[center][h3]Angry Birds[/h3][/center]

There was a flash, a deafening boom, and then a wave of heat. They struck Glough in that order, and for a few moments the cherry-red flames of that explosion (which had been far too close for comfort!) consumed the small shadow that the gnome’s similarly diminutive form had been casting in the evening sun. But the plan had worked!

From out of the trees-turned-splinters there flew dozens of birds, some in the form of pulverized and burnt meat, others as smoking corpses propelled by the blast, and a lucky few as panicked survivors flapping away as best they could after being disorientated by the sudden explosion of their wretched homes and all their vile co-conspirators.

Glough suppressed a chuckle as he took aim with a pneumatic rifle and fired; hilarious as it was to think of the imminent doom of his enemies, laughter was known to cause shaking of the hands and reduce weapon accuracy by approximately 23.33 (repeating, of course) percent, an empirical figure that the Royal Army had invested many studies and a substantial amount of tax dollars in order to derive. Now it was military doctrine!

As Director Glough pulled the trigger, cartridge of compressed air was breached and the pressure used to propel a dart; the tiny projectile was nonetheless deadly, as one of the fleeing birds found out. Other gnomish rifleman had taken up position around the grove of trees and similarly fired. They quickly reloaded and fired again, exterminating and driving off the last of the surviving birds that had been lurking in that cluster of trees.

“Delfus, prepare for the next assault. We press the attack until dusk!” the Director proclaimed, much to the dismay of a rather nervous officer.

“Director, I’m afraid that er, won’t be possible-“

Glough stormed over to his subordinate before he could get out another word, and then he roared, spittle flying from his mouth, “WHAT?!”

Delfus took a moment to breathe in and steady himself, for he was a senior officer and important party member, not some stammering fool. He stood in the position of attention and reported, “That was the last of the blasting powder and air cartridges. No more have been recovered, and we think very little of the arsenal was ever successfully jettisoned and parachuted, making further search efforts unlikely to bear any metaphorical fruits of the sweet sort!”

Glough burled his fists as his face changed in color to match his iconic hat. “Have the engineers improvise some weapons in the meantime,” he ordered. “We’re going to continue extermination efforts. We shall not rest so long as enemy saboteurs stalk these woods and mountains! This may be a wretched wasteland, but it’s my, I mean [i]our[/i] wretched wasteland and temporary home, so we’re going to pry it out of the cold and dead beaks of every last evil bird...”

The Director’s ravings continued for some time, circling round and round to his newfound irrational hatred for the birds. Delfus, for his part, was hardly listening. Instead he was wondering how he would continue spinning this to make the plan sound sane. To detonate those dozen barrels of blasting powder beneath a couple of trees and then exhaust every bit of precious cartridges that remained for their pneumatic weapons? Just routine quality assurance checks, of course. Killing all the birds? Just hunting to brush up on the food stores. But how would he justify killing all of the birds in ten miles?

Pah, that was a problem for tomorrow. More immediate was the concern of how they’d “improvise” to continue the Director’s plans and meet the daily
bird-kill quota that he’d imposed upon the party. Delfus endeavored to delegate that problem unto Engineer Bronzeburn. If anybody could do it, it would be him because his unorthodox thinking and penchant for using odd materials in his inventions had already left the gnome branded a madman. But that was just as well, because surely that meant that he would be able to create some sort of deadly contraption out of the available materials, there was plenty of twigs and grass and bird corpses to work with. If the mad genius could make something work, he stood to rise quite high in the party’s ranks.

And then of course, Delfus had to keep track of the ongoing efforts to rally any remaining stragglers, and further establish the base camp here at the crash site, and salvage whatever could be found amidst the Red January’s horrid wreckage...there was also the manner of the strange report of something having been seem watching them. Glough himself claimed to have seen it, but so worried was he about the birds’ presence that he’d not bothered to worry much.

[hider=Summary]
[b]A[/b] Improve Food: Glough is ordering the extermination of all nearby birds in retaliation for their assault upon the Red January. What birds aren’t totally blown up or incinerated are to be eaten.

[b]B[/b] Improve Military Technology: The gnomes [i]had[/i] an airship with lightning cannons and gunpowder and pneumatic rifles, but now they have lost or squandered all of those potent advantages and are left with nothing. An ‘Engineer Bronzeburn’ is left to pick up the pieces and try to develop some sort of weapon, so that the bird-killing can continue in full force and the gnomes can remain capable of defending party interests. Bronzeburn has a promotion on the table if he can pull this off!

Glough pays little heed to the strange figure that he saw, and his officer Delfus is  left to oversee the efforts of the four groups from last post while Glough takes charge of the bird genocide.
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