[Voting open] Working with a rat (Eared's Journey #8)

We’ve been journeying with mouse merchant, Eared Grant, as he arrives at, enters, and explores Rolling Coast, with you voting on what he chooses to do - read a summarised recap of the story so far here.

Read on to vote on his next step!

Despite Kester’s misgivings, Eared decides to trust that Gendol is telling the truth and to work with him. It’s a big step to work with a rat, particularly one they were fighting with the night before, but it’s a step Eared feels they must take.

“Before you leave,” says the restaurant owner, “I must pay you for your work of stopping these hijackings.”

Eared is about to turn down the payment, but Kester speaks up quickly: “Thank you, kind sir.”

The restaurant owner hands them a bag of 50 pips as thanks.

“I would love to give you more, but with all the hijackings, I’ve been rather short on income lately. What I will do for you, though, is offer you free meals any time you want them.”

“Thank you,” says Eared, “we appreciate your hospitality.”

Gendol looks around awkwardly, knowing that he’s largely to blame for the food hijackings. The owner of the restaurant turns and leaves the trio to figure out their plan.

Eared continues: “Right - let’s figure out our next steps here. We need to get into the Packratz hideout, and figour out a way to get our gear back. Gendol, what would you suggest?”

Gendol thinks a bit before responding, “Well, we could play it a few different ways. Right now, Clipp and his cronies will think that I’ve been captured, killed, or delayed. If I arrive back empty-handed, they’ll wonder where the sack of food went, but since I’m already a bit cut up from last night, I could easily convince them that a group of Quillbane’s followers attacked me to steal the sack.”

“And what would Kester and I do?”

“Maybe you could bring me in, say that you helped me recover, and you want a reward.”

“Not a bad idea! But what if they don’t believe you?”

“Well, another plan could be that I pretend to hold one of you as a prisoner, while the other follows out of sight, and sneaks in behind us. That way, we would all be in the hideout and have the advantage of them not knowing how many of us are there.”

“That could work, too.”

“I have another plan,” interjects Kester, “what if we pretend to be part of Quillbane’s retinue, and arrive at the hideout demanding tribute. We could even bring Gendol here as a prisoner.”

Gendol thinks about that one, and says, “Clipp hates Quillbane - he claims the old hedgehog owes him money, so he’ll likely take you prisoner if we do that”

“Well, that would help us get inside,” says Eared.

“I have one other idea,” says Gendol, “it will be a little risky, but could be quite effective. Freddo is trying to overthrow Clipp as leader, and he wants to work with mice like you. I have some friends amongst his followers who I could meet at the Oily Olive, and they could bring us to Freddo discreetly. We could work with him to figure out a plan for what to do next.”

Eared thinks about all this. They have four very good ideas, each with their own amount of risk, and any of them has the potential to his gear back.

Eared needs to make a decision here - which plan should they go with?

:white_check_mark: Any logged-in user can vote - just click on the option you like the sound of. You can join for free or login here.

Which plan should they try?
  • Claim they helped Gendol after he was attacked, and ask the Packratz for a reward
  • Pretend that one of them is Gendol’s prisoner, while the other follows in secret
  • Pretend to be followers of Quillbane, bringing Gendol as prisoner and demanding tribute
  • Make a plan with Freddo’s followers to meet with Freddo and work with him
0 voters
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Looks like we have a three-way tie here for the next step in the story! I could throw my vote in as a decider, but it’s much better if others do it, so I’m not the one driving the story :slight_smile:

I’m going to ping @members here to see if anyone would like to throw their vote into the mix.

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