In the morning, Kaldalis had to force himself out of bed well before he wanted to. With a larger obligation on his hands for the council, he knew he could afford spending the time on this project and put Reno, SeventyEight, Balrim, and Myrin on standby, but the council had given him three days to prove himself.

Every hour counted.

Strictly speaking, he only needed about eight hours of sleep every two days. Even if he wanted more.

So, as soon as he hit the eight-hour mark, he forced himself out of his tent to get to work.

The sky was just starting to light up from the rising sun when he reached the beach. Even so, sailors were on hand, ready and waiting to ferry Kaldalis back to Cotanaku, with a few of them unloading crates and barrels - though these seemed to be coming from the anchored boat rather than the other town. He managed not to call his ferryman “Captain Placeholder” as he negotiated passage back to the old camp.

Kaldalis used the trip to think his course of action through as soon as the sleepy morning fog over his mind started to thin. His first priority was to appease the Zaran council by gathering as much help as he could get. It would go a long way towards that if the promise of a glut of townbuilding quests might entice some of the people who remained in Cotanaku to take the trip over and contribute their efforts. But beyond that, his second priority was to actually prepare for the final attack on the town. There were a lot of factors that would go into that beyond just massing forces and erecting defenses.

It was possible that no amount of preparation would be enough. What if the next type of Infernal Horde could fly? Or tunnel under their defenses? Even the Xorn could present a new threat if their upgraded forms had huge line or cone attacks.

The final raid would be dangerous - a pitched battle with foes that deadly would make it nearly impossible to avoid casualties.

People would die.

With that sobering realization, he reorganized his priorities. The most important thing was saving lives. He and the other PCs would eventually respawn if they fell, but the NPCs? If they died, they were gone forever.

As he arrived in Cotanaku, he saw the inscription on the wall near the beachside entrance to the town. The list of names of the NPCs who weren’t coming back.

“First order of business,” he said to himself, “before shit hits the fan, we need an exit strategy. New rule: PCs only on the field of battle.”

To that end, he made his way towards Cotanaku’s council building to meet with the man responsible for him being put in this position in the first place.

Garyung was in a meeting with the council when Kaldalis arrived, but it finished shortly, and the Bhogad appeared ecstatic to see him. Kaldalis tried to return the larger man’s smile, but he wasn’t confident his chagrin didn’t show through. Now that he was face-to-face with him again it was hard to forget how Garyung had forced him into his current position despite his own wishes.

“Kaldalis, please,” Garyung said, clapping him on the shoulder and leading him back out of the council building, “let me show you around a little. I think you’ll be impressed by our progress here.”

He hadn’t noticed any difference on his way in, but as soon as Garyung was with him, pointing out what upgrades had been made, it all made sense. The first upgrade had been to the walls, flaring them out at the tops as a defense specific to the threat they’d experienced previously with the Syncoresi climbing the walls.

After that, though, most of the upgrades remaining had been quality of life.

The food-court-like mess hall had been expanded, giving the cooks a more robust kitchen space. Freshwater wells had spawned when they’d upgraded to a town, and now they had been made larger and more secure. This included a pump house that the Bhogad told him was the first step to establishing organized irrigation for the would-be farms outside the town walls.

Many of the living areas had been upgraded from tents to smaller huts - though Garyung said that most of the work had been done by the adventurers following up on personal quests to lay permanent claim to the temporary housing and upgrade them on their own initiative. Another thing that had been built mostly on adventurer initiative - with support from the council - was a distillery, which was being put to use purifying and bottling water.

“As we discussed at our last meeting,” Garyung said, “I have been favoring stockpiling materials so that we can establish another camp farther inland soon, but I’ve been listening to the demands of the people. And, you know. Making decisions. On my own. No big deal or anything.”

“I’m impressed,” Kaldalis said. Despite the poor facade of nonchalance, he didn’t miss Garyung puffing up a bit with pride at that. “Things are coming along nicely.”

“The people here chose me to do this job,” Garyung said, casually running a hand through the slightly longer fur on the top of his head. “It’s my responsibility to get it done.”

“Right,” Kaldalis said, biting back a comment about assigning a willing volunteer for the position of envoy for Panbu. “Speaking of responsibilities, I need to discuss mine with you. Panbu has come under attack by the Infernal Horde, so I was hoping we could borrow some manpower to take care of business.”

Garyung frowned, brow furrowing. He was silent for such a long moment Kaldalis found himself worrying that steam was going to start leaking out of his ears.

“We can’t have another memorial wall after this,” Garyung said at last. “If the Infernal Horde is attacking, I don’t want to be sending people to their deaths.”

“Absolutely,” Kaldalis said quickly, before Garyung could continue his train of thought. “I’m glad our priorities are aligned here. I’m not looking for the fight yet. We assemble all our crafters and gatherers and smorc our way to victory. We rush the Zaran’s demand for a town, trigger the final raid, and repel it. The quest here clearly called it the final raid, so if we get it done, we’re done dealing with them forever.” He raised a fist and brought it down on his other hand. “If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.”

Garyung snorted at the joke, but his expression became much more thoughtful and less concerned.

“It seems a reasonable idea,” Garyung admitted. “As long as we get them out before the fighting starts.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Kaldalis agreed, putting a hand on Garyung’s shoulder. “I was actually thinking of loading all the other NPCs on a boat and sending them over here when we hit the button. We got through our first raid with no losses. Literally zero. I think we can do it again, but if we can’t, I want everyone in your care.”

Garyung’s eyes widened at that, but he was nodding. It was uncertain at first, but resolve filled his eyes as Kaldalis spoke.

“No casualties. No losses.” He mimicked Kaldalis’s earlier gesture, thumping his open palm with a fist. “A perfect operation. One for the history books.”

“And I can’t imagine anyone better suited to handling it than you,” Kaldalis said, using his hand on Garyung’s shoulder to direct him to the left, towards the beach. “You organize your people, get on a boat, and lead the charge. Everyone looks up to you. They follow your lead. Nobody can drum up support like you can. And when it’s all done, I can think of no one I’d rather have at the head of our forces against the Infernal Horde.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Garyung said, raising his hands and stopping in his tracks. “Me? You want to drag me out there?”

“Again,” Kaldalis said, sensing a metaphorical fissure opening up underneath his plan, “no one is better at gathering support than you are. Everybody loves you, man.”

“No, no, no,” Garyung said, shaking his head emphatically. “Absolutely not. I’m sorry, but my responsibility is here. Cotanaku needs me.” His grimace turned into a scowl. “I can’t believe you’d ask me to abandon my post. What is this, some kind of test?”

Kaldalis threw his hands up. “Fuck, dude. I told you I didn’t want this job. All I’m doing is telling you what needs to be done. If you wanted someone to deal with Panbu for you without getting involved, you should have found someone who wanted to do that! But you stuck me with the job, so now you’re stuck with me.”

“It’s not my fault,” Garyung snapped, crossing his burly arms over his chest. “I didn’t have time to find anyone else. And as far as I’ve heard, you’ve been doing a bang-up job.”

Kaldalis realized, in that moment, that he was about to say something extremely unkind about Garyung’s mental state. The man had obviously been lying to himself about how immaturely he’d handled Kaldalis’s assignment as Envoy, and in the absence of Kaldalis himself complaining about it, he’d believed his own lie.

Instead of snapping something he didn’t really mean, Kaldalis took a deep breath and pressed his index finger and thumb to the bridge of his nose. As he blew the breath out, he realized he wasn’t going to get what he wanted out of the conversation. All he could hope for was to get what he needed.

“Look,” he said at last, finally meeting Garyung’s eyes again. “Like I said, nobody drums up support like you do. Maybe you can throw around some of that social weight and get the word out. Send whoever you can spare. I have three days to show them what we can do.”

Kaldalis turned and started back towards the boats before the conversation could continue.

He couldn’t guarantee that if Garyung said something dismissive again that he’d be able to hold his tongue twice.

Better to focus on the work ahead of him than on the discomforts behind him.