With the Aurora all buttoned up, berthing fees paid for the next three weeks and the group all booked into a hotel close to the starport, they can finally begin their break on Vanejen. As seems customary they head out to one of the local bars on their first night.
Later that night, a small bird-like alien cautiously edged its way to the table and the adventurers. Afraid to speak, it stood in the shadows and watched. Finally, Tommy noticed it and beckoned it forward. "What's up, little fellow?" He asked.
Slowly, needing lots of encouragement from the group, it told it's story.
The creature was far older than anyone guessed, aged maybe sixteen or seventeen standard years, and said the group could call it Chiree. It had lived, with its nest of some forty or fifty adults and children, in a small village on the savannah between the jungle and desert. As a mere nestling, it had been taken from its home, along with two siblings, by rough men wearing guns and uniforms with gold badges. It spent weeks in a cage in the hold of a ship, and was finally taken to a terrible prison, where it had spent the last year. Chiree describes the prison as a lot of individual cells, each crowded with varieties of aliens, and guarded by metal monsters.
Weeks ago, he managed to escape by sneaking out of his cell and leaping into the icy waters around the prison. Washed up on a beach, almost dead, he recovered and worked his way here, living off fruits and berries. Initially hiding, he tried to get help from humans, but they drove him away with rocks. It ends it's story with a simple plea; "They will kill my nest mates, I just know it. They are planning terrible experiments on them. Won't you help me? Please."
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