Episode 1

## **Introduction**

Beaks and jaws have been muzzled. All of your weapons, items, and gold has been taken from you, leaving you in nothing but the armour you were captured in. You don’t know why you’re here, or how you even got here but you all have some guesses.

“Hey,” someone whispers to you all.

With a struggle, you look up to see a Tiefling with you. “Are you all okay?” He whispers, not waiting for any of you to even try to answer. “Don’t worry. I have a plan to get us out of here.” You all struggle to look around you. Trying to look for yourselves for a way out of here, finding yourselves in a huge chamber, a great hall and throne room; a ruin that has been modified to become a base of operations for these people who have captured you, and their beasts. Most of the saddled beasts are bipedal, with domed skull surrounded by spikes or huge with crests and beaked faces.

One wall is exposed to the elements, blasting you with bright sunlight and hot desert air, with the rest of the great hall filled with poachers and tribal warriors. But at the top of the stairs, towering above you all is a huge bull-horned carnivorous creature, armoured up so much that its pale striped skin is barely visible, and pacing back and forth as it watches you all be dragged across the floor as if choosing which one of you it wants to eat first.

The ground trembles every time it takes a step, and you almost feel sick at the smell of rotten meat with every breath it takes. By the exposed open wall three huge creatures fly in, all ridden by armoured people, two women and one man. They look human from what you can tell, but the things they flew in on are not dragons or gryphons or anything you know to be familiar to your homelands, you know that much. They are giraffe sized with stork beaks as long as you are tall, even the smallest one is still four meters tall at the very least and is in the process of swallowing what looks to be the body of a human. From the throne, an old grandmother steps down towards you all, smoking on a pipe. The huge bull-horned carnivore behind her steps forward but she whistles for it to stay. She examines you all, spryer for her age than you expect of an old lady in her nineties and armoured up in bones and wearing two scimitars at her waist that have very recently been wiped clean of blood.

“Sorry we’re late grandmother. Saracen was debriefing us on what he caught.” Says one of the women. She gives their grandmother a huge glinting jewel they were carrying with them. The old woman nods approvingly and passes it to a warrior close by who takes it and heads to an overflowing vault at the back of the room before she approaches you all.

“Well these are definitely the more interesting things your platoons have brought back in a while.” The grandmother says to the three, blowing pipe smoke into your faces. It smells disgusting, it is not even tobacco. She jabs Kosayl and Asmundur with the pipe, getting hot ashes all over your clothes.

“Are these two human Rayla?”

“We think so?” The second of the women – Rayla - on the huge flying creatures says.

“We found one in a ship that had fallen through one of the portals in the desert. The other one chased Saracen’s squadron for a good twenty miles on foot before they too him down. He thought the Pompador were deer.” She gives the fighter a shove, then with one hand picks up Grinn to show him off to everyone, being careful to not get too close to his teeth.

“This tiny one is a gnoll, well we think it’s a gnoll because it looks a lot like one, but Saracen says it’s a hafling? We caught it biting the tail of one of the Deinos. And the other thing is a…what did you say it was Tarra?”

The third – Tarra - shrugs. “An aarakockra?”

“Eh, they’ll do.” The Grandmother, gestures to the Tiefling with you.

“We don’t need that one though, Avery. They’re too much trouble.” With a grin and a piercing whistle, the first woman who spoke – Avery - points at the Tiefling. He looks up as the huge giraffe-tall pterosaur, the Quetzalcoatlus, stabs its beak down on him, impaling him at once with a sickening crunch, before throwing his body up into the air and swallowing him whole.

“A warning,” The grandmother shrugs to you all, “Behave or Belle will have you all next.” The huge bull-horned carnivore growls at the sound of its name as the grandmother turns around and begins to head back up to her throne to pet the big dinosaur on the head and calm it down.

“Put them in the cells for now. We’ll sort them out later. Take any weapons they have to the armoury. If they piss you off in anyway, just feed them to whoever is hungry.” With a different whistle and an order to the warriors and poachers around you, you are all lifted up and carried down several levels to what is these poachers’ jail cells. You struggle and wriggle, the paralysis is wearing off but you are not in full use of your limbs yet. As you are carried along the landing you are overwhelmed by the smell of animal dung and the bellowing sounds of critters you can’t quite see. You’re thrown all together into the cell as the guards complain about the lack of space left for you all, removing the muzzles and gags they put on you, and locking you in and giving the keys to this large sailed lizard that sits outside your cell.

The paralysis wears off, and you can all now move.

## **Events**

* The lads wake up in a ruin owned by Petra Stone, and are paralysed by the bite of a dinosaur.
* They break out of jail and went down into the stables below and pressgang an intern called Beynjymyn after killing all the rest, and encounted Compies for the first time.
* First minor pvp occurs between Grinn and Ko.
* Took Beyn around the lower floors of the ruins, went to the armoury, passed the blocked room with a glitch inside.
* Went into the kitchens and met Cinna and Maeve who were going to poison Petra Stone with flowers in her coffee (White Snakeroot). Also got some food and items
* Went to the library and encountered the shelves of books that changed depending on what you were thinking of. (Library Books of Alexandria)) Retrieved some of these glitched books then burnt the rest.
* Went into the amber room and found petrified people and animals in the huge cavern.

## **NPC's Encountered**

* Petra Stone
* Avery Syrah
* Tarra Stone
* Rayla Marzemino
* Kater Crane
* Ernest Pontdemercy
* Maeve and Amy
* Beynjymyn

## **Creatures Encountered**

* Dimetrodon -
* Jackalwere
* Baryonyx
* Olorotitan
* Pachycephalosaur
* Parasaurolophus
* Triceratops
* Compsagnathus
* Gallimimus
* Stegosaurus
* Homalocephale
* Microraptor

## **Items Found**

* The Glyter Bomb
* Carolines Reaper
* Tome of Cat Summoning
* Amber Shards
* A finger in Amber
* Books of Alexandria

## **Trivia**

* Grinn had the first roll of the campaign.
* Ish wanted to try something stupid to show off Grinns personality and make him try and squeeze through the bars. Grinn got a natural 20 ( also the first one of the campaign) and he popped out with ease.
* This is the one and only episode where Ko punches someone.