to buy. All this in consideration that he might not get to return home. 
First he asks the barkeep, then he goes to interrupt Malakai's spell casting  and after he gets told to go away he finally finds Van-Healsing in his temple who is willing to assist him. Since none of them have ever really bought a property before tho, it's a lot of guesswork. Kain realizes that perhaps it would be easier to buy land and then hire people to build the house so he goes to explore these option. Finding the price suitable he pays off 150 gold right now with the house being set to be finished sometime in October. 
Malakai finds out that when looking through the gem it is will allow the user to see hidden, illusionary, invisible, astral, ethereal things with varying detail depending on range. Satisfied with this magic item he goes to sleep with it around his neck. 
Meanwhile, at the Storybrook inn Van rents himself the best room gold can afford in this town, complimented by a whole feast being brought up as well. Satisfied he then creates an illusionary female Chis cleric which he himself believes and they have a pleasant evening. 
Kain spends rest of his day praying to Relkor, praying in general at first and then he begs the god to tell him what happened to his mother. After he's done with the prayers he leaves 30 gold on the shrine and leaves. 
=== Tuesday, 1509-09-20* ===
Morning comes, everyone memorizes their spells and they assemble in the Storybrook inn. While they're eating Corni's father comes over and asks how is Randy. They explain that the village appears to have been slaughtered by bullywugs and then on their way back Randy herself got killed by a bugbear club. The gnome grows grimmer and comments on how they seem to always come back in fewer numbers than what they leave with. Malakai snaps back at him and leaves the inn with the party quietly following. Kain inquires what was that was about and once Van explains that his son used to be in their party shrugs, not being all that surprised. 
The party gets Jeeves and make their way over the river. Not long after they find themselves back at Windshire. Kain and Van go together to find some possible belongings, Kain specifically goes to his house and retrieves a wooden box from under his bed that contains 2 wooden flutes. Van meanwhile finds the same hairbrush and pulls out a hair from it which he then uses to cast Speak with dead. 
The spell goes off and first Van asks if Kain's mother knows how she died to which she responds that she doesn't. Second he asks what happened to cause her death and she tells that a great shadow came over everything when she stepped outside and that's it. Third he asks whether she knows where her body is located and she responds with another no. Realizing that he is indeed now alone Kain takes his flute and begins to play on it, tears rolling down his eyes.
Malakai meanwhile scans the gauges in middle of the village they had mostly dug out, but sees no illusion on them, intent on finding out what happened here he continues on for almost an hour, but finds nothing in the whole village. 
Once he's done Van walks up to him and asks whether he found anything and what is the gem he used, Malakai lies about buying the gem, but tells as it is regards to the villages status. Van informs him that he was able to speak with Kain's deceased mother. With not much else to do they go to find a puddle and get ready to cast Reflecting pool when suddenly Kain notices 3 wet figures stepping into the village.
Being the most eloquent and hardy Van puts on his helmet and steps forth asking the 3 people to identify themselves whom promptly turn around and run the fuck away. Ignoring the random bandits Van goes back to casting his spell. 
The pool clears and they can see a dimly lit natural stone cavern, there's a large pile of human bones in vision and on edge of the vision there can be seen a shimmer of something golden. The bones look to be somewhat broken, yet fairly clean and not too old. The pile itself looks big enough to cover hundreds of dead villagers. They note that the floor seems to be flattened dirt, but before Van ends the spell someone from the other side dispels it. 
Van is spooked by this and warns Malakai that such a creature is likely highly intelligent and powerful so they should be extremely wary. 
Distraught Kain meanwhile awaits for them in the carriage, fuming in his head about the gods that allowed this to happen.
Once they're back in Shirebrook all 3 of them make their way to Rohana's shop which seems unusually full today. Malakai squeezes in and offers to help Rohana handle the costumers which she happily accepts. Turns out it's a whole school trip of wizard apprentices, whole 8 wizard apprentices with empty spellbooks at their sides. He makes small talk and gets to know they are staying on their ship while selling some of the wares to the snobby would-be wizardlings. 
At one point the apparent teacher comes over to Malakai inquiring to his Stoneskin enchantment. He appears curious and offers to buy it from him for 400 gold so Malakai agrees to come by later that night. The man confirms their ship is in harbor and drops the name of the ship as Waveskipper, which is what Venlen rode into town, halfway through making Malakai stutter and Van almost come question the wizard, but Malakai shushes him. The mans names turn out to be Tim. 
After helping Rohana up from another bloody coughing fit, they finally get some alone time with her. The shopping wizards having provided her a whole lot of gold she seems in a happy mood. Malakai introduces his new Stoneskin spell to her and then Van brings up the real topic up, the fact they now have some idea what has been abducting the villagers. He offers to show the experience to her to which she seems open, but when he mentions that his scrying was detected within a minute her demeanor immediately changes to that of worry. They set another meeting for tomorrow for the exchange since he will attempt to scry again for more information. 
Malakai asks if she knows anything about Witch of the wilds, but it seems she only knows of the general ideas, she does confirm it's commonly believed the witches diet consists of people. 
Kain goes to his inn room and begins carving a statuette of Relkor. Van instead of staying at temple goes an inn as well. 
Malakai meanwhile seeks out the harbor master and before heading to the Waveskipper questions what the man knows about the ship's captain. The harbormaster tells that Red, the captain, ships anything or anyone he can anywhere that's on his route. Finally Malakai goes to the ship, has to get past a sailor who had been told to expect a man, but he seems to mistakenly think Malakai is here for a veeery different kind of business. Somewhat flustered Malakai heads on. 
First Malakai locates Tim's room, then he walks around the hold to get an idea of the layout of this ship including what appears to be storage. Next he listens in on and finds where the students are, split between men and women apparently. 
Done with the scouting he knocks on Tim's door and goes on in. Malakai tries to barter with him at first, trying to get him to trade spells instead of a gold transaction, but Tim appears very unwilling and cites time as being quite tight. Malakai ends up gloating about spending more time out in the world doing real wizard things, but eventually the deal goes on. 
Few hours later they walk out on the deck and split on good terms, Tim mentioning he might be back next year with a whole new class. Malakai then turns to the sailor and asks to be led to the ships captain. When the man asks on what grounds he explains that this is a matter of the state regarding a passenger that was on the ship a while ago. 
They go down to the captains quarters and Malakai is let in once more. The captain, being a sailor, is drunk of course and when Malakai asks about Venlen and whether has any records of passengers dating 6 months back is very slow to start searching for papers. After a particularly lazy search the captain plops back down his chair and tells Malakai he can't seem to find the records, he also seems to be planning on leaving on the marrow so Malakai leaves. 
Except he doesn't go back to his house, he goes to the students quarters. It appears though that they're not sleeping yet, but despite that he opens the doors and turns invisible alerting the people inside. Someone manages to light a candle and Malakai sees most of the kids are clutching their spellbooks as weapons, not wanting to deal with all this he turns around and leaves, but just before he can get out of the hallway Tim's door opens and the older wizard comes to check out what's the racket. The students inform him that there was an invisible person here, but by then Malakai has already left.
=== Wednesday, 1509-09-21* ===
Malakai is awoken to Rohana knocking on his door. She greets him somewhat awkwardly and begins with confirming that he and Tim had dealings yesterday, and that Malakai then left, went to talk to Red had no more reason to be on the ship except he didn't leave and apparently went spying on his very young pupils. Taken aback he protests, but she continues to scold him about being a creep and walking invisible around a ship to spying on schoolchildren. He manages to sort of successfully deflect question of why he went around invisible by saying that he has suspicion that Tim is actually Venlen and that's its dangerous for Rohana to involve herself in these matters. 
She ends up advising that next time Malakai ought to first leave and only then come back invisible, mentioning that he might have made an enemy out of Tim. Idea to kill him seems to make her uncomfortable though. 
Kain finishes his Relkor symbol and then goes to a tailor to get himself a Relkor stitched traveling cloak. 
Van goes to meet up with Rohana and Rapport's the information he found regarding the Malkis cultists and the possible monster responsible for the disappearing villagers. Rohana gives back information about the investigation regarding the woman who poisoned the Valmont's. How her family fell on hard times so she went out to Shirebrook to work as a chambermaid for the Valmont family, but then one day received a box with her father's hand and ring, and a note instructing her to poison the Baroness. Rohana also shares that there have been reports from the same village where the girls family was that odd brown robbed people have been seen around. 
Once they're done Van goes to Nap and then memorizes his Reflecting pool spell. Party assembles for this and they go out of town to scry on the man who murdered the peasants from Misty Rapids. They see him in his robes, sweeping water into a bucket in a slightly flooded room, then once the bucket is full he walks up the staircase that was behind him and hands the bucket to another figure in exchange for an empty one. The man then goes back down and restarts the process, then goes back up, but partway up suddenly freezes and looks at the party at which point Van ends the spell. 
Thinking on where could the cult be located that might get flooded Malakai starts marking down all the places where the assassinations have taken place. Rainwood is noted down as a possible spot. Ashlands is ruled out as being flat therefore a tower might be easy to spot. Tetherwilds is noted as a possibility though it's fairly unexplored in their travels. 
They go and actually buy a map in a cartographers shop and ask the guy for opinions where a 3-story stone tower might be located in. He is of opinion that Tetherwilds is too dangerous to build a tower in and travel in. Man notes that Thornwood is mostly brick buildings not stone. After a few more fairly specific questions the man bats the party off though. They ponder on the waterline and where could it be that water might be a problem until Van suddenly thinks back to his stonemason education and realizes that the tower was made out of limestone, however it's a fairly popular building material. Having a new lead they analyze what stones their local cities use and Van comes up with that Stromheim is mostly granite, Rainwood is wood with a dash of granite, Thornwood is brick and Shirebrook has some limestone. 
Needing some stone masonry advice Van seeks out his old stonemason buddies in town. They give him some shit at first, but soon enough when Van tells of the scope of their investigation they come around. Turns out that Tetherwilds used to be a good limestone source before the apocalypse which is why Shirebrook keep is made out of it another source of it is in the hills north east of Stromheim. They do say that limestone is fairly common stone though and that there's an abundance of buildings made out of it. 
Without any more leads Van takes his old buddies to a tavern for a few drinks. 
Kain starts carving a composite bow. 
== Experience and changes ==
* Kain gains 4th level and rolls 5HP for a total of 28HP
*Dates are extrapolated from a previous mention of an exact date.
Category:Hardcore Heroes Episodes