The Three Rioters Timeline and Summary

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• At the beginning of the Pardoner's Tale, we meet three party boys who spend all their time in the taverns, drinking, gambling, and whoring around.
• The Three Rioters see a corpse go by one day and learn that it is the body of a friend of theirs, killed by Death.
• After recalling all of the deaths Death has caused throughout the countryside, the Rioters swear a pact of brotherhood and make a plan to seek out and kill Death.
• On the way to find Death, they meet with an Old Man and treat him rudely, asking why he is so old. He tells them that no one will exchange his youth for age, and that he has begged Death and Mother Earth to take him, to no avail.
• Convinced that the Old Man knows where to find Death, the Rioters threaten him with violence if he doesn't reveal his whereabouts. He directs them to a nearby grove.
• When they reach the grove, the Three Rioters find eight bushels of gold, which they decide to wait until nightfall to transport to one of their homes.
• They draw straws to see who should go to town to bring back food and ale, with the lot falling to the youngest.
• After the youngest has left, the two others hatch a plan to stab him when he returns so that they only have to split the gold two ways.
• The youngest of the three buys a deadly poison in town and spikes his friends' wine bottles with it, planning to kill them so that he can have all the gold for himself.
• When he gets back to the grove, his two friends kill him.
• The other two sit down to eat and drink, swallow the poison, and die painful deaths.
• No personal growth or character development here.