The Adventure Zone: Amnesty - Episode 1

Synopsis
''Our heroes begin a fateful day in the unassuming, rural ski town of Kepler, West Virginia. Duck answers a peculiar distress call. Aubrey puts on a memorable magic show. Ned plans his next grift.''

Prologue
"We see a carpet of pine needles laid out over the quiet floor of the Monongahela National Forest. Bright light is beaming down from the waxing, nearly full moon overhead. It is summer in Kepler, West Virginia, and it is still. In this particular neck of the woods, not a creature is stirring.

'' The tall pines all around are motionless, bathing in this moonlight. There are no howls from the forest’s depths. No frogs rattling in the creeks that criss-cross the terrain. No crickets whistling their summer song. Kepler is quiet too. Its citizens have long since retired for the day, the steady hum of the funicular that connects the town to the ski slopes above ceased operations hours ago. ''

''Signs for the businesses catering to Kepler’s night owls flicker and dim as their proprietors close up shop. Soft lights in the towns’ windows extinguish one by one, save for the office window of the Amnesty Lodge, on the outskirts of Kepler’s topside, where the manager sips her evening tea, peering expectantly out of this window and into the forest beyond. And back in those woods, a stone archway stands in the centre of a small clearing, the waxing moon reaches its zenith in the starlit sky above. ''

''The carpet of pine needles begins to vibrate in soft pulses, away from the centre of this clearing, and, in an instant, the span of the small arch is filled with the moonlight above, and the carpet of needles is stripped away as sharp winds blow outwards and away from the clearing in every direction. The moon’s reflection on the archway dims. The owner of the Amnesty Lodge finishes her evening tea and extinguishes the last light of Kepler, West Virginia."''

Duck Newton
During the night, Duck receives a future vision of himself standing in Monongahela forest. Yards away from him is a stone archway that beckons Duck forward. A strong gust of wind comes off this archway and, right as it hits him, he awakes in his office in the ranger station, where he is working an overnight shift, to the sound of his desk phone ringing. Duck answers the phone and recieves a distress call complaining about someone at the Park and Camp RV making too much noise and also about a big bonfire going on right in middle of their campground, which Smokey would say is not acceptable behavior.Duck heads to the Park and Camp Lot 5, where he sees a parked, mid-sized RV that looks recently wrecked, and, just like the complaints said, there is also a bonfire roaring in a pit in the middle of the lot, although it's starting to die down a bit. Duck takes out his his maglite and Reads a Bad Situation.
 * Q. Are there any dangers I haven’t noticed? A. Duck hears a sound inside the RV of someone nervously loading a shotgun shell into a shotgun.

Duck calls out, "Excuse me?" to the person inside and is met with a shotgun blast to the door to the RV, which fortunately only dents it, and a yelp from the person inside. Duck pulls out his radio and calls for police support in response.A young woman in her twenties steps out the from the RV and sets down the shotgun. Duck tells the woman his "name", which causes her to crack up, as her name is Pidgeon Wilson. Duck tells Pidgeon to get the fire under control, as it's a real danger to the park, but she tells him that she needs to keep it aflame as its the only thing keeping whatever she saw in the woods away. Pidgeon explains that she was out in the forest looking for mushrooms with her friend, Pete, when, suddenly, they were attacked by what looked like several bears rolled up into one superbear. Pidgeon managed to make it back to the RV, but Pete is still somewhere out in the woods. Duck doesn't quite buy Pidgeon's story and, seeing that there's still twenty minutes before the cops arrive, decides to Investigate a Mystery.
 * Q. What’s my best way in? A. Very, very cautiously.
 * Q. What's the biggest threat? A. The person with the shotgun. Obviously.
 * Q. What sort of creature is it? A. Pidgeon reiterates that it was a bear attacked her. It had patchy fur, almost like patchwork fur, had a big horn coming out of its shoulder, and was about 8-ft tall.

WIP
 * Q. Did you see which way it went? A. Pidgeon points back into the woods sort of behind Lot 5 and explains that the bear pursuing her turned tail once it got close to her camp, which is why she built the bonfire. In the direction Pidgeon pointed to, Duck sees a path of broken branches and disrupted leaves, all covered in droplets of black blood or ooze. Pidgeon tells him that she shot it in self-defence, which she believes technically makes it not illegal. Duck begs to differ.

Featured NPCs

 * Dr. Harris Bonkers
 * Momma
 * Kirby

Featured Locations

 * Kepler
 * Snowshoe
 * The Cryptonomica