Ryan Baker

Official art by Babisu Kourtis

**Ryan Baker** is an American soldier serving as captain of Vulture Squad under Amadeus Jericho. A veteran of the horrors of the Vietnam War, Ryan hides his scarred and disfigured face behind a balaclava as he tries to keep his men alive at all costs.

## History

### Early Career

Ryan was accepted onto Vulture Squad by then captain Adam McNeil, where he would serve for years liberating POW camps. On one mission, the team was contacted by Amadeus Jericho to an NVA military base where the Viet Cong had supposedly abandoned and were no longer in the area. This turned out to be untrue, and vulture squad was hit with mortar fire, killing and mortally wounding all except Ryan, who himself was left heavily scarred and near death. Ryan was rescued and hospitalized in Japan, where he would develop a morphine addiction.

Once Ryan recovered enough to return to combat, Jericho granted him the position of captain of Vulture Squad. In spite of the promotion, Ryan would go off to sulk in his tent and engage his morphine addiction, scaring many of the recruits he brought on and causing many of their deaths, and began wearing a mask to hide his face. Ryan would eventually manage to overcome his morphine addiction and recruit six other men he managed to keep alive: Xavier Wise, Logan Stovall, Gerald Keyes, Eli Taylor, Charlie Miller, and Leon Varnes, although Jericho had already gained a low opinion of Ryan and his team during Ryan's addiction and kept it long afterwards.

### Arrival in Vulture Valley

After a routine assignment, Jericho called the vulture squad to his base. As he and the rest of Vulture Squad flew over on the Father Vulture, Ryan happily watched the rest of his, reminiscing on how his old squad mates were less like a family than this. Once the squad had arrived however, Ryan ordered them to be as serious and compliant as possible due to Jericho's temper. Once the squad arrived inside, Jericho simultaneously them, especially Ryan, while giving them their mission: find a platoon of Green Beret that went missing in Vulture Valley. While the rest of the squad prepared, Ryan broke off and looked at his scared face in a mirror and picking at blisters in his arm, being hit with a need for morphine and memories of the death of his old squad, breaking the mirror in a fit of rage.

Once the squad was back on the helicopter and heading towards the last known position of the missing platoon, most of the squad expressed doubts on their mission and pointed out worrying signs such as a giant game trail, Ryan was forced to quiet them down to keep them from scaring themselves too much by reminding them all they needed to do was save the missing soldiers. Once the helicopter landed, the squad searched the area, although only Logan and Gerald found evidence of the team, a backpack, while the rest only found evidence of what appeared to be large birds. Inside of the backpack the squad found a map and journal mentioning that the platoon was moving towards a research station and that they were being hunted, Ryan deciding to head to cautiously move towards the marked position.

As the team moved through the jungle, Ryan wondered what could've spooked the Green Beret so much when he noticed that the jungle had gone silent. Beginning to panic. Ryan broke into a sprint. accidentally getting ahead of his squad as they began doing the same. Ryan stopped once he realized this and waited for them to catch up, but a large predator attacked him and dragged him off, but only managed to tear his boot and barely break the skin of his foot before gunfire from the rest of the squad pushed it off. Hearing it communicate with others of its kind and Xavier warning him it would likely come back, the squad quickly moved down to the game trail, where they set up camp. Ryan and Leon left the rest of the squad to scan the area for danger or any sign of the missing soldiers, stumbling upon a *Tyrannosaurus* family inside a bamboo forest. As the pair began moving away, the Mother woke up and noticed them, chasing them out of the nest where the Father had just returned from his hunts, who took up the chase instead while his mate returned to the nest. Ryan and Leon ran from the theropod until they found a ditch hidden by plants, which they hid within. This caused the Father to lose them and attempt to flush them out, nearly smelling where they were before Ryan convinced Leon to run. The trio ran further through the jungle until they came upon a cliff, where all three fell in.

Ryan was forced to carry a drowning Leon around the panicked attacks of the Father, and with the timely intervention of Andrei Wynn, dragged him under a mangrove and performed CPR on Leon while the tyrannosaur was preoccupied with attempting to get back to his family. Once Leon was revived, Andrei guided them to Research Station 4, where he had been living. While there, Andrei told them the story of the particle collider and how he ended up abandoned, and gave them a radio which Ryan used to force Jericho to evacuate his squad. With that done, the trio left the station to search for the rest of Vulture Squad, having something rush past them followed by Logan, who only could tell them that something had taken Gerald. The rest of the squad arrived shortly afterwards, who described being attacked by *Deinonychus* before running after Logan. Once they had caught up to him, the squad began searching for Gerald when a *Utahraptor* jumped up and screeched out in pain while holding Gerald. Logan tackled the fleeing predator, stabbing it in the eye as the rest of Vulture Squad got a chance to open fire on it and forcing it to relinquish its hold on Gerald. Gerald, who had his stomach torn open by the predator, was suggested by Andrei to be killed and left for the raptors to finish off, but Ryan objected and Eli knocked Andrei out over the comment, whom Ryan then forced to carry the scientist as it left them without a guide.

Once the group returned to the research station, Xavier began work on Gerald while Ryan ordered the rest of Vulture Squad to guard the windows. The *Utahraptors* quickly turned up, attacking from the windows and the ceiling's glass pyramid. Once the two dromeosaurs on the ground attempted to break open the door, Ryan ordered it to be open and had Leon shoot his grenade launcher at the two, knocking them back as the two on the roof fell through and became disoriented. The group abandoned the station and ran north until they heard the Father Vulture above, shooting off a flare. This, however, gave the *Utahraptors* enough time to catch up and attack, eviscerating Leon and nearly tearing Gerald in half before Logan mercy killed him and let the predators have the corpse. Ryan attempted to calm his team down long enough to reach the helicopter, where the Father *Tyrannosaurus* returned and attempted to bring the helicopter out of the air until gunfire forced it to let go