Kasumi is vaguing out in a line at the supermarket when she spots a headline in a tabloid - "Monsterous Maurauder Steals Slabs!". The artists impression does look a lot like the gargoyles they've interacted with before... enough like that the pack feel that maybe its a good idea to go and see what is going on.
Its Monday's newspaper, this is relatively recent news. They head out to Eumemmering early in the evening, to the Gordvale Arms. (Its not real, but assume its here and it looks more or less like this) ("Chicken loaf wrapped in white bread" "We've been doing this for 12 minutes and we've gone stupid already" "When they finally legalise marajuana, you'll be able to get a parma and pot and pot") Sinead and Will go in to the realm, Tillie, Kasumi and Finn go into the Umbra. Out here its mostly weaver and wyrm influence. Its well outside the range of the usual sweeps from the Sleeping Lore sept, so there's not even the occasional attempt to minimise wyrm build up - the sept only has the resources to respond on a firefighting basis this far from the CBD. The pub is there in the Umbra, though not heavily detailed. It looks more 60s than 90s.
In the realm, the car park is about 1/3 full. There's a drive through bottleshop (despite young people not being sure how this works) that isn't doing much trade at this time. The guy at the till looks at them when they ask about Dan, and points to the fridge and continues smsing. Dan seems a bit cautious when they talk about the Truth, but says he's got a break in 30m if they wanna wait about? They walk out and buy some whiskey and jerky for while they are waiting. Sinead goes out the back and finds there's a park that a creek wanders through - she changes form and goes sniffing about while Will sits in the gutter and drinks and senses unnatural.
The area around the back of the pub is used as a freeform toilet and garbage hole, but there's no pentacles or heavy blood smells. Nothing in the Umbra smells unusual either - and sensing gifts don't show anything particular either. ("i should make a list of antagonists. And protagonists." "venn diagram" "yeah, antaonists, protagonists... " "[everyone] Scott [in the middle]")
Dan comes out after 30m and sees Will, and wanders over. Will gets his Truth of Gaia on. Dan says basically what was written in the article was what happened, the lady reported it right. Most of what he's saying is not false, but he does exaggerate a bit. Grey, human shape, big (twice the side of a person, not true), flying, sort of a dog's head. It took 4 slabs, like big ones, and just sort of jumped into the sky. He was the only one working, no one else saw it, though they came out because he was yelling. None of them really believe him, but ... The reporter lady said that people around places had seen some stuff, but he doesn't know anything about them. He is kinda over the whole thing. He has a contact number for the reporter. 'Anna'. As he heads home, they sense wyrm on him, and they're ok with how wyrm tainted he is. (Stabilised big foot footage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us6jo8bl2lk)
Next morning, the pack call the reporter 'Anna'. Sinead calls and asks about the article about the gargoyle, claiming to be a monster hunter. Anna seems a bit dismissive, and says that all she has is in the article. About the only thing that she can add is there's been some calls to the cops between Narre Warren North across to Dandenong, and that's about it. They've been all in the last month or maybe a touch longer.
The pack cruise around a bit near the pub, and try to look for high points for the gargoyle to watch for a chance to lunge for beer. The industrial estate across Princes Highway might be high up enough, there's some prefab concrete buildings. From the Umbra they check out the drive-through building itself and find that it has some fairly obvious gouge marks. The marks don't have a smell - which tells them something in and of themselves.
While they are there, they check for cameras in the carpark and surrounds. There's one on the cash register, and some in the pub itself, but nothing on the carpark.
The pack decide to raid the police computers via the Umbra. Rather than wading through the horror that is probably extant at Dandenong Police station, they go to the new Narre Warren cop shop. Much easier to deal with the authority spirits out here.
They find a computer and start the awakening ritual. The computer spirit gains some solidarity and becomes a vaguely usable keyboard and screen ("I see you are trying to awaken a computer, would you like some help"). Will binds the spirit and starts giving it commands. It takes a bit of messing about, but they get 3 responses to searching for gargoyles. One is Dan from the Gordvale Arms. One is from a security guard at Fountain Gate, though he didn't use the word gargoyle, and it was added into notes later. He apparently saw someone prying at a fire door leading into the shops. He described it as someone with something on their back - a bit like wings - jump down from up high, and make a spirited attempted to pry the door off. When he ran up, they left. The third is Vera Hensiek - she's rung a couple of times, and said that she has seen a demonic thing sitting on the neighbours roof, and its broken tiles, and upset her dog and ruined her roses. She used the word gargoyle, like one of those things on one of those churches. They play about a bit looking for search terms, and find that 'flying' gets some more vague reports of something really big flying overhead, much bigger than a bat. 9 were reported at Narre Warren, and 3 at Dandenong. They're all within the last 6 weeks ago - Vera called 3 nights ago, for instance.
They make a note of Vera's address (north of Fountain Gate) and head back to where they stepped. As they are driving off toward Vera's, Will and Kasumi yell at Tillie to stop. They get out and check out some graffitti - amidst all the tags and random stuff is a pretty clear stylised gargoyle. Is there some sort of mage gang war? (https://pegis40.com/) Its certainly a bit teenage... stealing beer, graffitti.... They cruise around and find another, maybe older and less defined example not far away. Some more just wandering shows 4 all up - one near a high school (Eumemmering Secondary College) toward Dandenong on the back of a milk bar, two on the freeway and one on the train embankment near the Narre Warren train station. None of them are as detailed as the first one - Kasumi takes photos with her phone. ("well at least i don't think i'm a dragon")
(Aaaand then I made the mistake of saying Vera lived near Ernst Wanke road, and everyone went stupid)
Vera's house is one of four units on a double block with a central driveway. The pack observe from the Umbra for a time, getting ridiculously strong peeks - Vera lives on her own, there's one other older woman and two older couples. They come up with a plan to approach Vera while pretending to be monster hunters.
Vera is in her late 70s. ("we shouldn't ridgeway her"). She has a jack russell. The neighbours roof does have some damage, but nothing particular says 'gargoyle'. Her roses, also part of the complaint to the police, seem like roses. There's no real smells out of the ordinary. The pack cruise the Umbra for a bit to make sure nothing is going to leap out at them - instead of the suburban sprawl, its more like fields that have recently been converted to suburbs, and only the first 20 houses are there. Nothing special. People sense for wyrm and other unnatural senses.
After working out some complicated backstory about being monster hunters collecting their bounties at the police station, Kasumi and Will door knock. Vera comes to the door and is happy to talk to them about her calls, or indeed about just about anything. She says that the police tried to tell her it was a fruit bat. She thinks it was as big as a person. She offers them tea. She says she's seen it several times now - it scared her Jack (the dog) and it ruined Florence's roof. Vera thinks that last time she was awake because of her trouble, and it was 4 in the morning and she heard something crash into Florence's house - Florence has been here for four years, but she (Vera) only moved in oh about 18 months ago, but Florence said that she'd never seen anything like it before. Florence slept through the whole thing because of her medication the doctor gives her. She pointed it out to Florence the next day and the police said that it was a bat, and she said that she thought bats had much better hearing than that and don't crash into houses very often. Vera saw it very clearly - it was tall and had wings and it was too dark to see what colour it was and do they have sugar in their tea?
Vera's seen it only at night, but not just at 4am. Once it scared her Jack, but one time she think it was scaring some kids around, teenagers really, yelling as it flew along. Her son bought this house, oh not long ago - before that she lived at Dandenong with Petey in the house that they bought after they got married. This is him here (in a photo). And the other time she saw the thing, well, she doesn't want to speak ill of the family across the way, they probably work very hard, but they do come and go at all hours and it keeps her awake and aggravates her trouble. She was up because of all the car door slammings, and she looked out the front, and she saw it out the front, near her roses, and they've never been the same. It was standing next to them. For all she knows it did its business there, and now they're not doing well. They never had black leaf before that! ("they're just all labia!") They didn't seem to notice it, but it was near her house and they had lots of bright car lights. (its been showing up over the last 6 weeks).
So what are they going to do about it? Er, well, they're going to try and figure out what it is, so she shouldn't worry if she sees them at night. Oh well, she'd better tell Florence, and Hilda and Jack too. Will offers her his mobile number and she has to squeeze it onto her book because its one of those long numbers. Kasumi pretends to be 'Sarah', and they have a discussion about anglicised names.
Tillie ponders whether the gargoyle got drunk and drunk flew into the roof. The pack are now wondering if that the gargoyle isn't hanging out near its masters - they maybe should crawl the neighbourhood sensing for unnatural and seeing if they can sense magic? It actually seems like a reasonable plan - cruise around in the Umbra and peek and sense. ("we could just pretend to be the census people - 'please tick to indicate you're a mage'").
They cruise for the afternoon without finding too much - a couple of people that they will come back and treat for too much wyrm taint later, but nothing too much. But shortly after dark, they do spot two youths spray painting on the side of the convenience store in the middle of the estate. Spray painting a gargoyle, specifically. The pack sense from the Umbra and both kids have a very slight dead sense, a slight magic sense and slight wyrm sense. Its like a taint laid on them, like they've been exposed, not like they are a source. ("Originally I was going to bully them, but lets stalk them for a while instead").
The pack decide to follow from the Umbra and see what they can see see see. The two of them are the hoodies and black tight jeans sort of look. They seem to be doing a rough version of the design the pack saw in the business park. Will looks up - no, theres not a gargoyle on the roof, but there's light drizzle and he can't say if there's anything further up. They break off the spray painting because they run out of paint, and take off furtively for a bit then drop back to just walking. One of them is apparently 'Mac', but the other's name isn't mentioned. ("What was his name?" "Why do you even ask, you're going to forget in a minute" "I already can't remember if its Mac or Matt").
They talk some shit, but don't seem to have any plans that need to be spoke about. They were mad about the convenience store guy not selling them booze for something, but Dave will apparently have some. The two kids follow the road under the freeway, making the pack yell and run under the horrible wyrm/weaver thing.
After walking for a bit more, they turn into a house that has loud music coming out of it. The pack observe - it looks like 16 - 21 year olds with shit beer and cheap spirits... and this is a squat. There's only 10 or so people here, but more are filtering in through the drizzle. The house backs onto the freeway reserve, with giant noise cancelling fences looming over it. They sense for wyrm, and there's a little, a spectrum of moderate taint to nothing. The house next door also seems to be a squat, but it deliberately darkened. There's no gargoyles hiding in it.
There's a fire drum out the back. And people at least roughly know one another. Mac's friend turns out to be 'Poz' and Mac is 'Macca', making less cognitive dissonance for Will. There's a guy called Misha who hangs out with them, and he has the same weird exposure levels of weirdness. Someone called 'Davo' shows up - he isnt' a gargoyle, but he does have two 6-packs of the beer that was stolen. A smoking gun! He also has a stronger feeling of magic and deadlands. Trudy shows up with Remy, her boyfriend, and she has some of it too, but not as strong. Its not super raucous, though the music is loud. People are mostly chilled. Kasumi tries to keep an eye out for anything that might be circling, but can't see anything.
After an hour or so, an argument breaks out up the back of the overgrown yard. Will heads over still peeking, and hears "you fucking fucked my fuicking girlfriend, you fuck". When he arrives, he can see Remy (large polynesian guy) pushing Macca and yelling at him. Macca is a bit defensive and says "no mate, we're just mates". Remy seems not to believe this, and the yelling and pushing is getting louder and rougher. Tillie, peeking back at the house, sees Dave look up into the sky and say "throw that fucker out!". Back at the altercation, 5 seconds later a gargoyle lands roughly on the back fence, grabs Remy by the shouldrs and leaps into the sky. ("a demon took the maori kid!")
Kasumi, in homid, and Finn, in lupus, dives straight through the gauntlet. Will, unaware that he's on his own, starts chasing it through the Umbra while peeking. Sinead picks him up and starts carrying him ("jesus christ its a lion get in the car"). Tillie is baffled and increasingly annoyed she can hear her pack shouting not next to her but doesn't want to not watch Dave.
Kasumi and Finn arrive next to Macca in an instant, and leap the fence, giving chase. Macca looks surprised in the rear view mirror. Will sees them pass him and says "oh nooo". All the humans start heading for the back of the yard, and Tillie follows. Macca pretends that he chased Remy away, primping himself up a bit until he sees Dave make an elbow intensive jesture.
Finn can see the receding Remy yelling as it flies along the freeway reserve. He and Kasumi give chase - after a couple of houses, it drops Remy and banks up into the sky. Remy hits the ground hard and yells more. The gargoyle flies on to the top of the noise barrier and perches, then walking awkwardly back towaard the squat house. It either is unaware of the pack, or doesn't care. It settles down and watches the squat house from atop the wall. Remy hobbles away from the party as fast as he can. Kasumi contemplates trying to knock the winged thing off, but even in crinos, its a hell of a jump.
At the party, the excitement dies away and people go back to drinking and talking. The mood has changed a bit, and some people decide to go, but it picks up after a bit.
The pack wonder about whether when some mages were killed, the gargoyles went rogue? Joined up with kids? Or maybe the kids summoned one accidentally?
It starts to rain rather than just drizzle and there is a brief "woo" of a police siren out the front. The pack glance that way and there is a cop car sitting with all its white lights on across the driveway next door ("don't make us get out in the rain, no one will have a good time"). A whole bunch of people decide that that's their signal to leave - some by the front, some over back fence. Davo, Macca, Poz, Misha and Trudy grab their stuff and leave together out the front. As Dave leaves, he whistles and the gargoyle leaps off the fence and coasts after them. It jump or glides from roof to telephone pole to roof and so on, following the teens.
The pack follow from the Umbra. The group of people look up from time to time, clearly knowing its there. Misha heads off first, saying "I'm going to me dad's, its closer. Are we going to the house tomorrow?" Davo ums and ahs and says sure, nothing else on. Lost Prophets start to get an idea of what might have happened - if there's another mage house around? Did they find something to control gargoyles? Or being groomed by mages?
Trudy and Macca break off - "I'll walk Trudy back home" and both the youths and the pack go "uhunh". Poz and Dave walk and chat for a bit - Poz peels off and says he'll be there tomorrow, but late. Dave keeps walking, being trailed by a gargoyle. He arrives at a normal suburb house, which is lightly there in the Umbra. Dave goes to the side of the house and slides open a window, and crawls in - he whistles and the gargoyle lands on the house next door, on the fence, on the window sill, and then squeezes into Dave's room.
The gargoyle crouches down at the end of the room and Dave puts on some headphones and puts on music. The pack scan the rest of his house - there's an adult woman and a 10ish year old boy in another room. They sense unnatural on the gargoyle - it has the cold, deadlands sense mostly; some fast metal (magic); and some wyrm. Its sort of roughed in in detail, its not carefully created. In Dave's room, his backpack is there - he didn't have it at the party but now when they sense it, it has a fast metal magic sense about it .
The garou contemplate stealing his backpack, and the presumed gargoyle remote that might be in it - Kasumi's gifts might make it easier to do so, but presumably the gargoyle might take steps again. They decide to watch him overnight, and see if an opportunity arises they might take it, but otherwise they'll just keep watching.
The pack settle in to watch Dave, taking turns to peek and nap. Someone calls the caern and gives Graeme the low-down so that if the Lost Prophets vanish, the other garou have some kind of idea where they are and what they are doing.
Dave leaves the room once or twice to get food and go to the toilet but otherwise tools about in his room watching tv and videos. Eventually he goes to sleep
At 8am Dave's door bursts open and his mum comes in and yells at him about coming in late, about the room being a mess, about him not getting any of the housework he was meant to be doing, how he's meant to spend today looking after his brother and some washing. The gargoyle sits up and is on alert, but she doesn't react to it or even look at it - its like she can't see it at all. She slams the door. Dave didn't even wake up during the whole process.
His little brother gets up and eats breakfast, watches cartoons and plays on an older console in the lounge. ("I don't know that Taking the Forgotten woudl extend to little brothers").
Dave gets up at midday. He goes to the kitchen and makes pasta for himself and his brother. The gargoyle hangs out in the bedroom, where the backpack is - the pack eye it off but decide that its the sort of action where there's no going back once they've committed.
Dave spends the day messing about on his phone, watching tv and doing nothing special. About 430 he bursts into action and has a shower. The pack are so, so bored. He grabs stuff together, including his backpack and goes out the window with the gargoyle - its just his particular idiom, apparently.
Dave heads back into Fountain Gate against the occasional wave of drizzle and goes to Mcdonalds. The gargoyle spends its time jumping from house to tree to telephone pole to house and so on - its hard to see what with the dim winter light and the rain, but even still the pack are interested to see that people don't really react to its presence. While Dave goes into McDonalds for some food, it lurks on a nearby concrete building's roof - once it crouches down, its quite hard to see.
Misha and Poz join Dave for their evening meal and reparte. They ask "is it about?" "yeah." "cool." Poz seems more nervous about it than Misha and Dave tells him to stop looking for it when he keeps looking out the window.
After finishing, they leave, walking along the road, heading north back into Narre Warren. Poz and Misha can clearly see the demon, adding more data to hypothesis. They stop at a bus stop. They're not waiting for a bus though, but for Macca and Trudy who join them after a bit. After a bit, Macca says "so... last night, when stuff happened with Remy... .did anyone else see the little chinese woman and the really big dog?" There's a long pause and someone says "what the fuck are you talking about?" Macca is adamant that he saw them - they were just suddenly there when the .. you know... came and took Remy and then they leapt the fence. No one else has the faintest idea what he's talking about, so he just drops the topic.
They walk a long ass way - Misha says "are you sure it can't carry us, this is fucking long way" and Dave poo poos the idea. They are now walking out in basically countryside - its dark and there's no foot path any more. After about an hour they turn off the road onto a gravel road. The pack are keeping a look out for anything unusual, sensing both the realm and the umbra ("my ass senses are tingling") The gargoyle stays closer to the kids now that there's no traffic or other lights - eventhing goes quiet except for the trudging. In the Umbra, the pack are moving through light forest. Its rolling hills, and pretty dim as the humans walk along - their conversations drop away and they seem to cluster together. They look like they are up to something rather than being scared.
Will gets a flash of magic and deadlands ahead and then its gone. He can't see anything else around, and sense wyrm doesn't really show anything. He moves about, sensing, and the sense of magic seems to vanish and re-appear as he moves forward, backward and side to side. He stops and it stays in whatever mode its in, so its not something approaching. Its not strong and not in the trees - its further ahead.
In the Umbra they go up and over a small rise, and down the hill ahead of them, they can see a house. No, wait, they can't. Yes they can. No they can't. What the hell. The visible house corresponds to sensing magic and the cold of deadlands. That's... concerning. There seems to be a fence around it as well, but they're a fair distance away. In the Realm, the kids are sneaking along and stop, apparently checking for any signs on activity around a property ahead. They go closer and closer and its clear there's a big hedge around it, and that it corresponds to the weird umbral house. They slip through a hedge and stop to check for lights - when its clear there's no activity they head in. Tillie gets someone to lift her up so she can peer over the 12' tall connifers in the fence, and she can see a weatherboard house, sort of old looking. In the Umbra, the hedge is somewhat constructed looking, like a fence - presumably the act of making a hedge has given them some weaver aspect.
The pack argue for a bit, and eventually Kasumi touches the fence. Nothing goes zap, which is a good sign. Lights come on inside one end of the house, presumably the kids - the curtains make it unclear exactly what's going on inside tho. The gargoyle has settled onto the roof. The lawn between the hedge and the fence is a bit overground, but not insane - a few months of uncontrolled growth. The pack theorise that maybe its been abandoned for 15 or 16 months ago - but the lawn doesn't look like that. The house in the Umbra appears almost identical on the outside to the realm, except that as they move, it vanishes and reappears. The senses from the house are magic, deadlands and wyrm.
Will gets close the Umbral house and touches it. Nothing happens. When he moves along and it vanishes and he touches it, it bites him. ("I told you it was a hologram"). The pack peek through the tiny gap in the curtains. They can see beanbags, and a large tv, and other random things that look new as if they had been stolen by some sort of animated magical creature. The youths have booze that they are opening.
Lost Prophets cruise around the building to get an idea of layout, identifying the kitchen, and maybe lounge and a toilet or bathroom. With some care, they manage to find a spot where they can touch the house while it appears and open a door, which seems to be safe to get inside. They explore within carefully.
The kids appear to have stolen an Xbox and a large tv. The house has power, which is a little odd. They seem to have been here a bit, but as the pack explore they find that some of the walls have the same fractal paintings in/on the wall the found in the other mage house - which explains why the kids seem to be using only that end of the house, cos its creepy. The other end smells musty and has a lot of dust settled down. Looking at them, the pack get the feeling that they are incomplete - that they never got finished at all. Logically, this might be related to the weird half warding as well?
There's some minimalist furniture in the house - there's two bedrooms and one of them has seen some teenage use, but the otherone is very dark and doesn't appear to have been looked at much if at all. The pack figure there's a trapdoor here somewhere, and indeed they eventually find it, partly concealed. They open it in the Umbra and can see down into the black - concrete; patterns; ladder and a sense of foreboding.
The pack decide to phone home. They actually get Emma on the phone and say that they've found an unfinished mage house, with a trap door and ladder and that's where the badness was. Also teenage squatters. There were no gargoyles in the last house; but they followed the boy with the pet gargoyle to get here. Emma is keen to come and visit, but she says get on with investigating, she'll be a little while.
They head back and squabble a bit, but with sharpened claws they head down the ladder. Kasumi's phone and Finn's faerie lights. The patterns are not complete down the concrete access tube, and the spill out into another underground chamber. In the Umbra, it looks like concrete, but its not really. In the realm, its dark. Like pitch black dark. It smell musty, and a bit damp, with a faint organic smell that reminds them of some sort of decay, without being precisely rotting. ("Van gogh?" "picasso" "What?" "What?" "I said vanguard." "OH").
In the centre of the chamber is another spell circle, or at least part of one (and not a pit, despite player recollection). Finn speculates that the designs are fading rather than incomplete? But they'd have to measure that over time. There are two additional subspaces - they look like bad reflections of something in the realm. One of them is weavery than the other. The sense of magic and death prevails without.
They decide to step, bringing their lights with them. The physical room looks very similar by the light of a phone, without demons lurking to kill them. Tillie looks around for a light switch - (The GM stares at her for a minute and then says "yes of course there are") - she finds it and turns them on, very small downlights. There's an electric hum quietly in the background that they really only notice because it turns off. Paranoia increases considerably, but nothing happens. Tillie senses for wyrm and gets a good sense of the space around her - all the patterns sense of wyrm, with a sense of volition rather than just environmental, but there's no point sources, whether demons or evil masks. They can see two doors - one leads to an empty store room and the other is ... fridge. That was the noise. They open the door, and a rank smell and thick liquid ooze out. The bloated pile of corpses starts to liquiesce as they disturb the not-quite-hermetically sealed chamber. They close the door and sigh. ("Food fight!")
The fridge highlights the problem with the house - why does it have power? Who's paying for it? How did this fridge get down here? The only non-house thing that is evident is the gargoyle, so the pack hatch plan "steal that kid's backpack". They head back up and peek to see what's going on up there. First they check for sheds and mail - there's one big shed and its full of tetris'd in furniture in the Realm, and barely appears in the Umbra. Maybe its all been taken out to do the patterns? There's a letterbox, but its not crammed full of shit, suggesting that maybe there's a post office box in a town somewhere or maybe someone picks it up? Maybe mages hate junk mail?
Emma shows up while the players are peeking in on teenagers and waiting for them to pass out. They show her around, though she declines their kind offer to reveal the pile of bodies in the fridge. She looks at all the stuff and is most interested, but is happy to leave it for the Lost Prophets to stand around in the Umbra and then deal with five teenagers as they see fit.
A few hours pass, and it heads toward midnight. Macca and Trudy retire to the less weird bedroom. Poz passes out. Dave heads outside for a piss and a smoke. Misha staggers to his feet after a minute and follows. That leaves the backpack in the room with no one conscious to observe.
Kasumi steps into one of the empty, unfractalled room. She can hear the repetitve sound of 19 seconds of dvd menu. She creeps in, picks up the backpack and creeps out the other side of the room and into the lounge. She ransacks through the bag - clothes, hat, bottle of spirits, and a tshirt wrapped around something heavy. She unpacks it carefully and finds two palm sized glass balls within. They glow faintly, and have a cloudy, plasma sort of orange material inside. (like this, but moving very slowly http://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip-1849309-stock-footage-colorful-atmospheric-background.html?src=rel/803719:3/3p) They're clearly mystical, but they do not feel like a fetish. She's not sure but they might be warm. Sensing them shows they are extremely magical, and somewhat deadlandsy.
Outside, the gargoyle sits up and is looking around. It spreads its wings and starts clambouring down onto the ground. Will, peeking, decides that people inside need to know this.
Rather than dedicate them, Sinead steps out and puts them in her magpie's swag fetish. There's a bit of concern that this will bring the gargoyle into the umbra. Or the thing keeping it under control is taken away and it goes berserk. On the other hand, there's a big fridge already full of bodies down in the basement. ("https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2hZnPxQ8xg")
Dave and Misha head inside because its freezing and the gargoyle is being weird. It follows them inside.
Kasumi and Sinead leave for the Umbra.
The gargoyle seems to sniff about where the backpack was and maybe following along where Kasumi travelled. Dave seems annoyed by it being strange and orders it to sit in the corner. It does, though it keeps alert. That's odd, as the pack were of the belief that the balls were how he controlled it. ("maybe we need to take it further away?" "you're in another universe and they are in a magic sack"). Are they unrelated?
Lost Prophets attempt to experiment lightly with the balls. They attempt to give the gargoyle commands while holding into them. ("sniff your butt"). No dice. Maybe it doesn't work from the Umbra? They split up - some of the pack go a distance away and step back into the Realm while other members continue to peek. Kasumi attempts to give it orders and nothing really happens. She tries "come here!" and still nothing happens. She lightly taps them together but declines to experiment further because it feels like very thin glass or crystal. Tillie senses wyrm to see if her gifts could reveal anything - they are slightly wyrmy, but in an indirect kind of way. Like they're not inherently of the wyrm, but maybe they've been exposed to strong wyrm emanations. Oh, actually they feel the same sort of wyrm as the gargoyle does itself, so that's interesting. Sinead stares into the orange clouds and thinks that she can influence how they shift ... no, wait, she's just bullshitting herself. It does change slowly - a slight variation in the orange colour over time. Kasumi puts them both over her eyes and tries to see through them. ("We play pool with them").
They could try using Tillie's pack leader powers, or the cracking stone to try and open it. Generally garou magic is concentrated on the Umbra; some tribes drift a bit, but in general its all the Umbra, and so they don't really have much that'll affect demons or ghosts or whatever is making this sense of deadlands.
Will thinks there is a connection between the gargoyle and the balls because as soon as they touched them, the gargoyle started to react. They try and work on the timing for that - it might be that it just reacted to Kasumi appearing in the Realm near the house. Maybe it has spidey senses? Maybe because they were inside the house? It was in a "on watch" mode really, perhaps Dave told it to keep a look out of something.
Will tries sense of true form through the gauntlet on the gargoyle but can't make sense of the results. The kids are watching a new movie, but are really just kinda kicking about. Will uses his sternest voice on the balls and tries to command the gargoyle through it, but it doesn't work any better for him than anyone else.
Should they try smashing one? Finn thinks its the last option, Sinead is bored now. What if they are doing something good, like restraining the gargoyle from killing everything. Tillie grabs them and runs toward Narre Warren, to see if the gargoyle follows them if they are too far away. ... Nope. ("If we take it too far away, and it eats him, how much do you care? " "I'd say about half a shit")
Other options? Where did they get sense unnatural from? Oh wait, Boobook the Owl, their magic- and death- knowledgable totem. Rather sheepishly they summon him. Boobook lands in a tree. Boobook says that the globes are magic of death. They are cages. There are demons within them. Ah. Do they contain them now? Yes.
Hmm, if these are demons, they probably shouldn't take them to the Sept. Frankly, its a bit exciting they took them into the Umbra inside a fetish. They call back and get Ian ("I have two balls full of demons"). He's not keen on them bringing them back either, in a sort of laid back way, and suggests Emma should have them. Where is she? I dunno, home?
They call Emma and wake her up a bit. They give her a run down of what they've found and how they are demon cages. She asks a bit trepeditiously how they know they are full of demons, and on being Boobook told them seems kind of relieved. Emma says they can bring them to her place and she will put them in a box to keep them safe. They leave Will and Kasumi to keep an eye on things while everyone goes back into the city to do this.
While the other half the pack are away, Dave and Misha decide that its time to go. They kick Poz awake and yell for Macca and Trudy to put pants on, its time to go. Then Dave goes to his backpack.... and its not there. He looks outside and around and accuses his friends of trying to be funny. They're all pretty drunk. He turns to the gargoyle and says "find my backpack". It moves around, sort of sniffing, and heads into the swirly part of the house. Dave says "its not in there!" and then the gargoyle returns with it and he gets really surly. He looks in the backpack and can't find his balls (ha ha). Dave accuses his friends of stealing them, everyone else is confused and quite sleepy and drunk. It starts to get a bit snarky, Dave leans into the gargoyle and whispers to it and it starts moving around. The others get really freaked out as it starts moving around them, demanding what to know he told it to do. It moves everywhere around the kids and the other rooms, but comes back empty handed.
No one else knows what on earth he's lost, and so they are defensive. Maybe you dropped it on the way or left it at home. There's some yelling. Misha manages to break the tension saying that whatever he's lost, they'll come back tomorrow, in the light and not pissed and find it. They turn everything off and leave - Dave stomping ahead and clearly looking on the ground for the balls and the others behind a bit concerned (maybe the monster is driving him crazy?).
Dave walks all the way back the way they came to the bus stop, looking on the ground. He's totally lost the others, but the garou opt to follow him. At the bus stop where they met Macca, he stops and gets the gargoyle to fly back to McDonalds and look in case he dropped them around there. It comes back in 15m without balls. Dave swears a lot and goes home.
Meanwhile the others show Emma their balls. She shrugs and says "if you say so". She puts them into a lead chest, with gold wire holding it shut. Emma suggests they don't get too cocky, and try not to get anyone else killed if it comes down to a fight. Emma says they have two things to worry about - the existing gargoyle is a veil breach that needs attention. They point out that lots of people didn't even see the gargoyle - maybe its connected to the same magic that hides the house. But in any case, its gotta go. And two, she spoke to Cossack and the Sept would like to acquire the house for extended study, and they'd like the pack to arrange it
They debate what to do about Dave. They can't just leave him with gargoyle. Maybe they should make friends ("with the gargoyle?" "here, have some nice chalcedony" "Fresh trilobytes!" "Fresh??") with Dave ("If there's one thing history has shown, its that Will is good at making friends with bogans" "you should put that down as a speciality"). Rather than have the gargoyle step on his brother while they attack Dave in the shower, they opt to pick their time a bit better.
Kasumi goes onto the council website and finds that she is able to get the title records in return for human monies (rather than breaking in and blaming cop killing on the sabbat). However they want a credit card, and instead of doing that they wake the spirit up and command it to do their things. It turns out that the house was transferred from its previous owner in January 2010 (maybe a month or two before the pack encountered mages) to an M. Jackson, who has a PO Box at Endeavour Hills and a home address in Belgrave South.
Despite the pack wondering if this is Michael Jackson, (or Miss Jackson) they look into it. To Endeavour Hills first, where Kasumi uses her gifts to unlock the outer door and the PO Box. The Post Office is in a new bit of the centre - they've extended it a bit and added a few shops and a shiny new entrance. The gauntlet is a little bit high here. Kasumi pulls out a couple of bits of spam, a power bill and a gas bill.
While Kasumi is breaking and entering, Sinead is staring at a real estate agent right across the way, and realises that its Jackson and Kernighan, with an M. Jackson as the registered agent. She nudges Finn and they both use gifts on it - there's no real sense of wyrm here beyond the 'plastic and ashphalt' background level. Finn says there's a strong weaver presence, which might explain the high gauntlet. (or vice versa). There's no magic tho, no deadlands, nothing really stand out. The agents do residential and commerical properties, it has shiny lcd billboards and looks new (being part of the new entrance).
Kasumi examines her mail - they are poststamped in the last week. She opens them and finds the gas is basically the service charge and that's it. Its addressed to M Jackson at the PO Box, for the property Lot X on Kerr's Road. The electricty bill is similar, but it goes up 6 weeks ago (and covers up to 2 weeks ago), presumably when Dave broke in.
To Belgrave South! Because they are worried about Jackson being a mage, they are more cautious than usual and park away and approach slowly in the Umbra. Given the lack of weaver out here, it can be difficult to tell an invisible house from an unrectified house.
In the realm, the street looks like its full of tree-change houses. There's lots of two stories and some solar panels and SUVs in the drive ways. At number 19 there is an umbral structure, though its not well filled in. They test the possibility of mage wards with Kasumi's butt, and reach a consensus that its probably not a mage house per se. There's people at home and two SUVs in the drive way. There's a set of family-stickers on the back of one of the SUVs that has 4 people on it.
The house is occupied on the top floor, but there's no easy way to get up there in the Umbra, so they're forced to carry one packmate around peeking while in Crinos form. There's two late adolescent girls studying and or listening to music, and a late 40s couple doing whatever people do on a rainy Sunday afternoon. There's no signs of an evil basement - the downstairs has a two spare bedrooms or offices, a bath room and a sitting room, but its all cold and unused at the moment (not abandoned, just shut off). Its all very domestic, which just shows how advanced the illusion is.
Will peeks and sniffs, trying to establish if Jackson - if this is Jackson - is anything other than human. He doesn't seem to be. After listening in for some time they find that M is Martin. Figuring nothing is happening here, they head back to check in on Dave.
("We should call the council every 20 minutes - 'still no bunyip'")
Dave is at home, eating dinner with his family sulkily. ("surely if you had a gargoyle, you would teach it to - " "uh" "- play Xbox" "that is not where I thought that was going"). The gargoyle is in his room, in what looks like the same pose and place as they left it.
Nothing is happening here, so they go back to the caern and brain dump to Graeme.
After much discussion, they finally get his mobile number and call it. Kasumi pretends to be Sarah from Origin Energy asking about his latest bill for the property at Kerr's Lane. Supicious pause. "I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number" and hangs up. The pack immediately decide to Ridgeway him ("its been too long").
After much planning and conspiring, they opt to go with the plan to kidnap him after work - Tillie will leap into his car with her chameleon gift when he leaves the office and then sit up and make him drive somewhere while the others catch up. There's some chance that he might be super evil and that might be dangerous, but Tillie could try leaping back into the umbra. ("Its an upright Ridgewaying").
The enact the plan - the first hitch is that the new bit of the shopping centre is covered in active weaver spiders. As the pack approach, the spiders stop calcifying and regard the pack. The spiders don't immediately leap to attack, and the pack aren't really interested in confrontation, so they just move in cautiously. When the garou don't immediately wreck stuff, the spiders continue with their work. The pack remember to act with caution. This also explains the high gauntlet and the high sense of weaver in the area.
Jackson isn't there when the pack arrive and peek, but they scope the other staff members - there appears to be 6 or so agents, handling both residential and commercial properties around the place. Sensing doesn't show anything particularly unusual. Jackson shows up after 30 minutes or so, and similiarly has no magic sense about him.
They lay their plans, clearly identifying Jackson's car because he goes back and forth to it and goes out a few times. ("Is that why you asked if I lurk in the car all day?" "Dogs die in hot cars!"). The pack shop at the strange shops at Endeavour hills.
By the end of the day, Jackson is still working away as people head out. About 6pm the rest of the staff have headed out and Jackson suudenly stops what he's doing and stares forward a bit. He gets up woodenly, walks out of the office and across the way to the post office. He opens the door, opens the post office box, reaches in and takes all the materials inside. He drops the junk mail into a shredder. He then returns to his office, still moving somewhat woodenly, and sits at his desk and returns to normal. The pack suddenly realise they should sense him to see might have happened - there is a strong, but dimming, sense of magic.
Given the strange mental effect, the pack reluctantly decide to not Ridgeway him now. They plan what to do - put the bills back in the PO Box ? Put a note in there? Put an angry badger in there? Alert the mages via Jackson that there's someone in the house? The pack opt to put the bills pack and observe carefully.
Lost Prophets contemplate Dave and the gargoyle again in the meantime. Perhaps they could go all anime and step out while already swinging a giant rock breaking mallet? Finn speculates putting the Cracking Stone on the gargoyle, and the incredulous look on the GMs face leads to shelving, but not discarding that plan. Maybe that's why the mages had the fetish in the first place? ("Are they a thing posessing a thing or more like a fomori, where its one new creature?" "Yes, that test would definitely help to resolve that question. You have no idea what would happen, and judging by my expression, neither do I. I'll think about it" "don't think too hard because its NOT GOING TO HAPPEN")
They head back to check on Dave and eventually someone can peek. They can't hear, but Dave's demeanor is that of a man trying to plan something. He's muttering to himself and making hand jestures. ("these chips smell like cat urine." "They don't taste like they smell." "... good?") At 10 o'clock, he grabs his stuff and backpack and heads out the window, bringing the gargoyle with him. He doesn't, as the pack expect, head toward the mage house - Sinead suspects he's heading to a friend's place. He stops and lurks in front of a suburban looking house. All Will can sense is the gargoyle, but its so overwhelming it could be hiding everything else. Dave's showing no sign of acting immediately, so the pack creep through the scanty umbral houses and check who lives here. Oh, its Poz. Right. Is Dave about to gargoyle murder him? Poz appears to have an older and younger sister and two parents living here.
Lost Prophets consider acting precipitously, I mean pre-emptively, but decide not to cause a veil breach without due cause. Dave waits 15 minutes and then creeps onto the property, and lurks near the side entrance, trying to peer over it and count lit windows. One of Poz's parents is in bed, the other is getting ready for bed. One sister is in bed reading, the other is doing homework or soemthing akin to it. ("we could start a fire" "For any particular reason, or just for shits and giggles?"). Dave heads into the next house quietly, and climbs the fence, dropping into Poz's backyard. The gargoyle follows him up and over and the pack lurk along in the Umbra. ("front page news - one police animal shredded by wild animal, the other... fell... from plane?")
Dave heads into the yard and hides behind the shed. He pulls out his
phone and Will attemps to position himself so he can read the messages.
Dave: Where are you, what you doing?
Poz: Home
Dave: Meet me at the Maccas, need to talk
Poz: its late, and shit to do tmrw
Dave: Its important
Poz doesn't reply straight away and when the pack stick their head in,
he's holding his phone and trying to make a decision.
Poz: It'd better be.
Ten minutes later, Poz slips out the back door as quietly as he can, and heads off. Dave watches from his hidey hold and after a few minutes, he creeps toward the house. Disbelievingly, the pack watch as he creeps inside with the gargoyle and tiptoes to Poz's room, shutting the door. Dave tells the gargoyle to search the room, but after a moment or two the gargoyle stops peering around and returns to Dave, who curses. They creep back out, somehow not being spotted or heard, and run off through the streets after Poz. ("My ex sends me $0.01 bank transfers with 'i miss you'").
Dave moves fast, to try and catch up with Poz. Some of the pack sprint off in lupus and get to McDonalds to find Poz angrily eating a cheese burger and messaging Dave where the fuck is he. When Dave arrives, he bullies Poz into coming outside. He stomps out and asks "WHAT". Dave says that he was worried Misha was with him. The gargoyle lands next to Poz, who jumps a mile. Poz is unimpressed and demands to know what the hells is going on. The gargoyle gives Dave a blank look and moves off a step or two and Dave says that he lost some stuff out of his backpack Saturday night and he thinks maybe Misha took it. "Is that why you're being a dick?" "Shut up!" Dave explains about the backpack and things missing from it. They talk about maybe who did it - Misha wasn't alone in the house really, maybe Macca was looking for a condom? Dave won't admit what it was "just something of mine, right?" ("His lucky buttplug"). Poz eventually says "why didn't you message me this rather than dragging me out" and Dave says no messages or phone or anything about it!
They eventually come to an agreement that they will go together to the house tomorrow in the late afternoon and try and check it out. They both head home. The pack track Poz just to see if he calls someone else on the way home - he messages Macca on the way home "Did you take any shit out of Dave's bag on Sat night?". There's no response and he heads home without contacting any else. He gets caught sneaking into his house his older sister, and they have a hissing argument. They call past Dave on the way back to their car, and find him at home as expected.
The garou head back to the post office at Endeavour Hills and get the bills out again, because they want to be there to see what Jackson does with them, and they aren't sure if they can manage the timing.
After school, which apparently Poz still attends, they head up to the house. The gargoyle follows, flapping along - there are more people able to see it than the pack are comfortable with. Dave and Poz walk and try to keep an eye out for whatever that thing that Dave dropped that he won't tell Poz about.
Figuring this is a good time to have a... talk... with Dave, the pack run ahead in the Umbra and plan to lurk in the house. Kasumi is going to hide in the hedge with her ragabash powers while the others wait in rooms ajoining the family room. When they come in - hopefully without the gargoyle, but eh - the pack can casually walk in, surrounding them (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp8Em_h3jzo "surprise motherfucker") Finn uses his gifts to mentally connect to Kasumi, watching her out the window and filling her head with pop culture static.
Dave and Poz approach over the fields rather than by the road. Maybe 100m away, Dave calls the gargoyle down, and they all creep down together. Kasumi gives people a heads up that its coming in. The two humans stop at the back door, and Dave gets a key out from under a rock near the back door. Kasumi starts to creep closer to be behind them. He sends the gargoyle in and follows. Poz is about to step in, but then he spots Kasumi, who freezes, standing and staring at them. Poz yells "Ah, Dave!" Dave and the gargoyle come in - all the garou step in from behind doors in as non-comic fashion as possible.
Tillie says "Hi Dave - don't". Dave says "Ah shit!" and cheeses it, and the gargoyle follows. Poz sees Dave and an animated statue coming and bolts as well. Will uses his gifts and slows Dave's flight while the pack give chase. Finn, the Kif of the pack, sighs and follows. Outside, Poz is making it for the first fence, but Dave is finding that all his sprinting is not getting him further than a mild jog. The gargoyle heads past Dave a bit as it is able to move properly.
Kasumi moves to cut Dave off, leaving Poz to his own devices while the rest of the pack spills outside. Tillie attempts to maintain some gravitas in the face of Dave's panic, and just strolls fast after him. Dave panicks and tells the gargoyle "Carry me!"
The gargoyle leaps into the air and grabs Dave with its feet, around his arms. Tillie takes a running leap and lands around the gargoyles neck. Will grabs its legs and wraps his legs around Dave. Sinead throws herself at his legs but misses. ("should i spend willpower?" "nah we're going to need that later when this doesn't work"). The gargoyle flaps its swings and the three passengers and it start to head into the air - not effortlessly soaring, just getting a bit off the ground. Kasumi grabs one leg and adds her minor weight to the pile. Her additional weight seems to pull things downward. ("dack him!"). The pack are yelling at Dave to call it off, and generally menacing at him.
Dave yells "let me go! let me go!" and the gargoyle does whether or not it was actually being addressed. Will falls on Dave. Dave and Will fall on Kasumi. Tillie leaps gracefully from the gargoyle. It flies up to the top of the shed and watches intently.
Finn and Will, with their persuasion gifts, lean in and glower at Dave before dragging him back inside. ("Intimidation is the threat of violence. If you just *do* the violence...."). They sit him down and Will says "tell us from the start how you found the house and the gargoyle. And don't lie to me. I'll know". Dave is huddled on the beanbag looking fairly dejected. He says that he was walking home from Belgrave one night and found it. Sinead looks skeptical that he'd put that much effort in, and says why didn't he take PT - because there isn't any. You have to go into the city and out again.
Apparently it was pissing with rain (slightly untrue) and he was looking for somewhere to shelter because he was wet (very slightly untrue) and so he found the keys to go in because it looked empty. And then when he was looking around, he knocked one of the orange things off the table. And then that thing came out. And it'd do what he told it to. "Was it already a statue?" Nup, it just came out of nowhere. The pack check where and Tillie and Sinead go in there to see what they can see. Sinead finds some extremely fine glass shards next to a bedside table. It might be enough to be an orb. They change to lupus and sniff about - Dave's faint scent, maybe one of the other teenagers, neither of them recent. Other than that, dust and must.
Back to Dave - "did you ever go .. downstairs?" Dave seems genuinely baffled as to what they are talking about. "what do you know about the gargoyle, has it said anything?" It doesn't talk. Um, it doesn't always know what he means when he tells it to do something? "How long has it been since he broken in the first time? " Start of June? 5 or 6 weeks ago. "What's the deal with the graffiti?" It was just a cool thing they all knew. "Have you seen the patterns on the walls changing?" Nope.
The pack tell Dave that he needs to a) go to this address (Vera's house) and tell her he was responsible for wrecking her roses, and he's going to help her, and b) he's going to tell the gargoyle to obey their orders now. Dave says it doesn't always listen or get it right, so it might not manage this. "Try. Order it in here, and make sure you don't tell it to attack us, or it'll end badly for you". Dave looks crestfallen; he was clearly thinking of that.
Dave gets it to come in, and he tells it to listen to this guy (Will) and do what he says. Will tests it, and it will obey basic commands at the very least. Dave is told that he should never have come here and he should never have had the gargoyle - he's lucky to be alive. He should go away and not come back, and neither should his friends. He looks surprised that nothing worse will happen. and cheeses it.
Kasumi and Tillie follow in the Umbra to see where he goes but don't peak well. Dave jogs along for a while then drops to a walk. At one point, Poz whistles from his place of concealment and joins Dave, presumably asking what happened.
Will spends some time getting the gargoyle to do things. It doesn't comprehand some commands, but does well on the simple things. When Tillie returns, they call the caern and brain dump at Graeme, who does like that they've chased out the teenagers, but isn't too thrilled at their gaining a gargoyle. They brain dump about Jackson too, and communicate what they think is happening. He asks them to stash the gargoyle for the meantime - they can discuss it at the moot on Saturday. Maybe, given the lack of all their effectiveness on the Full Moon Killer, the demons could be helpful there.
They decide to stash the gargoyle in the basement, despite the fridge and the magic circle down there. It struggles a bit with the ladder, but it sits in the corner and drops into a sort of sitting position. Will asks if it can speak, or if it has a name, but it shows no signs of making a noise. They head out and grab some paper and pen and try to get it to write or draw. It sort of copies Will waving a pencil around but its not doing anything off its own bat. ("I think its dumb. Now its going to kill me in my sleep because I said its dumb." "Just dribbling in your ear while you sleep").
They decide to take on Jackson tomorrow. They'll follow to Dave's house now and see how he's going on the way back to Endeavour Hills to put the bills back in the post office box again. Dave's not at his house, but questing stone shows him at Poz's. They can't peek worth shit, but they can see him through the gauntlet with Poz. Will calls Vera and gives her a heads up that some young man will be coming along to help her with her roses, and there won't be any more trouble. She's confused, but pleased that they have sorted the problem out. Unlike the policeman. I'm sure they mean well but they're not being very effective. They explain the winged thing was this young man's and now he's coming to help her out. Give them a call if he gives them any trouble. ("You've set the tone for a coming of age film where Dave learns the value of hard work." "And then he shows up and finds her - " "Murdered by a gargoyle?" "No, unconscious from a heart attack" "She could tell him cool stories from her youth. ''I slept with all the beatles you know, even Ringo'' ''who's Ringo?'' ''er, the man from Thomas the Tank Engine''").
The pack drive back to the mage house and steal the tv and the xbox and take it back to Kasumi and Sinead's house.
Jackson does nothing during the day of note. Other employees are lingering on site for some time, but eventually they leave and not very long after that, he lapses back into the sort of zombie state. The pack, peeking well for a change, sense him and find that there is mostly a sense of magic around him, with faint fringes of wyrm and deadlands. It doesnt' appear to be emanating from anything or anyone else. Sinead senses for wyrm and just finds its sort of light. Jackson walks over to the PO Box and retrieves the mail. He drops junk into the shredder. He doesn't seem to react to the opened bills. From a drawer he pulls out a cheque book (Commonwealth vs Westpac from the business) and pays for them that way (baffling the pack). The name on the chequebook is not his name, its A. Davis, not a name that seems familiar. He doesn't seem to react to the increased cost. The cheque and the tear off section of the bill go into an envelope, the rest of the bill goes in the shredder, and then Jackson goes back to the post office and sends the letters. Then back to his desk and suddenly the magic stops, and he goes back to normal.
The pack toy with ways of disconnecting the utilities and messing with the system, or tracing the cheque book. They could try and mess with the bank computers from the umbra, but that's a bit fraught given the high security and weaver influences. He must have signing rights to the account, because he was signing it. Maybe it was just set up that way to try and avoid it showing up in his normal banking? It seems simultaneously overly complicated, and not a complete way of anonymising things. They could keep an eye out for statements coming into the post office box - anyone who uses paper cheques probably has paper statements too. Rather than coming out every day, they could get some other post office box (somewhere else) and redirect the address.
[Bit of metadiscussion about the FMK, how its happened all but 2 months in the last 12, how people go into lock down those days, how there have been two senior police detectives resign, how its become a macho thing to stay out on those nights. More discussion about how to deal with networked computer information - attack client (easy, but can't do anything magic), attack server (harder, can do magic) or get an agent (weaver spirit)) ("You guys have said a lot of nerdy stuff over the years, but knowing what auspice your children would be...")].
The pack decide to raid the bank information from the Umbra. They find a small Commonwealth bank branch and awaken one of the teller's pcs. Sinead awakens the spirit the most awakeny that its ever been awakened, but Kasumi can't figure out the bespoke system. Will just shakes his head at the continuing disappointment that Glasswalker magic presents, and binds the spirit.
They find out some basic info from the accounts - there are no linked accounts. Its just a cheque account, with signing rights for A Davis and M Jackson. There is just shy of $15000 remaining in the account. It was opened in January 2010, about the same time that the house details appear to have been updated. The statement appears to pay electricity, gas, water and a mowing guy - though the last stops in about March 2011. A once off large sum that might be rates? There's an address for A Davis in Narre Warren North. They are running low on cheques - there's only 5 or so left. The starting amount (about $23000) appears to have been deposited from a Spanish bank.
The pack head to the address... and find it doesn't exist. Its not a field, but its a missing number address - the street goes 22, 24, then a connecting street, and then number 28. Number 26 does not exist.
The Spanish thing is contemplated - they had a strange association with overseas things in the previous mage house. Ah, no, that was Portuguese, but a Brazillian dialect. Still, that suggests that the mages originally came from somewhere else.
The pack crawl all over the furniture in the shed. Captain Meticulous (Kasumi) spends hours sniffing under furniture and inside cupboards and so on. There are two scents that are common across all the furniture, both of which are quite old. They are stronger than other scents, but less recent. There are two other male scents that are familiar. After some thought, Kasumi ventures that she thinks that the two scents match up to two of the mages that attacked them at the caravan park at Sunbury. Who are dead. This ... kind of... puts a timeline on things. It means that the magic on Jackon has been there for over a year, but that's not impossible.
They head back to the caern and brain dump to Graeme and Cossack. Graeme is still down on the whole gargoyle thing, though Cossack seems more open to it being useful. The fact that its the Sunbury people is a bit reassuring to them, and that there's not this constant supply of Yet More Mages. Kasumi suggests that maybe there are factions, not necessarily working together. Cossack wants the Sept to have a firmer legal claim to the house, but he doesn't see any urgency or need to act precipitously as long as no one is going to interfere.
The pack get the fun and happy job of cleaning out the body jelly from the basement, despite their urge to just fill it with concrete and walk away.
"6 bodies down and we still keep digging!" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwxEC2Cyd8g).
The pack bring their humerous (and humorous) songs about disposing of bodies to the Moot. Opening Howl, Inner Sky! Spirits are summoned and thanked and the Sept ("So, from that time you had the penis, you were able to do a comparison?"). There are two major topics for the Moot - the new Mage house, finding it, all their efforts to clean it out and terrorising teenagers, and being knee deep in human aspic; and what to do about the Black Spiral Dancers. The Sept has had a deal with Father Pigeon to report on things his children see across the city, but its been expensive, and not actually helpful in finding the evidence of the Dancers or mages. They have found a bunch of fomori and banes and people being dicks, but not Dancers. The Sept Elders aren't keen on renewing the deal, as its taking resources (mostly gnosis) they'd like to use in other places.
Other options are floated - bats? They're only around in summer. Cats? Not really spiritually on the same side as rat. Cockroaches, ditto. Owls? No so much in the city itself. Rats is an option, but the birds were meant to be useful in their ability to see large areas, versus rats who tend to cluster under the ground and not move around as much. They'll go with rats if there's no better option, but its probably no help in finding the mages, only the Dancers
Street lamps? Not really talkative. Hipsters? ("I got murdered before it was cool"). Hidden Green had plans to deal with the cameras, but something has been messing with them - they've had cameras turned off, burned out, or otherwise negated. They put in observers on the cameras, and nothing obvious showed up. They are not happy, but not sure how to fix it.
One of the benefits of their deal with Father Pigeon was that they weren't actually affecting the pigeons, so it was surreptious. Kirsty brings up the gargoyle and if they could use that? Cossack says that even if its reliable, and it can sense .. something, its only one pair of eyes. Will thinks they can test its senses - it seemed to pick Kasumi's presence up quickly for instance? On the other hand, what if a mage senses the gargoyle and gets all curious and dominating. Maybe Finn should speak into its head? ... no...
Wind spirits? The benefit of animal spirits is that there really is one over arching spirit that they can make deals with - that's not so much with elementals ("and wind spirits might be too flighty" "no"). Train spirits? They do go places, but only in limited ways. Kirsty says that she's found them universally bad tempered and difficult.
Renown is recognised. Songs are sung ("Rhyming jelly human with grape poupon?" "or getting pooped on?") and stories are told. (Bear And wolf are friends - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2443974/Bear-WOLFs-unlikely-friendship-caught-camera-photographer.html)
Lost Prophets are asked to do caern duty for a week and a bit. They want to be as fast onto any Full Moon Killer action as possible as part of that.
The pack partake of the revel but come back early. They are hanging out around Graeme's house, trying to dry out from the endless drizzle, when he says that their kinfolk in police comms has said something is up in Warburton lane in the CBD. Fire, and suspected homicide.
The pack split up, some in the realm, some in the umbra, so they don't have to mess around peeking and such in the high gauntlet of the city. When they arrive, there's a crowd around the emergency vehicles that are blocking the lane - mostly people who had clearly been out and about, but some folks in pyjamas from the apartments nearby. They alley is only about a room wide, and they can smell petrol from here. The umbra is full of weaver spiders that give the pack the eye but then continue about their work. The spiders in the alley seem alert but not alarmed - it might be a reaction to the existence of fire. Sinead uses her gifts to pretend to be a senior weaverspider and gets a status report - they reacted to the fire motes that appeared in the umbra. They're too stupid to give much more than that
Sensing gives a distinct magic sense and faint deadland sense - the magic is the fast metal sense they've felt on the fire before. Wyrm does suggest something has been here or happened here recently - not revelationary, but a good confirmation. There are two cop cars here, but not far away are several other official looking vans with no windows... maybe a severe response in case the full moon killer is here? Tillie realises she can hear two police detectives interviewing an eye witness and so she listens in carefully. This woman say two guys walk from the other side of the road, out of an alley. They crossed in front of her and she saw one of them carrying a petrol tin. When she got closer, she saw flickering fire light and went up the alley a bit to see the fire everywhere. She describes them as two guys, wearing trenchcoats (like many other people, given the weather) with longish hair - she wasn't close enough to see many other details. They get her name (Megan Dawson) and the fact she was working late and was on her way home (from the bar she works at).
Despite the full moon, there are a lot of people out here - they are partying hard, but its got a brittle edge to it. Kasumi and Tillie find somewhere they think is a blind spot on the cameras and Kasumi changes to lupus.
Will manages to peek enough to roughly see stuff - it looks like there was a fire all over the alley, but mostly on what looks like a corpse as best he can tell. Its badly mangled, which the fire does not hide properly. The building behind the corpse is a light industrial of some sort - the other side is a carpark. Will sniffs about and finds a bedroll in the carpark. Thinking this is probably the victim, he tries to track the smell. Its around a lot, as if the person spent a long time here. He can smell them in a few other sheltered spots along the alley despite the rain.
Kasumi returns in lupus, and tries to track the two trenchcoat'd figured. She follows them backward down the alley on the other side, which is a bit more retail (coffee shop, coffee shop, gallery/coffee shop). She can smell petrol, and two scents which might match the guys in the atrocity raelm. They appear to have flown in at the far end rather than have arrived in any other normal fashion.
The pack contemplate ways of following this up - they could do spirit things (fetish, summoning) to try and figure out where the killer of a given corpse is? Spirits to do the "last thing you saw" thing are probably viable, and spirits to tell them where person X is, sure - but connecting those two ideas together would be hard. Tillie has her raven-spirit gift? That might be useful to track around the city if things happen next month.
Lost Prophets want to try and find out if the corpse is the guy living rough in the car park and plan to chat to Cossack about him. Back to the Sept they go and find Cossack dozing in a dry spot. Cossack does know where they are talking about and says that there's a guy who sleeps there and works the car park a bit. His name is Terry, but Cossack doesn't have a surname. Plus Terry doesn't go far, and won't touch dirt often, making it hard to questing stone him, even if they had his name. If its not him in the fire, he will probably come back to the car park?
The pack use their usual tactics to steal the coroner's report. The attack was at about 2am. The person murdered was a male in their early 30s - its a John Doe at this point. They were attacked with "knives" that match the cases at the other Full Moon Killer killings. Police seem to think its a guy with a hatchett, except there no sign of a weapon left in the wounds. A serial killer, who is normal until the day. The body was extremely badly burned, inconsistent with petrol fires on rainy days, inconsistent with the fire damage at a distance, but consistent with the fire damage right near the body. There's no strong conclusions drawn, just "this is still weird. Some kind... of .... microwave gun?"
The age and such is not a good match with the description that Cossack gave them, but it might be Terry - in his 20s, but if he's been living rough, he might seem older.
On their return, they swap info with Cossack - he says that a couple of people think they saw Terry down near the aquarium, under the bridge on Flinders St, earlier this morning. But when they approached him, he booked it.
They head down there and have a sniff about, and think that Terry was here... but its hard to say when. Was it earlier today or Saturday? Kasumi thinks... Sunday. But she can't follow him because its really wet and the rain has got rid of all the scent.
The pack head to the alley and go to try and look there, but its blocked and manned by a couple of uniforms, lurking in ponchos. The pack get the word out that they are looking for Terry. In a good way.
Monday afternoon they get word back by the grapevine that he's been hanging out at a bunch of houses in between Sunshine and Footscray. They get a rough address and head out there to check it out, which they do from the Umbra. Its on Sunshine road, past Tottenham, jammed between two industrial estates. There are about 6 houses in varying states of disrepair. The pack are deeply suspicious of the fact its across the road from the railway line given history of Dancers and others starting near the road.
The houses are oddly more real in the Umbra than the realm, where a couple of them have been pulled down, garages have been removed, porches partly demolished. In the Umbra they are fairly filled in, but there are patches that are showing Weaver ephemera through gaps in their structure. Finn peeks the peekiest peek while the others guide him around. They find the owner of the scent they associate with Terry, whose name appears to be Terry. There are a fair number of permanent scents here, and a selection of more ephemeral ones, so it seems like the permanent squatters have a lot of visitors . Finn rules out any supernatural influence on any of the people or houses that are here right now.
Terry is in his late 20s or early 30s, with blondish curled hair. He's not terribly heaviset or skinny. He has a some sort of pronounced twitch in his right shoulder or neck - Finn's not sure if its drugs, lack of drugs or something inherent to Terry. He's chatting to a guy called Martin - there are another 8 people here scattered over the 6 houses. ("Big Palaentology is just covering it up!")
The pack contemplate how to approach him for information. In the end, they send Sinead and Will in as the scruffiest looking, and they wander up and knock the on the door. They are being observed from the houses as they walk closer. Finn mindspeaks the two pack members in the realm so he can report if anyone runs out the back door.
The guy that was speaking to Terry opens the door (by lifting it out the way, its not attached properly). He's a bit suspicious of them and takes a message back to Terry about some girl called Sinead who owes Terry money. Martin comes back and says "think you got the wrong Terry" and Will says "Terry who was sleeping at Warburton Lane" and Sinead says "We're friends of Cossack". Martin goes back and conveys this to Terry ("Do they look like cops? " "he might be, she's not") and Terry decides to see what's going on.
Martin lurks in the background while they talk to Terry. (Terry's twitch gets more pronounced while he's talking to them, and Sinead thinks its not drug related - its all one muscle). They say that they're looking into what happened Saturday night for Cossack, and understand that he might have been there. Terry says they said something about money, and they wave a $50 at him. Sinead asks if he wants to come for a walk and talk, but Terry doesn't seem to trust them that much.
Terry says he had his head down and didn't see much. There was a guy who came up the lane earlier, and he was just sitting on the ledge there - its not good, but its out the rain if its not hard. Then another guy came up, he was talkin' to himself and stuff. He didn't sound good, so Terry kept his head down. The guy was muttering, and then talking out loud. Sinead asks if he was talking to himself, and Terry says more like he was talking to a group of people. And he sounded a bit like a priest - he said "holy" a few times, and some other priest stuff that he doesn't really remember. Then there was some yellin' and then fire, and so Terry got out. He'd read the news and stuff and since then he's heard the guy got chopped up and on fire. His mate thinks the cops are in on it, and they're doing it and that's why the guy hasn't been caught. He went to go back and there were still cops there and so he didn't wanna go back. (Will doesn't think he's told any lies, or Truth of Gaia doesn't work)
The two garou quiz him a bit on anything weird he might remember, just in case. Terry thinks the second guy was dressed as if he was living a bit rough too, like trakkies and sneakers and a beanie maybe. He thinks that there was a weird noise for a bit, like a cat or something? He can't reproduce it, but it was more like a really mad cat than a dog. He might have said 'sacred' too, once or something. Terry's spot is inside, so unless he needs to, he's not going to stick his head up. Terry reiterates that he was speaking like a teacher or something like that.
Terry asks if they can go and check to see if the cops are gone and come back and tell him? Sinead says she can do that, its not far.
The pack consider this back at the Sept with Graeme. Maybe they need to look in churches for a preacher that is the Dancer? Does it eliminate the mages are controlling the Dancer? Well, no if they are catholic from Brazil or something, then they might be into that sort of thing. Maybe the mages are watching what he does? should they keep an eye on Terry, will the mages and Dancers try and kill him? Its unclear if they missed he was there. Maybe the killing itself isn't just ritualistic but an actual ritual? Maybe Terry heard him doing a ritual? Its been going for ages tho, the 'ritual numbers' tend to be lower - you know, maybe up to 13. Oh. Graeme has the thought that maybe its not a special number he's trying for, but that the ritual is really hard to get right? Someone raises the possibility that its been multiple different people doing it, because the situation keeps changing over time?
The counter argument to "doing a ritual" is that its usually conducted in the Garou tongue, and they've seen him other times and he wasn't talking out loud, but standing still and staring at the moon. Maybe its mind control by mages slowing driving him insane? Graeme isn't sold that this Dancer is being kept seperate form other dancers - all the hard to sniff out stuff says talens or something being used and that takes some level of planning and skills. Maybe not control, maybe its an alliance? Perhaps the underworld touching mages are using the ghosts of people that the Dancers are killing? Is the fire just a side effect and the spray petrol away to make that a little less notice? Or maybe desecrating corpses stops spirits from moving on or something? But then the pack would sense magic. oh wait, they are, but they'd associated it with the fire. Hmm. Lost Prophets are such cheery folks to have around. Anyhow, its more information for them, maybe it'll lead somewhere.
Ian, who came in and had been listening, says that speaking of flying dickheads, they were all talking about the house the other night, and the pack should go sort out the physical locks, just in case that the teenagers had copies made. And they can do some theurge shit to have something else guarding it in case someone approaches. But other than that, don't touch the real estate guy at the moment - they'll do some research to the house for a while, and then mess with him, and then see if that causes mages to show up.
About 1030am, Kasumi's phone tells her she has an appointment with Ion Apostolovna. As she didn't book, or confirm that, she gets a bit nervous and does some sanity checking. Tillie offers to come, but Kasumi is happy with people knowing where she is. ("keys stuck in the baby again?").
Kasumi puts on a fresh blouse and trams there. She tunnels through several layers of personal assistants and waits patiently. Ion comes in 5 minutes later, on his phone, speaking a language she does not understand. He points at Kasumi and into his office. ("Rude and late and rude"). He finishes his conversation and very shortly speaks to Kasumi. ("Its like the ultimate in hands-free, you just speak through your teeth - " "I always speak through my teeth. That's basically how the whole thing is set up." "Shut up". "I can also talk through my arse")
He takes out a briefcase and hands her a cheque for $25000. "You will write up a quote for a job for this company - " he hands her some information printed out - "and then you will pay this gentlemen " - he hands her some other information - "minus your expenses. I need this done by tomorrow." Kasumi stares at him for a moment. "Is there anything else?" "um, no, I'll do my best."
Kasumi heads home contemplating exactly how she's going to help launder this money. She starts sketching out how she quoted for help upgrading their intranet, and how much her cut will be. In the end she plans for taking $5000 and paying him $20000.
Will goes to the house to check out what locks he needs to change. When he arrives, the back door is open, swinging in the wind. He steps inside and concentrates - he cannot hear or feel anyone moving inside the house, so he cautiously moves into the house. He finds the trap down has been forced from within, rather than released from without. He slides down the ladder a bit and confirms the gargoyle is gone. Will switches to lupus and has a sniff about. He cannot find any new scents of people inside the house, but he can tell that the back door has been open for a few days. He can track the gargoyle by the lingering smell associated with the cellar.
The gargoyle has headed straight out the back door. Will calls Tillie and gives her a heads up. He suggests it left not long after they did. She asks Will to go hunting for where it might have gone if its obvious. In the meantime, she'll speak to Emma and tell the caern elders that Will lost the gargoyle.
The scent leads out of the house and kinda south east, away from the road. It goes in bursts as if the gargoyle was hop-gliding, and not in a totally straight line. It eventually leads Will to a copse of trees, where he can also smell Dave, Poz and Misha. The scents seem to be mingled and about the same age - maybe Saturday night or Sunday? ("Goddamit Posworth!")
Tillie finds Emma interacting with spirits and thanking them for help. Tillie waits patiently until she's free. Emma doesn't seem too surprised at the news, and is more interested in whether it ruined the house. She tells Tillie to sort it out, and in the meantime she's going to check the other balls at her house.
Tillie brings Finn and Sinead and they all meet up at Dave's house. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jil0WCh_UoQ) ("it'd be much easier to ride with your lifeless body. I'm just saying"). They peek around Dave's house and find that he's not there. ("You would lose renown if you dedicated a motorcycle." "I wouldn't" "Good, you can dedicate my motor cycle"). ("no you've gotta face north while breastfeeding or it won't work"). Sinead does a Questing Stone and find that he's... about 200km south east. Maybe near Wilson's promontory or something? The pack drive to Leongatha and do more questing stoning. The trail leads them to the sunny resort town of Cape Paterson, which is functionally deserted in August. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullockornis).
They cruise around the town for a few mins - there's one shop, a lot of empty houses that are rented holiday houses. The foreshore is mostly ti-tree, with caravan park stretching for some length. Will is briefly distracted by the nearby surf beaches. The pack decide to go into the Umbra and peek back.
Questing Stone had suggested Dave was in the caravan park area, so they try there first. Sandy tracks wind through the ti-tree, which stretches up to make almost tunnels of canopy. Little niches are there for tents or caravans. There's only really one tent in the entire area, and that is indeed where Dave is (just Dave, not the others). The pack scan for the gargoyle and find it in the trees, laying low. Dave is in an old-style tent (poles, ropes and pegs) and laying on his blow up mattress getting mildly stoned. He's been here for a day or two in their estimation ("the royal 'your'" "if we become a republic, can we not use that any more? Is it the republican 'your'?" "the plebian 'us'" "the common 'youse'" "the proletariat 'we'")
Despite some feeling that this implies Dave planned this, Kasumi suggests a viable scenario where they just went to look, the gargoyle came to them and they panicked ("you should run man! just run!").
The pack contemplate what to do - its nearly dark, and the sites aren't powered, so there's limited amount of light around. They've got lots of options for torturing Dave and they do love to torture the mundanes with all their righteous magic powers. The only real concern is the gargoyle being in the tree.
("They love their culture like Tool fans love Tool") Shortly after dark, Dave starts getting a backpack together, and grabs his shoes. He zips up the tent and calls the gargoyle down. Dave gives it instructions - follow him, but stay out away from the road so no one can see you. Dave then heads out of the caravan park, and onto the main road. The pack trail along and see him trying to hitch a lift (without any success at this stage). The gargoyle is out in the fields in the dark, glide hopping along.
The pack laugh and Will goes back to get their murder-van. (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Toyota_Land_Cruiser_70_003.JPG?1473675458948) ("I think that given our line of work we should probably get our car comprehensively insured."). He drives back, and sees Dave still hitching, and pulls up. Dave completely fails to identify Will or anyone in the back (Finn is in lupus), and asks if they are going into Wonthaggi. "Where are we going Dave?" Dave misses that he's not said his name (bit stoned) and gives a bit of a shpiel about wanting food from Wonthaggi. Will asks "Why did you go back to the house Dave?" Dave looks briefly puzzled, then looks at Will and the people in the back and swears. They're doing 100km/hr, he's not really able to just leap out. "Just tell us what happened Dave. I'm sure we'll understand".
Dave says that he didn't go to the house, it just came to him! Sinead says houses don't move and Dave seems confused. "Walk us through it Dave" "I was hanging out with Poz and Misha, and it just came back, a'right?" "Where were yuo hanging out?" "Fuck. We went to see if you'd gone. We'd left a bunch of our stuff there, arigght?"
People glancing out the back spot the gargoyle flying across the fields and trying to catch them, but they are going too fast, and it falls behind. ("you upgraded, now you look like drug donkeys." "Drug ass"). "You understand we cannot leave you with it. Its dangerous. You shouldn't mess around with demonic powers". ("if I broke 3 fingers, then its torture.") "So, what we're going to do, Dave, is it take it back off you" "What if it comes back?" "We'll make sure it does not." Tillie says "Dave. I will break all of your fingers if you do not pay attention". Will continues "But now, you owe us, Dave. If you really wanted nothing to with this, you can your chance to stay away. But now you do what we say".
They pull off the highway onto another smaller road, and drive a kilometer or two out away from the main road. They pull over and tell Dave to call for it. A few minutes go past, and the pack can sense it coming, though they can't see it in the grey night (cloudy). When it arrives, Dave emphasises that it should stay with these people and do what they tell it. They tell it to crouch down in the field. Tillie tells Dave to get in the car. He's quite tense until she turns around, and drives him back to the highway. On the way he becomes more tense again, as she informs Dave in no uncertatin terms that if he fucks up again, she'll burn down his house with his family in it.
The pack run over their options with the gargoyle. While there was talk about waiting and seeing if someone turns up that could deal or communicate with it, that was based on it behaving itself. Between this demonstration of self-determination and the worry that the mages and the Dancer are doing some sort of ritual, and the gargoyle might act as a spy, the pack think its time to ace this one.
Lost Prophets do a quick call and update Emma. She's ok with their plan of just smash it. At worst they have the other two balls if they need to investigate further. Getting rid of the veil breach now seems like a good idea.
They pull some fencing apart and wrap it in wire - it seems unaware of what they are doing in any sort of survival instinct way. They wrap up its wings and limbs, then change to Crinos, using their claws to smash the stone creature to pieces. It struggles as they break it to pieces. It seems to flake off in layers, as if its shells over shells all the way in. It doesnt move like muscle, but it seems to have similar sorts of properties. It starts to disintergrate into brittle pieces.
The pack head back to Melbourne, throwing another bit out every few kms. They totally don't lob one at Dave as they go past.
Lost Prophets brain dump at Elders and get some sense of closure. Tillie thinks that one on one the gargoyles might be a problem, but in a group they should be able to take them. Though the flying thing might be a problemWill learns Questing Stone. The others get on with their lives. ("Alright, i'm going to rule that crinos do have external genitalia so that you can pee on people. Can we move on now?")
Cossack finds Tillie and asks for her to find a contact of his, a Yesif Petrou. Tillie checks that he's not a werewolf or a kinfolk, and Cossack says that he's a fence ("... undetr the full moon, he turns into a fence. Now I see a fence with a moustache"). Cossack was asking him for information that the sept might find is related to Dancers or Mages. Tillie asks why he isn't just using a Questing Stone rite, and Cossack says that given the topics he was looking into, there's some small danger that it might be something that could be reacted against - he'd like them to go and visit his house first and then make a call about doing the ritual from there.
Tillie calls the troops and they do a driveby of the house in Yarraville. Its a sleepy little street with fairly skinny blocks and old weatherboard houses. Petrou's house has had a 2m high brick wall added to the front, and a big metal gate, but it otherwise looks like most of the other places. There's no standout sense of wyrm, but the weaver seems strong here, a possibility that is backed up by the high gauntlet. The pack drive off and find somewhere to step a few kilometers away.
In the umbra, the neighbourhood is maybe 100 years old, and its been impressed onto the spiritual world fairly firmly. Most of the houses exist, though they're not detailed. They get to Petrou's house - in the Umbra, the fence is not there ... the front wall is not there, nor is the garage but its otherwise the same. Sinead is able to ignore the gauntlet and peek well, and the others guide her around. There's no signs of swirly mage stuff on the walls, which is good. They go in.
The front door opens into a lounge room. Sinead can see that there's some signs of a struggle in the lounge, It doesn't look like someone was searching for something, so not that its been turned over. Sinead changes to lupus to get an idea of who might have been here. She can smell one prevalent male human smell, and three very light smells, also probably male. There's a dog smell... but she thinks its prevalant and probably Petrou's, rather than being anything like a sign there's a Dancer been here.
They cruise through in the Umbra. The house has three bedrooms, but Petrou appears to live alone. There is indeed a dog out the back, tied up - they leave that for Finn. One bedroom is a main room with a bed, and it has signs of a fight, probably. The second bedroom appears to have had doors cut into the garage, which is weird. The third one is full of unopened boxes of quality electronics. The back of the house is a kitchen (including dog food) with a back door that is open - there's signs it has been forced open.
Figuring there's no one here, the pack step out of the spiritual world and into the physical. Tillie checks the kitchen, and there's some mouldy bread and milk on the turn - she'd guess Petrou's been out for at least 5 days. Sinead finds thr three new scents start at the back door and head straight enough to the bedroom. Finn grabs some dog food and his gifts to speak to the dog. It immediately starts to bark at him, but kind of backs off/wags tail/snarls when it sees the food. Its clearly very hungry. He manages to quell its aggression and give it food and water. It eats too much while giving Finn the eye, then throws up. Then eats that too. Eventually its willing to talk to its new friend.
"Where is master?" "Not here"
"Where did he go?" *blank dog look*
"When? " "ummm. hungry, thirsty?" That appaears to be how it
conceptualises time passing
"Other people" "yes?" "When?" ".. hungry, thirsty. Three not him!
Told! HEY HEY HEY NO NO NO! Kicked. Bit! Kicked again."
"Time?" "um... before sun"
Finn agrees they can walk, and the dog runs to the back corner of
the fence, and says "here here here!" There's a back gate, padlocked
from the inside, but it looks like the three that came in have piled
some junk on the otherside of the fence (sort of lane way) and then
climbed (not flown) over the fence. The pack trace the scent back
from there and find it goes to a curb - probably people getting
out of a car and sneaking up this way. Out the front, the scents
go out the front door and to the driveway - another car? Tillie
finds a padlock for the front door on the ground, with a bunch of
keys still in the lock.
They sense unnatural while gving the place a good look over - there's not really major amounts of any supernatural influence here tho. They do find that Petrou has a nifty tv and associated bits. He has a bookshelf, mostly with non-fiction stuff on it, like motorbike repair and world war II history. Kasumi finds his mobile phone tangled up with sheets and bedclothes while Tillie looking through evey pair of pants he has in a wardrobe. Its flat or at least won't turn on. His wallet is kicked under a set of drawers - it has a modicum of cash and some id. She also finds a ledger book... except that either she's forgotten to read English, or this is gibberish. No, its gibberish - maybe its in code. Finn detemines its not caesar cypher, which is about the extent of his cryptographic knowledge. Kasumi says she can put some of it into tools online and see if its breakable. ("Let's awaken the ledger" "Let's not")
And now a moral quandry. What to do with the dog. ("The sept has a mascot" "A totem is not a mascot!") They eventually decide to take him to Kasumi & Sinead's house after getting its name ("gruf?") and deciding it was trying to say Gus.
Tillie figures she's ok with Questing Stoning him at this point. She gets Will to do it. Petrou is somewhere like 15kms north, northwest. They go up that way and do another ritual, and Will does very well. He finds that the trail leads toward the long term carpark at the airport. Ah. Things are not looking well for Petrou. They drive into the long term car park and are driving past when Will says "that one." The pack stop, get out and walk to the red corolla and pop the boot. Oh yep, that's a body in there. Sinead thinks he was beaten to death with long sticks of some sort. Do they call the police? Kasumi casually looks around and say "no, because there are cameras up there".
The garou sigh and Sinead and Will work out how to hotwire the car. When they get to the gate they find they don't have a ticket, and have to pay the maximum fee. Despite the thoughts of just driving through the gate. ("to the sept!" "no! " "why not?" "there's no parking"). They drive toward Airport West and make a call, getting Graeme. Tillie says they have good news and bad news. What's the good news? We found him. Huzzah. p[beep beep]
Tillie rings back and tells Graeme he's an idiot. Graeme blames it on Ian. They've had to steal a car with a dead Petrou in it to get it away. Graeme says that they should take the car to an address in Whittlesea. They smell the car before continuing to drive it - there's two scents, one of which matches one of the intruders at Petrou's, but an older more thoroughly imbued female sense. Someone has emptied the glovebox as well - there's nothing particularly identifably in the car.
Cossack calls on the way and says that he wants to be sure that Petrou was actually beaten to death and there's nothing more concerning. They get to the house in Whittlesea, its an empty house with a double garage. They drive the car inside and pop the boot. There's no signs of anything ritual, or spiritual or anything (or anything missing in a similar way) - Petrou is wearing pyjamas and has been beaten to death, mostly with bats of some sort (or garden stakes?)
They ring Cossack and give him the lowdown. He suggests that they leave the car and the body and the sept will deal with it. They should come to the Sept and talk to him further. This they now do.
Cossack meets them and says that while it looks mundane, given what he was looking for for Cossack, he'd like them to follow up a bit. Will says that given it shows some signs of being crime related, are they going to stand on the toes of the other sept? Cossack says he doesn't want them to wreak revenge, just confirm it was a normal killing - start with "why now?" at least. He says that Hidden Green have been oddly non-responsive to questions and such in the last two weeks. He isn't sure why.
Figuring this is a bit concerning, or at least might be relevant, Tillie calls Tanya. The phone rings for a while, and then Tanya answers it a bit cautiously. Tillie asks if she wants a drink, and Tanya wants to know if its an official drink. No. In that case, she arranges to catch up with Tillie at a gig that night on Swanston St. ("I'll woo her yet").
Kasumi takes the book and transcribes a few pages, then tries to get the internet to decode it. Six hours later she's installed java and a bunch of libraries and programs, and just come to the conclusion that there's either not enough text, or there's some sort of second order maths going on to skew the statistical pattern of letters.
Tillie goes and waits in the queue, revelling in the novelty of people just not getting out of her way. She eventually gets in and just finds Tanya at the bar, minding a spare seat in the crowded club. Tillie buys her a drink and broaches the topic. Tanya is a bit evasive in a weird way. She says things are complicated. Elaine is no longer a pack leader - Tony Cho Mi challenged and won, so he's now the pack leader of The Alternative. Tillie gives Tanya the eye - she's not getting vibes of 'shut up' or being blocked out, despite the evasiveness. She asks about Ion and Irena and Tanya says that its gone nuclear. Something happened, and they've gone to war. Tillie asks if she should mention it to Cossack? Tanya says its sept business really. But it wouldn't hurt for him to know why there's limited communication. They talk about Kasumi and the work she did for Ion - Tanya is surprised and asks what? Tillie says business nerd things, and Tanya says that sounds like its the stuff she was doing for the sept, mostly for William. Tanya says it hasn't come to blows, but that the two Shadowlords are fucking each other's shit up hard core. They switch to talking about the guys on stage - Tanya's record album asked her to come listen to them, she's not thrilled.
Tillie finds Cossack and gives him the low down. Cossack says that things look mundane, but he'd still like them to check it out. He's not terribly surprised that its come to a head - there's been a certain amount of escalation in violence in the last fortnight, it must have been that. Cossack suggests things might be weird if Irena wins - just different really, because Ion has been a sept elder for a long time.
Then Tillie summons the troops to Sinead's house. ("ARF ARF ARF" "hi Gus") She gives them the low down, and Will suggests that maybe the Ion/Irena thing might be what happened to Petrou. As Cossack still wants them to check things out, the pack consider their options short circuiting the whole process of working out what's in the ledger by spirits - epiphlings? Owls or ravens both have an association with languages, or at least understanding? Weaver spirits to decode it? Computer or something? Chimera? Some of these spirits might be able to just pull the meaning out of things without decoding it, others might be able to reverse the encoding.
Thinking about it, the book is hand written. Either it has to be a simple code or, I dunno, maybe he has an enigma machine? Will suggests going to some 3rd year maths students and offering a combination of money and violence to get it done. Maybe they could awaken the journal? They're really not sure what might happen - the only spiritual association is its meant to keep its secrets, it might actually get harder to break the code at that point
("Summoning a spirit of tattling, that was your first mistake". "We'll summon an ephiphlings of epiphlings" ) They decide to dedicate a bunch of chiminage, and the ledger, and summon an avatar of Chimera ("we're basically shouting 'help' into the Umbra"). Sinead spends 4 hours engaged in the ritual. About half way through, she gets a flash of insight - she really doesn't care about how its encrypted, she wants to know what the meaning of the book is. This gives her a way to shift her summoning, calling more precisely to a specific type of spirit.
Will hits himself in the head while they are waiting. He says that he's not sure but he thinks that Petrou's books were about WWII and he thinks that maybe one of them was about codes. The pack groan but decide that they're already committed to this path for the moment.
When the Chimera spirit arrives, it spins a shroud of Umbral mists up, and appears as lights behind the fogs, with multiple female voices when it communicates. However, it seems extremely well inclined toward them. ("We're demoting you to kinfolk" "Come at me,scrub lord, I'm ripped"). The pack thank the spirit for coming and explain their conundrum. The spirit agrees to help without further payment.
Kasumi dedicated the book, and she finds that she can suddenly comprehend the contents of the book. It doesn't translate the words, its just that she can understand it. She finds that as expected most of the content is names - she can get a sense of how often some of the people are repeated. There's no I. Apostolovna and no I. Sliviak. She reads it out and the others try and remember it and or transcribe it.
Of note - the last entry is for an I. Clarke and its for $10,000, which is a lot compared to the other amounts. There are some other I. Clarke entires, and some other Clarke's. There's no notes for that entry, but there are for many of the others ('tv', 'stereo', etc). Hits? Drugs? There's no dates associated with any of them. There's a few others without notes too - two Clarke's, one Marriott, one Thomson. These sums are larger than the average too - most entries are sub $5000. They suspect from the numbers of things that he's maybe a middleman - he takes the stuff that has been stolen en masse and sells it to people who sell it to a guy in a pub. Maybe he was a snitch, and that money is for grassing on people?
They decide to start up his phone, but subtool like. Kasumi pries out the sim card and puts it in a metal box to turn it on. They find that he has a small number of texts in the phone. Not all of them are in the contacts on his phone (just phone numbers). None of them are casual (vs business), and not all of them are in English; a couple are in Czech. The earliest messages are from Friday (he seems to clear them out a lot), and the last are from Monday pm - that seems to be when the power ran out. There are 10 or so from Monday, 3 or 4 from any given number and they follow a script roughly "I'm here, where are you" "Seriously where are you" "Fuck this, I'm going". Only one stands out in all this, from a number not in the phone - "Watch your arse", sent on Saturday morning. The "where are you" messages start Monday morning too, possibly helping confirm when he was killed.
They look through other bits of the phone. He does have contacts in it, in short form, and it does match up to what they got from the ledger to some degree - IC might be Ian Clarke, for instance, but its not all of the names in the ledger. There are a limited amount of images stored on the phone - a couple within a pub, one of a band at a pub, some random photos of things that maybe he thought was interesting. There's one of another person going "ehhh!" with a beer, a younger guy maybe 30.
They decide to put the sim back in at a McDonalds in Port Melbourne somewhere. More messages arrive, in the same vein as the ones from Monday - where are you, where's my stuff, fuck you.
The pack decide to head back to Petrou's and see if they can't pick up anything else. They step out from the Umbra and head for the books. Petrou has only one small shelf of books - there's some motorcycle care and attention books, and the WWII stuff that Will remembered, a dictionary and some random individual books, plus some older fiction. Will looks at the code book he remembered seeing, and it has a lot of detail about different codes (big section about the Enigma machine). He flicks through it for marked pages to help them work out about the encryption and it looks pretty well read, so nothing stands out. He glances through the other books and finds that a copy of Dinner at the Homesick Resteraunt has weirdly had words underlined in it to about 2/3 of the way through. They have been underlined individually, possibly in small batches judging by the different pen colours. He shows it to the others and they think its probably relevant but odd. Another of the 5 or so fiction books has underlining all the way through. It confuses and enrages them.
They take the chance to sniff about carefully. He doesn't really have any photos in frames or anything similar in the way of knickknacks. For a person who shifts high end electronics, he doesn't have a kitted out house either - he's got a tv and a dvd player, but they are just every day items. Other than that, he has a turn table and some vinyl records - everything else is pretty old school. There's nothing that leaps out as a hobby thing either - no sports equipment, some tools in the garage, but nothing major.
Kasumi thinks to check the ceiling (vs their usual paranoid about finding basements full of mage bodies) and finds that Petrou has a set of eight mismatched boxes stored up there. They are sealed up, and very light. With a certain amount of trepedidation she opens one and finds that its empty. She checks another and its also empty. They don't smell of anything other than Petrou and dust. He would have had to have sealed up the biggest one up here, otherwise it wouldn't fit through the roof door. The pack is frankly a bit baffled. They try putting stuff into the boxes and sealing them up, but nothing magical happens. Sense unnatural also doesn't really show anything. Finn asks if maybe he keeps all his bad thoughts and nightmares in there. ("Good work, Pandora")
Tillie starts to wonder if this guy isn't right. Sinead stares around the house and wonders out loud if he's not a bit odd as well - he appears to have no friends and no hobbies and not care, some very precise interests about motorcycles and world war II and has hand-encoded a ledger. Is he a bit rain-man-like? Kasumi says "lets go"
Due to GM screwup, players do some research online and try and figure out who some of these surnames they have. They quickly find some references to Ian Clarke, and a Clarke family, especially in context of one of the other names, Marriott. Because of the recent increase in violent crime associated with "known underworld figure", Ian, Adrian and Scott Clarke, they are able to find a photo and some other basic information. Stephen Marriott appears to lead a family in a sort of underworld rivalry with the Clarkes.
They also do some reverse lookups on some of the names and that lets them find addresses fo some too - they seem to be scattered across Melbourne. The pack toy with calling the "watch your arse" number but decide to hold that card in reserve.
They decide to check out the Clarke's. They find an address and do the normal "drive past and check" - except that its in a court, so they park nearby and Umbra back instead. Its in Bentleigh, in an area that is being demolished-and-rebuilt, with lots of McMansions. Its on a court with about 10 houses, about 4 of which are grotesque bloated rectangle blocks.
In the Umbra, there is a large amount of weaver spiders as you'd expect of an area under construction. However, they are a bit messed up - extra limbs, laying the same amount of ephemera down in the same spot again and again, weaver stuff all bent out of shape. Sensing suggests a strong wyrm sense - not corruption, but a large spread of a persistent taint. Peeking suggests that it comes from just that house... the one they are coming to look at, of course.
The pack move cautiously through all the mishapen weaver goo and the weird spiders. Inside is quite, quite tacky. Interior design by price; nothing really coherently put together, just bought on the strength of its material value. There's a security system, but no murder basement. There are more people here than would fit comfortably - many of whom are sitting awkwardly, near doors. They look like guards. There is also Ian and Scott Clarke and another Clarke that is presumably Adrian, and Margaret Clarke, Ian's wife.
The garou listen in - there are discussions about various illegal activities; protection money, gambling, some drugs maybe? Not so much "whack a guy" as "threaten or hurt them." They are talking about reacting to someone else's stuff, and the older Clarke says "that prick Marriott" at one point, to his wife saying "language!" loudly
Tillie gives some thought to just stepping out and exploding everyone in the building, but they resist the urge. They speculate about the actual connection between Petrou and the Clarkes. Petrou was being paid by these guys... a large lump sum too, but with no notes as to what it might have been for. Drugs? Money laundering? ("Its just what he charges to see his boxes)
There is some talk about cleansing to get rid of all the wyrmness at the Clarke house, but also some worry that it'll just come back. The major worry is that the spiders are sucking up wyrm ephemera and making weaver stuff out of it, and that's why everything is so messed up.
For the moment they decide to go to the Marriotts and see what they can see there. To Balwyn! They cruise past the house - its part of an area of 1 acre blocks, lots of high hedges, tennis courts, big inground pools and automatic fences. Its an older area - it might have been a "buy your country estate" sort of edge of Melbourne development The Marriot house has a fence at the front, a big looped driveway leading to a large 2 storey house. There's lots of large trees on the block, and a distinct wyrm taint even from the car. Tillie really doesn't like the look of the block - there's a shadow over the whole area, including the house. Peeking suggests that its very dark here in the Umbra - the ragabash moon doesn't help, but its hard to see.
The pack drive off a distance and hop it back in the Umbra. Finn peeks before they get right onto the Marriott 'estate'. In the Umbra, the property is indeed very shadowed - the big trees loom in the back yard; the house appears in the Umbra, and there's something not right about it. Without sense wyrm they might overlooked the shadowy corners tho - its not like walking into mordor. Sense wyrm says that its not a fomori barracks, but it does fall at the shitty end of normal people behaviour. ("This a job for Becc 'Dry Hands' Brandt" "This may not be the hand job you need, but its the hand job that's here")
The house has a inground pool and seperate spa, and pool house. Finn can see that people have made up temporary beds in the pool house tho - reminiscant of the Clarke house too. Given the increase in violence, it looks like neither side is taking chances. The whole place has a slightly sticky sense, like a house that's been shut up for a winter of deep frying and laundry. Sense unnatural doesn't hint of anything other than this mundane wyrm influence. The house itself tho forbodes somewhat specifically - something in the roof is unpleasant.
They plan to head up that way while slowly investigating. Within the house there are also extra guards, as well as a small number of people getting a bit of a brief on the current activities. The person leading things is Steven Marriott, based on photos they found. The house is less decorated by price - it is more elegant than the Clarke house. The people who decorated here knew what they were doing, though it might have been twenty years ago. Finn complains that the pack is not paying as much attention to guiding him around as they might be and snaps at Sinead and Will. At least one of the other people in the group being briefed looks like a sibling to Steven. They are talking about the same sort of mid-level crime as at the Clarkes - its not world spanning mafia, doing hundred of kilos of cocaine and guns, but the people here clearly have people working for them too.
Will peeks to try and confirm that no one is Shadowlord kinfolk or anything. There's a guy that he can't seem to get a sense off and after a minute or so he suddenly realises that its a painting. Will twitches a bit as the rage rises, but its not Frenzy. ("apart from the guy with the dodgy brush strokes, they seem fine").
The pack head upstairs, half expecting to be got by banes, and so creeping about in glabro form. On the second floor, they find that all of the bedrooms are in use, with makeshift bedding on a couple of floors. There's one person upstairs at the moment, in a kind of guarding mode. Everyone seems to be on edge.
They find a pull-the-ladder down sort of access into the roof. Its not very solid, glabro is pushing it to ascend. Tillie senses and thinks there is something strongly wyrm up there. The pack is expecting to be grabbed as they stick their heads up, and are seriously on guard. Will smells and thinks he can smell violence and anger on the wind - a bad sweat smell ("its like a cross between a boxing ring and 15 year old's bedroom")
("how's being 30?" "I'm gunna die") Its dim up there, but they can see the ceiling is low, and steep, so its lower down at the edges. Will heads up first and stands at the top when something that appears to be made of rusted metal drops off the roof and attacks him with blades for hands. It stabs him pretty heavily. Tillie heads up the stairs, but seems another one uncloak under the edge of the roof edge - its a anty-centaur thing of blades. She half runs toward it and waits for it to engage her. ("I always take damage from things dropping onto my head" "maybe you need one of those helmets with spikes on it?" "I feel like you're mocking my german ancestry" "Maybe you need a bike helmet with cable ties to make them not go you?"). Kasumi runs up to help Will, but gets sliced from defensive blades.
Finn runs up and rips the bane off Will and mostly pins it to the wall. Will nearly bites him for kill stealing. Another monster scuttles across the attic and drops onto the stairs to face Sinead. She's not having any of that and smashes it hard. Kasumi decides Finn and Will have this in hand, and heads over to help Tillie. Finn decides to get a better pin and stuffs it, loosing the bane to attack again and nearly frenzying Will gets attacked more but wears it ("it stabs you in the existing holes") Tillie flips to crinos and punches the spirit so hard that it smashes through the roof and out into the garden. Kasumi shrugs and turns and heads back, leaping down the stairs and attacking the bane from behind. The pack continue to attack, but find themselves on edge more than is perhaps usual and fighting surges of rage. Finn smashes his opponent into pieces.
Tillie looks out the new window, and can sort of see where the bane went, though it is hard to see. She leaps out the gap after the spirit, adeptly slows her fall with the trees and gives chase. Will follows her out the window after checking Kasumi and Sinead are under control. Finn howls a bolstering howl enhanced with his gifts. Kasumi kicks the spirit further down off the stairs - it doesn't run over Sinead due to her sharp reflexes, and she slashes it as it goes past, smashing the spirit again and destroying it.
Tillie and Will head back and find Sinead doing a victory dance. Once its been established that everyone still has their own organs, the pack peek into the Realm. There are yet more camp beds here, set up between piles of trunks that appear to have been moved back out of the way for the time being. There's now way more beds than people here, which is a bit weird. Maybe there's been more people? In terms of supernatural influences, there's nothing more than a wyrm influence, possibly the banes that they just wiped out. Will smells and finds that two of the (three) smells match up to the fellows they smelled at Petrou's. Oh yeah, that guy. Will's in favour of grabbing one of the random guidos and severely Ridgewaying him to find out what's going on, he's a bit sick of trying to figure it out. Tillie says "not yet"
The sniff around - all the temporary beds have been used, but not every night or all the time. There's certainly people here guarding - some in the house, some in the copse out the back, and two in a tiny guard house at the front gate. It all looks temporary - reacting the circumstances. Maybe not everyone can be here all the time? The activity in the newspapers has certainly been violent and active? People guarding are certainly armed - hand guns for the most part but definitely loaded (not a consistent single gun amongt them all, they all have different sorts of ones). If they're wrecking Clarke stuff maybe they are worried about Clarke's coming here. They find a 3rd scent from Petrou's place here in one of the beds, and one of the owners of the scents from in the roof, which applies to a 'Lou' (probably Louis). Lou has a reasonable chunk of wyrm, but not a fomori. He certainly seems impressed with his phone, that he got as a freebie from a guy who was paying 'insurance' to Marriott people. (the pack have a moment of paranoia about whether the glasswalkers would give talen'd phones to gangsters so as to monitor them).
The pack go back to the attic and check for wyrm levels in the Umbra. Its diminished some, but the overall miasma is the same. Should they cleanse it? is it worth it, given the gangsters will just regenerate more essence? ("i heard she had a heart of gold. Turns out its just made of meat." "Again").
While they are waiting and figuing, the gates open, and a rather expensive car drives in. A woman in her 40s with a reasonable family similarity to Steven Marriott gets out and heads inside. She heads inside with little or no care taken of the goons. The conversation that ensues is her objecting to this stupidity of someone staying at her house, she's not getting involved in this stupid feud. Her and Steven argue, (her name appears to be Danielle) and eventually she agrees that someone can watch her house from the outside. (Dutch Schulz madness at the edge of death)
Thoughts about Petrou - is there anyone else who might know him and know anything? There's the guy in the phone camera photos, and whoever sms'd him with "watch your arse" ... though its not clear if that was a warning or a threat. You don't message someone you're going to attack though... unless the plan wasn't to kill him?
They consider talking to Cossack about this stuff - if Cossack was getting information from Petrou... maybe he dealt in information? Maybe that's what the unlabelled payments are for? ("you're like a wombat" "his poo is cubic?" "Why are we talking about womabt poo?" "Maybe its so they can build shit out of it, like lego" ). Ok, back to Cossack and see what else he knows ("no, not to ask him about wombat poo")
They're driving back next to the Exhibition Gardens when suddenly a hispo garou runs out of the tiny streets on one side, right across in front of them and across the gardens. Cars heading the other way slam on the brakes, and there is some colliding. Tillie maintains control. ("can we drive after it?" "no, well, yes, but you will attract attention"). While the others leap out and give chase, Kasumi calls Graeme and says there's a hispo running wild across the Exhibition Gardens . He asks if its them and they are covering their ass.
The others try and track the hispo across the landscape; Finn has this in hand, he knows the signs. He's leading them along straight after the garou, but its faster than them, and its getting away. Kasumi decides to take her chances - she uses her ragabash gifts in a shadow, and spends a rage to flip to lupus. ("Image of you ripping your clothes off and running around screaming while kasumi changes form in the background). The mystery garou is heading for populated roads. Kasumi sniffs the scent - female, probably homid... no one she knows. ("if we can catch her, can we fight her in homid?" "Fight? yes. Win? Oh god no."). Kasumi sprints off to chase her pack. Will tries to use his Halt the Coward's flight gift but he can't get a good lock on the fleeing garou. ("Now all sing! MY POWERS DONT WORK LIKE THAAAAT").
The hispo runs out onto roads, and car brakes screech, followed by a metal on metal smash. When the pack arrive, there's no naked chick in the middle of the street, or signs of screaming further down the road. There are signs of cars hitting one another and then hitting parked cars. Lots of people are getting out and looking shell shocked. The pack take a moment to try and see if they can see anything. Kasumi shoots past them and onto the road where the scent goes to - people in the cars start screaming, as if, perhaps, they had recently had some exposure to the Delerium. The scent goes into the middle of the road, gets a lot more intense and then seems to have no further travel. Man hole? Gauntlet! The homids grab Kasumi and drag her off back into the park as they hear the sound of approaching sirens.
Finn tries to peek, but no luck. Kasumi can't manage the horrible gauntlet, and neither can Finn. (antikythera machine) The pack take advantage of the bruhaha and find a dark corner to step sideways in. They somehow manage it through the gauntlet and then trot back to try and find the missing garou. There's no sign of her... maybe she's stuck in the gauntlet? They feel around trying to see if that's the case. There doesn't seem to be anyone. Gifts? if yes, that puts the lie to this being a Lost Cub, which is one of the suggestions they have at the moment. They retreat to the caern and brain dump at Graeme.
Graeme isn't too thrilled at the Veil breach, but says that they might be right on the Lost cub - or it could just be someone wandering through and making a mess of it. There's a chance its a Dancer, but the evidence says otherwise. Cossack isn't around, but Graeme says he'll pass on the message.
Hours later, Cossack shows up at Tillie's house. The pack braindump about their mystery werewolf, and compare notes. Tillie wonders if the garou wasn't one of the spectators, because they didn't check. doh. They braindump about Petrou and Marriotts and Clarkes. Cossack say that's its possible that once Cossack had got him to pass information along, he might have started selling info to other people too. He would like to know if it was a deliberate murder or not, but that might not be worth the effort. Cossack agrees that the fight between the two families is probably part of the Ion / Irena thing that Tanya said was going down. The pack suggest they could try and find that out by back channels - or even just by going and asking Ion or Irena directly. Cossack is happy for them to spend another day on it; don't kill anyone, but maybe chasing the amount of wyrm taint there could be good - maybe doing a cleansing just to try and take the edge of the escalation. Maybe the banes have triggered the whole thing? If Ion and Irena have been manipulated, that's bad. Its weird that the banes were in the ceiling - Will starts to suggest either of those garou might have deliberately put the banes in the roof and Cossack says that before he says anything out loud, he should have some absolutely rock solid proof before even starting the sentance. Especially about other whole tribes. ("William! he's not wrong about the Shadowlords"). Cossack says don't suggest that a whole tribe is willing to work with the wyrm to achieve their goals. "I just - " "No, just say 'yes'!" Kasumi thinks that its significant that the guys that killed - or at least captured - Petrou had the banes lingering about them. The pack plan to head out there at dawn to take advantage of the ritual significance of that moment. Also they can spy on the house in the meantime. ("Are you looking at pictures of nuns making out" "lose one experience" "its on 9gag" "... lose 2 experience").
Before dawn, the pack head out to the Marriotts and do a cleansing ritual - Sinead leads and Finn and Will help. ("we talking about quantity of sperm?" "no, penises".) Kasumi peeks and spots 4 guards scattered around the site.
The cleansing ritual rips through the wyrm taint laying over the area. In the Realm, no one really seems to react, which is a good thing, really. In the Umbra, the shadows clear from around the whole site and Tillie can see a number of bloated bat-like things hanging from trees. She whacks Kasumi to stop peeking and points it out to the others. There are 9 of them, and they are definitely banes. When they get closer the faces are more like ticks, and they don't have wings. The pack start contemplating how big a fight they are in for, but Sinead uses her gifts and finds that while they are full of essence but otherwise fairly week. The pack slice and dice the banes, coating the cleansed area in yet more wyrm goo. They can never win.
The pack decide the next most pressing thing is to find the "watch your arse" person and see who they are, and why they sent it. Is it a threat or a warning? Kasumi finds a payphone and makes a call. "Hi is this Michael?" "er, no sorry love, wrong number." Ok, so its a guy and he's Australian. That cuts it down to 10,000,000 possible people. And he's not named Michael. 9,900,150. They put the number into the reverse number lookups - "an australian optus number, probably a private number". Will encourages Kasumi to phone dive and just see.
Figuring that the guy is probably dodgy, they decide to try ringing again in some fashion, while some of the pack peek at the Marriotts - if he's not there, they can try the Clarkes. After some discussion, (questing stoning the phone, binding a spirit to his phone and questing stoning that, getting a spirit to just find his phone and tell them where it it, "communicable disease"), they opt to complicate this plan. They'll summon a weaver spirit, and get it to go the guy's phone - they'll connect it to Kasumi's phone by making a phone call, and get the spider to send back a GPS message.
Sinead summons a spirit based on Kasumi's descriptions. The spirit arrives in Kasumi's phone and messages. She negotiates with the spirit - it wants full access to her phone. She negotiates to 36 contiguous hours (not starting now, but within the next 3 days and when it starts she will have to leave it at home), but no credit card and she's removing her accounts and she'll give it one. And it can't call or text people. And no in-app purchases. Kasumi agrees and Sinead binds the spirit to the phone.
Back to the Realm, and its about midday. The spirit will need about a 10s gap to jump between phones, so Kasumi will need to keep the call going for a bit. She decides to filibuster him - she'll just start talking about some drama that almost everyone wants to know about. She starts talking the second he picks up the phone and not stop for long enough for him to even get a word in sideways, but somehow in such a way that he doesn't actually want to hang up on her. ("I'm making a dick pick out of dick picks, like one of those mosaics"). He's clearly confused and she's used enough names that he sort of knows enough people that could be who she's talking about. Eventually he manages to say "I'm sorry who is this?" and they sort out the apparent confusion, even getting his name as "Dan", not Dave.
Ten minutes later, Kasumi gets two GPS messages from "Dan's" phone and the third one was the spider indicating it has returned. ("you should ring him back and be all like 'OMG I just spoke to the wrong guy for 10 minutes'"). Checking the GPS coordinates, they are pretty sure that he's at the Marriott house. They actually decide that while of them peek, Kasumi will call and Tillie will watch from the Umbra. While waiting for Kasumi to call, Will spots the guy in Petrou's photo. He wasn't here yesterday and he wasn't one of the ones that killed Petrou. And someone calls him Dan while Will is following around. 10 minutes later, Kasumi calls and just starts talking again. Dan tries to say hello three times and then just hangs up. Then he notices his phone has sent her a couple of messages and he seems pretty puzzled.
The pack decide to Ridgeway Dan and probably one of the murderers. Maybe Louis. ("Kasumi could get naked and beat him with a golliwog"). There's some concern that of al the people, gangsters will be resistant to being Ridgeway'd.
Will is peeking for some time and starts to get the idea that not everyone here is familiar with one another. There seems to be some small cliques that do work together, but not overall. There's awkward small talk between them. The more senior appearing people do know one another - it looks like normally the mooks work with a particular crew, with particular skill set. Dan seems to have more education than the average there, and perhaps doesn't seem to get a lot of respect in subtle ways, from both mooks and the bosses. He's a bit of an outsider, more than being pushed into the pool for laughs.
More generally, he tries to get an idea of what the senior people are doing - they seem to be protecting their own assets and processes and thinking of ways to ruin the Clarkes. There's more protection being sent along with people. Mostly its planning - its not internatonal mob, its more along the lines of taking stuff from those people and being the next step in the chain.
While this is going on, the rest of the pack spiral out from the house trying to find where Dan parked his car. After an hour or so they find it, and manage to find a letter with his full name on it (Daniel McMurray). Now that they can questing stone him, they don't need to come up with some sort of plan to lurk in the back of his car and spring out as he drives off.
There's eventually a shift change of sorts about 5, and Dan heads. They opt to go and get dinner and not follow him. What is the worst thing that could happen. About 10ish they cruise past his house - the back one of two townhouses in a leaf street in Box Hill. There's no strong sense of wyrm or anything else from the street, so they park somewhere and cruise back in the Umbra.
Dan's house doesn't really exist in the Umbra, which means its piggy back time. So much for dignity. Its not big - it has two bedrooms, but the second one is full of stuff, and there's no regular scents of anyone else being here. Dan is watching tv and eating takeaway - Finn is accidentally self-racist and goes looking for booze, but doesn't really find any in the house. They check around for a gun and find a handgun in a gun case under his bed. He has a couple of fish in a small tank.
Despite threats of continuing Kasumi's diatribe about Samantha and Monica on the phone call this morning by having Kasumi appear in his bed and starting it again, the pack go for a more usual approach - everyone in glabro except Will and Will using his gifts on Dan. There's some talk of getting Kasumi to steal his gun with her gifts, but they opt to pass.
At three in the morning, they appear in his kitchen and then creep silently through his house. They pin him down and Will wakes him up. Dan doesn't really seem surprised that this might happen. They ask him about the Clarkes and the Marriotts... which seems to surprise Dan. Dan seems to be trying to hedge what he says a bit in case the wrong answer gets him stabbed - but he doesn't really know the wrong answers and so he's humming and harring. Dan says he doesn't know the details - there's always been competition but about 2 weeks ago, the Clarkes made a move and things went south. They spoiled a couple of deals. The only one he really knows is that they hijacked a truck coming from Adelaide of, um, stuff.
The pack ask about Petrou and why the Marriots did things to him. Dan gives up Louis as a guy that killed Petrou and says that he thinks it happened because Petrou told the Clarkes about the truck, and then Huey Nguyen told the Marriotts it was Petrou. They ask about Dan warning Petrou, and Dan says he didn't, suggeting Will's gifts are not working as well as possible. Will says he knows that's a lie and if there is another lie, there'll be trouble. Dan says that he did because Louis was talking up what they were going to do, and he didn't want to see Petrou get so fucked up. And then Louis and them went even further when they got him. It was like Louis and the others were egging each other on.
Will says they may come back and talk to him further - Dan says he doesn't know anything, he's just an accountant. The pack shake their head about his bad decisions. Figuring they have asked everything they must know, Will asks about the boxes. Dan doesn't know - he says they're not mates, he just didn't think they guy needed to get put in hospital for months.
The pack creep away into the kitchen, watching that Dan doesn't foollow them, and then step out into the gauntlet. They look back and peek, watching Dan lay in bed until he's sure they're gone, put lights on, check that doors are locked, and generally freak out. Another successful PTSD victim.
The pack catch up with Cossack and braindump. He agrees that it all sounds pretty mundane - it might be related to Ion and Irena but it doesn't sound like dancers did it. He's happy for them to look further if they want to, but he's not going to insist.
The pack decide to just check in on Huey Nguyen. Questing Stone shows that he's in Richmond, just off Victoria Parade. The pack cruise on past and do their usual check from the car for wyrm and supernatural and don't really pick up anything.
They park near the Yarra and head back. Sinead cannot seem to get her mojo happening, and the others struggle a bit. In the end, Kasumi can see well enough to see stuff. It seems to be some sort of clothes importer or wholesaler? There's people working here (mostly Vietnamese?) unpackaging and packaging things. There's a lingering sense of wyrm here higher than the average human background, and a couple of the individuals particularly worry them.
While they watch,two guys stagger in, bleeding and bruised. People mob them and seem to be trying to figure out what's going on, but as Kasumi cannot hear and doesn't speak Vietnamese anyway, she cannot follow it. One guy seems to be the boss, others deferring to him and he seems to be giving instructions. When people are sent back to what they are doing or sent out, this guy pulls out his phone and makes a call.
Kasumi uses her SpiderSong gift and can 'hear' what is being said on the phone despite not being able to hear the realm. The guy speaks English on the phone, not Vietnamese, and when the person on the end replies, they are also speaking English... and they are Ion.
Huey gives Ion a run down of what happened "A couple of her guys caught a couple of his guys and beat them up." Ion asks for details on location (next to North Richmond station) and says that he will potentially be able to get photos. There is some discussion - Ion is in favour of a sharp, fast response, sending people out in groups of four to find them now, because she'll have people watching. Huey wants to wait for a larger group this evening. The discussion isn't familiar, but they do know one another - the tone, from Kasumi's point of view, is a little bit like someone speaking to a slightly superior person in the same organisation but not in the same chain of management.
Kasumi thinks that Ion is acting out of character - normally she finds him very calculating, and this seems a bit flustered and reactive. Maybe Irena is on the front foot,.. or maybe its not Ion. They have had problems with dopplegangers before.
The pack argue about what to do - leap out and kill everyone? Accuse Ion of propagating the wyrm? Speak to the sept elders? Yeah, lets plan that last one before doing anything further.
First of all though, they look around - there seems to be less wyrm stuff here compared to the Clarke and Marriott houses. There's some, but not as much as you'd expect if its the same sort of establishment. Perhaps Ion is keeping it clean?
Ion and Huey finish their conversation - Ion compromises and sends out a couple of groups of four guys now. The pack follow, but they split up and go different directions. Flipping a coin the pack follow the group heading east. The guys split up into two pairs, with one pair lingering 50 or 70m back further. Both groups are searching, into cars and on top of buildings, down into side streets slightly. Will has a moment of paranoia and looks about for spirits that might be spying on the area, but is pretty sure that there aren't any peeking into the realm that he can perceive - they are all behaving in fairly normal ways.
The two at the front, yell and start running. The two at the back take off at this. They seem to be chasing two european guys who are running like crazy. The vietnamese guys are gaining on them, and the european pair run down a sidestreet, then veer down an alley. This turns out to be a bad idea as there is a chain link fence blocking it, and while the first guy makes it over, the 4 pursuers catch up with the second one, and kick him for a good minute before spitting on him and leaving. After a minute or two, his companion returns, and gets him on his feet. They hobble through backstreets (getting a certain amount of attention on their way) to a street that looks a lot like the street they ran down, only this one has their car in it. They drive off.
Lost Prophets head back to the address where the attack happened. Its a little one way street that goes past the train station. From the Umbra they can spot signs of scuffle and some blood, but there's not other evidence - no police tape, etc. It would have been a pretty out in the open place to kick people to bits. The garou can't detect much else from the Umbra, so they tramp back to their car, parked near the Yarra and then step, then tramp back here with Sinead in lupus form ("I'm coming back as a dog").
They use their sensing gifts around the area and Sinead sniffs. There's been a fight here - there's blood from 3 people, more than a nosebleed, less than an arterial spray. There are cctv cameras at the station, whose ramp overlooks the street and it might be that there's footage of what happenened. Also of the pack sniffing about the area. Kasumi contemplates the chance that the Hidden Green sept already have access to these cameras and that's what Ion meant.
They opt to go back to the caern now, and talk. They brain dump everything at Cossack and Graeme. Cossack says that he would imagine that while Ion does prefer to plan things out, he isn't unable to react quickly to take advantage of opportunities - he doesn't think that there's any evidence that Ion on the phone isn't really Ion. Cossack doesn't think that knowing how Ion is involved doesn't really change what they knew. Kasumi makes the suggestion that perhaps there's some external influence on Ion and Irena's argument? She feels they are indirectly causing extra wyrmness. Finn and Sinead just don't want to get involved. Will wants to talk to Scott about it, as a good contact into the Sept. Cossack says that he is comfortable with them approaching Ion on the basis that they're chasing a lead and it leads to him, but if Sleeping Lore asks what happened, its an official enquiry. He does feel their time could be spent better, but if they have an itch to scratch go for it. He does want them to cleanse the Clarke house tho, just because it sounds like the sort of environment that starts to generate fomori, so head it off at the pass by removing the wyrm taint and any banes. ("we could romeo and juliet this shit?" "you're going to poison everyone?" "remember how this worked out in the play?")
Lost Prophets meditate for gnosis (or at least try) and then get some sleep and plan to head out to the Clarke house at 4 in the morning
The pack are driving south along St Kilda Rd at 4am, planning to get to the house in time for dawn. Finn and Sinead are napping when the brakes squeal and the car stops. Tillie and Will both say they heard a howl, and wind the windows down to listen again. It doesn't convey much information, sort of the equivilent of "heeeeeeeeeyeah." Will rolls out of the car and into the bushes so they can change to lupus form with some sense of subtley. Sinead peeks but can't see anything there. All Will can smell is urine, but another howl comes through while he is in lupus form, and all the pack go "its in the park" - they park and jog into Fawkner Park.
They try and spot what might be happening, but there's no sign of a crinos tearing up the landscape. Exploring around, Will picks up a scent in the middle of the park - its the same as the scent they picked up in the Exhibition Gardens the other night. ("I want to let out a friendly howl of 'get over here cunt'"). There's no response to a friendly "heeeyyy?" howl, but they can follow the scent trail. It wanders around like mad tho, up one street and then back down the other side, across main roads and down alleys, through some back yards. After about 30 minutes it turns into another house ("its a warehouse"), over the side fence and into the backyard... where is sort of stops. Will searches about for the scent in the Umbra, and sort of finds it... but its older, like days older. The others look about and spot an open window with what might be claw marks on the sills?
The house in the Umbra is not the house in the Realm - the one in the Umbra is older, and smaller. ("fiiine, we'll use our stupid magical powers"). They contemplate jumping up after whoeever it is, but the decide to step instead and contemplate from the Umbra. Tillie and Sinead sense for wyrm and Will for unnatural - maybe a little, but nothing massively out of the ordinary. Despite some shennanigans with being able to peek, eventually Finn is able to check it out - he is looking into a teenage girls' bedroom, as determined by the many teenage girl style of decorations and the naked teenage girl on the bed. Figuring this is their bunny, they find grassy feet and the same sort of scent that they picked up earlier. Looking about her room, they try and figure out what her name is ("its 'Brad'") - 'Mel' is written in large letters on a piece of paper, which might be her name. They can't really make out anything else, though there is a school uniform hung up on the outside of the cupboard.
Some discussions about what might have happened - first changes are almost always violent, how did no one notice this? Or perhaps she's not a lost cub, but just a lone wolf that they don't know? In that case, they should know better. They look about the house and find two older people, presumably Mel's parents. Will tries his gifts and confirms that there's a kinfolk sense off them. The pack scratch their heads a lot - there's something weird here. Will says something about weird dreams and turning into werewolves that sticks in his head, but he can't pin down what it is. Sinead says "... you know, she's really really asleep right after coming inside. Was she sleep walking?". Will says "oh. Yeah - all the wandering. She's sleep ... wolfing"
("Maybe she'd be better at Hidden Green... safe, in the high tower, away from the dirt." "Are you expressing some disatisfaction with your pack?")
The pack consider what to do - traditionally, kidnap and torture to try and force a change. Traditionally also, people would know who the kinfolk were and bind Kin Fetches to them. This seems not to be the case now. They don't have quite the normal "killing spree going on right now" level of urgency. (Some highlightling how much older the GM is by the medium of pencilcase grafitti). Will would love to get her into the Umbra, but it requires some understanding of where you're going on some level - maybe at the caern, ut not here when its a very high gauntlet. there's some talk of territory and tribes, but really, in the city the Glasswalkers worry about the CBD and city as a process and the Bonegnawers worry about the university and royal park and people. ("We'll take everything in zone 2". "Anywhere the NBN goes is Glasswalker") But outside of that, its not really a thing, and new cubs are pretty unusual and valuable.
So, back to the specifics. They could send a text message. "heyyyy?" They decide to go call the caern instead and ask for advice or suggestions. They get Ian - "What did you fuck up?". They explain what they are doing, and face his disbelief that there was really another garou in Exhibition Gardens. Eventually they convince him they are for real, and he says to bring her in then? They go into the details and Ian's all "You are talking to the wrong guy. Let me find the process manual. GRAEME!"
Graeme sleepily says "stop Veil thing. Take your time. Your responsibility. If bringing her, let us know first. " ("lets not roofie a teenager?" "Why not?"). The pack opt to stalk Mel and her parents. ("Will: Can you disguise yourself as a school girl?" "Kasumi: *hard stare*"). Peeking better this time, the Lost Prophets are able to see that her name is actually Melissa Lindridge (parents Graeme and Wendy).
Melissa gets up and freaks out some - she's naked and dirty and her window is open. They get the vibe that this is not the first time this has happened. ("You're going to give her the werewolf talk? " "you're going to grow hair in unexpected places... like all over" "You may put some extra weight - like 2 or 3 hundred kilos" "And your penis is going to go straight up and into your body") ("Can we send her a hogworts letter?" "You do have a owl" "you need to be more white" "SUDDENLY racist"). Her dad leaves to go to work, while Melissa's mum chivvies her into getting ready for school while getting ready herself.
When they leave, Will and Kasumi step into the realm, leaving the others to keep watch. They hunt about for werewolf smell, such that it is - she seems to wander the house in various forms. There's no pets here. They examine her room - she's at Wesley College, not far away, and she's doing year 12 (mostly science, but also English Lit and French). Her laptop went with her, but there is a family computer. ("I had potpourri" "you have weird sex toys" "its like rose petals, but scratchy") Kasumi finds there are three accounts, one each person. She tries some basic passwords but no luck there. ("There is no brad!") They can awaken it if they really need to.
The two garou check the parent's room. They find some collapsable file archive things with stuff relevant to Melissa in it. It only seems to go up to year 10 - school reports and such. They look up again and find another more recent one It seems to have a lot of correspondance in it from her school recently, say in the last 6 weeks, which pertains heavily to Melissa getting lost on a school camp. There's school emails, and reports from the police and the SES. Apparently she got lost on the camp somewhere north of Bairnsdale (Silver Fang territory) for a day or two. Kasumi googles her name and says "oh." The group of students were on a hike for 3 days, she got lost and it took a couple of days to find her much futher away than they expected to. There's some letters back and forth to the schools lawyer - less worry about being sued and more a report on what the school did to prevent something like this happening.
There are some school reports from about the same time that Melissa was moody and unfocussed in class, which is unusual for her. While the event was obviously distressing, its going to impact the last 3 months of VCE - maybe she should come back next year? Hmmm.
The pack decide that is probably a high urgency to get her to be brought into the fold. This isn't a pre-change werewolf, this is someone apparently who has been wandering about for weeks. So they start putting together some plans and give the caern a heads up that they want to bring her there and maybe try and take her into the Umbra. Graeme asks if there's not something a bit less abrupt they could do to minimise the issue, but the pack doesn't think so. He suggests keeping the sudden jumps to a bare minimum, try soft.
Lost Prophets head to the school in the Umbra and peek, sniffing about to find Melissa. Sinead once again is the goddess of peeking. Melissa is in her English class, and they observe - she goes to her English, French and Biology classes. She gets spoken to a couple of times by teachers for being unfocussed. The pack have some concerns about her social interactions - she seems to have some friends that come and speak to her, obviously making an effort to draw her out. Its not terribly successful - she doesn't really engage in any depth. Some of them ask her to come out to Jam Factory after school, but she says she has to go home and keep working.
The pack plan a direct approach - to go and say hi when she gets home and no one else is there. They're hoping to be able to play the 'we can help' angle, especially with Will's gifts. ("Call me maybe") At the end of the day she sort of dawdles getting out fo school until her friends have gone and then walks. However, she doesn't go home, she goes onto a bus up Punt Road. Because of peak hour, the pack can keep up in the Umbra. Melissa gets off at the top of the hill and heads down towards the Royal Botannical Gardens. The pack follow her as she finds a bench seat, overlooking the lake. Melissa sits with head phones on and her head down.
Despite the pack's belief she's trading for drugs, it seems that she's just chilling out. The pack still want to try the direct approach but worry about her freaking out. Maybe they could get her to come with them to the caern by... um, tram? ("Nothing says 'careful competant organisation that can help me' like 'do you have a myki?'") There's some people about - joggers, people pushing trams, a couple of school kids wandering through. Given her clearly stressed demeanor, it might be that the wrong stimuli does cause her to lose her shit - the more violent, the more likely, but even just confusion and upset might do it.
They come up with a plan - Will will approach with full charm, and bringing food or something to break the ice. Chips, yeah. Finn and Sinead will try and stop people from coming up the pathway out of sight of the chair (pretending to be VCA students filming on the green), while Tillie and Kasumi wait for a fuckup of some sort.
Finn finds that some of the people that he's asking not to go through are pretty keen on the whole project. One guy, Ben, wants to help, he's full of good ideas for how to convey what they want to convey in the non-existant video piece. He starts to help Finn explain why they've blocked off the path and how cool its going to be.
Sinead on the other hand ends up in an argument with some idiot who just wants to have an argument about how rude it is for them to block it now, why didn't they do it earlier in the day before all the people who have real jobs are coming through, and so on. She starts to twitch and get jittery and feels the urge to punch him, but its less about frenzy and more about losing her will to live.
Fortunately, Melissa has not noticed any of this nonsense on account of having her head down. Will wanders up and sits on the same seat, putting his box of chips down and letting the smell of fried potato and salt do its thing. Melissa looks up and is clearly a bit surprised at Will's presence. He wordlessly offers her some chips and she takes a couple and says "thanks". ("If anyone knows anything about seducing werewolves, its Will" "Can I get a speciality bonus?" "werewolf fucker, do you require assistence?") ("The whole plan relies on deep fried potato, what could go wrong?") . After about 3 minutes, she takes her head phones out and says "Do you mind if i steal some more?" "Go to".
Tillie notices that there are raised voices coming from over where Sinead is, and stomps over there. Sinead is now physically blocking the guy from coming up the hill - Tillie arrives and looms over him. The guy seems less keen to push Tillie physically, but is still arguing about how they have no right to get stoned and use his park with his taxes. For some reason this guy just has bees up his ass. Ah, there's an idea, Sinead hits him with her Scent of Sweet Honey gift and 2 minutes later he's starting to get attacked by mosquitos and whatever other bugs are nearby. He eventually gives up - "I'm going to tell park rangers about you and the bees!" and runs off.
Meanwhile back at the bench "I'm Will." "I'm Melissa" "I actually came over here to talk to you - " Melissa starts to give him the eye ("I know I just met you, and this is crazy, but you're a werewolf, so claw me baby"). "I know weird stuff has been happening, and I can show you why". "I... should probably go" - but she doesn't move away at all. "I know what happens when you lose time, and when you wake up in the morning. I'm like you are" "Who the fuck are you?" "I'm William Jackson" "Why do you know this?" "I went through it too" ("Don't say the word 'cult'"). "It was really scary and confusing. If you want to come with me, I'm happy to take you to meet some people" ("Don't say 'human trafficking either'") He gives her a card with his number on it - "you can come with me now to Carlton, or you can give me a call when you're ready". ("If you're trying to not freak someone out, saying 'I watch while you sleep' is nto going to help") She takes the card "I have to go".
Melissa heads off at some speed, looking behind to see if Will is following, but he's eating his chips. She runs past Finn and hears Ben say "oh, is the filming over?" and gives him a look but keeps going. Kasumi takes off and follows her in case it goes pear shaped, while the others follow in the Umbra at their leisure. Melissa does head straight home though, and so Kasumi meets the others.
Melissa is watching things on youtube, probably in a desperate attempt to distract herself. Will's card is in the middle of all her stuff, obviously set there carefully. They can determine she has a yahoo email of some sort, but aren't able to mess with the computer from the Umbra. When her parents get home, she slams the laptop shut and opens some books. Her night goes about as they'd expect, but when her parents have gone to bed, she sneaks into the kitchen and makes a very strong coffee and then again an hour later. That's what they want, a jittery new werewolf.
They toy with some interactions - spirits, mindspeak, etc - to try and prompt her to call Will or pass out hard or something? Kasumi suggests something to help pull her into the Umbra? They have smelt her scent there, so she has been there at least once. They could make a talen, or bind a spirit directly to her. ("there's almost certainly a concept spirit out there of 'ya mum'." "but what does it look like?" "'She's so fat...") Maybe they could lower the gauntlet for her? Or given that she's asleep, maybe some sort of dream control? Mindspeak? it is a gift of dreams of sorts.
There's some concern that constantly drinking coffee will work her into a frenzy, if she has enough - or she'll be on a hair trigger tomorrow at school, which would be worse. Maybe something to knock her out (a sleep spirit?) and then something to control her dreams (a chimerling). Its possibly going to be a bit expensive in terms of chiminage, though they now do have the option of "get in the sack". Can they do both in one spirit? The pack decide to seek guidance, and Sinead and Finn head back to their caern to ask Ends-the-Quiet for more information.
Ends-the-Quiet listens to their problem. He says that the servants of Chimera are wide and varied. Some are spirits, others are powerful dreams that have come into a life of their own, and others are created from shared stories. He believes that they should be attempting to summon a Sandman - a spirit that brings sleep, and then dreams. He suggests that perhaps, as Chimera is a totem of wisdom, they could offer to understand their own dreams further - and the first step of understanding is knowing.
Sinead gets on with the summoning, spending a couple of hours in ritual to bring him. Shortly after she finishes, she can spot the spirit approaching - an old man, in a grey suit, with a sack slung over one shoulder. He approaches her and asks what she wants. She says she needs someone to sleep and dream. The spirit says it will aid the garou, but in return he wants this one - pointing at Finn - to learn a gift of dreams. There is a gift that lets him see the dreams of others - he will not teach it though, they must find another. The two garou say this is acceptable. They explain that the one they need to affect is some travel away, and the spirit says that when Sinead calls his name, he will come again.
In the meantime, Will plans ahead and dedicates Melissa a coat for when she appears in the Umbra - taking away a certain potential stimuli for frenzy seems like an idea (we determined that Finn only wears pants in the Umbra).
At two in the morning, Sinead and Finn show up. Melissa is still awake, with the windows open, on her 4th cup of strong coffee. After explaining what they have done and what the plan is to the other three packmembers, Sinead calls the spirit. It arrives swiftly, and asks where the one is, and what she should dream of. The pack suggest dreaming of travelling to the Umbra. The spirit vanishes, and the pack suddenly develop an inability to peek. Tillie manages to get a good sense of the physical realm. She sees the spirit appear in Melissa's room - Melissa leaps backward and gasps as the spirit throws a handful of sand in her face. She looks dazed and then passes out, slumping onto the ground.
The spirit vanishes but does not appear in the Umbra. ("Sand people" "Oh no, they're going to return in greater numbers"). After 20 minutes she starts to twitch and move about (she's either sleeping or having a seizure) and then changes form to lupus. She stands and shakes herself and looks in the mirror and vanishes. Tillie stops peeking and prepares to catch her as she falls from the realm room.
Five minutes later a large lupus appears in the air and falls rapidly. Tillie catches her smoothly and puts her on the ground. Melissa has a moment of panic, but then just sniffs around. She's a bit stumbly and her eyes aren't really open, or focussing - still clearly dreaming. She responds to the pack's presence in some way, but not necessarily in a sensible way. Lost Prophets decide to shift to lupus as well and lead her around. She does follow more or less as they travel, though she gets distracted at times, possibly responding to things they cannot see. Kasumi is sent ahead to the caern and to give them a heads up that everyone is coming.
Ian is in the Umbra when Kasumi arrives, talking to Nadine. She gives them a quick run down of what's going on. Nadine cautions them that if she freaks out, the low gauntlet could lead to Melissa appearing in the Realm. She suggests a park, but Kasumi says that it seems safer here.
Everyone arrives at about 4.30am. They let Melissa walk around a bit, and then just try to gently wake her up. "Wake up Melissa, wake up" She wakes up and looks really confused about having 4 legs. She stumbles backward and changes to crinos and all the surrounding garou start to leap forward, but she then rolls to homid form and yells.
The pack manage to calm her down and give her the basics of what's going on - super healing, magic powers, lots of friends, oh yeah, world ending. There's a brief rundown on the rules, starting from don't tell anyone. They sort of get her to change form a bit, but its not under control.
They attempt to try and figure out what tribe Melissa might be a member of - she's not a fianna or silver fang just from the look of her. Maybe Child of Gaia or 'Gnawer or something? There are ways to figure it out, but they'll have to talk to Emma about. They can work out that she's an ahroun tho.
The pack reckon they should get Melissa home before her parents wake up. They head across the gauntlet and borrow a car to drive her back to South Yarra.
During the day, they talk further with caern elders - just knowing about garou things won't stop Melissa from potentially sleep wolfing and the pack should regard themselves as needing to be on alert. While Tillie is thinking that a big bottle of ambien is the way to go, other pack members are more thinking of a spiritual option.
The pack sort out cleansing the Clarkes while Melissa is at school. It goes fairly smoothly.
After a bit of discussions about what to do (sleep talens? More spirit binding?) Lost Prophets get themselves some calming tea ("is this like your own hippy blend?" "No, t2") and Sinead tries spirit awakening on it. There's some reaction and they find a chance to pass it to Melissa. An hour or so before bed, Melissa makes a cup of it and makes revolted faces while sipping it. Her mother asks what on earth she's drinking and Melissa makes up a story about someone suggesting it might help her sleep. She heads to bed and falls asleep before long.
It seems to work so well that the pack's guard drops completely, and they are surprised by a falling lupus rolling out the window. Melissa hits the ground and wakes up, stumbles over backward and changes to crinos. The pack run up to deal with any potential frenzy but she has it under control. The pack help her back inside. ("Why are you in my backyard?" "We're trying to make sure your daughter stays home at night" ".... I'm conflicted")
