Before deciding what to do next – ask Val if you can take a sip from their flask. After all this fighting, you need it more than ever.

Rashan

What now? Now you would like a drink. Val obliges, offering you their peanut flask.

You take a sip, and immediately your whole mouth is overcome with a burning sensation. Suppressing a cough and choking back tears, you force the firey liquid down your gullet.

“Good, huh?” says Val.

While you recover, you watch a carrier pigeon flutter above the treeline and towards the mid-afternoon sun. You wonder if that’s Alex on his way back to Murida, getting ready to tell the Queen about how you should be stripped of your knighthood and thrown in the Underriver. You pour a little alcohol on the tip of your blade.

We can’t leave them here. We’ll fight the titan together. Let’s spend as much time as we can training and arming the shrews here with rocks and sticks and set up an ambush.

Matty

Okay. It’s time to get serious. You start outlining a plan to ambush the vulpes.

“Hold on,” Rosaline interrupts. “An ambush? You’re getting ahead of yourself. Who said we’re fighting the vulpes in the first place?”

Val chimes in. “Yeah, like, Alex was being a fuzz-nozzle, but he wasn’t wrong. Us three fighting a vulpes would be reeeeeally stupid. You get that, right? Plus, you made a contract.”

Oh, to hell with the accursed contract. Besides, it wouldn’t be just the three of you. The whole village could be equipped with sticks and stones.

“You saw the state of the village,” says Rosaline. “These people are not warriors. They would be nothing but liabilities on the battlefield. I suspect the vulpes deliberately targeted the healthiest shrews first to prevent exactly the kind of uprising you’re suggesting.”

Move all the people. The time might not be on your side, but staying here will only lead to a fight you can’t win.

W1770W

Alright, forget fighting. You start outlining a new plan to move the shrews.

“Move them where?” asks Rosaline.

Ah, well, you still haven’t worked that part out yet.

“Quality plan,” says Val.

“Okay, look,” says Rosaline. She stretches a paw out and measures the distance between the sun and the treeline. “There’s four hours left of good daylight. Did the vulpes say what time he would return tonight?”

He did not.

“Then we should assume dusk. That’s usually when vulpes start to prowl. So if we give ourselves two hours to investigate the village and evaluate our options, that leaves the remaining two hours to execute the best plan we can design.”

“Or to bail if the situation is a complete loss,” adds Val.

Priority one now, though, is to talk to the residents. Find out anything they know about the titan, and anything hidden about Solhill that can be used to your advantage. 

Alfador

You like Rosaline’s idea. Talking to the residents and searching every corner might open up new options for fighting or fleeing. But where to start?

“Oh, right. I’ve got something that might help,” says Val. They produce a crumpled piece of paper. “I drew a map of the village earlier. Please excuse the crudeness, it’s merely a rough sketch.”

Wow, Val. This map is awful.

“I DID MY BEST,” they cry.

You examine Val’s map carefully. In addition to the forum which you’ve already visited, you see a pub, a throne room, an apothecary, a library, an earth cellar, and several communal living quarters.

Thoroughly searching one location will take thirty minutes.