Hardcore Heroes: Episode 35

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== Synopsis ==
The party spends a quiet night in the hobgoblin base and strategizes their approach to the gryphon tower. Despite differing opinions on how to handle the gryphons—Malakai wanting to attack, Kain preferring not to engage, and Van contemplating negotiation—they cautiously make their way inside. They discover valuable magical items within the tower and deal with aggressive gryphons through a series of skirmishes. Malakai eventually retrieves these items and manages to escape with the group's help. Returning to their base, they explore an underground chamber system and encounter minor issues before arriving in Redport. There, they learn of political unrest and conflicting reports about the Count's men, leading to more tension among the group. Meanwhile, Malakai takes a dark turn, murdering Zinley, a shop owner, in a gruesome fashion before looting her shop and returning to the inn.
==Recap==
=== Sunday, 1509-11-13* ===
The night in the hobgoblin base passes uneventfully. Since it was only Malakai that engaged the hobgoblins both Kain and Van are still invisible. They plot how to approach the gryphon tower with least amount of sound. Kain protests every notion of just killing them and honestly would probably rather not go to the tower at all while Malakai seems eager to fireball the bird beasts. Van meanwhile keeps thinking he could somehow make a deal with them. 
Malakai agrees to make everyone invisible for this and they approach the tower while carefully watching how many gryphons leave the old building. The tower has 4 floors with the upper one having large windows where it seems the gryphons roost. There seems to be a break between first and second floor. 
As the party comes closer another gryphon comes out of the tower and they sort of lazily circle above what seems might be the party itself. After Kain's warning they stop for 10 minutes, but nothing seems to change in their behavior so they continue on. 
Unlike the rest of the town it seems like stones haven't been taken from the tower itself. Party inspects the tower for a while and concludes that gryphons shouldn't be able to get through the floors on the inside of the tower. Also that there should be about 4 to 5 rooms at top of the tower. 
Malakai climbs the wall to the 2nd floor, but sees nothing of interest there. Either looted by people or animals. He takes out a rope and holds it himself while Kain climbs. With assistance from Van Kain first slams Van's face in the wall and then actually climbs up to the 2nd floor. Eventually they all make it there. Malakai casts Detect magic as they're walking to the 3rd floor and begins exploring what appears to be an ancient library. Most of the books appear to be ruined except for a small batch in the middle of library. 
To conserve his spell they make their way to the 4th floor where the gryphon roost is, talking aloud all the way. Van proposes modifying the gryphons memory to show them that they had once saved the beasts, again they devolve into argumentation whether to kill or not to kill them. Malakai doesn't seem to understand why they cannot just deal with them the usual way. 
Tired of arguing Malakai finally goes up to the entrance to the 4th floor. He ignores the audible gryphon squawking and walks into the hallway that has 4 doors on its sides. Throughout the tower he counts about 11 gryphons. His detect magic also finds 3 magic items tucked away inside the nests. There's a very strong necromancy aura, another very strong unreadable aura and a strong enchantment aura. 
After consulting the party with his findings they decide that such a haul might really be worth snooping around in the gryphon nests. Using the doorways seems like the most sensible way to try and fight them so they go back to the 3rd floor. Van becomes invisible and immediately one of the circling gryphons for above dives for him as he's backing into the doorway. 
The gryphon lands in front of them squawking angrily at Van who fails his Modify memory spell. Kain voices his disapproval of this once again, but stands next to Van to fight off the avian. After some more attacks the gryphon backs out of the library. 
Party think-tanks and comes up with Napping Malakai so he can cast Invisibility on all of them so they can get out of the tower, and come back later more prepared for a stealth mission. Malakai goes to middle of the library where he is Napped, after 15 minutes another gryphon scrabbles through the doorway and goes for Kain. This knocks off last of his Stoneskin charges, but instead of retaliation he tries to woo it with his ranger magic which succeeds and makes the bird threatening instead of hostile. Next round he succeeds once more making the gryphon cautious, but gets stuck there. However the bird seems unwilling to fight them now and leaves after a moment. 
Soon after another gryphon scrabbles through the doorway. However this time Kain fails his ranger charms on it and it quickly ends in a good ol’ sword fight. The gryphon manages to inflict some fairly heavy wounds on Kain, but it is kicked out of the library soon after. 
About 30 minutes later another gryphon hops through the doorway and goes for Van whose up front this time. They battle with Van only taking a little bit of damage and this bird is kicked out as well. 
Finally Malakai wakes up and starts memorizing his spells, though because it turns out it might take more than an hour they try to find a way to blockade the doorway. With the bookcase immovably cemented to the floor Van goes up to the door and becomes a tree instead. The gryphons outside all seem extremely perplexed by this and eventually one of them tries to move the tree trunk, but it's too heavy for it to move. Another one makes the attempt, damages Van somewhat, but fails to move the heavy tree trunk sitting in middle of the doorway. 
An hour later Malakai finishes memorizing his spells and turns everyone invisible for easy passage out of the tower. Before they go Malakai pockets a book titled Animals of East Arcadia. Two gryphons are still perched on the stairways above and below them though which makes it somewhat difficult to leave, Kain tries to distract them with horn blowing, but it just seems to put them on edge. 
Party retreats deeper into the room as a gryphon comes inside and circles around the room and then leaves. They wait another 30 minutes after which the bird at the bottom staircase has left and then Kain and Van leave without issue while Malakai stays behind. The wizard Polymorphs himself into a spider and crawls up to the 4th floor to the room he saw the necromantic item in. There he only sees 2 gryphons at this point and is able to make out that the magical item which was in the room is actually a potion.  
Meanwhile, back at the bottom of the tower Kain blows the elven horn and retreats to the hobgoblin cave while Van is still shuffling around the base of the tower.
In the tower Malakai turns himself into an Invisible imp and snatches the potion out of the nest. The gryphons seem to notice something is up now, but he manages to scamper out of the room before they do anything about it. He stores the potion back in library on the 3rd floor and then flies back to where the next magical item was. 2nd item is another potion, a bit deeper into a nest than the previous one, but still accessible. The 3rd item seems to be even deeper in the gryphon nest and with a gryphon in it to boot. He sneakily casts a Detect magic and confirms that the 3rd item is inside the edge of the nest, probably deep enough to require tearing it apart to get to. Satisfied with his haul of a potion of vitality and oil of timelessness Malakai flies back towards the hobgoblin cave.
Eventually they reunite at the underground base. Malakai shows them the potions they've gotten and immediately requisitions the potion of vitality leaving oil of timelessness to Kain. Malakai studies his spells through the night and learns Grease from Aldricks spellbook. 
=== Monday, 1509-11-14 ===
Night passes peacefully and they plot to go explore this underground chamber system. Malakai takes it upon himself to create the map with scraps of paper they all have laying around. Kain also marks the doors they pass through with chalk. 
Through the endless chambers and doors they find only leftover furniture and dust. It appears that everything has already been looted through and so after about half a day of exploration they decide to head out to Redport. Kain proposes to Van to speak with the dead leucrottas, but he seems to dislike the idea of bothering the dead for their own fairly selfish reasons. Locate object is proposed as a less morally ambiguous way to find treasure. 
They spend another day in the underground system, mostly just resting for the rest of the day. 
=== Tuesday, 1509-11-15* ===
Night passes uneventfully and the invisible party makes their way to the leucrotta cave where Van having memorized Locate object casts it. Looking for gold coins finds nothing and so they go back to Rockwave. They pass by 4 giant scorpions, but do not engage them. 
They go back to their inn and the innkeeper comes up to them with his hat in hand. Apparently one of the cleaning maids went into their room to clean it and the chest freaked out and flew out of the window onto the roof. Party gives the man some good natured shit about it and pay him for a new chest while Van spider climbs onto the roof to get his chest back.
Malakai rents a carriage. 
Van does some Weighty chest experiments and casts the spell on his armor so that he cannot be picked up and thrown anymore. This also means he can accidentally crush a horse he is riding if the armor touches the horse. 
=== Friday, 1509-11-18* ===
Party arrives in Redport without issue, before they get to the gates Malakai turns invisible. They find Jeeves waiting for them at the gates, he tells them that Tyrus wants to speak with them and apparently called Malakai a lying twat. 
They arrive in the inn and Tyrus tells them that Stirge sent him a message relaying that the Counts men never arrived. Van of course argues that Count did intend to send forces and he could prove by it sharing the memories so they're kind of left hanging there until Kain asks what does he intend to do now then. Stirge has apparently mentioned that Shirebrook has begun to degrade into a sort of lawlessness now and could use some leadership, but Tyrus seems to be rather content with not being a wanted man in Redport nor anyone being after his gear. He doesn't quite confirm whether he will return or not. 
Van decides to go Nap so that he can check on Newfort, fearing that if the Count's men never arrived something might have happened to the county capital. 
Kain tries to talk with Tyrus about his previous life, but he is rather reluctant to say anything and they end up sitting in silence mostly with invisible Malakai hanging out nearby. 
Once Van wakes up he uses Idea to confirm that Count did indeed tell them he'll be sending men, he wanders back down to their table and confirms it with Tyrus as well. They continue talking about the fighters plans and it seems like he'd rather go find another peaceful backwater town where his sword wouldn't be needed. He asks Van of their plans and he kind of shrugs, mentioning Kains proposal of leaving Eridon. 
Hearing that all the reason for calling Malakai a lying twat was because of Count's men never arriving Malakai finally leaves the party and goes to Zinley's shop. There it seems to be a new clerk at the counter and a new guard next to the entrance, he waits inside the shop until it closes. About at the time of midnight he begins moving, he Polymorphs into a spider and crawls under the door atop the flight of stairs finding his way into Zinleys bedroom. 
There he sees two dwarves in bed so he backs out of the room and goes into the office room. He ponders for a while how to best murder these two and in the end polymorphs back into his human self and then casts the Web spell. Neither of the dwarves wake up so he steps in and cuts the throat of the male dwarf and steps back again waiting for Zinley to wake up properly with her bleeding out lover in her arms. It doesn't take long for her to recognize him, but instead of cursing him out she starts trying to negotiate, telling him what great things they could do together. Malakai entertains her pleas for a while, but once she refuses to tell him where her treasure is he finally has his shadow trapdoor spider finish the job, ending Zinleys life in a grotesque nightmare. 
The owner dispatched he cancels his spells and starts looting the house with a Detect magic. Having faced no interruptions whatsoever, he finishes looting everything of value that's not pounds upon pounds of silver and finally polymorphs into a bird making his way back to their inn. He wakes up the night watchman, rents himself a room and settles down to sleep.
== Experience and changes ==
* Kain gains 6th level and rolls 4HP for a total of 37HP.
*Dates are extrapolated from a previous mention of an exact date.
Loot from Zinley spoiler
Items looted from Zinnley's shop include a magical axe, a potion of firebreath, 3 potions of healing, a pair of magical daggers, a magic scroll, 1200 gold coins & 20 mithril coins
Category:Hardcore Heroes Episodes