Let me get this straight. You want to gather a big pile of rotten meat, lay it out there, and wait inside the pile?
"It's time to tell a story. It's not a story of heroic deeds by knights in shining armor. There's no parade for the heroes at the end. But it
is an interesting tale nonetheless.
When I was younger, just getting started on my own, I found myself with a group of adventurers. Now, my goal back then wasn't to become an adventurer. I was moreso looking for mercenary work, maybe work as a bodyguard. I'd heard tales of adventurers who got into shit that I wasn't mentally prepared for. But after 2 months without steady employment, my coin purse was running low. So I went over to the adventurer's guild and signed up for the reserves list. Basically a list of folks looking for an adventuring party, or adventuring parties looking for members. As luck would have it, there was a group who had just lost a member --
that should have been the first red flag, but I was young -- and was looking for someone to shore up their bladed weapon specialist role --
their words, not mine. Being a somewhat practiced swordsman, it seemed like a good fit, and they already had a job they were about to head out for, which meant getting paid sooner.
Fast forward a few months, and things had been going pretty well. A few close calls, but as it turns out, having a cleric of the Everlight is pretty handy for avoiding dying. We took down a bandit group that had been causing issues for a small village, handled an infestation of Ankheg that had started to spread out from the Nabata Desert towards some of the border towns, and had just gotten word that some minor lord wanted to hire us for a job. My coin purse was pretty healthy, and I was feeling good.
It took us a few days to get to the lord's manor, which was a nice change of pace. A little time to practice my woodworking, recover a bit more than usual, and just relax. Once we arrived, we were greeted by a butler -
a butler! - who led us inside, had us take off our shoes -
who does that? - and brought us to meet this lord. He had heard of our rout of the bandits, as he had business interests in the town, and wanted to bring us on for a very lucrative opportunity. Through an informant of his, he had come to learn of a red dragon wyrmling in the mountains near his estate. Now, I don't know how much you know of history, but dragons have been effectively extinct for nearly a millennium. That there was a wyrmling, meant there was an adult that had escaped the Scouring, and had decided to stay, rather than flee like the rest of its kind. Our job was to capture this wyrmling so the noble could train it as his own. If we ended up killing it, he was still gonna pay us, because authentic dragon scales are still one hell of a status symbol.
With information in hand, and the glimmer of a massive payday in our eyes, we set off to find this creature. A day and a half journey into the mountains had us noticing scorched underbrush, scrapes along trees, and near sundown, a cave with an orange glow emanating from it. We backtracked a few hundred yards, and made our camp to plan. We discussed for a few hours, not finding a good plan, before the wizard finally spoke up, after digging through his books. "If the mother isn't here, the wyrmling will have to hunt for itself! We should set a trap." Him being the most learned one of the group, he outlined his idea. Red dragons tend to scorch any meat they find to a crisp, so they aren't necessarily looking for fresh meat, they're looking for easy meat. So if we provide the easy meal, it'll be easy as hell to bait the creature.
So, plan somewhat in place, we made the trip back to town, and bought as much rotten meat as we could. As it were, there had been a bit of a hot streak of weather, and there was a lot of meat that had started to turn. By some definitions of luck, this was lucky. All in all, we managed to get nearly 400 pounds of rotten meat, and let me tell you, that smell is still burned into my nostrils. Especially after another day and a half travel in scorching heat and sun. By the time we were back to the exterior of the cave, I'm pretty sure every creature within 5 miles could smell the meat. We built up the pile, but once we set it all up, the pile didn't look nearly as impressive as we were hoping. In comes the brainiac suggesting we hide under the meat to make the pile look bigger. No, I'm not joking, yes, he was the smartest person in our group. We all reminded him that it was a
RED dragon, that likes to
burn it's food to a crisp, and he was suggesting we hide in its food. He explains a bit further, to assure us we wouldn't become part of the meal. He has a spell that can make us resistant to fire, and combined with the insulation of the meat pile, we should barely feel the breath of the creature, especially considering it's just a wyrmling. Barely convinced, but with not much better of an option, we agreed to his plan.
I would rather be burnt by a fully grown red dragon than deal with that sensation again. The meat was rotting to the point it was turning from solid hocks of muscle, to a sort of slurry. It smelled so bad I don't think I've fully regained my sense of smell. But... It worked. About 30 minutes of sitting in that hell-pile, we feel the ground starting to shake under us. We hear it sniffing, getting closer to the pile. It was so close, we could hear it beginning to breathe its fire breath. Just before it could, we struck. The ranger and I had a net used to capture bears, and we dragged that over it, the wizard and the cleric did their best with their magic to hold it in place, and for a moment, we thought we had succeeded on this stupid fuckin' plan. Then, the wyrmling tensed, it's scales flared out all over its body, shredding the net, and it engulfed our magic users with the breath it had been preparing for its food. Out of options for capture, we resorted to plan B, kill it while leaving the scales as in-tact as possible.
It came close to being the last adventure we ever did. The cleric had run completely out of spells, many of them having little effect against the wyrmling's hide, and the wizard had been knocked around like a chew toy, as the wyrmling ignored the ranger and I, focusing its ire on the wizard. I ended up having to force feed the cleric and the ranger our last two healing potions, and even then, we barely killed the creature. But we succeeded. Covered in blood - ours, and its - smelling like we just stepped out of a troll's asshole, but we won. To prove a point, and because I really don't like posh snobs, we waltzed into his foyer still coated in viscera, dragging the creature through his front door. His butler was appalled, and I do feel a little bad for him, but the look on this noble's face was almost worth it all. That and the massive chest of coins he paid us.
The group mostly parted ways after that. The wizard was heading to Araphen, to look for a teaching job at the Lussonia Academy, the cleric staying in the town of the noble to open a church of the Everlight. The ranger and I decided we'd had about enough of the adventuring lifestyle, and with the money we had made off that job, we had enough to buy ourselves a tavern and settle down for the rest of our lives."
The man grabs a flagon from the table next to him and raises it towards the woman tending the bar, "Ain't that right, Ranger?". She grabs a small hunk of cheese and throws it at him, smacking him square in the middle of the forehead, calling back with a laugh, "I told you, if you ever call me 'Ranger' again, you're sleeping in the alley!"
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