Will talks to Ends-the-Quiet about learning bits of lore that he could trade for the stories he's going to have to get from Ireland. The Stargazer elder suggests talking to Cossack as a galliard. Will approaches his Sept Leader and Cossack offers to tell him some things if Will will walk around with him for a day or two. Will's up for that and spends a day or two wandering the streets with Cossack. ("The Get are one big cautionary tale to everyone else"). He really didn't know what Cossack got up to. The answer is "he walks everywhere and talks to everyone". Cossack seems to know someone in almost every block - the cleaners or the guy sitting out the front of the pub or the tram driver or the security guard at a small mall. He stops and has a word with people - sometimes its just an "alright?" but other times they'll have a problem, or a bit of gossip to share. Once he asks Will to scare off some teenagers hanging out the front of a shop - all it takes is Will stepping out the front door and giving them the eye. Most of the people Cossack seems to be older folks, and the one or two younger ones stand out. In between all this Cossack shares stories - mostly Australian lore, little bits and pieces of stories.
Finn attempts to hang out with Sarah but gets a real vibe of "um, I'm washing my taxes". He can't quite work out what he might have done. She's not totally shutting him down, but he's definitely getting a bit of a brush off. Perhaps she's picked up someone else while he was off having "fun".
Kasumi talks to HR about trying to moving her work to a part time job. It takes til Thursday to get an appointment with Caroline from HR and she has her "HR face" on the whole time. She asks if Kasumi has spoken to her manager, and says she should and so will HR. Caroline is doubtful of being able to accomodate Kasumi in the long term, but mention of medical reasons should make it more likely. Mostly she's collecting information rather than committing to anything. "I'll investigate that for you..." "Have you considered..." "Procedurally..." Kasumi can't pick up if her reaction is "pfft, no" or "this will be hard" or "how can I make this happen". She thinks about it for a bit, and then also emails her boss asking for a week of unpaid leave next week. He is really unhappy, and disappointed and disapproves, and makes some implications that her tasks may need to be handed off to another coworker (Fiona) long term but eventually agrees. ("You could eat a bunch of razor blades" "I'll let you know now you will be rolling rage a _lot_ if you do this"). Kasumi starts making a mental list of steps to find more work.
In the evening, Kasumi is at home when her chiminage PC starts complaining about unauthorised access repeatedly. She attemps to peer into the Umbra, and suceeds beyond her wildest dreams. Clinging to the weaver cabling around her apartment is a strange looking spirit - its head and face appear eel-like, but its body is more like a primate. Its skin is smooth, and mottled blues and greens (a bit like this). She senses for unnatural taints - there's not much wyrm, but there is a strong wearver, and a significant wyld. Its head snaps around and it looks roughly where Kasumi is. Then it suddenly moves toward one of the weaver cabling and pushes its face into the cable, wriggles and pushes its head, and then shoudlers and the rest of it into the cable (despite it only being an inch or so thick). Kasumi sms's Elaine about it, but she gets "circumstances haven't changed" back. She debates getting Sinead to come and help but replies to Elaine with "willing to discuss small favours - I'm asking for info". Elaine replies with "busy now, will chat later".
The pack speak to Graeme - we're going to be away for a few days. Not saying where. Can't confirm it has nothing to do with the unexplained meeting with Michelle on Monday. There are long awkward pauses as Graeme stares at them, but he eventually shrugs and says "sure".
Having previously called and confirmed that they are coming, the pack meet Cernonous at Echuca again late in the day. Tillie has thrown together enough stuff for the pack to survive for a few days. She's expecting to fight spirits if not anything else. They drive their murder van up north. They meet him and he suggests perhaps staying in Echuca overnight and starting freshly early on Saturday morning.
Cernonous wakes early (predawn) and is doing rituals in the Umbra when the rest of the pack stir awake. In homid, he's a big guy in his 50s - in glabro and crinos he has horns (thus the name Cernonous). The garou head off shortly after dawn and drive off into the wilds of NSW. There's no real plan, other than drive around, keeping away from European settlements as much as possible.
While they are driving around, Finn queries about names. Cernonous says that there is a tradition of taking god names as deed names at his sept and amongst some of the other Children of Gaia. His counterpoint, the Voice of the Goddess (and other Child of Gaia council representative) is Inanna.
People peek as they are driving, and Cernonous points out that once they are away from towns, the Umbra becomes a lot more wild, but in a strange way. There is a growing disparity between the Realm (light temperate forest) and the Umbra (semi tropical rainforest and swamps). Cernonous says the garou have no explanation for why this is - normally when the gauntlet is lessened, the realm and the umbra resemble one another. It might be that there's some connection to another realm, such as pangaea. It could be an illusion, or something else. The pack also see tree kangaroos, giant goannas and other megafauna.
Saturday is spent driving around in moderate circles. Cernonous isn't exactly a barrel of laughs, and he puts a bit of a damper on the normal pack interactions.
Late in the day, while travelling on a dirt road, the pack spot a car pulled up ahead (no, its not a red dusty sand soil). A guy flags them down as they approach and they can see that its a family in a car that has broken down. The pack, giant wierdos that they are, all spill out and sense the family for wyrm (they're clean) and stretch their legs while Will and Tillie have a chat. The car has broken down - it was fine then it wasn't and then they pulled up. However, while they are trying to get an idea of the situation, the family dog is barking its head off and snarling at them. Finn can hear it going "wolves! wolves! wolves! WOLVES! WOLVES! THAT'S WOLVES!" He "WOLVES" tries "WOLVES" to "WOLVES" calm "WOLVES" the "WOLVES" dog "WOLVES" down by dominating it, causing it to sit down and growl "wolllllllllves" quietly under its breath. Sinead tries to bribe it, but the dog's not having a bar of it WOLVES WOLVES WOLVES. She goes to the front instead, looks at the engine and points out that these wires here should be connected too, on top of Tillie and Will making some quick half-assed repairs that will get them to the next town. ("Take one for the species")
They stop at some .5 horse town with a motel attached to a pub, and get a parma and a pot. Cernonous evaluates the clientele and opts to get an early night. Tillie is in favour of the same but Finn and Will want to go and have a drink and she's not willing to leave them alone, even though Cold Chisel has been the last six songs on the jukebox. ("Really, this is the thing that becomes a challenge for pack leadership? A beer in a pub?").
The night is passed without a fight, but with many idiotic interactions - "Are you here with the nip chick?" "Don't say that" "Oh sorry, nip lady." Kasumi gets stared at a lot, and gives up and goes back to her room. Sinead gets "do you have a boy friend?" and when she doesn't answer 'yes', she gets offers of free tequila shots. Its about 930pm when someone says "what the fuck happened to your face" to Tillie. "I could show you." "What?" Mark, whose mate Scott fell off a car, says that Scott's arm looked like that, cos he got his arm caught in barbed wire. Mark is pretty persistent in the face of Tillie's stoicism. The night is only awkward, with no actual punching on.
Another day of driving around outback New South Wales. The landscape is scrubby in the Realm, but the Umbra is thick forest. Will and Sinead are peeking when they suddenly realise all the animal spirits are gone, and its getting darker and cloudy in the Umbra. The realm looks the same, but there is something ahead and off to the left on the horizon they can't make out yet. They pull over to check it out, and look around. As they stay and watch, the feeling in the umbra gets darker and more stormy. The trees start to move on their own. In the Realm, the thing on the horizon is a cloud... maybe. Its hard to focus on, a couple of kilometres forward of where they are.
Driving on, they deploy sensory gifts and try to figure out what is going on. There is some wyrm in both realities, but in the Umbra there is a growing sense of wyld.
It becomes clear that the cloud on the horizon is moving, and that its a dust storm. The sky goes from blue to dull yellowish white, and visibility drops sharply. In the Umbra, the boding clouds are still swirling around in the direction they are travelling. It appears to be windy, with trees whipping around. The pack drive only another kilometer before the rising dust has dropped visibility to less than 50 m, and so they opt to pull over and step into the Umbra, which is easy to reach, except for Finn.
The pack start slogging their way through the thick semi tropical forests. Every now and again they manage a glance at the sky between the folliage and can see that the clouds are spinning around maybe a kilometer or more ahead of them. It has a clear centre, probably around the town that was meant to be ahead.
The pack come to a thin river laying in a wide banks. It looks starved, as if it should be bigger than this. Despite some suspicion about being drowned by the river, they wade across the various sandbanks and make it to the far side. There is a strong smell of imminent storm - that pre-storm feeling. Sensing, the unnatural taints are growing, wyld, wyrm and that cold sense they have associated with the demons (and Malajimbarra said that demons were native creatures of the lands of the dead). They chat briefly with Cernonous about that last sense - he speculates that if this is a Bunyip it might imply the Bunyip spirits are actually ghosts, which is not the case with normal ancestor spirits of the garou (perhaps there is a symbolic aspect to the whole tribe being dead that is like the cold demonic sense?).
Kasumi and Sinead point out that the sun is on one horizon, and the moon is on the other. That... is not right. The moon is in the right phase, but it shouldn't be up yet and it was only mid-afternoon. Does that add to the argument of "we're not in Kansas any more" with regard to the Australian penumbra?
Tillie senses wyrm and finds that it is an frustrated, angry, destructive wyrm sense, as if the whole storm was fury made flesh. The wyrm is within all of the storm, very pervasive in everything that is happening. She can feel the centre as being way ahead, but she suddenly swivels and warns people something is coming. It feels like part of the storm, but there's a sense of something moving within that. The pack premptively switch to crinos and prepare for combat. Trees are bashed down and the undergrowth is trampled, and a 3 metre tall wombat bursts into the clearing and sprints toward the garou. The garou re-evaluate their plan - most of them jump up handy trees, but Finn leaps onto the back of the giant prehistoric wombat and Will dodges to one side to attack. When his claws attack the spirit, he finds there is an unusual amount of resistence for a spirit.
Foiled by the sudden disappearance of its targets, the giant wombat rams the tree that Sinead climbs. She manages to cling to the trunk, even though the tree comes out of the ground somewhat, and Finn manages to cling to the wombat. ("gunna surf the wombat"). The wombat continues to ram the tree as hard as it can, slowly knocking it over. Tillie launches herself out of the tree and attacks the spirit, shredding it considerably. Will smashes the spirit again and it lapses into slumber, disappearing from sight.
Cernonous points out that that spirit was of an extinct creature - not thus a commonly found spirit even in the weird Australian penumbra. Other potential Bunyip 'disturbances' have also had rumours of huge spirits like this. Kasumi posits that they've previously been told that spirits exist in an eternal now and that time meant less in the Umbra and maybe that is what is happening. Cernonous doesn't believe that that's the case with the raw penumbra, but if they have an issue where a realm overlaps. Perhaps the connection between the two realms is what causes the storm.
In the Realm, its very dusty - there's thick red dust hiding everything and swirling around fast. The best guess is that they are out in a field somewhere, but visibility goes from 3m to 10m at most. The same unnatural taints are swirling around - wyld primarily, some wyrm and a touch of that cold sense. In the Umbra, it starts to rain, and lightning strikes somewhere far ahead.
The pack wander further, and are attacked by other animal spirits - none of them are behaving normally, all aggravated and aggressive. None of them are much of a hazard to 5 crinos, but the pack have to destroy some of the spirits that launch themselves in to attack. They are making their way toward the centre of the disturbances when a guy in jeans and flannel appears, and yells "What the fuck!". The pack sense to make sure he's not a werewolf, but he seems to just be some guy, a probability that is born out when he is swarmed by angry native spirits. The pack start running in to help, but he is swarmed to the ground and killed as they run. That speaks that there are issues with the gauntlet - Finn tries to peek and ends up stepping out into a dust storm without even needing a reflective surface. He's on a ashphalt street, next to a gutter, but he can't see more than that. He manages to keep the dust out of his eyes to look in his mirror and return to the Umbra. The rain immediate turns the dust on his fur to mud - which is odd, because he didn't even dedicate the dirt.
Finn reiterates that they should summon Boobook and the others sort of agree. While they are talking, something bites Will on the leg. Ow, its a bull-ant. Another one. Ow, another one. Oh no wait, they are like little anttaurs with spears attacking him. ARRRRGG, Tillie burns them up with fire and the pack keeps moving. This makes the idea of summoning their totem a bit tricky, they're going to have to spend 10 minutes doing the summon. Hoping that the centre of the storm will be calm, the pack head that way as fast as they can.
About 5 metres in front of the pack, a young girl appears already screaming and running. She glances at the pack and stops screaming to save breath to flee faster. Almost right behind her appears a giant goanna, easily 10m long, and running in that weird way wiggling goannas do. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZRT5EmcCDQ) Kasumi takes off trying to chase the girl while Tillie runs up and claws at it, finding that it has the same resistance to being damaged the wombat had. Will runs forward to try and get in front of the lizard Sinead and Finn run to help Tillie, aiming to grapple the goanna by grabbing its tail.
Kasumi catches up to the girl, but the goanna runs fast enough to catch up and dangerously licks her. Will manages to get in front of it and swipes across its eyes, getting its attention. Oh good. It takes a giant bite at him in return. ("why are we protecting this child" "Litany" "I didn't say we'd eat it"). Tillie leaps on the tail and grinds her heels in. Kasumi grabs the girl and toys with leaping through the gauntlet, but instead trusts her pack members to wipe it out. Will and the goanna smash claws to teeth but do nothing. Tillie, Finn and Sinead grab its tail and slam the brakes on, and the lizard skids to a halt, arches around and tries to bite Finn in half.
Tillie yells at her packmates to start dragging/pushing the lizard through the bushland ("imagine how much easier this would be if anyone helped"), hoping to beat it to death on trees. Will runs back to help, while Cernonous runs to Kasumi and takes the now near-catatonic child. The lizard attempts to gnaw on Finn but he is apparently super spiritual this week. Now confused and upset, the goanna tries to take off ("if it goes anywhere, we're going with it!" "do we... want that?" "no, but it is a fact"). Kasumi runs in and smacks the lizard. Will chews at the scales. Things are going the pack's way and then the spirit vanishes. Will goes "oh no" and peeks, seeing a 10m long goanna wandering through a swirling dust storm, ploughing through someone's fence.
The pack step and carry on. ("everyone take a limb and pull" "... oh you mean the lizard" "What did you think I meant?" "The girl" "how many legs do you thinks he has?" "I dunno, women are mysterious. Something happens once a month, extra legs, its all the same" "that's my menstrual leg, its fine." "*punt*" ) The lizard has spun around and regrouped and comes for them as they come for it. ("spank him. with your extra leg"). Tillie yells at everyone to grab a limb each, but as she's running to the rear leg, the lizard bites and savages her, tearing muscles off her arm and tearing her abdomen open. The others stick to the plan while Sinead leaps to heal her packleader. ("I'm going to demote the lizard"). They manage to if not pin then to discombobulate the lizard and take away its ability to reasonably flee or attack. Tillie is healed and all but leaps down its throat, clawing wildly and disincorporating the spirit.
The pack flee back to the Umbra where it might be wet but at least they can wander about in crinos form. Cernonous takes the girl to the realm and leaves her in a house, hoping for the best. The pack keep trying to find the centre of the storm. They see little bits of weaver stuff like cabling and walls, suggesting they are in the town proper. The mad spirits sometimes attack it, sometimes leave it alone.
They reach the point that arbitrarily seems to be the centre, more or less. They peek, and when the dust storm clears they can spot a prop plane in the street, that appears to have pranged into a house. This is fairly inexplicable - it doesn't appear to have blown off a nearby airport, and it hasn't hit it at flight speeds, but its crashed. It doesn't sense any different to the surrounds.
The pack get a good peek and do some sensing. There's nothing unusual about the plane in terms of supernatural energies. Peeking about the plane, its about 4m wide, single prop engine, cockpit and about 5 windows. Inside the cockpit, it looks a bit strange, but in the back it looks stranger - there's a stretcher and a bunch of medical gear. Oh wait, its a flying doctor plane. They look more closely and find that the extensive weird stains around the cockpit are blood, piss and shit; along with chunks of fur. Tillie thinks that it smells like possum. The possibility that a giant possum appeared and attacked the pilot is floated. There's no bodies, and there's no signs there was more than one person in the plane. There's a fair amount of stuff that has been scattered around when the plane hit the house. Did someone go through the first change? It would have to be an old first change, which isn't unheard of (Kasumi). They can't really follow a trail of blood in the realm or anything, because the constant swirling dust is erasing scents as soon as they are created. They double check the house the plane ran into but its empty and doesn't seem to have anything special inside. Will steps out to check the plane out from within. ("See, its not Andrew, its Will")
Kasumi calls people's attention to approaching figures in the stormy Umbra. They're homid, not bunyip shaped. Sensing wyrm gets the same senses as the storm, sensing unnatural says almost the same as the storm, but more of the cold sense. They get close enough to see that the shapes are dessicated corpses, shuffling towards the pack. The pack respond accordingly ("pretty sure there's something in the litany about not consuming human flesh" "oh no" "No there's not something in the litany, or no you shouldn't do that?" "don't eat humans or wolves" "Its not evidence if you eat it" "It comes down to what's more important - hiding the evidence or obeying the litany" "I feel this is how metis happen." "I feel like your mama is how metis happen"). Kasumi tears an arm off one of them, Tillie smashes another in a single blow. Finn punches one in half. Sinead smashes another out. Will is still going through the gauntlet. They aren't really much of a threat to 5 garou in crinos, but there is a strange feeling when they punch the zombies. Its like hitting flesh, but they are in the Umbra - its almost like hitting other werewolves in the Umbra. A closer look suggests that they are wearing modern clothes, and are probably ex-townsfolk. Will is still going through the gauntlet.
Humans should not be in the Umbra, this is bad - perhaps not as bad as being attacked by spirits and killed and turned into zombies. Tillie thinks to check for id - one of the zombies has an intact wallet; Brett Towers, who lives in Menindee. It does look like he's just a guy who fell into the Umbra. Its odd enough that all his stuff has come into the Umbra with him - then again so did the 12 year old being chased by the lizard. They confer with Cernonous, who confirms that in other stories about bunyip storms, the gauntlet went up and down, and garou were drawn into the umbra and lost. He regards it as a positive, if not good, sign. They need to find what the storm was triggered by.
Oh yeah, Will - the pack peek again and see what he's up to. He's just appeared and changes to lupus in the plane, and is sniffing. He looks really surprised suddenly. ("Timmy's stuck down a well!") The pack step out to join him. Will says the blood in the cockpit is garou blood - his scent of true form gift identifies it as such.
The pack are at a bit of a loss - maybe this unknown garou is the centre of things. Tillie looks for itinary or id. She finds that the flight path, and it turns that the plane was going from Broken Hill to Mildura. It appears to only have the pilot onboard, like an admin run rather than a medical one. Everything inside appears to have been locked down, and there's still no sign of a patient or a nurse or doctor in the cabin.
Will wants to try a Rite of Contrition in the plane - it would take about 10 minutes or so but it might help. Tillie ums and ahs a bit and says to hang off for a little bit and see if they can see anything outside. The pack heads out into the dust storm to see if they can see any trail leading from the plane. Some of the pack think they see something moving in the dust - they can't make it out but its something big. Cautiously, the pack moves out and try to see if they can find it.
They opt to change to lupus, despite all the dust settling into their fur. Kasumi got the clearest sense of movement ahead, so she leads the pack on. Tillie is to her right and Will to her left, and the rest of the pack behind. She spots something distorting the wind a bit ahead and they cautiously approach... finding its a brick pillar forming the gate of a driveway. It has "Menindee Football Club" written on it. She turns around to chat to the rest of the pack, and realise that half the rest of the pack aren't there.
Finn gets some grit in his eye, and by the time he's cleared it out, the rest of the pack are not visible. He sets off in what he thinks is the most likely direction, but after a minute or two, a little bit of a lull reveals a pub with a bunch of cars parked out the front. He spots a human stumble up to the door and almost fall inside. This is the first person they've seen not sucked into the Umbra. He decides to use his Call of the Wyld gift to make his howl of "I'm here!" go further. Kasumi hears Finn's call and thinks she knows where it came from. She leads the others onto the road and along through the obscuring dust.
Sinead stumbles as she hits a ditch at the side of the road, and watches her feet for a minute. When she looks up, she can't see anyone and has no idea where she is. She goes back up onto the road, and keeps going the right direction to catch up with people. She thinks she's getting turned around and is looking around when she sees something big launch itself out of the storm. A hispo-formed thylacine lunges out of the dust, mouth agape and leaping at Sinead's throat. Sinead runs blind into the dust to try and get away.
Finn has a brief moment of concern and decides to hide out the back of the pub, which is probably for the best as a bunch of people come out of the pub with shotguns. He hides at the back of the beer garden, conveniently out of the wind.
Sinead bolts blind through town, over fences and walls and across paths. She runs into a garden, spins around and looks down the path she came down, but nothing seems to be following. She looks back into the garden and sees a human staring at her from within the doorless outdoor dunny. She stares at the human. He's all scratched up and bleeding a bit. He stares at her. She stares at him.
Tillie, Kasumi and Will get to where they... GODAMN IT. Will has vanished now. Tillie and Kasumi hunt around for Finn and find his scent leading to the beer garden. (Who knew the Fianna would go into pub). Cernonous steps out from the Umbra and joins them. They quickly chat about how to find the others - in the end, Cernonous will questing stone for Will (because Sinead has the ritual and might be able to do it back). In the meantime, Finn's going to go inside and check out the humans in the pub to see if theere's anything there they need to know.
The human breaks the standoff by whistling and trying to get Sinead to come over into shelter with him, obviously thinking she's someone's dog. She opts to run off again. She tries howling to her pack, but the sound is absorbed by the storm and she gets a lungful of dust instead.
Finn does his best "I was travelling and now i am dazed and confused" roll as he bursts into the pub but no one notices him come in. He sees a bunch of humans yelling and beating something furry to death with chairs. They finish beating it and it dissapates back into the umbra - it was a spirit of some sort. He looks around - some people hurt, some people in shock, some kids, an aboriginal guy laying on a table with a blanket over him and more blood than is healthy outside of him.
Finn identifies someone who appears to be in charge and asks what's going on. They don't know. Finn mentions the plane and the guy points at the aboriginal guy and says Tom and Pete pulled him out of it after it crashed, but they can't find the doctor. Finn says he knows where someone is that could help, just out the back, and the guy he is speaking to expresses some surprise that anyone would be stupid enough to stay out there in the storm. "Someone said they saw a lion! And we just heard something making a noise like a demon out the front!"
Tillie comes in and surreptiously checks the aboriginal guy out. She senses him and he has high levels of wyld, wyrm and weaver about him - its not a "this is a garou" but it is an unusually high unnatural senses, he has a pilot's uniform on, and Will did say there was a garou. She patches him up without saying "this bit is broken", because garou healing will fix that before long. He seems badly hurt on the back more than the front. She says he's hit his head (*BONG*), but isn't that badly hurt. (A few people give Tillie or Kasumi the eye, but they have more scary shit to deal with than scars or casual racism).
Sinead is searching for the others, but she can sense that something is circling her - and now it runs straight at her. Its the same hispo form bunyip. It lunges at her and slams her aside, then turns rapidly and lunges again, missing. The bunyip is spending rage much more than Sinead can keep up with, keeps smashing into her before finally wrapping its too-wide mouth around her throat. Sinead realises she's stuck, and opts to trust her life to the Bunyip doing dominance games. She submits and makes eye contact with the bunyip -
- a torrent of images flood through her mind... she can't track all of them, but she is able to retain a few of them. A storm raging across the desert. An immense reptilian eye opening in the darkness. The Cracking Stone laying on desert sand, and the ground opening up and swallowing it. A newborn baby sprouting fur and claws. The Melbourne cemetary torn up, and the surrounding buildings ruined and in flames. A rainbow arcing across the sky. Rain washing away red dust or blood from ghost gums. A garou in crinos form behind a feathered mask.
She passes out.
Cernonous gets Kasumi's attention at the back door and says that he cannot sense Will, but in an extremely odd fashion that makes him think that storm is interfering with the ritual. He could try again from the umbra, but he would require some company. All of the garou suddenly get a sense that something has changed. Kasumi checks the aboriginal guy, but he's still unconscious. Cernonous says that he knows him - his name is Jacky Gecko and he is an Uktena and Tjinderi's protege for a time.
Lost Prophets think that the storm has lost its intensity and the noise level is dropping. Kasumi peeks and sees that the storm in the Umbra is spreading out, and there are no signs of insane spirits (compared to 15 minutes ago when they were everywhere) ("level cleared!"). They tell some of the humans in the pub they are going out to help people, because they can hear the storm is dropping away.
Outside, the intense howling wind is dropping, and dust is starting to fall out of the sky. Kasumi changes to lupus before everything clears utterly and starts trying to sniff for her pack mates. They find Will first - he is unconscious and beaten up, and under a ute. There are some signs he didn't crawl under, but was thrown under there. Cernonous uses the Mother's Touch gift and heals Will. "BUNYIP! Argh, there was one." It beat him up and he blacked out. He hadn't seen Sinead, he just got lost when they were looking for Finn.
They split up - Tillie and Kasumi go one way and Cernonous and Will another. Tillie and Kasumi find Sinead out in the middle of the school oval ("what a slattern!"), unconscious. She isn't injured, just out. They manage to bring her around just before Tillie bitchslaps her to consciousness. Sinead says there was a bunyip and a guy and the bunyip again and then it tried to eat me. Then she saw a lot of things and then she passed out.
They start to spot people moving about town in a frazzled to paniced way. The garou head back to the previously agreed meeting place - the pub - and find Will and Cernonous there waiting. Jacky Gecko is awake and conferring quietly with Cernonous. The pack get Cernonous' attention and get him to come outside to talk. Sinead conveys her visions, and Cernonous takes them seriously. ("where is the _wise_ sheep?") Cernonous suggests they should leave before there is too much official human attention. Tillie says she's sorry it didn't work out - Cernonous counters saying as far as he is concerned, this constitutes a successful test. It was one of the more positive outcomes - they made a connection and conveyed information. Jacky comes out before they leave and thanks Tillie and her pack for their help.
The pack return to their car, and while it does not have a wombat bum mark in the metal, it is buried in dust. They scoop and blow enough away to get moving. As they drive away from things, they talk to Cernonous - there's speculation about whether it was Boobook as their totem that made a difference but other garou from septs with bunyip or dreamtime spirits as their totems have been attacked. They talk about what Sinead saw - Lost Prophets want to get in contact with Cossack about one or two of the images. Cernonous reiterates he is just asking for discretion not secrecy - if they want to explain things to the sept leader and warn him, that seems fine.
He asks if they want to continue and Tillie asks for a moment to consult. Sinead says yes as long as she doesn't have her head in any more bunyip mouths.
Cernonous says that in his human life, he is a geneticist at Sydney university. After a vision given to him by the Goddess, he has dedicated his life to restoring the bunyip tribe by cloning them. He has had some success with his processes, but now he is reaching the final stage, and he wishes Lost Prophets to help him complete the last steps. He believes that through the connection and the packs efforts, the bunyip tribe may be able to demonstrate an approval of his goal and or methods. If their actions suceed in helping him, it suggests a spiritual approval from both Gaia and the Bunyip. In short, what he would like them to do is find some Bunyip remains.
Tillie "Show-Me" Kennedy wants to see what he's done so far, but he points out that without 20 years of genetics experience its not going to mean a lot to her - and similarly with the spiritual side of things, he's a rank 4 theurge and they just don't have the experience. ("we're not werewolf god." "Not with that attitude"). Cernonous understands they have some reservations that its not a traditional method, but traditional methods have not exactly served the garou well - he hopes to combine tradition with new tools that are available to solve their problems.
Lost Prophets opt to pull up in the next town so they can chat amongst themselves for a bit. Cernonous discretely walks off a bit so that they can do pack consultation. ("does anyone... have any.. deep seated issues that they want to talk about" *leans close to Andrew and gives him the stinkeye*). Finn likes the idea that the spirits will let them know real quick if its not what they want. They have some concerns about Sinead's visions and whether they are relevant to this - the baby with fur and claws certainly seems like it might be, but they are actually more concerned about the torn up caern and the Cracking Stone disappearing into the ground.
They talk about possibilities - the rainbow might suggest the Rainbow Serpent, but there is also the western symbology. The baby sprouting claws worries Tillie as an early first change, but it could be a rebirth symbology.
They ring home and get Graeme on the phone. He's curious where they are but Tillie distracts him with talk about visions - she says Sinead had one where the caern was in flames and torn up and he goes serious. He asks to speak to Sinead and tries to prompt her memory as to where she might have been standing, and other details and context. Sinead gives the best answers she can (she was at the south end maybe in the centre and looking at the Melbourne Uni colleges?) but it was so quick that she can't be sure. She ums and ahs and says that it might be bunyip related. They ask if Graeme wants them to come home and after some discussion Graeme says he'll get two of the other packs to stay close - but they should try and be reachable by phone (if they're not planning to umbra anyway).
The pack speak to Cernonous about their concerns about their sept and he says that if there is a garou emergency, he may be able to get them to Moonbridge home. Some more chatter about visions, while Cernonous is there. He says that they should both be wary of the obvious interpretation, and not too quick to discard it. The vision of the caern torn up could be symbolic - something important to Sinead being destroyed, but not necessarily the caern, maybe her mortal life given she was facing the university? The mask could be someone playing a role, or in a ritual context? The visions didn't feel like a narrative - they might all be disconnected.
The pack opt to continue at this stage. Cernonous suggests they drive on to Dubbo and stop there for the evening. From that point onward, he suggests that they split up, and the Lost Prophets go and talk to a garou who knows a lot about the Bunyip by the name of Bartholomew Wise-in-the-Ways-of-the-Wyrm. Cernonous says that if the pack speak to him about the Bunyip, it has one connotation but if the Children of Gaia council member does, that may be another. Bartholomew is a Fianna for what its worth. In the meantime, Cernonous will return to his sept and then to Sydney. With luck, Bartholomew might be able to direct them to remains, and they will be able to join him in Sydney to progress further.
On the way, Tillie decides to probe him about metis and infertility. Cernonous is a little cautious about broaching the topic. ("no, no this is totally a metis deformity, I'm not a shit ahroun") He says that he believes that the infertillity was a wise decision by the Goddess when creating the garou. He asks them to imagine a world where the garou were able to have progeny with one another with abandon. Tillie says she doesn't think there'd be many humans left, and Cernonous agrees. He suggests that the garou would have become the dominant species like humans have but worse. So he believes it is a limitation on them placed by Gaia and well-thought out. It is not a physical block, but a spiritual one. ("A god did it"). In short all predators need some limit on their ability to overwhelm the environment, and with the garou disease and injury are not a factor, they live a long age, they are effective as all get out - and so there must be a limit on their ability to reproduce. Will asks if she will allow the reproduction that he is attempting, and Cernonous reiterates that he is hoping their participation will help communicate whether he has found a new way to proceed or is committing a spiritual error. Will asks how he feels about cloning a garou from a non-extinct tribe and Cernonous says that because the spiritual is as important as the physical, it might be that he can only clone the bunyip successfully, if it is what he is meant to do. ("The jellyfish is the most spiritual of animals"). ("maybe we could cut bits off a garou until they can't step any more, and that'll tell us where the soul is."). Will asks if there are kinfolk who have been conceived by IVF? Cernonous cautiously says yes. Garou? No. Have people tried? Yes.
When they get to Dubbo, Cernonous gives them directions to a Bartholomew's house, which is outside of small town called Glen Davis and confirms they have his mobile number. He gets them to drop him and they go and find a motel. ("Wait til we meet him, then judge how much post he gets").
That night, the pack talk about how they are going to be discrete - Will wants them to tell limited truth, Finn wants to just rely on the contact they have already has as a reason and Tillie wants to skirt the issue.
Glen Davis turns out to be at the end of a gravel road in the stereotypical Blue Mountains - steep slopes topped with cliffs and plateaus. Cernonous' directions are accurate, so they find the house with no problems. Its the sort of domicile that the word 'rambling' was invented for. It appears to have been built in sections and then sections joined up, with no real plan. They park and walk up, spotting the figure on the balcony at the top of the stairs to what looks like a front door. He's wearing jeans and a shirt, mostly white hair, kinda stringy and old. (He looks a lot like Kym Gyngell but the players are too young). He doesn't look too impressed to see them. Tillie stops at the bottom of the stairs and introduces herself and her pack ("we brought you a gift *waves whiskey*"). He says he is Bartholomew Wise-in-the-Ways-of-the-Wyrm, a rank 3 Fianna theurge. Tillie says that they are here to ask for advice on the Bunyip and he shrugs and says he figured, come up.
Bartholomew walks with the aid of a stick and sits down as soon as he can. He says he has been meaning to come and talk to them anyway, given the whole Scars Atoning caern thing. He's only heard about it second hand, so they pack rectify that - Finn tells the story again without any extra peregrine bits. This takes a little while. When he finishes, he asks Finn to go over it again with him later so he can write it down.
So what brings them here? Tillie says they have encountered the Bunyip as part of the Scars Atoning thing, and they have a dreamtime totem and they had an incident in the Atrocity Realm that had a connection to the bunyip. And so they are looking for remains or places where the bunyip were or something to jog the connection. Bartholomew says that most places the European garou interacted with the bunyip toward the end were caerns - that's where the biggest fights were. Scars Atoning is a bit odd on that basis - there's no sign that anyone fought over the caern, yet the Bunyip were't there. He says that he'll have a think and go through his notes - in the meantime, make themselves at home.
The pack chill out a bit. They head back into town to check in with Graeme. Nothing seems to have happened, but the two packs are very much around to be sure if it does, it'll be covered.
Will expresses his concern - it has the potential to be blasphemous and bad and all the creeping around does not reassure him. They haven't had time to talk to Boobook about it, so they opt to summon him and have a chat. They brain dump about what they are doing and what they are thinking and the spirit considers it. Boobook is unable to really grasp what is happening with Cernonous as it is a process that is beyond his knowledge. ("Weaver magic!"). He cannot say whether it is appropriate or not, it is not of Boobook. He says their aims are true, but they should seek to be sure others' aims are also true - including the elder who leads them on this path. He's not advocating holding the Elder down, but he does suggest that if they are being led, they should be sure of their guide. ("he's actually going to bring them back to hunt them for sport" "the most dangerous game"). Boobook cannot say if this will work or not - their contacts have been true, but that is all. Tillie asks Boobook if someone is watching them now, and after a moment Boobook says he does not think so. Boobook says he will now remain with them for a time.
The pack cook for Bartholomew while he continues to look for ideas for them. Shortly after they finish, a magpie flies through the kitchen and lands on Bartholomew's shoulder, appearing to talk in his ear. He feeds it scraps and sends it back out, and says that they have a guest. He heads out. Some of the pack follow, others wait inside while peeking (not Peeking). Walking up the path is Jane Redfeather, which is a bit random. She sees Tillie and Will and seems a bit taken aback. Her and Bartholomew seem to know one another though. She's here to talk to Bartholomew about some of the pictographs in the cave caern - less the people and animal figures, but the geometric patterns that are at Scars Atoning and other old bunyip caerns. He says that some of them have troubling connotations - is anyone in a hurry? No? Then lets go for a drive.
He directs them south about an hour's drive to a national park carpark, and then into the brush. He changes form - its not very smooth and it seems to take him some time and concentration. The Lost Prophets figure its because he's old - they know that garou eventually lose the ability to change form as their bodies wear out. However, he's pretty spry once he's in lupus and leads them through some broken terrain. After another hour or so of running he leads them to a sheltered rock face that has aboriginal paintings all over it. He changes back to homid and removes from a pocket a rock with a design on it that looks awfully like the Cracking Stone. Sinead surreptiously checks to see she hasn't been pick pocketed while Bartholomew holds the stone up to the wall. Shadows move oddly across it as if clouds covered the moon, and each time they clear again, the paintings have changed. With one final pass, they change again and there is a passage into the rock that was not there previously. Sinead says "I have one of those." and her and Bartholomew stare at each other. He says his is the Waiting Stone and he will talk to her about it once he has shown them what is in here.
Bartholomew leads people down into the raw rock, handing out torches that he brough with some forethough. While they are walking down the descent, Sinead senses for wyrm - the pack members in front of her manage to catch her before she face plants on the floor. Will cautiously senses unnatural and finds an overwhelming sense of wyrm coming up the tunnell. He passes that on, as Sinead is brought around. She says there is just incredibly stong wyrm down the cave. Bartholomew seems blase about it, saying there's nothing in there now. The gentlly sloping tunnel turns into a shaft that heads straight down for 30 metres. Its not hard to do, but it does need crinos form. They end up in a chamber about 20 m across, filled with big slabs of broken rock. Its like someone's tipped twelve truckfulls of concrete down a hole, except that its all native rock.
Bartholomew says that the bunyip used to perform rituals here similar to what the Uktena Banetenders do (people have heard the name but don't really know any more) - at the blank look from the Lost Prophets, he looks at Jane and says they do rituals to keep various wyrm creatures dormant. She doesn't confirm or deny this. They do this because these creatures can't be killed, but they can't let them roam about. And that's what was in this cave. At the horrified expression on the pack's face, he continues, saying that the bunyip had their way of keeping them asleep. During the War of Tears there were rumours of something here, but no one was sure where and by the end of the War, no one knew. It was only when he found the Waiting Stone that he was able to get in there and it was gone. Someone asks what it looked like, and he starts picking up stones near the walls and looking at them. It could have been like this 5 pointed star, or this giant humanoid thing, but he thinks that that's a spirit. All the rocks on the ground around the outside have paintings on them, and the existing walls have lots of sharp edges - it looks like all the walls were smashed off. Bartholomew finds a few rocks and shows them - these are the same sorts of things that are at Scars Atoning. Are they wards, intended to hide whatever is guarded from the Wyrm? Or part of a ritual to keep the beast dormant, which mihgt imply there's one under the cave caern.
Without constant renewal though, the wards eventually break down and the wyrm beast was able to leave. Tillie asks if Scars Atoning know this, and Jane says that's why she's investigating. Are there others? Bartholomew says that he would be willing to bet that the Uktena have found some and are doing their own rituals - Jane's face goes stoic again - but there are probably more out there. Which is why he would like to talk to Sinead about the Cracking Stone.
Will says the last thing they did before visiting involved a brush with bunyip spirits while doing some research with some other Elders who asked us to keep it quiet, and there were some visions that involved the Cracking Stone. Bartholomew looks surprised - he didn't realise they meant it had been this weekend when they spoke earlier. Jane asks if this had anything to do with the Atrocity Realm things that they didn't want to talk about. Kasumi - "yes". Will - "no". Tillie clarifies that they did see some stuff that was maybe Bunyip, but the stuff they didn't want to talk about was more personal. Will says that one of the visions Sinead had was of a vast reptillian eye opening in the darkness, and another was the Cracking Stone (or so she thought) sitting on the ground and the ground hissing away out from underneath it as it was swallowed. Bartholomew and Sinead compare fetishes but don't want to go into too much experimentation just here - a brief look says that the two fetishes are similar but not exactly the same. Made by the same person? Different information in the patterns? Bartholomew asks where it came from, and they explain a little bit about the mage house they found and how the Cracking Stone mystically hypnotised Sinead.... when you put it like that, it seems bad.
Bartholomew says that the Waiting Stone appears to be a key to get into this particular site, as well as having the ability to open anything locked including Wyrm wards. It suggests that there might be a site for which the Cracking Stone is the key.
There is some discussion of the word 'unkillable'. They wyrm beasts aren't alive, but they are a primeval entity from before when death existed. So. They compare the thing that took Struthers, and he says that sounds like a very powerful bane, but a wyrm beast is more essential. Its better to think of them as an event than an entity. Tillie asks how they get it back in the hole and Bartholomew says he doesn't really know - trapping them is harder than keeping them asleep, and they don't even know what it was. Jane offers that the Croatan tribe may have all died trying to trap something like this.
Will floats the idea that the mages had the Cracking Stone, and they do deals with the dead things in the underworld... could they have been planning to try to bring it out and control it? Maybe if they thought it was a demon? Or worse, they think the mages might be under the influence of a demon - could it be this? Its not a good thought really. Bartholomew muses and says that they too far beyond humans to really be able to be able to interact directly. Tillie asks what they do when they escape and Bartholomew says they destroy things. Depending what part of reality that its attuned to, it could destroy concepts as well as everything around itself - for instance, one of them might be able to obliterate the idea of fire. Its possible when it escaped, it was weak and its gone somewhere to recuperate and that's why they haven't noticed. There's no obvious escape path other than down. Will surmises that there might be some sort of outside influence - Dancers might free it, or wyrm cultists? They tell Bartholomew about the Dancer that they think is under the control of Mages.
On that cheery note, they head back to Glen Davis. When they get there, Bartholomew passes a sheaf of handwritten notes to Jane that basically cover all the information and suggestions he has. She heads off back to Scars Atoning. Bartholomew says that he's going to keep going through notes, the pack should find a spare room and crash somewhere. ("All right, we'll have a nap, and then fire the missiles")
Just before dawn, Tillie wakes up early and wanders out onto the balcony. She finds Bartholomew there drinking coffee, apparently not having slept the night. Some companionable silence and then Tillie asks how things went. Bartholomew says that it went ok, and then says that they've met before - well, not met per se, but he's seen her before. Tillie starts to prepare the "I appear to have a doppleganger" speech, but Bartholomew continues saying that a friend asked him to come and speak to a young Fianna who was struggling with adapting to garou society. He finally caught up with them outside of Newcastle, because his friend had been trying to track what he thought was maybe another garou on their own. She'd been moving north, not quite invisibly, leaving the odd bit of rumour or weirdness behind her.
So he turned up to talk to him, and he was watching Tillie... about 3 year ago. Tillie is a bit weirded out and asked why she was being watched - Bartholomew says she could ask Sparky next time she sees him, but mostly because that's the job he's taken on, looking for lost cubs. Tillie says she wasn't lost, Bartholomew points out that Sparky didn't know that, he was tracing evidence. Tillie says she will have words with Sparky about this. Bartholomew, after a moment's pause, says the weird thing is that the Fianna fellow was a guy called Nick Kanellakos. Tillie says she knows him, and Bartholomew says that its odd that he's ended up at Scars Atoning - when these coincidences start to build up, its worth keeping a close eye on things. Scars Atoning keeps coming up.
Inside the house, Kasumi is yelling something, so Bartholomew and Tillie go inside to see what the hell is happening:
Overnight, Kasumi has a dream that mixes in elements from the scene in the Atrocity realm and the bunyip events at Menindee. She sees Tillie killing the ute guys, and Tillie in the dust storm. Kasumi wakes up suddenly and says loudly "It wasn't Tillie!". The crinos in the Atrocity realm has the wrong pattern of scars and not enough - previously it wasn't clear if all the sand and such all over it had hidden everything, but when they were at Menindee, Tillie was also smothered in dust and you could still see them. Even though that person - whoever the hell they were - moved like Tillie and looked like Tillie, it wasn't her. Not even her from the future. ("pack of traitorous cunts")
Tillie says "see!" a lot and people make breakfast. While they eat, Bartholomew goes over some possible locations for them to follow up. There's three possibilities - a lot of the obvious options would be caerns with septs, which they didn't seem keen about - they could chase up. In Western Australia, near a town called Mullewa, a Black Fury pack had been tracking a bunyip when it met up with several more. They attacked and killed all the bunyip, but a couple of months later, all the Furies vanished.
Option 2 - there was an aboriginal encampment near a place called Clermont in outback Queensland and several bunyip were present when a group of garou and kinfolk attacked. The pack make some careful enquiries about the terrain, comparing it to what they saw in the Atrocity Realm, but the feeling is that the forest was more temperate than outback Queensland might provide.
And the final option is a caern near a place in South Australia called Etadunna, on the Birdsville track. Lost Prophets make uncomfortable noise about that one, but Bartholomew says that there's a dispute over the ownership of the caern, so there's no sept. Its on the border of Get and Red Talon protectorates, and he understands that there's some sort of presence there from both tribes. The pack start to twitch.
Bartholomew says that there are probably other options, but that should get them started. They ask to borrow a map and try to work out where they should go first. Clermont is the closest, only 16 hours drive away, but Mullewa would be a whole two days solid in the car without a break. There's some mulling over whether they would be able to get a Moonbridge or not, but then they'd have to tell people why they needed it, and that doesn't gel too well with "discretion". Tillie takes a bit of a poll and calls it as "Queensland" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdOwFTo4Q3I).
The pack thank Bartholomew. He says he has to head out now anyway - some news came back from a place called Menindee and the pack confirm that's where they were, yes. They give him a run down about what they saw and Bartholomew says it matches other people's stories. There's some talk about the bunyip, and whether any are still left alive, deep in the Umbra or other realms? Bartholomew thinks they're not, and their totems have retreated from the world as well. Bartholomew's going to go to Menindee and look anyway and see what he can see.
Lost Prophets make some preparations and plans, thank him again and head off. They have a conversation about what they tell Sleeping Lore, if anything, and then call. Graeme is mostly happy to hear from them, but obvious curious about where they are. Tillie says they are in Queensland. Silence. They can come home if he needs them to. Silence. Is.. that alright? ("Do you want anything from the shops? Pineapple? Banana? Four X?") Graeme supposes, but is a bit confused as to why. He asks if it is more urgent than potential threats to the caern and the pack say it might be connected but they don't really have any more info. Tillie is a bit more forthcoming about where they are headed (Clermont) and that they are chasing potential Bunyip stuff.
On the way they call Cernonous, and he eventually calls them back. He sounds cautiously optimistic. Tillie says that they are going to Queensland and then they will evaluate how long this is taking and whether they need to do it in sections in order to meet their obligations to Sept and Caern. Cernonous seems amenable to this reason for delay, if it is required. He will not be following them, but is available for them to call.
The pack get near Clermont about midnight, and find somewhere to pull the car over and sleep. Fortunately Tillie had the forethought to bring camping equipment, so they find somewhere quiet.
The pack drive into Clermont and have a look around and some breakfast. They find that its a shire centre, and there are a couple of civic buildings, including a library. They boot Finn out with instructions to find what he can, and cruise around looking for things. Most of the town is on a rise, but there's a "Historical Marker" sign down in the park near the creek. It seems focussed on how the town was mildly flooded a couple of times before there was one monster flood and people decided to move the town. They actually dragged the town up the hill with a steam engine. There are small information sections with photos ("here is where Joe's Bakery was", etc). The pack check the Umbra, and find that its big enough to not have the strange disconnect with the Realm - weaver stuff galore.
Meanwhile, back at the Library, Finn has made friends with Glennys the librarian. She directs him to the local history section, which is mostly fascinated with the flooding and moving, or talks about the farming and mining in the area, but he also finds a mention of a "dark day" - a massacre. There were a bunch of Aboriginals laying about and causing trouble (spearing sheep, etc) and some locals decided to take steps. The details here are a bit imprecise ("No one who was involved on the day left records"), but some other Europeans found the encampment over a month later and reported how they found bodies of natives that had been torn apart, women and children killed, bodies showed signs of being fed to dogs, and other atrocities. The savagery of the attacks brought outrage ("its one thing to drive them off, but another to brutally tear them apart") and police investigated. None of the eyewitnesses were willing (or able?) to provide clear testimony and the time between the events and their discovery made it not certain that the bodies hadn't been disturbed by wildlife after the events - although charges were laid against two of the locals (Bernard Spooner, John McCorison), they did not make it through a full trial before being dismissed. Its all a bit suspicious when you're looking at it with a Garou eye.
There's no mention of what happened to the bodies, and the location is a bit imprecise - "on the creek, south of Wolfang Peak". Reeally. Glennys is able to help him find Wolfang Peak on the map, and its about 20km away to the north east. Finn contemplates checking the council archives as well, but apparently Roger won't be in til 10 and he's not too sure what he'd be looking for. Glennys says that there's a marker at the cemetery about it. She has many helpful pamphletts about things around the town like the flood, the original miners, original settlers. She's heard about the attack but its not something that's heavily celebrated - most of the history about the town is on how it was moved. Finn notices a certain synchronicity in the timing of the massacre and the giant flood - they were less than a year apart, which isn't damning, but is certainly of note.
Finn rejoins the pack and they decide to check out the marker in the cemetery. Its fieldstone with a brass plate attached to it, and has been neglected and grafittied a bit, but it does recognise that a wrong was done. Its not "these four people are buried here", its just a short description of what happened. "At least 15 aboriginal people were killed including John and Betty Spring who were well known around the town"
The pack head out toward Wolfang to see what they can see. They drive past the edges of a mine north of town, which is unpleasant. The highway leads out through what is effectively savannah - its warm, grassy with the trees, especially in the dips and low points. Wolfang Peak is easy enough to spot (http://www.bonzle.com/c/a?a=pic&fn=5fv6eyr7&s=4) as it rises on its own out of some low hills. They park the car and head out on feet toward the mountain. The Umbra is more thick rainforest than the Realm is, and weirdly more hilly. Its disorienting to look at the Umbra and move through the realm. Once they are out of the sight of the road, they step into the Umbra and summon Boobook for a chat. Finn explains what they are looking for, a site of a massacre and potentially the remains of Bunyip. Boobook is happy to help pinpoint the location if they can get closish. He will remain close by in the Umbra. The pack go back to the Realm, and climb the lower slopes of Wolfang and use the higher vantage point to see if they can see some favourable locations to have a camp. Will nominates three possibilities for them to check out.
They head down and disturb some cows, who decide they're not staying around to deal with these wolves ("nooo. Noooo. noooo. nooooooo" "stupid gift").
The pack check out the first of their potential camp sites and find that its much rockier than they thought, and its probably not somewhere they'd pick. (Shagging the dog). They move on to the next site, but before they get to it, Boobook says "stop". Kasumi peeks - the Umbra is more tropical rainforest again here. She can hear the same creek as in the realm, but it sounds much more like a river in the spirit world. She can see spirits around, including Boobook, who is sitting in a tree and doing the 'attentative owl' thing forward of where they were travelling. He stops and flies forward, moving into the Realm, joining the rest of the pack. "Something is here. Something lingers." (radioactive peas).
Lost Prophets use their sensing gifts to get some idea of what might be ahead of them. There's something slightly wyrmy ahead of them - its not strong, its more like a little bit of a sense on top of something that she can't sense. Finn can pick up something very faintly ahead that is charged with essence - its not a spirit, exactly. Maybe its a slumbering spirit? Tillie thinks that what ahead is not of the wyrm, but it might be doing things that are a little bit of the wyrm in some fashion.
They ask Boobook if he can sense anything further. He says there is something bound by death here. Not here precisely, but close - the garou think its probably the possible campsite they are 30m or so away from. Finn asks if they want to try and awaken the slumbering spirit with gnosis? Boobook says there is a spirit here, but it is not slumbering. Will asks if its bound by a ban, or by a ritual? Is it on the Umbra side ? No, Boobook says it is bound to the physical realm. The pack ask 20 questions and Boobook says it is not of the wyrm, the weaver or the wyld. Is it a servant of Gaia? Boobook asks why they are asking. Tillie wants to work out of its safe to unbind it, Finn wants to talk to it. Sinead says that spirits are usually bound for a reason - a task, frequently. So its doing something, or there are some set of conditions that need to be fulfilled before the binding can end? Is this a caern? Boobook says the spirit is not bound as they would bind a spirit to a task. The pack are staring at Boobook as they are not sure why he's being recalcitrant. Will asks if the spirit was a pack totem? Boobook is unsure. He asks again why they want to know. Will says they want to know if the spirit is relevant to their quest. Boobook asks what they will do with the information. Will says that if the spirit is related to the artifacts they are looking for, they could interact with the spirit to help find them. Boobook says "You must investigate further on your own. You must show with actions" and flies off and returns to the Umbra. Lost Prophets are a bit miffed about this but get on it. ("The plan is to cry until the owl comes back")
Will carefully extends his senses forward as he creeps toward the campsite. He concentrates strongly on his sense unnatural gift, and as he approaches, he can not only sense wyld, weaver, the cold sense they have associated with death and wyrm (not of those things, but having some of them within it), but he can almost see the ritual. He can sense essence flowing tenuously from a number nodes around the campsite. These flows have woven into a pattern of some sort around the site; he can feel/see/smell that some lead off up... eyes are drawn to the peak looming above the campsite. And he can smell something. Like rain. No, like a storm. ... No, like lightning.
Will conveys as much of this as he can to the rest of the pack. It definitely seems like the rite has been done across the campsite, bounding it in some fashion. There are those hot spots that he can sense, but from a distance, he cannot spot anything that matches physically.
Sinead suggests that while they can't ask Boobook, there's nothing stopping them speaking to other spirits, something old that might remember what happened? They toy with trying to awaken the mountain, but decide that that's a bit fraught. They decide to talk to the creek spirit, and not just because water spirits are more likely to take essence or gnosis in return for some questions. Sinead moves away from the campsite a bit and begins her ritual.
After 20 minutes or so, the river sound changes and they can hear whispering and speech. Occasionally a face is reflected on the surface, distorted but visible. Will introduces himself formally to the spirit (Fostern Philodox of the Get of Fenris) and says that they are Lost Prophets. The spirit refuses to give them its name. They wish to ask the river some questions in return for some of their gnosis. The spirit agrees to this deal. Will asks about the nature of the ritual here. Vengeance. What is bound here? The lightning man - the one who watches and judges. Who bound him? The wirrenun. The pack look at each other but don't know the name. What happened here? Sorrow. Anger. Murder. Vengeance. When? Before. Many floods ago. Why was the Lightning man bound here? Vengeance. Was it the garou who murdered? Yes, wolf changers killed wirrenun kin. Blood soaked into the ground. The pack asks whether the lightning man was a pack totem? The spirit seems to indicate no. It will not speak his name. Lost Prophets try and gain an idea of the time that the murder vs the binding happens, and the spirit says that the ground was still wet with blood. Are the wirrenun still here? No. Did the lightning man bring storms? He does and the rain feeds the river spirit. Just once? Some.
The pack now has some idea of what the spirit bound there is, and that means that Will could maybe perform a rite of contrition to try and approach the spirit and talk. Finn points out that the spirit has said that there aren't bunyip here, only kinfolk, so that might not suit them. Its weird that Bartholomew's story mentioned Bunyip though.
The pack ask the spirit a few more questions - do you know where the wirrenun went? All dead. Where? The spirit says that it has answered many questions. The offer more gnosis to it in order to answer this final question of where they all died. It says that the wirrenun fell in many places. They fell in fights, they fell in despair, in the dark. Many fell near rivers, many fell far from water. You killed many of them. (#notallgarou) (a collective 'you', not a specific 'you'). This isn't as specific as the pack was hoping for but they do hold up their end of the bargain.
Lost Prophets decide to try and approach the lightning man, after a rite of contrition. They try to draw what they think the spirit might look like in sand at the side of the creek as a focus for the ritual. Despite struggling to not draw Thor, Finn manages to make something that he's happy with. ("Suggesting that its now possible to summon 'Moon Moon'"). Will performs the ritual, but isn't entirely happy with how well it went ("Could I do it again, and explain that i'm sorry that the lightning man was offended?"). The pack opt to continue with the plan.
The pack opt to be in lupus and enter the campsite. The first thing that they sense is that there's a change in the spiritual nature of the area - they presumably triggered the ritual. Tillie tries to sense for wyrm, and finds that there is some, anger oriented - sort of like the bunyip storm. Kasumi senses for unnatural and can sense the flows of essence. The rest of the pack poke her and point up - there's a billowing of storm clouds above Wolfang Peak, and they can see a figure rise up on top of the mountain. The mountain is some distance away and not small, and so the fact that they can see this figure indicates that it is quite large. The figure is clearly humanoid from here. It jestures their direction, and something flies fast down to the campsite, striking the tree next to them - and then lightning hits the tree. The garou do not feel that this was a miss. They debate briefly about fleeing or fighting, but try instead to stoically wait.
The spirit leaps off the mountain and down to the campsite. The pack manage to mostly portray some level of submissiveness to the spirit as it is 'greater in station'. The spirit booms loudly "You should leave! You slaughtered the helpless!" Will stands firm. "We wish to pay our respects to the dead. We wish to find the remains of the wirrenun. We wish to atone for the crimes of the garou." "The guilty must be punished!" "The guilty are dead" "The guilty must be punished! Kin were slaughtered! Vengeance!". The pack do a quick consult. ("I don't care about slaughtering innocents."). The spirit is easily 30' to 40' high. It appears to be an older aboriginal man, with stone axe heads tied to its arms and legs. Its beard and hair stream out from the head like clouds. Behind the spirit, the clouds are getting darker and more threatening. "Wolf changers came! Murder! Rape! Torture!"
Kasumi points out that there are garou punishment rituals for this sort of thing, they do not necessarily need to go and slaughter some random garou. Maybe they can manage something by finding descendants of the killers? Or ancestor spirits? They also want find out what happened, and the spirit knows - maybe if they agree to punish the guilty, the spirit will tell them? They propose this to the spirit - "You will punish the guilty. You will take this task". "If we take this task, will you show us where the wirrenun lie?" "No wirrenun lie here, only kin."
The spirit does not know who the garou were. "Four wolf kin brought others on horseback, enthralled. Fell upon the encampment. Killed, butchered, raped, murdered. There were no wirrenun here". Presumably wolf kin are garou. The pack ask a couple of followup questions and the spirit says that the wolf kin came looking for bunyip and found none. The pack query if they punish the guilty, will that free the spirit, and it agrees.
The pack say they will do this thing, and head away from the campsite. There are building discrepancies that are concerning them - Bartholomew sent them here because there was a story that some garou attacked a campsite and it turned out there were bunyip there. This spirit - and the river - suggest this was not the case at the time of the attack and instead a (some?) bunyip came here later. (Assuming wirrenun and bunyip are the same).
The pack head back toward town, considering their options. They can probably trawl through local records looking for surnames of people who were in town then that might be resposible and their descendants now. There was that history book Finn found - maybe the author lives locally? They could find the local garou, presuming that it was local people who did the attack? ("I love that you assume it was the Get of Fenris responsible for this"). Could they perform a rite of punishment on remains? In theory, yeah, you can lay symbolic punishment on the dead, but it would depend on the punishment rite, as some of them are pointless without being able to experience it.
They pull up at the historical park and ring Bartholomew, and explain their conundrum - his story was that there were Bunyip here, but the spirits say otherwise. He asks if they are sure they have the right spot and they explain what they did find. Bartholomew humms a bit and says he's still in Menindee. Those stories were written down in the late 1920s, so it would have been a generation after the events. He thinks they are accurate as far as they accurately transcribe the stories as they were being told at the time. He says they were mostly Silver Fangs, and he recommends that before they make any definite statements about the truth or inaccuracy of those stories that they seek some advice - "This is why I stopped hanging around with you lunatics". Tillie says she doesn't expect him to fix it and Bartholomew says he has no intention of trying, they got themselves into this mess, they can get themselves out. He abandons trying to be subtle and says that if it was him, and he was a Shadow Lord packleader, leading a pack of folks that allied publically with the Fianna, he would use a bit of tact and delicacy before announcing that a Silver Fang pack had lied about encountering Bunyip. Ah, says Tillie. Gotcha. (Did they lie about there being Bunyip? Or did they lie about being involved?). He recommends seeking more detail. He's still in Menindee, and hasn't the original stuff here, but he's planning to head home soon, and he could look at things when he gets there. Bartholomew says he thinks the pack was a Silver Fang pack called Howls of Frost. Tillie says thanks and hangs up.
They've got a half day at least to kill in Clermont, so they send Finn back to the library to speak to Glennys more. The others try looking up the two surnames they do know about - there aren't any Spooners in the phone book, but there are 6 different McOrison addresses. ("You're not red, you're orange") Kasumi thinks they should make the descendants apologise. They check out all six places and Will tries to tell if they are kinfolk, but thinks that none of them are. They could look more for likely Silver Fang kinfolk? Mayor? Pub owner? Someone who owns a lot of land, like stations. But on the other hand, its Red Talon territory really, and they don't know that the Silver Fangs have a presence here. Has it always been Red Talon territory? Will isn't sure, but he thinks that the Jindabyne Council administrate that sort of thing, and its been around for a while - not forever, and maybe not when the War of Tears was happening? Hmmmm
They decide to phone home and get Cossack - he seems interested in what is going on. Tillie says they are chasing Bunyip tail, leading to some awkward silence. He seems not thrilled with hearing this. She says that they're fine, but they wanted to check in on Sleeping Lore. Cossack says that he's starting to get a bit concerned but Tillie says that they haven't had any further visions. Cossack seems more interested in whether _they_ are in trouble and Tillie says no more than usual (in the background, Will says "We might be about to"). Cossack is a bit concerned about the length of time and the lack of information, but isn't trying to rein them in directly. Tillie says that when they are done doing this immediate task, they'll head back.
Will wants to know what they do when they find this info out - summon the spirits and try to punish them? None of the pack have punishment rituals really. They could tear the spirit to bits, but that seems a bit brutal. They could summon the spirits to the lightning man and let nature take its course. ("I don't know if you know this, but we get periods during the day too").
There's some discussion - they can summon the spirits (if they exist, if they will be summoned by non-Silver Fangs), they could punish the descendants (if they exist, if they can find them) or.. or they could present their evidence to the Silver Fangs and let them deal with it. Finn thinks that this is a dumb idea, the Silver Fangs will hide the evidence and attack the pack. Or blame it on the Fianna. The others are still exploring the idea while Finn complains. They'd need some rock solid evidence to present, but they are rank 2 and get some respect accordingly. If they contact the right Silver Fang, this might work. Wait, they're dealing with this whole thing because of Cernonous, and Cernonous and Darius appear to be friends. Maybe they can pass it onto Darius? ("I should get a tattoo of that passage in leviticus that bans tattoos").
They ring Cernonous and explain their situation and their understanding. Cernonous is interested in the fact that there are no bunyip remains, but Lost Prophets say that they have taken on some level of chiminage to fulfil the spirit's goals, and they were thinking of talking to Darius. Cernonous asks if they have names, but the pack explain that they are waiting on Bartholomew for names. They have the probable pack name, Howls of Frost. Cernonous inquires further about what they have, and suggests asking the historian if they are looking into it further, but otherwise, get the names from Bartholomew and he'll speak to Darius. Tillie says they have sort of taken on the duty themselves, but Cernonous points out that given the lack of actual Bunyip remains there, the talents of Lost Prophets might be better spent moving onto the next possibility.
The pack try and find the historian and get some info out of him. Finn asked Glennys earlier about him and found out that he's a school teacher in Emerald, a town about 50 or 60km away. They give him a call and he answers pretty quickly. Finn says that he's a university student studying history and archaeology and he's interested in the events they found in his book. The guy seems a bit uninterested, and says that his conclusions are in the book, which Finn should cite if he's writing on the event? Finn comes across as a bit vague and not really focussed and frankly like he's a high school student. ("I'm not really sure he'd be more likely to help us if he was covered in bees"). The guy says that as a student, the book will be most useful to him, and brushes Finn off. Finn feels that this is a bit weird and so the pack decide to go check him out.
They drive to Emerald and cruise past his house - there's no sense of wyrm from a distance. They find somewhere to step, and come back to check him out. He appears to be in his late 30s and lives alone. Will checks him out with his gifts and despite paranoia, he seems to be human. Despite further paranoia, his walls are not covered with mage sigils either. They poke around a bit and decide not to bother breaking in, and head back to Clermont.
Bartholomew rings them and explains about the stories - the stories were a mix of different tales, and about half of them were about a pack called the Howls of Frost, which consisted of 3 Silver Fangs (Illyich Simonov, Adelaide Macarthur, Winter's Long Tooth) and 1 Get of Fenris (Jerich Stone's-Kin). He says that the story is pretty clear - they attacked an encampment and fought a glorious fight against Bunyip. Maybe the story was associated with them and it wasn't them, but in the end Illyich did go mad, and was put down by Macarthur. ("I love that there's the possibility you're going to have a challenge fight to see who is second in charge"). Bartholomew says that now, looking at it with the eye of "maybe these stories aren't right", he wonders that there wasn't something wrong very early on. They thank him and then make a second call.
Their new information is passed on to Cernonous who says that he'll contact Darius about it and consult with him. Tillie says that if they're not staying here, they're going home to check in. Cernonous says he hopes that they intend to continue investigating, and give it some level of priority. Tillie says yes, but they want to talk to their Elders about the visions they saw, and also their Sept Leader is asking pointy questions about where they are. Cernonous reiterates that he doesn't want to ask them to do anything they feel is dishonourable. Tillie asks that they want to be kept informed about the interactions with the Lightning Man. Cernonous seems a bit terse about it (the rank 4 elder would certainly like you to get on with doing what he's asked you to do) but concedes that they do have other obligations.
The pack debates whether they go home, or whether they go to Etadunna first. They'd have to go to Birdsville and then down the track from there, its not super convenient. The urge to go home is pretty high, so they get their stuff together and head south. ("We got through a whole session without baby interuption" "Yeah, shame about us tho")
Look.
What?
Another brown hill.
Oh.
On the trip home, the pack contemplate what to tell their elders, specifically Cossack. They don't want to hide things from him, but Cernonous has asked them to be discrete, so they want to work out where one ends and the other begins. They could say they are doing things for Council members without going into detail? I mean, they've already said they're looking into bunyip things. ("Darkest adelaide" "Deep Adelaide. Like its part of the Umbra" "Perth - I've never seen so much fuckall in one place"). In the end, they decide to talk to Cossack but anyone else can be told "pack business". They talk about other pack business and watch the landscape slowly slide past. ("This is a pack tactics thing, we need to get our wingman plan on")
They arrive in Melbourne mid afternoon and hide from one another in showers and beds for a few hourse before returning to the caern. ("is your daughter.... preborn?" "Can anyone else smell melange?"). They find Cossack in the Umbra and he's amenable to having a long chat about things. The head to Graeme's house and crowd into the lounge with the traditional tribute of beer and pizza. Cossack asks who should start the conversation and Tillie indicates him - he says that in an event unprecedented in history, a senior member of the King of Australia's court comes to the Bonegnawer sept in Melbourne and asks to speak to a Shadow Lord pack leader. A week later, and they disappear to Queensland, chasing bunyip things. So, what has Darius got them doing? And when he says 'unprecedented', he means it literally - none of that court has ever come to this Sept. Tillie says that its the connection to the bunyip that has brought this on, and says theoretically, if a member of the Jindabyne Council approaches a pack and wants them to do something, but wants them to be very discreet about it, what should they do? How discrete? Fairly, but not absolutely. Cossack is concerned about how obsessed Darius is with the bunyip, and whether he might put the pack in difficult positions in an effort to gather the kudos for being the leader who restored the tribe. Its not that he doesn't trust the pack - "I don't!" drifts Ian's voice out of another part of the house "Rank 2 or not, they're wet behind the ears. They're going to get done over." Cossack clearly didn't know Ian was there, and pushes the door shut before continuing - he clearly thinks that Darius is giving them instruction and worried about political repercussions.
Tillie twitches a lot as some retroactive discussions take place in the car on the way home and then says that they aren't just interacting with Darius, and in fact, they haven't seen him since that first chat and they've been following instructions from Cernonous, the Child of Gaia council member. Cossack contemplates this while chewing some pizza. Tillie emphasises that this is the thing that they've been asked to be discreet about. Cossack says that Cernonous and Darius are allies, and he knows that Cernonous supports efforts to try and undo the extinction of the Bunyip.
Cossack is worried that they are getting politically involved when they aren't fully aware of the repercussions. Hepoints out that the Council is not exactly united on the idea of trying to restablish the bunyip, or even to make efforts to reconcile with the australian spirits. And while he knows the pack are interested in this, explicitly working with Darius and Cernonous on the topic, it might lead to some personal opposition to the pack. Just as a for instance, although Tillie isn't interested in the opinion of the Shadow Lord tribe at the moment, it might not be ideal to deliberately put herself into opposition with her tribe leader. Or, alternatively, Darius setting things up so that Tillie looks stupid, just to get at Vlad Volaschky slightly? Darius is so interested in this topic that its unlikely to be anything as petty as that, and in fact he might use it as an example of how well things go when tribes act as one. Cossack's point is that its not likely to be straightforward, Darius will have the standing of the Silver Fangs and himself firmly in mind, and that they are getting deeply involved. ("First you get the sugar...") Tillie is pretty distinterested in the political side of things, and says that Cernonous seems pretty focused on the practicalities? Cossack says that he would expect Cernonous to be more spiritually motivated and straightforward. Will pipes up and says that he's been told that the Children of Gaia are often pretty naive. Cossack says that you might describe Inanna, the other Child of Gaia council member as a bit naive, or at least unworldly, but he has found Cernonous to be fairly practical.
Tillie says that Cernonous has seemed to be the one asking for care and discretion and it did seem to be because he was worried about political - or even physical - opposition from the other Jindabyne council members. Cossack says he's not even sure what they are really doing.... ok. Tillie says it will be ongoing, and they need to head off again before too long, out to Etadunna. Somewhere where Get of Fenris and Red Talons are arguing. And they are looking for bunyip remains. Cossack stares at them a lot. Now that they spilled a little bit of info, they talk about giant wombats and goannas. Cossack asks if Cernonous is dragging them out into the middle of nowhere to face spiritual hostility? Yes. He has a concern for their safety, especially as they talk about being attacked. And Sinead had her head in a bunyip mouth. Ah and they should probably explain some things about the Cracking Stone and Bartholomew, and the Waiting Stone. Cossack only knows Bartholomew by reputation, they haven't met. They can't chase up how and why the mages had the Cracking Stone - its possible that they couldn't even use it though.
They talk about local matters and how everyone was on alert. Cossack asks about when they are going to go, and the pack say that there's some flexibility on that - they'd be glad to stay and discharge some obligation to the Sept for, say a week? He seems to think that is a good idea, a week of being the pack on guard. That will also let the pack sort out their mortal lives a bit.
They let Cernonous know - he seems not terribly thrilled but accepts that the pack have home Sept obligations.
Finn gets a notification that his supplementary exam is on Friday, and begins to cram as hard as he can.
Sinead and Tillie sneak out one night and help Sinead do some industrial sabotage. They choose Pearce to ruin and it goes fairly well ("you have killed [rolls] 12 innocent by-standers").
People meditate at the caern to regain some gnosis. Finn realises he buzzed out on the spiritual nature of the caern instead of studying and leaps back at it.
Will gets some extra cash in hand work during the week.
Monday, Kasumi goes to work (although with some thought about just never going in again, or using Taking the Forgotten to take her own job) and finds that she has a meeting booked with HR and her boss and another name she does not recognise mid-morning. Oh dear. She goes along and finds that they are their first and they have carefully chosen non-confrontational seating. ("I recommend you cry" "I recommend you vomit blood" "I've changed my mind, just eat them" "Or be Sadako" "I don't what happened, they just died. 'We saw you shooting the camera'. That was an unrelated incident" ). The extra person appears to be a note taker, introduced as 'Brent'. Caroline seems to be chairing the meeting, and she is concerned. About everything. She is quick about making a proposal to meet both Ms Umino's needs and the company's needs. They ask if she is interested in taking an extended break from her position, using her accrued annual leave at perhaps a half rate, and using this time to perhaps help recover her mental equilibrium. Perhaps. At half pay she would perhaps be able to take 2 or 3 months, and at the end of that time she could perhaps see how she felt, and whether perhaps she felt like she could return more focussed at the end of that time. Kasumi rides her genuine sadness and pushes it a bit hard to seem quite upset. (MOOD SWINGS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNFTgO5g0Rg) Kasumi has the insight that they are maneuvering her to leave without any hanging leave to be paid out. While they are discussing things, Caroline makes a slight slip that if she was seeking medical or psychological attention she could also claim some sick leave to extend the time away. Kasumi's boss looks less impressed, but Kasumi pushes the issue. By the end of the day Kasumi has packed up her desk and signed some documentation about the next few months and by the end of the week she has signed all the documentation.
Some of the other Sept members enquire of the pack what the hell is going on, especially in the context of the vision. Apart from the vision, they get told its pack business. The pack gt given the eye. ("Why do they care?" "Because eventually half of you will get killed and they have bets on who gets the remnants").
Kasumi starts her safe mouse house project. Although she debates letting some loose in Tillie's house, the danger that her metis pack leader might eat the mouse dissuades her. ("Put the mouse inside a dog and the dog inside someone's house"). She gets a cage and a couple of mice from 6 different shops ("one for me and one for the pot").
Finn does his exam with a couple of other people doing supplementary exams (not the same as his). He thinks he does ok.
Will may or may not have tried to interact with spirits to get their names.
The pack ring Cernonous and let him know they are back on the case. They chat about where to go next and mostly people think Etadunna and the Get and Red Talons are. They make some preparations such as camping gear and an extra jerry can for petrol, and do a bit of a rundown about how they are going to do the interactions with the other garou.
Will is quizzed about Get of Fenris stuff, but he says that he wasn't really at his Sept long and it was down on the shoreline not outback, so he's not really able to help.
(Bavaria Bavaria Bavaria where the mountains stick out of the ground https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsEH578NiWY )
Still. Boring.
Things are complicated by not being 100% sure of where they are going. They know where Etadunna is, on the Birdsville Track, but there doesn't seem to be a town there or anything. They've looked around at the maps and Lake Eyre National Park is there, maybe the caern is in there? Its the middle of nowhere so there's not quite the same need to buffer things against humans. The final plan is to go into the Umbra, in lupus, and howl to make their presence extremely well known.
They turn off the real road at Maree and fill up both the car and all their jerrycans and get some updated info about the route. They pass a couple of 4WD in convoy and one truck coming the other way, and at one point they are passed by another 4WD towing a trailer.
Late in the day they come to a sign that says Etadunna. It appears to be a sign, a creek bed, and a campsite, but they can see some buildings like part of a farm on the other side of the creek bed. The campsite has some basic facilities - a hole toilet and there's a bore water pump nearby with lots of warnings that the water might be hot. The 4WD that passed them earlier is set up there with a couple (Martin and Denise) and their two kids (Dylan and Kyla). They are way friendlier than the pack is expecting (cashed up and a bit bogany) so paranoia leads them to be scanned with gifts. Nope, they're just normal folks. In the Umbra, it appears to be swampy.
The normals are going to make leaving into nowhere harder ("Are they really looking at us?" "there's nothing else to look at"), but the pack solve this by saying "we're going for a walk" and heading out.
The pack shifts over to the Umbra when they're a kilometer over to the west. Its marshy with banks of ti tree and some dry land. They stop, and give a greeting howl. A response comes back from further west - "ours, go away". Lost Prophets howl again in the standard "we seek permission" sort of limited garou tongue that lupus allows. There is no response, but they opt to wait politely in the same location.
After a short while, they see lupus approaching through the umbra, following the lines of the terrain. Two of them appear to be dingo-related, and three are european wolves. They stop a hundred metres away and reiterate the "go away" howl. When Lost Prophets make no move to leave, they approach slowly, stalking with hackles raised. Tillie introduces herself formally first, and one steps forward "I am Flies-like-a-Stone, a lupus Red Talon rank 2 philodox. You should not be here, leave". Tillie says they are following the request of Elders, and need permission to enter this land. "No. You will leave" There is clearly not a scope here for negotiation.
Tillie sighs and says "I challenge you". Flies-like-a-Stone makes eyecontact with her and the two of them attempt to stare each other down. Tillie is about to look away when Flies-like-a-Stone suddenly ducks his head (and Tillie uses her Seizing the Edge gift) and she presses her issue. Tillie graciously gives him a moment to regain his equilibrium. In a moment Flies-like-a-Stone asks why her pack is here.
Tillie takes the moment to introudce her pack - Bonegnawer (grr), Get of Fenris (GRR), Glasswalker (grrr), and Fianna (eh). Flies-like-a-Stone formally introduces his pack Head Harvest (First-to-Bleed, rank 2 Galliard, Silent-as-Dew, rank 2 ragabash, Luna's-Last-Daughter, rank 2 Ahroun, and Voice-like-a-cool-breeze-on-a-hot-day, rank 2 theurge). Flies-like-a-Stone asks again "Why are you here?" "We are seeking bunyip remains" "Why?" "For an Elder". "How do we know this is not a trick - Get of Fenris bringing in others to attack?" Tillie goes to reply when behind her there is a disturbance and a female voice says "Why would we bring a ragtag pack like these mother fuckers?". Will knows that voice - its Lise.
Lost Prophets turn around and see a group of 6 people in a mix of homid and crinos form. A woman in jeans and a leather jacket staring daggers at Will appears to be the pack leader. Tillie introduces herself as the pack leader of Lost Prophets. The woman looks at Tillie and back to Will - "You really have a type, don't you?". There is a certain similarity between Tillie and this woman. She looks back at Tillie and then continues "I know who you are - its hard to miss a familiar name when you know they've been sent away in disgrace, and yet finds a caern suddenly, and things worked out pretty well for you. As opposed to someone else, who gets sent to this FUCKING SHITHOLE!". She seems mad.
The rest of Lost Prophets are on guard and looking at the rest of the likely-to-be Get pack. The other five garou behind her look a bit baffled, like they don't know what's going on any more than Lost Prophets do.
Will says "oh, they sent you here then" a bit weakly and the woman says "Ah yes. To guard a caern against a handful of flea ridden mutts". Some of the Red Talons start to growl and she looks at them "Do we have to have this discussion again?" and they stop. She turns back to Tillie "So why are you not leaving? Oh I forgot to do the polite thing. I am Lise Hendricksen, this is my pack Raging Storm, get the fuck out." Tillie and Lise go back and forth, Tillie doesn't want to leave and Lise says "get out". Lise half throws a punch to see what Tillie does. Tillie steps to one side but Lise doesn't even follow through. "Out! Not your caern! Out! I don't care what the Red Talons say, get out. Its my job to guard this place - its not as exciting as finding caerns and meeting the Jindabyne council, I'm sure, but its what I've been told to do. Out."
Tillie tries for a bit more reasoning ("clearly you've got issues with Will, and if you want to take them out on him, that's fine by me") and negotiating, but Lise says they have nothing she wants. Tillie says they are looking for remains that they think are here, all they need to do is look. Lise doesn't give a shit, there's nothing Tillie can offer. The pack quickly put their heads together and wonder if they can get her reassigned out of here, but it doesn't seem like something they can swing. Lise says she's been given clear instructions to not let anyone in to the Get territory - they pay attention to such things, unlike some people. "You have nothing I want, you're not anyone from my protectorate - " with a hard look at Will - "you're not in my tribe or my pack, and you're not my elders." Its getting clear that Tillie is going to have to challenge them for this.
Lise scans the Lost Prophets, and says that she's always found that one on one fights were always a bit arbitrary - how about they make it two on two. The Get are kind of spread out and try and creep out the rest of Lost Prophets behind them (versus the more straight forward Red Talons). Kasumi sits down on a dry hummock. Tillie tells Will he's up and Lise picks one of the Get called Miles. Miles suggests that its just a punch on (no teeth & claws), any form, stay in the Umbra, and the last one standing wins.
The fight lasts about 6 seconds of rage spending fury - Lise goes straight for Will, who avoids the first punch and then lands one. Miles kicks Tillie ineffectually. The second punch from Lise breaks Will's jaw and sends teeth flying and nearly makes him frenzy. Will then returns the favour and smashes Lise's face in. While she is reeling, Tillie knocks her out. Miles switches his focus to knock Will down. Tillie punches Miles but he dodges. Miles punches Tillie in the throat scar, partly collapsing her throat scar. She punches him head over heels and unconscious in one go. Water splashed into the sky from the initial attacks spatters down as Tillie stands there amidst 3 unconscious garou.
While this fight is going on, the rest of Lost Prophets start noticing a bad smell. Maybe it was churned up by the fight? Its a bit like an infected wound, this is not a good sign. One of the Red Talons starts sniffing around as well. There is a brief concern about it being a similar scent as the pus bag bane that Struthers bacame, but its more a necrosing flesh smell than pus. The Talons are starting to look concerned and move around. Finn peeks and senses for unnatural and finds nothing really. Sinead senses for Wyrm, and there's something.. oh no nothing. Wait, that buzzing insect going past like a hornet has a sense. Oh, and that one, droning at it flies past them 5m in the air. And that one. And that small group. Oh dear. Sinead opts to bring Will around while the others start to look concerned. The Red Talons are snatching bugs spirits out of the air and looking unhappy. Flies-like-A-Stone asks if Lost Prophets brought this and they say no. One of the pack snatches one out of the air and crushes it - its clearly some sort of bane. The Get have noticed it and start to swat them too. All the bugs are heading the same direction - off to to the west. Lost Prophets start to follow them. Lise and Miles are bought around by their pack - other members of Raging Storm says "hey!" and Tillie yells "They're going this way, keep up!"
Kasumi gets bitten on the neck by a spirit. She manages to grab it off; its one of the bug things. Its about as long as a thumb, with two sets of pincers, and no eyes. Its chitinous, but sort of sticky. She crushes it, and it is destroyed easily. The pack can start to see small groups of bugs. Will yells at one of the Get "What's that way" and he starts to um and ah. Lise yells "Shut up" and then demands to know if they brought it, because its a hell of a coincidence that its arrived as they were here. Everyone is getting attacked while running - the Talons are audible but not visible as they move across the marshland, and its clear they are fighting. The Fenrir are moving slower than Lost Prophets as they keep attacking the bugs which are now best described as 'swarms'. The bugs are not all the same - there's beetles and twisted bees and something that looks like a dragonfly with a scorpion tail. Bursts of flames erupt from Raging Storm, who are getting distracted.
The terrain isn't all swampy, some of it is dry sand or little hillocks. Ahead, the pack can see something enormous, and as the umbral mists clear they can make out a giant gum tree, maybe 50 meters tall. Hovering next to it is a roiling cloud of bugs, all making a one drone sound, and growing in size rapidly. As they get closer, the tree is visibly on a bit of a rise and they are getting out of the water. Tillie tells Finn to get the others to get here now, and he Calls the Wyld to give it an oomf. The bugs seems to respond to the sound, the droning grows louder and higher pitched; the sound is suddenly familiar to Lost Prophets as they have heard it before, in the Scar. Spirits there said it was a Nexus Crawler... and then the cloud turns in on itsself and becomes a single nightmarish creature ("like someone took a zoo, put it in a cannon and fired it at a wall"), floating next to the tree. ("We should run away... I mean, beat a tactical retreat. To Melbourne").
The combination of smell, sound and sight of the abomination nearly cause Tillie and Will to freak out. They double check behind us and see the Red Talons a bit of a distance before, and the Get pack right behind them. Finn notices that Lise is holdin two very familiar handaxes... the same ones they saw in the Atrocity realm with Will's supposed ancestors. She puts them together and hurls the combined axe into the sky at the Nexus crawler.
Lost Prophets glance around for ideas on how to fight this thing, given its not within claw range. Sinead recalls that, post Scar, the Elders said that its attacks are chaotic and wyld as well as wyrm. Nexus crawlers are extremely dangerous even to experienced packs, but not indefeatible - hopefully having 16 garou here might even the odds. ("We need a pokemon ball" "Or those things from ghostbusters, the traps" "Oh I thought you meant the proton cannon"). They can't bind it, it will take ten or more minutes while it attacks everyone ("we'd only have to survive 200 rounds").
The pack become quickly aware that the tree is the caern - not only is it unnaturally enormous, the only large tree in the area and such, but the gauntlet is very low.
The Crawler isn't entirely contiguous - tentacle like structures form unconnected to it and writhe around before being reabsorbed. Will and Tillie sharpen their claws. Tillie confirms that the thing is solid by checking the axe that Lise threw is still stuck in it. Finn tries to use Call of the Wyld ("stay stay stay more or less contiguous!") but unfortunately makes just squeaking noises. Kasumi swarms up the tree and Will heads up after Kasumi. Sinead uses her Command Spirit gift and forces the Nexus Crawler to start to descend. (http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/2011/11/azathoth.jpg)
One of the mouths looks at Sinead and speaks - her skin starts to rot and fall to pieces. Tillie leaps high straight up, but finds she can only jump about half way. As she starts to descend, a ... mouth-like thing (with no throat, just teeth) on the end of a protrubance closes on her flesh and bites, but does only cosmetic damage. Finn heads up the tree, Kasumi attempts to climb higher so she can get above the crawler to attack. Sinead heads up the tree after her packmates. ("Finn and Kasumi, sitting in the tree, K. I. L. L. I. N. G!") Lise's axe pulls out of the flesh and flies back to her hand as she runs in, along with the rest of the Get of Fenris pack who follow the lead of the Lost Prophets.
Kasumi takes a couple of running steps along a large bole and leaps out, claws extended and raking past the Nexus Crawler. The leap is perfect, but her claws bounce and skip across the armored surface of the monster. A claw sweeps downward and smacks her harder to the ground, but she rolls and spins back into combat. The Nexus Crawler does something near Will, and suddenly he finds that his vision spins and left and right change sides - he moves his left hand but it appears to be on his right. Tillie uses her Create Element gift and triggers a blast of fire around the spirit ("I can also make it dirty!") and it does some damage but the whole thing doesn't ignite or anything. One of the Red Talons leaps in crinos across the sky and slams into the side of the Nexus Crawler, clinging with its claws. The others are coming in, but sadly there is still a stream of bugs also still coming in and merging with the Nexus Crawler.
Kasumi heads up the tree again. Finn climbs up further, wanting to get high enough to lead onto the top of the crawler. The crawler attacks a random bit of swamp and one of the Get in the tree. Will is affected again - gravity swings around and suddenly down is into the sky. He falls up one set of branches, but catches himself on the next one. Tillie is attacked by a sort of scorpion's tail but it glances off bone. Sinead is close enough now to activate her Spirit Snare gift, which she does, tangling the Crawler in magical force.
Will runs along the bottom of the branch and leaps onto the bottom of the Nexus crawler, while Finn runs along the top. Finn is knocked slightly off balance by Will's rocking the branch, and so his leap leaves him hanging onto the side of the crawler, while Will lands smoothly feet up on the bottom of the Crawler ("Do you really want 'surfs the wyrm's ass' as a deed name?"). Kasumi is part way up the tree when she suddenly turns into a liquid and flows down the trunk - the others can see her dribble down, her horrified face very clear. They can see and hear the other garou from the Red Talon and Get packs getting attacked and hurt. Sinead gets smashed with what looks like a pinecone of teeth, but keeps her seat in the tree. ("Moths remember which plant they first had sex on, and treat that one as their favourite" "Was that moths or goths?")
The Nexus Crawler has descended low enough at this point that Tillie is able to leap up and grab hold of some protruberances. She is now hanging downward while Will is standing head down nearby. Will is struck by flailing limbs, but keeps his balance. Kasumi tries to change form in the hope it would avoid being a puddle. Some of the Get are frenzying. Sinead appears next to herself and yells "Boost me!", changing to lupis. She blinks and then helps hurl herself into the air and onto the top of the crawler before turning around, seeing herself and yelling "Boost me!" and changing to lupus at the same time. One of the Red Talons falls across the landscape, crashing into trees and such. The Crawler obliterates a ti tree. Will smashes his claws into the Nexus crawler while hanging on in fear of the gravity returning to normality.
Finn pulls himself onto the top and smashes claws in. Mouths appear under his feet and start trying to maul his leg. Future Sinead lands in lupus form and bites the spirit roughly. Kasumi suddenly reverts to a more solid form. Gravity returns to normal for Will, and he falls down, but has a good grasp of various protruberances and is hanging underneath like Tillie. Some of the get, having seen Sinead throw herself into the air go the same plan. Kasumi leaps up the tree.
Some garou have been severely injured and been knocked out, reverting to breed form. Lost Prophets are remarkably unmauled, having only suffered some limited wounds so far. The Nexus crawler tries to swipe Tillie away, and she is knocked down onto .. another garou running in. She lands very awkwardly, but that Red Talon frenzies. Sinead keeps biting in lupus form on the top of the crawler and is smashed by the Crawler in revenge. Desperately trying to get away, Tillie rolls to her feet and leaps back into the sky - she manages to get one hand grabbing onto a chunk of spirit. Lise is zapped with a blast of entropy and then smashed by a bony protrubence, sailing into the swamp.
Kasumi leaps out of the tree and manages to get enough of a grip on the Nexus Crawler to haul herself onto it. A couple of the Red Talons are clinging to the side and gnawing their way in. Will, clinging to the bottom claws wildly at the spirit ("I kinda wish that I hadn't spent so much rage fighting my ex-girlfriend"). Finn is still on top also clawing at the wyrm spawn. The Nexus Crawler is starting to look frayed, and the flow of bugs renewing it has dropped away. Sinead suddenly spins away into the distance, as gravity suffers a fundamental loss of coherence. She crashes into the swamp in a deep and snag free puddle. (12 dice... no damage).
Sinead leaps out of her puddle and runs back toward the battle. She swerves via some of the more injured garou and tries to do a quick triage ("Are their heads still attached?"). There's a homid stuck in a tree that she thinks is fine, and she drags on lupus out of a puddle so that their face isn't under the water; then heads back toward the fray.
Tillie opts to not take the chance of falling back down where the frenzying garou is and tries to get a better grip. Will is scorpion tailed from two directions but doesn't lose his grip. Kasumi is blasted with entropy but resists. Tillie claws at chunks of spirit and they start to drop away. Two of the get land on top of the spirit and start smashing chunks off it while talons leap up and strike before falling to the ground. Kasumi is hit by a tentacle and knocked to the ground. Finn claws and tears at the spirit. Kasumi is struck with entropy again only this time it affects her very badly. Sinead takes a running leap into the air ("Fuck my mouth! ... I mean... fuck, my mouth") but can't get the height but does dodge horrible blasts. Tillie strikes again.
Tillie is finding that the unravelling spirit is becoming difficult to hang onto, but keeps attacking. The spirit starts to distintergrate, the solid parts become dead bugs again and garou and wyrm tainted spirits rain down all over the landscape.
There are five garou down - 3 of the Get and 2 of the Red Talons, including the pack leaders. No one seems to be grieving for dead packmates, they just seem to be unconscious or badly hurt. Tillie, concerned that this is just stage 1 ("This isn't even my final form"), looks around and tries sensing for wyrm, but given the thousands of brittle wyrm bug shells raining down, (like shedded cicada skins) that's no help. Finn peaks into the Realm and sees that there is a tree, but its much smaller, and kind of scraggly - there are bunches of leaves but you wouldn't call it 'foliage'. There are many items attached to the tree - painted bits of wood, bones and stones that certainly have an indigenous look to them.
Miles comes over and asks if they brought this? Sinead says "you're welcome" and he says "lets wait for that." He asks if Will is prepared to swear that they had nothing to do with it, and when Will seems to be, he gets Thorston (one of the Get) to come over and grab Will's hand while he swears that they know nothing about why the Nexus Crawler appeared now (while conceding it seems really oddly coincidental). Nothing seems to happen and Thorston nods at Miles. Miles say "thank you" to Sinead. ("Why did you bring it home into the house?" "Look at its eyes? *gooblygoobly*). Miles says "don't take this the wrong way, but I'd like you to leave as soon as possible, what the hell do you want?" Tillie explains they are looking for bunyip remains, and Miles says that there's probably some tied to the tree. Tillie asks if they could take it? Miles goes back to speak to First-to-Bleed, looking at Lost Prophets while they talk. First-to-Bleed comes and says they will need to speak to the caern spirit. Voice-like-a-Cool-Breeze-on-a-Hot-Day will do the caern opening ritual to bring the caern spirit. Miles says that it won't do them much good, but won't elaborate. Voice-like-a-Cool-Breeze-on-a-Hot-Day responds to questions about the caern spirit, saying it is a bunyip spirit, a spirit of life. The pack contemplate what it might want and the lupus says that it may not ask for anything.
While the ritual is going, the pack have a chance to quickly compare notes about the fight. One thing that stands out is how the packs fought - the Red Talons had a couple of heavy hitters and everyone else protected them. They were all fairly mobile too, not committing to one front. The Get were more free for all and everyone was attacking but at the same time, it was in combination with one another - they took up Sinead's idea of throwing one another quickly. The stand out was Lise, who attacked on her own with the axe.
The ritual Voice-like-a-Cool-Breeze-on-a-Hot-Day performs is not an awakening, but one of the caern rites. From within the tree, a faint glow appears, and within the glow resolves an aboriginal woman, about 15' high, wearing a loin cloth and not much else. Voice-like-a-Cool-Breeze-on-a-Hot-Day says that this pack has requested to speak with her, and the pack leaders have decided to allow it. The spirit's attention turns to Lost Prophets. Her expression is very stoic, but Kasumi can feel waves of loss and sorry coming from the spirit. The spirit turns specifically to Will. She speaks and says "You have returned." ("HA!") "[pause] One hundred years as promised. [pause] Life is often this way. [pause] I do not". The rest of the pack stare at Will and looks just as baffled as them. Will tries to call on his ancestors, and finds that the sense of their presence is strong, and in foment - a frothing sea of information and flashes just there. Will says he doesn't understand, but the spirit turns her attention to Tillie, who formally introduces her pack. They have come to request some bunyip remains to take with them. The spirit asks why. Tillie pauses and Will asks Voice-like-a-Cool-Breeze-on-a-Hot-Day to step away for a moment as this is a pack thing. The lupus stares at them for a moment and retreats to a reasonable distance while still watching.
Tillie says they have been sent by a Council Elder. Stoic staring. They are on a quest to right the wrongs of the past and bring back the Bunyip. Long silence and then "My children cannot be returned. What is done is done. I do not think you can - or will - return them." Will finds himself having to bite down on a massive surge of rage. Tillie feels that - "If you allow me to return to sleep I will give you a token". Er. Yeah, ok, Lost Prophets agree. She fades back into the tree.
Will indicates he'd like to spend a bit of time trying to figure out what is going on inside his head. Tillie looks about and sees that Flies-like-a-Stone is awake and speaking to Miles and heads over there to give an update to what's happening. They are interacting in a somewhat stilted/formal way but without any obvious aggravation. They talk briefly about the Nexus Crawler's appearance but the Red Talon as this one (Miles) has said that Lost Prophets was not responsible for its appearance, it is the packs' here issue to resolve. Tillie says that the spirit has said that they can take something, and that Will wants to meditate on things. After confirming that he is not attempting to touch the caern's gnosis, Flies-like-a-Stone is happy with that. Miles says as the pack leader is unconscious, he is happy to say its fine. Thorston says "as our former pack leader too" and Miles tells him to shut up. Tillie tries to get information out of Miles about what on earth was happening between Will and Lise, but he ignores her and asks if there was anything else she wanted. ("I get the feeling that we're the guys at that party that have overstayed their welcome" "Except that we only just turned up. And everyone else here is a horrible dick. So its more like we turned up to a party and it was really terrible and we all want to go home").
Will starts to try and contact his ancestor spirits. The simplest ones come first, merely flashes of memories and vague bits of knowledge. He keeps searching within himself for where the surge of rage came from.
The rest of Lost Prophets head into the Realm, where the air is cooling now the sun has gone down but its still a shock compared to the marshlands. The ground is dusty soil, very dry and sandy. Sinead is told not to drop the Cracking Stone. The tree is alive, but its clearly struggling. As they walk around, a bone drops from the tree in front of Sinead - it looks like a hand bone that was tied on with woven bark or maybe hair. ("Lick it! Put the cracking stone on it!"). Sinead picks it up, and its not a fetish or anything immediately obvious. Its been there for a while, its not fresh. Tillie dedicates the bone so they can take it back to the Umbra with them, and then they head back to the Umbra.
When they arrive, Will is not where they left him - there is some shouting, so he is easy to find. He is standing near the unconscious Lise and the members of her pack are saying "Hey!". Will comes to himself ("I turn around and I have a cavalry moustache") and has his hand out, and an almost overwhelming urge to say the garou tongue word for 'come' - the word is on his lips and he is about to say it. Will goes with the urge, and the silver axe lying on Lise's chest flies up and lands in his hand. The shouting changes tone and two of the Get change to crinos. ("WILLIAM You put that down right now, it does not belong to you!"). Will says "I think this belonged to one of my ancestors". He examines it and tries to casually ignore the other garou. Anger-like-Ice, one of the Get who is in crinos form says "Give me that". Lise, who has come to unnoticed says "Are you going to take *that* too? Give it back now." Will asks where it came from while holding out the handle. "Its mine, its been in my family for ages." Will wants to talk in private, and Lise snubs him "Why are you still here?" Lise is still badly hurt, broken limbs and bleeding wounds. Will says "We're about to leave, but there's stuff I'd like to talk about". Lise says "No. You're walking around, why are you still here." She calls for Lori, but Lori is still out cold. Will tries to speak quietly to her "You blame me for being out here." "Its your fault." "Its your fault as much as mine, you should take responsibililty - "
Lise snaps to crinos, clearly frenzying. She lashes out with claws and scores Will across the chest. He loses control as well and also starts to Frenzy. ("I'm just gunna... *pulls balaclava on and hides*") ("I can heal only 4 aggravated, try not to take more than that"). Lost Prophets decide this is going to end very poorly, and despite being in homid form dog pile onto both of the garou - Kasumi spends rage to instant flip to crinos, and nearly pins Lise and Finn comes close to pinning Will. Lise tries to escape, to the point where her arm bones, not totally healed, break with an audible snap. With help from Tillie and Sinead they wrestle both the crinos to the ground. The other garou pile on at the same time, and are just waiting for the frenzy to end. Finn spots Miles evaluating the situation, and then punches his packleader in the back of the head to the sound of cracking skull - no one else really saw what happened. Lise slumps, reverting to homid. Sinead tags out and heads over to check her out - Lise has no heartbeat and isn't breathing. Sinead opts to heal the worst so that she doesn't accidentally die, and Lise starts to breath again.
Will finally passed out and goes to homid. Its made clear that Lost Prophets have really worn out their welcome, so they hoist Will over one should and head off. They decide this is a good idea. Kasumi is a bit doubtful on the quality of the bone's dna just from what she's read in science magazines, and brings up whether they are going to have to go to Western Australia still. It might depend on how old it is - perhaps they could get some sort of expert geneticist to check it out.
When they are about a kilometer from the caern, the pack hear a 'psst' from some shadows amidst ti tree. They can't really make out who it is, so the whole pack moves closer. When they get nearby Thorston, one of the Get, comes out form the shadows. He wants to know what they know about the whole showdown with Lise and Will. He says there is something really weird going on with Lise's statements about being 'sent' out here. He's got friends back in more populous areas, and while its true that she was sent from her original sept to a more remote one, that was over a year ago. But about 2 months ago, she just suddenly quit her pack and disappeared from that sept, and turned up here not long after, claiming she'd been sent. He thought it was a bit weird and asked around to find this out - no one at that end had the faintest idea what it was about. He wanted to ask Will questions, but Will is unconscious still. Thorston says that if they feel the urge to share info back at some point, he'd appreciate it.
The pack head back through the umbra to more or less the campsite. They need to get Will awake to step through the gauntlet, so while Tillie slaps him in the face, Kasumi scouts forward and peeks. She finds that in addition to their campsite buddies, there are two other guys sitting around the campsite, one about 50 and the other about 20 and showing signs of some family relationship. Will comes to and the rest of the pack spend time waving their fingers at him and warning him he needs to provide an explanation real soon. He's still bleeding - big claw marks right across the chest. He checks that Lise is still alive and no one else got killed and Lost Prophets are a bit dismissive. Kasumi reports back and they start trying to clean up - blood everywhere and everyone's wet and muddy and in the realm its desert. ("Is it feasible that we're just very sweaty?"). The plan is laid to come back a couple at a time so they have time to cover for issues.
Spying again from the Umbra, their camp buddies are talking with the newcomers about should they call the cops, because the people that were here walked out into the desert 4 hours ago and haven't come back now the sun is down. ("Why would you talk to people just because you were camping next to them that seems weird" "Would you ever go camping like this?" "No!" "Then your take is probably not indicative of the people who would"). The pack quickly come up with a plan - Kasumi and Will come in first and call out that they are fine, they got a bit lost, they're just cleaning up, the others are coming. Through the power of gifts and fast talking and changing out of sodden clothes and acting like idiots, they manage to persuade both the newcomers - who are farmers from the nearby station - and the campsite buddies that they are idiots who went out hiking, got turned around, didn't have torches or enough water or sat phones. Thank goodness for the campfire, it led them here.
Despite the clear "how are you not dead" expressions on their faces, the humans accept their story, while advising that they turn around and go back, and make better preparations before coming on. Tillie says they are indeed calling it off after camping overnight. The humans walk back to their own fire, leaving the pack to try and get some sleep. Tillie is deeply suspicious about being attacked or something and sets people to a rotating watch. When her turn ends she cannot wake Finn up even with kicking, so she draws angry eyebrows on him. Sinead can't sleep, so she volunteers to do it the rest of the night and spends hours drawing on him with the textas. Mostly dicks.
Sinead half hears the other campers wake up and start making breakfast not long after dawn. While the pack snores away, they make breakfast, pack up and go. Its the sound of a diesel car driving away that wakes the rest of the Lost Prophets. Tillie looks at Finn's face and doesn't laugh, but does suspiciously check her own face. The pack get their stuff together and get in the car. Finn sees himself in the mirror, grits his teeth and removes some of the penises. Will is still injured, so he opts to spend the trip in lupus to make it heal quicker.
As they drive, the pack subtley question Will as to what the fuck. He hides in the footwell in glabro while he answers. Will says that he's still making sense of things himself - it didn't go like he thought it might. Finn's mostly interested in the axe, but Will isn't exactly sure how that happened either. Tillie mentions the bits that Thorston told them - the whole "was sent here" thing was only in the last 6 weeks or so, and her old caern doesn't really know why she left. ("I'd like to point out that you have a 28 hour drive home. 'Well, let me tell you about it [opens door, rolls out along the road]").
Will explains that the more pure bred tribes take some steps to try and keep that pure breeding. They'll sometimes arrange situations where garou get to interact with kinfolk and hopefully hook up - once that they're pretty sure those kinfolk aren't going to change. Except that even tho he'd been in fights and car accidents and gone hunting, he hadn't changed. Oh. Ohhhh, say the rest of the pack. ("That's totally gross"). So, yeah there was some unpleasantness, and Will had to leave - apparently so did Lise. Butttt that wasn't 6 weeks ago, so there's something odd going on. Things Thorston said sound like Lise got sent somewhere at the same time as Will did, but not to the Etadunna caern. (Consanguinity was the word I was struggling to recall)
Will changes the subject slightly and talks about his issues with his ancestor spirits. They were really strong earlier, and one of the reasons he moved to Sleeping Lore was to try and get it under control. He had thought that his self-control had improved, but since he's been back talking to Lise, he's had the same thing were ancestor spirits are messing with him. That's what the axe thing seemed to be. He thinks that one of his ancestors owned it, which is what he said to Lise. The only time they saw the same axe was in the Atrocity Realm, and the female woman had it. But she got killed. Tillie asks if its possible that he's related to Lise, because she was saying the axe has been in her family for ages. Its possible - there's a limited pool of Get of Fenris kinfolk in Australia. Maybe that would explain why Will's ancestor spirits are going crazy. Or maybe it was the weird umbral stuff outside of the city, and the city helps. ("Is it because you're a Bunyip?" "Well, that's probably it, but lets explore everything else"). They talk about the caern spirit and its weird conversation - it was talking like someone was answering, but Will says he wasn't even mind-talking. So.. the axe. They didn't see what happened to it in the Atrocity Realm - woman got shot, kinfolk who did it got stabbed, both bodies were burnt. They didn't see what happened to it. ("That's the axe that killed me.... is he right?") Maybe the guy was one of Will's ancestors, and she was one of Lise's? Or the other way around? How would they find out?
As to the weird behaviour of Lise, maybe she is getting manipulated by ancestor spirits too? Maybe they're being manipulated into doing... something? After 100 years at that spot? Maybe the caern spirit knew the Nexus Crawler would be there 100 years ago and arranged for some defenders. Although they've been told it was originally a Red Talon caern, the Get have it as part of their protectorate, which would have been something established by the Jindabyne Council... which would have all been sorted about 100 years ago. Maybe Will had ancestors involved? The Atrocity realm thing seemed a bit older than 100 years, but it is hard to be sure.
In short - Lise was acting weird, and out of character in Will's opinon. He didn't know her well as a garou, but it doesn't seem right. They talk about the matchmaking - it wasn't so much an arranged marriage or anything as arranging an opportunity to get involved with known kinfolk. ("One of our viable batchelors!"). There's a bit of a talk about how there are always rumours that [other tribe] keep their kinfolk in a deplorable situation as a breeding pool. There are exceptions - Children of Gaia and Fianna are known to be friendly with and keep track of their kinfolk. The SilverFangs do arrange marriages if possible, or so everyone has heard.
Finn comments how much his and Will's early lives were similar, with the assumption they were kinfolk not garou until they changed. Kasumi is the same, leading to Tillie making snarky comments about late bloomers. Finn mentions his first change and maybe faeries and his scar on the back... ok, who drew a giant dick using the scar.
Tillie, who has spent most of her time looking at Will, given the lack of anything to really worry about in terms on traffic or road hazards, looks into her mirror and swears. She'd totally missed the approach of the four wheel drive behind them... and the lights flash red and blue on it. More swearing from the pack, but they slow down as Will changes to homid form. The cops pull over behind them and sit there for a moment or two while the pack try and squint through their tinted windshield to make sure there's not shotguns being prepared or anything. Two cops get out, and wander over, one either side of the car. The pack sense for wyrm because of justified paranoia, and find no more than a standard amount. The older cop knocks on the window and has a friendly chat. They confirm that the pack was at Etadunna last night, and then have a talk about water and sat phones and all. He appears to be honestly interested in their wellbeing, but the younger cop is giving the whole car the eye from the outside and looking in at people. They ask for Tillie's license (which is not in her name) and wander back to the cop car.
When they come back, the cops ask if they can have a quick look through the car. Tillie agrees while Sinead suddenly realises that the cops might think that there's a chance that they are drug runners - having driven half way from Melbourne toward northern Australia, gone out into the desert and then turned around and come home. Fortunately, the only gear they have is on Sinead. The cops have a look through their camping gear, but its a rough quick look through rather than a thorough turning over of their equipment. The pack are thanked, and told they can go now, but they should be careful. The police head back to the cop car and sit there with the doors open. The pack drive off, and can see the police sit there for a while then take off (dust cloud). They catch up and pass after a while.
Eventually they get a phone signal, and give Cernonous a call, letting him know they have a finger for him. He asks some questions and then asks where he should meet them, Sydney or Melbourne. After some map consultation they ask him to meet them in Melbourne late tomorrow. They let him know they went through a Nexus Crawler to get it, which seems to impress him.
Lost Prophets call home and say they are on their way home, they should be there tomorrow sometime. Graeme is happy to hear they are on their way, and wants to know if there were nuns in their story. Tillie says she'll get Finn to start working on the nun component as soon as possible.
I Spy With My Little Eye....
The pack arrive in Melbourne about midway through the day. They get coffee and go straight to the caern. They find Cossack and Emma there and there is an awkward moment as they want to talk to Cossack and not tell things to Emma. She seems less than impressed at being shut out - Cossack, once she has gone, agrees and wants it over as fast as possible. The pack give Cossack a short version of what happened, especially how they fought a Nexus Crawler (iguesswiththehelpofotherpacks). They let him know they need to get the bone to Cernonous. Cossack says "go away. shower. come back. More detail". Before they go, he says that a pack from Reconcilliation, wanted to speak to them late Saturday, but said it could wait. They get a number for the packleader Byron Fortesceau and Tillie calls him before sleeping. Byron wants to talk about the situation near Clermont in Queensland. They arrange to meet tomorrow, and Tillie will give him a better update when she knows.
They speak to Cernonous again about meeting him. Despite his urge to act discreetly, he says he does not have time at the moment to take a circuitous route and he will arrange to meet them at the caern at 8pm. Excellent says Tillie, and naps.
Early evening, Cernonous Moon Bridges into the caern, and the Lost Prophets take him somewhere quiet to speak. They give him the bone which he puts into a plastic bag without touching it. They ask if they should have been more careful, but he says he knew contamination was a hazard. They give him a run down of events at Etadunna. ("That's the most nonchalant story about defeating a nexus crawler.. 'bally uncomfortable, isn't it?'"). Cernonous is concerned about the presence of the Nexus Crawler, and how likely it was a coincidence. On the other hand, an undefended caern is an obvious target. Tillie then speaks about speaking with the caern spirit and her outlook on the whole process ("its not going to happen"). Cernonous says that spirits are known for their ability to not look past the moment; he takes the fact she spoke to them at all, and that she gave them the bone as a positive outcome.
Onto the technical issues - it will take him about a week to decontaminate the bone and to determine if it is of use to him. He would also like to take samples from the pack members who held the bone just to eliminate them as potential sources of contamination. Lost Prophets are not well pleased, and go aside to have a quick chat. ("maybe he's secretly wanting to clone us" "why would he want to clone *you*" "hey! why wouldn't he want to clone me??" "I meant you collectively, actually"). Kasumi says that its not entirely illogical that this would make life easier. It seems legitimate, but she's a little uncomfortable too. Cernonous wants a cheek swab, not a blood sample, which the pack find less creepy. They opt to go with it in the end.
Cernonous talks about what to do if it doesn't work - he's happy for the pack to wait and see rather than to continue out to Western Australia. Their energies are probably best left in reserve in case this does work. Will asks some questions about whether he thinks it will work with other fallen tribes, and Cernonous says that it depends on the will of the Goddess - it may only be his path to work this way with the Bunyip.
Once Cernonous is gone, the pack express some doubts about what is going on - Will in particular is concerned about bringing a bunyip ghost to a body, are they going to get a bunyip or a weird revenant zombie thing in a garou body? Also, what about the spirit totems of the tribes - they would need to get Rainbow Serpant or Bunyip to adopt the child. Generally the feeling is that it seems inappropriate not to at least try, even though they have lots of reservations.
Later they speak to Cossack about the details of what happened in the desert. He listens and asks questions and at the end suggests that he should do the Rite of Recognition now rather than waiting for the Moot (especially as the pack does not want to go into detail yet with their sept mates).
The pack get a hold of Byron and he's happy to meet them. They suggest the back room at Carmel's. Byron arrives, and he appears to be vaguely turkish maybe? They do the formal introduction thing - his full name is Byron Fortesceau, and he is a rank 3 Silver Fang Galliard, and he is the pack leader of the Middle Way at Reconcilliation. He says that his pack is only small, three members all up, and the others are Children of Gaia. He hands Tillie a small note and says that one of his Sept Elders gave it to him to bring in the light of earlier events. It says, in badbly scrawled pencil "This is definitely Byron Fortescue"(sic). He doesn't seem to be aware of what it is, and the pack don't really want to share. They do ask who it came from - apparently Chases-the-Evening-Star, gatekeeper at Reconcilliation. Will subtley sniffs and confirms he is garou.
Byron says that he's been asked to look into an interaction the pack had with a spirit in Queensland that seemed to impact on some history with an older Silver Fang pack. He asks for them to share what happened and listens intently. The pack just give him the details - there was a Silver Fang pack, and the story they have suggested there were Bunyip there, but the spirit there says it was just kinfolk. Byron puts two and two together from the things they are not saying and says that if that pack acted against the litany, that's a problem. He understands now why they were asked to quietly look into it before coming to a sudden conclusion. He confirms that they're happy to take the task on? Tillie says that its important to them that its handled quietly but thoroughly, so as long as he's happy with that, they are happy.
Sinead realises she has a couple of days to fulfill her geas for this moot and learn two new tricks. She decides to go and ask Marion for some help. Marion is busking in the city at lunchtime - once the rush has died off a bit, she chats to Sinead. Sinead offers lunch and beer in return for some more lessons. They chat over lunch at a nearby pub (Peter, Peter, Peter). Over the next few days, Sinead follows Marion around while learning a couple of different street performer tricks - they spend some time in the CBD, some time in cafe, and some time in Peter's flat, where Marion seems to be spending a lot of time. Peter is moving stuff about while Marion shows Sinead in front of a mirror what to do. Marion is rubbish at explaining, but good at showing.
Will spends some days interacting with spirits toward his need for spirit names to get the gift he wants. He contacts a wolf spirit of war and offers that in return for its name to call upon, he will never tell another the name, he will only do so once a month, it has to be for a fight, and they will fight side by side until all the enemies are dead or they are the last of his allies to leave the battle. The spirit agrees.
Will goes hunting for a fire spirit and finds one before too long. In return for making a fire as an offering, and burning himself whenever he does, the spirit agrees to give him its name. He contemplates finding a spirit to help him heal packmembers, but can't quite get the thought to gel. He speaks to one spirit, but it wants a permanent gnosis.
Kasumi spends some time rearranging her financial arrangements to cope with her reduced income. The pack toy with the idea that they will need to move into a share house all together, and then with the possibility of misusing their spiritual powers to terrorise, infest or otherwise disuade people from a house that they like.
Saturday night, the pack try and decide if they want to go mage hunting or drinking. ("I want to take you to a MAGE BAR! MAGE BAR! MAGE BAR!" "now I've got the image of a whole lot of guys with beards and wizard hats riding bicycles") ("We did our going out and getting trashed chiminage right?" "We should do it again to be sure") They unusually opt for hunting. They check with Graeme - the major thing the sept has done this month is make a deal with Father Pigeon to get news from his children across the city. That's mostly looking for the Dancer, and it will mostly be useful during the day.
Ideas are bounced around - maybe they could summon a spirit of death to talk to the ghost that they detected at the hospital? They might be able to get some information from there, as they are pretty sure the mages were connected with the site in some fashion.
The pack opt to go out looking with Boobook - he will watch from the skies while they look around on the ground. Its time and effort intensive, but its the night before a full moon, so that might be a time while mages are active. They're not having a lot of luck, and by 2.30am, they are heading back home. The pack are wandering through Exhibition Gardens when something blows on Tillie's neck. She leaps around ready to kill but there's nothing there. She decides to peek and see if she can see anything, and there is some strange spirit there. They can see it more by the dust and leaves that it stirs up than directly.
Fearing that it might vanish before they could get to the caern and back, they opt to chance the gauntlet and head to the Umbra via Kasumi. On arrival, they can see and feel that its a wind spirit. It heads to Tillie and stops a few steps away. "Message" "From?" "Another" "Give me the message" "Feed me" Finn opts to do so, and literally breaths gnosis out into the spirit. Tillie says "So what's the message" "The horned god is dead" "Oh good, more cryptic rubbish", but is interrupted by Finn choking and swearing, then saying "Cernonous??"
They head back to the caern and step out. They try the phone number they have for Cernonous and he doesn't pick up (its 3am). They decide to consult the elders, but with it being 3am, the only one awake is Ian. He's playing XBox and tells them to wait until he's ready, but then he crashes and swears. "What?" They explain quickly saying that they've had a message about Cernonous and and want to know how to get in contact with him. He asks if they tried Questing Stone. The pack look sheepish and he kicks them out. Sinead does the ritual and finds Cernonous is 1000kms or so to the north - probably in Sydney.
The pack don't have a number for Darius, but they do for Michelle, his secretary or whatever. They call her and she says "oh good you got my message. Get up to Sydney quickly and quietly". They say ok and go looking for Ends-the-Quiet, who is asleep at the north end of the caern. Lost Prophets ask him to open a Moonbridge, because they've been summoned to Sydney by a council elder. Ends-the-Quiet gives them the lupus equivilent of the stinkeye, probably because they are doing Jindabyne Council things without telling their elders. He asks for a moment to talk to the Rocks Caern in Sydney. He talks briefly, and then a silver disk appears. The pack run through - a few steps later and they find themselves in a bricked cellar that smells like a pub. A slightly sleepy doughty looking woman in front of them - Tillie is formally polite and she says she's Josephine Brereton. Ends-the-Quiet says they wanted to be subtle and so she shows them the way out the door. Its easy to get their bearings because there's a big bridge off to their right. (https://www.google.com.au/maps/@-33.857621,151.2057483,3a,75y,147.61h,83.04t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sz4lIkHOipagpdoRSbhdRRA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1)
They try ringing Michelle but her phone is "out of service", which might be because she's in the Umbra. Sinead quietly sings to her Questing Stone and it suggests that Cernonous is south a couple of kilometers. After a bit of jiggery pokery and leaving the immediate Rocks area they get a taxi, and Sinead gives him directions from the empathic responses from her ritual. Frankly the guy thinks he's going to get mugged, so he's surprised when they say "stop here and here is your money". They're outside Sydney University, which isn't really a surprise.
The University campus provides some quiet areas for Sinead to do her ritual again. While she does the others peek in the Umbra to see what the university is like in the Umbra - it looks older and a lot less dynamic compared to the grounds of the university they are used too. It has a slight Ivory Tower feel - "I am an important Public Building!" Sinead says Cernonous is in that building over there, the rectangular white one, and on the fourth floor on the north side and he's laying down. Apparently her ritual went well. The pack saunter through the grounds - there's one or two other people they see at a distance, and a couple of security guards going the other way together.
The building Sinead points them to is apparently the Centenary Institute according to the big sign above the door. Its a very rectangular building that looks fairly new (compared to the rest of the university). There's a couple of lights on in the building. Kasumi uses her gift to pop the door, and there's no immediate sign of alarms, so the pack head in. The pack head up the stairs rather than the lift, up to the fourth floor. As soon as they open the door they can smell blood and chemicals. The rooms along this floor seem to be labs - there's a directory board next to the lift where they come out. There's an intermittant flickering light coming from the same spot down the hallway and a faint electrical buzzing sound. Sense Wyrm reveals a lingering feeling, a bit like a fading echo - there's not something going on right now, but something has happened recently of note. Sense Unnatural gives the feeling that something has happened here as well - they are too far to get detail, but there's a swirl of different energies still lingering.
The pack figure there's nothing immediately dangerous down the end and so they creep down. About half way they can see that the room they are headed for has a smashed window leading out into the hallway. They peek in the door and find the lab hasn't been totally trashed. Paranoia leads to Kasumi checking the Umbra for Michelle and Darius - this room exists to a greater degree than the rest of the building, but there's no people here.
Up the back of the room, behind some benches and stuff, in the flickering light, the pack can see a large body - oh yeah, Cernonous is a crinos. Maybe he's not dead dead? They'll have to go in to check. There's chemical spills but not everywhere so the pack hop from dry space to dry spot. A pool of blood surrounds Cernonous - they double check that he's actually dead dead, and given the back of his head is crushed and his spine has been severed they don't think he's coming back. The wounds look like claws, and they are all from behind. Finn groans and starts looking around for a cloning vat. Its hard to tell what was in here to begin with, lots of stuff has been smashed pretty severely and to the aware eye there's claw marks everywhere too. The pack seriously wonder if he made a bunyip that then killed him. There's no sign of the bone, amidst all the rubble and debris.
Kasumi changes to lupus and sniffs around - Cernonous' scent is everywhere, but so is the scent of spilled chemicals and blood. She can pick out two other scents that she thinks might be garou from near the door and a bit in the room but not around a lot. She thinks they came seperately. Finn says "Wait, if Michelle noticed the body, why didn't she deal with it?" At the door there is a clearing of a throat and Michelle is standing there extremely well dressed even though its 3.30am. Tillie asks where she was and she says she was leading the security guards away so that they did not do the sweep that they were starting. She gives short orders, I mean instructions to the pack to remove the body and remove anything that indicates their connection to Cernonous. She asks if they know where Cernonous' house is and gives them the address when Tillie says they don't. She says that there may be material there as well. Tillie asks if she knew what happened and Michelle indicates she doesn't, and anything the pack can discover while cleaning up would be appreciated. Will asks how someone found him - Cernonous was meant to meet Darius for dinner and when he did not, the Silver Fang elder came to find where he was. She needs to leave, but she will return as soon as possible.
Finn sighs and says he'll dedicate the corpse and so he starts that. The pack try and keep an ear out for any approaching guards - they put some furniture in front of the door so that there'll be a crash sound. Tillie starts trying to clean up - its clear the lab's broken and the guy that should be here is gone, but she can at least hide the immediate "Someone has been exsanguinated here" response. They try and figure out what Cernonous was doing when he was killed - he seems to have been at a desk with a computer on it so they start from there. There is an empty docking station that might normally have a laptop on it. Kasumi tries to turn on the pc but its not really working. She goes to open it to see if there's anything obvious inside, and notices the cover is already not screwed on. Looking on the inside, the motherboard seems damaged as if it had been powerspiked. Maybe the harddrive is still ok? She takes it out and dedicates it for later investigation.
They investigate scents more. One of the garou scents was Michelle, the other is likely to be Darius. There is another smell that moves around the room, an industrial smell, like overheating train brakes. There's another smell that Sinead picks up near the computer where Kasumi is dedicating - its a dusty, sandy smell, extremely faint. Its a very dry smell - she speculates whether its a gargoyle or maybe like the outback dustiness that was around Etadunna. Its hard to be really sure, its so faint. ("We do spend our entire lives killing people in service to our god").
Tillie tries looking for paper notebooks - she finds a shelf full of notebooks with dates on the side... and they only go up to June. She thinks some have been removed. She tries to read the ones that are there, and they appear to be in some alien language using her alphabet. Kasumi says its all heavily scientific notation and maybe abbreviated. Will is looking for the bone using scents - he thinks that it was at one spot for a while, its scent is on some equipment, but that spot is heavily smashed, and the trainbrake smells lingers there a bit as well. There's a non-specific wyrm sense here, but it doesn't match up to the weird scents much. Sense unnatural shows that all the triad senses are increased - but there's no sense of fast metal, and only a tiny amount of the cold death sense.
There's some speculation about either a weird bunyip clone attacking, or some of the tribes Cernonous warned them of. Or maybe Darius, if things were taking a tack that he's not keen on - they said that he was very invested in the outcome, but maybe he insists on things being done a specific way.
While Finn takes the corpse into the Umbra, the pack sniff about further away. The train brake smells head out into the corridor and down to a locked janitor closet. With the awesome power of their spiritual gifts, they pop the lock and find that the window in the closet has been smashed outward. Tillie looks out the window - there's trees down there (maybe 1.5 stories high, not giant gums). Despite some contemplating of jumping out the window its pointed out they can just saunter out. Looking closely, there's some smashed branches right below them, as if something heavy had hit them from above. A garou, changing to crinos out the window?
In the Umbra, the room is solid, but its sort of more organic looking. The desks are wood, the edges are smoothed, things like that. Finn sniffs just to check that none of their smells have come in or out of here.
The pack contemplating splitting up to follow different leads, but decide not to take the risk. The immediate thing to investigate is the scent trail from here before its obliterated by humans - unless Cernonous' house is on fire, its going to be less in imminient danger of getting muddled. As they are planning to leave, Michelle returns, with two guys in suits who she does not introduce. She asks where the body is and then says that hopefully they sort this out then put this shambles behind them. Tillie says they know how to contact her, and then Lost Prophets leave.
Sinead, who changed to lupus before they left, sniffs around the copse of ti tree trees that appear to have been the landing zone for the train-brake smells. There's a certain almost of tree destruction here, but no smell of blood, so it might have been a controlled flight into terrain kind of thing. They follow the smells. Its a very odd type of smell to follow. For a start, its a very simple scent, almost like a single note. Also, it meanders all over the place, wobbling back and forth. Sinead has an insight and realises that its actually two things laying down the same identical smell, like perhaps clones. It leads to a sort of landscaped area, with some ponds and fountains. It gets harder and harder to follow. They contemplate dealing with the possibly awake spirit of the fountains but opt to go to Cernonous' house first. To another cab!
One speeded cab driver trip later, and they get out at the address Michelle gave them. Its an older house in an older area. In the Umbra, there's no more presence than they expect to see - some obvious matching up with residences, but nothing glowing and womming. They just wander up to the door and open it with ragabash power. Reconning slightly, they are wearing dishwashing gloves from a 7-11. They investigate.
Cernonous appears to live on his own, but other people do visit. There's weird shit around, but again, rank 4 theurge, so its not really a surprise, its probably ritually stuff. They don't think he lives her all the time, its slightly musty. He has occasional visitors, that probably stay overnight sometimes. They gravitate to Cernonous's study. It appears to have been subtly turned over - there a spot for a laptop, but whether its been taken or not, or it was the one that would have been at the lab, they're not sure. There are gaps in the shelves where stuff appears to have been taken. This seems oddly well planned - has everything been cleaned up by mages again?
Will looks for a fridge for ("beer?" "sandwiches?") samples but Cernonous doesn't appear to have a sample fridge here - there's no sample bags or anything that would go with it either. Kasumi looks to try and see what notes are gone, and given Cernonous considerately dates his exercise books, she finds that everything from this year has been taken, and some of them are out of order. There are some locked drawers and in one of them Will finds some mundane objects like personal objects, and a couple of envelopes full of cash - mixed notes, it looks like emergency money.
They find a safe - its not powered, but it is locked. When they pop the lock, they find its empty, which seems a little odd. Will changes to lupus and sniffs about, but he can only smell Cernonous' scent in this room. Maybe he got rid of his notes for some reason? Took them to his lab? Destroyed them? Put them in the Umbra? In other parts of the house, they can smell other people, including Darius, but in here, its just Cernonous. There's not a really recent Cernonous scent in the safe but inside there are object (not alive things) smells - leather and wood, and something that is a bit disquietening.
Kasumi heads to the Umbra while Finn looks for a key ring that might have keys to other locations. He does find a large ring of random keys, but its right next to the phone and written on a pad next to it is Tillie's phone number. Finn opts to get rid of the whole pad.
The Umbra is much more vivid than their cursory glance from the outside suggested and there is a sense of activity around Kasumi. She wanders around looking for a work room, and finds that there's a space marked out with a ritual circle in one of the rooms. In the meantime Tillie is checking out Cernonous' dvd collection. There are two smells in the Umbra - Cernonous' smell, and a female smell that occurs elsewhere in the house in the Realm. It is probably a garou scent ("you're in the _Umbra_"). Kasumi has a sense she is being watched - she looks about and sees a face in a mirror in the Umbra. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" Its caucasian looking, but not quite human - a man with a bearded face. "I know the Horned God." "Why are you here? he's not here, you shouldn't be here" "Um, he's dead. who are you" The face says that its the house. The house says "Was it the others?" "were there others?" "yes. Came in through an open window. It was _locked_". "They took some notes -" "Don't care they came in a window and it was locked". Right. "Which window?" "This window [detailed description]." "You shouldn't be here. Don't break anything. Don't use the windows. Leave everything alone". "When did they come in?" "This evening" ("how many cycles of the hot water tank?")
Kasumi reports back. They sniff carefully near the window from the inside, and only when they are right up against it. Its the same dusty, faintly sandy scent. Argh. Bunyip? It is most like an outback smell.
The pack contemplate going to Cernonous' sept in Nimbin and talking to them or talking to Darius about what they have found. Tillie calls Michelle and asks if anyone has informed Cernonous' scent. Michelle says that Darius is planning to do that as soon as practical. She asks about evidence left behind at the house, and Tillie mentions the tiny faint dusty smell, the same as at the lab. Michelle says she didn't notice that smell at the lab, and Tillie says that it was fairly faint and very tightly situated. Michelle says she'll call them back soon.
Twenty minutes later and the phone rings. Michelle says that she has spoken to Darius and he suggests that for the moment they keep a low profile - things will be open in the next day or so, but for the moment he recommends not sticking their heads up and muddying the waters. Tillie also conveys about the smell going to the water. Michelle asks where it went after that, and then when the pack are a bit vague about it, abruptly suggests that they follow up on that.
Grumpily they head back to the Uni. Its pushing 5.30am by this point as they wander through the uni with their... dog. Sinead and Finn have a sniping argument about trying to find the scent which gives them an odd look from a passing jogger. She picks them up again and traces them into the water - despite some confusion they don't mystically vanish, but they aren't followable in the water itself. Sinead tries hunting around the sides of the ponds and fountains, looking for an exit point. She can't find anything that is the same train brake smell.
They ring Michelle and convey the update. Tillie contemplates hitting her up for a Moonbridge home, and instead asks who they should ask for one? Michelle asks how they got here, (via Ear to the Ground sept) and why they can't go back that way? Tillie says they can but its busy and that might not be discreet. Michelle seems to think that it'd all be Bonegnawer business or something and not really care, so they say bye and hang up.
The pack is just mentally checking themselves to see if they have forgotten anything when there is a disturbance in the force. Finn looks around and around and can see the clouds above looking very oddly - they seem to be spirally just south of the CBD and not far from where they are now. The rest of the pack use their powers to try and figure out what is happening - Will finds a strong sense of Wyld, Demonic (cold) and Wyrm from the direction of the spiralling storm. ("cloudy with a chance of bunyip"). Frankly it feels a lot like the same sense they got at Menindee. Oh dear.
The pack head toward the strongest sense, with Tillie piggiebacking Kasumi who is peaking. The sense of unnatural powers grows, and the rain drops get huge. There's not lightning, dust or megafauna, at least yet. The pack are running along when Kasumi belts Tillie on the shoulder and says that she can see a frenzying bunyip in crinos. The only thing in the realm is a small square with a couple of trees and a seat. In the Umbra, weaver spiders are responding to the damage, running to the bunyip and getting obliterated. Tillie thinks they need to take steps - if it crosses over in the city, it'd be bad on a Litany kind of scale. Will isn't sure they can actually stop it from frenzying without more violance- it might have been raging for 110 years. Storm spirits are starting to manifest in the Umbra.
Lost Prophets all step through together in an alley way. They can hear the storm but the Bunyip is much louder. The pack basically run at the Bunyip to attack. It hears them coming and hurls bits of smashed up building at Sinead, catching her on the shoulder despite her trying to dodge. Will gets close enough to use Scent of the True Form - its a garou, definitely but maybe not. He gets a claw across the throat for his trouble, nearly crippling him. Kasumi and Tillie slam into it to try and grapple the spirit, but Kasumi slips on the spray of Will's fluids. Finn joins in the grappling, but its head is still free and it attempts to bite Tillie's arm off. Sinead heals the worst of Will's injuries; he leaps up and helps his packmates pin the spirit. His face is now buried in the fur, and he uses his gift again to get a better idea of what the thing they are fighting is. The weird non-Garou part of the scent resolves itself into a layered, complicated impression - its garou but a spirit, but something else below that too. This isn't inconsistent with the Bunyip being ghosts. It doesn't smell sandy.
BAMF. The spirit is gone. Finn peeks before anyone leaps through the gauntlet, and finds a taxi coming down the street. There's no sign of frenzying bunyip, only drunk people heading home and joggers. There's no sandy, dusty smell. The tone of the storm immediately drops, and has a less active sound. They investigate around immediately - there's no instant obvious reason for a bunyip to manifest here. The only unusual thing is that the weaver spiders that are manifesting to repair things are avoiding the last spot the bunyip was tearing up. They follow the bunyip's scent back and find it manifested 200 meters away, near a train yard. They can't find anything that immediately gives them a sense of why it appeared here. There is some talk about the train brake smell being relevant, but its hard to see how.
The pack decide they've had enough of this shit, and want to go back home for the Moot. The storm breaks up really quickly as they wander around. They call Michelle to update her but only get voicemail.
They head back to the Rocks and find that the site is definitely a pub. Its closed, as you'd expect at 6.30am. Eventually after knocking, an older guy, shock of blond hair and a widow's peak opens the door and asks if he can help them. Tillie gives a basic introduction and he says to come in, Josephine left him a message - he's Herman, Master of the Rite. Tillie does the formal thing and Herman does in return - he's a homid rank 4 bone gnawer theurge. Herman says he's heard of them ("save a caern, word gets round, dusnit"). The pub is a pretty traditional one, team pennants on the wall, photos of boxers ("boxers??" "people who box..?" "oh, not like 'the caern elders are boxer dogs'"). They give him a run down - they were here on business and there was a bunyip spirit. He seems pretty relaxed - "oh, that's what that was". He asks about whether their business was bunyip related, and the pack says "um sort of". He seems to be suspicious about their involvement, but they say that if anything, its them, and they would like to get the hell out back to Melbourne. He says he'll pass on what they said and he'll get Josephine up. The sleepy looking caern elder does the ritual and sends them home.
The pack arrive back in the Sept and contemplate what to do. Despite an overwhelming urge to sleep, they decide to go and tell Cossack what has happened. They find him sleeping under a tree in Royal Park, and totally doesn't pretend to be asleep and hope they'll go. Lost Prophets give him the skinny - Cernonous is dead and they didn't do it, and they don't know who did, but they worry he caused something bunyip to happen. They go into the detail of their night. He suggests that the train brake smells might have been spirits - if its just a single note of a scent, its usually not something alive. He agrees that the dusty smell might have been someone using ragabash gifts to hide their scent. Up to the point that they talk about the storm he seems to think that they are doing the right sorts of things, but as they get further into the last events of the night Cossack's face gets a weird look. They ask why, and he points out that in the last 100 years, there have been rumours of bunyip manifesting, but they've all been rumours and they've all been in the outback. If Lost Prophets hadn't found a caern at the same time, their claims might have been totally ignored. Now they've had confirmed contact more than once, which is again, beyond unusual. And a third time in a city, which has never happened. Aaand they are treating it as no big thing, and are back here now rather than trying to figure out what is happening??
The pack point out they spoke to someone about it at the Rocks caern and they seemed ok with it. Cossack asks who, and when they say Herman he sighs. Cossack focuses on Sinead and says "It is poorly regarded to speak ill... not even ill, but poorly... of your own tribe to other tribes. Herman is an good Rite master and an excellent elder, but he hates not knowing things." The pack agree that they were very blas'e about the situation and thought that he was satisfied with their answer. Cossack says that he might just have thought they thought he knew and was experienced with all this and he wouldn't have wanted to look like he didn't know. Just to be clear - he's concerned.
Tillie says that every time there's been another storm, after it passes its just gone, and it seems to be being centred on them. Cossack gives her the eye and says thanks for coming back to Melbourne. He is concerned - there's at least two actors in the situation where Cernonous was murdered plus the Silver Fangs. Will wants to go and tell the Children of Gaia, but Cossack says once they've asked the question for instructions, they should probably go with the answer. He says that given Cernonous is dead, he is going to tell the rest of the Sept Elders what has been happening, and then they will come to some sort of plan. He asks if they spoke to Mother Pasta (Jindabyne Council member for BoneGnawers and also the Sept Leader for the Rocks caern). They go rest, but be on high alert, don't be far away. Everyone crashes at Tillie's house.
Tillie's phone rings about midday and Graeme says to come to his house. They get there and find all the Sept Elders are there - between the pack and the Elders, there's not a lot of left over space. Cossack says that everyone is up to speed and kind of unhappy, but not with the pack. Emma has brought up the possibility that the train brake smell wasn't a spirit, but it was talens, used to hide smell, which suggests that there could be more people involved. If it was a talen, it might be that the scent that went into the pond disappeared and then they came out as themselves. None of them like the idea that that smell was Bunyip, and it was just a strange thing to leap out the window rather than just go out the door. Tillie asks if they need to go back to the Atrocity Realm, but no one is keen. Nadine (its weird enough to see her here in Graeme's house, let alone talking much) says that she's more concerned about the random nexus crawler. It seems like too much of a coincidence that it happened when Lost Prophets were there. Cossack says "Above and beyond the personal issues there - " Ian : "pffft" Cossack: " - the stuff they saw in the Atrocity Realm seems to be connected". They talk a bit about Lise, ancestor spirits and the possibility that the nexus crawler was connected to that rather than to the Bunyip stuff.
The possibility that the results were stolen by mages is brought up. Maybe the dusty smell is actually gargoyle rather than anything outbacky, despite the desert smell? Nadine speaks up again asking about whether it might be the same folks that were running the animal aid wyrm installation - they would surely be interested in the results of anything like cloning bunyip, given all the stuff they were researching. There's some talk about Bartholomew and the Wyrm Beasts and the Cracking Stone. Did it release the nexus crawler? Sinead doesn't think its very active - the spirit seems to be quiescent. Its pointed out that she did go into a kind of trance in the mage house and get dragged straight to it tho. Oh yeah. Hmmm.
The pack contemplate talking to their totem. Tillie isn't positive about the outcome of a conversation like that, but Cossack says that they need to ask the right questions. Cossack's plan is to make contact with people he knows in Sydney and get them to keep an eye out for weirdness of the storm variety - not the actual sept members at the Rocks, but other people. Lost Prophets go to the caern and attempt to summon their totem, but Sinead is a bit all over the place in concentrating. The pack try to just use their inherent link to indicate to him that they would like his presence, but Kasumi keeps humming the star wars theme, ruining it for everyone.
Cossack finds them in the caern after only a short amount of time. He just made a call and got told that there's a big storm that's blown out of nowhere. That seems like their cue - they do a mental check of what they have in their pockets and head straight to Ends-the-Quiet with Cossack. The ritual is done, Cossack has a brief conversation with Sydney and then sends the pack through - he says that he only gave them Sydney garou a brief run down, random storm, bunyip, Lost Prophets. Boot.
Lost Prophets arrive in the basement of the pub with Josephine, who looks more awake this time. She asks some questions about this storm and what they are here for, and Tillie gives her the basics - Bunyip arrival seems to bring storms. But normally once a storm dissapates, that's it - given there's another one, they think they should check it out. Josephine asks if they have enough oomf to deal with it, and gives them a contact number in case they need help.
The pack get a taxi and get him to drive toward the storm. Its certainly a bigger storm than the one earlier this morning - its about 4 or 5km across rather than the 1 or so from this morning. The cab driver is not happy with their instructions to head toward the spiralling clouds and hammering rain. The rain is heavier, and the wind is getting stronger. Gutters start to overflow, and they spot some emergency service vehicles heading along. They have to turn because some powerlines are down, and the cabbie puts his foot down and says he's not going closer. The pack shrug and head off. ("We tip him" "Out of the car? MY CAR NOW"). (http://i.imgur.com/NFcuavw.jpg)
The winds are swirling around from random directions, and its cold and wet. People are hunkering down or sprinting through the rain - its about 1pm but lights are on everywhere. Will peeks roughly into the Umbra and can confirm there is a storm and there's no immediate sign of giant lizards. Sinead peeks into the Umbra and manages to be able to perceive quite well. She can see tiny banes caught up in the storm being whirled around ("waaaa... waaaaiiigh.. moorrrrrraargh....") while other spirits are just hunkering down. They are very small banes, they look like the crap that just builds up in the cities rather than a storm of active evil spirits.
They choose to stay in the Realm so they can deal quickly if they find something, while Sinead is peeking and being guided. More emergency sirens can be heard and flashing lights go driving past a couple of times. The pack senses for Wyrm and unnatural. Will reports the same sorts of senses as earlier, a cold deadlands sense, wyrm and wyld. However, the relative ratios seem to have changed, and the wyrm sense has grown. Sense Wyrm gifts suggest both a destructive sense and something else - Sinead can feel the whirling banes in the Umbra but there's something else as well.
Sinead shouts suddenly that even over the storm she can hear frenzying garou - between that and people looking for the centre, they home in on a Bunyip in crinos form, tearing the landscape apart. Sinead's pretty sure that its the same Bunyip spirit as last time. There are more banes near this frenzying garou/spirit as well - they aren't being sucked into the Bunyip or anything, but they are there and hanging about.
They contemplate what to do now - Cleansing or Binding? The problem is that the spirit is on the move, and with Cleansing at least they have to circle the spirit. Binding might work better - perhaps if they try the grapple thing on it again and then Sinead can use some of her gifts and then the rite? She's low on gnosis tho, so its not going to be something they can do more than once. To do these things they'll need to be in the Umbra anyway, so they look about for somewhere to step. Its a suburban kind of area, 2 to 4 storey apartments rather than houses, with some trees (this kind of area) The pack hide into a sheltered driveway and vanish into the Umbra.
Will appears first with Kasumi - the rest of the pack are taking a bit long so Kasumi in lupus scouts ahead a bit to try and find where the Bunyip is now. It has moved closer to them as part of its random path of destruction. She can see that the spirit appears to be wounded - there are little cuts that look red and torn. Banes seem to be hanging around it - they might be feeding off the destruction even. The others appear after 5 minutes and find Will tapping his foot. Kasumi reports back, and they make combat preparatons before running its way. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074958/quotes mad as hell origin)
Sinead pauses and triggers her spirit snare gift before the pack close on the Bunyip. Tillie and Finn slam into the spirit on each side and pin it to the ground. Up close, they can see that the sores and cuts are infected looking rather than fresh cuts bleeding. Sinead and Will have their hands free, so they opt to both start rituals while their packmates are keeping the spirit down. Will attempts to draw ancestral information forth to help him, but his predecessors are silent on the topic. Will is moving around performing the ritual while Sinead sands still and attempts to bind the spirit.
Will is half way through the ritual when he feels an active surge of energy well up through the Bunyip spirit (not from the spirit, but through it). It disrupts his ritual and throws the pack to the ground. Sinead manages to keep her energies under control and ground the ritual smoothly. The Bunyip spirit rises up and then vanishes. The pack swear, then Finn peeks and sees the frenzying Bunyip raging up the street in the Realm - he tells the rest of the pack and they swear some more.
Finn can't see too many people fleeing like crazy, but there are cars slowly coming down the road with lights on. They find a small enclosed yard to step into and leap through the gauntlet led by Kasumi. ("We built this city on cullltural approooopriation"). They appear in the rain with not a lot of space to spare for 5 crinos. They leap out into the street and find that the bunyip is frenzying away from them. It has smashed some cars but is heading toward the lights approaching.
The pack sprint toward it - Will and Tillie travel down the footpath while Sinead, Finn and Kasumi sprint down the road. The bunyip sees them coming and runs toward them. The Bunyip ducks and weaves, using its rage to move like lightning, avoiding Sinead and Finn. Kasumi misses, and Will leaps over cars and grabs one arm, and Tillie sprints out of a gap and grabs the other. ("I'm recording me eating pop rocks"). The spirit is close to being pinned, but not entirely - it bites Will, and inflicts aggravated damage, tearing arm muscles. Will's world goes red and he frenzies. Finn grabs the now free arm and tries to repin the Bunyip ("Guys I'm going full Get") Will rears up and drives his claws from the top of the Bunyip all the way through its manifested body and into the ashphalt. The spirit comes apart in Finn and Tillie's hands, fraying into essence very rapidly.
The pack keep out of way of Will smashing the evaporating spirit and hope that he gets his shit together before the oncoming car arrives. Sinead changes to lupus in the lee of a large tree after checking no one can see her, sprints up the road and out in front of the car. Its brakes squeal and it stops as the 'dog' runs off the road. This gives Will a chance to get back under control and after Tillie smacks him in the ear, they dive out of sight ("you're four heavily built models and Deadpool"), peek into the Umbra to check for the bunyip spirit and then flee into the spirit world.
The storm does not appear to have lost its pitch in the way that it has previously when the bunyip spirit has vanished - this storm is certainly bigger than the last one. Tillie senses for wyrm - the point source that was the bunyip is gone, along with the strange wyrm sense that underlay it. The wyrm that makes up the destruction of the storm remains (its not just 'stuff being destroyed = wyrm, there's a supernatural wyrm component).
The pack peek back and check that there's not an armed mob responding to the presence of monsters. There's not really any sign of anyone having done much really. They seem to have got lucky, but they keep watch just to be sure. After about 5 minutes, the wind drops, and its just hammering rain, and then the rain drops back to spray rather than big storm drops, and the clouds start to go not in a ring.
The pack start to head back through the Umbra, heading toward the Rocks. Once they get off the main roads, the tone of things change. The main road had well maintained apartments, but two streets behind there's rubbish stacked up, and a couple of burnt out buildings. ("Grafitti in the umbra?" "no, in the realm". "yeah, otherwise, it'd be all 'straight out of da umbra!'."). There's a real facade of prosperity, but behind it is delapidation. When they step out, Finn manages to step straight into a needle, stumble into a bin, trip and fall shirtless into a puddle. ("Is that a rage roll?" "In the interest of brevity, no. Otherwise, yes").
The pack get out from under the storm and find that it really does have a defined edge - on one side there's flood damage and poles down and sirens, but on the other its merely damp.
Tillie calls home and talks to Graeme about what happened. They give him the run down of what happened. He talks to them about contacting the Rocks, and suggests that rather than visiting, he'd call as a first pass. Tillie says they want to stay, so they'll have to get a motel to stay for a bit until they can figure out what is going on. This they do - they ring the Rocks caern and get Josephine. Tillie admits to the potential veil issue, but think that its ok. She says that they'll be staying in town - they'll find some accomodation in town and be there if it happens again.
The pack trawl around and find something suitable in motel accomodation with minimal amount of checking of ID. They find somewhere eventually that will take a $50 note in place of ID. While they are waiting for the next storm, they decide to head into the Umbra and see if they can quiz their totem for useful information.
Sinead summons their totem and after a short amount of time he swoops in and lands on a nearby branch. They ask him some questions. Do you know what is causing the storm? The presence of the bunyip. Why is the bunyip making the storm? The bunyip is the storm. Why is the bunyip here? I do not know why it is here. How do we stop it? I do not know why it is here. Stopping it means knowing why. How do we find out? Something has provided a way. The same something that interuppted their ritual? Maybe. Something has created a path to this place. Can Boobook take them down the path - can they go down it? No. How do we close it? Find the thing. Will the storms continue? Yes, something is very wrong. Something is happening. Is it another caern? He is not sure, but the thing that is happening is of the wyrm. The horned god is dead? Yes. I know because you know. Where are the bunyip coming from to get here? He doesn't really answer, but does say that in normal times, the Bunyip make their own time to come to the Umbra, but in this case something else is happening. The pack thank their totem for his help, and he says that he will remain nearby.
The pack head back to their room and talk about what to do and what they know. Will says it feels like his cleansing ritual clashed with another ritual - does that suggest werewolves? Or do mages do ritual magic that feels the same? Emma ran into mages in Sydney ages ago - are the ensconced? She seemed to suggest that they were transiting too. What about the Full Moon Killer, will that happen in Sydney cos they are there? Kasumi mentions Bartholomew - he was interested in Bunyip things, maybe he'd know something? They decide to ring him.
Bartholomew asks how the disputed caern thing went, he wasn't sure because he didn't hear anything. They said it went ... yeah. There was a Nexus Crawler. But now they are in Sydney because of a mild infestation of Bunyip. What? There's been a couple of manifestations of Bunyip. What?? He asks about details, and in the background, Tillie can hear something going on - he's moving around and there's some crashing. They tell him about the clashing rituals, and how it manifested. (thump, things moving) Wait, you were trying to bind the Bunyip? (voice distant, as if the phone was being held by a shoulder) Have there been any giant lizards? (jingle jingle). No? Good (thump thump). Not yet - there's been two storms and they are remaining in Sydney in case there's another one. Bartholomew asks if they have a question, or they're just letting him know? Kasumi grabs the phone and puts it on speaker - she says that their totem said that something is giving the bunyip a way here and there's some process going on that is bringing it. Bartholomew asks if this is what they were trying to do with the remains. Did they find some? Yes. Where is it? Gone, along with the person who asked them to get it. What?? (distant voice shouting at the phone, as if it was on speaker) The remains are gone - do you think that might be connected in some fashion? The pack look at each other a bit abashedly, and agree. (car starting in the background). Tillie asks what he's doing and Bartholomew says that he's on his way to Sydney, what else would he be doing? Its about a 4 hour drive. He says that the thinks that the remains - whatever they found - are probably strongly connected. He doesn't know if he'll be any help, but he wants to see for himself. He hangs up and they'll see him soon. ("I'm suspicious of Bartholomew, how do we know its him and not someone wearing his face" "You rang him." "oh").
The pack think about what they know and sum up - they gave the bone to Cernonous. Someone - potentially a pack of werewolves - murdered him and used spirit magic or a talen or something to hide their tracks. They stole the bone, and now they're using it at the core of some sort of ritual to bring a Bunyip spirit to the city. ("What are the chances that it's Scott? What are the chances we can pin it on Scott?"). Does... does that not sound like Black Spiral Dancers? The ritual certainly felt really wyrmy. Kasumi wonders whether it mightn't be someone connected with Michelle? Or maybe Darius, if he's crazy like Silver Fangs are reputed to be? Murdering other werewolves is a bit of a no-no, but if he's as obsessed as people say he is. It could have been other werewolves objecting to Cernonous and his plan to make a clone army of garou. Ok, back to facts - someone has stolen the bone and all the notes, and now they are doing rituals to summon bunyip so it will go beserk? Was the ritual there already or was it being imposed? Finn gets a terrible look on his face and asks if anyone knows if rituals stop when the ritualist is dead? Is it Cernonous'? They try and work it out - ritual effects don't need maintenance, they'll keep going. Things like binding do tend to come apart faster after the initial ritualist is dead, but also they can be renewed for a long time, they don't just break up when the initial ritualist is gone. Oh dear. It doesn't explain where all the stuff vanished to, but it does hold together other than that - maybe the bone was consumed as part of the ritual? Maybe the notes were taken by Michelle (she is a ragabash) to cover their involvement? ("Ragabash are the kender of the world of darkness, yes"). Why would she send them to the house? Maybe because she knew they wouldn't find anything and it would mean that they got out of the area if she needed to do something at the lab?
The pack decide to consult their pack totem - he is Finds the Lost, does that extend to bones? Boobook said he would remain nearly, so they head to the Umbra with questions in hand.
Boobook is still where they left him, lurking in a tree. Tilie is straight forward - "we've lost this bone given to us, can you find it" ("Technically we didn't lose it. Cernonous lost it." "That's unfair, he might well have known where it was, right up to the point where he died."). Boobook says the Umbral landscape of the city is very complicated, but when the sun is gone, he will search.
Some of the pack nap during the afternoon. Others chat about what might be happening and what they could do - ask the Silver fangs were there to eliminate the possibility they took the books? Did Cernonous clone the pack with the samples he took? ("Its Tillie." "See, the stuff in the Atrocity Realm was future clone Tillie"). Tillie calls home and gets Cossack. They chat about events, and how much they should tell Bartholomew. Cossack suggests that they ask Bartholomew to be discreet for a coupld of days until its all out and public. They talk about what might happen with respect to the Full Moon Killer - he says that people will be watching, even though Lost Prophets are not going to make the Moot, and clearly its them murdering people. (no not really) Kasumi googles for indian burial grounds at the two sites where the Bunyip appeared. There were certainly records of aboriginal presence at the second one, but nothing like "400 tribesmen were killed her in cold blood" that might call to Bunyip presence. (Most of the locals were killed by exposure to disease)
Boobook lets them know he is taking to the hunt when the sun goes down. Bartholomew rings for more precise directions and some of the pack go out for pizza. The pizza shop has a tv on and they are watching for reports of what happened in the last storm - floods, power out, trees down, nothing about giant dog monsters. The weather bureau is getting a bit of criticism for their lack of predictions about these storms. The rest of the city is perfectly functional.
Bartholomew shows up and the pack give him the full info about what was going on. His face gets that look that they are getting familiar with. They share not only facts as they know them, but some level of speculation - that Cernonous probably summoned a bunyip and it went terribly badly. Bartholomew is more focused on what's happening first and figures why will follow. They talk about the ritual that Will encountered - Bartholomew says he's not sold its Cernonous' ritual, unless he was tricked into doing something. Will asks about summoning a Bunyip to ask, and Bartholomew says that people have tried that before and the whole Umbra turned against them. All the records he has about Bunyip in the last 100 years are all third hand or speculative - there was no confirmed actual manifestation in that time. The fact that Boobook is a dreamtime spirit might have something to do with things - though there are caerns with native spirits that have become allies, pack spirits have been far rarer.
Bartholomew is planning to go out to the sites where the storms happened, to see if he can see something they've missed. He's happy for them to come along. Will belatedly senses true form and thinks that Bartholomew is a werewolf. And he smells like the person they met recently. And they rang him. So, seems legit.
The first spot is easy. The second site is harder, because there are still emergency services dealing with consequences. They get there in the end. In the Umbra, they find a scent from the bunyip spirit - its odd, its not canine. Its a little like kangaroo, but not really. Bartholomew uses some theurge Fianna powers, and comes up with, er, nothing, really. After some consideration, he says he still doesn't think its Cernonous' ritual. He doesn't think that Cleasnsing and Binding would clash like this. On the otherhand, if Cernonous has summoned something here, and its stuck for some reason, it might be that wherever it comes from is still connected in some fashion and supply energy... or corrupting things?
Bartholomew takes another room in their hotel. Lost Prophets and him compare notes some more but in the end decide to get some sleep while they wait.
Middle of the night, the pack gets a mental "wake" from Boobook. There's no storm, but he indicates one is forming. They go and wake Bartholomew, who says "what?" just as lightning strikes not far away and rumbles like crazy. They get outside and look around - clouds are quickly building to the west of the city, accompanied with winds and lightning. It starts to rain on them - it seems like the storm is even bigger than the last one, if the focus is way on the other side of the city and its affecting them here. ("maybe we should just let Sydney go"). ("Holy shit snacks") Boobook got them awake as soon as the storm began, but even by the time they have got in the car and got going, its at full blast.
The previous storms have not had lightning, but this one is making up for it. Between the torrential rain and wind, they can spot lightning arcing across the clouds and ground striking. In the Umbra, the pack can see more significant banes moving around, very actively. Sensing, the sense of Wyrm has grown stronger than the sense of wyld, but the cold dead sense remains stronger. Its extremely worrying - they seem to be roused up by the storm, but not as whirled around by it. They can sense the storm and its active wyrm destruction, and the sense of the bunyip's particular wyrm sense.
The roads start to get blocked with branches and flash flooding very quickly, although being 3.30am, the traffic is pretty minimal. Finding the centre is hard - once they are in the effect of the storm, visibility is so poor at night that they cannot use the clouds to move to the centre. Sensing gives some idea, but they are moving slowly in the car when lightning hits not far away and the whole neighbourhood blacks out. They continue in the car, cruising in a loop in near Balmain while some pack members peek and try to find what they are looking for. The car starts to slew around in the wind and the rain. The pack opt to stop and proceed on foot in the Umbra. Bartholomew declines to come along, suggesting that his presence might ruin the purported connection to the Bunyip.
Kasumi leads the pack to the Umbra. They can hear frenzying bunyip over the fierceness of the storm, and head that way. The banes are not simply lumps of vaguely mobile essence, there are identifiable bane types like maybe greed, pollution (oilslick), and such - ordinary city banes, yes, but a lot of them. Will is nearly hit by lightning and has trouble hearing and seeing for a bit.
The bunyip is still frenzying but it is moving more eratically, swiping pointlessly at one thing then exploding the next. It looks more ill, with large sections of flesh missing, and froth around its muzzle. The storm itself feels stronger in its wyrm sense - the pack watch as weaver spirits are eroded down and destroyed as they work on repairs.
They consider options - Kasumi asks what might happen if the Cracking Stone is used on it. Tillie just wants to keep killing it until that works. Cleansing? Hard on something that is moving erratically? CAn they Moonbridge away? Strengthening it with gnosis somehow? Mother's Touch? It looks ill...
Lost Prophets spot some crinos shapes down a street leading to their road in the Umbra. Is it Bonegnawers or Dancers? Lost Prophets head directly to intercept the 5 newcomers. Lost Prophets get close before these other Garou see them, and the last two go to crinos form in case. There's a quick introduction - this pack is Streetsweepers, from the Rocks caern, and their packleader is Pox (Rank 2 BG Ph Ho), a short dark haired guy with a slightly unsymetrical face. Pox clearly knew that they were meant to be around. Lost Prophets suggest that they are going to bind and cleanse the spirit, and Pox thinks they are mental. Finn asks about tracing active rituals, and Pox introduces Gordon Bennet, the pack theurge - who says "not really, no" They explain about the clashes in rituals, and Gordon (fairly heavy set, balding guy) looks startled. They ask about breaking bindings, and the GM rants about the lack of such information in the main rulebook. Kasumi asks about whether the cracking stone might undo bindings....
Sinead tries to communicate with the Cracking Stone and get an idea about whether it is able to do such a thing, but the spirit is in slumber and she's not sure it was understanding what she was trying to do conceptually. ("Its probably not going to get worse"). There's some concern that the spirit's capacity to do damage was increasing whenever they encountered it, but it might also have had something to do with it manifesting. The pack decide this is worth a try - four of them will tackle the spirit, and then Sinead can come up and activate the fetish on the spirit (not just brain it with a river rock). Pox says he'll follow their lead, but frankly Lost Prophets seem insane. (Streetsweepers: Pox, Gordon Bennet and Some Assembly Required, Petey, Lys). The backup plan is keep hitting it
Non-theurge pack members pick a limb each and run for the spirit. Tillie grabs first but is dodged. Will blocks the bunyip's attempt to disembowel Tillie. Finn grabs a leg, Kasumi grabs for a leg. Finn is bitten for his trouble, and almost frenzies. The bunyip is nearly pinned, so Sinead comes in and activates the Cracking Stone -
Kasumi, Will, Finn and Sinead all wake up in a panic. They are in a small room with two single beds, and no Tillie. Tillie wakes up thrashing about in a small room with not much space in it, in crinos form. She changes to homid and glances out the window and sees only stormy night. She can see old-looking buildings and some kind of bay or river. Best guess is she's still in Sydney and its still night time.
The door opens on the other room and Pox looks around the door. Sinead wants to know what happened. He says they screamed a lot, just then. No, before that. They went unconscious and the spirit vanished. Then the storm got a lot worse. Then it got better. Then it got a lot worse. They go to ask more questions, but he says he'll be back in a minute. Pox opens Tillie's door and says "ah, be right back" and shuts the door again. She hears it lock - its just an interior door and she could destroy it, but the symbolism isn't lost on her.
Tillie's door opens and Herman comes in with a woman Tillie doesn't know. Herman asks what on earth is going. Tillie asks who the woman is - apparently she's Florence, Master of the Challenge. Herman wants to know what they did. Tillie wants to know where the rest of her pack is. Herman says they're just next door, he just wanted to talk to her alone for a bit. Also, she didn't fit in the same room. ("They can't be without me for too long - it turns out they're imaginary") Tillie starts to explain the long story, and Herman interrupts and wants to know about the last 12 hours. Tillie says that the Bunyip spirit keeps manifesting, which is unusual. As she's explaining, she can sense that there's someone just outside the door being very quiet. She asks Herman who it is; Herman says she should keep explaining. Tillie says they used the bunyip fetish they have that breaks wards in an effort to free it from any binding. Herman asks why she thinks its happening right? Tillie isn't sure. He gives her the eye and then says "back in a minute". Tillie looks into the Umbra and finds the building is identical and the gauntlet is only nominal - she's almost certainly in the caern.
Herman and Florence come into the room with the rest of the pack. They ask where Tillie is, and he says she's just downstairs. They ask to see her and he wants to ask them questions first. Sinead asks why they've seperated them, and he says its because he wants to ask some questions. He wants to know what's going - specifically what they did and why. He says that 24 hours ago, there was a bunyip and they dealt with it. Now Sydney is getting roughed up thoroughly by - the power goes out and there's only dim lights in the room. Herman sighs and says "ok, what did you do?". Sinead says they tried to bind and cleanse it and their rituals were interrupted by other rituals or a ward or something. Then it came back again so they used a fetish to break the wards or the binding, and it knocked them out. Will says that they think its been bound to this area for some reason, and every time it comes back its more wyrm tainted. Herman asks "bound to what??" but the pack make it clear they don't know (but didn't mean the Rocks caern). "What caused it to happen now?" Will says "argh. It might have had something to do with something Cernonous might have been doing, but we're not sure". Florence goes very still. "We heard Cernonous is dead." The pack ask how they know. "What killed him and trashed his lab?" "We don't really know". Kasumi says "Cernonous asked us to get involved with him because of our affinity to the bunyip, but we don't know what happened". Herman says "ok" and gets up and leaves with Florence, leaving the door open. He bangs on Tillie's door on the way past and says "come on".
When Lost Prophets come into the hallway, they see an older woman all in black looking at them unhappily. Its Mother Pasta, the sept leader and the Bonegnawer Jindabyne council member. "Get downstairs. What is this about Cernonous". Tillie says that he asked them to do some tasks. Mother Pasta wants to know what has he done here, in her city, and do they have a hand in it. Tillie says "It might be the bunyip spirit, and no we didn't do it".
Lost Prophets come downstairs and find 20 or 25 garou in the bar, all looking pretty unhappy by lantern light. Will starts to introduce the pack formally, but people behind them start mocking and he gives it up. The Sept elders form a group at one end of the bar, and they give Lost Prophets the current situation - the storm broke up and then got worse, and it seems to cover all of Sydney unlike the little storms from earlier. Tillie asks if it has a centre, and its pointed out that given there's no clear edge, that's hard to determine. Mother Pasta isn't happy with their behaviour in Sydney and the pack are a bit puzzled about what they've actually done wrong (something something respect territory something litany), at least in Sydney.
Something changes, and about half the garou look about suddenly. Kasumi keeps glaring at her phone and muttering about the shitty reception in Sydney. No one seems to know immediately what happened, and so the various garou look about. The storm seems to have got louder - its now howling outside. The pack use their gifts to sense wyrm and unnatural - Sinead can feel the wyrm in the storm, and that its stronger than it was before. The strange wyrm sense associated with the Bunyip before is even stronger. She thinks that its reaching a level which is very close to corruption, from which there is no coming back. Finn says that the wyrm sense is stronger than the wyld sense and seems to be almost stronger than the cold sense. Tillie asks what the shiny black thing is out the window - other garou look out there and swear and call for Herman. Tillie's out a window - there's shiny black stuff up to about half way up the second floor. Then a big white irregular pillar with dark crosshatching leading out of the black up into the storm. She's staring at it when her sense of perspective changes and she realises she's looking at the biggest pair of docs she has ever seen, with a leg with fishnet stockings out the top. "What the fuck. Do you normally keep a giant pair of women's legs at the caern?" Herman says that the caern totem has manifested and heads with some of the elders through a door behind the bark and downstairs. Tillie goes outside, getting really wet in the process, but as the storm whirls around she manages to see that the caern totem is a 100' tall punk girl, replete with pink and black striped mohawk, with her head tipped back and looking up at the sky. ("Its a giant rollerderby girl")
The rest of the Sept is baffled as to what is going on, and some of them are outside looking as well. ("I can't remember the punchline..." "We have to know the joke first Becc"). ("You need to stage a coup" "Why? Against who?" "Me" "What? Why? I'm not going to be a better pack leader, and like... fuck Will!"). Streetsweepers head into the Umbra and the Lost Prophets follow. In the Umbra the storm is worse - stronger wind, almost impossible to see or hear. Boobook is not there, but given the weather its not surprising. The pack want to speak to him but not do a ritual at the Rocks caern and all the bruhaha that will involve. Will tries to get a sense of what is going on with the totem using the sense unnatural gift and thinks there is a flow of energy through the totem and out. Is the storm sucking power out of her?? Is she doing it on purpose? Do the sept elders know? They tell this to Pox and Streetsweepers who look unimpressed.
The pack are following Pox inside when the pack think "Oh crap, Bartholomew!". They add contacting him to the list of things to do. As soon as they get back to the Realm, Kasumi tries calling him but gets voicemail. She leaves a concise message. Pox heads to talk to the Elders while Tillie thinks about just running. Someone knocks at the door - various garou look around and then someone opens the door and tries to have a conversation through the crack, then gives up and lets someone in. Its Darius. The whole room goes more or less silent, and watches him as he walks over Lost Prophets. Darius asks after the Sept Elders and agrees to wait until they are ready. He says that he believes that the current set of events and the magnitude of what is happening suggests that there may be a Dancer Hive involved. These are the sorts of statements that travel.
Mother Pasta comes back out of the backrooms and sees Darius next to Lost Prophets and makes some cognitive leaps. Mother Pasta storms over to him, shouting things in garou tongue and italian. People manage to pick up enough of what she's saying to realise she's saying that he used the pack as pawns to get her caern destroyed. Darius wears the snarling attack without reacting particularly, even in the of the other caern elders behind Mother Pasta backing her up. When she stops for a breath, Herman says that the caern totem is not responsive and she is sending out all her energy into the storm. He would estimate that the caern has about two days before its drained. Will says "what was that about a Black Spiral Dancer Hive?" and all the Rocks Elders look at him. Darius suggests that given the scale of the corruption out there, the ritual being conducted is almost certainly being powered by a Hive. Mother Pasta suggests in as many words that he's making up Dancer Hives to cover his fuckup. Mother Pasta ends by demanding that Darius leaves the caern and the city. He pauses a moment and then says if its what she wants. As he turns, he says "Matilda may I speak with you".
Near the door, Darius says that he believes everything will come out about events very shortly. Tillie asks if she is able to be open about things and Darius says that it can probably do no harm at this point. Tillie also queries if they should stay and assist - Darius looks at Mother Pasta and says thats not for him to say. Tillie asks if Darius has the chance to look for Bartholomew Wise-in-the-Ways-of-the-Wyrm in the centre of the last storm, she would appreciate knowing he was safe. Darius agrees that he can attempt that.
Lost Prophets are left on their own while the garou here start to talk amongst themselves about what they can try. Sinead says she has some extra information that she'd like to pass from the Elders - she saw a bunch of extra visions before the dream, after using the Cracking Stone on the bunyip. The pack all look at her. She says that she saw a bunch of things, but she wants to tell Herman too. The pack go over to Herman who is talking about options to try and fix things. Mother Pasta and another garou are with him, and they both glare at the pack. Tillie says Sinead needs to convey some things.
Sinead says that when she activated the fetish and blacked out, she heard a heartbeat, loud and slow. And on every beat, she saw visions:
When Sinead talks about the feathered one, Herman starts to look a bit grey. He asks about details - how many people? Maybe 12. Herman thinks that it sounds terribly ritualistic - if she saw it on contact with the bunyip, it might be related to the ritual that they clashed with. Sinead says that they've had bunyip triggered visions before and one of them was a garou in a feathered mask. Herman looks at Mother Pasta who says if there was a Hive in the city, they would know. Herman looks unsure and says "thanks for this information. Now.". Tillie arcs up a bit. Herman says "Lets believe for a moment that there is a Hive" Mother Pasta starts to object and then says "fine, let's say there is a hive - what can you do with your bunyip connection to find it and stop what's going on?" Lost Prophets look unsure and she says "why don't you go and have a little think while we do some planning".
Lost Prophets back off again from this blatant snub, and Tillie's vote is that they just go and let Sydney burn. Kasumi mostly doesn't want to get 4 million people killed. They opt to try and find somewhere to call home, and get a crackly connection to Cossack, and try and brain dump. He's fairly surprised by what's going on. The reception is awful, so they try and find somewhere quieter in the caern pub to talk. They mention Darius was here and said it was a hive and then Mother Pasta sent him away and there's some faint moaning on the other end. ("What can we do? I hate every single person here, can we just come home?"). Cossack says that they should at least try and deal with the bunyip if nothing else. Will asks about other septs in the city - Cossack says there's a Glasswalker sept there somewhere, but he's not sure where or how to contact them. They ask about Full Moon Killer deaths - there's been no news yet. Cossack asks if there's anything he can send their way. Some way to detect the caern? He says it'll be warded.
Cossack's suggestion is to take chances - if they can think of anything, give it a shot. Concentrate on the bunyip and symbolic references to it - it might be the weirdness of the bunyip could cut around wards. They decide they need to be back at the hotel room for some quiet and to do any rituals they want to do. Tillie tells Josephine, who gives them the stinkeye and says "fine"
Lost Prophets walk back to their hotel - there's no a taxi to be had for love nor money and the Umbra is even worse than the realm. They've not even made it out of the Rocks area before they are utterly soaked. Twice cops stop them and suggest that they head home as soon as possible, its too dangerous to be out in the storm. The pack smile and nod and say they are heading straight home.
Its dawnish by the time they get back to the hotel. Bartholomew's car is there, and there's a light on in his room. They knock and he opens the door and looks at them, shakes his head, and says they can come in. "I guess something went wrong" Another voice says "That's a surprise". Its Sparky, Tillie's friend. They ask if Darius has come by. Bartholomew looks at them a bit funny and says "should he have?" They explain they asked Darius to look in on him. "That was kind of you. No, I have not seen him, and I don't care to" "Why?" "None of your business." "Fair enough".
While the pack try to not drip all over Bartholomew's things, they catch up a bit - he saw them being carried out by another pack of garou unconscious and figured that he might as well leave. They explain about how Darius showed up and said it was a Hive, but Mother Pasta does not agree. Bartholomew says that he's probably right - this is too much power being raised by even a powerful pack. Bartholomew asks if the topic was brought up in any face-saving fashion that didn't make Mother Pasta feel stupid about a hive being hidden in the city? The look on Lost Prophet's face says it all.
They talk about the feathered masks. Sinead thinks carefully about the feathers and says she thinks they were predominantly grey and pink. The other mask she saw was more colourful, but still had those colours in abundance. Big feathers? yyyeas. Bartholomew wonders whether they might be brolga feathers. The stories he has suggest that Brolga has elements of being extremely vain and ... well, not wyrm tainted, but not pleasant either. Tillie doesn't like the idea that maybe Dancers would have a native totem, even one that had been corrupted. Could they summon brolga? yes, but they're only likely to get an uncorrupted and confused bird spirit. Bartholomew suggests that if all the participants were wearing masks, it might be for some unified central focus. Sparky tells him to just spit it out, and Bartholomew says that if its a Hive and brolga is the totem, he might expect that it had the ability to be deceptive, like hiding the Hive. Its speculation - and he doesn't have any notes here to look through. He doesn't think underground is a good place for brolga's... unless it was just dark.
Lost Prophets go to find Boobook while Bartholomew thinks. They open the door and find that.. well, the room has been trashed. Not heavily trashed, but turned over. Things are everywhere. Kasumi looks at it and what has been spread around and says she's not sure that it was actually raided by people - the pack don't have much stuff anyway, and most of what's been moved around is light stuff. Maybe someone left the door open? But there's not much wet. While they are looking around, they pull back a blanket and find a bundle of wooden sticks. The pack quickly sniff and sense around - Kasumi ("I'm so great at sniffing ass") finds the most information.
The sticks themselves have some level of mystic power, but there's nothing else in the room. Will thinks they might be talens. The wood is worked, and they have a small amount of paint on them - not in a pattern or word way, but here and there. It looks old. And actually the wood seems old. Kasumi sniffs the sticks, the middle of the room and the doors. She is sure no one came through the door before they did while there was a storm. There's a smell in the centre of the room that doesn't belong - its not a person smell, it might be a spirit, but it smells like an environmental smell. It smells like a warm day in grassland. On the sticks themselves are faint people smells - the scents have been deliberately dulled. The wood itself smells like maybe its been stored? Not actively used, but not mildewy. Despite some paranoia from Tillie, the sticks don't surround something - there's just 6 sticks loosely tied with strings. Will roughly manages to peek (unlike the rest of the pack) and can see Boobook nearby in the shelter of a large tree.
The pack head to the Umbra and find the storm doesn't just look worse, it is worse. The hotel room isn't there, so they can walk/huddle over to Boobook. Despite paranoia, Boobook says he did not bring them the sticks. He was here when they arrived tho - a spirit brought them. He says it was a wind spirit - a whirly whirly. They ask Boobook what the talen is, and he says he does not know. Boobook does not know where the bone is - he searched until dawn. When they used the stone, things became more open. Then the attack on the spirit became stronger. They think its a hive - Boobook agrees it is possible. They say they think it might be brolga - Boobook agrees Brolga could hide a hive. Do they summon a brolga? It wouldn't be the same spirit, and Boobook says that Brolga belongs in the far north. Boobook says he will come to the sticks and so comes into the physical realm with the back.
Boobook stares at the sticks for some time and says that they are one spirit bound there. It is a spirit of searching - he is unfamiliar with it beyond that. The pack touch them and don't explode, so they take them to see Bartholomew and Sparky. Will thinks Darius did it - that he wasn't allowed to help Mother Pasta, but he could help Lost Prophets. It seems a bit quick tho - to be thrown out and be ready to go with these talens only an hour or two later. They explain what happened, and contemplate taking them back to the Rocks? Or they could use them, and hopefully come back and say "this is where the problem is, lets attack" and maybe have people less pissed off at them.
Sinead is nomianted as the bunny to trigger the talen - she attunes to it very well and gets a good rapore. The spirit in the talen is a spirit of finding, and it is specifically keyed to the bone. Sparky is fine with coming with them when they activate it, but Bartholomew says that he'll sit this one out thanks. They try and work out what realm to be in and decide to be in the physical realm, and in lupus - the low visibility shouldn't make it a problem ("I don't want to get taken to the pound on the way to the Hive").
Sinead activates the talen and gets a strong pull to the east, toward the ocean.
The weather is not condusive to travelling fast - the storms makes visibility very short and they are soaked to the skin very quickly. They travel a very short distance before it changes and is pulling more north. Lost Prophets stop to make sure that the bone isn't moving, but that does not seem to be the case - it just seems to not be far from their hotel. ("Its Will!"). ("just so you know, the reason I said you were oblivious is because you were swearing constantly and Hamish was just there.") ("On a related note - and I promise I normally take better care of your children than this...")
In about 20 minutes of travelling Sydney's windy ass streets, the stick turns to ash, and blows away instantly. The pack are in the middle of a Carlton esque like area. There's no immediate tables of bones in front of them, but it does seem quick for a talen to fade out. They tentatively decide to activate another talen. The talen leads them on the way they were travelling before.
A short while later, the pack all hear Boobook say "There is a facade here. Things are not as they seem." The pack attempt to get some shelter under a tree, and do the peeking and sensing thing. Kasumi peeks to look into the Umbra. The storm is still going like crazy there, tearing things to pieces, but there seems to be less banes than previously. There's pattern stuff everywhere, but the houses are fairly old and have a physical presence. They look more run down in the Umbra than in the Realm, but not rotten, just abandoned maybe (vs the realm which has a couple of obviously empty buildings, some signs of things being crappy). They've seen shielding at the mage house that made things look normal but there's been no sense of magic at all the whole time. Sensing gifts are overwhelmed by the storm's nature.
The pack try and speak to Boobook and ask if he could show them what lies beneath the facade. There is a pause and then Boobook says that he could, but it would use the last of his strength (sending him into slumber, not death). Will tries to use logic and see what might be happening - he looks for repeating patterns of smells to try and see if the cover is a cut and paste job, but can't really detect anything untoward. The storm is really too overwhelming to be sure about subtle details tho.
They opt to continue on for the moment rather than lose their totem. About 100m further on, the stick suddenly swings and points right at a house that looks like no others in the street - one of many two story terrace houses in a row. ("don't use the eraser on the end. Its a trap. Put there by the devil." "Its a tarp" "Many bothans died to bring us this pencil"). Kasumi peeks again - once again, the Umbra corresponds as she would expect it to. The burnt out shop in the realm is a mostly normal looking building in the realm, the overgrown houses with pulled curtains is even more overgrown in the Umbra. Everything looks older, but it doesn't look significant.
The pack decide now is the time to tap their totem. They speak to Boobook and agree to take this last help from here, and encourage him to find somewhere safe to slumber. Energy suffuses each individual pack member, and their vision begins to change. Some of the shadows get clearer, and some of the brighter areas dim a bit, and all of the detail get sharper. At the same time, the neighbourhood goes to hell - in the Umbra, Kasumi can see banes clinging to nearly every surface, covering the walls and rooves. In the realm, the pack become aware of human figures standing in the gardens, or huddling in the doorways of many of the houses they have walked past, or that are along their original route. The houses go from abandoned and run down to derelict and twisted. The house in front of them radiates wyrm and the pack decide to drop back and get some backup now. They start to move off as the Bunyip spirit appears in the Realm, frenzying, right out the front of their contender of worst-house-ever. It is smothered in black smoke-like tentacles, and it is fighting them, thrashing and trying to escape. Its possible that this is what the bunyip has been doing every time they see it. The pack are about to change to crinos and fight the tentacles when it snaps out - perhaps drawn down and into the house.
The pack make a strategic withdrawl a street or two away and call the Rocks caern. They ring the Ear to the Ground caern, but the connection is awful. They are having to yell to be heard, and the person at the other end demands they come to the caern, and obviously can't really make out what they are saying. The pack sigh, and find street signs then text the address and "on our way". The take a chance, and change to lupus, and sprint through Sydney toward the Rocks
As the pack runs, the shimmering fades and their vision returns to normal. They come out of the run down terrace houses and onto the main road, and find that the surface-good/two streets back bad effect that they noticed a couple of days ago is strong here - the main street has a BMW dealership and art galleries, but two streets back its filthy with burnt out cars. They avoid car crashes, cops, floods, downed power lines and more and make it before long to the caern.
When Lost Prophets arrive, there's a virtual aisle of pub tables leading them into the middle of a clear spot, and everyone staring at them. Tillie avoids the niceties, and launches into what they found, illusions, banes, bunyip and horror. People look pretty skeptical, but Pox looks at the Elders and nods. Grudgingly, Mother Pasta asks if they can bring their totem and the pack say that to give them the chance to look through the illusion, he exhausted himself to slumber. Mother Pasta gives them the eye. Will says that they have some speculative ideas about it maybe being a brolga spirit hiding things.
Florence steps into the circle and says that even if they don't belive its a Hive, it does sound like some kind of Wyrm related setup - she's half saying this to the Elders - and they should react accordingly. Will asks if they can call other garou from the city, and people hum and har and say its probably not viable. Lost Prophets say that they've had good results from getting lots of packs together to fight things, and the Elders say they only have three packs, they don't have that luxury. Pox pipes up and says "These guys too", pointing at Lost Prophets, and grudgingly it becomes four packs. Lost Prophets mutter amongst themselves and then ask if Herman would like them to call home for help. There's some suspicion about non-Bonegnawer garou - Will says that they could make some calls and get war packs from all over in on this, and the Elders go pretty chilly. Herman says they can call Cossack and see if there are any Bonegnawer packs he could spare.
The door opens, and four people the pack haven't seen before come in. There is some surreptious reaching under clothes for weapons from the assembled garou, and one of the newcomers speaks with his hands clearly empty, saying he understands they might need some help. The discussion that follows is audible to Lost Prophets - the four of them are garou, but they are not members of a Sept, but call themselves a free pack. They have automatic weaponry and are willing to fight in return for some access to the caern afterward. The pack is called We Also Walk Dogs, and its clear that some of the Rocks caern has heard of them.
Will asks Pox what the deal is with the other Sept and why they won't help. Pox thinks about it, and obviously decides to tell them, saying the other sept in Sydney isn't big - they have one pack and things are a bit tense between the two septs. Mostly they start on the south side of the Harbour and the Glasswalkers stay on the north.
In the interim, Tillie calls Cossack. Miraculously, she gets a good connection. Cossack is glad to hear from them and then sad to hear what they've found. Tillie says they've offered to ask for help ,but it was made clear that they're only interested in Bone Gnawer help. Cossack says that he was expecting the call, and there's people on alert. Cossack says to put him on to someone sensible ("you're speaking to her") and he will make arrangements. They pass the phone to Josephine who seems happy to talk to Cossack.
Lost Prophets call back to Bartholomw and Sparky and give them the lowdown. Bartholomew asks if Darius is still there and is told no. Sparky suggests asking Mother Pasta if she would like he and Bartholomew to come along. Tillie walks over with the phone line still open and asks the question. Mother Pasta says she does not know Bartholomew, but does know Sparky - if Sparky is willing to attest for him, she'll let the Fianna in.
Will continues to be baffled about the lack of cooperation between Septs, and some of the BoneGnawers point out that they have been burnt before - caerns have been taken off Bone Gnawers by other tribes after friendly contact. Also is he saying that he doesn't think that the Gnawers can't handle it? Will shakes his head and walks away.
People are tooling up and making plans. Some of the Sydney garou ask them for detail that they saw. ("I just want to get this over with so we can leave sydney and never. come. back."). The tone starts with "if its a hive", but after a while the phrase "at the hive" starts to take over.
Josephine comes back upstairs with Christine Elliot and the Hand of Lore. Christine says hi as she walks past to speak to Mother Pasta but the rest of Hand of Lore stop to catch up. Lost Prophets ask about the Moot night and Marion says that three homeless guys were stabbed a lot and then set on fire with petrol in an unused warehouse in Port Melbourne. This breaks their theory about progressive numbers of deaths - although none of the the other Melbourne packs have the ability to sense mage stuff, so maybe it was just some nutcase?
Christine comes back and joins her pack, and heals Will's aggravated damage. Marion chats to Sinead and asks if she remembers the other day when they were at Peter's practicing card tricks? Apparently the reason that he was cleaning out his spare room was because he wants Marion to move in. Is she going to? Hell no. Awwww. Marion points out that as romantic as the whole odd couple thing is, she tears people to pieces with her hands, and he's a policeman. Its romantic, and its been a lot of fun, but pffft. Tillie suggests moving in and making him miserable and Marion says she's not taking relationship advice from a seven year old. Kasumi makes some crack about garou babies and Marion is all "Oh. No. Oh no. Anyone else. Let Carmel have a few more. You. her. That guy. anyone else". Marion says that mortal lives are not really an option in the long term, and eventually you have to accept that. She was hardly looking at Kasumi and Finn at all. They ask about whether they need to find a new gym and offer help, and she says don't stick their oar in.
The plan basically seems to be "run in and kill things". Despite the storm, there is a feeling that having four packs do this might be a bit of a threat to the veil, and so options for covering up the whole thing are discussed. Valentine, one of the BoneGnawer elders says that he knows a guy who owes him a favour - they'll use some magic to make a distraction. They are using up a serious favour for this, but it seems necessary.
Bartholomew and Sparky show up - Sparky has clearly been here before. There is some discussion - neither of them are going to join the attack, but they are happy to stay at the caern and cover for people. That frees up one of two of the other elders to come and fight. Despite the general racism against other tribes, Mother Pasta seems to trust Sparky and his opinion on Bartholomew.
The plan is that some packs will go in, aand other packs will stop people coming out and running away, or coming in and trapping the garou. Lost Prophets are told to block the back of the house - both realm and umbra. They're really not happy about splitting up, but looking at the number of people and the work to be done, they mightn't have a choice. They talk about how to divide up - Will and Tillie should form the core in each realm. Will's gifts lend themselves to being most useful against fomori so he'll take the Realm. Kasumi is probably most helpful there as well, and Sinead against spirits in the Umbra. The Umbra is probably more dangerous so Finn will go there as well to act as backup (and comms). Will suggests that they should be prepared for things going horribly wrong inside and Lost Prophets will need to run in too.
No one is real happy about the short time that they have to plan anything, which is being unspokenly blamed on the Lost Prophets. If they had more time - and access to the caern - the sept would probably be looking to summon spirits to help with the attack. There's a certain amount of "of course its in Kings Cross". The Rocks garou are passing some weapons around, a random assorted set of guns that have been collected over the years.
At one point a large black guy with dreads and scars is brought upstairs and chats to the Elders. People point at Lost Prophets and seem to be explaining the situation, but whatever they want him to do, he doesn't seem too impressed. Reluctantly, he agrees and when the conversation is finished he wanders over to the pack and says, with a carribbean accent, they are the ones that found they hive. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7Tc8C6qZ3c) Tillie introduces herself semiformally and finds the guy's name is Robert and he is a rank 5 philodox which catches the pack a bit by surprised. He asks what they think is there, and they say a Black Spiral Dancer Hive. What will getting rid of it will do? Hopefully stop the storms and the corruption of the bunyip. Robert asks if they know what the Elders want him to do and the pack look blank. He has a gift that will cause all the grievances and problems that the people nearby in the city have to suddenly come to the fore, and they will riot. There will be so much confusion that the garou can attack without worrying about too much attention. Do they think its worth it? The pack are frankly a bit taken aback. Robert says he thinks its posturing - that this is not a real problem, and the real problems are so big that the garou cannot handle them. He thinks they have lost - that the fight against the apocolypse is over. He has seen things that are not fixable by the garou. He has been to the spot in the Caribbean where people punched a hole into the wyrm realms - that was not oil coming out and contaminting things, but raw wyrm ephemera. Tillie says they should keep fighting, and he does not think so. It is over. So why do this - why make people's lives a bit more miserable for the last few years? Will says its duty, and Tillie says that they have nothing else. Will and Kasumi start to get the thought that maybe Robert is suffering from Harano, but that's not the sort of thing that you say out loud. The pack say that they think its worth it and he sighs and will do this thing then.
Lost Prophets wander off to chat to Sparky and ask if there's other alternatives, like hoping the storm will be enough. Sparky shrugs and says its the Bone Gnawers home turf, its their decision. Will suggests Harano to the other pack and they sigh but still sort of agree with him. How about explosions? terrorists threats? Sparky says that might lead investigators back to the garou worse, and quietly he says that their hosts are not Uktenna, and not Fianna, and they don't have a lot of theurges, they don't have access to the caern and its powers at the moment - this is what they have. They don't have the same level of carefully fostered cooperation that exists in Melbourne. The Fianna just to the north have a bad history with Sydney. The Silver Fangs to the south - well, Mother Pasta just told the King of Australia to sod off.
Everyone finally seems ready, and transport is brought around to the front of the caearn. ("Next week on werewolf - fuck you don't spoil the plottttt")
Will spends his time making a quick will. Tillie chats to Christine and asks if Cossack found something to help. She looks at Tillie and then says "yeah, its going to be too close quarters for us" and gets Marion to give over the Umbral Shotgun. Tillie asks if they want it, but tiny stone terrace houses aren't really good for long weapons. Will ends up with it, and manages to scrounge a strap from We Also Walk Dogs
As they travel, the storm eases off a bit. Its still there, but its not quite as insane as it was. Will says the Dancers are probably expecting being attacked and switching their efforts to defense. Oh good.
The packs stop at a nearby park and finalise decisions. So Much for Subtlety and Hand of Lore are going in at the front (Physically and Umbrally, respectively) while We Also Walk Dogs guards the door. At the back, Lost Prophets will be on guard duty while Streetsweepers run in.
The packs use their gifts like Claws and Fangs of Judgement (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QetvK6ldl2s&feature=youtu.be&t=235). Finn prepares a war howl, and waits for the signal. The pack work out some basic ideas - lurk in dark and wait for people to attack them. The maps of the streets they checked out suggested that there's a few directions that they'll need to defend against, which means they can't do much seige-wise - too many fronts, not enough people.
Robert triggers his gift and the garou all wait for some sign that things are taking off. In the near distance, there is a scream and a smash of glass and he nods. The garou split up to travel to their positions When they arrive, the alleys are cluttered with rubbish, but not impassable. Pox double checks that this is the right place - neither he nor his pack can see the banes, etc, although Boobook's final gift to the pack still seems to be in effect for them.
Many of the houses backing onto the alley have a little courtyard surrounded by corrugated iron, and bars bolted over the windows. A few trees loom over the alley way, providing a little bit of cover. Tillie, Finn and Sinead are about to move to the Umbra, Pox punches Tillie in the shoulder - ''good luck dickhead'' and off their move to the spirit realm. Everyone waits. Finn peeks to the Realm while nothing has immediately happened in the Umbra.
The signal howls out - Finn adds his echo and bolsters his pack. In the Realm, there is a crashing sound from nearby. Lys, one of Pox's pack pulls out a whistle and blows it as they approach, and rust quickly spreads across the corrugated iron just before they slam into it. She does it again, and the bars and door on the house do the same. Streetsweepers slam into the door and there is immediately a shotgun blast, and the smell of blood. Howling and gun fire echo from within the house ("who brings a gun to a dog fight?")
Lost Prophets are on guard, and Kasumi and Will hear the sound of approaching runners from the east. Three people appear to be sprinting their way, and despite some initial concern that they are just people fleeing a riot, they are not phased when Kasumi makes herself known in crinos form. She's not actually scary, but one of them slows down while the other two continue their headlong rush. Will steps out and fills the alley, but not the attackers with shot. The two pack members feel they are almost certainly fomori. The fomori that stopped pulls out a handgun and shoots at Will, barely hitting him. The others have a baseball bat and pull out a knife, so there's not too much change of silver being involved. Kasumi hurls a cinder block at them and it disintergrates, showering the wyrm things in harmless fragments. (Not quite a botch "Argh, it had a spider on it!").
Will shoots the baseball bat guy, who is hurt. The knife girl stabs Kasumi. Baseball bat guy heads for Will. Kasumi slices the knife weilder, who falls to the ground convulsing and bleeding everywhere. Will drops the shotgun and decapitates the baseball bat guy. Kasumi is shot by the remaining fomori. Kasumi buries her claws deep in their chest in return, with entrails bursting out. Will leans over Kasumi and takes the fomori's head off.
Meanwhile in the Umbra, Tillie lurks up a tree and Sinead stands in some gloom next to Finn. Banes are heading back into the cracks between houses, but the pack don't think they fall under the purview of 'defend that back door'. Suddenly, a window in the next house explodes out and a large warrior bane appears. It leaps out of the window and charges toward Sinead and Finn. Sinead says that its a scrag as it slices at Finn. Tillie tries death from above and slams into the spirit claws first.
While they are attacking the spirit, Tillie and Finn spot someone in glabro dropping out of the window into the courtyard. While the other garou continue to pound the crap out of the scrag that cannot manage to hurt them, Tillie looks over the fence, and senses wyrm on the now-crinos garou there, finding that he is corrupted, and thus a dancer, and also lunging right at her. Tillie ducks down at speed as the crinos slams into the fenceThe others notice this given the enormous noise. Sinead runs over, leaving Finn to deal with the mostly shredded bane as the fence is smashed down and on top of Tillie. Sinead claws the dancer, but isn't able to really hurt him. Tillie stands up from under the fence, forcing the Dancer back a bit and getting clear out from under. Finn finishes off the Scrag, and starts to head to the combat.
The dancer uses some sort of strange gift on Tillie, making horrible yipping sounds at her and putting her off a bit. Sinead isn't interested in this sort of nonsense and drives her claws in, and tears away the Dancer's entire right arm and torso. Tillie rakes the dancer open from guts to jaw, tearing everything out and flinging the lifeless body back against the wall of the place.
Meanwhile, in the Realm, Will comes back a bit closer toward the Hive house, lurking in the courtyard while Kasumi lurks in the alley using her ragabash gifts They hear the sound of an approaching engine and can see lights coming down the north alley. They lay in wait to see what happens - a ute comes down and tries to make the turn, but crashes into the fence on the far side, losing a passenger over the edge. There are still passengers and they seem to have guns.
Will steps out and empties the shotgun into the grill, and is rewarded with steam and general unhappy motor noises. Will runs toward the ute and tries to flip the car, but isn't having much luck with the steam and trying to lift the front end. Kasumi tries to help, but one of the back passengers discharges a shot gun at them, and inside one of the passengers shoots at them with a hand gun. The two garou have a moment of parallax error when the person coming out from behind the ute appears to be much closer than the ute, before realising that that person is suddenly much much bigger than they should be. The garou run around the left side of the car and try a team effort to flip the car. The car tips up as the driver leaps out and to safety, and fomori riding on the back fall off awkwardly while firing at Kasumi. While the giant lunges at Will, Will slices him with claws ("is he a fomori?" "... he's 10 foot tall") and tears muscle and organs away and the giant collapses. Kasumi leaps over the truck and onto the gun man who just got to his feet, crushing/clawing him. The cab passenger starts kicking the windscreen out. The driver grapples Will, put pulls away at the same time, and many small points of pain erupt all over Will as some sort of barbs tear flesh away. The world of Will goes red and he frenzies. Will strikes the driver and tears flesh and muscle away. Kasumi strikes him from behind and cuts him in twice. The windscreen comes out and Will spins and leaps on the passenger awkwardly leaving this way, crushing and tearing him.
Will manages to get some control of his frenzy now there are no opponents, while Kasumi spins the ute around a bit further to make some cover and block the alley from that direction.
In the Realm, Will patrols up and down the alley, trying to be surrepticious, while Kasumi hides using her powers. They can hear roaring and occasional gunfire - its not just from in the Hive building, but underground and in some of the ajoining buildings of the terrace.
In the Umbra, the same sort of combat sounds are drifting out of the spiritual buildings. The three members of the pack hide to be prepared for more escaping entities - Finn hides up in the tree, Sinead two courtyards up, and Tillie across the way in a courtyard.
Both groups peek from time to time just to check on their packmates.
In the Umbra, Finn spots some crinos shapes emerging cautiously from the house. He checks that they are not Gaian garou (or at least they have a lot of wyrm for gaian garou). They are being very stealthy and looking around nervously, and one seems slightly injured. At the alleyway, the two crinos look left and right and seem to be trying to decide which way to go in whispers. Finn opts to use his Faerie Lights gift to make a distraction and see what they do - the two of them see the lights, sniff the air, and retreat away from the lights, apparently, heading for the cross-way in the alley.
Figuring they can't really let them get away, Tillie uses her Create Element gift and sets the injured one on fire. The bright light reveals that its either wearing something odd, or its a deformed metis. They start backing away while watching around for further ambush. Tillie leaps over the fence and charges toward the two purported Dancers. Finn sees Tillie moving and does a running leap out of the tree and engages. The garou slice at Finn with claws, and he resists the urge to frenzy against them. The injured one claws himself deliberately, while the second one turns and runs. Sinead engages the injured crinos rather than leave Finn on his own. ("You can go right on past and trust that Finn can take care of himself." "Untrue"). She swings her arm pack intending to claw the bleeding Dancer, and smacks Tillie in the head as Tillie rushes past. Sinead manages not to lose her mind and frenzy as well, as does Tillie.
Tillie sprints past and runs down the fleeing garou by spending rage, and slams into him and then him into a wall. Ribs break and his wind is knocked out, but neither of them fall. ("all my friends are getting murrrderrred"). He spins and slices at Tillie who opts to not dodge and takes it on the chin. Finn is clawed again ("death by a thousand aggravated cuts") as his opponent spends rage. Sinead claws and her claws tangle in the weird shirt thing that the Dancer is wearing. Tillie claws her opponent roughly about the head and shoulders. Finn claws him as well, and the Dancer frenzies. The frenzying werewolf claws ineffectually at Finn, who hunches his shoulders and wears it and then blocks the next blow. Tillie is struck again and flesh tears away gruesomely. ("Kill them harder. And stop getting injured"). She slams the Dancer with claws again, and tears him open. He stumbles back and changes to homid form, dead.
Tillie starts sprinting back. Finn wears two crashing blows from the frenzying werewolf without getting hurt ("Woo, Finn the invincible!"). Sinead spends rage and rips the Dancer in two. Both halves remain in crinos form, suggesting he was a metis. Sinead heals Finn and Tillie back to only mildly injured. Finn peeks into the realm and sees....
Will is 5 or 6 houses away when the two packmembers feel a thud under their feet, like an explosion some distance away. There's no immediate local effect (like the ground lifting up or caving in) so they remain on guard. Will comes back to Kasumi and asks if they should check out the house - has everyone been killed, kind of thing. Kasumi says that she was looking at maps earlier, she saw that there's a road tunnel not too far away.
Suddenly the roof above the Hive house explodes out as a large crinos shape explodes out. Despite some confusion about whether it was a monkey and it was caern spirit vs caern spirit time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88y4ttqaW6U), the two garou realise that its just one of the Dancers making a break for it through and across the roof. The crinos shape has no fur, but is covered in warty orange skin - it looks armoured. Will aims and fires the shotgun, but it doesn't hit. The Dancer starts running across the rooftop away from Will. He's struggling with the rooftop around the bit where its all broken up.
Kasumi takes 3 steps and then mightily leaps to grab the Dancer's ankle, causing him to sprawl onto the roof on all fours to not fall off while Kasumi is dangling in midair. Will uses his Halt the Coward's Flight gift against the Dancer while sprinting toward the Hive as fast as possible.("You can shout and run at the same time. Its one of your many skills"). The Dancer swings around and uses a gift against her, making her realise what an entirely overwhelming opponent he is, and how she is going to die. Kasumi lets go and falls to the ground, and time slows down - as she falls, details leap out and she can see in the Dancer's hand a cord with a familiar bone attached to it. Its the Bunyip bone the pack retrieved. Kasumi comes down on the corrugated fence between courtyards, slicing up her legs.
The Dancer gets up and runs to jump across the gap, but Will's gift seems to impede his ability and he plunges down the gap between terrace rows. Will sprints along the alley following as the Dancer disappears from sight and hears Kasumi yell "He's got the bone!" Finn hears that while peeking, and leaps through the gauntlet to try and help but will be some time. (http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/GD/mEeGvEf3-when-your-team-gets-killed-but-youre-just-a-bard)
Will engages with the Dancer and gets clawed badly. The Dancer's claws burn with some sort of gift and makes him nearly rage. Kasumi wibbles and tries to bring herself to follow, but is still beyond afeared of the Dancer. The Dancer claws at Will, who attempts to block the blow, and both of them miss. The Dancer suddenly is knocked heavily to one side by gunfire from further down the alley. Will claws and is blocked. The Dancer grabs Will and spins Will between himself and the mystery gunman. Will lunges forward and down so he's not in the way of the line of sight of the gunman ("I saw this move in a strip club"). His attack is so devastating that the maneuver turns out to be unnecessary - he rends the Dancer into several bits. ("That's not what I was trying to do, WAGH FRENZY"). Will looks up at the gunman - one of We Also Walk Dogs - who gives him a wave and heads back out of site toward the front of the Hive.
Will grabs the bone as victory howls erupt from within the terrace row.
The howls also echo into the Umbra. The Umbral people peek to try and see their physical packmates and vice versa. Everyone is covered in blood and there are injuries, but everyone appears to be moving around. Tillie signals to wait and her and Sinead move to the realm.
Finn arrives first and looks disappointed there's no more fighting. Kasumi spots some people coming from one end of the alley and there is a tense moment or two when its clear they are armed. However, she can also recognise them, it is the Ngalyod pack (who work for the Council). Fujiko approaches the pack and asks Will what is currently happening - they appear to have won but he is waiting for the rest of his pack. Tillie arrives and they exchange formal introductions despite knowing who everyone is (Fujiko Mifune (Rank 3 shadowlord philodox), Lisa Everborn, Alistair Diarmid, Alex Sees for Miles, Jane Doe, Broaches the Cask). Given how injured Lost Prophets are, Tillie asks if perhaps Fujiko could assist by healing some of the badly hurt pack. Alex Sees-for-Miles obliges.
Garou start to filter out of the Hive house and one of the next door terraces. No one is unwounded, and people are carrying their dead, and no one is unwounded. Pox and Lys from Streetsweepers are dead, and Josephine Brereton. The quick debrief is that there were something like 20 Dancers in the Hive, which was more than expected. A few escped out the back way, but Lost Prophets say they got four of them. Everyone is keen to retreat to the caern and regroup and see if it fixed things. Tillie tries to call back to the caern and can't get a signal. Tillie sort of wants to look inside, but Some-Assembly-Required suggests against it because there were traps and not all of them have been triggered. Lost Prophets offer to stay and keep an eye out, and the other garou agree - don't stay for too long, but an hour to check that noone else comes here is a good idea. The Ngalyod pack will go back to the Ear-to-the-Ground sept and then return.
Lost Prophets clean up some of the corpses they left over the landscape and right the ute. Kasumi and Tillie head back to the Umbra to patrol around there too. Will points out he has the bone and it is still badly Wyrm tainted. Sinead checks it out and finds that it is very close to being corrupted. They are pretty reduced in their gnosis pools, but the pack think that doing the cleansing ritual is probably worthwhile, you know, considering. The perform the ritual and it has a distinct effect but it is not completely cleared - there is still a webbing of wyrm taint about the bone. They waffle a bit and then decide to commit the last of their resources to doing the ritual again. As the ritual completes, something seems to not fade away, but break, and the last of the taint flees the bone. The storm immediately changes tone, slowing - the rain drops back, and the wind dies a little. That does make the sound of riots a little bit clearer though - every now and again someone runs past a street or two away, shouting.
Tillie and Kasumi spot some slumped houses a block or so away - its a recent thing, where rows of bricks have dropped a foot or so and the whole wall has slumped, smashing glass and such. That might have been the location of the explosion.
The Ngalyod pack return via the Umbra and recommend that they return to the Rocks caern. The storm broke about half an hour ago and the caern spirit dematerialised - when they left the Elders were trying to communicate with the spirit. They return back through the Umbra.
The Rocks caern looks like a scene from mash. There is a lot of blood on the floor and table. Bodies are laid out and surrounded by their pack - Lost Prophets immediately scan those and see that on top of the three dead garou they knew about, one of the free pack We Also Walk Dogs (Eddie), one of So Much for Subtlety (Rational-Like-Wildfire) and Marion Perry are dead. The pack immediately move to the Hand of Lore and commiserate. ("I don't think Tillie is physically capable of crying, but I bet you guys are").
The next few hours is debriefing and mourning the six dead. There were 8 Dancers killed inside, 2 out the front, 4 out the back, and 3 or 4 got away down tunnels that were collapsed. There's a vibe that perhaps not all the Dancers there were 'native' - not all of them seemed to be familiar with the place and a couple of them stepped into their own traps. Maybe they called in extras to help with the ritual? Or to do something after the ritual?
Lost Prophets confirm that they got the bone off the last Dancer they killed and cleansed it while they were waiting afterward. There's a moment where people give the pack the eye about things, but one of the other Sydney garou confirms that they saw the warty guy and he was carrying things. Christine says they saw that Dancer on the top floor when they were fighting.
The Elders return from speaking to the caern spirit - Herman says that the totem responded to a call from the Bunyip spirit and was sending out energy to help the bunyip resist corruption. She hadn't felt the spirit until early Monday morning in the middle of one of the storms. Lost Prophets suggest it was about the point where they used the Cracking Stone on the bunyip spirit. Ah. Did it break wards on the bone or on the Hive or ? Either way, it clearly did something. There's a bit of discussion about why the ritual made a giant storm, and the pack point out that the storms seem to be part of the bunyip presence, not the ritual. Bartholomew is still here and he confirms that almost every purported sighting of bunyip comes with some sort of environmental disruption, like storms or similar. So the point of the Dancer ritual was probably just to corrupt the bunyip, and no one has any idea how they got a hold of the bone, unless it was something as simple as "they were spying on Cernonous".
Conversations are going back and forward, and Will and Sinead pass out - they've been on the go except for being unconscious for nearly 60 hours, so its not really unsurprising. Tillie leaves them and just checks with Christine whether she'd spoken with Cossack - yes, but only briefly to tell him Marion was killed. Tillie calls and they have a short talk. Cossack is glad to hear they are all ok. He thinks they are ok to stay there for the moment and rest unless they are told to go away. Tillie drags everyone into a corner and they sleep (using Tillie as a giant furry rug).
Hours later, the pack suddenly sit up - its not clear what awoke them, but they all have the sense that someone said something. Its light, and other garou are around but not looming or anything. The storm has stopped - they check and get told it stopped an hour ago. In the Umbra, things are surprisingly clear, but some distance away across the harbour, the pack can spot clouds building and moving in odd ways. Oh no. They let Florence know and run off.
There's no lightning ahead of them, but it does start to rain and blow wind. It doesn't feel as angry as before, but sensing gifts do show a certain amount of cold/dead, wyld and wyrm like the normal sense of the bunyip. The pack head for the centre of things and find a thylacine form bunyip (probably the same one as was in crinos) running about - it still has wounds and looks worse for wear, but it does seem better than the last time they saw it. The bunyip does not respond to howls or formal greetings, and shies away when they approach. As they try a number of things, it gets, if anything, more skittish and it vanishes. About 10 minutes later the minor storm has gone.
Thirty minutes later, the pack spot another storm further away from the city. They head that way, briefly stopping to call the caern and give Florence a heads up - nothing has gone wrong yet, but there is a bunyip just ... looking about. Florence asks some pertinent questions, mutes the phone for a minute, and then says continue investigating.
They travel to this next storm and find the bunyip again. It is still in thylacine form. Will offers it the bone from a distance but the spirit shies away again. The pack try the most non-threatening lupus approach they can think of, but its still very skittish. The pack stop and lie down and just watch - the bunyip stops running away, watches them for a bit, and then returns to what it was doing (apparently looking around). They follow at an extreme distance to see what it was doing - it appears to have been looking at the least-artificial bits of the landscape as it travels. Sniffing confirms that it does not smell of the desert smell they found in a few places, and its smell is a little odd - between being a spirit and not being a canine, its a little unusual. It still smells a little of the Hive, and a bit more wyrm than they are entirely happy about, but not so much as to be an immediate concern. No one has any gnosis left to do a cleansing ritual anyway.
Other spirits around in the area are weaver spiders attempting to rebuild the damage from the storm. There are less banes about than they might expect - that might be positive, but it depends what happened to them.
Finn tries howling a "we're here to help" sort of howl - the bunyip looks their way for a moment, then vanishes. It didn't seem panicked, just gone.
The storm breaks up while the pack debate what to do. In the end they opt to go back to the caern. They call Bartholomew and meet him back at their hotel and compare notes. He doesn't really have any ideas - maybe its associated with the bone still and they might need to get it out of town? It does suggest that maybe it has goals that are inexplicable - that its goals are just strange to alive people. Will does report that its definitely a ghost based on his gifts when they encountered it the first time.
The pack head back to the caern. Hours later, while monitoring the BoM or SES, they hear another storm reported, further out of town. The storms are following a pretty straight line away from the CBD - maybe its just trying to get away from all the Weaver stuff in the city? ("We could watch from the BoM radar" "We could do that from Melbourne"). They check out this storm and find nothing new. They return back to the caern again and when the next storm appears they just wait. It evaporates on its own in about an hour.
A good six hours pass and there is no sign of futher storms. On speaking to Ear to the Ground elders, they get a distinct "so when did you want to go home" vibe and decide to go with it. Valentine performs the Moon bridge ritual in lack of a gatekeeper and they return to Melbourne.
The first priority is Marion's funeral. The Sept had been waiting for the Lost Prophets to return. Marion's body is placed on top of a cremation pyre and the Sept members tell stories celebrating her life ("Remember that time she got blind wasted and murdered a bunch of people?"). Some of them are sweet, some are sad and some are brave. The last story is told by Christine, telling how she died - the Hand of Lore had gone upstairs, and were fighting room to room. Marion had been at the front, and bearing the brunt of damage from the attackers. Alex frenzied, and threw himself into the fight. He was felled by banes, and while Marion was defending his body, she was struck down and killed. Cossack takes up a brand and it catches fire - he says "Marion Perry, Howls-of-Brass, go with Gaia" and lights the wood. It burns very quickly as the Sept howls out its loss. The Sept talk quietly while the wood burns. Alex doesn't really mix, even with the rest of his pack.
Lost Prophets head home. Finn finds that he has multiple missed calls and some voicemails, all from... Peter. Oh. All from Sunday. He listens to them. The first one is "are you there?". "Sorry, this might be a bit awkward, I just wanted to have a chat to you about something". "Sorry to be a bit, you know, nagging. Its about Marion. I know you're friends with her, um, I was hoping to chat you about something, um.... yeah". "Sorry mate I know this is getting a bit obsessive, but I ... I asked Marion to move in, and she said no, and I'm just trying to work out if I misread the situation. If, yeah, you're not able to say, just let me know, otherwise can you give me a call?". Finn contemplates dropping his phone in the toilet. Finn mentions this to the others, and they toss up some possible tactics.
Graeme calls Tillie in the morning. He says that they have a message for the pack - the Jindabyne Council has called Lost Prophets to come and talk to them tonight.
News reports from Sydney start to filter in. There are 30 or 40 confirmed deaths already. Other people are missing both in the storms and the riots. The cause of the riots is being discussed in the media - common sense says people panicked, but there are suggestions of white noise causing psychotic breaks, or government weather control sattelites brain washing people.
Tillie speaks to Cossack about Peter. He does say they could make it Christine's problem. They could do nothing - which has the benefit that their actions can't go wrong. Lost Prophets are concerned about him being a cop and getting more access to information than normal folks might be a problem in figuring werewolf things out. Cossack says they could lie, they could bind spirits to him. He suggests minimalist lying as a way forward - don't come up with some sort of involved story, just enough to explain.
They speak to Christine, her only thought is not to murder him - if they are willing to take it off her plate, she'd appreciate that greatly.
There's some talk about what on earth actually happened - no one can be certain about the events. Originally the pack thought that the Dancers were attacking the Rocks caern, but afterward, it seemed that the caern spirit was trying to help the bunyip. Was the whole Hive effort aimed at corrupting the bunyip? If so, why? Maybe they needed a corrupted bunyip spirit to open one of the wyrm beast holes like Bartholomew showed them? That's... not ... relaxing. Even if that's not the reason, that gives A reason, which means that there might have been some sort of reason the Dancers were corrupting the bunyip.
That night Ends-The-Quiet opens a Moonbridge and Lost Prophets travel through to Jindabyne, along with Cossack and Christine Elliot. When the pack arrive, they are politely but firmly seperated and interviewed individually.
Generally the pack is honest, but not necessarily forthcoming on some details that aren't directly relevant. They admit to having had some reservations on the methods and process, but generally trusted Cernonous (and were appropriately respectful of the Rank 4 sept leader / council member). Given the lack of knowledge, they were curious about their contact with the bunyip and Cernonous offered a chance to explore it. They play down Darius' involvement at the start, and don't share much of their suspicions that perhaps the Silver Fangs were involved in the cover-up. They skim over a bit of the details on the Lightning Man, some of the history of the Cracking Stone, and the whole Lise/Will shenaningans. The lack of concrete facts is brought up as a problem in interpretting what happened, though some of the coincidences like the nexus crawler at Etadunna are tagged as "troubling".
The council breaks into arguments while the pack is being interviewed. Distinct feeling that Vlad has the advantage at the moment, politically. Grek, Fingal, Tjinderi and Inanna mostly listen. Darius looks unhappy. Mother Pasta glares daggers at Lost Prophets the whole time.
Finally the Council is reassembled and everyone is told to come. Inanna speaks for the council. She says that the council is far from finished in considering the matter or united in opinion about the affair, but they have come to the following decisions.
Cernonous died as a result of his own choices. It was his decision and he suffered the consequences.
Over the course of events, Lost Prophets freely gave assistence to the Get of Fenris, the Red Talons and the Silver Fangs. They were acting from the best of intentions, and acting in a matter of which there is almost no knowledge, despite over 100 years of striving.
However, their actions also led to the endangerment of a caern and the deaths of six garou in the precipitious attack on the Hive. They also were not exact in their interpretation of territory.
When pushing the limits of something, one must accept the consequences of ones actions. The council is not prepared at this point to punish Lost Prophets for any of the matter ("woo hoo!" "Roll willpower"). However, all future interactions with the Bunyip must be investigated only with the constent and supervision of the Council. Mother Pasta stares daggers at the pack all through this.
Christine asks to be recognised. Inanna asks her to be brief and Christine asks what the council intends to do about the traitor. Everyone looks blank and Inanna asks for more information. Christine says just before she killed one of the Dancers, it gloated that they cannot expect to win when betrayed by their own kind. There is a bit of talk, but noone has strong ideas - Inanna says it might have been a reference to Cernonous, or to the Hive or just the Dancer playing mind games.
Inanna says finally, the council will investigate the bone themselves and ask the pack to hand it over. Will pulls it out of his pocket and hestites, saying "The last time I gave this to a council member, it led to the endangerment of a caern." Some of the council look amused, other people look on in disbelief. He hands it to Inanna who hands it to Tjinderi Knowing-Smile. Tillie says that they want to return the bone to the disputed caern in the long run and Inanna says that they'll take that into consideration.
The pack are dismissed, and they head home with teeth grit.
The pack decide that dealing with Peter had better be the next thing on their list. Unfortunately they have to work through Finn who is lacking a lot of experience in lerv. Finn calls and Peter is a bit dismissive of things on Sunday - he apologises for how intense he seemed. Finn asks how he is and Peter says he's had better weeks - Marion isn't retuning his call and he's starting to think that maybe he misread the situation. Finn tactfully says "Yeah. Possibly. [silence]" "Oh.Have you spoken to her?" "No, not recently" Finn says he's not really close friends with Marion and hasn't known her for long. Peter seems surprised. More awkward silence. Peter says "well, if you speak to her, feel free to let her know that I'd like to talk to her". Awkward goodbye. ("That was not the plan") Hopefully that will help put him off, but the pack is still a bit suspicous.
Several days later, Kasumi is dreaming of a Japanese forest. A reddish wolf emerges from the trees. Kasumi greets it, and it says it brings news, of a sort. "In this last time, somebody [group] made a serious mistake. " "Was it us?" "No. When they realised, they attempted to fix it as best they could. The one primarily responsible fled - but may seek revenge." "How could we find them? Do they have a name?" "They have fled far." The wolf returns to the forest.
Kasumi tells her pack about this next day, and they discuss it. Will thinks 'fixing' might have been giving them the sticks, but there's no easy way to be sure who the actors might have been.
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