Tillie gets an early call from Graeme who says he needs them to speak to someone, or rather he needs Kasumi and Sinead to speak to them. He sort of half explains and then says "no, just come in". The pack assemble (*shlurp*) at the caern. Graeme is in the Umbra with Ends-the-Quiet and Ian Shatter-Glass, when he sees them he waves them over.
Graeme says that he encouraged some kinfolk to look into places associated with death, following up on the idea that Lost Prophets had. And this morning, one of them rang him and said they think they found something not good - so he would like Lost Prophets to go and talk to them. However, Tillie will scare the pants of them - he wants Sinead and Kasumi to meet her, at Broadmeadows in the shopping centre, at a cafe next to Coles. The low key approach would be ideal. Her name is Angela.
The pack head out to Broadmeadows. Sinead and Kasumi look as non-threatening as possible - Sinead even finds a clean shirt without the word 'fuck' written on it anywhere. The others peek from the Umbra, but can only see and smell. Kasumi spots the teenage girl giving them the eye - she walks past, looking into the cafe, rather obviously. The third time past, she approaches rather tentatively and asks if Kasumi is, well, Kasumi. Introductions are made and Angela is bought a coffee.
Angela says that some friends and her were at a place last night, sort of exploring. And there was something not good there. Kasumi asks for details - it was a cold feeling. She is obviously trying not to be overheard. They were looking through Greenvale, because last night was sort of a time when ghosts come out, and its haunted. The ask if its a cemetery and she says no, its an old hospital. And so they heard ghosts, but there was a spot which felt bad. She's very blase about having heard ghosts - "I'm used to seeing those" - Angela is much more interested in the bad place. The pack are a bit surpised. The ghosts were on the 2nd floor (mostly footsteps and such), but this was on the 3rd floor. Because someone had said to keep a look out for things, she thought she'd make a call. Sinead says that she did the right thing.
The two packmembers sense unnatural and wyrm on her - no wyrm really, but there's something sort of unnatural about them. In the Umbra, Will, while peeking, tries to use Scent of the True Form, but trips and falls through her while peeking. In the Realm, Angela goes pale and reacts in a very skittish way, looking around and around and asking if they saw something. ("William! Get out of that 14 year old!")
The two werewolves realise she's squinting at them and ask why - Angela lost her glasses last night, so if they go Greenvale, could they look for them, becausetheyarekindofexpensive. Kasumi gives her her mobile number and says if she finds anything else, give them a yell.
Kasumi asks for more info, if she doesn't mind - it was on the 3rd floor of the boomerang building. It was kind of cold and dark, and it just felt wrong. Bad. She is very skittish of the two garou, which may suggest she has some common sense. Sinead considers telling her to come to Carmels if she needs help, but generally it seems that the garou at Sleeping Lore are a bit ansty about sharing more information than they need to about garou and their activities.
The pack reassemble ("Who did something to her??") and compare notes. They're going to Greenvale later tonight then. They contact Graeme and brain dump, and he's in favour of this plan, and yes he knew she had some abilities to sense ghosts and such and liked going into weird places - that's why he asked her to keep an eye out for weird things.
The pack make some preparations for going to Greenvale this evening. Should they umbra or realm? They decide umbra as a first pass. ("I would really enjoy if that was our thing, finding caerns" "They would put the 5 of you on sticks and use you all over the landscape"). Step 2 - where the hell is it. They do some internet searching and actually find some information before rushing in. Greenvale used to be a TB hospital, and then an old people's hospital before being closed 5 years ago. They actually find some photos from a year ago of the place as it is abandoned. Oh, apparently its "one of the most haunted places in Australia" Right. Oh, there's definitely security guards there too, which leads Will to wonder whether she actually heard footsteps, rather than 'ghosts' ("Could have been ghosts, could have been guards" "Could have been ninjas." "no, you wouldn't have heard them then." "hear that? *silence* Ninjas").
They turn up well after dark and step. The umbral landscape is light brush/forest, easy to move through. The buildings are more or less the similar to the physical realm.. except the colours are bleached out, and the shadows are longer than they should be. All the windows are missing glass, and the hollow frames look like empty eyesockets, as if the building was watching them. Finn is peeking and tells them that there's some guard shack and a chainlink fence ("let the record show my players are idiots"). They sense for wyrm - there is more than a background level of wyrm about the place. It might just be the decay? But its more an emotional pall about the place, almost like a despair. When the wind blows, it has a hollow, faded feel to it. (GM has props, wooo! :)
In the realm much of the rooves are ruined, many windows are out. There's grafitti all over the place (IM INSANE) and equipment that was left behind. In the Umbra, it gets real dark inside, and the walls are starting to leak weaver stuff. At one point Finn gets a sense that is similar in description to the lesser sense that Tillie felt at the Fergusson's house. Its only in the Realm, on the 2nd floor, concentrated on one spot. Its odd, but they make notes and head off.
They reach the 3rd floor, and immediately hear noises. Yes, in the Umbra. Its a distant, slightly echoey noise. The pack start to creep around. Or at least, those not peeking do - they all start to move slowly and carefully, but forget to hang onto Finn. He keeps moving, and steps out into a room that isn't structurally sound, plunging through the floor with an enormous crash. As Will leaps into the room to try and grab Finn, the chittering gets louder and heads closer - the dark corridor ahead suddenly becomes far more menacing.
Darkness swarms up the corridor. Tillie makes a tactical decision, and leaps down the hole Finn made in crinos form, widening the hole and telling the rest of the pack to follow, which they do, arraying themselves around the hole in preparation in the room below (which is about the size of a 6-bed ward). Finn tries to howl, but is a bit confused about what he wants to achieve and its not very effective.
Pouring through the hole come many bats, flocking in a swarm through the gap the garou made. They are warped and strange looking - most of them have only teeth and mouths and no other features, about a foot across including wings. (Believe it or not ,this is not what I had in mind http://hotaru-neko.deviantart.com/art/Pokemon-Zubat-34279347) The pack start smashing the batbane things out of the air, and they don't appear to be particular strong spirits. The banes attack fast but not terribly hard, except against Kasumi who gets bats in the eye and makes a tactical withdrawl out the door. Tillie's concern is that there is something behind them, chasing them along. ("Tille and WIll. Who I will now refer to as 'Willie')
Sinead leaps out the door after Kasumi and heals her. Kasumi leaps back into combat. The pack are smashing bats out of the air fairly effectively, and bats start to flee out the window instead of continuing to fight. The pack swipe at some slow learners, and stick their head up the hole to see what else is coming. Nothing, apparently. People look out the window and notice the bats are booking it all in one direction, rather than spreading out in a kind of panic fashion. They seem to be leaving the hospital, rather than back into the hospital with all its cover. Feeling this is suspicious, the pack decide to give chase and return to the hospital later. Will uses his newly found Halt the Coward's flight gift on a few of them to slow them down. The pack jump out the window, change to lupus and give chase. They spread out a bit, but not so far that they can't see one another.
Kasumi is keeping up with the fastest bats, Sinead and Will with the slowed bats and Finn and Tillie are lagging a bit behind. The moon is very bright, the bats are not flying high, they are not very hard to follow. The head in a suspiciously straight line toward the city, but after a kilometre or so, the previously brushy forest starts to get more and more weaver stuff, and that begins to become the occasional house. The pack are slowed, but not stopped - there are whole empty blocks between the odd loved family home that actually shows up in the Umbra.
Kasumi sees the bats start to drop as she heads up a hill. Suddenly there is a burst of colourless fire at the front of the bats. One after another fly through the same place, and the flashes keep going as each of them hits the same spot. There's nothing there from her point of view - there's the normal weaver stuff that probably marks out the street (power lines, road, etc) but a big field on one side of the road, a house a bit down but nothing here. There's a faint wyrm stuff. Kasumi peeks, and she is looking at a house on the block - roof, walls, carport, etc. Will and Sinead catch up as the bats they were chasing also crash into the same place, lighting the area up. Will senses unnatural - not really very much out of the ordinary. The others catch up, and details are swapped. The pack have a concern that its a portal into somewhere awful like the Scar.
Tillie picks up a stick and pokes at the spot she thinks they vanished at. Burst of colourless fire and Tillie jumping up and down yelling holding her hands. ("I have *got* to learn to delegate"). Her arm turns red and the skin bubbles. Tillie nearly frenzies while swearing, but manages to keep it under control. Will, still peeking, says ... nothing happened. Someone flicks the stick, and there is a burst of coloured fire - the stick seems to hit something and there is a bright flash. Finn wanders around throwing things at the space to map it out without blundering into the space that triggers it. The flashes match the house almost precisely - not the block, but the house.
Lost Prophets start to become a bit concerned about the whole situation. Frankly, the bats headed right here, and not at such a speed that the pack couldn't follow. Are they pack getting drawn away from the actual action? Did they come here with a message? Did they get controlled into it? Were they bound? Why were they there at the same time as the pack went there looking for mages? ("What do you do without the magical spy realm?" "Lose patience with the situation and set the whole house on fire?"). They test the wyrm again, and find they can't really sense anything extremely out of the ordinary, but there is a vague background noise, hard to pinpoint. There's a faintest rot, decay smell.. almost like a swamp has been churned up.
Time for some investigation in the Realm. Kasumi is voted out of the spirit world and Will offers to come with her and hang around for when, er, if it all goes pear shaped. Although people can't peek well, they manage to find some shadows for Kasumi to step into. It turns out the space they have chosen is a small grove in a park. ("how much is that doggy at the window"). She blurs away in homid and creeps around Its about 11pm at night by this point, a house three away is having a loud party. She can see and hear jets landing at Tullamarine. The street is a not a full street - its about 3/4 wide with sloped gutters. As she gets near the house, outside lights come on very brightly - the sensors trigger even before she gets into the property.
Kasumi decides to sneak via the neighbours dark yards, and creeps around. She jumps the last fence into a property that has clearly been gardened with a chainsaw at ankle height. There's stumps of plants and small trees covered by knee high grass. She creeps forward and then - click - the lights come on out the back. She runs toward the house to hide under the sensor - she brushes the house and her butt suddenly erupts in pain. In the Umbra, flash of colourless flame where she touches it. She runs off, over the fence and snarls at the small domestic dog who runs and hides. As the smell of burning butt dissapates.
Before they head back to the Umbra, Will and Burnt-butt have a hunt around in lupus for scents. There are no fresh scents here, nothing more than 2 or 3 weeks old. Hmm. Will speculates about the timing, and how that relates to the big explosion in Braybrook. It was about the same time actually. Will spots a lot of junk mail hanging out of the letterbox - he'd estimate about 2 weeks worth of that too. Kasumi uses open seal and pops the lock, then gets the mail out. ("Did that dog just steal someone's mail?") They run off and change back to homid to read it - the occupants are apparently T&M Smith. Its on a gas bill, and they have used less gas than last year. ("What you're telling us is there's a gas line going to the property?")
In the meantime, Sinead and Finn mark out the edge of the house in the Umbra without asploding themselves, and start a rite of cleansing. They finish and there's some sense of wyrm stuff fading - Finn throws another rock and finds that maybe the response is less bright? Tillie steps into the realm and tries to use Sense Wyrm from there to see if there's any change. She finds that there's a strange nothing sensation about the house - its like being numb or not being able to see something. The numbness fills all the space of the house, and she thinks it continues under the ground; it doesn't match the house precisely either, but is under not all of it, and then under the back lawn some.
Ok, regrouping. How do they get around this? Call for help? More cleansing? Driving a truck into the building? Ok, calling for help. They ring back and get Ian on the phone. ("what we need is a drilling rig." "what we need is a dedicated drilling rig"). Greenvale, bats, mage house. Ian puts them on speakerphone, and is clearly cooking at the same time. Basement, numb-wyrm. They hear Cossack's voice asking if they can get in. No, its warded. Its also got wind down metal shutters, making it zombie proof. And maybe sunlight proof. Cossack says he has no immediate ideas, but he'll call Emma and they will call back as soon as they can. In the meantime, they really need to get inside - feel free to take relatively gross steps. "Like burn it down?" "... between nothing and burn it down, but not that far". He doesn't care if they break the house.
They go back to the Umbra and do another cleansing ritual, pouring spirit energy into it. It seems to lessen the response when they throw more sticks at it. They think about just pushing stuff up onto the house and burning it out, but when Tillie finds her stick, it wasn't burnt, only her. ("now we're back to peeing or bleeding on a rock"). Will is still keen on driving a truck into the building, and leaping out just before it hits. They summon Boobook to ask for any advice ("Away from the house obviously. *bzzt* sorry.") Boobook says that there is a space there that is turned in on itself. That's no help, think the pack. It is tied to the physicality of the weaver thing that is there. It suggests that wrecking the house might damage the magical thing. There is a strong sense that Boobook does not really comprehend what is going on any more than they do.
They contemplate summoning spirits to help them out - something extremely pure to help get rid of the wyrm stuff here? But their cleansing is doing basically that. The pack decide to go a bit more low tech - they'll go out the back and throw a brick through the window. Will finds a big chunk of quartz from a neighbours garden and lobs it straight through what is probably a bed room window. Chunks of glass wobble and fall out, leading a reasonably large hole. Lights come on from next door and the garou dive under the shadow of the fence - lots of light comes out as if curtains are opened. Then the light goes out... Will waits, and 30s later, hears the curtains close. He waits for potential police activity.
In the Umbra, a dark hole appears, partly revealing a window at that spot - the edges almost flicker, and waves of malevolence issue from the space. The space missing matches to the missing glass precisely, suggesting that as Boobook says, the effect is very tightly tied to the physical aspect of the house. The edges of the hole flicker oddly as the pack move around, almost blurred. The peer (not peek) through the edges and try to see what is in there.
The inside of the house appears to be... a house. There are walls and curtains and some carpets, but no furniture. Perhaps more interestingly, the floor, ceiling and one of the walls are covered in swirling patterns of some sort. (Despite pack panic, the patterns are not like the tattoos that Alex had on his walls - they were more varied and included pictures). The patterns include spirals, but also branching kinds of tree-like patterns. Its dim in the house in the Umbra, so they can't see a lot of detail.
Meanwhile, in the Realm, Will and Kasumi are lying low in the shadows. After 15m or so, they figure that there's no signs of police or further neighbourhood interest, and its safe to move around a bit. The pack contemplate trying to maneuver someone through the hole in lupus. Its fraught, but doable. They could smash more window, but again, more noise and it might summon more police. They decide to head back to the Umbra and regroup.
Back in the Umbra, they lob a rock through the umbral window. Glass falls out in a similar fashion, which makes it a bit easier to see inside. Kasumi and Sinead think that the patterns are almost like fractals - they're looking from some distance away, but that's the impression they are getting. Oh, the only wall that it is on is the outside wall. Ahh. This is nothing that they have ever seen before - its definitely nothing to do with garou lore that they have ever encountered. (Something akin to elements from: http://colliemom.deviantart.com/art/Hanging-Branch-72068763 http://lterri.deviantart.com/art/Fractal-Fern-229827171 )
The pack do some investigation, spiritually and physically. Finn does a Sense Unnatural in the realm - there is wyrm, but also the two senses that they felt at the Fergussons (cold and metallic) in much higher amounts. Tillie senses for Wyrm again and gets a lot of successes. Its tightly tied up with death, in a murder kind of way not just like decay. Its not a point source - its the whole area/structure. She's pretty sure there's no point sources in the house at all. The patterns also exist in the Realm - but so does furniture and stuff from what they can see through the broken window while trying not to get spotted.
They decide to call back to the Caern. Ian says that Cossack isn't here any more - he took their info, made some calls and went for a walk. They let Ian know that the "totally unrelated murder scene" they investigated days ago seems to be related to this in some fashion. Tille says Kasumi and Sinead say the forcefield has something to do with fractions. "Fractals!". Its some sort of math thing, apparently. There's fractures or something on the wall. Ian has about as much clue as she does. He'll let Cossack know as soon as he can.
They try some mundane investigation in the Realm - sniffing at the window in lupus form gives a rot and decay smell. Its food though, not bodies, as if stuff in a kitchen has gone off. There are a number of faint human scents - too faint to seperate or identify which suggests they are old. There are no dog smells though. Much discussion about what the situation might be. The topic of pushing someone through the hole comes up again. For instance if they had a small japanese woman who was also a ragabash scout? Kasumi: "Or we could make the hole bigger."
The pack pokes about further. Kasumi could get zapped by the door, use Open Seal on the lock, then control simple machine the handle to open it up. That would mean suffering through some more magic damage. ("Krusty butt pizza!" "well done rump?"). They investigate further and find that the window that they broke has a winder - she could peer in, and use control simple machine to wind the lock out without having to touch anything. It might not work, but it can't hurt to try, unlike the open seal plan. Brief speculation about trying the door handle, which they have not as yet - trying it in the realm is going to be very obvious, but they could go in the Umbra? Wait, they can't see the handle in the Umbra - that suggests that maybe the field covers the handle. Hmm. ("Black Butt Pirate might be a good garou name?")
They decide to go with the pain free option first and see what happens. Kasumi uses her gift and finds that she can feel the spirit, but it hasn't opened for a long time. She tries again and ... oh, clockwise. Wzzzz the window sticks for a moment and then winds out all the way. In the Umbra, the forcefield didn't trigger, but there's no change in the situation. Kasumi ducks under the window and reaches from inside to out through the broken part, cautiously expecting to be zapped. Nothing. They toss a stick inside and make sure the floor doesn't explode.
Ok, now ot get inside. Tillie and Will lift Kasumi up under the window high enough that she can tip forward and roll into the room inside. There's no explosion or flash of colourless fire. Nor does she find herself in Malfeas. It smells not so good inside. There's furniture - in this room a single bed that has been used and not made. Rugs on the floor cover the patterns, and she plays lava around the house. Kasumi checks out the patterns more closely. There is more and more detail as she closes in. She cannot tell if it has been painted over the paint, or if its part of the paint on the walls. On the floor, it could be under the lamination, or maybe its floating on top? Some of the fine detail is hair thin, and she's not sure if it isn't finer than that.
Kasumi goes to the front door and sees that its chained, but not deadlocked. She touches it and does not get shocked. She finds the switch for the lights, and turns them off, and goes to the back door and opens it up. In the Umbra, a gap opens in the ward. The Umbral wolves open the screen door... and then find that there's no knob on the outside in the Umbra. They sigh and everyone heads into the realm and goes inside the back door that way.
Everyone wanders around looking at things. The kitchen looks as if people left plates after a meal. The fridge milk is dated to two or three weeks away, which matches their estimate of the rotting food. There's no pictures or nicknacks. There are clothes and signs of people sleeping in other beds. There's nothing other than the marks on the wall that are out of place. Tillie peeks - the Umbra looks functionally the same, except with less transitory stuff.
Will is walking up one of the corridors, and finds that rugs have been pulled away and a trap door opened. This... was not how it was 5 minutes ago when he walked through. "Did someone open this?" Tillie: "no". Kasumi: "no". Finn: "no". Sinead: ... Um, hello, Sinead? There's no sign of her anywhere in the house. They try and smell her down the hole - there's a ladder anchored to concrete leading down into the dark. The patterns also swirl down the hole - there's a distinct feeling that they travel down the hole, its a sense of movement, though hard to define. They climb down in glabro. They sense before heading down ("lets go into the trap") - there's more Wyrm down the hole, but the same kind. There's the same/more sense for the other unnatural senses too.
The space at the bottom is very very dark - the small amount of light from the ladder well flickers as people move back and forth. Kasumi uses her smart phone as a torch and Finn lights up faerie lights. The patterns spill across the roof, down the walls and swirl into a circle in the centre of the room about 6' across that is free of patterns. Kasumi takes a couple of photos to send them to Cossack. There are two doors on the far side, one of which is opened, and a silhouette is moving inside. Finn sends his faerie lights into that room, and it is indeed Sinead. She has something in her hands -
- Sinead is moving through the house when she becomes convinced that she has been here before. In fact, she is here and looking for something specific. Its down here - she moves the carpet out the way and lifts the trapdoor, then heads down the ladder. It takes a few minutes of hunting through boxes, but she finds a river stone with patterns painted on it. It feels like a fetish, and so she attunes to it. It's called the Cracking Stone, and it was made to open Wyrm wards, but coincidentally it is good at opening anything locked -
Sinead looks up and sees the others. She suddenly can't remember how she got here - its like she tuned out and just travelled down here because it was familiar. They poke at the fetish a bit, because when Sinead says that its for opening wyrm wards, that sets off some alarm bells. Sinead is pretty heavily scanned for weirdness, but there's nothing out of the ordinary about her. It seems to have some sort of river spirit inside it, the markings on it ... well, honestly of anything they look a bit like Bunyip markings. This is something to take up later, maybe with the Elders.
The pack aren't keen on crossing the circle. Sinead frankly isn't sure that she didn't cross it already. She has a look at it and all the patterns that come down to... no, wait, things aren't coming down, they're going up from the circle. The circle is the centre of the whole lot.
Tillie scans for wyrm things and finds a strong signal in the other boxes around Sinead. She starts looking for it while the others go and look behind door #2. Oh, a pile of bodies. Oh, two piles of body. This room is pretty cold. The pack sigh and check them out - both piles are fully clothed, so they can maybe find some ID. The first pile, people have been stabbed in the left eye, throat and several points in the chest, and the corpses are somewhat dehydrated. It looks very ritualised. The second group have been stacked rather than piled, they have coins on their eyes, and don't appear to have been stabbed. They're not as cold, and.. wait, are they dead? Will tries to find a pulse to a background of his pack yelling about zombies and getting out of the room. Nooo. Oh no wait. Oh no... oh wait. There's one about every 20 seconds.
Tillie opens a box and sees a copper coloured mask. The second she sees it, she goes "nope" and closes the box. That'd be the metally sensation then - she takes the box out and puts it near the ladder to be taken with them.
Kasumi says that coins on the eyes is a common thing in a number of cultures - paying the ferryman is the greek myth, but it crops up all over the place (because it stops the dead person's eyes popping open). So. They seem nearly dead and have had a dead thing done to them. Ok.
Sinead yells a warning as a figure drifts past the storage room they are in and heads for the other room. Its a hooded figure, dark coloured and not really touching the ground. ("Shut the fuck up and kill cunt, versus shut the fuck up and kill, cunt."). Sinead runs out of the room, intending to sneak up behind this figure, and then finds that it has a friend she couldn't see from inside the store room. Up close she can see it has no face inside the cowl, just darkness, as well as long pointy finger-claws. Various people remember the whole "plaster in the wounds" at the Fergussons. She flips to crinos and blocks the door. It swipes at her, but does nothing.
Kasumi looks out the door and - . Finn looks at Kasumi funny as she goes to crinos and snarls at him. Will goes to crinos and shoves his way past her to engage the enemy. Finn opts to grab Kasumi because he doesn't like the way she's staring and him. ("but what if its a human corpse?"). Sinead smashes with her claws at the floating cowl thing in front of her but they scratch along this thing like its stone - very similar to the gargoyles. She's sliced back in return and manages to roll with it, but the cowled things are fast. Will crunches his opponent with teeth, and it starts breaking up.
Kasumi bites Finn solidly on the shoulder and tears flesh and muscle away. Finn resists frenzying and opts to use his psychic powers, trying to mindspeak Kasumi. He does extremely well and smacks hard into the mentality posessing her, knocking it away. Kasumi comes back to herself... except herself is in crinos, half pinned, with a mouthful of werewolf blood. She manages to keep it together and not frenzy.
Sinead bites her opponent, crunching chunks of stone off. The darkness under the cowl turns to her -. Will toys with shoving the cowl into the circle - it will either help or hinder them. Yep, that's the spectrum of options. Tillie winds up and smashes the one she was fighting into dust and fragments of stone - again, like the gargoyles did also. Sinead shakes her head and is a bit confused about the 1/3 second she was missing. Finn is trapped inside his room, so he howls - a rallying cry, inspiring his packmates to fight on with greater fury.
Sinead shakes her head and leaps over to the other stone thing and smashes it mightily. It grabs Will by the shoulder and leans in - a blast of cold, death smelling air lashes him ("yes, like dementors, but backward - but I'll point out, prior art"). Its not terribly overwhelming. Tillie powers into the stone thing too, and then Will bites its head clean off. Apart from the sound of settling dust, the room goes quiet. ("I'd like to revisit that 'burning the house down'").
Tillie has a concern that killing power to the house might wake all the dead and neardead people up. They were all cold but not really decayed at all - they look freshly dead, but they are not leaking. Both groups seem palid, but not in a "drained of all their blood kind of way". If they push really hard next to the wounds, dark blood starts to ooze out.
They head up the ladder (struggling with a couple of boxes of occult paraphrenalia and an evil mask) until they get phone reception, and then call to the caern. The pack gives Cossack a call and a run down of what they have to deal with now. He mentions that The Alternative should be there soon and asks some questions about how urgent things are (did they cause police to arrive?), how many bodies and -
Another cowled figure appears in front of Tillie in the loungeroom, and she flings the phone to one side. ("hello?"). People come running through the house to try and help. Kasumi runs to the front door, wrenches it open (in case The Alternative is on their way) and changes to crinos. Will flips to glabro and runs up the corridor, followed by Finn who shoves past to try and grapple it. Sinead takes the other corridor, and heads up from behind Tillie. Tillie (using Becc as a proxy due to baby holding) obliterates the floating cowl thing, filling the room with dust. She shifts back to homid and picks up the phone ("hello?"). "Make that 3 stone monks". "You should get out".
Despite some concerns they will be pursued out of the house by the cowled stone things, they head across the road and hide out in the park in homid. The general feeling is that these things are almost certainly demons, like the gargoyle-like things that have attacked them previously.
About 10 minutes later two cars show up. The first is a fancy car, and Ion Apostolovna and Robert Red-Dust-Plain get out, and the second is a group of people Lost Prophets don't really know. Ion sees them and there are introductions - the only garou are The Alternative, led by Elaine RDI. Robert is very interested in the magical things that they have found, the others have more interest in the demons. Robert looks at the mask and agrees that its a bad thing. He looks at the Cracking Stone with Sinead's approval, and agrees that its a fetish, and it looks like a bunyip one at a first glance. No one knows why mages would have it.
Ion says that Cossack rang as they approached, and he'll be sending some people to help collect material and take it away. Its maybe an hour or two til dawn, it would be nice to be away by then. People are happy to have physical evidence but less happy that the mages are so established. Will conveys his theory that the big fight in Braybrook led to these guys vanishing somehow - Elaine looks unsure, as she doesn't regard what happened there as much of a victory. It was almost a sucessful trap of all the garou involved. Maybe the mages ran away when it didn't work? They need to go back to the hospital too - Kasumi says they need to get her glasses. Ion thinks it stinks of trap here - layers of trap?
The garou head inside - Ion goes via his car and gets a case out from a hiding spot in the boot. From that he takes a long sword, and follows people in. Lost Prophets show people around - at one point two more demons appear, but the large group of werewolves deal with them (Ion's sword is indeed a fetish as speculated, the blade turns to shadow and goes through the walls without doing damage to it). Finn speculates that the almost dead people are resources kept on ice.
The garou get all the bodies out, and then start taking boxes. There are enough people to defend the carrying people when random demons appear again - Will takes a chance of sense of true form, which doesn't give him anything other than "not alive". Another pack member senses unnatural - strong sense of cold, some sense of metal on the cowls, which is the opposite order to the walls of the house.
There is some discussion between elders here and Cossack on the phone about what to do with stuff. Ion and Robert were going to take it under Hidden Green's wing, but Cossack suggests that maybe somewhere independant would be good. The final decision is to take it to a property in Sunbury that Sleeping Lore have access to. Coincidentally, 5 minutes later Marion and Alex show up with a 3tonne truck and the keys for said property. Some stuff is loaded into Elaine's car, some into the truck.
The boxes they are loading appear to be packed deliberately, as if for moving. Finn points out that at least three of the boxes have portuguese writing ("I told you they order them from amazon") and seem to making reference to San Pao, which is in Brazil. The mask is packed in peanuts, its not just stored. Its plain coppery looking with eye holes and no mouth hole, and with no straps to hold it onto your face. Hmm
Generally the feeling is to rescue the live people first and maybe bring them around with a variety of motives from "because its the right things to do" to "maybe they have some info". Ion and Robert reckon this is under control and head off, leaving the more junior garou to clean up. The garou open the umbral door, which opens a hole in the invisibility wards. They look downstairs and see that the cellar does exist there, and a fuzzy representation of the sigils and patterns exist there.
The truck and car head off, giving Lost Prophets a lift back to their car near the hospital, and then everyone heads to the Sunbury property. More speculation about why the bats and the trail right to the house - maybe it was a distraction from something worse? What could have been worse than that house and the bodies and artifacts tho? Maybe it was a lingering alarm system and the house was just unoccupied?
What are they going to do about the bodies? Adam in Steel Hunters is an EMT and the closest to a doctor they have - Tillie is worried they will wake up now they've been removed from the murder room. It does mean talking to Scott tho, so there's some resistance from Lost Prophets.
Looking at the people and trying to get a feel for any similarities between them all, they don't appear to be a specific group, but there's no one in any fancy clothes, more practical (tshirts, jeans) or work clothes (boots, tough wearing pants).
Once they arrive at the Sunbury property, it turns out to be an abandoned caravan park just out of town. Alex jumps out with keys and they drive in, but the truck can't get in very far so the cars are parked and left. The caravans are mostly still here, but the grafitti and broken glass suggests that both it has been closed for a while and that the locals are not treating it with much respect.
The garou haul bodies down to the far end and ransack through their id. They come from a mix of suburbs across the north west of Melbourne. ("we could just leave them back in their houses" "on their doorstep?" "In their beds!"). With IDs they can look through the missing person lists and try and get an idea of when they were snatched. Tilie is still pretty concerned that the nine dead bodies are going to start to rot and wants to keep them cold, the others have more concern about the eight live ones. ("Should we remove the coins and try and wake them up?" "They might die" "They might wake up and provide an eye witness account" " 'No Cossack, there were only seven live ones'"). There did seem to be an urge to question them if possible - but maybe it could be done after letting them return to their lives, but on the other hand Elaine says that she'd rather the police didn't get reports like "a man in black robes came up and magicked me".
The stuff is all... esoteric to them really. They can list it and check it for wyrm, but they don't really know what to do with it. It needs someone with some knowledge of magical things.
Its getting on toward dawn when three of the pack look up at an alarm noise. Kasumi says "Crap, that's my car alarm". They run down towards the cars while Sinead and Finn say "what?". The garou can see that there's another car parked in behind their car and some figures are carrying boxes from the truck and Elaine's car. They pick up the pace and consider changing into crinos form, but decide to stick to glabro. The figures seem human, and they don't recognise them as being other garou (not that it would be honourable for Hidden Green to do so, nor that the Lost Prophets would make that suggestion out loud).
One of the figures looks up and jestures toward Kasumi, who catches fire all over. The smell of burning glabro hair prevails without. Tillie runs toward that figure, yelling - between that and the burst of fire The Alternative, Sinead and Finn come running. Other figures turn toward the approaching garou. The garou close, fire bursts out near Tillie, but isn't close enough to hurt her. Tillie then leaves the ground, running ineffectually in space. Will immediately goes to Crinos and frenzies. ("oh well, that's what the Get is for - go into death rage and cause a distraction").
One of the figures pulls a sword and steps out to face Will. There are 4 figures, all dressed in black, two in coats. Will smashes at the sword bearer. Tillie changes to crinos form, and the sudden doubling in weight is apparently more than the telekinetic can manage. She drops and hits the ground, but not as solidly as if it had been a straight fall. Kasumi runs up the guy who set her on fire and punches him hard in the solar plexis with all her forward momentum, winding him badly. For her troubles, Kasumi is picked up and thrown away into a caravan which shudders considerably. She's a bit stunned.
Will and the sword guy strike each other at the same time, Will is badly wounded but he tears holes in his opponent as well. Tillie is hit by a large rock that comes flying out of the darkness. She picks it up and hurls it back at one of them. Kasumi bursts into crinos, shakes off her stunning, and runs back into the fray.
Fire bursts around Will and the guy he was facing. Will drops nearly dead and in homid form to the ground, and his opponent similarly drops, on fire. Tillie is not picked up, but is hit with an invisible blow into the truck.
Sinead and Finn come running in, with Elaine and Tony Cho Mi right behind them. Finn opts to not use Call of the Wyld given their proximity to the town. Tillie closes with one of the guys and swipes him hard, making him stagger backward. He clearly decides to book it, and flies up into the air. Kasumi comes running in, and strikes an invisible wall of force, staggering her slightly, and losing all of her forward momentum. ("we _do_ want to know why they keep starting fires!").
(AAARRGH. Recording didn't work past this point, doing it from memory).
Tillie decides that flying away is not an option, and leaps 32 feets straight up, grabs the flying guy and plunges into the ground, killing him. Sinead heals Will, bringing him back to consciousness and near health. Finn engages one of the remaining two and the fourth one sets everyone on fire again killing his compatriot and annoying the garou. Kasumi limits their retreat by shanking the car. The last guy tries to fly off, Finn tries to knock him sideways and sent him spinning, Will uses his Halt the coward's flight gift,to slow him down and Tillie leaps up and grabs him by the ankle, dragging him down to the ground.
The guy is still struggling, but Sinead grabs his arm and slams into the ground expertly. ("I don't feel good about putting out people's eyes" "They always say 'just the tip'"). Finn does a quick check for other opponents in the car and sees none, but he does become aware just how much their crinos-type-behaviour is visible from the roadway in the increasing dawn light. Its only a matter fo time before someone drives past.
The dropped sword flies through the air and stabs Tillie in one shoulder much to Sinead's surprise as it goes past her eyes. Will activates his persuasion gift in preparation of intimidating this guy. Tillie punches the still aware mage in the head on the basis that if it wasn't him making the sword fly, it might as well be. Sinead pulls his arm backward and breaks it, knocking him out. The rest of The Alternative come running in from behind, boggling at the mess everywhere.
Will pulls the sword out ("Its my sword, it stabbed me!") and waves it around. Its not magical as best they can tell. The garou start dragging the bodies into the truck, adding them to the pile. There's a general "these guys are probably mages" discussion, (and sense unnatural matches the metally, flickery and fast sense that they have garnered today) and Elaine rolls her eyes and makes a phone call. Kasumi tries to get an idea of what they were grabbing, but it looks mostly like "whatever was closest or easiest to remove". They were loading it into their own SUV, which is kind of speccy.
They gag and hood the captured mage. Will keeps sense unnatural active on him with the plan if that if metal or cold senses spike he will take steps. Elaine walks back and suggests they call Cossack, while still on the phone to someone about what is going on. This they now do, and there is some back and forthing between Elaine, Tillie, Cossack and Felix (on Elaine's phone). The compromise reached is that the stuff and the SUV is going back with Elaine, the bodies are going in the truck and Lost Prophets are going to take the live mage are going in the truck and being taken to another location for questioning. It does take some actual negotiation between the Elders - both groups are pretty keen to investigate stuff.
Some questions about how they were tracked here - they check out the Cracking Stone and can't find any sort of tracery. Other stuff is also quickly scanned and they don't think that they've been bugged. Maybe they could track the mask or something - there's been some indication that mages have an interest in fetishes and an ability to find them in some way. The rest of the stuff isn't spiritually significant in a strong way tho there are some glimmers of wyrm, wyld, magic and demonic.
Tillie ransacks the mages for ID or stuff. She finds no ID or money, but one of them has a small dagger, and the others have some amulet looking things. There is a moment of tenseness when Elaine insists that stuff is the stuff they are taking, but Tillie concedes it, but they are keeping the sword. ("Its got my blood on it, its mine.")
When the pack get to the remote farmhouse northwest of Melton, the sun is well and truly up. Cossack, Emma and Ion are there. The Elders get them to drag their captive inside. Cossack says they want the Lost Prophets to guard the outside, in case this goes horribly wrong and someone or something comes for them. Tillie wants one of the pack present to watch the questioning so they can learn a lot. Cossack says no, he's not keen - Tillie pushes a little and he asks her to talk to him about it later. Lost Prophets set up a perimeter in the Umbra and Realm, noting as they do that the gauntlet is a little bit low here. Finn and Will are in the Umbra, the others are in the Realm, and two people are peeking back and forth between the realms.
In about 15m there was a sudden big spike of the cold sensation from within the house to the pack member sensing unnatural. Tillie sticks her head in as she hears Emma say "woah" and Cossack opens the door saying "I'll just get - oh". The others come in and find that where the mage was tied to the chair is a partially melted mass of flesh and bone. Extra boney protrusions have erupted out of it and flesh has run like wax. Emma asks them to sense unnatural on the spot. They confirm it has the demonic sense that they have picked up before. The only information that the Elders gained was his name - Benedict (retroactively making it clear that Benedict was his name, not anything else's name).
Sinead speculates that maybe its not that the mages controlling the demons, but the demons controlling the mages. That is certainly an interesting - horrifying - question.
Ion talks about the attacks from the floating stone monks in the house - they weren't very coherent. If they had been planned and eight monks had attacked individuals on their own then it would have potentially been bad, but there didn't seem to be any plan to them.
They talk about what they did get - the mage spoke in a european accent, but Ion says it might be that he's spent some time there rather than he came from there.
Cossack is in favour of burning the mage house down, but Ion says that its a matter for discussion. Lost Prophets point out they have some photos of it ("don't drop box them").
Will says maybe the bats were trying to help - even tho they were banes, maybe they had some will of their own to help the garou in some fashion. No one is too enthused about this idea of bad spirits helping them out, but its not totally overridden.
Cossack sends them back to the hospital now after Emma heals the pack that are most badly injured. The elders are left with the pile of mage fondue to clean up while the pack trundle back to Greenvale.
("its funny because Damien's recording is just going to have a bunch of Richard meowing")
They park somewhere further away this time and step into the Umbra. People peek back and keep and eye on the realm. They head to the boomerang building again. On the 3rd floor there is a faint faint wyrm sense about where the bats were, but they can't spot much else. The Umbra has a pervasive wyrm sense which makes it hard to pick anything out, ("I made a tactical error, I was lower than the cheese") but they can sense something like bats.
(Some discussion about the difference between demons and the dead - someone told them that demons are seperate from ghosts early on.) There's no signs that anyone was avoiding this area particular - the grafitti is about this dense everywhere. ("Really, the goths come here to do weird science stuff?").
The pack are starting to think that maybe night time is the requirement to see weird things. They opt to try the second floor - Angela described it as a place where there are sometimes ghosts, so they decide to give it a shot. There is a the faintest whisper of a cold sensation in one of the wards .. in the realm. There's no matching sense in the Umbra at all, which is weird - the two worlds are perhaps not compatible? Again with coming back in the evening so they can be in the realm. ("why are we trying to find a ghost?" "... so we can say we've seen a ghost?"). Everyone is still a bit confused and concerned about why the bats led them straight to the house. Was it a trick? A trap? An alarm? Spirits being stupidly literal?
They decide that Kasumi will sneak in now, while Will keeps an eye out for security guards, horny teenagers, grafitti artists and tobacco salesmen. Bloop, she appears in the realm. The room probably held 6 to 8 beds that could be curtained off, judging by the wrecked remnants. The windows overlook some areas that might have been gardens before it was abandoned, with a bit of a view over some bushland. She senses for unnatural taint and finds that it is much easier without having to reach through the gauntlet. She feels something like a current, a cold intrusion in warm water. It leads from next to where a bed might have been, toward the window, and then out to the corridor. Its whispy, and not active, but she can certainly feel it. Its not quite like the demon sense, but akin to it. There's some thought that perhaps if this was a dementia ward, this was something that someone did again and again while they were alive... and then kept doing it after they were dead? Something like repeating the activity would make a spirit? Maybe they died slowly while repeating this simple activity, wearing a path into the lands of the dead... depressing, but frankly the whole place is really.
Tillie decides to summon Boobook and ask him about things, given the link between owls and death. Sinead conducts the rite despite mood breaking silliness from the players. Her arrives after a short time and lands on Sinead ("my hair is full of secrets. And owls"). (Some discussion about spirit geases, outstanding and what happens to them when you die, and people's ability to steal you geas and do it better than you to make you look bad). They ask about what they can feel in the realm - is it a spirit? No. Is it a reflection? Yes. Can they talk to it? Unsure. Not manifest. Can they make it manifest? No. Will it manifest? Yes. Night time? yes. Is there anything else here in the hospital? Yes. Finn remembers that darkness is stronger for ghosts, but Saturday night was Beltane, which could be said to be functionally Halloween/Samhain for the southern hemisphere. Thinking about it, Angela said something about it being a particular night that she went - Friday night tho, but perhaps that corresponds too. ("We have a word for 'less strong' - its weaker." "I doed it! Last night!"). They ask him about finding Angela's glasses, and Boobook says the obligation was given to them ("you had a hamish look"). ("you can't break my finger, its my birthday. Also I need that finger for flipping you off").
Kasumi changes to lupus and sniffs around mundanely. She can smell people - possibly Angela - in the nearby area, mostly teenagers by the smell of acne and desperation. The smell of security guards seems to be mostly on the ground and first floor - like they don't really bother going through the rest of the building in any meaningful sense. Kasumi finds Angela's glasses at a cross-corridor point, and they appear to be undamaged. They get them out of the hospital and back to the car ok, and Kasumi sends an overly cute SMS to Angela about returning them.
The pack check in with the Sept and tell them what they found (nothing). The Alternative succesfully stored stuff, Hand of Lore have started trying to sort their bodies out. People some sleep and rest while waiting for night.
When they wake up, Will has a shiny new battlescar from a sword stab and Tillie has some speckled extra scars. Kasumi has a reply for Angela, asking for them to go to a particular address, but not come up and knock - message her and she'll come out to get them. This they do on the way out to the hospital. When they get to the street and message her, she comes out from the shadows and nervously takes them, thanking them but obviously not wanting to really engage with the five psychopaths.
The pack return to the hospital again. The night does seem to transform the site into a much spookier location - windows like staring eyes, shadows moving on their own. They look back at the 3rd floor in the realm and check it out again - there is a higher than usual wyrm sense here, and from the realm they can sense a very very faint metally sense that Will couldn't detect earlier.
On the second floor, there is no immediate sign of a ghost, and the place feels much as it did earlier ("ITs probably midnight" "Do ghosts pay attention to daylight savings?"). They wait around surreptiously to see if anything happens. At no point do they see anything, but sensing using their gifts does show some disturbances. Its almost like they can see something, but only with the gift active. They try and communicate, but there's no real response to that attempt, even when sensing the room. Given their idea of what might have happened, they are probably trying to get the attention of a ghost with dementia. They try bleeding on things, following the same path as the ghost did with no change. Sinead tries putting furniture in the pathway, but there's no change to the sense of cold at all.
In the end, they hang out til 1am, and then decide that there's nothing really significant to see. The bats and ghosts remain a mystery for the moment.
Hidden Green report back about the stuff they took. Some of it appears to be ritual components, similar to some of the stuff that gets used in werewolf rituals. Most of the other stuff just appears to be paraphrenalia - not inherently magical or anything. There's something odd about the pendants taken from the two mages that attacked them, they appear to be something, but not sure what. They are small identical golden disks with symbols on them, but no one is sure what the symbols are. There's only a small sense of wyrm to them. No one really wants to test them out to see what they might do. Lost Prophets organise to see them, and confirm that they have the metally sense that indicates magic: it seems local (its not a tracking device), and not very strong.
In terms of people, the dead people are vanished by Sleeping Lore. The not quite dead people were revived and interviewed and questioned. Five of the eight people reported something coming out of the sky at them, the other three don't recall anything. They were all out and about at night on their own. The garou suggest it might be gargoyles grabbing them and then mages zapping them? On the other hand, they've seen demons do mind control things directly too. The mask is going to be destroyed. The Cracking Stone gets to stay with Lost Prophets - reward for finding the whole place in the first place.
Overall, people seem to accept Will's proposal about the connection between the Braybrook attack and the house. There's no firm A caused B line of causality, but the connection between the two seems reasonable. Sinead's theory that maybe the mages are controlled by the demons gets some discussion too - it doesn't seem impossible, because that's often what happens when humans mess around in the Umbra, and it might explain the demon-inspired death in the interrogation.
Renown is awarded! Kasumi challenges for rank 2 [preemptively redacted].
The pack get on with life, including spending a week doing guard duty at the sept. Sinead learns the rite of binding from Emma, spending a lot of time at the caern. She chats to Emma and Chris about Spirit Awakening - she thinks about getting a spin drum to help with that process, but doesn't make a start yet. Will looks into prices to fly to Ireland - its about $1500 round trip almost any time of the year. In terms of garou time, he learns about rituals from Ends-the-Quiet, and specifically the Rite of Contrition. ("That genealogy rite could be useful if anyone was a BUNYIP" "What, I have to go to ireland because I'm a bunyip?"). Tillie spends her garou time at the caern, mostly in the Umbra and practicing a lot of spirit combat, and her non-garou time at the gym, as does Finn, who spends the rest of his non-Garou time desperately trying to catch up to his uni work. Kasumi improves her work-attendence record, and spends her time at the caern learning how to fight, or at least learning how to take damage and keep going. ("Tillie will indeed show you how to get beaten" "And Ian will show you how to beat Tillie - 'be somewhere else! Then come back with an axe!'")
Sinead is having trouble getting in contact with one of her suppliers called Snuffie. He's not answering sms and a day or two later, his phone is going to messagebank rather than being answered. ("I reckon its Ion, messing with us"). Getting rather suspicious by this point, she tries questing stone ritual to find him - but doesn't really get a response. ("Last time this happened, they'd been eaten"). ("I dunno - front dick?").
Sinead goes clubbing and finds someone else that knows Snuffie too. She approaches a girl called Jean, who looks briefly panicked on Sinead's approach, but relaxes when its clear that only talking is on the cards. They hold a conversation mostly in the girls toilets. She hasn't seen Snuffie since the weekend, last Friday - they were meant to catch up on Monday and did not. She knows he lives in Northcote somewhere. Jean thinks that he's probably been busted - that's the most likely outcome. ("I still think its Ion or Irena getting back at us in a trivial way"). Jean thinks Jack will be here later and he might know more. Sinead has no idea who Jack is, and ask Jean to introduce them. Jean asks if Sinead has anything left to sell anyone - she's feeling a bit pressed about rent. (Some contemplation of continuously stealing from the guys that broke into their house). Sinead figures she has a job and can manage, and sells what 3/4 of what she has at near cost to Jean out of the goodness of her heart.
A couple of hours later Jean introduces Sinead to Jack, a very tall and thin man. Jack spoke to someone called Cat who said that Snuffie thought someone was muscling into one of the places he sold at in Northcote, and he was going to go and sort it out. ("Oh my god, dealer drama, get out now. Abort. abort."). That was late Friday he thinks or maybe Saturday. Sinead seriously considers running away, but decides that she should probably look into it a bit further.
Tillie gets a phone call from Nick Kanellakos from Scars Atoning. She is somewhat suspicious, but it appears that he is just making a social call. Nick asks if she is free to have a drink tomorrow night. Somewhere in the CBD. Somewhere busy. He's going mental, its so quiet out at Scars Atoning, and he happens to be passing through. She says she'll meet him at Flinders St tomorrow night and they can find somewhere.
Kasumi is at home fiddling around on her laptop when her special netspider pc beeps and an error message flashes on the screen - "Unauthorised access, permission denied". She tries to look into the Umbra in case something is going on, but the gauntlet is just too high. She pokes around on the pc itself, and can't find anything obvious - its all malware-proofed as best she can, she scans stuff anyway, but nothing looks out of place. She goes all Harry Potter and opens notepad and types into it, but there's no response. She makes a note to get Sinead to come and look at her pc or something.
Will gets a call from Harry, who has got him any number of heavy lifting jobs. He asks Will if he wants some work today, and when Will indicates his assent, Harry tells Will to be at the MCG in 45 minutes. This Will does. When he arrives it turns out that there was some difficulty getting deliveries to the G for the last day or so, so now they need to unload and distribute a bunch of food around the venue. Half way through the day this is complicated by people showing up for the game. Will slaves for nearly 12 hours for $300 and 4 mixed 6 packs of beer - the glorious life of a defender of Gaia.
Finn and Tillie are at the gym, as are Marion and Peter. Peter and Finn are working together as they are about the same level of strength, while Tillie and Marion are lifting much heavier things. Finn notices that there are two very hefty guys at the front desk, talking with Fi, who works the front desk in the middle of the day. What catches Finn's eye is Glenn coming out, glancing at paper they were writing on, and shaking his head. The body language starts to get a bit confrontational, and Tillie notices Finn noticing. The two guys are young, but without much of a neck. Things get a bit shouty and Finn, Tillie and Marion wander over. They hear Glenn say "No mate, word gets around and I am not having that sort of trouble here.". Glenn sees them coming and gives them a little headshake, but the two guys turn around and see the two heavily built garou... and Finn... looking at them. "Fuck it, didn't really want to come here anyway." They leave, and try to slam the door, but its on one of those hydrolic springs. This makes them madder, and one of them kicks the shit out of the sandwich board sign out the front.
Tillie comes over and asks what that was about and Glenn says those guys have joined a couple of small gyms, caused trouble, started fights, etc. As he said, word gets around. They turn around and look at Marion who looks concerned and mouths "wyrm" at them before heading back to Peter, who has started coming over to see what is going on.
Finn and Tillie head out after the two meatheads, cross the road and follow them sort of surreptiously. They try and sense for supernatural influences at a distance. There's some sense of wyrm but they are too far away to get much idea of how much or how. Finn has the idea of getting the forms back to see their names - they can't call Marion because their phones are in lockers. Finn runs back, leaving Tillie to sneak along after the guys. When he gets there, Peter and Marion are having an awkward conversation, so he speaks to Fi. He asks to see the forms and she just stares at him, saying "Not really, I don't think I should". Finn says he thinks he knows them, and they might be more trouble than they've been. She reaches into the bin and asks who he thinks they might be - "er. John?" "no".
Finn concedes that he has no idea what he doing in terms of persuading Fi, and heads off, tring to guess where Tillie might have gone.
Meanwhile, Tillie trying to be subtle about following the two guys as they head south. They appear to be about 20 years old. Both guys are very muscled in weirdly ways, like all their muscles are built up. Their clothes are either deliberately picked to show off their muscles, or they've both grown a lot recently. Suspicion starts to grow. I mean, you know, more. They walk for about 20 minutes and stop and talk on a corner, then split up. One of them waits at a nearby train stop while the other heads out of the city further. Tillie keeps following, and Finn spots her walking along, joining them.
He walks along for another 30m or so, then heads through streets. He doesn't appear to be avoiding them, just zigzaging along through Collingood. They follow him to a house on Easey St and take careful note of which house he goes into. Tillie and Finn decide to leave this for today, because she has stuff to do tonight.
When Finn gets back to the gym to get his stuff, he chats with Peter a bit. As part of the conversation Peter asks if he wants to come along with him and Marion and Glenn and Amy to dinner. Its up Nicholson street, apparently a vegetarian place. Peter's not really sure what is involved - he's surprised that Marion is a vegetarian. Finn says he doesn't really know while mentally thinking about Marion tearing things limb from limb. He toys with bringing one of the pack members, but decides to see if one of his friends from last year wants to come along ("Do not use your gifts to pick up some random girl and take her to a werewolf dinner"). Sarah McGilligy does indeed have the evening free, at least if it involves Finn buying her dinner.
Finn meets Sarah at Uni (she lives in College) and travels with her up to the resteraunt, which turns out to be a new cafe rather than anywhere super fancy. Peter and Marion are there, Marion seems surprised but not horrified to see Finn. Glenn and Amy come in not far behind, and introductions are made. Food comes quickly and is delicious, booze is fairly cheap and also flows freely. Half way through the meal, Peter asks how Finn and Marion know one another - Finn says the gym, kind of, but they met via a mutual friend at the university. Marion says "yes, I often went to the uni. To busk." Finn expresses surprise that Marion does any busking, and he enthuses at her to try the open mike nights he goes to. Finn noticed Peter is spending more time watching than participating, especially when Marion and Finn are interacting.
Finn decides to subtooly ask him, which he does by pulling Peter away to help him with drinks. Finn asks if everything is alright. Peter says he's fine. Well, he was a bit surprised at how fast people were leaping up with the guys this morning. Finn shrugs and they head back. Phew, nearly had an emotional male interaction. Back at the table, the topic stays with the guys this morning - Glenn says that they joined a gym in East Melbourne and caused a ruckus in a few days, and stuff got broken. And then another one on Bridge Rd and got in a fight. So, word got around the secret gym running conpiracy and he just doesn't want them around, given they are clearly steroided out of their brains. He seems a bit depressed by the topic to be honest.
Kasumi gives Sinead a call and explains about her spirit computer issue ("I have proximate knowledge of many spirits") and asks if she can come have a look. Sinead agrees to pop up as soon as she get a chance. Sinead rocks up at the neat, well presented apartment in her mismatched, holey socks, reeking of barrista sweat, and feels a bit out of place. Sinead checks out the pc and shrugs - she peeks into the Umbra despite the high gauntlet and observes. She is high up in a weaver structure. Everything is neon and shiny. She can just see the pc, its a little weaver node, with the netspider sitting on top of it. ("It's connected to the wall by a cable"). Nothing seems terribly out of place as far as she can tell. Kasumi fiddles with it a bit in the realm, and there might be a little bit more activity, but nothing startling. Sinead tries her sensing gifts - she can sense a lingering gnosisy sense on the network card that was the most recent piece put into the computer as part of the geas. There's no more wyrm than anything else in the city, but there's a faint sense of wyld amongst the weaver. In fact, if it wasn't so weavery, it wouldn't be a notable amount of wyld. It could have been a wyld spirit of some sort interacting with the net spider? They fiddle it for a bit, and decide to bind the net spider lurking here to the pc to try and interact with it - Kasumi knows its name, which helps.
("I didn't know what a spider grinder was" "Its an app for spiders to pick up...").
On successfully finishing the binding, a window opens and the two garou can interact with the spider. Kasumi asks about the anomoly two days ago, where access was denied. There was an unauthorised access. What tried to access? Unclear. A spray of characters and such is dumped to the screen for 10s or so. However, they are able somehow (diff 8, and you got 3??) to pick out some meaning from it - Sinead because she has the spirit speech gift, and Kasumi because she recognises some of the technical information. Its certainly not human information, but there is order there.
Sinead gets information about a spirit whose nature is weaver at its heart, but there is other dynamic stuff wrapped around it as part of its nature - its not something that has been glued together, its a spirit that can make sense of nonsense, like a weaver spirit that can deal with chaotic information. Maybe like a search engine of some sort? ("Its the google indexer" "I'm pretty sure we'd know if it had become a sentient spirit"). Kasumi gets a different, but complementary sense. Something that moves through dangerous places. The netspider didn't really understand what it was - the other spirit approached and was trying to get at it in some fashion, and the net spider got into a slap fight with it and the new spirit fled. It wanted something is the only other impression the net spider can convey.
It sounds ungood. Maybe its just a random coincidental spirit interest. Or maybe it could be something that is seeking out specific weaver things, or maybe even signs that the garou have been here.
Kasumi queries about whether she can do anything to strengthen the system. Yes. ... what can she do to strengthen the system? ("I require more minerals. I require more vespene gas"). More order. More pieces. More order. Anti virus? Defrag the drive? Fill it up with nice indexed information? Kasumi probably needs to talk to someone better about computer security, especialy spiritual things - maybe Elaine RDI could be worth asking, she seemed to be technological au fait. ("At least its not Scott." "Is Scott a glasswalker?" "Yes. GLASSWALKER AHROUN!". "He's a knob jockey is what he is").
Meanwhile, at the Flinders St clocks, Nick is 15 minutes late when he shows up on his bike. He apologises vaguely and then asks where they are going. Tillie has no firm plans, so basically Nick wants to go somewhere busy and loud - he can't drink as much as planned, he has to ride home later. They find somewhere insanely loud and full of people (http://www.robotsushi.com/). ("Somewhere with blood on the floor." "Elephant and wheelbarrow then?" "Oh, no, not that much blood"). Nick doesn't appear to have any ulterior motive other than to get a night away from the serenity of a bush caern - he wants to be where he is, but that doesn't mean he doesn't miss nightlife. They chat a bit about garou life, things that have happened at Scars Atoning. The Fianna are slowly buying property nearby, mostly so they can get some kinfolk in locally - some have moved to Ballarat, some to other small nearby towns. They're trying to be subtle about it, so it doesn't become a topic of conversation. She asks about the fetishes they found - Nick says that horn summons banes was destroyed, he doesn't know what happened to the other thing.
Tillie tells him about the mage stuff they've found - demons, houses, bats, fear and confusion. Eventually he has to head off, but he says that he'd like to do it more - they can say its for interpack cooperation or something. They should come out too, just to say hi from time to time. Tillie says she'll bring the children, it can be an excursion. For a moment, Nick looks at her with horror before he realises she means the rest of her pack.
Meanwhile, things are wrapping up at the resteraunt, but Sarah and Finn want to go out. Marion and Peter pike out and head off, but they convince Glenn and Amy to come out for kareoke.
Tillie is walking home when she spots a guy staring at her as he walks her direction. He is definitely giving her the eye, and he glances around as he approaches. He says "excuse me, is your name Matilda?" Tillie says "maybe" He says that he is Mandras Sky-watcher, an elder at Reconciliation. He is mid to late 30s, scruffy hair pulled back, jeans, shirt. Mandras says that he recognised her from a description given to him. He asks if she has some time to talk, and Tillie takes him into a nearby bar. Mandras seems a bit skittish of all the people there, but he leans in close and asks how they found out about the caern being attacked. Tillie gives him the eye a bit and uses a couple of gifts on him - he doesn't sense as wyrm, and he has the typical mix of wyld and weaver and spirit energy that she's picked up from garou (maybe a bit higher wyld than usual? Country garou? Lupus? He's certainly skittish in this crowded pub). She says "Our totem" in garou tongue, and he blinks and looks around to see if anyone heard, and then continue in English, asking about who their totem. He seems considerably interested in the contact they had with bunyip spirits, and how they got to the caern rather than the caern itself. He asks Tillie why she thinks it was them, rather than someone closer. She really doesn't know. He asks if they are trying to find out about it, and Tillie says she did, but she hit lots of dead ends. He seems happy with her answers, and says that he knows answers are hard to come by. He thanks her for her time and leaves.
Will gets home and sheds grimy clothes as he heads to the shower. He's in there still when Tillie gets in - she can hear someone banging on the back door (not a euphamism). She asks if Will is expecting anyone, and flicks the curtain aside. Marion is out there, and she's covered in blood. Tillie wrenches the door open, and Marion is drenched in blood. "Is that yours?" Marion reaches down and drags Peter in, also covered in blood. "Is it his?" "What?" Marion seems a bit dazed - she says there were some guys, and they tried to shirtfront them, and... then something happened. Peter is alive, but he has a hell of a bruise. She says she was out with Finn and so she came to find Finn for some help. Tillie calls the caern and gets Graeme ("Marion. Blood and gore everywhere. Unconscious cop") who seems almost as dazed as Marion. He wants to know more details and then he's confused why Marion is at their house. Tillie asks him to send someone to babysit while they try and find out what's happening.
Will "Not a Bunyip" Jackson takes off and tries to track Marion's path - its not hard, the smell of fresh warm blood leading right to their house is quite simple to backtrack on. Tillie swears, and starts calling people to come here while hosing the back path and down the alley way a bit. Kirsty Surfs-the-Train appears in their hallway, and asks what's happening. Marion is just sitting on a chair in the kitchen, staring into the distance. Kirsty kicks her into action, getting her in the shower. Will traces the path along a slightly winding route to an alley about 300m away or so. There's a loud raucous party on at the end of the alley, and two people looking down the alley going "What's that?" at the dark trickle down the drain. Will barks and when that doesn't work, growls deep and scary and prowls forward. "Brad. Brad! BRAD!" says the woman dragging the guy away from Will's approach. They don't think its a wolf, but they do go out on the road and keep a car between them. She wants to ring into the party and warn people there's a rabid dog inside, he rings and tries to yell in the phone as they head off at speed.
Will looks carefully inside the alley. Its pretty dark and the loud party has covered any screaming. There are some windows facing in, but they're dark. There's blood everywhere and gobbets stuck to the walls. ("how do we clean this up?" "Fire". "Bleach that is on fire"). He changes to glabro in the darkness, rings Tillie and gives her the address and says bring garbage bags, and then starts scraping bits up. He steals a bin from one of the front yards and quickly fills it - there's at least two if not three people here. He's going to need at least another bin.
Sinead is on her way home when Tillie rings. Tillie says "Can you come over? Now." Sinead sighs and says yes. Kasumi says she'll be over before long. Finn's pants are vibrating as he sings along to "Come on Eileen", and he calls back when its over. Finn enthuses about the night and says they should all do this together. "We work too damn hard!" A femal voice in the background says "you're a student! You don't turn up to class!" as Sarah yells at him over the noise of someone murdering "Jack and Diane". "Can you come home?" "Do I have to?" "yes." "What's happened?" "Nothing I can talk about over the phone". Tillie hangs up when she hears Sarah and Finn arguing. Sarah's unimpressed and doesn't want to go. Finn says catching up tomorrow, but Sarah says that _she_ is going to be studying tomorrow. "Late tomorrow?" "Fiiiine". She says he can at least get her home and Finn says "of course!" They start walking toward Melbourne uni.
Will looks around and finds a fire hydrant in the next street that he can get the cover off. Its going to need some special equipment or extreme violence to get it to spray water everywhere. He checks around and makes sure no one is watching, quickly changes to crinos and tries to twist things without the tools he really needs. No luck - ok, violence it is, so he holds off for the moment. 20 minutes or so later, Tillie arrives People are leaving the party and lools at her a bit funny, but Tillie exudes self confidence and leave me alone and they just head off. Tillie sneaks in and boggles at the mess in the alley. She start throwing the piles Will has made into bags for easy transport, double bagging them to make sure. There appears to have been three seperate events, and four bodies at least - its hard to be sure given that they are fairly dismembered. They seriously consider leaving the bodies in bins for the garbage truck to pick up. Maybe if it wasn't Friday. Dedicating them? ("Can we use the cooking gift?" " a) breaking the Litany -" "We don't have to eat it!" "Somehow I feel its worse to cook them without any intent to eat them"). ("We're going to have to kill Peter, aren't we?" "We're not killing a cop!" "Yeah, we'll let Marion kill the cop.")
People come out of the party again from time to time and the two garou go stealth mode. One group start to head down the alley, and Will starts making loud sex noises to send them away (with a whispered "I think that's Felicity!") while Tillie looks bemused. Sinead and Kasumi arrive and boggle at the mess They need to get rid of it, how? "We need a car" "no. No. NO. NO!" Apparently Kasumi's car is not an option. ("Lets take them to Ridgeway's house" "Isn't he dead?" "yeah, exactly, lets fill his house with corpse parts"). Stuff them down the drains? Tillie rings back to Graeme and asks about disposal. He can get them an address to take things to, but Tillie points ot they don't have a workable car. Will suggests they could steal one and Tillie says they are not doing that. Graeme sighs, gives them an address and says "tell them its a 'gate' situation and you need to borrow their car". He doesn't seem really thrilled. Graeme asks how Peter is - Tillie says she has no idea, they are cleaning up and left Kirsty with Marion and Peter. Graeme isn't sure of the wisdom of that, but says the gore is a higher priority.
Tillie goes to get the car, Sinead goes back to their house. The shower is running and Kirsty is poking about. Kirsty asks if she can go. Sinead asks where the others are and Kirsty says Marion's in the shower, and the other guy is where Tillie left them. Sinead goes to check on Peter, and sends Kirsty to Marion. "Do you have any towels? A _lot_ of towels?" Kirsty says that she wants to try and get Marion out through the Umbra, but she's still out of it. Got any booze? They find some peach schnapps. Got any food? Kirsty tries to get Marion to focus with these things. Marion is unkeen to drink more, she's had enough. Sinead drags Peter to the bathroom and there's bloody water everywhere from splashing. She sighs. Kirsty seems a bit rubbish - actually she seems a bit blase and distracted. Sinead just asks Kirsty if there's any wrong, but she shrugs and says no, she was just in the middle of stuff when she got called here. She gets a bit prickly and Sinead backs off, but she thinks that Kirsty is not telling the whole truth. She surreptiously checks Kirsty for wyrm taint, but there isn't any.
Sinead checks out Peter and thinks that he's been punched really hard in the side of the head. Nothing seems to be broken, but he's probably concussed at least. She debates healing him, but decides not to in case he comes around. She strips his clothes off and puts them in a bag with Marion's clothes after rescuing wallet and keys. She steals some of Finn's clothes and puts him in them.
Tille thinks to check the remains for wyrm, and finds there's nothing obvious. Why did Marion kill 4 untained humans? Its a bit baffling. She heads off to get the car. The others two look around and Kasumi sighs, saying there's a head up there in the gutter. That explains the excess of arms. Will peeks into the Umbra and says that there's enough of a spiritual reflection of the building to climb up there. They decide Kasumi will head into the Umbra, climb up, step out and get the head. This she now does with a certain panache - she staggers a little on appearing in the realm, but doesn't plunge down onto the cobbles. She drops the head down to Will.
Sarah in the meantime is walking home with Finn and wants to cut through the cemetery. He's against it. Sarah starts to mock him about ghooooosts. He gives up and goes along with it.
Kirsty comes in and says Marion has had some food, but she keeps vaguing out. If she could get Marion to change to glabro, it might be better, but she's not tracking. Where's the rest of her pack, maybe they will have more luck?
Kasumi swings over the edge of the gutter and takes a moment to steady herself to make sure she'll drop safely when the lights come on in the window in front of her. Its a half frosted window - she makes eye contact with the guy looking out the window and just drops. She hits the ground awkwardly and changes to glabro to heal it while waiting to see if they need to run. There's the sound of running water down the pipes. The light goes off. Five minutes pass without any sign of an alarm being raised, and so they shrug and move on.
Tillie goes to the address given and the door is opened by a guy with slicked back hair, black jeans, shiny shoes. Tillie tells him the secret word given to her by Graeme and says she needs his car. He sighs and gives her the keys, and points at a car. She heads out and sees that its a beautifully restored Monaro and feels a little bit guilty. She swings via home and gets Finn's sheets to line his car, given Finn still hasn't show up, then off to get the bodies. They load the car and Tillie drives off, leaving Will and Kasumi to wreck the hydrant.
In the meantime, Sinead has tried her number for Georgina but doesn't get an answer. She tries Graeme, who says that Christine is up in Sydney on business, Georgina is off camping somewhere. He gives Sinead Alex's number, who is concerned and says that he'll be there as soon as he can. Finn drops Sarah off, and stops and chatted for "5 minutes" and then walked back to his house. Sinead catches him up on what is going on. She's a bit annoyed that it took him so long, and Finn suggests that there wasn't a sense of urgency. ("We need code words" "What's the code word for 'dismemberment'." "BBQ?" " 'Someone spilled bolognaise sauce everywhere'"). Kirsty says she's gunna go now there's two of them here and heads off. Sinead says Peter is now Finn's problem.
Will debates getting some raw meat and throwing it around as some sort of abortive prank - it might attract attention or it might hide the truth, especially if there are packages for the meat? Hmm, the water will probably wash it all away. They decide not to do that. Will uses the big steel cover to smash the hydrant on the nozzle facing down toward the alley. He holds the bin and tries to deflect it up onto the walls, manages to get that happening, and fill one bin and throw it around before he decides enough lights have come on, and books it.
Tillie meets Chris McNeil and Ken Xavier with a station wagon in an industrial estate. They switch bodies from car to car. Tillie asks if they should look for ID? Chris doesn't want to do it here and leave any more evidence than he actually needs to - so he guesses they will give it a go when they get to the ... hole... that they will be dropping bodies into. The two members of Get of Pennington drive off, and Tillie returns the car to the guy who appears to have been waiting up for the return of his car.
Alex shows up at Tillie & Finn's house 30 minutes later. He's quite concerned about Marion, but a bit dismissive of Peter. Marion's asleep in Tillie's bed and they discuss what to do. In the end, Alex stays with Marion, while leaving Lost Prophets to handle Peter. Will and Kasumi show up and give Finn a dirty look, and Tillie is not far behind. Sinead gives them all a run down of what happened here, including Kirsty being a bit weird.
Its about 2am now, and they decide that they should deal with Peter now while he's unconscious. They have a rough concern that he might remember some things like Marion in crinos form. Finn says that he should forget everything after the resteraunt and suggests that maybe a spirit of, er, spirits would be helpful - Peter's already squiffy, and surely booze spirits would have the ability to make people forget things they have done the night before. There's some small chance that he'll suddenly remember things if someone reminds him ("I did what?") but it should work. Other options are some sort of memory spirit, or some sort of hallucination spirit to give him tonnes of nonsensical memories and flood out the dodgy ones. Alternatively they could go mundane and just suggest that his drink had been spiked. ("So we either steal part of his memory or we gaslight him?")
They decide to summon a spirit and consider chiminage - they could go out and get a kebab and hit the booze? Its probably a bit late in the evening now, but sometime with a timeframe. Before the next Moot maybe ("No, I'd tell you if it was tomorrow, its about two weeks from now." "Otherwise we'd be whiskeying up this breakfast cereal"). Sounds like a good place to start from, so Sinead steals some of Finn's crappy whiskey, dedicates it and heads into the Umbra. ("Me and Jose are not friends"). She spends an hour or so summoning and at the end of that can hear the approaching sound of "here we go here we go here we go!" (tequila monster). A guy stumbles up the back alley, wearing a football scarf and carrying a can. *crash* "Who fucking left that there!" (Not a euphamism). "Hullo love. What can I do for you?" The spirit peers at her blearily. "What?" Sinead says she needs its help, and offers the booze. The spirit thinks its for poofters, but takes a big drink and says "nah, its alright. What else?" Sinead says that her pack will offer a big night out in the name of the spirit before the next full moon. It seems less interested. She says there's five of them, and it says it can probly drink more than they can.. in fact, before it wants to do anything, it wants to see how hard she is. Sinead sighs and heads back to the realm and says she needs more booze - its either the good whiskey or cheap eastern european beer that someone left here one night. She pokes Will into dedicating the good whiskey while Finn complains bitterly.
When she gets back, he's asleep sitting up on some rubbish bins. "Who are you?" "You told me to come back and show you how hard I am." "You should see how hard I am." Sinead's eye starts to twitch. "I'd rather not" "Fair enough - show me". Sinead drinks about 1/3 of the bottle. "Now do the thing!". She tries to resolve the situation before it hits her bloodstream. ("At this point it becomes clear Sinead is also spending the night, and I start making up more beds"). The spirit says "sure!" but steals some of the whiskey then vomits. It seems happier to do things for her now - she says they want to bind it to a person who's been drinking and make him forget stuff some of the night, because he wan't drunk enough. "What? fuck that. cunt. Where's 'e! I can take him!" It stumbles into the Umbral house and sways there while Sinead does the ritual. The spirit fades out to the faint smell of booze and stomach acid.
They decide to not take him to the hospital, but to heal the blow to the head a bit, and then hope he stays asleep. The pack prepare some stories about his clothes, with the idea of implicating that he vomited everywhere and that he'll be too embarassed to ask for them (which is good, because they are covered in blood). The healing isn't complete, but it looks less "we should take this guy to hospital".
Alex is brought up to date about the Peter status to make sure that he knows what the story is. He'll stay with Marion after snibbing the lock in Tillie's room, in case Peter drunkenly tries to come in. Tillie and Will spend the night in the Umbra, watching out for things. Sinead slumps unconscious on the couch, Finn is bemused that he ends up sleeping on the floor in his own house. Kasumi goes home to her clean house and has a pleasant shower and gets into her clean pyjamas and freshly laundered bed.
Sinead gets up, pukes a bit and goes back to sleep. ("we have to party before the next full moon").
Will heads over to the alley close to dawn and checks it out for body parts. The fire hydrant has been repaired or shut off, and the lid is back on it. It looks like the pack has done a reasonable job, but there's stains on the wall that are a bit concerning. Will decides to go to the nearby hardware place, gets some spraypaint and randomly covers the walls. The council can help them scrub the walls. ("I'm not painting a mural, I don't have any sort of artistic ability. I'm just going to draw red dicks and swear words").
Peter wakes up at 8, confused, drunk and hungover and also wearing Finn's pants. He has no idea how he got here and where Marion is and what is going on. He throws up once or twice. Peter is partly confused about why he is at Finn's house - he had no idea where it was. Finn lies and says Marion brought him here. Tillie sees that this has happened, and steps into her room to talk to Marion. Marion's memory is flakey, Tillie gives her a rundown of what happened and what they did and then heads back into the Umbra. Marion is pretty apologetic and thankful for their help. The two of them taxi off home.
Finn makes breakfast, while everyone is caught up on the weird wyrm gym guys. They're going to do stuff about it tonight, but in the mean time Will and Tillie crash out and get some sleep after a particularly long day and night. Finn calls Sarah and agrees to meet her in the library to do some study this afternoon. Sinead meditates in the caern for a bit to recharge her gnosis pool. Will heads there in the afternoon as well, but he keeps getting hassled vaguely by the cemetery spirits gibbering at him. He sees Graeme who asks how the night ended up going - Will says they did a good job. All the giblets gone or washed away, and stains covered up, and drunkeness spirit bound to Peter. Chris says that he found ID on 3 of them, and they appear to be random idiots rather than anyone out to get garou. Graeme asks if Tillie is home - when Will says yes, Graeme goes and gives her a call. He asks her to bring $2000 to the caern, and she agrees, running it up before long. While she's there, they have a chat - Graeme says that they need to get a car of their own, and probably something like an old landrover or something. The Sept can't always help them with expensive items like cars - despite the appearance of being well off, a lot of their resources are tied up. Tillie asks if there is a kinfolk they can buy off, but Graeme says cars keep being the things that get traced, so maybe just buy a random car. Tillie also wants to try and buy it with fake ID to make it hard/impossible to trace to them.
Finn's study turns out to be less "study" and more a small group of students in the library. There are some sarky comments from Sarah about "mysterious phone calls" (Finn says that Peter and Marion were really, really trashed and he needed to help), and some people a bit surprised to see him, but it otherwise goes well. (Here, read all this. And this).
Early in the evening, Finn is on his way back from the library when he hears a smash and spots something falling from a 3rd floor window. He catches it without thinking, but with grace and elan (there's never anyone watching!) and finds that its a glass beaker. He can hear some strange noises - like screeching - coming from up there, which he thinks is part of the science faculty or something. ("Yes like that. Thanks Lydia").
Despite psychic urging to climb up and go through the broken window, he decides to call his pack. In 20 minutes or so, everyone assembles. The screeching noise is very intermittant, but at one point Finn sees something run along the window - not huge, but not little. In the Umbra, there's nothing obviously weird - the building is here at the moment, but its not surrounded in trees and looks a bit newer. Kasumi gives people a dirty look when it becomes clear they just want to use her as a master key. They open the door and sneak in, looking for cameras and anyone guarding. Its dark through most of the corridors.
The pack stop outside the door that seems likely to match up to the broken window and do some sensing from outside. There's a strong weaver (science building), some wyld running about (science research building), and some wyrm - BAM - behind that door that something just slammed into the back of. Tillie says there is a moving thing that senses of wyrm behind the door, but there might be more. The screaming and chittering starts again. People change to glabro to be sure, as there is a smashing sound within. Finn and Kasumi cautiously open the door and take a step in. Light filters in from outside, illuminating things a bit. Its a lab sort of room - benches around the outside and some desks in the middle. Something leaps out from below the far benches, bounces on middle desk and leaps at Finn. Kasumi flicks the light on, and as the fluoroescent lights flicker there is a lovely strobe effect as a largish monkey flies across the room. She's able to see that its foaming at the mouth. Tillie leans between them and punches the monkey out of the air. It hits the ground between her and Finn and Kasumi. Will and Sinead are unable to get into the room as three large glabro are blocking the door, but Will can see bloody foot and hand prints all over the walls, and a guy slumped on the desk in the middle of the room.
Finn tries to punch the monkey on the ground and misses. It lunges at him and sinks fangs into his calf. ("What's worse than a werewolf with rabies?") Kasumi moves into the room and looks around to make sure there's no more monkeys - the room has no cages here, just generic science lab equipment. Finn punches the monkey. Tillie grabs it and pins it to the ground, moving into the room a bit so people can squeeze past. Will does so to check out the guy slumped on the desk - there's a lot of bright red blood pooled on the desk and dripping onto the floor. He uses sense unnatural to get an idea of how much weirdness is going on. The dead guy does not have a particular supernatural sense. The monkey does. Some bottles of reagents on the shelves have a wyrm aspect to them stronger than just "chemicals". Tillie makes a call that the monkey can go, and breaks its neck. On the white floor, its clear that the foam arond its mouth is kind of green tinged. Kasumi looks at the chemical bottles and is able to pronounce the names of the chemicals. The labels say they should be refrigerated, but they are just on a shelf. That's weird. Maybe the labels are wrong.
Sinead looks at the guy - he has a terrible case of throat-missing-itis. It appears to have been torn out by some sort of small fanged primate. Hmm. She lays him back down on the desk in the pool of blood. Kasumi spots a vent with its cover knocked off and hanging down. That is presumably where the monkey came in. There are two computers in here - one spattered in blood next to the guy who was probably using it. Finn is up for destroying whatever research he was doing on the grounds of guilt by association, but Tillie suggests they should call Aquinas and ask him some questions. She does this and interrupting his dinner ("we have a dinner emergency. There's bolognaise sauce on everything"). She says they are at a science lab at the Uni and there's been an incident. This door says something about 'brain research'. She gives the room number and it turns out she's in zoology. He agrees to come along in about 30 minutes. ("We go wandering the corridors, listening for rabid monkey noises") They turn out the lights to attract less attention from random security guys. Sinead senses for wyrm and says that this monkey is a fomori, or has about that level of wyrm taint anyway. The chemicals have a different kind of taint to what the monkey does. They are not the same and may be unrelated?
Finn is left in the lab to guard things against the guards while the other pack members go around this floor hunting for monkeys. They find a directory next to the lift, which notes the building has 3 floors and a basement and the basement has "animal house" on it. They check this floor first, because there's some suspicion about how a monkey would climb 4 floors in the vents.
From the corridor, they can smell rats and mice, and in one room a wet smell that is probably fish. Will sniffs near vents in the corridor and can smell monkey in them, but only from near the liftshaft and the room where the dead guy is.
By the time they've managed this, Aquinas has shown up. They show him what is going on. He says he knows the researcher - his name is Amran Khan, and he was not doing monkey research. In fact he was doing virology research. AIDS virology research specifically. Finn, who got bitten pretty hard starts going "ummm". There is some discussion about if he has been infected what to do about it - rite of cleansing won't do anything, there are some antivirals if he has been infected. Aquinas also suggests that relying on his garou heritage, and stabbing Finn in the heart or something and letting him be 'dead' for a bit would probably sort out any virus that needs to be at body temperature. Finn is unkeen and wants to wait and confirm the monkey was infected in the first place.
Aquinas isn't keen to move the chemicals, but he notes down the details and says he'll look them up. Aquinas suggests that they throw the monkey out the window as a cover for why there is a dead monkey. Finn suggests clearing the computer, but Aquinas says that they should probably just leave it, he doesn't think that it has any bearing on the death.
They head down to the basement. As soon as the door opens, the garou all wince at the concentrated smells. (But at least they are not psychically assaulted). They break in using powers and look around. There are rats and mice and sheep... yes, sheep. The sheep are quite aware that these are wolves in human suits, and flock up the back. Some of the animals are sealed off in quarantined rooms, and some are not. They do various sensing things - some of the rats and mice have a greater than comfortable wyrm sense to them. They decide to not interfere right at the moment. They glance at the labels on the cages and the two cages where the wyrm influence is strongest are both supplied by Pearce Animal and Biomedical supplies.
They find the monkey source - "University of Melbourne Macaque colony" and "sponsored and supported by Pearce Animal and Biomedical supplies". There is a mix of individual cages and a large habitat like cage at the end. One of the individual cages is immediate of interest because its door is open. It has a name tag, an ID number and barcode, and a handwritten "Charlie". One of the vents appears to have been pulled off too.
Kasumi accesses their computers using her phone and gifts, and downloads things that seem relevant. The garou approach the monkey cage, and the macaques also seem to think they are dangerous predators. Or, you know, someone they don't know. Finn uses his gifts and treats from a handy bin as bribes to get one of the macaques to talk to him. The macaque thinks the guy in the other cage was an arsehole. Is anyone else as arsehole. Yeah, that guy [looks at all the monkeys]. Which guy? That guy [looks at the other monkeys]. Apparently they can't grasp pointing. Are you sick? Are you saying I'm sick? Where's my food? can I have some food? It grabs the food and runs off laughing, but hands some of the food to other monkeys before eating what's left. There's some sort of social structure there. The macaque returns for more food and questions, but it doesn't grasp things like "where did you come from?". They ask about specific things that it can see or has experienced, and its more helpful there. The jerk in the cave was always starting fights and stealing food from the right guys who should have the food. Always angry. Is the other guy angry? Yeah, that guy [looks]. ("do any of them sense strongly of wyrm?" "I don't know, no one has tried." "ah"). They sense for wyrm and one of the other macaques seems to have a very high level as well - lower than the dead one, but high. Presumably that is "that guy". Tillie asks if they can encourage the good monkeys to kill the bad monkey, but that's probably not going to happen.
Other monkeys look at them and come closer, but they are deeply suspicious of the newcomers who are garou. "DON'T LIKE YOU!" and throwing things at the glass. ("Monkeys kind of do that anyway" "Yes, its social commentary"). They try and get a sense of when the angry monkeys arrived, but the best is that they came later than everyone else. They're new. But not when. Did anyone came in and make them angry? No, always angry. Came here angry. Got angrier tho. Not sure whether something happened to make them angry. They're arseholes [demonstrates arsehole]. It gets more food off Finn and again it shares it with some macaques. Finn asks why they haven't dealt with the other monkey. They have. ArSEHOLE! This macaque starts to jump up and down yelling ARSEHOLE at the wyrmy one, and the others join in, all yelling arsehole while it hisses at them. Tillie scatters some food around the place to cover for the snacks they fed to the helpful monkey
Despite cries for a monkey knife fight, Finn opts to go into the Umbra and try and do a rite of cleansing around the macaques as best he can there. He peeks first and sees that there is a space here to go into, and in fact its the animal house reflected. There's some sad, weavery looking animal spirits hanging here. ("The sheep are so sad they are mooing").
Kasumi turns up documents showing that the two macaques are only recently transferred here. They haven't been used in any research at all, tho the other monkeys have been, but they've been taken to specific labs. They were both brought here 6 weeks ago from Pearce. There's some behavioural comments about how they are not integrating well, and Charlie has been seperated from the others because he's too violent. The other macaque is called Catherine, and is also exhibiting issues, and there's been discussion from Pearce talking to the breeders. Other monkeys came from Pearce four or two years ago. Its mostly a breeding colony, and not terribly successful. (RELASE THE MONKEY)
Finn steps, and the animal spirits book it. He shrugs and starts doing the rite of cleansing in the storage area that seems to have predated the macaque habitat. The others retreat back to the top floor to braindump at Aquinas. He's happy for them to follow it up, he's busy. He's seen Pearce stuff around the labs entirely, and also points out that the chemicals don't come from them, so don't get too focussed. They decide to also cleanse the chemicals from the Umbra without touching them.
Finn checks from the Umbra, and there's some declination in the amount of wyrm on the macaque, but not as much as he'd liked. ("A reminder that I am recording you idiots"). He decides to give it a miss tonight because they have more to do, so he'll come back tomorrow. He's about to leave, and finds that something has actually changed. There was something lurking in the corner, tiny motes, but they've left.
Will picks up the dead monkey, gives it a practice lob and then perfectly flings it out the window, right through the hole that it had already tossed a beaker out, exactly in the fashion that a crazed monkey would do to itself. He glances out the window just to confirm no one was underneath, and then all the garou shift into the umbra and leave.
Lost Prophets decide to go back and look for the gymbros. They head to the address that they have, and peek from the Umbra. Its a long thin one story terrace house, done up a little bit, but definite share house vibe. They cannot see the meathead guy, but there are two other guys watching tv in the loungeroom. Sniffing suggests that the two guys match up to two bedrooms, and the meathead guy's scent is in the other one. Its also very sweaty, a bit rank, and on the table has a small resealable bag with some gel capsule things in it which has a distinct wyrm feeling about it. They find a thing with his name on it, which is Robert Summers.
Finn suddenly remembers that they had filled out forms at the gym, and they could get the other guy's address too, as long as Fi hasn't thrown them out. ("He's writing his name, but with the other guy's surname"). While they are watching, Rob comes home. The other two turn the tv off and go into their rooms, shutting the door. Rob goes to his room, and takes out small sandwich bag full of green, and digs out a bong. The pack suspiciously check that pot but its not tainted. The pack opt to do a cleansing rite around him as well as the drugs, which they do while he's sucking smoke down. As they complete the ritual, Rob leaps up and runs to the bathroom, and vomits into the toilet. Tillie senses for wyrm, but can't pick much up now its just be cleansed. He seems to have less taint than they sensed yesterday morning, which maybe shouldn't happen if he was fomori? Unless the ritual managed to shut a lot of the wyrm nature off?
They look at the vomit, there's a tiny of brown or green in what he's puked. Its not terribly unknown for people to do a big spit after toking too hard, but he didn't look like a newbie. He looks a bit dazed and surprised, but returns to his bong.
The pack contemplate the possible relationships between the tainted speed from a month or two back, this steroid stuff and Sinead's missing friend Snuffie. They decide to try and find Snuffie by Questing Stone, so its off somewhere quiet in the physical realm to do that. Finn detours via the gym and gets the two membership forms out of the bin, so amidst the protein bar wrappers and an old banana peel they find a membership application for a William Keys.
Sinead does a Questing Stone for Snuffie - she gets a sense of direction, and a sense that her target is not moving. He's about Northcote direction, so they all head that way. The sense of his presence lingers, but it leads them toward a park, not a house. And down into a creek valley. And toward that pipe there. Oh no. (JESUS, FUCKING CHEERLEADERS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTlcUQobdOk)
Someone changes to lupus and confirms there's a body down there. They decide to call the cops and let them do the investigation to find information like how he died while the garou peak from the Umbra. This they now do, making an anonymous call, and totally not to the organised crime police unit as Will wants to do. The pack lurk about and watch, and sniffing about for scents - there are two male scents about the end of the pipe and area that are suspicious, but not immediately familiar.
The police investigate appropriately, and it seems like he has actually been shot rather than having been killed with 'strange knives' or anything more suspicious. He's been shot in the chest, they start looking through his pockets, get some id (his real name appears to be Stuart Huffman).
The pack decide to try and track down William Keys. The Questing Stone leads to a converted warehouse in East Melbourne that is hosting a large party. The pack decide to send in Will and Sinead to scope the place while Finn peeks. The dude bros - and there are 3 of them - are obvious from a distance away, hanging out in the kitchen and comparing muscles and leering at women who come past. Will uses his persuasion gift on them, comes to them as a building up supplicant and becomes the newest best friend of Bill, Bazza and Del. Over the next hour or two, he learns much more than he wanted to know about gyms in the area, protein supplements and exercise regimes. Sinead, on the other hand, scores a double handful of drugs to onsell and dances to some good music.
Will leads the conversation to steroids subtooly, and Bazza and Bill give Del a look. They talk for a bit about them, and Del suggests that he could maybe hook Will up. Will's phone is "broken", and so Del writes his own phone number down for him, and some subtle probing gets his surname too (Cartright). Will says he's going to go hit on a girl now, and makes his escape (cue an ethical discussion about the use of persuasion and consent).
The pack reassemble and compare notes. As its about 2am by this point, they decide to try and track Bill's house. Back to Clifton Hill, where they find he lives in a sort of 1BR bedsit underneath another house with its own entrance. Peering from the Umbra (eventually), they're sure no one else lives in it, though there are people in the house above it. It is more or less the same in the Umbra, though more 60s looking. There's no one else in Bill's room, nor has their been for months. Will senses for unnatural taints, and finds there's a nebulous miasma around, but no point source. Sinead and Kasumi step out of the Umbra...
Finn becomes aware that its been five minutes or more and they haven't appeared, suggesting they are stuck in the gauntlet. He finds them by feel and bunts them out into the Realm. They arrive unaware that any extra time passed and look around. They close the curtain and flick lights on. There's a futon bed in one corner, and a certain amount of bachelor mess. ("You cannot sleep - there is a dance off nearby") Sinead senses for wyrm and finds there is a sense of wyrm in the fridge - behind the crisper is a small sandwich bag with 4 gel capsules in it (and not a bag of pot, despite some confusion). They are quite wyrm tainted - really a poisonous anger, a very acidic hate, a physical rage. Its like the gymbros, but stronger. They are real gel capsules and not cobbled together in a bathroom, they require somewhat of a setup to make. They want to keep one, so Kasumi - now Captain Stealthpants - takes one out the door and away in preference to dedicating it. The others are summarily cleansed from the Umbra.
Despite it being about 2.30am, they decide to hit Del's house while he is at a party before calling it a night. He's weirdly in the white pages with his mobile phone number, and so they head off there. He lives in an old art-deco apartment in South Melbourne nearish to Clarendon Street. Checking it out from the Umbra is hard, and they are not sure that someone else isn't already there. ("Its the talking baby, you have to hold the baby to talk"). Sinead manages to peek well, and sees that there are two bedrooms, and someone else is asleep in bed (his bed, to be clear, not Del's, despite the pack envisioning the intense emotional bond between them). She is however peeking well enough that they can find his drugs - he's reusing a vitamin B bottle in the bathroom. ("Each capsule has a tiny overmuscled guy floating in it, like a worm in tequila")
Now what? They reckon Del is a low level schmuck, and they need his dealer. Fortunately Del was keen to help them out with that or at least was while under the influence of gifts and beer at a party. (babies make it hard to plan). They have a lot on their plate, so they decide to do a quick cleansing from the Umbra and then get their heads down.
("everyone gets a willpower back." "Can I have something else, like ticks?" "certainly, its very itchy and hard to reach."). Sinead goes to the caern and tries to meditate, but has no luck. The laaadies suggest that Will doesn't call too early in the morning so as not to seem desperate.
Aquinas rings Tillie before she gets a chance to contact him. He says that the chemicals that were there were reagents for various analysis protocols rather than direct agents. She says she has no idea what he is talking about, and he says it was stuff for testing, not stuff for doing. He isn't sure what it would actually do, maybe it would ruin results? It feels aggressive, but that's not a scientific analysis. Tillie asks if he did in testing, but he just looked up the label - he had assumed it was what was written on the thing.
Tillie says she has something for him too. Aquinas asks if its a cupcake. Tillie says it could be a cupcake too. (Aside that explains why Will lives with them - he's the only one who can cook). Tillie meets him at the caern with a bought cupcake and the drugs. She asks if he can test what it is, or confirm its steroids like they thing. He says he can do that.
The pack get together and check their shopping list - weird computer stuff, gymbros, monkeys, Pearce, party before the moot - and decide to check out Pearce. The website is a bit limited, possibly to avoid PETA-like interference. The pack consider contacting Kirsty before heading out there, but after a long discussion they decide not to and just head out there. The address is near Essendon and head out there to check it out.
They cruise past - its part of a nice office building kind of estate, with a big sign at the front, some shiny looking offices and some warehouse access. They sense wyrm on the way past, but nothing leaps out. There are some cars in the car park, which requires a staff card to open. They find somewhere to step a couple of kilometers away and then come back in the umbra. Weaver stuff in the Umbra is pretty thick, as you'd expect, and not all the buildings appear. On the plus side, everything is single story.
As they approach, Kasumi thinks she sees thing scatter. She's not sure if it was banes or whatever, but there were some spirits that scuttled away. Finn peeks while people keep an eye out. He finds some offices, some warehouse, mostly for holding chemicals, some animal storage areas, very similar to how the Melbourne Uni animal house was laid out (rats, mice, fish, etc). There's no monkeys here at the moment. There are people here, tending to the various animals. Kasumi can spot more scuttling, but it feels like one or maybe two seperate spirits rathr than a horde of cockroaches.
Finn gets the pack to guide him around more, and spots enough security (cameras, etc) to make him think there might be more than he can see. He traces the cabling back and finds the "security" room is more like a server room - obviously its recording and storing rather than being observed closely. Thre's a bunch of phone numbers on the wall for various emergencies.
In the Umbra, Tillie spots a rat sticking out of a hole and snarling at her. It doesn't look right - its got huge fangs and giant claws on its hands. She senses wyrm and finds it is a little tainted, but not corrupted. They get Sinead to try and talk to it. "mine" "who" "go!" "why" "mine. go away!" "but" "MINE". It isn't behaving exactly like a rat and it doesn't look exactly a rat either, so its not a Rat, its something else rattish. ("its a cat sized rat. We're going to need a dog sized cat" "and then a horse sized dog. Conveniently..."). Tillie's all for kicking it in the face, but its pointed out that there might be a lot more.
After a lot of discussion, Sinead tries to cut a deal with it to let them stay in its territory. It doesn't want them to take anything away, but the rest of the pack are worried that might include informaiton and anything wyrmy they need to take. They offer to release more rats here, and its not keen on that even in the realm. In the end they offer it some gnosis to sweeten the deal. It stays angry, not in a steroid way, but in a feral way - in fact 'feral' is a good word for describing the spirit. It seems to think the animal house area is the most interesting part of the site ("MINE"). Some confusion about why there are caged, bred rats being defended by the feral rat, but 'feral' is not the same as 'wild'.
The pack check out the realm - there's some wyrm taint, but its around things that you'd expect to see it on, stuff that is poisonous or carcinogenic. The monkeys weren't really bred here though, so perhaps they should look to see where Pearce got their monkeys from and go from there. There is a vague plan to come back later when there are no or at least less staff wandering about.
Later than same bee, they come back through the Umbra. A bit of a scan around suggests there's no staff here now, and no cameras in the toilets, so they start from there. Kasumi and Will step in, and all the lights flicker on. It looks like they've got a motion sensing lights in here. There's no other signs of alarm, so they continue with the plan. Kasumi is boosted up in the roof and puts her phone on some of the ethernet cable. After a bit of fiddling, she starts accessing the internal computer system.The first item of business is where the monkeys came from. Oh. Indonesia. And they spent 9 months in quarantine in Sydney (which seems to be "as expected") before coming here for a week or so, and then going to University of Melbourne. These are the only two macaques in the last year or so. O...kay. Kasumi pokes about for a bit looking into any irregularities, but the only slightly strange thing she can find is that the monkeys were meant to be delivered on day X, but it was delayed for some reason at the last minute to day X+1. ("as per the phone call...").
They do some mousebreeding on site, but they get some from specialist breeders (some suggestion that its mice with particular traits?).
They look about and try to find any other information. They get names for the manager (Norman Tenaglia) and senior staff (Amy Yeah, senior animal manager; Kevin Wyck, senior chemical manager) without having to try and get into HR records or anything. They appear to be doing well for themselves, and expanding slowly. About 25 people work here - academics and heavy lifters abound. They look up who drives the animal transport trucks too, but its hard to see who specifically might have been involved.
Kasumi looks for other info about the same time as the monkey delivery. They find that there's a guy who does checking on stuff like chemical purity and he queried a delivery from a third party about the same time as the monkeys, saying it was badly contaminated. There is some email traffic about it, and then the third party said "we will issue a full refund and replace the sample", so presumbaly it was them at fault.
They hear someone clunking around with keys and flee back to the Umbra. It seems like there's a security guard moving around. They watch for long enough to establish that its just a regular sweep, not an alarm that's gone off.
They take their names and doing some questing stones. Amy Yeoh lives in Sunshine South. There's a green bubble car in the driveway, and the house has been renovated a fair bit. They move to the Umbra and check her out - she appears to live with her husband and no children, and additionally to not be a servant of the eternal darkness. There's a strong weaver sense compared to the nearby houses, but that could just be a combination of her being a scientist and the house having been renovated fairly recently.
They questing stone for Tenaglia and for Wyck and find that Tenaglia is in Melton and Wyck is in Reservoir somewhere. They opt to stay out this way and drive out to Melton. Its in a newish estate with very large "country living" blocks. From the outside, nothing seems out of place. They find somewhere to step and check it out from the Umbra too. The Umbra is full of new weaver stuff, including lots of spiders calcifying things. Five people appear to be living here - 3 kids, Norman and a woman that is presumably his wife. Norman is... more tainted than they are happy with, but its not an intense sense, but more remote? Maybe he's been exposed to something rather than doing something? He does work in a chemical storage place, but he seems too high for that. Maybe its an underling?
They opt to cleanse him from the Umbra, whic Finn now does. When they sense afterward, he doesn't leap up and spew worms all over his wife, but actually seems to have had most of it lifted. That's suggestive that the taint isn't inherit to him. Perhaps.
To Wyck's house - he is a bachelor living in a house in east Reservoir on his own. He is also a bit tainted, about as much as you'd expect for someone who handles or is otherwise exposed to industrial chemicals a lot. Given he's the senior chemical manager, its not exactly a surprise.
Given the level of taint on Tenaglia, maybe its a underling encouraging them to do bad things. Given its 2am, they opt to look at this in the morning.
Kasumi goes to work. Will is cooking ("that's a good trade, isn't it? Cooking for rent? *persuasion persuasion*" "Your jedi mind checks won't work on me!") and listening to the radio when he hears on the news about the accidental death of a researcher at Melbourne University by a rabid monkey, and the resulting protest from animal rights activists on Royal parade disrupting Monday morning traffic. Will is deeply suspicious that Kirsty might be involved. He and Tillie talk briefly about maybe telling her what's going on, but she might either be pissed with them or go on a rampage.
They decide to check in with the Elders more comprehensively than they have so far. They find Cossack at the caern and give him the run down and ask about Kirsty. He says that Kirsty hasn't brought any evidence of wyrm stuff to the sept at this stage. He's happy for the Lost Prophets to keep on with it - he asks how the other thing is going with the gym guys? They give him the run down of where they are going with it. Cossack is more concerned by that to be honest - Tillie says that she thinks it is all connected: the tainted speed, the dead drug dealer, and the guys on the steroids, but she can't figure out how. Cossack says he'll ask the street.
Remembering that the Get of Pennington are on caern duty, they go and find some of them. Marcus and Barry are kicking back in the Umbra when they arrive. They're not aware of the protest but Barry winces slightly. Does Kirsty know about it? Marcus says she was going away for a couple of days early Saturday morning. There's some talk about her seeming a bit off on Friday night and maybe it was them that delayed stuff, but Marcus thinks that it was something Cossack got her to do. (Some out of character speculation about whether Kirsty might have set up the taint at the Uni? )
("Lydia can be Boobook." "Boob. Ook, yes")
They meet Finn and opt to check the protest out. There are about 50 people protesting, shouting and waving placard and handing out pamphlets. They have indeed semi-blocked Royal Parade side street, and are talking to cars. They actually spot Kirsty, holding a placard and being part of the crowd. Tillie approaches Kirsty, who is her normal charming self, but they get her to move away from the crowd for a word. There's still people around, but Tillie blurts out "I killed that monkey". Kirsty twitches and comes somewhere quieter. Tillie tells her about the monkey and the researcher and what they have found since. Kirsty is sarcastic about how remarkable that the animal experimentation might end up with some sort of wyrm taint. If only someone had thought of it. Tillie asks if she wants to be involved, but Kirst says she's been told and isn't keen to get involved so she doesn't get publically humiliated again. Tillie is relatively diplomatic about it, and asks if she wants to be kept to up to date, and Kirsty says yes.
They talk about Pearce being clear of taint, and how the monkey was ok there, and bad here. Kirsty asks if its someone at the University, rather than Pearce. She says that given that the Get of Pennington hang out at the uni anyway, she can look around and see what she can see - its part of their normal territory anyway. Some talk about Aquinas looking into the actual stuff, and Barry being the man for having an arm stuck up a cow's bum. Maybe its someone outside of Zoology coming in and doing something? Kirsty appreciates Tillie giving the heads up, and she'll get someone to come cruise around with her.
The pack debates getting day drunk to fulfill their spirit geas, but decide to get on with their day instead - drug taking guys and then Pearce.
Some though about why Pearce isn't as wyrmy as maybe it should be, given the strong monkey wyrm taint. It might be someone who maybe doesn't work their all the time, like truck drivers? Or sales staff?
Anyway, drug dealers first. Will calls Del from a payphone, and reminds him of the conversation on Saturday. Del takes a few moments to recollect and then it all comes back. He apologises and says he's feeling a bit sketchy. Del says that he needs a number from Will to pass on - Will says he's got a phone organised but he hasn't got it yet, but he'll call back asap and then they can see. In the meantime he's going back to bed. ("i'll lose my gains!")
They need a burner phone, this is getting ridiculous. They contemplate how to obtain one illicitly long term. For the moment, they get one off Graeme and talk to him about organising how to do it themselves.
In the meantime, they day time stalk Pearce. Its pretty busy during the day, but they have enough time to scan all the employees and people delivering things and such. No one is particularly concerning, though some of the people who handle chemicals are tainted in a way similar to the chemicals. Tenaglia was the strongest taint, and when the pack scan him today, he's back to sort of background levels still. By the end of the day they are scratching heads a bit, but it occurs to them that maybe not everyone is at work. In the arena of truck drivers, there are two who are interstate doing deliveries - Anton Pasquale is delivering to a hospital in Adelaide, and Steve Graham who is getting a delivery from Sydney. Hmm, Sydney is where the monkeys come from. Anton will be in about midday tomorrow, and Steve on Wednesday late in the day. The pack consider going to Sydney, but decide to return and check them out then. ("could he moon bridge to Ireland?" "no, it would use up too many favours going through Russia, etc" "Why, we're all respectable garou? A Get of Fenris... a metis... a bone gnawer... ah." Moon Bridge gift )
At the end of the day, they call Marion and check in to make sure things are ok. Marion is pretty happy to hear from them and says she owes them one - maybe she should take them out for dinner. Peter really thought he had been roofied because he still felt drunk late Sunday night, and they ended up getting checked out at the hospital to no avail. So everything is ok, but she might pass on going out with Finn every again.
Finn gets some study done.
Will tries Del again, and Del sounds really pissed. Will talks calmly at him and he says hang on. More distantly they hear "fuck off you fuck!" and then "WHAT! I mean, hi!". Will says he has a phone and Del keeps yelling at people in a way that indicates that he is a) driving and b) a bit racist. Del tells him to text the number through. He gets a message back later in mangled text speak that he's passed in on and they'll call in a day or so.
("I'm not eating a bowl of cereal with milk, i've just got a bread roll in one hand")
In the afternoon, Sinead is working at Carmel's and hears on the radio the name "Rob Summers". She turns the radio up and listens closely. Apparently in Collingwood today, he has gone on a "chain of assaults" and there are some severe injuries involved ("I like the idea of 'preemptive euthanasia'"). Police have closed off access to some of the roads around the area, and are asking people to stay away if possible.
Tillie gets Aquinas on the phone who says that the stuff in the bottles wasn't mislabled, it was exactly what it should have been. The other thing was steroids, very pure, and lab made, not bathroom job. Tillie asks where she should start looking ("Essendon football club?") and Aquinas says try Kirsty maybe, she might know but he doesn't. Basically its organised crime levels, not some random guy.
Sinead tells Carmel she has to go ("I have to prepare the bolognaise") and makes a call to the pack, who (sans Kasumi) perversely rush there post haste.
Sinead peeks well, and the pack find police cordons blocking traffic - school and work traffic is building up and making it insane. They stick their ear in near police scanners, and find that its not urgent, as if maybe all the excitement is over. They hear the name of a pub and head that way. (http://www.boredpanda.com/dad-tattoo-son-doodles-keith-anderson-chance-faulkner/)
When they arrive, there are a lot of police, and some ambulances and all the windows are smashed out. Inside there is an extremely dead Rob Summers, leaking from many locations. Its hard to recognise him at first pass because almost all his muscles have swollen up - his face is distorted, his neck has gone, arms and legs are enormous. (ALL KINDS OF GAINS, "TOO SWOLE TO CONTROL!!"). There's a green shimmer on his face, as if he had powerade spilt on him. Sensing wyrm suggests strongly that he is fomori - he is way higher on the awooga scale than he was, expecially as the pack cleansed him. The amount of wyrm suggests that the physiological changes might be part of becoming a fomori. The garou erk and think of the other guys that have been taking these drugs.
The pub itself is wrecked - there are bottle smashed, chairs thrown out windows, smashed tables, and blood everywhere. In addition to Rob, there is another smushed body and some injured humans. There are three ambulances here, but Sinead spots more down the road, along with some cops. And maybe further along, she's not sure. Clearly, this is not where things started, its where they ended.
They follow the trail of ambulances back down toward Rob's house. One ambulance and cop car at the same place as blood and a mangled bike, but at other sites it isn't as obvious as to what happened. At Rob's place, there are two cop cars, but no ambulance. On the inside, there is an awful amount of blood in the kitchen, all over the bench and walls (but no gobbets of flesh?).
Lost Prophets contemplate the depth of problem this poses to the Veil ("Much less than 'kill all witnesses'") and their options in covering it up - they could burn the pub down, inject him with some sort of PCP (if they had any) (this is your brain on a nun), go to the coroners and steal the body, shoot him some more to make him pulped and unrecognisable, hijack the ambulance and steal the body, destroy the ambulance mid-transit, blackmail the coroner, threaten the coroner, threaten the coroner's children, or mess with the results of an autopsy. In the end they decide to handball the problem to someone more competant in any of those things, and head back to the caern. They speak to Graeme and Nadine about what happened, and the Elders agree that they should concentrate on the other potential fomori and they'll get someone to try and cover the coroner.
The pack head to Bill Keys' house. They cleansed Bill's house, and his drugs and stole one, so it makes a good control point to Rob. who they cleansed. When they arrive in the Umbra, there are many tiny motes of anger wyrm energy, sort of protospirits. As they watch, some dissapate, but others are consumed by neighbours and grow larger. There's something in the realm generating these motes. They peek, with difficulty, and Kasumi says she can see someone muscley moving around - not super muscley though, so it suggests that they're not fomori? She senses unnatural and gets a wyrm sense. Meanwhile, Will, bereft of common sense, eats one of the motes and has to spend a moment calming his shit.
Tillie peeks harder and confirms that its Bill. Bill is walking in circles with his fists and teeth clenched, muttering obscenties and epithets to himself. The rage/anger motes seem to be close enough to him to suggest that he is the instigator, but he's not murdering, as the pack feared. This second, anyway. Finn starts doing the cleansing rite from the Umbra, and the ur-spirits start mobbing him. The rest of the pack keep them off him so he doesn't muff the rite. When he completes the rite, releasing pure spirit energy, all the motes are obliterated, and wyrm taint is cleansed. Tillie sees Bill take a deep breath and start to calm down, getting a glass of water. He mutters something about having to just last until tomorrow. Tillie says he seems to be going through withdrawl - he had 3 drugs, and they flogged one. Oh. That suggests he might be getting more tomorrow. ("all we gotta do is keep this asshole cleansed". "... I'll get the floss"). That suggests they might be able to follow Bill to the next step then? In the meantime, Del, just to check he's not nuking a bus of orphans and nuns.
On the way, the pack note that there are more anger motes appearing at a certain point. Peeking suggests that it might be from the drivers caught in traffic on Hoddle St - between normal peak hour and a huge area of traffic being shut off, people are losing their minds. At least no one is hulking-out and ruining the place. Onward!
They arrive at his house in South Melbourne, and no sign of fonts of spirits pouring out across the landscale. Del's not home man. Peeking shows that no one is home. They step out and perform a Questing Stone to try and locate him - he is about 600m south of them, which would be in Albert Park lake somewhere. Off go the garou to look around. They search around - he's not running or playing crickets, or laying back and tanning, or riding a boatbike. There's no obvious kerfuffles that might indicate a rampagee. Tillie peaks too, and asks what the big building nearby is - 'gym'. oh. Yeah, he's probably there.
The gym in the Umbra is all new weaver stuff, and there are spiders working to calcify things, so they need to be a bit cautious. The pack move through, looking for Del. In the Umbra, there are motes about the place - larger than the ones at Bill's, but not as active, nor as appear-y. Maybe there's been some recent events that caused anger, but not enough to send Del into fomori land. While Will peeks, the others snuff out the motes when they see them. The garou occasionally see spiders incorporate them into new calcified structures.
Will spots Del and it appears that he works here, as an impersonal trainer. They watch him for a bit, working on a couple of machine specifically. At one point a young lady is sitting on a lifting machine totally wrong, and Del swears at her while trying to get her to do it right. She gets up and leaves, but in the Umbra, an anger mote appears, buzzing around.
The pack take a chance and try to cleanse Del while he's lurking at the machines, but between dodging weaver spiders and all and him moving around a bit, Finn finds the ritual isn't super effective. The two ritualists are feeling a bit depleted by this point, so Finn and Sinead head back to the Sept to update Graeme and to meditate to get some gnosis back. Sinead isn't having as much luck as she'd like, espeically after Ken hits her in the head with a rock accidentally. Finn drains the caern down to the dregs.
Meanwhile, Del has the occasional encounter that leads him to start losing his temper, and the pack to squish motes in the Umbra. Tillie can't seem to peek, she's just finding it too hard to relax around all the weaver spiders. The try and keep an eye on Del with sense unnatural but its just not really finely graded like sense wyrm is. ("once he's killed everyone, there's not witnesses for us to worry about!") Their plan for when things go wrong is to know where the toilets are, so they can step out, then try and take him down.
Kirsty comes up to speak to Sinead. "Tillie asked me to check out Zoology" "Oh yeah, what did you find?" "Nothing.". Kirsty says that there was little bits of taint here and there, but there wasn't anyone who could do something wyrmy like the monkey. Which doesn't rule out the university as the source - it could be a security guard or an admin person or something. They'll keep looking.
Graeme also catches up with her and says that the Hand of Lore went to check on the autopsy, and the results were a bit unusual. ("Change it to 'uusual'"). The tox screens and all will happen over the next few days. Rob killed his housemate (arms torn off), assaulted two people in hospital (one stable, one in critical), tore a cat in two ("awww"), threw a hipster off their bike into traffic ("oh well"), smashed a bunch of cars and other property, and punched up denizens of the pub such that they are seriously but not threateningly injured. At the pub he was ranting and raving and the cops came and he threw things out the window and was coming out, so they shot him. Then he got up, and so they shot him a lot. In the end the coroner made some notes about needing a medical history and maybe genetic abnormalities, so its still in progress.
At about 8, Del goes to his supervisor and says that he is going to go home, because he's still feeling sick. The supervisor says that they've actually had two complaints today about his attitude and behaviour, and probably a good idea to go home. And maybe take tomorrow off, come back Thursday and we can have a talk about your attitude. In the Umbra, motes start to appear, and in the Realm Del goes red and white and starts to demand to know who has made complaints. Will dives through the Gauntlet into a toilet. Tillie and Kasumi are squishing motes that are being generated, but Tillie tells Kasumi to peek. Unfortunately that leaves just her squishing motes, and they are starting to get away from her, and consuming each other.
Kasumi is peeking but can't hear. She can see that there is a confrontation going on, but that the supervisor has obviously had some sort of confrontational training, and is trying to keep an open stance, and non-threatening jestures. Unfortunately Del is grinding his teeth and starting to roll his eyes. Will appears in the Realm in a fortunately empty cubicle and heads out the door. Kasumi sees him and asks if Tillie needs help - the spirits are getting out of control, so yes; between the two of them they are much better equiped to handle the proto-spirits.
Will uses his persuasion gift, and just feigns surprise and raw friendliness. He interrupts the conversation, and catches Del by surprise, derailing his building rage. Will blows this wanker off and says they should go and have a drink. Del's train of anger is indeed diverted - "I'm going home, and I *might* come back Thursday!". Del says he needs 6 drinks. No, he needs 26 drinks. He's had the shittiest day - he describes it in obscenity laced, racist terms. Will just nods and acts sympathetic, hoping the rest of his pack is coming along in some fashion. As it turns out, Kasumi and Tillie are following the trail of generated motes. Will persuades Del to go back to Del's place with spirits, because a bar is a rip off. ("8 bucks for a beer! And it was a poofy fucking german beer!") People are starting to avoid Will and Del from a distance now as they walk through the park. ("spirits! You'll get them!"). Del gets very enthused, and says "I've got good news for you, but drinking first!". ("We should do this party thing at the same time"). Del says he should call people! Will says "I'll get people to come around. Hot chicks!" "Fuck yeah!" ("Will is an idiot." "I've solved this problem!" "... savant").
Kasumi peeks as they wander along, squashing the diminishing amounts of motes. They see Del walking along and enthusing at Will. Figuring that the situation has changed and they need to find out what the situation is. They step into a toilet cubicle safely, but straight away someone bangs the door open into Tillie, and then apologised. She doesn't seem to see Kasumi. ("this is how rumours start" "yes _this_ is how rumours start. Werewolves appear out of the magical umbra... and that's how the two women got there")
Will gives Tillie a call and finds out that she's in the Realm now. Will explains what's going on, and gives Del's address. She can hear Del yelling "we're doing shots!" and such in the background. "bring rum!"! Tillie rings Sinead and leaves a message - come as soon as you can, wear something slutty. Del says "Bazza!" which makes Will remember that they've forgotten one of the drug taking guys. Del and Bazza have a conversation and they've both had shit days, but that Rob's day has been worse. Bazza apparently has been watching the news and conveys what happened to Rob. ("Fuck. Fuck! FUCK!. Jesus") Del tells Bazza that Will - the guy from the party on Saturday. No, the other one - is coming over and bringing girls. Bazza declines the invitation and is roundly abused for being soft by Del, who hangs up on him. ("I can't believe you haven't woken the baby up"). Del buys much booze. Kasumi and Tillie get something a bit nice and head over.
Sinead leaves a note on Finn's head, and comes along via tram. Del's housemate is there, and pretty pissed about them doing a spontaneous party. Will makes himself scary and threatening, and the housemate says "fuck it" and leaves. Del looks a bit guilty for a moment and then says that there's been something wrong with him all week, he doesn't know what.
Tillie and Kasumi come along. Sees Tillie ("fuck"). See Kasumi ("oh. um, sure, come in"). They proceed to get hammered hard. Del is a bit weirded out by Kasumi, but after a few drinks he starts asking a bunch of friendly-but-racist question. Her eye twitches a lot. Sinead shows up and Del seems intrigued and mentions the party on Saturday he saw her at. They all try and stick with the party theme, but its a bit small and a bit odd, but Del is having a good time. Their main aim is to knock Del out, so they trick him into drinking games, or two for one with Kasumi or so on, or ditching their drinks.
Will, as lead partier, goes one for one with Del, and within about an hour its pretty clear that he's really really hammered. He pukes into the sink, then pulls his head back into the cupboard really hard. The wolf surges forward and Will nearly frenzies. Del says "I'll help!" and pours his drink into the wound. Will dents the sink with his fingers trying to keep himself from freaking out. Will goes outside for a breath of air. Sinead distracts Del with music. (DURR DUUR NA DURR THUNDER! DURR NURR NURR NURR NA! THUN-DER)
Del must have the constitution of a bull, because he's still going even though the others are starting to waver. Finn shows up with booze, and the others say "you have to catch up!".
There's a knocking on the door. Uhoh. Tillie gets to it before Del is really aware that something is happening, and slips out. One of Del's neighbours is a bit taken aback at the site of the tall scarred lady, and then further confuddled when she agrees that things have gone far enough, and they need to quieten it down on a work night. Mission accomplished, he scuttles back upstairs.
Figuring they have to get Del out of here, the pack contemplate murdering him at the beach or in Albert Lake Park before deciding to feed him McDonalds and take him home. There's no accounting for taste. They cram him into the Prius, with unconscious Will in the boot. Del stretches his arms out and puts them behind Kasumi and Sinead ... ohhh yeah. Finn is the only one able to drive at this point, even tho Del is suspicious that he's old enough. Off they go!
They end up at Tillie's house at 4am, and drop Will behind the couch. People play silly buggers with drinks. Tillie nearly falls asleep, but wakes herself up enough to revert to crinos. Eventually Del passes out at 5.30am. Kasumi plans to call in sick in a hard core way.
At dawn, Finn heads into the umbra and does a rite of cleansing while slightly pissed. The taint on Del is reduced considerably - its not gone though, which is perhaps understandable with the length of exposure. ("Sticking an egg up his ass." [disbelieving expression] "oh you weren't hera earlier." ) ("his _wyrm_ taint drops off.")
The pack take stock, and realise they've missed Anton Pasquier's arrival at Pearce and that they'd like to check in on Bill. They sensibly check the news headlines and find nothing, so to Clifton Hill they go via the caern after a brief review of who everyone is. Peeking after some sniping between the pack members shows Bill is sitting on his bed and looking at his phone, waiting for a call. His bed is pretty messy. The pack observe for a few hours.
("I think the homids would like to keep the body count down. Just out a general appreciation for human life." "then you shouldn't have made a metis your pack leader then").
At 10ish, Bill gets a phone call from 'private number'. A male, non-buzzing voice says "its at the Clifton Hill railway station, behind the coke machine". Bill is keen to get there, and he's out the door before the call's finished. The pack give chase in the Umbra, with Sinead peeking and being carried by crinos pack members. They get there just before he does, and sniff about. There's been a lot of people at the station this morning - its a Wednesday and closish to the city. She can't really pick out a smell of a person beyond 'male'. The drugs are wrapped in a bag which is then wrapped in glad wrap and jammed behind the machine, like many other people's used lunch wrapping. They contemplate awakening the coke machine, but unless they want a tasty beveredge, not so useful.
Bill shows up and has an altercation with the guy at the barrier. As the pack panic, Bill convinces the guy that he just really super wants a coke and gets let in. He does buy a coke, and at the same time, grabs the packet and heads off. In the carpark, he takes two and sighs. The pack chat about cleansing the drugs, but Tillie is worried that that was what made people go mad. Sinead suggests that perhaps they were addicted to the wyrm stuff as much as to the steroids, and it was withdrawl?
Meanwhile, Will is keeping an eye on dead Del when his phone rings. "Will Smith?" "Yes, that is I." The voice suggests that they've had it suggested to them that he might be interested in some products they sell. They ask what suburb he is in, and he says Carlton. They tell him that a sample - a sign of good will - can be found on top of the door of the toilets at Edinburgh gardens. They're not interested in meeting in person. Will says he understands, and calls Tillie on the other phone.
Once they have followed Bill home and checked where he stashed his drugs, the others step out and get a phone message from Will. Tillie says they'll go straight to the gardens in the Umbra, Will should wait for Del to wake up naturally. The Umbral trip is not fun, because part of the Edinburgh gardens was a cattle pen and slaughter house.
They get there and find that there is a package atop the specified location. On the plus side while this smells of urine, it doesn't smell like 1000 people and urine like the train station did. There are two male smells that seem associated in the immediate area. There's other smells that aren't as savoury, but no glory hole despite cries and ongoing discussion from the pack. The drugs are easy to find because of their wyrm taint, but nothing else leaps up. Sinead follows the scent from the spirit world - it leads reasonably straightly to a road, and disappears. Probably getting into a car.
Its not impossible that the same people were at both places - the distance and timing from Clifton Hill to Edinburgh gardens mean that it was easily possible to make both drop offs.
Meanwhile, at home, Will stirs Del by clanging pans around on the stove, and then persuasions him. Del says he feels much better this morning than yesterday - ever since Saturday he's been feeling sketchy and wanting to punch stuff, but that piss up was just what he needed. Good plan Will! Will asks about the 'good news' and Del says that the people he was talking about will call him - Will says they called a bit before. He asks about the fact it was free - Del says yeah and looks a bit unsure. He says they've never charged. Its weird, but they never asked about it - Ed says he asked, and they said to keep his money. They gave him three to show they were legit, and it kicked in really hard and fast. Del thinks they are testing it out on the sly. Will asked how they found him and Del looks shifty. He says there was this other guy, Bruce, who used to supply some stuff - bit of an assist. But a month ago they rang up and said they were taking over his business, and as a gesture of good will, they were offering a few free. Dodgy, yeah, but it works, so, like take a risk! YOLO! Will asksed about the other guy, and Del says he doesn't know really - they weren't mates or anything. They didn't charge him, or Rob either. And he passed things onto other people, like Will's number and a few others. Will has a moment of horror when he realises there might be more steroid abusing protofomori than they thought.
Will asks about how he contacts them. Del's got a number, but he doesn't use it unless he needs to really - they ring him once a week and he passes info along. Will says it sounds cool like a secret agent thing, and Del looks impressed. While Del is off in the loo, Will grabs his phone and scans through for numbers. He finds one for a Bruce Seckler, and three others that are sufficiently inexplicable to be the dealers. He notes them all down and replaces the phone.
Del comes back and they chat a bit, and he heads off, promising to call Will again. Soon. When he doesn't want to puke.
The pack have a long talk about how to trace numbers. There's no easy mundane way to get the info about who called Will, although there must be mechanisms for cops, etc. Basic spirits aren't going to cut it - they will need to go up a step from the local gaffling and jaglings to follow the sorts of correspondance they are asking about. There are options for either spirits like bloodhounds or weaver spiders. Plug and play might let Kasumi access a pay phone to try to ring the number, but it won't magically let her know info like that without connecting to the right telco database.
Short immediate leads, the pack track Anton from Pearce. Questing Stone is not helpful, so they just go to Pearce. He's there, but doesn't appear to be particularly tainted. Neither does anything he brought it. Well, that's him crossed off the list.
Back to the strange phone numbers - the pack sort through them. Sinead says that one of them is "blow job at [bar]" sso they can cross that off. Another one is a nightclub name with all the vowels removed, and two letters transposed. That leaves one as a possible lead.
First of all, they questing stone Bruce Seckler (who is not Snuffie). He is kind of north east from where they are, in the suburbs somewhere.
They follow the stone and find Bruce Seckler is a balding late 40s looking guy training someone in a gym/martial arts club. He seems like just a guy - no real wyrm taint or unnatural senses. The pack debate what to do with him. Mostly they want to see if he is alive, so, er, mission accomplished. They go to lunch instead and talk about english antonyms and also what to do. (Amber ladies)
They head back to Pearce and keep a look out for Steve's return from Sydney. Eventually. The gauntlet is apparerently being quite difficult. They watch as people pack up and go home. By 6, there's only a few of the animal tending staff, one of the loading bay staff, one admin staff and the managing director, Tenaglia remaining. The truck appears, and backs in. The driver - presumably Steve - gets out and him and the loading guy start taking stuff out of the truck. Steve, despite all the best leads, does not appear to be wyrm tainted, nor does the stuff he is bringing in have more than the expected level of wyrm. The admin staff member goes home, and Kasumi spots that Tenaglia is lurking about the loading bay, which is a bit odd. He keeps pulling out his phone and looking at it. ("Wielding a +10 real estate agent. You're evicted! You're evicted!").
Steve and the other guy finish up, and Tenaglia is still around. He wanders around the place and toward the other remaining staff. This seems a bit suspicious to the pack, so they sense him again - no additional wyrm from the other night when they cleansed him. He starts loitering around the animal handlers a bit, and wandering through other offices. The garou have some suspicion that he might be mind controlled.
When the animal people finally leave, he fiddles with his phone some more (but the pack can't read or hear it). After 5m his phone rings (lights up), and he goes out and opens the main gates. A white van drives in and stops. The pack are slightly suspicious. The driver and passenger get out and come to speak to Tenaglia a bit. They smell them - they smell like two male humans. Tillie senses them, and they hit at least one awooga of wyrm each - maybe fomori, maybe not? Feeling these are the responsible individuals, they watch. Tenaglia goes back to his office, the truck opens and two more guys get out, carrying cages and bags. All four are dressed the same - plain cargo pants, black jackets. The 4 of them seem to have swipe access to the facility, which suggests this has been going for a while. The stuff in the car is also wyrm tainted - animals, bottles and boxes. The two fro the back have a different demeanor to the ones in the front, and they have less wyrm taint (but still a lot). They note the van's plates.
The intruders leave some animals, take samples from others, inject some, and remove some. The two guys from the back of the van appear to be mostly in charge of animal handling and seem quite competant at it, though the front two are also engaging in this activity. They don't go into the chemical part of the warehouse. The animals they are interacting with are rabbits, mice and rats, and despite urgings, no one wants to change to lupus and hide out for them to capture. (and no one wants to volunteer the missing player's character).
Checking out the van from the Umbra, its kept very clean - like its carefully cleaned between trips maybe? The pack speculate about their ability to mystically track this van (a spirit that can leave a super strong smell, or seagulls to circle the van with a chip glued to the outside), but that's the sort of thing that needs some preparation, and in essence its easier to just follow them in their car. ("could we bind a memory spirit to a rock to make a memory talen? And give people amnesia?" "A frypan to knock people out, etc")
The animals being dropped off are a bit wyrmy, and also not quite right for some reason. The ones injected start to sense of wyrm also. The ones they are taking are mostly clean, but not universally. They show signs of finishing up, so the pack split up so that someone can retrieve the Prius. The wyrm guys tell Tenaglia, still in his office, that they are going (presumably, given the pack can't hear) - there's no money changing hands, and no casual chattery. The van heads off, the umbral garou step out and leap in the Prius and they give chase.
The van heads onto the freeway down toward the city. It turns off through Alexandra Parade. It keeps going out the Eastern Freeway. At about Ringwood the pack start to get a bit baffled and give the caern a call to brain dump. Graeme says that he'll have a look and see what sort of places out there might have lots of animals. He'll ask Nadine too, and call Reconciliation at Healesville given that they are heading that way. ("its all hillbillies and wineries").
By Lilydale, the amount of traffic starts to drop right off, which is bad because it might be easier for the van to spot they are being followed, but it also presents more chance to be tricky in the car.
At Coldstream the van turns right and heads down a B-road. The pack reckon they must be getting close to their destination, and drive past the intersection, pull over, find somewhere dark, and change to lupus. They take off after the car on the road, sniffing the recent smell of van fumes. After about 1 kilometre, they find that they have overshot, and have to double back to find that it turned down a left gravel road. The big sign here says "Victorian Animal Aid and Rescue". Oh. The van has gone in a back gate marked "vetinary clinic", and it has parked at one end of the car park. The pack decide to head to the Umbra, and find that the gauntlet is much higher than expected, about the same level as around Pearce, a much more built up area.
Peeking shows that the lot is actually empty in the Umbra - dusty and crappy grass, no reflections of the buildings or trees or anything. It doesn't look sick, just unresourced. Sensing wyrm doesn't cause any major awoogas at a first glance around. They opt to head out a bit further and step there, near an airstrip that is 500m further from town, where things are much freer feeling.
The umbra is lightly brushed - there's some weaver stuff around the airstrip and a nearby winery has a bit along the vines, but its nothing else obvious. They head back to the site, and it is indeed empty. The complete lack of weaver - after what is relatively recent construction - is definitely on the weird side. They speculate about the possibility that something sucked the essence out of here - yet another caern being drained of essence?
They peek and find that the site is extensive - there are kennels for keeping dogs here, an animal rescue area for pets, and one for farm animals, and one for native animals. At the front of the site - at the main carpark - there's a building for doing presentations and suchlike, with brightly coloured posters that suggest school groups come through sometimes. A vetinary hospital is seperate from the rest of the buildings at the rear near where the van has parked amidst some other vehicles, some of which are labeled as belonging to the site.
They track the smell of the four guys as best they can - it leads from the van to a room in the operations area (kitchens, etc) that looks like an empty store room. But ... that's it. The smell doesn't vanish, and there's no other exits. The floor is a bit strange, but Will can't really work out how - its a bit machinery smelling, but he can't see properly. The walls have a space as you'd expect, and also have an oil smell. The pack scratch their heads - did they go into the Umbra? Or other realms (demons or fae or something?) Is it an elevator room? The roof looks like a normal roof, not partitioned off or anything. They can't see any surveillence - the rest of the site has obvious palmsized cameras. Is it an illusion? Trap door?
They scope out how many staff are here. The vet clinic has a doctor and a nurse, and there's one operations person here. They might have seen the van? It seems hard to believe that they didn't at least vaguely register it.
They opt to step in in two groups. Will pulls Tillie and Kasumi in, and 5 minutes later Finn appears with Sinead. They are all pretty sneaky while they sneak about. Will pulls up some carpet, and its clear it hasn't been moved in a while, so trapdoor isn't likely. Tillie senses for wyrm - she can sense the guys that have been here, but she can also feel a cold sensation from the ground - there's a sense of wyrm through the floor, but its like its a long way away. She can't say what it is, but - the lights go off. And then on again. Kasumi looks abashed, but says that the switch has a slot at the top for a key card or something. She uses plug and play with her phone and can see that there is some sort of bespoke computer control behind this light switch with a few options. Will wonders whether this place would be a half hour helicopter ride from Scars Atoning and whether there might be a link between the two. Probably not, its 200km away. The pack decide to call back to caern before going in.
They step back. Well, Will does, Finn get stuck in the gauntlet. When the others realise, Tillie sighs (Will suggests that no time passing means that they will keep, just leave them there), goes back and gets them. Sinead looks cross, then drags them back to the Umbra. Finn looks more dejected than he was.
The pack heads back 500m away and makes some calls. They ring Graeme who says "Aha." Tillie says "If you're about to say 'animal aid'..." and Graeme said it was on the list. He guesses they are at animal aid, but says that he had boarding kennels and some insane cat lover called Ingrid. Tillie explains about the room and what they could work out about it. "What's it with you guys and underground things?" Graeme spoke to Reconciliation too, and they said "the sanctuary" and everyone had a good laugh. That Sept is now aware they are out there somewhere, and Graeme will update them. He suggests not going in with guns blazing. Graeme asks about umbral access, and Tillie says the umbral ground stopped them. He suggests digging. Lost Prophets are a bit abashed. Graeme suggests proceeding with caution, but says that people are aware they might need to send people, do they want that now? Tillie says they've got it under control for the moment. She'll call in when they know more. ("What would happen if you undedicated you faesces and then stepped?").
They start to dig in crinos form. About 2 feet down, they hit something hard and plastically. Further investigation shows its something like perspex, greenish black and mostly opaque. Peeking near it is dark, unable to see much, but there is a space there. More of the dirt is cleared, and the garou find an edge. It senses of wyrm when Tillie touches it, but not when she does not. The sheet is about 3m square, and it takes a while to clear enough dirt away from the edges. ("Rock! 1000 uses! memory editting, axe, fire!")
They pry the edges up, and immediately the sound of animals screaming and wailing in pain emanated from down the hole, along with a distinct wyrm corruption. ("Can we cleanse?" "yes. with fire"). Kasumi is lowered slightly into the hole to peek, and sees a shaft (SHAAFT) descending maybe 20 or 30m down into the ground. There's grooves in the side and the suggestion of machinery above. It does look like the room is an elevator room. Sense unnatural says weaver and wyrm. In the Umbra, the sides are covered with black, glistening slime. When Tillie senses wyrm, there's a big mix of different sorts of wyrm.
Ok, its time to report back. ("Clearly Elinor holds us back").
("I have run out of fucks to give"). They call Graeme who gives them a bit carte blanche in terms of help. He suggests sending some people out to help, and then doing some reconoitering a bit, cautiously. ("we've got 1 fetish... could our second one be a grand klaive?"). People will be at least an hour to come out to them, so in the mean time dedicating some stuff to make it possible to get down the hole sounds like a plan. ("it does sound like we're lowering Kasumi down the hole as bait").
They premptively send some faerie lights down the hole, figuring that if they trigger security, then anything will. Kasumi spits that there are two features near the bottom of the shaft, one above the other. She suggests they are two doors, suggesting that there are two floors. That already suggests a certain size or significance to this place. The pack head back to Coldstream proper and find there's a hardware place. They step out, dedicate a chunk of rope and a crowbar big enough to go across the shaft mouth, and leave. ("I thought about leaving money but then I realised I don't care"). ("50 shades of cardinal") ("So I got burned as a heretic because I wouldn't sleep with the king of france")
A few minutes after they get back, the pack spot Ian Shatterglass and Nadine Holloway coming across the landscape. They get the rundown, and the Elders agree with their fishing, er, spying plan. Nadine approves of the idea to ask Boobook for help, and wants to keep surprise as much as possible. Ian says that other help is coming. Tillie asks if its Scott and Ian nods. Lost Prophets develop a twitch.
The garou summon Boobook and chat. He is happy to extend his help to Kasumi to hide her from spirits as she heads down the shaft. The other garou change to crinos and lower her in glabro down on a rope. She finds that the sound of animals gets louder, and appears to be coming from the walls in general ("maybe this is the spiritual refleciton of elevator music"). They lower her to the first feature and it does appear to be a door. She tries to peek, but the high gauntlet is foiling her. Kasumi did a case study in elevator doors in her engineering degree, and knows how they work, so she is able to use control simple machine to cause them to open.
The space on the other side of the door is quite large. A balcony runs around a large open space, dimly lit by weaver ephemera that looks roughly like lights. She can't see down over the balcony, but it probably matches up to the next door downward. Nothing is obviously moving, but there is still the ongoing animal moaning and screaming. Everything is still covered in the black crystaline surface.
Kasumi opts to build up a swing and then jump onto the floor of the balcony to see more. Its cold underfoot - that surface is also covered with black crystaline material. There are more doors leading left and right from this balcony. The floor surface over the balcony has cable-like weaver structures all over it, possibly desks? Kasumi tries to peek again and totally stuffs it.
She tries to confirm the lack of spirit activity, and finds that there are actually shadows moving within the black surface. They flicker back and forth, subtle shade differences for the most part, and not trying to track her despite sudden fear. She looks at the other doors - not lift doors, but more like office doors. Nothing else is obvious, so she heads back upstairs via the rope. ("erk everything is all sticky and now I have cream with hair in it")
Scott Rosen and the Steel Hunters show up - "Tillie!" - look down the hole and get braindumped at. Scott says it sounds kinda shit, and asks about the plan. Will says that they do need more investigation before kicking the door down and Ian agrees and approves of their volunteering. It is suggested that the pack ask Boobook to extend his power across the whole of Lost Prophets - even if it is unneccessary, its a good idea - and they investigate further, which seems pretty viable. ("Bear in mind that Tom Riddle was 17 when he made up 'Voldemort'... its like 'DarkSyde'). The aim is to try and keep their surprise factor if they can, but Tillie wants to get someone down there who can peek. ("telling me I can't be pack leader is not how that works"). Nadine mentions the problems they had earlier this year with people stealing animals form the zoo - she'd like to know if these guys are connected. Scott says as long as there is some punching, he's fine with any plan.
They speak to Boobook, and he is on board with a contribution of gnosis to help power things. The pack head down on the rope, with Finn slipping every metre or so and crashing into Will. They all swing out into the open doors that Kasumi left, and Sinead peeks. She can see a large open space filled with work desks (computer, chair) down on the the floor. There's at least two people working on their computers even though its after midnight. It looks like offices, not a factory down there. There's about 20 desks. Its not like a call centre, but like more senior desks. There's no carpet, or partitions between the desks, which seems out of place. She can see through the side doors on the lower floor and it seems that they are laboratories in there.
Kasumi notices that despite Boobook's protection, the shadows seem to be clustering around Will somewhat. If they spread out, its just him, the rest of them seem to be ignored. The garou toy with giving him a shoulderide the rest of the exploration, but just default back to pretending its not happening.
The pack explore - the doors that lead off the balcony go into corridors with the occasional door. Exploring further suggests that they are all residential, like small apartments. They investigate and find about 25 to 30 people sleeping or otherwise busy in the apartments. Sinead senses for wyrm on them, and finds that at the minimum they would want to hold the least tainted down and cleanse them, and some of them feel like fomori. This.. kind of... not good.
The lower floor has a central area full of desk - the desks have some specialist equipment, and computers and textbooks. They look almost like 'manager' desks, but there's no real personalisaiton or privacy. Will posits that its so organised that there might be more of these places. There are guards wandering the place as well. Some Along each side under the balcony are labs with glass walls and more equipment - its looking more and more like a research lab. Some of the labs have animals in cages in them, many of whom look distinctly not right. There's no working desks in the labs - it looks like SCIENCE is done int he lab and then ADMIN in the central bit.
In the Umbra, everything is weirdly deserted. Weaver stuff is all over the place, but there's nothing moving except inside the black walls. In the Realm the pack find the security room, and a new lift shaft, suggesting there are even more floors below this one. They open the doors and look down, spotting what looks like two more floors underneath this one. Sinead doesn't want to descend further in case they run into something that sees them and wrecks the surprise, Kasumi wants to keep exploring to make sure there's nothing to surprise the garou. The compromise is to go upstairs and speak to the other waiting garou and let them know what is going on.
At the surface, they find Steel Hunters laying around admiring the stars and having a lovely night. Tillie ssays they've been working - she dumps out what is happening in brief, and Nadine says "I'll be back" and goes to make some calls. Tillie wants to go hunt more and Ian says "Let me know how it goes". har har it is to laugh. Tillie asks Scott to get some more rope. Scott tells Claude and Ben to go get some more rope. Ian comments on the lack of being attacked and Adam wants to know why banes aren't just appearing spontaneously from the ambient wyrm energies. Where is that essence all going? Is it being used for something? Or is it that they are being created, drawn into the Realm and used? All the fomori that the garou have met have been a bit bonkers, you wouldn't expect them to do Science. Is it a wyrm caern? Surely it would be defended better in the Umbra.
Nadine comes back and says that she called the Scryers to come and Reconcilliation will send two packs. When some of the Lost Prophets express surprise about this, she points out that even if these folks aren't the same as the ones that were attacking Scars Atoning, they are similar - its a wyrm installation that is organised and well resourced. Some chatter about the wyrm device that let the fomori there look into the Umbra.
Thirty minutes later, about a dozen garou show up in the Umbra. Nadine greets two of the and they are formally introduced to Mandras Sky-Watcher (rank 3 homid child of gaia philodox) and Stephen Righteous-Claw (rank 3 homd child of gaia ahroun). Tillie waves at Mandras who gives her a strange look. Nadine introduces Tillie and the Lost Prophets and Mandras says he's been meaning to catch them to talk. Tillie asks if he means further to their conversation the other day. Mandras has no idea what she's talking about. She says she met him in the city on Friday at about 11pm - Mandras says he was in the city that night, but he was in Richmond about then and he's never met her before. Ian says "heh, nice one" to Kasumi who shakes her head, and then Tillie notices an expression based conversation between them. There is more staring between everyone - Tillie says that 'Mandras' asked about their totem, and a bit about Scars Atoning.
This is... kind of... not good, and needs to be followed up, but the current situation needs to be dealt with more urgently. More formal introductions are finished up - the other packs are Gaia's Balm, pack leader Andrew Polodori (Rank 3 Silver Fang Homid Philodox) and made up of Children of Gaia and Fianna, and First Wave, pack leader Runs-Prey-to-Ground (Rank 2 Get of Fenris Lupus Ahroun) and mostly made up of Childen of Gaia (which is a hell of a combination). Will surreptiously uses scent of the true form - everyone here is a werewolf, and no one is a spider in a human skin suit.
Lost Prophets give the other three packs and Elders a run down of the situation - gauntlet, accomodation, labs, security, lifts, wyrm tainted humans and fomori and so forth. ("what sort of idiot brings a theurge to a wyrm fight!"). There's talk about the lack of banes in the Umbra and the crystaline walls. Most people think the shadows are guards and it was only their totem gift that kept them from being attacked. Its crytally, maybe there's something weavery going on that is binding banes down. Which might explain the high gauntlet? This is not a reassuring thought either. Possibly there were lots of banes here and weaver spiders have arrived to make a reflection of the site, and they've bound all the banes up. (Fish swimming under a lake is a good description of what they are seeing). Stephen says that without knowing what it is, the only plan they can make is to be aware of it. The bottom floor does need to be examined before they finalise any plans.
Members of Lost prophets become aware of a subtle pushing to the rear in terms of plans and discussions being undertaken, even though the assembled Garou don't really know all of what is going on. Polodori and Runs Prey To ground and the Reconcilliation elders clearly work together enough that they start making plans without really consulting the other garou. Its not that Tillie is being snubbed as a metis or anything, its just that they are kind of getting on with it. The Lost Prophets raise their voice and inject a little without being too overwhelming, but it ends up with Will being given more attention (stupid pure breed). Maybe its sort of more a lupus thing? These packs do have a higher number of lupus in them than the city packs. Tillie's mostly happy to let the locals sort it out when Scott nudges her in the side and mumbles "Get in there!" "no" "Fine, I will!" "Fuck that!" Tillie steps up a bit more firmly if only to keep Scott out of it. (fucking scott doesn't tell me what to do!) ("Argh, no, don't destroy the future Lyd!"). There's a bit of body language adjustment, but no one takes exception really.Generally the feeling is "everyone must die". There's not a lot of love for any of the least wyrm tainted down there, and so there's not a lot of interest in cleansing them. Lost Prophets would like to go room to room murdering, but the gauntlet is a real issue, and no amount of magic stealth will help in an empty corridor with cameras. Maybe that's the best idea then - take out the security room and work from there. Its pointed out again that they stil don't know what's at the bottom of the hole - so Lost Prophets get their ropes and head down.
The pack head out of the horrible gauntlet area and set Sinead to peeking, then bring her back. Its about midnight as they slide down the rope. Sinead has such a better view from the spirit world that they double check some areas that they could't see so well. As they travel around, it appears that Tillie is now of most interest to the shadows within the wall - they do nothing more than flock around her.
They check out the elevator room - it looks a lot like the room that the elevator comes down from. They check out the desk area looking for corporate logos, but don't find anything other than the names of the things they are using (intel, etc). There's no desk names, so they wander upstairs and look at the apartments - there's actually space for close to about 50 people, and about 25 to 30 people asleep. The doors do have names on them, and they pack check for any that leap out. The rooms look like hotel rooms, some of them are bigger than others, but none of them are huge. There's one couple in one room, everyone else is on their own in double or bigger beds. They have kitchettes, but nothing huge in any of them. Atthe end is a kitchen/mess hall - it looks more like army rations than 3 course meals. ("no one wants to play wyrm pinata with the walls").
Sinead spots a blue beret hat on a bedside table next to someone exceptionally wyrmy, very much like the ones that were on the heads of the guys at Scars Atoning. Oh. Oh dear. ("Windmills are the males, and the dams are the females"). On their way down to the bottom floor again to look over the shoulder of someone typing, Sinead says she hears barking. They follow the noise and find what is functionally a kennel for large rotweillers. That's poor. She senses wyrm and says she thinks they are fomori. Oh. Oh dear.
They check out the security room to see if the blue beret guys have another umbral peering machine. They can't see anything obvious, but do find that there is a lot of places where cameras are viewing things. There are 3 people in the security room - 2 observing things, 1 guy watching them. They stick their heads into the armoury. Sinead says that there are a lot of guns - she doesn't really know what they are, but she describes rifles like the ones that they had at Scars Atoning, and some short guns that the others id as being machine guns (*all groan*) and probably shotguns.
They skim through the first aid area and identify it as being like a GP surgery - not a clean room with scrubs, but they have a bunch of pharmaceuticals and IV and such. They could do minor surgery that doesn't require general anaesthetic. There's one person in there, in a bed, hooked up to IV and a bunch of machinery - a disproportionate amount of machines really. The pack in the Umbra see that the crystaline walls seem to thicken up around that same spot, and that the shadows are clustered in a way similar way that they are around Tillie. Sinead senses and gets a high wyrm sense, but not a fomori, something else. She senses for unnatural, and they are not, despite pack cries, a mage. They have almost an umbral sense to them? No, maybe a spirit sense? Something like a spirit bound to a person? Is ita possessed human? That might well be what they are sensing ("if its a vampire, they have a fake cardio machine"). (resurrection men)
They peek over the shoulder of the guy still typing and try to understand it. There's lots of technical... biology, probably. Something about immune cells.
Tillie decides to stick her head up the rope and braindump to the garou around the elevator shaft and give them the bad news. It doesn't really change their plans, but might mean they have to be tighter about the execution. Back down she goes.
The pack figure they may as well actually get on with looking at the lower levels. They pry open the elevator doors, attach their umbral rope and slip down the shaft ("shaft!" "right on"). There are clearly two levels lower down. They go to the first one, and find that in the realm there are signs as the lift opens - 'virology' and 'bacteriology' point one way and 'production' the other. They go toward the virology direction and find a series of labs with dying or dead animals, some of which are air locked. In the other direction, it looks awfully like 'production' refers to drug production. With a sinking feeling, Sinead senses for wyrm around the small orange gel capsules that the machines seem to produce and finds that it has exactly the same sense as the wyrm steroids that they have been following. Oh. Good. There's no people here.
The next floor - level 4 - appears to be operational room. The first thing they spot is yet another lift shaft, implying that there's at least one more level. Awesome. The rest of the floor appears to be taken up with a large computer server room (cold), and a technical store and repair room. There are two guys at computers in the technical room. In the umbra, its really, really dark in here - its been lit enough by light down from level 2 down the shafts and some random lights, but this level does not have much illumination. Kasumi uses her smart phone to help them see.
As they pry open the next lift doors, the screaming of animals gets louder and more insistent. Also, an ozoney smell of electricty, probably a generator. They cut off a chunk of rope and lower themselves down the shaft, which appears to be only one floor deep. Down there they find a generator in one room, and in another room.. hell. This is where all the animal screams are coming from. The room is pitch dark and full of animal screams, scents of blood, piss and pus. There's some sense of movement, but nothing visible. In the Umbra the noise is even louder, but just as black.
When Lost Prophets get to the surface, the garou there are talking about lowering the gauntlet with a wyld spirit. Lost Prophets say they should be in first and take out something like the security room and secure the armory, while other people follow along and start killing sleeping people. Other sites - computer room, or generator are suggested as a first site to hit, but then overall the feeling is that the armory is likely to complicate things if it is available to the installation. Boobook also conveys that his ability to hide them is limited to the time of night.
The hospital guy is brought up - no one else really knows what he is, but general feeling is that spirit posession might be correct. The pack has some concern that a Struthers-like reaction might happen when they kill him, but that's the only regard they have for the sanctity of human life.
Sinead is in favour of dangling one of the non-Lost Prophets garou down and seeing what happens with the black crystal stuff, but there's resistance on the grounds that if it does anything it might spoil any tactical surprise they have. Runs-Prey-to-Ground is in favour of hit hard and all out rather than having sneaky plans. The homids are more in favour of removing the weapons from the wyrm-tainted guys' hands, so that's the plan for Lost Prophets. Polodori says that if they have taken the security room, any follow up alarm that they trigger might only be seen there, and its not relevant when the pack is there. Nadine points out that they would like to get data - there's probably a fair chance that there's some scope for destroying all the computers if the right alarm is raised. So that gives them target #2 - Steel Hunters will head for the server room and stop the techie guys from doing anything.
Lost Prophets makes some plans for securing the security room - there are two doors out from the security room into the computer area, and one into the armory. The doors are solid metal, and presumably the windows next to them are bullet proof. ("how many crinos does it take to stuff up an armory").
Ian speaks up suddenly and says "take out the generator". People toy with it - the downside is its right at the bottom of the installation, which means it'll need to be Lost Prophets. Kasumi says that if they have any serious setup, it'll have some backup power if only for a few minutes, and maybe offsite backups - they'll be relatively gungho about trying to obliterate their computer stuff at that point, so it might just act as a warning instead of a solution to all life's ills. It would presumably leave the entire place in darkness, which is probably going to benefit the garou more than the humans. But not definitely. Its turned over a bit more, but in the end people think the other parts are more valuable and vunerable.
The fomori dogs are the next thing to be sorted - there's some concern that there might be a "release the hounds" alarm, so people need to be there to stop things from getting out of hand. The Scryers end up taking that, along with Ian, leaving First Wave and Gaia's Balm to go left and right through the accomodation areas.
While the other packs are summoning and binding a wyld spirit, Lost Prophets put their heads together about what sort of spirit to deal with to bolster their somewhat depleted enthusiasm. Various spirits of respect ("As a shadow lord, i vote against grandfather thunder", "you can summon stag on your own time") such as peregrine, or solidarity such as wolves. They decide on a Bhelhwi, a spirit of courage, and trot off to find some running water to help that along. Sinead performs the summoning ritual and after a time, the spirit rises up out of the water in the shape of an enormous crinos shape. Will steps up to speak to the spirit. ("They should have fired and glazed it") ("We don't have a pack name do we?" "Well done, you've now forgotten _your name_"). He says they will be first to fight in a battle in the offing, and they require help bolstering their will. He offers 5 kills dedicated to the spirit in return for its help. The spirit asks for 5 tokens, one for each enemy that they slay. The pack agree that this is acceptable. The spirit cuts itself with a stone knife and then cuts each pack member, mingling blood with blood to convey its gift.
When Lost Prophets return, the summoning is continuing. Nadine is standing by with a fairly disapproving look on her face - she was against the whole idea and isn't showing signs of having changed her mind. The spirit descends from the sky like a rainbow coloured aurora, and Rain-Falls-Up steps up to bind the spirit. When he has done this, the spirit descends into the ground, and weaver ephemera starts to be pushed out of the spirit landscape, along with many spiders. Other spiders rush in from outside to try and stop this onslaught, leading to a tall wall ringing the site of weaver ephemera franctically being tended and extended by spiders. Nadine flat out says that if they try this in the city, she'll come down on them hard and fast.
Lost Prophets take that as their cue, and head down the rope as the other packs watch and start counting. The crystaline material doesn't seem to have suffered any from the wyld spirit, though shadows still flicker within the walls, following Kasumi closely. They go to the security room and confirm that there are still only 3 people there. The guys look occupied with their tasks - two people tending desks with computer systems and one guy in a supervisory looking desk. Because of earlier shennanigans, only Sinead and Tillie can step, so Sinead takes Will through behind the supervisor and Tillie takes through Kasumi and Finn as close to both the others as she can.
The two groups appear simultaneously. Kasumi clawpunches one of the desk guys across the room, knocking him prone and probably bleeding out, while his chair flies across the room. Tillie skips past Finn and claws the other guard heavily enough to sprawl him into the middle of the room. Finn decides his opponent is no longer a going concern, and heads for the door that leads out on the armory side. Sinead smacks the supervisor around, knocking him into the right position for Will to reduce him to paste. Total time 2s.
The pack curb stomp the unconscious opponents to ensure they don't get up again. Kasumi sits down at the consoles and starts trying to get an idea of how to use them. The elevator makes a door-open noise and the pack spot two of the guards that were walking around before coming toward the door. They're both armed with rifles of some sort, and one of them is fumbling for a swipe card. Two of the pack head for the door to lie in wait. ("ideally we want to get them into the room, and shut the doors, before they start bleeding")
The door opens, and Tillie in crinos form grabs the lead guy and drags him half way across the room. ("signs that you are a regular, 4.5.."). Sinead pulls the other one into the room and grapples him. Tillie's opponent gets a foot down and stops her headlong rush for the wall. Tillie decapitates him for his trouble. Sinead keeps crushing her guard, but he starts to wiggle free. Will comes in and claws him to help her out but the guards are armored. Tillie drops her dead opponent and claws at Sinead's. ("Stop kill stealing, i'm hugging him to death"). Sinead bites at his head, but the guy manages to slip out of her grip. The garou decide enough is enough - Tillie grabs one arm and Sinead the other, and Will cuts the guy in two.
Kasumi starts to notice various crinos appearing on the monitors as they flick from camera to camera. Crinos. Dark room. Corpses. Blood spray. And so on. It looks like the battle has joined. Sinead strips the guards - they have automatic rifles, handguns, knives and some kind of alarm system. Oh.
Tillie is keeping an eye out for Scott and Steel Hunters on the monitors, but can't seem him. She can see what looks like the tech room but the two guys in it are just doing the same sorts of things as last time. Will and Finn go into the armory to check it out mundanely, Sinead goes looking for suspicious taint. Will finds drawers of grenades of different sorts, and some ammunition for various weapons... which feels a little strange. Not like silver, but something like it? Despite a fear they were wyrm bullets, sense wyrm doesn't really show anything out of the ordinary here. As the monitors flick around Tillie gets a good look at the other garou that are moving around the site and notices that they are all a bit more torn up than she would expect. There's nothing obviously attacking them now so she guesses they got torn up in the Umbra. The Scryers are visibly damaged in the kennels, and the rottweilers are going crazy.
Kasumi figures out enough of the computer console to start being able to get information out of it. Step one, have any alarms gone off? BWOOP BWOOP BWOOOP BWOOOOP. That's a yes. She tries to shut it down quickly, but this console doesn't allow her to override the alarm. She jumps up and runs to the supervisors console and finds that it has higher privileges, and the sound goes off. Lights start coming on, and the monitors start showing humans rapidly getting dressed and running out into corridors. Kasumi starts looking for ways to lock down doors or whatever. ("i dont think the OHS here is particularly well regarded"). She turns off the lift leading up and out of the complex. She remarks how locked down the security room can be compared to the rest of the complex. She ups the security to this room.
The computer room comes up again and the two geeks are now in the server room madly doing things. There's still no sign of Scott. Some of the staff come out into the open area, running for the security room. They aren't well armed, let alone dressed, but start trying to use swipe cards and swear a lot. Against better advice, the garou grab some grenades and guns to try and provide some relief to other packs. On one of the monitors, they spot guys with handguns shooting at werewolves, but it doesn't seem too bad.
Lost Prophets lock the security room so they can exit and leave it secure. Five crinos rip the door open and 3 unarmed guys in their pyjamas are reduced to screaming and bits. ("'out of order' written across the door in blood"). ("there's no glory for this" "wisdom?" "No." "honour?". "No!"). As soon as the doors are opened, they can hear handguns going off but nothing heavier
Tillie and Sinead press the lift button to head down stairs, and while its coming up, grab armfuls of guns and ammunition and run them down to the kennels for Scryers and Ian. The others spot people on the balcony above aiming weapons at the two of them and decide to step in. He fires a shot off at Tillie but misses. Kasumi sprints across the computer desks and leaps up, catching the bannister and pulling herself down onto her feet. Will spots more people running onto the balcony behind Kasumi.
As Sinead and Tillie head for the far door, it bursts open and Scryers come backing out in crinos form fast, along with a lot of barking. The guy shooting at Tillie swings around and shoots Kasumi - the ammunition burns as it goes into her and she feels a surge of rage. Behind her two guys are closing, so Will sprints up the stairs, goes past the armed guy and Kasumi and engages the two guys. ("dance commander!") He tears one of them in half while Kasumi claws at the gunman. Finn sprints to the other near set of stairs and starts heading up the balcony.
Tillie can see that the Scryers are fighting a couple of dogs and have fallen back to the open area to give themselves more space. She yells 'weapons' and turns to go back, boggling at her packmates who are engaged in combat rather than waiting at the lift. ("that's your "I'm doing a stupid thing" expression" "no no, its just that in the calm light of mroning mistakes might have been made".)
Will is knifed by the second assailant and nearly frenzies ("do you want to spend a willpower or do you want to go 'full Get'?"). Finn can hear footsteps coming around the corner, and lies in wait despite his pack leader's psychic "GET TO THE CHOPPER". ("Stop kill stealing!" "I'm kill securing"). Kasumi slices a big chunk of the gunman and finds he bleeds greeny muck. As footsteps run around the corner, Finn lunges at one of the guys, clawing him open and breaking bones, but he's then shot by the guy right behind him and then clawed open by the next guy, who has weird bone spikes and claws instead of hands. He is very badly mauled, and opts to stumble backward, feign death, and fall back over the edge of the balcony, crashing to the desk below and knocking himself senseless about 3 feet in front of his pack leader.
Will smashes the knife guy and then he and Kasumi fall back to the lift where Tillie is stabbing the button with her claws. There is an enormous crash as something comes down in the middle of the desks. The lift opens and the Lost Prophets pack in, stabbing at the close door button. Someone gets shot as the door closes and the lift descends. Its at this point that the pack realise the lift is covered in fresh blood, including two very large bloody hand prints on the doors. Sinead heals Finn in the lift, who looks a bit embarrassed.
When the door opens, big bloody crinos footprints and blood splatter are evident in the corridor. There is much roaring further down the corridor, and the door at the end is torn off its hinges. Sticking their heads in, Scott is slamming some guys' head repeatedly into a metal desk. He's pretty pissed and the pack seem pretty on edge. The pack looks pretty torn up, and the short answer is "in the dark at the bottom of a black lift shaft, it was bad in the Umbra". Kasumi starts looking at the computer stuff and can see that some of the expensive looking equipment is on fire. There's smoke coming out of some of the gear. Tillie says that Steel Hunters are needed upstairs, so Adam starts healing people with Sinead's help, and they say they will come up straight after Lost Prophets.
Kasumi thinks that the technician guys got to the server room and enacted some sort of disaster code. Things are not responding to keyboards and more smoke appears. She starts killing power to stuff and spraying fire extinguishers everywhere.
As the rest of the Lost Prophets head up in the lift, Will pries the trigger guards off some of the automatic rifles. As the doors open, there's nothing immediately there ready for them. There's some sort of bruhaha going on near the kennels - not just fighting dogs but other things as well. They can hear something hammering on the glass to the right of the lift. Finn and Will burst out and look - there is one massively over-muscled, Rob-Summers'esque looking guy hammering at the glass with his fists, while two gunmen are escorting him. Finn cuts loose with Call of the Wyld. ("if it all goes to hell, we get back in the lift"). Will shoots the behemoth, who turns toward him. Tillie shoots the fomori as well, on the grounds that without him the others can't get into the armory. The guys behind him with hand guns shoot and miss and shoot Will respectively, while one of them hides behind the hulk. Will, having spent some rage, lunges forward and claws the nearst gunman. ("no one trusts people with silver teeth. even in real life they're almost certainly pirates").
Sinead claws the hulk too, and where normal people have layers of fat and such under skin, this guy really only has more muscle. Finn closes and savages a gunman, tearing at his arm and forcing him to drop the gun. Will claws the hulk, who starts to bleed in a sort of arterial fashion, but is still standing. Sinead puts an end to that, throating him and not getting crushed by a falling giant. ("you just shuffle forward and back and then punch him"). Tillie shoots the other gunman, but he shoots Finn with the painful unsoakable bullets. Sinead sighs and moves to heal him. More guards come clattering down the stairs as the elevator goes "bing!" and the Steel Hunters power out of there. ("i could tell from the waves of obnoxious coming out").
With the addition of the Steel Hunters, all healed up, and the pincer effect of the other packs pushing fomori and staff into the centre, things swing the way of the garou. The final straw is when Nadine uses her Jam Technology gift to ruin all the guns. Many of the garou look a bit tattered, but no one appears to be dead. A small number of people haven't been killed, but instead either surrendered or went into a gibbering heap (suggesting not everyone is fomori).
Lost Prophets go and check out coma guy as soon as the gun fire stops. They find that instead of him being on the bed, he is on the floor. All the monitors have alarms going off - some because he disconnected them, but others are suggesting he's dead. The pack cautiously check but he does appear to be dead, with a red foam around his mouth. Tillie thinks he's had a fit or something, and bitton off the end of his tongue. The pack check for ID and find that he doesn't have any in his hospital gown, but his name is on the local chart - Colin Wilson ("his name is Colin wilson." "What was his name?" "Calum Watson" "Don't tell him the wrong thing!") Tillie peeks across the gauntlet and finds that where there were no spirits before, now there are many twisted animal spirits, fighting amongst themselves. Oh.
Meanwhile Kasumi continues to pull power out of machines, but she finds that some of them are now really hot. Really, really hot. Oh dear, there is lots of smoke coming out. ("i was swimming and blogging... and then i was just swimming").
People are healed where necessary, but without the pressure of being attacked, they heal pretty fast on their own. The various packs compare notes about what was happening. About 2/3rds of the security staff appear to have been fomori - a couple of them injected themselves with some sort of epipen kind of deal and turned into the hulk.
Words are had between Polodori and Scott when it becomes clear that the computer systems were not secured. Scott points out that they got attacked all the way along the 2nd floor and then when they went into the lift shaft it got really bad - unlike some people who got off at level 1 and attacked sleeping scientists. It nearly becomes a fight but Melissa Freedom steps in and has some quietening words. ("i dont know that i've ever seen blonde chest hair").
The garou wander around poking at stuff and trying to work out what to do. The Reconciliation elders don't want to try and take anything out, its easier just to keep it all here. Tillie points out that it might be that an alarm has sent 300 guys in helicopters on their way here, but Mandras says that if that's the case then its already happened, and they don't really have the gnosis to dedicate and rip everything out via the unpleasant umbra. He's more concerned about a self-destruct button. They opt to have somone sit in the security rooms and keep a look out for approaching people.
Its clear that its going to take ages to sort this place out. Even with the ruined computer systems, they are going to be central to investigating things, and so they'll need a computer-savvy glasswalker or similar. ("like a whole lot of blancmange stuck together with tears"). Scott and the Steel Hunters seem happy to head off now the fight is over and narkiness is in the air, and they will talk to Elaine RDI from Alternative coming instead. The Reconciliation elders seem happy with that idea, so off they go.
They get some information just poking around and flicking through things. The ammunition appears to be a silver/steel alloy, suggesting that they were concerned and aware about garou - oddly, it seems to be new. There's no obvious internal name for the place - it just seems to be 'the facility'. At least its not 'facility #21'. There's no obvious external network connections when they boot up a pc, but there are some documents that look like they've been sent from another site. There was more than 1 blue beret guys - looking through rooms finds about 6 more, and they were all the most "pants down, tentacles out" of the fomori. The alive prisoners will be interrogated and killed to try and get some more info as well. Everyone left alive is a human - there's no evidence of any mages at all for isntance.
Lost Prophets look about for drug evidence. They find that some of the scents they find match the guys who were dropping drugs off, pretty much absolutely confirming that the steroid fomori and evil animals were coming from the same venue. There's no real links they can find with the weird wyrm tainted chemicals that were in the rabid monkey room though, leaving a few loose ends.
The Sleeping Lore Elders are going to head off, and encourage Lost Prophets to leave. They scan the staff at the Animal Aid on top and find one person who senses of some level of wyrm. They pass that info back to Mandras, who confirms that they'll be checking out everyone and their families in the next couple of weeks - and all information will be passed back to Hidden Green and Sleeping Lore as well.
Before they go home, Lost Prophets take tokens of their slaughtered foes - after some arguments, they opt to take one each. (Tillie - tooth. Kasumi - antlers. Sinead - hair. Finn - antlers. Will - ) ("take his junk!"). Will dedicates them and they head for the stream to resummon the courage spirit. The spirit is satisfied with their offerings and the deal is complete.
Nadine gives them a lift back... to the caern. They brain dump to Cossack and Graeme when they get there (big wyrm thing, but not our problem). ("shower us with admiration and gifts!"). Cossack is pretty pleased about the inter-sept cooperation working well. Eventually the sleepy pack are sent home to rest. As he's getting ready for bed, Finn finds that when he looks in the mirror, he can see his collarbone is all wonky and clunks strangle when he moves it. Oh well.
Late in the day, the pack get back together at the Sept. Cossack performs the rite of recognition for the pack. Additionally, in recognition of Kasumi's excellence in performing her auspice duties in a dangerous situation (being a scout) at the Animal Aid Refuge, the Sept recognises her as Rank 2.
Kasumi starts looking for ways to track the Red Wolf spirit that came to her in a dream. The topic of fake Mandras comes up and the others give Kasumi the eye - the Sept is obviously interested in people who pretend to be other Sept elders, and may well send Lost Prophets to give a heads up to other septs, especially Scars Atoning, given the interest that the fake Mandras had in that new sept. Will does some meditation to get gnosis back.
Information filters back from the investigations at the Animal Aid facility. It appears to have been set up to do research and experimentation into animal research. They were trying to: wreck animal experimentation by messing with the results; researching drugs for particular animals; virology with an eye for creating diseases that would remove an entire species of animals (ie: maybe wolves); animal fomori research, extending to human fomori, and the drugs appear to have been a field test. Information about Wilson (coma guy) seems to have been scarce, but it looks like he was sensitive to the Umbra in some fashion, and his reactions would act as an alarm if the banes and corrupted animal spirits reacted in the Umbra. Everything is sideways references, but that's their best guess.
The surviving researchers were there for a variety of reasons - some of them were there so they could Science!, others appear to have been blackmailed or even kidnapped and brought there. Tellingly there was a lot of anti-depressants, anxiety and mood control drugs were found in the bedrooms.
One of the major goals of the investigation was to try and figure out if this was a one of many sites or if it was unique. The answer so far is "dunno", but it is definitely a major installation. There have been some information about Edridge in document - not like it was a closely associated site, but that there is some connection beyond the blue beret guys. There's some indication that they received their silver alloy weaponry about a fortnight after the fun at Scars Atoning.
Some names of apparently senior people have been found, but they don't respond to questing stone - that might be that they are warded, that the names are fake or that those individuals are overseas. Those names will be passed around to try and see if anyone else can find them. ("I've taken - dunt dunt - tainted drugs...")
Elaine turns up on Saturday to speak to Kasumi, and gives her a usb key, saying its probably of interest to them - its a fragmentary list of the people being supplied with the steroids. There's some names, but not all of them have addresses, and there is an address without a name. They recognise some of the names, but there's some others on there that they don't know about. And they know about a couple of people not on the list. Awesome. Given the response that Rob, and nearly Del, showed to the drugs going away, all of these guys are ticking time bombs and will need to be managed. Kasumi is all for pre-emptively killing them all before they go mad and kill other people. The pack wonder about getting some help.
Lost Prophets sigh and take the list, and decide to check out the unknowns to figure out what is happening. Then they revise that plan, and check Del out first. Del appears to be at home, and cooking bacon and eggs (he must be in a bulking phase). His housemate is asleep. He is still wyrmy, mildly more than the other day when they cleansed him, but not spewing motes of anger into the umbra.
The pack debate what to do and it comes down to needing to clarify their aims - fight the wyrm, save the near-fomori or save everyone around the near fomori. Basically its fight the wyrm, save others, save the bozos who took the drugs. They have spirit options - calm spirits into talens of some sort? That might stop them going insane enough to trigger whatever it does. Kidnapping? Killing? Sedating? Faking providing them with replacements? Or make it just poisonous? Talens to knock people out and take them somewhere else to kill them? ("we should visit that man and give him some flowers." "The man whose arms got torn off? what would he hold them with, he's got no arms"). They could have a different plan for each affected person too, complicating things futher. ("can't we just put them all in one room and spray some semen around and say they have a violent gay orgy?") ("Why does 1% of the population have 99% of the heroin?")
They google the names of the people that they don't know - Ed Biezen, Len Hardman, Kyle Gemes, and then an address without a name. Rob Summers brings up a lot of google, for obvious reasons. Ed has previously been charged with assault. There's a Len Hardman that plays in the VFL. ("it doesn't go like that - AFL, BFL, CFL etc" "*V*FL!" "*giggling* "Its only funny because Eli seems so cross" "if it does go like that, VFL would be really really shite"). None of them show up as having killed and murdered everyone. Other than Rob.
They buzz Ed - he lives in a set of flats in north Melbourne. They go to the caern and then come back in the Umbra to check it out. In the Realm its three story of brick flats around a crappy courtyard. In the Umbra, its sketchy, but there enough to just walk around. Ed doesn't appear to be home at the moment, but there is a strong sense and scent from him here. He has the same not good sweat as Del and the others. They use sense unnatural to find Ed's drugs under his mattress. ("I keep my porn on the internet" "means everyone else can use it as well"). He appears to be some sort of job that requires heavy lifting. He appears to have 3 drugs left.
(https://heathenscripture.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/joyce-katter-devine-last-bastion-against-the-gaypocalypse/ " I don't advocate gay marriage any more than I advocate eating potato salad for breakfast. I just think it makes zero sense for other people to campaign against it. What the fuck do you care? Eat your cornflakes and shut your stupid-hole.")
They opt to not cleanse Ed's drugs nor rifle through his pots for money and jewelery, but to continue with the plan to see what everyone on the list is like. They Questing Stone for Ed and find him at his local, just down the road from where they started. He's quite built, drinking beer, and watching some kind of sport on the tv. No one seems keen to sit near him. A quick sense wyrm from the street suggests Ed is quite wyrm tainted - more than Del was before he was cleansed. He's pretty close to reaching a level that the pack would assume was a fomori, but he is't one, despite the green sheen to his skin.
They make notes and head off. Not having an address for Len, they Questing Stone for him, and find that he's in Elsternwick area. To the prius! The house is a two story house, with large hedges and a double size block. They find somewhere to step, and come back to peek. The Umbral house has a bland reflection, with a few more spirits active in the garden. There's no font of anger motes anywhere to be seen, so viewing the realm is required. Despite Finn's ongoing issues with peeking, some of the pack manage to view the realm frmo the Umbra as they wander around. There's 4 people in the house, one of whom is quite swoll. He's the 20 year old son of the older couple in the house. His drugs appear to be in a vitamin box in his room.
Leaving Len, they try and find Kyle Gemes. They don't have an address for him, so they try questing stone some more. Its not being particularly helpful, so rather than push it, they head instead to the address with no name. The garou cruise past and see that its a townhouse in East Malvern. They find somewhere to park and step, then head back. The place does not really have a proper reflection, but there is enough weaver stuff to be able to move through the house. Actually, there's a lot of weaver stuff - or rather not so much lots as it is fairly intricate. Tillie peeks and finds it has white carpet. White furniture. All the art and furniture matches, and all the prints are hung precisely. ew. There are three scents - two older, and one younger male scent that has elements of the bad sweat smell from the steroid users.
They scope the young man's smell. Its ever so slightly askew - books out on the desk instead of on shelves, and some shoes out of the cupboard. Sensing wyrm finds his drugs - taped behind a drawer in a plastic bag. They can't really see well enough to get a name. They debate stepping out to read things but figure its not really important enough at this stage to take a chance.
The pack speculate about what to do now. Rather than doing them individually, Will suggests doing them as a group, perhaps suggesting that they've been given toxic drugs with bad side effects and the pack will give them an antidote. ([5 minutes of talk about testicles vs penises] "yes, science bitches!" "Its a discussion about penis science. Its important"). They could then cleanse them or hit them in the head with a hammer. Finn puts forth the possibility to maybe get a spirit to do the cleansing - while that will take some effort, it might be less than individual cleansing.
Tillie decides to head back and chat to Cossack and they put forth their suggestions. He says that they would need a story about why they were doing the antidote thing to avoid extreme suspicion. They need a venue and Sinead's place nor the guys that stole Finn's stuff house seems viable. Cossack has some concerns about the amount of resources they are committing to this, but he doesn't disagree with their plans (and agrees that murder will also cause problems). He tries to poke holes in the plan to help them have plan B.
Cossack suggests mixing their plans - get them all in one spot and get a spirit to help sedate them while they cleanse them. He does point out last time they did this, the cleansed person then went crazy. He also asks them about venue - it'll need to be soemwhere that looks partly legit. Day surgery? Empty medical suites? Random office?
Sinead suggests she could get some xanax or valium to help things along - that could be the 'antidote'. They work through the story but can't think of a reason for why they would be a group helping the drug takers on the sly. Maybe they could be from the company, and it was rogue group trialling things? That might focus anger on the pack and end poorly. A charity organisation? Why would they get involved like this?
Its starting to get a bit involved - do they have the resources for this, or the time even? ("Do you want to be like that guy who went crazy? Or have your genitals fall off?") Tillie starts to twitch and lean toward killing them. Cossack says that there's a fallback where the sept can lend them gnosis stores to do the cleansing and binding individually, if this gets too complicated. Not sure what order they will flip out either? Maybe they could get some regular steroids to help with withdrawl symptoms? Did the drugs have a sort of wyrm-bane tape wyrm? Could they make an actual antidote? They could bind a spirit to something to effectively be a talen of cleansing, so that's an option. Then they could go to them rather than bringing them somewhere. Could they trick them into going out into the country for a body building comp and then murder them there? Could they pick up the steroid selling business and just give them a cure?
They could be the same people that have been giving them drugs, telling them to come in in order to keep getting free suspicious drugs, and do some tests. The pack could then be a bit dodgy and there's a good reason for it. They could borrow some equipment from Glenn's gym as test gear? ("We're giving this, its a booster Let us know if you have any wooziness. Or anal bleeding").
In the end they go with that - Sinead plans to head out to get some xanax and valium. Will gets a call from Del, asking him to come out to some club on King St, but Will pleads chronic softitis rather than get involved in that tonight.
Sinead heads out, and on her way there she finds some new offices in Richmond that suit their plans exactly, so she sends the address to the others who check it out and confirm. Kasumi goes to find some online surveys to fake for the 'tests'. Sinead finds someone willing to sell her a lot of strong sedatives for a decent price, and is home by 2am. ("yay team! and by that I mean yay Sinead").
More practicalities - what sort of spirit to summon? Generally the best option is Unicorn, because of the strong association with garou (being a tribe totem) and with calm, peace and healing - fundamentally the pack are going out of their way to heal/help people that they could just murder, so that's a good way to get the spirit onside. The downside is that the spirit will probably want chiminage - perhaps something like restraining their own violence or perhaps helping others? ("I'll do a _lot_ of weed. I mean, a _lot_. I'm having a hard time conceptualising how much I am talking about"). After considering a variety of options, the pack opt to approach the spirit with the offer that they will each do a couple of days of charity/assisting work in the name of the spirit. They also ask if they can go to Scars Atoning to do the summoning, given its a caern of calm, and Graeme he'll organise it for tonight.
They look at the list of people to get together and hit some minor issues - Del knows them all. Bill knows Will and maybe Sinead - probably not well enough for it to be a problem, but still. Oh wait, Bill also knows Tillie and Finn from the gym. Hmm, will he remember Finn? Probably not, next to Tillie and Marion. So, while Sinead is cleansing from the Umbra, Will will watch her, Kasumi will be the person in charge, and Finn her helper, and Tillie in another room, ready to help.
They make the calls, and Will gets a hold of Ed and Len, who are reasonably amenable to coming. Len asks about whether the drugs are detectable on a drug screening, and Will promises someone can talk to him about it tomorrow but it is a totally new product so he should be ok. Kasumi speaks to Bill, who is ok with coming, but then with Kyle (who they never managed to find) who is angry and yelling abuse at someone in the room with him, making random threats and generally bad tempered. Kasumi bribes him with promise of extrapayment and implies there would be no more drugs. Kyle says fine and slams the phone down. They don't have contact for Bazza, though Del does, so they might need his phone at some point. Maybe Will can slip them xanax while hanging out one night and Sinead can cleanse them from the Umbra. What could go wrong?
The pack also doesn't have a contact for the East Malvern guy, but Finn, who is watching the tv while studying, says that's probably not relevant. Apparently there has been a double murder suicide at the address - the media doesn't have many details but they are showing the front of the house and its definitely the one they went to last night. Lost Prophets head out there, find somewhere near Gardiner's Creek to park and step, and head to the house. From a distance they can see little anger motes floating about the place. Sinead doesn't peek, distracted by the minibanes. But Tillie can, and she plays a fun game of Dexter - she thinks that the McEntree's (now she can peek and read that it is David, Martha and Stewart McEntree) died in two sets. One person was hit upstairs and then progressively beaten to death along a corridor and then down the stairs. Someone else was chased around the lounge, and attacked progressively. There's no immediate sign of a suicide, but after hunting around a bit they find handprints and signs of a rope or something on the bannister above the stair well.
The opt to go and talk to Christine about how they dealt with the morgue issues last week with Rob Summers as she lives near by. They find the rest of the Hand of Lore are there too. They handball the problem to chase that aspect up, and Marion volunteers herself and Alex to stop by on the way home later. Christine says that its interesting that the guy hung himself as it suggests that he's not a complete lunatic after something has gone wrong and its more like a frenzy than a total conversion. When the Hand of Lore investigated Rob, his brain had been badly damaged or changed by the process of turning into the hulk. Christine sugggest going back and taking Stewart's drugs, just to cut back on evidence? Lost Prophets head back and go through the Umbra again. Finn peeks as Tillie steps, but she has been gone for 10s when he spots someone using a torch moving through the house.
Tillie appears, reaches over to pull out the drawer and realises there is torchlight coming up the corridor. She glances around and sees a closet, takes two steps that way and then hears Finn's voice. She spins around looking for Finn, wondering why he has stepped out. Finn says "no, I'm in your head!" and Tillie restrains herself from swearing, moves to the closet and mutters darkly. Torchlight comes into the room briefly, looks around then continues up the corridor. The torch doubles back and then around the house, then out the back door again. Finn reports they've gone. Tillie senses for wyrm and smells to see if the mystery break-and-entering competitor is something to do with the drugs, but while she can sense the echos of Stewart going crazy, there's nothing additional, and the more mundane scent is just an unfamiliar young male. Baffling, but they decide to just flog the drugs and leave.
The pack try and work out if they want to bind unicorn to a thing that has to be used, or whether they can bind the spirit to the spot. Both have their upside, but also downside - not least of which is the pack's initial inability to think of anything that isn't a three unicorn moon tshirt. They contemplate a peace symbol, something to do with doves, or peace lillies. ("Go to first class and be all 'this isn't where i parked my car'")
( "Swamp germans". "muuu muuu muuu" "Who would skin a giraffe?" ... no wonder it takes forever to get started)
The pack Moon Bridge out to Scars Atoning and meet David Thewlis and Jane Redfeather after respectfully greeting Jirrawan. The two sept elders are interested in a catch up on news, including the faux-Mandras incident, but generally about the animal installation as well. They are happy for Lost Prophets to head out of the caves and summon unicorn.
Sinead arranges the peace lillies around herself and drapes her daisy chains over herself, then begins summoning. She spends three hours praising unicorn and asking for help. At the end of the summoning, a shaft of silvery moon light brightens and then fades into the shape of a white unicorn. It is not strictly a horse in form, more made up of different kinds of woodland creatures in a rough horse form. It moves toward Sinead and once out of the moonlight, it is clear it glows slightly. Sinead greets the spirit and it appears to be relatively well-disposed toward them. She explains what they wish to do, and why (keeping a bunch of violent people calm while they heal and cleanse them), and that in return they will each spend 10 hours performing charitable acts for their communities. The spirit accepts and Sinead says they will do it within the next two moons, which is also acceptable. The rest of the pack are frankly suspicious that things went so well. ("More or less disrespectful than when Will gets it wrong and calls him 'Jirrawang'?")
As soon as they return to Melbourne and are out of the Umbra, Will's phone bloops repeatedly. He has two calls from Del, asking if Will has heard from the guys that he put them in contact with? Because Del was speaking to Ed and Ed said there was some sort of meeting tomorrow about it, but he hasn't heard anything, and he can't get a hold of Bazza.
The pack sigh and contemplate getting Del to come along anyway. It'd mean getting some other garou to help them, but its not too hard. They decide to go with "there's a Wednesday session" instead and try to get Bazza's contact details off him too.
Kasumi rings Del and fakes him out thoroughly - Del gives up Bazza's address and everything. Will then calls him after the fact and says he has a session on Wednesday too, which seems to relieve Del's concerns about getting left out. The pack ask Barry Heaton to come and help out on the Wednesday to cover the pack members that Del will recognise too easily.
The pack spend Monday setting up their decoy medical lab and getting $1000 worth of gift cards ("we're going to have to steal another baby"). When the alloted time arrives, Sinead has bound Unicorn to the site when Ed shows up. He's dressed in a blue wifebeater, tracksuit pants and thongs. He's a bit tentative anyway. Len and Bill show up and are in reasonably good mood too. Kyle shows up, and he slams the door and is rude as well as being a bit shorter and with a flat forehead. In the Umbra, motes of anger and rage start to show up - not a fountain but some. Kasumi is very calm and practical at him, which doesn't offput him, but she also offers a gift card which does mollify him a bit - the others perk up at the idea of getting stuff for free too. Sinead peeks from the Umbra and senses wyrm - Ed and Kyle are very highly tainted (tho Ed is much more chilled than Kyle) and Len is a bit high and Bill is still low from the last cleansing they gave him. Bill and Ed vaguely know one another, and Len and Kyle at least know each other by sight.
The four of them are given their "booster" and Sinead gives Unicorn the nod. The garou in the realm feel the effects of the spirit on all the people in the nearby area ("woah"). After about 15 minutes, Kasumi is aware that Len isn't really writing anything on the paper, he's just staring at the pen. She gets him up and into the side room to 'relax'. The others look at him and are a bit confused, but don't really get excited. Kyle gets slow and having trouble focussing. Sinead starts cleansing from the Umbra. Bill is asking lots of questions about side effects, because his mate Rob went a bit nuts, which he is worried might have been a side effect, cos Rob went a bit nuts. Bill is not clearly not quite tracking, but getting a bit anxious about the side effects (because Rob went nuts). Kasumi manages to calm him down and get him out of the loop. Ed is apparently a regular downer user, and just rolls with it - relaxed, and thinking about things, and writing down very slowly.
Sinead's cleansing goes wrong and the pack try and work out what to do. In the end, Finn goes into the Umbra to perform the ritual instead, and this time it works well. There's no immediate puking or leaping up and hulking out. Tillie checks them, and finds that the wyrm taint is a lot reduced, though not completely removed. They'll need to get rid of the drugs so they don't pump back up again - hopefully unicorn will be able to stop them going insane on the withdrawl.
The pack consider what to do with these 4 near-unconscious lumps of meat. They can't really put them on a tram, let alone let them drive, so they organise some taxis, and follow along behind to replace their drugs with codliver tablets. Ed and Bill are easy to get home, Len is a bit trickier because there are other people living there, but he's so out. They get Kyle home to a weatherboard house in Oakleigh where his girlfriend is there. She has a weird demeanour and when they look closely, bruises. The pack twitch lightly and give serious thought to just murdering him. For the moment, Kasumi ninjas in ("That's our word!"), gets the drugs and piffs them out a window, then cannot step out. She opts instead to follow them out the window.
The pack try and figure out where Bazza is, using the info Del gave them, and it turns out that about a week ago, he died in bed. Heart attack? he doesn't appear to have turned fomori in any obvious fashion, but he's definitely dead. They opt to make an anonymous call to the cops about a smell and no one responding to knocking. They call Hand of Lore to warn them about another autopsy, and find out about Stuart - while he had some physiological changes, they weren't as significant as Rob's, which also is backed up by the fact that he showed some remorse after his rampage.
The pack contemplate their time and decide that they need to party out tomorrow night, after fixing Del - that's the last night before the Moot. They try and get Del to come earlier, but he has a new job and can't make it.
Deprogramming Del goes well, and they ship him off to his home at about 11pm. The pack then fulfil their spirit geas by going to a house party that Sinead knows about, and get completely shtonkered. ("its the new Ridgewaying - Ridgewaying is tying them down and threatening them, Del'ing them is giving them stealth drugs").
Moot moot moot. Opening Howl! Inner sky! Summoning the spirits of packs to thank them for their assistence, and mentioning other spirits that have helped the Sept in this last week.
General business - its been a busy month, especially for the Lost Prophets, starting with the mage house and ending with the bruhaha with Pearce and Animal aid. Will's theory that the mage house was abandoned concurrently with the ambush at Braybrook is generally felt to be good. The bats leading Lost Prophets to the house is still a strange event - was it the other group of mages that attacked them afterward? Was it meant to be a trap? The house hasn't been destroyed yet, but its on Cossack's list for the coming week now Hidden Green is satisfied they got everything they can from it. General discussion about dealing with mages (they don't know how), and what happened to the mage they tried to interrogate (melting). Kasumi's suggestion that the mages are being controlled by mages is debated, and found to be possible, but not able to be confirmed, although it might explain the sudden appearance of a strong group of mages. There's no explanation of the connection to the sense of magic that Lost Prophets found in Abbotsford when the Fergussons were killed - they were killed with "strange knives" like Tony Staley, but the pack definitly felt magic at the fire site. Baffling.
Hand of Lore dealt with mind control weaver things in the Botannical Gardens that were taking over some of the senior managers, without killing anyone, as well as doing morgue stuff for Lost Prophets. The Scryers spent a fair bit of time in the Umbra, doing some stuff for spirits. The Get of Pennington were on guard duty a lot.
Animal Aid discussions and wrap up. There's a weird slightly embarrassed vibe around the Get of Pennington and Kirsty. The place seems to have been dealt with thoroughly, though there are some loose ends - the bottles of wyrm tainted chemicals that were in the lab still have no explanation for their origin. Kirsty says they trawled everyone who might have access to the building, and there wasn't anyone specifically wyrm tainted on staff, in the guards or the cleaners. Its baffling. Other loose ends include Tenaglia and why he was letting the guys into Pearce.
("Are they saying we don't have houses?" "This picture does suggest that, yes").
Some talk about the fake Mandras. Cossack and Graeme suggest people should be on guard against this sort of thing going on. Kasumi wonder whether it wasn't actually a fake Mandras, but a real one being mind controlled. Everyone gives her a dirty look for suggesting an even less attractive possibility ("Thank you captain doom face" "That is now your new deed name"). Or was he lying for some reason? Will says that he's been thinking about the number of people looking in on the pack and he's a bit disturbed. The garou speculate about some sort of gift or spirit favour to hide them from anyone spying on them, but its not going to be a little thing to get happening.
Things break up a bit as people start dealing with their individual stuff and the elders. Renown is recognised. Sinead challenges for rank 2 and is told that she must work out what sort of talen the Sept needs and make it. Finn challenges to have his glory recognised, and Ian says that he spends too much time preparing his galliard tasks - if he can impress with an impromptu telling of the steroid fomori/animal experimentation story, the elders will recognise him. He does a reasonable job.
Will challenges to have his honour recognised, and the elders quiz him about why they spent so much time on the steroid fomori, and how their behaviour relates to the litany. Will concentrates on the protecting the veil and repecting all of Gaia tenets of the Litany, and fends some light probing about why they didn't combat the wyrm as their first option, given how much effort they sank into it. He defends the pack's decisions well and the Elders recognise his honour. Ken challenges for rank 2 and the elders get Ken to try to critique the attack on the animal refuge installation, and suggest what the garou did wrong and what might have gone better. He does an ok job, without offending anyone and they recognise him. Barry challenges for rank 2 and after a discussion amongst the Elders, he is recognised without further challenge.
Lost Prophets take advantage of their new ranks by learning stronger gifts. Kasumi learns Spider's Song from a spider spirit in return for ordering Tillie's house before the next moot. Will learns strength of purpose from a wolf spirit in treturn for not eating for 3 days (or frenzying in that time). Finn bargains with a frog spirit - in return for finding who wrecked the habitat of its earthly children at a nearby creek and making sure they do not do it again, the spirit will teach him the Howl of the Unseen gift.
Stories and songs are begun oddly by Ends-the-Quiet who normally does not talk. He goes to Crinos and speaks in Garou tongue and asks "Why do so many garou names reference fire? Why do so many of us think of our rage as fire?" There's some tentative discussion, suggesting that even humans think of anger as red flames. Rage is more than just anger; it is a spiritual power, a more real thing than just anger. Some of the Sept wander off and get engaged in other stories, but some stay and talk with him about it. Finn says that fire is cleansing, but fire is also destructive. Ends-the-Quiet points out that in this country fire is also regenerative - many trees need fire to germinate their seeds. There is more discussion, but Ends-the-Quiet eventually brings it to a conclusion by saying that fire is the meeting point of man and wolf (and not 'elf') - it is the wyld that man understands, it is the weaver tool that wolves understand. It is the meeting point of wyld, wyrm and weaver, like the garou themselves. ("I keep expecting you to bust out some Electric Six" "Don't you want to know how we keep starting fires? Its our desire. It is our desire" "I hate you people").
(5 minute discussion about the ammonia content of various creature's urine). The moot builds toward the Revel, and it becomes clear that Kirsty has been chosen to be Wyrmfoe for the evening. She leads the Sept into the almost frenzy state and then howls as everyone disperses into the surrounds to rid the area of excess wyrm.
Lost Prophets are wandering around Carlton when they spot a drain opening that looks a bit odd - it looks like a cave mouth rather than a regular shaped bit of concrete. It smells like oil and rubbish and plastic and rot. Its almost like an industrial waste smell rather than a storm water draing. Will peeks and can see a 3am suburban street in Carlton - he sniffs at the mouth of the drain and gets a similar, but slightly more organic and less corrupted scent. He senses unnatural and gets a strong, non specific wyrm sense - Tillie sense in the Umbra and finds that there's definitely a bane in the the drain.
They discuss options, and decide that Tillie will flame it out of there and see if they can draw it out. This she now does, making several cubic metres of fire, flames streaming out the mouth and the two little vents at the top before changing to smoky dirty black smoke. Tendrils of wire, with plastic, glass and metal clinging to it run out of the drain and head for the pack. Tillie and Sinead stomp at it, smashing the bane but taking some damage themselves from the bits of rubbish bound up in it. Kasumi lifts the drain cover to attack in a wider front while Will claws ineffectually at the other end. ("I'll use persuasion - 'have you ever tried _not_ being a bane?'"). Tendrils wrap and slash at the pack with limited effect. Finn reaches around Kasumi and attacks the tentacles. ("we're going on a bane hunt, we're gunna catch a big one... I'm not scared...")
Tillie eyes what's happening, and yells "grab it and run". The pack each grab handfuls of bane tentacles, cutting their hands up a bit. They each then run different directions. Unfortunately, Tillie dominates this process (11 successes??), and she hauls the whole bane out of the hole and drags it along the street. This works well for Will and Sinead. Finn manages to let go before he gets pulled down the top hole, but Kasumi is not so lucky, and goes in head first. The rest of the pack pull the bane in lots of different directions, smashing the spirit up, while Kasumi gets out of her hole without frenzying.
Despite some dirty looks from the ragabash, they then decide to check out what is going on here in the realm. Kasumi and Will will step out into the drain so they can't be seen, and look at what is down there. After some shenannigans with peeking being quite hard, Tillie gets Finn and Sinead to take her to the caern and back while peeking well before they step.
When they appear in the Realm, its muddy and goopy, but not as horrible as it is in the umbra. There's no smell of bodies, frankly surprising the pack - its in fact a lot more organic here than in the realm, with dirt, plant matter, food as well as the oil and other crap that they found in the umbra. ("its everything I imagined and more." "And not just monkey faeces either"). They poke at it a bit and make sure there's nothing of significance they are missing, but come to the conclusion that the drain has got blocked, and crap has built up, and that's attracted or formed a bane in the Umbra. They are about to head back when Kasumi hears an approaching thumping sound. She freezes and gets Will to do the same. Tillie is peeking when she sees a guy run past wearing sneakers with money taped all over him. He is otherwise naked. She checks for wyrm, and he doesn't have any. She stares a bit bemusedly as he runs off and turns a corner, and checks that isn't some weird human thing that the pack haven't mentioned, like that pancake day thing. ("is there nude running money day and I just missed it?") Kasumi hears the footsteps run across the top of the drain then fade, so figures they can go now.
The pack all end up back in the Umbra, and debate what if anything to do about the naked jogger. ("What day is it?" "How is that possibly relevant?") Mostly they think he's probably either lost a bet of on a buck's night, (or this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjrUOlK2714 or possibly this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQEBzauVIlA) but out of a sense of roaring curiosity, and certainly not so they can rob him for a ticket to Ireland, they follow his scent along the streets to a nicer part of the suburb than their collapsing terrace house. In the Umbra it is an older looking building than the realm, which has been renovated a few times. They wander in.
Inside, Tillie can hear him in the shower. There's a drift of money near the shower where it appears to have been dropped. The pack are really confused. They cruise around and find his name is Clifton Hillier, he seems to live on his own, and be moderately affluent (nice electronics, nice clothes, random pile of money and packing tape). They scratch their head a lot, but decide to leave it, and go back to Kasumi's house. No. Yes. NO. Yes. NO!! Yes. Noooo. We're here now! Arrrgj.
WAAAARGH. Only a couple of hours after they went to sleep, the pack are woken from their horrifying Malfeas dream. Kasumi's phone is ringing and when she answers it, its Graeme, who, after a bit of discussion about their horrible dream, says that there is a fire ("um, dd we forget to put the garbage monster out? is the whole Umbra burning?") or there was a fire - the chatter on the radio was that the fire was weird. It was in South Yarra, he'd like them to look. They sigh and agree. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AqHoCnoa8E)
The pack park in the domain, step, and run out a bit further to check it out. In the Umbra there are little fire spirits hanging out, and some motes still appearing. Tillie peeks and finds that the exciting part of the fire appears to be out - there are still fire engines tho, and police and such. There appears to have been a vehicle fire, maybe an SUV, in the driveway of the house that Graeme sent them to. There's a skull in the remnants of the car, but almost everything that isn't steel is ash. Sinead senses wyrm in the Umbra, and finds some sense, but not a specific one - there's been wyrm things happening here, not there is a bane here now. They head into the house and find that the people that live here are Norman and Eileen McKoy and their kids Andrew and Charlotte. They don't appear to be here, but the house does have police and senior looking firemen looking around. Listening in, the reason for the confusion is that the fire wouldn't go out. They sprayed it as usual but it kept burning. Finn senses unnatural, and finds the same wyrm as Sinead notices, but no magic. Tillie checks in the realm and finds that there is a strong metally sense of magic around the car, and with wyrm lingering around the same spot. Some speculation about rituals for souls or to become a mage, as well as asking questions about the full moonness of it all.
(Buckaroo Banzai vs Buck Rogers)
The pack spend more time listening in to the emergency services personel. Cops are still taking statements from witnesses - most of them report a weird, almost industrial noise like a chainsaw, or like some weird creature. (Gargoyles?) Then weird metal noises and some screaming. And then there was fire. Mostly people were asleep. The car pulled in about 4am. The pack check out the car looking for comfirmation about their gargoyle idea. The forensic people have access at this point and are removing two smaller skulls and assorted bones from the back - it looks like the driver had kids. The roof appears to have been mostly torn off, hanging by a thread on the back right corner. ("how many people can be mages?" "How many people in melbourne?" "aout 3 million" "how many werewolves?" "about 60?" "three million minus 60"). There's no sign the fuel tank exploded or anything, which sort of suggests that maybe it was already damaged before the fire?
Lost Prophets go looking for a pricey house that might have some CCTV. They find one 2 or 3 doors up on the outside of the house in a dome. Everyone looks at Kasumi who sighs. She can't seem to peek well, but the others manage to position her into the crawlspace between floors to get at the cabling. She crawls along and finds a box where the camera cable comes in, and phone cabling come out. This suggests the video goes offsite, but she tries it anyway. Fortunately it has a standard unsecured webserver on the box, and Plug&Play lets her access it. It looks like the HD video is sent elsewhere, but there's a lower quality version kept here. She downloads the last 12 hours onto her phone after deleting some pictures of cats and mp3s. The box has a sticker saying that it was supplied by Tern and Key security services. She tries to leave through the gauntlet, and finds that the space isn't exactly condusive to spiritual peace. She decides to relax and review the video for a bit (without sound). The camera couldn't precisely see the events, but there is something. About 4.30am, there was a bright light that caused the camera to crap out for 5s, and then it was clear that there was a fire (flickering light reflecting on the surfaces the camera can see)
In the meantime, the rest of the pack check out the neighbours for blood altars or 12 mages standing there with shotguns, but it seems like everyone nearby is normal. While listening in on the McKoy house, they find that the reason that there was a car with kids driving in it at 4.30 was that they had just come back from the airport, and the father is still overseas - the police are trying to get a hold of him. (Opinions are divided on the vegemite chocolate. GM says 'bleh'.) (Babbling about food convention differences between countries)
Kasumi tries to step again, without much luck. She takes a deep breath and focuses, and tries again, ending up in the Umbra. The whole pack review the video with sound this time. The sound is tinny, but they don't think its a chainsaw. In fact, although its hard to hear, they think it might be a garou roar. Its definitely not mechanical. Maybe it is a gargoyle noise? Maybe? Its not a howl, its a roar. Then there is smashing glass and metal noises, some very brief screaming ... and that's it. They start to talk and after a minute, then there is the fire. So there's a lag between the silence and the fire starting.
They try and scent around the fire and see if they can get anything. The fire itself is a bit of a write off - between the smoke and the water and the foam its all useless. Finn is creeping about on the embankment and finds an anomolous stagnant water smell. Its pretty faint and transitory, but its very similar to the smell that they found at Tony Staley's murder.
They speculate further - a werewolf who is a lost cub? Mages that could transform into a werewolf or werewolf-like creature? It all happens on the full moon, that's a hint of sorts perhaps. Maybe the mages have a werewolf under their control. ("Its not kirsty, she smells like tattoo, blood and hate") Maybe they are trying to make werewolves look bad or something? The mages they have encountered do have an interest in fetishes.
Kasumi steps back into the Realm and calls in late. Her office points out she has a meeting in 30m. She manages to bluff that she's held up by the fire in south yarra and will be there as soon as she can. The others get a hold of Cossack and invite him over for pizza and speculating.
Cossack agrees that the sounds could be a garou. He's a bit concerned by the fact its repeating each full moon, and agrees that their theories about mages doing pretend werewolf things holds up to some scrutiny. Finn speculates about temporary mage mind control on garou in a revel. Cossack suggests that he will ask Emma to go and find some local spirits for whom the event was significant. Tillie suggests they could try the cops and using them to investigate, and he is more or less for it - definitely follow obvious leads. More speculation about mages and gargoyles, and why they haven't seen any for a while - maybe they are hard to make?
Will wants to find out if there's any subtle link between the people who have been killed, so he's probably going to be at the library all day trying out options. Tillie toys with stealing police information but all the old problems with getting in there exist plus their inability to interact easily with computers from the Umbra.
Kasumi and Finn head back to the house late in the day and ransack from the Umbra - the McKoys were in Bali on holiday. Eileen and kids flew back while he went on the US for work (he's in banking or something). They can't find an obvious link - Eileen's maiden name isn't Fergusson or anything. Finn finds a cat and queries it - he manages to get the info that something ran away from the fire down the street. It was the big thing that jumped on the roaring thing. He gets the direction and checks it out further - they find traces of trail all the way to a pedestrian bridge that goes over the train line. Its a sweaty, manky stagnant water smell. There are claw marks on the bridge, but its hard to tell what sort of thing made them. Its weird that whatever it was came up here to jump down into the tracks because the embankment nearer the incident would have been easier to get to. What about if who or what ever it was jumped onto a train? There wouldn't have been a passenger train, but there could have been freight, or shunting trains?
Emma returns later and says that the spirits were ("recalcitrant, obscure and annoying") as helpful as they could be. The fire spirits came because there is fire, not to start the fire - which is good, really, because the alternative suggests that mages can summon fire elementals. The other spirits were deeply asleep - that being a problem with spirits in the high weaver areas - and thus didn't sense anything of such a fleeting event.
Finn gets up early and goes to deal with the niggling sense of frog problems he needs to deal with. It leads him to a spot on Moonee Ponds creek, near the corner of Moreland and Pascoe Vale roads. There's clearly been a fire there, and all the ground has been churned up. It seems centred around a concrete pipe that appears to have been broken up in a non-professional sort of way. There's a distinct smell of petrol in the area. Finn is a bit baffled because it doesn't really look like a frog habitat. There's water, but not much else. The fire doesn't appear to have taken out big trees or anything, more scrubby or saplings. He looks a bit baffled, and checks the Umbra. The spirit world, in contrast to churned up mud and soot and petrol smell, has saplings and some ponds. Compared to nearby areas, this spot was sort of lush, but it has wilted somewhat.
In the realm, the fire appears to have spread up the embankment and to the fences of the shops and all that face onto Moreland Road. The horrible posibility that it was frog habitant 150 years ago and urban sprawl ruined it. The fire was maybe last weekend, so that's sort of reassuring. There's been some people through where the fire was - MFB people for a start, but some small number of other people and dogs have trawled through it too. He spirals out following scents and at one point he finds a beanie that has a strong petrol scent as well as matching the human scent that was near the fire. He finds that that person's smell has been in the area repeatedly in the last week. It leads out onto main roads, but given the reaction of people as he hits the main road, it might be easier to not trace this early Saturday morning.
Finn figures they can come back at night and get a trailing scent. Kasumi guys shopping and gets a video card for her dedicated pc, and shops for charity. Will spends the day at the library trying to connect the dots between the dead people at each full moon... without much success. It might have something to do with day two of his spirit geas to not eat. Sinead works. ("Smell my banana"). Finn gets some study done.
Kasumi comes over and kicks everyone out of the flat so she can organise it, so the rest of the pack head back at night and sniff around some and lurk about some. A couple of people walk through with dogs or on their own, but no one like the smell thats on the petrol hat. Finn opts to go hunting the smell instead of lurking here and two of the pack sniff while two act as dogs. ("perfectly normal human dog creature"). The scents are sporadically detectable on Moreland Rd, but he struggles to pull them together for a while before realising they go back and forth. Once he figures that out, he can pick which side street it goes down, and once that's sorted, he can follow it a lot more smoothly.
The scent leads to a set of 6 units on a block, and to letterbox #3. ("Shall we go secret spy realm #3?" "Did you call him #3? Because I thought I was the gamma!"). They find somewhere nearby to step which isn't very hard at night. Finn peeks and does an astounding job. He finds that there are two guys in the flat, and both of their scents were around the burnt area a bit. They are apparently Jules and Mick, and the sole residents of the flat, eating maccas as they watch the footy.
Meanwhile, Kasumi has toyed with throwing out all the mismatched crockery, and has nearly finished the kitchen.
Jules and Mick are sensed - they have a wyrm sense to them, but its minor and oddly brittle. Their unit is pretty grotty - frankly the rest of the pack are feeling better about where they live. The pack start to contemplate ways to torture these guys - 1000 freddo frogs? Beating them up? Maiming them? Dobbing them into the cops? ("its only breaching the litany if I swallow?" "Normally this is a sex thing"). ("would the frog want their toes?"). In the end they decide to Ridgeway them.
They head home for their props - hoodies mostly - and then sneak back. Sinead gets caught up in some rose bushes and makes a chunk of noise. The lights switch in unit #3 and the curtains twitch in unit #2, but after letting someone in #3 go to the toilet and then back to bed. They move forward again after 30m and Cracking Stone their way into the unit. Stealthily they rearrange the lounge, grab some socks and then assault Jules and Mick. Gagged with their own socks, they are dragged naked and pyjama-clad into the lounge and through a combination of persuasion, being in glabro, and assaulting these guys at 2 in the morning in the dark means that the two guys wet themselves and are just gibbering messes. "Don't set fire to shit or next time we'll fucking cut you!" The pack then leave after kicking them in the ribs. The garou find their way back to the Umbra and peek back to find all the lights on and the two of them never sleeping again. A job well done.
The majority of the pack get back to find Kasumi has knocked off for the night. All of Will's stuff has been tidied away, he can't find it for 30m before he looks in the outside laundry. The kitchen turns out to be pinkish. Who knew?
The next day in the afternoon the pack head to the caern to touch base, and to summon frog (*singing* "we all know frogs go 'pop' in the microwave") . Frog comes with not much ceremony and agrees that Finn has fulfilled his requirements, and thus gives the Gift of Howl of the Unseen.
The pack stick their heads in on Graeme and find that Cossack is there, but also Jane Redfeather. There is some paranoia that its actually Jane and not faux-Mandras, but it does seem to be the Uktena caern elder (checking with various gifts). She had some business in Melbourne and dropped by to catch up on news. (It was asked who the highest ranked ragabash the pack know is, and Chases-the-Car is a rank 3 ragabash bonegnawer, Elaine is a rank 3 ragabash Glasswalker, but Bret (sept leader at Rippling Waters) is a rank 4 ragabash Fianna)
The pack brain dump at their elders and Jane about the car fire. After a bit, Jane asks if they have considered trying to find anything in the Atrocity Realm. Graeme clearly winces, but Cossack says he considered sending someone last month, but figured the danger outweighed any benefit, and without a personal link to the events it seemed less likely they'd find anything useful. Jane says that she could guide Lost Prophets there - she's been there before. Tillie says they'll do it, and Graeme gives her a look, and suggests that they should find out what they are volunteering for.
Tillie asks if its like the Scar and so there is some discussion about the Atrocity Realm - its a place where horrors are re-enacted endlessly. Oh, that sounds fun. Sinead knows a little more than her pack leaders, that you can find scenes of atrocities repeated there endlessly and it sort of lets you see what happened from other angles. It tends to be instances rather than sweeping events - so there are lots of encounters that made up the war against the bunyip, for instance, but not one scene that coves the whole thing. Its dangerous spiritually as well as physically - it can be psychically draining to be involved in atrocity after atrocity. Plus there are banes there feeding. Plus the only way out is to get killed by one of the emanations (spirits of the realm that make up a scene) in an atrocity scene. But it can be hard to seperate them from actual banes that are not native. Jane says she has been there on a couple of occasions and it can be hard to find to begin with - she's want to leave Wednesday at the latest so that the moon isn't in a smaller auspice while they are looking. The Atrocity realm isn't very nice at the best of times, and faded moon paths to get there are not going to help. The pack look a bit doubtful and those with mortal lives um and ah. Jane suggests that she'd be ok with going later in the month, say philodox waxing (around the 18th) instead if they are happier with that. Tillie says she wants time to think about it and notices Graeme giving her the side eye again.
Jane talks more and then asks to get moonbridged home (which helps confirm that she's really Jane). Lost Prophets chat to Cossack and the other Sept Elders about what going to the Atrocity realm involves and why Jane might be nervous about travelling Moon Paths during the darker moons. Cossack agrees that it might be a way of getting some clearer information about what is going on, but it does have a risk to even go there, and without a personal connection with the events they might not even be able to find those vignettes. Cossack talks about what happens while they are there - the base realm is a wasteland, but every now and again visitors are snatched suddenly into atrocities - little scenes which play out mostly accurately with all the people involved played by spirits of the realm plus the pack observing. Lost Prophets ask what 'mostly' means - he says that sometimes the observer can affect the replay if there is a spiritual connection. Cossack says its their call really, but he thinks the mages are enough of a difficulty to start investigating like this. He's a bit leery of going into detail because of the usual influencing their experience, but they push him for information about the scenes. He says that they will be there as well as the original actors in any scene, but if they mess with it too much, it'll be disrupted for a time.
Cossack points out that it means that they will be away for a time - it'll be some time to get there and back plus what happens. Finn makes noises about having exams and not being able to reschedule them. Kasumi also needs to plan for any extended absence from work. It sounds more and more like they should leave it for two weeks. They might want to try and find a site that they would describe as an atrocity in the Realm to give them more resonance on getting to the Atrocty realm - maybe starting from one of the murder sites might help them get there and find the right scene? They could also get their charity work done, and some guard duty/learning here wouldn't go astray too. The only down side is that they might be so long in the Umbra they'll miss the next moot.
(Giant Tortoise naming issues)