5.10 Give Me Ashcon's Liberty...or Alusfar's Death
After Ashcon's fight with the guards, Ashcon falls into an exhausted state. He has killed himself many times before, but this time...its very different. The fight with the demon and the rest of the guards (in addition to the numerous times he had killed himself before) has limited his ability to bounce back. Ashcon finds himself lingering between consciousness and death and back to consciousness again for several days, only seeing flashes of his body being dragged by city guards, his body slumped over in a cell, then...a robed figure? Chatting and discussing with the guards? Gold changing hands...and in the meantime just agonizing pain and silence...
In the meantime, deeply wounded, "Derek" the mysterious commoner escapes to try and regroup. Unable to save Ashcon again from the guards and knowing what they would do, he goes to the monastery for asylum and assistance. Binded in a demon summoning circle and a zone of truth, he has been imprisoned for questioning in Harriet's tower. It's there they discover the grave importance of Ashcon's capture - and how his body is likely to fall into the hands of the Midnight Sun for experimentation - to try and harness the curse Ashcon has for their own nefarious purposes. The party sets on a quest to locate Ashcon.
After going back to his last known location, they were able to track his whereabouts to a single jail cell nearby guarded by a single town guard. The party interrogates him and they find out that after the altercation he was imprisoned there and the Midnight Sun had subsequently paid off the guards in charge of his shift to acquire his body a couple of days prior. Needing more answers, the party turns to the thieves guild for help, where they have a tearful reunion with Mouse. Mouse, through the thieves guild's plant in the Midnight sun, instructs them that there were whispers of a fire genasi being ferried to a certain warehouse in the city district for evaluation and experimentation by "outside council," later to be discovered as Vassinack, the nefarious necromancer Alhoon.
They identify the warehouse and a deadly raid ensues, taking down most of the midnight sun cultists in the process, but Vassinack doesnt go down that easily. After a hard fought bout, Vassinack makes a strategic retreat and the party is able to retrieve Ashcon's decapitated, and yet somehow alive, body safely. After a tense meet up with new thieves guild members offering to transport Ashcon's body (Betsy, "The Jackal", a master of disguise known as "Night Rok", and Zohza, "Raccoon"), they now find themselves in yet another abandoned warehouse planning their next move, as the warehouse next to them burns down in flames....but they are safe, at last.
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