Sept of Sleeping Lore

The Sept try and scrape Brenna's brain, but they find that Erebus is nothing if not thorough. Not everything has been scraped away though - Brenna recalls the sound of rain somewhere far above. It wasn't constant - it sometimes wasn't there, and other times was louder or softer. She has memories of not quite swimming while undergroud. Maybe moving along pipes? But it doesn't quite make sense. Kasumi asks if they maybe transformed? Brenna says maybe, they weren't swimming as a person, that might be it. She's not 100% sure. Were they the water itself? How akin is that idea of having to swim somewhere to accessing the fae cave. What does Brenna remember about that anyway? Just a brief bit of being in the cave.

Does Hidden Green have any fountains? Yes? Tillie asks if Kasumi thinks the Dancers are under Hidden Green. I mean, if it was possible that they were somehow using the old caern site, it'd make a great place to hide. But you think that someone would have noticed.

Brenna really thinks that she spent almost all her time underground. That does explain why the possum and the pigeons didn't really help spot the Dancers. Tillie asks if Coode Island triggers any memories - but no, nothing.

There's some discussion about how close this Hive could be, and if it was one made rather than found, why didn't anyone notice that happening? Did the Dancers find one in potentia? Maybe up around Richmond or along the Yarra? There used to be lots and lots of polluting industries along there. Anywhere creeks and rivers have been pushed undergound?

Tillie and Brenna kind of get to know one another.

Kasumi spends most of her time generating electricity and planning out her new devices. She's going to make a moisture meter, and an acid meter for the Earth ("What, the whole planet") and a little windmill, solar powered. She also organises to get a talen of accent changing. They bind a parrot spirit into a talen in return for hanging up four seedbells for parrots at their new house. She doesn't think that the Binding is a good enough one to last too many shots.

Will contemplates coldforged iron as a fae defense. A bit of consulting suggests that its not really a thing, but if he wants to use spirit awakening on a knife, that might be a thing. Or a length of chain. length of chain. He starts to learn the Rite of Awakening from Finn. Will also goes hunting for Eagle and leaving kills for their children, and also leaving some remains for Fly, tho he's careful to delineate between each kill.

Finn does some teaching Will the Rite of Awakening, but also looks for some pick up work. He asks Will to put him in contact with someone, who gives him some basic 4 or 5 hours work for $100 cash in hand.

Word comes from Rippling Water that the Ngalyod pack came there after the Council met - the Jindabyne Council want to do more research, letting more people look at the Hopping Mouse Hill cave.

The pack decide they will accept Melissa. (If there was another young pack looking for members, they might point her there instead, but ce la vie). They check in with Boobook - he isn't ringingly in favour of the idea, but he doesn't reject it out of hand.

They want to set her a challenge appropriate to a young garou. It can't really be a combat challenge, they opt for an investigative and thinking one, because she'll need to keep there. They check in with Christine and ask if they've looked into one of the dodgy trucks from Coode Island? Not yet. Ok, well, that can be what Melissa needs to do to prove herself - she needs to investigate the high wyrm truck that they found at Coode Island and come back with information about it. Where did it come from, where is it going. And also not breach the Litany.

The bounds of Melissa's challenge are set - she has to find where the truck has gone, what was on it, and where it was going, without violating the Litany. They spend most of their time investigating, so an investigation challenge is on point. Melissa will probably need some way to Sense Wyrm - asking someone else for help to get some way to do that is part of the challenge. She's ok to ask for help, just not ask Lost Prophets. Tillie decides to stalk Melissa while she does the task, through a combination of using her Raven gift, and the chamelon gift.

Melissa starts by asking Emma if she can make her a talen that will help her to sense wyrm. The Elder is happy to do so. Then she heads to a library, and spends a couple hours there. After that she goes to Hidden Green, surrepticiously followed by Tillie. Tillie waits til Melissa leaves and then calls that sept, trying to figure out what it was that Melissa was doing. She eventually gets through to Elaine who says its not really any of Tillie's concern, even if Melissa is her work experience kid. Tillie is baffled about the bitchiness, but jut asks. Elaine says there's no problem, Melissa said not to tell her, and she paid for the help. Just Tillie? Well... just Tillie by name, but the implication was not to tell them.

Melissa then heads to a receiving warehouse at night. From there Tillie can see her break in, and use their computers. From a distance Tillie attempts to sense wyrm, but there's nothing significant. Then Melissa heads off again, this time specifically to a Chemist Warehouse receiving warehouse. Tillie continues to trail her. Melissa scouts from the umbra, and then steps, but shortly afterward there are strong signs that she is frenzying, in the Realm, inside the warehouse. Tillie chameleons it up and comes in closer to be able to peek. Melissa appears to be smashing up a bunch boxes and shelves. There are two guards outside, but they are opting to rather sensibly not go inside. Tillie can't see any, but figures that there are almost certainly cameras here - this is a problem.

The guards have called the cops, but it takes them a while to arrive. Melissa calms her shit before then and steps into the Umbra. She appears to be trying to figure out what to do. Tillie closes in, but when she gets close enough to smell Melissa, its clear that there's a strong perfumey smell all over her, and for some reason when Tillie smells that scent, she finds her rage spiking. Tillie manages to keep it together, but it does suggest why Melissa might have freaked out. Oh, this is reminiscent of the wyrm makeup from ages ago. Tillie senses for wyrm - there's a bit, but not like as much as a rage filled spirit that triggers frenzies should show up with. ("What did the glasswalkers like before there was an internet?" "Trains" "Again with the autistic tribe")

Melissa watches the security guards when the cops show up, and then sprints into the building through the Umbra and dives into the realm. The police stop and look at the smashed up stuff, but Melissa was deeper into the admin area. ("It was probably a possum") The cops head toward where Melissa headed, but Tillie steps invisibly into the Realm and makes some extra nouse to distract them a bit longer.

By the time Tillie gets back to the cops nd peeks, they are baffled by the computer that all the security footage is on having a meltdown not long after they start it up. There's a baffled look as they try and start it up again but it won't go. The cops shrug and unplug the pc to take it out to a car. More cops show - a detective and another uniformed cop. They are looking at the destruction.

The Lost Prophets debate amongst themselves when this becomes a breach of the Veil and Melissa loses the challenge. "Not yet" is the feeling, but it'll depend on how she deals with the recording.

Melissa goes back to the Realm and makes some phone calls. Shortly after that, Kasumi gets a call from Chris McNeil. He says hi and then reminds Kasumi that they've been wrecking up eviddence as part of the New Years Eve misdireciton. Yes. Well, he just got a call from Melissa asking if they could wreck up some Veil breaking evidence in the real short term. Kasumi says she knows what this is about. Chris says that he's not really in a position to react that quickly, is this something that Melissa is doing for them? Kasumi explains the basics, set her a challenge, etc. Chris asks if she could do a favour for him - can Kasumi do this now, and then he'll owe her a favour, and Melissa can owe him a favour, but that hasn't wrecked up their challenge? (The Sept generally doesn't run on formal favours, but there's definitely a social karma between individuals and packs). ("do yu need anything that I have taking-the-forgottened returned?")

Kasumi rushes to the site because this will be much easier to deal with before it gets to formal evidence. She sneaks onto the site, and then bamfs into the cop car from the Umbra. The computer has a smell of burning which Kasumi narrows down to the CPU. Not sure what's going on there or how she did it. Kasumi pries the hard drives out but is now not sure what to do with it. This is 2012, they're not SSDs, she can't just eat them. She decides to bash the drives a bit and mess up the circuitry. ("Just pee on it"). Tillie tells her to grab any drinks the cops have left there and dip the drives in it. She does that, and then opts to use her Electroshock gift to really screw it up ("I'm bored"). Then she steps out, runs off, and steps back into the Realm to let Chris know.

Melissa chases up a couple more Chemist Warehouse locations over the next few days. This time she wears some sort of bandana as a facemask when she goes into the locations - its unclear what she does there, but she doesn't freak out.

After that, she comes back to Lost Prophets and says "Ok, I found everything out I can, and I think I covered up a possible veil breach." So, the shipment went to the purchaser. She narrowed down what the wyrm was coming from - some kind of perfume. But she did frenzy when she got exposed to it. Not sure why. Its just a cheap perfume. Its all of the same type, she's checked out other locations where they were selling it and its all the problem. She watched, and normal people do not freak out in any fashion. By the time that it was split up and sold to individuals, the amount of wyrm taint is barely noticable. She doesn't know where it came from tho.

The pack ask for some more detail in a couple places. She got a sense wyrm talen from Emma. She got Elaine to help her track the truck in return for an unspecified favour in the future ("Noooo oooooo oooooo"). When she frenzied, to hide the evidence, she used Control Simple Machine on the CPU fan, and told it to stop.. which did for the PC but not its drives. She had had to get Chris to deal with that, which he did.

There's some mental consideration, and in the end the pack decree that this is sufficient. They'll summon Boobook and make him give her a membership badge. Does she want the whole process to be just between themselves, or publically announced at the Moot? She thinks for a moment and says "At the Moot." ("Its a big fuck you to Amy, suits me")

Tuesday 7 - Ahroun Moon, Moot Night

Opening Howl, and Greeting the Mooon. Spirits are summoned and thanked for their help. There is much talking. Coode Island, and given that info by strawmen, but it went nowhere. Brenna is now back and she has given them a little bit of information that suggests that the Dancers spend their time below ground for the most part, possibly swimming in pipes.

Also the Wyrm Beast ("why don't you ever have nice dreams that come true"), and talking about the Fianna party, and Brenna's arrival. Full Moon Killer? Theoretically won't be one this month, though it has taken a couple of days sometimes for bodies coming to the surface.

Lost Prophets are released from guard duty - the Scryers are on for the next week at least. Christine looks considerably better than she did a month ago - not hungover. She talks about the Glade Child and the kids that are at that weird location, and how Melissa Freedom has visited a few times. The spirit seems dormant, but not in a bad way - they'll have to wait and see how spring goes, probably.

The Sept still don't have a caern warder - at the next Moot they will have to have a challenge to see who wishes to take the position, and they might open it up to some other Garou.

Lost Prophets formally recognise Melissa as a pack member. Boobook is greeted and asked if he will accept Melissa. Amy definitely has a "uugghhhhh" look on her face. The ritual is done, and Melissa joins the mental link to the horror of everyone.

Bandit, the bone gnawer member of Hell Hounds tells a couple of stories. Amy does ask Ian, as Master of the Challenge, if he could tell her stories of past fights at the sept. Ian claims that he has sudden onset alzheimers, and cannot remember any. Amy seems baffled by his attitude, and leaves. Later when she asks Cossack, he says that its not the Sept's focus, but there have been fights - smart, wise fights - and he'll talk to her about those.

At the end of the night, the Sept revels across the landscape, renewing their Rage.

Wednesday 8 (Ahroun waning) - Thursday 16 (Theurge waning)

The pack and Melissa adjust to each other's mental processes a bit. There's at least one embarassing moment where her only little mental song leaks through to the whole pack. ("Stop thinking about the forbidden dicks")

Couple days after the Moot, Melissa wakes Sinead up and says she's had a great idea. They need disguises. Good ones, not like Kasumi's cos she looks like a british gangster trying to be casual. Melissa needs blue hair, get rid of her rich girl blond highlights. No one she ever knew would think that she would do that. Sinead should go corporate bitch. ("I guess that means Kasumi should go school girl"). ("This is the start of a makeup montage, I can feel it"). ("Yes Finn, I know how the umbra works") ("You're going to end up with no teeth" "They'll grow back" "You're a werewolf, not a shark") Melissa says that she had a dream they were being chased by people in bad disguises, that's what gave her the idea. Sinead eventually agrees that goth dreads are going to be an issue, she should blonde them. ("Quick dumpster dive, and farmer's market")

Tillie spends some of the week hanging out with Brenna, trying to get to know her. But there are definitely parts of personality missing - she's missing big chunks of time and experience. Sometimes bits come back, and she's trying to integrate them. Tillie bothers Sinead to find the "make it hard to find her" talen, but its hard to pin down what they might actually need.

The pack start narrowing down the locations they can move into for their new house. The walking bit has been done, and they have a dozen options, and now comes the researching into who owns the place and whether they can be tricked into forgetting they own the place.

Friday 17 - Theurge waning

Friday morning, Kasumi mentally contacts the rest of the pack and says "do you remember the demon guarding the sundering?" Despite the vagueness of the players, the characters do remember. That entity has communicated to Kasumi that there's an item called the Chandeen mirror, and it allows you to look into the Deadlands. Its in the posession of a mage called Ademko, and he lives in a place called Casillis. Tillie is a bit confused why they want to see into the Deadlands? The theory goes that the mages' magics will be more obvious there, and they might be able to see enough to track them. So this place appears to be out east, north of Bainsdale. The pack are suspicious of the source - but Kasumi says that while it could be a trap, it does fit with what they know.

They pack food and water and a tent - "its Bairnsdale, not the middle of the desert" - at Kasumi's request. Its about a 5 hur drive so they should probably get a move on. Will says their tactic should be to start in the Umbra, because it seems like the mages don't have a great sense of the Umbra. And to not be obvious in the physical world until they have to be. They start off by doing a Questing Stone ritual for Julius Victor Ademko - nothing at all. Hmm. Is he just floating around not touching the ground? Not his real name? I guess they'll find out. They grab the sword and the armor - hey, they can put that on Melissa if it turns nasty.

Once they're off the main road at Bairnsdale, the murder van is a bit more of a trial - its hot and its full of people or dogs. On the way they lay in some plans - murder or not murder? They'll have to see. He mightn't be alone. He might be an ok mage? Who knows if he's powerful - he's clearly known to powerful demons, so maybe. It could be the strawman himself. They might just be able to buy it off him.

The plan is to leave the car at Swifts Creek and then run in the Umbra the last 10 or 15 km. Then they'll scope out the town while peeking and trying to home in on him. When they get there, they leave the murder van in a carpark, walk out of town and then shift to the Umbra. Before they go, the pack do a Questing Stone in the Umbra - nothing, which is honestly reassuring. The road out toward Casillis is very low quality, and it doesn't massively show up in the Umbra, so they have to peek and move at the same time. Its kind of a nice run, to be honest - well out of the city and into the wilderness a bit... though that carries the exciting possibility that Dreamtime creatures will come for them.

The pack sense for unnatural as they jog along, just to make sure they don't trip over anything in the Umbra. There's nothing magical or anything in the Umbra. They are heading up into some extremely hilly and steep areas, through some farms before the forest closes in around the road where a creek flows out of the Casillis valley. It opens up again once they are inside the valley - there is a thin strip of farmland along the flat areas, but that turns to forest very quickly as the terrain gets steep.

The town itself is really quite small. There's a pub on the corner, and a collection of about a dozen houses around it, one of which is a shop/postoffice. There's another dozen or more farms along the valley and up into the hills. The town has a 'recreation reserve' and a CFA shed a bit to the south, and a hall/church. There's signs it used to be a bigger concern - their brief google checks on the way here said that it used to be a gold mining town, and its population peaked 100 years ago. There's no real mention of it on the Shire website.

There's a few cars parked out the front of the pub. They glance at the post office and wander that way to see if they can see Ademko written The post office is a bunch of post office boxes in the store itself. The boxes are open at the back, but they can't get a good enough peek to check names. The store is open - the blurry look they can see is that its mostly dry goods. They sense the bustling, grey curled, and floral dress lady that runs the shop (And lives out the back) and just confirm she's not a mage or fomori.

Will's immediate suspicion is that the guy is hiding out in an abandoned gold mine. Their searches online didn't show any touristy Sovereign-hill esque things to go visit, though one poster online did say something about an area full of what seemed to be old mining equipment down south. Figuring that ghost town and deadlands mage go together, and wanting to spy from the Umbra as much as possible, the pack head down there. They manage, with a bit of sniffing around from the Umbra, to find the spot mentioned, but its overgrown with bracken, and just a pile of rusting and rotted machinery. There's nothing supernatural here, or even signs that its visited by anything but snakes.

They come back toward the town proper via the church - Kasumi thinks that there's a graveyard there, but she hasn't got a great peek and can't tell if there's any new markers, or if they're all old. The church (hall) has a little residence next to it, but it doesn't seem to be in use. They check out the pub (Finn gets a good peek) and see if it has some accomodation - yeah, nominally. There's a single room with a double bed in it and an ensuite, but it doesn't look like it sees a lot of use. There's about 6 locals here and the guy running the pub, and possibly his daughter. They've got food, but its steak sandwiches and sausages and mash. There's no kids - everyone other than the lady behind the bar is older than 40. It has an olde worlde charme.

While Finn has his good peek, they head back to the post office. The houses kind of appear in the Umbra, but they're pretty sketchy. The post office lady has left the lights on in the shop, but is eating her tea and watching teevee. They scan the post boxes but can't see any Ademko. Or Okmeda. Not every post box has mail in it, but there's no Julius or Victor in there or John Smith. There's a lot of Grace and James and George... an Emma, how modern. All the surnames seem whitebread country surnames.

Finn wanders about being guided by his packmates, sensing for unnatural sensations. They start at the pub because its central. At one end of the bar there's a large painting hung on the wall. Its a bushland / farmland setting, all hilly, painted from high up.. wait, its here. You can make out the pub and some of the houses. Finn can see people in the painting, even though they're tiny.. and more importantly, it has a tiny glimmer of magic and deadlands about it. The people aren't moving, which is good. Finn peers about it and sees that there's a little label next to it "Casillis. Donated by Mr Ademko. 1979"

The rest of the pack point out that it also has a reflection in the Umbra, which is much cruder looking, but unusual. It doesn't have a frame and its very gloomy looking - it was quite hard to see til they got up close. Finn describes the painting in the realm, and its a clear, sunny day. Its surrounded by memorbilia, photos of old guys and football teams. Will senses unnatural in the Umbra - there's nothing lingering there at all though. It is wyrmy - its got a bit of a sharp bite to it.

The pack decide they have to go in. Finn and Will are picked to head into the pub as... uh, they should get their stories straight, because they'll probably only get one shot at this. Visiting cousins? Hiking? Where's their car? k, they're driving to Bright just cos, came this way just cos, stopping for a beer and a parma.

Everyone turns to look at they come in the door. They're probably the youngest people in the room - everyone else is 40+. There's no reaching for shotguns for these newbies, there's just a moment of "oh someone new". The main bar is like a large room in a house, with a few tables and stools at the bar. They're greeted as they come in, and arrange that they're going to stop in and have a feed at the bar. The beer on tab is just boring beer. There's one bottle of white wine in the fridge, everything else is beer. There's an old tv hung up in the corner, showing the cricket, but its a little bit wavy. No one's aggressively watching it. There's a married couple having dinner on a table. Everyone else is sitting at or near the bar.

The two garou pick some food and the woman yells back to Todd saying one parma and chips and one steak sandwich and chips. The young woman behind the bar asks what brings them up this way? Both pack members try their persuasion gift on her, but she seems strangely resistent. Clearly that's suspicious. ("Natural charms? Oh no, we're in trouble") Melissa snidely says that they should just imagine she has bunny ears. They chatter about having come this way, which she (Debbie) approves of - the Great Alpine Rd is just a bit bland. And people drive crazy. There's some gossiping about the Shire and their priorities.

Will asks if there's anything to see in town - he read something about old mines. Debbie says that there's some stuff - oh did they drive up from Bairnsdale? Finn says they parked near the rec and walked up - it looked a bit closer on the map. Oh right... well, down near the sharp bend as you come into the valley, there's some old workings down there, but they shouldn't go wandering about at night - some of the old pits were covered with wood and then dirt, and its been so long that they're rotted through now, and surprise! you fall down a long shaft. There's nothing like a museum? No, the town is getting smaller every year. If the Shire had driven the road up here 20 years ago, like everyone wanted, instead of up where it goes now, it might have been different. But some of the people that made the decision had land along where it goes now. (head shakings all around). Deb says they should maybe come back another day, its lovely during the day, but now the sun's down everything's a bit gloomy.

Finn takes this chance to ask about the painting - local artist? She says it was a bit before her time. Hey Charlie, the guy that did the painting, do you know much about it? Oh yeah, it got donated. There was a european fella that lived up here. He did that. Will points his persuasion gift at Charlie and over does it a bit. Charlie moves down to next to Will. He's about 80 and appears to made of teak. "So." Apparently he came out twenty year after the war. Lived up in the hills off that way (waves west). He didn't really mingle, but he turned up one day and donated it to the fete. Oh, this way, pfoah, maybe 30 year ago? That was a good year actually - lots of stuff happened at that fate. If you look up there, that's me - I won the wood chop that year! A full 30s ahead of everyone else. Still hold the fete? Oh, no not enough people any more. Last one was 85 or somethihg. There were some fires, and some people left, and then there was a couple held at Swifts Creek, and that was that really.

Will asks if the painter moved on? No, he died in a car crash about then. Oh tht's sad. Tell me about yourself Charlie - did you want another beer? Oh yeah, the fete did well, except that was the year one of Flo's cheeses expoded. It swelled up and then exploded. They can see two of the other people in the pub rolling their eyes ("it just bubbled up and out!"). There was a lot of people that came and visited that year, come and have a look at these other photos. This is when we had enough people for a football team - Doug's the last one I think, everyone else went and played for other teams. Will says its like that at his folks' place, in South Australia. Oh a croweater - bit of a trip in one day. Oh right, live in Melbourne. What do you do for a crust? Heavy lifting.

Is there a photo of the painting guy amongst these? Oh no, not really, he didn't much get involved. What sort of european? Not really sure - he wasn't no eyetie, and not a frog or a german. Someone further to the east maybe - not russian, but, um... yeah. Hungary? where's that, is that the sort of area? Quiet guy, figured he'd had a bad time. Kept to himself and such. Died not long after the painting was donated - was a bit of a surprise to be honest. He'd say hi and hello and such if you saw him in town, but not much of a chatter. But if you look close at the painting, you can identify individual people, even though they're really small. Like that's clearly Florrie talking at the gate of the shop. You can see Emmie and Lorna there walking along taking their morning constitutional. That's me at the pub, which is a bit of a mischaracterisation I think. Its a lot of detail for a man that didn't interact much. You can date it a bit by the signs on Florrie's shop. That's the Baxter place up there, and that burnt down in, oh 83 I think. Oh actually thats about when that fella died. Will asks where his house was? Oh, no, you won't see it on this, uh, you can't see it now, but this has been painted from up there on Springs Track toward town, the fellas house was much further along Springs. Is it drivable? Oh, yeah, but he wouldn't suggest you go up it at night without being familiar with it - you'd get turned around easily and end up at Dinner Plain.

Haven't thought of that bloke for donkeys. He was coming up from Bairnsdale and lost it on that sharp turn as you come up from Swifts Creek. Happens not none times, but the fella must have been moving a fair pace and went over the edge and got smashed up. Another bloke pipes up and says he remembers it - everyone though he'd been a bit [elbow movement] in Bairnsdale, but that's not what the cops said. They were trying to find next of kin to inherit and all, but then the place burned down not long after and they stopped trying really hard. Probably all the painting chemicals and stuff. It wasn't fire season. Will comments there's been a few fires, but people just shake their heads and say its bush, and its steep and once it starts iit can get away pretty easy.

The garou's meals show up, and everything settles down a bit. They get the feeling that Debbie is actually married to Todd, not his wife like they thought. Jim and Carol talk for a bit about their kids that's moved away to Sydney. Charlie suddenly says "Julius!" and everyone jumps. That was his name. Julius Ademko. Knew it'd come to him. Will says what happened to the property in the end? Oh, didn't get sold, goverment prob took it back in the end. Got a bit of a reputation, out there. Hiker went missing. Blackfellas won't go near it - they won't go down that track at all. ("We're going to go there first thing, aren't we"). What was the place like? Oh, not much, just a sort of wood cabin. One of the other blokes says what are you talking about Charlie, you couldn't see it from the road, and its not like you've gone up there. Charlie says yu could see it for a bit after the fire. And Tom drives up and down that way all the time. People go up there hunting.

Will asks if he did a lot of paintings - was he famous? Oh no one really knew - he never said he was a painter, he just showed up that one day with this. You'd see him around the place sometimes, looking around? I guess he was scouting out places to paint. Any of them survive the fire? Oh not that he remembers taking anything away. How about the cops, did they take anything when they locked it up? Probbaly not, they just were putting ads in the newspaper and all. Flo might remember more. But she'll be shut up by now - she rememebers lots of stuff about people. Guess most of his stuff was in the fire though. It'd only been a month since the crash. No one was banging on the door to buy the place, it was just a bush cabin. Will surrepticiously sense for unnatural but nothing on Charlie, though he can sense the faint magic on the painting. No one else has anything unusual.

Jim and Carol leave, and another guy comes in.

In the Umbra, Kasumi gets too bored and touches the painting. It doesn't have the same texture as an oil painting. Its got smooth bits, but the gaps between them are textured. Its a bit custard apply? It doesn't feel painted, its almost like its grown here. Almost botannical. She's not sucked in and transported to 1979 to win the wood chopping and ruin Charlie's life.

Finn and Will chat more with the locals about the town - legends of the gold miners and spooky bits of landscape - but nothing that sounds particularly recent. There's bits of hills where the wind blows one direction and they moan - people says it was ghosts abut there was a geologist who said there's caves like at Buchan, and the wind blows across them. There's a real "we could have been a contender" vibe from the stories - if only the Shire had taken the road the right way, the town would have been fine. Now - there's only one family with kids, everyone else is getting on or moved away. Eventually the two of them leave, wishing Charlie best of luck with everything.

The garou all get back together in the Umbra and plan to head up to Ademko's old house. ("Just pee while you run, waggling your tail around to spray it everywhere like a hippo" "That's an annoying metis deformity, constant incontinence" "Maybe that's a bit much and its only when you change out of metis form" "Any time you shift to a form with a smaller bladder you pee yourself" "Be like parrots, shit yourself as you take off" "Every time I go into combat I shit myself" "You gain dice on defense but lose dice on stealth")

Ok, they'll run out of town while someone peeks, find Springs Track, then step out into the realm and head along the track. Tillie wants everyone to sense as they travel in case there's evil in the bush. ("Butt-onette"). The follow the dirt and gravel track as it switches back and forth on the way out of town. Kasumi notices that there's a bit of a clear spot, and it looks back over the town - this is more or less where the painting was from. She tries to peek, but there's nothing obvious there in the Umbra that she can see. Their track joins another track that's better maintained, possibly because it goes to an actual house up here that they pass.

Its pretty dim as they run around - the moon won't be up til midnight and the sunlight is fading out of the western sky, and there's no houses or car lights. As lupus, they aren't bothered by this, in fact its kind of nice. They find a couple of artificial firefighing ponds, but there's no other signs of structures until they hit a bend in the road and its clear that there used to be some sort of access way off the road there. They push through the small gum saplings and find a clearing around a platform that looks artificial. There's much sensing, but nothing obvious leaps out.

There's signs of a structure on the left - a couple of chimneys still stand around a bunch of rusting corrugated iron. On the right there's smaller amounts of rusting iron, probably sheds. Further right there's a dam that's been dug out, but it doesn't have any water in it now - there's an ephemeral creek that might feed it in winter. There's no vehicles or farm equipment obvious to them - maybe deeper into the bushland.

The main structure is bigger than hut but not huge - cabin might be the right word. They sense for unnatural in the Realm - nothing obvious. There's no human scents, some animals. There's not recent burnt smells, the fire was sufficiently long ago that its all weathered away. The pack look suspiciously at the corrugated iron, and whether it hides a basement, and just generally at the area and wondering if tere's an invisible mage house of PAIN here. Maybe they should split up and step into the Umbra? Tillie goes with Melissa and Kasumi.

The others try and take steps to not be mind controlled to swing past a particular spot and miss it. The look of how the roof is sitting suggests there is a space below it. Sinead goes to move the corrugated iron but Finn is pretty concerned about the smell of snakes - given the weather and the environment, there's a high chance that there'll be something living under there.

In the Umbra they are still on top of a mountain. Tillie senses for wyrm and finds something unsettling about the place. The shadows seem deeper than they should be - the gloom is darker and they move a little bit out of sync. There's a vibe that things are off. There's a weird sussurating when the wind blows. Kasumi does sense unnatural and finds the faintest of wyrm senses around the place. Its been 25 plus years, its probably not just 'wyrm chemicals from painting'. Its an elusive sense, like it comes and goes - if they had to categorise it, its not a pollution sense, more an emotional residue. ("Dirty deeds done dirt cheap".) There's no deadlands and no magic sense here.

Tillie starts to look for a place in the Umbra to match the purported hole in the ground in the Realm. The house in the Umbra has only a pile of weaver stuff with a brickish texture - its probably fading out given there's no real house. There's another bare space where the sheds are.

She finds a gap in the earth in the Umbra - its only 50cm by 150cm, and its not hard edged ("yonic"). She can't see far down it - its unnaturally dark down there. She lays down in crinos form to try and stick her head down it, and finds that the edge is very loose, and slippery. ("At the end of it is your mother"). She has to grip the earth with her claws to stop sliding in.

She peeks into the realm. There is a space, but its full of debris. She decides to slip into the hole, and its very easy. Its not a huge space and she can't see etc but she can feel that it starts to drop dust and bigger fragments when she bumps her head. In the Realm, she can definitely smell snakes. Err. Snakes won't kill them but no one really wants to get bitten and poisoned either. She thinks that the space down under the house is not very large. The walls seem to be fieldstone rather than anything super finished. The floor might be dirt? or just covered in debris. Some fragments of glass and other bits in the rubble. She finds that at one end of the space is a space like a chimney that is set into the ground. There's missing bricks at the bottom, not in a decayed way, but deliberately. When the building was there, this might have been the way into the underfloor space. Its not big enough to be a well .

Tillie wants to come out now, so she sticks her arms out and gets Melissa and Kasumi to grab them, then changes to homid. Or rather, Melissa overbalances and slides down into the hole with her, knocking more stuff everywhere. They manage to sort themselves out, but the whole hole behaviour has a real vibe of ''its hard to get out of this hole''.

Finn says that Tillie's plan of just "scare the snakes away" is not going to work if the snakes are nesting here. They'll defend it in that case. "how important is it that we clear the snake nest?" ("We can jump up and dwn and make snake wine out of them"). Finn sighs and moves the corrugated iron. There's definitely hissing noises and movement under there. He finds a snake coming out and attempts to talk to them. GO. GO. GO (threat). "Need to get past". GO. "You go" NO. Finn tries to be threatening and the snake hisses and lunges toward him. Finn jumps backward. Sinead and Will stomp around and make more noise and make it clear there's a lot of threat. The snake wavers and then flees. They cautiously go back to clearing the space out, and get enough out the way to be able to see more.

Finn looks at the brick ground chimney and says that it was probably a cold store - you'd put food that wouldn't keep down there and add some moisture and it'd help a little. But it should't have the hole punched in the side. They clambour into the space under the house - they don't need to go through the hole. The hole really does look like someone made themselves a cellar.

Will changes to lupus and the smell of snakes becomes much stronger. He's pretty sure there's more about than just the one. He scrabbles a bit and thinks that the dirt floor theory is correct. He senses for unnatural and finds a glimmer up the far end, a faint ringing sound that sense of magic. He starts to dig in lupus and starts to uncover bones. The bones themselves have the sense of magic. They dont think the bones are human - they find more, including a skull. Hmm, dog? Oh dear, werewolf? Oh another dog skull. Oh and another. Different sizes... probably not a Cerberous kind of thing. They don't _think_ they are thylacines...

So.. is this someone's dead pets? Sacrficed dogs? Lupus? Or was he feeding something (someone) else to the dogs kept in here? There's no sense of wyrm in the Realm, but the magic is really really faint. The bones are sort of mixed together, but they weren't digging with care and they might have mixed them up. Is it possible the dogs just fled into a burning house? The cold store would have had a lid, and also the dogs bones have magic resonating in them.

Looking at the floor level, this space wouldn't have been very big - they'd be crouching or bent over to move around here. There's not much in the way of large objects in the rubble, but maybe a table or two? There's a lot more rubble in the hole than stuff. The field stone wall look incomplete and not well made. ("Secret shitty mage lab"). Is it an entry to the underworld?? Surely the Umbra would react in some fashion, or there'd be a sense of that sort of energy in the world if that was the case. Maybe the sense in the Umbra of you can't get out and its darker than it needs to be leads more toward that "this is where i feed prisoners to dogs".

They can't find anything that suggests the dogs were chained up. Its really hard to get an idea of what the other bits they do find down here might have been. Kasumi finds knives and forks and melted buttons and snakes (ARGH) but nothing like jewelry or crystals. She sifts through some of the ashes some more and a suspicion starts to grow that there's just not enough stuff here. There's kitchen stuff and some basic evidence of clothing, but even despite the fire, given the protection from the fallen bits of roof, she'd expect to find more evidence of paper ash, or anything else magical.

Maybe they should raid the police station and edridge anyone who investigated. But it was 30 years ago, and it seems unlikely that the same cops were be here, if not retired.

Why would Ademko need a different house to store his good stuff in - he's already at the arse end of nowhere. What other spots do they know he's associated with? The pub, and wherever the painting was painted. Maybe he was an aesthete.

Will goes looking for frames or tins. No, nothing here, but they haven't looked in the shed yet. They head over there - in the Umbra Tillie and Melissa french farce themselves out of the hole. Tillie tries to peek under the fallen bits of shed - much more collapsed than the house was, but has trouble seeing too much. She digs a bit of a hole to see whether there's a space underneath. Its less burnt - the house was thoroughly burnt, but these things weren't as obviously burnt out. Tillie thinks that maybe the sheds were knocked down rather than burnt down. There's no extra cellar as far as she can see. She relates what she can see to Finn who contemplates the possibility that it might have been the CFA that flattened the sheds during the fire. She relates that there's a snake smell under all this as well.

Kasumi senses for unnatural and can't pick anything about the shed area. The pack think there were probably two sheds against one another and a car shed sort of thing. One of the sheds has remnants of paint and canvas ("and terrain and minitures..."). Everyone peels the corrugated iron off and there are more snake shenannigans. Kasumi is staring at the space revealed and goes all CSI/time team on it - there's a weird difference in the ground colour inside the second shed. The ground is dry mostly, but then it goes to a different brown colour instead of grey and dusty.

They sniff about in lupus form (ARGH ASH) and then start to dig. Dig dig stick. Dig stick. Dig dig bone. Wait, the first ones were bones too. Oh those are much longer bones than the dog ones. There's no magic on these ones ("Its just a normal corpse!") They keep digging around and find a human corpse. There's no sign of a coffin ("They've been buried vertically? " "No I'm just standing up and using me to demonstrate") or any artifacts. Why on earth did he bury someone here? Why would he shit where he eats? There's a whole bush to bury people in ("it got full") - maybe there's too high a chance of someone walking in, even with almost no one being here. ("he tried burying people out there, and thats why there's now three dogs buried under the house - they kept digging up the corpse.")

The pack are pretty sure its just one person buried in the shed, and there's no other obvious burial spots. The body is on its back, and covered with about a foot of dirt packed in - its unclear if its 'ritual'. No coins. No obvious cause of death. Its still unclear why they weren't just dropped in bushland. There's no remnants of clothing - no buttons, zips, shoes or anything that might have been just rags even. They don't really any rituals or gifts that deal with ghosts.

Kicking through the rubble, Kasumi wonders if they've seen anything like a flat disk that might be activatable. If there was anything that had any lingering magic, they should be able to see it with sense unnatural. There's nothing that immediately says 'mirror' anyway. But maybe its not a literal mirror? Hmm, what else could it be. A painting of himself? That painting at the pub? Huh, it did have some sense of magic about it. They could probably steal that with taking the forgotten, if they replace it with another image. But why would he give it to the pub? Maybe he was worried about it getting stolen by someone. On the otherhand, if a drunk idiot crashed into it and spilt beer on it, it might get wrecked.

They could steal a painting to replace it? Will says they really should have just checked if it was painted on glass. Maybe rather than finger painting, getting a countryish painting from an op shop in Bairnsdale, and rearranging the rest of the photos and then taking the forgotten it? ("I swear to god, if we end up trapped in a painting") ("Lets steal a painting from Scott." "Its just a painting _of_ Scott" "I bet Scott had a vibrating bed, with a mirror on the ceiling")

Figuring they're pretty done here, they collect the dog skulls into the Bag of Shadows, and cover up some of what they've done. Throwing the corrugated iron back onto the top of the rubble will probably hide most of what they've done. They just cover the grave up and then put the shed roof back on. Anyone driving past won't notice, but it won't stand up to anyone coming and looking.

Its after 10pm once they head back to town. The sun is well down and the moon won't be up for a while, so its well dark. ("where do we stand on 'santa'?") Will ponders whether there's any spirits they could consult on ghosts? Maybe an owl, perhaps. Hmm, something to use later.

The pack head back to town along the road. As they travel, it might have been Will's suggestion or just a general sense that the night is dark and they are in the bush, but they spot an owl flying past. And then again... and a third time. And now its perched above the road. And Kasumi says "actually that owl has glowing red eyes". She senses unnatural - magic, deadlands and wyrm. The deadlands has a slow and cold sense - the magic here feels similar, its a stony, night feel. Kasumi stares at the owl and after a few slow blinks, it flies away. Tillie says that it was a powerful owl and everyone stares at her. She shrugs and says there was a display at the zoo.

The pack try to give chase off into the bushland, and up the steep walls of the valley that they are travelling down. The terrain and the dark and the lack of wings don't really help. Will is falling behind the least before he loses track - the owl is curving around toward town a bit. Tillie decides to go raven, and gets Melissa to watch her body as she goes out into the spirit raven.

She feels immediately that something is not right. Going into the raven is hard, and taking off is hard. She's gone 200 or 300 m away and everything starts to get dark. She is heading for town, and briefly sees the town lights occluded by something. The land itself has dark roll out of it, and the sky staarts to get dark from the centre. Its like she's going to faint. Tillie starts to feel cold and she mentally speaks to the pack about whether she should abort. The rest of the pack can't hear her well, as if she was many tens of kilometers away. She senses and finds there's a definite sense of rising deadlands and magic everywhere. Tillie opts to revert back to her body. The others, who are still spread out in the bushland, are struggling to mentally hear one another even nce she's back. Tillie manages to convey "ROAD" and everyone walks back to the track.

By the time they go back to the road, the mental link is totally gone. Finn's faerie lights are very useful in everyone getting back together. Everyone feels a little cold and stuffy. Hmm, time to go to the Umbra. ... uh... why can't they feel the gauntlet. Ok, back to the pub as a group. Hmm Kasumi changes to homid and checks her phone - one bar of service. They try and sense unnatural.. and it doesn't work. Sigh. Sense wyrm still works for them, but not the totem gift.

They get close to town, and spot some lights on in a house. Hmm. Kasumie uses her stealth gifts and heads toward the house to see if there's anything going on inside, while the others wait behind. She's hard to see, but knowing where she is and where she's going makes it easier. They're peering at her when something that is too difficult to make out happens to Kasumi. They're really missing the mental link.

Meanwhile, Kasumi is skulking toward the farmhouse when someone falls on her from above. ("Its an old hungarian man? I get that at home!") and she is bitten around the neck. She blows to crinos and hurls whatever it is off herself. Its a person, not an owl. ("A person fell from the sky and bit you?" "A vampire?" "no, santa claus"). They're dirty and frankly a bit smelly, and wearing an old fashioned suit.

The rest of the pack can suddenly see Kasumi in crinos and start heading that way.

The person lunges at Kasumi (yes, in crinos) and she can see them well enough to see elongated pointy teeth. They try and bite her some more, hissing and attacking. Kasumi tries to grapple it off her and manages to hold it by the scruff of the neck. Its human, but with glowing red eyes. They're dirty and don't smell great - its a man in his mid 50s, vaguley eastern european looking.. this is presumably Ademko and she says so in a growly voice. There's a note of recogntion in his eyes, but then he evaporates into a reddish mist that flows around and reforms behind Kasumi.

Kasumi leaps and tries to pin, snarling "Wait. Talk." but she misses. "Just. Talk!". ("We broke into his house" "Did we?" "We broke into his basement of dead dogs"). The apparent vampire mists again and reforms nearby. "All of this is _mine_. You will leave" (in accented english, with a very raspy voice). Kasumi shifts to glabro to make talking practical and says "we're not here to take your territory." "Everything here is mine! Go! You are not welcome!" "We are looking for something that belongs to you" ("Mint?") "Mine!" "We want to borrow it" "Mine!" "We _will_ kill you for it". He mists again and it flows away vaguely toward town. ("Gunna go to the pub, have a pint, until this all blows over")

Given the limitations of hispo around stakes, the pack opt not to carry sticks with them and change to lupus for speed. ("you _do_ want to lose melissa, cos then you get renown for a prophetic dream"). They make it over to the town - most of the houses the lights are off, but not all. The pub is closed. There's a kind of pervasive wyrm sense - its not super aggressive, but it is everywhere. They try to sniff things as they go along - livestock, kangaroos, people, cars... It does smell like the world should smell, not like old oil painting.

They sprint across the road and into the shelter of the pub. Kasumi pops the lock and they all sneak in. They sniff about and it doesn't smell great, but there's nothing obvious here. Some of the pack change to crinos, and the floor creaks alarmingly. Tillie hisses that someone lives here, be quiet. She takes the painting from Ademko off the wall - its really obvious where it was, but nothing falls out from behind it. The pack tell Melissa to keep an eye out. The painting is quite heavy and solid. It doesn't have a back, and there's nothing written on it. ("Smell, magic smell!"). There's a bit of a wyrm sense to it, but its really faint. Its a little akin to the miasma around the place.

By faerie light the painting seems the same as it was before. The detail is pretty astounding. The street is weirdly busy in the painting, kids and adults and so forth - as if it includes everyone who lives in the town. Every house has someone out the front, and there's people up and down the road and ni the fields. It makes the town very populous, given how many people they've seen today. The detail is insane - Maybe he's put a bit of everyone's soul in it to power his magic.

Melissa says there's a cat in the car park and its staring at her with red eyes. Kasumi grabs the painting and waves it in front of the window. Will says that it might have been better to not let him know they know about it, and she puts it behind the bar. Will says that as a philodox hwe thinks they should keep the Veil in mind. Melissa says this is all interesting, but the cat is still looking at her.

After a bit more arguing, Will heads out the back door with Kasumi, while the others sort of menacingly sneak out the front door. The two garou creep around the side of the pub while their packmates hold the attention of the black cat forward by lingering in the door way. Will is coming around to the car park when he puts his paw down on what he thought was grass and turned out to be a ditch - he makes a surprised noise and the cat's head snaps toward him. Will can clearly see the glowing red eyes. The others start to make growling noises to get its attention back while Will refuses to make eye contact and creeps forward.

The cat looks at the other garou, looks at Will, blinks - and the red is gone from its eyes. At that point it acts like a cat - ie it pissbolts as far away from these dogs as it can. Will takes off after it, and the others cheese it along as well. Tillie goes to leave, remembers she's in crinos and can't get out the door, changes to lupus and then has to wait because everyone else is ahead. She tries to race down the stairs and awkwardly half stumbles.

The cat is not as fast as the garou, and when it realises there's 5 large dogs after it, it leaps a fence by half crashing into it ("aaaa aaaaaa aaaaaaaaa" "and you say beast speech is useless"). Will sniffs for true form - that's a cat! He stops and the rest of the pack sort of look at him funny. He has to explain in garou tongue like a chump, rather than using the mental link.

Meanwhile Tillie is back at the pub and realises there's a figure watching her from the other side of the road with glowing red eyes. She opts to get it! and chases at it, aiming to just slam into its legs. She's super focussed on the vampire, and he changes into a mist just as she gets there - she is unable to stop herself and slams straight into a telephone pole behind him. She's not concussed or anything and manages to look around and see the vampire reforming on the other side of that room. ("I'm just looking at the range on one of my gifts" "its the lightning bolt one, isn't it")

Tillie starts stalking toward Ademko. He starts backing up in a what seems like a nervous fashion, keeping one eye on what's behind him. Tillie attempts to direct him given he's being so skittish and push him a direction she wants to go. While she's doing this she sniffs at him - he doesn't really have a scent trail like something alive does. He mostly smells of dirt and cold. Tillie suddenly realises that she's 100m down the road from the pub when Ademko stops his nervous retreat and just holds still. Tillie makes a "I'm here" sort of howl before continuing to close in. Tillie tries to see what Ademko keeps looking behind at. Ademko starts to approach slowly and tentatively - Tillie sharpens her claws on the road. Ademko approaches, maintaining eye contact -

Meanwhile the others have retreated from the cat situation back to the pub, and found Tillie isn't there. They start casting about for her and eventually find her trail heading south. ("TOO familiar with Tillie's smell"). There's an earthy, unpleasanty smell mixed with it. They trace it about 100m and then Tillie's smell veers into the bush. About 10' away from the edge of the road, they find Tillie in lupus, staring ahead of herself. The pack approach cautiously and when it becomes clear she's staring blindly ahead without blinking, Kasumi smacks her.

Tillie is suddenly aware of herself and the change of scenery. She's only moved from 10' away, and appears to have no neck bite marks. She does sense lightly of wyrm, and so Will makes sure with scent of the true form. She hasn't been out long - she tries to find a scent trail but it doesn't lead anywhere. It smells like the earth, its a vampire - they probably should check the grave yard. Will's not sure they're in the realm world, but if they are are there actually people here?

Hmm, ok they should probably check that first. They don't have their magical spy realm any more, so they'll have to do it the old fashioned way, creeping around people's back yards in the dark, like a pervert. ("Damien's new ring tone"). Kasumi activates her stealth gifts, and creeps into the back yard of one of the houses that does still have lights on. She can see into the house - there's a guy, in his 50s, has a kind of farming look to him, sitting on his couch, staring at his tv. ("Make some possumy noises outside" "As a dog?"). Kasumi makes some noises, not like a possum, but probably like a pervert. There's no sign that the guy made a reaction to this weird noise outside. The tv is on, but she can't see what its showing. She goes around to the front and rings the doorbell. She heads back to the window, and he's just in the same position as before - seemingly caught in a thrall, much like Tillie was just before.

("Whats your least favourite clan, and why is it treemere") Kasumi comes back and chats to the others. Tillie says she should go into the house and just have a look around. She slips in through the backdoor - smells say many sausages have been cooked, vegetables boiled to death and meals flavoured with sauce. It seems to be a legitmately occupied house, and not just a cardboard cutout. Only 1 person lives here, though others might visit. There's no dead smells - there's clothes and cutlery and milk and a plate with leftovers in the kitchen renovated in 1963. She sneaks further in and sees the tv has late night Gippsland tv advertising furniture places in Sale. Kasumi sneaks into the lounge proper - there's no smell of blood or the other scents the vampire has had. She sneaks back out.

The pack want to confirm its not only this place. They slink up to the other house with lights on. Its much like the others - weatherboard on top of brick foundation. The garden obviously has seen much love if not variation on the plants. While the whole pack hide in the backyard next to the obligatory lemon tree, Kasumi looks to sneak in. She peeks through blinds, but can only see some legs and feet lying on a couch. Kasumi tries to make another possum noise - this time its less pervert and more possum. No one stirs inside. She goes to the doorbell and finds its one of the old style turny ones that only make a noise when she turns it. She does, but there's no apparent reaction. The front door isn't locked, so she slips in. As she comes around the corner, she is a bit surprised by a figure sitting in an armchair that wasn't visible from the outside. However, they also appear to be in a trance - its an older lady, hanging onto some knitting and staring at it. The legs she saw belong to a gentleman about the same age, who appears to be asleep on the couch while the tv is on. She changes to lupus while the floor boards creak a lot. No one has been here other than these two for weeks. She creeps back out to the lemon tree meeting point.

The pack have a short chat and decide that the cemetary is the place to go. They go down the short lane on the east side of the main road and surreptiously check it out. There's a wooden post and slat fence around it, but its a bit nominal and needs some work. The garou head through the woooden arch and have a look about - there's no office here, so there's no records to look through, so they cruise about the place. Sniffing shows no particular visit by the vampire, which is their main concern. It also doesn't see a huge amount of normal foot traffic - there's more smell of rabbits and foxes than people. (As the rabbits sense the garou coming and run for it). There are a lot of plots where the headstones have fallen in, or there's signs of a burial but no detail about who is buried there. Tillie wants them to look for new burials, so they spread out and start checking dates. The most recent one they find is last year - most of them are 20th century with only a 3 this century. There's more in the range of 1980 - 2000, and even more earlier than that. Finn calls out that he's found one for Ademko - its pretty low key, just a simple marker to say "Julius Ademko" and 1983. The pack assemble around it - its not disturbed, and there's no smell about it.

Tillie wants to dig, but Will isn't sure they need to. Kasumi says its either empty, or there's a body there that will confuse the issue further. ("That's the core of the problem? They're enthralled at night and he forgets to tell them to breed?"). Tillie isn't disuaded and changes to crinos, and starts boring her way down. She pries up the concrete cover and the dirt starts flying every where. Will looks about and notices there's a possum up a tree with glowing red eyes staring at them. He carefully doesn't make eye contact, but keeps an eye on it. There's some talk about Finn using gifts to make mind contact, but the whole "entranced" thing disuades them. ("Let him watch... like a pervert" "When i said we were dogging...").

Digging down is tricky as crinos is too big for the space so Kasumi and Tillie keep shovelling with their hands in glabro. They make good time, and eventually hit something wooden. They have to keep widening the hole to get to the edges, and even then it turns out to be more use to pull it up a bit. It takes another 20m to get it free. They pry the lid up to a bit of coffin damage and find that there's.... nothing inside. No mirror, and no accoutrements. No fancy pillow. There's no sign that anyone was ever buried here at all. Its a very plain coffin - one step above unsanded pine box. The others go to bury it again, but Tillie says that she might want to put a vampire body in it later, so leave it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9JXrJ-y5tA) Given there were no relatives, its weird there was a burial at all. Maybe he left money and instructions and someone went "yeah ok"? There's no records here, and no mortician in the town - maybe they can look in the church?

The pack flip off the possum and head for the church. Kasumi's phone says its coming up to midnight. The church is an older building - weatherboard with a peaked tin roof - with a newer extension to one side made of brick with a tin roof. There's a board out the front with fading notices. Apparently there's services here once a month, but most of the rest of the notices are sort of community notices and a lost dog message. The garou sniff around the place, but can't sense anything much. The pack opt to go in the main doors. Inside the space is wide open, with bench seats pushed to one side. There's some cupboards up the far end, with some cleaning equipment in one, and some random bits like table clothes in the other. About half way along the left hand side is door, and a serving window just past it. Tillie senses for wyrm and finds that there's more intense wyrm sense here, but its not down to a point. ("Its a church", "Its had a bachelors and spinsters ball here, so don't wave the luminol and uv light around). Its the same sense they have from Ademko, and across the town - but stronger than the town, and less strong than Ademko's taint. There's some normal smells here, but they are weeks old.

They force the door with magic and look down there - it looks like the brick building has a corridor leading along from this door with a kitchenette, laundry and kind of office space branching off. The other external door leads into the corridor. The kitchenette has a pie warmer and a fridge. The laundrette has just enough room for a sink and a mop. The office at the end has a small table, a couple of old arm chairs, and some cupboards at the end. A folded up campbed is stacked next to the cupboard. The pack change to homid and ransack the cupboards, still looking for records.

The cupboard has boxes ("DAMMIT") in there, full of papers. The papers are not ordered at all. One of them is full of flyers and bits of memorabilia - its like someone's thrown it all together though, because some of it is photocopied, some is photostatted and some appears to be typed. The cupboards are newer than the records - it seems likely that this is not the original location that this archive was stored. There's some newspaper articles with names circled and underlined. There's a couple of funeral pamphletts, but they're older ones. There's some books in another box - they look like account books but don't have money. Will looks at them and then says "hey, this is the burial records." They aren't current - they cut off in 1985, but it lets them find Ademko. There's a burial date roughly matching what people have told them so far. The record lists the date, the person buried, maybe the minister, and then what might be contact information. For Ademko its Unk, Unk, dammit. And 'Shire' down as a note.

Looking at the burial record, this book covers 1973-1985. It suggests a higher population here than there is now. In 73 there's 20 burials, but in 85 there's only 5. Going through the archive boxes thoroughly, the pack find its full of stuff that would go on the noticeboard out the front. Less "lost dog", and more formal things that happened at the church ("This woman is no longer my financial responsibility, she has been seen with an irishman"). There's funeral booklets with pictures and a bit of biography and running sheet. There's not one for Ademko, unsurpringsly. But there are two for situations where the whole family died - no, wait three of them. This is over the last 30 years, but its still a bit suspicious. The last one has more detail, saying that it was a housefire that killed everyone. There's another where a local fell down a mineshaft. A couple of teenagers who died very early from accidents. There's other notices, like for local Shows, but they peter out in the last 1980s. There's a police post for a pair of lost bushwalkers - it catches the pack's eye because it talks about them being last seen up Springs Track, which is where Ademko's house is.

Presumably the families dying was connected to Ademko - you'd imagine killing a whole family might be good for ritual activity? One of the family's died in February, it could have just been a bushfire? They try and see a pattern in when the deaths happen - its not all the same house, they're not at the same time. The pictures aren't really great, but they determine that the dead people aren't people they've seen already tonight or anything - tho the mineshaft guy looks a lot like Todd at the pub. Agewise, it could be an elder brother or an uncle?

Tillie, who is bored by this whole thing, suddenly pricks her human ears - she can hear car engines quietly going past, along with the sound of tires crunching on the gravel. While the others hunker down, Kasumi activates her sneaky gifts and goes to look. She comes back and reports that two utes have gone past and done a uturn and are now sitting and waiting at the end of the lane. There's someone driving and someone in the back of each one. There's also a group of townsfolk mobbing on the main road. She thinks some of them are armed. ("I don't really want to kill a whole town full of people. I'm not saying I won't, just I don't want to"). They were a bit pyjamay. ("maybe the townsfolk know there's a vampire than can hypnotise them, so when something weird raps at the window, they just stare at the tv and pretend they don't notice")

Tillie contemplates trying to questing stone Ademko again, and seeing if now that they're closer and he's been touching the ground, whether they can sense him. She has the sudden thought that the grave, with its marker, which was a bit inexplicable, might have had a ritual purpose - possibly around messing with his name? Its not demonstratable, but its a possibility.

Tillie says she wants to get a better idea of what's going on - she can use her chameleon gift. She drags Kasumi with her too. They just slip out the door and hide in the shadows as best they can, and look around. About 1/3 of the way from the mob to the church, Tillie can see Ademko standing in the middle of the road. She hisses through the door saying what she can see. He's just standing there with his arms crossed. The other direction she can see the two cars idling - she senses wyrm and thinks that there's some sense there, mostly like that around Ademko himself.

There's a fair bit of strategisting, trying to work out if this is a trap and if so how to escape it. Tillie sneaks around and checks out the utes - there's definitely a driver, and someone standing on the back with a gun. There's spotlights on the top of each vehicle - looks like they might be used for roo shooting or similar.

She goes back and there is more talking. Eventually they have a plan - Tillie, invisible, will head toward Ademko through the fields next to the church lane. The others will burst out of the church and run obviously across the lane and into the car park, drawing attention and possibly fire.

Tillie notices that Ademko is further away than she saw him before - he's heading toward the mob on the main road. She doesn't have cover, but her gift should make her basically invisible if no one is looking hard. Meanwhile, back at the church, one of the cars comes forward and turns all its lights on, swinging around and trying to track the rest of the pack as they run across the cemetery. As Tillie gets closer to the humans assembling under the street light, she can see that they appear to be dressed for sleeping, but they are carrying a variety of weapons, including some guns.

Though Tillie's plan had been to try and capture Ademko or otherwise threaten him, he's clearly so unaware of her presence that she decides to just slam into him in crinos form. She bounces over the fence and crashes down onto the vampire.

Ademko staggers to his feet. Tillie tries to bash him again but misses. Ademko makes eye contact with her and orders her to sit, and she can't help but hit the ground with her ass. She notices the mob start to head her direction.

Meanwhile the rest of the pack hear the wheels of one of the utes spin wildly on the gravel before they grab and start the truck hurling down the lane, with the spotlights focussed down to where they know Tillie went. The other ute backs up and turns just after, sending its spots and headlights wheeling across the cemetery. Its clear that something is up, so they start curving around and heading to where Ademko was before.

Tillie decides that plan c is in action, and smashes Ademko with claws out, rending her way through clothes, skin and bones. His flesh does not behave like normal flesh - there is no wet spray of blood, or meaty feeling, and its cold. Tillie has torn away a considerable amount of his body, and Ademko staggers backward, and falls to his knees. She is about to smash him one final time when he dissolves into a mist once more. It doesn't flow quickly away like it has previously, but it doesn't seem to care when she waves her claws through it and gives it a kick either. The speechless mob is almost on her, and she doesn't really want to kill a whole load of random humans, and also the accellerating car coming the other direction is a bit concerning, so she books it up and over the fence toward where she thinks the pack is.

Meanwhile the rest of the pack has been running her direction. Sinead and Melissa are out ahead, Kasumi and Will follow and Finn is running behind. They can see Tillie lit up by the approaching ute and its high powered beams, so they have a good idea what's happening. Finn pauses to let loose with a Call of the Wyld to try and shake the enthrallment that the humans are under, but it doesn't really help. When Tillie heads their way, they can see three townsfolk break off and chase her while the rest of the mob clusters around where she was fighting. Its clear that at least one of the townsfolk have a rifle, as they shoot at Tillie but miss. Kasumi uses her Control Simple Machine gift to lock the trigger in place. Without their mental link Sinead does not know this and leaps onto the gunman in lupus, knocking them onto their back and sending the gun flying. The other two humans, one with a sort of machete looking thing and the other with a hatchett, climb the fence and keep after Tillie. As Melissa passes Tillie she snarls 'hatchett' and so Melissa tries to tackle the hatchett off the woman in her nightie with not much success.

The ute that had been racing down the lane veers off toward where Tillie went, bouncing wildly as it goes off the road and into the shallow ditch, then leaping up and through the barbed wire fence, crashing into Melissa and the woman she was struggling with, and sending the person who was in the tray flying over the cabin and heavily onto the bonnet. The lights are still working and light up the area. Finn heads toward the second ute, and is shot at by someone on the back for his trouble, but the shot goes wide. Melissa hobbles around the front of the crashed ute, clearly trying to not hulk out. Tillie curves sharply around back toward the mob - she senses for Wyrm and finds there's a sharp point source within the mass of humans.

Sinead starts knocking people's legs out from under them, and making the mob stumble into one another. Finn leaps the fence and sprints past the ute, attempting to do the same to its wheels - its not as successful as he'd hoped, but it is losing air rapidly from that wheel, causing it to wobble violently and lose a lot of speed. Tillie, having swung around back the way she was going, bears down on the mob in crinos and crashes into people with her arms open, sending them sprawling wildly before coming to a stop. Will, also staying in lupus for this fight, runs past and around, trying to see into the middle of the pack of people. Kasumi grabs the gun that had gone flying and flings it into the middle distance.

Tillie spots Ademko with his face buring in someone's neck and smashes her claws down, tearing him away and sending a spray of blood across all the people. Ademko crashes to the ground and seems to be if not dead then on death's door. Seeing a chance to kill steal, Will rushes in and closes his jaws on Ademko's neck, tearing the body into two.

Kasumi opts to end the power and blacks everything out. ("Shame about the guy with a pacemaker") Sinead leaps forward and heals the lady who is gushing blood all over the place like some kind of deranged St Bernard. Will grabs as much body as he can and gets clear of the crowd. Tillie grabs big bits that are left and follows him. The corpse starts to break up - its not like last time where the red smoke flowed with volition. This is more like its disintergrating into a black dust. Will's leaving a trail behind him.

The crowd stops and stands swaying. Before they were moving with purpose, but now whatever will was driving them has gone and they have halted and just stare into the middle distance. Kasumi heads toward Melissa and whatever carnage is overt here. Finn checks the ute and makes sure that they're not about to get shot, then heads to lupus.

Kasumi finds Melissa nearly has her shit together in front of the ute and is about to return to the fray. Sinead turns up there as well because she saw the guy in the back of the ute go over the cabin and come crashing down before. She can see that he's shattered his shin bones when his foot got caught on the tray side of the cabin. Kasumi manages to heal a tiny bit of the damage and sighs. Sinead sorts it out properly.

Will uses his Scent of True Form gift and just finds that he is carrying a dead corpse in his mouth. He tries to sense the gauntlet but its not there. Tillie gives a short "OI HERE" howl to get the rest of the pack's attention and indicate they should head to the church to hide behind. As they run, the body that they are carrying is falling apart faster and faster.

Finn is coming behind them and says that the dust is not behaving normally. Its hitting the ground and swirling up weirdly - its not inert powder, even though its not as enthusiastic as it was previously. The others just shrug and run off more figuring they need to deal with the imminient Veil breach first. Tillie senses for Wyrm, and finds that the smoke has the same sort of sense as Ademko all day - there's not exactly a point source, but a concentration is in the smoky bits. She looks around and the church gives her a similar feeling - earlier the church had more wyrm too, and they didn't get a chance to look into it. Maybe she shouldn't take the body there, just in case. There's a big hill behind the church and she heads up there, howling a mild 'come! hill!' to the others.

As Kasumi, Sinead and Melissa come that way, they encounter some of the dust billowing up. From their point of view, it looks like its moving along the much paler gravel of the road, along toward the church. Oh good.

The garou are about half way up the hill when the humans all snap out of their enthrallment. Confused sounds turn to screams and shouting and panic. Its clearly all beyond confusion down there as people run off in all directions. The body collapses completely by the time they get to the top of the hill.

The pack reassemble and compare notes. They figure that they really need to go and wreck up the church, so the 7 of them slink down there in lupus. None of the panicked townsfolk are coming this way, so there's no real hazard around being spotted. The pack circle the church and they spot a flow of black dust coming up the grass and pooling against the wall before going into the vents set in the brickwork. Tillie tries to block it with her giant crinos hand, and the dust does seem to pool up around her, but also is flowing along the wall. While the others go into the church, she uses her gifts to send fire blooming under the church. There's certainly a lot of burning dust and cobwebs under there now. ("Whatever's down there has no eyebrows"). She can see some stuff up the far end that seems to actually be on fire.

Meanwhile the rest of the pack go inside and are looking about. There's no sign of the smoky black haze nor an obvious access point to beneath the church. Kasumi tableflips and just smashes her way thrugh the wood, tearing up chunks of floor board. Melissa helps her out. Smoke starts to drift up from under there - not black evil vampire smoke, but actual paper smoke. The two of them look around and find that there's some rubbish up the far end of the church that has been set on fire.

With some scrambling, they manage to put it out before it really got moving. It looks like there's a trap down in the floor up here, but its under the cupboards in the hall - but prior to that someone's thrown a bunch of random paper and bits of plastic down the hole. The slope of the land means that there's no real headroom down here for anyone bigger than glabro. Tillie doesn't think the fire did much, and the tide is spreading along the wall, and starting to go into a different vent. She gives up and heads inside too.

The garou look around and try to see what's happening with the vampire dust coming in the vents. It appears to be coming up the end with all the rubbish and then settling onto the ground. Tillie senses for wyrm and agrees that the vampireness is intensifying here. The garou start to dig there - there's not a lot of space here but Tillie notes the floor has been fucked up already over there, so why not here too. ("we're going to burn it down anyway").

Once the floor is removed, a few crinos make a big hole pretty quickly - a few feet down and they hit a coffin.

The pack clear the rest of the coffin out. Clearly this isn't accessed every day - its a few feet under the ground, and it doesn't appeared to have been disturbed much. While some packmembers shape flood board into pointy stakes, the others remove the dirt from all the lid.

Tillie pries the lid off with claws, to the squeaking of nails in hard wood. The inside appears to have been lined with cloth originally, but its now also dusty and filled partly with dirt. It has a distinct smell, of decay and earth. They sense wyrm but there's nothing more here than there is in the surrounding area. The pack can see more black dust cascading down the slope they've made and settling into the coffin. They start moving things around and see that there are objects in the grave dirt. There's definitely no skeleton, but there's 40 or 50 objects here - almost knickknacks? They start taking them out and passing them up to Melissa to sort out.

Baby shoes. Medals. A locket. Some keys. Is this ritual stuff? It doesn't seem to all belong to Ademko, at least not without a lot of explanations. Its like mementos. Will tries to use his scent of the true form gift on the cascading black smoke/dust. Its a bit more concentrated than last time, but its still kind of a thing of the dead - its not like a demon... it is a bit like a ghost?

Kasumi gets a bit frustrated and just drags her claws about in the coffin, and hits something metal. She goes to dig it out and pulls her fingers out suddenly. Right, its silver and lots of it. She changes to homid and pulls it out and finds that its bigger than an A4 page, with a kind of ornate frame with a lot of detailed bits on it - its crusted with crap and dirt, so there's no specifics obvious.

Sinead, Will and Kasumi get out with the mirror and start checking it, while Melissa goes back and keeps pulling things out of the coffin. Kasumi is just saying "its silver' when she hears the sound of police sirens echoing along the valley. That's a surprise - the money was still on them being stuck in a painting. They try and see if their spirit powers are back - maybe the mental link is returning? And there's a faint sense of the gauntlet.

The pack members down in the hole say that the amount of crap going into the coffin is increasing - has he been trying to get into this coffin the whole time? Maybe he's going to reform here. Well, lets fuck it up then. ("We need to get this church on fire"). The crinos members of the pack start grabbing it and breaking the wood pieces out. The others start looking for flammable things - oils or other accellerants and paper.

Meanwhile someone goes and peeks out the office window - there's a cop car coming up the main road, lights flashing and sirens. There are now lights on in the pub and other houses, and a crowd of people in carpark. The cops pull up slowly to the crowd and turn the siren off. Two uniformed police get out and are surrounded by a mob. No one is going to notice them smashing up some old coffin, but they might notice the fire.

Kasumi wraps the mirror in an old curtain and puts it somewhere carefully. The folks pulling chunks off the coffin think the dirt is piling up higher, and taking on a humanoid look to it. The rest of the pack find cleaning fluids and an oil heater - Tillie rips open the sealed sump in it and starts tipping it out on screwed up papers. The torn up floorboards add more fuel for their fire to be. Sinead senses the mementos they've been pulling out and finds there's enough wyrm there that they can just go on the fire too - the mirror is also a source of some wyrm taint.

Most of the pack slip out and head to the tree line. Tillie stays at the doorway in lupus and uses her magic powers to fill the area of their setup with fire. It catches pretty thoroughly. ("There's a CFA shed near the pub." "we should set that on fire too").

Meanwhile the rest of the pack can see another emergency vehicle coming up the road - its probably an SES station wagon. It won't have enough equipment to put their fire out as it gets going. They also pull up around the pub. Tillie joins the rest of the pack at the treeline. Kasumi says she thinks she can feel the spirit world - she wouldn't be willing to try stepping just yet, but it feels like its coming back. Its almost like when her foot has gone to sleep and is now coming back. They can empathically feel each other, so the pack link is coming back too

The fire is good and going before anyone notices - its way beyond fire extinguisher before the hue and cry is raised. The cops and the SES car drive up the lane way to get to the hall - but when they step out, they obviously are left without many options. The cops go abck to the car and use their radio. The SES guys do a lap of the building, evaluating how likely it is to spread, or if they can take any fuel away.

The pack consult their gifts and try to work out if Ademko/smoke is around them, potentially following the mirror, but they seem fairly clear. The pack decide that its time to cheese it. Kasumi will stay in homid hanging onto the mirror, while the rest run in lupus with her. They want to stay within the treeline, which is going to be slow, but makes them basically impossible to spot.

Half an hour later its become clear that the interference stopping them from accessing the spirit world, or using their powers is fading fast. They can mentally talk, and the gauntlet doesn't feel too strong ("dammit we could have walked out of here whenever"). Once out of the valley, its all lifted and seems back to normal. Hmm. They want to get the mirror out of the valley and all, but maybe some of them can double back? They try putting the mirror into the Bag of Shadows, but it will not activate with the thing in there. They have their totem gift back - the mirror is strongly magical and of the deadlands, and some wyrm and demonic. Its not the magic they are familiar with in Melbourne. Its definitely active though.

In the end, Finn and Melissa head onto Swifts Creek where their car is, while the others head back along the road in the Umbra toward Cassilis. The weird numbness gets stronger again as they head to town, but not in anywhere near as strong or oppressive a sense. The sense from Finn and Melissa gets more empathic despite being relatively close. The pack can see the town when they get there because of the small concentration of Weaver ephemera. Will peeks to try and see what is going on. They sense unnatural - there is still a deadlands, wyrm and magic sense about everything, especially in the Realm. Its fading. ("It started when you saw the weird owl" "Did it have a piano accordian?").

The town seems to have been organised somewhat even by the very minor amount of emergency staff. People that seem ok, and just confused and upset have been sent back home. People that were injured or in shock or had firearms have been some space in the pub. The two cops that are here are constables (not senior police) - when they go back to the radio and ask _again_ when any support is coming, they are told that there's an two ambulances on their way up from Bairnsdale, but Omeo police are unable to help.

Inside the pub Debbie has fallen asleep on the table, and Todd is making coffees for people who aren't drinking it. There's some desultory conversations about the cause - there's not a shared water supply amongst more than half the people, there's not a shared gas supply. Hallucainations ? Why is the church on fire? It sounds like the wildest theories have already been talked about.

The church is still burning merrily - the SES and a few locals have got the CFA shed open and taken out a towable pump, but its a bit past being easily dealt with and doesn't seem in danger of spreading so they're just trying to contain it. In the Umbra there's fire spirits having a wonderful time. They can't spot any vampire corpse in the middle ignoring the fire, or a batlike shadow rising up toward the sky. There's still a wyrm/deadlands/magic mess around the church but its not building.

The pack decide that maybe a cleansing ritual might help break things up and solve the problem. Sinead and Will perform the ritual. Someone else peeks inside, and sees another car drive in - it turns out to be a relatively local doctor woken up to come help.

Finn and Melissa see a couple of ambulances go past toward Cassilis with lights on, but not sirens. Its followed by a cop car and another car. Shortly after a couple of CFA trucks come in - one from north and one from south.

Sinead finishes the circle and howls loudly to banish the wyrm. Kasumi is looking around for any other disruption and spots a number of white wolves coming their way across the Umbral landscape. Oh, yeah, this is Silver Fang territory. The pack resolve to straight up omit mentioning the mirror and be deceptive about how they came to be here. The group of lupus come straight their way - as they arrive, two forward members of the pack change to crinos and then homid while the others linger in lupus. Tillie gives a slightly formal 'wassup', announcing herself. One of the Silver Fangs says he is Alexander Prokopenko, packleader of Shattered Fire, a rank 3 Silver Fang Philodox. What are they doing in Silver Fang territory?

Will is poked to talk - he gives a brief rundown of what happened: they had a vision of sorts about there being something magey here, they came to see what it is, and it turned out to be quite the wyrm installation. They couldn't get to the Umbra for the last few hours and weren't sure they could get away. Prokopenko asks why they did not seek permission to be here. Will sort of stumbles over it not really occuring to them to do so. Prokopenko asks if their Sept is so ignorant and illmanner as to honestly not know where the territory of the Silver Fangs lies? Will mumbles something about the Fangs claim the border of their protectorate encompassing Melbourne, and Prokopenko says whatever the Septs close to the scab allow them to do, that does not excuse coming further into Protectorate and the territory of other septs.

Meanwhile Finn senses that Tillie is annoyed, and Will is trying to be reasonable. Oh no, its people - they have to deal with people, their achillies heel.

Will squints and apologises somewhat formally for their transgression. The Silver Fang grits his teeth some more and then asks what is this, waving his hand at the fire and area. Will says that was the centre of a wyrm creature's power, and they were forced to set it on fire to destroy it. ("What are you talking about, this is a wyrm energy free circle of joy?" "oh yeah, we just cleansed it").

Prokopenko walks back to the rest of his pack for a quiet word. The garou tongue word for 'bunyip' drifts out of the conversation. Prokopenko directs his pack to spread out and look around while Tillie rants about "well but they let wyrm!" on the mental group chat.

Prokopenko returns and asks about how they learnt about it - Kasumi says she got the information from the demon that was at the bottom of the Atropos well. Will opts not to vocalise "demon" and instead says they were given information by a spirit.

Prokopenko asks for some details about events going on here. The pack decide to keep mention of the mirror out of any conversation, but are otherwise up front about things that happened. He seems mostly interested in where have you been, and what have you done. They advance some of their theories about Ademko - he might have a hidden stash somewhere here, because there was nothing at his house and he seems to have been inhabiting a coffin. ("So we burnt it down and did a cleansing ritual").

Prokopenko says "stay here" and he moves over to speak to various pack members. After about 10 minutes he comes back and says they have other pack members here. Where are they? Will says they're back at Swift's Creek, they went back to get vehicles. Another half hour goes past. In the Realm a couple of fire engines have shown up along with the ambulance, but they sort of look at what's left of the fire, consult with the SES guys and shrug. ("The next time Scott turns up, just right in the nuts" "That was always my plan") ("As a legal argument, your theory is nonsense. As a way of starting a fight, its spot on").

After some mental discussion about the Silver Fangs and the mirror and the possibility of the police finding it and all... they decide to send Finn and Melissa back to Bairnsdale and wait there. Just in case.

Eventually Prokopenko returns and says they can go. Get their packmates and get out. Will asks if they should offer to come back and confirm that the mage is dead, because they've got the gifts for it. The rest of the pack aren't keen, given whole attitude they are getting from the Silver Fangs. Tillie says buhbye and the pack changes to lupus and head, while mentally yelling at Finn to wait up. They've only got 15m out of Swifts Creek, so he pulls over and waits for the rest of the pack.

Once everyone is back at the car and Tillie has pushed Finn over so she can drive, the rest of the pack take a good look at the mirror. ("Just squat and rinse it off"). The whole thing is much larger than they were expecting - not a hand mirror that's easy to lug around, but more like a wall mirror The face is silver but the frame is brass or bronze - its crusted with dirt and worse and hard to see detail, though its clearly ornate. There's figures of some sort - ghosts, demons, spirits, tortured forms of mortals, its not sure.

So, if they take it back to Melbourne, where to put it? Mage house? Uh, no. Mages might want this thing ("DEMON BALL Z") and be able to sense it, so they need some way to hide it. Should they just make it Emma's problem? They don't really know how to use it - even a couple of hours in the car doesn't give them any clear ideas how to activate it.

Saturday 18 - Theurge waning

The sun is coming up as they get back to Pakenham, so Tillie decides they can just call Emma. It rings for a while and then a sleepy Emma says "yes?" Tillie is bright and shiny at them. "We found a thing? " "Like an animated hand?" "No, not a Thing". They compare notes and after working out that it isn't actively dangerous, Emma says they should bring it to her house.

Emma is waiting with coffee when they bring the mirror in. They run over the details - senses strongly of magic, somewhat of deadlands, a bit of wyrm. They clean it up a bit ("spray and wipe?"). The brass and bronze is tarnished, but the silver appears to not have any oxidisation at all. ("This will make a great statement piece for our new house"). Its clearly magical. Its displeasingly wyrmly, but some concern that cleansing it might wreck it. The wyrm doesn't just feel like it is "dead world stuff" - its also out of place and its fundamental nature doesn't belong here. On the plus side, they don't think its a demon stuffed into something to make it a fetish. Maybe the extra wyrm is contact high from the vampire? Or he used it for something (though it didn't look like its been used for a while).

How to activate it? All eyes go to Kasumi who says yeah, the demon wasn't exactly forthcoming. What exactly did they say? "there's a mirror, look up Ademko in this town"... that's about it. ("Never would have suspected.... the ragabash"). Will says that all the deadlands stuff seemed to involve killing people - their rites, and the mages. But surely you wouldn't have to kill someone each time you wanted to use it? But lesser things - blood? ("Already said i'd wee on it" "outside please") ("put your butt on it" "shloop. 'oh no, sidequest, rescuing Kasumi's butt from the deadlands'") Polishing it? Well, cleaning it up properly can't hurt.

It doesn't get better honestly - the figures on the outside are all twisted and elongated, and seem to be chasing each other maybe? They're intertwined together. Its not comfortable to look at it - there's a real demon-fleshcraft vibe, like they saw demons do to people inthe Deadlands.

They could call Grek? Could take some time to get a message to him. Kasumi says she could sleep with it nearby? ("Asked the shop assistant if they knew anything about the bunyip. denied everything. Very suspicious." "Do dreams violate the litany - asking for a friend")

Bleeding on it is an option - Emma says outside, and makes it clear she's not concerned about trying it in her backyard, 1000 mages scrying or whatever. Magic is not her thing, but essentially what they want to do is make a connection to the thing to use some of its innate abilities, or provide it with power to do the same. Making the connection on how to do so is not obvious - with a fetish, its instinctive. Emma says she can experiment and come back with an answer, but she doesn't have some of the abilities they have. She's confident in Sinead's abilities to poke just as safely as she can. Kasumi volunteers to leave it nearby while she sleeps (Not sleep with it) and hope for more demon contact. ("just push the start bottom at the bottom left corner"). ("upside down upside down miss Jane") ("I've tried bleeding on it, I've tried peeing on it. I'm out of ideas" "And fluids" "I've thought of another fluid." "Oh yes, here's Will, he fucked a mirror" "It was just so handsome" "And it tingles when you touch it". "We've gotta go to the dead lands to rescue something - Will's dick" "Its just the tip") She doesn't recommend experimenting in the caern - go find somewhere quiet. ("yeah, not the graveyard" "Not *that* graveyard, anyway")

Kasumi only. Kasumi comes back from a shop run with croissants that are untainted ("I wasn't paying attention, are we putting power into the croissants or the mirror") and they all head back to their house. When they arrive, Brenna is sitting on the couch staring into the backyard. She jumps when someone says her name and looks around startled. Tillie asks where she was, and Brenna seems confused. (No stars in the eyes tho). Will quietly scans her with sense unnatural but there's nothing outstanding. Brenna says she sat down and just... phased out. It was night time. She's stiff. The pack are pretty concerned. Kasumi looks about for blood or dead people, but nothing. This is not the first time that Tillie has seen this - with nothing else to do, she just sort of vagues out. They've had conversations about it - Brenna is aware that she's missing a lot of herself between the Dancers and then Erebus. But not for that long. Brenna seems a bit embarassed by the whole thing. She ducks off to the loo,

While she's out the door Kasumi seizes the moment to come clean about where the information about the mirror comes from - she says it wasn't a dream, and it wasn't untrue that it came from the demon that guards the Sundering... but she has a contact here and is a mage. ("Oh you are so grounded"). She makes it clear that its not strawman. The guy found her at the library and initiated contact. (Will triggers his Truth of Gaia gift) and offered to help. He said that he was able to help them if he can. They've talked a bit, especially abuot the strawman.. mens... mans... them. He says that there's more than one group, and not all of them have aligned goals. He seems to be independant - he didn't know a lot of stuff about them specifically. He didn't have any advice around Coode island.

Will asks if he knew anything about the attack on the caern. Yeah, he did - the conversation was that his associate (the demon) wants to get rid of these guys, you want to get rid of these guys, how about we work on this together. She didn't say anything because she didn't want them to kill him out of hand. He's willing to talk to them now via phone call. ("He's a big nerd and he likes knowledge"). Kasumi says that the mage gave strong suggestion that the straw man and the mages that attacked the caern are the same group.

Can they trust him? Well... the mirror info was good. Kinda. How did he know where it was? Not quite sure. Why doesn't he want to meet them? Well, mostly all the violent murdering. He was pro Sinead ("What's so special about me? " "you're not a psycho") but definitely concerned about the others. Don't know if he knows about Melissa.. who says she feels like she's being left out somehow. So... sorry I've been the stereotypical ragabash. ("That takes the edge off really - 'oh, its the ragabash lying' "). Will's a bit concerned about if people find out that they effectively lied about a dream - they have a lot of dreams that they want people to believe. Kasumi says that his name is Xanthipides. He looks mediterranean, but doesn't sound Greek.

Ok.. well, they want to experiment a bit. Kasumi passes along that Xanthipides said that things behave by either having their own energy or using yours (a bit like talens). He asked about whether there's written instructions. Hmm no, but the frame is pretty ornate. Maybe they could ask Bart? No, he's really more werewolf things. Malajimbarra? Will says they should not let him know they have it ("Is this a Jindabyne thing? " "No, its a racist against Uktena thing"). Will wants to try a non-caern graveyard and try things out there. ("I thought you said non-canon graveyard" "Isn't a non-canon graveyard just a place you dump some bodies")

Before that, they decide to give Xanthipides a call. Kasumi tells him she's going to ring and put him on speaker call. Will checks for unnatural taints around (in case of scrying), and isn't able to find anything beyond the unknown. ("I want to phone dive _so_ bad"). After some awkward greetings, Xanthipides asks them to describe the mirror. Kasumi asks about sending him a photo and he says he doesn't have that sort of phone. They give him a run down - silver surface, demonic looking frame of brass or bronze ("Don't do what Donnie Demon does"). Is there any obvious things that do things? Any spots on the back where you could put something? A divit that looks like you could put something in it? (everyone gives Will a hard look). Kasumi asks about invisible ink instructions? No, whoever made it would know, and they wouldn't necessarily want anyone else to. Will says they found it in a coffin and Xanthipides interrupts with "you found it _where_?"

The pack give him a rundown of the events last night. Xanthipides is a bit taken aback. He says that he's only ever seen one passing reference to that sort of thing, and it was a morality story of "don't do that then". He's going to try and find it again - he doesn't remember many details. The implication was you can do it, but you need to do it when you're young hale and hearty for it to work, and no one tries til they've felt the touch of their mortality. Some discussion about the downsides, which includes killing and Xanthipides seems less keen on it than every other mage they've encountered. Tillie actually asks how many people he's killed and he stammers a bit and then says he doesn't really want to go into it. She reframes it as "what is up with the other mages? And mass slaughter" He says that he can't answer directly, but he can let them know that they do that to expedite the connections to the deadlands. And his... um, lets say patron ... does not like that. She doesn't like the imbalance of an excess of um call it death energy into this world.

Will asks what he can tell them about the mages that attacked the caern. They have patronage from a powerful demon in the shadowworld. Do you know if they are in league with the fallen garou? Ah, other than what you've conveyed, I don't know anything about them. When they attacked, there were some people with spirits merged into them - is that something the mages can do? Xanthipides says he can't tell them everything that other people can do - there's a whole swathe of things people have said they can do, but not all of it can be true. He's encountered some people with a different view of the world from him, and could tap ... He's not trying to be difficult, but he has some constraints. They could tap other energies. Some of them might have been able to do that thing with merging people and spirits.

The people that attacked the caern, they definitely had some kind of alliance going on. Stuff that went on that day, not all of it these mages that attacked them could do that. Some of the demons clad in flesh tho, they could do.

Xanthipides reiterates that he didn't actually expect them to find Ademko or the mirror straight off. He was expecting to find some evidence about who might have raided his stuff after he died, given the time span they were talking about. And then they'd have to make a deal with those people. So, turning back to the mirror...

Mentally, Will asks whether there was maybe something in the other stuff that they pulled out of the coffin to activate it? Its not impossible - it was all weird stuff, and it all had at least a faint magic sense to it. Well, its all burnt now, so it'd better not be that.

Kasumi asks if Xanthipides knows about Ademko being a painter. There was a weird painting in the pub that had a lingering sense to it that they'd associate with Ademko. He considers it for a moment and then says he did not know he was a painter, but if he was it would fit in with some other bits about the guy's life - some things that were written about him. There was a reference to .. someone got him to do something, and within the conversation (with a 3rd person) they said I've commissioned him to do the thing.

k, so back to the mirror. Conveying power to it - blood is a good idea. But they need some way of, er, charging it. There's an amount of magical energy you need to imbue into it. Alternatively, you probably don't need to kill anyone with it - its not just morally wrong, but its an excessive amount of power. They might find it only works at night, or day - there's other things associated with the dead. It might need a magic word, but that usually only works if something is there and listening to the words. The pack ask if there's not a manual? Xanthipides says no - its 600 years old, its passed between 12 different owners since it was made. Materials - lead, or particular oils have an association with the dead. Maybe grave dirt? Is that why it was in the coffin?

The pack head off to Coburg after dark ("Coburg by Night"). They find a dim corner of the cemetary in the Realm - figuring that this is a mage thing, and they mostly act in the physical realm. They dig up a bit of dirt from a grave (raiding an already cracked and open one), and prepare to bleed on it, but no one's 100% sure how to get started. They can't actually give gnosis to something without there being a spiritual connection, and usually its the spirit part that establishes that connection (even in a fetish).

While someone senses unnatural, they try sprinkling the grave dirt on it. Nothing. Checking the Umbra shows nothing obviously out of place - there are some death spirits lurking about, they could try and bind one to the mirror, but Emma was down on accidentally shoving a spirit into the Deadlands.

Kasumi tries more commanding the item - shouting (quietly) at it in latin and hungarian she learned earlier today from the internet while putting the dirt and blood on the mirror. No response. Hmm. When they attune to a fetish, they have an empathic connection to the spirit so this sort of "do the thing" works. There's no sense here that there's another entity in the mirror and thus this doesn't seem to be the way forward. Spirit awakening on the mirror is still a fair bit lower down the list.

Ok, time for blooood. ("Mix everyone's together and drink it in some sort of... vinculum"). Ok now its covered in blood, but there's no other immediate change. They smear it around and draw a smiley face. The gift-using pack members report nothing. Ok, well, the impression they got was this was the bare minimum of what might activate the mirror - they'll probably have to up the ante a bit.

Say Bloody Mary 3 times? Use this mirror to step? Dunno that they want to go to the Shadowlands right now. Open Seal gift? Kasumi gives it a shot, but it doesn't feel right - it doesn't turn that way. Does suggest that there's no extra key required on the top of anything else needed. Maybe fire? ("We haven't lit any candles or incense... maybe it needs to be romanced" "I was thinking I can make fire or put fire on it.. but i guess you could take it out to dinner if that's what you think will work") Tillie lets loose with a small blast, but no change. Blow on it? May as well go all 4 elements. Still nothing.

Plan F ("This is why we need Will"). Maybe they can sing to it? Cleansing? That's probably not a great idea, its likely to disrupt things. So, blood in and of itself was probably not going to be the way forward. They need to possibly charge it in some fashion. They can't just put gnosis in things, they need to have some way of interacting with it - and usually the way that they do that is with rites. Rites are their way of doing spirit things. (Using gnosis with gifts is tapping a tiny bit of spirit that gave them the gift, rather than doing it directly). So, maybe dedication? Spirit awakening? Maybe their gnosis sharing thing? Could they put the mirror between two of them and push gnosis back and forth? Its technically mediated by their pack totem... maybe. Why not try. Kasumi makes a joke about red wire/black wire and it does trigger a thought that they need to make the connection to the mirror still, so maybe use blood as the medium there.

They make a loop of all the pack, with the mirror in the middle. They try pushing gnosis through to each other. Nothing obviously happens, but Will is sensing and says that actually something changed in the mirror - its more active than it was. They opt to go again - ("more finesse?" "no, more brute force hammering") going harder and pushing gnosis around more extragavantly. The frame moves, writhing and changing. The figures move about, and the headish ends move to the centre - the blood runs off in rivulets, and disappears at the heads, as if the blood was being drunk.

The mirror clears and they can see into the Shadowlands. The vista is the same greyish reflection of the physical realm that they wandered through when looking for Grek last year. The mirror stops moving, and they pick it up and wander about. Fallen buildings are visible outside the cemetery - there's one static figure draped over a grave, unclear about how they died there. They can spin it, and the image stays as is - its like a window into the deadlands. Tillie waves it over her packmates, but no one has any presence there. They see one of the vibrations that are demons flying past overhead. Tillie says she hopes its one way mirror.

They do a bit of experimentation - the opposite side of the mirror does not show an image. They wander about, keeping an eye out for anyone giving them the eye for being weirdos, but so far there's no one close enough to pay them attention. Outside the cemetery, they can see some movement in the mirror, and so the pack head toward it. There's an old lady standing next to the road, looking back and forth along the road. When they get closer, her head stops going back and forth and turns straight toward them. The pack approach a bit closer and can see that she's not on the side of the road but in the middle, and her legs are smashed backward. She is staring still as they approach and follows them as they move. The pack opt to not approach.

About 30 minutes later, the mirror clouds and returns to just reflecting them. Ok, so they only get a short time - though maybe they can finesse it more later and get a longer time. Maybe they should take it to Coode Island? They do have an option for attracting a strawman to come and talk to them, so they could have the mirror ready to go - not show it to them, cos they might want it. They should see what happens if they use it in the Umbra.

Sunday 19 (Theurge waning) - Tuesday 21 (Ragabash)

The pack spend a bit of time experimenting with the mirror, tring to refine what they've discovred so far. Will wonders if it can be charged up by doing spiritually significant things - they found it in what is probably gravesoil, under a church, in a coffin, in the place where a vampire lives. So maybe some of that has the right kind of resonance?

Maybe they could invent a ritual to charge the mirror? Its not outside the range of possibilities, Sinead has a fair chunk of skills. But its months of work, not a short term project. Could they get a spirit to give some gnosis to the mirror? Yes. Would it be willing to do so? Almost certainly no - so the chiminage would have to be good. Maybe they could get a spirit to give them a gift that lets them be nuanced about their gnosis?

After a couple of days of experimenting, the pack discover that they can actually take some of their blood out, use talisman dedication on it, and then tip that on the mirror, and the mirror activates. The downsides seem to be that it doesn't activate for as long as brute forcing gnosis in, it requiress 10 minutes, and it actually requires like a cup of blood, so its not a casual palm-slice deal. On the upside, they can kind of pre-prepare one or two cups. There doesn't seem to be a limit on how often they can activate the mirror, except for their supply of blood.

The next item on their agenda is "can we take this to the Umbra". And the answer appears to be "yes". It does seem a little hard to step from one realm to another when carrying the mirror - there's a sort of drag or something from it - but they can go into the Umbra and activate the mirror. It does not work when they activate it and try to move between realms - it just will not come. From the Umbra it seems to work the same was as it does in the realm. That's useful.

Now, where can they keep it? Emma is ok with storing it for them, but they may not be able to get it at all times - she'll need to retrieve it. Maybe they could awaken and bind a safe at their house? Perhaps they could ask Boobook to hover near it, but this might change the dynamic where Boobook lingers near the biggest group of the pack.

When the mirror is active, it does seem to attract some mobile ghosts. They start to move slowly toward the mirror while staring at it - its unclear if they can see through the mirror or just sense it in some fashion. They haven't yet seen any Bunyip spirit/ghosts through it ,but it might be exciting if they do. `

The pack have an itch about Coode Island, and so they give the caern a heads up, and take the mirror near to the site, closer to the weird rock site than anything else. They do a bit of a reccy before moving in, but find nothing stands out as being very band. So they find a good spot and activate the mirror, but instead of clearing, and showing the shadowlands, it goes black. Swinging around, black, black, black. They sense for unnatural and wyrm around, but there's nothing more than they found previously. ("Can we zoom out? " "yes, two fingers and pinch"). Tillie says they can walk out and see - they cross Footscray Road and it clears. They spin around and find the black shadow is behind them. They spin around and ,.. oh. There are a _lot_ of dead people floating in the Deadlands and some of them are looking at the pack. Most of them are laying down, not always at ground height. One of the pack remembers that this area has been a plague hospital. (https://www.victorianplaces.com.au/coode-island) Oh great.

The pack walk around, skirting the edge of the black. It seems to be circularesque, and be centred on the ritual site they found ("Hands won't go through - nothing with bones in it"), though not exactly. It covers a few hundred metres, including sticking out across the Maribyrnong. There's a kind of radius outside the area that is always black where it flickers and they can see what looks like a normal shadowlands scene. It doesn't keep happening at the same place or at the same angle or speed, so they can't keep triggering the flicker. There was no sense of something like this in the Realm or Umbra when they checked it - nothing that was being hidden from them that they could sense from either realm.

The black doesn't have its own form, its just that the mirror doesn't show anything in one area. How terrible is a trip to the deadlands? Bunyip, zombies, bunyip, time confused ladies at cross roads, bunyip, popes in airplanes, bunyip, demons possessing corpses. Ok, moderately terrible and dangerous. But maybe the Hive is actually in the deadlands? Or is it a mage encampment? But why would the strawmen direct them here to look? Multiple factions of mages sending them to fight some of the others? Is it not a shield, its actually a void - the ritual drained all the energy out of the deadlands and left a gap? Is it a pocket universe? ("Gifts are like apps, right?")

The pack opt to call Xanthippides and see if he can offer some insight. Kasumi gives him a run down of their investigation, without saying exactly where they are looking - they say that there was some kind of ritual done at a spot, and around it is a region where the mirror is black. She asks if he's seen the deadlands - he's a bit hestiant but says yes. He asks some questions, and then suggests maybe there's just something interfering with the mirror? There are places where you can't spy remotely just naturally - Tillie asks about those and he says that there are natural places, and places that can be warded against far seeing at a distance. Is it over something significant? Only the ritual. Xanthipides says that given the round-a-bout way they are talking, he assumes they're not keen to tell him where it is, but after a moment the garou say its over Coode Island, and they were looking for Dancers.

He tentatively says that its not one of his big skills, but he could try looking there. It will take him a little while, but it might be better than trying to travel to the lands of the dead. Will mentally says over the pack link they should try out the mirror at the mage houses. Maybe *outside* the mage houses, just in case. Could they take it to the hospital? No, it was mysteriously demolished shortly after they visited, even though it had been abandoned for ten years and nothing new has been built there since. Given the way the batbanes behaved (went straight from the hospital to the mage house), maybe it was an important place for them and they had spirits there come and tell them something was up? Worth checking out too. Could the demonic cathedral they keep dreaming about be in the Deadlands?

A few hours later, Xanthipides calls them back and says with the rider that he's not very good at it, he can't scry there. Its not that he sees what they see, but as he looks over Coode Island there's a big bit where he can't make it work there. Its not that there's something there, its sort of ... access denied. You mightn't notice it unless you were trying repeatedly to check the place. His understanding is that they have some ability to sense the things he does? Is there any sense that that's going on there? Only in those vague flickering, but nothing significant. Tillie recalls that most of the flickering was away from the bit that seems to be shielded. Maybe the mages were looking for them? They were certainly surprised that the Garou didn't seem to have looked into it, though they were hidden by cuckoo.

The pack ask Xanthipides if he can see into their spirit world. No. They give him a description of the ritual site and he agrees it sounds like power went up. Or down. But that's no help to him. Actually, wait - this ritual was done in, uh ... "werewolf world?" "yah, ok lets go with that." It was done there and its affecting the shadowlands? He doesn't think it was the strawguys that did it - he doesn't think they can stick their business into werewolf business like that. Maybe they can work through intermediaries to do something, but not like that. Tillie asks if some of them could do some of his rituals there? Oh, uh, he's not sure. It mightn't be possible. There's not a chance that the rocks in the Umbra are a reflection of the deadlands? Not really, because you'd sense it, but if there's a big ward in the deadlands, maybe that's specifically what its there to hide? There's no set way of doing things for people like Xanthipides, which means that he can't say no, but he can tell them its unusual.

Maybe the reason that mages seemed to be collecting fetishes (like the Cracking Stone) was that they were using them to pay the dancers to do stuff for them? They seemed to be working closely together on the goo attack on the caern, but there's no real way for the pack to work out what their relationship was, or is. The strawman definitely has told them things the Dancers didn't want them to know. Or maybe it is seperate groups? The magic of the strawmen, and the mage houses and the ones guarding the Full Moon Killer all seemed to be the same, at least as far as their Sense Unnatural gift tells them.

The pack head back to the caern and give Emma the low down, though they keep the stuff about Xanthipides to a vague "contact" description. Is it a possibility that the Dancers were doing a mage spell in the Umbra? Could they be doing a powerful joint energy? Emma asks if they aren't unnecessarily multiplying entities - there seems to have been a fair use of energy there, maybe they just contacted a powerful Incarna and said "do a thing for us in return for this". Emma asks if, given the mages told them about Coode Island, could they have set something up to test whether Lost Prophets could sense it? Could they have found out the pack went to the Shadowlands last year? Tillie says she had the same thought.

Emma says that the ritual was otherwise not aimed at them or anything in the Umbra. The Full Moon Killer, followed around by mages all the time, was doing something ritually, around killing people. Was that the overlap? Given the mages let him go, was it fulfuilling something of theirs? Except he was doing it at the full moon every year. Where do ghosts and werewolves cross over - the bunyip werewolf ghosts.... ("don't say the b word, then i have to tell the council. Say 'bunnies'". "can't talk about bunnies too much, gives Will a funny feeling") Maybe mages and dancers together can compel Bunyip spirits, to perhaps show the bad guys where the Giant Wyrm beasts are. Emma says they need to stop coming here with these horrifying possibilities.

Emma doesn't really want them to go to the Deadlands. Slipped time and all, and the Sept's priorities don't match up. Maybe they can ask Striders for help? Some spirits walk the boundary between life and death too - anything that could be described as a psychopomp ("Like some sort of owl") could probably help them out. Cuckoo? Owl? Finn remembers some stories about sulphur crested cockatoos in indigenous stories. Curlews too.

The pack decide they should talk to their pack totem about their psychopomp issues despite some pack members scepticism of the usefulness of such a tack. Boobook is still guarding the safe spirit at home. Lost Prophets give him a run down of what the problem is, and what they need.

Boobook doesn't reply straight away, with a 'please wait' kind of vibe. About 15 minutes later, a different owl flies in - its another Boobook, but its dark coloured, and looks a lot like the one they summoned in the Deadlands. There is some information exchange between the two owls, and then the new owl says "show me the place". The pack agree and off they head, with the Chandeen Mirror. As the new owl flies past they hear little snatches of voices, suggesting this is indeed the same spirit.

At the site, Dark Boobook takes off and flies around, almost silently. It glides around the space where the lights flicker, doing a number of passes around, and then it returns. The spirit says the ritual was done to sanctify this place (more than cleansing, less than caern rites) to a spirit. But the spirit that space was created for then took that space into the deadlands. And then it took [concept] and [concepted it]. The pack prompt the spirit for what it meant then - they get a stronger feeling like a hunter that did not just eat the meat, but also disposed of the bones and skin and entrails. It wasn't just the ritual space but also the surrounds that would be tainted by that ritual that were.. folded? away.

There's some discussion about the ritual. It was akin to the rituals that are used to hide a caern, but it is not one of those rituals. It marked out a liminal space - the inside is dedicated to a specific spirit. The spirit can sense that the ritual passed from this place to the other place, but it was the only thing that moved to the other place. It cannot tell what happened to the spirit, nor what spirit it was. It was almost certainly a servant of the wyrm - but only by the trail that were left, below the earth. It cannot tell when the ritual was done. The spirit cannot speak to the intent of the people that did the ritual. The place is hidden from the owl while it is here. Tillie is confused by what "passed through" means and the spirit isn't finding explaining easy. No one died here. Nothing went to the deadlands - if they had, the spirit would see marks. It was not a mage ritual - it was almost certainly a Dancer one.

The pack ask if the Boobook can go to the deadlands. The spirit says that its duty is to carry fallen from the Umbra to the Deadlands. The garou ask if it could go there and back for them - the spirit is not thrilled by the idea, but might if given appropriate propriation. ("two coins?" "You're thinking of Charon, who can take you across the river...") Will is wanting to be a bit subtle, because if the Dancers have something actively there, they might not have reacted to the pack wandering around the Umbra, but might take steps to intrusions in the deadlands. Tillie says that hopefully death spirits flying past wont attract too much attention.

Could it have been a building being hidden? There were buildings here that were destroyed in the fire, they should appear in the Deadlands. Hmm, the ghostly remnants of a horribly wyrmy chemical fire? Worrying thought. Is the space marked out like a hive? No, a caern is connected to the realm and the umbra, this is not. Its also not that big a ritual. Could they have summoned the Green Dragon here? Could it have been a sacred place before that, and loaded with "we can summon green dragon" but hidden in the deadlands? When the Incarna was summoned, everyone went "yeah, that means there's a Hive here" because of the spiritual significance that it would require to do it with no notice. But maybe the Dancers had a plan? The Uktenna did not have a caern to summon their tribe tote.. but maybe they'd been prepared for this, but the Dancer's had no warning at all.

Lost Prophets need more information from someone to see into the Deadlands, so they think of some chiminage for the spirit. After some negotiation they agree that once for each pack member they will provide a funeral for someone that wasn't otherwise going to get one. There's no time limit though ("One of those state funerals" "Oh, a pauper's funeral, not one held by the parliament"). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number)

The spirit agrees, and heads off. The pack awakens the mirror after a few minutes and tries to spot it. They've activated the mirror quite a lot in this area, and the more mobile ghosts are starting to cluster around the ritual site, staring at the mirror. The pack try and move away from them as much as possible without drawing attention.

They spot the spirit flying about. It doesn't seem to get bug-zapped out of the sky by the black mark. It seemes to pass through the blackness without any drama. The spirit flies around longer than the mirror will stay open, but the pack opt to not reactivate the mirror. After about an hour the spirit returns to them ("Sense wyrm!"). The spirit conveys that it did not see a great deal, but there are several things they should know about. There is not a fire or other obvious disturbing thing hidden by the darkness. The walls of the ritual are noticable but do not form a barrier to travel. The centre of the ritual has a body - that of a decaying garou form. But that is the only garou it saw. There were ghosts but no mages. It is tainted strongly by the wyrm. It could not tell what spirit still - it was a wyrm spirit and a strong one.

So back to this body. There's a crinos form garou corpse in the deadlands - its just bones. Ok, so its a metis. And the deadlands is weird for garou. And decaying is not what people do in the Deadlands? Its right in the middle of the ritual, which might provide an answer to all unusual three things.

In the Umbra, its a mix of different architectural styles, but all of them have a decayed look about them, as the buildings have been knocked down in the Realm and that takes its toll. ("Don't go to kindergarten and sing "Everyone has trauma") The pack decide to look... down... for things. Boiler rooms, basements, murder holes. They're wandering aimlessly through the site otherwise, ideally looking for black spots where more enchantments have been done. ("I'm already a walnut full of condoms" "Maybe they're still in the packets" "Tiny tiny ones" )

There are more ghosts, active and non-active, here than there is normally. Some of the moving ones start heading for them while they are using the mirror, making the pack pick up speed.

There's no signs - or there are, but the text is gibberish. So they're forced to follow their noses and hope for the best. ("We should put a leash on Melissa" "Like a dog one or a harness?" "Not the one with the nipples") ("All crinos have a dick" "All?") ("I'm just saying if i have to put my nipples away, you have to put your beard away") The Lost Prophets are heading down a sub ground corridor, where one side has windows, with a bank cut down to let light in. There's the odd dead person, but not as many down here. They spot one person walking up the corridor that doesn't seem to pay any attention to the mirror, and there's a faint deadlands sense according to the pack member sensing in the Umbra.

Tillie gets a sense that there's something ahead that's wyrmy. Its not strong, but its spread out. It doesn't feel like an area, but more like an entity, except that its a broad sense. They're a few rooms away, they got a fair bit of warning. The pack sneak closer, except Melissa who seems to clomp down the space while looking embarassed. The rooms branching off the corridor seem like big spaces broken into small spaces - maybe individual rooms to see patients?

As they approach, Tillie says oh, its a large number of entities, that's why its a bit spread out. Various pack members get gifts ready. There's a human size door way that's going to make access into the space exciting with Crinos asses in the way. ("People can make a wits and eugh chocolate roll")

Kasumi peeks around the corner and says that there's things on the roof. Its much darker than it should be, and there are chitinous noises. Oh its bats again. Tillie sticks her head around the corner and calls on fire, sending roiling flames along the roof. Some of the bats fall down, burning as they do. The banes are bat like, but not exactly bats - they have one glaring eye and a vertical mouth. Finn and Will, unable to get into the room, maneuver to be ready to respond to any spirits getting past their pack mates.

Some of the bats panic out the window, others mob the garou. They are not particularly dangerous, so the pack aren't particularly stressed. ("Maybe your ancestors came from a place where eating mushrooms would kill you" "What, Leongatha?"). Tillie runs to catch the ones going out the window, and explodes a bat on the way past. Will takes the chance to slip in, without blocking the door, and swipes some of the attacking spirits, rendering it to base essence. Finn dives in in glabro form and smashes at spirits. Sinead tries to use her gifts against the spirits, but for some reason isn't able to channel her gnosis particularly.

The bats mob the garou some more, but aren't particularly effective at hurting them. Sinead sprints through the melee to join Tillie, shredding the spirit. Tillie goes out the window after the fleeing bats. ("Flinging half dead penguins at a photographer"). A few more bats go down, Will yells to Melissa to finish them off while they chase, and runs out the window. ("Will's right, we're coddling her" "Like eggs" "Never say that again" "The 'Will's right' bit or the thing about eggs?") Kasumi sticks her head out the window to see what's going on out there ("Now you're blocking the window!") The pack outside can see that there's one bane out landing in a tree while the other flies around in circles. They're not flying on in a straight line like the last time.

The rest of the bats are dealt with and the pack reassemble outside. The bats definitely dont have a destination in mind, they are just as high up as they can get. This is the opposite of their last behaviour and suggests that they're just native to the site, and that the last time they were controlled to get the pack to follow. By who is probably relevant, but they really have no idea.

Now all the bats are gone, the light has lifted from the room - it looks like that was the work of the spirits. The mirror has also reclouded,.

One of the bats flies back into the building, but on investigation it just flies off again. It didn't have any particular special location in mind.

Back to plan A - wander aimlessly and sniff at things. Kasumi senses for unnatural while Will peeks into the Realm and Melissa guides him. There's a faint deadlands sense over everything - and the occasional spike that suggests there's a ghost there. There's a generalise wyrm sense, and Tillie says its not enough to worry about generally. But. She's getting more traces of wyrm in the Umbra as they wander around - its not rising but they are heading toward something worse. Will says that they're floating over an existent basement that is somewhat full of rubbish, but not entirely. He can see some doors off to one side of that existent area too. He relays this, and the others try and work out how to get through the buildings that do exist in the Umbra.

They are having trouble finding there was through the various contorted and combined bits are architecture. Will is only able to point at the door but the various corridors lead them in weird directions. Everyone's a little bit tetchy by the time they actually hit the basement. This area appears to have been used for a bunch of different things, judging on the mess of walls and rooms that make up the Umbra. Its all a bit decayed tho, but not so much that they just want to plough through it. Will points in the rough direction that the doors are, but there's construction rubble in the Realm that makes it hard to be sure. He spots some signs that humans have been through here - tracks in the rubble and rubbish.

Tillie says there's a growing amount of wyrm. Everyone's getting jumpier as tension grows. Will is forced to rely on them, but he's having more and more thoughts about how he should be in charge. If he was leading, this wouldn't be happening. Melissa bangs him into something which highlights the issue ("I think he needs a wank and a biscuit." "don't we all" "That's the phrase for a short rest now").

Kasumi is starting to think that this is pointless. They're using the mirror for wank - after all the effort they went through to get it, they should be hunting the mages, not digging up past history. They could have done all this by getting the Silent Striders to look into it for her. Them. No, her. Tillie is not good at accepting help, just because it might cost her something. Using these ridiculous tools to solve a problem - they don't even work properly. If they had just gone there, but the Elders keep getting in their way.

Tillie is trying to listen to Will's instructions, but they are just fiddly and frankly a bit tetchy for no reason. Honestly maybe she should just burn everything down. The sixth time Will insists they have to go left instead of right, even though there's shit in the way she cracks it. Tillie just says "FINE! WE'LL GO LEFT THEN" and just starts ploughing her way through the walls and structures in her way. She should have just done this in the first place. Melissa says "jesus christ" quietly to herself - Will assumes they are being attacked and stops peeking. Kasumi says "Finally we're doing something, and its _this_" quietly over the mental link.

Sinead just shakes her head - Tillie is attracting spiders instead of something less stupid. Maybe she should have looked harder at the whole sept elder thing. Maybe then they'd listen when she talked, because they're not fucking listening now.

Tillie smashes a couple walls down, but they aren't just falling apart like she thought. The rage comes surging up, but she's not frenzying. Will says "what are you _doing_??" "WHAT YOU TOLD ME TO DO. You said 'go left', so we're. Goiing. Left". Kasumi says "At least we're doing something." "I've had enough of all of you and your attitude" . She kicks her way through the rubble, hefting big chunks left and right. She heads for the wyrmiest sense - something is going to pay. Will sharpens his claws - unclear whether he's intending to fight Tillie or banes. "There won't be any surprise! Melissa, prepare for a fight" Finn and Melissa exchange a glance, both obviously confused what's going on. Will says "Its probably banes making us crazy!" "DON'T YOU DARE CALL ME CRAZY"

Kasumi says "can we just go in there, kill the wyrm and go home? I mean to the home where I am sleeping on the floor rather than in my comfortable bed!" while thinking if she'd thrown Sinead under the bus, she'd still have her laptop and it wouldn't have made a scrap of difference to Sinead because she's STILL living with them all in one house. OH that they are about to get THROWN OUT OF. "I WOULDN"T HAVE TO BE HANNAH CHANG!". Her teeth clench but she doesn't frenzy. "I don't wanna be HANNAH CHANG! SHE'S DIRTY!"

Tillie gets to the door and just kicks this metal door as hard as she can. One of the hinges breaks and it twists around 90 degrees. Its dark in there, and more wyrmy than out here. Kasumi says through gritted teeeth "We. Have. Open. Seal." If she was back in Japan, she'd be away from all this madness.

Tillie charges in, even though it dark. She cuts loose with a blast of flame that roils around the room. Will groans and heads in because its a battle now, so he isn't allowed to challenge, even though she's charging straight into an ambush. The room isn't very big, and its empty and made of spirit concrete. Things scuttle around on the walls toward the corner. And then the light goes out. There's nothing even HERE TO FIGHT! Finn says "just a moment!" and lets loose with his faerie lights, which helps everyone who isn't flash blind from the fire.

By the light of a glowing Finn, the pack see cockroaches scuttling along the walls and roof. "Gross" says Tillie, "Oh good, my totem is gross, thanks" says Kasumi. "If only we had a thundestorm here instead". She's looking at them though, and they are not quite moving right. The move is more like centipedes - they stretch out to move along. "Oh yes Glasswalkers are wyrm tainted" but the thought feels like its being imposed on her, not her own, and then it almost feels like its being taken away. Will senses for magic, but there's none here - there is deadlands and wyrm from not just the cockroaches, but also the walls. Kasumi is trying to keep her thoughts in order and work out if the roaches are evil or not when one of them rotates its head to show an extremely offputting human face on the front. They are bolting to the corners. "We need to kill everything in this room". (https://catsmusical.fandom.com/wiki/Cockroaches https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Uei5Qk9RM)

The pack smash their way into the spirits. They aren't hard to kill, but there's a lot of them. When the spirit is smashed, it leave a sticky black goo that won't come off. There's more of this goo on the walls and floor as well, and so wiping it off just gets more. The spirits run through small cracks in the walls as well as into the corners. They destroy about half of them. The smashing seems to help them clear their head - there's the occasional intrusive thought, but its not as subtle.

Will peeks, but its dark in the Realm. They'll sort that out in a minute, but now in the Umbra they start pulling the walls apart - they look solid, but much like other structures, they appear to be disintergrating after the physical destruction. Behind the walls are cockroaches, and small tunnels they are using to move arounsd. Its unclear if there's a warran of banes in the walls somewehre - the fact that the wyrm sense is concentrated in this room says no? There's no signs that anything has been done to this room to make it call banes here - no runes or anything. The spirits do come back, realise there's garou here, and leave again.

Will talks about the mind control they were facing, figuring that being aware of it might help. It seems like it was the spirits themselves, which makes removing the black goo a high priority. The pack figures they should go to the Realm and see what's going on. They step into the open-air basement space and then over to the door. There's signs of people outside the door - cigarettes and cans. Tillie says there's the same sense on the other side of the door. With a Look, Kasumi pulls on the handle and the sliding door moves open with a bit of needs-maintenance squeak. ("Pile of bodies, pile of heads" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIbewTc6vNM)

By the light of a burning Finn, there's signs of a fire in the middle of the room. There's things spray painted on the wall - the first pass is "occult" but the second pass is "metal album". ("R. E. D. Red. But mummy, its green"). There's some rough seats - an old arm chair with legs off. There is signs of booze and nangs and weed. ("Ah, this is where the roaches came from" "Minus 50 experience"). There's archways through the wall that weren't there in the Umbra, but it just seems to lead to another store room. The pack sort of look at the spray painted signs to see if there's something hidden in the amateur look to them. There's no coherent tradition here ("Oh wiccans you say"). Its this and that mixed together, but there is a little bit of a vibe that all of them seem to be death related. It looks like one of the spray painted things is a ouija board - and in fact they find one in the rubble here. So, maybe its people drawn here by the ghost stories?

Ok then they better activate the mirror. The mirror unclouds and a hand slams up against the glass from the other side.

Will jumps back a few feet and a ghost comes into view. Its an older looking guy, probably in his 50s. He's got patchy hair and rake marks down his face from fingernails. The ghost is still fixated on the garou, or at least the mirror. Will tries to move away from it and it follows. The space in the shadowlands seems less like a basement and more like a natural hole. There's another moving ghost at the top of the slope, watching them.

The closer ghost is following Will as much as he moves around, moving in a scuttley way. The one at the top of the hole starts to move down. As she gets closer it looks like she might be a consumptive patient. The pack start to worry that the mirror acts like some sort of lure, and maybe its getting worse the longer they use it. However, they don't know how to turn it off, so they may as well use it up.

The pack cruise through the site, looking specifically for blackout areas or weird things in the Deadlands. There's nothing that stands out - no more dead metis, no ritual marks, more ghosts than usual - but its a known ghost place. They check out the mirror closely as they travel to see if its changed at all - Will thinks that yes, its not quite the same sense as when they picked it up. But it might be the rituals they are using to charge the mirror.

Lost Prophets decide that's enough when the mirror goes dark, and head to the basement to cleanse it out. Tapping out some gnosis from Kasumi, they burn off as much wyrm stuff as possible - its probably going to need some further attention later.

Its been a long day, but they decide to cross another possibility off their list - out to Lysterfield to try and check out the half finished mage house. On the plus side, its much smaller than the hospital, so one more zap with the mirror should basically do it. Its a fair drive from Tullamarine to Lysterfield, so its after midnight when they get there. The pack give the fear spirits bound to the site the password to make them leave the garou alone.

("How close to the demon infested house do you want to get before activating the mirror?"). They start from well external to the site and make sure there's no more groups of squatters using it. It all looks ok for the moment. Its always a risk that someone actively dangerus will find it, but for the moment the Sept has opted to keep it. They sense unnatural and try to quantify what the gift returns - its difficult because it provides a empathic sense rather than a number value - and do think that the place is becoming weaker over time.

The pack activate the mirror, well outside the building. Broadly speaking the landscape of the deadlands is the same as the realm and umbra. However there is no hedge, and are numerous trees. All the trees are warped and weird in a way that says 'demons', and there are a number of the distortions that the pack have learnt are demons lingering nearby. Where the house is, some kind of structure or artificial material appears in the Deadlands. It doesn't look like a house. As they approach, they can see that it has the same kind of warped, smooth nature as things warped by demons. ("Buildings should be buildings, and mammals should be mammals").

There are no apparent ghosts around that they can see. The pack approach carefully. They can start to make out more detail, between the distorted trees. Its definitely not a building. Its not constructed, it looks demon created. Its twisted and hard to follow with the eye. At the far edge there are stones making up steps or pathways, but if that's what they are then they quickly warp up and twist at the same time. ("Its like geiger and escher had a baby"). There are multiple path or steps that come together into a central space. Its a little like if someone had taken hot plastic and pulled it while twisting it and wrapping it around a central pillar.

The material itself is a mix of colours - some of it looks stoney, other parts are bone white. They get close enough to see that its textured in some fashion - the outside edges seem more textured than the inner ones. Its a little bit like woodgrain - there's circle bits and long stretched out patterns and you could almost think that that part is a face. Oh. No, its actually a face. And another, and that's the shape of a body. It looks a lot like demons have smooshed people, or ghosts, into this structure.

Following the lines of the structure as it lifts and twists toward the centre is a bit eyewatering. No two lines seems to travel the same way, which does not help. The structure fills basically the space of the house. It has a sense of not being entirely complete, which is possibly for the best. None of the demons seem to react as they walk closer.

The obvious answer is that the mages took people, killed them, and fashioned some sort of... thing.. in the deadumbra. The patterns on the walls are fractal - the closer they look the more detail they can see. The thing in the Umbra has a similar look from where they are. These fractical wards are unfinished. This thing in the shadowlands seem unfinished. It seems likely that there's a relationship there. The pack figure they can't get anything more from a distance, so they take the mirror inside.

The shadowland structure starts outside the walls of the house, but at about the edge of the walls, the various elements that twist together come so closely together that there is no more light - gaps become little holes and the holes close up. Not deep into the house - a couple of feet at most - its too dark to see

The faces in the shadowlands material are only really apparent at the far ends of the structure, the ones furthest from the house. They become less clear, more just patterns as the lines flow in toward the house. Will points out that at the Airport West house, when the fractal wards were complete and the house was invisible in the Umbra, things that were probably demons just kept appearing in the house. Is it possible that this .. whatever it is... amounts to a weak spot in the world leading to the umbra of death? Is it a way through? That matches up to what death spirits the sept has summoned and asked to investigate have reported (though they didn't mention the twisted structure). This might be a secondary effect, given in the first case, it seemed to be most use as a defense? Or is that backward?

Ugh. Its about 3 in the morning. They should really sleep. On the way home, they make some plans for tomorrow - gnosis, caern elders, and possibly making the first steps to contact the strawmen. ("She keeps putting her thumb in there, and then [raspberry]" "She'll only do it once." "Twice")

The pack arrive at the house and come back to an envelope on the floor. Its their last notice to pay overdue rent or get out by Friday. Oh great. Well, that accelerates their need to go and find somewhere else to live. But tomorrow.

Wednesday 22 (Ragabash)

Once everyone has got a good night's sleep and caught up a little, they head to the caern and try to tap out some spiritual energy. After midday, they go and find their Elders. Cossacak and Emma are around in the caern, so the pack braindump on them. Cossack is keen to follow up on the hospital - whatever caused those spirits to cluster there probably still exists, even tho the pack did a cleansing and scattered the banes for the moment.

Cossack thinks for a bit, and then says does it make sense that whatever the Dancers did at Coode island was aimed not at garou, but at the mages? Or some of the mages? They did a thing that affects the dark umbra, and the mages thought they were there.. have they just done something to mess with them? And it wasn't relevant to the garou? But they can't test it. It just seems a strong possibility - that for whatever reason the dancers did something that stopped the mages from doing their magic there. (After suddenly realising that the players did not think Xanthipides was scrying into the real world). It doesn't really inform what they should do, but it suggets they shouldn't concentrate on Coode Island.

The Lost Prophets think that they have one more option - if they can retrieve the body from the shadowlands, they can maybe get a handle on the Dancers that way. Perhaps there's some evidence or a ritual they can do to track the previous inhabitant.

Kasumi nicks off to try and find spots to move to by raiding real estate agents computer systems. The rest of the pack scrape up everything they care about in their house and get it out the door. They make big eyes at Naomi, who is a bit frustrated but says they can take some stuff to a couple of different locations to stash it for a few days. ("All my clothes fit in the one backpack. I also need to save my favourite wok and my knives. Done")

A couple hours later they get a message from Sparky ("nu city who dis") and arrange to meet him. They meet him in the park with beer. "What do you want". They explain about the Chandeen Mirror and what they have seen - Coode Island, and dead metis and dead spots and Dancer rituals. Sparky says it had better me the Dancers who moved the ritual to the deadlands - a single mage that can do that wholesale is bad news. Tillie wants to know how they track it, and Sparky says get some sort of mirror apparently.

Tillie asks him what the hell is going on and if he can get the bones. Sparky says that dead shit is weirder than live shit - the rules for the Umbra and the Realm don't always apply in the Shadowlands. And even there they are inconsistent. He spoke to people about that, and they think everyone knows where babies come from, and the sun will come up tomorrow and what hunger is, but there's much less consistency on what happens after you die, and the death umbra reflects that.

He thinks that a deal with a spirit means the spirit will do the thing, for the negotiated price, and then it will probably move on. It often won't be involved beyond that. He thinks the bones were part of the ritual - Will ponders stepping sideways where the bones are and if they could get to the Deadlands. Sparky says that could be exciting - they might be able to get in, but not out of a little space, or the Shadowlands themselves. More talk about mages - Tillie says she doesn't really care about them, except that they are fucking with her shit. ("I care a bit. I mean, that hell fortress, sculpted from the spirits of slain sacrifices, could possibly be described as 'of the wyrm')

Sparky asks about what they want. Tillie says "insight, stories and bones". The bones would be good, because there's a long shot they can use them to trace the Dancers in some fashion. But she can't justify endless resources on them. Sparky says there's no casual way to go to the dead worlds and come back. If it was easy, then people would be back and forth all the time. Some talk about which spirit might have done it - Green Dragon or the NightQueen? But there's no sense of fae about this. And the Green Dragon seemed to come out of the sky - its unlikely to have been just hanging around on the down low before hand. Tillie says that if a big spirit put it there, maybe a big one could pull it back? Almost certainly, but it depends on how much they're willing to pay.

Anyway... the bones. Could they do something to grab them without going into the shadowlands. Sparky says "hey, bard boy, how many stories do you know about people bringing things back from the lands of the dead?" "oh, um, there's stories, old world things, where heroes go on quests there?" "And how well do they go?" "Oh, badly. Oh." Sparky nods and says its easier to go there than to come back. Its not simple to come back the same way unless you've opened a bridge there, you often have to go a long way to come back. He says that he does not know the ritual Grek used to move to the deadlands. He does know another way to get there, but it doesn't come with a simple way back. Also, its not for them, just him - he'd have to find another way back. There are ways (he looks at the moon and hmms) and they don't come free. Plus if he grabs them, and their part of an active rite, that'll disrupt it and attract attention too. On the other hand, maybe sending the ritual to the deadlands was the only bit the metis was part of, and now its done.

So Sparky says first of all he'd suggest that they limit their use of this mirror. They'd sort of come to that conclusion. The second is that if they end the ritual in the deadlands in some fashion, the initial ritemaster will know, if that matters. As to him getting the bones, if they weren't looking for a Hive, he wouldn't be willing to help them with this. He says give him a bit to think about it, and see if he can work out a good way home first.

Will asks if the metis body is a gate into the deadlands still? ah, maybe. There'd probably need to be some sort of key to activate it. Their skull? The knife that killed them? yeah possibly. But unless they have it, not helpful. They mention the phone box and there's talk about whether they were calling the shadowlands and going to the deadworlds there? No, probably not. Bit of talk about the phone calls and the timings there. (Calls went from October to January. The phone box was wrecked earlier than February. The mobile phone it was calling went off the air 4th January and never came back on). The strawman told them about Coode Island on the 17th of January.

(Full Moon Killer and the eclipse just after the last phone call from Coode Island, with no mages in evidence. The attack on the caern right after the pack disrupted the Jaeger-attack on the kinfolk of the Sept. Maybe the plan was to attack on the full moon/moot night, not on NYE? Mages seem to have some need to hide, like the Veil.) ("Concerning, I dont want to agree with the Red Talons, but here we are") (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch) (Could the Dancers had some big stash of gnosis for a plan and used it to pay off Green Dragon instead? That's basically why people thought there was a hive. Maybe there isn't?? Maybe the Hive is near the Yarra and Uktena spooked the totem spirit and it called Green Dragon) ("He's a witch, but also a good egg")

Kasumi has spent some time looking at real estate agents and will suggest some people they could kill to get to the Deadlands. Half the agents she's looked at have their own weird systems for tracking everything - one people have just a big excel spreadsheet. Someone else appears to have written their own auditting software. There are some areas which will suit them - North Melbourne, or Brunswick or Richmond. There's not a lot of areas where the industrial places are more than one set of properties thick, but those areas have a couple. She's got a couple of prospective locations.

In the meantime they contemplate what sort of spirits they could bind to it to make the house safe. Some kind of camoflague to make the place nonremarkable. Maybe an alarm. Someting to block mages from remote spying on them. They've seen Ion bind a snake spirit to an ivy to wrap intruders up. The Sept has bound fear spirits to the hedge around the mage house ot keep people away. Some of what they want strays into magic and wards, but there are spirits of some tribes for which that's a thing. Spirits that can respond to "looking too hard", whether remotely or directly? Shadows? They could also think of spirits to make it a bit nice. Lots of cultures have anti evil eye wards. Maybe that'd be helpful against the mages - spirit awakening on wards for protection?

Given the Dancers keep using the Yarra to hide themselves, maybe they could work with water spirits to monitor it? Rats? Seems very bonegnawery. The Sept have rat spirits that they interact with, but nothing like the connection with Father Possum. A big swarm of rats from the mouth of the river, driving them along, and investigating any of the holes they find. ("Could we graft one river spirit into the yarra, just for the moment?") ( Warding objects that could be awoken? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazar_(amulet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamsa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheela_na_gig )

Thursday 23 (Ragabash)

Kasumi says she's found one spot straight away - its in Richmond, which is a downside, but it otherwise has high potential. Its a commercial place, under the aegis of a real estate agent, but they are making no efforts to rent it out. The owner's only paying a tiny amount too - he seems to be local, with a greek sounding name. Its a little workshop, crammed between two larger ones.

The pack cruise on down in the murder van. Its on a one-way street, with red brick buildings all down one side. They drive on past - there's some sort of shoes making business on one side. Then there is the one they are interested in, and despite what the REA records said, it seems that there's something going on there. There's a white van parked in the drive, and people moving around inside. The pack sense as they go past - Becc shrugs but Tillie says "uhoh, those people are all of the wyrm. Bad news, not somewhere to live, good news, something to fight."

They circle around and come past again, attempting to peek - its an extremely industrial area, and its hard to do. Tillie can just see - as expected the whole area is pretty much weavery and wyrmy. There's nothing specific in the Umbra that makes them unhappy, but the building looks .. hollow. If a building could look gaunt, this is the one that does. Pack members looking in the realm do a head count - about a half dozen. They all look dodgy. They all have sunglasses on, and garish clothes.

Figuring that cruising past a third time might be pushing their luck, the garou drive off and find a park. They head into the Botannical Gardens to find somewhere less crap to step, and then work their way back. Its a bit exciting crawling across the weaver structures that bridge the river, but they get back within 30 minutes or so. In the Umbra, the building is even more malnourished than it seemed when peeking. There's a wyrm taint here, but its not a strong as they'd expect given the strength of the response from the 'people' inside. They can't peek well, as you'd expect given the high gauntlet, but eventually they can roughly see figures.

There's a bunch of boxes or crates on shelves. There's people pulling boxes out of the car, and puttin them aside then loading more. The boxes don't have any consistency to the colour and shapes on them. The boxes don't seem heavy, and they don't sense of wyrm. All the people sense like fomori. There are 4 here, all male. From the front there is a roller door (open), and then the van reversed in the space behind it, with its back doors open. Then some shelving, with boxes on it. Then a space with desks, but without computers or anything. The 4 guys are working around the car. Tillie peers more closely at the desks and thinks that they look a bit like they were reclaimed from hard rubbish. Its looking sketchier and weird the longer they look at it.

They move out the back, into a kind of office like space, and Tillie makes a noise. There's a ... person, filling up about 2 car sizes spaces. They're grossly obese, with a normal head atop a slumped out blob, clearly naked - Tillie says that she thinks they'd have trouble getting up. The room has a sense of being lived in - the huge, palid guy is maybe laying on a mattress. Ok that's probably the main source of any issues. If they leap in and attack that, the others will probably come and join in.

While they are watching, the van is filled and one of the guys gets in it and drives off. One of the others closes the roller door by a switch next to it, conveniently hiding the next exciting part from the reasonably busy street out there. One of them comes and sits at a desk, and another goes out through the people door. The final guy comes around behind the shelves, where there's a pile of junk and stands there staring.

The pack prepare themselves to leap through the gauntlet. Its probably good to go in two groups. Sinead and Kasumi (in lupus) and Melissa will go in one group, Will, Tillie (in crinos) and Finn (in glabro) in the other. Finn leads his way through the gauntlet, but Kasumi goes the long way. The pack appear in a room with the not-great-smelling blob. Will leaps into the blob man's chestish area and then slashes heavily. The skin parts and white semi-liquid material starts to ooze out. The spatter on Will starts to itch and then burn. Finn grabs a chair because he doesn't want to touch anything. Tillie slashes as well, and tears away at the guy, but where the white spatter lands on her, she is also burnt.

The flesh under Will's feet parts and he sinks into the creature. Its arms wave and it makes some sort of garbled yell. The doors out to the open area are wrenched open. Both guys that were packing things are there, one of them throws himself on Finn - not a wrestling grab, but a functional fall&grab. Will pulls one leg out, covered in 'flesh'... its more like tapioca than actual flesh. Finn whacks the guy fallen on him with his makeshift club. His arm comes off - it just sorts of falls off with a plop. Tillie slices away at the blob thing - the skin starts to tear like a baloon and then keep splitting and white goo oozes out faster and faster. Tillie takes a step or two forward and slashes, is sprayed by the fatty muck that she explodes out. The creatures arems keep waving around madly as it deflates.

Will breaks free and leaps away. Finn smashes his tackler in the head, and spatter gets him in the face and upper chest. The second fomori from outside runs and belly flops into the liquid mass of the blob man. The blob sits up and grabs Tillie's head, its arm extending just a bit too far, attempting to pull her forward. The clothes from the guy that threw himself in start to float away. Will loses a tonne of flesh off his feet and nearly rages. Finn smashes the blob with his club but finds that he's glued to the ground by the remains of the guy he smashes apart, and as he falls forward harder than expected, his club comes apart in his hands.

Will tries to free Tillie but misses. Finn hears the slam of the steel door at the front as someone barges through it. Tillie tries to slash it, and is pulled forward, running her claws into its heart and lungs. She gets sprayed in the face with white goo that sends a surge of Rage through her. The creature flops backward with a gurgle, and it starts to spread further. Anything organic starts to smoke. Tillie heads out the doors and goes to see what else is happening. There's another blob spreading out of its nylon clothes face down on the floor. Oh no, the guys driving the truck. Tillie can see chunks of bone inside her foot. ("That's it for your foot porn income stream, now its all scarred") ("We should get a hose")

Will looks in a box - they're all empty, but packing taped together. They're all random boxes, like uni students were moving house. ("Fucking boxes!")

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Komodo_dragon#Parthenogenesis) Sinead, Kasumi and Melissa finally appear ready for action, but find all the excitement has gone. They are caught up with what's going on while everyone pokes around. There's no obvious keg of "fomori maker lemonade" or anything that suggests what might have created the fomori. The guy that was running in appears to be wearing basic cheap clothes but otherwise just be made of fats? Versus the large guy who has bones and blood. There's a galley kitchen with a fridge, but all that's in the fridge is a large variety of soft drink... oh and the fridge appears not to be on. It doesn't sense of wyrm ("more than usual"). There's a bin, but its just full of soft drink bottles and ants.

Ok there's nothing pressing here, they should clean up the van. Kasumi and Sinead, not having some kind of chemical burn nad Finn, only lightly burned, are sent out to try and find where its gone. It only had a slight slight lead, and its been less than 10 minutes - they'll go on foot, while listening out for sirens. The street they are on is one way, so they head that way, splitting up each time they hit a roundabout. Sinead is heading north up the 2nd street and sees a bit of a honking fraca. There's a white van stopped in the middle of the street with the door open, and cars driving up on the footpath to go past. About 50m before the car there's a small group of people around some damp clothes. One of them is on the phone to the cops. She gives the signal - "fuck".

Meanwhile back at the farm, Will and Tillie notice that Mr Blob has grown a bit furry. Its concentrated on where they were standing and attacking the Blob, and they can see that each patch is the same colour as their packmembers. Oh no, its regenerating. Um, they dont want to claw enthusiastically because they were getting sprayed with goop that burned. Will tries to work out how to practically go around it, but he's up against the wall. He tries to use carboard boxes to slide Blobbie away from the wall, but he kinda folds up like a pancake and then unfolds again. Tillie says just put boxes down and walk over them at the edge. They try working this out.

Sinead approaches the small group as the man on the phone says "they hung up on me again". Apparently his interaction with the police wasn't very civil. Sinead asks what's going on and they say "this guy melted. Thinking quickly she says she's seen a prank like this .. On The Internet. Frankly these guys appear to have been desperately scrabbling for an explanation and her convincing story has them grabbing it like drowning men to a plank. ("its called gelling, like planking"). "There's probably someone hiding somewhere filming us all". Finn and Kasumi are moving quickly to join her. One of the guys says "I bet he didn't melt, he set this up first in the same clothes and then ducked into an escape of some sort." adding some legitimacy to Sinead's story. One of the others seems mad and says he's going to go fuck up the van - Sinead says that she could take the van to the cops? Oh yeah, that'd fuck 'em up. Oh there's probably cameras up there (and he points to the wall). "Dickheads. Explains it all"

Sinead gets into the van and hits a snag. The truck has a kind of gear system where its not labelled. Oh, um. She does't actually have a license. She revs it, and tries to change things, but the lever won't move. Kasumi says she's nearly there and jogs right up to the door, waving at the guys still talking about what happened, getting in and they drive away at a bit of speed. ("~\o gunna put a mattress in the van // and sleep in it instead // so I don't have to sleep with you lot // maybe Melissa can come ~\o")

Will starts the rite of cleansing, while Tillie whacks it carefully. Tillie remember that the ritual makes a lot of noise. There's a radio, and she gets Melissa to tune into the loudest thing and then turn it all the way up. Will does the ritual and howls loudly. They watch Blob for a few minutes, and the regenerating seems to have stopped, but its still got a remaining wyrm sense. That will hold it for a bit ("Maybe we can shove it into - " "The van?" "Why am I not allowed to have a home?") until they can organise a more permanent solution. Maybe they could keep Blob and tip any more bodies int the same vat its in? "As your philodox, I would advise you that that is dangerously close to violating the Litany"). Ten boxes of bicarb soda? Fire? The building feels like its ingrained with various flamable chemicals and it would go well.

Will cruises around and tries to get a sense of how long they'd been here. It doesn't look like its been abandoned and they've come in recently. There's signs of settling - there's a crappy tv positioned so Blob could see it. As much as the boxes are all fake, someone's taken some time to collect them all and tape them shut. Is it covering anything else? There's ledgers on one of the desks, but they're yearly ones from last year, and the entries only go for half way through January 2011. And it doesn't really look like its for here. The rest is full of scribbles and doodles. It looks like its been pulled out of someone's rubbish - as do the desks and the shelves and everything else. Nothing matches, there's no power. There's rubbish, including food rubbish - its all junk food. ("Were the other human jelly people also caustic?" "how are you going to test that?" "I'l get my ass"). The sub-blobs don't appear to be burny like Blobbert is - at least not so much that they start dissolving cardboard like he did.

The van is pulled into the building and the slidey door dropped again. There's no GPS in the van, and none of the bodies have mobile phones. They have wallets, with some basic cash in them, but again they seem like the clothes, sort of prop-like. There's no ID. There's a real sense of not really being engaged with the world around them. There are keys they find in the back room puddle to the doors to this building. Will finds some petrol receipts in the van - one of them is from closeby, its pretty recent, paying by cash, and probably filling the van. They check the van - it hasn't driven very far in that time.

They can't really tell how these or this fomori came to be. ("It was a fat berg in the sewer and someone fell in"). The only sort of spiritual clue is that the Umbra feels hungry, suggesting they've been active for some time.

The feeling is that this fomori is shut down but not extinguished. Its not burning to touch it, but it is still uncomfortable. Fire will probably kill it, but not here, its too dangerous. Oh well, they've got garbage bags in the murder van and a whole lot of boxes here. This they now do, loading the boxes full of Blobert into their newly stolen van. ("we dont want to live here" "o/~ its a bit of a fixer-upper")

Before they drive Blob away, the pack cruise around the area both in the Realm and the Umbra, just to make sure this guy wasn't a security guard at the front of the Hive or something. There's a gap between the building and the fence around the train line. There's no obvious sense of much traffic there, though there is graffiti along there. The strong Blob smell was also in the van, so either the blob golems also smelled like Blob or sometimes he went in the van. There's a drain in the middle of the concrete floor, but there's no sign its been removed to allow egress. Even if the fat golems had been going in and out, you'd expect a certain amount of signs in the grime around it.

In the Umbra, there is still a hungry vibe. Its not specific to an object or location, its more a vibe to the one location, stopping about where the walls are plus a bit (less spread onto the train line). The gauntlet is about the same level as usual.

The pack decide to ring home and check in. Nadine picks up and says she can give them a location to have a cheerful bonfire on a backblock. Don't let it get out of control, you'll have the locals on you. They transport the boxes there, and between Tillie's powers and the liquified human fat running out of the boxes on fire, they manage to burn up most of Blobert. The pack linger until they are able to pick out the most obvious bones.

Just as they are finishing up there, Sparky calls Tillie. He says he's been thinking about their request and has decided he's going to do it. "Its a big ask" "yeah its gunna cost ya". He says that there's a company manual with some basic rules and that seems to apply. He's going to nope out if it gets too hot. And he needs some things. No, not a lot of human fat. He needs a room with a bed, and a free standing wardrobe, big enough for one of them to get into. And some ice. And a tea cup with a crack in it - not broken or chipped, just cracked. And some sand. About a small bucket of sand, and same of ice. Lost Prophets ask him to text them the shopping list. ("oh shit, I got a bucket of crack" "I just skimmed the instructions"). He says to message him when they have it organised - oh it has to be all ready at night time. Tonight by preference. Kasumi suggests Melissa's house, and she looks horrified. Will checks how long he needs it - oh, less than an hour.

The pack make plans, mostly involving Kasumi's taking the forgotten gift. They steal sand from a playground, and some ice from a servo. They steal a cup from an op shop. ("I don't feel bad any more because I'm Hannah Chang") THey find that it takes a bit more finesse to crack them than they think ("<smash> FUCK") and so in the end they find one with a crack instead. Its a fancy tea cup.

The pack contemplate a room with a wardrobe. Their own house? Mr Casetti's house? The house the Hell Hounds are in? An air bnb? They call Nadine who is baffled why they are ringing, but she says she can ask around.

After a couple hours she calls back and clarifies that they're not going to fuck it up? Tillie says sure, not at all. Nadine says there's someone who is willing to lend them their back room, but they don't want their house wrecked up. She gives them an address - the owner won't be there. Put it back the way it was.

Tillie rings Sparky to check if the room is going to get wrecked up? He says no, it'll be fine. They give him the address and travel there. NO one else is there - its a two bedroom house, very neat and tidy. The owner (Terry) appears to live there on their own. The pack start arranging the room to suit themselves while they wait. When Sparky arrives, he's got his "get shit done" kit with him (just dedicated things). He says they need to empty the wardrobe so that one of them can fit in. He scoffs some food they brought, and confirms they owe him - they can bunt the favour onto their Sept if they want to.

They wave the mirror at him, but Sparky isn't keen on it being nearby. It might fuck up his ritual, and so he wants it a distance away - they can use it after if they like. He checks he knows what they want him to get - he's grabbing a skull and then hopping it as fast as he can, because it might go pearshaped.

Right, lets get it started. Kasumi is the smallest, she gets to get in the cupboard with the ice. When he says, grab some iceblocks and then just tap it on the inside of the cupboard. Tillie, you're on sand - tip some of it into the bed. When she's knocking, you need to blow on the sand.. not enough to blow everywhere, but enough to make it notice. She stares at him. Sparky says it needs to be sighing, use her judgement. Right, start knocking. Nope, too fast. Too hard. Ok better... yep, that's hard enough. ("This isn't even the ritual, this is just t fuck with you"). Ok, yep just like that. Sparky picks up the teacup, and says "hold it..." and then he vanishes, and the tea cup shatters, dropping fragments on the floor. Will says that just before he vanished, the crack seemed to open, and Sparky fell in.

The pack tidy up their mess and head off to the caern. When they get there Cossack is sitting in the kitchen and eating random chinese food. They can hear Ian upstairs. Tillie gives him a rundown and asks if there might be others the same - they've had issues previously with fomori being created from external factors. Cossack says that they haven't had any other reports of anything like this. She asks if they can borrow the Hell Hounds to go and tidy up the last bits - hose it down and do another cleansing. Ian's voice comes from above saying "if you ring me with this bullshit, I'll tell you to get fucked. Sort your own shit out". "We didn't though." "You rang here, sort it out. " "I did" "No you didn't, you came here whining 'mummy help me'" "What use are you then?" "I can put pictures up high?". Cossack's expression isn't eyerolly, but he just stops and waits. He considers his the options - do they have some sense of who owns the place? Sort that out first, then he'll get the Hell Hounds to finalise it.

Anything else happening? There's a pack of layabout rank 3s living here instead of on their own resources? Ah. The pack head off. They've got thw owners name according to the real estate agent, but that might be Blobert. Sinead does a questing stone but despite a GM brainfart, ("Take your time, we're ok" "I mean Becc could give birth any moment") they get no response - perhaps it was Blobbert? They do a websearch on the name - Andreas Itsiopolous. They get a few hits, he seems to have been known in the local Greek community. There's an article from a couple of years ago about him and his family, wishing him well as he returns to the old country. His wife predeceased him, he has three kids, Alexander, Calliope and Nicholas. He was a business man that had come from a poor immigrant background and worked his way up to a prosperous businessman. They google the kids names - some hits on Alexander and Nicholas, and a bit of a facebook profile for them. They get photos, and neither of them look like Blobert really.

It seems that the two kids are relatively prosperous - Alexander seems to be a managing director of a company, whereas Nicholas is a proprieter of a business. Oh, Alexander's company has changed its name but its the family business. Hmm. Kasumi remembers that there were some recent communications in the property file, but she didn't take notes about it. Off to the real estate agency it is. Off they go to Carlton.

The real estate agent isn't more evil than they usually are, so they come in via the Umbra. The receptionist pc is here and still on, but two of the three guys that work here seem to have laptops. Well, its a good start, using plug and play - she can get the property file up and look through it, but not the directors' email. They find the file she had before - there's an email to aitsiopolous@gmail.com "as per our phone call, $50 a week, no active marketing, let you know if anyone enquiries". Oh, its Alexander, not Andreas. Hm,, that's not his corporate email, it looks like a private one. Hmmmmm. The pack checks out the agency for a bit - they get the three director names. They hire out some IT support, they don't have an employee.

Questing Stoning Alexander it is then. Sinead gets a good sense that he is off to the east a bit - with a bit of honing in, they locate a nice looking house in Hawthorn. They do a drive by and check for obvious excess of wyrm, but there's nothing huge - peeking in the Umbra shows a neighbourhood where the occasional house, and more occasional room seems to exist, but most of the houses are just sketched in. The house in question has a nice Mercedes parked in the drive, and a closed garage that might have more.

The Lost Prophets find somewhere to step in a carpark with other people dogging and trot back. Will is 100% sure there's nothing supernatural here at all. Peeking shows 5 people live here - a couple, presumably Alexander and his wife, and also two girls and a boy - the middle girl and younger boy are asleep as is Mrs Alexander. Alexander is watching the soccer on tv downstairs, the older girl is talking on the phone in the upper floor. Alexander has an office. Its a bit gaudy in places - an extremly glittery chandalier, and white cushions with the blue 'greek' patterns - but there's no carpet on the walls.

While Will peeks and keeps an eye on Alexander, Kasumi dives (saunters) through the gauntlet into his study. Will smells the delicious food but is not distracted. He's got 20 minutes left on his soccer match. She opens his laptop, and notices the password. Oh well, plug and play it is. She manages to turn off the screensaver and get into his email. Outlook is full of company email. Hmm. She finds a browser and opens gmail - he does seem to be aitsiopolous, so that answers that. Kasumi starts to look at emails and finds that much of it is fiendishly in greek. Oh. She fires up google translate but its going to take forever to cut and paste. Ok, looking for key elements. She finds a bit of correspondance with the real estate agent. The conversations are clipped a bit - they're just there to ackknowledge phone calls. They find some other similar interactions with a different agency - another property, in Richmond. It looks like a shop and a residence above - the agent says the tenant is being difficult, you should keep your options open (hint hint). Alexander actually replies with "fix what's broken, and drop their rent by $50 a month, they're good tenants". That's on his personal email. On the business side, there are references to both properties, but they are using them as collateral for borrowing money for upgrading some equipment. They only mention those two as collateral - there's other properties the business owns, but they're not mentioned.

Should they change his passwords and then update the saved one here? It might be a problem if he's logged in in other places. They probably don't need to just yet. Kasumi goes looking for family emails - they're a mix of english and greek. There's more from Nicholas than Calliope. Kasumi saves a bunch of them to her phone to be checked out later. In the other room, Alexander yells because his team got a goal with 5 minutes to go.

Kasumi checks for emails with the father - hmm, no, nothing, but it mightn't be surprising. Kasumi decides its time to go, so she steps back out. The whole pack head back to the van and Kasumi tries piping some of these family emails to babelfish. She manages to get that Andreas died in Greece, and they are not telling the Australian authorities. Ohh. There's some conversations between the siblings about 2 months after he died about how Alex and Nick don't want to say anything because they'll need to sell some properties to cover tax things. Calliope is unimpressed and refuses to be part of it, Nick things its a good idea. "we'll tell them eventually, but right now..." There's nothing that says 'fomori' here.

The pack decide to buzz past the other property just to check it out - its neither a fomori nest nor empty. It just seems to a flat above a shop. Maybe they can extort the family about the Cremorne one then - "pay us in gift cards!"

Friday 24 (Ragabash)

Despite Kasumi's call for extortion, the pack figure that they're pretty much done here. The Lost Prophets get the caern to tell Hell Hounds to go clean up the last of the wyrm and gobbets. Kasumi goes back to looking through REA data to try and find the spots that might suit them.

Sunday 26 (Theurge)

While Kasumi is studying tax records, the rest of the pack head out and cruise around looking for places. They find a place on Little Lothian Street that looks shuttered up, with a business sign pried off it. A quick google suggests that its a business (Aztec Office National) caught up in a court matter. They decide they need to know more about that - there's a bankruptcy case going on, and none of the creditors can agree on the split on selling off the bits. Its been going on for 9 months, and is likely to being going on for a while. The business owned the property in question. They appear to have been trading while potentially insolvent, with a few creditors. So eventually the property will be sold, but it might take a while.

Its two stories, with a warehouse at the bottom and an office at the top. The road is quiet, which is good. Its a 7 minute drive to the caern - faster if running in the Umbra.

Kasumi says she has found a place on Baillie St in North Melbourne that might suit. Its a bit more of a busy street than they wanted to try. There's no one in it, and hasn't been for two years, but the agent keeps charging the landlord their fees. Some googling of the account info suggests the owner is actually a superannuation group - each month the agent invoices them, and they get paid, but there's apparently no tenants. The agent appears to have tried to contact the owning corp a few times and then given up. The place seems pretty small though. Its not very far away from Litle Lothian, so they all meet up there.

Its got a bit rollerdoor at the front, with a pedestrian door next to it. An alley goes down the side and around the back. There's another rollerdoor on the alley side. Much of the rest of the street is terrace housing. The pack cruise past and sense - nothing leaps out at them. In the Umbra there's a lot of structure, but not a lot of life. There's security cameras at one of the businesses up the street, and a couple of doorbell/porch ones on the houses, but nothing on the property itself. There's no signs of life.

They subtly walk up to the steel pedestrian door and Kasumi tries to open seal. No luck - she gets Sinead to come and use the Cracking Stone on it. They open the steel door... and there's another normal wood door behind it. What the hell. Kasumi tries the handle and its weirdly open, and so they slip inside.

The human door leads into a tiny office space with bad carpet. There's doors out of it into the warehouse space. Its been fitted out with weird rails across the framework that is in the roofspace, with chains and pulleys hanging off them. Kasumi cahnges to lupus and sniffs - there's not a petroleum smell, but there is an industrial smell. She thinks its maybe electric motors? Thee's a very dinky kitchen at the back of the warehouse space, with a single toilet stall. This is very small, about half the size of Lothian.

Hmm, back to Lothian, with an eye to go inside and look around. ("Anthony keeps..." ). There's a big rollerdoor leading into the warehouse, and an office looking door off to the side. They cruise past for the usual and find its also not a wyrm hole. The pack break in using their magic powers. Unlike Baillie, this place is full of stuff in the warehouse, mostly office supplies ("[gasp] Office supplies!") by the smell of it. Its useless bits and pieces - many boxes of staples, but no stapler. ("Make a bed frame out of them and then shrink") ("NO my character sheet." "Oh it used to have coffee on it, now baby vomit. WE're old")

There's a stair leading up, underneath it is a galley kitchen, and then a male and female toilet. ("Two toilets, sold!"). Up the creaking stairs, there's a corridor at the rear of the building, and several offices leading off it toward the front, each with windows onto the street. Some furniture remains - shelves in the warehouse, desks upstairs, but no computers or anything. There's no back door out. By smell, no one has been here since before Christmas. So far this looks pretty good - its only a short term soluton, but the apocalypse might come in the next year. Will would rather somewhere more long term - people could come while they were off in the Umbra and wreck it up.

Baillie is more open which is bad. Maybe they can come in and out by the umbra - could they establish a fetish or something to lower the gauntlet? Though that does mean they can only have dedicated stuff brought in. Hmm. Maybe some observation for a bit and make sure there's nothing super suss at either location, while also looking for other locations.

• Interlude 2010-2011
• August
• September
• October
• November
• December
• January
• February