With purses fattened by wererat gold, we set our plans in motion. Ygnas held a party announcing her vacation to Candletown or some such place, honoring her bargain with the rats but leaving the gold they paid her with us. Rowen did the same with a different destination. Pluck was still detained. Old friend Lyrian and new friend Kiba with her dog Kiki joined us from the Glorious Blades. Rumor has it Kiki used to run a delivery service. We hired on several new mercenaries, including a wizard Golson, and shared out silver daggers among them all. One got to borrow my longbow and 10 silver arrows. Another got 10 silver bolts for his crossbow. We spent the night at an inn. This was all very expensive, but it was rat gold buying it.

The next day (and the last day of the blood moon) we descended into the sewers again, picking up urban barbarian tribe leader Thomas on the way.

Alas the Yggian paladins were there before us, guarding the path downwards. This struck me as incredibly suspicious. Why would they leave people to guard the entrance? How did they figure out the valve system without being given the key and the combinations? Why are they trying so hard to stop us joining the fight?

I think the Yggians have been corrupted and are defending the wererats instead. Maybe not all of them, maybe not even these two (that they were left outside the lair is a little suggestive of innocence). But the fact that the Yggians keep posing guards that want to stop people going in is troublesome.

Arguing didn’t work, and Pluck – the brother of the other Pluck, strangely enough – refused to use his one spell to get us past the Yggian guards without a fight, so we tried a few distractions. Eventually we lured them out of position to the south by way of Lyrian playing a damsel in distress, and I managed to slip past with Landon in one boat, plus the torchbearer with his dog. The rest of the group was still on the wrong side of the guards, though.

I couldn’t think of a good way to get the rest of the group past without violence, and our options for distraction were exhausted. Either Pluck relented on his refusal to use magic to bypass the guards, or I did something to change the situation. So I called out to my friends “I got past the paladins, I’m going down!” and jumped down the staircase to the lower level. From above I heard faint cursing, probably from my friends and the paladins both.

Hopefully the rest of the group can sneak past in the chaos, or fight past if their spines stiffen, or the Yggians do something to reveal their true loyalties, or maybe I can find out what’s really going on.

But as for me, I swore a vow, and I’m done running.