Bucking Brontos- A Prehistoric Western!

[daird]

#1

You ride into the little town of Hornbrook, Montana, the wind kicking up dust in your face. You pay it no mind, though- after a day on the trail, you need civilization's comforts desperately. A sign off to your left proclaims the building it's on to be the Red Frill Saloon, and you head inside for a drink. A rough-looking man in a hat made of a strange, scaly blue leather motions you to join him.


"New in town, I take it? Well, Hornbrook's not like other towns in Montana. To understand her, you need to understand her history, and to understand her history, you need to go back well before she was founded." The stranger takes a slow sip of his whiskey. "Back around… oh, 1790 or so, some Frenchie got this strange idea that there were animals in the distant past that weren't around today. Most people, honestly, didn't pay it much mind. If they were extinct, well, we'd never see them. Weren't really relevant. But as we pushed back the boundaries of our knowledge and filled in the blank spots in the map, a funny thing happened. Turns out, extinct is a relative term."


"It was like the ultimate gold rush, as everyone wanted to get their hands on a living, breathing dinosaur. And not just individuals, either- governments tamed great numbers for their armies. The British took full advantage of the vast herds of Alberta, while the Spanish focused their efforts on the giants of Argentina. And when the Civil War started, Yankees and Rebs alike rode to war on mountains of fangs and scales. Heck, I saw the charge of Lee's Tyrannosaur Corps at Gettysburg with my own eyes." You note that the speaker doesn't say which side he fought on.


"After the war, things settled down, for the most part. There's been some arguments between Uncle Sam and John Bull over the boundary line, which leaves some folks nervous, given how close we are to it. But mostly, things are pretty peaceful. We tame dinosaurs and send some back East, use most of 'em here. Which reminds me- if you're hungry, old George back there makes a mean Triceratops steak."


So, obviously, this is going to be a Western set RP with dinosaurs. However, there's a bit of a catch- you can play as a human, or a dinosaur. Now, these are not talking Dinotopia/Land Before Time dinosaurs, though a little bit of anthropomorphizing is okay. All dinosaur species are playable, and don't worry about going too obscure- Wikipedia has a list of all of them.

Human Sheet

Appearance (Pic or Description)

Name

Age

Gender

Personality

Bio

Inventory



Dinosaur Sheet

Appearance (Pic or Description)

Name (Make it something like Swift Claw or Green Snout if wild, though more humanlike names are acceptable if domesticated)

Age (Age ranges are unknown for most species, but I'd expect that larger dinos lived longer than small ones)

Species

Gender

Length and Weight (Just to make sure you know what you're talking about- I DO NOT want to see ten-ton compys or 2 foot long Triceratops)

Wild or domesticated?

Personality

Bio

 

[Red Thunder]

•Joseph "Joe" Zimmerman
•35 years of age
•Male
•5'10" / 185 lbs
•A man used to being on his own, Joe tends toward the quiet, having little to say in the way of conversation. This is not to say he's unpleasant: he's nearly always cracking a crooked smile at something, and a harsh chuckle is usually soon to follow. He enjoys the company of his fellow man, in much the same way that a sheepdog likes the company of his master's flock. But his eyes are always looking for the weirdness, for the things out of shape. And when he finds something worth sinking his teeth into, his pleasant manner evaporates and the hunter comes out.

•Born and raised on a horse ranch in Utah, Joseph Zimmerman and his family had their hands full. Horse thieves showed up regularly, looking for an easy payout, and the horses themselves tended toward stubborn and rarely were broken without a fight. But the worst were the wild animals. The dinosaurs. The herbivores went where they pleased, grazing on anything, giving no mind to little things like fences. The carnivores did the same, finding they had a palate for horse meat, and ammunition was regularly in short supply. So, in addition to the horses, the Zimmermans took to training raptors. Smart, agile, and adaptable, the raptors sought activity and training, and Joe in particular took to their training easily. One he picked to hand raise: a beautiful Utahraptor he named Quiet Feet in the tradition of the Indians, nicknaming her "Kay".
But ranching didn't hold Joe's attention, and he wanted to do something more active. He aided a US Marshal one April hunting down a band of notorious horse thieves, and Kay proved her worth in finding and corralling them. Joe for his part enjoyed what they did, and afterwards took up bounty hunting to scratch that itch. He's in Hornbrook currently making good on some warrants served.
•Joe carries a Colt revolver and a Winchester rifle. He also has a Bowie knife strapped to one leg.


Dinosaur Sheet

•Quiet Feet (nickname: Kay)
•17 years old
•Utahraptor
•Female
•15' long / 950 lbs
•Trained from birth to track, subdue, and hunt
•Mischievous and playful, Kay loves to be involved with whatever is going on. If she's allowed to participate, she's a dedicated if sometimes distracted helper; if she's denied, more often than not she'll find trouble to get into, thereby achieving the attention she desires.
•Quiet Feet was born and raised on the Zimmerman Ranch and personally picked and hand raised by Joseph. After showing a proclivity for hunting and tracking in rounding up a gang of horse thieves, Kay was chosen by Joe to accompany him in bounty hunting.

 

[daird]

Name: John Fletcher

Age: 32

Male

Personality: John is a curious individual- perhaps too curious for his own good. He loves to go out for rides outside of his ranch. He tends to be wiser than you'd expect from a man so young, and tends not to speak very much, making it all the more attention getting when he does so.

Bio: John grew up the son of a prosperous Cincinnati merchant, but knew a storekeeper's life wasn't for him. After serving in the Union Army during the war and seeing very little action in the Quartermaster Department, he went west, using savings from the Army and his father's inheritance to buy some land and dinosaur livestock outside Hornbrook. He now runs the Double Bar Ranch, and has a herd of Triceratops and Corythosaurus. He's no dinosaur baron, but he does fairly well for himself.

Inventory: A Colt Navy Revolver.

 

[Dakota K5]

Appearance


Name: Otto Williams
Age: 36
Gender: male
Personality
Otto is a rough around the edges man from back out east, he will speak his mind but doesn't have an issue speaking softer to people that need it. Always willing to teach those who want to learn, he is a man of action and thought rather then useless speeches and platitudes.

Bio
Born back East in Georgia to a mixed parentage of an English Father and a German mother both established immigrants by the time Otto came along. His mother from a small family of workers and his father a lawyer making a decent living in Savannah representing many of the dinosuar owners in cases for proper payment for the use of their flocks and as such Otto grew up both well cared for and educated. By the time the war had started Otto had been off at school for only a year and like many young men at the time on both sides of the north south divide he went home and joined up with one of his state's regiments and became a rebel, a sharpshooter. Otto had never been one for politics before the war and didn't care much for them when he signed up either, slavery, states rights and all the other reasons the Confederate states had seceded for had never concerned him as he saw the war as some grand adventure like he would read about as a child but war is known to change a man, in both perspective and attitude. By the last days of the war Otto had become jaded to both the union and the destruction they caused as well as the leaders who had started the war in the south, he had seen men tore apart, drown in their own blood or die of infection while also causing his own share of fatalities as a sharpshooter. The war had been started for reasons Otto understood but did not sympathies with and at the end of it all he saw no reason that he should have fought in the first place. As soon as the war ended Otto started heading west, away from it all.

Inventory
Remington Rolling block: x1
Colt SAA: x1
Kephart knife 6in: x1
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Appearance

Name: Oak
Age: 8 (juvenile)
Species: Allosaurus
Gender: Female
Length and Weight: 18 feet 2500 pounds
Wild or domesticated: Wild

Personality:
Oak is a moody creature of some attitude who demands her master's attention at most times when he is awake and rarely affords anyone else attention.
Bio:
Otto found Oak in Missouri when she was only a year old, he had been on his way west and when camping he heard a sound of distress down a hill into a small forested area. He had heard the noise after the sun had gone down so he was only able to call out to the creature and try and calm it through the night though that did very little to stop the noise of distress. In the morning Otto headed down the hill from his camp and found a small newly hatched Allosaur trapped in the roots of an Oak tree. He freed the small creature who attempted to take a few fingers as he went but Otto had seen enough death in the war and decided he would at least do something to help this creature despite the things attempts to bite him. He guessed the creature had been here some time as it did not get up and run as soon as it was free, he took off his coat and threw it over the creature so he could safely take it back up the hill. After that Otto fed and gave the creature water for a few days until it could stand and move about on it's own and at that point it left, and Otto thought that was the end of it. As he moved camp and set up a new one he started to find small dead animals, he was frankly confused by it all until he saw that same Allosaur from the oak tree was following him and bringing food to him as he moved. This continued for several weeks before he could coax the creature into camp again and to actually stay, he started calling the dino Oak after the tree he found her trapped in and for the next eight years she served as a companion on his trip west.​

 

[daird]

Attention, everyone. Due to changes in my schedule, I no longer have the time to GM this roleplay. My apologies.