Rooster, short by one Nanny, uses a rigorous selection process to secure Nanny’s replacement. Eeny, meeny, uhhmmm, you! He points vaguely at Tricksy, the newly hired kobold trap master. Tricksy, Bizzle, Slick, Tatters, in my office!
The client in Rooster’s office is Leshanar Dragonspark, a personable elf who is cautious, if not worried, about an aggressive dragon hunting outfit operating near her homeland. She wants to know who these dragon hunters are and what methods are they using to capture the dragons.
Epi Glottis has become unreliable since his unfortunate demise and reconstitution, so Rooster himself will be today’s transport director. He directs them to the unfinished transport DRAGON (Drastic Reconnaissance Aerial Gunship Of New-Design) and hands out the operator manuals.
When eventually completed, DRAGON will magnificently impersonate a bronze dragon. But for now, the untested airship requires a signed waiver to board through the unfortunately located butt hatch. For obvious life preserving reasons, neither Rooster nor Leshanar will be accompanying them on this dubious flight. Brash new hire Tricksy wonders whether everyone else is chicken. Rooster’s eyes narrow at her.
DRAGON has dedicated task stations. Tricksy takes the flapping and propulsion position. Charismatic Slick takes the head position, responsible for the forward lightning cannon and for providing the dragon’s speech and interactive personality. Bizzle operates the tail attack and steerage. Tatters sets up at a hatch through which he may cast spells in the unexpected circumstance violence becomes necessary.
It suddenly occurs to Bizzle that flying at a dragon hunting airship in a conveyance exactly resembling a dragon might cause some confusion, making him the last person to realize that this is the point of the mission.
Before they leave, Rooster emphasizes what this mission is all about: Communication. Communicado. Avocado. Shevacado. Rooster might be losing it.
After some traveling, Slick sees a great bronze dragon hovering next to an even larger airship imprinted Predator. She can see that the dragon is double grappled by lines from two of several mounted crossbows mounted around Predator’s deck, a dragon hunting ship if ever she saw one. The crossbows swivel for aiming but mount out on the edge such that their field of fire is limited, and none of them are mounted forward, probably to allow room for the enormous dragon skull adorning the prow.
The captured dragon calls out to DRAGON in draconic, Help me! I’m being attacked by these…. Translating Tricksy deletes the finishing expletive.
The party, capitalizing upon Predator’s unprotected bow, pilots DRAGON in front of Predator just within range of the lightning cannon. Slick aims a shot down Predator’s long deck and ignites a bolt through a line of seven bandits, immediately killing six of them and merely injuring the unlucky seventh. The wooden deck ignites and flames quickly engulf Predator. She breaks in half releasing two more dragons from below deck. The flaming wreckage and all aboard plunge to a swampy demise below.
The party braces itself for the pecuniary adulations of the three liberated dragons, but when Slick asks the bronze dragon’s name through DRAGON’s audio system, Draxle gets extremely indignant at Slick’s non-draconic common language choice. Slick explains that she doesn’t know draconic because she is dumb, but at least she knows a mechanical contraption from a real dragon. Offended Draxle and his friends no longer wish to interact with DRAGON, except possibly for the opportunity to destroy it. The momentary allies part ways.
The party lands DRAGON in the swamp below, hoping to find a little more information among Predator’s wreckage. After obliterating a bandit hunting ship in one shot, confidence is high that negotiating a swamp will be a walk in the park by comparison.
As Tatters and Slick wade into the mud toward the pieces of Predator, giant sucking leeches attach themselves and begin syphoning off their blood. Tatters, who prefered his blood where it was, defends himself with magic missiles and turns his skin to stone, but even with a supporting stream of arrows from Tricksy the leech only grows larger.
Bizzle dashes to help Slick and together they slay the growing leech feeding on her, then to the leech swallowing Tatters and attracts a leech of his own along the way.
A hissing flower sends tentacles to grapple Slick. Tricksy deploys her suture fly companion, Knit, to intervene, but the flower drags Slick into its mouth before Knit can sew it shut. Tatters casts mass cure wounds, an especially clever trick for a wizard, and the party is whole again.
The largest leech decides gorging on Tatters’ blood isn’t enough, swallows him whole, and submerges into the swamp. Tatters expires his stoneskin to instead dominate the offending leech. He commands it to spit him out and then kill itself. The leech complies with the first command and Tatters spews to the surface. The leech suspiciously bungles killing itself somehow and instead goes with what it knows, swallowing Tatters again, this time knocking him out.
Tricksy slays Bizzle’s leech leaving him available to go beat on the flower with Slick inside. Bizzle gets fed into the flower by tentacles and helps Slick attack the flower from the inside until it regurgitates them. Bizzle kills it, from the outside as one prefers.
A couple more arrows from Tricksy finishes the leech digesting Tatters and she cuts him out with her rapier. Pouring a healing potion into his acid burned gob brings him back around. Tatters has the satisfaction of killing the last leech with magic missiles. By this time, the party realizes the leeches will avoid them if they avoid wading in the swamp goo.
Bizzle takes a look at a crossbow near the Predator wreckage. The bolts are enormous and, of course, designed for grappling, but a detailed analysis can be made later by an R&S specialist if Bizzle ever makes it back. The crossbow and bolt go into his bag of holding.
The commotion alerts a nearby plant. It stuffs Bizzle into its mouth. A fire bolt from Tatters quickly kills the flower, rendering it unable to spit Bizzle out. He thrusts one, then both, scimitars up through the flower to the surface.
Tricksy carries all manner of trap making tools and materials and has no problem producing a shovel. She and Slick take turns digging for Bizzle until Tricksy can leverage the shovel and pop Bizzle right out of the ground.
Slick and Tatters poke around one of the half sections of Predator. They find and collect strong turquoise rods from below deck, likely composing dragon cages. Bizzle eats a salvage bar to prepare for the next tussle and helps guide stealthy Tricksy toward a bandit body, apparently the only remaining body that hasn’t been dragged away by leeches, flowers, or some other dreadful swamp scavenger.
Tricksy finds a book detailing construction of the crossbows and cages and Predator. Most alarming is a diagram showing tiny Predator next to a much larger airship. Yikes.
Unwilling to chance the terrors of the swamp, Bizzle teleports the party an embarrassing fifty feet back to DRAGON and they safely return to R&S headquarters.
The looted book entirely satisfies Rooster for the mission, but the larger ship concerns everyone and will undoubtedly have to be dealt with later.
Rooster turns his attention to the crossbow. The design is new to him and nothing beats a practical demonstration. He aims it down a long hallway and, when an intern comes around the corner, Rooster looses the bolt. Magnetic pods deploy upon impact to grapple the intern, or would if his skin were metallic.
Tatters resets the sign: Safety begins here, 0 days with no accidents.