The pack starts trying to work out how they will learn sense wyrm. In theory, a metis or theurge would be the traditional groups that would learn the gift, but they are not totally limited to Sinead and Tillie as other Garou often learn that specific gift. The next step would be to work out what spirits they should contact.
Will spends a fair bit of time in the Umbra and watching his packmates in the realm to see if they are being spied on. After comparing notes, either there's no one spying on them, or the conspiracy is extremely coordinated. However, this heightened state of awareness does help him notice that some of the sept is being a little bit socially awkward with the Lost Prophets. He watches this for a bit, and its not rude, just there is 3 seconds of awkwardenss in any interaction. He figures out that there's a pattern - the sept members who were arguing with Kirsty (such as Georgina) are the ones that are being a bit odd with Lost Prophets.
At one point, Kirsty shows up and spots Tillie, totally coincidentally. She says that she appreciates that Tillie stood up with her at the Moot. She knows it didn't go well, but Tillie did what she said she would and Kirsty appreciates it. Tillie asks how the Get of Pennington are, and Kirsty says that some of them are pissed with her, some aren't. Kirsty in return asks if its all of Lost Prophets that think that the animal thing is worth doing something about? Tillie says that the situation is similar - some agree, some not so sure, probably about 50/50. Kirsty asks whether Tillie would be up helping her organise some stuff about it; obviously only as a private matter. Tillie says that she wants to talk to her pack first, tho Kirsty is quick to point out that its just a personal request, not a garou/pack thing. CONSIDERING. ("No no, its not a date, its helping animals" "There's a wounded wolf in here that needs help. You should lick it better". "Alright, i am giving up now").
Midafternoon, its windy and rainy. Tillie is at the gym. Kasumi is at home. Will is getting ready for work. Sinead is at work. Finn is working at home on his uni work. Each of them has a sudden urge or command to come to the caern right now! Finn shuts his laptop, grabs a jacket and heads there immediately. Come! Sinead suddenly sprints out of the door with no warning, still holding onto the coffee machine piece, leaving Carmel and the customer saying "what just happened?". Come! Will sprints out the door, desperately pulling his clothes on as he runs past Finn. Come! Kasumi finishes her email, puts clothes on and trots to the caern. COME! Tillie is lifting and pushing things and has to go. She grabs her dedicated stuff out of the locker and heads to the caern posthaste. She calls on the way and gets Graeme. He seems relaxed and doesn't think anything is up. Oh, wait, he can see Will... he's sprinting through the rain without shoes, jumping gravestones in an effort to get here. Oh, he just slipped on some gravel. Will bursts in and asks what's happening. Sinead bursts in, handle to the coffee machine in one hand and apron on asking what's happening. Graeme is baffled, he says that Tillie called and said she's on her way, they should wait here. They peek and see Boobook flying around in an agitated fashion.
They move into the Umbra to wait. Will realises Sinead is following Boobook as he flies from tree to tree. Sinead realises there is something wrong, really, really wrong. The others show up and move into the Umbra as well. Boobook comes down and circles the pack repeatedly and then COME! and he zooms off at a great speed to the west. They change to hispo and follow. As they run, the Umbra starts to haze - something like smog or mist builds up and closes in as they run. Tillie senses for wyrm but finds nothing. ("Botch, and what a botch" "That's because you originally were going to get me to roll"). The mists hide terrain ahead of them, and when they reach that point, the landscape has significantly changed. Finn says that they are being pulled along an airt again.
The mists clear and the terrain is definitely not urban - its a grassland sort of deal, rolling with hills and full of rocks. There's some speculation that their dreamtime totem is dragging them out into the outback to be consumed by hungry ghosts. But that of course would be silly. The mists close again. This time, Boobook seems less vibrant, as if he was becoming depleted or diminished in some fashion.
The same process occurs twice more, and each time the terrain is more wild - less smooth, more broken, more bushland, not just grassland. They start having to dodge around trees. When the mists clear the second time, there is no Boobook, and the sense of pulling is gone. They are in a hilly, dry, forested area in the Umbra. Will peeks across the gauntlet, finding it much harder to breech than expected. He looks out at the landscape and finds that where it was rainy and a bit windy in the city, there is a distinct storm going on here. Trees are being whipped around and rain is lashing them. Tillie and Will think the area is a bit familiar, but cannot put their finger on why. Tillie senses for wyrm, and gets a confusing sense - like she goes looking for yellow, but got orange? There's wyrm here, but not here, its underneath here. And its being applied. And its coming in waves - it comes with the storm surges, but then it washes past at a high level without wind.
Finn is sniffing around - he is in bushland, its not an illusion, they are really where they appear to be. Eucalyptus and wet soil is the strongest smells. There is a sudden waft of an odd smell - its human, but strange. There's lupus but not quite right. He looks up and sees an aboriginal man dressed in traditional clothing, a strange looking crinos, and a thylacine lupus. They are all looking at him. The rest of the pack see this (except Will, who is still peeking) and freeze. Finn drops down and gives a deeply respectful greeting howl. (Finn: awe. Tillie: curiosity. Sinead: sheer terror. Kasume: curiosity.) Will hears this noise and looks to see who has shown up. He sees the three figures, and something inside his mind sense a wave of exultation - its very much a YES! strong emotional response. Deep sense of satisfaction and rightness. Its not from him, its internal and external at the same time. ("Are you a fucking bunyip!!")
There is a wash of heavy rain, and when it clears, the figures are gone. The pack are in a certain state of shock, and try and confirm that they actually saw what they thought they saw. Will tries to draw on his ancestral knowledge about Bunyip, but gets no real response. He does know that the Bunyip tribe were wiped out by the other Garou in what was called the War of Rage, ending just before 1900 or so. The majority feeling in the Get was that if the Bunyip weren't weak, then they wouldn't have been able to walk in and take over, but there is also a significant counter opinion that the garou nation got played somehow, and it was they were weak and manipulated into doing the wrong thing. Its not that the Get wouldn't have taken over, just extinction was totally the wrong response. There's sometimes rumours of seeing Bunyips in the Umbra in the outback, but its always rumour and unsure. Also it almost always is associated with individuals and packs going mad or just vanishing.
Finn checks out the specific location the Bunyip were standing - he thinks that the scents lack that sense that their source was a real garou in the spirit world, and instead have that nature that suggests that it was laid down by a spirit. As he circles around, a short distance away he gets a tiny whiff of scent of someone else - its a little bit like Will, but its not Will. The rain is playing havoc, but he tries to follow it. He follows it about 30m away and finds a small clearing (a couple of metres across on a rock) where there is a distinct smell - couple of homids and lupus. There's a touch of flannies and beer, that might have been what made him think Will ("I smell bogan!"). He reports back that there's been another pack here ("Something that reminds me of Will - beer and self loathing"). Will looks baffled but conveys what he knows about the bunyip and the emotional response he got from within. There was no precision on the emotional response as to why ("Yay the bunyip!" or "Yay I can kill more bunyips" or "I AM NOT THE ONLY BUNYIP!").
Tillie tries to get more detail of the wyrm sense she was getting, but she finds she acclimatises to it very quickly - she has to keep stopping and starting. Its not stronger at this rock or anything. There's moss on the rock scuffed away, no sign of sacred paintings or anything. Tillie smells the scents and realises she knows them - Mark Sutherland from Blood Claw... at Grinding Stone. ARGH. We're at Grinding Stone! That is why the terrain is so familiar. Crap, they are well within the bawn. Finn tries to howl out some sort of "hello, we are here and respectfully apologise for intruding" kind of howl. Its loud, but so is the storm. They wait for a response. There's nothing for a bit, and they check the scent trail - its fading but they think that Blood Claw travelled to the rock and then stopped. No response to the howl again. Finn opts to use his Call of the Wyld gift instead to give a lot of oomf to the volume. A response, muddled by wind and echos comes back that only manages to convey "stay there or else". ("where's the fight?" "We'll bring it to you" "crap").
They hold still and wait for further instruction. Down the hill they spot a large wolf stalking toward them. Dark coloured and moving through the underbrush. Will tries to sense wyrm and gets a feel of what Tillie was describing - its a bit like looking at a projector and seeing white, but when you move your eyes you can see red, green and blue instead. Tillie looks at the wolf and realises that its a decoy, and looks behind, spotting more lupus coming up with a real sense of stealth. She tells her pack to stand defensively as they approach. To their surprise, its not Blood Claw, its Sveta and the Heralds of War. Tillie says their totem led them here through the Umbra but Sveta seems suspicious and short tempered. When Will interupts she verbally bites at him. Tillie says they can talk to Will and Sveta says she didn't realise Tillie wasn't pack leader any more. Will says he can sense wyrm everywhere and Sveta sticks her hand out to stop a packmember from advancing on Will. They apparently can sense the taint every where but when Tillie offers help, Sveta demands to know why Lost Prophets think they need help. Things are going swimmingly. The pack refrain from mentioning Bunyip. Sveta says that seeing as they are here, they can come and explain exactly what they are doing here to Huros.
They are escorted through the Umbra to the caern centre. They are walking along when Tillie and Will vanish. Will is suddenly in the Realm on a dirt path, getting rained on a lot more, with a paddock that sketches the edge of the national park on his left. It was like the gauntlet drained away and he just stepped out into the Realm. The other three are accosted by Heralds of War who go on alert. Finn peeks and can see Will going "What?". Sveta says to not move. Finn conveys where Will is. Will senses in the realm and finds that tho the storm is more fierce, the wyrm sense is much fainter, hidden more behind the world? Sergei Melonov says that Tillie is in the gauntlet. Sveta directs Sinead to rescue her, which seems ridiculously easy. Lost Prophets says that the gauntlet was ridiculously high when they arrived and now its dropped to nothing and Peter Beauchamp says that that has been happening for most of the last week now.
They go up the hill to the centre of the caern and find Huros, Malajimbarra and Anastasia Evenhand (Black Fury caern elder). Huros confronts Sveta who says their totem brought them. Huros questions Tillie, who confirms it. Huros frames the situation as their totem invaded his caern, and Tillie apologises on his behalf, suggesting he would not have done so without good reason. Huros wants to speak to Boobook and the pack say they don't know where he is. Huros quizzes Sveta about what her pack were doing, and she says that they heard the howl and moved from where they were looking for hints of the cause to over that part of the park. The pack manage to gather than there's been weird things happening for the best part of a week, but this storm and gauntlet pulsing are new. The Grinding Stone garou think they are under attack by something, they just cannot find what it is. Huros is all for a show of force, Anastasia and Malajimbarra are advocating waiting at least until Commands-the-Waters returns before making any aggressive maneuvers. Tillie waits for an appropriate moment and offers their assistence if there is another they could help with. Huros gives her a look, but Malajimbarra interrupts and says that he is going to speak to Lost Prophets about spirit matters first. He leads them a little bit away.
The pack have a whispered conversation amongst themselves while walking, about how trustworthy the elders are. Especially the Uktena Theurge - the Uktena are not well trusted, but he has seemed alright so far. They decide to play it straight.
Malajimbarra asks them some questions about how their totem brought them to the caern, and what Boobook said and did before that. They explain he brought them through airts, and that he just summoned them and brought them as fast as he could. Malajimbarra asks that the pack bring Boobook here so he can ask the spirit some questions directly. Sinead does this with flair. While she does this, the others confide in Malajimbarra and say that when they arrived they found 3 bunyip spirits. Malajimbarra seems unimpressed about their hesitancy in sharing this, given what is going on now. On arrival Boobook looks quite washed out, so the pack donate gnosis to strengthen the spirit. Malajimbarra greets Boobook respectfully and asks why he brought Lost Prophets here. Boobook conveys that he knew something was wrong, but not what it is. The spirits of the land are angry about something. The conversation is a little odd as he thinks differently to the garou - for instance, he did not exactly make a decision to bring them him, he responded to the situation as part of his nature, like water running down a hill. So he did not bring them to a specific location, he responded to the the situation.
Down the hill a moonbridge opens where the other Elders are. Malajimbarra asks Boobook to wait, and suggests the pack does the same. He heads back to the circle and the pack watch him greet another sept elder who has arrived. While this is going on, Tillie tries to ask Boobook about the spirits they saw. He does not know what they are speaking of - he has had no interaction with them. He suggests that perhaps they have responded to the same situation that drew him.
Meanwhile, down the hill, they can indeed spot the point where he says that Lost Prophets encounter the bunyip as four sept elder heads turn suddenly and look at them. Malajimbarra jestures to the pack to come down. Huros advocates responding to the bunyip with force, finding them and stopping them from attacking the caern. The newly arrived elder, Ivana Howls-the-Storm, suggests waiting until Commands-the-Waters returns from Rippling Waters, as the same attacks are happening there (300km away) and that may indicate that it is not specific to Grinding Stone. Will says that Boobook made the suggestion that the bunyip spirits might be responding to the same danger that Boobook perceived. Huros says that most bunyip spirit sightings have lead to attacks on or the loss of garou packs - they are eminently hospital. The non-decision is made to wait for the other two packs to return (Blood Claw and Gaia's Rage) and for Commands-the-Waters. It turns into a more detailed discussion about the sept.
Boobook begins to grow agitated again and the pack get his attention and ask what is happening. There is still something wrong. It is not here. They ask him for detail, but he is not able to respond in a way that makes sense to them. Tillie asks if he can show them, and Boobook takes off. Lost Prophets yell that they are chasing their totem and take off. The Heralds of War chase them for some distance - initially in a aggressive fashion, but when they catch up and ask, and Tillie conveys that they are following their totem's instructions. Sveta and all peel off a bit and have a discussion which they can hear. Sveta does not want to accompany them as they are on guard duty, some of her pack are keen to help. In the end she says that they will return and tell the sept elders what is happening.
Lost Prophets increase their pace and continue to chase west through the steep terrain surrounding Grinding Stone. Eventually the hills and valleys and bush becomes grassland - peeking into the Realm says that they have hit the farmland to the west of the caern. Will and Tillie have a rough idea of the landscape, and Finn has passed through it enough to be able to throw his 2 cents in - they are running west to the south of Ballarat somewhere. They avoid towns with their collection of weaver stuff (as well as the wyld storm that is Meredith). They run for some hours in hispo, eating up the kilometers, through the stormy weather.
After several hours running, ahead of them they can see a break in the weather. From a distance they can see moonlight shining on the ege of the clouds. Its a bit of an eye of a storm - it doesn't stop dead, but drops right off. Boobook heads them straight that direction. As they approach, he stops at a tree branch and appears to consider the direction in front of him. After a moment, he says "you must continue" and flies up into the sky, almost like he's hunting.
They are in the midst of a mix of grassland and scrubby brush. Sensing of wyrm shows the strange mix of the wyrm they were sensing at Grinding Stone mixed with a more usual wyrmish feel. Will peeks and finds that they are on a gravel road. On the other looks like normal farm fencing with some animals out in the fields probably. On one side is bushland with a chain link fence? He can't see real well, but it seems a bit excessive for just a rural site. Will suggests it might be a mine? Or something like that. Finn peeks and gets a better result, he confirms what Will saw. The chain link fence has barbed wire along it and looks sort of newish. Finn also says he can also see lights a bit further down the road, where it appears to be an entrance. He leads them that way - it is oblique to the lull in the storm, not into it.
At the entrance, they find a gate, a guardhouse and a sign - Edridge Research Labs. Kasumi says "ah!" and says she knows about this place. Its an alternative energy place that tried to get Toyota to invest in them. They were mostly keen on biofuels - growing oily crops to make fuels for burning, but Kasumi's boss wasn't too keen on that so he made recommendations to pass on the chance. They got a number of government grants partly because they were investing in rural development and regional industry, employing rural people and so on. She thinks it was about 9 months ago that all this happened.
The guardhouse is more a gatehouse than an armoured bunker. There's a boomgate to stop traffic but nothing stronger than that. There's a guy sitting and watching tv, without obvious tentacles. He has an Edrige Labs uniform on. There's space for two people in here normally - there's a phone, a computer, etc. There's a small bank of security video screens flicking from view to view. Finn senses for wyrm and doesn't sense anything particular. It exists in the Umbra as a bit of collection of weaver stuff, but with thick weaver matting leading up into the property. They decide to keep leading Finn.
Finn points up the roadway into the property. In the umbra, its a clear area through the bushscrub. It doesn't go straight, it curves along around a small hill. He can see shaped out in fields that are probably green houses. The fields seems smallish, and he can see that there are signs on them, but can't always read them. Even when he can, it has a bunch of code letters and such. He can't really sense any specific point of wyrm taint.
As they approach the top of the hill, weaver stuff starts to build up. Trees are tangled in it, and stunted and grey. Finn says he can see lights up there. As they get closer, he can make out a multistory building. The top of the hill is a carpark, lit by sodium lights with space for a fair number of cars. It has buildings around it on three sides. Two of the sides are double story. In the Umbra, the vegetation at the top of the hill is mostly dead. Lots of dead and dried leaves, and big clear areas with just dirt. Weaver stuff roughly marks out the buildings Finn is reporting, but it is more like webbing and scaffolding than complete buildings.
The pack wander around and try and find things like security cameras. In keeping with the serious fence, they find that there are a few. The southern building appears to be an apartment block or something, and it has the least number of cameras. The eastern building is labs and offices, and it has a fair number, inside and out. The northern building is an operations section - it has a loading dock, practical stores, security and a kitchen, and it too late a fair number of cameras.
They notice a distinct wyrm taint beyond the background pulsing nature. In the Umbra, little bits of weaver stuff have a sticky or greasy, or rusted look to them, a touch of taint. The soil isn't just weirdly dry instead of wet from the storm, its almost powdered - but when Tillie digs down a bit, it becomes wet clay very quickly. When she brings her hand up, its like its covered in blood. They check and it onlys mells like wet clay, but visually it is quite organic and red... and being in the Umbra suggests that symbology has more significance.
They go through the accomodation area again and check out the occupants. There are three apartments on the bottom and two on the top - 2 bedroom, fairly new and fancy, but not much of a presence in the Umbra. Someone is still awake upstairs, but people downstairs are flaked out in bed.
Obviously someone has funded the venture here to a high degree. Kasumi recalls that they were looking for partners rather than scrounging for funding, and that they got a lot of regional development grants from state and federal government. The pack decide to go looking for whoever is in charge. No, wait, bushland. No, wait. The greenhouses.
Down the road they go, and across the fields. The greenhouses are locked, and labeled (with a signin sheet) with cameras around. But they don't have an Umbral presence, so they can just wander through really (Not growing poppies or medical marajuana or anything). Its a lot of seeded plants, maybe grains - Kasumi knows the prospectus was all about growing biofuels, so probably grains with a high level of oils and such. The fields have labels and all, but not quite the same level of security as the greenhouses do. There's no one big crop, its more lots of research or test plantings. There's a sense of wyrm, in a way that is weird for what's fundamental growing plants. There's maybe a miasma of faint wyrm taint, and some more than others. There's not really a reflection of the plants in the Umbra. ("You're nude, you came here your barista clothes" "I don't care, I'm dead sexy".)
Back to the labs they go, via some of the bushland. Will advocates for just killing everyone that's here carte blanche so they have the run of the place, but it seems a little over the top. As they travel they can hear a weird moaning sound. Keen werewolf senses lead them to one of the sources, a large crack in the ground - like clay has dried and seperated. They can hear other moanings in the distance. But as the wind moves over the holes, it moans and groans. Finn, peeking into the Realm has no idea why they have stopped here, as he can't see anything unusual and he relates that. Tillie taps him on the ear and he stops peeking so he can shine faerie lights into it, which he does. The crack is quite deep, and the glowing light bounces from side to side as it descends. The surfaces start to glisten 6inches down and have the same blood-like appearance as the area Tillie dug at the top of the hill. Despite cries to pee down the hole, more conservative garou think that might send the wrong message. There is a sense of wyrm down the crack, but it is not a point source like a bane, but more a sense of something corrupt happening.
They go looking for something that might be underground. Will peeks but not well. He finds that the eastern building is 2/3rds labs on the ground floor and 1/3 processing machinery of some sort. There's no obvious downstairs in the Realm, and in the Umbra there is only smaller cracks in the ground. Maybe there's dead people buried under the ground? It would explain the moaning. Maybe its a bunyip massacre site? There's no one working (Saturday night, Easter) but Finn did see more security in here earlier.
They poke at the crack a bit more, yelling down it, and trying to find other ones. They find one quite a bit bigger - probably about a foot wide and maybe 20 foot long all up (though its not straight). ("I just wrote down 'and now we go back to the moaning crack'"). The sides are slick clay again, but its less that its bleeding and more that it looks like flesh - it just smells and - ARGG NO - tastes like clay. Its just dirt, sticky orange red clay. ("Its Tiddalik!"). They could climb down it... but no one is willing to be the first one down. Finn sends faerie lights down, and at the far end of his range he can see that the nature of the surface changes from clay to rock. Tillie grabs some sticks, and wraps them in bark, then sets them (and most of the nearby area) on fire with her gifts before dropping them down the hole. Because its falling, the light goes pretty dim (and blue), but the bouncing torch illuminates a thin crevice that descends some distance. When this doesn't cause anything to boil out and eat them, they drop a few more. One of them gets stuck just in sight, most of the others descend a fair way before going out, though there is some indication that one or two hit a bottom of some sort first. Finn wants to climb down, but no one is keen straight away - the slippery clay for the first 6 or so feet is a bit exciting. Changing form would be hard too, if things go wrong.
More sensing for wyrm - the background surge is still there (its not a heartbeat, its a simpler beat/surge than that). Down the hole is wyrm sense - a thing happening, not a thing lurking maybe. There's some speculation about using the holes to dump corpses, after possibly dedicating and wearing them. Further hole speculation is put off when the garou realise they haven't actually finished exploring the buildings.
They find an incinerator out the back of the labs and find that it doesn't really seem to have a strong wyrm sense here - there's something here, but its not very strong or precise, so its not that some of the plants are eeeevil. There's nothing _of_ the Wyrm. The plants are certainly not going to be the source of the 200km radius umbral storm based on these readings.
They keep moving to operations area. Kitchens (cafeteria is in the office area), security, loading dock with little golfcarts. The security area has two people sitting and one person standing as if they were about to leave (holding coffee) - Steve is standing, Paul and Derek are sitting. As they peek around, Kasumi finds that there are some stairs heading downward with a door at the front that says "Generator room, authorised personel only". Kasumi can hear machinery noise in the realm. She can see one camera pointing down the stairs.
They go back to the security room, and while looking to see their generator basement on the cameras, notice that the security room has security cameras in it. That's weird, who is watching that? As they watch, the security room shows up on the monitors, so apparently the watchers watch the watchers watching. They can see the generator stairs camera tho, and its not a fish eye camera or anything, so there is a bit of space under the camera as you stand at the top of the landing. Sinead is watching as Steve leaves, and sees him pick up a rifle from resting against the wall. She doesn't know much about guns, but thinks it looks fancy? She commands her guides to help her follow Steve as he leaves. He is having a smoke as he walks down the road in the drizzle. Steve seems very casual about carrying the gun. He seems pretty relaxed, or at least not jumpy about his travel.
When he gets to the guardhouse, him and... also Steve, apparently, have a chat. They are both very bored, apparently, and complaining about 3am programming on WinTV. Other Steve opens up a gun cabinet, and takes one of two rifles out while first Steve puts his in there. otherSteve slings it over his shoulder and walks out into the rain, grumbling. Sinead tries to describe the gun to the others who might know more - it has a long bit at the front and a stubby bit at the back and a trigger and a bit at the bottom to hold bullets? A clip? Which suggests to the others that its an automatic or semiautomatic? That's... odd. This adds to the over the top security on the site. These guys appear to have Edridge on their clothes labels, so they're not a security company or anything. Neither of them is nervous about carrying the weapon, and if they were worried about being attacked, they'd be moving in twos, not ones? They seem bored, frankly. But someone is worried somewhere. Maybe they are to stop something getting out? Sinead says that if they are doing genetic engineering, protestors might shop up and attack? Even still, semi or full auto weapons is a bit much. Maybe they are there to dissuade? A bluff? Corporate espionage? Kasumi says that its partly an American concern, perhaps they're going with their guidelines? Steve and otherSteve definitely don't look like highly trained military mercenaries.
They decide to check out the generator on the ground that its underground and the problem seems to be underground. Watching the security screens for a bit seems to indicate that there's no cameras down in the generator room. To deal with the one on the stairs, Kasumi plans to use her new gift to interface her mobile phone with the camera, take a photo with the camera, and replace what the camera is sending with that. She will have to be in glabro to reach and hold her phone in place next to the camera, but other people can step and go into the underground area. Well, except they will only be able to stand on the stairs and drop. Much planning goes on trying to make sure that stepping and coordination will happen in such as way to allow garou in and out.
Of course, plans are foiled by chance. Kasumi cannot seem to find her way through the gauntlet, so Finn is forced to bring her through. He manages to do so without (probably) being on camera, nor losing his balance down the stairs. Kasumi activates her gift, and Will follows through to the Realm. Tillie does not, and opts to remain in the Umbra to protect Sinead.
In the Realm they find that the basement area contains 4 generators, two running, two not. There are also 2 smaller generators that seem to have a lot more tech equipment attached to them. At the end of the room is a sign on a door "DANGER! 50,000 VOLTS! DANGER OF DEATH!" ("open it!"). There's definitely no camera here, and its pretty noisy. After 5 minutes it becomes clear that there's no Tillie here, so they peek back and find her making rude jestures, or at least signing to say "I'm staying". Through Sinead peeking and Will peeking they manage to communicate through interpretive dance. Will and Finn will investigate - Will who has no idea about tech, and Finn who cannot investigate. Finn pokes around a bit anyway. ("That's not a pouch, that's your butt"). The touch screens on the smaller, fancier looking generators list things like speed, efficiency and temperature. The 50KV door has a lock on it. That's about the extent of their ability to manage technology.
Kasumi is starting to get a sore arm anyway, so she has a ransack through the firmware on the camera. She manages to find a power cycle option, and triggers it, then runs down the stairs and out of sight while the camera is restarting. (just in case the security room flickered to that camera in the meantime). Now the people in the Umbra can no longer see their packmates, so they decide to go and watch the camera room from the Umbra instead.
Kasumi examines the door that they are suspicious about. She can pop the lock with her gifts, but she is still suspicious. She spots the alarm on the door, but its a pretty simple contact alarm so her plug and play gift is not going to help. ("Keep in mind there's no cameras down here, so if you kill the power and guards come down you can just slaughter them" "In the dark") Kasumi looks around the room for some extra wire and finds a lot of tags wired on with wire she can straighten out. It'll be obvious someone has messed with it, but she rigs up something that will at least let them open the door and look inside, even if its a bit fragile. No alarm goes off when she gets her wire setup, so that's a good start.
While Sinead watches, otherSteve comes back to the security room, and speaks to Derek. Derek isn't quite the same laid back guy the two Steves are. Derek is much more the trained professional paying attention that Sinead was concerned the guards might be.
Kasumi gifts the door lock, and carefully pulls the door open, watching her rigged up wire. There's no immediate alarm noises, and she stops when the door is open enough to be able to see through the door. There is not 50000 volts in big buckets inside the room, nor any sort of obvious electrical hardware. Instead she can see trays of bottles, stacked up. There's no light in here other than what comes from the generator room, and she says she thinks the liquid in the bottles is glowing. On the other side there looks like some machinery that handles the bottles - some sort of bottling machine? Will senses wyrm through the gap, and finds that the bottles are not wyrmy (relieving his fear they were radioactive or something), but there is a sense of wyrm about the room and its situation. Its quite a strong feeling. Kasumi squeezes her head in and looks around and can see some big angled wooden doors at the end of the room, like tornado doors.
( 10m while Damien tries to remember the word 'ossuary' and Becc slanders her dad for ruining her garden :))
Tilly gets bored of sitting in the Umbra and takes Sinead walking as she peeks. They trawl through the offices - Sinead held up while Tilly walks. Sinead has no idea why they are doing this as she cannot hear or anything, but she figures Tilly just wants to know what's going on and so she recites what she can see. The offices are almost university like, lots of desks with computers and books everywhere on shelves, printouts and white boards. Lots of botany, biology and genetics books, lots of spiral bound stuff that looks like they printed it themselves and bound it. There are about 12 desks, and a nice kitchen and newish facilities, coffee maker and so on. She gets some names - Adrienne Stone (prof genetics), Wei Zhu (prof botany) and Gordon Prachaski (prof botany), as well as the senior admin person (Amanda Wade).
Meanwhile, back in the cellar, they really want to see what is down that door. Kasumi contemplates pulling bits of wire off to extend their wire further, but they decide instead that Will will changes to glabro and pins the door and Kasumi will squeeze through. Kasumi examines the machine - its not something that has come off an assembly line, but something more like someone's taken a bottling machine and jury rigged it a bit. She contemplates taking some of the wires out of it to extend the alarm thing, but investigates further first. The far wall has a wooden wall with a plastic tube that leads to the bottling machine and a plastic wrapping tube that contains cabling leading through to the far side. The far doors aren't alarmed, and in fact it looks like a pretty rough job.
Kasumi breaks the seal on one of the bottles, changes to lupus and smells the liquid within. It smells like mineral water. She can also smell a breeze coming up through the door - its a damp smell, but kinda burnt too. She can smell 4 seperate homid scents here too - Derek and Steve and two scents from the security room that they did not attach to an individual. Sensing wyrm finds that there's a sense of wyrm about the water, more about the machine, and a rising vibe from behind the slanted doors at the end. Kasumi grabs some bits of wire, squeezes back through the door and they relock it, and re-jury rig a more useful short circuit of the alarm.
In the meanwhile, Tillie and Sinead cruise the apartments - there are 6 apartments, 4 of which are occupied. There's no smells of either Steve, so it can't be that all the staff sleep here. One of the people in lower apartments has a uniform much like the security guys, as well as a CB radio on the bedside table. It might be the head of security lives here? (Somehow the players mishear the GM saying "black hitler" and go on a weird diatribe). Tillie does a quick headcount and says that there are almost more guards than there are staff members. The two garou head back to the security area, and Sinead suggests they start digging down where the stairs are in the umbra - they might be able to get down to a point that the camera doesn't watch and step. The clay makes it hard, but crinos sized hands make it easy.
Kasumi's jigging works, and she reopens the door with her gifts. They slip in, and close the door rather than hold it open and maybe tip someone off. Will and Finn poke about a bit and then it is suggested to dedicate a bottle as evidence. Finn can do this, so he starts the ritual even tho he is worried about the wyrm taint. Meanwhile the other two open the doors at the end - inside is a very roughly hewn corridor. Its not smoothed off, but has sharp edges on the volcanic rock. Its been cut and that accounts for the burnt smell. The cable tray and the water piper have been roughly attached to the roof with bolts. Will senses for wyrm down the corridor and it is definitely tainted down there. Its a miasma, not a point source. The tube isn't of the wyrm, but there is an amount of wyrm to it. The breeze running up the corridor is moist, and kinda minerally and still. ("stagnant taint", "do you really want _running_ taint?")
Finn is most of the way through the ritual, and as he opens himself to charge the object with energy, there is a surge of energy from the bottle of water instead. Not in a "COMING TO GET YOU" sense, but more that he opened a door and something flowed out. Like popping a balloon? The bottle is dedicated, but he thinks that the water has lost its glow. Maybe the water or bottle wants to go into the umbra? That's disturbing. He toys with doing a rite of cleansing, but its really loud. Some discussion, and then the idea that it was full of gnosis comes up, which is odd. Some more taunting of Finn to drink the water, but he refuses. Finn knows of fetishes or talens that are made to hold gnosis (and caerns are places where gnosis manifests), and there are stories of old fountains which were charged with magical energy, stories of magical cauldrens too. Actually, a lot of the fetishes and talens are water related too, so there is a tight relationship between water and spiritual energy. ("this bottle is part of me now" *pretend snatch and glug* "Do not drink your packmate, that is way against the litany!").
Tillie and Sinead hit rock and can't go any further. But they get down far enough that they can see a bit into the generator room - they can't get in, but they can see back into the room in areas where the camera can't. There might be some natural undulation in the umbral rock surface such that it goes under the roof in the realm, but they'd have to clear an immense amount of area to figure it out. Oh well, nothing else to do. Dig dig dig.
The pry the lid off a sealed bottle, and it makes a slight sucking sound, as if it was slightly under pressured. It smells like the scent coming up the corridor too. (More random accusations that Will is actually a bunyip). They decide to see if they can get out and consult with Tilly and Sinead at this point, and notice the pit that the two umbral garou have made that lets them see out a bit. This lets Finn use his mindspeak gift when peeking at Tilly, and they can finally consult in depth. ("You can talk in people's head and all this time we've been conversing in interprative dance??").
They decide to get the rest of the pack in there. Sinead peeks and looks at the security cameras to time when the stairs are free, yells this Tilly, who passes it to Finn, who tells Kasumi to go *now*. She runs up to the top of the stairs, holds her smart phone up and loses her grip on it. Five garou watch as an expensive and essential piece of technology spins down the stairs, bouncing on the concrete several times to the bottom. Three pieces hit the ground at the bottom, chased by Kasumi. However, Sinead and Tilly have already started to move, and they go to step out anyway. Kasumi jams the battery back in her phone and yells at it to hurry up and boot up. Before its even all the way through, Tilly and Sinead appear, grab Kasumi and run out of shot from the camera. The garou pause and listen for any alarms... but it seems that it is all ok.
Despite some urge to see if they can set fire to the water in case its the biofuel, the pack set down the corridor in glabro, expecting to be menaced at any point. The corridor doubles back on itself as it goes through the rock. The rock is really hard, so its been a lot of work to cut it. Water starts to drip down through the rock, and in places the fluoro lights have shorted out. The tube glows faintly where it is transparent, and Finn has some faerie lights to help. Suddenly the cut corridor comes out into a huge cavern. The floor, which has been crunched black rock chips suddenly turns into white sand. There's some suspicion that the colour has been sucked out of it but it just looks like beach sand. The cavern is immense, they cannot see far around it. Wyrm sense only seems concentrated on the tube still, which clings to the roof and heads directly out into the cavern. There are some human scents, the burnt smell from the corridor, water (still water), and lots of it.
In the dim light it takes a very moments for Lost Prophets to realise that the walls are painted - the corridor cuts into the middle of them. Kasumi looks closely and sees dots, and figures, and lines... ooh dear, they look aboriginal. They go a long way up the walls onto the ceiling, and as far as they can see along the walls. A sense of dread fills the whole pack as they expect to get eaten by some sort of dreamtime monster at any moment. Will follows the tube along the roof out into the cavern, stopping as he reaches a lake. The tube seems to continue out and then drop into the water, as the faint glow can be seen. Will contemplates the possibility that they may be in a bunyip caern. No one has the rite of contrition, which suddenly seems a chronic lack in their arsenal.
The water is extremely still, with a very very faint glow - it is giving Kasumi the irrits. The water is just not moving, its not flowing, splashing, or anything. It doesn't smell fresh, but not stagnant either. It has a very minerally smell. Will checks the Umbra and finds that there is an equivilent space in the spirit world - it feels large as well. Kasumi tries her smart phone, but it has booted weirdly - half the apps not there and being a bit weird in its behaviour. The torch bit still works, and she tests that the surface reflects light water. When she steps, the sand moves and a single ripple moves out across the water into the distance. The white sand goes out into the water, and it shows that there's a brown/orange tinge to the water in the lake. No one wants to go in the water, so they opt to go into the Umbra instead.
Stepping is remarkably easy. The Umbral cavern is almost identical - same water, same sand, and same pictures when they approach the walls. Kasumi still has her phone out, and it is even more glitchy in the Umbra, so she sighs and puts it away. Will attempts to channel some of his ancestors who might be able to help him make a make greeting/apology to the spirits of this place ("they're unlikely to be able to do the ritual for you" "because you're a bunyip" "or genocidal get"). He cannot manage the rite, but he does indicate that they are garou and are here to help, without any sense that they might be challenging any authority. His voice .. does not really echo. Its like it's absorbed, like being in a sound studio.
The pack try and see if they can go around the lake, and find that the cave is vaguely oval, with the lake taking a bite out of one side. The pictures appear to extend out onto the wall over the water as far as they could see. When they walk back the other way, they find a natural entrance, or exit. They take a few tentative steps down and find that the pictures continue on the wall and ceiling. (It is not the same direction as the cut-tunnel that they descended). Peeking shows a tunnel in the Realm in the same location. There's still no point source of wyrm, but there is a sense all around. Something wyrm is happening, not something that is here.
The natural tunnel is followed for a bit. The white sand fades out after a bit, as does even the faint glimmer from the water. Finn's faerie lights are summoned up, and provide enough light to vaguely explore. The cave is not a straight line, nor is it easy to negotiate - there are points where they have to climb up and down (homid or glabro form required). They find side chambers, also filled with paintings all over the walls. They look closely at some of the paintings and find that amongst the more geometric designs, there are figures of various size and shapes. Some are animals, some are people. Some are bigger than others - Finn says that in many cultures size can indicate significance rather than actual size (egypt, pharoahs are huge, etc). It sinks in that the paintings are in the Umbra... either the paintings in the realm were so significant that they have sunk into the spirit world, or someone has painted them in the Umbra. Someone being bunyip most likely. Will peeks and confirm that the corridor is there too, but he cannot see.
They reach a point where the roof has cracked and seperated. It looks very much like the cracks that they found on the surface, tho it might not be the same one given the lack of burnt out torches. As they travel they spot more of varying sizes, although Kasumi suggests that there might be more caverns to find. After 30 minutes, there is a brief whiff of the outside world, but it is another 30 minutes of winding chambers and dead ends before they come out into the rainy, stormy surface. They have to wriggle through a pile of rocks that block the entrance.
Tilly toys with cleansing the lake, but its large and hard to go around. They could remove the pipe but that will only temporarily remove the issue. They toy with killing the guards, and reanimating their corpses, possibly as a giant human centipede, but also possibly as a human ouroborous. It is pointed out that it would probably be a wyrmish act to engage in. Tillie wants to dedicate a cement truck to bring it through the Umbra and cement up the cut tunnel ("I guess we could use horses, but we'd have to grind them up real fine"). Sinead wants to burn it down or blow it up.
Lost Prophets return to the cavern, discussing things as they go. Will suggests that they need to keep this a garou thing, so dealing it by getting it heritage listed or something is not going to solve it. They need to find the people (loosely speaking) responsible for this process and smoosh them. Its pointed out that do indeed have a word for a sacred place with low gauntlet where gnosis bubbles to the surface and spiritually significant symbols have been added and it generally has been taken care of over time, and that's "caern". Its hard to avoid the strong possibility that this is bunyip caern.
Number 1 rule is to not let a caern fall to the wyrm (all the tribes agree that this is true, possibly the only thing in which that is true). Kasumi wants to kill everyone and blow up the equipment and then take them to court and then Ridgeway all their families. No one really thinks that this is a bad idea (tho the general Bone Gnawer / Sleeping Lore vibe isn't that killing is necessarily bad, but it is best to focus the need to kill in a surgical, minimalist way, if only to reduce police interactions - note that this is almost the garou equivilent of super-veganism). They discuss ideas on sabotaguing things - wrecking the machine, scrambling the research notes, making the whole project non-viable. They could do more spying on people like finding senior management folks? To wreck the tunnel, they will have to get some explosives, and they do not have the skills for that, so it will involve asking other people.
Its clear no one knows about this caern, and despite Will's suggestion they keep it for themselves and Sinead's repeated accusation that he is a bunyip, they will probably have to let everyone know about it, which raises the question of territories and all. Most of the western side of Victoria is Fianna territory, and the rest is Silver Fangs (although Grinding Stone is neither Fianna nor Silver Fang, it is commanded by Commands-the-Waters, a Silver Fang; conversely, Reconcilliation is a Child of Gaia/Fianna sept even thought it might be regarded as a part of Silver Fang territory). Given how far they ran, it would be hard to not say it was the Fianna protectorate - Will isn't too keen on just handing it over to a given tribe, his reasoning being that a protectorate with an existing caern or two might not have the strength to take another one under their wing.
The pack head back into the cave in the Umbra, and totally do not sense the thing that the GM made them roll to sense that was in the realm. Its faster this time to get back to the main cavern, but it is still very dark and still takes 45 minutes.
The pack contemplate pulling the pipe out of the roof or otherwise knobbling it. Tillie is unkeen to act in this way in case that attracts immediate attention. She wants to get the rest of the garou to get here and help, this is too big for them. Kasumi is keen to tip the water back into the pool and hoping that returns that to the caern, but it will probably require something ritualistic - its almost certainly something mystic happening that removes puts the gnosis into the water.
The practicalities of contacting other garou is contemplated - Grinding Stone doesn't have a phone really (messages get passed along) and Finn doesn't have a number for the Fianna sept that is out this way. It's not in Grinding Stone's bawn anyway. Some chatter about how this is going to be resolved, but ultimately Tillie wants to call Cossack and let the elders sort it out.
Kasumi's phone is broken anyway, so they will have to find another way to ring. Will doesn't want to run away from the site while they contact people either - he wants to check things out and then contact people but stay local. The storm and the cracks and such all suggest they need to act now, they can't do their normal week of surveillence. There's some talk of swimming out into the lake to try and wreck the pipe, but the stillness and Finn's talk about magical methods of travelling into the umbral realms by lakes at other caerns dissuades them.
Lost Prophets move easily into the realm, and head up the newly cut corridor. Not all of the pack are creeping well. Will goes around the first 180 degree bend and can hear boots coming down, and see torches shining on the wall at the top of the next section. The garou retreat back to the main cavern and decide to hide in the Umbra as there is not really any cover in the cavern. Or, you know, in the Gauntlet.
Kasumi and Will appear in the Umbra. Tillie, Sinead and Finn do not appear straight away, so the others peek back to see what is going on. Kasumi reports she can see 4 people, all in security uniforms. It's Steve and Paul at the front, and two new people, dressed in a much more military fashion with two blue berets. All four have bright halogen torches and are looking around, especially at the giant footprints in the sand. There's not much in the way of identifying insignia on the new guys - Steve and Paul have "Edridge Labs" written on their uniform, but not the new ones. The older new guy looks at the other one, who nods and heads up the corridor. Steve and Paul are told to stay here, on guard and wait.
As Kasumi walks around and observes, she gets a flash of Tillie. Oh, yes, Tillie is stuck in the gauntlet, along with the others. Will sighs and moves to grab them, and manages to do so in such a way that they are all dragged into the Umbra. The updated situation is explained to Tillie, Finn and Sinead. There's some surprise at how fast the new guys have appeared - maybe they were scheduled to come and take the load of bottled water away?
The pack opt to take out the two locals by leaping out and disarming them, in crinos form. This they do with grace and elan - Steve and Paul have their rifles taken off them with a minimum amount of fuss and kneecaps shattered. Paul lays on the ground clutching his leg and yelling while Steve runs blind into the dark back up the corridor. Finn leaps on him in crinos and muffles Paul with his enormous clawed hands. Will gives chase after changing into lupus. Steve glances behind and sees Will emerge into the light with jaws agape, turns back and ploughs headfirst into the wall, dazing himself and and ending flat on his ass. Will changes to glabro and drags him back down the corridor.
The pack contemplate drowning them in the lake, or burying them in the sand, but in the end they decide that they take them down the pitch black side corridors. Once there they are stripped of swipe cards, walkie talkies (just static), shopping receipts, sand, phones and wallets. The two guys are seperated and interrogated with the help of the persuasion gift. While this is happening Tillie confirms they do not have silver ammunition and checks the gun in general (automatic rifles). Steve is not entirely coherent, but Paul is happy to be helful at this point.
Paul says he doesn't know who the new guys are - they are extra security that Ms DellaHarper called. Ms DellaHarper is the chief of security here. He and Steve had found that the door had been jimmied, they woke her, she called the others. There are 6 of them. The procedure is if they find anything out of place, to call security immediately. What's the water? He doesnt' know. What happens to it? He thinks a truck comes to get it - it doesn't happen often. The new security guys showed up in a helicopter. Its now sitting in the parking lot. It showed up in 30 minutes. He doesn't know who runs the place outside of the local manager - Amanda - and the academics and his boss is Ms DellaHarper. The guy in charge of the new guys seems to be called 'Chisholm'.
The two guys are left tied up and told very clearly to not make any noise or fuss and they may yet get to walk away. The pack think about what their plan should be - coming up the short way, the cut passage up to the generator room has "speed" going for it, but not a lot else. They would be basically single file, and Paul's yelling was probably heard echoing up to the big room. They might find all the guys waiting for them into that room with guns, and they could be pinned down. Even if Steve and Paul didn't have silver, its possible the extra guards, who seem to be looking for garou, might have it. Going the long way has the risks that the the guards will be able to settle in some fashion, but the benefit of being able to do it in the umbra. ("we could take the helicopter!" "Do you know how to fly a helicopter?" "no" "I look forward to seeing the results of this experiment").
Tillie makes the call that they can't afford the time. Despite thoughts of taking Steve and Paul as either hostages or ablative armor, they head up alone to the storm doors and find that they are closed. People stop there and listen carefully. They might be able to hear someone moving, a creaking, and then maybe a shuffle? but they aren't 100% sure. Will senses for wyrm and finds that there are point sources of wyrm on the other side of the door - not tainted, actually of the wyrm. (GM accidentally fails to clarify the actual number of point sources - the players assumed there were 6, there were actually 2, but it was never actually stated). Kasumi points out that one fomori was a problem, what if they are all hot irish chicks? (Massive distraction about sex and food caused by people thinking Becc was about to put spray cream in her armpits). They decide that discretion is the better part of valour, and opt to go and contact help urgently - they dig up Paul's phone to call back to the caern when they get out to the open air again.
They stealth out the entrance, sensing carefully for sounds and smells out of place, and for wyrm. They notice that the circle of 'calm' around Edridge is collapsing down, and the rain and wind is getting intense. Tillie opens the phone and finds that Paul does not lock his phone, he has good signal strength and credit. What a guy. Tillie calls the cemetery, and gets Ian ShatterGglass on the phone. She gives him the rundown - found what seems to be a disused caern. Ian: sorry, say that again? We have found a disused bunyip caern. He gets the details - Edridge, militarised fomori. Ian says he'll see if anyone is awake. Tillie stares at her phone and wonders if he heard right as he hangs up.
Kasumi spots movement upslope in the dim, rainy environment and points it out to the others. Will senses wyrm phenomenally and can feel the approach of 3 fomori from 200m away, in an inverted V shape. (and now the GM and players realise the error on the number of wyrm sources in the basement). They are moving really slowly, as if they were scouting or otherwise hunting. Similar senses they got through the door, and not coming directly toward them, but off 20 degrees or so.
The pack come up with a cunning plan. Kasumi (who has no firearms) will take one of the rifles and just try and fire at the fomori, who will presumably head that way. In the meantime, the others can ambush them from behind. Kasumi activates her blur of the milky eye gift and sneaks off supernaturally. The rest of the pack wait until she gives the signal. Kasumi fires and manages to wing the guy closest to her. All the fomori drop or otherwise find cover. They think the wyrm things do some handjesturing, and the fomori turn and start heading for Kasumi. Kasumi toys with stepping sideways with her broken phone, but god knows where that might take her.
The others wait until the fomori get involved in heading toward the gunshot, and then take off in lupus form, stealth running through the landscape. The fomori start to shoot at Kasumi and hit her in the body. Ow, Kasumi feels a surge of rage, but does not frenzy. The others reach to within 5m of the fomori and change to crinos. Tillie slams into the wounded fomori who probably doesn't even have a chance to register he is under attack before she splits him lengthwise. As Will approaches the other wingman, but the fomori at the back sees him coming, and fire - Will is missed, but the guy he was about to murder spins around and manages to dodge out of the way of incoming claws. Finn spends Rage, and lunges with claws out at the fomori at the back, and hits, but is also cosmetically sliced for his trouble ("this isn't my knife, its a noodle fork. WHERE IS MY KNIFE"). Kasumi starts to book it now she is not likely to be shot again. Finn's second attack shreds the armor the fomori is wearing and sends it flying.
Tillie keeps her momentum and heads for the other wingman. Sinead rushes up to engage the fomori that Finn is fighting and swipes at him, but misses and continues running. Will dodges as his opponent opens fire from close range, but gets a light flesh wound for his troubles. Finn smashes the fomor opponent with his claws and runs to close with the final opponent. The fomori Will is facing vomits a green liquid at him, but misses - the vegetation that is hit instead starts to blacken and smoke. The other garou close and the pack consider kill stealing from Will, but decide to help instead. Tillie grabs one arm, and Sinead the other, and Will smashes his claws into the pinned fomori, killing him in seconds.
Lost Prophets stand around the dripping forest - both with blood and rain. Sinead heals up Kasumi's damage. They check out the fomori for tentacles and ID. No ID, they do have IR goggles (yoik), a spare clip for the weapons (yoik), and two of them have two different grenades (yoik). The pack get that weird look that pcs get when handed heavy weapons. They have no idea what sort of grenades they are, but still, funny. Tillie wants to put them on the pumping machine and run, but there are high votes for "on the helicopter". They do not entirely look human - one of them, the skin is a bit jelly like, not normal... and if they pull it, it stretches. Ew. Will is keen on firing the bodies and cleansing them. They could use the grenades, but that makes it harder to cleanse. They drag the bodies down the hill on the far side of a log or two.
They try and evaluate how many opponents are left - Paul said there were 6, but that's one of those approximate numbers. Even if he was right, they reckon that the head of security is also going to be a problem, so that's about 4 or 5. (brief distraction about control simple machine and sex toys). They struggle up the hills in lupus with guns in mouths. ("and when they bark, they shoot bullets out their mouths"). This turns out to be non-optimal, so they hide the guns and head for the Umbra instead. Creeping along in case fomori can summon banes or something. The hole above them is closing very rapidly, its barely visible now. They head for the security room and peek.
The security room has 5 people in it - Derek they recognise, and they think that the woman is DellaHarper. The two guys who were in the cave, and another guy, all with berets, are in here too. They all strongly sense of Wyrm. Derek is fiddling with stuff on the security desk. The oldest guy has an insignia on his hat that seems to be a rank thing - he is tall and gaunt with short white hair. The pack seriously consider setting fire to everything, but this will summon police and CFA and the like. They'd just leap out now, but there's some concern about getting the timing right with slipping through the gauntlet.
Finn is watching the security folks poking at their systems. They seem to be adjusting them in some fashion, talking about firmware and rebooting and updating. Derek seems to think that whatever they are doing is going to not work everywhere. Dellaharper instructs him to get on with it, and he pulls out a piece of equipment from a duffel bag (something hand held, kind of a black box, but with a small screen on it), and plugs it into the system. Everything shuts down, and then starts up again. The screens start showing the different views. There's the top of the hill, stumpy trees, bare areas, weaver webbing.. - "OH SHIT, they can see into the Umbra!" yells Finn. The screens flick and show the security room, with 5 garou sitting around and talking about how to wreck the helicopter.
Finn says the fomori are reacting to this. The pack leap into action! Finn is still peeking when he sees the older guy reach into another one of the bags, and pull out something like an animal horn. The others grab Finn and leap straight through the gauntlet and into the Realm in two groups.
Tillie and Finn appear in an empty security room. Tillie glances out the door and sees one of the berets in the security foyer with an automatic rifle trained into the room. She bursts out the door, attempting to smack him down. ("Something to aim for, 34 pack members"). She knocks him off to one side, but he keeps his balance and tracks her with the gun, and she can now see the other fomori out in this foyer, lying in wait with more guns. Finn sprints out the room and hangs a left, running straight into two prepared fomori, one of whom is all warty and horned, and bulked up. ("Who's that on the gm screen?" "Uktena I think" "Who's the aboriginal guy?" ".... bunyip?")
Sinead, Will and Kasumi appear in the realm just in time to see one of the fomori empty his rifle on full auto into Tillie at close range. ("When i said 'is his gun pointed at people I care about', I meant _me_"). Finn is mildly shot. Sinead runs out to be near Tillie, but with some cover from the desk. Kasumi sprints around the corner, glances and sees Finn, and heads his direction to help him out.
Tillie, shot up and mad, leaps forward at the guy who shot her. He clearly is armored, which helps a bit, but is badly clawed. ("What about me?" "They are getting their extra actions before you even get your first one." "at least I can't botch the initiative roll"). Finn leaps at the fomori, but gets tangled in a wheelie chair and stumbles to the ground. Kasumi lunges past him. Will sprints out into the room and leaps the desk in a bound to engage the older guy on the far side. The guy on the far side shoots as Will leaps, but barely clips him at all. Will lands and spots another person cowering on the far side of the desk.
Tillie tears the throat out of the fomori who shot her while Sinead heals her of some of her damage. Finn manages to turn his stumble into a kind of body slam up under the gun, but Dellaharper grows spikes and stabs him in the chest with them. Finn's initial opponent's neck swells and he spits a spray of foul smelling goo at Finn's face, but misses. Derek stands up from behind the desk and shoots Will in the back ("Where's Steve? I miss Steve. He's totally not shooting me in the back") rather ineffectually. Kasumi claws at Dellaharper, but finds that the warty skin does a good job at defending her.
The older beret throws his empty gun to one side, and his skin goes red and ripples. Crap. When Will slices him up with claws, the blood that spurts out burn Will's skin. Dellaharper slices at Kasumi but misses, the other beret tries to hit Finn in the face with a rifle butt. The old beret fomori's mouth opens impossibly wide and he bites at Will. Tillie turns and engages Finn's fomori friend, and starts to tear holes in him. In return, he spits blinding acid goo into Tillie's eyes - Tillie frenzies. Sinead leaps over the desk next to Derek, shoving him and spoiling his aim on shooting Will. Kasumi rakes Dellaharper, and her clothes disintergrate, but the armoured skin is tough. Frenzy-Tillie smashes the head of the enemy in front of her into the ground, and steps over to the next enemy. Sinead attacks Derek, but he anticipates her, and steps inside her guard, putting the gun under her chin and pulling the trigger. ("You soaked 7 of 8? ..."). Its bloody, but not very incapacitating.
Kasumi grapples Dellaharper to try and slow her slashing talons down, aware that Tillie is frenzying, but not aware that she's blind and might slice Kasumi. Will's beret opponent tries to bite him again, but with little effect. Tillie lunges forward and smashes Dellaharper into the wall, crushing her chest - she is oblivious to the fact that Dellaharper is dead and keeps frenzying on the corpse. Sinead lunges at Derek's face and is shot again for her trouble - she frenzies. Kasumi drops DellaHarper's arm and heads over to Will to help as does Finn. The older beret guy sees the extra closing opponents and books it out the door into the corridor. Finn keeps his momentum and heads out the door. Its a tight fit, so Will has to wait for him to clear.
Sinead tears chunks off Derek, shredding huge pieces off him until he collapses. Tillie stops tearing holes in DellaHarper, glances around (the blindness has faded) and sees the older beret running. She only barely perceives the glass wall, leaps the desk and and sprints straight towards him, slamming hard enough into the glass to shatter the entire wall. This makes it easier to keep up with the beret.
Finn flips to lupus to go faster, and bites at his legs. It hits him but does no damage, but does stagger the fomor somewhat, stopping his flight. Will dodges through the falling glass into the corridor, while Tillie shakes glass out of her fur. The fomori bites Finn, but to no effect (GM cannot roll for love nor money). Tillie lunges in and bites, doing some damage but getting a mouthful of burning blood for her trouble. Sinead leaps into the fray, still frenzying. Kasumi reckons that the fight is under control (and doesn't really want to be in a confined space with two frenzying packmates) and doubles back into the security room to look for the blackbox. Will smashes the fomori into the ground with the sound of breaking bones.
And then something explodes outside.
The frenzying members of the pack continue to pummel the glooped remains of the fomori into the ground while the others step away and don't make eye contact. They look outside and see that there is a significant fire out there, and what looks like the remnants of some sort of vehicle. There are faces at the windows of the residences and at the bottom doors - which appear to be locked, and they cannot get out.Kasumi looks for the duffel bags and finds them kicked under the security desk. They contain a horn of some sorts with glyphs scratched into it which senses of wyrm and the black box that Finn said caused the security system to see in the Umbra. She glances into the Umbra and sees that the umbra now contains a number of banes that definitely weren't there before. They are not organised and attacking one space, they are leaping onto the weaver stuff, the fire motes, the landscape, and even each other. The horn and this event might be connected.
Rather than splitting up, the controlled members of the pack hang about and wait for the frenzies to pass, which they do in 10 minutes or so. Events are caught up on, wounds are checked (Sinead lost a tooth - "I swallowed a bug!") and the pack head back down to the generator cellar to nobble the machine. They go the calm option and disconnect the main pipe rather than wreck things.
While they are doing that, they hear a faint howl from upstairs, and go up to investigate. Upstairs they find Cossack and Emma, Commands-the-Waters, Malajimbarra and Heralds of War from Grinding Stone, and Bret Hutchinson (sept leader), Leaps-in-the-Light (ritemaster) and One Phone Call from Rippling Waters. Some of them are a bit wounded, and others are looking around with a "wow, messy" look on their face at the security room. A quick glance in the Umbra says there are less banes than there were 20 minutes ago.
There's some "who is in charge" kind of social shuffling, but Cossack just tells Tillie to tell them what's going on - Ian said something about a caern? Tillie gives the short version of how they got here, and then says that there's a room downstairs and through that room is another room with a machine that is spitting up bottles of gnosis and if you follow the tube underground a really long way there's an old Bunyip caern. And then there was some fomori. There's these guys and some other guys downstairs and some dead guys out in the bush, and the fire just happened and I have no idea what happened. Emma has that "uhnh" look on her face after that. There's lots of chatter about the Bunyip stuff, and then Kasumi mentions the Umbra security device, which causes more chatter. Cossack says "quiet" and people settle down. Cossack suggests that Lost Prophets show the various sept elders downstairs while perhaps the other two packs remain up here and deal with the people in the residences? The other elders agree, and off Tillie leads everyone to the room.
Lost Prophets are being explicitly allowed to lead the way in that special garou fashion. Will manages to wangle entering the caern first again, and makes a similar statement to the caern about these are their honoured elders. The other garou wait patiently and respectfully as he does this. The garou move around the place, and its definitely a caern. The three ritemasters go to the shore line and perform some sort of ritual - Sinead thinks its a ritual related to the moot rites, but she's never seen it before. Those rituals have a focus, the caern totem, but this is more general. Malajimbarra is leading the ritual.
In the meantime, people are looking at the pictures on the wall. Finn notices that some of the figures painted on the wall are larger than others, and reiterates that this is often a measure of significance. There is one figure that is big a lot of the time. Its not, as they might have thought, a big wolf thing. Its a human figure, and it seems like it has a dot pattern painted over it a number of times - its not like its been erased, its had the same patterns added each time. ("only a true bunyip would deny their bunyipicity!"). Finn has been following the pictures along, and realises that he has been following segments along down the corridor a little bit - there are distinctly associated ... stories?
The sept leaders are looking at the pack, and the theurges and the walls and talking amongst themselves. Will goes for the Get tact option and heads over to talk to them about who will get the caern. As he approaches, they are already talking about it - Cossack and Commands-the-Waters are already talking about things, and suggesting that the matter should go to Jindabyne Council. Bret argues that its in the Fianna protectorate, and that they can take care of the matter. Neither of the other sept elders disagree with the idea that the Fianna should be in charge, but its a pristine, untouched, bunyip caern and other people have expertise to get information about things from it too. Tillie, who has drifted into the conversation asks about how they don't know there aren't still bunyip here - the others says that no garou would leave the building above them functioning at a caern. Commands-the-Waters says that the Bunyip are all dead, the "but what if" conversations are pointless. Sinead says they saw some, but its pointed out that they saw some spirits.
The theurges finish their ritual and head over. Leaps-in-the-Light confirms that its a caern, but its been critically drained, and will fade by the next full moon unless steps are taken. That, plus the theurges agreement seems to decide that it will be taken to the Jindabyne council, which Bret agrees to grudingly.
Organisation is, er, organised. Lost Prophets and the Sept Elders will all head to Rippling Waters and moonbridge from there, leaving Heralds of War (after some negotiation) and One Phone Call to clean up here as best they can. ("One Phone Call isn't a particularly strong/combat pack" "And we know they have some issues with authorities"). While they are heading to nearby vehicles, they give a more thorough run down of events, touching on the concerning in-depth knowledge the security folks had, the number of fomori and the sudden appearance of a helicopter here, and the umbral viewing tech. In return, Cossack gives them a rundown of what happened while were running - Cossack and Emma were at Grinding Stone after they ran off Questing Stone was only working part of the time when they tried to find the pack, so they headed this way to see if that helped. Eventually, Ian called, mumbling something about caerns and Edridge - the Fianna were called and the address obtained. Frankly, Leaps-in-the-Light probably got 3 speeding tickets on his way, but everyone showed up more less about the same time, and came in through the Umbra.
Its a couple hours later when they get to Rippling Waters, parking at a random house in Koroit, and running back down on foot in the Umbra. The center of the caern is an island in a volcanic lake, and there is a certain amount of activity. Lost Prophets are given something to eat and somewhere to sit while things are organised. There's a lot of activity - one would think that one did not find a caern every day or something. (20m talk about kinfolk). Tillie gets the eye a bit, probably because of being metis, but she gives people the eye right back ("There's a little bit of racist grandma"). Tillie says when they get there, no one other than her is to say anything, unless asked. ("sorry, what was your advice to your packmates?" "Shut the fuck up"). Also, make sure to yawn on the way through, because the council is at 2km above sea level and they are at 0m above sea level. The council meet at the Crackenback sept near Jindabyne (thus the name), which is in the middle of Silverfang territory - be respectful. Eventually, Russell Cole opens a moonbridge and everyone passes on through.
When they arrive, there is a storm going on (presumably the same one as was drifting across the state previously), and there are a large number of clearly armed, and annoyed looking Silverfangs surrounding their group. Commands-the-Waters and Bret are talking with a blonde woman who uses the word 'invasion' in terms of how many people are coming through. ("if this was an invasion, you'd know about it, this is not how we make war" "this is how we make love" ... "someone says 'can we come over' then 20 guys show up??") A man in a suit with thinning hair and no chin comes along a path, and it becomes quickly apparent that his name is Darius Winchester, he is the Silverfang sept leader, and the Silverfang representative on the council. (and that he is a rank 5 ahroun). Darius also doesn't look too impressed, but his interest grows when the phrase "bunyip caern found" enters the conversation (though his interest is slightly reduced when people continue "in Fianna protectorate"). Darius agrees to call the council, asks that the Sept Elders come with him to discuss things. He asks one of the surrounding Silverfangs to show Lost Prophets the hospitality of the caern. She introduces herself as M'lady Kathryn Hope, Steward of the Sun Lodge at the Crackenback caern, and rank 3 homid philodox. Tillie introduces herself and her pack formally, and M'lady says they are honoured guests of their sept, she will see to their needs while council members are summoned. They are taken along a gravel path to a small lodge where there are beds and showers. She offers food and drink and the pack accept gratefully. They know that the council is going to ask them for details, so they run over their story for consistency and coherency before falling over.
Finn pokes Tillie awake and says that he's had a visitor. Bret came and spoke to him; he is concerned that Darius is going to push for the caern to come under the control of the Jindabyne council rather than be part of the Fianna protectorate (possibly to get it under Silver Fang control?). The Ngalyod pack, as the arm of the council, will be nominated to participate in saving the caern, and Bret would like Lost Prophets to challenge for the right to take their place when the council meets, on behalf of the Fianna - as they found the caern in the first place they would have a reasonable claim to such an honour. In return, Bret will make them honorary members of the sept that forms around the caern.
Tillie wakes the others up so they can discuss it. She's behind the idea in theory, but she has a concern of not really knowing what challenging will entail. Taking control of saving the caern in terms of buying property? Seems beyond their resources. The implication was that the Ngalyod pack would have some task to do and Lost Prophets would take that place. Tillie's pretty keen, the offer seems generous (she likes the idea of more allies and caern resources). Finn says Bret did say where he was, and if they really need to ask more, he could answer them, tho discretion was preferred. They opt to send Finn along to chat with him (under the aegis of "tribe business"). Bret sees him coming and they talk off to one side. Finn wants to know what it would involve. Bret says that he has said that he won't preempt Darius at the council in terms of specifics, but he can say that there's a potential way to save the caern. Finn presses for details - a spirit quest or a sacrifice? Bret gives him the eye and says that he's been around the Shadow Lord too much ("its not me, its the Get!"). Its not a sacrifice.
Finn asks about the Ngalyod pack and if they will have to fight them. Bret says it won't come to that. Probably. He gives them a brief rundown of the members of the pack, and says that even if it comes to a challenge, the context suggests it probably won't be a fight. Finn is reasonable satisfied with the answers he gets and says they are in. As he is heading back, Cossack catches up to him. There is some brief chitchat and then Cossack presses Finn for what is happening. They head back to the accomodation to talk. More brief chitchat, and then they explain the situation to Cossack. He doesn't seem too fazed by Bret's offer, though he hopes that they will remember they are members of Sleeping Lore first. Cossack points out that there's a fair chance that even if the Ngalyod pack went out and did things for the caern, the rest of the council would leave it in Fianna control anyway, so its a generous offer on that basis. Some speculation is undertaken about potential tribal mixes at a new sept, and its pointed out that the Fianna are not averse to other tribes mixing it up a bit - One Phone Call includes Children of Gaia and the pack leader Abina is a Silent Strider, for instance.
("Who hates the shadow lords?" "Everyone. Because they are dicks. Including me, and I am one. Because they are dicks").
After dark, a Silver Fang from the sept comes and finds them at the cabin. He says that the Council is meeting and that they are summoned. He leads them around paths for a time and eventually out into a meadow. A horse-shoe shaped table is open at one end and Lost Prophets are led to that end, where Cossack and the other visitors are already assembled. As they approach, Bret makes eye contact with Finn who gives a little nod. There are thirteen chairs around the table, and 3 gaps. They get a brief introduction to the garou that are here - Wungala Rose (Black Fury, older aboriginal woman), Mother Pasta (Bone Gnawer, older mediterranean looking woman), Cernonous (Child of Gaia, small horns in crinos form), Fingal Flashing-Claws (fianna, very old), Dom Mephisto (Glass Walker, vague italian looking, chubby), Carla (Get of Fenris, blond haired 40something), Mamu (Red Talon, chair discarded, large, scarred muscle), Darius (Silver Fang), Tjinderi (Uktena, 40-something aboriginal woman) - the missing members are apparently Monash (Stargazers) and Grek (Silent Striders), with the thirteenth chair being for the Bunyip.
Darius starts the council by doing a brief introduction. No one seems to not know what is happening, but he does it anyway. Commands-the-Waters and Bret are asked about the storms, and the spirit attacks and the random gauntlet wavering up and down. Commands-the-Waters says that they appear to have lost a pack - the Get of Fenris pack Blood Claw has disappeared shortly before Lost Prophets arrived. Lost Prophets make a note to remember to say that they smelt the scent of Blood Claw in the Umbra near the bunyip spirits.
Tillie is asked for the further details - she covers Boobook's summoning, Bunyip spirits at Griding Stone, the run to Edridge led by Boobook, machine draining gnosis, caern cavern, fomori, exploding helicopter, bane summoning horn. The council ask some questions:
Darius - do you have any sense of the caern spirit? LP: No, not really;
he looks a bit disappointed
Don Mephisto - was their any indication of how much Edridge knew? Was
it specifically a wyrm installation? LP: not specifically, but all of
the security staff seemed to be implicated.
There is some discussion, and followup questions - Lost Prophets
get the feeling the blue beret guys are not unheard of amongst some
of the Council (but not all).
Carla - were there any signs of a struggle? LP: Not really. Carla
follows up with "so there was no sign they didn't abandon it?"
This implication that they just walked off leads to a big argument
amongst the council members - Carla doesn't really argue the point,
but just smiles while others bicker about it.
Cernonous - apart from the pictograms, were there any other signs or
remnants of the bunyip? LP: Only that the pictures were in the Umbra,
and the spirits at Grinding Stone. He looks disappointed.
Wungala Rose - did your totem explain how it knew what was happening?
LP: we asked, and it gave a totem answer. She doesn't seem disappointed
with the answer
Tjinderi - who suggested bringing the matter to the Jindabyne Council?
LP: It was a pretty unanimous decision. T: but who suggested it first?
LP: The first I heard was Cossack and Commands-the-Waters.
She leans back and looks smugly at Fingal, who loses his temper. He says this is pointless, this is a matter for the Fianna in their protectorate, not for posturing pups attempting to lecture to their betters. Vlad says loudly and sarcastically that "_Now_ you're not ok with the council poking their noses into other territories?" which leads to more yelling and tempers raised. Phrases drift out - Cernonous's voice saying "Why this bickering continues, a caern is in danger!" and Fingal's response that he will not be lectured by a metis from a tribe that cannot even pick a leader. More yelling. Darius, slumped into his chair, picks up his sword and holds it up - lightning leaps up into the sky and thunder booms. In the silence, Darius says "I suggest that the Ngalyod pack is sent on behalf of the council to find a way to save the caern." Tillie steps up and gets attention - "We would like to offer ourselves to go in their place". Darius starts to talk but Vlad snaps out "vote", really quickly (Finn suddenly remembers Bret saying something about support on the council for this).
Darius and Tjinderi vote for the Ngalyod pack. Cernonous abstains. Mamu says "homid posturing, all know caern best for Red Talons". The others all vote for Lost Prophets, and Darius is clearly annoyed. "If that is the will of the council, then I wish you well". He leaves - not a sulking stomp away, but ending the meeting. Carla and Cernonous walk off with Darius, some of the others chat amongst themselves. Don Mephisto walks down with a Japanese woman who is introduced as Fujiko Mifune, shadow lord philodox rank 3, and pack leader of the Ngalyod pack. Don Mephisto says that they may have a solution for restoring spiritual strength to the caern. The council has had word recently that wyrm forces are harvesting and storing gnosis within a batteries in an Umbral realm called the Scar. They are to go there, and attempt to bring back at least one battery, ideally more. Fujiko says that the Scar is a realm where weaver and wyrm are dominate - it is an industrial nightmare world where changing is hard and passions do not flow easily. ("Can't you just google 'cat penis' when you get home like everyone else?")
The Silver Fangs open a Moonbridge back to Sleeping Lore so that these filthy Bone Gnawers, etc can get out. I mean, they respectfully make it easy for the Garou to leave. There's some desultory conversation at the caern, but in general Lost Prophets want to go home and nap.
Kasumi can't get into her house. Swipe card won't work. Garage beeper won't work. Internet won't work. She sighs, grabs some clothes and heads back to the caern. Sinead has two messages on her phone - the first is from Carmel saying "what the hell?" and another from Carmel saying "never mind my last message". Will on the other hand has three phone messages - "where are you?" "Why are you not here?" "don't bother coming in". So, that job lasted 2 weeks. Tillie lets Cossack know that they smelt Blood Claw near the sighting of the bunyip spirits, so they might not be as missing as previously believed. He says he'll contact Commands-the-Waters.
They find Emma at Graeme's house. and ask questions about getting to the Scar. She says they need a Moon Path - not a Moon Bridge - which they can do by... looking for it, apparently. Emma says the Umbra responds to the aims and desires of those within it. They should set off, keep in mind where they want to go, and try to find the path, which will hopefully make itself evident She suggests that Sinead is the best to lead them in the Umbra, being a theurge - its often best for one person to do the looking, rather than to be following two people.
She says the Scar is a very heavy weaver place - it used to be an idealised industrial revolution, with the machines of industry guiding everyone to a brighter future. But it became corrupted by the wyrm and now it is fairly bleak. Emma isn't too keen to give them too many details because their experience can be completely different from her experience - the Umbra being what it is, it will respond to their expectations, if they have some, and so if she has a worse than average experience there and tells them about that the chances are they will have a very similar experience. So if she only gives them a rough outline and some metaphysics, then with some luck their experience might be better. She suggests that its a dangerous place, and she suggests stealth might be better than a frontal assault. She experienced a lot of smog, and found that it was hard to change form, or to drawn on her rage, which matches with what Fujiko said the night before as well. She says it can be hard to enter and leave the realm - there's a significant spiritual barrier, like a gauntlet. Emma doesn't know what the batteries will be like, but she has seen spirits enslaved their to drain their essence, so its not a huge jump. Tillie wants to dedicate some bags to make it easier to carry. Graeme says he also has something for them and pulls a shotgun out of a bag. It's apparently a sept fetish, and does not require ammunition. It can be activated to do aggravated damage. Please do not lose it if possible. Tillie and Will have a bit of a slap fight about who gets to attune to it, Will ends up with it. It doesn't have a trigger guard, so it could be used in crinos.
They explain to Emma about their various spirit issues, and she sighs. She agrees to help them out with Rites of Contrition (which maybe Will should learn) and dealing with spirits. First step is to come up with an apology and, if relevant, a revised deal for the spirits they have offended. Folks decide to go and start meditating in the caern to try and renew their gnosis. (Andrew: "botch"). Will keeps getting hit in the head by a peregrine spirit - apparently its really annoyed with him. He contemplates how to make things up to the bird - perhaps he could dedicate some wyrm kills to the spirit? Maybe the next three? He goes back to Emma and makes this suggestion, and she is happy to intercede with the spirit. He agrees to do this to make up for not fulfilling the original deal, as well as sticking to the original deal too. ("That's why a robust culture of constantly challenging the pack alpha is necessary").
Kasumi contemplates dedicating a phone connected to the network to the Net Spider, but is a bit concerned that it will run up her phone bill constantly. Or maybe a web cam ("....") and it can watch the city out the window for a month. Perhaps she could buy a new piece of computer equipment toward a system once a month? Will suggests breaking into the Toyota building and attaching a wifi connection to one of their servers - good in that it fulfils some auspice nature too, but it might be a bit risky. She could buy a server on the net and dedicate it to the spirit? Even a virtual machine. She finds Emma too, and renegotiates - she is going to provide a piece of a system once a month every month for a year, and leave that machine for the spirit. Her phone is just broken though - they have a discussion about the usefulness of getting a new one and taking it to the Scar, but Emma says it was more industrial and less computerised when she was there last, but it was 10 years ago. Kasumi asks Georgina if she could go and get one for her, and she's fine with helping out.
Finn comes up with the idea of perhaps teaching rather than learning something. He could write a song about peregrines and perform it on the street corner for hours. ("And now you have to do peregrine impressions. And I don't mean make the noise, I mean you have to jump off a building and slam into something small and furry on the ground at 120km/hour"). Or beat poetry (much pretending with bongos). He offers to make a peregrine poem, and finish the next four open mike nights with it, and do it the next Moot night. Peregrine seems happy with that.
People get their renown recognised. There is much glory for fomori killing, some honour and much wisdom for finding the caern and all. They dedicate the bags they want and otherwise prepare.
At the night, a lot of the Sept come to see them head off. Kirsty's pack (Get of Penington) and Christine's pack (Hand of Lore) are around, wishing them the best for their trip. (15m distraction about Noah's ark and how translating it from Gilgamesh makes Jehovah into a total bipolar nutbag). Sinead leads them from the caern already in the Umbra, and wanders southish. (10m distraction about Morwell = Mordor). They move from industrial area to industrial area without Sinead being confident its the way to go. They end up in South Melbourne, and she leads them into an old art deco apartment block and into the elevator. There's one of the mesh doors you have to close on your own. Sinead hovers her hands over the buttons, and doesn't pick the bottom one, but the top one. The lift goes up and up and up... well beyond the roof of the building.
Eventually the door opens and a silvery path leads away in front of them, with mists rolling in on both sides. The path feels like a metal, except its more like stone - it smells faintly oily and metallic. They start off, and glance behind them, seeing just the elevator door on its own (5m distraction about the twilight zone/ scary door). The path leads gently up, its a tiny bit of a climb. The mists sometimes swirl and lights can be seen away. The smell of oil gets stronger and the smell of smoke increases - wood and coal smoke. The path gets a rainbow sheen, like oil.
After many hours a lattice appears ahead of them (not the biscuit), a mesh of weaver stuff. They thought they were close, but it turns out that it was quite large and a long way away. As they approach, they can see giant weaver spiders moving a long way away across the weaver mesh. The path approaches but doesn't actually touch the weaver stuff - it turns and the mesh starts to become the roof, and the gap between the two of them narrows further and further. ("Pi drives the weaver crazy. You should attack the weaver with pie") This is probably what a gauntlet would look like if they could see it, so this is probably the boundary of the Scar. They can touch the weaver stuff - its cold and hard, but very very smooth.
Much planning about what to do in terms of default forms - probably all in lupus - and who is going to take people through the gauntlet. The pack thinks to peek and have a look at what they can see through this weaveryness. (Sinead botches. Tillie botches.) Kasumi thinks that she can see into a cave? Dim, square edges. Oh, no, its a room. She can dimly see some furniture - maybe a bed? ("Its your mum's house"). No movement ("Its _your_ mum's house then". "You can tick wits". "Lowering the tone, eh?"). There's a window... they might be up high? Or its hard to see out the window. Oh, it has a door with a round handle, that is going to make the lupus thing a bit hard. They toy with everyone going into homid after all, given it is a reflection of an urban environment, they might need hands. They could just explode it, but that's not really stealthy.
Finn leads the way through the gauntlet. From the point of view of those left behind, he sinks into the weaver stuff ahead of them, slipping between some of the strands, but larger strands pass through them as they pass along. The others follow as soon as Kasumi says she can see them.
The room they appear in is grey - the carpet is grey, the walls are grey, the bedding on the camp bed is grey. They rub at the curtain and a sooty material rubs off, leaving a white plasticy fabric. Its a very small room - there's a small kitchen and bathroom, and the water that comes out of the taps is brown. There's no fridge, but there is a pantry and it has very plain canned food in the cupboard. (They Live fight scene: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9rrgJXfLns) The smell is pretty unpleasant to their lupus senses - its a caustic smoke smell, wood and coal and who knows what else.
They listen at the door, and can't hear anything. Someone looks out the window and can see they are up high in an apartment block, one of a set in a blighted landscape surrounding a concrete courtyard ("oh, so like Britain?"). They can just make out the ground amidst the swirling fog or smoke or smog.
A loud siren goes off outside - it doesn't sound like an alarm. In a futurama like scene, people start heading out of the building in an ordered swarm. Well, "people" - they all the look the same, and they all move the same. There's the sound of tromping feet in the corridor outside, as if hundreds of people were descending stairs. Its somewhere between Being John Malkovich and Silent Hill. They drudge from building out into the courtyard in a mostly ordered fashion. There are beings that are not the same as these workers, but are more metalic looking, and they have swords... no, wait, their hands are swords. These figures appear to be guards - occasionally they poke at the workers, making them stumble. They try and make out where people are heading toward, but its hard to see out the window and all the smoking. As the pack stare into the distance to try and make out where they are going they can see another stream heading back. This stream of workers are shambling, staggering, and there seem to be injuries. One falls near the door way to another apartment block and appears to vanish, sinking into the ground or something.
The pack wait and observe - no one attempts to come into this room, tho the pack are on edge while they hear people moving around. They want to follow the workers off to wherever they are going. Once the noise and fury has stopped, the pack think about peeing on the rug, but it really ties the room together. They take note of the room (room 13, floor 19) and creep out. There's one 10W lightbulb above a staircase. Its dim and grey and dusty and smells bad, and its very quiet. There's no windows into the hallway. They smell under a door, but nothing penetrates the smog smell. Some rooms they can hear breathing.
After 19 floors, they come down into a foyer that is also grey. There's no security or anything here either. There's no grafitti - there's no signs of any form of rebellion that they would get in a human place. There's no sign of guards anywhere, they must have followed everyone back to ... wherever they've gone. The pack sneak out into the street as invisibly as they can. There's no trees, there's no birds. Where there's bare ground, there's little or no grass - one planter has a stick in it that might have been a plant once. There's no plastic - there's metal and concrete and glass, but there's no litter, like old chip packets and all, and paper, but no plastic. The paper has scribbles on it that look representative of writing but nothing actually written. "This is how rubbish looks".
As they head off in the direction the streams lead, they find that between the giant apartment blocks, the road is fronted by small brick utility buildings, like sheds and the like. Nothing like shops or hourses. The road looks like ashphalt, but it isn't. There's a gutter in stone, but no foot path. There are gaps between buildings that don't quite qualify as alleys. There are no street signs.
After a bit of travel, out of the smog is emitted a warbling scream. The pack throw themselves into cover and try to get a sense of it. Its coming from above them, and its really loud. Its not a human sounds, nor any animal they can identify, but its not from machinery or anything either. There's almost a hunting sense about it, but it doesn't seem to be localised to the pack, but passes obliquely off to one side. It might have been from an apartment block top? It goes for about 15s and then stops.
After more travel, there is an increasing thudding sound, like machinery, in the direction they are travelling. Out of the smog in the distance emerges a long, low building, with a very victorian look to it - red brick, panelled windows, arches, etc. Atop it are smoke stacks, pouring clouds of black and grey smoke out of the top. It is surrounded by a chain link fence with an open space between the building and fence. They can't see a gate in the limited distance they make out. The fence looks a bit out of place with the whole turn of the century look of the building. Finn checks the fence and says its not alarmed or electrified at all. Nope. Nothing, perfectly safe. They toy with how to get through or over the fence, and how to hide the hole. Instead they go to the corner and dig through the dry earth. 4 inches below it gets really hard and compacted, which slows them down a bit, but the fence isn't set in concrete or anything. Dig dig and then they are through.
("For some reason they kept the bull in the field closest to their house" "To check on it - you can lean out the window with the big red drapes, and make sure the bull is still looking at you")
They creep up and look through a window, after wiping some soot and crud away, and they can see inexplicable machinery being tended by some of the workers. The workers aren't really animated in their interaction with each other, tho there is some. The workers are shackled to the machinery they are tending. The pack toys with rescuing them, but feel that its beyond the scope of their mission. Many of them are injured or maimed, and none of the machinery has anything resembling safe guards. The guards they saw before continue to walk around the area, and some of them do have big blades instead of hands, or multiple legs, but others have guns, or something like guns.
Its a very complicated situation inside the building in terms of the different machinery stations, making a lot of cover for the pack if they want to move around inside (assuming the workers don't turn on them). Conveyor belts move things around in a complicated flow, heading down the building - stuff stamped out, partly assembled, boxed, moved to the next bit. The pack decide to go with that plan, and sneak inside. At various points they workers can see them but barely show any interet, let alone raise the alarm. The workers have grey eyes with no whites or colour. (Neutral planet). They have no clear gender. The guards seem to follow a set path, in pairs.
The pack move all the way along to the end of the factory, which is about a kilometer long, and find that the factory starts to disemble the things that they were building, sending the parts back to the start again. Frustrated, the pack look more closely at the machinery. The thing that is common between all of the areas is some mystery tubing that seems to have no purpose - it comes off the equipment, often near where the shackles attach and either joins up with other tubing, or heads into the ground. The horrible possibility that the point of the factory is just to drain the spirits of gnosis is put forward, especially as they are looking for a gnosis battery. Joy. Despite votes for pushing a guard into a machine to drain its gnosis, they start looking for manholes to head down and follow the tubes.
Despite some awkwardness in getting lupus down the hole, they all end up in a tunnel under the building. It looks like an access tunnel. Occasionally light comes down from other man holes. Not far from where they entered, there's a pipe that seems to empty into the tunnel - its smaller than human size, and disturbingly free of liquid and grit. The tunnel tilts in a particular direction and they head that way. More pipes, of differing small sizes, all connect into this access way. They are peering down some and wondering if they can fit up them when some twisted spider/rat spirit things come leaping out various pipes. They are fast, but not much of a threat, but when they bite on, they drain gnosis. The pack crush some of them, and others scamper away down pipes when they are badly hurt.
The pack continues down the tunnel. The access shafts get less common as they travel on and slightly down, but given the only pack member not in lupus is Kasumi, its not really a problem.
Ahead a pipe gushes suddenly, pouring black liquid in a puddle on the floor which starts to run away the same direction the pack was travelling. It smells like the rest of the realm - grey, smoky, oily, regret. Its more viscus than water, but its not sticking to the surface, almost as if it was non-stick. It doesn't flow back up hill, which is reassuring. Run off from the batteries? Horrible gnosis? ("Feed it to the halfling" "*pause* Shit, I'm the halfling").
Hours pass as the pack follow the tunnel. Suddenly the tunnel opens up into a large hollow. A number of tunnels seem to meet here, about 30' across and 20' deep. Liquid suddenly pours out of one of the other tunnels, the same black, slightly viscous material as they saw in their own tunnel. It spills across the floor and runs out a lower tunnel, but the rate that it leaves is slower than the rate that it is jetting into the space, and so it starts to build up. As this is starting to concern the garou, the same warbling, screaming sound echos through all the tunnels. Its impossible to tell where its coming from, behind, down the other tunnels, it could be the stuff itself? They back up some, cautiously watching the level rise. It comes up about half way and then the flow slows and stops, leaving the gurgling liquid to run out of the lowest tunnel, leaving little or residue.
The pack discuss where to go. Is the black stuff a physical representaion of the gnosis? In which case they should probably follow it further. There's some concern about being drowned over 10 minutes in wyrm oil. They opt to go down the outfall, and find that there are no longer light from man holes, though it is a bit bigger. Finn uses his faerie lights gift to provide a glimmer as they walk.
As they travel, the tunnel becomes more cave like. Smooth concrete becomes mixed with cobbles, which then becomes mixed with raw stone. Cracks appear in the walls, and suddenly there is movement from all sides. The pack all leap into action - Finn lunges at a moving shape, and attacks it, biting hard down, shaking it around. Tillie goes to leap at another shape and sees at the last moment that its a sqirrel, which swerves suddenly and skids to a halt instead of attacking. A large cat leaps out and then aborts its attack on Will. Everyone stops and waits to see what's happening, and it becomes clear that the attack is stopped. Finn drops a saliva sodden, beaten up spirit out of his mouth and tries to apologise.
Lost Prophets and the spirits try and communicate. The spirits are all minor gafflings, and have trouble making themselves understood. Finn is able to vaguely communicate, and says that they are spirits hiding from guards. And they are surprised to see garou, but also pleased. And they want the pack to come with them to see... the... leader?
Many of the spirits seem lesser than the pack would expect - a bit feral or dishevled, and in some places a little transparent? Basically as if they were running low on their own essence. Will wonders if they are spirits native to the realm, urban ferals that live around these sorts of city environments? But there are some spirits that seem really out of place - "wild" animals. They try and ask, the best concept that the spirits try to convey is "lost". They manage to also get "king"? ("Someone complaining about being discrminated against for being non-contiguous. 'Why is there only one option for 'location' on these forms?')
("I've never seen you and David Bowie in the same room, that's all I'm saying" "If I could do the David Bowie voice, I would't be singing").
The spirits lead them up slowly, and they can start to hear a cacophany of spirit animal noises. ("Its ok, we're not getting anything done, just skip to the end") ("Egg's Guide to Minecraft"). The tunnel they are struggling through opens into a cavern, filled with animals, which opens out somewhere into the sunlight based on the filtered sunlight. The squirrel leads them to a falcon, perched on rock, which greets them, the glorious defenders of Gaia. They do the formal introduction things, and this spirit introduces itself just as Falcon. It asks what they are doing here, and it says that its an honourable quest indeed. It, and the other spirits here, on the other hand, are trapped here, having escaped the factories. Tillie offers to help them in exchange for their help, asking about how they are trapped. Falcon says that the weaver wall holds many lesser spirits here, but others work to rescue their bretheren in factories.
After some discussion, the spirits will show them the facility where batteries are stored and help them liberate some, and Lost Prophets agrees to steal extra and bring them to a factory and release the gnosis within to help free spirits from bondage vile. ("Avalanche in Skyrim - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5rAy-iEfNc"). They talk about where the batteries are stored (some sort of pyramid shaped building) and where they are transported to (outside the Scar, not sure where to). The spirits don't have enough strength themselves to take on the guards in a frontal attack on their own. Tillie asks about the screaming noise, and Falcon says it is a nexus crawler - those pack members who have more knowledge of the minions of the wyrm make "errk" noises, and say that nexus crawlers are very powerful and somewhat chaotic wyrm spirits. They have shown up in the last couple of years. The black stuff they think is gnosis or essence, drawn out of the workers, and even the air and the realm, and made into batteries.
The pack are lead through secret underground paths that end up in storm water drains near the CPS. While they walk, there is another shift change, and they hear thousands of feet tromping. The accomodation block that they appears in is not the only place where spirits live.
Weasel says if they look out here they can see the CPS. They lift up the drain cover and peer out. Some 200m away is a triangular building whose base is approximately double the size of a suburban house. It is on a road corner, surrounded by a clear area and then a chain link fence. More of the black skinned guards are visible. The building appears more modern than the victorian factories - or at least the security is. The building itself looks out of place - more like an extrusion than something built. There is a vehicle reminiscent of a ute is being loaded in the area in front of doors. Smoke and smog obscures details from time to time. On the opposite corners are abandoned lots (dusty and full of rubble, like something used to be there), and low brick warehouses.
The ute leaves, with two guards inside the cab driving, and 4 guards riding on the back. It heads past their hidden area, and seems to be riding low and heavy. A dozen or more guards seem to be left behind, they herd workers back into the building and shut the giant roller doors. Figuring its an easier target, they start planning ways to intercept a truck. Its probably got the batteries in it? Probably. They make plans for an ambush, but decide that it needs some kind of wire across the road - as there's not buildings on two sides of the road here, they opt to fall back another couple hundred meters. They work with the spirits to come up with a way to scout the CPS while being out of visible range. There's concerns about drawing more attention, but there is constant industrial noise and los of smog that should hide them from anyone further away than the immediate focus of attention.
While they are planning, they see a smaller vehicle approach from another direction, something more golf cart sized. Guards emerge, herding workers, who start unloading things and carrying them inside. Finn's eagle eye says that the things they are lifting are bigger than a car battery, and that it requires two workers to lift them. They take two of these things - presumably the batteries - out of the golf cart while guarded with twice as many guards as there are workers.
Despite the many hours of observation and planning, there's no change in the ambient light. Even if there is a sun, its well behind the clouds, and that suggests bad things about seeing the moon at all.
People do some shapeshifting while they are waiting. Or not. They string the barbed wire above the road, above cab height, but hopefully at the height that will inconvenience any guard passengers. Will, Finn and Kasumi hide on one side, and Sinead and Tillie on the other side.
After 3 hours of unsucessful form changing, word is brought that one of the big vehicles is coming. They can hear the rumble as it accelerates their way. (5 minutes of trying to work out how big a hectare is). The garou hide and wait. ("I WILL FUCK YOU WITH A RAKE", http://tasteslikedoom.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/by-allie-manydeeds.html). Will spends a rage and Tillie reverts to breed form so they are in crinos.
Unfortunately, it seems the drivers spot the barbed wire across the road and slam the brakes on. ("An ambush is a kind of surprise"). The ute skids to a halt with the cabin under the barbed wire. That does position it ideally for Will to fire the fetish shotgun but shot doesn't really go through the door in any coherent fashion. Sinead and Tillie duck and don't get hit. Two guards in the back stand up and fire at Will. The other two are on guard but don't leap off the back.
Sinead barrels forward and tries to body slam one of the guards down, but they are heavier than she expects. Will hurls the shotgun to Kasumi and leaps forward. Kasumi fires into the air, not expecting the kickback from the shotgun. Tillie claws at the guard turning to shoot Sinead.
Will is is shot by one guard, and the other on his side of the truck leaps off and stabs Finn with great gusto. The bladed guard on Tillie's side slices at her and cuts chunks off. Sinead channels her rage and shifts to crinos form and then bites one of the guards. Kasumi fires into the air. Will leaps up onto the bed and attacks. Tillie claws the guard shooting at her. Finn howls out a rallying howl to his pack, using Call of the Wyld. The guards, being spirits, unravel rather than bleed or spray gore everywhere.
The drivers hit the accelerator and the car starts to move. ("Cows with guns!"). Finn is sliced open and mangled. Sinead contemplates leaping the ute to heal him, but instead grabs the corner as it starts to move, and using Will's weight as an assist, flips that corner up and over, sending the whole thing into the air. The ute lands on its roof, skidding along, rotating 60 degrees across the road, and putting an end to its escape plan. Will, channelling his surfing powers, leaps up elegantly and lands next to Finn.
Tillie continues the flipping of the ute, lifting it up to get at the batteries, and coincidentally providing some cover. Kasumi slips in under Tillie and starts looking for batteries. Finn retreats up the alley a bit to get away from the bladey guard, leaving him for Will, who is brutally stabbed. (MIllions of peaches). Sinead changes her plan and heals Will while Finn retreats.
(cows with guns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI)
Kasumi can see 4 box-things, strapped down. They are black and look pretty much like batteries (terminals, etc). She finds a release for one of them, and catches it as it falls. They're heavy, but not unmanagably heavy. Will, now less chopped into component bits, leaps at the bladed guard and almost pins him - the guard can't attack Will but now he is kind of facing Sinead.
One of the guards flipped off the truck appears around the cabin side with his gun. The other one tries to flip the truck back onto its top, but Tillie nails it in place. Sinead is slapped in the butt by a flailing sword as she leaps toward Finn to apply more Mother's Touch to affected area. Finn then leaps up to help Will ruin the pinned guard. Tillie is playing tug of war with the guard on the other side of the ute when his companion shoots her through the neck. She starts to bleed out into her own lungs, but channels rage to remain conscious. Sinead sighs and leaps back across the combat zone to heal Tillie while Kasumi drops the batteries and crash tackles the shooter; he goes down but is not hurt. Will starts to slam the guard he is grappling into a wall. Finn runs over to curb stomp him, but misses, and the guard rolls to his feet. Sinead sprints over and bites the guard's head, and Kasumi punches him into non-existence.
Weasels and birds leap in to help with the last standing guard, and the pack smoosh that one. They stomp the ute and trap the other two guards trapped in the cabin. The batteries are released and examined - they appear to be battery like, about the size of a small amp, but all one piece. They haul all four batteries into the bags they brought and take to the tunnells. The weasel cavalry lead the pack along until they get quite close to the factory that they found first. They hear alarms as they travel, which may or may not be relevant to their actions. Lost Prophets convey to the animal spirits that they would like them to scout for the pack. On their return, they manage to communicate that the guards are active and looking around, but they are not tracking. Tillie is finding that her voice is very raspy and gets sore easily, obviously the scarring has caused some troubles.
The pack decide they don't want to let the someone wyrmy gnosis out amidst the workers and find somewhere quiet (briefly) to do a cleansing ritual. Finn does that and is satisfied with the results. They contemplate dropping a battery from the roof, or tearing them apart with claws, but decide in the end to put a battery on the safety-gear-less production line and let the machinery wreck it (and possibly wreck the machinery). The pack sneak back into the factory again, and make some space for shenannigans by ambushing two of the guards. They free random workers from their shackles, and the various worker spirits just stop and stare. The battery is sent down the production line and eventually gets squished flat by some sort of forming machinery, incidentally causing that to malfunction. Gnosis explodes out in a iridescent wave, refreshing the pack's diminishing stores, but also causing the worker spirits to shuck their greyish forms and reverting to their true nature.
The pack is surrounded by a cacophany of forms, including a cheese spirit. Not just naturae, but ephiphlings (dreams, memory spirits and such - "you're naked at school!" - "your teeth are falling out!") and elementals. Fires start as an elemental cuts loose and just starts burning things. (Teeth spiders). Spirits chase around everywhere making a total racket, but the pack manage to get enough of them to understand that its time to go, and bolt for the apartment block that they appeared in. So much for sneaking, as a parade of spirits chase them across the landscape. ("and that's when you realised that the apartment blocks are teeth" "and they are made of spiders" "And the spiders have teeth"). Lost Prophets toy with wrecking another battery here at the apartment block, but decide to hang on to all three.
The pack step sideways with as many spirits as they can manage to help through the walls of weaver, arriving in two groups in the Umbra, and there is an explosion of spirits spreading out into spirit world. Spirits revert to type, and predator spirits start chasing prey spirits and so on. The pack books it as various weaver spirits start to take an interest.
The moonpath is still where they left it, which makes life exciting. It seems dimmer than they remember, which might indicate that some time has passed. They change to lupus and book it.
After some time, everyone but Finn gets a hackle-raising feeling that they realise is a sense that they are being hunted. Being hunted does not sit well with the garou and they start to get tetchy. (Moon Moon, no!). There's no cover on the Moon Path at the moment, it just being a sandy/concretey path along through umbral mists. The pack's main concern is that whatever is following them will follow them back to the caern. The opt to stop and wait and deal with whatever it is. ("I kinda like the idea of a howl of "come on if you think you're hard enough" but only if we know its not hard enough").
Will keeps his nose peeled - he can smell the pack really strongly, so he moves forward a bit. He can smell they are leaving a scent, them plus the smell of the Scar still. After a bit he realises that there is an additional dog and Scar scent on top of their scent drifting their way. Shortly after the pack can see a some shapes, like dogs, but moving very oddly, right at the edge of visibility.
Lost Prophets howl out a challengy howl. Two of the dog-silhouettes turn and run off, and four charge forward to attack. Finn howls out a sustaining howl with his Call of the Wyld gift. The approaching spirits are dog-shaped at the base, but they are twisted. Some of them have bone sticking out, others have open sores, and one has six legs. They look at bit like the rat-spirits that attacked them in the Scar, basically initially naturae spirits, but now twistd by the weaver and wyrm.
Will takes off after the fleeing two, the others engage the feral dogs. The others wait for the approach of the attackers. Kasumi tries to use their forward momentum and flip them over, forgetting that they are spirits and don't quite have the same physicality. ("plague hounds?" "sort of" "bonegnawers then" "fuck you, you can heal yourself" "I'm the only one with pure breed, as far as I concerned, you're _all_ mongrels."). Tillie slams her claws into the feral dog as it closes on her. Sinead tries to kick one, but manages to wedge her foot in its mouth. Finn smashes spirit stuff out of another. Will starts to close, but wants to get closer before taking his shot. Kasumi grabs the neck of one and slams down on its spine, pinning it. Sinead smashes the offending feral with her claws. The feral dogs seem not terribly dangerous, although as spirits they are difficult to wear down.
Will and the ferals he are chasing surge back and forth in distance as he tries to get close enough to fire. He almost loses the furthest one in the fog but puts on a burst of speed. Finn smashes a fleeing spirit into so many pieces. Sinead overbalances and falls on her ass. Finn leaps over and ends her opponent before it has a chance to take advantage of her position. Tillie does the same to her opponent and then takes off after Will. Some distance ahead in the fog she can hear the shotgun firing. Only one. Oh dear. She puts on a turn of speed. Far ahead, Will has given up the chance and taken a shot.
Meanwhile, Finn does a cleansing ritual around Kasumi's pinned spirit. It takes 10 minutes, and he is forced once again to use his own blood to make the circle, but it is quite successful. Wyrm taint pours out of spirit as it writhes, dissipates in shards, and the warped nature of the feral spirit seems to revert. The spirit seems to waver and vanish - not in a "destroyed" fashion, but maybe in a falling into slumber way.
The other two garou return and notes are compared. Howling drifs out the Umbra back the way they have been coming from - "I found it". The feeling is that things from the Scar were tracking them (the trail, the batteries, something) and they are not real keen on leading the wyrmtainted spirits back to the caern. Tillie and Sinead both put forth that they will leave a trail as long as they are following the moon path. They decide to try and summon their pack totem. They explain the situation and he agrees to help lead them back to the penumbra off the moonpath. The mists close in. The pack get the sense that only a shadow away, thousands of spirits are zooming around the Umbra, but they cannot perceive any of them.
They start to see tree spirits emerging from the mists and over some time, the mists clear and they are within an Australian forest. They can see the moon, and it is the end of philodox, suggesting that it is...
They poke around and find some streetlights and a sign, and find they are in Studley Park, just down the end of Alexandra Parade and not far from the caern. As they move along, its apparent that the sun has just gone down, and its a weekday, just from the traffic they can see in the Realm. They trot to the cemetery in the umbra and run into Christine and Georgina, who come with them to Graeme's house. Cossack is there as well, and a brief run down of their success. (If Miyazaki anime was the same as normal anime - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPXr-BeXJHI )
They ring Rippling Waters and pass along the good news. The decision is made to head out to the new caern now, because they have a bunch to do there, and doing the ritual at dawn seems appropriate symbolically. Cossack and Emma are going to come with them, and some followup discussion is had about Scar things - the Silver Fangs might like to know about falcon-king fighting the good fight and the tracking dogs are a bit concerning and nexus crawlers, yuck. The pack ask about local news - someone had messed with the forensic data from Tony Staley's death, and it wasn't Sleeping Lore and it wasn't Hidden Green. It might just be someone hiding that they screwed up, but its still concerning. Rainbow Inc have appointed a new managing director, Steve Marshall. Lost Prophets want to check him out as soon as possible.
When they arrive near Edridge, they park somewhere safe and go into the Umbra. They meet some other garou ( Spear of Tulu, pack leader Mae Fischer, Homid Ahroun Fianna rank 3) at the edge of the Edridge's land and get led through the tunnel to the caern. The Fianna have added light sources (quartz rocks with sunlight spirits bound to them), making the paintings way more visible. They get a chance between preparations to ask Mae what happened after they left Edridge. So far the Fianna have been muddling the waters - it now seems like a special generator exploded because it was left running, rather than a helicopter. The official timeline is "there was an explosion, security went to see, and then there was a bigger explosion". The "locked into building aspect" of the accomodation has been glossed over and the site has been suspended and marked off by cops and arson investigators. The Fianna have investigated and feel that most of the staff, other than security staff all seem to be legit - they thought they were doing the good work. They are still looking into Edridge as a company. They got rid of the two guys left in the cave and sent them home. No one is 100% sure where the blue beret guys came from, but there's been descriptions of similar groups, and blue berets before, but its been encounters with teams who have no trail after that. No one still knows why the helicopter blew up.
People start to arrive - Bret Hutchinson and Leaps-in-the-Light bring more Fianna, not just some from Rippling Waters, but others from further afield. The batteries are cleansed in preparation and Lost Prophets get to participate in that. Only two of the batteries will be used, and they'll hold the third one in reserve or to research. Theurges do theurge things, and Tillie gets bored and starts to wreck things. No, not really. The chanting does not echo properly. Kasumi gets the irrits and she can't tell why. ("i rolled another straight!" "Anything good?" "no, it goes 2 3 4 5") Kasumi whispers to Tillie that something is weird here and bugging her. Tillie says she should have gone before she came. Tillie peeks and sees that there isn't the spiritual presence that she woudl expect given all this ritual - there's not water spirits in the lake or some rock spirits in the walls. Its not like they've been pushed away, its more that something has been done to make the whole caern a single spiritual piece - its all The Caern.
Tillie sidles up to Cossack and says that Kasumi says that something is weird. Cossack looks about, seeming to use some gifts, and quietly suggests that they go down the tunnel and have a look around to the outside - no one wants to be surprised by the arrival of unwanted guests or anything. As they head away, the sound of the ritual dies off much quicker than it should and it returns to silence. As they look around, they do hear something out of place - its a weird coughing sound, a bit like a bark but not exactly. Its like a possum. Oh wait, or like a thylacine? They try and trace the echo and it leads to a short side tunnel. There's paintings all over the wall and Finn checks them out. He brings over one of the lights and suddenly isn't sure that some of the paintings moved. The paints take advantage of nooks and crannies in the rock to add to their effect, so maybe it was just shadows move. They ask Boobook and he says "it is Bunyip. They are not here. You hear echoes" Finn asks if its like an impression or a memory? "Yes". "Are they spirits?" "They are echos". Will toys with trying to channel the exact ancestor that affected him during the storm but feels that it weould be better to do that somewhere calm and maybe with Ends-the-Quiet. Kasumi's strange feeling is gone. They return to the cavern.
Kasumi's feeling comes back. Its not evil, its just something off, irritating her for some reason. She peeks and its like she's looking through water. WATER. Its the water. Its so still that it is irritating her, like a picture slightly crooked. Its better and worse now that she knows what it is, because now she can't stop looking at it. They pass things onto Cossack, who says they should tell Leaps-in-the-Light when they get a chance.
The ritual concludes and Lost Prophets are subtly nudged to bring over the batteries and release the gnosis, which they do by basically wrecking it. The gnosis fountains out of the damaged containers, and echos around the chamber. Everything starts to look more real, especially in the Umbra where the walls are absorbing all the spirit energy. It should be boiling with noise, but its silent, its only gnosis and essence boiling around the room.
On the far side of the cavern, the garou can see something emerge from the images - they do not change, but like an optical illusion suddenly makes itself visible, a huge painted figure, about 15' tall, covered in pictographs appears and seperates from the wall. It wades through the water, which ripples slighly, but the ripples do not reflect off the white sand. The spirit stops 10' out from the edge of the beach and all the Garou hear its voice in their head. "I am Jirrawan, the cave spirit. The time for mourning is done. Now is the time for restitution and renewal."
Leaps-in-the-Light formally greets Jirrawan on behalf of the Fianna. He introduces all the surrounding Garou, including Lost Prophets. When Jirrawan's attention is focussed on Sinead, she becomes aware that there is an exchange between the two spirits. She cannot catch what it is, but it is dense with information. The pictograms around Jirrawan start to move, spinning around in bands on his body. Leaps-in-the-Light asks for Jirrawan's blessing in forming a Sept here to defend the caern. The spirit agrees and it is suggested that there is a full moon in three weeks, and they will have a Foundation Moot at that time. Jirrawan says yes and moves back to the far side of the cave, disappearing into the wall without a trace.
And at that point the Fianna all yell in celebration, dancing around and cheering, and generally being celebratory. Bret gets people's attention and says that they will be heading back to Rippling Waters to celebrate this, and Lost Prophets and their Sept elders are welcome to come with them.
People head back to Rippling Waters, and ask if they can collapse. This they now do, having not really slept since Sunday. By early afternoon they wake up and see what's happening. They find Cossack and Emma and get their renown recognised. Tillie, Will and Finn think that their actions mean that they could be recognised as being rank 2, and Sinead would like her Wisdom recognised. They feel that they should go with the surge of good feeling for their pack at the moment and challenge tonight at the party. Cossack suggests that they might want to speak to the Master of the Challenge, Catherine Lie-Thrower.
Catherine hears them out and looks at them a bit impassively before saying "Sure, we can do that. I'll let you know what we will do". While she's off, they do some planning. Kasumi plans to give her doctor friend a call so that she can get a medical certificate to cover the random time that she's been away.
The party starts at dusk. There are not just garou, but also a few kinfolk. The garou aren't all locals, there are some folks from the other Fianna protectorate in the Hunter Valley. Bret says some words to begin with, and says that they are planning to throw open membership to the new sept to not just Fianna, but to Garou from other tribes too. ("there's sort of a sibling rivalry thing going with Get and Fianna - I can do something stupider faster than yuo!"). There will be a challenge to sort out the Sept Leader, then the other elders, and then packs will be formed. There will need to be some people guarding until that Moot happens, which will stretch them a bit thin, but that's how it goes. The new Sept will also need a new name - people are invited to make suggestions. Kasumi suggests "Still Waters" and makes a face. ("You may as well call it 'Stagnant Pond' and be done with it"). Will suggests asking Jirrawan what the name of the old sept was. People aren't sure how that will go, but agree they could ask. Bret jumps down and the party takes off.
There is chatter about the caern, for obvious reasons - the Fianna are looking at buying up land nearby to get Kinfolk in the area to provide some support for the new sept, but don't want to make it too obvious. There's also talk about how exactly a caern is hidden for so long, without any signs of a hostile takeover - the conversations are a bit awkward, but people raise the possibility that it was made dormant and the bunyip whose sept was there went off to fight somewhere else. There's not much chance that a group of Garou attacked them there, without their being a record of it. On the other hand, the War of Tears was so churned up spiritually that a clear sense of what happened.
People relate some of the lore of the War of Tears. One of the things that people mention is that things had been tense for 100 years or more of Garou & Bunyip interaction, but then there was some sort of trigger event, and it turned into a war and the Bunyip were wiped out in about a year. The trigger than most people agree was the cause was a Red Talon whose sister wa attacked and killed by Bunyip, and he started attacking them and it seemed to act like a crystalising event. There was no jindabyne council then, but there were powerful septs and a leader position - at the time there was a Fianna in charge, Keally O'Shannesey. She was new to the position at the time, and maybe her position wasn't very strong, and so she sanctioned the attacks. Afterward, she was full of regret at her actions, and she was one of the supporters of the Jindabyne Council formation.
Other things they overhear is that people do think that Fingal (Jindabyne council member) is approaching the end of his life - he is over 100 already, but he is still fighting fit. There's no one Fianna who could guarantee enough support for a challenge either.
Tillie finds that if she is on her own, the Fianna will start to make conversations that don't include her. Its not that she's being snubbed exactly, it just that conversations move to subject she doesn't know, or people head to get a drink and don't come back. It doesn't happen if she is with any of the other pack. This has been going on for about 30 minutes when Leaps-in-the-Light comes and starts talking to her, dragging some of the other Children of Gaia and deliberately making her part of the social scene. She manages to quiet ask if its a metis thing - he agrees people are dicks.
Kasumi is given a few drinks, but spends her time politely pretending to sip at it. The kinfolk reckon its time to go when Finn starts telling his peregrine story.
About 9 o'clock, Russell manages to get everyone's attention and says that Lost Prophets have suggested that the achievement of finding, and resurrecting this caern should see them recognised as rank 2. Three of the pack wish to challenge thusly - he's a bit drunk - and another wishes the assembled garou to recognise formally her wisdom. As they are challenging as a pack, they shall be challenged as a pack. Finn shall use his knowledge of the Lore to work out what spirit to summon for his packleader to fight. Sinead shall summon the spirit. Will shall negotiate with the spirit. And Tillie shall fight to be recognised. There is much drunken cheering. Russell says that the challenge will happen at midnight.
Lost Prophets try to sober up and wrack their brains - a lion? A dragon? A kangaroo? A mouse? The fianna totem is Stag, that's no good. What about one of Stag's brood? Boudiccea? Oh, hangon. Maybe a Fianna ancestor spirit? That has some legs. They don't really have time to call a particular spirit, but being in a Fianna caern should help. Its a ritual challenge, so its not like they will call up someone's grandmother to be murdered. ("not with *your* scrotum!"). Alternatively, Lion is good, or Boar? Finn is trying to think of his packmate's strengths, because Will will have to negotiate and Tillie to fighht it.
Kasumi is in favour of either the fist fight with the fianna ancestor spirit or hispo vs lion. Will is in favour of an ancestor spirit as it is easier to negotiate with ("I will find all your descendants and give them head" "... for a moment I thought you were still talking about the lion"). Finn decides that the ancestor spirit is the right answer and gives Sinead some tips on what sort of people to summon.
Sinead, in turn, starts to think of spiritual connections. The connection of blood is a good one. But she's Bonegnawer. She makes Finn come over and then bites him, smearing blood everywhere. ("you could have used a knife!" "I don't have one" "I do!") The fianna brew. Woad? hard to get a hold of. Does anyone have a harp? No? No one??
Will tries to think of some chiminage before Sinead starts. He basically comes close to making irish jokes in his efforts to work out what to give them ("I'll drink an entire slab, and when I am drunk I will carve your name into my face" "that's a terrible idea, what if its a really long name?"). He could do a song? but he's really no good at composing things or performing things. He could fight something for the spirit? What do Fianna not like? Get.. metis... "hey, we'll let you beat up this metis!" Maybe finding a Fianna artifact? That's maybe a bit over the top. Maybe learning a spirit's history? But garou history comes in stories. Maybe learning stories of the ancestor, and learning to tell them? Especially if its someone from outside the tribe, spreading stories about honour and glory of the Fianna? ("I'm sure they have _some_ honour and glory" "oh this is going to go so well"). What else do Fianna like? Music, family? They are very passionate people.
Sinead goes and finds a large mug of beer, and drinks it, then gets another mug to offer the spirit when it arrives, dedicating it on the way through. She mediates on the Fianna and the things she knows about Finn and the Fianna in the Umbra. At midnight, Sinead spends an hour calling for an ahroun ancestor spirit. Apparently her efforts are well received, for at the end of that time, she becomes aware that someone is approaching from deeper into the brush. It is a dark haired, pale skinned woman. She is carrying a spear, and wearing fairly old looking clothes, decorated with fur ("hers? WOLF?"). "You called."
Will introduces himself as Will Jackson, philodox of the Get of Fenris. He is a guest here this evening. His pack and he wish for her to aid them in a challenge. His packleader wishes to fight her as part of a challenge. In return, he will learn tales of her exploits. She speaks in return, with a strong irish accent, pointing out that he doesn't even know her name. Will asks, a little chagrinned. She says she is Bridget O'Meary. Will says he will learn tales of her bravery and tell them to his own Sept. A Get Sept? No, he lives at a Star Gazer and Bone Gnawer sept. She looks a bit surprised, and says it explains his friend there (pointing at Sinead). He says that he would go to a nearby Get sept and tell them stories too. Bridget says he needs to find three stories about her. How long does he think it will take? "Oh, surely your descendant's here - " "Oh I don't have any here". She suggests that he could find out where they are as part of his chiminage. Will agrees. She agrees to his deal.
Will says the rules of the fight are fists only, no gifts and homid. She suggest glabro, as she is a homid and does not heal well. He cautiously agrees. He says in the Realm? Bridget says that he should have specificed that before they agreed. Will starts to look a bit panicked at how little he nailed this deal down, but she says she's just messing with him and they agree that she can take a physical form and they can fight in the realm. Bridget asks who she is fighting, and Will points at Tillie, who introduces herself formally (Matilda Kennedy). Bridget is a bit taken aback at her opponent being a metis... with an Irish name... but a shadowlord. There is surely a story there. Bridget says that she was a rank 3 ahroun homid fianna of the Sept of Ann bolu an yehvri a gweeha da savri te. Will desperately tries to commit that to memory.
Bridget and Tillie head out into the Realm, and people scatter to make some space on the lake side. When Catherine says "go", they immediate launch into a flurry of accelerated blows, both spending rage at a great rate. Some blows are blocked, there is some tentative grappling that goes nowhere. Tillie thinks she is stronger, but that Bridget might be faster. Despite out of character cries of "snog her, that'll throw her" from the rest of the pack, Tillie refrains from litany breach as a way of winning.
Tillie tries to bodyslam Bridget towards the water. They both go down awkwardly onto the sand but its not really effective beyond that. Tillie leaps onto Bridget and has pinned her so the only thing Bridget can do is try and struggle. Tillie headbutts her extremely hard in the face. Bridget struggles to control the urge to frenzy, Tillie continues to headbutt. Bridget gets one hand out, but Tillie re-establishes a grip. Bridget eyes off Tillie and asks if her Sept gave her all those scars. Tillie says "yes" and headbutts Bridget square between the eyes. Bridget tries to escape, Tillie tries to get a choke hold, but it does take a long time to suffocate garou. Tillie looks sideways and sees the lake just there. Tille rolls with Bridget into the shallows, and ends up on top yelling "say mercy", with Bridget's face just at the water level.
Bridget spends rage and struggles out from Tillie's grip, though neither of them are upright. Tillie spends rage leaps on her again but Bridget dodges. Tillie grabs again and gets her not quite pinned, but heavily encumbered. Bridget struggles to get out, Tillie grabs her again, but better this time, and Bridget and her go under the water. Bridget suddenly swells in size, changing to crinos, and Tillie can tell that she is frenzying. ("Well, i've won, but I have also lost horribly"). Tillie opts to run for the shore, brute force ploughing through the water. Bridget runs for the closest dry land, clearly fox frenzying.
Some of the other Fianna take off after Bridget, and the howling cuts off before too long. Catherine says "sort yourself out, I need to have a chat with people". She goes and talks to Cossack and Bret aside. After about 20 minutes, Cossack finds Tillie and asks her to come with him. She looks suspicious but goes. Tillie asks about Bridget and is told she went into the Umbra and left. Catherine says that she feels that perhaps Tillie's packmates were not entirely clear in their demonstration of abilities to be rank 2. Tillie says she thinks they did alright, but Catherine says that Will's challenge was to deal well with the spirit, and he was a bit to indiscrimate - eg: he's going to Ireland to fulfil this debt. Cossack says that this isn't the first time that the pack have been overgenerous with spirits - they need to work on it. Catherine says it was close though, the things he suggested were right for the spirit, it was just too much. Tillie asks if they can get extra credit, and the Elders nod, that's why they want to talk to her. The Fianna are going to be stretched a bit for the next few weeks until the new Sept is established, and would benefit from having an extra pack handy. So, while the pack are helping out with that, they could get some extra instruc- "sold" says Tillie. They chat about the details, and basically Lost Prophets are going to head there tomorrow, and there'll be a lot to do, but in between those things, Will - and Finn to be honest - can get a bit more instruction. Tillie is sent to go and be merry.
About 15 minutes later, Bret gets everyone's attention and says that while the challenge ended well, things might have gone smoother. To complete their challenge the Lost Prophets will spend a week with the Fianna, learning lore from the elders. Everyone cheers and boos with yelled comments. Propriety is clearly not a big thing here. ("the fight was tops!"). Bret says in recognition of their efforts, not just in finding the caern, but also in helping restore it, he would like to offer the pack honorary membership, not just in the new Sept to be formed but also at Rippling Waters. Does anyone object? "Nooo!". "Do you mean no you don't, or no we shouldn't?" "noooo!". In the end the Fianna are all for it - Bret checks with the Sept Totem and the sound of Kookaburra's laughter echos everywhere, and the lake bounces. which they take as a yes. The pack are cheered and given/sprayed in drinks. There is much toasting.
The pack decide to start their duty at the cave caern straight awya rather than go back to Melbourne first. Cossack and Emma leave early by moonbridge. The only person with some concern in Melbourne is Kasumi, and she works with the Fianna to get a fake Warrnambool hospital record so her doctor friend can give her a med certificate.
Will spends his time - outside of shovelling rubbish - formalising the bits and pieces he knows about ancestor spirits learnt in the process of learning about past lives and channelling them. Kasumi get some pointers on fighting from the other garou. Finn spends a lot of time looking at paintings on the wall at the caern and trying to figure out their meaning. Sinead gets some pointers on the rituals being used at the caern - they are less common and so it allows her to get a good perspective on commonalities and differences.
Lost Prophets take some time to clear their various outstanding spirit geas, like hunting food for peregrine and the such. The pack contemplate fulfilling their obligation to Boobook to learn sense wyrm. It takes some time to think of a spirit, and then decide between raven, wolf, owl. They are keen on ravens and try to think what chiminage that spirit would like. There's a lot of thought about mortal children types of stuff, like bringing food for the spirits, but also their more spiritual correspondences. Secrets, ravens love secrets and shiny things. Ok, they can do that. Sinead starts summoning, calling for raven.
She comes out of her summoning trance, and it becomes clear that there's not one raven here, but about 17. They adorn the nearby trees and bushes, and they are regarding the pack with a skeptical eye. Its gone all Hitchcock. The pack try and address the largest mass of them, and one says that they will offer gnosis for their request to even be heard. Feeling that they should keep trying for a bit at least, the pack agree, though Will is now suspicious about offering anything to spirits. The mood lightens somewhat, but there is still something menacing about nearly a score of black raven spirits cawing at them and regarding the pack with beady eyes. Will quietly says that he thinks these spirits are more native than the ravens he was thinking of, that might be why they are a bit narky. As Finn offered the gnosis, the spirits seem to be paying more attention to him - having a beast speech gift helps him understand them too. Finn says that two of his pack wish to learn sense wyrm, and in return they offer chiminage of secrets. The raven wants to know how many secrets. One for each of the pack by the darkest moon (five days). Good secrets, demands the raven. Hidden ones. Not things known but unspoken, but secrets. Raven declares they must bring tokens of the secrets too. The pack counter offer that if there is tokens, there should only be two secrets, one per pack member. Raven wants them brought to the umbra. The pack agree. Raven agrees and the whole flock take off.
The pack manage to steal bits of time in between cleansing Edridge stuff, helping baffle mortal investigators of what happened, preparing the caern and guarding the site against any untoward attention. They were planning to get a photo with a camera, but no one wants their phone stolen. ("I want a positive pregnancy test"). The pack could make their own secrets ("we have to get someone pregnant!") They contemplate looking for hidden dead bodies in the landscape somehow. Or hanging out in the doctor's office. Or peeking in a church, listening to confession. Finn winces about that particular option, pointing out that while various Fianna might not be Catholic in a straight sort of way, their families are.
In the end they find a child who is not the biological child of his father and cut off a lock of hair. ("I was thinking a sperm sample." "What if its a girl child?" "... of the _father_". "and this is how succubi myths start"). And also that Bevan Quinn is buying his sweetie an engagement ring and planning to propose (they steal the receipt). ("We're not stealing the ring, we didn't go out of our way to find something nice and then ruin it").
Over the week, they spend a bit of time interacting with the Spear of Tulu and getting to know the pack better. The Fianna pack talk about some of the future of the sept to be formed around this caern. Jenny Roche suggests Mae might challenge for one of the Elder positions, but she waves off such speculation. Other Fianna names come up, ones mostly unfamiliar to Lost Prophets, and the possibility of garou from other Septs and Tribes.
The caern paintings give some secrets away - there are definitely multiple stories here and different styles over time. Its like its acreted without much of a plan. There are animals, there are geometric patterns - some of these have a known meaning, but others are a mystery. The problem is that paintings often require on a context that is either gone or relies on a commonality of culture that Europeans just don't have. Its a long term project.
On the dark of the moon, Sinead summons the ravens back again. Fortunately this time they only get one spirit (the one they had met and dealt with) and it seems far less hostile. ("BATTLEPOPE") The spirit pecks at their tokens a bit and deems them satisfactory before stuffing them under its wing in some fashion. Tillie and Sinead both are given the gift of Sense Wyrm by the spirit, who hops away happily before flying off.
Toward the end of the week, some other Garou show up (no its not Scott). The Ngalyod pack appear with Leaps-in-the-Light and talk to both Spear of Tulu and Lost Prophets. They tell the packs that the Jindabyne Council summoned and spoke to Boobook, but he was not able (or willing) to tell them much more than he told the pack; he knew something was wrong and responded accordingly, like water flowing down a hill. There was no volition involved. Generally the council seems happy with how things turned out (caern saved and all), and given that they have had a rare friendly or at least productive interaction with dreamtime spirits, the Lost Prophets may be called on by the council later. The last bit of news is that Blood Claw were found, stuck in the gauntlet where Lost Prophets said they smelt their scent. The Get pack didn't see any bunyip spirits - they had stepped as they would normally and got stuck.
At the end of the week, Lost Prophets return to Rippling Waters and are lightly quizzed by Catherine and Leaps-in-the-Light, who agree to recognise the challenging pack members as Fostern (rank two) members of garou society.
Lost Prophets moonbridge home. Finn realises he left his light on. And his window open. And all his electronics gone. Wait... He yells and Tillie and Will check their stuff too - nothing outside Finn's room appears to have been touched, like it was a snatch. They took his CDs and his organ. Finn closes the curtain and changes to lupus, but all he can smell is fortnight-old washing from before he left.
Sinead gets home to freaked out housemates who say that someone turned up and paid her rent. She shrugs. They move off.
Tillie tries - on top of bachelor funk, she can smell two other male scents. They came in over the back fence, and had a go at the door before trying Finn's window, so the garou head out into the alley out the back. The scent wanders a bit aimlessly around the neighbourhood, trying some other yards/houses.
Eventually it leads back to another terrace house where they can smell both older and newer versions of the same scent. Rather than bursting in higgledypiggledy, they opt to backtrack a bit and find somewhere to go into the Umbra. From there, they peek, and manage to wrangle the high gauntlet of the inner city enough to even hear.
Inside is a poor student or equivilent house. There's signs of 6 different people living here, though there are only 4 now. Two people are cooking mac&cheese in the kitchen and 2 are going through a backpack of CDs. That room also has a few piles of what looks like randomly aquired consumer electronics. Figuring they have their targets - also because they smell like the scents from Finn's room - they espie upon them a touch further. They just appear to be random low grade thieves, so they garou go for the brute force option.
Kasumi goes home and dumps her clothes in the trash. She starts running a bath, and gets a cold beer out of the fridge before chilling out to some music, checking out the two weeks of tv she has recorded and ordering in thai food.
As Finn botches two rolls in a row, the garou head out of the Umbra in their quiet spot and head for the front door. They bang on the door and it is opened by one of the chefs. Will says "we're here to get our stuff back and starts shoving his way in". "yeah!" says Finn. The guy starts pushing the door shut and swearing. "Woof" says Tillie in lupus form and in tones of low menace, shoving the door wide open and running in. Will follows. The guy slams the door shut into Finn's face while saying "What the fuck are you doing?" Tillie stops outside the closed door of the auditors of petty theft and growls. The door is pulled open by a guy who has a look of "What is going on?" Finn finds that the front door is locked now. His eye starts to twitch.
Will says "open the door". "I'm not opening the door, I'm calling the cops!" "NO Don't CALL THE COPS" says the new fellow "Its a misunderstanding, I'll sort it!". Tillie slips in and sniffs for Finn's things. They appear to be in the bin - his several cds of irish folk music, cranberries and dido have just been tossed and then the synthesiser squashed in on top of them. The other guys lets Finn in, who puffs himself up a bit as he slips through. Finn finds his stuff in the bin and nearly frenzies at the rampant disrespect. Will asks if its damaged and Finn nods, because at the very least he can see some broken cases and scratched cds. Will says "you owe us some money now, this stuff is wrecked." They um and ah. Tillie grows and one of them hits the other, who pulls $50 out of a stash under the mattress. The other guy mutters "they wouldn't even give us $0.20 for them" and Finn nearly loses it. Will says "sit down and shut up and hand over more money" "I've got anotehr $50 and that's it!" "I can see more" "That's my rent money!" "I. Don't. Care." Finn is crushing the bin, his hair seems to be moving on its own. The guys shove a handful of cash at Will. As the garou leave, with Finn clutching the bin and the others retaining their dignity, they hear shouting start in the share house. Another glorious victory for the defenders of Gaia.
Will walks and talks and tries to find some work. He gets some people willing to take heavy lifters on on a shift basis and some numbers to call during the week. It'll be last minute, but its work. Finn finds that he is already 20% down on the essay that is now a week late, and his email full of queries about if he is dead from classmates. Finn tries to scramble his notes together into something. Sinead calls Carmel and gets a shift tomorrow.
Kasumi is heading out to the caern and finds that its like a bombsite. The caern is unharmed, but some people are hurt, and Aquinas is badly burnt. He's shuffled into Graeme's house and people heal him. Once things are under a bit more control, Kasumi gets the story - the Scryers and The Alternative, a pack from Hidden Green had been following up on the weirdness around the state election, and it led them to possessed politicians and election officials. They followed a lead to a warehouse in Braybrook, which turned out to have banes and demons in it, which would seem to confirm the mage connection. They were fighting when Chases-the-Car had a premonition of danger, and got everyone almost all the way out when it exploded into a fireball. Now all that evidence is all blown up, which is not a good thing. They are going to have to cleanse people, cover evidence and that sort of thing. Kasumi asks about smells on the site, and the Scryers says that they didn't get a firm chance to sniff, and now its all blown up and smokey and foamy and wet, so there's not much chance of htings there.
Kasumi is asked to grab those packmates that are free to help, and she makes some calls. Finn is working like mad but all the others have a free evening, so spend their time running and fetching and cleaning and so on for the other two packs.
Finn is running a bit late for his lecture and so is hurrying out the door. As time slows down he sees a basket on the doorstep, with a baby asleep in it, manages to jump it, but stumbles down the step, through the gate and catches himself on the two cars parked out the front. ("YOU!"). Immediately car alarms go off, and the baby starts awake and starts to yell. He walks back and stares at what is definitely a baby in a bassinet on their doorstep. He spots a note, and opens it - its written in handwriting and for a moment he thinks he has forgotten how to words, but then he realises its in Italian. ("you should check it for traps") He brings the whole kaboodle inside.
Carissima,
Questa è la mia nipotina. Per motivi che non posso discutere, non è sicuro con lei a vivere con la sua famiglia in questo momento, e quindi la lascio con voi per curare e proteggere. Anche se so che faresti questo dalla bontà del tuo cuore, ho anche lasciare un piccolo segno per aiutare a fornire ciò che le cose che lei può avere bisogno.
In bocca al lupo!
M
(with thanks to google translate, so its probably gibberish :))
Finn is concerned about the lupo bit, which he figures means 'wolf'. "Did either of you order a baby?" ("farmer's direct veal"). Tillie sniffs it - there is a baby in need of changing, a weird plasticy smell and a perfume smell. The baby is a girl. Finn says "can'tstaygotclassbyebacklater!" and runs out the front door, leaving Will and Tillie to deal. ("You're a girl." "I'm *not human*"). Will roughly thinks that the child is less than 1 but older than 6 months. ("My elder is called Mother Pasta??"). Tillie thinks that the baby is maybe more olive than Will, who is frankly the person under suspicion at this point. Tillie ransacks through the bassinet and sees a lot of money. She moves the blanket well out the way and sees more money. No nappy, which is the more urgent requirement. "Call Kasumi". "Why, she doesn't know about babies?" "She's the only godamn grownup".
Kasumi is just settling down to work, reading her email, having had a meeting with her boss about her absence and getting back into the mindset when her phone rings with Will's number. She sighs and answers. "Someone's left a baby on our doorstep."... "Is there a note?" "yes, but it is in a language I don't speak." Will dictates the note to Kasumi and she pumps it into babelfish to see what it says. In the meantime, Tillie counts the money... $5000... $10000... gods, there's $50000 here in non-sequential $100s and $50s.
Translating Will's babbling suggests it roughly means - "Dearest. Here I present granddaughter. For unknown reasons not safe. You are responsible. " Its not doing well with the translation - maybe its a dialect? It suggests lots of options, so she's having to pick and choose between words and meanings. "I know you are good. I leave things to assist you in providing the things that the mother might need. In the mouth of the wolf" ("Matilda, did you send us a baby from the future?". "I AM A METIS"). They contemplate taking the baby to the caern, but the caern is busy dealing with the warehouse explosion.
Practicalities! Nappies. Food. ("Find what size clothes she's wearing now." "You're a fucking genius!"). The two garou left in charge really have no idea ("Right, I get diapers, clothes and a wet nurse"). Tillie notices the clothes are high quality, very nice. I mean, she came with $50K of unmarked bills, but still. "Buy a book about how to baby a baby". Tillie wonders about if this baby is garou or kinfolk - she knows there are ways to find this out, at least with kinfolk. She checks for a kinfetch spirit, but can't find a sign of one.
Kasumi calls Graeme and has a strange conversation. She says "a baby has rocked up on our doorstep". He says he'll call her back in 10m. Which he does. Kasumi brain dumps on him about it and asks if any kinfolk children have gone missing? They talk about the letter. Graeme asks for them to bring the note to him or something.
Will comes back after an hour and comes back with a triple armful of random stuff. Then he goes back and gets all the stuff he didn't think of. Tillie manages to get the child to sleep even though she gets thrown up on in the process. They walk the bassinet and child over to the caern and see Graeme. Graeme roughly reads Italian and says that Kasumi's translation is about right. He asks how the baby was dropped off and where they came from. The pack belatedly remember they have super werewolf powers they could maybe use to find that out. Graeme can tell them that "in the mouth of the wolf" is not something to freak out about, its just like saying "break a leg". He says his grandmother was italian. Tillie wants to leave the baby and Graeme points out that he lives in a small 4 room building with a guy who can't change to homid or lupis. She'll get squished. He does offer to find a babysitter for them, but says that the caern is pretty busy at the moment, so they'll have to sort it.
When they get home, Will sniffs around the front door. He finds the perfume smell and finds that it wsays "old person" to him. He follows it as best he can, and it seems to wander about their street. It crosses the street twice and wander up and down in front of houses. Maybe they picked a house at random? Maybe they were searching for something. He manages to track it back to... a curbside. The scent vanishes at that point, as if someone got in and out of a car. Tillie rings Sinead and asks for help. She comes over. Will senses for wyrm -nope, nothing more than background noise. He remembers he has another gift, and so uses scent of the true form. He's pretty sure that this girl isn't even kinfolk,let alone garou. She just seems to be a human girl child. They toy with just giving her over to the police, but there's some reason they have the child.
As Sinead approaches the house, two guys in suits attract her attention and ask if she lives locally. When she gives them a look, one of them says he is Anton Moscetti, with Foster First National (and he has a business card to prove it). They're looking for people looking to sell their property, and wondering if she knows of anyone who has just moved out and maybe who they sold their house through? Sinead manages to get across she's just visiting and they thank her and continue to the next house before going up to the door.
Finn turns up and catches up with the details. He asks who rented their house before they did? They get the occasional mail for previous tenants but no Italian names. Tillie gets a call from someone who says Graeme asked her to call, her name is Tamara and she needs some babysitting. Tillie asks if can come over, and after a moment of awkward silence, Tamara says yes. Tillie double checks that Tamara is legit and then cabs over there with Will. When they arrive, Tamara is pretty nervous of the two psychopaths in her house with her children. Will sniffs her at some point and finds she is indeed kinfolk. They leave her with a chunk of cash.
When Sinead leaves their place and heads to work, she sees the same two guys who approached her before sitting in a car with a third guy in the back seat. They're all in suits and having a conversation. They're not looking at Sinead. She mentally takes down their rego number.
(Google Map to help players visualise the area)
When she gets to Carmel's, Sinead notices there's a poster up at the counter for a comedy competition at the Espy this Saturday, and Marcus Finlay's name is on it - being one of Carmel's packmembers, its no surprise she might be keen to support him.
Kasumi comes over after work and people do some catching up. They compare notes and figure they should check on the Ridgeway injured people and the new MD for Rainbow Inc. They check the news for "missing heiress baby" but there's nothing really of note - mostly the news covers the exploding warehouse in detailed but repetitve detail.
They contemplate getting spirits to help them. This has some pretty high potential, but without binding rituals to help the spirit into the Realm, they'll need a significant spirit and have to bargain with it, putting themselves into more chiminage debts. Also they won't just be able to go with something like a fox spirit, they wil need to find a spirit with some more symbolic connections between the baby and her family (maternal spirit?). Something to remember but perhaps not act on immediately. There might be some rituals that allow for this, they'll try and remember to ask about for it.
They get a hold of their landlord, Gerald Singer. They come up with a story about a letter in italian that has shown up and it looks kind of important. Gerald is a builder that lives out towards Footscray, he says he bought the place about 10 years ago, he doesn't think he had any italian surnamed people renting, but there's been a fair turnover, and some people were subletting, so he can't be canonical about it.
So more than 10 years? Seems unlikely. But the pattern of movement out in the street could have been searching, trying to be 100% sure which house it was they used to live in? Or it could be someone looking at lights on. What if someone was using Questing Stone... oh, yeah maybe? They don't really know their neighbours thought, maybe its off by one? Finn and Sinead decide to cruise around in the Umbra, peeking, and trying to see if anyone might be the actual target. In the meantime the other three go and peek in on Tamara to check out the baby and the kinfolk.
Tamara's house seems mundane from the Umbra - it has a slightly higher umbral presence than the neighbours, but no more than a favoured family house might. They peek in and her husband is a bit confused about the sudden arrival of a baby. Tamara appears to have made up a story about a cousin suddenly called away and needing a babysitter for a few days, but he's suspicious. ("if you really cared you would have taken me to Lisbon to see the best snakeologists"). Surreptious gift use from the Umbra suggests that Graeme is not a kinfolk, but Tamara and her two children are. No obvious sign of demonic magic or anything.
Meanwhile, back in Carlton, Sinead is seeing and sniffing people from the Umbra. Finn's neighbours seem to be a mix of students, hipsters and some ancestral residents from the 1960s. The houses vary from well maintained to "nothing done here since 1893". No crack dens, the worst is student housing. There's one Italian couple but they don't have an empty crib and they aren't looking under the couch or anything. While they are cruising the neighbourhood, Sinead spots the Foster First National guys again. They are walking around the neighbourhood and taking notes. She thinks they are making notes about the houses with no lights. She senses wyrm on them, and gets more of a sense than she's happy with on a human, but not so much as to indicate that they are fomori. ("yeah, but they are real estate agents" "No, worse than real estate agents" "Lawyers??"). They are certainly doing something cagey, even if its not casing the houses, because they act subterfugal around passersby on the street. They are a block or two away from Finn & Tilly's house. They eventually go to a car parked next to a park and get in - the same car as earlier, and there's again another guy in the back seat. Although she can' hear them, their body language is a bit irritated.
She sniffs to try and get a sense of any olfactory information. The two walkers are a bit sweaty - they've been walking around for 9 hours so its not a big surprise. The car has a bit of a funk as if someone has been in it for a while. They've eaten takeaway in here during the day. She gets enough of smell sense to be able to describe them to her packmates later. Sinead tests that they can't see her while she's in the Umbra, and is pretty convinced they have no sense that she's there. ("et the record show the GM is not talking to anyone of his players"). They go to drive off, and Sinead briefly contemplates stepping sideways into the boot, but remembers that she has a business card with a name on it.
People get together and float theories. The real estate guys aren't fomori, but that doesn't mean they aren't supernatural. Will suggests that if they are mages they have left the baby to form a sypathetic magic connection to the pack. That seems unlikely, but can't be easily disproven. ("the baby is a gargoyle egg"). (10m about bowls of semen. I'm not going into it). Sinead tries questing stone on Anton, but its strangely unresponsive. They plan to try again tomorrow before freaking out or assuming its an alias. ("it has a date and time on the label?" "yes, otherwise its not science, its just jerking off into petri dishes").
Kasumi googles Anton Monscotti at work the next day, but nothing comes up, which is a bit reinforcing the fake name possibility. Will and Sinead check out Rainbow Inc, and find that Stephen Marshall seems normal enough, and the site is still moderately cleansed from when they cleaned up after the fight in Williamstown. Marshall comes from Perth, and scent of the true form suggests that he is human.
Tillie goes to the gym and sees the same poster Sinead saw stuck up on the wall near some other notices. She also spots Marcus's name.
Sinead comes back to Tillie's ("Tillie's?? I pay the rent!" "Its all about who's peed on the most stuff." "On purpose") after her shift and sees that there is a large limo double parked out the front. She sidles up and sits on the porch having a smoke, messaging Will and Finn who are home. They dive into the Umbra and check it out. There's no one in the passenger part of the limo, but there is a driver looking at his phone in the front. They sniff about in the Umbra to make sure someone didn't step out of the limo and invade their house, but there's nothing obvious. The driver puts his phone away, looks at their house, tries to make out what Sinead is doing, shrugs and then sits there some more.
Tillie finishes lifting things and sees the message on her phone. She messages Sinead back about the limo as Will and Finn come back out of the spirit world into their house. They message saying "its just a guy waiting". They give up and go to speak to him - Finn activates Persuasion, ("you can make all the social rolls" "Cool. What do we want to say again?") comes out and asks if he's going to be long, because he's blocking the road and making people honk. They guy says he's waiting for a Matilda Kennedy, at the address that Finn just came out of? Her and four friends? Finn agrees she lives here but wants to know who sent him and where they'd be going to? The guy reads off a piece of paper that he's meant to be picking up a Matilda Kennedy about now, and taking her and 4 friends to.. well, he isn't allowed to say except to the person who is meant to be going in the car. The driver seems to be concerned that this is a prank. They ring Tillie who is jogging back the back way to get her. ("Matilda McKendrick"... "this is why you are not allowed to remember names". "God forbid anything happens to us and Will is the only one left alive - I was with.. some people... um... " ). "So there's a trap outside?" Sinead messages Kasumi and gets her to come over too.
Tillie gets home and goes straight inside. She comes out and confronts the driver in her usual calm fashion - "What". She says she's Matilda, he wants some ID. When she acts up, he offers his ID which is a driver ID card from the limo company. Prophetically Kasumi suggests that its either mobsters who want the baby or someone from Hidden Green. The guy says that if its a prank, he needs to get onto his boss and let him know, so he wants to sort it out. Tillie hands over a license and he says that's fine when her name and pic line up. He says that he has to take her - and four friends - to an address in Toorak, on St George Rd. Yes, he'd describe it as a swanky end of town. The pack are pretty suspicious of what is going on, but in the end Tillie, Finn and Will will go on the limo and Sinead and Kasumi go in Kasumi's car.
The limo toodles south and east, easily trailed by Kasumi. The limo turns into a mansion-like domicile, and Kasumi goes past and pulls over. Sinead and her step into the Umbra. Meanwhile the limo stops out the front of the mansion behind a lexus that is then parked by a staff member. The driver says he's meant to wait for them - the three garou get out and head up to the front door.
In the Umbra, while there are tree spirits matching up to the elm lined streets, they are weaver smothered and brown-leaved. The houses vary from looking more or less the same to looking dark and brooding or taller and more withdrawn from the street.
The door is opened by a suited gentleman, who when Tillie says "I'm Matilda", replies "Ah Miss Kennedy, please come this way." He leads them away from the party noises to a quiet room. They sense wyrm and get no response, or at least less than they would expect in the area.
Meanwhile in the spirit world, Kasumi peeks well, and is being led along by Sinead. They wander onto the property and are attacked by some ivy. Kasumi faceplants, yelling for help from Sinead. Sinead is dancing around trying to avoid getting grabbed. Before they can react in detail, the ivy forms a snake-like head and regards Kasumi, then unwinds and slides off back ointo the underbrush.
After a short wait, a gentleman re-opens the door to the sitting room. He's in his 40s and kind of slavic looking. Tillie vaguely recognises him as a Hidden Green Shadowlord. She's not 100% sure on his name, but thinks its Ion. "Ms Kennedy. So what are your interntions with the baby?". Ion appears to assume that they know what is going on, and when it becomes clear that they do not, he offers to help by taking the baby. Tillie says she wants to know what is going on, Ion says he feels no particular urge to enlighten her, and as long as they have intention to interfere with the situation he is happy to leave it. Tillie says that she'll interfere if she wants to, "you've never met me before have you." Ion says "Not formally - I am Ion Apostolovna, rank 3 Shadowlord Ahroun and Master of the Challenge at Hidden Green. Would you like to behave yourself in my house?" Tillie says she does not want to play games, she just wants to know what's going on. Ion says that given they have no interest in the child, he will guarantee her safety if they bring the child to him.
In the Umbra, Kasumi tracks Matilda to the sitting room where she is talking to an eastern european man with her hackles up.
Ion says that there is some danger to the child, and he would not expect her and her friends (gesturing vaguely at Will and Finn, who have been ignored) are particularly setup to care for a child. Tillie says what stops him from interfering. Ion says he knows she had the child and has not taken steps. Tillie asks why the child was dropped with them - Ion says that he would love to know the answer to that quesiton, but he doesn't and that's why he doesn't trust them. He thinks it is an unlikely coincidence that the child would end up with another garou randomly. Tillie asks what her name is, and Ion is unkeen to share even that information, but when Tillie continues to be stubborn he says her name is "Maria Pantoliano" and when they have done their little investigation, they should contact him again to help them. Will says that they aren't willing to just hand over the child to someone who might be the problem. Ion asks if he has a point. Will wants him to just tell them what they will find out. Ion isn't interested - he says that he will not interfere in another pack's business, but he strongly recommends that they bring the child to him. Stevens will give them a contact number. Ion returns to his party. Lost Prophets grit their teeth, take the contact number and leave. ("is there someone else at Hidden Green we could talk to that isn't a Shadowlord" "There's Scott". "eugh").
The pack contemplate speaking to Felix directly, but Will suggests that they speak to Cossack first and run any interaction past him. One of the pack has heard the name "Pantoliano" before, in contact of "organised crime". Back to Nathan, who is checking job ads and texting people.
The pack make some calls and get Cossack to come to their place and buy him pizza. Thus the Litany is upheld. Cossack says that Ion is honourable in garou matters, but otherwise very pragmatic. They complain that he wouldn't give them information and Cossack asks if they offered anything in return, which takes them aback a little. Cossack says that Ion isn't exactly a crime figure, but he has a lot of influence as a "fixer". He's always been pretty much pro intersept cooperation, which helped smooth over some of the political differences between the two septs 20 years ago.
Back to the problem at hand - if Pantoliano is a crime family, as they suspect, then normally Cossack would talk to Hidden Green as a first step. But any such enquiries will come back to Ion - not in a rumour sort of way, but just in a "this is his area of expertise" sort of way. Cossack reads the letter a bit brokenly, and the details are basically what they thought, but with more flavour than they were able to get from google translate. It sounds very familiar (as in being familiar, not like they have heard it before).
Will is for going to a prison and ridgewaying a bunch of prisoners til they fess up what's what. Its pointed out that a prison might - might - just be a big hole of weaver and such and that might be hard without more spiritual tools.
The pack are not keen on going back to Ion in any fashion. Cossack hums and hars and then says there is another garou at Hidden Green that might be able to help them. He's not keen on them approaching this other garou, but he says that Irena Sliviak is also putting her hand into that arena. He'd like them to treat it as a last resort to approach her with help. She's a member of The Alternative, and she should be busy with all the politicians and wyrm and mages at the moment.
Kasumi suggests just looking them up in the phone book, ringing and saying "we have information" and waiting to see what happens. No one is keen, but they take a look at the phone book. There are three Pantolianos - T&M, B and G. ("its been so long since I used a phone book - what information do you actually get??"). They decide to go to T&M first, because Tillie thinks there is a chance that M stands for Maria and little Maria was named after big Maria. They are in Reservoir, and its quite a large property. It has a big concrete & iron fence out the front, and it appears to be rendered or concrete. Its a large property for the area, with a garden off to one side. Trees and roses mostly, with a little fountain in the concrete courtyard at the front. Its well lit, especially around the front, and they can see three nice cars parked in the circular driveway. The pack drive off a bit and step sideways.
Returning in the Umbra, the building is a stone shell. A number of banes, or at least dark spirits flee on their approach and scatter. The pack try and get some idea of what they work - they look more like ephemera, spirits of ideas, than pollution or anything. They were little and perhaps not well fed, or new. It suggest that there's not a constant reinforcement of them here. Lost Prophets make a note to come back and cleanse here later. The house and garden are more darkly shadowed than ideal as well, with a sense of being watched (but not that there's something watching).
Sinead peeks well, and starts to describe the house. Its fairly fancy inside, with a lot going on - there's stuff all over the walls and lots of furniture and carpets and rugs. There are a number of men here - an older one who is stalking back and forth and talking in italian on the phone in an angry fashion, and a couple of others waiting for him in the same room. Sinead hears "Maria" once or twice, and maybe "Bernadette"? Scoping around for other people, there's two other guys lurking in the kitchen having coffee. Up one end of the garden, in the shadows, there are two other guys "on guard".
They go looking for photos. There is a wall of photos, arranged in sort of concentric circles. The centre has an older couple. Below them, with another woman is the phone shouty man. Above is a woman who has some family resemblence and another man. On the next ring out are younger people in their 20s and 30s, and then some babies. There are some photos clearly missing - removed - from the 30s ring, probably one couple. There is a single baby under there that might be Maria, but they are only 80% sure, as some of the other babies are pretty similar. There's no names on the photos unhelpfully.
Sinead sniffs about - cigarettes, whiskey, tomatos, cooking, more people smells than are here. A large number of people come to this house over time. She picks out that perfume that was a large part of the grandma smell and follows it, as it heads upstairs. The umbral house is not as easy to go up stairs, but with the help of her pack, she can be guided. The upstairs appears to be in two wings.
On the left hand side, they find a room that has had a baby in it, and an old woman asleep in bed ("RIDGEWAY HER!"). She is definitely the same person who dropped the baby off, and its the same baby as got dropped off. ("i think i might have left a knife in the fridge. I went and got a knife, then I didn't have it, and had to get a new one, so if there's a knife in the fridge, that's why"). This woman is the one in the centre of the photo spread. They try and think of ways to get in contact with her.
Thinking about the letter, and how the baby was dropped on them and who seems to have done it, more and more the pack suspect that Maria wasn't meant to be left with them.
They sniff around and find that there's only six seperate scents up this part of the house. The baby, the old woman, the phone shouty guy and three others, two female (one more perfumey than the other) and one male scent that isn't strong. This is in sharp contrast to downstairs where there are in excess of 20 muddled scents. Only family come this way? They check out the other wing, and its clear that its phoneshouty guy's bedroom and a sitting room. The bedroom has a look of a room that wasn't always a male-only bedroom - there's some photos of a woman that have dated a bit and they do match the woman who is on the big photo spread. Two scents from the other side also come this way - maybe a cleaner and someone else? Unsure. There's also another male scent that comes that way too.
Will peeks and uses scent of the true form - the old lady is definitely not supernatural. Sensing wyrm in the area makes the shadows even more disturbing. There's an emotional badness - paranoia and planning - rather than doing things. Everything's a bit greasy. She's not specifically wyrmy - if anything, she's a lighter spot in the whole area.
("eat the cake eat the cake eat the cake" "okay, but then we gotta do some actual work brain") ("volcano high" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYiGhpsUTZ4)
Phone shouting man gets off the phone, and talks with his minions. He says Bernadette is interfering and she has some guys looking for Maria, so he wants some guys looking for those guys. Suspicions fall on either the "real estate guys" or Hidden Green. He wants four guys looking out for Maria. No one should do anything too precipitous - he will bust the balls of anyone who so much as scares or scratches his granddaughter. When those conversations finish, he has some other conversations that are a bit dodgy - something about horse races, and collecting money from people.
Afflicted with a sudden burst of paranoia that Bernadette's tip was from Ion and that Tamara's house was under threat, the Lost Prophets head over there through the Umbra. There's no obvious changes in the Umbra, but they spend a couple of hours scanning the realm for anyone suspicious. Having reassured themselves, they head back to the Pantoliano house and find that people have gone to bed. There are two different gentlemen awake in a small shed in the shadows underneath the tree at the back of the property, but everyone in the house is asleep.
They head for the old woman's ensuite and make preparations to go and burst in on her. Kasumi and Finn will go, and Finn will turn the awesome power of his Persuasion gift on her. They step into the bathroom and sneak into the room. Kasumi very gently wakes her and she confusedly starts looking around for glasses. "we need to ask you about Maria". She focusses on Finn, and seem to be under the impression he is the son of someone she knows. At least she speaks (highly accented) English. Kasumi says that she made a mistake leaving the baby with them, the old woman is sure it is Venetti's house. And thus Finn is Venetti's grandson, yes, he is a good boy. Where is Maria? Safe. "Yes, you keep her safe, you are a good boy, from a good family. Don't let Tutti find you. You take care of Maria. You are a good boy." She is very touchy, patting Finn's arm "Who are we protecting her from?" "Oh, not protecting, Tutti will not hurt his granddaughter, no." "How long do we need to take care of her?" "Not long, not long, Antony and his father will make things up. I will come and find you. You are a good boy, you are Vince, yes?" "Antony who?" "Your cousin, Antony. He is a dutiful boy, he will come back and everything will be ok. Like you" She thinks it will onyl be two weeks. They ask who Bernadette is, apparently its her daughter. She asks where Maria is, and Finn says "Safe". "Oh good, because no one knew where she was, Tutti was very concerned. No one knew where she was. I think Antony had taken her." Uh oh. Further conversation suggests that the old lady is not entirely in posession of her wits. She starts asking for her medicine and turning on the light, the garou run for the ensuite and step.
Wild speculation about what might have happened and how compos she was is ended by Finn pointing out that they have a ritual to find people by their names.
("Good job noob! nice save").
Kasumi decides that as she has work in the morning, she's calling it a night. She kindly agrees to leave them her car if they run her home. (the need for humans to have a crop). Will wonders why they don't just hand over the baby, other people aren't too keen on it. Either way they won't be handing the money back. Will also says that it looks straight forward, but then why does Ion want the baby? Many leads. Such wow
They get their questing stone going. Bernadette Pantoliano is first up. She is not very far away and in fact her address is the same as the B Pantoliano in the whitepages. Her house is new, clearly built in the last couple of years, amidst a sea of older properties. The inside is similarly new looking. There's only one person here, a woman in her 50s. She's the only heavy smell here, there are a couple other transitory smells. Her smell was also at the old lady's house. She senses of wyrm, but not as much as Tutti did and the environment is a lot less dark feeling. She has a handgun in a case under the bed. There are some photos, but they can't really see who is on them - an oldish guy, some young people. They think she is one of the other people on the photo board at the old place - which given that they think she's Tutti's sister makes sense. There's something odd going with surnames in that case, unless she married a cousin with the same surname. They contemplate stepping in and looking around with more clarity but decide it can wait.
They hunt down Vince Venetti. It turns out Mr Venetti lives in Doncaster. He's in his 40s and has a wife and two kids. There's not much wyrm here, even of the human low grade kind they have been encountering. This seems like a calm normal house - the sort of place you might leave a baby if you were inclined. They really can't see better than that and decide to come back another day.
Ok, how about Antony Pantoliano? The Questing Stone pulls them south about 40 or 50km toward Frankston. When they get there, they have to another rite and find that the sense pulls them toward a house at the end of a court. The pack drive around and find a quiet place to stop and step, except for Finn who is totally exhausted and can't be easily awoken. The Umbra is all swamp, all the time, so its takes a while of shlurping through damp muddy water to get to the house. Some weaver stuff appears there but its not really a full structure. Sinead peeks... or not, briefly able to hear smells and taste colours. Will peeks though not well; he sees two guys downstairs and awake (despite it being about 4am by this point), one watching tv, the other reading or someting. There are two other people in a queen bed upstairs, smelling like a couple.
Tillie peeks and gets a much clearer view. She doesn't recognise any of the people here from photos from the Pantoliano house. The two guys downstairs have suits on, rather rumpled. The people upstairs smell familiar - maybe their scent had appeared at the Pantoliano house. More wyrm than average on all of the people in the house - less than Bernadette tho.
The phone rings of the guy watching tv - "Stuarts? Yep? No. All quiet. Ok" *click*. There's some discussion - they are either mob lookouts or police. Tillie looks around for people's stuff. The two suits have guns. Not conclusive. There's a suitcase upstairs, like a clothes one for the upstairs people and some clothes in the cupboard. Its all new clothes tho... and this is not someone's house, none of the smells are ingrained, this is more like a hotel. The guys downstairs don't even have any things, like no extra clothes or something. There's no nick nacks or personalised bits in the house. This makes it look more like a safehouse. Tillie reads out the car numberplate from the dark car out the front and notes that its a "work car" sort of dealy. ("There's no 'my family' stickers with one child removed").
Guy in the kitchen closes his book, comes out and says he's going to lay down. His book is some sort of "holiday house book". He kicks his shoes off and lays on a single bed downstairs. Neither of them seem to be from the same ethnic background as the Pantolianos, but the people at the house were a bit of a mix. If they are in a protection situation with the cops, the pack is in favour of giving them their baby. Will points out that if their baby shows up to a safehouse, everyone is going to crap themselves. Tillie thinks their protection is pretty useless, given her pack found them. Will points out they used actual magic to find them, the mobsters don't have that sort of access (Ion not withstanding).
The pack decide that they can't decide now, and that its late (nearly dawn) and they are going to have a break. They head home and get six hours of rest.
(forever knight music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuPcMBcwT4A)
Later that same bee, they head back and look at the house as they cruise past. Seems to have the same car in the driveway, so they head to a quiet park to step sideways and slog back through wetlands. Two different suited guys are now in the house, and the couple is downstairs. (How do you solve a problem like Maria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1HwVmY28Pk) The pack spend a bit of time discussing messing with the mental states of the couple, and in a possibly game destroying fashion the GM rules they can mindspeak through the gauntlet.
Finn peeks and mindspeak-connects with the woman. He tries to fake Antony's voice in her mind ("Wait, why are we doing this?") saying "I wonder if Maria's ok?" Her reaction is basically to start weeping and sobbing, causing Antony to come over and comfort her. It seems legit that they are the parents and all. Tillie toys with getting a favour from the mob by offering the baby, which frankly seems like Shadowlord thinking. ("giving the child to Ion might be best for the child, but I just don't want to, cos he's crap"). She eventually goes and has a lie down, Antony goes and speaks to the guys downstairs, who say they are sorry but no nothing has happened. They have people looking everywhere they can, but things are inconclusive.
Will is in favour of giving the baby to the police as a way of getting her to the parents. Tillie doesn't exactly trust the cops - if there's anyone dodgy in the chain of baby->Antony it might go badly and also she does not care about scaring humans. Will says they could get the baby right to the guy in charge of the case that might cut out that potential chain link break? They give Kasumi a ring and ask her to try and find phone numbers and names. She says she can't find a name with that address, but its not totally uncommmon. On the other hand, there's no names with the house next door and one up the end of the street either. Ah, think the pack and check out next door from the Umbra, where they find some other suited gentleman in an non-personalised house keeping an eye out on the street and next door. Oh. The other house just appears to be empty, like no one moved in. Ok, that rules out "just stroll up to the door" plans for getting the baby back.
They talk about plans and options so more. Will pushes his plan, but how do they find out who is supervising this case? Maybe they can ask someone at the sept? Sinead has a plan for giving the baby to the cops, where a friend of hers works in day care, and someone dropped this baby off at the day care centre and didn't pick them up at the end of the day. And at the end of the day they found this note stuffed at the bottom of the basket. And she works as a barrista at cafe and she heard that there was a baby missing. Hmm. Might be a bit involved. Will says maybe they can go with the day care plan and leave the baby in day care and then tip the police off. Tillie is still not caring about freaking people out. Will is a bit confused why they care about the baby at all then? Sinead points out that if they erode the parents trust in the police, it will possibly cause them to flee the protective custody and take their chances and get the baby murdered too.
So at this point they have two workable plans - just drop the kids at the safe house, and to drop the kids to the policeman involved in overseeing the operation. Or drop the kids with Mr Casetti. Plan C would be give her to Ion. hahahaaha. They wonder about consulting Ion about why they shouldn't give the baby straight to her parents, but its probably not going to be helpful. (dead baby jokes). Plan B requires a bit of information they don't have, so they contemplate asking the Sept. And in fact, they decide to ask Cossack for some advice.
After some calls they find him in a park in Pascoe Vale. They give him the run down on their potential plans and ask if there are any flaws with their plans that he can think of. Cossack asks if she is going to be safest with her parents if they are on the run? Ion did guarantee her safety - but that might be physical safety. And they don't know what his plans are. If they are keen to give the baby to the parents, then Cossack suggests that he is more comfortable with Will's plan because its less weird. Its not litany-breach to drop her off randomly, but its more strange. Then Lost Prophets need help finding out who the cop in charge is. Cossack agrees to get that information for them, probably by Christine... tho he says that normally he would ask Hidden Green. There's some discussion about whether they are in danger of annoying the Glasswalker sept or Ion specifically. Cossack is pretty comfortable with their behaviour so far, and points out that if it meant a lot to Ion, he might have made some offer to them rather than just asking.
The pack go and check on Maria and Tamara's house - there doesn't seem to be any change there. No banes, no mobsters, no children nailed to the wall. All good.
Later that afternoon, Tillie's phone rings and a female voice asks for Matilda Kennedy. When Tillie says yes the voice says she is Irena Sliviak, and she was wondering if Tillie might like to have a chat. They arrange to have coffee in a cafe on Swanston St. Tillie drags her pack. When they arrive, a very beautiful woman, european looking gets Tillie's attention. She gets up from her small table and arranges a larger table as they approach. She offers to buy coffee.
Irena says she understands Tillie has recently become an aunt. Tillie sees no harm in confirming that. Irena says she'd like to help them with the situation - she's happy to cooperate in a number of different ways. Irena would like to see her returned to her parents. Tillie is suspicious, but Irena says that is more or less it. Irena and Tillie fence a little bit, but Irena is keen that Tillie just tells her what she knows, because its not really getting anywhere. Tillie says that she also wants to see the baby back to her parents, Irena thinks they can work together on that. Tillie wants to know the babckstory. Irena isn't sure of the details, having got the story 3rd hand - she thinks that Maria's father (Antony) wanted to distance himself from the family, didn't think it was the right environment for a young girl with prospects. Tillie says that suits her and Irena is keen to help. She seems genuine to the pack. Tillie says she knows there might be toe stepping in that situation, Irena says that she thinks it is mundane business, all very human.
Irena says she doesn't have an easy way of returning Maria, but she does have pathways. It might take a little while, but not too long. Suspicions grow. Tillie says "give me your number and we'll let you know if our avenue doesn't work out". Irena says that she'd be more interested in being in control of the speed of events so that they don't have precipitously. Tillie says she'd have to know what that would entail, and Irena says she's not averse to Antony's position, but perhaps not all of the information that he conveys has to be as complete? Some information given along, but not all of it? Tillie reiterates that she'll call Irena if she needs help - Irena takes out a blank card and writes a number on it, and graciously wishes them a good evening.
Finn heads off to his usual poetry slam and does his peregrine thing, having learned his lesson of ignoring spirit geases.
The others find Cossack and talk to him about their extended knowledge of why the other Garou want the baby and to see if that means they should come up with a different plan. ("we get to keep the money tho right?") He says that it doesn't really change things - if either Ion or Irena really wanted the baby, they could have made it worth the pack's while (or potentially made threats, but you know). So he is ok with them going ahead with the plan - but good to know they are thinking about this sort of thing too
("Fuck the umbra and anything in it")
Christine calls Tillie early in the morning and says that they are looking for a Senior Detective Nick Gronow - he is in charge of the Pantoliano investigation. His phone number is [this]. He is at the Russel St police station. Tillie says that's extremely helpful, thank you. ("You can't cleanse all the people"). They decide to check him out before just doing a handover. That means either being patient for 12 hours and finding him at home, or taking a chance with the incredibly weavery and authoritarian CBD police station. So, they start making plans for the latter, although Kasumi is all for getting him to come to them in a cafe or something. They find some old newspaper articles about Gronow working with the Australian Crime Commission.
Questing Stone tells them he is either on the 3rd floor of the building at the front, or on the back half of the 4th floor. (It doesn't exist any more, no - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell_Street_Bombing). The building is there, and almost identical in the Umbra - a bit more organic and bit older looking, but otherwise the same. The pack start thinking of ways to bluff past the security spirits inside the station. They spend a bit of time in the foyer, and get an idea of what the visitor's passes look like, and make two fake but symbolically relevant copies which are dedicated. They step in at the caern and move through the Umbra, avoiding giant rhino tram spirits and other weaver spirits to get to the police station. Will activates his persuasion gift. As Lost Prophets move into the non-public areas, faceless guard spirits stop them and say there is no public access. Will shows his visitor card and claims they have an appointment to see detective gronow. This seems to fake the spirits out sufficiently and they are allowed to pass. They are accosted a few more times, but the same routine seems to get them through.
Peeking! Much gauntlet! Such weaver! Kasumi manages to peek well enough to see and sniff, but not read or hear. However, she can scope out the area they are searching through. Its a cacophany of desks and temporary offices and people rushing around and on the phones. Other pack members experiment with the ghastly gauntlet, and Sinead manages to peek well enough to hear and read. They find Gronow not long after that, sharing an office on the fourth floor, with two other policemen. There is lots of paperwork, photos of people with the name 'Pantoliano' under them. They find pics of Bernadette, phone guy - apparently Tutti Pantoliano and some others. From what they can pick up the Pantolianos aren't exactly the centre of an international organised crime syndicate. There's some mention of shipping drugs, money laundering, a bit of insurance and betting fraud. They have links to people in Sydney as well, in a similar vein. Its maybe 15 to 20 people at the core - medium sized, not just a couple of guys, but not immense. Skimming the room, they seem to fit inside the standard range for cop.
The cops are sensed for wyrm and true formness. They rate higher than average, but not eeevil - one at the Bernadette level, the other two about the same as the other cops in Carrum Downs. None of them seem to be kinfolk or werewolves. Gronow himself smokes, and has an earthy smell, as if he was a gardener. ("digging graves, eh?" "or unearthing them").
Ok, he seems legit. They ring around and find a place that will take a baby tomorrow for a few hours. Now, the details of doing so. They'll need someone to bring the baby in, and some ID to do so with. They make some fake ID for Kasumi on the grounds she's the most non-offensive looking, and hoping for some cognitive dissonance with her Japanese appearance and Maria's mediteranean ethnicity interfering with their remembering what Kasumi looked like.
They collect the baby from Tamara and leave a small monetary donation in recompense. Tillie finds a BFF pendant and chain appropriate for the baby in case she wants to ever call in a mob favour from Antony and his wife ("*cough* shadowlord" "you dropped this *middle finger*") ("Do we..." "burn down the house?" "*whose* house"). They decide to contact both Ion and Irena after the deal is done and let them know what's happening - Kasumi's advice is to not tell them what to do about it, but letting them know is a good idea.
Kasumi shows up at the maximum child-delivery time, around 8.30 with her id with the fake chinese name (for maximum confusion). She says she is here to drop off Maria, and she'll be back at 12. They get her to fill out a form and all, but frankly its so chaotic that no one really pays her much attention. Other people watch in the Umbra to make sure she is not dropped into the blender. Will makes the call to Gronow - "Gronow" "Maria Pantoliano is at this day care centre" "sorry, what?" "Maria Pantoliano is at this address" "Sorry, who am I speak to?" *click*
In an hour or so, two people in suits come to the door. They have police badges. Its not Gronow, but it is the lower-wyrm guy from the same office yesterday, plus some other guy in a suit. (they sense wyrm on him to be sure, but he seems ok too). The police speak to the day manager about a possible Maria Pantoliano. This causes some disturbance. They interview they person who signed them in, and she only remembers the basics about Kasumi ("an asian lady"). No, they don't have any video recording here, sorry. The cops want to take the baby. The managers do not want to let them do that - they call the owner, who comes and speaks to the police and then speaks to his lawyer, before anyone agrees the police could take this child away. They wait until Kasumi was meant to show up. They call the fake number she left. Then there's a lot paperwork signed and witnessed and the cops take Maria away.
They head down to Carrum Downs and watch from there to see what happens. The cops get stirred up first before they let Antony and his wife know. They have 90% confirmed they have the right child with photos, but they have to get the Pantolianos to finally confirm for sure. There is a tearful reunion. Huzzah. They now have $48,000 and no baby problem. Tillie quickly SMS's the other garou - no reply from Ion, but a "thank you from informing me" from Irena.
Tillie and Will meditate in the caern to regenerate some gnosis. Will is still there later when some of Get of Pennington come past, including Marcus. Marcus comes over and asks if Will is free tonight to come to a gig at the Espy? Its a competition thing and its scored by acclaim, so the more people that are there in support of him the more likely he'll get through. Will says he'll chat to his pack and see. When he does, Finn and Sinead say they've seen posters for it already, and were thinking of going.
About 730pm, Tillie gets a call from Marion who wants to know if they can help with her plan to get Alex out of the house and pick him up on the way through? He's at Port Melbourne, and he said he was going to come, but he'll prob get distracted. Christine can't make it, and her and Georgina are coming from the wrong direction. Tillie says that's fine, she'll volunteer Kasumi to come through.
Tillie and Kasumi pull up at the address, and find that its an old apartment block. Tillie leaps out and knocks. The door is answered by some random 20 year old, who says Alex is probably in his room - its the 2nd on the right - and then runs back to the kitchen. She knocks. Nothing. She knocks louder and the voice from the kichen says he probably has headphones on. She opens the door and sees Alex is working on a drafting table with headphones on. She flicks the light on and off and he says "what? shit. hi?" Tillie says she's here to escort him to the comedy gig. He looks at his watch and says "oh, er" "come on" "yeah ok". While Alex stops the music and grabs a jacket, she looks around the walls - they're covered in tattoo designs that he's drawn, which is what he was working on on the drafting table. Some of it is familiar - its tattooed on Tillie or other members of the Sept, but some of it is not. There's a big... set, actually, it all goes together in some ways she grasps instinctively, that is clustered together on one wall. Its all .. for one person? But she hasn't seen any of it on anyone. She asks about it and Alex tries to deflect her by saying its a bit individualised. ("no, its not spirals. mr "trispiral sept" fianna.")
Alex asks if she's looking for new stuff and she says yeah, she's kinda taken with the stuff on the wall. He says that's really not what he was thinking about. They get back to the car and he asks Kasumi the same question, and she blinks a lot and then says she wants mispelled English words tattooed on herself like 'Jhon' or 'Wenesay', so she can tell people that it means 'strength'. Alex laughs and shares stories of similar things that people have tried to get him to tattoo on themselves. Tillie tries to talk to Alex about it, but he pretty solidly ignores her and changes the topic. Its only a 10m trip, but its frankly a bit awkward.
When the others get there by tram, they find its a Saturday night at the Espy and there are 3 or 4 events happening. There's the comedy thing in a back room, some metal band in the main room and either an appaling pub band or kareoke in another room. They go to the comedy room and find that the room is about 1/2 full already and 1/2 those people are werewolves. Ken, Chris and Carmel are there as well as Marion and Georgina who have saved them some seats. Everyone settles in while Finn offers to go and get some drinks with their baby money. At the bar, he sees Peter from the gym - they chat and Peter says he was here for the comedy stuff. Finn is too. Peter says the mates he was going to see the gig with have piked at the last minute, would Finn mind some company? ("yes, unlike every other normal npc, he appears again and again. Get over it") Finn agrees and when they come back, Marion makes some space for Peter to sit next to her by squashing Alex and Georgina up a bit.
They can hear the metal singers through the wall, but the sound system is good enough for the comedy to not really be a problem. ("*thump thump* *scream scream*" "Ah, sounds like Jimmy and the Raptors" "No, its pterodacytl party", "Man, we called our pack the wrong thing") This is the preliminary final before next week's grand final. The place is pretty packed by the time things get started. The first set is guy - girl - guy, and they are reasonably funny - they are new, but not the first time they've performed. At the break, people get up and try and get drinks by squeezing through the crowds. Finn, being on the outside, and holding the money is sent to get drinks. Georgina takes pity on him and comes along to help carry. ("We should probably shout the rest of the caern a drink anyway with the money" "Check, hide the money from the rest of the pack" "let me buy my ticket to Ireland" "oh no, you got yourself into that mess" "In the name of god, buy a fucking car" "no, a monster truck!"). Suddenly Scott Rosen slams his hand down on Finn's shoulder "Maaaate". He asks why they are here, and Finn says they're hear for the comedy. Scott asks if Tillie is here, Finn says yes, so he steals a beer and heads over.
Scott slams down on a seat next to Tillie while drinking some of the beer and says that Finn said the rest was for her, passing the half empty glass across. The other Garou have expressions varying from faint exasperation to amusement. Scott asks why they are even here, he heard they made new friends at the, er, out west, as he realises Peter is here and giving him the eye. Marion tries to distract Peter by starting another conversation. ("why is everyone at the other sept such a knob"). Tillie says no, they've been back for a bit, but she hasn't heard about anything that they've been up to. Scott concedes that they've been holding fort while The Alternative have been busy. He's of the opinion that the explosion was probably Asimov rather than mages. Lost Prophets have no idea who he is talking about but smile and nod. Scott says he's had no chance to run around and cause havoc like anyone else. He's at the gig next door, they're taking a break cos the main singer fell off the stage. He calls Tanya and Adam over to hang out for a bit too.
Finn is finalising the drinks when Claude approachs him and makes comments about being underage. Finn says that he's flattered, but no, he's good - does Claude want to see his ID? No, but the server does, now. Claude orders red wine and gets a glass of house win. He apparently seems to have been dragged here by Scott against his will.
Scott asks if the comedy is any good, and whether he should stay - they sort of came here to see Marcus. Scott tries to take Finn's seat, but Tillie kicks him out. He says he can see Jimmy starting up next door anyway, and says "tell Marcus that they were here".
Marcus is first on in the next set. He's not telling Garou jokes, and he doesn't frenzy at hecklers. The weirdos at the back give him a lot of applause. Tanya shows up between contestant five and six and asks if Scott was causing trouble - Tillie says its fine, she says that she's just getting tired of the niggling, he's winding people up for no reason. Basically she doesn't want it to turn into a thing. In fact, she doesn't want _anything_ to turn into a thing. She says this in a significant fashion, and Tillie says "the baby stuff?". Tanya says she doesn't anything to turn into a... thing. Tillie reassures her and says its not a thing.
Gig ends, and they do a clap-of-measure. Marcus gets through along with one woman and one guy. Big cheers, and the grand final will be next Saturday at the Town Hall. The crowd turns into gridlock as half them want to go and half them want to say and have more drink, moving around. Marcus appears and invites everyone back to his flat for an afterparty thing - they're all welcome to come.
The various garou are milling about trying to organise things, and Kasumi notices Marcus talk to Marion, and then Marion and Peter head out with the crowd. Alex leaves shortly after without really saying goodbye, looking a bit set in features as if he was annoyed about something, slipping out in the crowd of folks leaving. She calls after but he doesn't hear or doesn't respond. Georgina notices a couple minutes later that they have left. Kasumi says she saw them go to the door, maybe they are at the bar? Georgina comes back a bit later and says "no, they've gone - can I have a lift to Marcus's?" "Woo, afterparty." "Should we - " "Drop by a bottle shop? yes" "I was going to say 'see if Alex is ok?'". Georgina shrugs and says he's not really big on parties or large gatherings.
Marcus's flatmates are a bit surprised at being indundated with people, one of them in pyjamas. Marion and Peter are already there, chatting in the kitchen with drinks in their hands, standing close together. Maybe 20 or 25 people show up into the 3BR flat and drink and have a good time for the rest of the evening. Marion and Peter leave together; Will gives in to his curiosity and uses scent of the true form on him on the way out. It seems Peter is neither kinfolk nor werewolf nor vampire nor fomori nor mage nor a bus from highgate nor velvet underwear. Or maybe that just proves how competant the conspiracy really is. His continued screen time is a mystery for us all.
Plans are made for going to the Cave Caern moot on the Tuesday. It is going to start early, so they're going to head early in the day except for Kasumi who has to work and will turn up at about 6.
Finn goes to the gym on Monday morning before class. Marion is there, looking smug. At one point when there's not anyone else around she comes and chats to Finn and asks if he was aware that Peter is actually a policeman. No. No, he was not. They both quickly review conversations on Saturday night that he could hear and think they are ok. Apparently he is not on active duty because was in a bad crash a while back - as he said when Finn got to know him. Exciting. Anyway... she... is meeting him for lunch. Finn smirks. Marion flips him the bird as she leaves.
After the 2pm falling asleep rush, Sinead is cleaning the coffee machine when Mae Fischer sticks her head in. She's here to see Carmel, but after a few minutes, Sinead is included in the conversation. Mae says that the suggestion about talking to Jirrawan about sept names was a leading candidate and people were starting to get a bit antsy about the argument. The Elders decided to summon Jirrawan and asked if to honour the fallen they could name the sept what is was called previously, and he said "no" basically and went back to sleep. Mae says that if they have any good ideas for names, they should bring it along.
People give Finn a funny look when he shows up in lectures and ask if he's still enrolled.
Tillie gets a hold of Tanya (via Scott, who swears at his small phone's small buttons ("glasswalker me ass!" "he's a glass walker? I am ashamed")) and asks to catch up that night. Tanya gives her the address of a little bar in the CBD to meet at. Tillie buys her a drink and Tanya asks why the meeting. Tillie says that she was concerned at Tanya's concern on the weekend - is something going on with Scott. Tanya says no, not really - what you see of Scott is what is there, he's not particularly deceptive. But she was aware of their interaction with the other Garou from Hidden Green and didn't want his taunting to be on top of that situation causing trouble. Tanya seems keen on not disrupting any of the relations between caerns, and Tillie agress that that would be a good idea. They talk about Scott a bit - Tanya says that he's not as bad as he might seem, he's just pushing to see if they can be pushed. Tanya invites Tillie to stick around and listen to the next band. They chat about Hidden Green things and compare notes.
Kasumi is asleep when she becomes aware that she is dreaming. She is in a forest in Japan when a large wolf trots out of the shadows. It looks reddish, like some of the Fianna, but a deeper red than the rusty colour most of the Fianna she knows were. It appears very wolf like as it approaches. She greets it - "I am Kasumi Unami of the Glass Walkers." It replies in spirit speech - "I am Red Wolf". "How can I help you?" "You are being watched" "By who?" "By those (group) who are neither your friend nor your enemy. You and yours should be aware you are under observation". It turns and pads away into the forest as the dream comes apart and Kasumi sees that it was 6am.
About 9am Kasumi rings Tillie and gives her a description of the dream. Tillie says she dreamt Finn made her pizza cake. ("I made pizza cake!" "Oh my god, we're prophets"). They chat a bit - is it the mages? a group of banes? the council? a group of spirits? It could be anything. The key is they are being watched and should be aware. Given that Boobook promised to help them find mages if they learnt Sense Wyrm and they did, they decide to ask him. Boobook has been around the pack of late in the Umbra and so they find him and he agrees that they have attracted attention - their names are spoken by many others.
On the trip down, the pack chat about sept names. There is discussion about 'renewal' or 'still waters'. There is much silliness but in the end they think about suggesting 'dreaming waters', to reflect the nature of the caern and honour its previous caretakers. ("What's Tillie's surname?" "Kennedy" "Resurected Kenedy's"..."no"). ("Anything with 'waters' in it just makes me think of amniotic fluid, but that's probably just me, now")
When they arrive, everyone is in the Umbra. It has a vibe of a fate or a big party. There's not just Fianna, but tribespeople from other septs as well. Tillie spots a guy in a leather jacket giving her the side eye in a kind of "do I know you?" sort of way. She also can't remember his name - no, wait, its Nick... something. She met him with Sparky north of Sydney a while back. Lost Prophets mingle and peek into the Realm at the Edridge establishment. They hear some of the other Sept name suggestions - Scars Atoning is the most popular, and some support for Spring's seed - and decide theirs is better and push it a bit. They're not arguing heavily, but they are saying it a lot. The reception varies - some people are "yeah, that's good". No one is overwhelmed by it, but its not ruled out.
The challenge for Sept Leader starts at midday. Catherine Lie-Thrower, the Master of the Challenge fro Rippling Waters, is overseeing the challenge. Three Fianna are challenging for the position - Cairbre Heart-of-Fire (lupus rank 3 ahroun) a solid red shaggy wolf, David Thewlis (homid rank 4 philodox), a wirey man with dark hair and beard about 40, and Morwenna Elvenheart Firth (homid rank 3 ragabash), a red-headed woman in her late 20s. There are 3 challenges - combat, song and riddles. It is expected to take a number of hours, during which various garou mingle and watch the challenges. Cairbre wins the combat challenge - a non-lethal roiling fight across the landscape - fairly decisively. David wins the challenge of song by reciting an epic poem in the correct form. And then David wins the riddle challenge. There is some cheering. Morwenna changes to glabro and lunges at David; there's a moment of "ohhnooo" but she picks him up and wheels him around in a celebratory sort of way. Cairbre looks some unhappy, but offers congratulations.
While the next challenge is being sorted, Nick comes up to Tillie and says hi. He seems to have remembered her name, and her brings a Fianna woman withm him who is also familiar, called Teelia. All three of them have hung around with Sparky a bit in the last few years. He knows the story of how here was found, but he hadn't put two and two together that it was her. Nick - like Tillie - is apparently now settling down because he and Teelia, and Doyle (points) and Darkens-the-Earth (points) have formed a pack at this Sept, and somehow he is packleader. They compare some notes, Teelia has seen Sparky about the time when he came down to Melbourne. She travelled along the coast with him for a bit.
The next challenge is for Caern Warder and Keeper of the Land - because the sept is so small, some of the Elder positions will be filled by the same individual. There are two candidates, Donald Eyre (homid rank 3 galliard) and George Montleigh (homid rank 2 philodox Silver Fang). Lost Prophets are keen for the Fianna guy without even knowing anything about them. The challenge is a scavenger hunt in the Umbra with symbolic clues and people ambushing them with sticks. Its all fun and games until Montleigh is taunted a bit hard and frenzies, injuring some of the various garou who rush in to help the situation. Sinead volunteers to help out, healing some of the injured - its aggravated damage because its all garou claws. Donald is pronounced winner given George is no longer in the challenge (and he does a decent job).
The position of Master-of-the-Rite and Gatekeeper is only challenged for by one garou, Marches-the-High-Road (lupus rank 3 theurge), a barrel shaped brown wolf. There is still a symbolic challenge to demonstrate that he actually has the skills to fill the role, and Marches-the-High-Road is successful.
While these challenges are going on, a senior Fianna named Llwellan comes and finds Sinead and asks her about the pack's suggestion for the Sept name. He's interested in the train of thought that led them there. Sinead says they were trying to capture both the characteristics and history of the caern. She thinks the lake is one of its defining characteristics, its central to the caern. Whereas the dreaming is part of its aboriginal history. That was partly why they suggested asking Jirrawan for its old name. He nods and thanks her, then heads off. She watches as he speaks to other people. Some of the discussions are animated, others are quiet and nervous.
The last position is Master of the Challenge. The challengees are Brien Griffiths (homid rank 3 philodox), a brown haired, pale skinned man with a lot of tattoos, and Jane Redfeather (homid rank 3 Uktenna galliard), who is a tall part-Amerind woman with long black hair and tanned skin (many of the other Uktenna in Australia are part aboroginal). They have three challenges to compete - combat (first to lay a significant blow wins), a riddle challenge and a staredown challenge. Jane wins the combat challenge (she's faster than Brien). Brien wins the staredown (Jane looks away). And the final riddle challenge is won by Jane. So, Master of the Challenge is the Uktena.
Now the Elders are sorted, two packs to form the Sept are recognised. They are Green-Choking-Grey, a mostly Fianna pack from the north west of New South Wales. The whole pack opted to come to the new Sept. And there is Wild Rovers, which is a motley crew of mixed garou who opted to form a new pack at the new Sept.
Catherine Lie-Thrower is master of the howl this moot, and she gets all the garou to come into the caern proper. As before, the lake gives Kasumi the irrits. Catherine starts the Moot with a light and ethereal howl - unlike normal noises, it appears not to be muted by the caern. It is taken up by other Fianna individually around the cavern. Marches-the-High-Road takes the howl up, and it moves from a high pitched howl to a more earthly sound. The rush of gnosis that the caern rites induced floor through all of the garou. Jirrawan is summoned, and he moves across the lake. He is asked to bless the new sept, whose name is to be Scars Atoning (retcon discussion with other garou earlier - the people who wanted it wanted to have the name to be what the sept was doing, not about the caern. "It sounds like it should be a romance novel - Scar's Atoning - with a picture of two white people almost kissing". (Jezebel's review of THe Note book). Jirrawan agrees and there is a spiritual woomf sensation as the sept is established formally.
The two packs and their totems are thanked and greeted - Jolenta Peterson is a rank 3 metis ahroun fianna (wow), leader of Green-Choking-Grey, whose totem is Stag (many Fianna, Black Fury and a Red Talon). Nicholas Kanakellos is the pack leader of Wild Rovers (homid, ahroun, fianna, rank 2) and their totem is Fox. David as sept leader ("did you say sex leader?") recognises the debt the sept ("this is getting harder") owes Lost Prophets and Boobook and confirms their honourary membership of the Sept of Scars Atoning. ("This was a 'previous unsettled' caern then" "Yes, thank you Tony")
Once the very limited sept business is sorted - mostly that Green-Choking-Grey will be on guard for the next week - stories begin. Llewyllan Laughter-of-the-Stream is introduced formally as a rank 4 homid galliard, and the Talesinger for the night. He begins with a story about Keally O'Shannesey, the Fianna Righ during the War of Tears. Lost Prophets shift and wince a bit, and notice they are not alone in perhaps finding the subject matter uncomfortable. However, Llewyllan tells of the time after the War when Keally got all the Fianna to swear an oath to never commit an atrocity like this again. It is not told with a sense of "oh aren't we good to make this oath", but with a sense of sadness and tragedy that they were not wise enough before the War. Because he is using his gifts to enhance the story, its a real kick in the teeth for the garou who have been fairly congratulatory about the new sept. The story ends that from then on she was known as Keally Oathtaker.
Other songs start after this, a little bittersweet. The moot shifts into smaller groups as people listen to stories and songs, or handle individual business. Will is approached by a fianna woman who asks to speak to him aside - when he returns, he says that it was about his trip to Ireland. She told him how to spell the name of the Sept he is going to, and also what the name means - something like "the smell of winter in a summer breeze". (Spelt "an boladh an gheimhridh i gaoithe de samhradh te", but pronounced "ann bolu an yehvri a gweeha da savri te").
Finn performs his peregrine song for the 3rd and final time, with polite attention from the Garou. (With an incoherent lead in as he is preparing himself). The Lost Prophets speak to Boobook about the deal he set a month ago. Boobook agrees they have fulfilled the requirements he sets and he thusly fulfills his side. The sense that the pack have of their totem shifts somewhat. Rather than being able to draw upon Boobook to sense wyrm, they gain an instinctive feel for a different gift - Sense Unnatural. They mess about with the information the gift gives them to try and get a feel for how it works. Its not as sensory as sense wyrm, which can affect smell and taste and touch as much as sight. This is more a visual sense only, and maybe a tingling? They get wyrm, weaver and wyld in some balance, as well as a sense they might describe as gaian. They won't be able to be sure of what constitutes 'mage' until they encounter a definitively example thereof (people give XP to Boobook).
("yay more gnosis, I can dedicate another item of clothing" "eh, I just have Bruce BAnner shorts" "What?" "You know, the shorts the hulk always keeps on." "Oh, I kinda assumed you meant boxers with superhero prints on them, because that also sort of seems in character").
The stories start to get more inclusive, and more martial. Jane Redfeather tells the last story, leading the whole sept through the caverns, mimicing the story of the three brothers - Wendigo, Uktena and Croatan - across the landbridge into the bright lands to the east to fight the wyrm there. The story reaches its crescendo as they leave the cavern, and the garou all spread out howling across the landscape. Lost Prophets run off to the north.
Sinead is hit in the face with a stick. She looks up and gets his in the face with a bunch of sticks and gumnuts. There are a bunch of little aboriginal men, maybe 3' tall, up the tree. ("This is in the Umbra, to be clear"). Once they have her attention, they take off a few leaps through branches, then stop and look at her, piffing a couple more twigs. She starts to follow. When they leap between trees, the pale grey beards look like possums leaping betweens trees. They occasionally piff sticks at the pack to make sure they are still coming. They lead to a grove of trees and then bounce around in the tree branches making a fuss. The pack peek and see figures in the Realm, digging into the ground with... sticks? They can't see real well. Sinead peeks ("scuse me, out the way, theurge coming through") and sees that the figures are four child sized things, with dark skin, and no faces. That's not where spirits should be, but she doesn't recognise a type. She senses for wyrm and finds that they are very wyrmy - definitely banes of some sort.
[retconning some learning "halt the coward's flight" from a wolf spirit in return for spending 3 nights in the next month in lupus form only]
The pack send Boobook off to let other garou know what they are doing and that there are some spirits in the realm ("if i die, tell me wife hello"). The pack make some preparations and then Will takes them into the Realm. They burst into the middle of the corpse of trees and spirits digging in the soil. The figures are about 4' high and have skin like burnt bark.
Finn howls loudly to put the wind up the spirits, Will obliterates one, Sinead another and Tillie a third. When they are discorporated, they explode into a cloud of smoke and dust. The last one runs into the Umbra. Will gives immediate chase back through the gauntlet. ("I pee as i run!") The others follow more slowly, but due to the fickle nature of the gauntlet, appear before Will. They take off after the spirit, but it is much more agile than they, and vanishes into the umbral landscape amidst the shadows. ("do what your packmate tells you"). ("The part of chris will be played by Andrew")
They return to the realm and check out where they were digging. There's a sense of wyrm under the ground there, but its not a point source exactly. They dig down - it seems a bit too easy to dig, frankly. This has been recently broken, in the last couple of weeks. It starts to get squelchy and a smell of rot rises from the soil. Is.. is this where people buried dead Edridge guards? Or is it where dead livestock would be buried? No the trees are a piain, livestock would be buried out in a field. They find some fabric. They have to pull the whole thing out and find it comes with a bonus body. Its a human body, and it does seem to be dressed similarly to the fomori soldier. ("On the topic of finding unexpected disgusting corpses, today at work...")
They try and check out the corpse; Will holds it up to the moon to try and get a better look, and a lump of goo falls out onto his face. Tillie spins around to see why he yells and sprays everyone in rotting goo. (Mmm, botches). Ewwww. No, they can't see anything like fomori mutations. Its only a shallow grave, and there's only one. They make grumpy noises about whoever got the job of cleaning up fomori corpses. He's not even cleansed. ("I think he crawled off 2km and buried himself"). They decide to cleanse themselves and the now disarticulated corpse. ("Finnegan, clean my taint"). When he finishes the ritual, the body has no taint. What is going on? Did they not account for everyone? If so, who killed this guy and buried him?
Some figures head their way across the landscape - after a brief panic that its locals, they can see that its Wild Rovers. Lost Prophets say they found a corpse. Nick says they found beer and guns, they've had a much better night. Some fox hunters had them, past tense. They compare notes, but Nick really doesn't know anything about where the bodies were buried. They share beer around ("ew fosters"), decide to rebury the body now, and then head back to the caern to ask some questions. (Various taint jokes. "The time we spend together is so precious").
When they get back, the pack speaks to David and Marches-the-High-Road. They do not believe that's where bodies were taken to dispose of them, but they might want to ask Mae when she comes back. They are a bit concerned. ("let the record show becc did not eat a whole actual chicken") People drift back about dawn and they speak to Mae for a bit - she didn't do the corpse things, but she is pretty sure that they dedicated the corpses and displosed of them in the Umbra. They'll have to ask Sveta really, as the Heralds of War were responsible for them. There's a discussion about how many fomori there were, and fundamentally it turns out that the only number they have came from Steve in the cave, and maybe he got it wrong? Its concerning - the Wild Rovers will follow it up.
Jane Redfeather is more interested in the spirits that led them to the wyrm stuff. She thinks they are called turongs and interactions with them are not very common, but are generally positive. She is interested in the fact that Lost Prophets were dragged 200kms to save this caern when there were other closer garou, that they have a dreamtime totem, that they've had positive interactions with other dreamtime spirits and so on. She mostly bids them to keep it in mind that its unusual, and to not treat it as a workaday thing.
The Lost Prophets decide to get their heads down.
WAAAARGH. Many garou leap to their feet, stil asleep but ready for a fight as Lost Prophets all yell. As much as they know its the same dream, the emotional response is so strong that it takes some time to not flip to crinos and attack. They get much of the evil eye when its realised what has happened. Marches-the-High-Road is still awake and suggests they come out and talk to him outside. There's some speculation about why they are all dreaming the same thing, and why *that*. Is it what their totem is seeing as he reports back to the Wyrm? Or someone else's perspective? The details are more or less the same, but they do seem to recall somethings more clearly one time or the other. Marches-the-High-Road asks if they have had any other shared dreams? Maybe it is only a generalised warning dream, that they are more suspceptible to after a Moot or other spiritually significant moment? He doesn't think they are going to get dragged to Malfeas at any second. Good says Tillie - I wasn't worried about that happening until you said something. He will think on it more and ask around - he thinks the dream is extremely precise. ("as if one of you had been there" *heads turn to Andrew* "right, I'm a bunyip _and_ a black spiral dancer").
Seeing as how they are awake anyway, the pack decide to head back to Melbourne. Before they go, Finn speaks to Donald about wanting to be involved with the cave paintings. Donald says that their priorities are to sort out the rest of the Edridge stuff and other Sept business before looking at them really, but he's happy to let Finn know what they find, or to let Finn come and look at them when he has free time.
The trip to Melbourne is uneventful and they arrive back at their caern in time for Graeme to say "oh good, its you, very interested in what you have to say but right now you need to go and check out some dead bodies". Apparently Arnold and Irma Fergusson washed up on the banks of the Yarra, having both been killed by weird knives - a familar phrase. Mysteriously earlier in the night their house had caught fire and burnt badly to the ground. Graeme wants them to go and check it out and see if they can find anything else.
("he's the nightwalker, he's the worst kind of reverse vampire". "he wanders around spitting blood on people" "No, he breaks into your house and injects blood into you. That's somehow more terrifying") ("The reverse werewolf who turns into a moon" "a 3000km wide ball of rock").
They head to the house in the Umbra. There are some small fire spirit motes wandering about burning up weaver structures that appear to have been added to the site because of the fire. There site actually consists of a well maintained garden and a house in the Umbra - the Fergussons appear to have lived her for some time and have some level of satisfaction with their lives as its a fairly representative match to a real world house. The small fire spirits are starting to char things.
In the Realm, all that is left is the core of a badly burnt structure, water everywhere and a lot of smoke smell. The house was on a suburban street with a two story set of units next to it. There is emergency tape across the front. Will wants to find some significant looking spirits to see if they can help report what happened, but doesn't have much luck. Its been a pretty hot fire - Tillie senses for wyrm and finds a lingering sense. Maybe its just the fire? Maybe with some accelerant, that might leave more wyrm sense. Tillie uses their new Sense Unnatural gift and finds two senses that she has not encountered before, one stronger than the other, and sort of cold and maybe metally? Its hard to describe. They are definitely novel. They toy with summoning a spirit to help them, but without knowing a specific type of spirit, its going to be a bit hard and need a random chiminage if they don't.
They go to the site where the bodies were found. They washed up on a boat ramp just near Bridge Road. After that there was some searching and they found a second, and then there was an ID on them and found that the dead people's house was on fire. There's no sense of wyrm here (outside of the usual city background + being next to the Yarra) or anything unnatural either. If the bodies were only discovered here, then nothing else probably happened here to leave a sign. Tony Staley also died next to a river (well, Moonee Ponds creek), maybe that was it? Then there was fire. Is it mages? Kasumi wonders if they have an elemental sort of approach to supernatural things - the gargoyles were stone, this is near water, and there has been a fire?
At Staley's death there was someone chainsmoking in the shadows - they thought that was a garou, but the 'garou' smell is really only human and wolf/dog mixed together. Maybe it was a dog friendly mage with a gargoyle who killed Staley and then flew away? Thus the weird cut off scent? Could be. Hmm. ("It was Peter!" "Oh! Peter, not PETA"). Some contemplation of getting a spirit to antiscry them and trace it?
They decide to head to the morgue, amusing themselves by the mingling of gothic black architecture and science weaver. Finn peeks well and is lucky - he finds someone reviewing the information about the Fergussons and transcribing a recording. The Fergussons were in their 60s. They were found at 5.30am by a jogger going past. At 2am, the house was reported as being thoroughly on fire. The best time of death estimate is 1am - suggesting they were dead for a time before the fire. Best estimate of river time is that they were dropped in there between 130am and 230am. They were killed by massive trauma - their pelvises and nearby bones and organs had been crushed, and they had been stabbed by something very pointy like a pick or something? There was plaster and wood found in the wounds. There's lots of question marks on the report. "something something gargoyles" thinks the pack. ON the recording, soneone asks if they had a car driven into them or something. Next of kin is a Rosa Banks, a daughter. Finn sense unnatural - mostly weaver, as you'd expect really. There might be a faint whisper of something else, but not reaaaally.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noyFiYKlFJU)
They head back to the caern and brain dump on Graeme. There's speculation about gargoyles doing this, and in some ways that's better than the possibility that its a rogue garou, but there's no real evidence either way. He's like them to keep an open mind at this stage. Last time some evidence disappeared from the cops, and some of the 'strange knives' changed to be just normal knives. Can there be a garou mage? Is someone doing this while the garou are busy at a full moon, or in an effort to 'blame' garou, knowing that they are more emotional at that time? Graeme thanks them for their horrible suggestions. Will suggests stalking out the morgue and looking for someone coming and changing evidence, which is worth a try. Kasumi wonders about asking river spirits about things, in the hope they might have perceived somehting - Graeme thinks its not likely, unless the deaths happened there, in the river. ("I'm picturing the spirit of the yarra being like that fish from the Simpsons with 3 eyes"). (dirt girl world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY0Gnune0sY) ("let the record show the gm is a banana walrus"). Will has a convoluted plan to plant more damning evidence to encourage other people to fuck with the evidence, but Graeme is skeptical about their ability to do this at all, let alone competantly.
Graeme also lets them know that there's been a bit of a law and order push - both from the new state government as a ideological thing, and also in response to the explosion in Braybrook and some other criminal events - that is leading to the plan to centralise and organise CCTV cameras through the city centre. Hidden Green are for it, they think that it will help them keep things in the CBD under control. They've given Sleeping Lore a short list of places where the cameras won't cover - Graeme reiterates the parts of the Litany about the Veil and how it pertains to cameras. (It came up at the Moot last night that they missed).
They Questing Stone for Rosa Banks and find that she is in a unit near Sandringham. They find somewhere to stop, step and come back to peek. Kasumi peeks and finds an apartment with a couple in their early 30s. (Presumably a couple, and not Frank from next door making a move on the bereaved, despite what some fo the pack think). The woman is in tears, the man is comforting her. Kasumi can read and finds that there are bills and what not that identify the house as being the residence of Mr and Mrs Banks, and photos that suggest that the couple are indeed the people that live here, putting the final nails in the 'Frank' theory. There's no signs of kids. Kasumi senses unnatural but finds nothing of note - Rosa is not a mage or another werewolf or anything. Kasumi makes a note to come back here in a month and see if there's anything weird.
Will gets a phone call from a guy called Guy, offering him some heavy lifting work for a few hours for $100, right now. Will rolls his eyes and says yes, yes he does. He'll be there as soon as he can.
The pack decide to spend a bit of time spying on the morgue and seeing if they can spot someone fiddling the evidence. They work out a schedule for watching that lets some of them sleep on and off.
Despite their observations, and the publication of the horrifying details by the press, by Friday lunchtime its become clear no one is coming to fiddle stuff at the morgue. They can't really step out and use the computer systems there, though there is some speculation about using finding a space unaffected by video camera They maybe need to work on a method for doing this - Kasumi's gifts are helpful, but she needs to be able to access the network in some fashion.
Sinead meditates at the caern to regenerate her gnosis. Will fulfills his chiminage by spending some of the nights in lupus.
There's newspaper reports by Friday - killed by improvised weapons, but also crushed. Maybe hit by a car and then killed because they'd otherwise report it? The house fire included signs of an accelerant. They try and find any crime history for the Fergussons, but there's nothing on the internet. Kasumi searches the archives at the newspaper and finds a reference to the Fergussons, but its a local newspaper and about how they won a competition at a local fete.
They confer with Graeme - he says last time that it was a coincidence they'd noticed the change, because someone went to check a different aspect of evidence out and found that the hair had been replaced with human hair instead of "coarse hair", and some of the damage descriptions were now 'knives' rather than 'some sort of weapon'. They don't know where or when it was done.
The topic of possible garou mages comes up again. Graeme frankly isn't sure, but thinks that all the training they'd get might override it. Maybe a lost cub? Or someone that gets jack of werewolf bullshit, suggest Tillie. Graeme says the most likely people to know are going to be the Uktena. They could visit Malajimbarra or Jane Redfeather and ask? They decide to go with Malajimbarra, because then with luck they can talk to Sveta about the dead fomori at the same time.
The trip to Grinding Stone is event free. Malajimbarra and Sveta are both near the caern centre and happy to talk. Malajimbarra thinks that it is extremely unlikely that there would be a garou mage because the garou nature is too strong. The closest they come to what he understands mages do is rites, which tap the power of the Umbra.
Sveta has already spoken to the Wild Rovers and confirms that she did not bury any random fomori out in the wilderness. They dedicated the bodies and burned them in the Umbra. The only set number of fomor there came from Lost Prophets who got it from the random human guards. Wild Rovers dug up the body the found and investigated it correctly, finding that it had been shot in the back of the head by a handgun. So. Yeah. They only found the one in the makeshift grave. ("Don't waste *my* money on frivolous plane tickets")
