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.
