The rest of the day they traveled to the area in the Ruins of 'Atlanta', as Kage called it, where the forest began to thicken. Kage warned that this was the 'Horror forest' and that everyone should keep their wits about them.
Eventually in the middle of a forest, they found a clearing where the trees had been knocked down and arranged into a rudimentary 6 foot tall fortification with mounds of earth behind it creating a wall around a very large concrete pad. Kage explained this location was chosen because it was relatively level and had a good concrete pad to build a structure on. He further explained he paid to have the area cleared and fortified as such.
In the same breath he began to explain more about why they had to leave two years early. He outed Wraith as a dragon and explained that he, as a naturalist, could not have lived with the knowledge that he let the egg be exterminated and not given a chance to grow. So when wraith hatched, he had to speed up his plans a tremendous amount. He then explained that they had not brought all the supplies they needed to build the settlement and now the first order of business was to go into the ruins and collect building material.
Butch decided to use his dinosaur 'chops' to maintain a safer perimeter while Florida Man, Socket and Wraith headed into the woods toward a pond that was marked on a tablet that Kage supplied them with. Kage warned about Radiation and so Socket took the time to make devices that could detect irradiated areas and let them stay clear of them.
When they got to the pond, Wraith tried his had at fishing and socket dove in to try and see what he could find in the water. he was able to steer clear of large fish and alligators and discovered that there were two large usable sections of concrete wall along with three un-exploded nuclear bombs in the pond. Meanwhile Florida man was distracted by some fairies.
Florida Man was being enticed by some Trysia faeries to walk right into a thicket of Lankton's Knot but ended up just throwing things into the Knot instead. Eventually he wandered back to the lake to show his friends. Socket had just emerged and explained what he found when FM was on his way back and as a group they decided to go meet the faeries.
Wraith was on his way into the plants when Socket had a moment of clarity and realized what they were and the danger the plants presented. Socket stopped wraith from entering the thicket and explained what was going on. Wraith became perturbed because the faeries tricked him, prompting him to head into the forest and mope.
Socket and FM caught up with wraith just in time to hear Butch come across the shortwave and mention that Chops had indicated that something was approaching from the west. They rallied back at the camp where they discovered a pack of Tiger Claw raptors approaching. Socket recognizing the danger before the others, climbed up on top of Wraith's container and took a defensive position.
As the first raptor came into view FM influenced it's mind and had it call out to it's companions to expose themselves. The forest around the compound shook as a dozen of the creatures appeared. Butch wasted no time and started his mini-gun spinning. Wraith, thinking the creatures were new friends ran off to find some food to offer them, shortly returning to the battlements where the group was fully engaged in fighting off the creatures. FM was angrily reprimanding Butch for his use of force, claiming that he was a dinosaur king and how was he going to have minions if they all ended up dead like this, while Socket defended his position from the oncoming creatures with some mega damage blasts from his ice shotgun. Just as Butch was putting bullets int he last raptor, Wraith clobbered him with the large hunk of animal he had dragged from his container and then stormed off after telling Butch that he was a bad man.
While everyone cleaned up the mess and recovered, Wraith, unbeknownst to anyone, had gone off and found the nest that the Raptors had come from and was beginning to befriend the babies that were found there.
Later that day they told Kage what they had found and Wraith had asked if a 'cavern' could be created for him at some point, which everyone thought was a great idea. Everyone bedded down that evening with the plan to recover the parts of building they discovered the following day.
The next morning everyone headed back to the pond to gather the salvage. Wraith had begged some bullets from Butch and concocted an 'exploding chocolate bar' to try and repay the debt of trickery that the faeries had wrought and delivered it on the way past the thicket of Lankton's Knot as they headed to the pond.
When they got to the pond, Socket showed Wraith roughly where the concrete walls were, but Wraith got under the water and got a bit lost eventually returning with one of the un-detonated atomic bombs. This of course perturbed FM and Socket, so Wraith thought it a good idea to pitch the bomb into the Lankton's knot thicket.
They headed back to the settlement and erected the two walls they brought back before settling in for another night anxious to continue exploring.
Selling the notion that Ray was in fact a dragon was initially a hard sell as everyone took one look at the young man merrily attempting to stare down a passing frog and wondered what the hell Kage was trying to sell but one short transformation into a thirty-five foot ebony-scaled, red-eyed horned nightmare later and everyone was much more willing to accept the story. What the frog made of all this is not currently certain.
ReplyDeleteStill generally referring to himself as 'Ray', the young dragon happily busied himself improvising a fishing pole out of a length of steeltree, some cable and some bent nails but it didn't occur to him to bait it, thus assuring he'd remain occupied while Socket actually got some work done. Subsequently, it was discovered that the main purpose of the line was to lure curious wildlife close enough that Ray could slap the surface of the water with a twelve-foot length of corroded rebar and stun any nearby fish for subsequent collection. Sadly, Socket was out of the water by this point and hijinks failed to ensue.
The fairies served largely to demonstrate that able to turn into a massive scaled killing machine or not, Rays natural inclination when tricked is to kick things and sulk, having apparently learned from his father (Kage) that he shouldn't incinerate people, even if they're rude.
Hitting them upside the head with a dripping, nine-foot long tyrannosaur haunch for shooting up guests on the other hand is apparently fine.
Ray made no effort to inform anyone about the three surviving adult Raptors or the nests they were guarding, but has instead started working on getting adopted into the pack as a Plan B.
The Cavern was his price for flying back to the Steeltree grove from time to time to fetch building materials for a stronger palisade. Given that his idea of a practical joke involves exploding chocolate and extremely limited safety measures, this met with general approval.
Ray dropped off the exploding chocolate, only to promptly be talked by the fairies into trying said chocolate - the swift intervention of his allies prevented him from doing so, but there was much sulking and after kicking a chunk of rubble into the patch of plants, he stormed off to help Socket - which is how he came to get lost in the murky water and richer by one undetonated antique atomic warhead, much to the alarm of all and sundry.