Robots, wizards and Eels Oh My!

Following Radcliff's advice, Butch, Florida Man, Socket and Ray headed south toward the old state of Florida.

As they progressed the landscape changed and Socket explained that the large water filled craters that they were seeing in the ground were likely the result of erosion and storm issues than from golden age war time.

As they headed south they kept encountering towns that were empty. The freeholds were cleared of people and looked like they had been attacked and emptied quickly. No bodies but lots of belongings and a bit of blood.

This was the story in at least 4 towns heading in a southern direction until they found the largest town in the middle of a ring of 'craters'.

This town was identified as Bean Town and there was an organized group of mercenaries and concerned citizens that were arraigned with a 'Glitter Girl' named Amareyla at the center.

Socket was initially scared of the encampment because it had a lot of the armor and look of the CS but it was not quite the same.

Amareyla was a bit welcoming but a bit frosty and after the crew of Dinotours Excursions LLC made it known that they were there peacefully and that they were hunting red stump fungus, everyone settled in and began to help out a little.

Ray went around town asking about the Fungus but was not told much until that evening, when a man explained he had seen it to the southwest near the ocean growing on driftwood.

Over the next couple hours Ray went with Amareyla out into the woods to scout and reviled he was a dragon somewhat to her chagrin, but they were able to work through it.

Florida Man spent his time eating and hanging out with the guards, while Butch gambled half of the townsfolk's life savings away from them.

That night some drunk people vanished in the woods and when a guard went to follow them, he vanished also. The next morning when this came to the gang headed out with a pair of guards to see if they could find the missing people.

Eventually they discovered that the people must have been dragged into one of the water holes prompting Socket to go for a dive. Socket found a Devil Eel chewing on something and freaked out a bit.

When he re-emerged from the a different pit, he told everyone what he had seen and Ray jumped in with a dead gator to try and distract the monster. He realized he liked his hands after he saw how big the monster was and attempted to steal Florida Man's staff to use as a kabob but ended up dragging Florida Man under the water with him, which turned out to be a fortuitous turn of events because as Ray distracted the creature, Florida Man proved his name a bit and deftly dove down to gather the remains of some kind of bone-robot hybrid.

On the surface again, Florida Man went off to burn his name into his stick, a little butt hurt that Ray tried to steal it, while Socket examined the techno-wizard automaton remains. He determined that there were certainly some parts of it he did not recognize but for the most part it seemed to be all tech he had knowledge of.

Amareyla seemed to examine some runes on the device but was tight-lipped as to why when she stalked off to consult with the town watch captain. After some time Socket began working on a device to detect magic at range while everyone else milled about a bit.

Near dinner, everyone observed that Amareyla and the captain had some kind of disagreement and she stalked off. Ray followed, apparently out of concern that she had not had dinner and she was adamant that he not follow her. Eventually Amareyla had to knock Ray out to keep him from following her.

While that took place, Butch and Florida Man spent the evening trying to make a net over the town's central water hole out of fear that monster robots would suddenly spring out of it.

Amareyla eventually returned and asked Florida Man to help her try and drag Ray back to town. This did not seem to bother Florida Man at all and he did not ask what happened, he just agreed to help.

Amareyla and Florida Man tired but were not able to move the almost 7 ton Dragon form Ray. Florida Man used a stick smeared with poo as smelling salts to aide him in waking up and accidentally got some on his nose. When Ray woke, he was a bit angry with Amareyla and smashed her into the marsh. After she tried to intimidate him off her, he eventually helped her out of the mud.

Amereyla tried to convince Ray to come back to town as a dragon but Ray was not able to agree because Kage had warned him so carefully to avoid being known as a dragon by humans.

When they returned to town, Amareyla attempted to out Ray once more by blaming the fire in the woods she caused with her weapon, on a friendly dragon, but to no avail. Amareyla went off to go got sleep and Ray attempted to talk some facts out of the Guard Captain.

When the guard captain unsurprisingly attempted to stone wall Ray about a mysterious person that the captain and Amareyla were arguing about, so Ray just went of into the woods and followed her trail to a house that was the obvious residence of some kind of techno wizard. This wizard had drawn runes all over the interior of the home and then instead of unbolting and exiting the home, kicked the door off the hinges.

Ray copied some of the material he observed on the walls and then headed back to town to tell everyone what he found. When he returned, he was meat with a bit of skepticism but Socket, Butch, Florida Man and two guards eventually left to go investigate.

When they got to the house, Socket looked around and gathered some techno wizard things while Butch and Florida Man looted the rest. There was a water hole out front and So Socket dove in and checked it out. At the bottom there was a tunnel that was lined with all kinds of debris and it became obvious that this is where the material for the robot part they found could have come from. At the end of the tunnel he found what could only be described as a robot factory.

They headed back to town and shared this knowledge and then there was a discussion about what to do with it. Ray and Amareyla continued to butt heads and eventually it was decided that the town had to defend itself but the crew of Dinotours Excursions plus Amareyla had determined to assault the factory.

Radcliff the Magnificent

It was a short drive from 'Snake Pond' down to fort Hawkins. When they arrived, they were greeted with a group of armed men and women who were wearing special armor that appeared to be made out of Dinosaur hide.

The group was weary but not aggressive. When it was explained to them that the employees of dinotours LLC were there bearing a warning about a virulent and dangerous disease, they were allowed in to talk to the people who run Ft. Hawkins, Pennet and Gran.

Pennent and Gran are two Elves from another world that landed here and fell in love with the rustic charm of Rifts Earth. They run a wilderness scout school out of Ft. Hawkins and help control the monsters that come out of rifts located in the 'Mounds' near by. Ray was very excited and wanted to

After some introductions and explanations and learning that Pennent is a dick, they were shown an area where they could relax and rest. That evening during dinner, there was a commotion outside.

Everyone went running and discovered a group of scouts running back from the directions of the mounds being chased by a group of large ape like monsters which someone mentioned might be demons.

Ray, Butch, Florida Man and Socket leaped into action riding out to save the men in the APC. They had no trouble getting out to the men but they had a really hard time killing the monsters and just managed to get away.

After they got back to the fort the monsters approached and the wilderness scouts managed to kill them at the wall. Gran mentioned they must be demonic in nature and mentioned that you would likely need silver to really hurt them.

The survivors explained that two much larger monsters were waiting by the rift that these things came out of and that it was likely going to be a problem if they were left alone. This is where Socket, Butch, Florida Man and Ray all were super excited to go kill the big monsters, with help from the wilderness scouts.

So with 16 scouts in the back of the APC they headed out to go kill the monsters. When they were just 30 yards out they dumped Florida Man and the scouts out in the woods near the clearing by the rift and then Socket slammed the throttle. With Socket at the wheel, Ray and Butch braced themselves and they rammed the APC directly into the legs of the closest monster.

In an underlay dramatic smash, the monster did not appear to care to much that a large APC just tried to take it out at the knees. The creatures proceeded to attack the APC and ultimately cut it in half before Butch killed one and then with time bought by a hastily constructed confusion grenade, the archers with Florida Man managed to fell the other with concentrated fire from the Wilderness scout archers.

When the smoke cleared, Florida Man and Butch managed to get the intact terrarium out of the wrecked APC and Socket and Ray levitated and pushed the wreckage away from the rift because it sounded like something monstrous was coming out of it.

After a few rushed moments, a massive 100 foot tall humanoid monster chained with wrists and ankles together, came ambling out of the rift. The monster had massive stone spikes driven through its eyes and had some kind of sigils all over its body.

Ray attempted to talk to it while everyone else ran and realized that blood was also coming from its ears. The creature just smashed anything that got near it and seemed to be 100% impossible of talking since it had no tongue either. This is when Ray tried to get its attention with a tree and just ended up having to run away.

When they got back to the fort and reported what they found, Pennent said they needed 'Radcliff' who was a glitter boy who could likely kill the monster. Gran was not happy about this proposition and stalked off. Pennent managed to get the Dinotours employees to agree to go south to find Radcliff and bring him back. Meanwhile Ray and Socket went to talk to the healer of the camp about how maybe to heal the monster's wounds so they could talk to it and see if they could convince it to leave.

Ray and Socket were told that there was no way that the healer could help because he simply was not powerful enough. This lead Ray to the idea that maybe they could give the creature anesthesia to either help ease its pain in death or give them a chance to try and heal it with more medicinal means.

The healer told Ray and Socket about the Quink plant and they went off and gathered a bunch of Quink toxin after Ray got paralyzed by one of the plants and had to go dragon to free himself.

Meanwhile, Florida Man and Butch went and found Radcliff. HE was not what they expected at all being an overly sexual, innuendo ridden, smelly, overweight, Meth head. They convinced him not to try and have sex with them and then they managed to get him to head back to the fort.

Once at the fort, there was a brief discussion and Radcliff was obviously not welcome. they camped out in the field that night and then the following morning after Radcliff took some of Ray's meth, they went off to boom gun the monster.

Ray managed to get the monster to eat the Quink toxin after Florida Man in a last ditch effort was not able to communicate with it via ESP. After the smoke cleared, Radcliff mentioned he saw the fungus in the terrarium and told them they could go find his friend in the northern panhandle of Florida, where that stuff was growing wild.

It's a Bird! It's a Suit of SAMAS! oh, it's just Ray

After spending some time getting the Raptors settled in the newly built Lair., Ray, Socket, Butch and Florida Man took Mary-Lynn in the APC to head south toward the ruins of Atlanta where they expected to find a large pond that had the particular fungus they needed to cure the 'red death tree' infection.

The wind had picked up and heavy cloud cover had rolled in. A steady rain began and the temperature got strangely warmer. They began the trip anyway because none of them seemed to think a little rough weather should stop them.

With Mary-Lynn in the back of the APC, Ray needed a way to stay out of sight, and so using a winch and a long cable, he was put up in the air and towed behind the APC as it drove like a kite. Florida Man decided to work out a means of communicating with Ray while he was up in the air and began to compose a complicated vocabulary with a set of flags he crated. As could be anticipated, no one paid him any attention but he thought it was very important work.

After a day on the road they encountered a group of CS people on the 'road'. The group seemed friendly and explained how they were marauded by dinosaurs and needed desperately to recharge their E-Clips. After some careful conversation, Butch agreed to let them and then Florida Man spent an hour or so giving them a presentation on the new system of flag communication he had just earlier devised.

In appreciation for the aide, the CS troops and the scientists with them, shared information about CS trying to place a mole in Dinotours and handed off some spare gear that they were tired of carrying. The groups parted on good terms and the trip continued.

The following day as they drovem, the weather got a bit worse and thunder a lightning began. Ray got hit by lightning once and this traveled down the cable to the APC causing some minor damage to the environmental controls. Not realizing this they drove on and the APC got warmer and warmer until they finally had to open all the hatches to get some relief.

That evening the wind died down a little along with the rain. The temperature grew a bit higher and everyone was either too hot to sleep or simply did not want to be in the APC. Socket was busy fixing the environmental controls when a Florida Man ran over to the laser turret to try and shoot something, oblivious to the fact that socket had the subsystems turned off so he could maintenance them.

Florida Man hollered about Mosquitos and then hopped up on top of the APC with Butch to try and fight off some giant bugs. The bugs were vicious but otherwise ineffective as Butch and Florida Man shot them with bullets and fire. Socket was not able to hurt the creatures with his shotgun and instead turned on his self defense armor and then charged the remaining bug while flailing managing to smack it delivering a shock that dropped it to the floor sizzling. All the while, Ray was sleeping under the APC and after the third time he was woken with the hollers of the men above, he stole Butches pillow to stick over his head and then went back to sleep.

The following day they encountered a Cyber Knight and a group of adventurers. They told the man about the 'red fungus death' and Socket repaired a computer for him earning him a thanks and some reputation. Sir Anton the Cyber Knight shared that he frequently traded with Ft. Hawkins to the south and that they should go there and speak to the proprietors about the 'red fungus death'. Everyone parted on good terms and they continued to head south. That evening they arrived at the pond and spent the night.

The following day they began to investigate the pond only to find it full of 3 foot long leeches. Mary-Lynn produced some kind of wicker crystal bug repellent and they waded back into the shallows to try and find the fungus. After a bit of time, they were warned by Socket that something was headed their way and so Butch grabbed Ray who had been attached to the winch, and smacked the retraction button. They were pulled to safety very quickly leaving Florida Man and Mary-Lynn standing in the water wondering what was going on.

Socket continued to watch vigilantly and when he saw the car tire sized head of a giant snake emerge from the weeds he gleefully slaughtered it with the laser turret. Everyone headed back into the water to recover the tree they had found and then with a bit of group ingenuity, they created a terrarium to house it in.

Mary-Lynn said she wanted to go to Ft. Hawkins because she had a feeling it was important, and so they decided they would head down that direction.

...it was huge and covered in scales; what a monster!

After discussing the tree sample with the Herbalist, Ray decided he needed to take a closer look at the infectious agent. He 'borrowed' Lexington's binoculars and built a microscope that he then used, with Socket's help, to identify the mutant alien fungal spores that were causing the nasty disease that caused trees to go nuts and people to turn into ghouls.

With the knowledge in hand that it was a fungal infection Mary-Lynn, the herbalist from Kopar, prescribed a solution of herbs that would kill off plants and also provide a minor anaesthetic affect. Ray administered the solution to the sick Stegosaurus he had carried back the day before and began to observe it. After an hour or so he decided to go try and work out with Socket how to get his Dragon 'Jet Pack' working.

Socket and Ray worked out a good way to 'Technowizard' a temporary power source for the large jet engines he had acquired from Golden Age weapon smiths as they passed through the first time. They figured it would take a good six days to get things rigged up and while they were in the midst of their brain storming Butch and Florida man started yelling.

Over the day or so that Ray and Socket where scheming about Jet engines, Butch at one point came to Socket with an etched vibro-word asking if there was anything he could do to keep the Lankton's Knot sap from eating the blade. Socket quickly rigged up a techno wizard flaming element to incorporate into the agitator and viola, Butch now had a minor flaming vibro-blade. Socket did not question at the time what Butch was doing, not realizing that Butch and Florida Man were over in the Dangerous plant topiary getting ready to finally evict the Trysia faeries that took up residence there.

Butch, while wearing Lexington's spare boots and clothes, waded into the thick of the Lankton's knot enclosure and started hacking. Florida Man saw three faeries and kept an eye on where they were headed. As Butch was about to hack down the last plants, when the three Faeries bolted. This was when they noticed that the Faeries were all missing limbs and their wings appeared to be crumpled up a bit as if heat damaged. One of them screamed something about 'the bomb' and that is when Bitch started shooting.

Florida Man made a grab for the faeries but was not fast enough to catch them since they are so small and fast. Butch got two of them with his pistol and then his rifle while Socket bucked a shot with his shotgun at them. Ray appeared to contemplate getting involved but then decided to ignore the situation instead. Only one faerie managed to make it out of the compound.

Later in that day some of the Eleytherian(elly-eth-arian) men showed up looking for Socket. They explained they needed a reliable trade partner but had nothing much to offer, which is why they sought out Socket hoping for some charity. Ray was all to happy to help them gather some food and while he was out hunting, noticed some large raptor prints. He attempted to follow them but ended up getting lost. When he made his way back, the Eleytherians were happy for the food but perturbed by Ray's super natural strength.

The Eleytherians gave everyone a bit of a history lesson and explained some of the social dynamics among the local inhabitants. When asked about the cure for the fungus disease, the Eletherians explained that the rare mushroom that was one of the primary components for the compound was found on the edge of the southern lands in the swamps near something they called the time holes. Right then Ray decided he would take Mary-Lynn and fly down there that evening.

This posed a bit of a problem because Mary-Lynn was not aware of Ray's true nature and had no idea he was a large dragon. Socket observed Ray leading Mary-Lynn out of the Dinotours compound and decided he would follow, which proved to be a very prudent choice.

When out of the view of prying eyes, Ray transformed into a dragon and Mary-Lynn now confronted with one of the largest monsters she has ever faced in close proximity, was reasonably terrified. She began to panic and freak out. That is when Socket mustered as much mental fortitude as he possibly could and walked into the clearing and made believe that it was all a cruel joke he was playing on Ray and her. He explained he could change him back and proceeded to do so.

Mary-Lynn calmed down but sputtered on about how the monster he had transformed into was terrifying which greatly and deeply hurt Ray's feelings. For the rest of the day Ray was sad and hid in his container. Eventually Kage went to try and calm him down and met with some success after explaining this is why they moved here; to avoid people being super afraid of him and not accepting him.

The following day after breakfast, Raptors besieged the compound and after Butch mowed a bunch down with the mini-gun, Florida Man and Ray wrestled a pair that Ray said he recognized to the ground. When the fighting was over, Ray broke the psychic hold on the creatures that a Raptor King had on them and Butch was talked to telepathically by the Raptor King before it vanished into thin air, making it very hard for him to not think he was crazy.

Mutant killer fungus trees

After arriving back at the Dinotours facility, our adventurers were debriefed. Kage was made aware of the young man who may end up needing permanent sanctuary in the form of a full time position in Dinotours and Lexington introduced the 12 full time Kopar employees.

Butch continued to try and catch the Trysia faerie that he noticed a few days before. He found out from the Kopar that the faeries are somewhat universally disliked and half of the Kopar were willing to take shifts to help him catch the creature with a trap of Kopar engineering.

Kage made mention of some damage to the Pachycephalosaurus enclosure and was hoping that the adventurers would be able to go and make necessary repairs since he and Lexington were getting things ready for the next group of tourists. Kage also mentioned that a herd of Stegosaurus were much closer to the Dinotours facility than usual and that they were acting odd according to reports from the Kopar. Of course Ray, Florida Man and Butch agreed to look into the odd occurrences and after Ray made sure that his raptors were cared for, he headed off to the Stegosaurus' while Butch and Florida Man made arrangements to go south and fix the enclosure.

Ray discovered that the Stegosaurus' were sick with something that was causing a strange fuzzy mold to grow on their poo and was careful to harvest some so that he could have it investigated. After returning to the Dinotours facility, Ray, Butch and Florida Man headed south with material to fix the fence.

When Ray, Butch and Florida Man arrived at the Pachycephalosaurus enclosure, they quickly noticed that there was some kind of metallic material that looked like human remains lying in two blast areas and there was a lot of damage to the structure there from energy weapons. Obviously a fight had taken place here. They continued to investigate and found a man hiding in the structure but he seemed in very bad shape. Ray tried to administer first aide and was doing a decent job but the man, who called himself Kevin, became more and more agitated.

After passing them a data pad with a map on it that indicated a Golden Age facility location, he explained that they had to go and destroy the facility because ARCHIE was after it and for the sake of the known world, this could not be allowed to happen. Kevin proceeded to hack up some kind of nasty fuzzy phlegm and then before anyone could properly react, Kevin blurted that he would draw off the ARCHIE robots while punching something into a wrist computer and proceeded to rocket off into the forest at great speed with a personal jet-pack.

Butch wanted to talk to Kevin some more and so attempted to ground him the only way he knew how, by shooting him. This ended the way most people would think it would with Kevin landing in a bloody crash after taking a large caliber round through the chest cavity. Ray went to try and administer first aide again not thinking for a moment that the man would not have been able to live through the shot only to find out that he was very dead. Further investigation of the structure where Kevin was hiding revealed that he must have been sick with whatever the Stegosaurus to the north west were suffering from. Ray proceeded to burn all the remains he could find in fear that this thing would spread. They headed back to the facility so Ray could begin to try and analyze the disease and so Butch and Florida Man could get ready to head south and east to the facility indicated on the map on the data-pad.

Ray made his way to the Kopar village to work with the herbalist he met there hoping she had heard of the disease before or could help him come up with a cure for it. She agree to help and they headed back to Dinotours together. Meanwhile Butch and Florida Man had headed to the facility Kevin mentioned.

Butch and Florida Man discovered a well built blast door nestled in the bank of a swollen stream. It was well hidden and they felt like they had moved through here numerous times before. The facility was surrounded by gnarled black barked trees which were oozing a thick red sap. Florida Man, egged on by Butch, decided to taste the sap and as he did, the tree itself moved around and slammed him to the ground. The rest of the trees in the area proceeded to try and flatten the two men and were quickly dispatched by Florida Man's plasma thrower. Ray arrived just as the fight was ending and Butch was trying to figure out how to get the door open.

Ray approached the door with the data-pad and they found it was the key as the door began to slowly open. Once open, Butch decided to wait outside while Florida Man and Ray entered to investigate. Ray walked up to a terminal of sorts as described by Kevin and found the 'big red button' that Kevin said was to be used to initiate the destruction of the facility. Ray ignored the button and the directive given them by Kevin and proceeded to use the VR interface to check out the purpose of the facility.

Florida Man was checking the numerous corpses on the floor of the facility and one of them began to move, then attacked. a quick firefight later and the reanimated fuzzy mold corpses were all lying on the floor again.

Butch and Ray began to examine the computer together and Ray was getting very excited. Butch remembered what they were supposed to do and then pressed the button 'by accident'. A warning began to blare and Ray refused to believe that the place was going to be blown to pieces. Butch and Florida Man ran clear while Ray berated Butch and slowly followed. They all made it out just in time because the facility then imploded causing a large area of forest around it to sink a few feet.

Ray continued to be upset about the fact the Butch took away his shiny facility as they all headed home, kind of together. as they made their way home they noticed and were overtaken by some humanoid robots that appeared to not be too concerned with them.

When they arrived back at the facility, they found out that the SEEGA had poached the handful of Kopar who were watching the Lankton's knot plant in the compound. This perturbed Butch greatly and he and Florida Man headed off south after them. When Butch and Florida Man caught up with the SEEGA raiders, Butch wasted no time showing them the error of their ways and proceeded to kill the first two in command. He recovered the new 'employees' and they headed home.

Ray and Florida Man headed north after that to try and get a sample of what was causing the nasty fungal infection. They discovered a campsite where Kevin and some of his friends had obviously been and noticed some vials with red residue in them smashed on the ground. The trees immediately surrounding the campsite were starting to turn black and ooze red sap. Ray collected a sample tree and then they burned the entire area fairly certain that the sap was the vector for infection.

With a good sample in hand, they headed back to the D.E. facility and provided the sample to the herbalist who began work on a cure.

Swamp Tonic

All of the action with the Simvan riders attracted the attention of Florida man who was in the area anyway. He pounced on the APC from a tree the way you would ambush a large dinosaur only then realizing it was manned by the rest of the Dinotours Excursions employees.

After some quick introductions to the new tourists, and Florida man again trying to sell his 'action figures', they headed out to the SEEGA and Primal rage. When they arrived the children enjoyed playing int he berry and nut grove with the SEEGA children. After stopping to sell off the dinosaurs that Ray had captured from the Simvan riders they made their way to the arena to try and get good seats since it was first come first serve.

Butch was approached by Melechar, high priest of Sauron, again about becoming an initiate and Florida Man worked his contacts to try and get 'box seats'. As they were discussing the evenings ceremony, they worked their way over to the ice cream stand that Ray had invested in. The proprietor of the ice cream stand explained that business was not great since a number of people had gotten ill from eating the ice cream and Ray suggested that they mention to the patrons that it was nut based to avoid any more issues with people who may have allergies.

Alderic sought out Socket again to ask him if he would try the dinosaur control rig and socket politely declined to give it another go. However when Raban, Diablo's handler offered Ray the chance to try out the control rig, it was demonstrated that a dragon was inherently magical enough to use the rig with ease.

After being told that 'box seats' were reserved for the devote, the employees of Dinotours were told also that this evenings ceremony was going to be extra special because it involved showing the Gods strength by pitting puny Kopar humans with sharp sticks against them. This ruffled Butch's feathers quite a bit and everyone decided that it was probably best that the children not be exposed to a group of Dinosaurs being controlled by humans, eating other humans; for fun. So everyone turned to Florida Man for a tour of the other nightlife in SEEGA.

While they toured the local food Butch got some kabobs and then not at all ironically gave the 'sharp sticks' to the children to play fight with; which no one apparently cared to notice but gave him a chuckle. Likely no one noticed because the mother of the children had already started to heavily imbibe Ray's 'Swamp Tonic' as she affectionately named it provided to her most gleefully by Florida man who could actually enjoy the taste since it took way too much of it to actually get him drunk.

The children's father, like a couple other tourists, was enamored with Butch's war stories and failed to notice the degradation of his wife's inhibitions as they approached the SEEGA Primal Rage museum. Here there was a test rig for children to try and use to control a pair of scampers. This museum and this rig is how the SEEGA determine the small part of their population that have 'the gift' also known as the magical and psychic abilities to use one of their combination psychic and techno-wizard dinosaur control rigs.

Socket recognized immediately that allowing the CS children to try out these devices was a very very bad idea because of the implication if one of them could actually do it, but was not able to communicate this because of his existing issue with dealing with people compounded with the anxiety of demonstrating that a child of CS citizens was magically gifted caused him to go semi-catatonic. So with Florida Man and Ray were left to try and make the judgement on weather or not the children should try out the machines.

The children's mother was so far sloshed that she probably would have agreed to allow the children to have a flame thrower fight, so after Ray made sure that if by chance one of the children could use the device that they would not be detained and forced to become SEEGA 'players', gave the children a great big thumbs up. The two older kids got into the rigs and started to play around.

The oldest child had no luck and his scamper simply stood in the pen doing what it had done before, however the middle child instinctively and enhanced by the 'Easy Mode' suit, proceeded to make his scamper do jumps and kicks as well orchestrated as any 'player' could. This made the attending priest's eyes bulge as he excitedly started to exclaim that the child had 'the gift'. At this point the children's father took notice of what was going on and realized a little too late and with some not so gentle explanation that his child must be magically gifted.

This rocked Brian's world a little bit and he proceeded to order the children out of the suits immediately and then scooped up his wife to head back to the APC in a severely foul mood. As usual, Ray had trouble understanding why Brian was so agitated but offered some help to the wife after realizing that she obviously did not have the metabolize of a Dragon or a crazy and so must have consumed entirely too much of his brew.

The following morning everyone was trying their best to help Brian come to terms with his child's abilities and Ray said that once the kid was of age that they would have a job down here where they could live a mostly normal life. This seemed to ease some of his anxiety and they all agreed to let he issue settle itself.

The following evening they watched the primal rage ceremony and everyone had a great time. There was no more mention of the previous day's events and the following morning they headed back to Dinotours HQ.

Simvan eat Things

Florida Man went walkabout again the following day and everyone worried he may not come back this time.

That day more Kopar showed up to work as sanitation and housekeeping in the encampment. Socket busied himself with stripping the weapons off the APC in anticipation for trading them for parts to get it up and running.

That afternoon, Kage asked everyone to go and investigate another plume of black smoke to the northwest. Socket, Ray and Butch geared up and headed that direction. They passed the entrance to the MARTA tunnels that they had previously explored and continued heading northwest. after a little while they encountered another MARTA entrance but this one had been barricaded with concrete barriers to give someone the ability to make a fighting retreat as they went down into it.

On the ground in front of the tunnel entrance there was the obvious signs of a fight. They saw a number of black armored corpses and the source of the smoke; various pieces of the forest surrounding the tunnel entrance smoldering. They cautiously approached the entrance and quickly encountered some men with guns holding their ground.

Ray approached with his normal level of "I don't know, or care that, you can hurt me" and was met with some hostility. After a few minutes of conversation a leader identified as Lysander appeared wearing red armor and a cape to match. The men were not really willing to answer any questions and acted a lot like scared rabbits about to go to ground.

Butch and Ray were happy enough to leave after they explained that they lived right over the way and were worried about anyone who was setting fire to the forest, to which Lysander said he would send an envoy to talk about a potential relationship.

Socket however was very curious thinking that these men might be Atlanteans and that they might have information for him and decided to follow them. He stayed hidden for the most part using a device that cloaked him until the power for it ran out just as he was entering a massive chamber full of 'space ships' like the one that they had raided for parts before. Here he accidentally attracted the attention of the men he pursued and they confronted him.

Socket explained he had business with Lysander and was granted an audience after he showed them his tattoos. After some time and conversation Socket left with new knowledge of his heritage.

Back at camp Ray and Socket were busying themselves getting ready for a trip to Primal Rage the following day. Shortly after socket arrived, the Black Market guys showed up looking to trade the weapons and then Socket got the APC working again.

The following day they set out for SEEGA territory with Kage and Lexington holding down the fort again. After the first days travel, Browww came to alert them that something was coming and was urging them to follow him running south. This is when half a dozen Simvan riders bore down on the APC and the group.

Ray had been up ahead and then fell back to try and confront them while Butch shot at them from the back of the APC. After a short fight Ray ended up going Dragon and combating 4 Simvan on foot. Since they did not appear to be at all interested in talking to Ray about a "business opportunity" he and Butch dispatched them quickly and they were on their way again.