Doctor Danielle Conway's Story

The valley was peaceful this morning, a mere calm before the storm. The Ceratopsian herds were gathering by the lake for a drink, unaware of any dangers nearby. Near the forest the sauropods towered over everything, eating the leaves off the trees where nothing else could reach.

Unbeknownst to the herd, danger awaited in the bush. Eyes, unfeeling, unreasoning eyes watched them. These eyes belonged to a theropod predator, poised to strike at any moment.

It was only mid-morning or so, but it was already well into the eighties, surely. The hot sun was ripping waves of sweat off of her face, arms, and legs. There was also a killer humidity in the air; Dani (or rather, Doctor Conway, professionally) felt like she was breathing soup, despite the skies above being clear. She had only been riding for an hour or two, on the clever fold-up mountain bike she always used on her expeditions (a gift from some beau who was only a hazy memory now), when she crested a rise and got her first real good look at the Xamoyan wildlife. Dani squeezed both brakes and nearly succeeded in eating the dirt as the back wheel tried to fishtail out from underneath her.

Unfazed by the disaster she had barely avoided -there was a spiny flowering bush right where she would have landed (some kind of cacti no doubt)-, Dani’s deep green eyes were focused on the valley unfolding below her. She was already swinging off the bike before she absent-mindedly remembered to put the kickstand down. Unshouldering her pack and only distantly aware of the relieved pain in doing so, the biologist pulled from an outer pocket what looked kind of like the lower half of a fighter pilot’s mask. In actuality, it was an old-school Stenomask, updated and streamlined for the digital age, but rarely seen outside of a courtroom. Dani fastened it over her mouth and nose, clicked the record button and waited for the beep, before starting to talk in a stream-of-consciousness rush that she would go back and parse later.

“Down near the watering hole, I see a herd of what look like Triceratops but with only one horn that I can see. The head seems to have the same crown as a Triceratops, so they may be related. Seeing the one horn leads me to believe that these creatures are what the Rhinocerous descended from. Oh man, wow, this is awesome! I’d describe these… Ceratops…? In more detail, but wow oh wow! Are those Brontosaurs? They probably aren’t, I’d need a better look at them to make an educated guess, but I can really only see their heads and necks from here. And… wait… something is eyeing up those Ceratops… I can see a shadow lurking there…”

Dani trailed off in her narration of what she was seeing, waiting to see what happened next. Her words would have been barely audible outside of the Stenomask, and all the outside noise would be filtered out. But, nonetheless, someone standing nearby may have heard a few of her exclamations.

The sounds of the ceratopsians grunting echoed across the field, unaware of the danger nearby and most certainly not of the stranger nearby. The horned animals peacefully chewed on the shrubbery that grew plentifully in the area. The sauropods had their heads held high as the ground shook beneath their heavy steps. A couple of them came to a small grove of trees nearby to where Dani had been and they too began to chew on the high leaves.

The sound of a bird-like chirping came from the ground below as a pair of small bipedal dinosaurs inspected her bike. They had a beak instead of a mouth and had no teeth to speak of. They were gentle, curious herbivores. They sniffed and hopped about her bike, one even nibbled on one of its tires.

In his pursuit of Kassandra, Michael lewis would encounter a truly dangerous creature. It was a bipedal dinosaur that easily was a head taller than him, and it has been dubbed Vennoxamos. This was a peculiar dinosaur, it had two circular crests on its head and what appeared to be a frog-like throat pouch. It eyed him curiously before noticing the spear, recognizing him as a threat. It hopped in his path, and presented a terrifying threat display, shrieking and rattling a frill that was attached to its neck.

Michael stops as fast as he can, skidding across the grass a couple feet before coming to a full stop. He eyes the creature and slowly starts to back away, unsure of what threat that it presents to him. He holds his pike at his side, but with both hands, ready if the beast attacks. He keeps backing away, slowly, and doesn't take his eyes off of the Vennoxamos.

Michael lurches back as the liquid flies through the air, landing on his back. The poison splashes onto the grass about a foot before him, and he scrambles onto his feet. He dropped his pike, so he grabs it up and starts to jog backwards for about ten yards and then starts running in the opposite direction, stopping about forty yards from the Vennoxamos and then turning to face it.

Michael readies his pike, and stabs it into the roof of the Vennoxamos' mouth as it tries to attack him, and then quickly pulls back the spear. He continues his retreat, doing his best to avoid any more conflict with the beast. He quickly removes the head of his spear and screws on a shorter, yet wider, one, all while jogging backwards away from the creature.

Fortunately for Michael, this is enough to kill it. Its corpse falls heavily onto the grass, blood leaking out of its mouth and head. He was not out of the woods yet however. In the direction he was running he would encounter a four legged animal, a herbivore. It was a strange creature with a long neck like a sauropod, however it had hooves on its legs. This was Xamatoequus. It was busy browsing from a tree and not paying any mind to michael.

Michael almost runs into the Xamotoquus, and spends some time looking at it warily, unsure if it was hostile. He doesn't think it is. He then spends some time admiring the strange foliage and life all around him. He kind of wants to walk back to the corpse of the Vennoxamos, just to look at it, but decides not to. He doesn't yet trust the planet all around him.

The prosauropod continued eating the soft leaves of the nearby tree blissfully unaware of Michael. He would however encounter a strange new animal that looked out of place among the saurian residents. It was a small winged creature, one that looked like a rabbit. It flapped its wings and landed on the grass below. It had a pouch on its belly, indicating this was infact a marsupial.

Michael looks cautiously at the rabbit-like thing, holding his pike at his side in one hand. He's not really sure what to trust here, and so he decides to walk back after Kassandra. But she's gone, and he's not exactly a tracker. So he's stuck here. Damn.
He looks at the rabbit-thing for a bit, then decides to give it some distance. Those teeth look pretty sharp. He stands, just observing everything around him, and starts thinking.

The corpse of the Vennoxamos was next to him, already it started to smell like rot. This would attract scavengers, one of which was a small theropod. Its crane-like neck reached in and sniffed the corpse, and nipped at it. This was Coeloxamos, a mostly harmless scavenger that strangely smelled like honey.

Michael looks over at the scavenger, wary but not believing it presents any harm to him. So he sits down in the grass, a good distance away from each of the animals, and takes a small whetstone to the blade of his pike, and stores the rest of the blades in their respective sheathes, of which there were six, each a different size and shape.

He starts running the whetstone along the blade of his spear, making an ear grating scraping sound, about a second in interval between each pass of it along the blade. He seems absolutely focused on this task, but in reality he's focusing on his surroundings more. Not as much as he was earlier, but enough to know what was going on around him.
The slightly interesting note of this was that he made no vocal sound during his fight with the Vennoxamos, or any sound afterwards. His steps make almost no noise on the grass, his motions make close to no sound either. There is just the scrape of the whetstone on the blade.

The hadrosaur did nothing to annoy Michael, but they were a sort of a bother. He decides just to ignore them, despite how loud they were. He continues scraping away at his blades, but stands up. He plants the blunter end of his pike, the end that tapered to a point, not the blade, into the grass, so that it stands parallel to his body, and removes the blade from the shaft, using the whetstone to sharpen it. The loud honking of the hadrosaurs causes him to drop his whetstone and look over at them in annoyance, though. He picks it up and goes back to sharpening his blade.

The Xamatosaurolophus gathered near him thinking he was one of their own due to the scraping sounding similar to their honking. Soon however their curious honking became more frequent, as if they were trying to communicate with him. The tall grass all around was shuffling due to the breeze blowing and small animals running about. Something was amiss though, the hadrosaurs were keeping watch and their body language started turning from calm to steadily nervous.

Michael looks over at the Xamatosaurolophus's, near him, and puts the whetstone away. He glances at them and then looks at them a few seconds longer. They seem... Nervous? They were kind of agitated, for some reason.
He grabs up his pike from the ground and screws on the blade. He stays where he is, but holds his pike in his hands, ready if anything happens.

The nearby grass began to rustle, something was inside! The hadrosaurs began to move around and make agitated honks, they were scared. The grass began compressing forward, as if something was coming forward out of the grass. suddenly it revealed itself....to be a tiny little dinosaur. It was known as a Quilloxamos, a small bipedal herbivore with quills not unlike a porcupine lining its back. It made small squawks at Michael, curious of him.

Michael does not feel threatened by this small animal, so he puts his pike by his side, the blade pointing toward the ground. He doesn't mutter a word, but looks on as the loud ones shy away from this small, spiny one, a bit of an amusing sight. He's sure there are other people around here, he saw them at the corpse of the great beast. So he sets off toward where he thinks he came from, even waving goodbye to the loud, honking animals and the smaller, spiked one, smiling a bit as he does so. He shoulders his backpack and starts walking eastward, but he isn't entirely sure if this is the way he should be going. Eh, he'll figure it out.

It would certainly seem like it was a false alarm, but there was still something amiss. Suddenly the herd would find itself being ambushed, with Michael in the middle of it! It was a pack of Xamatoraptors, a large species of raptor easily two heads taller than Michael. They had noticeable frills around their necks composed of yellow feathers, they opened and closed them at each other as if it were a kind of language. One of them, the more dominant of the pack had went on ahead and the rest closed in and made their horrid screeches. The hadrosaurs were now in full fear mode, honking in terror and panic. They threatened to trample Michael as they ran.

Michael turns as he hears the loud honking and barely dodges the running herd, and then sees the cause of the panic. He can tell these ones are more hostile, they have more sharp bits, and why else would the Honkers be afraid? So he quickly takes out his pike and gets it into a combat position, but ultimately, there are too many. So he begins his slow retreat, not taking his eyes off of the Xamatoraptors. He wants to remove his backpack and pull out a different blade, but there's no time. These things are a bit bigger than him, and he's not all sure he wants to have to fight them off. So he whistles, very loudly and sharply, three times in quick succession and then three times slowly, then repeats the process. Any being around him that knew morse code would surely recognize the S.O.S. At least he hopes they do. He continues his slow retreat, pike at the ready.

Dani was enraptured by the massive, long-necked tree-eaters browsing in a wooded area just below the hill. Some of their heads were more or less level with hers, from her vantage. One even glanced over at Dani and let out a grumble of acknowledgment. The creature was so large, it resonated quietly through the earth beneath her feet. Then it went back to eating leaves casually.

Hearing the chirping from almost right behind her, Dani turned around slowly, so as not to spook whatever was there. She had to repress an urge to “squee” at the cuteness of the little quill-backed creatures. They were more interested in her bike, and didn’t notice her until she took a small step toward them. Dani immediately crouched down to about their height to seem less threatening. She almost reached up to pull down the Stenomask before a thought struck her: the mask looked very similar to the beaks on these Quillbacks.

“Hey, guys, aren’t you cute?” Dani said in a soothing voice, only somewhat muffled. “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. Here... I think I have something for you!”

Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a granola bar and offered it to the Quillbacks after unwrapping it. They sniffed at it skittishly, but didn’t seem to want to take it from her, so she dropped it in front of them. Her attention was torn away by a high, shrill whistle. Three short ones, three long ones, then three short again. It was repeated. Definitely Morse for S.O.S. Somebody was in trouble nearby.

Dani ran to the edge of the hill and looked down to see a large most definitely herbivorous herd stampeding away from her, being stalked by what looked like raptors. In the midst of the herd was a man holding some sort of long handled weapon, calmly threading his way through them. What worried her most was the raptors: they might decide the guy was an easier target. But how was she supposed to frighten them away? She had a large(ish) caliber pistol, but was loathe to use it unless absolutely necessary. Shooting it in the air would be a waste of ammunition. A plan began to form in her mind even as she went about doing so.

Dani hopped on her bike while calling to the Quillbacks: “If you guys want more of that stuff, follow me, please!”

It was a longshot that they would listen, but it might work. This side of the hill was very steep, so it would be a very rapid descent. With the height, it might seem to the raptors that the Quillbacks were bigger, so they might be spooked. If all else failed, maybe seeing a human racing at them yelling as viciously and loudly as possible racing down on them would scare them off. Dani pushed off and started heading down the hill...

The Xamatoraptors attention was diverted to the crazy person on the bike. They were surprised to discover a strange new creature that was not only not afraid but seemed to want to fight them. They opened and closed their frills to each other, once again using that strange bodily language to communicate with each other.

Through consecutive flapping and bird-like squacking toward each other they made a temporary retreat. All of them that is except for the alpha, he did not retreat. Instead he stood his ground and angrily screeched. He was not leaving without a meal, his pack could wait for him.

Michael watches as a person on a bike seems to rush over. The Xamatoraptors seemed to have scurried off, all but one. At least there's not as many anymore. The one screeched, he wasn't sure for what reason, but he rushes the creature anyway, and hits it in the throat with the blunt end of the pike, probably not killing it but almost definitely hurting it. He takes a couple quick steps back, then prepares his pike and takes on a fighting stance.

As predicted, it was a very, very rapid descent. Dani could barely keep her bike going in a straight line. but thankfully she only had one target now. The rest of the sizeable raptors did appear to be spooked by her unorthodox attack. The last one, definitely the Alpha, stood its ground. The dude with the spear rushed up and poked at the raptor’s neck, but Dani didn’t have time to see what effect it had. Suddenly she was almost upon the two. Hunching over the handlebars and shifting her center of gravity towards the back wheel, Dani wrenched the rear brake. Throwing that shifted gravity to the side now, the back wheel started skidding right into one of the raptor’s back legs, possibly breaking the thing’s knee-joint if it hit properly.

Not wanting to sit around waiting to have her head chomped off, Dani pushed down hard on the pedals after the momentum followed through on the strike. If she got free before the raptor could react to the attack on two fronts, Dani would throw down her Stenomask with one hand and then gesture at the spear-wielding fellow: “Throw me your spear! I have an idea!”

The Xamatoraptor alpha went in for a bite but was interrupted by Michaels spear handle strike to the neck. This injury would have it make a pained squeak sound. Suddenly Dani's attack to its knee joint would collide, causing its leg to fracture. The Xamatoraptor let out more pained sounds before falling over. It struggled onto its feet and yet....its attention was not on the two fighting it. One could see fear in its eyes. It did its best to limp away in the direction its pack mates went.

The reason for its fear quickly became apparent as hiding in the foliage nearby Dani and Michael were being watched. They were face to face with a Xamatosaurus Rex, the most feared and dangerous predator in the valley. It forward facing eyes were staring directly at them, having been attracted by the sound of combat. It made no sound, it awaited their next move and stayed stock still.