Cossack assembles the Garou at the Sept, and instructs them in some of the Rite of Passage - basically that its the point where they assume a place of adulthood amongst the garou. Cossack hands them a fetish, made from an old branch. Abbagail takes the stick and attunes to it. She can feel a call to the northwest, and into the Umbra. They move off.
The Umbral mists close as they run on. The branch leads them onwards. After a time, the mists close and they wander out into a very strange looking area. Piles of weaver web, stacked high and close together, with spiders all over it. They attack a few of the spiders and destroy them, but then opt to move on.
The fetish leads onwards, towards the airport. Entering the airport, all are struck by the foulness of the air, and the silliness of the lost spirits, trying to find their luggage. Much exploration leads to discovering a horrid muck leaking from an airconditioning unit. A Rite of Cleansing is performed, which clears up the immediate ephemeral gloop, but seems to make whatever is causing it mad. Something comes boiling out of the outlet, made of sludge and slime and foul vapours. The Garou twat it. So much for mood.
Onward further, onward, ever onward. The fetish stick leads them down into a creek valley and then along a slightly polluted watercourse. It stops again, right outside a mouth to hell... or at least that is what it seems like to the assembled werewolves. Black runny liquid runs out of a dark, square opening, surrounded by gothic carvings of rock. Kreige peeks into the Realm and sees that the corresponding place in the physical realm is an outlet pipe, barely a couple of feet wide. Something seems to be forming up in the Umbral cavern - Cole slaps it with his curtain rod which he has brought from the airport and it comes apart. The Garou opt to follow the trickle up the dark cave. As they travel along, it seems to burn and chafe their skin - all opt to travel in Crinos form.
Daylight ahead, and the pack emerge into a small depression. In the centre of the depression is a pond of the same gloop as they have been wading through. Half formed, liquid-looking banes move through the sludge, twirling around each other and around what seems to be a ball of shimmering light in the middle of the pool. Someone looks into the Realm and sees that they are in a concrete culvert, with a creek running in one end, and the water running down under a road into a tunnel on the other side. In place of the horrid pond in the Umbra is a big pile of barrells, some rusted, some cracked - they look like they've been dumped.
The Garou opt to clear the area of banes and then cleanse it. As they start wading into battle, they all start to perceive an increasing sense of the world around them - they can sense the Wyldness of the thing trapped by the Wyrm-tainted banes. Banes are engaged and torn to pieces, and in the midst of battle, Merlin drops from the sky and starts to peck and shred at the wyrmlings. The sense of the various taints around the Garou increases and then seems to focus under their direct control. Finally the banes are all cleared away and Bob tries to speak to the Wyrd spirit. It expresses a vague gladness to be away from the evil banes, and also purple monkey dishwasher. Bob tries to talk to it further, but it just whirls a bit and replies "cold spirals gumballs shattering" and floats away.
Merlin remains with the pack, having adopted them as his Children. The pack and its new totem return to the Caern, where the rest of the Sept await them. All celebrate the formation of the new pack, and the new totem, Merlin. Chris McNeil opens a barrell of Fianna brew and the party rages on into the night.
While they are sleeping, the pack all have the same dream: They are flying along through thick, dark clouds. They descend through the murk and find themselves flying over a landscape of vast metal towers, twisted walkways and machines belching fumes and smoke. Banes swarm everywhere as they continue to move on, now flying over a garden filled with people being tortured and a forest of evil trees. The view follows a black river to a giant fountain that spews black muck high into the air. Over a strip mine surrounding a toxic lake, the pack fly on. They are still descending when ahead appears a Gothic looking cathedral. The view flies onwards as the doors open and reveal infinite darkness inside. The pack flies into the darkness and all wake, screaming....
...to find themselves all over the caern in the Umbra.
They get together and have a bit of a talk about the dream. Most of the pack shrug and decide to ask Emma Teesdale, the Ritemaster. They describe the dream and she says she'll think about it and probably get back to them at the Moot.
The pack go and find Cossack and let him know about the dumping site and the fact they'd like to clean it up a bit more. He looks a bit surprised and says that he was going to let them rest until the Moot on Friday, but if they are up to it, yeah, it would be good.
Out to Westmeadows and looking around the site. The barrels appear to have been there for a while, judging by the rust on the lower ones. It looks as if they were dropped from the road above the culvert. They seem to be filled with an oily, viscious substance. The pack have the cunning idea of switching them - they take the old barrels away and leave barrels with water and sand in them. They take a sample to Aquinas Scales-in-Balance and ask him to see if he can find out what it is.
The pack sets up a rotating watch to keep an eye on the site.
Everyone gets bored with this, and they spend some of the day buying parts for a camera to rig it up to be triggered by a movement sensor.
Aquinas finds Freya and tells her that the substance is a concentrated by-product of plastic production. It is fairly poisonous and may be a carcinogen. Oh good, think all.
The camera is set up and the pack head off, getting on with their lives. Otis asks Winston to ask Gina to go out and get the tape from the camera late in the evening.
Otis finds that Gina has not returned and heads out to the site to see what is going on. Gina seems hypnotised by the jumbos that are flying over the site. She eventually drops a tape at him and stays where she is.
Otis and Corey spend a few hours looking over the tape. Bikes, kids, trees waving. It rolls on for about four hours all up, and the end bit is Gina mooning the camera before it goes blank.
In the meantime, Freya and Abbagail head out to the site and try and talk to some kids playing nearby. After a fairly abortive start ("Do you like to play games, little boy?"), they eventually are led to understand that some of the barrels appeared last year, before summer sometime, and that the last lot were dumped sometime around Christmas.
The Moot! The entire Sept comes together for the ritual of the full moon. The Moot begins with an Opening Howl and the summoning of Chimera, totem of the Sept of Sleeping Lore. The other pack totems are summoned and welcomed and thanked. The new pack totem, Merlin, is greeted and welcomed and the new pack formally presented. The Moot continues through its normal path - the spirit world and the Realm are united through Greeting the Sky. The Moot then moves to more mundane items. Emma tells the pack that their dream (and she covers it for the other Garou) is probably of Malfeas, lair of the Wyrm. She gives a brief cosmological lesson and no one looks happy. The pack tell of the dumping site, and what they've done to counteract it, and Cossack asks them to continue following it up. Aquinas mentions that there has been an increase in Wyrm-tainted drugs on campus and the Scryers are following it up. Nadine reports some odd breakins at the zoo - some animals have been stolen, but there's no obvious reason for it. The Hand of Lore are praised for removing weaver infestations from the Botannical Gardens. Kirsty raises the issue of vivisection at the University and tries to get the Sept to act against it. She is obviously passionate about it, but doesn't seem to have any hard evidence. Cossack evenually decides that Kirsty is welcome to act in a non-Garou fashion against it, but unless she can prove Wyrm involvement, the Sept will not act against it.
The Moot moves to songs and stories. Freya stumbles through the story of their Rite of Passage. Others tell stories and sing songs. The Moot increases in energy as each story grows more warlike and battle-heavy until the entire Sept is on the verge of Frenzy. They launch into the Revel and rage across the city in the Umbra, clearing away Wyrm buildup.
The pack give the camera away as a no brainer and switch back to paired shifts. The day is spent watching the site.
Kreige and Bob are watching the site from the Umbra when a nondescript truck pulls up and two guys get out. The guys move to the back of the truck and start to unload barrels, dropping them into the culvert. The two Garou watch carefully, and when the truck is empty and the back door is shut, they step out into the Realm in the back of the truck in lupus form.
The truck trundles along for 15 minutes or so, and then stops. Kreige and Bob get out through the Umbra (big clear area, devoid of life) and peek back in time to see the two guys who were driving the truck get paid off by a fat guy. They watch the drivers get into their cars and head off. The fat guy goes inside and packs up, slipping cash back into an envolope and then locks up and leaves. The two Garou run back to the Sept and collect their pack.
The pack return and scour the place. The site is Ridgeway's Trucking, in Thomastown, and the owner is Joe Ridgeway (probably the fat guy). They seem to do a lot of light truck transport - they go to where you want stuff moved, they pick it up and take it there. There are no monumental holes in the books, but there are discrepancies in the petrol and odometer logs over some weekends, beginning 3 or 4 months ago, and matching at least one of the probably dumping dates.
Some people head off and switch the barrels dumped for sand and water again rather than breaking and entering.
No overwhemling evil is discovered, and the decision is made to return tomorrow.
Early in the morning the pack arrive at Ridgeway's and watch from the Umbra. Staff arrive at about 7, including a foreman. Joe gets in at 8.30 and his secretary at 8.35. They go about being mundane. The drivers from the previous day are around and they are behaving 'normally'.
At some point, someone slips into the Realm and dumps some of the toxic stuff that was being dumped into one of the trucks, just as one of the drivers is around. He reacts fairly predictably - he looks around suspiciously, then drives it over to the water tanks and water blasts the truck clean.
When Joe goes home, some of the pack follow him and try and figure out if he is an evil spawn of the Wyrm. He eats tv dinners, so probably. Freya and Abby stalk Joe around his place as he sits in his underwear, watching tv and reading the paper. Joe goes to bed at 10.30, but takes his mobile phone into his room with his keys and change. Damn these workaday habits, exclaim the pack. Freya steps out of the Umbra and creeps into Joe's room, steals his phone, goes through the numbers that have rung him (after a player demonstrates you can do it with her phone) and records them all, before returning his phone.
Examining the numbers reveals that Joe received a number of calls during the last day or so. The pack spend some of the day hunting down the various numbers. Most are work-related, plus one call from a pizza place of some sort. By the end of the day, they have thinned it out to two possible numbers. The pack splits into two - one group goes to a flat in Elsternwick, and the other to a property in Eltham.
The packmembers who go to Elsternwick sneak up to the apartment only to find that in the Umbra it is a bare frame of weaver web. Taking their lives into their own hands, they climb it and peek, sensing like mad. Apparently a couple live here, in a 3rd story rather nice flat. They don't seem to possess any strange supernatural powers, but you never know.
Out at Eltham, they find that the house they are looking for is a Big Rancher style house, set on maybe 3 acres. It is set a distance back from any other houses, and has a reasonable view. It doesn't seem to exist in the Umbra, so the pack choose one person to peek and scout the house. Smelling says that only one person lives here. Lots of furniture and such made to be looked at, not sat on. Expensive stuff, too. Car lights light the house up and the pack watch as a 30-something year old man comes into the house in a suit, carrying a briefcase and laptop. They sense unnatural on him and come away with several wyrm-awoogas. Possibly they have their man. The man (Rudolph Chambers) is watched as he moves around. He pulls some pamphletts out of his briefcase, and they all seem to be about a company called Rainbow Inc - makers of plastic toys across the world. Oh, goodo.
Everyone shows up after the fairly non-eventful time in Elsternwick. Discussion is had about what to do and Abbagail suggests checking out their head office, in Melbourne. They pile into a couple of cars and head off, dropping Corey off at Uni.
Reaching the head offices on William St, they are foiled by the lack of building in the Umbra to sneak about in. Some of the pack give some thought to sneaking in via the three-storey building which does appear in the Umbra, but eventually saner heads prevail and instead the manufacturing plant is found in the phone books (the address of which being the sole goal of the head offices). Again on the move, and this time to Altona somewhere. The main manufacturing plant of Rainbow Inc ("A division of Rainbow International - Frankfurt, Osaka, Pittsburgh, Melbourne") is part of a fairly isolated small group of factories and plants amidst a sea of grass and thistles. Kreige attempts to peek and finds the gauntlet surprisingly strong. He vaguely sees the plant in the Umbra, with spirits moving about on it. The pack pull over, find somewhere not immediately obvious and step.
There is a sudden jolt and the pack find themselves in the dark Umbra, with a faint sun high above. Corey is there, and the Scryers too. Aquinas explains that the exceptionally high Gauntlet proved too much for them and its now Wednesday, about lunchtime. Suffering badly from gauntlet-lag (or something), they move over towards the chain link fence, not even considering it could be dangerous. It takes them less time that it does to read this sentance and they are over it and into the Rainbow complex. The Umbral manifestation of the Rainbow plant is scarily similar to the physical Realm copy. No spirits are moving about now, unlike last night when Kreige peeked. The pack move about, peeking and sensing.
As befits an industrial site, there is a certain amount of Wyrm-taint lurking about the place. However, there seems to be an excessive amount of it in the material world, even with the limited response from Sense Unnatural. The pack are concentrating on the offices at the site, and things such as the watercoolers, random chairs and air conditioning vents are tainted more than is considered safe. Freya also notices that there are numerous weaver spiders bound into the walls, and that the sense of the Weaver is quite strong. While Kreige peeks back into the Realm through the very heavy Gauntlet, the rest of the pack drag him around. They find Rudolph Chambers' office - nothing particularily wyrm tainted (well, more so than the rest of the offices) reveals itself. Kreige is dragged around further, and is about to step into the Managing Director's office when the others all yell for him to stop. Whilst the Realm is a fairly normal, if opulent office, the Umbra is filled with the constant drip of a brown and faintly off-smelling liquid from the roof to the floor. It does not seem to be welling out of any part of the roof in particular, and doesn't pool when it hits the floor. Even the windows which overlook a central garden have a thin film of the liquid running down them.
Looking at the Managing Director and sensing reveals a wyrm taint on him above that of the surrounds (already high). However, he appears to be a perfectly normal person, talking with his PA and the occasional person who comes into the office. Cole runs to his car and then comes back with an easel and paint. He makes Bob do some sort of outsider art, and is encouraging in a weird sort of way. While he gets on with that, the others check out the manufacturing area. They are hampered by their lack of knowledge about chemical processes, but nothign seems to be out of whack. There are a couple of big tanks which apparently collect the same bi-product that they have seen dumped in the culvert, but nothing particularily suspicious about them. The people are normal, but here, as in the offices, random bits of the environment are very strongly tainted - a coke machine, toilets, big urn, equipment in the production area.
Cole finishes his painting and waits a bit for it to dry. He looks at it properly for the first time and finds that amongst the constant brown rain, he can vaguely make out a bulbous shape, about the size of a desk, crouching down and hidden mostly by the surroundings. The factory is starting to slow down for the end of the day, and workers are starting to stream to their cars and head off. At about the same time, the Umbra is beginning to become more active. Spirits that seem to corresond to the factory workers begin to appear, a generic humanoid in overalls, and work the Umbral reflections of the machinery. The spiders that Freya noticed before begin to awaken and move over the structure - they ignore the Garou and seem to be adding more to the structure of the building - no apparent change is made, but they are working furiously on pre-existing walls and buildings. The thought is put forward that they are actually making the gauntlet even stronger.
More people leave the site, but Struthers and Chambers remain. Slowly the place shuts down in the Realm, and becomes active in the Umbra. The Garou decide to wait and see whether it is not Struthers, but some sort of mirror executive who is wyrm tainted. Lurking about in the garden outside, in the Umbra, they watch as Chambers sticks his head into the bosses office and seems to wave goodbye. Struthers is the only one left on the site, and he gets up and moves away from his desk. People watching rather borededly in the Umbra start to see a dark shadow in the Umbra, and become a bit more alert. The shadow seems to match Struthers' physical location as he moves into the outer office. Those peeking are watching as he touches the water cooler in that office and a dark liquid apparently oozes out of his palm and across the surface of the cooler before fading, or perhaps being absorbed. The pack run around the building, trying to get to Struthers (or his shadow) before he leaves the building, but are foiled by the distance. He is moving across the car park (in the Umbra, his shadow crosses a vast dead space) and towards the actual factory. Nipping back inside the offices reveals several items slowly absorbing the darkness from his touch. Struthers moves purposefully through the factory, touching items from time to time, and coating them in the wyrm taint. In the Umbra, where his shadow touches the worker spirits, they turn black and do not return to their normal selves for some time.
Eventually Struthers heads back to his office, packs up and heads out to his Mercedes. The pack take the license number of his car, just in case. He heads off, and they move well away from the site before attempting cautiously to step into the Realm. The pack move back to the caern, and have a brief break. Bob tries to use Questing Stone, but angers the spirit in his stone and it leaves. There is a brief consultation and its quickly revealed that no one else has the Questing Stone ritual. They revert to the human version, but find that their man is not listed in the white pages. They opt to find a caern elder and ask for advice, but luck out and find Ian, who is not terribly helpful. He seems to keep waiting for something, but whatever it is, the pack don't provide it. They express some concern over Struthers shadow and other spiritual matters and Ian suggests that they should go and see Emma, which they do. She is much more helpful and gives them a brief lesson on fomori - they are an evil merge of human and bane, which finds its way into the human's soul through cracks formed by evil thoughts and deeds. Once they fully join (and it can take a while) they are one being and it cannot be redeemed or seperated - death is the only solution. Emma agrees that Struthers sounds somewhat like an odd fomori, and suggests that it might not even know about the shadow. She recommends caution.
As Bob can't be bothered looking for a new stone spirit to help him with his Rite just now, the pack try for guile. They go to an VicRoads office, sneak in through the Umbra and plug in the number plate to Struthers' car. Despite a brief scare with a security guard, Corey and Cole don't have any real hassles and they find that Struthers lives in Hawthorn. Brrooom!
Struthers house, despite opposition from players, is near a hedge-surrounded industrial estate of some sort. It is a new building, all glass and split-levels. His Mercedes is parked out the front. The Umbral building is an older house, matching closely some of the remaining houses in the area. The pack move towards the site through the Umbra. Just as they reach the walls of the new material house, they crash through something in the Umbra. It is almost like sugar glass, except it is black and senses strongly of wyrm. They poke about and get no resonse from spiders or anything, but find that the black stuff follows the outer wall of Struthers' material house. Much peeking and peering about reveals Struthers, sans dark shadow, doing house-things like cooking and cleaning. He settles down with a book in the solarium (yes, its a real word) and they consider doing eerie things to him. Sanity prevails and they wait another couple of hours until he sleeps. Once he is firmly in bed, Freya starts a Rite of Cleansing.
About 2 minutes into the Rite, Struthers seems to stir, awaken, and walk to the kitchen. Freya tries to widen the circle, but prangs into the Umbral house and loses it. Struthers gets a drink from the kitchen and then looks around idly. As the pack try and figure out what the hell he is doing, he gets some noodles from the cupboard and a pot and puts the pot on the stove. He gets out some cleaning stuff from under the cupboard, and idly makes a few swipes at the bench before wandering off. He wanders around some more as the pack try and think what he could possibly be up to. Some of them watch him, while others prowl around the house, looking for clues. He has a lot of nice stuff, like videos, dvds, and a huge cd collection, artwork, etc. A lot of it is covered with a fine layer of dust, which is odd - it all looks like trophy materia, and there's no point in having it if it isn't maintained.
In the meantime, Struthers has gone to his liquor cabinets and sniffed cautiously at some of the spirits. He's drunk some of it, and left glasses of it in places. The pack begin to think he's either sleep walking or really weirdly possessed. To the bathroom, looking through medicines. Laundry, more cleaning stuff. The pack give some thought to leaping out and butchering him for being too enigmatic, but refrain at the last minute. Struthers walks into his study, picks up a whiteboard pen and writes on the walls "I know you're there, why don't you come out so we can talk". This sends the whole pack off into a spin, trying to decide what to do. Struthers walks to the kitchen, jumps up on the bench, and is sitting and kicking his heels. The pack debate some more. Struthers writes "Come on, what are you waiting for?" on the wall next to him. They finally come up with a plan to confront him, and try and peek to make sure there are no surprises. Bob peeks quite well and can smell something odd. She reports it back, and then homids all say "Erk, gas". It becomes quickly apparent, now they are looking for it, that the stove is not lit, and that most of the things Struthers has been playing with are flammable.
Sod this, think the pack, and Kreige volunteers to step out into Realm a distance away and use create element. This appeals to the pack's sense of humour, so this they now do. Kreige appears in homid nearby the house and uses create fire inside the glass solarium at the back of the house. The resulting explosion is quite impressive - a quick orange flash, and then a big blue inferno as the windows blow out. Struther is dancing about pouring alcohol on himself, which leads the pack to perhaps suggest that just maybe he's not working with a full deck. Struthers lays/falls down and seems to be on fire. Kriege heads back into the Umbra and Freya, who was watching him, starts heading back towards the rest of the pack when a shadow forms where Struthers was, and a huge, pustulent bag, covered in veins and warts, and with large spiky, metallic black legs comes out of the shadow and starts to cut the pack to pieces. Corey decides that rationality is not his best option and frenzies. The four members of the pack in immediate danger are chewing great holes in the bane, but it is taking its toll - every blow on the body releases a spray of evil black and yellow pus, which burns like acid. Cole and Corey are eventuallly burnt considerably by this gloop, but Bob leaps to their defense with his healing fetish, and also cleans up their battle scars. The bag of pus is being slowly beaten back, mostly by Abbagail "Call me a dork, will you" and it suddenly winks out. Those with some inkling on how spirits work suggest it might have used a reform charm, a common spirit power, which randomly teleports it away.
The wounded pack drag themselves back to the caern, after checking the Realm - Struthers' house is a wreck, and his body is looking rather unpleasant. They speak to Cossack, Graeme and Emma, who seem fairly happy with their performance. Freya wants to get the factory site cleansed, and Emma agrees and will organise it. Freya will be welcome to come along, as is any other pack member with cleansing. They are told to get some rest for the moment.
Freya heads off to work. The rest of the pack sleep in and watch the news. Cole deals with Gina. They start their clipbook of news articles, after the large fire makes a fair bit of coverage. Some of the pack check out ToysMightBeUs, the local large toy store. They find a considerable amount of RainbowInc products. They seem to be fairly clean of taint, except for a faint echo. Cole and Abby bicker over whether to buy Jordan a kazoo, and Abby threatens to buy Gina a case of the whistlepops. Cole retracts any statement he might have said that could possibly have ever caused any offense.
That night, feeling fairly frisky again, they decide to check out Rudolph Chambers. Before they go, Cossack suggests that having two executives disappear, as it was, in the same week would be bad, and to use some discretion unless they needed to act.
They get to Chambers' house to find he is, er, entertaining. They opt to use this chance to do a Rite of Cleansing from the Umbra. In the meantime, the others look about the place and find that he hasn't been celebrating or anything, although he has opened some wine and had dinner. Freya finishes her cleansing ritual, and any wyrm taint for, oh, a couple of kilometres, leaves.
Chambers calls in sick Friday and spends the day wandering about with a slight frown on his face. The pack leave two members on shifts to sit and watch to see he doesn't fall down dead or something.
