The Autumn Wyvern Shoot

Each autumn, for just two weeks, the forests and mountains of Taynedale fall silent. Everybody knows what is coming: as the leaves begin to turn brown the cloud giants who rule the valley release their wyverns for their annual shoot. Nobody sane leaves sight of their bastle house until the leaves are beginning to fall and the hunt is over.

All year, the wyverns are fattened up on goats' meat and adolescent humans - one from each village. They are housed in special adamantine cages in each of the giants' estates, so small that they are unable to fly - this keeps their wing muscles artificially weakened. The combination of obesity and enfeeblement means that, when they are finally released, they can only manage short stuttering flights and must spend most of their time rushing about in the undergrowth until startled by the hunters.

The hunters themselves go out a week after the wyverns are released. Armed with huge composite bows, they stride out into the woods in search of their prey, accompanied by packs of tamed dire wolves who rove through the trees aiming to flush out quarry. The goal is to kill the flapping wyverns with single arrows through the heart or neck, although this takes exceptional shooting; more frequently the reptiles are brought down like pincushions by volleys of arrows and then savaged by the dire wolves when they crash to earth. Their bodies are hauled back to the giants' castles by teams of human servants with teams of oxen, and feasted on throughout the winter; sometimes the spoils are shared out among the local human serfs in special yuletide feasts.

Anybody travelling through Taynedale during the first half of the month of November may encounter wyverns, hunting parties, or both. Replace half of all entries on the random encounter table for those hexes with "wyvern" (75% of replaced entries) and "hunting party" (25% of replaced entries).

Wyvern: HD 7+7, AC 4, #ATT 2 (bite 2d6, stinger 1d6*), Move 60/Fly 120 (E). 

*Stinger is deadly poisonous on a failed save vs death

*Can only fly for 120 yards and must then rest for 6 turns

Hunting Parties consist of 2d6 cloud giants (HD 16+2, AC 4, #ATT 1 (short sword 3d4+11, composite bow 4d6+11), Move 180). Of these, 1 in 4 will be unarmed wolf handlers accompanied by 1d6 dire wolves each (HD 4+4, AC 6, #ATT 1 (bite 1d6+2), Move 180).  

There is a 1 in 3 chance each hunting party is accompanied by 1d3 teams of oxen with 1d4 human handlers. These are unarmed and 0-level.

Hunting parties generally have no interest per se in hunting humans, adventurers or otherwise, but their dire wolves are not so discerning.