After milling about and observing for the better part of the day, The crew of Dinotours Excursions LLC found their way to the after bout party in the upper floors of the Primal Rage arena.
For reasons yet to be understood, Socket, who suffers from close to immobilizing social anxiety, fell into the roll of spokesperson by default. Finding their way through the party to the 'Player' area, Socket made an awkward introduction that was cut short when one of the players questioned why Butch was wearing a garish large red fur cape that he had purchased earlier in the day. Once Butch revealed that it was to conceal his massive golden age weapon, things got momentarily tense. Socket and Ray diffused the situation by speaking calmly to the players and convincing Butch to wait with the guards outside.
After everything calmed down, Socket and Ray were able to convince what amounted to the religious leaders of the SEEGA clan that working with Dinotours Excursions would be good for them because it would open them up to a larger market for goods and services not currently available to them. The SEEGA players were interested because they thought maybe this meant that they could find someone who could reproduce one of the mystical cabinets that brought them their religion.
Meanwhile, Butch made efforts to find out what was happening to the Kopar captives. he probed the guards for information about Sauron and was referred to a high priest of Sauron's order named Metlac. This was not a satisfying answer but he did learn that Sauron somehow 'uses' the Kopar but was told between the lines that he did not eat them. When the meeting was over and everyone was debriefed, Ray drank everything he found lying around at the party and then headed off to the pond with Socket for a nights rest.
The following morning as they prepared for the day's travel Butch noticed a group of SEEGA with a Raptor pulled cart heading into the wilderness. He had BrRaawwrr follow them and then when BrRaawwrr came back, butch followed him with a shout to the others that he would be back in a while.
A short walk through the woods later and Butch found himself standing at a gradual slope down to the subbasement of a wrecked golden age building. The building had a well used door leading into it and with a few precautionary calls of hello, Butch entered the building. He descended another two flights of stairs and eventually found himself in a large catacomb like set of rooms that appeared to be lined with desiccated bodies of Kopar stacked like cord wood. After collecting a few identifying pieces of jewelry, Butch tried to put the place behind him and headed back to camp. When Butch arrived at camp he tried again in vain to convince the others that this issue with the Kopar and the SEEGA would blow up in their face before Ray pointed out that Kage would be able to tell them what he thought when they returned.
Socket looked over the maps that they generated on their way here and determined that they could take a slightly more straightforward path back to the home office. After a day and a half of moving as fast as they could to get home, they began to encounter large peculiar constructs that were quickly identified as traps. Socket and Butch spent some time examining the traps and the area around them and were not able to come up with a good explanation as to who or what made them. Trying to puzzle it out, Butch pulled his rifle out and used the scope to survey the surrounding are and saw a vehicle in the distance. Ray noticed it as well and was off like a jack rabbit to investigate.
Butch and Socket took off after him not wanting to be split up. Ray and Socket arrived at a campsite where they discovered a well disabled CS APC and many weapons that were also interestingly disabled. They were about to leave the curious camp site when they heard a voice calling help to the west. Ray dashed off and Butch followed him. Ray failed to spot a snare and found himself dangling from a tree. Butch liberated him and they continued to investigate the area finding a tree where a CS soldier had been savaged and skewered. In a heightened state of awareness fueled by adrenaline, Ray and Butch both noticed the tail of a large dinosaur disappear behind the back of a golden age ruin and heard someone say, "I'm over here".
In the next few minutes a monster of a dinosaur came out from behind the rubble and assaulted Butch and Ray. Socket came running blasting ice charged buckshot at the creature and after a few almost deadly moments of combat, they managed to fell the creature. Breathing heavily, they looked around and thanked their luck that they survived.
ReplyDeleteRay of course, was deferring to Kage as his primary source of human ethics and morality as well as experience, preferring to listen to him than Butch - particularly since Butch tended to give him a headache whenever the conversation turned to why killing people was bad if it was for their bodies but okay if it's just for their stuff - sadly for later events, the fact that a persons body doesn't count as their stuff never came up.
It might be worth noting that as Ray was catapulted thirty feet in the air on the end of a snare, his main contribution to the proceedings was to shout 'wheeeee!' and he seemed to be spending quite a bit of time thereafter looking for another one.
In his defence, Ray didn't run off on his own (this time) without reason, but rather was chasing after the sound of a human voice crying for help - which of course was the Hellasaurus (a demonic hybrid of pit beast and dinosaur given to cruelty, torture and sadistic mind games) trying to draw off new prey.
While Ray was examining the body, Butch responded to a glimpse of dinosaur the way he always does - by opening fire and denuding a large area of foliage - which prompted the unnaturally evasive monster to charge down the torrent of his shells, ducking over and around the beam-like stream of flashing red and gold as it charged until it was able to cut off the cannonfire at its source with a snap of its dreadful, hook-fanged jaws...
...and was prevented from doing much more by the innefectual but energetic impact of seven or eight tons of hatchling dragon, whom it proceeded to basically pummel into a death-noogying before Butch and Socket were able to hose the alien monstrosity down with enough cannon-fire to kill it.