Sutherland.. Struthers.. whoever he was, is dead and the bane thing driven off for now. I am concerned by its apparent power and our failure to destroy it, apparently banes are hard to kill permanently. With no way of tracking it down all we can do is clean up its mess.
Storms, crazy storms. Probably caused by the Wyrm somehow...
We put the barrels of chemicals in Chambers house and Ridgeway him into being good. Track down some toys made using parts from Rainbow Inc, they seem.. weird. Maybe tainted somehow, maybe not. I contact some of the other Get to pass word about Rainbow Inc to Get in Frankfurt.
Sinead and Finn play apprentice to Chris, a particularly crusty Gnawer, learning the cleansing ritual and doing most of the actual cleaning up. I find rituals confusing, they perform them so differently here to what I saw amongst the Get, so it is good that the others are learning. Knowledge is a strength... still.. I wish they actually had some more muscle to go with it.
When I joined this pack I was appalled at how frail most of the others are, I half expected them to be killed in the first fight we got into. I am pleased that they have fought better than I expected, and Tillie the Ahroun makes up for the others anyway. She would have made a better Fenrir than Shadowlord.
Regarding Tillie, I originally expected that I would act as pack alpha, as clearly no one else was suitable, being either too frail or too deformed. In reality I find myself deferring to the Ahroun, the others do as well. When I first realised this I was annoyed, the human in me says that a pure bred Fenrir would make a far better alpha than an inbred metis. The wolf in me says that she is stronger, she is alpha. The wolf wins, this is the way of Fenris.
Still, Tillie-alpha has promised that we will support Kristy, one of the other metis, in some personal crusade of unclear merit. I hope there is some wisdom in this that escapes me.
I had hoped that once the storms had passed I would be able to find some time to take a break, head down the coast and spend a day surfing. I miss the waves. Unfortunately, the sept needed me to run errands for some insane old man. I can only assume that this was some kind of test Ends-the-Quiet has engineered to teach me about controlling my rage and 'respecting those beneath ye'. DON'T TOUCH THE WHEEL WHILE I'M DRIVING I can't get the smell of ham out of my clothes.
So we run into these wankers from some other sept. A real big fella who talks too much without getting to the point, this slimy eurotrash, and two others who seemed sick of them. The eurotrash tried to take my food, then pulls "first choice to the higher in station" to try and justify himself. The idea of abusing the litany to take a man's pizza... They challenged us to a race to complete a task that their elders had set for them. I really want to show them up, but at the same time I can't see how challenging us like this could possibly benefit them. Unless this Scott guys is as big a fool as he seems, then there must be some angle to this that we're missing. Maybe they hope that we'll get arrested and make fools of ourselves. It's not that unlikely.
We get Emma to summon a lune spirit for us, and Sinead pays it to find this fetish for us.
Sinead also curses Scott and Claude with the crawlies, which as a Philodox I judge to be an entirely appropriate punishment for the crime of being insufferable prats.
The spirit shows us where the fetish should be, or was, or might be or whatever. The room has these animated stone gargoyles in it who presumably either took the fetish, or damaged it, or were sent to find it.
They aren't a problem if you get a hold on them, so I try to interrogate a few but get nowhere, they seem to be mindless automatons, but as I let my guard down one drops onto my head and gets it's claws into my scalp.
The ensuing melee is messy and loud.
The others find the 'fetish' but it isn't a fetish. Finn dedicates it. Security are onto us by this point, so we get out.
Sinead wouldn't stop poking my scalp flap.
The Steel hunters seem to have genuinely just wanted to make a game of this, and weren't out to fuck us after all. Maybe they aren't quite as bad as I thought.
Need to figure out what happened to the fetish, and who sent the demonic garden gnomes. Also I need a haircut.
We head over to the Sept of Hidden Green, it's a fancy building with an arboretum. I continue to be unimpressed at the Glass Walkers' Weaver magic that I heard about among the Get, starting to think that they're just rich and like gadgets.
We meet Rob Red-Dust-Plain, the Keeper of the Land, and Felix Bertrand, Sept Leader. Felix confirms that it's the fetish he saw in his dream and that it's definitely fake. He thinks the gargoyles were manifested banes. I don't think that's true, they seemed too.. ordered? purposeful? mechanical? something. He's an Elder Theurge though, so I'm not going to argue with him.
Scott and I agree that since we didn't find the real fetish, the challenge technically isn't over. The rest of the pack seem unhappy with this for some reason, they know nothing of justice.
Christine was apparently sent to fetch us in case we were planning to murder their leader or defile the Caern or something. First she, and then later Cossack warn us not to start trouble with the other Sept. Reasonable, but hardly necessary, apparently there used to be a lot of bad blood between us. He's right that we need to be more careful about leaving evidence about though, that may have been my fault for bleeding on things.
We head back to the museum to replace the fake before anyone knows it's missing. Went smoothly. The gargoyle things appear to have disintegrated.
Ends-the-Quiet agrees that the things were probably not banes, perhaps some kind of possessed or animated statue, maybe a bane was bound into it.
We meet the Steel Hunters at the museum to continue the race for the pendant. Our plan is to track the scent we picked up near the fake. It leads us to a guys desk, a Mr Arthur Thackery. The Questing Stone brings us to his house, he doesn't smell much more of the Wyrm than anyone who lives in the scabs. We shift into his house from the gauntlet, grab him, put green bad over his head and put some sharp questions to him. His girlfriend Susan has the amulet and he's a habitual thief.
We have him call Susan and tell her to come home, and we wait.
We tie up Arthur and wait for Susan. Tillie and I wait by the door to grab Susan as she comes in. Finn, wearing lupus, waits in shadows across the street, ready to warn us as she approaches. Sinead is on over watch from the Umbra.
Then the Steel Hunters show up. They try to jump Sinead, but thankfully they suck and Sinead just steps across to the flesh side.
Juvenile trans-gauntlet taunting ensues.
They don't know who has the amulet but I realise that they will probably figure out what's going on by watching us obviously waiting for someone. In an attempt to minimise clues, I throw a blanket over Arthur.
Apparently no one thought to tell Finn about the Hunters, he barks out the signal that Susan has arrived. I try to get a look out the window but can't see anything. Kasumi rushes out the door, the plan to wait for Susan to come into the house is thrown out in fear that the Hunters will get to her first. I fashion a makeshift balaclava out of my shirt and head out.
It's already a mess, Finn is wrestling with one of them, trying to hold them back, Kasumi has almost pulled off the woman's shirt trying to get the amulet, one of the Hunters is running at them. I get there first, grab the amulet by the chain and rip it off.. except the chain is made of steel or something and I actually end up choking Susan with it and getting Kusmi's nose broken. Nevertheless I persevere and get the amulet before the Hunters (We Win! Suck it Scott)
Turns out the fetish makes you invisible temporarily, we are tempted to keep it, but.. you know.. diplomacy with the other sept, dishonour, all that. So we head over to The Hidden Green to present the fetish to their elders instead.
Suddenly gargoyles! Much bigger gargoyles than the first lot. Less demonic garden gnome and more man-sized stone monster. They swoop the car. In order to protect the fetish I shift to the umbra.. and learn a harsh lesson about the conservation of momentum after stepping from flesh world to spirit.
The others step too as soon as they get a chance, but first Kasumi, and then later Finn, get trapped in the webbing of the gauntlet. The Gargoyles didn't follow us to the Umbra and are now unaccounted for.
As Tillie and Sinead watch the two trapped, I head off alone to bring word of the gargoyle ambush to the sept.
Emma believes that the gargoyles are actually demons made or summoned by humans, but no one seems to know much about that. Personally I suspect that there must be some kind of Wyrm cult behind the things. Graeme charges us with travelling to nearby Septs to learn what they may know about the demon-gargoyles. So we are going back to Grinding Stone, and to another Sept called Reconciliation run by Fianna and Children of Gaia.
But first we return the fetish, Scott admits defeat, the Hidden Green know nothing about demons.
We borrow a car and head off to find out about the gargoyle demons. Our first stop will be Reconciliation, out at Healesville.
We are greeted by a Fianna Theurge named Liam, he brings us to Antoinette, the Sept Leader and a revered elder Philodox. She is very polite and mentions how it is good to see more cooperation between the septs. It might just be the typical Child of Gaia attitude, but I am starting to wonder if inter-sept tensions were once worse than we've been told.
Boobook is the Totem at this Caern.
Philip Bates, the ritemaster, looks like a dead thing, though apparently he isn't metis. I cannot imagine what happened to leave him like this. A powerful bane? Wyrm magic? Apparently he fought against powerful humans once who could animate objects, but they didn't use statues, might be the same sort of thing. Beyond that he knows little, but suggests that Malajimbarra may know more.
Members of the pack insist on dawdling at the sanctuary.
Eventually we head on to Grinding Stone to visit wise Malajimbarra. Once we get close we step sideways and howl a greeting. These are not city Garou who will let you wander close without permission. Shadowlords greet us, Tillie knows them better that I do. They let us in without any trouble. They bring us to Bathes-in-Blood, the warder. The conversation is short and to the point, we are given permission to speak with the ritemaster.
Being back at Grinding Stone, among the Get, dredges up so many feelings in me. Shame, nostalgia... shame.. mostly shame actually. I had gotten used to being in a pack with members from other tribes, now suddenly I'm embarrassed to realise how few of us could hold our own in a fight with anyone from this sept. I've gotten used to the Gnawers laid back style, and the Stargazers introspection, I'd forgotten what it was like to live at a sept where they pushed you constantly to be worthy of calling yourself one of the Mothers warriors. I think I'm getting soft. Then there's Lise... best not to dwell on that.
Malajimbarra offers to help us in exchange for a favour debt, some of the pack seem hesitant to accept which frankly I find disrespectful. But we do and Malajimbarra leads us on a long Umbral trek, we eventually arrive at a bush shack. We are introduced to a.. man. He smells of the Wyrm. I should be disgusted, but instead I find myself curious, how much must he know that you can smell it on him?
He tells us that the things are demons from the shadowlands, the realm of the dead, where human spirits go, that have been bound into a physical form. We can destroy their bodies, but we cannot harm them directly. Our best bet is to find the human mages that summoned and bound them, they will congregate in a group, they will seek places of power or significance, possibly associated with death. We might not have to kill them.
We return to Sleeping Lore and inform the elders of what we have learned.
I got a job. This isn't anything new I've always worked, my family was big on responsibility, I s'pose in part because the were part of the family, children of Fenris. But this is the first job I've had since the change. It was time, I can't be a burden on the sept, and money really helps at an urban Cearn (especially since the Gnawers always seem to be broke). I've had the job for all of a week and I'm already thinking about quitting.
I work late on Friday (it's a bar job, I'm collecting glasses all night), and when I get home I find out that the pack was ambushed while I was at work.
Apparently someone set a Formor on the pack, it created some kind of illusion that caused Finn, Sinead, and Kasumi to go mad with desire and start fighting one another. Tillie was unaffected but couldn't keep the others from causing a scene, Finn took the Glabro form to try and fight Tille, the Formor brought some entranced lackeys who shot Tillie. All in all it was a massive clusterfuck, Finn ended up in the lockup, there's very nearly a serious veil breach, the whole thing makes our pack look like fucking amateurs, and whilst no friendlies were killed it could easily have gone that way. It could easily have ended with my packmates killing each other, or obliviously rutting with the Formor while the goon puts a gun to the back of their head.
And I wasn't there.
I should have been there, I know I should have been there. I should have been helping to protect our pack, fighting our enemies, and proving to myself that I AM IN CONTROL!
It was Finn, Sinead and Kasumi who were entranced, and Tillie who saw through it. When I heard that I thought 'Of course', Tillie is strong. Strong of body and strong of will. The others are weak. Weak bodies, weak wills. They are becoming a liability. A Get wouldn't have lost control. I wouldn't have lost control.
I need to calm down...
I'm being unfair, maybe Tillie was immune because she is Metis, they're all infertile. Maybe I would have been entranced like the others, maybe worse, lose myself to rage, end up trying to rip my alpha's throat out in the middle of Bourke St. I don't know what would have happened.
This marks the second time we've been ambushed, after the gargoyle attack. The Formor told Graeme under interrogation that she was told what to do by 'a man with a buzzy voice'. I am inclined to think that this isn't the mages who set the gargoyles on us. We seem to be too easy to track down, that needs to change. I think we should proceed from here under the assumption that we're being watched.
Saturday afternoon, day after the fomori attack, day before the moot.
This Silent Strider guy, Sparky, shows up, he seems to know Tillie and Graeme somehow. He seems nice enough, doesn't talk as much as I'd heard the Striders are supposed to.
I'm concerned about how easy it's been for, first the mages, then the formor, to find us. We plan to split the pack up for day to day stuff, two doing overwatch from the umbra at all times, hopefully we will be able to spot if anyone is following us physically.
Sunday is the moot, at the full moon's peak. We talk about the mages and demons, Sparky tells us a bit about the Shadowlands, where the dead go, but doesn't seem to know as much about that sort stuff as I'd heard the Striders are supposed to either. Apparently it's mostly little factions within the Striders that are the real experts on death.
The Scryers have dealt with the wyrm tainted drugs. Though from the sounds of it thy aren't sure they got it at the source, too many people who couldn't remember where they got the stuff from.
Kirsty brought up the animal experimentation that she wants the sept to crusade against. Tillie had promised her that we would support her, this is probably the one decision that Tillie has made as pack leader that I really disagree with, she volunteers us to look into it, I wince.
Graeme makes it clear that he isn't going to change his previous decision. At this point, Kirsty should have either dropped it or made it a formal challenge, instead she starts arguing. Graeme asserts his authority, and again Kirsty doesn't either back down or issue a formal challenge, she just starts looking like she's going to frenzy, I don't understand why nobody is saying anything so I speak up "either make it a challenge or back down." A few people give me funny looks, like they think that was a bad idea. Kirsty is to far gone to listen and loses herself to frenzy, but at least has the good sense to run away from the caern, rather than try to throat Graeme. This is why the traditions and formalities exist, so that nobody has to embarrass themselves and nobody gets their throat ripped out.
We make a bargain with Boobook, two members of the pack will learn the gift Sense Wyrm without help from the Sept before the next moot, and it will help us find the mages. I make a deal with Peregrine Falcon, it will teach me to sense a being's true form, and I will spend the week only eating food that I catch myself as dedication to Peregrine. Hopefully I'll get the chance to head out and go rabbiting at some point, otherwise it's probably going to be rats.
We revel and rip up a bunch of wyrmy spirits.
Then we have the Malfeas dream again....
Graeme contacts us, apparently in the night someone was murdered in a way that looks like a werewolf did it and can we look into it. I note that it's in roughly the area that Kirsty headed in the grip of frenzy.. not that I'm accusing her of anything.
We check out the scene. A guy, who smells like he's probably a werewolf, stood around smoking in some bushes until the victim walked past, then he jumped out and murdered him and ran off. His scent mysteriously faded away as he did so. So Kirsty is in the clear (not that I would ever accuse her of anything like this), but this is weird.
Monday after the Moot
Investigating the weird murder. We spy on the cops from the umbra and learn some things about the victim.
Whilst checking the newspaper for the victim's name, we learn that Ridgeway is missing... I hope that he didn't top himself because of all that stuff we did to him. Stranger still, the questing stone can't find him.
We head to his house, it's a mess, and it looks a lot like that huge pus-maggot bane that was in Struthers has been here. That's bad.
Further questing stones reveal that the other people we investigated over Rainbow Inc's dumping are either fine or have fled overseas, except Candy, the real estate woman, who's been in a car crash and is in a coma. Is the bane following the trail back to us? Is there more than one of them? Not really sure what to do about it.
The victim's name was Tony Staley, we head to his home, but learn little.
Tuesday
We check in on Candy the realtor at the hospital. I am skeptical that we will learn anything since she is supposed to be in a coma from a car accident. She's awake, which is good, and doesn't stink of Wyrm, which is also good, but she seems groggy and is clearly recovering from surgery. We decide to come back later when she's more lucid. I think it is safest to assume that her 'car crash' was the work of the pus-maggot bane/s or their allies, even if we can't confirm it.
Ends-the-Quiet opens a moon bridge for 'Sparky' the Silent Strider so he can return to Sydney.
Next few days
I am still concerned by the ease with which we were found by the demon-gargoyles and later by the formor, so I continue watching for spies from the umbra whilst the others go about their business (with their knowledge of course). I don't notice anything suspicious. If they found us by physically spying then they have learned all that they needed to and stopped, or are very good and very organised. I think we should assume that we are still being spied on, but through undetectable, magical means.
So we should assume that the mages and the-man-with-the-buzzy-voice are watching our every move, and that the pus-maggot banes are at least looking for us, if not already watching us.
I notice that various Sept members are acting odd, specifically that those who were arguing with Kirsty are being awkward around the Get of Pennington. No doubt more fallout from Kirsty's embarrassing challenge that's not a challenge. I mention it to Tillie but she thinks I'm paranoid.