VWORP
VWORP
KCHUNK!

creeeeak

The crew of the TARDIS step out into a green, tropical world beneath a brilliant blue sky and a blazing sun.  There are towering, leafy trees all around the ship, and they seem to be in a shallow valley running east and west.  The buzzing and chirruping of insects can be heard all around.  Despite a bit of a breeze, the day is hot and humid.  There's a salt smell in the air, the faint hint of swamp gas, and an odd tang on top of those that reminds Stanley of working in a hyperbaric chamber.  Trav's readings show that the air is safe enough for everyone, although it would be best to be careful of fires.

Trav's temporal trace of the Mailman's warning signal to ancient Earth has led them here: it's near the west coast of the continent that will one day be Australia.  Here and now the planet is on the up-slope of a greenhouse cycle, hotter than Stanley's 21st Century, and although the sun isn't high in the sky the temperature must not be much shy of 35C.  Sereth finds this relatively comfortable, temperate by the standards of Draconia.  Smoke Alarm doesn't notice the heat yet so much as the open space and all the green -- the Traveller's talkiphone box is the only made thing she can see in any direction.

As they start to poke around their immediate surroundings, the four travellers can hear a distant series of hooting sounds coming from eastward: it seems like a horn-call with a definite pattern in it, though with a distinctly organic feel to it.

Trav comes out in comfortable khakis, hiking boots and a black T shirt with this logo -



"Wow, makes me nostalgic for Dinosaur Swamp back other home. All that's missing are the ley lines. It's been -so long- since I've seen dinosaurs. It's a bit late for that, but we are in the stage for mammalian megafauna - giant tapirs, the dawn horse, all sorts of interesting stuff. We should also may be running into some Homo Sapien Eocene folk - the reptilian sophonts later referred to as Silurians.  They are a great people, referred to as "the elder great sibling" of terra during the Great and Bountiful Human Empires. The Eocenes whom I met held the Draconian cultures in high regard, taking cultural inspiration from your people at times, Sereth - and I think your folk at various times had some of your art, politics and poetry in conversation with Silurian work, which got passed onto mammalian terrans. Eocene Terrans helped stop the potential wars between Earth humans and Draconians at some critical junctures - that's why Boobie and I got drawn into some Dalek attacks on their history at various points. But I've never been here before. This is new to me!" She smiles brightly at that, as old Rogue Scientist Louise came out as teacher for a bit.

Blissfully not caring about danger, Trav heads towards the horn calling, wanting to meet the natives.

Smoke Alarm burst through the doors of the talkiphone box, eager and ready to explore...

...then over a few steps slowed to a halt as she took in the vast green world around her. She outlooked but did not eyespy, did not have the knowhow of it. 'Where—?' Smoke Alarm was a creature of the urban jungle, not this living jungle. The closest she knew were the overgrown parks and gardens outside the Towers, green and dense with long grass and thick bushes, through which dogs and cats prowled. But even there, there'd been hard footpaths to guide a Kang, to let her trackback, and electricky lights and park benches and fountains and playgrounds and walls to show places and keep the gardens at bay, to reassure a Kang of home-sweet-home.

But here, there were no towers in the sky, no safe walls at your back, no streetlights, no bins or benches, nothing made by person or cleaner. The floor was just dirt and grass and leaves and bugs, and it squished beneath her shoes. Nothing followed straight lines and corners, it all lay higgledy-piggledy all over. Smoke Alarm could not name or knowhow half of what she eyespied. Even eyespying to the horizon was bewildering; raised in a close urban environment, she could not get high resolution on something so far away.

And it was hot and wet and sticky, and soon Smoke's long blue hair and shabby clothes, of pants and jacket and shirts and the rags tying them together, just clung right to her. It made her dog-bite itch and her eyes sting. She groaned under the oppressive heat and glared at the blazing sun. Where was the hair-conditioning? Where was the ceiling?

It hit her with a primal fear. This was no home-sweet-home, no place for a Kang. This was all just parks and gardens, green and random and dangerous, that went on and on and on, forever and ever.

As Trav strides a few steps away and Smoke Alarm worriedly orbits the TARDIS, there's a cavalcade of rustles and yips and yeeks that converge toward the travellers.  The undergrowth is more than knee-high on the Kang, and she's startled to see a half-dozen trails cut through it by a pack of somethings that swarm through in her direction.

Just.  Like.  Dogs.

She only sees an occasional flash of scales and colored feathers poke above the leafy greenery as the trails split to either side of her, arrowing past her and the others and past the talkiphone box, and off to vanish again into the green.

OOC: Now it's Past Trauma.

Smoke can add a Story Point.  And just to remind everyone, you're back to your starting SP total (so Smoke has 1 more than that now.)