When speaking with Zdenka, you are made aware that the Stonehall Dwarves are busy working on the breakout, and that they plan to go in roughly 72 hours. **Metagame Decision Time:** You must complete at least three preparatory tasks ahead of the escapade. You can select up to five. After that point, you will be out of time. The things you do or don't do will have effects on your plan and its outcome, and of course your safety and well being, in some cases. ## Infiltration & Reconnaissance - **Playing Pretend**: Posing as merchants, maintenance workers, or delivery personnel to map guard rotations and identify security weaknesses - **Let's Drink and Call It Work**: Social encounters with off-duty guards at taverns to gather intel about shift changes, prisoner locations, and internal politics - **Direct Recon**: Sneaking through service tunnels or old dwarven mining shafts to scout the prison layout firsthand ## Resource Acquisition - **Arms Deal**: Negotiating with black market contacts for specialized tools (lockpicks, alchemical explosives, rope, disguises) - **A Pre-Crime Crime**: Breaking into a Tortle administrative building to steal prison blueprints or guard schedules - **Coercion**: Convincing a sympathetic guard or prison worker to "misplace" keys or uniforms ## Personnel & Allies - **Rally the Dwarves**: Recruiting additional muscle from underground resistance cells or sympathetic dwarves - **An Inside Perspective**: Tracking down a former prisoner who escaped and knows the layout - **Windows of Opportunity**: Persuading a corrupt official to look the other way during a specific time window ## Sabotage & Distractions - **Let's Start a Riot**: Creating a diversion elsewhere in the city (staged riot, false emergency, festival celebration) to draw guards away - **Comms are Down**: Disabling alarm systems or communication networks between prison levels - **Poison All Around**: Poisoning the guards' evening meal to cause widespread "illness" during the breakout ## Technical Challenges - **Breaking Defenses**: Working with Zdenka to plan ways to disable magical wards or mechanical locks - **Time It Just Right**: Testing escape routes and timing under realistic conditions - **Strategic Command Decisions**: Coordinating simultaneous actions across multiple prison levels