Feb 20th, 2010 - Saturday PM
So Cossack says we have to undergo a ~right of passage~
SHIT!
Sinead has a magic stick though so I guess.. we're okay?
And as if that isn't bad enough.. I. CAN'T. FUCKING. SEE. Fucking spirits. What the fuck. Stupid mist.
It's an Airt I think, hell.. oh well..
Oh. Goody. Weaver spiders. How fantastic!
They paved paradise.. whatever. Let's fuck some shit up.
~*~ smash smash smash smash smash smash ~*~
My packmates stop clowning around for long enough that we cover everything in a fine layer of weaver goo. We clean some trees (surely this can't be the point of the exercise, but it seems like the right thing to do) and follow the magic fucking stick again.
~ ~ ~
Dead earth.
..on a dark desert highway..
Airports are awful and this place smells worse than sweaty old man balls. Clearly, the best course of action is to follow the smell up on to the roof, because we're geniuses, &..
There is something really sick in the air intake.
Oh. I see. It's a mould monster.
A big one.
Well, let's kill that shit with fire then. Fire and claws.
Initiation part 2: Electric Boogaloo
So we're following the magic stick right? Only it feels different this time.. and of course there's some exploding mist, and we're at a crossroads. (Everyone else says we can't summon the devil - whatever.)
Big rock, wordless signs. Smells weird. Everything surreal.. muted. Like a being in a painting.
And then: we're in fuckin' Sparkletown: Werewolf is magic. Why are spirits so fucking cryptic?
Let's dig! Dig dig! Hey! I'm not really digging! That's rude.
I rather think we're not in kansas anymore.
Riddles noooooooo. Blah blah, it's the moon, get to the good bit.
Oh ~awesome~ the good bit is more running and more godamn mist!
Aaaand.. suburbia?? Smells like running water and smog.
Warehouses = uninteresting. Shiny lake water = slightly interesting. Well there's only one solution to this: we're going to crusty mountain!
Ashphalt - are we on a freeway??
("Oily taint is the worst taint!")
Upstream we go.. oh, gross, stinkfoam.
"Hey, let's go inside this giant gaping taint hole!"
(Godamn useful fairy lights.)
It's coming straight for us! It's.. like a foot long! It's.. ... ..oh gross. It's between my toes.
MORE FUCKING RUNNING.
Oh hey a wyld ball! Better save it.
Why is it the most harmless looking things are always the worst! Ouch! Also yuck.
Sure lucky for this helpful owl..
YOLO.
("Hunts the lost" but don't tell anyone, eh?)
experience tells me that the best thing you can do to sway things in your favor is gather as much information as possible on your foe before they even know you're there, so that's what we'll do. if i have to tie this godamn get of fenris down in the meantime.. well, all the better, really.
we can be patient. for a little while.
(and when i figure out whose fault this is i am going to fill their house full of this caustic shit.)
sat 27th feb 2010 ahroun moon 8am
moot moot moot moot moot
there's a lot of howling, a lot of totems and thing, chimera is hanging about, boobook seems happy - all in all a good time. we don't have a pack leader OR a pack name yet and as far as i'm concerned everyone else can suck it. there's a lot of pomp and ritual - it's the werewolf way - and finn managed not to mangle the retelling of the initiation too too badly ("it's.. heartfelt"). what he lacks in skill the boy makes up for in enthusiasm.
emma mention the weird dream we all had that we all had that gave us the communal screaming mimis - it sounds like malfeas, which is like the worst wyrm place 4eva. shits fucked and we should watch out for it.
also there's some wyrm tainted drugs doing the rounds so don't put anything you don't recognize up your nose! weird break-ins at the zoo and animals being stolen, which is also pretty fucked. kirsty is mad about animal testing. actually, *i* am mad about animal testing. SHIT'S FUCKED I SAY.
then we roll out for some more howling and whatnot. god, werewolves.
oh fuck, drunk kids in the cemetery and because WE are the new guys we have to go fix it. some fucking about with trying to move them along gently (finn plays a surprisingly unconvincing drunk guy for an irish dude) and then with slightly more force (shouting, the step before hitting). there's some vomit, it's not on me, will appears to have backwards peeked and blinded himself - actually, it's all pretty funny.
and then of course there has to be some half dead guy in the bushes to RUIN EVERYTHING.
wayne buxton, 3rd year commerce at the uni, pocket full of tainted (hahahahah) speed. do the right thing, call an ambulance, will check on that shit later.
mon 28th feb
back to stalking a guy. now with gloves!
joseph wridgeway, presumably the owner of the truck company by the same name.
what the fuck. why is this guy so NORMAL? he MUST be evil.
1st March Monday, 12pm Ahroun Moon
We find our men at Wridgeway - Dave Picker, a nondescript white guy, and Tom Bell, also a nondescript white guy.Neither of them smell overwhelmingly of evil which makes them boring, but we decide to follow Dave anyway. This is mostly an excuse for me to ride my bike <3
We end up north of fucking Greenborough. He's got a wife, kids, again no obvious evil or murder basement. Snore. We decide to stalk him later if we're not busy braiding each others hair or whatever.
While we're waiting for Operation: Stalk Dave to begin, Sinead goes to check on Wayne, our friendly unconscious-in-a-bush druggie. He's been discharged so we have to spend a while fucking about with the questing stone to find him (knew the Theurge would be good for something eventually).
Shocking nobody, he lives in a shitty house in Kensington. We send Sinead in because she looks like she might have something in common with the hipsters inside, also so I don't eat anyone. Some chick with glasses - Melanie? - tells us he's drugged up (I'm seeing a pattern..) so Sinead leaves a note.
Back to afoermentioned stalking - this guy is definitely taking money on the sly. Note to self: come back and take sneaky unmarked-type notes, leave something unpleasant instead. Do the same for his friend if applicable.
This is fucking useless! He doesn't know anything - he's just a shitty flunky. The cash smells of Wridgeway so we decide to go visit the man himself.
At 2am.
In robes.
In Glabro.
The more I think about this plan, the more I love it.
2:30am Wednesday.
We cut the power as we go in. The visit goes well! Almost feel bad for the old guy - almost. Joe doesn't have a lot of information - there's a dude named Chambers, a phone number, a rough address, a tearful promise not to be a naughty boy anymore. Whatever. He bought this on himself.
"Everyone who is a great big baby can go home and sleep."
Thursday
The warehouse is a bit of a bust when we investigate - the most interesting thing we have is a number off the for lease sign out the front. This is going to take some investigating.
Fuck! Maybe Will is right - I'm starting to think kidnapping and torture might be the fastest way to fixing this mess so I can go home.
Thursday 4th March
The real estate agent is Brady, Tullis & Lau. We make Kasumi call because she knows stuff about business or whatever and she gets a Candace Tullis. Dearest Candy seems perfectly happy to rent out the warehouse - not sure what this means yet.
We make her call Chambers too - slightly snotty guy on the other end of the phone. We fake a wrong number.
We decide to break into the real estate agents office, mostly because breaking & entering is fun. Rifling through various things nets us Ms Tullis' mobile number - and the personal number of one Rudy Chambers. Yes! Motherfucker it is ON.
(Somewhere along the way Wayne SMS' Sinead and I think she sexed him through the phone or something, I don't know.)
We questing stalk our new friend Rudy and end up northeast of the city. He has a fucking mansion in Eltham - I start to hope this is our guy so we can take him for everything he has got. When Will peeks there's some definite evil.
Sneaky Kasumi sneaks in & pokes around:
"Rainbow Inc" is the business name - where the plastic waste is coming from maybe? Rudolph Chambers, Head of Marketing. RUDOLPH. Business addresses Factory details - Laverton Nth
Laverton it is!!
Rainbow Inc - Manufacturer of Fine Toys. That's fucking low, using little kiddies joy to poison. ("It's probably a dildo factory.") Stinks of taint (see above). Spirit realm is all fucked up here, it's near impossible to see anything and it's completely weaver infested.
Also there's a.. haunted coke machine? And the ladies soap dispenser? MONSTERS.
Oh wait no. Here's a room of evil.
Mr David Struthers Managing Director
Oh. David. You don't know what's coming for you.
1am Friday 4th March
OK DAVID LET'S DO THIS THING.
But first, a nap.
--------
11pm Friday 4th March
Questing stone says the fancy part of Spotswood, so to Spotswood we go.
Nice place, very nice. Clearly evil.
We're heading towards the house when Finn starts to shout and point. There's a.. line? Barrier? On the edge of the property - a thin, faint silver waiver. Alarm? Illusion?
We take the very mature action of throwing shit at it.
When that doesn't work we throw bloody shit at it. Nothing. RUDE.
It is this point, while bossing people around, that I get voted in as leader of our little band of miscreants. Wow. I've never.. nobody's ever wanted my opinion before. WHATEVER THERE'S SOMETHING IN MY EYE OKAY.
We puss out & phone the sept for advice. We get Kirsty, Kirsty calls Chris, he's agrees to come and save our asses. Hooray!
Chris, Barry and Kirsty show up & cleanse the area. We should learn that.
It fucks up the ward which.. I guess is good? Something happening is better than nothing happening, surely.
We make our way into the spirit house and have a look. This guy is bizarre on a level I have not previously experienced. Is he.. making noodles? Cleaning the windows? Sleepwalking?
Yup, this guy is fucked up.
"I KNOW YOU'RE THERE COME OUT AND TALK"
Oh no motherfucker, I don't think so.
And so he SETS HIMSELF ON FIRE. WHAT THE FUCK.
We're beating a hasty retreat when he dies, and.. turns into a giant pus monster. No seriously. Huge. Bigger than my bedroom, reeking, bloaked bag of disgusting taint.
We fight it and it's gross.
And then we win.
I hate being a werewolf.
Saturday 6th March Galliard waning
11:30am FUCKING HORROR STORM. Stupid prophecy? Stupid sexy Flanders.
Then we did nothing for a couple weeks.
Well that's not *technically* true. We did.. werewolf paperwork. I didn't get to hit ANYONE except for Finn some, so it was mostly boring. There's a lot of discussion about the weird shit that's been going on - why is the gauntlet at Rainbow Inc so high? What's up with Wayne? What's with the freaky fuckin' group dreams? Why are the Get of Pennington being even weirder than usual? We tie up some loose ends - steal some money from some fuckheads, give Chambers a good Wridgewaying, Will gets sold into slavery, we go to a toystore to play with the p- to look for evil toys. Yeah.
--------
Friday 19th, Lygon St, Theurge waxing
We're sitting in some godawful hipsters paradise eating surprisingly awesome gelato (the things you miss out on when you're born a killing machine!) when I have the distinct pleasure of meeting Scott, pack leader of the Steel Hunters. He wants us to steal a gold gibbous moon amulet from the mueseum. Something about terrible portents and the exhibition gardens, whatever. More importantly he is a DIRTBAG and I am going to find a way to humiliate him so badly he actually dies from it. Nobody fucks with my pack but me!
Friday 9pm
We decide to summon a loon to help with the Scott problem. Sinead does some arts & crafts because spirits are simple motherfuckers. Emma does the summoning - Theurge's are creepy, yo.
It works! & it's SHINY.
Scott's still an obnoxious asshole with a god complex and Claude's still an idiot with a pindick, surprising noone. Sinead gives him a bad case of BEEEEEEEEEES and it's amazing.
In lupus we head in, following our shiny shiny guide. We can smell Sinead ahead of us even though she's behind us - the morons playing tricks. If I'd felt guilty about the bees before I wouldn't now. (I won't.)
Our shiny friend isn't coming up with much so we head downstairs for some in-depth exploration of the archives. There's nothing - then there's something - then there's FUCKING GARGOYLES EVERYWHERE. We fight them. I fucking love fighting.
I also turn out to be pretty pro at holding doors shut in the face of extreme guard. This is presumably why I am pack leader.
Found it? The card info suggests it's Greek. There's no fucking spirit in it! It smells of something recent - a male.
It's like I stumbled into the Hunchback of Notre Dame only instead if cute songs there's just bits of Wills head all over the walls.
------------
This pack leader thing is both way more awesome and way harder than I expected. I care for these kids more than I've ever cared for anyone and I'd do anything to protect them - but so much is on my shoulders and I'm still learning (NEVER ADMIT THIS TO WILL). It feels like kismet - like coming home.
Hm. Moirai, parcae - Kismet. Now there's a pack name.
Friday.. still.
We follow the Steel Hunters to 101 Collins - fancy, yo. There's a lot of card swiping and secret lifts and James Bond shit - pack of wankers.
We end up in an arboretum of sorts, which I guess is the best possible outcome if you're cairn is a fucking giant steel cage.
We meet Rob, metis ahroun child of gaia and keeper of the land. He inspects our shiny new jewels and summons Felix - rank 4 glasswalker theurge & sept leader. He seems as confused as we are. Good!
Wait, why is Christine here? She gives us the side eye. Scott thinks we haven't won yet but I have this big fuckin' pendant that says otherwise. I tell him we'll think about helping him out and we jet.
Christine makes us promise to be good. We lie.
Cossack tells us some boring stuff about pack wars and whatever, yawn, I fucking hate being lectured.
FINE FINE we'll go clean up our mess at the mueseum. There's cops everywhere, senior type cops. Everyone's freaking out but kind of uselessly (typical). The gargoyles have.. disintergrated?
We take stock of the security footage system & decide to let the Steel Hunters know. SEE. WE ARE SO NICE. Butter wouldn't melt in my mouth, bitch.
We put the pendant back, must to my fucking disgust. I never get anything nice. I guess now we HAVE to go find the real one.
SLEEP.
---
Saturday Morning:
We hatch a BRILLIANT PLAN.
Saturday Afternoon:
We ask annoying questions about the gargoyles. The could be anything. WHY IS NOTHING EVER SIMPLE.
Saturday night 9pm.
Out BRILLIANT PLAN is sniffing. Sinead sniffs, as does Will. We all have our talents.
(The gargoyle dust -is also cursed- has wyrms.)
We find the desk! ARTHUR THACKERY. Curator, maybe? We crystal-stalk him.
We find ourselves in a house in Hawthorn - once again it is suspiciously normal. Arthur is a mid-thirties white guy with curly hair and a mild case of wyrm. Also suspicious.
We accidentally Ridgeway him. He is an idiot and a petty thief and he gave the pendant to his idiot girlfriend so we bully him into calling her home.
S'pose we should decide what to do with her.
And figure out how he managed to make such a perfect copy.
And figure out WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON.
Saturday night
We play bondage games with Arthur - this guy is kind of a sniveling weasel.
His girlfriends name is Susan Ryder, and they're moving to Brisbane, presumably to make it easier to be dodgy motherfuckers.
While we're waiting for Susan, the fucking Steel Hunters turn up, OF COURSE. We decide to take action now, in preference to letting them get to her first - at the same time, there's a howl, and a blonde appears, followed by - sigh - Steel Hunters in lupus. Finn changes form and takes them on, and then..
Well. And then there's a giant clusterfuck of epic proportions. The blonde maybe gets her nose a little bit broken. The important part is that after a fashion we emerge victorious! I get my pendant! It's full of shadows.
We're on our way to hidden green when two giant fucking winged gargoyle things come for us. We send Will and the pendant umbra-wards and book it.
Sinead and I doing some fancy fucking tumbling TOTALLY ON PURPOSE to try and get the gargoyles away from the highway before joining the others in the umbra.
Fucking Finn and fucking Kasumi are stuck in the fucking gauntlet! WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH TODAY. It's time for reinforcements.
Emma saves our asses, godamnit. We tell her about todays weirdness and she says demons. That seems.. not good.
Back at the sept we LEARN ABOUT DEMONS. We have to go to Reconciliation and talk to Philip, and to Grinding Stone to talk to the Uktena. HIJINKS!
Sunday
We borrow a car (a tarago - really??) from the Sept and make our way to Reconciliation.
(We use the long car ride to finalize a pack name - The Lost Prophets!)
When we get there we are menaced by some sacred Ibises.
Eventually we are -arrested- introduced to the Fianna Theurge, Liam. Antoinette, the sept leader, we meet in the umbra, and she seems suspiciously nice. Turns out we share a totem with their sept! I am not sure how I feel about this. Stupid owl.
Then we meet Philip, who.. looks like a zombie, to be honest. Finn does a little song and dance, everyone seems impressed.
Philip seems to think the 'demons' are probably summoned by some (human) mages. He recommends we go to Grinding Stone, so we do.
At Grinding Stone I am reminded that Shadowlords are unrepentant assholes. Sveta always was.
Bathes-In-Blood is also a knob. We do some sweet talking (as sweet as I can manage, anyway) and finally get to see Mellajimbarra. Why was that so hard??
He's a rank 4 Theurge Uktena, and sort of nice-scary and hard to read. He wants us to owe him a favour, which is dangerous business, but that's the currency that gets traded in these kinds of instances, so we take it.
He takes us to a MURDER SHACK. It has a giant MURDER PIT in it. Out of the pit crawls a naked guy. Somehow we do not get murdered.
However, he is very fucking cryptic.
We get the fuck out of dodge.
UGH I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO GO BACK TO HIDDEN GREEEEEEEEEEEEN.
We're having a pleasant (for us) breakfast (for us) at 11pm on Lygon St (except Will - he's at his job??? I don't understand humans any more than wolves sometimes) when some blonde bitch waltzes up and all hell breaks loose for NO FUCKING REASON ON.
Everyone hackles are suddenly up and nobody will do anything except staring at this dumb broad, so I do what anyone would do - I push Kasumi off her chair. Finn grabs the girl, Sinead falls over a table, Kasumi starts screaming incomprehensibly (nothing new) and Finn takes off with the girl. This can't be anything good, so I chase him. What the FUCKING FUCK IS GOING ON.
That's when Finn changes to Glabro and Sinead starts stabbing him in the leg with a fork. I punch Finn, Finn punches Sinead, Kasumi is still screaming..
We're probably attracting some attention. I do the only sensible thing and chair Finn. Kasumi runs past, blonde chick in tow, Sinead following close behind screaming epithets.
THAT'S WHEN SOMEONE SHOOTS ME IN THE BACK.
In what I feel is a very mild form of retaliation, I chair the two suits with gun into the ground. I want to keep going until they are paste, but I can see Carmel and she's got a heavy weapon, so I leave this particular part of the clusterfuck to her and take off after the sound of Kasumi and Sinead shreiking - not before Finn punches me IN THE GUNSHOT WOUND. Oh, he will pay.
I find Kasumi babbling in Japanese and crying in and ally, while Sinead appears to be getting it on with the blonde chick nearby. Huh.. didn't know she swung that way! Nonetheless this is nonsensical and when I yank the blonde away she has a lot of rows of teeth. Oh.
Kasumi seems to understand when I tell her it's a fucking succubus or something, but Sinead just goes back to what she's doing, so I pistol whip the blonde. Hard. This makes Sinead mad and she body slams me into the ally wall a lot.
I cop a doorknob directly to the gunshot wound. Everything starts to buzz and then the world goes dark.
...
When I come to Kasumi is crying and shaking me. I take stock of the two unconscious bodies in front of me - the blonde and Sinead (how? Kasumi??) - shrug, pick them up, and book it.
...
Once we've dropped the Fomori off to Ian, been lectured by everyone and their Dad, established that Finn might be kind of sort of in jail and gotten Sinead healed and her taint detainted, we bebrief. Turns out the fomori was set on us by 'a man with a buzzy voice'. Oh, so this is all his fault then?
I'm comin' for ya, buddy.
(Note to self: guy with gun = Anton Fortescue. Revenge???)
Saturday afternoon
Will calls and tells me Sparky has finally turned up - I introduce him to the pack and he agrees to speak at the moot.
(He is clearly *massively* impressed at my leadership skillz and awesome pack.)
THEN THERE'S A MOOT.
INSERT HIPPY SHIT*
(Hahahaha Sparks To A New Flame hahahaha sparky REALLY.)
There's a long drawn out discussion about death, the bad umbra etc which sounds promising but is mostly fruitless - note to self, though, check historical massacre sites.
Shit GOES FUCKING DOWN between Kirsty and Cossack. She frenzies and hulks off somewhere. I am secretly relieved that I don't have to have the sad animals argument with everyone else, even though it is totally fuxed.
The usual moot things go on: Finn sings a song, Sinead learns a thing, we talk to the owl. We're given a task - Summon a spirit to teach two of us sense wyrm. Good fucking deal.
Everyone learns some stuff. We revel. Then we sleep.
Queue more creepy ass fucked up fucking Malpheus dreams. This shit shall not stand but I don't know what the fuck to do about it.
Monday morning
There's a murder in North Melbourne. We check it out - LOTS of blood (hardly unusual for a murder), cops, VIFM van. We get badge numbers off the cops and names for the foensics goons - Tom Jones (HA!) and Jo Naysmith. Sniffing - it smells.. dusty. Cardboardy around the corpse. No Kirsty smell (phew) but.. slightly off smell - like murky stagnant water alose to the body. Male.. garou??? We follow it.
We spy om the police and watch them examine the body, post-Autopsy. Male, late 20s, dark hair, skinny - supremely mauled, claws up the back and front, not little claws either. Big claws.. crinos claws?
While we're checking the newspaper out for leads (the dead guy is Tony Staley) a familiar name jumps out - Wridgeway! Oh fuck, maybe we really did send him out of his gourd 'cause he's missing, has been since Thursday. Paper says open door, signs of a struggle.. Questing Stone can't find him in the physical or the umbra which is, by my reckoning, real fuckin weird.
We go check his house. We feed his budgie. The house is lightly trashed and smells of.. Wridgeway, blood (just in the kitchen doorway), orgainic/acid/stingy/puss.. STRUTHERS?! Smells like that fucking bane! ASSHOLE!
We decide to backtrack to try and find it.
Chambers: Not at home or at work. 6000km away, in fact. (Note to self: store bodies at his house.)
Candy: Car crash Saturday evening. She's in hospital. We make a note to check that out and keep backtracking.
Truck drivers: fine, shady motherfuckers.
We go talk to Emma. Could there be more than one pussmonster? Maybe it ATE Wridgeway? Does questing stone count if you're being digested??
Tony Staley 28. Shelf stacker at Coles. Brutal murder. Etc etc. We find his address and phone number - he lives in a sparsely furnished room in a sharehouse.
We check out rainbow inc.
Session 16
Tuesday!We dedicate some official looking shit and head to the hosiptal to take a closer look at Candy through the umbra. She's pretty wrecked, with a big headwound and a broken arm and maybe something internal. She doesn't reek of Wyrm any more than any other real estate agent and she's not going anywhere soon, so we'll come back when she's lucid.
Finn gets called off to school or something boring. Why is he panicking? I am pretty sure he doesn't even get to fight anything while he's there.
Back at the caern, Sparky wants to go home - I can't blame him too much given the chaos here. I -beg- ask ends the quiet for a moonbridge and am granted, which is awesome because I was totally fucked otherwise. Before he goes, Sparky takes me aside - says Cossack is more clued in to the politics of this place than he seems. I MUST REMEMBER THIS. I'm not real into politics myself, but it seems like useful information to have.
Then.. a quiet patch, which is nice. We get some rest, practise sensing wyrm - Will says people are being weird, but I think HE is being weird and also fuck everyone.
Kirsty finds me - she doesn't look like she's eaten anyone recently, I guess. She... thanks.. me? That NEVER happens. Then she asks me out on a date or something. Whatever. I tell her I'll ask the pack.
Session 17
Saturday
"COME"
There's a voiceless voice in my head and my body - inexplicably - needs to go to the cairne like NOW. I HAVE to go.I hate it when people tell me what to do!
When I get there, boobook is being SUPER weird. He takes off and we chase him in hispo, going west.
Suddenly, everything goes sideways and inside out. I know this feeling, like everything you can't see doesn't exist - it's an airt. We go path - plains - scrub - path - wild bushland. Then we stop.
We take in as much as we can. There's a storm happening in the umbra, quite a big one.. this place seems really familiar, but I can't quite place it. There's a gross, pulsating wyrm feeling that comes and goes, and there's a smell..
And then there's people. Well, people's really the wrong word - there's some FUCKING BUNYIPS. They stare, we stare, they stare, we stare, they disappear.
Finn says they smell like spirits.. and sort of like Will. If he's a Bunyip I'm going to cut his balls off.
There's a footprint, smelling of homid & lupus, and a rock. Lacking much other direction we check out the rock and weirdly it smells of Mark from Grinding St-
WE'RE AT FUCKING GRINDING STONE. Oh SHIT.
Why does Grinding Stone smell of wyrm???
There's some hopefully placatory howling, then we're being circled. Fucking Heralds of War - couldn't rub two brain cells together between them. There's some posturing but eventually they take us to see Hiros.
--- Everything goes dark. ---
And then I'm back only everyone has moved and Sinead has me by the shoulders, having just (apparently) pulled me from the gauntlet. How? I didn't go anywhere!! Someone from the Heralds says it's been happening for a week or so - gee, would have been nice to know your fucking cairne was booby trapped, buddy! We definitely need to speak to Hiros.
Melajymbara pulls us aside - he wants to talk to the owl, whom we summon. We mention the Bunyips, despite my misgivings, and he freaks out a bit.
Boobook says that the spirits of the land are angry about something. Now so am I! What the FUCK is going on?!
I hate this place.
Apparently Rippling Waters is going through the same thing, which makes the whole deal significantly more disturbing, and means we can't just concrete in Grinding Stone and be done with it, unfortunately.
Boobook takes off and - we're learning! - we follow. The Heralds follow us, eventually dropping off as we keep west - I think we might be south of Ballarat, but I'm not sure.
The storm lets up in a really specific and disturbing way and we're near a big fence and a sign - "Edridge Laboratories". Kasumi says they're an alternative energy company, whatever that is.
We take a deep breath and go in.
Jesus Sunday, 1am
We make our way into the umbral version of Edridge. It looks like just another crappy industrial facility in the bush.
We scout the outside. Fair number of cameras in the realm, fair amount of weaver in the umbra.
It's all pretty new and reasonably high tech.
There's a noise in the umbra - a creepy moaning sound - and the ground is wet, even thought it's not raining here.
Everything still pulses wyrm sometimes, but there's a constant stink of wyrm now too and smells slightly.. tacky. I dig and even though I know it;s clay it drips off my hands like blood.
We check out the people in the onsite accomodation - well, Finn does - but they just seem to be people.
We head towards the greenhouse. They're full of seeded plants and Kasumi says that makes sense. It's weirdly wyrmy for something so green - probably needs a good cleanse. With fire.
As we're heading out, the moaning gets louder. Because we're idiots who always head towards danger instead of away from it we go looking for the source of the noise, and find a big crack in the ground. And then another and another. We make Finn put his fairy lights down it - it's glisteny red and gross but nothing comes out and tries to eat us.
We go looking in the labs for stairs or an elevator, but there's nothing much. I am getting very frustrated and increasingly sure that we should just burn this place down to the ground.
We go back to the moaning cracks. We follow the loudest and find a giant maw in the earth. Finn does some more fairy magic but it doesn't work, so we chuck a bunch of flaming sticks down the hole, because that always works out well.
The hole goes from wet clay to rock. Nothing wakes up, which is good I guess. We debate what to do now - down the hole or look around more? Some discussion leads to looking around leads to finding an incinerator, looking around the operations area, and - Sinead finds a fucking stairwell!! But we can't go down it in the umbra. Back into the security room - there's cameras IN the security room and the guards have rifles. This seems increasingly not.. good. We track a guard for a while but he's just a guy.
We spend a lot of time debating how to get down the KEEP OUT generator stairs. Eventually we try the DUMBEST IDEA EVER.
Shockingly, it is hard and it is dumb. I can't even get out of the Umbra, so now I'm stuck while the majority of my pack wanders into what is almost certainly massive danger. I hate everything.
Still Jesus Sunday
I take Sinead and we explore. The offices are office-y and nice (according to Sinead). We get some names: Prof Adrienne Stone (Prof. of Genetics) Prof Wei Zu (Prof. of Botany) Prof Gordon Brechowski (Prof. of Genetics) Amanda Wade (Admin)
Current theory is an underground triffid army.
(Later, the others tell me: they find a machine & some bottle of glowy liquid in a place that smells of the security guard, which is bad news - they won't hesitate to come down and look. There's some tornado doors that are very wyrmy behind.)
We find another security guard asleep in the accomodation - there seems to be a really excessive number of security personnel here, which lends water to my triffid theory.
Sinead suggests we dig our way down to the basement. Genius! I am totally jack of wandering around aimlessly. We dig.
(Later they tell me that behind the doors is a long, lit stone corridor. Finn tells me he dedicated some of the liquid and BAM - no longer glowing, but he feels great.)
DIG DIG DIG. Dig dig dig, Nope, stuck.
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.
Suddenly, Finn is in my head. There's a series of complicated fuckery and Kasumi totally fucks her phone but eventually we make it downstairs.
We go down the stone corridor. And down and down and down..
We come to black rock and white sand in a huge cavern. It smells of people, water, sand, rock - as you'd expect. There's dot paintings all over the walls.. fucking hell.
(Note to self: make Will learn the rite of contrition.)
We shout a greeting/apology - nothing. We find a tube rising up from a big, very still lake - it's full of faintly glowing liquid. The stuff from the bottles? Whatever it is, they're concentrating it. If it's really full of essence..
We find another corridor and follow it. There's more paintings going up it but it gets very dark. Eventually we come up in a pile of rocks in the storm.
Giant hidden cavern full of dot paintings and essence.
Oh fuck me. This is a caern.
Ohhhhhhhhhh we need to fix this.
Still Jesus Sunday
There's some debate about what to do next - step the one: go back up and check shit out. There's lights in the tunnel though, so we book it back and make for the umbra.
Time stops-
(Later, they tell me: There's some security guards and some mercenary types. They seem unsurprised and unimpressed with our foorprints.)
- and then starts again.
I am getting way too fucking familiar with that empty space between worlds.
Some more debate over what next - but a quick decision is necessary so we jump in with all feet. There's a slight shattering of kneecaps and some running around but in the end we have two guns, two torches and two incapacitated security guards. I even feel a little bit sorry for them.
There's some persuading roughly about the head and shoulders until one of them starts talking - Chief of Security is Miss DellaHarper? and she summoned some helicopters when they found the doors jimmied. Someone named Chisolm is in charge maybe? That will need looking in to.
Fuck it. We're wasting time - we go after the mecenaries.. only when we get to the cyclone doors, it becomes apparent that there's a number of fomori laying in wait for us just behind them. We're on the back foot really, in an enclosed space where they have cover and we don't, so we change tactics and book it back - even my stubborn ass knows we need reinforcements.
We call Ian. He is his usual charming self.
When we come up there's 3 fomori nearby. Kasumi fucks off with a gun to make a distraction while we hunt them.
A shot gets fired and it turns out it went into the guy nearest me (thank you, Kasumi) - I reach him before he sees me, raise my claws, there's a sound like wet paper slapping against a rock and he is on pieces in the ground. A quick scan of the situation tells me Finn and Sinead are making quick work of their fomori, Will apparently got the lively one - by the time I make it to him and grab the fucker by the arm Sinead is right behind me and grabs the other, and Will turns him in to mush.
This is the kind of team work I can handle! I fucking love winning.
The Jesus Sunday That Never Ends
We check the fomori for tentacles and other goodies and walk away with their guns, ammo and grenades. We hide the bodies and then the weapons before heading back to the facility via the umbra - we head back to the security room.
There's 5 people in the room - Miss DellaHarper?, Derek, and some mercenary types including an older guy who looks like he's in charge.
The plug a machine into the camera and suddenly the umbra is on the screen and we're staring at them staring at us starting at them.
In the time it takes us to move into the realm everything has gone to hell.
...
The first thing I see when I cross is a big fucking gun pointed at me through the doorway - and I can smell my packmates around me, which means it's pointed at them too. I don't think, I just do - running straight at the asshole who is trying to hurt us. I cop a few bullets for my trouble, but he doesn't have a face anymore, so I win. When I turn there's blood and fur flying everywhere and I can see a great big fucking tentacled thing that I think used to be DellaHarper?. I run for it and get hit again.
The world goes black, then grey, then red.
...
When I come to I'm covered in blood and worse and I've just torn through a window. We're all sort of in tact, and the fomori are all dead (and Derek), there's just one poor quivering bastard in front of me.
Then the helicopter explodes.
Sunday's All The Way Down
When we come to we go straight down stairs & disconnect the machine - while we're doing it there's some howling, which I suppose means reinforcements have FINALLY arrived.
There's the heralds of war, melajimburra, commands the waters, cossack, emma & some rippling waters types, all looking bloody and a bit bemused.
We explain as best we can - nobody believes me about the helicopter - and lead the important types under the ground. I am REALLY glad that I don't have to stay behind and start cleaning up.
There's some magicing and some talking & some sorting out of shit once we're back near Lake Creepy, and eventually the decision is made to take this to the council and we're coming too. I start to wish we were staying behind to clean up.
We get taken to rippling waters and then a moonbridge to jindabyne to see the council.
It's intense. The silver fangs don't seem well impressed but fuck them. We're introduced to Darius the rank 5 ahroun sept leader - what a scary motherfucker. We're taken off to the kiddie table and spend some sorely needed time resting and recharging.
Finn wakes me up - he's been talking to Brett a& the Fianna want us to challenge to lead the restoration of the caern. The offer's a good one and we agree.
Later the night we're taken to the council meeting.
It's equal parts intimidating and hilarious. There's some story telling, a lot of fighting and a vote - we win! I think. Certainly we've volunteered outselves for something.
What were we thinking?
Sunday bloody Sunday
We make it back home via Moonbridge - it's not a bad way to travel really. I find Graeme and tell him about having maybe smelled some Blood Claw on our travels. JOB DONE TIME TO SLEEP.
GROUNDHOG DAY. No, Monday. Finally!!
We track Emma down and ask her endless questions about the scar, and she is needfully vague - this is complicated business and I don't really understand why we can't just go in guns blazing but apparently it requires ~finesse~ and ~expectations~ and other stupid human shit.
Everyone else has some ridiculous shit to deal with but not me because I don't make stupid fucking deals with spirits! Except that one time I did - should get on that. MENTAL NOTE MENTAL NOTE.
I spend some time meditating - it's not my strong point but I do feel better afterwards.
We end up with a bit of a send off - unnerving, are you all just here because you don't think we're coming back?? We follow Sinead, cos she seems like she knows what she's doing, and we end up.. in an apartment block? I don't know why I'd assumed this would be all out in the bush or something. We take some kind of ridiculous magical elevator. We end up on a kind of shimmery, silvery path (a moon path, one presumes - very literal) and there's more wandering, but it's a sort of directed wandering now.
Eventually we hit a giant weaver wall - probably the way in, like looking at a gauntlet, which is weird.
Wellp. Time to suit up and head out. Maybe we'll even even make it out the other side.
Session 24
Monday Night!!
We decide to continue on in Lupus, save for Kasumi, in order to be as stealthy as possible (HA HA HA HA).
We appear in a room - it appears to be the worlds shittiest apartment. Everything outside is grey and smokey and miserable and so are the.. I would hesitate to call them people. Humanoid automatons? There's some metallic clearly guard-like beings with swords for hands too. Man I bet this place is a real estate nightmare.
We're in apt number 13, floor 19.
We make our way down the stairs and out into the street - everything here is still very grey. I'd thought somewhere called the scar would be red, angry.. like my scars. It's not. It's just... monotonous.
There's some really creepy screaming and some weird thudding drum noises, but it's impossible to tell where from. Eventually we find a fenced in factory and everyone knows the best stuff is the stuff that's locked away so we dig under the fence.
We sneak into the factory - the grey slaves are shackled which makes me want to save them but that's not why we're here and I need to keep my mind on the mission. Eventually we come to the end of the factory - they're fucking assembling and disassembling the same thing over & over!!
The grey people have copper tubing running fromtheir shackles to the floor. Maybe the workers are being harvested for gnosis? It makes sense given we're looking for gnosis batteries. We find a manhole and descend.
We end up in an access tunnel fighting some kind of horrific demon rats. I feel like this has been too easy and it's NEVER this easy. I am deeply suspicious of what's to come.
Session 25
Monday!
There's a brief rat skirmish, then we move on.
Eventually we find a.. well.. a glory hole. It fills with more of the black liquid, and then empties & there's more creepy screaming. Without any real eads, we decide to follow the tunnel it came out of. Because we're a brains trust.
After a while of travelling through pipes there's a sudden rush of movement - we're all instantly on our hackles, and it's a.. series of cute cuddley forest critters. Finn is brave and defeats a baby bord.
There's some awkward communication & then we follow the animals of farthing wood.
We make a deal with King Falcon - we'll help the poor trapped animals (Kirsty would be fuckin' proud) if they'll help us with the batteries.
(The screaming, by the by, is a nexus crawler. This is very not good.)
We end up setting a trap in order to stop a truck we're *pretty* sure is full of the batteries.
It does not go well.
Session 26
Monday?
Things are not going well.
Our many hours of careful plotting and scheming and trap setting are undone instantly when it turns out the enemy has eyes, and they promtly start kicking our asses. Some guy with fucking BLADES FOR HANDS is laying in to me when the truck starts to move.
And Sinead, who I am now convinced is a bona fide fucking genius, flips that motherfucker. This I can help with!
Things start to go our way after that. The truck makes and excellent sheild AND it's full of the batteries we need and Sinead is running around healing people while we slowly but surely decimate the guards. Whatever works.
I do, at some point, get shot in the neck. I can feel myself bleeding in to my own lungs and, okay, it hurts a bit. I guess.
Eventually the guards are so far gone that the sweet little woodland creatures join in the destruction, and before too long we have four batteries and we're heading back to the factory to free some trapped spirits. This too goes well - we've figured out that playing stacks on one or two guards at a time is pretty damn effective, and once the battery goes off the spirits hulk the fuck out and we're off to see the wizard. I mean, go home.
We bust back through to the umbra with relative ease.
My throat hurts.
Session 27
Er.. Monday?
It's home time! Except something's following us because OF COURSE IT IS.
It's a pack of awful rotted filth wolved, yuck. They're not hard to get rid of, but one gets away and the subsequent howling can't mean anything good. Rather than have having them follow us back to the caern and potentially fuck shit all the way up, we get Boobook to take us home off path.
Being FINALLY home is awesome. There's a lot to fill people in on, and fairly limited time - turns out that we were gone a fair bit longer than it felt like we were. Gotta hurry up and un-taint some taint!
Back at bunyip central, shit gets magical. There's a lot of waving a chanting and all that woo-woo stuff. Kasumi thinks that something seems off and even though everything seems fine to me, I can admit that this is much more her forte than mine, so we investigare.
Bookbook says it's a bunyip. I blame Will.
Kasumi says she's having some kind of water-related OCD and I relay this to Cossack - I trust her, and I'd much rather raise a false alarm than not & have it be a real problem. He doesn't seem too concerned, so I guess that's good.
We find a cave spirit! Jirrawan. PARTY.
Session 28
Thursday 8th.
First we sleep.
Then we party.
The party is disturbingly educational. There's a lot of booze (Fianna, you know) but I'm not a big drinker and the vibe is weird - fine when I'm around the pack but if I'm on my own suddenly I'm a pariah. I'm not really a stranger to these situations - I don't think any metis is - but it shits me nonetheless. If I knew my parents I would kick their fucking faces in - not for breaking the litany but for creating a life that can never fit in anywhere and then abandoning it. Assholes.
Weirdly, but very sweetly, the Children of Gaia step in to try and make me feel more welcome. Note to self: do something nice for those people. Also piss on anyone from Newcastle.
And then, because we're idiots, we challenge for rank 2. Fuck, man, I've nearly died countless times in the past few months PLUS I saved the magic bunyip hole, surely I deserve a little recognition? We all do, really. (Except Kasumi, apparently.)
They tell us there's to be a fight. Finn gets to pick the spirit, Sinead summons it and Will negotiates. I guess Kasumi watches.
Which I guess is how I become the dumb fucker that fights this thing.
This thing, though, turns out to be a Fianna ancestor spirit called Brigid O'Meara - a surprsingly spirited apparently irish lass. She's a rank 3, and I feel like I'm pretty fucked, but we seems fairly evenly matched.
Which means this could take a while. I'm aware that I'm more whoa than go, and I think I need a bit of a plan here if I'm going to have a chance before I tire out.
Shit.
I know I need to do SOMETHING before she lands a lucky blow, so I go all in and tackle her - I'm hoping to drag her to the water, because she seems ancient enough and Irish enough that she might not know how to swim. I fuck it a bit, but it clearly startles her and we both go down - I'm fortunate enough to land on top. We wrestle a bit, but she's pretty pinned and headbutting her in to submission isn't working fast enough. Fingers mentally crossed, I try and roll her into the water.
And it works! I'm a fucking genius. I have her pinned, her head is under..
She FREAKS OUT and frenzies. I figure I might have just won the battle to lose the war, but I book it the fuck out of there anyway and thankfully she takes off AWAY from the water instead of following me and kicking my head in.
I.. guess I won. Not a scratch on me! I'm not really sure how this happened.
Session 29
Thursday 8th.
Cossack wants "a chat", which is concerning they want us to do some guard duty for the new caern, then we can have our rank? I am pretty pissed off because I feel like we did really well in the challenge and dammit *what more do you people want* but given that I was going to volunteer us for guard duty anyway it's not too much of a stretch.
We also get honorary membership to Rippling Waters. Eventually we will be members of ALL the caerns!
We spend a week in the bunyip caern, variously guarding things and doing grunt work. It's nice to be able to relax for a moment after the crazy that has been the last few weeks.
We've got some time for general life admin, and end up making a deal with a raven to collect secrets in order to pick up the sense wyrm we told Boobook we'd get. It's not terribly difficult, and I'm starting to cotton on to the fact that offering a spirit something ONCE - even if it's a biggish thing - is better than offering to do lots of smaller things over time.
Fujiku and the Jindabyne council pack turn up. Apparently we're in the good books - and we're bunyip experts. News to me.
We do, eventually, go through the rights of recognition for rank 2 (well, Finn & Will & I do). BOUT DAMN TIME.
Session 30
Friday
We're home! FINALLY.
And we've been robbed. Wait, what? Well, okay, Finns stuff has been robbed from our house, but it's still creepy and gross.
But, you know, the thing about being able to track scents..
They're local and they have our stuff. There doesn't seem to be any good reason not to just go in and take it back, so we do. Finn 'helps' and now he's not invited on these little outings anymore.
Saturday
Kasumi's at the caern when Aquinas comes stumbling in, burnt half to death. She calls us in to help - apparently while we were gone there was some more mage related fuckery. This has been a problem for us before and I'd really like to see it resolved, but mostly we're assigned shit kicker duty while everyone else does important stuff.
BORING.
Monday
I'm awoken by Finn, who is shouting in the loungeroom instead of going to class. When I go out, he's holding a baby.
I'll let you think about that for a second.
A fucking baby.
Somebody has left a fucking BABY in our fucking HOUSE.
He thrusts it at me, mumbles about classes, and books it. I'm going to KILL him.
But first the baby. What do you do with a baby?
As it turns out, EVERYTHING. This things smells, and it needs to be fed all the time, and it keeps throwing up. Is it sick? I make Will buy me a book which I read. I'm glad I'm infertile. It's a girl baby, and I guess it's kind of cute, but it can't do ANYTHING for itself. Do you know they can't put themselves to sleep? What the fuck kind of fucking shit is that??
Did I mention the baby came with a note? In.. Italian? And $50,000 in unmarked bills? How is this my life.
We have got to find a sitter and we have got to figure out where this kid comes from before I start to like it.
Session 31
Monday
We leave the baby with some kinfolk who seem like they know wtf to do with babies.
We do some stalking. Okay, quite a lot of stalking. Sinead keeps seeing some guys around so she follows them and they seem to be up to no good, but the human kind of no good that maybe isn't that much of a problem? To be looked in to.
Tuesday
More stalking, really. Kasumi researches the guy who took over Rainbow Inc - Stephen Marshall. We investigate him and he seems just regular corporate drone human evil, which is probably fine.
Marcus is doing a comedy show on Saturday. I briefly wonder if babies enjoy comedy shows. What's wrong with me?
I'm at the gym when I get a call - there's a limo outside our house. Waiting. Apparently for me. I come home, there's some negotiating with limo guy and eventually we get in, because we're idiots.
We end up somewhere in fucking Toorak at some sketchy mansion with a fucking butler. There's a real lack of wyrm here, it's noteable.
When someone does turn up, it's fucking ION - the challenge master at Hidden Green. Wtf? Oh, god, it's about the baby - he wants her, but he doesn't want to tell me why, condescending prick. I fucking hate werewolf politics. Don't hidden green owe us anyway? Plus Ion is a great big fucking chode, I'm not handing the poor kid over for no reason. He is not well pleased.
I do get a name though, for the kid. Maria Pantoliano.
Session 32
Tuesday
Cossack comes to US, which is how we know we're moving on up in the world.
Over pizza and beer we tell him about the whole weird baby thing. I come away from it feeling less than enlightened - all roads seem to lead back to Ion, or we could talk to Irena at Hidden Green, but he wouldn't reccomend it. Werewolf politics drive me crazy - everything would be SO much easier if we could just cooperate with each other. I think this must be what highschool is like.
We look up Pantoliano in the phonebook instead - there's three listings, and one of them is T & M. On the theory that M could be a Maria too and maybe it's a family name, we go there first.
It's a big house - bordering on mansion like - in Resevoir. From the umbra things are.. not so good. There's some semi bane things flittering about but they jet when we get close. Should probably come back and cleanse this later.
Inside is an old guy shouting in to a phone - something something Bernadette, something Maria. Good start. We go looking for family photos but sadly all babies look basically the same, although there's some weirdness with missing photos that suggests a rift.
We try upstairs and bingo - it smells like the same old lady smell that came with the baby, plus the baby herself. We decide to go and check on the kid and then come back later to talk to the old lady.
(The kid seems fine.)
We send Finn and Kasumi to talk to old Mrs P - they seem our friendliest bet to sneak up on an old bird in the dead of night.
It.. sort of works. She's clearly a bit past it (seriously, fuck getting old) and not making that much sense. She seems to think Finn is Vince Venetti.. and whoever that is, THAT is who should have Maria. She tells us not to let Tutti (Maria's grandfather - probably the guy shouting in to the phone) & Antony find her (Antony is her son, and the cousin of Vince Venetti, apparently) and Bernadette is her daughter.
Apparently it'll only be a couple of weeks, so that's something - but more importantly, we have some names now, so there is STALKING to be done.
Session 34
Wednesday
We run the plan past Cossack & he thinks it's okay. Progress!
Thursday
Christine calls - we're after Senior Detective Nick Gronow, the guy in charge of the Pantoliano investigation.
We stalk him, too.
Of note: Umbral police stations are creepy.
We find Detective Nick with relative ease. He seems pretty much on the level - about as wyrmy as you'd expect a cop to be, but nothing startling, they're all like that. He's definitely heading up the Pantoliano case, too - nice to have it confirmed.
We collect the kid - who I am almost, almost going to miss, but would never admit on pain of death - organise some fake ID & find a daycare that'll take her. (I leave her with a gift, too - because I might need her connections later or because I kind of like the little stinker, who knows?)
We execute THE PLAN. Kasumi drops her at the daycare, we call the Detective, he sends some guys, there's a tearful reunion etc etc YAWN. I let Ion and Irena know what we're done too, because I am magnanimous as fuck.
It goes.. surprisingly well. Really? Where's the chaos and confusion and shit going wrong? I am filled with a deep sense of forebodeing, waiting for the other shoes to drop.
Saturday
Will volunteers us to go to Marcus' comedy.. thing. I don't think I'll even understand the human compulsion to watch people stand on a stage and just say things, but I guess I should make the effort, so I do. I like Marcus well enough.
My phone rings at 7:30 - Marion wants us to pick Alex up - I volunteer Kasumi to drive us. There's some really fascinating art on his walls when I go in to haul him out - he clams RIGHT up about it though, and now I NEED to know what it is.
And then UGH OF COURSE SCOTT IS HERE I hope he dies. There's some weirdness, later, with Tanya - asking if Scott has been causing any trouble, which.. nothing more than the usual pain in my ass? I need to follow this up, I fucking hate politics.
And then we go to a party and of course it's fucking full of politics too, and the floor is sticky.
UGH.
Session 35
Sunday
Tanya and I get a drink - she actually seems nice, which is not really what I'd expect from someone who spends so much time around Scott.
Kasumi has a dream - it feels weird enough that we ask Boobook about it, who says yeah, we've been ~noticed~ by other garou and we're being watched. So don't care what they think.
Tuesday
We go to the sept at the new Caern for the moot - it's pretty full on.
Nick's here, weirdly - a guy I know through Sparky. He's got a pack now! A band of miscreants thrown together by circumstance. Sounds familiar.
Watching challenges turns out to be almost as fun as participating in them - take that as you will.
Then there's a lot of the usual howling and whatever, sept gets blessed ("Scars Atoning" apparently, which I think sounds like an Italian dessert), we get honoured for not totally fucking up finding this place and assosiated scar fuckery, there's some storytime. Boobook gives us the gift of Mage Finding (ok ok 'Sense Unnatural').
Then the usual running and shouting, only this time with more rocks thrown from the trees at Sinead - turns out to be some little spirity dudes and they seem to want our attention, so we follow them..
And then there's bad guys. IT'S ON.
Session 36
Wednesday --
FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.
Somehow I expect it to be hard and it's.. not. One of the little bastards gets away, but at least it's back in the umbra, and the rest of them get pulverised before they've got a chance to move.
Once we're done with all the fun killing we poke around to see what they were digging up. And it's a corpse. A really, really gross fomori type corpse. Nothing has ever needed to be cleansed so hard, so we do. Didn't we leave somebody else to deal with corpse duty? Why is this buried 2 feet deep 2km from the fight? Words will be had.
Everyone's pretty confused because apparently everyone we killed got theoretically accounted for. This will get looked into too, apparently - but I'm inclined to stick my head in and check, because that's what was meant to happen with the bodies in the first place.
And then we have the stupid malpheus nightmare again. It's getting really old.
When we get home there's good news, everybody! Two bodies have washed up in the yarra, 'strange knife' wounds! My favourite.
It turns out to be Arnold and Irma Fergusson - I am unconvinced they didn't double suicide just because of their names.
We investigate nonetheless - there's been a fire at their house, which I feel like maybe has happened before? The whole place is a bit weird - wyrmy but also using our new power I can feel two weird.. somethings. I have no frame of reference, though, so I don't know what they are.
The crime scene isn't real useful. It's not like bodies in the yarra are THAT rare.
Session 37
Middle Wednesday
We all go to the snack bar. I mean lobby. I mean morgue.
We luck out and someone is going over the autopsy report, which is WAY easier than anything I thought we could manage:
(Unsurprisingly, the morgue is pretty weaver heavy.)
We let Graeme know what we know, and throw around a few theories - mages? Crushed pelvis & traces of plaster could be more gargoyles. Garou seems less likely - good. Graeme mentions there's more cameras going up around the city - ugh, that'll make life easier for sure.
We 'look in' on (stalk) Rosa, she's in a unit in Sandringham. There's a couple in their early 30s, they seem upset and overwhelmingly normal. Unhelpful.
We watch the morgue overnight but nothing happens. Again, boring. We do some research into the dead couple - yep, they're people. OH GOD THIS IS ALL SO BORING I JUST DIED.
Friday afternoon
We go to grinding stone to ask some questions about mages and garou and if garou mages might be a thing - in theory yes but the consensus is that's it's pretty unlikely.
Sveta's here, so we bail her up about the weird gross body we found - they're got no fucking idea either, but he died via handgun which certainly wasn't any of us. It's disturbing - if someone shot him then someone was there and they got away. Hm.
Saturday
Graeme wants us to come see him. Highly suspicious. He's there with Ends-The-Quiet and Ian - EVEN MORE SUSPICIOUS.
They want us to go talk to some kinfolk - well, they want Sinead & Kasumi to do it, because they're nicest. That's.. actually reasonable.
We go to bloody Broadmeadows to meet Angela, who turns out to be some kind of extremely timid psychic teen. I almost feel bad for the poor kid, who seems to be on the verge of wetting her pants with fear constantly.
She says she's seen something in Greenvale, a local abandoned hospital. There's a big bad there. 3rd floor, boomerang wing.
Next stop: Greenvale. We will never stop being idiots.
Yep, it's as creepy as you'd expect - there's a real sense of despair about the place. We do a lot of quiet poking about - the 2nd floor, lvl 20, has an odd way about it that I want to look in to when we get back from here.
Then we get to the 3rd floor, fucking Finn falls THROUGH the fucking floor, and all godamn hell breaks loose.
Session 38
Uh oh, oh dear o'clock
We follow Finn down the hole and then turn to take on whatever's following us.
It's a herd of pokemon bats.
Still, they don't have face and you KNOW how I feel about things with proper faces. They do have mouths and pointy pointy bitey teeth, so we kill.. a lot of them, and the sad remainder take off. They seem like they're going somewhere with a purpose, so we follow them.
They take us to an empty field, except they disappearing through some kind of forcefield or something where it looks like there's nothing. I poke the nothing with a stick and nearly burn my fucking hand off. What the fuck.
We send Kasumi to investigate in the realm - and Will as a bodyguard - and she nearly sets herself on fire touching the house that's in the nothing space. Something really weird is going on.
(The mail says T & M Smith. Unhelpful.)
We try cleanising the horror property and not a lot happens. Sensing wyrm on the house gets me.. a kind of.. gap? It's not that there's no wyrm, there's no ANYTHING where this house is. It's really, really sheilded.
FUCK THIS. I hate inexplicable bullshit. We call home. They're as confused as we are - in some ways that's comforting.
Sinead keeps up the cleansing, and it's maybe doing something, but it's a very slow something.
We summon the bird. "It's a space turned in on itself." Fuck offffffff THAT IS NOT HELPFUL I WILL TURN YOU IN TO SUNDAY DINNER.
Will throws a brick through the house window - now there's a gap in the umbra. Well, that's progress..
But it's really, really not good in there.
Session 39
I guess the next step is to look through the hole, even though looking in to something emanating waves of evil seems like a really terrible idea. The house is definitely in there, and there's some weird glyphs and shit going on inside that make me very uncomofrtable.
We throw a rock through it - that could be out mantra - to get a better look and maybe a way in. Kasumi & Sinead say the glyphs are maths, fractions or fractals or something. What the fuck is a fractal?
It's REALLY wyrmy and death-murder-feeling in there. MURDER HOUSE. There's also that same metal/cold thing from the Fergussons murder scene, which is weird, because.. we're not here in relation to that.
We try the technically and magically difficult art of window opening, and.. it works! We manage to get Kasumi in around the weird sheild and she lets the rest of us in with minimal burning.
We're exploring the house when somewhere along the way Sinead just.. disappears. & we find an open trapdoor. In a corridor we've already been down.
Hey, a convenient trap! We go in it.
You'd be surprised how often Finn's fairy lights come in handy.
Sinead is indeed down here, although she seems unscathed - she's got a new rock or something, I don't know, Theurge. There's a big evil spiral, some evil mask in a box & a BIG PILE OF DEAD BODIES (they've been killed via some kind of stabbing ritual) plus some that are nearly dead.
We're in the process of noping the fuck out for backup when we get attacked by a couple of stone monks. Why isn't anything ever simple?
Session 40
Saturday, still.
We go upstairs to call Cossack about the whole evil basement full of bodies situation - mid call there's another evil monk. This is getting kind of old.
Cossack seems concerned and advises us to GTF, which we do - we wait in the park for backup which doesn't take long to arrive. There's a lot of concern now, which makes me feel justified. We help clear out the house and make sure someone else will deal with the bodies.
We're going to keep all this shit in Sunbury, presumably because nobody would ever want to go there to get it. In a caravan park. My point still stands.
(Must remember to go back to the hospital.)
While we're sorting bodies and vaguely mystical junk, Kasumi's car alarm goes off. Not wanting to have ANOTHER of her cars trashed on our account, we duck out to see what's going on.. and suddenly Kasumi is on fire. Fucking MAGES!
One minute I'm running and yelling, the next I am floating in midair. Well.
FUCK. THAT.
Mages ain't gonna know what hit 'em!
Session 41
Saturday-ish
GOD I hate being stabbed!
We waste the mages pretty thoroughly - okay, in part they waste themselves, but it's hardly my fault they're incompetent. We capture a naughty mage & he is taken inside to be questioned roughly about the head and shoulders while we patrol. Unfortunately the mage explodes in to evil go or something.
They only manage to get one thing out of him: A name. Benedict. (Should have let us do it!)
We head back to the hospital. It is.. significantly less spooky. But we love spooky, so we go looking for ghosts!
Nothing happens. We are bad at ghostbusting.
Session 42
Monday
Hidden green report back about the mage stuff. I find it hard to be excited about nonspecifically magical necklaces.
The semi-alive people come good(ish), but they don't remember anything useful. The mask is getting dropped in lava or something. Best place for it.
Wednesday May 12th
Sinead has been wandering around for days muttering about dickheads with stupid names being unreliable wankers.
Thursdays May 13th
Nick - the guy from Scars Atoneing - calls me. He's going mental stuck out in the bush and wants to get a drink on Friday. Why not? I've been at the gym all week, I deserve a drink or 6.
Kasumi keeps muttering about stupid computers not just doing what they're told.
Fri 14th May
Will has gone to play football for money or something.
I'm at the gym with Finn when two neckless ape-men wander in and try to start some shit. We gently dissuade them but as they leave Marion whispers something about them being horribly wyrm tainted.
Shit. Better follow them.
Session 43
Friday
We manage to follow one of the no-necks home. An address! Excellent - I'll come back later a little more organised.
Later that very same bee
Finn goes on a man-date with a cop.
Sinead goes on a lady-date with Kasumi.
Will goes on a self-date with some pies.
I do NOT go on a date with Nick. It's nice! I like the idea of sharing information and not playing stupid pack politics games. I think they'd have our back if we needed it, and we'd have theirs.
Just after I get home there's a knock on the back door. It's Marion - she's coevered in blood. A lot of blood. And dragging an unconcious Peter-the-cop.
Uh oh.
Bloody Finn who is supposed to be out with them is nowhere to be found, so I corral Will out of the shower, call the sept and the rest of the pack for help and start cleaning up.
There's a really lot of blood - probably more than I've ever seen in one place and that's not a small amount. We find an alley way with more blood and.. ugh.. body parts. Oh, Marion. What have you done?
I spend the next lots of hours cursing the day I agreed to be stupid pack leader. Disposing of body parts is hard and stupid, cleaning blood up from a public place is awkward and difficult, and Peter is still unconcious and I have no idea what he'll remember when he wakes up and Marion is totally out of it.
This is not so good.
Friday!
"So we either steal part of his memory or we gaslight him?" "Let's do both!"
We do. Sinead does some magicand manages to summon some kind of horrific football hooligan - she makes a deal with him, which is why she does the magic and I do the punching, I would have punched him clean out of the umbra. She puts him in Peter to make him forget.
The very next day we hide the last of the alley blood with some carefully graffiti'd dicks, then shepherd our houseguests out of our house.
NAP.
Saturday
Graham calls - he wants some cash money. As he has repeatedly pulled our asses out of the fire, I'm reasonable happy to give it to him. We have a talk about how much the pack needs a car - we have the money, so I guess it's time to go buy a shitty old station wagon. I think we even have some fake IDs around somewhere.
Finn calls while I'm there - I consider throwing my phone in the yarra - and says there's trouble at the uni in the science labs. We meet there and sneak in, which is the story of how we found a dead guy and I fought a monkey.
It's definitely one of those days.
Session 45
Saturday
We go on a monkey hunt.
Aquinas says the monkey might have HIV. This is bad news for Finn.
Because we apparently haven't learned from that time a few days ago where we nearly got killed in the basement, we go to look in the basement.
There's a lot of "Pearce Animal & Biomedical Supplies" labels on wyrmy things, including the evil monkey cage. The evil monkey is Charlie.
Trying to negotiate with monkeys is STUPID.
We decide to cleanse the situation.
LATER.
Rob Summers is taking tainted roids. He's also an idiot.
LATER STILL
We steal some paperwork from the gym. The other dudebro is William Keys.
LATER STILL..ER
We go to find Sineads dealer. He dead.
Session 46
Sunday
Nobody cares about dead drug dealers.
We go looking for Mr Keys and end up at a warehouse party where Will chats up some noneck named Del Cartright who seems to have some connection to both the roid-ragey douchebros and handy dandy steroids dealers. Hmmm.
Session 47
Still Sunday
We do some more stalking at Bill The Dudebros house - more tainted drugs, it's getting boring so we steal some. Del's house is much the same - same wyrm-tainted anger pills. Clearly we need to go higher up the chain.
THEN WE HAVE A NAP.
Monday
Aquinas calls me (I hate this phone) - something something chemicals something, I don't know. I bring him a cupcake and a tainted steroid. I'm not sure which one he likes more.
We go to investigate the animal place - Pearce. There's a weird angry feral rat spirit but nothing of note really - which makes me think that either they had a tainted batch of animals that's been moved on, or that the tainted animals are being shipped directly from the source. Either way, I'm glad we didn't bring crazy Kirsty.
Sunday 10pm
Session 48
Kasumi does her thing and breaks in to Pearce's computer system. There's nothing super incriminating, no Masterplan For Evil, but we get some important names.
Amy Yeoh, king of animals, appears to be clean.
Norman Tanaglia, king of Pearce, is a bit wyrmier than I'd like but in a more contact-wyrm kind of way. We cleanse him - we're getting good at that.
Kevin Wick, king of chemicals, is mildly tainted but nothing unusual, especially for someone who works with that much guck.
THEN A NAP.
Monday
We check in back at the caern. While we're there we run in to Barry and Marcus. Turns out Kirsty is still crazy.
We check out the protest at the Uni - crazy Kirsty IS there and being oddly reasonable. For Kirsty.
Session 49
Monday
Will flirts with a gymbro. He needs a disposable phone though, so we get that sorted out first.
While we're waiting on the call from the dodgy steroid dealer (why is my life like this?), we go back to Pearce. It's busy during the day but there's not a lot of wyrm happening here. DANG IT. There's some potentially evil truck drivers that aren't around but it feels like a stretch. We'll look in on Anton & Steve when they get back.
We check in on Marion, who is effusively greatful. I like her.. and I like her owing me a favour more.
Tuesday
Will is still arranging drug deals. This takes forever!
Aquinas calls - the drugs are as we thought. Nice to know we're on the right track.
Rob Summers of pot vomit fame is on the news - he's flipped out in Clifton Hill. We'd best go see to that, then..
Session 50
Tuesday
We sneak in to the crime scene via the umbra. FUCK THA PO-LICE.
It's pretty mental - Rob is extremely dead and he didn't go out quietly. He's is WAY too swole to control, in a hideous fomori way - we cleansed him two days ago! He's gone on a killing spree even we find impressive.
We con the sept into dealing with the body while we go check out the rather more urgent matter of checking on the OTHER guys with tainted steroids.
Bill's not well - close to fomori. We cleanse him again and it seems better, but clearly something fucked is going on. It's not yet clear if the tainted 'roids are causing the fomori rage or withdrawl because we cleansed them.
We visit Del. Del's not home. We track him, unsurprsingly, to the gym. He's not AS bad as the others, but it's still not good so we stay to babysit him in case he flips out.
Will is a brilliant idiot - a savant, in fact - and decides to step in and.. get the guy drunk. Somehow we all get dragged in to it, and end up at Del's place with a LOT of booze.
What could go wrong?