No Ferns in this Gully
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You've finally cleared enough space away from the portal that you feel it's safe to venture farther afoot. There is still a range of wildlife wandering the tundra, but the noise of the fights have scared the herbivores away, and the worst of the predators appear to have either followed the herbivores or learned to keep some distance. Taking advantage of the breathing room, you venture farther afield.
It doesn't take long to find a gulch with a dry riverbed, and then to follow that gulch to a place where it cuts a path deep into the ground, giving you a means to climb down what otherwise would be a daunting cliff. The dusty trail of the riverbed is littered with footprints and cart tracks, providing ample evidence that the expedition had at one point gone this way. From the base of the cliff, where the gulch opens up into a shallow riverbed again, you can see an expanse of badlands spread before you like some sort of pandimensional maze.
As you survey the scene, you're surprised to see a man walking up the riverbed in your direction. You greet him, and he introduces himself as Ash. "The whole expedition is under attack. We'd set up camp outside some caves, and a whole swarm of creatures came through. Might have been a stampede of behemoths, being chased by a pack of something else. They trampled the radio and smashed a lot of the gear. Communications weren't working very well to begin with. The main radio could keep in touch with the portal, but our personal transponders can't track back this far. I just got lucky, getting out of the maze and finding my way back to the river."
You readily agree to bring Ash back to the lab, so you can update Susan and figure out the next steps to take.
Location(s)
Notes
- One time adventure.
- Part of the Through the Dimensional Rabbit-Hole quest.
- Opens Astral Badlands.
References
- The name of the adventure references the movie FernGully: The Last Rainforest.
- Ash is the name of the android in the movie Alien.