Before I reached White Plume, I jogged east a little ways until I found the Rebel encampment. I approached the camp in Sneak. The guards were much higher level than me and could have seen right through me, but since I was a Rebel and on their side, they didn't break my concealment. The camp was nearly bursting at the seams with orcs. Rok'gar's father, Mak'gar, was assembling his troops, at least a couple dozen. Rok'gar was busy outfitting them with gear and they were preparing for war. There didn't seem to be any real urgency to their movements, so hopefully, I had time to pay this off.

I ordered Duckling to wait at the outskirts of the camp and loaded a few choice items into his inventory before doubling back to White Plume. There, I made a detour to the Shady Skills trainer. Thanks to my membership in the Duck Brotherhood, those always appeared on my mini-map, and I was easily able to locate him in the cellar of the potions shop. He offered an assortment of lockpicks, crowbars, single-use disguise kits, various potion recipes, and what I'd been hoping for— a couple of Sneak and Backstab enchantments that I should be high enough to learn with a little bit of time spent at the enchanting table.

I paused because he had one more interesting option: a spellbook of Buff Undead. I read the description: "Increases Undead targets' stats by 30% for 2 seconds. Scales based on user's Sneak level."

I had seen the elements before for a Sneak Necromancer build, which I wasn't going for, and this was clearly meant to augment it. I considered it. It would take all my money, and I wouldn't be able to afford the Backstab enchantments, not just yet, but it would fit beautifully with what I was planning.

I bought it, learned it, and cast it a few times on the Undead rats scurrying around the cellar. At my level of Sneak, the enhancement lasted for 15 seconds. It took all of my magic to cast, but I regenerated that fast enough that by the time the buff wore off, I could cast it again. And it didn't have a cooldown or a target limit either. I grinned. Things were starting to click into place.

After that, I proceeded to the top of White Plume and presented myself outside the Drake's castle, where a pair of guards harassed me.

"What business have you with the Drake?" one of them asked.

A list of options popped up. It was a pretty long list by now, as I spotted all of the various different prompts that could have sent me over here. I'd been dodging coming for quite a while now, it seemed. I selected, "I have news for the Drake about the appearance of the Turducken."

They scoffed at me. "The Turducken is legend! It doesn't exist.”

“But if it did, someone should warn the Drake,” the second guard pointed out.

"I suppose you're right," the first guard said. They stood aside and watched me disappear up the stairs as one of them commented, "I used to be an adventurer like you before I took an arrow to the wing."

I ignored them and entered the Drake's Hall. It was a wooden thatch building like a Viking mead hall with tables of feasting warriors and their dependents. The Drake sat on a throne at the top of the hall. I headed for him, and his advisor and an armored woman stepped down. The woman was humanoid with a bit of an orcish cast to her features, but she had hair, so she wasn't an orc.

"The Drake is not to be disturbed while feasting," the woman declared.

Again, I selected, "I have news about the Turducken."

The woman glared at me. "You are just trying to stir up trouble here. Be gone."

The advisor intervened. "I will speak to the Drake about this." He went and whispered to the large birdman on the throne, who nodded a long-necked head. The advisor waddled back. "This is not the first rumor the Drake has heard about such things."

I suppressed a grin. Certainly wasn't. “A patrol was sent out to the Western Watchtower at dawn. They have not yet returned. Perhaps you could go and see what is keeping them. That is the closest tower to the Dreadfort where you say the Turducken appeared.”

I accepted the quest. Just like Shad had said, I would be sent out there, and another Turducken would appear, giving me a second chance to absorb its soul and start the Honk power chain.

The Drake indicated the woman in armor. "My right-wing woman, Astrid, will accompany you."

I felt a moment of panic, worrying she would kick Duckling out of my party, but she didn't actually become a follower. She just dogged my steps as I left the keep.

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We made our way down through White Plume and out the gates. I immediately set off toward the Western Watchtower. Meanwhile, I checked through my inventory and queued a few things up: Potion of Fleet Foot, Potion of Fire Resist, Healing Potion, and, for good measure, equipped the Boots of Major Fire Resistance I had gotten as a reward from the refueling the kilns quest. How boots shaped for ducks could fit my feet was beyond me, but they did.

We approached the watchtower. Even from a good ways off, I could see it smoking and in ruins, but Astrid didn't seem to notice until we had almost reached it and stumbled over pieces of masonry fallen to the ground and a couple of dead bodies. Then she drew up, holding tight to her spear.

"What could have done this? Bandits or..."

There was a roar overhead. A Turducken circled. It lobbed a stuffing breath ball at us. I leaped aside as it crashed into the earth and kicked up a load of dirt. Then I shot one spell at it and made sure that it hit, turned, and took off running. The Turducken followed.

I kept glancing over my shoulder to check on its location. It had a pretty well-defined swoop pattern where it would come in low, land, hurl a stuffing breath, swoop back, get up high ahead of me, fire a longer range attack, then swoop back down again. All the time I was running, so its loops got longer and longer. Other than dodging the stuffing breath, it wasn't too bad. It might have been annoying if I was trying to hit it as it was constantly flying around. That wasn't my plan.

I raced eastward. Soon I could see the rise where the rebel encampment waited. Duckling should be just ahead of me.

I toggled my follower interface. This was going to be the tricky part. I could see through Duckling's eyes, but that made it really difficult to keep running.

I ordered him forward into the camp and commanded him to drop the explosives I'd put in his pocket with a one-second fuse.

I switched back to my own vision and dodged another stuffing attack just in time. Up ahead came fire and explosions. There was a bunch of shouts and a clatter of armor as the guards and orcs in the camp leapt up and started looking for who was throwing bombs.

I sprinted forward, activating my ability and burning all my stamina to move as fast as possible. Since Duckling was the one to have set off the explosion, I was still labeled as an ally to the guards. I raced right into the camp and dove into the big tent, then activated my Sneak just as the turducken landed in the center of the camp.

The orcs started shouting and attacking the turducken. I turned and targeted it and hit it with my Buff Undead spell. Its tail lashed out, its wings kicked orcs skyward.

It bit down and chopped the head right off of Mak'gar, their leader. I couldn't have planned it better myself. Orcs don't do well at change of command during the middle of a battle.

As my buff ran low, I cast it on the Turducken a second time. It sprayed stuffing all over the camp. The remaining orcs were hacking it to pieces pretty quickly. This wouldn't be the first Turducken they had seen, but I had taken them off guard, and this one was awfully powerful. By the time it fell, only a couple of orcs were left. I felt its soul whoosh into me. This time I let it. I wasn’t planning on sticking around for the quest chain anyway.

I heard Rok'gar out in the camp stomping around. "How did this happen? Who did this? What's going on here?"

I slipped out of the camp, still in stealth, and picked my way past the lines. Most of the guards were dead. I was halfway down the hill when I heard Rok'gar's voice again.

"Why did you do this?"

I turned. He was staring right at me. I could tell he couldn't quite see me because his eyes were not properly focused, but he was looking right where I was. I must have been disturbing plants as I went.

"I thought we were friends, Colin," he called.

I felt bad, but I wasn't stupid enough to reply. Instead, I waited until his gaze shifted somewhere else, then took three steps to the side and froze again.

"I thought we were playing this straight," he continued. "This is a stupid cheese. You should be ashamed of yourself."

I waited, not daring to breathe, until he finally gave up and stomped back into the camp.

I went ahead and turned in the quest to the Drake of White Plume, even though that progressed me farther down the main line. I was going to need the money it gave me as a reward for this next bit. It wasn't much, 40 gold. That was enough to buy the Sneak and Backstab enchantments I’d been needing.

As I left the shop to consider my next move, a nondescript NPC approached me. He was a duck person, drab of feather, carrying a satchel slung over his shoulder.

"Just who I've been looking for," he told me cheerfully. "I've got a message for you. Let's see." He reached into his satchel, searched around, then produced an envelope for me. "That's it." He turned and ran off, and I, curious, opened the message. I assumed it would be the next point on my quest. Perhaps the Grey Wattles were summoning me to secret training.

Colin, by the time you get this, I'll be dead.

That sounds nice and dramatic, doesn't it? Anyway, I figured out enough of what's going on, and I've got to get outside of the system to put some things together on my end. I think I've figured out how to get a good ending on this, one that lets us walk away feeling good about ourselves. I'm leaving you all the resources I've collected as the terror that honks in the night.

What I need you to do is persuade the Duck Brotherhood to listen and come out of hiding. You'll need to end the game fast before anyone else can strike. I think you're going to have a narrow window there, so be ready. They don’t trust me enough to let me talk, but I think you’ve got a better chance. Tell them we’re waiting for them out here, and I’ll have help.

Shad.

I crumpled up the message, tossed it away, thinking furiously. He could have left me a lot more details, but I suppose he didn't have to. Well, I’d been working on a way to put a fast end to the game all along, and now I knew what I needed to do. Time to put this exploit into action.