After much discussion about their current situation, they decide to hang tight until after they have met and spoken to the Jindabyne Council before they act on anything else. They get on with their paltry lives.
Thomas is hanging about at the Caern when a Moonbridge opens and a single figure steps through. Not learning from experience, Thomas doesn't immediately rend them into pieces, but instead tries to see who it is. It is apparently Carla Grimmson, the Get of Fenris Jindabyne council member. Ends-the-Quiet is speaking to her, and he turns and beckons to Thomas, who trots over. Carla says that she wishes to speak to him and his pack, so Thomas obliges and passes the message on.
Chasing-the-Night is in the grove, and he heads off at a trot along Johnson St. He is approaching Brunswick St when a shop window next to him suddenly changes appearance, becoming grey and almost opaque - and then it cascades down in a blizzard of small shards of glass, pouring almost equally into the shop and the street. A rather shocked shop assistant looks at Kimu, who shrugs it off as the last of the wyld earthing, and crosses the street to continue to the caern.
Once all the pack are assembled, Carla addresses Thomas and says that she understands that they are having renewed issues with a wyrmtainted bunch of mages. Kimu answers for the pack and there is a little click as Carla realises he is packleader now. Despite the usual Fenris racist attitude, Carla just raises an eyebrow and continues. She says that she agreed to lend them the assistence of a Get of Fenris pack as part of their deal regarding the Lake Eyre caern, and she is offers to lend them this pack now, to be stationed with the caern until the threat is removed. The pack mentally consult amongst themselves, and verbally check with Cossack, who doesn't object. Chasing-the-Night says that the help would be appreciated. Carla heads back via moonbridge and returns shortly with a group of 5 young Garou. She introduces Amy Dickson, homid philodox and packleader of the Hell Hounds, who are Winston Brennan, homid theurge; Sean Inness and Shu Leung, homid ahrounds; and Bandit, a metis Bone Gnawer galliard with only one arm. The pack are all rank 1, and all about 18.
Cossack suggests organising somewhere for the Hell Hounds to stay, and tells them to see Graham about keys for one of the ex-student houses across the road, which they do. On the way, Sean is being fairly rambuctious, and Kimu asks him nicely to show some respect, both for the caern and the fact they are in a cemetary and some of the people visiting graves are looking at them. Sean pushes this issue, and is totally surprised by being swept off his feet and onto his arse by Chasing-the-Night. The rest of his pack seem amused, and Sean is somewhat more restrained as they walk on.
The house in question used to be a kinfolk residence, but has stood empty for a time, so its a bit musty. Hell Hounds push past everyone and run inside, and start squabbling about beds. Oddly, Amy doesn't seem to be part of the scrabble, but is just conceded the main room. Holistic Approach look about to make sure the Get don't need anything in particular. There is a crash from the kitchen, and rather pissed looking Melissa comes back up the corridor, shaking her head. Thomas peeks into the kitchen and sees Winston is stuck in the broken pantry door. Melissa mentally mumbles something about grabbing her bum, much to the amusement of the rest of Holistic Approach. They decide to take the Get to Hidden Green, just to make sure there are no cases of mistaken identity. Melissa says that it would just take one phone call, and Scott would be there. The garou consider it and then decide to refrain.
They call Hidden Green and arrange to show the Hell Hounds about. They meet Drago and Felix and Irena in the garden and introductions are made. Fortunately, the Hell Hounds are too busy squabbling amongst themselves to cause much problems. Holistic Approach decide that the Get should have the afternoon off to get familiar with the city. So off they get sent.
Brett is wandering down Brunswick St in the late afternoon when some guy comes barrelling out of the alley he is passing. The guy is screaming gibberish and holding his head, and obviously not paying a lot of attention to where he's going - if he hadn't hit Brett, he probably would have gone straight out into traffic. He's dressed in a way that says bum. The guy is way spaced, but senses faintly of wyld. He doesn't seem to have a wallet or anything, although its hard to search while he's clutching at Brett and spewing gibberish at various volumes. Thinking that this is a little suspicious, Brett mentally mentions it, and the others come to have a squiz.
While Brett and one of the waitstaff from cafe next door tries to calm the guy down, folks appear from their various originating points and sniff about. They'd guess that the guy has been down the alley for a while, and has not had control of his bodily function while lying on a pile of cardboard boxes. There's no sense of magic, nor of wyrm beyond the normal "I'm in a city" amount. Thomas offers to take the guy to the Salvos while other people investigate some more in the area. Thomas drops the guy off at the mission and explains what the situation is - they promise to take care of him, and aren't staring at the guy with the weird eyes, no no. Kimu and John cruise Brunswick St looking for anything strange. Brett goes to the glade in the Realm while Dom and Mathias check it out from the Umbra. The thought is that anything weird might be emanating from here. In the Umbra the Glade Child is going nuts and growing green is everywhere. Then again, its a fortnight past the spring equinox, so this isn't unexpected. Brett chats to Gavan - he's been in and out all day, but Kylie and Brad have been up the back of the place. None of them had seen the crazy old guy.
They decide to have another look at the guy, so its back to the Salvation army for Thomas. There's a cop car parked out the front. Only the guys's not there - asking around, the nurse says that he got away from them and ran out into peak hour traffic on the street. She would imagine that he has been taken to St Vincent's hospital. Thomas dashes over there and glimpses at the guy - he has a big bruise on his head, bandages around his ribs and seems to be unconscious but isn't on oxygen or anything.
The pack poke at the problem, trying to figure out where this oddness is centred and head back to the caern again, mentioning this oddness to Nadine. She says that the Scryers mentioned that a tram had lost its brakes coming down Victoria Parade, but that's the only other odd thing. Chasing-the-Night is intrigued and goes to investigate it. There's nothing lingering about the tram, but it does occur to them that that particular tram route comes down Brunswick St. Everything is pointing to that particular street being a bit odd, so they decide to hang about and watch to see if anything else unusual occurs.
Dominique is hanging about at midnight, trying to look like neither a junkie nor a pro, nor a car thief nor a bus from Highgate. She's been kicking around for a while, and is bored silly. There's a bit of flicker up the road towards Alexandra Parade which grows closer. The street lights appear to be going out and then coming back on in a wave. The wave passes Dom and continues on to the housing commision flats, where it appears to break up and turn into random flickering. There is a faint Wyld sense around, but not a large amount, nor anything else. How strange.
The pack spend the day in the Fitzroy/Collingwood area, trying to pinpoint what is going on, although Brett talks to Emma in the morning and bargains with a Unicorn spirit for the Calm gift (he cannot spend rage until the Moot, or he loses the gift again). They observe any number of events, a very small number of which have the same faint wyldness to them. There isn't any sense of a particular spirit - its more a wyld energy than influence. One thing that does occur to them is that the changes and events are things which might have happened normally - things that are being frobbed are things which can be frobbed, and without the ability to sense the trickle of wyld underneath them, they might seem normal.
Looking in the hospital, it seems that the authorities have had more luck than the pack - the homeless guy that was hit is called Steven Adler, although they don't seem to have found any next-of-kin. Steven is still unconscious - he has some cracked ribs and bruising to the head, and probably concussion.
The incidents they find do not seem to be as centred on Brunswick St as they previously thought. A fire in the Collingwood Town Hall faintly tingles with the same odd energy that they have been detecting closer to the caern. The weather is being a trifle odd also - whirls of air and strange smells sometimes seem to waft about. The oddness is only a faint whisper amongst the cacophanous world, and its very hard to nail down.
Poring over a map, the pack find their eyes drawn to the Glade once again - its probably one of the Wyldest things in the area. A brief mental consultation occurs and they realise that no one actually sensed for anything strange at the Glade yesterday - they just assumed that the green, green umbral plants were going to be Wyld. A slightly embarrassed pack head down there. Chasing-the-Night senses and finds that there is a sort of clinging taint of this strange Wyld sense about the place. They decide to poke the spirit awake properly while other people check that the kids are ok. Brett's Calm gift comes in handy as he sucks Dom's rage almost all away to better placate the spirit.
The Glade child is mostly interested in growing, birthing, new life and spring as well as an almost voluptuous interest in bees. It does, however, know what they mean by the pooling Wyld. It thinks that the energy is seeping through from the inbetween places, through holes. They try and understand what might be on the other side, but eventually grasp that its not like that - there's no 'side' for it to come through. The spirit purrs about growing and rebirth and life, and it seems to be suggesting that not only is it using the energy to feast on, but when the energy flows through it is leaving some sort of metaphysical crack which the spirit can flow along. The pack argue about this - Brett is unsurprisingly all for it, but John doesn't want to see the city swallowed by some giant triffid. They try and sense in the Realm and find that the energy exists there too, in a sort of puddle. The Glade child is asked why the energy is here, but the best they can make out of its answer is that this is a weak spot, which leads to a theory that the weak spots are in the gauntlet - being a weaver thing, it makes sense that it has some effect on Wyld stuff.
John wanders off to beat up a pattern spider and make a talen which will allow him to sense small holes in the Gauntlet, while the others try and work out if the high wyld goes far, or has affected the Realm too much. They poke around a bit when Brett smacks himself in the head and says that Kylie came and spoke to him the other day and said that she was pregnant - it might be that the surrounds are affecting that. Brett, Chasing and Dom step out of the Umbra in the shed and bounce in to Kylie and co. They seem to be cooking and look a bit unsure about being able to stretch their food for 6, but Brett and Dom turn it down politely. They just sort of hang for a bit, but Chasing-the-Night takes the oppurtunity to sense Wyld and gets a significant (although still minor) spike on the Wyldometer about Kylie, above and beyond what you'd get from a pregnant creature.
Kimu suggests that he could show Gav and Brad some more defensive moves, but that the local park would be more appropriate - a cunning plan to give Brett and Dom time to talk to Kylie, which they proceed to do. She was fairly set on an abortion when she spoke to Brett the other day, but the fact he didn't automatically agree with her has given her pause. However, with more selfposession you might think a 17 year old might have, she points out that she is poor as a church mouse - not ideal situation to bring a kid up in. Brett says that could be sorted out some, and he gets the same "what the hell is going on?" expression from Kylie that they get from the kids from time to time. He also suggests the adoption possibility again, and Dom puts her oar in and says that she has had her kids - she was 3 months pregnant when they initially came and help them with the Glade, and it didn't slow her down until a month or so before she gave birth. There is some more gently persuasion brought to bear, but Kylie is unsure.
Meantime, John has made his gauntlet mapper, and is wandering around noticing that the gauntlet is much more rippled than their normal gross sense of its presence would normally reveal. There are subtle variations from place to place, and even from moment to moment. John tries to map it out. Meanwhile, in another part of Gotham City, Chasing-the-Night is teaching Brad some basic defense, and proper falls and dodges and the like. 8 plus months of working in the garden mean that Brad has a reasonable physique, and he's young and keen enough to want to learn to punch too, so Kimu holds his hand up and gets Brad to punch at it. Just as he notices an odd set to Brad's stance, the punch hits his hand and follows through to his body, knocking Chasing-the-Night flying into a bin. Brad and Gavan are understandably concerned, especially when Kimu is a bit dazed to begin with. They get him back on his feet and continue with something a little less surprising.
Once the kids are home and the pack has said goodnight, they chat amongst themselves over what is happening. Brett is wondering whether it might just be a spring thing - its just past the equinox after all - and they might be panicking for no reason. The other popular theory is that they might have brought something back with them. The situation isn't so evil that they need to panic into action yet, but they should keep an eye on things. Brett goes and talks to Cossack, who agrees, although he is concerned that technically the caern is probably the closest low gauntlet area, and he doesn't really need the extra stress.
The pack continue their surveillence of the situation, but nothing startling comes to light.
About midafternoon, Fujiko and the rest of the Ngalyod pack moonbridge into Sleeping Lore. She says that she is here to escort Holistic Approach to the Jindabyne Council - they are discussing the information which the pack discovered whilst in the Deadlands.
The Council meet at moonrise. The majority of their business is to do with Holistic Approach and what they discovered. As Chasing-the-Night gives the details of what the Watcher told them, Inanna, Darius and Scratches-at-Fleas all look more and more pissed off. When Kimu has finished, Darius asks Tjinderi to explain. Tjinderi is a little non-forthcoming, claiming it is a tribal matter, and that the Council was never intended to intrude into such matters. Darius says that if necessary, he will personally challenge her for the information. Tjinderi says that he is an Ahroun, and she a Ragabash - what challenge could there be between them that was fair and honourable. Darius loses his precariously held temper - he says that unless she informs the council exactly what hand the Uktena had in the events around Sydney, he will have her and the Uktena removed from the Council.
At this point, Grek calls for a break to allow tempers to cool off. The rest of the council not grinding their teeth agree and Darius stamps off, followed by Inanna. The other members get up and form small groups, talking quietly. Grek approaches Holistic Approach and after checking that he didn't suffer any problems due to their sudden approach through the anchorhead, they raise the topic of the current council. Grek says that Darius is very upset - Cernonous was his friend as well as a political ally, and he is not thinking things through clearly. Grek doubts that a move to disbar the Uktena would suceed, but even such a motion being put forward would damage the Council's stability - it is unlikely that many of the Council would support such a motion against tribal independance, as Tjinderi has cleverly made it an issue about this. While discussing the issue, Grek does mention that given that Tjinderi has made it a tribal issue, someone from her tribe could challenge her decision to not make the information public. No one looks at Kimu at all. No, no.
While this is going on, Mathias slips away briefly (Mathias only. When he returns, he suggests an alternative possibility that relieves Chasing-the-Night of the immediate burden of betraying his tribe - the pack, as designated Bunyip investigators of the Council (well, sort of - they did give their permission), could challenge Tjinderi to give up the information she posesses - it is essential to their quest. The pack discuss it amongst themselves, which approach is more likely to work, and produce the outcomes they desire. They finally decide that Kimu will challenge on behalf of the pack.
When the Council reconvenes, Chasing-the-Night stands forward before anyone else can talk and says that Holistic Approach of the Sept of Sleeping Lore challenge Tjinderi of the Uktena for the right to know the knowledge which she has of the events in Sydney last year. Darius looks a bit taken a-back, Tjinderi looks cryptically at the pack. Grek takes advantage of the lull and asks Tjinderi if she accepts the challenge from the pack. There is a significant pause as Tjinderi stares at Chasing-the-Night, and then she agrees. Grek suggests that the Council retire while the Garou discuss matters with the Master of the Challenge of the Jindabyne Sept, in order to determine a fair and equitable challenge.
The challenge is decided - each participant may summon up to 6 spirits in 12 hours. They will then take their place atop a tall pole with a platform at the top - the aim being to use their spirits to cause the other challenger to be dislodged from the pole, without directly attacking their opponent (no lightning bolting them, no). The Council organises for a sacred hunt so that each Garou will be bloated with gnosis.
Holistic Approach go aside to chat over who will take the challenge on behalf of their pack. Kimu speaks to his pack...
"Packmates. Our pack faces a challenge now, but I cannot help feeling that it is I who have brought us here, and I upon whom the burden (as pack leader and as a member of the Uktena) should fall.
"There are several in our pack who could face this opponent, despite her position and experience, and uphold the honor of our pack and those we are seeking to protect the memories and claims of. But I cannot help feel that for another to stand at the fulcrum would be to hide from the fate that I have been dealt.
"And yet, for all the same reasons, I am certain that my mind is clouded; I can feel the weight of the importance of this challenge pushing me towards instinct and away from consideration.
"I know the ways of spirits, how to call them, how to bind them to my will, how to speak with them. I also know the ways of the body, and find one's balance in adverse situations. And of any of us, I should know the ways of the Uktena themselves. Our opponent has been my mentor in this country. And finally, I have rank and position to claim this challenge as my own.
"And yet others of us have similar skills, if not the position, and are one step removed from the centre of the situation.
"I need counsel. I need your eyes to help me see clearly the path ahead. What do you say?"
There is much discussion over who should take up the gauntlet for the pack, but in the end, John chooses (is chosen) as theurge to take the challenge. Once the sacred hunt is complete, they discuss what spirits to summon - eventually it is decided to summon a fear spirit (to make Tjinderi want to retreat), a gum tree spirit (to help keep the pole upright), an earth elemental (to dig Tjinderi's pole out) and Kanau (to be a generic help-me-out spirit). Given the limited time available, John applies himself fairly intently to the summonings. The fear spirit requires that John submit himself to true fear at some near point in return for its help. The gum asks XXX, and the earth elemental is just happy to help the Garou.
The challenge takes place at dawn. Tjinderi has summoned an ice spirit and it sinks into the rocks and earth below her pole, freezing it solid. John calls upon gum to help him, and roots extend from the wooden pole into the ground, and branches form a nest about him. A storm starts to manifest around the combatants, and shake John's pole. He calls on his elemental to start excavating the dirt around Tjinderi's pole, but it is quite frozen. Weaver spiders crawl all over Tjinderi, anchoring her to the pole. John asks Kanau to fly around and distract Tjinderi's concentration, while sending his fear spirit to frighten Tjinderi. Her face pales considerably and she breaks out in a sweat, but does not flee. Flickering, dreamlike shapes appear around John, glimpses of nightmares and he is forced to concentrate strongly to not look at them. He asks Kanau to help his concentration, but Kanau is having trouble with the storm. A cat-legged serpent, Uktena, slides down from Tjinderi's pole and over to John's, climbing the branches. It looks deep into his eyes and John realises what a good idea it would be to jump off, so he breaks free of the branches and leaps off the pole.
A somewhat shaken-looking Tjinderi climbs down as the spirits disperse. She does not wait for the Council to reconvene, but simply says to the assembled Garou that as far as she is concerned, this matter is concluded. Darius looks dark and storms off, trailed by a few of the other Council. Others mill about for a time. Grek speaks to the pack, saying that it seemed a close thing to him, and it was still a better outcome than the Council being split - something that not all of Holistic Approach agree to.
The pack moonbridge back to the cemetary caern (Kimu only) and relate what happened.
John is still feeling drained after the challenge and rests (John only). The others get back with their lives. Melissa bleaches her hair blond and then makes it green and purple. Thomas goes visiting friends ("Er, yeah, they're contacts. Cool, huh"). Chasing-the-Night meditates at the caern. Brett and Mathias try to see if the Wyldness is increasing and speak to Hell Hounds briefly, who are looking into various wyrm-related matters in the city.
John says demons come to him in his dreams and tell him what to do. More explicitly, he has received information that there exists an item called the Chandeen Mirror which allows anyone to look into the Shadowlands. Why would they want to do that? Well, apparently much of the demon-mages magic works through that Realm, and they may be able to see and trace side effects of their wizardry. Sounds neat, say the pack. Where is it? John's information says that it was last held by a Julius Victor Ademko, who lives in Drake's Rill in east Gippsland.
Rather than rushing straight out there, the pack try and find what info they can on Ademko in Melbourne - apparently he's dead, and has been for about 23 years - he was killed by injuries resulting from a car accident. It lists his home address though, which might be useful. They shrug and decide to go out there anyway - no one is listed as a next of kin or anything as useful as that.
Four hours drive later reveals that Drake's Rill is a dozen buildings along the side of the old highway between Bairnsdale and Omeo, now bypassed. A drive-through shows that the town consists of an old Mobil station, a grocery/mixed business, a pub and a church as well as a dozen or so houses that they can see. Brett drives on out of town, and down a fireaccess track, and he and some of the pack come back through the Umbra while the others stop in town.
John, Melissa, Dom and Thomas decide to try the church/cemetary first, while Chasing-the-Night, Mathias and Brett lope out to the the address on the death certificate. At the cemetary gate, John finds a map of who is buried where and finds Julius Victor Ademko's grave fairly quick smart. Thomas senses and gets a faint deadlands sense to the entire cemetary, and starts prowling around. Ademko's grave is fairly plain, and sort of half overgrown - it says that he was born in 1921, and died in 1979 (which they knew), but it doesn't list "son of ..." or "loving father of ..." or anything. Annoying. Dom wanders off to chat to the priest on the grounds she's the least freaky looking.
Reverend Edwards is a nice man about 35. He says that he's only been here for about 8 years, and he's only here twice a week (Sunday and Monday) usually. He says that Reverend Long was here before that, but he passed on a few years ago. Thomas sense Rev Edwards and finds that he too has a deadlands taint, stronger than the area around the cemetary. A woman comes to the door and asks if she could speak to the Rev for a little while. Thomas demands that someone go and listen in, and eventually Melissa wanders over past them while looking at flowers - she says its nothing, the woman is just asking for advice, now stop being paranoid. Rev Edwards returns in 10 minutes or so, and euggests that they should speak to Constable Gillespie, or to Mrs Sandstrom at the grocery store - both of them are long term residents and might be able to help them out.
Meanwhile, out at the property, the rest of Holistic Approach find that the house and all appears to have been burnt out and overgrown. Its easy enough to find the foundations of the house, and what was probably a shed, but everything is overgrown. It sort of looks like bushfires might have come through. It also looks like there was a cellar of some variety in the main house, but its half filled with rubble, so no one is too keen on jumping in. They sniff around the house, but don't find any human scents. While Chasing-the-Night prepares to use his scent of distinction gift, Brett and Mathias continue exploring around.
Mrs Sandstrom appears to be your usual country-Australian-soapie-storeowner, and is happy to chat with Dom about stuff. She says that Ademko did live out here, and he was a painter or something. She thinks he came out from Europe after the war, but he was never particularly gregarious - he had the occasional visitor, usually other European men, but he didn't join in the town activities much. When queried about the painting thing, Mrs Sandstrom says that he actually has a painting up in the pub, something that he donated to the town at some point - its a landscape of the entire town from up the valley a bit. But basically he was coming back from Bairnsdale and on a foggy night, lost control of his car on a bit of windy road leading into town, and was killed. Terribly tradgedy, police were around everywhere for a couple of days because no one knew who his relatives were or anything, and then with Mr Ademko's houseburning down a couple of days after he died. 'Course that part of the bush has a bad reputation - a little girl was lost out that way, oh 30 years ago, and then there was that business with the hitchiker. Its just a ill-aspected bit of the world, mark my words.
Figuring that things are looking a bit weird, the pack retire to the pub. They chat with the pub owner, Mr Jensen, who is happy to point them out the painting, which is indeed not bad. He asks if they are staying in town overnight, saying that he has two rooms, and they aren't occupied, so he could rent them at cost, with breakfast thrown in. The Garou agree, and sit down for counter tea too. There are a couple of other patrons lurking about, and a policeman comes through and has a chat before heading off again. All very rural.
Back at the ranch, er, ruin, Chasing-the-Night lets his senses open up to the world around him. He starts to get little flashes of the past as his grasp of the world around him shifts. As strong senses of Wyrm and magic start to ooze from the surrounds, Kimu sees visions of a silver-haired man; in front of a fire; lit by firelight and carving something into the chest of an upside down man hung from a tree; under bright moonlight holding something dark and wet up to the sky above a mutilated corpse; of a wall of bones in the dark.
The pack discuss this - its becoming clear that Ademko (if that's who Kimu saw) is not a nice man. While Brett, Mathias and Chasing-the-Night investigate the Umbra at Ademko's, the Garou back at the inn chat with Jensen for a bit longer, asking more about Ademko and the painting. Apparently he showed up just after WWII, and built the house out east. He never mixed with people much, they just figured English wasn't his first language, although he spoke clearly enough. The town was having a fete one year and Ademko suddenly showed up with the painting and gave it to them to auction. Its quite big (10' by 5') and is a painting of the valley from up north. Jensen points out the detail - you can identify some of the people, even though they are tiny on this scale. The painting isn't from Ademko's old place, its from a lookout towards Omeo. The Garou begin to become a bit suspicious of the painting and check it out in detail. It has a lingering supernatural sense, a faint mingling of magic and wyrm. They can't really make it out in the Umbra, although it doesn't look too jolly.
Mathias becomes aware that he is being watched. He extends his senses and can feel that there are several sources of wyrm about him. Looking closely, he can see that the closest one is a possum, up a nearby tree. Its eyes are glowing faintly as it watches their movements around the clearing. Another source appears to be a second possum. A fainter source might be a wallaby or kangaroo across the road. Feeling that this is a bit disturbing, they mentally confer - they don't want to reveal all their abilities if they are being watched, so rather than changing from lupus to homid, Chasing-the-Night will come to town to look at the painting and Thomas will come out to the burnt house to climb after the possum.
Jensen makes it clear he wants to close up, and so the Garou head up to their rooms. Once there, they steps sideways and examines the painting in the Umbra. It appears to be the same image, except it is shifted in odd ways - where the material image is a bright sunny day, conveying a sense of contentment and goodness, the umbral image manages to somehow project a more disturbing sense of being watched, of the townsfolk scuttling to do their errands before returning safely home. It senses more strongly of wyrm in the Umbra, but less strongly of magic.
As Thomas runs along, he becomes aware of a small kangaroo watching him from up ahead. It bounds off into the bush before he gets too close. He and Chasing-the-Night pass one another and wave. When Thomas reaches the burntout site, he glances up the tree and confirms about the glowing possum. Thomas starts climbing the tree, and the possum retreats higher, watching him all the time. Just as Thomas corners it high in the air, the glow fades and the possum starts to behave as expect. The sense of wyrm also fades quickly. While they can sense no nearby wyrm, the Garou move into the Umbra. As they saw with peeking, the area is more shadowy than it should be, and a sense of wyrm lingers. They decide that hanging out here hasn't much else to report and start to head back to town.
Chasing-the-Night reaches the edge of town and joins his pack in the Umbra to look at the painting. He examines it and says that the magic is faint but was probably deliberate. They have a brief wonder about the "mirror" and wonder whether this is it, but in the end the Garou decide that its probably not strongly magical or spiritual enough (although there is an argument for "because its not turned on"). The Garou packmembers in town return to the material world and wait for the others to return. John notices an owl sitting outside the window, with faintly glowing eyes. He pulls the blinds while Thomas makes comments about tribe totems. They are still sitting in their rooms when they hear a creak on the stairs as if of someone ascending. The Garou assume the "ambush the ambusher" position in their room and wait. The sounds move up the stairs and to the other door, which creaks softly open... and then down the stairs again. This is communicated to the rest of the pack, and Thomas sprints along at great speed towards the hotel. In the meantime, they investigate the rooms nasally and come to the conclusion that the stair-creeping individual was probably Jensen.
Thomas shows up and steps sideways into the room, although it feels a bit harder to do so than he would expect. He creeps out and tries to follow the alleged intruder - all the signs show him that the man headed further into town, and so Thomas starts to move from shadow to shadow after him.
The others, not so intent on their prey, are finding it harder to here the mental chatter of their packmates, and eventually it fades. Trying to get a sense of the Gauntlet reveals that it has become considerably stronger, to the point where moving between Realms has become impossible. Cut off from one another, the umbral Garou decide to run out of town and find the edge of the effect and then run back in the Realm. It takes about 10 minutes to sprint to a point where they can move safely into the material, almost all the way back to their car. On the way back, Brett spots/feels something watching him from one of the houseyards, and leaps towards it, to find nothing there. Weird. They return to the hotel and compare notes - following the male scent leads to the back door of the hotel.
Thomas has been following the scent of the man along as it leads towards the cemetary - obviously his hunch earlier had been correct and the church was tainted. He sneaks from shadow to shadow until he stands within the grounds of the cemetary. Glancing around, he can't see anything particular askance - until he sees a pair of eyes at the edge of the forest that reaches towards the church grounds, reflecting back the white streetlight. And then another pair. And another. It appears that a small pack of dogs are lurking out there. Oh, that's ok. Then the reflected light dims and takes on a redish hue. That's not ok.
The dogs start heading towards Thomas, apparently trying to herd him up against the wall of the church. He decides to have none of that rubbish, and instead engages in a set of leaps and bounds off the headstones and tombs to fling himself onto the roof. Which, unfortunately, is much steeper and less house-roof like than he thought. By spreadeagling on the roof and getting as much surface area attached to the roof as possible, he is able to lay there and not slide down to edge of the roof. The dogs appear to be waiting for him underneath.
As he lays there, trying to sort out what to do, something lands with a heavy crash onto his back, and bites at his neck. Thomas begins to helplessly slide down and slips straight off the roof. He lands heavily on the edge of one grave, and on his back, but whatever precipitated (haha) this accident is gone. The dogs rush in to attack and start tearing at his sides. He flips to hispo and defends himself in the true Garou style. Chunks of canine fly everywhere.
Meanwhile, back near the pub, Mathias and Brett hear the deep throated growl of a violent and loud battle. They decide that it must be Thomas, cursing again the lack of a telepathic link, and head that way as quickly as they can.
Although their numbers caused him some initial difficulty, Thomas continues to chop holes in his attackers, including biting the head clean off one of the dogs, spraying the surrounds in arterial blood. Eventually he manages to maim, wound and kill enough to flee himself, bounding over the fence and into the woods to lay down and heal.
Mathias and Brett reach the cemetary at a sprint, trying to figure out why no lights have come on or people come to investigate. They find the wounded and dead dogs, and Thomas's smell and blood. Brett heals the wounded dogs while Mathias drags the bodies away before returning to ask them questions - in essence, the dogs came and attacked the bad thing that was here, which seems to have been Thomas.
Thomas is laying down and trying to make sure he doesn't heal up with dirt inside him when a 6th sense screams "danger!". He rolls to one side as something drops out of the trees into the place where he was. Thomas gets a glimpse of a humanoid figure, with glowing red eyes and a bloodied mouth before it leaps on him again, attempting to bite him. Thomas swings a claw its direction, but as his arm passes through that space, the figure dissolves into a redish mist and floats up into the sky.
Mathias and Brett hear the hubhub and run over to Thomas. He explains what happened, leading to the Garou deciding that their opponent looks awfully like being a vampire. Oh good. They can't see where the mist went, and trying to use sense wyrm just reveals a generic wyrm taint to the whole area, reasonably strong. Brett climbs one of the nearby trees and is scoping the horizon when an eight sense warns him of danger. He drops straight out of the tree and plunges to the ground - above him the tree moves as if a large weight was just added to it, accompanied by a hissing sound. They look back up the tree, but whatever it was is gone.
The garou figure its time to regroup. Or not. Brett heads back to the hotel. As he's loping through the outskirts of town (sort of the out miniskirts, cos its small), a door opens and one of the townsfolk comes out carrying what looks like a large butchers knife. They are moving a bit slower than normal, and a little woozily, so Brett manages to get past them. More people seem to be getting up and heading out into the street, all not looking 100% and sensing of wyrm and magic. Oh good. Brett goes to cross the road to the pub when he sees Jensen step out from some shadows and point a shotgun at him. Brett rolls to one side as the shot goes off. Jensen takes aim again, but the gun just makes a click sound. Jensen cracks it open to check the cartridge but by that point Brett is already moving, and slams into him, scuttering the gun away and leaving Jensen unconscious
John, Melissa, Dom and Kimu are alerted by the fraca, and head downstairs in time to see Brett coming their way. He lets them know the low down as they see more townsfolk heading towards them. John and Dom opt to head west out of town and curve around to where Thomas is, while Brett, Chasing-the-Night and Melissa will head north along the main road.
In the meantime, Mathias and Thomas, having also heard the shotgun, start heading into town. They slow when they see all the people coming their way, including the policeman with his gun, and decide to retreat. The humans that were heading towards them follow for a bit, but then head back towards the main part of town. Figuring that they are being watched from above, Thomas scopes the sky - he spots something that might be, well, presumably Ademko.
As they are leaving northwards, Brett realises that the paiting might be controlling the people, so he heads back into the pub. Melissa and Chasing-the-Night wait out the front while Brett changes to hispo, takes a running leap and crashes into the wall, dragging the painting down. As he's tearing it up with his claws, there is another shot outside and a howl of protest from Melissa. Her and Chasing-the-Night come running on, and she says that there's a policeman out there with a pistol and the fucker shot her. The three Garou run out the back of the pub and into an ambush. Five humans are there, some with guns, some with melee weapons. Brett takes off at speed and crashes into one of the rifle-weilders, as does Melissa. Chasing-the-Night isn't as lucky, and catches a wood axe in the spine, damaging his hind legs. Thinking quickly, Melissa flicks to crinos and picks her packleader up, flinging him into the darkness and leaping after him. Brett heads back to join the others, but the town is slowly following him.
There is a brief recap. They could try and lead the humans out of town, in the hope that the spell controlling them only goes as far as the gauntlet problems. They could try a cleansing, but that takes a while and they have to circle it (and spend shittins of gnosis for the whole town). While they are watching, John spots that a smaller group of humans have dropped back from the others and seem to be being hugged by another human. Wait, that's Ademko. Ugh, that means he's probably taking blood from them, following the whole Vampire theory. The pack decide to go with plan b.
Mathias gives off a Call of the Wyld (well, the Silver Fangs know they are here now) to bolster his pack and they charge towards the mob. As they approach, Mathias and Thomas peel off while the rest of the Garou bitchslap their way through the humans, breaking limbs, cracking skulls and generally causing horrific injuries to the poor controlled minions. At least two people are killed with single blows, and others are flung out of the melee at great speed.
In the meantime, the group of men around Ademko become aware of the Thomas-bullet heading their way and close ranks. Thomas bulls his way through before they can manage to link arms, followed by Mathias and his Clap of Thunder gift, knocking humans all over the place. Only the two outside men stay upright (stupid splits, I hate that), and one of them is still holding his smashed shin. The other manages to fire a shot at Mathias, but it only hits skin. Thomas and Mathias crash into Ademko pointy bits first and the air is full of chunks of bloodless flesh before it collapses into a mist and starts drifting away. Thomas follows and finds his ankles being nibbled at for his troubles as gnosis bleeds away. He looks up to find that a group of men have broken off from the general melee and are heading his way.
Mathias tries to disarm the man with the pistol and gets showered with dirt as the new revived Jensen misfires with the shotgun. A few townsfolk are sprinting his way too, making life exciting from all directions.
Melissa and Chasing-the-Night bound out of the brush towards Jensen as Mathias rushes at him and cops a shotgun in the chest for his efforts. Yay Luna's Armor. Mathias rips the shotgun out of Jensen's hands as it fires again and gets burnt paws. More shooting and running back and forth and sweeping people's legs out from underneath them goes on.
While Mel, Mathias and Kimu are crippling the remaining uninjured townsfolk, Thomas follows Ademko along as he drifts. Suddenly the mist seperates out into clumps and each clump becomes a rat. Literally hundreds of rats are running about the place. Thomas tries to stomp them for a bit, then tries to follow/chase them. Brett runs over and tries to collect as many rats as he can, noticing in passing that their eyes are glowing red. Thomas follows rats up into town only to find they are diving into the storm water drains.
John and Dominique decide that they should do what they can for the fallen townsfolk. At least 3 of them are dead, and a few others are on the brink. They move about with mother's touch and are joined by their packleader with his fetish and manage to minimise all the severe injuries, leaving only minor breaks and internal injuries. John and Melissa volunteer to take the three bodies out of town and bury them.
The rest of the Garou regroup and talk about ... wait, where the hell is Brett? Thomas sighs and volunteers to go and find him, easily picking up Brett's scent. Thomas finds Brett slumped against a tree, in homid, with bloody marks on his neck and shirt. Dammit. Brett is easily woken, but doesn't remember anything other than following the rat. They try to pickup the trails of the rats, but they go in 3 different directions, leading into little ratty holes or similar places Garou can't follow. One of the trails heads back into town.
Kimu, Mathias and Dom meet with Thomas and Brett on the north west road out of town and discuss what to do. They figure the vampire must have some point of power, and they try and figure out where it might be. They look at the church and the war memorial and the painting in the pub, but can't sense any particular spikes of wyrm or magic - just an overall magic, wyrm and demonic sense to the whole town. Thomas pulls the phone lines out just in case someone wants to call for help.
They are getting a bit frustrated when someone spots an owl swoop down and carry off a rat - as they watch, the rat silhouette disappears into the owl as if it was absorbed. Figuring that the owl is the point of reference they need, they give chase. Thomas and Mathias are fastest, followed by Chasing-the-Night. They watch as the owl flies into an open doorway - Thomas is only a few steps behind, and Mathias cuts around the back. Thomas glimpses a flash of wing bank into the kitchen but decides to be a bit more cautious. He changes from lupus to glabro, whacking his head on the ceiling and leaving a dent as he does so. As he creeps forward, a door next to him opens and a sleepy child voice says "Mummy?" and screams when the owner, a young girl, sees Thomas. He pushes her into the room and shuts the door, from where screaming continues.
Thomas steps out into the kitchen in a combat-ready crouch, coming face to face with... a breakfast bar. And that's about it. He looks around, but can't see anything moving. Mathias, who has come around the house steps in cautiously through the back door - he saw nothing coming out that way. Chasing-the-Night takes up station near the front of the house. Mathias and Thomas look about until they feel a faint breeze - from above. The roof access hatch is open. A quick glance up there shows that there is no red-glowing-eyed enemy apparent, but that the owners of the house have been storing stuff up there on chipboard across the struts. They quickly clamber up into the roofspace and look about. In the far end of the house, Mathias sees movement. They creep closer and closer. The movement intensifies and ... Mathias resolves the shapes into rats, escaping the presence of the Garou. None of them have glowing red eyes nor sense much of wyrm. This close to the roof, the two Garou can see the gleam of moonlight outside - holes between the tiles would easily allow a misty vampire to escape.
Outside, Kimu hears a noise on the far side of the house. He creeps forward and sees a young girl climb out the window of the house the garou are inside. Sense magic does not reveal any taint about her, and so he lets her run nervously to the front of the house and follows as she heads down the street and into another house. Weird. Kimu turns back and guards the house some more. The others come running out and up and they confer briefly. Something catches their eyes; the garou see a faint red mist drifting about the top of the house. Mathias yells at it to stop and against all expectations, it congeals into a humanoid figure, perched on the roof, covered in filth and dressed in half rotted clothes. Glowing red eyes stare down at them. They try to converse with Ademko - he basically wants them gone and seems fairly confident that they are unable to affect him - he is beyond death. They tell him they seek the mirror but when he demands to know what they will give him for such a powerful object, they decide to not deal with the Wyrm(tm).
During the conversation, Ademko causes two children from next door to come outside - Thomas tries to take them back inside, but Ademko does something eerie and a redish tentacle snakes out half way from one of them and remains until Thomas puts them down. Weirdly, the kids seem to have less magic/wyrm to them than anything else - the other little girl was the same. Eventually the conversation descends into "mine, isn't, mine, isn't" and Ademko leaves as a mist form.
John and Melissa run back into town, having buried the three humans. John notices that there is movement inside one of the houses and hears a childish voice asking for help. Glancing inside the house, he sees a young girlchild trying to use a CB radio. John runs inside in lupus form, grabs the hand-mike and runs out, leaving the child completely scarred for life.
The pack take advantage of the lull to head back to the pub and examine the painting in what detail they can (given Brett's efforts to destroy it). Nothing much comes to light, so they go up to the mountain view, where the painting was made. No luck there, no eerie symbols on the ground or anything giving away the bad guy's home, although the sightseeing point is still within the weird no-Umbra zone. They can see the humans struggling away from the field where the pack left them all crippled. Dom ponders the view for a bit and notes that the church also has a good view of the whole town, if only slightly elevated. Odd, normally a church would be in the centre of town... they decide to head down and look while Thomas mumbles about told you so.
They jog down to the main road and into town. Most of the people appear to have returned home. The pack swing into the church and have a look around. Most of the pews have been pushed back to the walls. The altar doesn't have bloodstains or anything. Sensing gifts are still no use due to the high ambient deadlands/demonic sense. They poke about the place some more. Brett heads up a small spiral staircase while some of the others look through the attached residence. He finds the church bell, and notices that strange patterns have been scratched on the inside. They sense very faintly of magic. Oh good. Mathias has a look using his eerie gifts and says that they are sort of about calling and summoning and drawing, but not of spirits, of people probably. Considering one of the uses of a church bell, that sort of makes sense. Kimu tries sensing magic and confirms the type of magic. Brett decides that he doesn't like the bell so he pulls out mr pointy and severs the chain holding it up. THUMP. Oh, now its blocking the trapdoor. Er. By changing to glabro he manages to get it out one of the archways, although it means going to glabro and doing a fair bit of damage to the wooden frame to do so. The bell slides down the roof and crashes with a bong to the ground.
Meanwhile, downstairs, someone has spotted the trapdoor in the dias. Its just a wooden door, easy to lift up from inside the church, or underneath. Underneath is dirt, spiders and construction material left over. It doesn't seem particularly bizarre, and some digging doesn't show anything. The investigation is broken briefly when someone hears noises from around the back of the church. Investigating this reveals that one of the humans has been tipping petrol all over the back of the wooden church. Brett finds a hose and sprays it all down, soaking the petrol away. While he's at it, he tries to wash off the dog blood, with mixed sucess. Back under the church, sniffing has revealed a very faint smell of old blood mixed in with the soil, although not in any particular spot.
Deciding that they have enough time to try and use Scent of Distinction at the church, Chasing-the-Night climbs under the church with Dominique and assumes the position. He has only just begun to sink his conscienceness into the surrounds when a squeaking sound starts to intervene. 10s of rats start to pour in from the outside of the church and swarm about under the floors. Dom and Kimu are covered in the little rodents, who are biting and scratching. They both assume forms that regenerate from the damage, but the constant onslaught, combined with the normal ratty byproducts, is still fairly overwhemling. Kimu makes a heroic effort to sink into his trance and suceeds while Dom swats rats off him and stops them biting his eyes and ears. In the meantime, the rest of the pack secure the church proper by wedging and barracading the doors with pews and other furniture. The sleepwalkers have broken into the attached house, but can't seem to get in any further. A quick squiz from the top of the bell tower says that all the town is clustered here. They sit and wait.
Chasing-the-Night's trance comes to a head. He feels himself sitting below the church on the dirt when the space beneath him opens out, dropping far below into a pit of eternal blackness. A miasma of evil exudes from the pit. He frees himself from the remnants of the rats and Dom and Kimu climb up into the church. Outside, the sound of hands slapping against the walls as the townspeople ineffectually attempt to get in continues. The pack discuss the vision that their glorious leader had (Thomas smugly saying nothing about the priest), and decide to perform a Rite of Cleansing. Those members of the pack that know the ritual all join in. The rite happens to end at dawn, which has an enhancing effect on its strength. As the last eerie howl fades from within the church, the screaming begins outside as the humans are freed from the evil spell.
The pack quickly consider their options - Brett trots up to the top of the tower and surreptiously watches the humans, most of whom seem to be in shock - some are running away, some are wandering around dazedly, but there's certainly no organised efforts at this time. They figure that they need to hide as much evidence as they possibly can, and that a sudden storm, despite the clear blue skies, is the way to go. Holistic Approach decide that given the human response and the sucess of the ritual, they have removed whatever evil lingered here from Ademko, at least for the nonce. They start to sense one another over the mental link, and some testing shows that the block between them and the spirit world is fading too.
The final decision is made - while Mathias summons a storm spirit and Chases-the-Night watches over him, Brett will peer from the Umbra and watch the humans. The rest of the pack, who had been seen in the town yesterday, go back to their rooms in the hotel after being realistically beaten by their fellow packmates. Dom, John, Thomas and Melissa stumble out of the hotel, and mingle with the humans who are looking dazed. They pretend to have no idea as to what happened, having woken up with wounds, etc.
The state of the telephone lines has been discovered, along with that of the police radio. One of the residents has a CB in his truck, and Brett listens in as Gillespie and co make some calls, eventually getting through to the police in Omeo. The rest of the town - once they've checked their kids are ok - seem to be either in shock, or fairly organised. A hall has been set up to be a temporary hospice while more formal arrangements are being made.
About 7.50am, a squad car drives through, and finds the townsfolk. There is much headshaking and confusion. One or two of the residents have been wandering around and noting the damage, and they show the police the pub and bloodstains in the back car park. One of the locals is a veritable sleuth and spots the signs of weirdness in the bottom fields. The cops take one look at it and tell everyone to get out until some real forensics can get here. They start taking statements from people in town until then. The garou that are in the town avoid giving statements, or names, although they see the police looking at them in conversation with other people.
More senior police race in from Bairnsdale, followed by the Telstra techs, who say that the lines have been cut, not accidentally broken, so they'll need more equipment before they can restore them. They offer to get a mobile repeater system set up.
About 2 and half hours after dawn, Kimu's eye is caught by people walking towards him from the Umbral forest. They bestride the earth as if it was their domain and their very bearing says that they are princes of this realm. The group of four is mostly homids, with one lupus. The obvious leader stops in front of Chasing-the-Night and waits. Kimu introduces himself, and the leader waits for a moment and then says " - my lord". Kimu repeats the honorific. The Garou says that he is Alexander Prokopenko, and he wishes to know why they are within his Sept leader's domain, and specifically what "that" (Mathias) is doing summoning a spirit. Chasing-the-Night explains the situation to the Silver Fangs in a deferential way while mentalling letting everyone know what is going on. The Silver Fangs don't seem to be planning to interrupt the summoning, but Prokopenko suggests that the rest of the pack are brought here. He seems annoyed that they are within the Silver Fang protectorate, but isn't going to kill them here and now. (Brett only).
Dom, John, Thomas and Melissa start to fade away now that things are getting busy. Brett is retreived by one of the Fangs. The summoning is completed and one of the Fangs steps forward to greet the gathering Storm spirit and offer it chiminage, rather bluntly cutting Mathias out of the loop. The dead bodies are mentioned, and Brett and Mathias are volunteered to go and get them and dump them in the creek downstream - with luck it may look like the upcoming flood killed them, or at least will hide the forensic evidence of what did. John overhears some of the Silver Fangs speaking to Dominique, except they call her Shoulders-the-Burden, which intrigues him.
In short order it is made clear to Holistic Approach that their presence is neither required nor wanted, and so they make their way home. They arrive in the early afternoon and speak to Cossack, who just looks disappointed. The pack consider perhaps not challenging for the next rank, given the events so close to the Moot staining their reputation, but at least some of the pack are planning to continue anyway. (John only).
That night, the pack appear to have made the news. Someone whacks in a video and they check it out. No one seems to know what to make of the whole affair. The people of the tiny town of Drake's Rill in Gippsland woke up this morning having apparently been involved in some sort of violent events. They were still dressed in their night attire and most were bruised, scratched and filthy, with some more serious injuries. Three people were found downstream of the town having apparently drowned in a the local creek which flooded, although police are treating their deaths as suspicious. In addition, the local pub had been vandalised and a valuable painting destroyed. Local feral animals had been killed in the town cemetary, and the church was defaced. In addition to enquiries being pursued, the police are seeking to speak to a small group of young people who arrived in town the previous day, but left before giving statements to police. The news then gives moderately details and complete descriptions of the pack in homid form (a young teenage woman with blue and green hair, a mid-20s man with white hair, the 20-something man bearded with a large full-back dragon tattoo, and the 20-something woman with strange scarring on the side of her head), and reiterates that the police would like to pursue enquiries with these people. The most in-depth news story ends with a request for sightseers to not intrude on the town's grief.
At least some of the pack decide that they need to be a bit less noticable to passersby. Melissa bleaches her hair back to blond and resigns herself to looking boofy. Thomas shaves his beard into a goatee and takes to wearing long sleeved shirts. John wears a hat for part of the day, and organises to meet Marnie, who indubitably how seen the tv. Those that stayed in the Umbra just gloat.
John has an uncomfortable dinner with Marnie and tries to explain what happened. He sort of stumbles through the vague explanation ("There's bad things and sometimes we have to fight them.") while his packmates mock him mercilessly through the mental link. Marnie accepts that John is telling the truth, but says that his description is pretty obvious, and other people around the uni may have recognised him. John elludicates his plan to shave his head, because the white hair won't take dye. Marnie points out that that is a suspicious act, and also he should have scarring on the back of his head and doesn't. John thinks some more.
Brett hangs out at the garden a bit more, both in and out of the Umbra. Early in the evening, he's lurking in the Umbra when the glade child starts to rustle. He can feel a tingling in his extremities which suddenly ramps up to being a full-on ecstatic experience. Brett's thoughts start to dance madly, he finds himself unable to hold still and cascading energies surge through him. As he starts being unable to maintain one form, Brett manages to gain a grasp of his faculties and stumbles through the Umbra yelling for help from his pack. He begins to flicker in and out of the the Realm and the Umbra as he exits the house. Sensing reveals more Wyld than god, and also an odd reverberation to the energies. Brett lurks in the shadows in the short street that the glade is part of and tries to not to be conspicuous.
The rest of the pack are relatively nearby, and show up in 5 to 10 minutes. Thomas uses his senses to see what's happening, and is swept up in the same rapture of energies. The others manage to maintain a sense of themselves. In the Umbra, the glade child is expanding rapidly, thickening in growth and generally looking contented with the state of things. Chasing-the-Night peeks a little worriedly, but finds that the Umbral growth is not matched with a physical change in the garden, which is just as well, because Kylie is standing in the garden, looking moonwards with her eyes closed. A horrid suspicion grows in the mind of the pack and they sense - the resonance of wyld does indeed seem to be entangled with the glade child and Kylie, whom they know is pregnant.
Kimu steps out of the Umbra into the shadows in the garden. He approaches Kylie and touches her - she jumps quite high, not having realised he was there. The wyld rush immediately stops and the energies start to fail. Kylie is surprised to see Kimu here, and they have a bizarre conversation as Kimu pretends to understand less English than he does. Kimu asks what she was doing, and she looks fairly embarrassed and says "nothing, really, oo, look a shiny new change of topic." He suggests going and buying her some dinner, which they do. The pack have thinks about what to do. Brett does the happy-dance at the idea of the glade child eating Melbourne, but John is less thrilled. Despite a brief suggestion of cloning the gladechild into potplants and using them as wyld grenades, they poke at the problem a bit. The feeling seems to be that Kylie, or Kylie being pregnant, is causing the wyld leak. Er, or the glade child. Or maybe it was Brett. Or maybe it was a conglomeration of things... some mention is made that the glade child itself is a new spirit - most gladechildren exist in one single tree, not amidst a number of plants - and that is also a thing of the Wyld.
The pack head back towards the caern to speak to Cossack, but run into him on Rathdowne St. They describe what happened to him and he still looks less than happy. They chat about maybe moving Kylie and the kids and Brett looks less than happy - he'd been thinking that, but then he'd been thinking how traumatic they'd find it. Perhaps they could contain the wyld energy instead - Kimu speculates that he might know some people in Tokyo that could help with that, although Cossack isn't entirely happy with asking for Uktena assistence, considering. Brett also has the concern that such a source of energy could draw the attention of others - the discussion turns to hiding the glade, and the Rite of Hidden Glen is brought up. Melissa says that maybe Hidden Green could help, and that they should be informed - its possible that Robert Red-Dust-Plain has some ideas, or at least knows the Hidden Glen Rite. Thomas offers to go with her, but she says it would be better to go and chat on her own, so off she goes. The pack move on to the caern, thinking that maybe they could chat to Keziah, although Kimu remains to chat to Cossack privately (Kimu only).
Finding Keziah isn't too difficult - the Daughters are on guard duty this week and Keziah and Jacynta are 'training'; meaning that Jacynta is trying to beat up Keziah, who keeps the battle on the run and strikes back and forth. While Mathias and Thomas wait for this to finish, Brett goes and speaks to Graeme and updates him on what happened. Graeme isn't entirely thrilled either, but is happy to leave it in their hands for the moment. Keziah and Jacynta finally finish up and collapse for a bit, and Christine comes over too. Once the two Ahroun have their breath back, Holistic Approach chat to Keziah about what might be going on. Frankly, she says its Brett, and to a lesser extent, all of them - they've all gone and touched raw wyld, some more than others, and she thinks Brett has brought it back with them. The pack get the feeling that Keziah wouldn't really care if the city was eaten by the wyld.
After his talk with Cossack, Kimu goes to make sure the Hell Hounds know that they've been invited to the Moot, and that they should stay in the Umbra for the moot. He gets to their house and they're not there, so he elects to hang about. Its only 10 minutes or so before a ute pulls up out the front, and Hell Hounds, in a mix of forms (not crinos, no), leap out and head for the door. The smell of fairly fresh blood and worse hits Chasing-the-Night like a freight-train. He groans and makes sure no one is around to see this. As Hell Hounds go inside and start fighting over the shower, Chasing-the-Night speaks to Amy and asks what happened. Apparently they had been trailing this fomori who was working to corrupt others by pretending to defraud the banks he was working at, and encouraging them to do the same. They didn't slaughter him in the bank, despite what Holistic Approach might think, but took him out into the woods to have a chat. It looks like he was working alone - yay subtle bane influences. Chasing-the-Night passes along the message about the Moot and leaves.
Melissa mentally says that she's chatted to the Hidden Green caern warder, and his first response was not exactly positive, although he did recognise the need for response to the situation. Apparently the ritual is normally only performed on a caern, not on random locations, regardless of how mysical they are. The Glasswalkers also normally don't have problems with too much wyld, but too little, so they don't exactly have a wealth of rituals ready to response to the threat. However, Robert will make enquiries and get back to them.
The pack chat about what to do, and then about the Moot tomorrow. Kimu makes a bit of a speech...
"I understand that some of the pack are planning to challenge for recognition of a new rank at the moot, although they now lack the appropriate renown for such recognition as a result of the unfortunate events of the last week.
"As pack-leader I feel I should remind you all that our pack totem is one of honor. As such it might reflect best upon the pack if we were to be mindful of our personal honor in these things. A desperate desire to advance may reinforce the poor image that our detractors have of us already. Perhaps this is a time for patience, instead. Fresh wounds are healed by the passing of the moon; so perhaps recognition of rank may wait for a more suitable time.
"I shall not be asking to be recognized at a more senior rank at this time. However, some of us are worthy of recognition now, despite recent events.
"Ultimately, I cannot prevent anyone from doing as their heart tells them."
It's a Moot Day, so people have various tasks to do during the day. Brett ducks out to Reconciliation to speak to Isis Healing-Hands about perhaps bringing the glade-kids over into their little cult. Er, I mean making them kinfolk. Isis is fairly intent on making sure that Brett doesn't want to do it for his own benefit, or the sept, but has the best interest of the kids in mind. Once he has managed to convince her that that is the case, they speak to Rain-Falls-Up, another of the senior Children of Gaia. He says that the Rite is normally performed at the behest of a Garou sponsor, but that the recipient needs to be willing, and the sponsor must obtain Unicorn's assent before beginning the rituals.
The rest of the pack try and keep out of sight. The Moot finally arrives, and people take their places for the Opening Howl and Inner Sky. However, as the final greetings have been made to the spirits, a Moonbridge opens in the Umbral caern. Three Garou step through in homid form, the leader looking familiar to Holistic Approach (although they've never met him). Cossack and Ends-the-Quiet speak briefly with the newcomers and then lead him to the circle of Garou. He introduces himself as Illyich Prokopenko, sept leader of the Still Moment sept in East Gippsland. Prokopenko indicates Holistic Approach and says that the SilverFangs are grateful for their discovery and routing of the wyrm-thing that had taken over the town. The Fangs had been lax in not noting this incursion (the pack mentally all think "We're fucked").
Prokopenko pauses briefly and continues. "We have been aware that in the last few years a number of Melbourne Garou have been active in the Gippsland area, engaged in ecoterroristic activities. This activity has been permitted, although we would have appreciated a polite notification that others were entering our territory." He pauses again and his voice turns harsh. "What we do not appreciate, however, is when these Garou lie and assault their fellow Garou, when the plant false evidence of the wyrm's presence, and when they leave evidence of silver weaponry at the sites where they engage in these activities, obviously attempt to goad our Septs into retaliating against a supposed wyrm threat." Mathias does a quick scan of faces, noting reactions from a few people, but significant reactions from Kirsty Surfs-the-Train... and Brett. He mentally groans.
Prokopenko drops his aggressive stance and says "I am sure that all concerned are responsible enough that the matter does not need to blow up into an inter-protectorate dispute, and that all right-thinking members of the perpetrator's sept will wish to protect the honour of their sept." He bows slightly to Cossack, who acknowledges it and moves with Illyich to the point where Ends-the-Quiet opens a Moonbridge away. When Cossack returns, he does not look impressed and asks if anyone has anything to say. Kirsty steps forward, as does Brett. No one looks too surprised, not even the Hell Hounds. Kirsty says that they were doing what needed to be done, and that the other Garou don't care about what happens, and if they had to tread on a few precious toes doing it, then so be it. Brett just adds that he thought they were doing the right thing. Kirsty starts cutting loose a bit, despite Brett's efforts to calm her down. Kirsty starts ranting on about Garou too scared to get their hands dirty, about how they were doing something for Gaia and not just sitting on their asses pretending to make a difference. Cossack starts to get cross, as does Graeme. Each Garou starts to raise their voice to be heard over the other, and some of the other Garou shift nervously at the confrontation. Cossack says something about punishment rites, and Kirsty gets more het up and says if the sept is going to punish them, then she'll give them something - she and Brett have been fucking each other for the last two years.
There is a long moment of silence as Kirsty defiantly waits for a response. Kimu makes a move to physically tackle Kirsty, but Brett checks him and shakes his head. Cossack asks Kirsty and Brett to leave the Moot. There is a brief hestitation and then Kirsty stomps away, closely followed by Brett. Cossack asks the respective packs if they knew anything about this. Chris says that he knew Kirsty was out with various ecologically enthused groups, but not any of the rest. Kimu says much the same. None of the Elders look real impressed. John notices that Melissa is grinding her teeth and generally not looking too happy either. Cossack says that it is necessary for the Sept to punish these breaches of the Litany, but that unless Kirsty and/or Brett accept the punishment, they will not be able to remain part of the Sept. The packs discuss matters - Chris is not sure what Kirsty will do, as she has been acting almost totally independant of her pack. Kimu asks what sort of punishment would be precedented, to which Graeme says that normally a Rite of Ostracism would be appropriate. There is some mental chatter with Brett, who points out that Kirsty will go off the deepend if she is dissociated from the pack officially. Kimu echos this to Cossack, and the Elders talk among themselves for a time. People look askance at the Hell Hounds, but they seem more amused than anything else.
Cossack returns and says that they have decided that the particular wrongdoings would be more suited to a rite of stolen wolf punishment. Brett and Kirsty are called back and Cossack asks them if they wish to remain part of the Sept. They both assent, although Kirsty's is a little slow. Cossack asks them if the understand that to do so, they must accept the punishment from the Sept. They assent. He asks them if they understand that the Litany is the law of the Garou, and thus to remain a part of the Garou nations, the Sept must enforce the litany. Brett says that he understands, as does Kirsty. Cossack says that the Elders have decided that from tonight until they believe that Brett and Kirsty have redeemed themselves, they will be under the punishment rite of the Stolen wolf - they will not be able to change form, nor regenerate, nor use rage. He suggests that they leave the Moot now, not together, and return tomorrow so that the Rite may be enacted (Kimu is a little surprised that the rite is not being performed now, but it is suggested that no one here knows it).
Brett leaves east when Melissa comes after him. She grabs his shoulder and rather unexpectedly punches him in the face before returning to her pack (Brett only). Kirsty starts stalking off. Marcus and Carmel, two of her packmates, run after her and catch up. Carmel gives Kirsty some keys - given that Carmel has small children at her house, this indicates some measure of trust. The two Get of Pennington return to the Moot circle, and the Moot continues. John asks Melissa what was up and she seems fairly unimpressed that while all these snide remarks were being made about her and Ben - her only friend outside the Sept - Brett was carrying on with Kirsty. Kimu chats to Chris about maybe sending Keiteki to watch over Kirsty, but after some umming and ahhing, they decide that it might be more suggestive of a lack of trust than Septly concern. Emma slips away by Moonbridge, to the bemusement of some. The Moot is much quieter. The Hell Hounds let people know about the banker-fomor they killed. The other packs bring up what happened to them in the last month. Holistic Approach let everyone know about the vampire. None of the pack think that today would be a good day to challenge for rank. People head off on the Revel and replenish their rage and gnosis.
Just shy of dawn, Holistic Approach return to the Sept and are greeted by Scratches-at-Fleas, the Bonegnawer Jindabyne Council member. He greets them by their Bonegnawer names (This Time for Sure and Spooky Mulder). It becomes clear that he is here to do the rite for the Sept. The pack get some sleep.
Aeeiiee! Stupid Malfeas dream.
Early in the day, Kristy comes back and speaks quietly with Scratches-at-Fleas. Her performs the punishment ritual, locking her into homid form until the elders release the ritual. Brett turns up and Scratches-at-Fleas repeats the process, locking him into his lupus form.
John is sitting about later in the day when his phone rings from a blocked number. A male voice says "Can I speak to Ms Lalor please?". John asks who is speaking, and voice repeats the question. John waffles a bit and the voice asks again. John shrugs and says that she's not here at the moment. There is a pause and the voice says "thank you, Mr Brighton" and hangs up. John lets people know, and they sigh, and immediately leap to the conclusion that its Sullivan Dane, rather than anyone else who has an urge to have them hunted down and killed.
John chases up the number via the Umbral exchange. It seems to be a city number, and he rings it from a pay phone. The phone is answered "Constable Michaels" and John hangs up. Seems to be that the number comes from a police station, emphasising the Dane-like possibilities. John ponders what to do next.
The pack have some thinks about what to do next - there's the possibility that they should maybe go to Launceston, so Mathias makes a call to Hidden Green and chats to Ion. He explains that they'd like to speak to someone about being allowed in Shadow Lord territory, and Ion says that he will get someone to contact them. Mathias goes off and gets a mobile phone somehow and passes the number to Ion.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that neither Thomas or John can really peek, they trawl around the police station, avoiding the Authority-spirits that patrol the site. They find Dane's office and try to read the screen (too small) and the reports on his desk (nothing in large enough type). He doesn't seem to be there. The office is smallish, and he shares with another detective. It has a window, but it looks out at a brick wall about a foot away. Nothing happens while they observe for an hour.
Not having any pressing emergencies, the pack get together and think. It doesn't happen often, so the rest of the sept sits around them and watches (no, not really). They consider the situation they find themselves in.
The two main pressing concerns are the wyldness seeping in through Fitzroy area, and the Mages. The Wyldness is proving to be difficult to treat, although Kimu has suggested that he travel to Tokyo to speak unto certain people he knows there - the nature of that city is such that Wyld is bubbling up and kept in check by Weaver, so they might be able to help out. Robert Red-Dust-Plain was a bit leery about using the hidden glen ritual - not least because it requires 5 Garou who know the ritual to contribute a considerable amount of gnosis. They decide there's nothing they can do at the moment except watch the site, and the theurges are directed to mount some spiritual guards about the site.
The mages are another fish sandwich entirely. They are not only wyrm tainted, they seem to have had truck with the Dancers, may have been part of the caern attack, and definately had a go at the Garou on the 11th of September. Cossack definately wants them out of the city. Presumably they can shield what they do, but there must be some way of tracing them, especially if they move from realm to realm. Mathias says that everything he's read suggests that they don't - they call things to them in some fashion. Nonetheless Brett hypothesises about the gauntlet between the material realm and the shadowlands and whether they could use some sort of spirit to find holes between the two. No-one really knows enough, so they send off an Owl to find Grek Twice-Tongue and ask for advice.
Some discussion about going out to Launceston and getting Elliot Schandler as well.
Late in the afternoon, Mathias receives a call from Ion, saying that someone will be contacting him soon, and indeed, about 30 minutes later, he gets a call from a female, who suggests that she comes and meets him. Mathias lurks around the main gate, and spots a young woman entering a bit later. She heads to Graeme's house and emerges minutes later, with Graeme, who points out Mathias. She approaches and introduces herself as Anya Kerenski. They move away from the humans jogging through the cemetary and step into the Umbra.
Kerenski suggests that Mathias explain quickly what he requires. When he's finished (mages, launceston, blah blah), she suggests that he hasn't presented much of a case as to why the Shadow Lords should let the pack enter their territory.
Kimu and Brett are lurking about when they see Keziah and Ends-the-Quiet meet a Moonbridge. The newcomer is a woman, and judging from tribal tattoos and general appearance, it looks like she's another Blackfury. They start heading eastish, which is sort of towards the Glade. Feeling curious, they two of them take off after the two Furies slowly.
Mathias puts forward the case that Holistic Approach have a lot more experience with mages, with how they operate and how to neutralise them. Plus they have gifts suited to tracking a mage down. Kerenski says that they could pass that information along, but concedes the gifts might be more useful than not. Why not just Mathias to come to the Shadow Lords rather than the whole pack?
Keziah and her associate move towards the east of the caern, coincidentally heading towards Mathias and companion. The woman glances towards Mathias and seems to stumble. Mathias' eye is caught by the motion and Kerenski looks that way too. There is a brief pause - Kimu's reading of the Fury's body language is that she is unsure, but then it shifts and becomes anger. Kerenski steps behind Mathias as the Fury shifts to crinos and starts sprinting their direction with a reminder than she is a guest here. Brett and Kimu take off after the attacker as well - Brett, with his shiny new calm gift goes at full pace, while Kimu lags behind, a little distracted by the odd behaviour of a moment ago. The Fury is screaming abuse to Kerenski about her being a traitor to her own tribe, as well as other more personal abuse. Mathias meets the attacker head on and the two crash together. He seems much more able than the woman trying to get past him to the Shadowlord, and he manages to grab her and then spin her around into a pin just as Brett arrives. Brett uses his calm gift and the Fury stops struggling. Kerenski suggests than she and Mathias leave quickly to not antagonise the situation further, which they do. Kerenski suggests that Mathias' quick, unhesitating defense was more than appropriate and she feels that she is in his debt somewhat - she will carry a recommendation that the pack Holistic Approach be allowed to enter Shadow Lord territory in return. With a fairly terse goodbye, she leaves.
Once the ShadowLord is gone from her sight, the Fury relents. She apologises fairly grudgingly to Kimu and her and Keziah leave. Brett and Kimu follow. As they suspected, Keziah was leading her friend to the Glade. The Fury is fairly interested in what is going on, and a bit weirded out at the Glade Child. Eventually she introduces herself to the Garou as Calls-to-Eris (much shuddering), a Black Fury Theurge (although she doesn't list a pack or sept...). She talks to them about their experiences, and explains that Keziah asked her here.
Calls-to-Eris pokes around for some time before sitting down with the pack to talk to them about what she thinks. Despite Keziah's belief that it is Brett that is the problem, she is more of the opinion that it is a combination of things - the particular spirit, the extra oomf from Brett and the others and possibly most damning, Kylie. Calls-to-Eris thinks that Kylie and/or her unborn child are calling on the wyld and providing impetus. She asks delicately whether there's any chance that the child was fathered by a garou, but the pack are certain it wasn't. Calls-to-Eris asks whether the warders could be moved somewhere else for the duration of Kylie's pregnancy, but Brett is strongly against it, and the others are unkeen. Calls-to-Eris says that if the wyld continues to build along with Kylie's stomach, then they may end up with an Abcess - a place where the wyld boils out and cannot be contained. Wyld tends to find low gauntlet places, and so reality might fracture along Johnston St to their caern. They ask if she's certain and she looks at them like they are idiots - its the Wyld, no one is certain.
They move to remedies. Calls-to-Eris says that the Furies might have ways to contain and heal the hole, but they are not exactly simple or safe - the tribe would probably want some sort of recompense - Calls-to-Eris suggests that they may want to claim the glade as their own, but she is only speculating. The conversation continues for a bit more, but Calls-to-Eris decides its time for her to go. The pack escort her back to the Sept and then let Cossack know what she said. He doesn't look too suprised. (Kimu only)
More pack discussion, about the Mages. They discuss the multiple groups that seem to be involved - the 3 mages from Port Arlington, the fractal-mages and their strawmen, and maybe others, like GerConst, that Malajimbarra introduced them too. They decide to invite Malajimbarra to come and talk to them - he shows up in a short while, and after some small talk, they discuss the mages and wizards. Malajimbarra says that he knows little about them, but he knows that they seem to have some basic magical abilities (fire, water, telekinesis), and then an affinity with other places and things - like the deadlands, but he gathers that other garou have had some interaction with mages who have an affinity with fae, or other alternate places. Its this affinity that seems to give them their power. From what they've discovered over time, the mages they're interacting with also seem to have a deal or arrangement with creatures from the deadlands - demons.
They also chat with Malajimbarra about the recent challenge against Tjinderi. He seems fairly neutral about their challenging his tribe elder, and more curious about what they found out and the challenge itself. The pack theorise more about the mages amongst themselves while Malajimbarra listens. They start from the scratch - why are they out to get them. Well, they are wyrm tainted at least. They were involved in the attack on the caern in some fashion, and distinctly involved with the events at the World Trade Centre. They have become a threat to the caern. They seem to be interested in business and political people - the Garou don't know to what their goal is - sometimes they get various bits of legislation done, or business purchases that don't always make sense.
They wonder whether there is some way that they can make the mages behave more actively, which is going to be easier to find them than their obviously well-shielded citadel or whatever. Using the gargoyle balls is one option, but it seems fairly minor magics, given that the teenagers in Dandenong with the balls didn't attract much attention. It might work as part of something else. Mathias wonders if it would be possible to capture Elliot Schandler in Launceston, rather than stomp him, and use him as bait. This seems fairly promising, but could be difficult to implement without him using his magic against them. They can probably find some way to 'encourage' him to join with them. More planning.
Mathias finds Emma and chats to her about speaking to a Raven spirit to get a Shadowlord Gift (Raven's wings). She seems fairly ok with the idea, and summons the spirit for him, and speaks to it briefly. Unsurprisingly, Raven wants a secret from Mathias in return for the gift - he has already worked this out and tells the spirit about the Shadowlords and pushing (presumably Black Fury) kinfolk off a cliff in Tasmania. The spirit seems to feel this is a significant secret and teaches him the gift.
Thomas has another of his fun dreams. He is sinking into the darkness, down into the earth. In his right hand is the bane lock, and it begins to throb just as a deep, rythmic sound comes to Thomas, surrounding him and pulsing all of his body. The bane lock is pulsing in time with this throb. Heat builds, and it pulses with the bane lock. A sense of great and pure Wyrm builds..... the dream fades and Thomas moves into a deeper sleep. When he wakens, he passes this on to his packmates ("Why is it always /you/?").
John decides to see if he can get a more full list of all the pagans/wiccans who inhabit Melbourne - it might be that the mages skim through and try to recruit people to help them through these sorts of groups. Thomas goes with him for a laugh, while Mathias goes to a cybercafe and looks up details on Christian Bury from ages ago. Dominique works on some talens, and makes sleep talens from sandman dust in a pouch. She also starts working on some 'clearsight' talens, working out what spirit to summon, eventually deciding on a Merlin spirit. Before he goes, Mathias helps her in preparing the talens - he agrees to teach the Fianna all they learn about mages in return for binding the spirit into a clover-paste to be spread on their eyes.
John has a fair bit of luck - in fact too much. There are more mystic groups in Melbourne than he can shake a stick at - not just wiccan/pagan groups, but asantru, hermetics, theosophians and so on. He sighs and starts taking notes. He also spends some time looking up 'cult' activity and finds there are about 4 articles a year about witchcraft and occult behaviour in the major Melbourne papers. Some of them are 'lifestyle' type articles, but a couple are about cultistic behaviour. One of them includes a strange house found in West Meadows full of dead bodies and other whacky stuff. Dom says to ignore that one. Thomas gets bored pretty quickly and goes outside and chats to some of the skaters on the steps - he vaguely knows them.
Mathias spends some money and time looking up news articles for the Bury's. He finds stuff to do with Andrew Bury who died in a suspicious housefire a year ago. He also finds an obituary for Melissa Bury, Polly's mum, who died of TB. He finds a couple of thin articles about an investigation into a wrongful death, associated with a Christian Bury, at Lilydale High School. The details are a bit vague, but it seems that a couple of drunk yahoos started attacking Christian and fell in the process, suffering serious injuries and later dying in hospital. Mathias comes out of the cybercaf and notices Thomas across the way. He mentally says hi, and then spots a couple of constables taking an interest in Thomas. This is brought to Thomas' attention, who decides to head back into the library. The police follow, but Thomas slips out a sidedoor. Mathias slips in after them, and sees the two coppers speak to the desk guard, who nods, and indicates further into the library. The police do a circuit and then come back out.
Mathias meets up with Thomas and they head back to the caern. More discussion happens about their situation, dumping what they know now. Mathias heads out to Dandenong to look at the Mage house, to see if he can spot anything extra. (Mathias only)
A moonbridge opens in the caern, and Ends-the-Quiet meets the new Garou. It is Grek, hooray, he got their message. He comes to greet Holistic Approach and they let him know why they have called him here, going into detail about what they saw in the Shadowlands and how they theorise that the Mages affect that realm in a way that might be detectable from their side (apart from with the Chandeen Mirror). The pack put forth their suggestion that perhaps they could go back to the realms of the dead, or talk to demons/ghosts from there, or perhaps interact with a spirit of death from realms that they are more familiar with.
Grek considers what they suggest. He points out that the death-Umbra is different to the Shadow which they are more familiar - while in the Umbra, you can wander across the world in the penumbra, and it takes an effort of will to move to the other realms, the deadlands have the opposite effect - you are "meant" to move onto another realm, and so the spirit realms sort of curve away. Grek illustrates this with their own experiences - when they arrived on the shore and talked to Christian, they were in a generic city-by-shore, and it took some time to move towards the centre of their ritual, about which the realm was more like that material universe they had left. Those who are more familiar/attuned to its nature can move along the shadowlands (as opposed to 'into' the deeper parts of the death Umbra), as evidenced by his guiding them towards a gate near Healesville.
The two points of this apparent distracted diatribe is that the native 'spirits' of the deadlands are subject to the same effect, so that they may not be able to scope their way across Melbourne and spot distortions, and that if the Garou go there, then they will have to fight against the same effect. Additionally, it is Grek's opinion that the Mages are interacting more with one of the Demon Kings, and that their magic may not even pass through the penumbra-like area, so the effect, if any, might even be indistiguishable.
So that leaves contestant number 3 - interacting with an Epiphanic spirit of Death. Grek says that the Striders have a strong history of interaction with such spirits (see the entry under Anubis, for instance), but that it might behove them to see if they can find anything about native death spirits, and whether they can help their efforts towards reconciliation. The cockatoos are mentioned (the ones that demanded a story about death from Mathias). There is a suggestion to ask Bartholomew Wise-in-the-Ways-of-the-Wyrm which Grek turns down, countering that Bartholomew concentrates more on traditional Umbra denizens and not the stranger enigmatic spirits. The pack get a vibe from Grek that they don't necessarily get on too well. Grek does suggest that Reconciliation might know something about the topic, and also suggests that they don't rush this at the moment. Brett volunteers to go with him, Kimu volunteers not to.
Mathias arrives back from Dandenon about now and says that they have a bit of a problem. He has just spoken to Sullivan Dane ("What?") who intimated that unless Mathias and friends can prove to him that they are on the side of goodness, he is going to call down all sort of problems for them. They bug him for details. Apparently Dane has been chasing the mages for ages, originally they came from Brazil, and they may have been here for up to 15 years. Dane appears to be a bit monomanacial, with a very Christian them vs us world view. He seems to be able to sense the mage stuff - he intimated a sense of Evil from the house. He also seems to know more about the garou than Mathias is entirely comfortable with - he didn't say outright that he knew what they were, but he knew something was up, and that they were an organisation. While they could probably deal with anything Dane could inflict on them, it would really mess up their mortal lives, even more than the current "watch for these people" would. Brett enunciates the problem by pointing out that they just have a time pressure now.
Everyone but Kimu, Thomas and Melissa run up to Reconciliation with Grek. They meet Antoinette (sept leader), Philip Bates (Rite Master) and Rain-Falls-Up (just this guy). The pack and Grek explain what their plans are, and why they are here. They review various stories, myths and legends that Grek and the other Elders know, but most of the aboriginal legends don't really have an after-life component - people don't go anywhere when the mythic realm is all around you, and all the stories they know about the Dreamtime are timeless in nature.
Grek talks about stories of the yowie and how death entered the world - there are some variations, but the core story seems to be that there were 3 people and during a drought two of them resorted to eating the flesh of other creatures, but the third didn't and died. Death was personified in this case as a halfman/halfbeast that hid in a tree boll (Brett: "Sounds like us"), and grabbed the third guy, and then tree and all went up into the sky, along with two cockatoos, forming the southern cross and pointer stars. There are variations, including an almost Adam/Eve one where the woman egged the two men into stealing the special honey from Baiame's tree, but the fundamentals are the same - tree, glowing eyes, cockatoos.
Word is passed through the Reconciliation sept about what sorts of things people are after, and those packs that are about come and chat about what they know - many of the stories they know include someone dying, but don't contain the sort of transition component the pack are searching for. A moonbridge is opened to Scars Atoned and garou from that sept come and join in the story telling. A few packs have heard the yowie story, and know some variations, sharing them or other stories about how death began in the world.
None of the stories are too promising - Grek's feeling is that the yowie spirit, if such a thing exists, is more about the decay of the physical body than the passing of the spirit to another realm. He suggests that they still have the option of contacting more well-known Garou entities, such as Anubis. The pack think that they should make a decision before too long - the time pressure from Sullivan Dane is too real. They could try the cockatoo spirits - they definately have some affiliation with death. Philip reiterates that part of the problem is that the original European influx irretrievably lost huge amounts of information about the spirits of the Australian Umbra - all they have left is public information, rather than the sacred stories. And even though the Sept interacts with the remaining Wurundjeri people, they were probably never aware of the extra information that the Bunyip would have posessed.
Towards the evening, the pack chat with The Reconciled, one of the packs from Reconciliation. Eclipses-the-Moon speaks up after a time and says that when she travelled here from Russia, it was via much of the Silver Fang protectorates. She heard a tale that stuck with her as it has parellels with stories from Russia.
Curlew was a dreamtime animal whose tribe lived close the mother earth. The Curlew people were friendly and helpful though they were slow and cumbersome in their big bodies. They did not sleep at night but kept watch for the other tribes. If Bunyip or some other evil came close, Curlew cried out three times to warn the other tribes. All the tribes loved Curlew and his people for this. Even though they feared his cry, they were grateful for his watchfulness over them.
Many times, they tried to reward Curlew but he would not accept their gifts. He thanked them for their generosity but explained that what he and his tribe did was for love of the other tribes, not in expectation of rewards. Even so, Curlew and his people were very happy to attend corroborees where all the tribes gathered together to dance as one body and to sing with one voice. Biami saw that Curlew was a very helpful animal. Biami decided to reward Curlew and his people, so he asked Curlew what he and his people would like most. Curlew thought about this before replying. Give us wings, Biami, that we may fly overhead and watch for danger. Let us be the guardians over the spirits of our departed brothers and sisters. Give us the power to warn tribes when danger or death is at hand. When death is coming we will cry out three times in the darkness and we shall escort our brothers and sisters to the shadow land so that they will not be afraid when they cross over from life to death. Biami heard this request and was glad to grant it. For their selflessness, Curlew and his tribe were changed into swift, graceful birds. They were the first birds who were able to fly at night as well as during the day. So now, Curlew carries the souls of departed brothers and sisters to the shadow land. He always calls out three times to tell the tribe that death is near. Curlews cry reassures the tribe that their loved ones will be carried safely across the threshold of death and into the shadow land where they will live in the dreamtime with Biami. Everyone knows that their blood brother, Curlew will be there with him or her when they make their last journey in this life.
This sounds fairly promising, although Grek is somewhat surprised at the story - it sounds fairly Anglicised to him, a little bit too much like angels taking people to Heaven. They chat with Nicolas Andrei, the caern warder, about curlew. He says he knows only a little - they are nocturnal birds, eat bugs and similar small animals. He thinks they stick mostly to the north half of the continent. Grek asks Eclipses-the-Moon where she heard the story and says that he'll check it out and see what he can find. In the meantime, the pack might want to consider what chiminage such a spirit could ask of them. Grek leaves as soon as the night descends.
Most of the pack return to Melbourne and catch Cossack and their Elders up with this possible lead. Brett remains at Reconciliation and chats further to Rain-Falls-Up about making the glade kids kinfolk. Nicolas also comes back with more info aout the curlew - there are a couple of varieties, but the one that is probably being referred to in the story is probably a Bush Stone Curlew, and he was wrong - they used to be all over the place, although they seem suffering what's euphamistically referred to as "habitat shrinkage", and so are most common in New South Wales. Brett shares this, and Dom says that's Silver Fang territory, leading up into Fianna land. They opt to try to get to Fianna land first.
John continues to work on his Fetish rite. Dom makes talens. Brett heads back to Melbourne late in the day.
Grek returns to the cemetary sept. He seems a bit miffed, but says that yes, there seems to have been a story about the curlew bird and its duty in taking the spirits of the dead and returning them to the Dreamtime so that they did not come back to haunt the living. Grek and the pack discuss what would be appropriate to this jaunt. Grek suggests a certain amount of ritual - although they do not know what the spirit does or does not like, simple respect rarely goes astray. The pack decide to run and fast for a day or so, heading northwards into the territory the bird would normally occupy, and where the story was heard. When they arrive, rites of contrition and cleansing seem to be appropriate. The pack consider with trepedation what a spirit of passing on might want from a pack of European Garou.
Divesting themselves of all weaver material, the pack decide to simply run north, hoping to drop into that exhaustion zen that leads them were their spiritual selves know where to go. They wait until dusk, and then leave, running through the Umbra, first through the weaverlands of the city and then into the countryside. A shudder passes through the pack as they move into the more hostile lands of the Umbra, and the sense of forboding and being watched starts to build. The pack run across rivers and through forests. They wear themselves down to a point where they can no longer run, and by mutual decision, slow and halt.
Aching limbs and gasping lungs fill their world for sometime. Thomas notices that neither Melissa nor Grek is still with them. Despite the leaden feeling in their limbs, the pack try and establish where they are and where the others are. The Umbra has an odd sense to it, making it difficult to discern exactly the nature of where they sit. Peeking shows a normal sort of bushland hillside, with the sun rising pinkly to the east. The pack have a faint sense that they are perhaps slightly out of phase with the normal penumbra, and perhaps in a heightened place.
Questing stone and howling both turn up nothing for Melissa, nor Grek. Kanau will not come when they summon him - presumably the choice to go on or return is theirs. The exhausted Garou sink to the ground and sleep.
On awakening, the pack discuss what they are to do. Thomas mentions his dream of old, just before Melissa joined the pack - the running pack, with one younger wolf falling behind, going into dark places and losing her. Kimu mentions that Melissa has expressed a worry that she is not fully part of the pack recently. The possibility that the missing pack member is already a test as part of their immediate task comes up. The fact that there had always been the thought that if someone falls they are not worthy comes up. The discussion turns more serious - what is more important, the pack, or their quest to reconcile the Garou to the Bunyip? Thomas immediately says pack, Mathias and Brett say the quest. John thinks pack, but says that the he thinks the quest is very important too. Thomas intimates that even if the pack leader says go on, he intends to return to look for Melissa. This statement makes things a bit awkward. Chasing-the-Night listens for a time, and then decides that they shall return, and perhaps take up this quest again another time.
They step out into the Realm and try Questing for Grek and Melissa again. Still no luck. The Garou start running backwards along their path as best they can. None of it seems familiar, and the Umbra is definately more malevolent than it was before. They don't seem to be covering as much ground as they might have previously.
After another day's sleep, a Questing Stone is tried once more. This time there is a palpable hit! Melissa is somewhere west of them, several hundred kilometres. Ye gods. They start to run that direction.
Well after midnight, the pack become aware that there is a presence approaching from behind them. They slow down and soon Grek comes into view. The pack and Grek swap stories - he was chasing with them and realised that they had lost Melissa, so he stopped and went back for her. He didn't find her, but he did pick up the scent of the rest of Holistic Approach, so he gave chase. They explain that they turned back when they knew Melissa had fallen behind. Grek seems a little pissy at this, and declines to come with them. He says he has some other tasks to accomplish if they are not to engaged in their tasks for the Bunyip. The pack wince a little, but nod. Grek heads north.
A few hours before dawn, the Garou become aware that they are again being shadowed. They slow and the shadowers do the same, and then turn their way. A pack of 4 wolves, large and reddish approach. The packleader waits and Kimu introduces himself and the pack. The new Garou are introduced as the Fianna pack Pebbles-in-Still-Water and the pack leader is Sings-for-Blood (LuFiGa). Sings-for-Blood seems helpful, but a bit nervous - she says that they have been running guard on their Sept bawn. Holistic Approach ask after Melissa, and Sings-for-Blood says that they found her wandering and raving after a storm on Thursday night. Kimu asks if they may come with the Fianna to see her, and Sings-for-Blood becomes more nervous. She says that if Holistic Approach will wait here, she will fetch her Sept Leader. Chasing-the-Night agrees and the pack settle in to wait.
About an hour later, Sings-for-Blood and another garou return. This worthy is introduced as Killian, and he says that their caern totem does not permit non-Fianna within the caern - Melissa is currently there, but she is unconscious and being kept so, a technicality which is not exactly making anyone happy. He suggests that they could arrange to Moonbridge her to Scars Atoned - he seems to know who Holistic Approach are, and that they are sept members there. This suits all, and so it is arranged. Holistic Approach decide to head to Melbourne and Moonbridge across rather than go straight to Scars Atoned.
It takes until about lunchtime to run back to Melbourne. Once there, they run into Chris and Marcus who quiz them about the 25% drop in numbers before Holistic Approach make it clear they don't want to talk about it. Chris says that Cossack and Graeme are at Graeme's place. The pack head there. The Elders, perceptive beings that they are, notice immediately that Holistic Approach is short one (1) pack member and one (1) Jindabyne Council member. Everyone explains and asks if they can be shifted out to Scars Atoned. This is arranged and the creaking and aching Garou flick out there.
Marches-the-High-Road meets them at the Moonbridge and says that Melissa was brought here earlier, and she has been taken to a house that the Sept runs. The pack head off through the caves, and emerge into midafternoon sunlight. The old Edridge site is nearly completely overgrown by bushland now, encouraged by the Garou of the Sept. They head for the farmhouse, and arrive to find Doyle Blackburn waiting in the kitchen. He offers them a cuppa, and says that Melissa is still sleeping in one of the rooms. Various packmembers stick their head in to check that its actually her. She looks grey, but she's still breathing. Mathias waits in the kitchen - he looks up to see a large red wolf staring at him - Sheaine. Sheaine expresses to Mathias that he's unsurprised to see yet another fallen packmate in their pack - as he said, one by one, Mathias will get them all killed. Mathias grits his teeth and turns his back, and Sheaine leaves with a snort and a brief word to Doyle. Mathias remembers a bit late that Sheaine and Doyle are packmates. The others demand to know what that was all about, and Mathias says that Sheaine was nearly a packmate, but the pack rejected him after a month.
The pack lurk about the house (Kimu only). Thomas waits in lupus in Melissa's room, and she eventually comes to. He summons the rest of the pack and they pack into her room. Melissa seems shakey, but ok, sanitywise. Melissa asks what happened, and they tell her. She looks a bit upset, and seems to summon her courage and says that she wants to leave the pack. The rest of the pack tries to suggest that she waits and makes a decision after a bit of time, but Melissa says that she's messed this up for them now and everything that she spoke to Kimu about previously still holds too. Some of the pack try and reassure her, others seem to think that if she's this adamant about leaving, then its best that way. Throughout, Melissa seems to be having problems meeting Thomas and Brett's eyes.
In the end, its mentioned that she should probably talk to Kanau about this. Once Melissa is up and moving about, they head back into the caern and ask Marches-the-High-Road to Moonbridge them home. Once there, the whole pack speaks to Cossack, who doesn't look to happy at either option. Emma makes Melissa come and sleep in one of the rooms in Graeme's house. The rest of the pack speak to Cossack, who says that if Melissa is not happy in the pack, they cannot keep her there against her will. He agrees she should speak to their pack totem first though. The pack find somewhere to collapse themselves.
The wake up about midmorning and consider the situation. Er, except neither Dom nor Melissa are really on the link. Shit! They go to Graeme's house and find a note from Dom saying she's going to take Melissa out to speak to Kanau alone (Dom only).
The rest of the pack decide to hang around the Sept. People pick up their junk and Mathias checks his messages - three. The first is from Anya Kerenski, saying that their travel arrangements have been approved, just let her know on this number when they are planning to leave. The other two are from Dane - one on Friday asking where he is politely, and the other earlier today on Monday, a bit more abrubt. Mathias responds to the calls (Mathias only).
Dom and Melissa return from their trip up to Macedon, and say that they have spoken to Kanau. Both look fairly thoughtful. The pack discuss trying to quest for the Curlew spirit again, and whether it will impact on their quest that they went and failed once. Dom and Melissa say they won't be coming if the pack go - Dom says that she'd rather not discuss it, but will explain to Kimu if necessary.
The remainder of the pack decide to head off this evening. They figure that extra effort will be required, and pledge this time to leave any who fall behind. Rites of Cleansing and Contrition are performed with some sucess, and they once again divest themselves of any corrupting influence.
Holistic Approach runs out of the city through the Umbra. The crossing from suburban to bushland Umbra is not a pleasant one. Instead of the unpersonalised sense of misfitting they experienced last time, the sense now is much more hostile, and seems to be directed specifically at their presence. Nonetheless, they run onwards.
The terrain, too, is much more obstructionist than that which they ran through on their previous attempt. Rather than rolling bushland, they are heading into heavy mountains. Steep cliffs block their way, rocks slip under their feet, undergrowth blocks their passage. Mathias and Kimu are both struggling with the landscape and the stresses of running. Despite their strong agreement on leaving the fallen, the others run slower to ensure they don't fall behind.
The night is ended in a sheltered location as they all fall down.
Brett is awoken from a deep sleep by the scent of smoke. He looks around and thinks that he can see a haze to the air about them. Despite the deep sleep of the others, he manages to wake them up. A glance around says that there is a dull red light coming from the direction that they have been running, and the smell is intensifying. Its not simply a small fire, it has that burnt-air smell of a serious bushfire.
The pack take off and try to look for somewhere safe to hide. Fortunately they have a number of members who are familiar with a) fires and b) how not to die. Between these members of the pack, they are able to find a decent sized pond in a small gorge. A number of greenish branches are dragged into the water with them to prop against the wall, and make a spark cover. While this is going on, both Chasing-the-Night and Mathias spot something alive further down stream - it is moving stealthily, but in a canine kind of way, not a feline way. They only catch the briefest sight of it - vague canine and with short grey fur maybe?
The fire roars ever closer and then passes over them. The pack is in no rush, and wait until the air has cooled off, by which point it is nearly moonrise. Once the ground is cool enough to run on, they head off again, running in the direction that feels right. Although Kimu and Mathias are labouring, this night they are able to keep up with the rest of the pack.
At several points during the evening, Holistic Approach become away that something or someone is shadowing them. There is never any confirmation, nor do they feel it would be right to stop and check. The running and spirit questing continue.
Thomas runs over a small rise topped by granite boulders, and from the rest of the pack's point of view, suddenly flips backwards. From the other side of the rock formation sprints a huge hispoid creature - canine, but hairless, and with huge, sharp teeth. It runs at an enormous speed, past the fallen Thomas (with his head in a log) and bites hunks out of John, who sensibly retreats. The creature continues on and wounds Mathias before the others start slamming into it and trying to rend its spirit nature. Kimu rolls into its feet, but is unable to destabilise the creature. Sensing unnatural reveals mostly a wyld sense, but laced with a sense of wyrm. The spirits looks mostly like a dingo, but with a wider jaw, and many more sharp and long teeth. Of course, the blood-red drool doens't hurt either.
The dingo spirit thing sinks its teeth into both Thomas and John, and both have to fight for control against a surge of Rage. The pack try to grapple the spirit, or to attack away from its dancing jaws. Brett tries the calm gift, which has some minimal effect - however, the spirit seems intent on killing them all. In a brief lull, it howls, and the howl seems to fill the entire countryside. Shortly after, a rumbling sound is felt as several great boulders start to rise from the earth, where only their tops had been seen. The pack recognise with horror at least three Nargun as the huge stone and fire spirits head their way. The pack fight on briefly, but the combination of the teeth of the devil dingo and the spiritual and fiery attacks of the Nargun lead them to believe that a strategic withdrawl is in order. Mathias howls a Call of the Wyld to inspire them all to get the hell out, which they do.
As they run, the Nargun lag behind, but the dingoesque spirit hounds (haha) them through the night. In a disturbing parallel to the fate of the Bunyip, the pack are driving across the countryside, suffering from the sudden attacks of the spirit and fleeing for their lives. At dawn, their tormentors fade, and the pack collapse.
As the last sliver of moon rises, the pack rise to their weary feet and continue to run. Their minds fade into the rhythm of the run, doing fades into being, fades into am.
Here, sense of right. Half moon high. Scent of gum, feel of damp earth, chirping of insects, leaves rustling, prey scatter before Garou. Walking, sniffing, tasting, listening, circle, together.
Mind starts to take back the kingship of the soul and the pack begin to return to themselves. They prepare for the summoning of Curlew. The Garou cleanse themselves and the area in full formal ritual, finishing with the dawn howl. They will summon and call for Curlew during the day time and finish at late dusk, when Curlew would be active.
Chasing-the-Night, Mathias and John each take a turn summoning and calling for Curlew. While they do this, other pack members take the time to express or consider why they call Curlew - Chasing-the-Night tells the Curlew story given to them by Eclipses-the-Moon; Brett thinks of all he knows of the Bunyip and the Dreamtime; John considers the symbolism of the tale and what they have learnt about death, the Dreamtime and the Umbra; Mathias tells of their quest through the realm of the Bunyip in the Shadowlands, emphasising that missing Curlew leads to the Bunyip becoming ghosts; and Thomas quietly considers the Silent Strider's lore and how it can relate to Curlew's task.
At dusk Kanau spirals in and silently joins the pack. The summoning is completed as the last of the sun disappears beneath the horizon. The pack wait in patience as the Ragabash moon rises and the starry night wheels on.
In the deepest darkness, the pack see something move. Vaguely hominid, dark skinned, it slips from shadow to shadow. The spirit stops a distance from the pack and they each hear a whisper say "You will never speak the name of the dead again". A quick mental chat resolves that this is the spirit's price for even approaching them, and that it probably means just names - speaking about someone dead by reference ("John's brother" for instance) is ok. The pack agree and the half-seen, half shadowed spirit moves closer, stopping maybe 5 feet from them, but still hidden by the night.
Curlew asks them what they want, and the Garou explain - both that they need to find some who reach back into the lands of the dead, and that they feel the need to reconcile themselves with the spirits of the Dreamtime. Curlew intimates that in the coming of the Europeans, it was overwhelmed by the numbers of the fallen aborigines and then by the Bunyip in the War of Tears. The Garou know that a spirit that does not fulfill its duty can often fall into Slumber. Curlew tells them that it exists in such a shadow state, and asks if they will perform chiminage tasks for it. (Again, the Garou know that a spirit can be withdrawn from Slumber by tasks dedicated to its name). The pack agree, and Curlew fades, leaving a single feather. Thomas picks it up and attunes to the feather, finding that it is a talen. He gathers that the feather will take them to where they need to go.
The pack decide to run back through the Umbra as best they can, but feel that if things turn unpleasant, they wouldn't be behaving poorly to escape to the material realm.
Spirit pack runs free
Fleet paws over broken ground
Moon turns from shadow
Very early in the am, the pack run into the cemetery. It takes some time before they come back to themselves, and they mostly just want to sleep.
Once they wake up, Cossack, Emma and Melissa are found (Dom is out at Rippling Waters) and they explain what has happened over the last week or so. Everyone is cautiously optimistic. Chases-the-Night looks at Melissa and asks if she has thought about what she wishes to do. Melissa looks nervous and says that she has decided that she does not fit with the pack, and thinks that it would be best for all if she left. Chases-the-Night asks if she has any plans after that - Melissa shrugs and says she wasn't planning on running away, but she might go and visit the Glass Walkers in Perth and see how her tribe behave in other places. The pack agree that sooner is better for such a thing. They arrange to summon Kanau that evening and perform the rituals.
While Dom is summoned and preparations are made, Cossack points out that this evening is Halloween, and tonight might be a good time to start the task given to them by Curlew. The pack protest and point to their droopy arms and legs, and Cossack points out further that they are trying to bridge the gap between Dreamtime and European culture, and performing their tasks this night is a good way to begin. They sigh and agree.
Shortly after sundown, the pack and Elders gather. Kanau is summoned and Melissa says that she feels her place is no longer with Holistic Approach. There is some silent conversation between Kanau and Melissa and then Kanau directs Emma to perform the rituals. The pack feel a bittersweet fading of Melissa from the link and there is a lot of "don't be a stranger" talk before Nadine whisks Melissa away to help at the zoo. Cossack pushes Holistic Approach to get on with their job too, and so Thomas activates the talen.
The pack feel a pulling sensation off to the north west and head that direction. Its a strange sensation, not a strong pull, but more a feeling that if they just let their legs walk, it would take them that direction. An hour or so of walking and the feeling seems to fade, leaving them facing a solid block of stone in the Umbra. Further investigation reveals it to be an apartment block in Essendon. The Umbral reflection of the flats seem to be indicative of the insular nature of the apartments. Not quite sure what they are looking for, the pack squeeze through the skinny spiritual doors in the otherwise featureless block and look around. Apartment 4 seems to have a faint Deadlands sense to it, and all the others seem clean, so they concentrate on that.
Peeking into the apartment quickly suggests that something has died in here recently - the air is acrid with the sweet smell of rotting flesh. Thinking its weird that no one in the block has said anything, the Garou check the outside, but the smell is almost indetectable outside of the bounds of the flat. Probing around inside reveals that the resident is a Ms Maree Goodwin, she lives alone, and that she was a beauty contestant way back. Odd. Figuring they can only get so much info from the Umbra, the pack head into the Realm. The smell is more intense, and people fight to hold their lunch. They find some evidence that Ms Goodwin has previously been active in the local church, but no family information. The framed newspaper articles are from the '50s and document her rise from the local to state beauty contests, and then a mention to the national competition, but no further details.
They sense some more in the Realm. The woman herself, sitting slumped in a armchair seems to be the source of the deadlands taint. Kimu tries to get a closer sense - there's no magic, nor any real extra wyrm. The sense of the death umbra is hard to pin down, because its so faint. She is wearing a small silver cross, that might be it. Kimu moves the body slightly so as to get to the chain, and something slumpes down out of her lap and onto the floor. Its a hand mirror. As he picks it up, light reflects off the mirror and seems to make the body jump and flicker. The mirror senses of nothing inparticular though, so he shrugs and tries to analyse the situation further. The pendant seems fairly inert though.
After a bit of messing around, Mathias comes to help out. He glances at the mirror and then rolls his eyes at the packleader, saying that it is tainted with deadlands. As he picks it up, he glances in it and sees not the decayed body of Maree, but a young woman. A bit more experimentation shows that light reflected from the mirror onto the corpse changes the corpse itself. That's pretty damn freaky. Sensing further suggests that maybe there's a fragment of spirit caught in the mirror.
Not really knowing what else to do, the pack decide to try cleanse the mirror. They dedicate it and take it into the Umbra, and perform the ritual on dawn. The mirror cracks as they howl, and the deadlands sense fades quickly, so they figure that was a workable idea.