Tillie challenges for Rank 3, and the Sept Elders eventually ask her to find a lost fetish. The fetish was a way of tracking pack members - they each gave something to the person with the fetish and from then on, that person could sense where they were and what they were doing.
There's a snag though. The fetish was owned by a pack leader called Harry Fox, but when he became Caern Warder, he got rid of the fetish, saying he'd taken it back to where it had come from. This was a bit of a faux pas - normally these things are passed to the Sept or at least to a specific protege.
Tillie gets a basic description of the fetish - it was a bag, and the things from Harry's pack went in the bag. Unless it wasn't the bag, but something else in the bag. She can't ask Harry, he died a long time ago - and the fetish was lost in the 1970s. She gives the elders the stink eye and wanders off to do some basic investigation and thinking. What sort of spirits would power such a fetish? Wolf or dog? Makes sense if its a pack power. She speaks with Boobook who suggests a lune, or maybe a rat spirit could be part of it, or perhaps an insect - something like bees or ants have this sort of bond.
Tillie asks if anyone knew Harry and exactly what it looked like. Graeme manages to organise talking to people who knew about the fetish or knew Harry Fox.
She gets a call from a Gerald Hardson, an older kinfolk in the know who isn't very complimentary about Fox (he was a bloody menace). She explains that she's looking for a fetish and getting mixed messages - does he know what it might have looked like, and what it might have done. Gerry says that his brother Daniel told him a bit about it. Daniel was in Harry's pack, and said that Fox insisted they give something dedicated to him so he could keep them safe. Harry was big on people giving him things in general. Gerry says that it was brown, not very big, and it had a glyph for 'pack' embroidered on it. Gerald isn't sad that Harry is gone - he says that Daniel said that Harry was big on everything went to him, and then he'd redistribute it according to need. Tillie thanks him and says she owes Gerry a favour.
Emma organises to summon an ancestor spirit. The spirit is one that often interacts with the sept in a very formal way at Moots, but this is much more casual interaction with the spirit as a person. Her name is Mary Anne Payne (Payne to the Wyrm), and she used to be a Master of the Challenge in the late 50s, which is about the time where Harry became a packleader. The spirit appears to be about 50 years old, quite muscled and scarred. She has scarification in the shape of ahroun glyphs on her arms.
Emma bows out of the conversation at this point. Mary Anne looks less than thrilled ot be left with Tillie. "Why are you here?" "I'm looking for the - " "No, I mean why aren't you with the rest of the spivs" Tillie's only vaguely aware what that means, and assumes she means Shadow Lords - "I had a personality clash with them. This is where I ended up" "We're not a garbage disposal for the other tribes" "I wouldn't leave this place for the world"
... "What do you want?" Tillie explains about the fetish she is looking for. Mary Anne says she's not sure where it came from - she says they had had a discussion about how useful something like this could be, and a few months later Harry turned up with one; he never said where he got it from. He'd gone off, and come back with it. Harry was recognised as rank 2 (Ragabash) before the others, and went off after that and came back with it. He never said what sort of spirit was in it. She's not sure she ever saw it 'work' per se, but Harry wasn't shy about reminding people it existed. He said that it would let him know if they were in trouble, but it also let him know where they were. He always did seem to know where they were and what they were doing - not just his pack either, but also lots of other people. It was part of Harry's package - she doesn't think it was his only trick for tracking people. He always seemed to know where the kinfolk ladies were, for instance. Mary Anne gives a slightly different description than Gerry - she says that it was fur, with glyphs burnt into it.
Mary Anne says that one of their packmates left once and the guy demanded his thing back. And when Harry tipped out the stuff in the bag, there was more than just the pack's stuff in there. The garou's name was Engines-of-Destruction, but he changed it to Engines-of-Truth when he quit, but he was killed not too long after. He thought that it mightn't have been the bag, but one of the other items in the bag.
Tillie asks if Harry was close to anyone, but Mary Anne says no. He was pretty aware of respective, uh, standing. He wouldn't really fit here any more. Tillie gets a 28:25 1) phone call to 'Mrs Stack' - unspecified older woman ????
Now that she has a focus for questions, Tillie goes back to Cossack and asks specifics. Cossack says that there's not as much he can help with as she might think. There was a ... cultural divide between the current status (ie: him) and the previous administration. Cossack says that the previous Elders had their traditions and habits and how they thought the world was, and how it would ever be, and they didn't want to change; even though the city and the people in it were changing quickly. This isn't something Bone Gnawers are usually accused of, but there you are. Harry, like many garou, found particular parts of the Litany more to his liking than others - specifically "The greatest share of the kill to the greatest in station".
So, there was a problem - the Sept was stuck, and they weren't accepting some garou as appropriate sept members. The numbers of werewolves at the sept were dropping, some of them were being lost, some went to other Septs. And so Cossack thought it had to stop, and he took steps. There was a bit of a turnover in Sept positions, and in the confusion, a certain amount of loss of expertise and information occured. Some people left, and took what they knew; others died from natural tradition; and others thought that their knowledge wasn't appropriate for some of the newcomers, especially members of other tribes (Glass Walkers).
Nonetheless, he can tell Tillie some things. Cossack recalls the argument over the fetish when Harry took the caern warder position. Harry and Father Barber argued that it was of value to the caern and Harry shouldn't have taken it away. Father Barber thought it was a caern fetish, Harry thought it was a pack fetish, and the pack no longer existed. The argument never really went anywhere, and "taking it back to where it came from" could mean anything.
Stories about Guided by Stars - they were all bone gnawers, 3 homids, 1 metis and 1 lupus. No galliard in the pack. They were a .. working pack, not a friends pack. They were tricksy if they could be - the stories that they celebrated were less "we beat 5 kinds of crap out of it" and more "we tricked them into attacking themselves". Their totem was a Wisdom totem - Cossack isn't 100% what it was. The stories have a 60s feeling, a James Dean, working class man, tough people taking what we want, and damn the rules kind of vibe. The stories don't match with Sleeping Lore now - they seem to be the sort of thing that Tillie might expect from Ear-to-the-Ground tho - a bit more of a blue collar working class folks. There were still Stargazers at the Sept, but they don't feature prominently in the stories.
Tillie further considers the spirit again - if the fetish was more about finding people, then its less likely to have been a pack spirit in the fetish. Maybe it was raven? And the stuff in the pouch was a kind of on going chiminage to keep the spirit happy?
She asks whether he had any children. Yes. Any still around? errr. The ones that knew Harry was their father, not so keen to get involved with the Sept.
Tillie wakes up the next day and realises that there was a common theme in the stories Cossack was telling her. Almost always there was an element of going into the Umbra to tap into symbology to help them take short cuts where logic won't help any more. They would go into the umbra and use symbologic similarities to help them find information or objects.
Tillie tries to build this sort of symbology over a couple of weeks. She starts with a copy of the fetish as best as she knows it appears, and bullies her packmates into giving her things ("its either teeth or some dedicated item, your choice") and speaks with spirits that might power this fetish. ("you know what goths are like, they like to glue shit to other shit"). Maybe it is the spying thing? Ravens? Shiny collecting things? That sounds more like jackdaw, or some other european birds.
Tillie has many adventures, trying to make this work.
On one trip she is following a moon path when it suddenly opens out into a space where two moon paths cross. She's in an Australian looking grassland, and a distance away she can see a stack of red boulders. As she approaches carefully, she can see a figure standing in front of them. Its a caucasian woman, standing in front of the rocks and staring at Tillie, who politely calls out.
She speaks, and Tillie can hear her voice clearly despite the distance. "We have always been waiting for you". Tillie senses of Wyrm and can tell that there's some level of wyrmishness to the situation - from her, but also from the rocks and the environment. Its a level that's concerning, but not a level that means "burn the place down". Tillie gets closer and can tell that she's not human. There's something wrong with her eyes - the pupils and irises are much bigger than they should be and her skin isn't right. Her mouth moves, but her voic isn't coming from there. "You are going to have killed the moon. I will have always seen you, running with the night in your hands." "I don't understand" "You stand in danger of having lost yourselves. There is a darkness within you." "how do we stop it?" "it is part of you" "if there's darkness, there must be light?" "There will have always have been both". Her grammar tenses are all over the place. "Who are you?" "We are the people fo the crossroads. Your path begins here." She points at the ground. Its dirt, cracked like summer dried soil. ("Cryptic spirit rubbish! I love it! Tillie hates it!") "Who destroys the moon - me or my people?" "You. " "Can I not?" "I always have seen that you will. Your path belongs here"
"What is that behind you? " "It is stone. " "Why is it here?" "It marks the way" "If I get lost, will I be able to find it again? " "We are the people of the crossroads" Tillie pokes at the ground. "Do I dig here?" "Begin here. Travel on. Follow the path. That is the way"
Tillie sort of heads off that way. The cracks in the ground start to look more significant. She keeps following it, and it keeps going. The umbral mists close in, and the crack keeps going, and getting wider and wider.
It reaches a point where Tillie has to pick a side to walk on - its now a chasm, with roots sticking out of dirt for a distance, and then raw stone below that. The depths have gone from too hard to see down because it was too thin to wide enough to look down, but misty before it reaches the bottom. Tillie senses wyrm and finds that it is extremely wyrmish - lots of wyrm energy bound up in the crack, an essential part of its nature.
Eventually, Tillie finds herself walking on parched black earth, with nothing living on it. The chasm dominates the immediate vicinity, and winds cause it to howl. Several hundred metres back from its edge, the umbral mists swirl. A path seems to start at the edge, and head down into the dark - it is cut into the edge, maybe a car width wide at the start. Tillie lobs a stone down into the dark, and it vanishes without a sound. She eyes off the downward path, and explores down it a bit, just to see what happens. It gets very dim very quickly, as do the noise of her footsteps. There are no spirits, but strange gusts of wind blow around randomly. It smells dry, an almost dim like the sound and light. The path changes width, sometimes only her wide, other times a few metres. She finds a water trickle coming out of the wall, travelling along the path and then goes over the edge. The path switches back and forth. About 100m down, its much dimmer than it should be, and so she switches to lupus.
Tillie finds that her attention keeps being drawn to the darkness down the hole and that she is walking very close to the edge. Its like everything is being drawn away - light, sound, smells, and even her focus. "No sir!" She gives this away as a bad idea and heads back up, and further along the edge.
After an indeterminate time, she finds a bicycle. It just appears to be a kids bike of some sort - it smells of grease and oil faintly, and maybe an owner, but she's not sure. Tillie toys with trying to ride it and finds the tire is very flat ("can i fix it?" Do you have a bike repair kit dedicated?" "no" "well then"). Its the sort of bike a 10 year old might right. This bike isn't a spirit, its a real bike. There's no footsteps or smells like the owner rode it here and then leapt off the edge. Tillie takes it with her. ("The wyrm comes after you, wanting its bike. ROOOOSEBUDDDDD.")
She finds another path - it looks very similar to the one she found before. Tillie is 100% sure its not the same path, umbral shenannigans aside, but she ignores it and keeps going.
A fair distance ahead, Tillie spots a bird spirit appear through the mists. It flies in spirals around the chasm, slowly decreasing in width and height, eventually moving into the chasm itsef, and then heading further and further down. Tillie reaches the point where it went in, and can't see it any further - she has trouble tearing her eyes away.
She finds a sock on the ground. It just looks like a sock. She sniffs it a bit and then hurls it into the chasm. Despite it being very light, it heads out into the dark. She stares after it trying to make it out against the darkness... and realises she's taken a couple of steps toward the edge without intending to.
Another path becomes apparent. Not far down it, almost like its trickled out of the wall, is a golden sheen across the pathway. ("gold's not dangerous to werewolves is it?" "only when sharpened to a point".) Tillie wonders how much further she can go - she's not hungry... wait, now she's unstoppably hungry. Aregh. She focusses on her prize as a distraction.
As she walks, Tillie finds more things. Keys. An umbrella. They're all things that get lost easily. ("yu find a communication pocket. A hat. Lunchbox. Its all just Hamish"). There's a distinct sense that these things are being drawn to the hole. This kind of makes sense in context of trying to find a thing that finds things that might have got lost.
Continuing on, Tillie finds another plain path, and then another gold one, and then another gold one. She finds more stuff as she travels as well - lost things, slowly being drawn to the edge. This suggests that perhaps they end up down the chasm?
Tillie wracks her brains about Umbral realms. She's heard about a lot of places, but the word "abyss" suddenly comes to her. She overheard a conversation about how the humans' unendeding hunger for Stuff might be a spiritual connection to the Abyss. It was one of the Stargazers, maybe End-the-Quiet? The tribe believes that this is where the Eater-of-Souls, an aspect of the wyrm, might live. The need for stuff, the hunger might be from a spiritual link to the abyss because it draws things to it.
Between that and stuff she's finding, it suggests that maybe some stuff goes over the edge, and presumably is drawn further down. She decides to give one of the descending paths another go. She tries to not focus on the darkness, but on the pouch. She tries the next path she comes to - it switches back and forth more than the last one. About 80m from the surface, a small cave opens into the wall. Its very shallow, but it has human bones in the bottom. She goes further and finds more caves - growing in size from a niche to a network of caves. Despite the dark, Tillie uses her garou senses and the bones as breadcrumbs, but on return she cannot find them again, even despite the heavy scents she put on them. (also using the bones as breadcrumbs). She tries to make fire and finds that the gnosis is drained out of her but no fire appears. She manages to not freak out at this and finds them again the mundane way. It takes a while, but she makes it back out.
The caves do have things in them - random lost things the occasional set of dessicated bones. Tillie decides to investigate shallowly. This one turns up nothing, so she heads back up and tries a gold path. It does actually appear to be gold. There's also uncut and unpolished gemstones in the walls. Maybe 60m down there's a 2m wide gap in the path, before it continues further along. Tillie opts for NOPE and heads back up and finds another gold path. It has the same gaps in it at one point; Tillie again chooses not to take the chance of disappearing into the depths of the chasm.
On about the 4th path, she finds a pouch. Its not furry, it appears to be hand made from very rough cloth. It does have the symbol for pack embroidered on it. It certain looks like it might be what she's looking for. It has a drawstring, and a couple of rocks inside it. Its not a fetish; there's a chance this is the thing anyway, as there was a nonzero chance it wouldn't be a fetish any more. She's really unhappy about how deep she is, and doesn't want to go further.
Tillie decides that on the balance of things, this might be what she was looking for, and she will take it back to the caern to talk to them about it. She comes up out of the pit, and follows it along to try and find her way home - she finds herself hungry, losing gnosis and generally not feeling like this is the right way to go. She goes perpendicular instead and hopes to get away from the abyss. She wanders the Umbra for a few days before making her way home.
When she arrives, Tillie relates her story to the Elders. Through fell theurgey powers, Emma thinks that the pouch did not use to be a fetish, but that it was the posession of Harry Fox. Tillie sighs and says so it used to be the thing in the pouch. The Elders hum and har a bit, and Cossack says that he actually thinks that it was never a real fetish. All the conflicting evidence and reports about it, and the fact that Harry got rid of it when he was going to be asked to share it with another pack, and that Tillie has found the pouch and its not a fetish - they all add up to the strong possibility that Harry lied. They take the pouch to Chimera and other caern spirits and query it. Its not 100% certain, but the overwhelming sense is that this is the thing, and the thing isn't a Thing.
While Tillie starts to grind her teeth about being set an impossible test, Ian says she should calm her tits and that she has passed the challenge. She did what the Elders wanted to test her on; she spoke to kinfolk, negotiated with spirits and investigated and quested into the Umbra and came back with firm evidence. Tillie is still cross because she would have liked to have such a fetish - but at least she knows a lot of background knowledge on how to make one like this.
At the next Moot, Tillie is asked to tell the tale, and formally recognised as being a Rank 3 Garou.
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