Get that Horse! Sponsored by L'gat's Tome of Amazing Creatures

Overview:

This will be a bit different from our usual encounters. The main monsters of this encounter is taken from L'gat's Tome of Amazing Creatures or their current kickstarter for volume two. I definitely suggest you check out their community Power Up Gamers. They are all about making roleplaying games more accessible, particularly for people with disabilities. In the interest of being transparent they did approach us and send us a copy of these things to help drum up support for their kickstarter. We did enjoy the monsters in the books so we thought we could use those for an encounter.

Initial Description:

You slowly rise through the air on feeling the wind across the airship. You've cornered your quarry as you the majestic wind swept creature being backed into the mountain. You see the small peaks poking through the clouds. Breath feels hard to come by in the high altitude. It's eyes focus with fury as it realizes the only way out is through your airship, you brace yourselves as it attacks.

Enemies: 

GUSTSLINGS
HP 15 AC 18 MOV 100ft
STR -1 DEX +4 CON -3 WIS -3 CHA -3
Blind Sense 40ft - The spiders can detect any living creature within 40ft.
Attack: (+5 to hit) 1d4 damage.  When a creature is attacked they must make a DC 15 STR saving throw or be launched 10 feet into the air and 5 feet back.
One last breath: A gustling can make it's form explode causing no damage but forcing all creatures within a 10 foot radius to make a DC 15 STR saving throw or be launched 10 feet into the air and 5 feet back.

NPCs:

Ships Crew - Their job is to fly the ship. They won't be much help in hurting the breezeborn, but if they disappear down the ship goes.

Objectives:

Main:

Capture the Breezeborn! - Just like it sounds. The PCs need to capture the breezeborn to help fix their problems (could be to pay a debt, could be some magical problem in a town that only a flying horselike entity that brings the wind can fix).

Side Objectives:

It's a Long Way Down - You don't want to fall off the ship. That will spell death.
Keep the Crew Alive - The more crew members are the more help PCs can get; either getting the ship to move or getting help loading nets, or throwing ropes over the side. 

Map:

Key:

Green X - Breezeborn
Yellow S - Gustling Spawn Points
Red Triangle - Net Guns
Purple Square - PC starting location
Blue - Open Sky
Brown - Airship
Dark Blue Circles - The Crew
Light Grey - Accessible mountain tops
Dark Grey - Inaccessible mountain tops

Special Mechanics: 

Capture it! - The PCs need to capture the breezeborn. After they have gotten the breezeborn to less than one quarter of it's HP (less than 51HP at average health) they can fire the gun. It contains an enchantment to float (to keep the breezeborn from plummeting to its death) and small enough weave that it prevents the breezeborn from traveling through it. The PCs should know that it needs to be quite weak to capture it. The gun is a straight DEX roll which needs to beat the AC of the breezeborn. It takes an action to load the gun and an action to fire. If they fail to capture it or if they kill it the PCs fail.

The Crew - There is an initial crew of 12 to help the PCs. They function as a single creature that loses some of it's special abilities over time. Don't worry about tabulating hit points, only have the crew members die if they are thrown overboard by the creatures (which the creatures should aim to do unless the PCs intervene somehow). The crew has the following actions (which also can be used as reactions):

1. Move the ship - They can move or steer the ship in any direction.
2. Load the nets - They can help to load the net to the gun.
3. Throw a life line - They can throw a rope overboard to help a falling PC.

At a crew of 12 the crew has 2 reactions and 2 actions
At a crew of 9 the crew has 1 reaction and 2 actions
At a crew of 6 the crew has 2 actions
At a crew of 3 the crew has 1 action

Falling and other Ariel Maneuver- This depends on the tone of your game. The more heroic you want your game the less rolls success, the more roles the PCs should get to avoid plummeting to their death. We would tend to run this as a heroic scenario, so it would be one roll to do something cool and 2-3 rolls to save yourself depending on how bad they mess up.

Gustlings are coming - At each initiative count 20 the breezeborn summons 1d6 gustlings evenly split from the two mountain side spawn points (represented by yellow S's) to join it in battle.

Extras:

Easy Re-skins - While this fits perfectly well in a fantasy game it's pretty easy to make monster hunting fit in any genre. Could be the target for a cyberpunk outfit or it could be some alien creature your sci-fi group needs to get.

Inspirations, Shoutouts, and Thanks - Thanks to Power Up Gamers for providing the inspiration this week with their cool monsters! Check out their kickstarter if you would like to have more monsters!

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