Envy and the Outcasts returned to the surface of Stormreach to discover a changed world. Literally: the world had appeared to advance by a month, even though Twitch and her companions had experienced the passage of just a few days. Twitch's puzzlement at the phenomenon would have to wait, however, as the companions quickly learned that their adversaries, the Bilgerats, had taken advantage of what appeared to be their extended absence to post a bounty for Legion and to kidnap Yipping's friend Khagra. No sooner had the group reconvened at the rechristened sloop The Seven Sins than Yipping urged his companions to join him in rescuing Khagra. The group quickly agreed and began scouting the area near the city docks where the Bilgerats were known to operate. Envy--who, she had recently revealed, was working off a life debt to the demon lord Levistus--and Twitch soon noticed a tail. It turned out to be a rat tail, as a set of Bilgerat scouts attacked the group. Envy and the Outcasts made fairly quick work of the wererats, who appeared unwilling to share information about Khagra's whereabouts. But The Traveler's pathways are mysterious, and no sooner had the companions disposed of the Bilgerat threat than Twitch noticed the bugbear she had befriended after the group's initial attack on the Bilgerat warehouse. Zegra the bugbear, who had forsworn the criminal life, expressed his gratitude for Twitch's past and present generosity and shared that Khagra was likely to be in the Bilgerat hideout underneath the storage room of The Princess Crown, a magic supply shop not far from their location. Armed with that information, the companions formulated a rough strategy to enter the shop and seek entrance to the hideout. While an actual princess's crown may be delicate and ornate, The Princess Crown shop was anything but; Bilgerat guards posed as customers while the erstwhile proprietor guarded the counter that separated the shop from the back room and the entrance to the hideout. After a few unsuccessful attempts at subterfuge, Envy and the Outcasts discarded subtlety for brute force and battled the guards, leaving none alive to give warning. Beneath the shop, the Bilgerat leader Jerome and his henchlings appeared prepared to murder Khagra by dropping him into a pit. Envy and the Outcasts sprang into action, setting up a magical web to prevent Khagra's fatal fall while engaging Jerome (whose gruesome method of regeneration involved eating the rats he controlled) and his wererat forces. A nimble assassin wererat proved difficult to drop, but one by one, Jerome and the other Bilgerats fell to the companions' blades both magical and mundane. With Jerome slain and Khagra rescued, the companions prepared to confront whatever new threats awaited them in this changing and dangerous landscape.
