Fredrick falls back with Jilly and climbs down out of the trees with the ease of a chimpanzee slouching over on hands and feet in a similar gesture to hide among the foliage the best he can given hes bright red.

"I say we go after the archers first they'd prove the biggest issue, the melee we could maybe take out once we finish up those two" he says before shrugging "though we could also rush in break her out that cage and then just leg it out of here deal with them coming after us late"

The camp holds its shape while the three regroup in the southern brush. Jilly slips back first, Fredrick dropping from the trees a moment later, and Garreth easing in beside them with the quiet steadiness of someone who has spent years reading fights before they start. Ahead, the clearing remains tense but not yet stirred into full alarm: the archer at F12 still watches the cage and open ground, the second at I4 keeps the wider lane, and the cage watcher continues that short, restless route between H13 and G14, never straying far from the gate. The others remain near their positions, wary, but not yet moving like men who know exactly where danger is.

Garreth studies it once, then speaks low. “If you want clean, you take the archers first. If you want fast, you stop thinking about the camp and think only about the girl. Those two are lock on that cage." He points at F12 and H13. "Break that, and you run.” His eyes flick to the central fire. “Do not get bogged down in the middle. That’s where numbers win.”

Then the pressure sharpens.

A black raven cuts down through the trees, wings beating once, twice, before it glides to the ridge of the central tent at E9. It lets out a rough, deliberate croak and hops down through the flap.

Inside the tent, something shifts.

Map info: Each square represents a 5ft distance. Each character has a 3-action economy, which can be used for movement, actions, or abilities. For ease of interpretation, remember to mention coordinates while moving or attacking. Garreth will act as he is told (in varying degrees). Any doubts, feel free to ask!

"OK. Let's take the archers first." Jilly nodded in agreement at Fredrick's suggestion. Though when she looked back at the positioned guards she noticed a glaring flaw on the strategy. Do any of them can do ranged attack? It seemed none of them carry bow or something like that. Rushing towards the archers through the melee bandit would be dangerous. The safest option would be to use stealth, or...

"Throw me!" Jilly exclaimed, she put down her oversized witch hat and then flip it upside down before jumping into it like a weird goopy ice cream. She wriggled herself deeper into the hat by melting her own body. It's like those circus performance where the clown stuff themselves into a cannon.

"Throw me at the archer. I can perform surprise attack and we can flank them from two sides." Jilly's elongated arm stretched out of the hat and formed a thumb up.

Action:
1) Prepare Surprise Cannon - Magic F, Componentless Magic F, Change State F, Elasticity F - Transform into a jelly state and ready to attack on impact

Fredrick picks Jilly up as requested and slings the jelly at the Archer at F12 aiming for the archers head using his strength to do so.

Action: Super Strength F

Then he would break away to the side to I2 and dash into the archer at I4 aiming to incapacitate thier ranged abilities.

Actions: Fast F, Fighting style martial arts F

Jilly vanished into the hat in a wobbling, absurd little ritual of trust, and Fredrick answered it with raw force. He swung once and let her fly.

The throw carried farther than any sane person should have managed. The blue blur arced over the brush and dropped straight onto the nearer archer before the bandit even had time to look properly upward. There was a wet, elastic whump as Jilly crashed into him in a tangle of hat, slime, and surprise. The bowman folded hard into the dirt near the cage, stunned out cold before he could so much as cry warning.

That single impact cracked the camp’s stillness wide open.

Fredrick did not waste the opening. He broke away at once, cutting across the clearing toward the second archer, feet eating ground in long, urgent strides. But the throw had cost him. By the time he closed in, the burst of speed bled out of him; breath hitched, muscles burned, and he stopped just shy of striking distance, close enough to threaten, not close enough to finish.

Garreth moved at the same moment, advancing from the southern edge with sword already in motion. He met the melee bandit near the fire with a veteran’s directness, steel flashing in a low, committed cut. The bandit caught it by instinct more than skill, blade scraping hard against blade, and the deflection turned ugly fast. A return slash slipped in tight and bit Garreth across the side.

Not deep. Enough.

Now the camp was awake. One archer was down, one still standing, and the clearing had gone from tense to violent in the span of a breath.



The camp reacts fast.

The remaining archer at I4 jerks at the sudden violence, then immediately gives ground—backpedaling to G4 where the angle between tent and brush is cleaner. Bow already in hand, he nocks and looses in one practiced motion, sending a hurried shot toward Fredrick at K4 before the red-haired man can fully recover from his sprint. [Incoming 2d4-3 attack]

At nearly the same moment, the melee bandit at H7 breaks toward the center, boots cutting across open dirt to J9. He does not rush blindly at Jilly or the cage—instead he angles for Garreth at K10, trying to catch the old soldier from the side while the clearing is still in disarray.

The bandit already facing Garreth at J10 wastes no time either. Steel flashes low, mean, and close as he presses the veteran head-on, trying to keep him pinned in place long enough for the second melee man to close the trap. [Incoming highest roll 2d4-2 attack from J9 and J10]

By the cage, the watcher at H13 snaps to the real danger at last. He strides to G13, planting himself between Jilly at G12 and the cage gate at G14, then lashes out to drive her back from the bars. It is not subtle work—just brute urgency, the kind of swing meant to buy one more second between rescuer and prisoner. Inside, Marra’s daughter recoils from the iron bars, alive and terrified. [Incoming 2d4-3 attack]

The downed archer near F12 remains crumpled, not rejoining the fight.

Then the tent at E9 stirs.

The flap at E9 parted, and a woman stepped out—not dressed like a ragged marauder, but like someone who understood exactly how much cleaner authority looked when it wore dark wool and fitted leather instead of scraps. Her hair was tied back, her jaw narrow and severe, and a green cord circled one wrist above the hilt of a plain but well-kept saber. One look took in the fallen archer, the breached perimeter, and the strangers in the clearing.

She did not shout.

She only said, cold and clipped, “Kill the old man first.”

"It's okay, we came to free you." Jilly noticed the girl's distressed look and tried to give her reassurance. Though considering the man in front of her is swinging his weapon. Jilly inhaled the air around her to inflate her cheeks to an absurd size that blocks her face, and then use the inflated cheeks to catch the bandit's attack head on. Melting anything it catches into jelly.

Action:
1-2) Block with Slime Catch - Change State F, Elasticity F, Transmutation F - Block attack with inflated body part and transmute any non-living caught into gum-flavored jelly - 2 action - F grade

Fredrick moves quickly ignoring the arrow headed for him and moving quickly towards Gareth. Winding up and attempting to smash through the second melee bandit at J9 hoping with enough force that it knocks into the bandit right beside and leaves an opening for gareth. And then that Jilly will be able to start running so we can all take off.

Action: Fast F, Superstrength F, Martial Arts Fighting Style F

The archer at G4 looses first, trying to punish Fredrick before he can reach the center. The shot comes fast and flat through the clearing—but Fredrick is already moving, red hair flashing as he slips the line of fire by a fraction. The arrow hisses past where his ribs had been and vanishes into the brush behind him.

He does not slow. He drives straight for the knot around Garreth, shoulder low, strength gathered for a brutal breakthrough. But the two melee bandits are ready for him. The one at J9 takes the hit just enough to spoil its angle, boots skidding in the dirt instead of being bowled clean through, while the one at J10 steps into the opening that failed to form. Steel flashes. Garreth catches one strike, turns another—and still takes a hard slash across his already battered side. The old captain stumbles half a step, breath breaking sharply, posture tightening around pain. He is still standing, still dangerous, but now visibly laboring for every breath.

At the cage, Jilly’s answer is stranger and far more effective. She swells her cheeks into a wobbling blue shield just as the bandit at G13 hacks down at her. The weapon sinks in, slows, and begins to melt into sticky gum-colored jelly in his own hands. He stares for one fatal second, overcommits, and his momentum carries him forward. He smashes shoulder-first into the cage gate at G14, rebounds off the bars, and crumples in a groaning heap at Jilly’s feet—disarmed, dazed, and out of the fight.

For the first time, the path to the girl is open.

And from near the central tent, the woman in dark wool watches it happen without panic, one hand resting near the hilt of her plain saber. Garreth is badly hurt. The cage is within reach. The camp’s leader is now fully in the open.

Jilly hopped over the fallen bandit and talked to the girl inside the cage.

"I will get you out of here. Hold on." Jilly didn't have the cage key, so she grabbed two of the bars with her hands before trying to pull it apart. Letting out a grunt and got her face turning red as she exerts all her strength. Jilly was as strong as a wet noodle so she wouldn't be able to break it in normal way, but the bars turned into gum-flavored jelly for her to tear through it.

"Let's go!" Jilly nodded at the girl and urged her to leave the cage.

Action:
Break the cage with Transmutation F

Fredrick happy that he slipped an arrow to the chest continues his momentum and goes to slam his fist into the bandit and push one into the other to buy him and Gerrath time to break away and get out of here, leaving jilly to handle the rescue mission. Turning and calling out to the old man.

"Run! we got the girl we just need to get out of here!" not caring what the woman who seems to be by the tent means or what she represents to the greater situation in the area. What matters is getting the girl back to her family in safe hands away from these dummy's.

Action: Martial arts (Hand to hand) F, Super Strength F

The cage did not hold for long.

Jilly’s strange little body pressed against iron, and the metal gave way in the way only magic makes possible—not shattered outward in some grand display, but softened, warped, and ruined just enough that bars bent apart with a shriek of protest. For one frozen heartbeat, Marra’s daughter only stared. She was smaller than fear had made her in everyone’s minds, dirt-smudged, pale, and all sharp breaths and wide eyes. Then survival won over shock. Her hand shot out, caught Jilly’s, and the moment the opening was wide enough she slipped through it and ran.

That was all the camp needed to understand what had been lost.

Shouts broke loose at once. The woman by the tent did not scream orders; she only moved, one clipped command enough to send the rest into motion. Arrows hissed through the clearing, one biting into earth, another clipping leaves close enough to sound like tearing cloth. Fredrick crashed into the nearest threat not to win cleanly, but to buy time, forcing bodies to slow, turn, and react around him rather than after the fleeing girl. Garreth, breathing hard now and holding his wounded side tighter than before, took that small, precious opening and ran with the rest. It was not pretty. It was not orderly. It was the ragged, desperate kind of escape that only works because people commit to it before they can think better of it.

Branches whipped at shoulders. Roots threatened ankles. Behind them, the bandits came on in force now, no longer a camp but a hunt. Their boots pounded the logging path, their voices carrying between the trees in bursts of anger and direction. Once, twice, another arrow sliced past close enough to be felt rather than seen. For a stretch of heartbeats it seemed obvious how this would end: the wounded old guard would slow first, the child would stumble, the distance would close, and all the violence they had barely escaped would crash down at their backs.

Then the pursuit hit something it had not expected.




A man stood in the middle of the path ahead as if he had arranged the forest itself for his entrance. His armor was absurdly polished, blue and gold catching what little light made it through the canopy; a red scarf swept at his shoulders with all the dignity of a stage curtain. Sparkles seemed almost offended not to gather around him. His face was ridiculous in a way that demanded attention, his posture worse, chin tipped high with the confidence of a man who had never once doubted that the world improved by seeing him. He lifted one gauntleted hand, inspected its gleam with grave personal interest, and only then turned his head enough to acknowledge the chaos rushing toward him.

“Oh, honestly,” came his voice—thin, nasal, and unbearably self-satisfied, as though he had been interrupted while admiring his own reflection in a spoon. “Must I truly do everything myself? Go on, then. Run along. Try not to collapse before the bridge. I would hate for this rescue to look untidy.”

He did not look worried. He did not even look hurried.

The bandits did.

Steel rang behind them not long after, followed by the sound of men realizing too late that they had run into something far beyond the sort of prey they were used to chasing. Whatever that man did on that path, he did it without needing thanks and with every expectation that he deserved it.

By the time the bridge came into view again, the world had narrowed to breath, pain, mud, and relief. Marra was already there, having lived every second of the escape in dread of seeing only half the people return. When her daughter appeared through the reeds, that dread broke. She did not call out first. She simply moved—stumbling, then running, then dropping to her knees to catch the girl in both arms as if brute force might somehow make up for the hours of helplessness that had come before. The child clung back just as fiercely.

Harrowfen Bridge held the moment in stillness. Marsh water whispered below. Garreth stayed standing only because pride and habit were doing the work his body no longer wished to do. The road behind remained open, the sounds of pursuit gone distant or broken.

For now, the girl was safe. The mother had her child back. And in the quiet that followed the running and the fear and the clash of steel, there was finally room enough for whatever words came next.

Jilly watched silently at the mother-daughter reunion from behind a bush. Hiding as if her oversized hat didn't jut out of the bush like a pole. She helped someone today, hopefully Marra moved out of that village to somewhere better. The problem with that village probably runs deeper if the neighbors would rather sell a child than dealing with bandits.

Jilly bounced towards Garreth, her eyes looking curiously on his wound. She wanted to help, but wasn't sure how. Though this made her remember that her master was an expert at healing magic so Jilly herself should have some talent for it. Maybe she would practice healing later.

"Here, Mr. Guard. You should have some lunch and then take some rest." Jilly handed Garreth a handful of candies, which was her meal for that day.

Next she bounced her way to Fredrick. She spun her arm before playfully fist-bumping his leg.

"That was great, pardner. You should throw me again next time." She said gleefully.

"That man who blocked the bandits, I feel like I have seen him before..." Jilly rubbed her non-existent chin as she tried to dig deeper into her memory, though she seemed to have up midway and simply waved her hand at the direction where they last saw him.

"Thank you for the help, Sir Coin-sama!!!"

Fredrick didn't like to run he would have rather fought but sometimes survival outweighs any ambitious belief he would have had of surviving that fight without being tortured, dead or worse. Their messy and rushed retreat only showed him how much he lacked the skills needed to take a situation on like that properly. Now standing here at the bridge and running a hand through his hair slicking it back into his ears and breathing a sigh of relief whoever that was that helped them really saved their skins. He made his way first to Garreth asking directly and bluntly "Will you Survive that?" Before Jilly handed him candy, he just kind of stared at the jelly in confusion as he received a fist bump. Confused a bit dazed and tired he really hoped they hadn't caused this to be Gerreth's last act of helping this community. He was old enough he knew this likely painted a massive target on his back especially since we hadn't eliminated the threat simply rescued a girl they were informed was sold for the safety of the town.

Fredrick watched the reunion between Marra and the girl they don't have the name of and just watched as they existed in this state of relief having the sinking feeling that this wasn't the end of this problem at all and leaving him with a bad taste in his mouth that they couldn't stop this entire situation despite their success in rescue.

Harrowfen Bridge settled slowly after the running stopped.

Marra clung to her daughter as though the act of holding her tightly enough might erase the hours between losing her and getting her back. The girl—Lysa, once Marra found breath enough to say her name aloud—held on just as hard, face buried in her mother’s shoulder, small body still shaking with the aftershock of fear. Neither seemed willing to let the other out of reach, not yet. Behind a bush whose cover was ruined by the very obvious jut of an oversized hat, Jilly watched in satisfied silence before bouncing back toward the others with the simple certainty of someone who knew helping had mattered. Fredrick, breathing hard and still looking more tired than triumphant, stayed near enough to Garreth to ask the question that needed asking.

Garreth did not answer immediately.

He took the candies Jilly offered him, turned one over in his palm as if he had not expected to be given anything so small and earnest after a fight like that, then let out a faint, tired breath that might have been the beginning of a laugh. “I’ll survive this one,” he said at last, though the hand pressed to his side made plain that survival and comfort were very different matters. His eyes shifted to Marra and Lysa, and whatever little humor had touched his face gave way to something firmer. “But they won’t survive Wickerford. Not after this.”

Marra lifted her head slowly.

Garreth nodded once, more to confirm what she already knew than to tell her anything new. “You, the girl, and me—we leave. Not tomorrow if it can be helped. Now. Greybank first, then closer to the capital. Somewhere the King’s law is still law, and not whatever bargain those cowards have made with fear.” His gaze hardened when it turned back toward the village in the distance. “That place is done with silence. Let it choke on it without you.”

The bridge held quiet around that decision. The marsh whispered below. Somewhere far back along the road, whatever became of the bandits and their pursuit no longer mattered enough to reach this moment. What remained was simpler, if not cleaner: a rescued child, a wounded old guard who had finally chosen a side he would not retreat from, and a knot of unlikely adventurers who had broken the pattern Wickerford had lived under for far too long. Jilly’s grateful wave toward the distant memory of “Sir Coin-sama” hung in the air with all the sincerity in the world, and even that absurdity felt right somehow, after everything.

For now, Harrowfen Bridge was no battlefield. It was only a place where people caught their breath, looked at what had been saved, and found room enough for whatever words still needed saying.

1. **Narrators Involved**
- DoubleChecker (wink-wink) Grade S Narrator

3. **Summary of the Roleplay**
- The group found a desperate letter asking for help in the village of Greybank. Someone is missing their daughter. A mysterious old figure approaches them, directing the group to a nearby village, Wickerford. After arriving at Wickerford, the group finds a weird atmosphere: villagers stare, and guards tell them to leave the village. They find Marra, running with her as guards try to stop them from helping. They meet again with the old man, Garreth, and they start having a better idea of what is going on: the lord of Wickerford is complicit in a series of long, ongoing kidnappings of the villagers by a group of bandits. The old man reveals himself to be a retired captain of the guard who was kicked out after deciding to oppose the whole scheme.
- The group starts to search for the bandit camp after eavesdropping on guards talking. They eventually stumble upon the camp itself, Marra's daughter being held in a cage. A fight ensues, Garreth becomes heavily wounded, and the girl is freed from the cage. The group runs away, being given chase by the bandits, numbers now greater as the ones who had been out on patrols join the chase. In the nick of time, a mysterious figure emerges from the shadows, allowing for the group to escape with Marra's daughter.
- Marra is reunited with her daughter; Garreth suggests the trio move to a village closer to the capital. The rescue was a success.

5. **Criminal Acts Perpetrated**
- None

6. **Lore to Establish**
- None

7. **Partial Participants**
- Rat (MJlol)
- Kind (deleted user)

9. **Full-Time Participants**
- Fredrick (discord.com/channels/5207614178892185…) - Scarce Rushdown - Standing Grade F
- Jilly (discord.com/channels/5207614178892185…) - SpoiledBread - Standing Grade F

10. **Characters with Point Boosters**
- None

12. **Assets/Titles Roleplayed For**
- Fredrick - Ryke Adventurer Guild F
- Jilly - Ryke Adventurer Guild F

13. **Characters with [Wanted]**
- None

14. Criminal Titles
- None

15. **Special Skills or Assets(downtime activities)**
- None

16. **Transactions Performed**
- None

18. **Character Sheet Oddities**
- None

19. **Aftermath **
- Now it comes to light, more publicly, what has been happening in Wickerford. Will those with the knowledge step up and ready themselves to nip the evil in the bud?

20. **Narrator Bonuses**
- None

21. **Additional Notes**
- None