Chronology, January 1925

2005-07
2005-08
2005-09
2005-10
2005-11
2006-02
2006-05
2006-07
2006-10
2007-02
2007-04
2007-05

Friday 2nd - Elodoth waxing

Having set out several days before, the pack return on the first day of the new year with their totem. Totems. The twin nature of the spirits Dens-with-Secrets and Hunts-Shadows causes some raised eyebrows, but no one seems terribly surprised that the pack has been found themselves an avatar of the Death wolf as a totem.

The group of Uratha are clustered around a firepit in the middle of the park, which they more or less have to themselves, given the frigid temperatures. There is a minor amount of mingling between the packs, mostly along Tribe lines, but its no great party.

Paul Arnold of Voice Across the Waters calls for attention and most of the voices stop. He announces that the packs have met and decided that as part of the celebration surrounding a formation of the new pack, the will be given a small part of the park as their own to maintain and upkeep. Its an area on the west side that is marked out by the Lake, and several roads (marked in pink). The pack recognise it as not being too shabby, sort of surrounding the old Ladies skate pond. However, a couple of major roads go through there as well. Its an interesting place, and the pack opt to go and check it out right now, prompted in part by Dens-with-Secrets demanding that they make her a lair.

Off they trot through the frozen solitude of the park late at night. The motorway does make a fair significant cut through the area that the other packs have said they can use, but there is also access to the water of the Lake (frozen at the moment) and significantly bushy areas away from humans that might make an acceptable lair for their spirit totem. Most of the spirits are tree spirits, dormant for the winter, although the spot a couple of others flitting about as well. The Uratha wander around surveying things and 'marking' their territory.

Flynn is striding across the bridge across the Ladies Pond when he is suddenly assailed by a scent of death. He stops and looks around to make sure that there is no one around and shifts to Dalu form to have a good sniff, but the sense is fading. Some of the others show up (as the players are cursing their lack of a pack mental link) but they can't scent anything at all.

They poke around and find that around the bridge, things seem darker and portentious. Lloyd can't see anything within the spirit world specifically that might be causing this, so they assume there's something in the material world itself. The pack find their eyes drawn to the pond itself, and sigh. The ice directly under the bridge is fractured in such a way that makes it look like it might have been broken since it formed, so they find something start cracking it. Its not too long before a canvas sack makes itself known.

They haul it out of the freezing water. It doesn't have any makers or owners stamp on it or anything, it just seems a generic sack. Its been tied shut with thin rope, and seems to be full of something that weighs about 50kg. The Uratha sigh and sort of guess what's coming, but open it anyway. They find that inside the sack are partially frozen body parts. Figuring it can't get anyway worse, they tip them out on the ground. Some of the bits need to be pried apart - they've frozen together with blood & water that's leaked into the sack.

They reassembled the bits and find that its one person, a young woman. The various pieces appear to have been hacked apart, with an axe or meat cleaver or something, and not very cleanly. There's some signs that she might have been hurt before this too - scratches and a couple of fingers are missing. Teri points out that both arms have a row of puncture marks that look like needle wounds - a lot of them, and none too accurate.

Julian decides to try and use his Know Name gift to figure out who this is. He brings his spirit powers to bear and the whole area rocks with power. A breeze pushes through and the bare trees rustle their branches together and the whole world seems to whisper the name "Katharine Hammond". The pack look at each other a bit bemusedly - that's never happened before. Teri suspects that she's heard the name before, but can't quite pin down where. They think about it for a bit, and Flynn suggests that tomorrow he can make some discreet police enquiries via his father. In the meantime they stuff the body back into the sack and put the sack under the ice.

Saturday 3rd - Cahalith waxing

Lloyd decides to spend the day in the library, sorting through old papers, to see if he can find the name Katharine Hammond. There's nothing recent, so he flicks through some older papers, and finds her name in a list of women arrested for 'loitering' around an area of town he knows is regarded as a immoral neighbourhood.

Flynn returns from his visit and says that a Kathy Hammond was reported missing on the 26th of December by her boyfriend, David 'Spider' Holloway, a black jazz singer. Nothing much has been done about it, other than to question him as a suspect. She'd been pulled in before, for minor stuff. Teri says she knows where Holloway plays - a group called Rising Glory play at The Pit.

Unfortunately, that venue is within territory claimed by Crooked Road. Julian decides to go and speak to Precious and see if she's willing to let them pass on through. He takes Lloyd along and they head to Swedish Cottage, as they know the Harlem pack can often be found there, and indeed, they find a couple of members sitting in the bracing night air. Julian stops at the edge of the balcony and after a few moments Everton walk over to speak to him. Julian explains their situation, emphasising that they are wanting to improve their territory and all, and Everton carries the information back to his pack leader. They seem to converse briefly and then Everton returns, saying that their pack have permission to follow up this matter, but that they would appreciate hearing of what happens.

A bit bemused by the lack of chiminage, the pack get dressed appropriately and head to the club. Lloyd drives there with Mary Elizabeth and Julian, the others make their own way. They arrive to find a nominal cover charge gets them into a downstairs jazz venue, already crowded on a cold Saturday night. The venue is split into a two level arrangement - the bandstand and tables are at a lower level, while a drinks counter and some seating are on a raised half circle surrounding that.

Lloyd, looking spiffy in his tux, is shown to a seat near the front of the stage. Teri mingles. Flynn and Johnny look around for a way out to backstage. Julian lingers near the bar and Mary Elizabeth. Backstage there is a bit of a bustle, with a previous act still packing up, and various hangerson clustering around. By the cunning plan of asking, Flynn and Johnny make their way to where Rising Glory is preparing for the night's entertainment. The band seems to be 4 black guys and 1 white guy. Flynn strides in wants to know who Spider is, and one of the black guys, who'd been sitting with his face in his hands looks up.

They have a brief conversation about Katharine (Kathy) which revises slightly their impression of the situation - rather than assuming that Spider was her dealer, he actually seems to have quite a strong feeling for her, and pleads with them to tell him what they know. They decide to not answer "she's been chopped into pieces and left in a pond in Central Park" and pump him for what info he does know. He admits that she was a sometime heroin user, but he didn't supply her junk - he knows she sometimes bought off a guy called Norbert who might be here tonight. Some of the other band members are watching this exchange with less than happy faces. Spider pleads again to let him know where she is, and what trouble she's in and how he can help, but they shrug and move off. One of the other guys catches up with them before they leave and asks them not to hold out - Spider has a real thing for the white girl. Flynn suggests that a Benjamin might help loosen his tongue and the guy looks staggered and mutters something about there's no way she got herself into /that/ much trouble.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, LLoyd is sitting at the front of stage, randomly employing his Twin Sight gift and looking about the place. There are motes of various spirits drinking what essence they can find. There's a more significant spirit of .. maybe dissension? hanging about the band on stage, and he notices that one of the brass players is being very grabby with the female singer. The spirit appears to be feeding rather than encouraging, from what he can see.

Meanwhile the others have found that the place is serving booze to selected customers - asking for a fruit drink with extra juice seems to be the key to the barmen, although it looks like only the regulars are actually getting booze. Johnny passes on the info they found out to the rest of the pack, and he and Flynn wait near the backstage entrance to see if anything else interesting happens. Lloyd, still splitting his attention between the spirit and material worlds, notices a newcomer who is being trailed by spirits of envy, greed and such things. He seems to be making the rounds of the club rather than sitting and talking to anyone in particular, and careful observation suggests that money and small packages are changing hands as he does. One of the pack pass closeby and hear the name 'Norbert', so this suggests he is their bird.

After some encouragement, Mary Elizabeth is convinced to "make friends" with Norbert. She approaches him when he's at the bar and strikes up a conversation. Norbert rather obviously looks her up and down and likes what he sees. He hits on her rather sleazily, and Mary Elizabeth pretends some interest. He asks if she'd like to sit with him and watch the show and she agrees. A quiet word to the barman sees staff going down to the front to move some guy from near the front who's been staring at everyone out of his seat (Lloyd), and the two of them and a bottle of champ, er, lemonade ensconced at the front. Norbert plies Mary Elizabeth with the rather nasty booze, while sucking a fair bit down himself. People come and speak to him, and either get introduced or sent away, depending on whether they'd impress his new 'friend'.

  On a trip to the loo, some of the rest of the pack try and encourage her to go home with him, but she fairly adamantly says that there's no way she'll be seen leaving this club with that guy. Its bad enough she's at the front. So the rest of the Uratha consider plan B. Lloyd, figuring that they don't all need to be inside, goes back out to his car and gets changed into his dedicated clothes. Flynn notices the white guy who was with Rising Glory come out of the backstage door and look around - when he sees Flynn he comes over and asks what's going on. Spider is talking about not going on if he doesn't know what's wrong with Kathy. This guy (looking a bit bloodshot and shaky) asks if she's dead - its obvious that she's in some trouble, and she would have come running back here if she could. Flynn thinks fast and says that if he can tell them Norbert's address, they'll pass on what they know. The guy heads backstage, looking confused.

The group onstage finishes up and there's a brief intermission before Rising Glory come on. When they come on, its clear that Spider is scanning the crowd before the others get him to start singing. Despite his obvious distress, he is actually pretty good, and the group play to that strength.

Norbert is pretty drunk by this point and begs Mary Elizabeth's pardon while he ducks off briefly. She takes this oppurtunity to leg it out to Lloyd's car, and is replaced by Teri, on the grounds that Norbert might be too drunk to care. When he comes back, he's obviously annoyed at the change in scenery, and almost looks like he's going to charge off through the crowd, but Teri is sufficient coquettish to keep his attention.

There is a brief intermission and the white drummer (Charlie, according to the band intro) comes back to the wall where Flynn and Johnny are lurking. Charlie says the best he can do is the apartment building - he doesn't know that actual number. Flynn looks a little unsure and the guy says that's the best he can do. Flynn concedes that that is sufficient and says that yeah, Kathy is dead. They didn't do it, but they're trying to figure out who did, and make it clear that it was not a nice thing to do. Charlie slumps a bit, like he wasn't really expecting that news and says "hell, what am I going to tell Spider" and then walks off.

Pack huddle. Teri still seems to have her hand in, but it won't hurt to check the apartment out ahead of time, so Flynn heads off on foot to go and look at the building. Its not far away, and on a corner of a T-intersection. The trunk of the T is a slope, so at one end its 6 floors (basement-esque apartment) and at the other only 5. There's a locked foyer, but there's no obvious doorman from outside. In a side alley, two fire escapes lead up to various windows, but one of them only goes half way up.

Meanwhile, back at the club, Norbert keeps trying to cop a feel, so Teri suggests they go back to his place. He agrees and they head out, grabbing coats on the way. They catch a cab from the club, and Lloyd swings out to follow them. Julian and Johnny stay to watch the band. Flynn is waiting in wolf form in an alley and sees Norbert drunkenly weaves away from the taxi, half leaning on Teri. Flynn heads across the road as they go inside, and slips in before the door closes. Norbert obviously doesn't notice the 'dog' before the lift closes and they head up. Flynn sees now that the doorman is asleep in a chair a bit further into the foyer, and has been drinking. He tries to sniff the letterboxes and get an idea of what appartment Norbert is in, but the mingled smells are a bit much. He lets Lloyd in where he says his packmate's face at the door and the two of them head up the lift, figuring they should be able to smell the two of them.

Teri and Norbert go inside what proves to be a relatively spacious apartment on the 5th floor. He tells her to make herself confortable while he freshens up a little. Teri takes this oppurtunity to ransack the desk under one of the windows, finding a few valuable odds and ends that get pocketed. At the back of one of the drawers she finds a stack of postcards with Kathy on them - she's dressed like a school girl on the front one, but they get rapidly more hardcore through the set of twelve, culminating in rather graphic sex. Also in the drawer is what seems to have been the wrapper with "Hammond Rare Books" .

Its at this point that there's a knock on the door. Norbert comes out, muttering under his breath. He opens the door a bit and Flynn slams it open, breaking the chain, and stepping in. He and Lloyd step into the hallway as Norbert staggers back. Teri looks on calmly and then remembers her role and yells a bit before cowering in the corner. Norbert and Flynn have a discussion about Katharine Hammond; to begin with, Norbert seems to not even be sure who they are talking about, but Teri mentions something about her that triggers his memory before lapsing into cowering state again. Lloyd pushes past Norbert and starts going through his bedroom, but Norbert is fixated on the rather more threatening gentleman still in the hall rather than the tweed wearing academic. The discussion descends into violence, and Norbert tries to smack Flynn with a baseball bat, ending with an unconscious, or near so Norbert on the ground, tied up and gagged. They search the lair for treasure.

The wrapper is examined more closely - it looks to have been a plain paper wrapping that went around the cards, and all it has on it is "Hammond Rare Books" - no address or anything. Someone points out that Kathy's surname was Hammond, and there is some face pulling. Teri heads off in case Norbert comes around. Lloyd looks for Norbert's black book and finds a stack of locally produced racey magazines. Flicking through them they find an ad for "Hammond Rare Books". Comparing the magazines and postcards, the magazines are posing, mostly just bare breasted rather than full frontal, but the postcards are very explicit. The first might get a fine, the second would see everyone involved doing jail time. More ransacking finds a small handgun in a bedside drawer, which Lloyd takes. Some women's jewelery, assorted bits and pieces of various quality, which also gets taken - if anyone of it is Kathy's that gives them a link. Lloyd finds a small chunk of hash in the kitchen, and decides to chuck it and not tell his packmates, and also a snuff box with what is probably cocaine in it. LLoyd finds a rolodex and takes it, and checks his cupboard - cheap suits.

The two remaining Uratha consider pushing Norbert a window - "he tragically fell while smoking" - but Lloyd thinks its unnecessary. Flynn suggests that it would be to protect their... something or other, and its pointed out that when you're reduced to that sort of excuse, its unnecessary. They decide to leave the snuff box and the cash behind, just to cut back on the chance that Norbert might cause them issues later. They ungag him and leave.

Sitting in the car, Lloyd flicks through the rolodex, but can't find any "Hammond" or "Books" or "Postcard" or "Pornography". They wonder whether they should spin past Hammond Books, but its really within Voice Across the Waters territory and its late. They decide to do a drive-by and just not step out. Its a seedy neighbourhood, down towards the Hudson river side of Manhattan. There's a certain "tidal" scent to the air. The bookshop is one of a strip of shops - butcher, tailor, etc. The windows are painted over and "Hammonds" is painted over that. It looks like the strip of shops has residences over the top, but there's no lights on. There's an alley up behind it, dark and easy to sneak up.

Sunday 4th - Cahalith waxing

Lloyd spends his day with Mary Elizabeth, looking through Norbert's Little Black Book, and trying to figure out what the notations in the notebook mean. There's a lot of "Smith". They think that some of the codes say "purchase", some are "supply", some are "clients" and some are "special girlfriend". Not all the handwriting is his - sometimes he has got someone else to put their details in there. There's no KH or HK, so no luck there. There's an entry for A. Wood at The Pit, which might be one of the band members, marked as a customer.

Julian and Johnny show up and say that they stuck around and followed the band for a while to see what would happen. They followed Charlie, the white band member. He found some large gentlemen and money changed hands. These men went to Norbert's building and knocked on the door and bribed the doormen, and went up in the lift (and presumably found Norbert tied up). They came back later and told Charlie that he was already tied up, didn't know anything and was relatively easy to kick.

They toy with approaching the bookshop as a customer tomorrow, but in any case, they'll have to chat to Voice Across the Waters for permission. They wander through the major territory of the pack in Central Park, stopping at the Angel of the Waters fountain. They know they have an obligation to drink from the fountain, and Lloyd uses Two-World Eyes and sees a water spirit all but thrusting liquid at the people stopping to drink. He opts to drink from the other side. They speak to Andrew O'Connor and he says that as long as they put a fresh loaf on the tidal flat at a given location and leave it there, they can go in and out this evening.

Having done this odd task, the pack then head for Hammonds' about 11pm. When they dropped the loaf off, they drove past and found that the lights were on upstairs, so someone presumably lives there. They park somewhere secluded nearbyish, leaving Julian and Johnny to watch the cars. They change to urhan form in the darkness before heading up the back alley. The butcher's next door is covering a lot of potential scents down this alley way, but there seems to have been some foot traffic up and down here. Flynn wangles the lock and the door is open despite the cold and the crap lock.

The door leads into a dark corridor. There are stairs leading upwards to the second floor, a kitchen off to the left, big double doors leading to the front of the store. A door leads off to a sort of lounge on the right past the staircase. Chairs, potbelly stove, radio, nothing special. No photos in frames on the mantlepiece. There are two scents in the area, one male and one female, neither of them particularly clean. There's no sign of printing equipment - nothing might have been done here printwise, but perhaps they do take photos here. Lloyd wonders quietly if perhaps someone killed Kathy to send them (the shop owners) a message.

Flynn goes into the next area. There's a small office, with a rolldesk, filing cabinets and the normal office stuff there. There's nothing special in the material here that Flynn can find. There's records of purchases and such - some are from businesses, some are from individuals. Half of that space has a door marked private blocking it off. Terry sniffs underneath it, but it just smells like paper. Flynn tries to pick the lock, but the picks get stuck. He yanks them out and the lock mechanism comes with them. The bolt is still turned though. He sighs and changes to Dalu, and uses a knife to pry the lock open. Or off even, as it bounces across the floor leaving splintery wood there behind.

Lloyd can hear snoring drifting down from upstairs as he sits guard at the back door, which is hopefully masking the clowns in the office. Now having got access to the private area, they find that it seems to be where the "discerning" gentleman material is kept. There are a few folios of prints of naked ladies, there are postcards and playing cards with topless and naked women and men. Some random film cannisters are stored on shelves and even some stereoscope material. They find some copies of the same ones of Kathy they found at Norbert's and well as some others. Some of them are basic sadomasochistic poses and people being hurt. There's a chair in here where people can sit and peruse before purchase. There are more than two scents, but most of the others are faint.

Lloyd sneaks upstairs after seeing the others indicated there was nothing up the front of the building. The corridor on the second floor goes from front to back and there's 2 doors on each side and a window at either end. He sniffs underneath the doors, finds what's probably the master bedroom judging by the snoring and the scents. The door across smells like old rotting flesh. Oh good. The third door smells like a bathroom and the forth has a fainter smell of rot and decay. Only the second door is locked, bolted from this side with a padlock, relatively new.

In the very front of the store, Flynn finds a normal bookstore, with books everywhere on shelves. He looks for the till and checks to see if its got cash in it. In the dim light he hits the sale button instead and it pops open with a loud "cha-ching!" noise. Everyone else in the building sighs. There's about $30 in the till - not lots, but a reasonable amount. Figuring that it already looks like a robbery, they'd better make sure that there's something stolen, he steals it.

Mary Elizabeth heads upstairs stealthily, both to find Lloyd and make sure that ringing noise didn't wake the occupants. She sees Lloyd lurking at the door and heads over there. The other two also follow upstairs. Lloyd changes to human form, opens the door a crack and then slides back into urhan. They nose the door open - its a bedroom, a small one, with floral wallpaper and not much furniture. The smell of decay belies the appearance. The smell is coming from down the back of the iron frame bed, and underneath. It seems to be coming from the mattress itself, and probably wouldn't be obvious to a human. From this awkward position, Lloyd also notices that there are manacles that are chained to the bedposts and then tucked down out of sight. He comes back out and changes back to human, and checks out the drawers - they contain adolescent female clothing, a bit dusty, and definately musty. It might have been left there for months.

Flynn grabs a box and puts expensive stuff in it. He finds a box of watches under the sales desk amidst some other gifty knickknackery. They're not too flash, but might be worth grabbing.

Lloyd shifts back to human and whispers about what he found in the spare bedroom. He's all in favour of taking a proactive stance at this point and someone points out that worst case scenario they have a butcher's next door. They plan downstairs and decide the plan is to interrogate the owners. They go get Johnny from one of the cars, because an extra person won't hurt. Flynn grabs a couple of knives from the kitchen. Mary Elizabeth suggests dragging one of them out of the room before they ask questions, if practical. They figure that Dalu form is the way to go.

Johnny moves quickly into the room, flicking the light on as he goes in the door. There's a large master bed, a dresser and all. The bed has an enormous fat woman on the far side and a smaller guy. Johnny goes to the woman's side and Lloyd to guy's side. Terry follows in and tries to evaluate the situation. Mary Elizabeth waits at the door as Flynn rushes past her. The two humans wake up and try to work out what's going on - the guy lunges at the drawer. The woman sits straight up and rolls out of bed. They both seem to shake off sleep pretty fast.

LLoyd kicks the drawer shut and holds it with his leg as Terry leaps onto the guy's chest. He finds his hand suddenly hurts, he must have whacked it on Terry. Flynn runs to help Johnny, who is facing off the fat woman, who turns out to be about 6'3'' as well as hugely overweight. Mary Elizabeth picks up a vase and debates lobbing it into the fray, but decides not to. Johnny tries to punch the woman out, but finds that the blow is just absorbed by the wobbling flesh. Terry threatens the guy with a big kitchen knife at the throat. Flynn tries a kidney punch and the woman doesn't flinch. The fat woman grabs Johnny and mashes him against her, trying to smother him. Mary Elizabeth tries a "Know Name" on the woman, whose name is apparently Edith Hammond.

The guy swings his left hand up and tries to smack Terry in the head, but it just kinda glances across his head. It doesn't hurt, but she notices that there seems to be a mouth opening up in his hand. Terry channels his essence and flows straight to gauru form, suddenly getting about 200 pounds heavier. He experiences excrutiating pain crushing his ribs, about where his knees are sinking into the guy. The bed suddenly drops half a foot and nearly tilts Terry into Lloyd as the legs break.

Flynn jerks the woman back and away from Johnny, and her grip breaks, but she falls backwards back on top of him, knocking him back a little. Lloyd kicks the drawer again and sees bruises flower on his own wrist, and hears bones break inside the drawer. Terry claws the guys arm, kind of worried about the mouth-hand, planning to joint it. Claws slice through the guy's flesh and tendon and Terry suddenly finds that he is bleeding from the same arm. Terry nearly loses it from the sudden surprise.

The guy's face starts to split like a harelip, and peel back revealing many spiney teeth, and the uratha that are facing him start to get a feeling that this may end poorly. Flynn gets out from underneath the woman. Lloyd continues his drawer/wrist interaction. Johnny slashes at the woman with a knife with no obvious effect. Terry shifts to urhan and leaps into the air to body slam down on the guy. Mary Elizabeth makes sure that no one is coming up the stairs or anything. You know. In case. Edith tries to kick at Johnny's knees ineffectually. The guy curls up and attempts wraps his toothy maw around one of Terry's legs, but misses him. Flynn goes a solid boot to the woman's head.

Lloyd figures that this hand is going nowhere, so he uses Two World Eyes to see the spirit world. There are many longering spirits made of sharp things and darkness. They seem to be darting into the space where the guy is and sometimes darting out again, but maybe not. There is also a cold sensation from behind Lloyd, but he can't split his attention that well. Johnny picks up a bedside table and whacks the woman. Mary Elizabeth heads down into the kitchen. Terry is a little concerned about the depth of the mouth this guy has - it seems to be deeper than it should be. All the pack are assailed by a wave of pain that burns in a couple of places. Flynn holds his knife right about her eye and snarls "stop it!" and the woman starts to sob and moan rather than struggle.

Terry decides he's sick of this, and flops down on top of the guy, bearing his weight down on the chest and mostly pinning his arms. The guy's face collapses back to normal, and every one of his muscle locks - face, arms, legs, neck - and he hoarsely screams. It looks like everything has spasmed, and the pack think they can start to hear muscles tearing. Lloyd looks into the spirit realm again, and spiritually it seems like his face is lifting up and out and away from the body. This does not seem like normal behaviour for either ridden or claimed humans or the the spirits involved.

Terry punches a hole in his abdomen and there is a dunnnng sound as muscles give way with a snap. The guy stops moving and Lloyd yells that the spirit that came out went into the woman. He sees that the spirit dragged some of the flitting spirits into the space where the woman is lying. She is briefly outlined by the spirit's essence, making her almost appear in the spirit world. Mary Elizabeth finds a cleaver.. oh good - it looked like Kathy had been cleavered to bits, and this is a bit dirty...

Terry leaps onto the prone woman, but has too much momentum and bounces off, thumping against the wall. Flynn leaps off the bed and piledrives onto her face in dalu form, tearing skin on her face. The woman is writhing unnaturally on the floor. Johnny tries to pin her feet down. Terry starts biting her chins/throat. Flynn drops down to stab her through the eye and finds her head is retreating into her body. Lloyd glances behind him at the cold thing - he can see hooks and manacles brightly through the walls of the spirit house, as if they glow. There seem to be spirits hung on the various torture devices.

The pack crash into the woman a few more times and eventually kill her - Mary Elizabeth's cleaver and other sharp things help, but they find the fat inside her had started to crystalise into a hard shell. However, once she is dead, the spirit seems to be stuck inside the dead woman's body, hammering to try and get away. They briefly debate what to do - and whether they should contact Voice Across the Waters about the whole situation.

There is a brief lull while the werewolves sit and try to work out if anyone heard them. There's no sounds of screaming from the surrounding humans or anything, although there is a lot of gore in the room (some dogs broke in and... nevermind). Lloyd can see pain motes floating about the place in the Hisil, as well as the spirit still stuck inside the woman. They think about what they want to do to hide their Hunt. They've got a couple of cars nearby, and Lloyd suggests putting the bodies in them to get them away.

First of all they finish looking about - all the clothes in the bureau are precisely laid out, socks stacked precisely the same length. They find a photo album jammed under the mattress - it includes photos of both the people they just stomped and a younger Kathy hammond. Some of the photos are sexual in nature, and no one feels bad about having pasted the two of them. One of the later photos looks odd - it almost looks like its been faked, and it seems to show a much bigger version of Colin Hammond. It looks a little like the photos of the werewolves in non-human forms. Closer examination shows that both Colin and the twisted Colin have the same broken-heart tattoo.

A key to the locked room is found and they open up the big padlocks. The smell of rot cascades out of the room - what was faint before is very strong once the door is open. There's some bottles and junk on the floor, and what looks like meat. The light seems unwilling to enter the room - the darkness seems to absorb the faint light from the outside of the house. Lloyd reaches for a lightswitch and founds that it has been gouged out of the door frame. They find some candles without much hassle and try to light the room up. The candles seem to dim as they go into the room, but they don't get snuffed. The shadows bounce around a bit oddly, and a sole candle left on its own goes out.

The room has a pentacle scorched into the floor and darkcoloured candles at the points. The room smells of rot, meat, sex, blood and so on - there's flesh and hair stuck to the walls and roof. Manacles are attached to one wall, and spirits cluster around that area of the room. The manacles could be drawn out to lay someone across the pentacle. Lloyd backs across the pentacle and get a shivery feeling - almost like what you'd get at a loci, but not quite. A lectern stands at one end of the room with an axe leaning against it, and a tattered, stained book sits open atop it. A quick glance says that it is not written in modern English - Julian looks and says "middle English" and that he has studied it (much to the GM's surprise).

They try to think about what to do - burn it down, clean it up, torch it, try and keep it, set it on fire or just tell Voice Across the Waters about it. It'd be hard to break the cycle of causing pain and feeding off it - they couldn't cleanse it of the resonance that is here and keep the potentiality here, they although they could get rid of all the resonance that is here. They could try and modify the resonance to something more palatable than straight out pain and lust. Julian decides that they need to contact Voice Across the Waters, given its their terrirtory and ask for help.

Johnny and Julian go off to find Voice Across the Waters at the park. While they are gone, the others consider that they have no real proof Kathy was here - there is a big cleaver and an axe in the room, blood spatter, but that's not absolute proof. Teri takes her nose into her own hand (so to speak and sniffs around for Kathy), while the others do a thorough search. She finds Kathy's scent from the last month of so, although its not the newest scent - there's a female, older perfumed scent that's newer. They find more syringes in the bathroom, along with a suspicious bottle of liquid in the cabinet - Lloyd takes a sniff and a look and passes it to Flynn, who is about to eat some when Lloyd says "wow, almost pure heroin". Flynn puts the bottle down. Teri carefully pockets the bottle for "trading purposes". There is a box with some girls' clothing stashed away, some empty photo frames that look like they've been emptied recently. Some of the books in the front room are relatively rare and are of interest to the pack, or worth enough cash to be worth stuffing into a sack.

Julian meets Andrew, who is still in Central Park. He doesn't appear to have moved at all from the seat that he was in before. Julian explains how their evening has gone and says that they discovered some very bad spirit stuff, and humbly requests that they be allowed to defer to the greater wisdom of the more senior pack. Andrew agrees and gets up - Julian swears he hears ice crackle as his clothes move and shift.

Flynn finds his way into the roofspace and finds that some boards have been laid down and equipment moved into the roof so that a home development studio has been established there. Its probably only big enough for Colin - Edith wouldn't be able to get up the ladder. There's some trunks with just random guff in them. Lloyd checks Edith out - she's decaying, but the spirit is still stuck inside. He can hear a faint screaming from the spirit, which is definately in the material world. Its not smooshing things, its overlapped spiritual - as if it was in twilight and trying to posess the dead corpse. They try and get a feeling for the couple - it looks like Colin was mostly bossed around by Edith during their normal lives, but the photos, he's definately not submissive.

Mary Elizabeth recognises Voice Across the Waters showing up as Julian returned as well. Paul and Gordon from the senior pack head over to Julian and he leads them into the house, giving them the fuller run down about why they were there and what they found. He explains that the trail led from their new territory to here, emphasising their efforts to protect their new domain.

Paul checks out the bedroom, Gordon heads straight to the pentacle room. They point at Colin, and at Edith and talk about the jumping spirit and the quick physical changes. There's some trepediation about the uratha's reactions, although that's countered with "why didn't they notice 10 years of psychopaths?". The rest of Voice Across the Waters show up with a truck. The uratha looking at the dead and occult don't really seem to be fazed by what they see, even though the pack is a little weirded out. More time is spent in the pentacle room, checking out the details. Bodies are moved out to the truck in blankets.

Monday 5th - Cahalith waxing

Terry hangs out at the park and tells their totems about the new secret things that they have found out. In the new bright morning, Julian examines the book closely. The language is either mid to late 1500s or later but from somewhere outside of London (some of the turns of phrase are more common in Welsh Britain). Its a folio - the pages are pushed together and glued together. The majority of the text is printed, including the page that it had been lain open. That page had had some words blacked out.

Julian does a translation of that page:

Biyonde a swolowe in že anonderfolde nyghte a pas leden to a waghe of houge stanes, ant biyonde že waghe amounten ********* a-seruinel že tatered ant un-yed figures of že merke. Elenge has hie slepen bihinde že waghe, ant žei že clomben že waghe skyualde ouer hies body a-niten ********* but žen hies name es i-cwede or red he bi-comen a-mensken or a-baiten ant taken že schaft ant soule of žes he bait an. F. žei že red of bales ant cerche f. hits forme innen hern mende bi-callen bales, ant swa myht ********* agen amblen a-monges menkes.

Beyond a gulf in the subterranean night a passage leads to a wall of massive bricks, and beyond the wall rises ********* to be served by the tattered and eyeless figures of the dark. Long has he slept behind the wall, and those which crawl over the wall scuttle over his body never knowing it to be *********; but when his name is spoken or read he comes forth to be worshipped or to feed and take on the shape and soul of those he feeds upon for those who read of evil and search for its form within their minds call forth evil, and so might ********* return to walk among men.

Despite the incredulous look on the GM's, Julian starts examining the possibility of removing the (obviously later added) ink from the page to see what the name that is written might be. He can probably do it, but decides to speak to the rest of his pack before going ahead with this plan. He examines the rest of the book, and finds that it might have been 200 pages or so, although pages have been torn out of the folio, and it might have actually been torn apart and then reassembled into its current form, as some of the pages are apparently out of order. This may take some time. Julian falls asleep after lunch while working on the book and has an odd dream.

Lloyd considers the chance of the pack being able to lend a loci in the park. The Eagle & Prey loci is one that they have used before - its in Voice Across the Waters' territory, and its one that they used before. However, they don't want to bug that pack again today. Fundamentally he wants to get into the hisil so that they can help make a Den for their totem - he could summon a spirit to help him... if he had that ritual. Oh well. Lloyd toys with the idea of finding various bums that die of exposure in the park and burying them in their territory to add to the Death resonance.

The pack get together at night so they can chat and catch up. They catch up on their days - werewolf stuff, werewolf stuff, shopping, freelancing. Julian brings the book along and relates his findings, and mentions removing the ink - which folks are happy to go along with until Julian reads out the "when his name is spoken or read he comes forth" bit, at which point they all say NO. ("I'm far less ok with the blanking now"). Julian also relates his dream which catches people's attention (Calahith, etc). The mythology of masks are discussed, especially in context of spirit posession (eg, like what Edith and Colin suffered). Lloyd makes mention of Poe's "Masque of the Red Death" and the common masquerade theme in gothic revival culture, which matches Julian's concept of when it was.

The rest of the book consists of fragments - the content seems almost scripture-like. Each couple of pages seems to be a thing of its own, and much of it seems to be warnings of things that live in the darkness, almost like faerie tales or something like that, but other bits are almost instructions on how to contact the dark things. Some of the individual pages have no coherency and just seem to be gibbering. There are definately multiple authors. Julian shares the bits of his translations that he has around the pack. The pack come up with the general impression that the beings described in the stories are almost like a subpantheon of the Maeljin - demiurges of the basic unpleasant Envy, Gluttony and so on. The creature described on the open page seems to be halfway point between Lust and Gluttony. Some of the other creatures described have names as well - Glaaki is one, and its not a First Tongue word. Mary Elizabeth wants to burn it, but the others think it makes a good secret to dedicate to their totem.

Getting back to their initial situation of the Hammonds, their working theory is that the pain spirit was the original contaminate and the creature whose name has been struck out came later and did the messing with Colin & Edith that let the more severe physical changes. That indicates it might have been something Incarna-like which means that some of the usual spirit rules change. This... is not reassuring. They toy with going back to Hammond's bookstore to see if they can find where he got the book from - he was keeping accurate records of his rare books. The disturbing possibility of there being more than just the Hammonds involved in worshipping this demi-Maeljin is raised.

The pack are chatting about Lloyd's body plan, and also getting into the Hisil to dig a Den for their totem, and learning the Funeral Rite as part of this process when Hunts-Shadows says he will teach Lloyd the Rite of Funeral Dedication in this case. LLoyd agrees happily, because that cuts down on the favour they need to ask of Voice Across the Waters. They still need to ask about getting into the Hisil, so the pack finish up their meal and head to the park. They find Paul, Andrew and Teresa in a gazebo (eek!) in the park; the conversation stops as Julian makes himself known and asks for passage through their loci to fulfil a totem request. Andrew looks at Paul and then says "We would like to show you the spirit that you found recently" (with the implication that if the other pack coincidentally happened to go and do their own task at the same time, that would be fine). The uratha go through the loci by touching the sculpture.

In the Hisil, the statue is just a bit more realistic - the goat is bleeding from the eagle's talons. Paul leads the new pack across the park through the shadow, avoiding the spirits of winter and snow. Dens-with-Secrets joins them as well, causing Andrew to look and shudder at them. They get to Edith's body, which has been brought into the spirit world. They can now all perceive the pain spirit within the body, which is ranting and raving and trying to get out of the the corpse. It appears to be mad - Andrew has tried to speak to it and it just raves. Other than smashing the body to pieces they can't really think of another way to get it out. Voice Across the Waters think that the Hammonds' had been Ridden before, and this pain spirit came in afterwards - thus the quick physical changes (in other words, the other way around to what the pack thinks). No one mentioned any book that they might not have found. Lloyd suggests that they might have also been one being - man and woman joined by marriage - from the point of view of the spirit, which is an interesting concept. Voice Across the Waters haven't seen anything like this before, but they they've seen lots of other singular things too, so they aren't that freaked.

The pack decide that they've clicked on everything they could click on in this area, and go check out their territory. This is the first time they've been able to check it out in the spirit world - its kind of nice. There's a certain amount of work needing to be done - boltstering the tree spirits and so on, but not too much in the way of spirits that need to be scoured away (some murder spirits). The smell is pleasantly clean, and earthy where the snow doesn't accur. The roads that cut through the territory are like scars across the landscape - dead earth, with no plants or even bugs. Most of the area is frozen or cold, but there's nothing apparently wrong with the area. The pack mark their territory at the various corners. They head for the area that Lloyd had marked as being a good spot for a Den. The area, out on Hernshead, is out of sight in the Realm, and dark enough in the Hisil. A large tree spirit has fallen and its trunk makes a beginning hollow that they can expand through digging in Urshul form, working in Dalu and generally following the instructions of their totem. Eventually the pack head back through the loci they borrowed and go home.

Tuesday 6th - Cahalith waxing

The pack pass the word around the other uratha that they are welcome to donate dead bodies to them to be buried secretly.

While lurking in the gardens, Teri is accosted by some sort of strange gardener (an official one, employed by the city) who threatens her with the cops, accusing her of bringing weird friends around to make this a den of iniquity, without being precise about what the exact problem is. He says that he won't put up with her friends here at night and she asks why he's here at night, following women around maybe? Its one of those strange and awkward moments, but Teri makes it more uncomfortable for him and he leaves.

Lloyd, who has the strange book from the Hammonds, spends some of his time looking through it, consulting with the library he has in town. He makes fairly significant progress in translation and comprehension, but doesn't get any dreams.

When they get together than night, Teri mentions the gardener, and his "this is my garden" shpiel, and just mentions they should keep an eye out, in case.

Wednesday 7th - Cahalith waxing

Having done as much with the book as he can, Lloyd changes to spending time paying attention to the totem and learning the funeral rite and First Tongue - mostly sitting still and occasionally being snapped at by the totem's long teeth, but it does seem to convey something about the funeral rite.

Mary Elizabeth and Teri go shopping together. They wander through some of the nicer areas of town "looking for weird things" - ie: shopping. While in a dress shop, they overhear two ladies gossiping. They are talking about the daughter of a woman they know, who was caught kissing a black houseservant. Shocking! Well, did you hear about mumble, who took her shoes off and ran through the snow in bare feet! Standards these days, children not being brought up properly, muffle muffle. Mary Elizabeth, a little concerned that they might be talking about her, lays in wait for them to come out. She uses Know Name and realises their names are Evelyn Spencer and Valerie Austin. Mary Elizabeth and Teri consult and think that it might be worth asking further questions.

Thinking quickly (honestly), Mary Elizabeth approaches them, commenting on the top they are purchasing as a conversation opener, and flatters and charms them (being obviously rich and elegant) before moving around to the gossip side of things over coffee. Despite her strange companion, she's obviously a lady of quality and the Loose Tongue doesn't hurt either. They spill a lot of dirt about the various going-ons of people they know to the two werewolves, who make things up in return. The dirt is all a bit odd - people behaving in an odd way for the most part, doing things that are really out of bounds for the normal behaviour. Blah blah, declining moral standards. Its not all children, there's mention of older people as well. Most of the stories are normal (drinks too much, lazy, etc), but there's one or two that just don't ring true. Someone's husband, normally polite and proper, who started eating his jello with his fingers and great gusto. Someone who broke into song at a bank, loudly and enjoying it. All the odd stories seemed to be linked together by a sort of unseemly exuberance.

They seperate from the lovely hosts and cruise the town to see if they can spot anything weird. Its not the sort of part of town that Mary Elizabeth would normally find herself, but its certainly upper middle class. There is the occasional boutique rather than shop. Nothing leaps out at them as being out of the usual.

Meanwhile, Flynn and Johnny are following the gardener that gave Teri some grief. He does legitimately seem to be a gardener, although he's spending all his time shovelling snow at this time of year (with the occasional nip of a hip flask for warmth). They follow him home and find that he lives in a somewhat rundown apartment on his own.

Julian is reading the scrap of the Hammond's book again and again, trying to understand the details. The stuff about the brick wall might be allegory... which might mean that the wall is the gauntlet. In which case, it seems to be talking about people passing over the wall, which might mean them! Or... just humans going the wrong way. It bears more research.

Mary Elizabeth and Teri return to their pack with tales of gossip and all. The other werewolves stare at them, but they manage to eventually convince them there might be something spiritually odd going on. Plus the territory is not really claimed by any of the other packs.

• Investigate weirdness. Snows.
• Flynn steals a car
• Mary Elizabeth dances on the street.
• Work out that the church connects all the events.

Thursday 8th - Cahalith waxing

• See some weird behaviour (trousers)
• Check out the church.
• Teri meets priest.
• Borrow a loci again to go into the hisil.
• Find the loci.
• Find the spirit.
• Cut a deal.

Friday 9th - Cahalith waxing

• Meeting Julian's friend.
• Hotel, friend is dead, killed by spicey smelling people.
• Ritual killing - gutted, symbol carved on his head, weird collar thing.
• Spicey smelling people were hunting something
• Searching.
• Find a letter about a book, a mention of Penhew Foundation, a letter to his publicist about the Carlyle expedition, and a lead to Emerson Imports.
• Driveby Emerson.

Mary:

Following our only real lead, some of the pack drove past JuJu House to get an idea of what it was. This wasn't very fruitful as it is positioned at the far end of an alley. There's a courtyard of sorts in front of it, tennements on one side and the back with a pawn shop on the third side. The pawn shop is abandoned, and has a second frontage, which we decided could prove useful.

JuJu House is in Crooked Roads' territory, so we headed back to the park to try to contact them. It's late and cold, so we had no luck. Terri rang up someone she knows and got permission (as a favour) for us to investigate JuJu. The offical line is we're investigating the murder of a friend.

Back at JuJu we split up. Julian scouted out the courtyard in wolf form, Flynn stayed at the alley entrance with the cars and the rest of us B&E the pawn shop from its other side. From closer it is obvious that JuJu House is a shop, selling wares of the sorts we found at the importer.

Julian discovered the smell of blood around the front of JuJu House, mixed with another unidentifiable smell that's kind of organic and reminiscent of oil. There's a light layer of snow everywhere, which made things a little harder.

After entering the pawn shop we found it mostly empty and the door leading to the courtyard was chained and locked. Terri disabled the lock using physical and gifted means, allowing us to open the door. The pawn shop had two storeys, whereas JuJu House was a single storey, so Lloyd opened one of the first-floor windows to gain access to the JuJu House roof.

After some scouting around on the roof I found a locked trapdoor, which Johnny and Terri tried to open. Eventually it succumbed to Terri, leaving Johnny a little flustered.

Lloyd stayed watch on the roof while the rest of the pack (minus Flynn, who was scouting out in the main street) entered JuJu House. We found ourselves in the office section of the shop, and turned on the light to have a good look around (Lloyd covered the trapdoor with his coat). We discovered that: there's a strong common scent of an older man around the shop; the vaguely organic scent from outside is stronger inside, and in a way it reminded Johnny of anaerobic decay; part of the floor had been cleaned with detergent recently; there's old blood caked between the floorboards; the office held little of interest (though Julian has the nagging suspicion there is some connection he should have seen) and finally that the cleaned-up parts of the floor (which we assumed is hiding blood trails) lead up to a cabinet.

Lloyd

Whilst situated upon the roof of the establishment that my pack-mates had entered, and maintaining a cautious watch on the surrounding environs, my attention was drawn to a window two stories up upon my left-hand side. A light appeared behind the curtains and was then extinguished some 15 seconds later. Yet thereupon, I noticed the tentative and furtive shifting of the curtain, as if some unseen watcher was peering down upon me from the now darkened room.

Glancing back toward the trapdoor that my pack mates had recently effected their ingress by, I could perceive that the illumination of the light within, feeble as it was, was still visible from underneath my coat, where I had draped it across the aperture. I moved with some measure of alacrity and alarm to the spot, and hoarsely whispered down that the light should be extinguished forthwith. The electrical torches that I had supplied them with should provide sufficient incandescence for their purposes. The light was rapidly doused, and I was able to retrieve my coat. For this I was more than a little grateful, as the climate and the location whereat I found myself were equally non-conducive to comfort.

Mary

Johnny and Terri moved the cabinet exposing a trap door in the floor at which the cleaning smell stops. I looked into the Shadow which was instantly regretted. It was dark, opressive, seriously disturbing. Vague things hung from the ceiling and some sprits resembling shifting glyphs occupied the Shadow-store, giving off seriously bad feelings. Finally there is a strong earthy smell that is somehow disturbing. I jumped back to the real world quickly. I relate what I saw to the pack. I cringe thinking about it now, knowing that surrounded us in such a relatively mundane place like the store.

Julian, keen to resolve all of this, opened the trapdoor. It resisted his pulling, though wasn't actually locked or stuck. When opened, a sort of shout emerged, though it wasn't really heard. We all assumed that some alarm had been triggered. Stone stairs led down, well-worn and caked in grime old enough to have almost crystalised.

Johnny peeked into the Shadow and saw just a black hole where the stairs are. Warm, fetid air flowed from the hole. There were more of the spirits that I saw and they made him think bad thoughts. The air from the hole washed away the earthy smell of the Shadow-store.

Julian, again keen to press on, lead Johnny and Terri down into the hole which turned into a short stone corridoor with a wooden door on one side near its end. There was the strong scent of many people having travelled the corridoor over recent days. The door was carved with the same design we saw carved into Elias Jackson's forehead. At least we know which way it should be oriented now.

I stayed in the shop - I wasn't going anywhere near those steps. Lloyd stayed lookout on the roof.

Terri tried and then Johnny unlocked the door. Julian then, deciding this is something he must face alone, ordered Johnny and Terri back up the stairs. Johnny assented and headed back up. Terri ignored him - though Julian didn't seem to notice as he opened the door.

Lloyd

Settling down to my watch once more, it was not long after that I beheld a small group of men, four in number, proceeding with purposeful tread down the alley in my direction. They were all obviously negroes of the vicinity, and I suspect that their sudden appearance so soon after I was observed from the upper window was no coincidence. One of the men moved with a stiffness suggestive of old age, and it was this fellow that I observed was grasping a set of keys.

Again I moved to the trap door, and again "spoke" in the extremely limited but nonetheless effective language that my urshul-form allowed. I succinctly conveyed the approach of outsiders toward our position, with the seeming intent of achieving ingress in a more conventional fashion than the one we had ourselves employed.

My communication had a dramatic effect within, as soon I heard a commotion as shelves and other furnishings were cast bodily in front of the door. This certainly achieved the desired effect of preventing entry, for once the elderly negro had unlocked and retracted the iron grating, he found himself quite unable to actually open the door. The three younger fellows pressed their forms against the portal, attempting to force an entrance.

Mary

Julian passed through the underground doorway, revolver in one hand and lamp in the other. He entered a large room, larger than the shop. It had drums (for beating) against some walls and a large, circular plug on the floor (about 2-3m across). There was gadgetry which implied that the plug may be removed. Across from the door was a curtained area. Carvings covered the walls and dried blood covered the floor.

Lloyd

It was then that I noticed Flynn running down the alleyway, gesticulating over his shoulder in the direction from which he had just come. No sooner had he ducked around a corner and disappeared into a public conveyance, a movement that passed unnoticed by the four men directly beneath me, a second group of men, negroes all, rounded the corner from the road and entered into the courtyard. It was now quite the gathering we had, particularly at such an hour in January.

It could not escape the notice of even the dullest mind that nine such determined men could not be kept out of the shop indefinitely. Also, I had noticed that several of the negroes were armed with saps and knives. Indeed, one fellow was toting a pistol and another secreted a shotgun under his coat. I felt that perhaps it was time to pre-empt their assault with one of my own. In particular, I wished to ensure that the rogue with the shotgun was not able to employ such a fearsome weapon against us. However, if you have gleaned from the foregoing what my intention now is, do not consider my action too brave nor too foolhardy. I was confident that the Lunacy provoked by my Garau-form would do the majority of my fighting for me, as I had seen it do on more than one previous occasion.

My memory of the next few moments is a little unclear, but I do recall some ten seconds later that I found myself facing only three adversaries, with the negro in possession of the shotgun insensible at my feet. The rest of the ner-do-wells had fled at the very sight of me, a concept I still find rather incongruous and difficult to reconcile with my self-image. Flynn and myself were now beset by two remaining brutes whilst the third negro, a fellow of particularly sinister countenance, had inscribed some form of mystic rune upon the ground.

Mary

With grim determination Julian drew back the curtain, revolver still in hand (lamp placed on the stone in the center of the room), to see an alcove occupied by four large African men, standing with their entrails spilt out onto the floor. The men moved. There was a fight. I asked my companions to tell me little of it as it changed them all. Julian in particular saw things in that room that no man should ever see. He alone saw what was in the Shadow beneath that plug in the floor.

Lloyd

As we proceeded to dispatch our opponents with no great difficulty, a great being descended from the nighted clouds above. In the gloom it was difficult to discern clearly, but it seemed to be a form of serpent of unprecedented size borne along by vast wings. As we bested the last of our foes, the titanic creature all but crashed into the roof of one of the adjacent tenement buildings, shaking the earth with its impact. Flynn and I scrambled through the window of the shop not a moment to soon, as the terrific tail of the nightmarish creature swept down into the courtyard, skewered the writhing body of the aforementioned sinister negro (whom I believe had in fact summoned the very creature that now proved to be his undoing) and deposited this unfortunate into its great maw forthwith.

Having no great confidence that the shelter in which we found ourselves could, in fact, withstand the determined assault of so great a monstrosity, those of us still remaining at ground level fled down into the subterranean corridor that my pack mates had located not so many minutes before. Our only hope was that perhaps a few feet of solid stone might prove sufficient protection against the rapacious attentions of the unnameable horror outside.

Mary

I also don't really know what happened outside the shop, only that something very large and very hungry appeared. Flynn called it a dragon. I saw its huge tail(?) spear men and scoop them up as if they were dolls. It forced us downstairs - I refused to enter that underground room, and was knocked down when the thing upstairs demolished JuJu House.

Johnny

Well, it's like this you see. Some great beast has flown out of the sky and eaten a bunch of people. It's still thumping around destroying the neighborhood and we're down here watching Terri and Julian smack each other around like neither has any better business to seek.

So I take the shotgun and fire into the ceiling, hoping that it might sustain their attention, but both are so iron-headed, that it seems that nothing but the appearance of the beast itself might tear them away from each other's throat.

"Enough," I shouted. "We have better things to do," but they ignored me. I leveled the weapon at their heads, thinking for a moment that I could cease this madness with but a small twitch of my finger. But it soon became apparent that Terri had the better of Julian. Apparent to all but Julian, for he refused to submit and Terri was forced to hold his jaws around his neck, as one would a particularly troublesome walnut.

Finally Julian collapsed, defeated not by one of the horrors we had encountered that day, but by a pack mate, who too was drained of his lupine essence by the struggle. Will this foolish fighting cost us dearly later? I fear that already the demons inside us may be greater foes that the demons we see before our eyes. I will meditate upon this thought at the synagogue tomorrow.

• Get out of pile of rubble by digging & being rescued by other locals.
• Have a pile of stuff from the building
• Crooked Roads show up eventually
• some locals try and burn it all up
• eventually leave
• BAck to Lloyds, discuss the situation and try to figure out what is going on.
• Argue with Julian about what to do with cultist stuff - he thinks it should be destroyed, others want to learn from it first, Julian leaves.
• Identify lion claws as fetish
• Soemthing odd about the stick/wand, with egyptian heiroglyphs
• Mask is very odd - its organic, but not wood.
• "copper" bowl has twisty arabic words, spiralling into the middle, can recognise the word for 'dream'
• Headband with weird 'thai' stuff
• Julian goes to visit someone else(tm).
• lloyd reads the book once everyone's gone and learns zombies. He also finds some references to a cult from Kenya - Cult of the Bloody Tongue - that has the strange headdress & eye symbol things. He has wonderful dreams.
• Julian returns and asks questions. He looks through the stuff they took from Elias' room, and realises there might be some leads at the publishers. He also conveys a dream he had near Dens-with-Secrets about where a wolf spirit guards a cave full of secrets but people keep raiding the cave nonetheless. Julian thinks that this emphasises tht they need to destroy it eventually.
• Julian examines the egyptian-staff/wand and it says basically "Nyambe, thy power mine" - he reads it out and the scepter throbs. (Nyambe is the creator god from south western africa)
• More discussing about stuff and what to do with it.
• "Do not resurrect"
• Is making zombies a harmony sin
• The arabic is a dialect Julian's not familiar with, so its slow going. It also seems to be missing some text - it looks like a challenge-response litany of some sort, calling on spirits and djinn about sending/sharing dreams,
• The metal headband might be to show off the mark on the forehead.
• Daily papers speculate wildly about the events of the previous night, earthquake, who knows? Police Puzzled!
• Aunt Rebecca (of Harsh Truth) tells Johnny that there's a meeting this evening of the all the uratha ... in the gazeebo!
• Johnny goes to synagogue.
• Julian goes to the hotel and talks to the police about the dead Elias (Detective X), the Carlyle expedition, etc. police says there have been 9 similar murders over the last 2 years.
• Flynn goes to talk to his da about the murders, and passes over some cash to grease the wheels... and it will be Monday
• Mary-Elizabeth finds an invitation that her family didn't pass onto her - a party this evening for some people she's known well over the years.
• Julian makes a call through to Prospero Press and manages to get an appointment to meet with his editor.
• Lloyd plans to head out to his house on Sunday to find some other relevant books.
• [OOC] much wrangling about how to get in cointact with one another and pass along the stuff about tonights thing
• Lloyd plans to go to the NYPublic Library, which is near Prospero press but realises both places at in Voice Across the Waters.
• After some arguing, Julian goes to find someone from VAtW and ask if he can go to Prospero Press. He gives up after 2 hours and just goes.
• Mary Elizabeth gets a message from Lloyd that there's a meeting tonight. She curses a lot and goes to his place.
• Julian gets a load of interesting evidence from Prospero and speaks with his editor.
• Flynn and Teri go and hang out at the territory at the park.
• Meeting at the park! Much describing events, arguing, no flaying of the players. Things get tense along tribe lines, but calm down. In the end the pack are allowed to go into VAtW and Crooked Roads territory without asking while chasing this topic, and they just have to tell Harsh Truth and Still Moment of Inspiration.

Sunday

- flynn/johnny patrolling
- people sleep

- church for ken & richard (terry male, friend Mary-Elizabeth)
	- spirit affects guy to yell Hola!
	- uratha drain 2 essence

- out to woop woop for bryan and narelle
	-	carriage out to the property
	- discomfort at the gates
	- scent of wolves at the gate, and humans on the property.
	- scent of human and wolf blurred, scent of blood as well
	- scents are old (canone = 2 weeks, human = week)
	- people broke in, but maybe emergency, didn't ransack.
	- scents of canines around house too
	- 3 human smells in kitchen, wood smoke, gunsmoke
	- tracks of wolves are < 3 days ago (last strong snow)

	- hit the library and bring books back

- arm of god preacher near the park
	- apparently watched events from saturday
	- unholy negros flaunting god, thats why he smote them

- gardener
	- possibly bribing him
	- possibly make it clear they'll break his legs

- book research
	- blood cults
	- cults are very different when not that far apart (travel is hard
		in africa).
	- different terrain produces significantly different cults.
	- bloody tongue people come from Kenya, mostly open terrain
	- religions are often brutal
	- blood cults attract a contingent that might not be welcome at home
		- adolescent males, excess numbers of them.
		- tend to be violent
		- tend not to be persistent - flare up and then fade back/out
		- may be a core hidden center that attracts mooks, or might be an
			archetypal cults (or might be spirits).

	- comparing this to the Carlyle reports / Elias' notes
		- Bloody tongue
		- cult's good is not of Africa.

	- lots of reading Elias' notes

	- Julian's dream

	- taking weapens from Lloyd's house

Monday

	- statue => combination of animals, like a chimera.

	-	Flynn receives papers from his dad about 9 victims o the bloody tongue
	- scattered all over the place, geographically and socio-economically
		- one of them lived in the apartment block that collapsed
		- discussion about the marriage couple. (not killed there, but dumped?)
		- some of them might have been cult people being unpleasant rather than
			Cult activity.
		- possibly a lot of new-moon things happening.

	- possibly looking at Elias' hotel about his notes, they might be in
		a hotel safe. (up to date ones) (no, it was just a passport)

	- sharing all the notes to make sure everyone was up to speed.

	- looking at Elias' timeline of travel aand why he went a weird way
		back home - possibly the cult was on his tail.

	- theorising about possibly having destroyed the cult in NY already

	- corrected some confusion about where the Carlyle expedition came
		from : New York, not London
		- "Pretty sure I mentioned this to Richard - he's not here, I can
       blame him anyway"
		- Elias mentions some books in Carlyle safe
		- more investigation into the carlyle expedition
			(see clippings)

	- following up with Erica Carlyle.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29189
http://www.snopes.com/history/hoaxes/sawingny.asp
http://www.nfatoys.com/tsmg/web/coltguns.htm

- reviewing Roger Carlyle
  - socialite, diletannte, heir
  - ratbag, suddenly became focussed on Egypt
  - went to London with expedition
  - went to egypt "sunstroke"
  - went to kenya. *splat*

- Erica Carlyle inherited, a bit older than Mary-Elizabeth

- digs happened in Egypt winter, then take a break in summer

- toying with how to approach erica about the expedition
  - mary elizabeth... hasn't met her formally, but has been somewhere
    that she was at.
  - breaking in?
  - julian contacting, re: Elias's death.

- Terri decides that they'll try it the nice way first.

- Mary Elizabeth spends Monday hunting around her social circle for
  people that might know EC very well, and finds out some basic info
  - hard to get a hold of.
  - not quite a recluse, but she's interested in the business, not
    socialising (business = transport, munitions, import/export)
    Roger was a playboy, and spent spent spent - Erica has brought the
    business back from the brink
  - has an estate upriver, townhouse in NY
  - significant bodyguard - rumour has it is an exmobster
    - Flynn/Johnny can't confirm that

  - has a solicitor - Bradley Grey of Dunstan, Whittleby and Grey

- much discussion abot their "angle"

- decide to write a letter to the solicitor (much baffling about the
  idea of subtley)
  - decide that Julian is a better contact than Mary-Elizabeth
  - academic thing might have more respect.
  - Decide to call the solicitor
    "I'm julian, I'd like to meet mr grey on a matter of urgency,
    at your earliest convenience"
		- appointment for 2 days hence
    - writing letter to Ms Carlyle

- in the meantime:
  - trashed car / arm / clay smell = statuette
  - ritual learning
  - gardener
  - lots of dead people

- Lloyd goes off to find Winnie McMasters and learns shared scent rite,
  as well as spirit brand
  - LLoyd

- Flynn goes trawling through mortuaries looking for a body missing
  an arm. He spends a bunch of cash bribing attendants and finds the 
  body (Brendan Cole) without an arm - it is a white guy with his arm
  missing.
  - couple of bite barks, weirdly distended outwards as if something
    had come out. beak maybe? but can see teeth... more like the teeth
    have gone in horizontally and flexed.
  - the arm appears to have just twisted around until it came off
 	- fingernails on remaining hand are damaged, maybe machine grease
	- flynn finds the report
    - had some id on him
    - cause of death is "maiming"
    - found in a park up harlem direction (near the river)
    - quite close to the squat with the statue
		- animal attack or weird weapon made to look like an animal attack
    - "too close to a river bear nest"

- growing familiar with the territory
  - mapping out where they want to draw the edges

- dead people 
  - two kills that stand out -married couple, & young girl
  - chasing up Coopers
  - go to lib and look up stuff in papers
	- (exceptional success)

  - details definately covered up - initial reports in news, but 
    no followups.
	- Cooper's wife's surname was Harper, and M-E knows the family
  - Cooper was a clerk for a shipping importer, but not Emerson
  - Morland Importing
	- moving to San Fran, maybe tkaing up another more snr job
	- J.B. Borland was the medical examiner
	- "I didn't swallow"

- Wednesday: Julian
  - visiting Grey
  - Grey already has a folder on Jackson Elias' death ready
  - Elias had already contacted them
  - Julian mentions that some of the expedition was still alive (Brady)
		- chasing elias's death, not intending to publish
    - Brady not trustworthy according to Grey
  - Grey says that its not really in his clients interest to stir matters up
  - says that Erica doesn't have any other material about Roger's quest
  - mostly went to Africa to make herself available to the police 
  - Julian is looking for background information about the whole expedition
  - Grey asks what Julian will do if he turns down the request?
    - publisher, penhew foundation, pursuing other sources
  - grey suggests that its best for the matter to be kept out of the 
    public eye, and if Julian would agree to that he will pass on the 
    request.
  - Julian asks why Roger went on the expedition, Grey is unaware, and
    implies that Roger ignored him. Grey suggests it was one of ROger's
    gin soaked ideas. Perhaps Sir Penhew had more to do with the direction
  - julian makes a statement that he'll keep chasing this, and grey
    takes it as a bit of a threat


Wed night:

  - Terry head down to the hotel when the Coopers gots themselves murdered.
    - busy hotel, nice
		- pretends to be an investigator
    - goes around the back, gives a staff member a ciggie and some money
      and chats to him about it.
		- police say it wasn't done here (didn't hear it)	
	  - nighttime there's only 3 staff on	
    - can get in from across other buildings
    - police thought the staff were in on it
		- dad turned up and spread money everywhere, staff were threatened
      with being fired
    - maids found them
		- bloody car left in the back alley

	- it seems weird that these people were killed
    - much speculation
    - warning to others?
	 
	- Morland imports are two doors down from Emerson
	- everyone heads down there to check i tout
	- morland is large, has security guards and dogs
	- own their own steamers on both atlantic / pacfic - they
    mostly go southampton/NY
  - no evidence that Morland have anything to do with Emerson/JuJu house
  - much much much confusion and no firm ideas
	- possibility that the people that killed them were irrational.

- later phone call arranges an appointment at 4pm 

• Flynn and Johnny decide to break into AMA to get the records for Robert Houston, the psych. that went along with the expedition.
• In a semiprophetic way, Julian decides not to be involved with the breakin, because he doesn't want to take the chance of jeopardising his upstanding citizen standing.
• ("Are you armed?" "I have my kosh" "Why do you have a vorlon in your pocket?" "Its good as a torch" ... "there is a hole in your pants")
• They break in through the fire door with only minimal hassle.
• They head into the building and Flynn pushes the lift button without thinking, and there's a loud clunking sounds, then as they run for the stairs, slams the door. Flynn sighs and Blends behind the door with the kosh out. Johnny does the same up the next landing.
• Surprising koshing to the back of the head leaves them with an unconscious guard. They put him in an office a floor or so up.
• They break into the AMA records room without any fuss and grasp the indexing system. They find the files they are looking for, and they find the files for Carlyle, both Erica and Roger. (see handouts).
• They ransack through other notes from Houston for gossip or blackmail material.
• They look through records about Houston, they find an investigation because one of his patients killed herself. They find his file about her, and it seems a bit intimate - it seems there might have been some impropriety. His notes got terse again, and she suicided after that - he saw her the week she killed herself (July 1918).
• Much discussion about the expedition and why the doctor went with him and the relevance of notes.
• Mentions of books in Roger's notes, seem to match up to the ones that Flynn saw in the safe at the Carlyle mansion.
• Find records about Houston, after his death there was a lot of discussion about whether his records were medical records or not.
• Find Houston's home address. Find executor's address too.
• They go down to the 2nd floor and raid a doctor's office, ransack the place and steal a bunch of drugs.
• Go to the church, find that there's a crowd outside.
• Priest is claiming there's a burst pipe, everything's flooded, people can't come in, but the werewolves can smell blood.
• At the church, two guys come out, all bundled up. (police?)
• Terri tries to nonchalantly head for the door to go in where the police came out, but gets intercepted by two elders, who say they already have a plumber coming.
• Julian gets the policemen names as they leave (gift)
• While watching them intently, he sees one of them break off to speak to someone in a car.
• Terri uses sense motive and gets "Scared and horrified" from the two elders
• The car Julian was looking at opens and two of Harsh Truth get out - Hugh and Nathaniel get out.
• Julian flags the situation to Terry, who goes over and says "we've taken this"
• Lots of discussion about urinating on territory
• Hugh: Are you willing to fight to keep this?
  Terry: If I have to you - you're not using it, and you don't need it, and you're not defending it.
  Hugh: Really. .
  Hugh jestures at the policemen and says "take these two out of here". One of them looks uncertain about the whole situation, but the other is happy to work on Hugh's orders. Julian is completely unimpressed and asks what he's done wrong. The policeman says he's loitering, and obstructing traffice, and there's been quite a violent crime here, he wants them to come and answer some questions.
• Julian & Terri goes to speak to the priest, trailed part way by the police. Terri talks to the reverend briefly, saying the police just said there's been a violent crime here, and as a new person and an irishman, suspicion might tend toward him. He offers to leave to not cause trouble, the reverend says it won't be necessary, Julian says that he's not sure what' going on, there's introductions, the reverend says that he'll come and follow up later today.
• Police escort them around the corner to the police car, then drive them to the police station despite some thoughts of resistance.
• They are asked to sit and wait in the open public waiting area, and the two constables disappear into the rest of the area. Julian asks if they are under arrest and the dodgy guy says no just answering questions.
• Terry borrows a phone from the desk sargeant and rings Lloyd and sub-tool-y explains the situation ("friends of Flynn's"), encouraging Lloyd to go to the church to check it out.

- lloyd got a call from terry saying they were at the copshop
 
- lloyd goes to the church to see what's going on
- police still there, no parishiners
- peeks, shadow is darker than would expect
- has a look about for access to church
- a doctor comes out of the church

- sense malice
- sparkle of motes of anger and horror
- bit of people have same spectrum (cops)
- nothing terribly tense

(pager, we send a page around)

- doctor goes to car, heads off (number plate notied)

- lloyd finds somewhere isolated, changes shape to wolf
- waits for the police et al to leave
- finds the coal shute on the thin side of the church

- settles down to wait for humans to leave

- hearse pulls up. two guys walk out of the church, with a stretcher,
  lloyd can smell blood. 

- car pulls up with two of Harsh Truth (Thorsten and Nathaniel), 
  one of the seniorish cops goes to greet them 
- lloyd tries to make himself small, but Nathaniel spots him.
- Thorsten is scoping hisil.

- Nathaniel and Thorsten get let inside to see the church with
two policemen, other cops all leave
- No sounds of ocmbat from within. Locals start making themselves 
more obvious at windows.

- lloyd goes and walks up to the church as a "dog"
- can smell blood evidence from within pretty clearly.
- can just hear voices inside - the word "blood" does come up a lot

- cops leave, lock things up, Nathaniel looks for Lloyd, but
doesn't see him. They all leave

- lloyd goes down the coal shute, then changes to dalu.
- manages to clean off enough coal dust to not leave too much tracks

- smell of blood all through the church
- blood all over the wall, the alter, the roof. (no sign of ladder)
- seems to be enough blood for one body, but its been deliberately 
  spread/painted out as wide as possible.

- looks almost like its been deliberately desecrated
- loci feels like its been emptied - not sure if it was Harsh Truth
  or whether it was whoever did this

- lloyd goes into the hisil to see what he can see. He splats the
motes of anger/horror/etc
- no sign of the joy spirit.
- howls to try and get its attention

- no joy
- [bits of recording missing]
- definately flying done in the building to reach the roof. 
  Someone broke in through the window in the niche near the
  front of the church. 
- smell of pigeon, but no smell of anything coming through the window
- damage to window is weird, looks more like damage to lloyd's car.

- peeking into the realm with two world eyes, can see police 
  putting up do no t enter signs, then leaving

- meanwhile...
- flynn and johnny make off with their drug stash
- no on'es @ lloyds place
- they go to the park and do park things until its clearly been
  much longer than church would take.
- they swing by the church

- meanwhile...
- after 30 mins, Julian goes up to the front desk and asks where
  the police that brought them in ar.
- desk sergeant sends a uniform to go find the 'arresting officers'
- uniformed guy comes back speaks to the sergeant. some puzzlement.
- uniformed police gets the two uratha to come to the desk & speak
  to the desk sergeant
- apologetic about it , but the 'arresting officers' have gone off
  duty. Julian is politely horrific ("we were going to church when
  we were interrupted", "Dr Julian StClair") and the D.S. says that
  he'll speak to the captain about the confusion. apologises.
- terry scores a watch from the guy sitting next to them

- they swing via lloyds to see if they can find flynn and johnny
- no go
- julian's power says they are at the park

- everyone manages to assemble near the church

- lloyd feels a sudden urge to lick some of the blood and his stomach
grumbles. Feeling this is odd, he peeks. He spots the joy spirit
looking like a little girl
- he goes into the hisil
- the joy spirit look like a man with no pants
- first tongue: "you failed"
- l: "how did we fail"
- s: "you meant to protect, you failed"
- l: "err. how?"
- s: "empty"
- l: "not for long. You saw nothing?"
- s: "nothing here"

- (it takes an hour to corrupt Narelle)

- l: "yes, we weren't here"
- s: "then there were others"
- l: "other like me?"
- s: "yes."
- l: "they didn't defend it either"
- s: "maybe they will not fail at protecting. Stronger than you."
- l: lloyd waffles a bit
- s: "all for me!"
- l: lloyd breaks off the conversation

- lloyd removes a board and goes out the window, sneaks away.

- they meet up & brain dump.

- spirit is pissy
- damage looks like something is out to get them
- blood was on the altar/loci, but not concentrated there

- pigeon are not migratory. They survive in trashy buildings through winter.

- oh noes! too many things to do. 
- AMA breakin: info that the sneaky ones found about the Carlyle expedition 
(see handout)

- inverted ankh
  - normal ankh = eternal life, sun, etc.
  - inverted has implications of excess rather than opposite.
  -  (ie, too much sun)

- Harsh Truth
- pack's best chance is to make it too much hassle for Harsh Truth
  to try and hang onto 
- suggestion of blowing up bridges
- julian reckons that if they can clear up the mystery the other 
  packs might be happy to support them as much as possible.
- the loci near the park make it very valuable tho.
- the damage to the window & car looks a bit like the effects of an
Iron Master gift called 'ruin' - the car was a bit more than the gift
could manage tho
- what is it then?  destroyer spirit?
- its prob smaller than the church window, which was about 3' * 2'
- can fly, has claws...
- strong enough to carry human body

- possibly establish themselves in the community, like Harsh Truth
  have managed to.

- some speculation on locis of pain, apathy and frustration

- some discussion on getting control of the loci...
- lloyd becoming part of the church community
- blackmail on the priest
- blackmail on the elders?

- terri suggests that they could say they just happened to be there
  chasing the monster

- speculation about the tactics Harsh Truth might try
  - they like flanking people and coming at them from odd directions
  - purity/glory/honor end of the spectrum


- pack name speculation "Silver Chair"

- speculation about renegotiation with the joy spirit...

- could the pack 'buy' territory from Harsh Truth? Its possible.
  -not sure what they might ask for cost wise.
  - they do pride themselves on being suave, and in control
  - might have wound them up now.

- at one point - "Maybe we should concede the territory, we are
always running around hunting monsters"
  - Hunts-Shadows says "Wolf Must Hunt" into all their brains at the time.
  - brief discussion, half their totem seems to suggest its not that 
    important, but Dens-with-Secrets may have a different opinion.

- conducting a guerilla war might be funny, but probably not practical

- ages:
  voatw - generational
  harsh truth - 20 year old pack
 	crooked roads - 10 year old, heavily rolling
  still moment - 5ish

- julian's offers a plan to offer their services to clean the church
  - get onside
  - leaves them in the building
 
- monster speculation

- Ms Fernwhistle, the organist found the mess.

 [ going to visit priest in the afternoon ]

- looking for bodies.
  - many places have spread out coronial facilities

- while searching for bodies pretending to be a journalist 
  or a police officer?

- visiting morgues that night
  ($50 all you can eat)

- lloyd and johnny go in.
- two guys, oily, in need of a wash, playing cards
- Johnny shows his "press pass" ($5)  as a reporter for "The Truth"
- asks about a "grisley murder"
- the guys have been given clear instructions not to talk to anyone
  talk about that. 
- how clear? bit clearer than that. Yeah, about that clear. ($15)

- goes to bottom drawer (bottom cos it has sides)
- bin full of body parts, all disconnected and smashed up.

- lloyd checks it out
  - lots of greenstick fractures/tearing/twisting
  - no bite marks
  - claws (3 fingers, not 4)
  - very little soft tissue
  - negro kid

- spirit world is clustered with death and "investigative spirits"
- death sight spots a ghost, but its a fairly ephemeral thing, just
  a glowy white figure walking fro a drawer to the door.

- they ask about coroner's notes but the attendant says that he's
  taken them with him

- no clothes in the hospital and not with the body .. police prb have them

- speculation about facing down Harsh Truth vs running to London

- speculation about stealing Erica's books and running to London

- Mary-Elizabeth finding it hard to come up with excuses...
  - "We could pretend you were kidnapped... 'send 6 boat tickets'"
  - California
	- marry a lord
  - finishing school
  - make a zombie mimic and leave her behind.

back in tiiiiiime
- visited Rev Birmingham
	- its getting on to about 4, and there are more than a few 
    cars out the front.
	- door answered by his wife
  - Birmingham talks to the julian in the hall
  - Julian offers to clean up the horro
  - Birmingham takes them into the main room and they meet
    the bishop (da bishop!) godfrey (tubby older guy) and 
    deacon wellard (a bit obsequious)
  - also random other "elderish" men in the church.

  - julian makes the same offer, having dealt with similar things in
    foreign lands.

	- the bishop says its a generous offer, they'll have to talk with the police
  - most of the audience is relieved to hear the offer
  -	bishop is forceful in personality, if unassuming looking.
  - asks for julian's plans
    - gets a rundown of the plans 
    - mention of need for discretion
    - financial aspect of the situation? 
      - julian says that he has resources to manage, although he would
        be happy to accept any assistence
  - bishop takes contact information 
 
  - Terry spends the interview scoping the place out
    - photos include a young man in uniform.. but nothing later than that age
    - there's a notice framed "signed, president of the united states"
    - photos of a daughter getting married, 
      photo of same daughter, later, probably california 
    - house isn't well-monied, although it is well kept.
    - manningham looks frazzled
    - Know Name on the bishop -> Bishop Charles Godfrey

  - Birmingham sees them out, very warm farewell


- later that evening, check out the chopped up negro kid

- late that evening, Terri begins the process of ruining the cops life
  - cop is a married guy
  - known dodgy


* Monday *

Julian gets an early morning phone call
- Nathaniel, pack leader of Harsh Truth
- says "meet us in an hour in the park" against the side of the road.

Julian rings lloyds and passes the words
- pack get themselves together out there
 
- snowing
- 10 mins late... people mention the sneaky underhandness
- 15 mins late... lloyd starts to make noises about leaving
- they duck off to speak to Dens-with-Secrets, and she says that 
  no one has come here.
- 30 mins... lloyd is concerned about having the special books and
  evidences in his house. 
- he looks into the shadow, normal spirits....  oh wait, Harsh Truth's
  totem, "Cutting Wind" is here, which explains why its getting so cold
- car pulls up as they were about to go.
- Julian subtly pulls out his watch and looks at it
- Nathaniel speak to Terry.
  "here's what's going to happen. You're going to back off. You won't
   be fingered as being responsible for the murder in the church and 
   we won't have to make this incident public to the other packs. "
   Now, if you think this is not acceptable, consider how easy it 
   would be for evidence to appear that connects you (terri) and you (flynn)
   to the murder. Consider the reactions of the other packs when they find
   out that this 'hunt' of yours has been a cover for sneaking through and
   scouting out their territory."
Terri: This is part of our little hunt
Nathaniel: No, it is not.
Terri: You don't think? The body was left there by the thing we are hunting
Nathaniel: It /happened/ to leave the body in the loci
Terri: Its hunting us
Nathaniel: What sort of Uratha allows themselves to be hunted?
    Now, even if the situation occured that police evidence wasn't quite
    enough to convict - which is unlikely, as that would be awkward - the
    standing of various individuals in the local community would be greatly
    diminished, wouldn't it? (waits for Terri to nod). Difficult to
    interact with parishioners.
Julian: I thought we got on quite well with the bishop.
Terri: yeah
Nathaniel: Up to the point where the transvestite prostitute is arrested
    for the murder of a negro in a church? I think that relationship would
    come to a brief and unpleasant end.
    On the other hand, if there was a situation where a loci and some 
    territory required administration in our area.... there might be an
    arrangement that could be reached.
Terri: I think so. You have a broad territory. 
Nathaniel: We do. Our interests don't necessarily match up to the interests
    of the humans around the loci. 
Terri: We already do favours for your pack. Some of us work in the human 
    realm for your pack.
Nathaniel: You do. A continuation of that arrangement would be acceptable
Terri: We could manage the territory, we might fit in better with the tone
    of the area.
Nathaniel: A subservient position, of course.
Terri: I can accept that. 

Nathaniel goes to consult with his pack breifly, and the pack discuss
themselves. Lloyd and Mary-Elizabeth think that there's no point arguing, 
as their hunt is leading them overseas, either to london and egypt. 
Hunts-Shadows says "Wolf must hunt", almost seeming to agree. 
Dens-with-Secrets doesn't say anything counter to that statement.
Terri is inclined to say yes, as it leaves them in a positive light 
with the packs here, and they probably are going to have to go over
seas for a bit anyway. Julian doesn't want to give it over easy, but
recognises that its probably sensible.

Nathaniel returns and there is further discussion about the current 
arrangement and what the change in the situation will be. Basically 
Harsh Truth will take the essence the pack were taking, and allow the 
spirit to continue to remove it own essence - so if the pack want 
essence out of the loci, they'll have to negotiate with the spirit. 
Harsh Truth will be able to enter and leave whenever they want. But 
beyond that, the territory is the packs to customise as they will,
as long as that is appropriate.

The deal is sealed with a drink of vodka. Nathaniel says "this is
over." and they leave.  Julian is the only one that seems to have
his nose out of joint.

Meanwhile...
- the mangled corpse and the car appear to have been done by the 
  same creature.

- julian remembers that the reversed ankh thing might also have
  connotations other than "too much of a good thing".
  the ankh hoop end is the divine end, and it being handed to 
  someone is like offering them the god end... which matches 
  Carlyles dream ("and join me as a god") and the book Flynn saw
  in the safe "my life as a God"

- plans to steal erica's books and then flee to london

- The pack start to seriously look at going to London - organising
tickets, makign sure their mundane concerns will be set up for long
time delay

- (lots of reviewing notes and writing up a map of what's going on)

- how would Mary Elizabeth leave? She's the trickiest...

- "in the meantime I'll just eat rodents"

- Julian can probably organise with work to go to London/Egypt

- who is going to clean up - trying to keep it to a minimum, maybe
  just the pack (good excuse to buy purity renown)

- plans to steal Erica's books

- Master plan - "Aha!"

- "as if the children of gaia had been repeatedly raped by the uktena,
   and ended up with stockholm syndrome"

- "iron masters are the least crazy."
  "lies! Terri, Flynn, Julian"

- two weeks pass.
  - bishop returns contact.
  - wednesday is ok to start cleaning
  - alternative place of worship
    - presents the pack with a chance to make that permanent
    - if they weren't leaving ...
    - make it into a hall rather than a church?
    - not so practical. 
    - congregation might start drifting away long term
  - chipping off frozen blood is No Fun, but its better than hot summer
  - try and keeping to the cover story of "pipes burst"
  - could provide counter rumours to hide the truth.
  - wanna try and make sure the loci doesn't drift in nature...
  - about 20% of the congregation have come past the church and seen
    the pack cleaning things up.
  - "if you can't remember who the wrong person was in the last session
     it was Rupert"
  - no monster/pigeon attacks
  - pack still going to church @ the alternative venue
  - Birmingham avoids them a little, but they've made a friend of the bishop 
  - deacon is around a lot too, he's the primary contact
    - also nice to the bishop and it looks like he is greasing the 
      wheel to make sure that he does't get posted here permanently 
  - spend some time doing "inappropriate joy" things before they get 
    real tradesmen in, to recharge the loci, and to make the spirit happy

 
  - harsh truth shows up a lot to begin with, establishing the  
    situation explicitly
 
  - terri's plans to ruin the cop's life come more or less to fruition
    - photographd in compromising positions
    - in light of change of position with harsh truth, consider blackmail
		- but in the end, decide to show the photos to his wife and ruin
      his life that way, but not publically.
    - he isn't at work any more after a bit

  - Johnny and Flynn sneak into Erica Carlyle's mansion, steals the
    set of books without much effort.
    - leave replacement books there that look similar.
 
	- My Life as a God
    - Crompton, english artist that went to egypt and joined a cult
    - wasn't stable to begin with (or got posessed)
    - snippet describes a temple room
    - descriptions of sacrificing people, they seem realistic to 
      werewolves who have previously pulled people apart
  - Pnakotic manuscript
    - written in late 18thC english, hard to read, but modern english
    - writings about prehistoric, or perhaps prehuman writings
    - disturbing similarity to First Tongue in the grammar
    - perhaps written under "divine inspiration"?
		- "Hyborea"
  - Selections d'Livre de Eibon
    - in older french
  - a lot of the trip to london will probably be spent reading/translating
    the books
   
  - really all want to go to London on one ship 
  - M-E might need to enveigel an invite, and other people go on the same shop

 	- tourist tickets ~ $60 each, 4-6 days trip to southampton

- planning for trip to london

- gibbering about ken&tim's superhero RPGA group
  "Elf Man! Half man, half elf!"

- Mary-Elizabeth needs to get to London
  - Terri is all for Mary-Elizabeth marrying LLoyd.
  - finishing school, bumming along after another family.
  - goes around socialising with random social group over a few days.
    - most people say "don't be silly its midwinter"
    - Spain, Italy maybe via London.
  - slightly younger cousins, 16yo: Eileen
    - backwater family - not a lot of money 
    - have heard /some/ of the rebellion that Mary-Elizabeth has engaged in, but
      its a bit diluted.
    - Eileen is going to France, via London.
    - happened to be talking about it, and Mary-Elizabeth is able to subtley hint
      that she might be happy to come along and keep her company.
    - Eileen, tutor, older friend.
    - her parents are cautiously optimistic about Mary-Elizabeth coming along.
      ... they'll need to speak to her father tho.

- Mary-Elizabeth smugly heading home, not alone in the elevator
  - mr mcgovern - same floor, slightly leery at Mary-Elizabeth, and has been since her
    reputation started to slide.
  - leaning in a little close, has been drinking.
  - some thought of terrifying the man.
  - tries partial transformation while removing the coat but it doesn't work
  - mcgovern leans in for a peek.
  - gets lightly groped.
  - there's someone waiting at the lift, awkward moment.
  - mcgovern heads the other way, walking awkwardly 
  - Mary-Elizabeth is still smug.

  - she notices a sudden breeze when he opens his apartment door... odd, 
    given its night in winter.

  - the breeze appears to be coming from the janitor's closet at one
    end of the u-bend corridor.

  - clawmarks on the door frame, a little talony... right near the bottom
    not so much gashes as points, as if something has held the door frame.

  - Mary-Elizabeth goes to her apartment to call, parents and siblings are home, 
    can hear them talking as if it was normal...

  - rings Lloyd. Lloyd rings Julian, and others, and manages to get a hold
    of Flynn.
  - Lloyd heads through the park to see if he can pick anyone else up
    on the way, but no luck

  - Mary-Elizabeth gets changed into less outside clothes, then goes to check out
    the door/closet.
  - judging by breeze under the edge of the door, the window is open
  - looks around the floor, finds claw marks on the elevator door (solid
    metal, not mesh)

  - Mary-Elizabeth lurks in the hallway until curiosity leads her to open the janitor
    cupboard. The window has been smashed in. Snow coming in.
  - she's investigating the doorframe and all when she realises there's
    a neighbour right behind her, asking "what are you doing?, what's 
    with the window? There's a cold breeze, I'll get a draftstopper"

  - Mary-Elizabeth has a chance to check the claw marks, and they are fairly odd - 
    almost like its paused at the doorway and leapt into the hall fro
    some reason.
  - the closet is full of snow/water and the glass has been scuffed about

  - Lloyd and Flynn arrive and tell the door man they're here to 
    see Mr Cheswell. "Not expecting you" "We're here to see Mary-Elizabeth" "Ah.
    I shall just ring up".

  - Mary-Elizabeth's father sticks his head out from the apartment to see where
    she is. Tells her LLoyd (and his .. man servant) is here. She waits
    in the corridor. Her door keeps opening and closing as her father
    checked.

  - Lloyd and her go and look at the janitor's closet and the claws  
    and the elevator. Lloyd thinks the elevator has been attempted forced
    open, and thus the slight deformity and claw marks.

  - Mary-Elizabeth, in an effort to cover the potential embarassment, drags Lloyd
    into her parents house for 'tea'.  Flynn is waiting outside, but not
    happy about being left on his own. ("I;m his bodyguard" "that just
    creates MORE questions"... "we sell your daughter cocaine"... "he's 
    my personal physician, and has my brain medicine"). In the end he
    agrees to wait outside the door.

  - lots of awkward moments while meeting the Cheswell's  (wits 1.mmm)
    - "we're going out to the opera" 
      "which opera" 
      "um. its a surprise"
      "that explains why you're not dressed for the opera"
      "er... i had to come from long island. In my car"
      (which is better than "I'm /in/ the opera" a suggested solution).
    - escorted to the door where Flynn is waiting, mr cointreau's driver
    - hilarity ensues.
  - in the meantime, Terri is digging up frozen icey corpses. 
    Its not clear who is having the worse night.

  - on the way down the lift, Flynn is boosted up into the space, through
    the double trapdoor, just to see what is above the cage,

  - the surface of the elevator roof where the cable joins buckles, twists
    and warps, and the cable starts to unravel... the elevator starts making
    unpleasant noises and descending slower.
    - Flynn changes to dalu (yeah, heavier, good plan)
    - light inside flickers and goes out.
    - lloyd changes to dalu and starts prying the doors open.
      - the lift is still moving, and they are between floors.
    - Mary-Elizabeth sighs and prepares to have her opera gear exploded.
    - out of the darkness in the elevator shaft something drops onto Flynn
    - its difficult to make out what it is, but it has wings and claws, and
      swipes at Flynn.

    - Flynn goes to gauru form and the roof starts to collapse on one side.
    - lloyd and me manage to open the door wide enough that she can leap out
    - Flynn swipes at the creature attacking him - the claws tear into 
      material more like damp bark than flesh.
    - Lloyd checks out the roof and plans to pull it all down once Mary-Elizabeth 
      leaps out of the door.

    - a long elongated head with tufts of hair stabs out of the dark..
      almost a mole head but naked and warped... sinking its teeth 
      into Flynn's shoulder.

    - Flynn smashes at its throat now that he knows where to hit it

    - Mary-Elizabeth rolls out into the corridor and sprints for the janitor closet.

    - Lloyd grabs hold of the buckled roof and pulls down as hard as 
      he can. The flimsy, magically damaged surface comes crashing down,
      dropping Flynn and the monster into the elevator, shoving Lloyd 
      straight out of the lift after Mary-Elizabeth.

    - Flynn feels a sucking sensation and feels his blood flood out of
      him and into the monster things.
    - Flynn flails away at it
     - Lloyd changes to gauru and then leans into the elevator to grab 
      a limb of the thing. 
    - Flynn takes advantage of the creature being pulled half out of 
      elevator and bits straight through the neck, severing the 
      creatures spine, and ejecting lloyd into the hallway with the
      rest of the creature.
    - LLoyd shoves the body back into the car before the doors slide shut.
    - Mary-Elizabeth is halfway to the closet and hears "bing" as the doors shut.
      she goes with plan A.

     - Lloyd changes to human, runs for the stairs, makes it to the next 
      floor and pries the doors open. From below he can see the machinery 
      to stop the lift freefalling is stopping it from falling all the way.
    - Flynn howls a victory howl.
    - Doors are opening and people are staring at LLoyd 
  
    - Mary-Elizabeth loses some clothes and changes to wolf. She hears the howl
      and shrugs, changing back to human, and redressing.

    - the car sinks past Lloyd and he sees that Flynn is covered in 
      ash and leaking blood. There is a demon corpse sitting on the 
      floor. LLoyd lets the door slide shut as people start to catch
      the edge of the corpse.
      "What was that?" "I think... a ... turkey... got caught... in
      the lift".....

  - Lloyd sprints down the stairs and to the basement. 
  - Mary-Elizabeth heads for the stairs and hears him crashing down and gives
     chase to the lobby.
  - Lloyd hits the ground floor and finds the stairs don't go all
    the way to the basement. He bursts into the lobby and finds lots
    of people making "oooo" noises at the sounds coming from the lift
  - He finds the access to the basement and runs through it, jamming
    the doorstop behind him making it hard for the door to be opened
  - there's a bunch of space in the basement - burner room, a kitchen 
    for the restaraunt/dining area/club a floor up.

  - Mary-Elizabeth is in the lobby when the lift slowly comes down and people
    pry the doors open (despite her efforts to stop it). As the lift 
    goes past people trying to peer inside and Flynn leans out and
    biffs one of them in the head, and people stagger backwards and the
     doors shut. Flynn can hold the doors shut this time.

  - Lloyd pries the door open and Flynn nearly biffs him in the head
    too. The lift shudders past a bit further than the basement, leaving
     about a 1 foot step up.

  - they have a chance to check out the body - "not altogether crows, 
    nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor decomposed human beings"
  - they grab the bits of body and find that its really bitterly cold.
  - in the brighter light they find its skin is almost like burnt 
    leather, as if it was burnt to ash.
  - (loss of SAN)

  - they grab the body and stuff it in the furnace, but one of the
    kitchen staff bursts in before they've managed to get the whole 
    thing into the fire.  
  - Flynn whacks him in the head with a kosh and drags him away from
    the furnace to hide the evidence.

  - They flee the scene.
     "In a week we'll have been two black guys"

  - Mary-Elizabeth waits patiently for her friends, attempting to establish
    an alibi. Then she goes upstairs to make some excuse about why
    they didn't go ("car trouble", "hat fell off").

  - the wounds take longer to heal than they should be. They do kind
    of look like the wounds on some of the dead guys that they've found.


- While people are debriefing, Lloyd reminds people that tomorrow is
  solar eclipse. No one is quite sure what effect, if any that will
  have the Uratha. 

  - he talks to some of the other Ithaeur and they're not sure either,
    but appreciate the thought.

- Lloyd goes to speak to Andrew from Voice Across the Waters about
  maybe learning the rites that allows them to fight ephemeral spirits,
  As well as the summon gaffling ritual.

  Lloyd offers Andrew access to his flat while he's gone overseas (or
  at least 3 months), the ifno about the horrid things they've found,
  and some essence in return for being taught the ritual.

- midday Sunday....
  - Flynn is having Sunday dinner with his dad
  - Mary-Elizabeth is spending time with her family in the traditional after church time 
  - Terri goes to the church and then to Lloyd's place.
  - Julian goes to the church and then to the museum.
  - Johnny is at home.
  - Lloyd is learning rituals from Andrew.

  - Flynn notices the light going a bit strange, reddish, and points out
    the eclipse to his dad. Fascinating, what!

  - Mary-Elizabeth is at a house with family people, and there's a fairly science-savvy
    uncle who makes a pinhole camera so the family can cluster around and
    watch the eclipse.

  - light starts to dim out at Lloyd's place and Terri freaks because 
    something is eating the sun! Oh wait, eclipse. He heads down to the
    park to see how its going...

  - Flynn is pointing out stuff when he notices that his skin is going
    kinda silvery. "I'm going to the toilet, you keep watching" *runs*
    He can see that the normal auspice tattoos that show up in the 
    Umbra are coming through.

  - Mary-Elizabeth notices little Anthony staring at her. "You've got paint on your
    face". She goes inside and looks in the mirror. Nope, nothing there.
    She heads back out and keeps away from young Anthony. 

  - Terry is wandering through the park, and looking at all the people.
    No gloves on and he notices his hands have silver marks. That's odd.
    Hands in pockets. Oh dear, looking in a reflection he can see the
    silvery auspice marks all over his face. Oh no. He runs under the 
    bridge and finds that its ok out of the light.
 
  - Lloyd is in the park in the realm with Andrew and listening to the
    instructions on the emphemeral ritual when Andrew says "what did you
    just do" "er, listened?" Lloyd notices that Andrew has some weird 
    silvery lines moving down out of his hair line.. oh, wisdom renown 
    marks.  Showing up in the realm. Fabulous. 
    Two world eyes reveals a lot of lunes around and they are attacking 
    and consuming helions with great gusto. Clearly its something to
    do with the eclipse.
    Fortunately the two of them are in a secluded location and so they
    just sort of ignore it. 

  - Mary-Elizabeth has an aunt ask if she's feeling ok, because she's looking a 
    little... pale. She heads back inside and looks ok in the mirror.
    Looks ok. Rather than go back outside, she finds a window to look 
    out near the fire. Its near the fire, so she takes off her gloves,
    and when the light hits her she can see the auspice marks. Ah. 
    She decides to "go for a lie down".  

  - Terry scuttles across to the den they've made just to check that
    all the secrets they've left there aren't visible now. He finds that
    the tattoos are getting brighter as the moon takes more and more of
    the sun away. Heading toward the secluded area, he can see that 
    spirits are starting to be visible. He can't tell if its just
    ephemeral spirits, or straight into the Hisil, and hopefully the
    normals can't see this... he'd expect more screaming if that was
    the case.
  - As Terry goes to cross the road he glances to the right and sees two
    figures about 60m away. One of them is covered in silver netting,
    almost glowing from head to foot. The other is a black silhouette,
    like a hole cut in the world. They are standing next to one another,
    and appear to be facing Terry's way. If only someone would invent a
    telephone that could be carried from place to place, he could call
    the others.

  - the light is going quite brown/red. Terry successfully determines
    that he's going to be the only source of white light if this keeps
    going the way it is. Terry tries to sneak closer, but when you're
    brightly glowing, its hard to sneak.
    
  - Lloyd can see that the lunes around are taking on a strange aspect -
    they are getting a very oddd halo, reddish light.

  - Flynn is lurking out of the light and his dad says "oh, its entirely
    covered ... what's wrong with you?" Flynn glances down and finds that
    even tho he's out of the light, he is glowing. He flees to the 
    bathroom.

  - Mary-Elizabeth is hiding inside, hoping that everyone is outside. ("except for
    the help" "screw the help" "that's what got you in trouble in the
    first place"). Wrong! One sleepy little 3 year old stumbles out i
    into the drawing room and sees Mary-Elizabeth and asks why she's glowing. Its
    pretty. Mary-Elizabeth says that she should go outside with mummy and watch the
     moon. Out she wanders.
    Mary-Elizabeth idly wonders if she can slip into the hisil at this point,
    but it doesn't seem to work. the light suddenly goes to maximum
    darkness and she slips through into the hisil. Oh, wait, undedicated
    clothes. Oh dear. She slips back into the physical realm and desperately
    tries to untangle her clothing, which has all been left in a big 
    assembled pile. 

  - Terri loses sight of the two figures while avoiding hoomans 

  - as soon as the moon covers the sun entirely, all of the Uratha
    auspice marks become much brighter and obvious. They look brighter
    than they might be in the spirit world., but that might just be
    because its dark.
  
  - Lloyd tests the gauntlet and finds that it feels a bit permeable.
    Not gone, just travellable.

  - Lunes flow around all the uratha, smashing into them and charging
    them with essence, causing the auspice marks to glow even brighter
    and more obviously. The marks seems to almost float up and off the
    uratha. Some of the lunes mark the auspice glyphs in the air.

  - Terry bolts for the den and finds somewhere to hide. the tattoos
    glow through 2 layers of clothes and its quite dark so they are
    obvious from a distance.

  - Lloyd and Andrew take advantage of the massive amount of essence and
    practice the parts of the ritual that need spiritual energy.

  - "We should go to the observatory and smash it so this can never 
    happen again"

  - as soon as the sun peeks past the edge of the moon, the effect fades
    while they are out of the light, but it continues if they are in the
    light.

  - helions cascade down out of the sky, and get revenge on the lunes

  - the effect slowly fades as the moon moves awya from the sun.

  - Terry changes to wolf form and creeps to where he saw the two figures.
    He sniffs around and finds scents that match the two figures. They
    split up almost straight away, going in opposite directions. He tries
    to work out which one was the silvery one, and tracks that figure - 
    running for a bit, then walking. And then out into the street. He looks
    too much like a wolf to not draw attention from pedestrians all headin
    out of the park. He goes back and finds the same thing with the other 
    scent.

- A few days go past. Mary-Elizabeth manages to convince her father that going with
  Eileen is a good idea. Her mum is harder to convince, but she uses her
  best persuasive voice. They are perhaps worried that at least here they
  can keep an eye on her.  

- Lloyd does the renown recognising ritual for those folks who want it.

---