Holistic Approach Chronology

November 2000

Wednesday 1

Early the next morning, Brett makes an anonymous call to the police about the smell from one of the flats. A time later some police wander past and frown at the smell. They call the body corporate and work out how to legally gain entrance. Ms Goodwin's body is found and the police react accordingly. The pack watch for a time, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of suspicions being raised about the situation.

The day is spent in rest.

Thursday 2

Late in the day, the pack activate the talen once again. The pulling sensation this time guides them to the north east. The night is spent walking.

Friday 3

Just on dawn, the talen ceases to guide them. The pack know that they are up the Yarra river valley somewhere, but its not clear where. They peek and find themselves in the midst of a cemetary, perhaps not too surprisingly, and in fact, right in front of a particular grave. The headstone says "Marion Eunice Warrin, died 9th July 1902, age 7".

The pack sense around but don't find more than a whisper of deadlands sense (its a cemetary). A little bit of poking around suggests that the other occupants of the cemetary might have been aboriginals. Brett jogs over to a nearby building and looks around the place - he comes back and says that they are at Coranderrk. The pack tentatively wonder if the young girl in this grave might not have been from the stolen generation.

Holistic Approach thinks about breaking into the building, but decide that they can just as easily wait 3 or so hours (thus learning the Teresa lesson) until it opens - apparently its a semi-touristic place.

While waiting for the station to open, the pack poke around and garner as much information as they can from the area. For the moment, they decide to not go and visit Reconciliation, despite the sept and caern only being a few kilometers away. Instead they check around the cemetary. There are a few other deaths from that same approximate time, more of them old or young than middling, so it might have been a particularly hard winter.

Eventually someone comes along the dirt road from town and parks near the building. Another human does the same shortly afterwards. The pack decide that their way forward is for Chasing-the-Night to pretend to be here from Japan with his friend (Mathias) (who can use his tongues gift to pretend to speak Japanese), and has some interest in investigating the similarities between the Ainu and the Australian aboriginals. (Basically because Brett is a lupus, and John, Thomas and Dom were all on the news recently).

This they now do. Mathias and Kimu go out to the main road and walk in to the centre. They head inside, and a 30-something aboriginal woman sticks her head out of a kitchen or something and asks if they need any help. Kimu says he is just looking for the moment. They wander around and read about Coranderrk - how it was one of six or so stations around Victoria, but that they were slowly all shut down due to lack of funds. At one stage, anyone deemed to be half-caste was ejected from the stations, due to a lack of funds. They read about how the mainly religious governance of the stations forbade celebrations of aboriginal culture as part of the assimilation policies, and so on. Its not exactly an uplifting story. However, they also learn a fair bit about William Barak, who was a powerful figure in the history of the local people, and of Coranderrk especially.

Kimu is glancing around the walls when the name 'Warrin' catches his eye. He finds a picture of the young girls at the station, and notices that one of them is listed as Marion Eunice Warrin. The young woman that came out before is around, and so he asks her some questions about the people in the photo. Kimu tells her about his own experiences, and that of his people, and how there are many similarities. There chat for a fair while, and Kimu subtley asks the questions the pack need to know - for one thing, people came to Coranderrk from all over the state, not just locally. Some came as individuals, and some as families. Kimu says that is especially the children that catch his heart, and points to three of the children in the photo, including Warrin, and asks what she knows about their fate; all in slightly apologetic, broken English.

The woman (apparently 'Julie', according to her nametag) seems happy to help, and somewhat curious about the Ainu people (whom she has never heard of). She says that they have numerous books here about the station for sale (hint hint) and she's happy to look through them and see what she can find for him. It only takes her a short time to find out about the first girl, whose family were split up when some of her family were declared to be half-caste and therefore not eligible for the benefits of living on the station. They apparently moved into the local area, and were caught several times sneaking back and forth. Apparently the whole family eventually moved to somewhere near Beechworth, and descendants are still in the area (there are interviews in the book).

The second child is a complete unknown. The third is Marion Warrin, who was apparently an orphan and ward of the state. Kimu asks after her, and Julie says that she doesn't recall much about the name, but will see what she can see. At that point, an older couple come in and want to ask questions, so Julie says that she'll get back to helping them in a bit, but invites the two Garou to look through the books. They do, and learn a bit more about the history of the station and William Barak.

The other couple leave, and Julie offers to help Mathias and Kimu further. Kimu asks how it would happen that such an orphan would end up here, and Julie looks through various references until she finds how Marion appeared at the station. Apparently she was brought here in the care of a Rev. Maiden when she was about 2 years old. Subtle questions about the man who brought her here (avoiding the names of the dead still) give them a full name - Reverend Herbert Maiden, c/o the Ballaraat Parish, who used to correspond at length with the station governor. There is no real mention of Marion's delivery to the station. There's not much more information than that.

The two of them thank her for her help, and "Chris Elliot" buys some of the books on his credit card so that they can continue their research. They walk away from the station again, and meet up with the rest of the pack. The general feeling is that they need to keep following up what they can with this - Brett suggests that the State Library has a lot of birth and death info, so they might be able to find more about Marion there. In the meantime, they decide that going to Reconciliation and letting them know what's up is a plan. They cut across the fields and into the caern via the Umbra, speaking to the Sons of Luna as they cross into the bawn.

The pack are again graced with the presence of Antoinette, and tell her what they have found and accomplished since they last spoke to her and the other garou of Reconciliation. She asks them some pertinent questions, and when Brett says that they only links they have are through old records, she points out that if that may be the point of the task - that they can bridge the gap between the spirits and the european culture, and take a spiritual task and investigate it in a material way. The pack mention that they may end up wanting to move the remains of the deceased and Antoinette says that she may be able to help when the time comes.

Its quite early in the day when they get back to the city via borrowing a car from the Child of Gaia sept, and they drop John off in the library to research his little heart out. The rest of the pack return to the sept and inform Cossack and Emma what's been happening.

Midafternoon, Thomas is speaking with Ends-the-Quiet when the elder looks a bit distracted. A moonbridge opens shortly and a woman steps through. It is clear from her various tattoos and such that she is a Black Fury, and she introduces herself as Leah Tears-of-Blood, ahroun packleader of the Fury pack Wyld's Vengeful Claws. She is hear to speak to garou about the wyld forces forcing their way up into the city. Ends-the-Quiet directs Thomas to take her to Graeme's house and says that Thomas is of the pack Holistic Approach that are investigating the situation.

Thomas mentally alerts the pack and is joined by Kimu and Brett. Both of them notice that Tears-of-Blood shies away from them as they get too close, and think uhoh. They are on the way to Graeme's residence when they are intercepted by Nadine, with Melissa in tow (she shrugs at Thomas). Nadine directs them to Ian's room instead. Once they are out of the way, Nadine rather brusquely asks what Leah can do for them. Leah explains that they (the Furies) have rituals to take excessive Wyld energy and spread it out over a wide area so that it is disappated in a positive fashion, rather than just causing a different sort of unbalance. She fairly bluntly points out that no males would be permitted within the area of the ritual, and it would need to be maintained, and still no male would be permitted to profane their sacred rites. Brett points out that that would be difficult as there are three humans there who have a strong connection to the site, and two of them are male. Leah is adamant, and seems a bit narked that they would try and argue the point. Melissa has a "what's up her arse" expression, one shared to some degree by Thomas.

The discussion turns a little short, and eventually Nadine cuts things off by saying the Elders will discuss it, thanking her for her time. Leah turns to Melissa and asks why she stays in this pack of uncouth male egocentrics. Melissa blandly says "bite me, muffdiver". There is an uncomfortable silence, and then Leah turns and leaves with Nadine. Melissa, too, leaves shortly afterwards Moments after that, Ian becomes visible in the corner of the room, saying that Melissa's statement was stupid. They discuss the Furies requirements, which seem to be impractical. Kimu says that he thinks going to Japan and speaking to the tenders of that city is a plan. Ian bluntly asks what Kimu's plans are for going there, and why the Uktena would be better. Kimu intimates that he is not happy with the Uktena, but is happy to use that connection to get himself a bit further into the good graces of the supernaturals in Tokyo. Ian grunts and then tells them to get the hell out of his room.

By the end of the day, John has found out some information about Marion, as well as Herbert Maiden. The information about Marion is somewhat sketchy - the State Library only has the indexes for the BDM records. She is listed as WARREN - Marion Eunice, died 1902, in HEAL. Mother: UNK. Father: UNK. Blast. However, they have the Registration number and can get the full listing in a day or so. While he was there, John thought to look up Rev Maiden too - apparently he died in BEAU (probably Beaufort, near Ballaraat) about 1920. John idly looks up what he can find about the guy, and finds that he had at least 4 children, and one wife, and most of them were born in BEAU as well, and a couple of them died there.

Saturday 4

Early in the morning, John thinks to go back to the State Library and see if any of Rev Maiden's papers have been lodged there. This turns out to in fact be the case, and so he happily starts chugging through them while the others get on with their Garou lives.

A morning's research starts to pay off. Maiden was in correspondence with a number of people around Victoria at the time. He seems to have been quite the humanitarian, flavoured by the beliefs of the time - the assimilation policy was only going to help the last dying tribes of Australian aborigines, etc. One of the people that he seems to have exchanged a fair amount of letters with is a James Clarence Bryant, who was a local member in NSW, and an aggressive opponent of the NSW Aboriginal Protection Board. They were good enough friends that Maiden's first son was named after Bryant. Somewhere admidst their combined written works, John finds not only a mention of a visit from Bryant to Maiden in 1897, but also a mention of a young servant girl on one of Bryant's properties in New South Wales who fell from a ladder and broke her neck. There is a mention of a young daughter, "attractive despite the odd birthmark on her cheek". While there is not a firm link from this child to Bryant to Maiden to Marion Warrin, the pack feel that there is enough evidence to suggest that they have the right people.

John tries to find out which language group or clan hails from the area where Bryant owned property, and is swamped in information about the Yorta Yorta people, who recently lost a Supreme Court case to have their native title recognised in the Echucha area - pretty much smackbang where Bryant was a member of parliament. And, in Garou terms, that area would be... damn. Silver Fang territory.

The pack decide that maybe its time to make that trip out to Reconciliation now. They grab the car and cruise on out there. Once at the Sanctuary, a small group of Garou assemble to chat to them about the problem - Antoinette, Phyllis Hernandez of First Wave and Byron Fortesceau, pack leader of The Middle Way. Holistic Approach dump out all the information they have found so far - the young mother's death, with a young child with birthmark, Bryant's trip in early 1897 to Maiden's, and Maiden's subsequent trip to Coranderrk and the approximate date matches - and their conclusions based on that information. Byron says that its a little thin - if they weren't involved in a spirit quest and all that entails, he'd certainly be more skeptical about their links. Phyllis is a little more emotional, and critical of Maiden and Bryant, but agrees that Holistic Approach's chain is probably correct.

There is much discussion about how to move Marion's remains to her tribal land - could they find some relations on the sight? Would the Yorta Yorta group want to participate? Should they ensure that Marion's spirit rests easy in the move, and if so how? Would the Yorta Yorta want to be part of the process publically, or should the Garou just act on their own? What will be the Silver Fang attitude to the pack at the moment - Dom says that the Western Plains protectorate is one of the more traditional (crazy) and insular (insane) groups of Silver Fang septs. Not helped by the fact that they will also be near the edge of two Silver Fang protectorate (Riviera as well, who are a bit pissed) and near Fianna territory too. The last thing the pack want to do is start a territorial war.

At one point Byron and Phyllis go off and have a chat on their own - Byron appears to be trying to convince Phyllis of something, and eventually she agrees. When they return, he suggests that the two Garou might be able to find someone inclined to help Holistic Approach, but it might take a couple of days, and the pack would have to be sworn to a certain amount of secrecy. They agree in theory, but don't want to be drawn until Byron is able to be more specific. He seems to accept that and the two Silver Fangs head off.

Sunday 5

The pack have a day to themselves to sort out various life-related stresses. John and Brett study rituals, the others help out at the caern.

Monday 6

More loafing around the caern. Just before lunchtime, Graeme finds Mathias and asks him why Dane has been poking about the trustees of the cemetary about the mage attack on New Years Eve. Holistic Approach discuss it with Graeme for a bit - Graeme is concerned that there may be more to it than Dane coincidentally poking about for mage information. The pack don't think its much more than Dane doing his mage research. They have a bit of discussion about the Sept's relationship with the trustees - apparently they are normal humans, who know nothing about the Garou in the cemetary.

After lunch, John gets a call from Byron, who asks if they can come and meet someone tomorrow in Kyabram, about 11am. John does a mental check and it seems possible. A location is arranged.

Tuesday 7

The pack get up bright and early and drive north. While technically in Silver Fang territory, they decide that being on the road isn't really interfering with anyone's bawn. 3 hours later, they pull into Kyabram and go into the pub where they've agreed to meet. No one else is there, so they arrange some breakfast while Mathias and Brett go into the Umbra.

Byron and Phyllis show up about 15 minutes later, along with a young aboriginal guy. The garou all move to a table far away from the pub staff in the otherwise empty pub. Byron introduces the newcomer as Kevin, of the Silver Fang tribe, and of the Yorta Yorta. There is a certain amount of 'huh?' from the pack - despite some rampant paranoia, Sense Unnatural doesn't reveal the typical Bunyip-like oddness. Kevin appears to be about 20 and looks a little unimpressed to be here. Holistic Approach explain their dilemma, but Kevin isn't exactly forthcoming with joyous will to assist - frankly he's pouty and bad tempered, wanting to know why he should help them out. He doesn't necessarily like them, or Byron and Phyllis, and is suspicious about the pack's motivations - he wants to know why he should help the same people who dispossessed his people of their lands and apparently did the same to the original spiritual guardians, and now want to take their place. The pack try and explain their take on things, but its met with a certain amount of skepticism. A bit dissonantly, Kevin also wants to know whats in it for him. Kimu asks what he wants (as the pack groan) - Kevin's somewhat surprising answer is "get me out of the Sept I'm in" as Byron winces.

Byron asks Chasing-the-Night to come for a walk while the others finish their food. Chasing-the-Night keeps his packmates up to date and passes on questions. Byron explains that Kevin is not yet rank 1, and hasn't exactly been the ideal young garou. He's a philodox in a tribe that is functionally alien to him, almost the ideal of the type of people who have messed up his people's world. However, that doesn't excuse his behaviour - he has violated the Litany on a couple of occasions, and his Sept elders have basically said that he's not allowed outside the bawn, now is he allowed to interact with family. Kimu queries the last, given the whole reason of coming here, and Byron says that far from having bad relations with them, it was a little too good - Kevin seems to feel that he should let them know about Garou. Kimu passes on a comment about Darius maybe helping Kevin out, given his obsession with the Bunyip, and Byron sighs and says that's not a bad idea - except that when Darius visited, Kevin called him a chinless faggot. It doesn't need to be said that Darius isn't interested in interacting with him. Chasing-the-Night asks whether its possible that they might be able to negotiate with the appropriate Sept elders to release Kevin into their custody; Byron isn't sure, as its become a matter of honour for them to make him into a functional member of the Silver Fang tribe - Falcon insists that he is a Silver Fang. Byron reiterates that he would like the pack to be discreet about Kevin's existence - they had to call in a number of favours to even get this meeting to happen.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Mathias mindspeaks with Kevin to have a private discussion. Kevin is still fairly ansty about helping them, and when Mathias says that they could maybe get him into a Sept near Melbourne, Kevin says that he's not interested in leaving the ancestral lands of his family. Oh good, so he wants to stay somewhere near Echuca, near the borders of two Silver Fang and one Fianna protectorates.

Byron and Kimu return and Kevin is asked if he actually does know what they need. He grudgingly concedes that he does know some of the rituals (small r) that are appropriate to their problem, or someone who does, but he's still uncooperative. Phyllis is obviously sick of his attitude, as she points out that as Garou they can manage this to their satisfaction without him, but they are giving him an oppurtunity to participate - they thought he'd want to be part of it. On that awkward ending, Holistic Approach say bye and head back to Melbourne with the promise to get back to people in the next day or so.

   On the way back to Melbourne, the pack talk about what they could do to help Kevin. Frankly, they don't think the Silver Fangs will take anything from them in return for Kevin's freedom, and the whole situation feels a bit problematic. Rather than drive on, they pull over and talk some more, and in the end, decide to ring Byron again, and ask if they could meet Kevin's sept leader. Byron isn't exactly enthusiastic, but they talk quickly and he says that he'll call back.

30 minutes later, he says that he and the Sept Leader will meet them at a farmhouse north of Kyabram. The pack rush to a town near that address in the car, and park, leaving the more objectionable pack members behind. Chasing-the-Night and Dominique go and meet the Silver Fang Garou. When they arrive, there's no one about, so they wait. After a time, Byron and a female werewolf they don't recognise approach over the fields. They change form to homid and approach. Kimu is introduced to Dorothy Darts-like-Flame, the Silver Fang Sept leader at Kevin's Sept.

Kimu explains what they are attempting to do - move the bones to help Curlew to find the mage - and how they were hoping Kevin could help them with this process. Dominique assists with the telling, and when she speaks, her words ring true with mystic might (pesky fetish). They tentative also try to imply that even though its definately not the Silver Fang's fault, Kevin is rebelling against their authority, and that being part of something like this might help him get a better sense of place in the Garou nation (not that he wouldn't eventually with the Silver Fang's excellent guidance. Uhunh. For sure.).

Dorothy says that it seems the sort of thing that Kevin should be involved in. She agrees that she will tell him to assist them, but that she wants reassurance from them that Kevin will not be in contact with 'inappropriate influences', and makes it clear that she a) holds them responsible for him while he is with them and b) doesn't want them preaching sedition. They promise to play nice with Kevin. Its only at the end of the conversation that they think "hey, maybe Kevin will feel a bit betrayed by this. Uhoh."

Wednesday 8

The pack have been told to meet Kevin at Reconciliation. They drive out bright and early in the morning and chat with Antoinette. She says that Kevin is here, but is being fairly unresponsive. John and Brett head out to meditate in the caern and at Coranderrk respectively while the others find Kevin, sitting on a bench in the Realm, and throwing stones at a pond. There's some sort of school group around, and primaryschoolaged kids run around the square.

The pack attempt to speak to Kevin - his only response is "Get. Fucked". Obviously this is not going well. They continue to talk to him for a bit, and he is obviously biting back comments constantly. They try and explain that they couldn't get him out of the Sept (not that they tried) and that helping them here will help him gain respect in his tribe and Sept and a greater degree of freedom. When Kevin is still surly and unresponsive, the pack mentally discuss the fact that he's being a prat, Thomas particularly wanting to just smack him and get on with their task. Frankly, if someone pulled the shit on them they pulled on him, Holistic Approach would be trying to pull their entrails out through their nose. A certain amount of ablative honour seems to be in the offing.

Thomas tries to reach Kevin by explaining that he fled Garou society and stayed away for years, doing his own thing and allowed to make his own choices, and found out that it wasn't such a good idea. Unfortunately, Kevin seems to focus on the first part of this attempt to reach out and frenzies, barely diving into the Umbra through the puddle before launching into a rampaging sprint across the caern. Fuck, thinks Thomas, falling backwards off the chair and letting the pack know by the link. Mathias leaps for the nearest toilet to step sideways. John, who is nearby, breaks his meditation, and gives chase, as do a couple of other Garou in lupus. As it turns out, Mathias and Thomas are faster, and Mathias slams into Kevin's back in crinos. Kevin's head snaps back, is caught by a low lying branch on a tree and twisted further. With a fairly sickening crack, he crashes to a halt as Chasing-the-Night runs up and hits him with the healing talen. Kevin appears to be breathing, but is way out cold.

The two other lupus turn out to be the Boylan twins, and they are shortly followed by Stephen Righteous-Claw who is toting a large baseball bat. They explain what happened, emphasising that Kevin had the presence of mind to step and not permanently scar a bunch of little kiddies. Even if he has torn across the normally calm caern landscape and destroyed trees and left divots. Stephen suggests that Holistic Approach might want to do what they can to fix things before the Keeper of the Land, Chases-the-Evening-Star tears off their skin. They agree this would be a good idea. Dominique gets a chance to show her fellow Garou the whacky variation on Mother's Touch that works on plants that Sandra Norton taught her at Rippling Waters while the others take their turns guarding Kevin.

When he comes around, it happens to be Mathias who is guarding him, and he is matter-of-fact about what happened ("You frenzied, I took you down"), although he does cede to Thomas's request to mention the "went into the Umbra bit" too. They eat and perform other mundane tasks before heading over to the reservation about 11pm.

While this has been going on, John has been calling on his favourite friends, the earth elementals. After three hours of summoning, the soggy ground boils up into the shape of a rough mud humanoid. It seems happy to help when the pack explain that they want to lift up the not-dirt below this point (inside Marion's grave), but to disturb it otherwise as little as possible. It takes about an hour for the earth to churn and produce a crumbling coffin and the delicate bones of a young girl. Kevin tells them all to piss off and not watch - he has brought a bag with various ingredients and while the pack back off 150 m or so, he performs what seem a number of different rituals until dawn, when he allows them to return. They find that he has bundled the remains up into a neat bark package, marked with painted symbols on the outside. Now they have to decide where to take her - the suggestion is that they head for Bryant's property first and see what happens then.

  The trip to near Echuca is a somewhat strained and silent one.

  As they near the Murray, Kevin directs them to Barmah, and from there the Barmah State Forest. As they approach, Kevin gives directions, and eventually says they can park in a gravel car park near the Dharnya Centre. There are another couple of cars parked nearby, two of which look like staff, and a third that is probably visitors. Kevin gets out wordlessly and goes inside, followed at a distance by Thomas and Kimu. They watch as Kevin approaches a middle-aged woman behind an information/souvenier desk, but veer away and idly look over the displays rather than eavesdrop. They find out all about the Barmah park and the history of the building. Peeking shows that the building exists in the Umbra, although it is a bit rougher in construction. As well as the woman behind the desk (who looks at least part Aboriginal, but not necessarily related to Kevin), there is also a tradesman of some sort, putting up shelves inside.

Meanwhile, back at the car, John resists the urge to ransack through Kevin's bone-pack that he has left behind, and eventually goes inside instead, while Brett and Mathias head into the rather soggy, but natural feeling Umbra. Meanwhile, Kevin disappears through a "staff only" door at the urging of the desk-woman. Time passes...

A couple more cars of people show up, one is a family who settle down to eat lunch, the other vehicle disgorging some hikers who immediately set off along a longish walking track. Kevin comes back out to the car with an older aboriginal guy, and grabs the bones. They talk briefly in a strange tongue, and Mathias uses his Tongues gift - Cob basically saying Kevin did the rigt things. Kevin and Cob go back towards the Centre, followed by Mathias. Kevin makes it clear that Mathias is not welcome (by the simple expedient of closing the door in his face). The family group head off around the nearby lake.

After a while Kevin comes out again with the older guy and heads for Chasing-the-Night. The tradesman is lurking around in a way that suggests that he's keeping an eye on things. Kevin says that they can leave the bones here, and Cob (gesturing at the older man) will make sure that they are treated properly. Kimu suggests that they should leave now then. Kevin says that he's not going. Chasing-the-Night says that that could be harder than Kevin thinks. Kevin says that if they try and push the issue he'll tell... no, he'll show the people here what they are trying to hide. The body language is fairly obviously Holistic Approach versus Kevin, Cob and the white guy. Kimu decides that now is not the time to push the issue and heads for the car. Kevin and co turn and go back into the building.

Kimu, John and Dom decide that before just turning Kevin in, they'll give Byron a ring and see what he says, but the reception sucks here, so they head out of the park, while the rest of the pack spread out around the centre and watch from the Umbra, sneaking up to hear in windows when it seems safe. Their words are just gibberish until Mathias uses his Tongues gift - Cob, Alyssa (the woman) and Kevin just seem to be talking about mundane things, people they know and so on.

John calls Byron and then passes the phone to Chasing-the-Night (ew, weaverthings). Byron seems resigned to his fate, and says he'll be there as quick as he can, but he won't be able to get away for a while. He suggests that they don't push Kevin to breach the Litany - Duh - but that he's leaving it up to them as to what steps they take. Kimu asks if they should tell Kevin's Sept, but Byron says that might make things worse at this stage.

The pack decide they can't just leave Kevin when he could breach the Litany at any time. They try to come up with a plan. Their best option seems to be to summon a spirit of Sleep to put everyone in the building to beddie byes and then take Kevin away. Mathias starts the summoning while Kimu, John and Dom stay near the park entrance in the car, and Brett and Thomas watch to make sure no one slips away.

While Mathias is summoning the other visitors leave the park, and no one else appears to enter. Towards the end of the afternoon a sleepy looking Van Winkle-type of spirit appears walking through the trees. It is fairly friendly, and when the pack offer to dedicate a night's worth of sleep to the spirit as well as provide tasty tasty gnosis, it agrees to help them out. It wanders over to the Umbral building and lets itself rip (so to speak).

The pack rush in. Well, sort of. Mathias steps into the soothing Gauntlet for a time. Brett leads Thomas through the gauntlet outside the building, and then they both rush in to find that Kevin has rushed to see why Alyssa has fallen randomly asleep. Thomas continues with the momentum motif and tries to bodyslam Kevin, who dodges. Thomas misses, crashes into the glass display case, shattering it, pushing it back into Alyssa, driving long shards of glass into his body and finally crashing to the floor entangled in the human's body. As Brett gets his Rage-less slow arse there , Kevin leaps the remains of the desk and boots Thomas in the head, and Thomas slumps into blessed unconsciousness before checking on the puny crushed human. Brett rushes over too and heals Alyssa, who has not exactly enjoyed the process either. Kevin rushes off into another room before Brett can order him to do as they say. Kevin is heading to Cob, but Brett catches up and uses the Calm gift, then crashes Kevin to the ground and knocks him out. Brett none-to-kindly drags Kevin back to Thomas, heals the ahroun and gets him to take Kevin out into the bush somewhere. The rest of the pack appear and Mathias starts his its-not-evidence-if-you-eat-it ritual.

Mathias calls upon Mosquito spirits, who come and consume the blood in the realm. However, he zigs rather than zags when calling upon Moth to help destroy the hair, and thousands of Moths descend upon him and Bretty, consuming their hair and clothes. This is somewhat offputting, to say the least. However, until Mathias has a chance to perform a Rite of Contrition for the Insect Gods, he probably shouldn't do the ritual again - they'll just have to cope.

The pack decide to take Kevin to the nearby farmhouse where they met Dorothy the first time, on the grounds that Byron et al can home in on them there. He shows no signs of coming around even after a couple of hours, which is a little concerning, but probably easier to deal with.

Sometime around 7pm, Byron and the rest of his pack show up at the farmhouse. They ask what happened, and Byron winces, although he admits that he can't think of an easy out immediately either. Isis looks less impressed, but doesn't say anything. They chat with The Middle Way and suggest some ways to slant Kevin's contribution in a positive way - he did do what they asked after all. Maybe Byron could skim over the whole threatening to break the Litany bit.

Eventually the pack pile in the car and head back to Melbourne. As they come around a bend on the Hume, they can see a police booze bus ahead. John is driving, so he can't leave but the rest of the pack members who are wanted by police at the moment decide that its time for them to visit the tasty, tasty Umbra. There is a brief pause before they all crash through the spirit world at 60kms/hr. John pulls up as directed and chats with the officer before being sent on his way. Around the next bend, he stops at a truck stop and they wait for the remaining pack members.

Arriving back in Melbourne is fairly much a non-event. They talk with Cossack and Graeme a bit before crashing to sleep - tomorrow is a moot day, so they'll have stuff to do and stories to tell.

Thursday 9

The pack spend the day preparing for the Moot tonight. As usual, things kick off at dusk. The Scryers are asked to give their stories first (assorted mundane mage hunting activies, result zip), and then Claws of Wisdom. They let people know a trimmed version of what they've been up to over the last month. People look bemused. Renown is awarded and stories are told. Revel, grrr, woof.

Waargh! Stupid dream.

The pack decide to leave things a day and perhaps relax before continuing with the tasks set for them by Curlew. Some of the Claws of Wisdom are hanging about the caern when they hear a "hello?" kind of howl, in the Umbra and toward the northeast. Happenstantially, they are up that end of things, and trot off. A couple of blocks away from the caern they spot a young fem garou leaning against a wall. She straightens when they approach, and waves. Introductions are made - apparently she is Shayne, a rank 3 Black Fury ragabash. She understands that they are having some Wyld difficulties and want some Black Fury help - but unfortunately that involves dealing with some of the less tolerant members of her tribe. She intimates that she knows Leah Tears-of-Blood and also that she doesn't respect her much.

They have a brief chat when one of the Claws of Wisdom spots some of the Hellhounds looking their way from 100 meters away, specifically Amy and Sean - the two Get are looking their direction and chatting. They move away when one of Claws of Wisdom wave. The pack offer to take Shayne to see the Glade, an offer she accepts. When they arrive, only Gavin and Kylie are around, but the Garou opt to stay in the Umbra regardless.

Shayne is a bit blown away by the Glade child, and agrees with the Wyld energies surging out of holes in reality here. She pokes about, and closes her eyes and listens, and generally examines the place. There is some discussion about what is causing it, and she reckons that its a combination of the new spirit and Kylie/unborn baby. They are sparking with Wyld, and Shayne asks Brett if he's not the father. Really? Sure? You don't sleep walk or anything?

After an hour or two, Shayne says that she can definately help them with solving their problems. She doesn't have any problems with the kinfolk being there, even the male ones (several nasty comments are made about chasing Leah around with dildos "Watch out, brave Garou, its a penis!") - in fact they might be able to help, given that they have such a connection to the place. Everyone looks happy.

   After comfirming that they are interested, the pack quiz Shayne a bit. She says that the Wyld will be sort of dissociated from the material world for a bit so it can spread out before it reaffects things. How far? Well, its hard to say, cos its Wyld, but maybe a miles? What happens when it reaffects things? Well, Wyldthings, but hopefully minor stuff - I mean, no one really objects to a bit more dynamism to the world, their problem is just that it is a bit too concentrated, right? Mathias starts to notice that Shayne is getting really quite... worked up. She's bopping about unable to sit still, and is twitching quite a fair bit. A bit of mental conversation suggests getting out of here in case she causes the same problems as Brett. Shayne is thinking that this Ragabash moon is the right time - she says that she'll need some help from various people she knows, so it'll be necessary to bring in some more folks - is that ok? The pack think so, but say that they'll have to talk it over with their Elders. Maybe they should go to the caern now. Shayne is a bit reluctant, but agrees.

As they walk back to the caern, Mathias subtly brings up the twitching. Shayne says that she has a bit of a problem with the full moon - ahroun moons send her off a bit weird. She seems to be calming down an appropriate amount as she they move away. They get to the caern and only manage to find Graeme. Shayne is a little shy at first, but seems to relax a little as they chat. She explains about the dissociation and how its a ritual best down at Ragabash moons. Graeme says that they'll have to talk about it. Shayne says she can come back in a couple of days - she'd prefer to stay out of the city somewhere. They agree and she says she'll pop back in say 3 days - any more than that is going to make it hard to get the people together. Shayne goes off.

The Garou talk with Graeme a bit, who, amongst other issues, points out that the area of effect is going to be overlapping with Hidden Green, so they need to be informed. He's happy to organise that and talk with the other Elders, but as informal guardians of the glade, he wants to see how they feel about things. Good? Good. Ok.

The pack decide another night's sleep is in order before triggering Curlew's talen once more, and so they get some kip.

Saturday 11

Thomas is rudely awoken by Melissa early in the morning. Apparently the police busted down their door - she'd gone back to crashing there, but not hanging about. Frankly she blames Thomas and the others for getting on the tele again about the kidnapping. She only just managed to get away by stepping sideways. Not happy, Jan. Thomas is more annoyed about the lost of his piecemeal motorbike.

Seeing as how they are up, the pack assemble and push the magic button. Brooowwwww. Thomas coughs and tries to activate the talen again and gets a better response this time. The senstation draws them far nornortheast, a much further pulling than before. They decide that maybe a car is in order, given last time it took them to Healesville. They score another van, different from the one they took to meet Kevin.

Hours later, the pack pull into Sydney, a little worse for wear. The feather pulls them to a southwest suburb, and finally towards what looks like a pallative care hospital of some sort. They park in a small side street and step. Weaver structures dominate the landscape, and they have to pick their way between web. Thomas says "here" and they peek. Through the relatively thick gauntlet, they peer into the Realm to see a nurse apparently feeding a couple of elderly women. The woman she is treating at the moment is extremely thin, and doesn't entirely seem to be tracking. The nurse takes a small bottle of something herbal looking out of a pocket and moves to put some of it on the woman's food. Suddenly two guards burst in, followed by a man in a suit. They grab the nurse, and the bottle of herbal stuff and the food that was going to be given to the patient, who starts yelling and making a fuss - nothing she says is coherent really, but its clear she wants the food.

John heads out to the car and steps while the others follow to see what is going on. The nurse is taken to the director's office and the bottle is put in front of her. The guards are excused and leave. The nurse is left to sit and stew for a few minutes - while this happens, someone sniffs through the Gauntlet and comes to the conclusion that the bottle of "parsley" is probably some form of nightshade, just based on the smell. Oh good. The director (Andrew Talbot) returns and basically says that he believes that the nurse (Priscilla Ryan) has been behaving "unprofessionally" and hasn't had the patient's best interests at heart. He never actually comes out and says "you've been topping the oldies". Talbot says that she is going to resign immediately, which the hospice is going to accept. She will be paid out for holidays pending, but she is no longer employed here.

Meanwhile, John steps into the car and disturbs three teenagers at work ripping off their car. After knocking one out and seriously freaking another, he chases the conscious two off, then returns and moves the van.

  The pack watch as Ryan packs up her stuff and drives him. John follows in the van while the rest of the pack trundle along in the Umbra. She doesn't seem to be paying a lot of attention - the more empathic Garou suggest she might be in shock. After a couple of near misses, she arrives at a set of single story units. Ryan parks and sits in the car for a bit, then goes inside.

The rest of the pack show up and check out the site. There's a faint Wyrm sense about Ryan - a taint, and a strange one. Its reminiscent of the Killer of Children while not partaking of that entity. Much thinking about it suggests that its almost like a wyrm taint of balance - if Ryan is killing people that shouldn't be alive then that's possibly closer to the sense of the wyrm's original purpose, which is rare in this day and age.

Sniffing around from the Umbra suggests that while she doesn't get her own poisoned plants from a herb garden, she does dry them here. There are some gloves and other safety equipment permeated with the same scent, and a box that has had the plants in it.

Meanwhile Ryan sits in her dark house. She is obviously in shock now, and the pack become a bit concerned that she might do something dangerous. John makes a quick call to her house, having glommed the phone number from a bill lying around. Ryan jumps and rushes to the phone as John hangs up. This seems to snap her out of it a bit, because she turns on a light and tv, orders some pizza. While she is doing this, they cruise through the house from the Umbra. Things of note include a set of photos, an older couple with some family resemblence to Ryan and a younger couple and kids.

While they are considering their options, primarily "what the hell are we meant to be doing?", Mathias notices that some areas of the Umbra are starting to darken, as if a cloud of shadow hung there. Sensing suggests that this something bane related - the clouds grow and thicken in content, and the pack can hear a faint whispering in the backs of their minds.

This is not good. They decide to dispatch the evil banes and throw themselves into the combat with grace and enthusiasm. Unfortunately each blow seems to strengthen the banes, increasing their power, and when they strike back, the pack find themselves resisting the urge to frenzy and do more violence. Seeing as how the banes feed off such violent impulses, the pack take the more sensible option and run away - the normal corruption process takes a month, so Ryan isn't in any immediate danger. The banes chase them for a bit, and then return to circling and whispering through the gauntlet.

Brett, Mathias and Chases-the-Night decide that a cleansing is in order, and perform the ritual with grace and panash. The banes don't seem to react to this and continue their efforts to reach the puny mortal. When the ritual is finished, one of the banes visibly starts to shred and break apart, while the other two simply fade like they appeared.

There is a brief consideration of this - although banes often appear to those in turmoil and try to corrupt them when they are vunerable, the sudden appearance of the banes on the same evening bespeaks something a bit more significant, and suggests that Ryan has importance outside of their own quest. More thinking.

Sunday 12

Having watched Ryan until she went to bed, the pack catch some sleep. When he wakes, John has memories of a strange dream - Ryan was walking along, wearing a mask, or a hood or something. She was walking next to the road, but the road was actually a pit or something, and there were Things in it. When the others awaken, he mentions this, along with his thoughts - that Ryan's spiritual significance is putting her in some danger because she is unaware of it.

There is much discussion about how they could change this. Brett says that he is working on learning the Rite of Parted Veil, maybe that would be sufficient. They talk about possibly making her kinfolk or at least spiritually awakening her. The pack have some concerns that rushing things might crack her into full on psychosis, but taking too long is going to have its own problems.

Holistic Approach consider what sort of approaches might help. It depends why Ryan is doing what she is doing. They think that its because of family members, but they aren't sure - John and Brett head for the BDM in Sydney and see what they can see. The building is kind of old and not too well maintained, so they are able to slip in through the Umbra and awaken a desktop terminal to make some queries. Apparently Priscilla Ryan is the daughter of Thomas and Dorothy Ryan and she's 35. Tap tap tap. She has a sister, Victoria. Ah, Dorothy died in 1982, which would have made Priscilla 17 or so. Tap tap tap. And Thomas died 6 months or so later. Figuring he may as well make the best of an oppurtunity, John makes three fake people in the database, one for himself, one for Mathias, one for Thomas. He doesn't send out a copy of the birth certificate, not having a fake postal address sorted out, but at least there's some details on these people online.

Thomas mentions that the Silent Striders used to work with sort of priests - basically humans who had a sense of the deadlands. They note this down as a possibilty - no one said that they had to do this entirely on their own. More speculation - maybe they need to help instigate some sort of spirit connection - perhaps Ryan is to become a shaman for Curlew. They consider that Curlew doesn't necessarily appear as a bird. Hmm. What sorts of spirits might be able to help keep an eye on Ryan from the Umbra, but won't be skittish of her Kevorkian like activities - in the end, they decide owl, and specifically Boobook might make a good guardian.

  John spends some hours summoning Boobook while the others watch Ryan. She spends the day "keeping busy" as much as she possibly can. Her house has never had such a scrubbin'. John's summoning finishes up and he is a bit surprised at a soft "Boobook" from behind him. They speak to the spirit and explain what they are performing a chiminage quest for Curlew and this woman in the Realm is part of it and they are worried that she is in danger. Boobook agrees the help them, saying that if she is in danger, he will come to Thomas and tell him. This wasn't exactly what they wanted, but its sufficient, so they agree, exchange some gnosis with Boobook and bind him to Ryan. Boobook flies up into a nearby tree and vanishes to sight.

The pack continue their discussion about what they should do and how they should do it. Thomas is a firm devotee to the belief that they should expediently expose Ryan to the supernatural, but the others are a bit more cautious - they don't want to shock her too much further. Another look over her house doesn't reveal anything religious; it doesn't seem that Ryan has any strong beliefs in much, except presumably the rightness of her actions. Brett figures that, despite Thomas's arguments, this might take a while and they might have to ask Garou from the Rocks Caern for some help over time; they have a bit of a time limit for staying here, based on the need to be back in Melbourne by Ragabash moon, although that's not a hard limit.

They keep an idle eye on her during the day. That night, while she sleeps, the keen eyed Garou spot someone slinking through the darkness, heading into the set of units. They take a quick squiz and realise that its one of the security guards from the other day, when Ryan was caught. He seems to be sneaking along and looking at the flats, maybe looking for a particular one. Brett and John decide that it would be best if he didn't find it, so they step out of the Umbra and into the Realm. They chase silently across lawns and crashtackle the guy. Brett grabs his foot and trips him over with a hearty oomf. John, in glabro, leaps on him and starts to strangle the guy. However, in the darkness, they haven't noticed that he has a crowbar, which is swung up and battered against John's head. John nearly frenzies, but keeps it under control as Brett pins the arm with the crowbar. John manages to get a good grip and holds on till the guy stops thrashing around.

No one in the units seems to have noticed, and so John flips the guy up onto a shoulder, and rifles through his wallet. They dump him in a yard a couple of hundred metres away and hurl his wallet down the drain. The guy comes to an hour later, and is a bit dazed and confused. They follow him to his car, which he drives away. As they have his name (Berend Smith), they don't bother to follow, but try and work out what he was up to - the crowbar says he was going to break in, but why? The pack marvel at the strange mysteries of human behaviour.

Monday 13

Said questing stone is used to find Mr Smith. He is at home, and doesn't seem to be inclined to go to work - probably works shifts at the hospital or something. He has some wicked bruises around his neck. At about 11, he goes to the shops. Will wonders never cease. As he doesn't seem inclined to go to the police, and hasn't covered his apartment in "Ryan must die" scrawled in crayon, they shrug and move back to the scene of the crime.

Meanwhile, Ryan has got up and done normal morning things. She then takes a deep breath, gets her little black book and starts making calls to various nurse temp agencies. She gets signed up informally to two places, and by about lunchtime has been offered some work on the Tuesday night. Yay shortage of nurses.

The pack watch Ryan and Smith for the day, but they don't do anything particularly startling. Smith comes up with some cock and bull story about helping out in a barbrawl (to break it up) and that's how he got the bruises. Ryan has a couple of blank periods where she fades out - the general feeling is that she is somewhere between being in shock, and not knowing what to do with her life now.

Mathias uses the Dreamspeak gift to watch Ryan's dreams overnight. Her sleep is broken and dreams are not particular coherent. They include muddled images of the hospice administrator, of the woman she didn't 'treat', of someone that's probably her mother crying out in pain for someone to help her and strong feelings of impotence, of being frozen in place while all this whirls around. When he comes out of the trance, there's still a bit of time before dawn, so he uses the Gift again, on Smith this time. He's more inclined to mess with Smith's dreams, and manages to garner the impression that Smith was motivated to attack Ryan because his grandmother died in care, and what if she had been killed too?, combined with the realisation that the hospital administrator wasn't going to do anything.

Tuesday 14

The pack decide that the info on Smith says that he won't be much of an issue - he might try again, but they can deal with that when it happens. The concentrate on Ryan, who gets up bright and early, and heads out on errands. Kimu, Brett and Dom stay at her unit while John drives along and Thomas and Mathias jog in the umbra.

Ryan visits a dry cleaners and a couple of other shops and then heads out on the road. The pack are idly discussing what to do with her still when both Mathias and John are seized by a sudden premonition of danger - Thomas on the other hand is seized in a vice like control, as if a hand was on the back of his head and forcing him to look in a particular direction. His vision blurs and clears, and he is peeking at Ryan, who is driving along, and then looking at another car ahead of her which wobbles slightly and strikes a parked car, and begins to spin out of control, and then lift off the ground

Time seems to slow as the Garou go into hyperdrive. Mathias and Thomas flip to glabro and crinos respectively while sprinting as fast as they can, passing Ryan in the Umbra and leaping through the Gauntlet - Thomas activates the Monkey Puzzle on the way. The uncontrolled car is now upside down and headed straight for Ryan's car. John, who is behind Ryan on the road, uses Control Simple Machine to slam the right hand side brakes on Ryan's car and causes it to swerve suddenly to the right. Dom, Kimu and Brett leap through the Gauntlet and run towards a nearby car. Thomas and Mathias appear right in the path of the tumbling hatchback and Thomas attempts to bodycheck it into the air so that it will pass over Ryan's car.

However, the angles are wrong and the momentum is too much. The passenger compartment of the flying car crumples and Thomas and Mathias are thrown heavily to the ground. Thomas is unable to prevent his Rage rising, and it comes in a veritable torrent. The rest of the pack feel/hear this screaming fury suddenly erupt as Thomas goes nonsentient. John is distracted and when he suddenly realises he's heading for Ryan's now stopped car slams his foot on the accelerator rather than the brake, and manages to intercept both Ryan's car and the airborne hatchback at the same time with the van, moving quite fast. Mathias reviews the situation and dives back into the umbra to give himself a better tactical location to decide what the hell to do.

John's seat is somewhat ruined, which is annoying given that he's still in it. He has to climb out the back of the van to get out, and sees Thomas start destroying both the car that thit him and a couple of other nearby vehicles. This is going to look odd to the onlookers, who see him as homid. As Dom smashes in the window of an easy-to-jumpstart car, John runs around to Ryan's car to see if she is still alive.

   John ends up having to tear the windscreen out of Ryan's car. He reaches in, touches her and activates Mother's Touch. Mathias watches from the Umbra as John rolls down the bonnet and crashes to the ground - he has also disappeared from the mental link. After some quick consultation with the glorious pack leader, Mathias steps somewhere unobtrusive and runs over to take charge of the situation - his innate leadership skills come to the fore and the homids trying to help bow to his suggestions. Of course, the Persuasion gift doesn't hurt either. They get Ryan out of the car and her and John to one side of the road.

A random passerby runs up to Thomas to try and calm him down. Mathias watches wincingly as the guy is smashed in the face by crinos Thomas, and flips clear over the row of parked cars. Thomas returns to tearing great chunks out of the crashed vehicles and any other car that is near enough. As Dom cuts a policeman out of traffic and floors it up an approaching street with the horn down, Mathias tries to decide what to do with Thomas, being the most urgent problem they have right now. As he thinks, two fit looking humans run straight at Thomas. Mathias cringes - one of them is stomped on and rended asunder, and the other is kicked a good 5 metres into a car. The onlooking humans are screaming and making much noises of horror. The Garou quickly plot what the hell to do mentally, and Mathias decides to use the fae sword to cut a hole in the fuel tank. As he glances up to see if he can get close enough to Thomas, Thomas suddenly arches his back and convulses before dropping to the ground and flowing back into homid form (not that anyone else can see that). Time to act! Mathias runs over to Thomas, heaves him up over his head and tosses him behind the row of cars that he's been offending. Mathias flips the sword out and slams it into the fuel tank.

Unfortunately, this fuel tank is a little bit too obliging, and this sparks. Mathias is thrown back 10 feet and is on fire, but manages to hold onto the sword. A black and red fireball rise into the air and the flipped car is knocked about and slips to the ground. As the humans demonstrate another type of scream, Mathias runs 'into' the flames and steps sideways into the calm blue Umbra where he rolls about trying to extinguish the burning petrol in his fur.

Everyone moves away from the fire. Brett, Dom and Chasing-the-Night show up and spread out. Brett, in lupus, checks out John before humans pull the "dog" off the injured person. John is now healed, and Kimu muscles in and pretends (fairly successfully) to be a doctor and help move the injured people away from the fire and see what's up with them. Kimu tries to figure out what is up with John. He's got a big smack on the head, but that's not really enough. Ryan, too, looks like she's come off worse in the crash - head wound, check... er, except John appears to have healed a lot of the damage. Mathias senses - there is only a faint echo off both Ryan and John, but in both cases, its sort of a Curlew-like sense.

Meanwhile, Brett runs to Thomas, who is fitting and convulsing still. There doesn't seem to be any damage, so Brett steals his fetishes and runs on, leaving the confused humans. He manages to hip&shoulder his way to the two injured hoomans and heal them of their more life-threatening wounds, despite kicks from the other helps who want to get the dog away.

The pack are at a bit of a loss about else to do. Police, ambulance and fire engines arrive and the police start moving everyone away. Frankly they are staggered at the carnage. The fireys spray some sort of foam goo all over the burning wreck, which hasn't spread any further than the original car. Thomas, John and Ryan are loaded towards ambulances, as are the other injured people around. Kimu starts to fade to the edge of the crowd. Brett slips into the Umbra, and suggests that he could attune to, and use the feather. Not having many other ideas, the pack agree. Brett fires it up -

Mathias, Dom, Kimu and Brett are in a cave. It is dark, yet they can see. The walls are made of rock, like basalt, featureless and grey. They have no mental link, nor can they use their Sense Unnatural - it seems they are cut away from Kanau. People find that their tendency is to revert to breed form, even Brett - the punishment ritual doesn't seem to affect him here, but it doesn't seem to be a compelling thing, just a release, so he decides to stick with lupus form. They can smell John, and faintly, Ryan. The sense of both of them leads to a crack in the floor, barely human sized. On the rock is a darker patch, in the shape of a human footprint, just on the lip of the crack. Not having any other ideas, they start slipping and sliding down the hole. The walls are irregular, and vary in gradient so that sometimes the Garou slip a long way before skidding to a halt. The crack twists and turns on its way downwards.

After a time, the pack's strange dark vision shows them that the path splits. In one split, they can see odd cable-like features protruding through the rock, and running for a time along the ceiling before returning the rock. Closer examination reveals that they look most like roots. A suspicion begins to grow in the mind of the assembled Garou. They opt to take the same passage that John took, and continue their way down.

The tunnel splits again and again. Some of the splits have roots, sometimes the roots appear independent of the passage divides. The pack emerge into a small node in where the ground is approximately level and find John waiting for them - he said he could hear them coming. John had pretty much the same experience as they did, just when he touched her to try and heal. He also points out that he found a couple of feathers on his way down - he isn't sure what bird they come from as they are fairly non-descript. The pack start to share their suspicions - that they are descending underneath a World-tree of some sort. Chasing-the-Night activates his Axis Mundi gift and senses a huge Axis of Mund somewhere 'ahead' of them, stretching from way down, to way above. Ok, check, one Yggdrasil.

Much downward travel for the collected Garou. Suddenly, the ground flattens and they are in a low cavern. Water pools at one side of the cavern. The ceiling is rife with roots, and the air rank with the smell of blood. Ryan hangs naked from the roof, tangled in roots. She has been mutilated, and the various organs dropped onto the hard stone ground, which blood continues to drip slowly before seeping across the rock to the pool.

There are other cracks that lead from this chamber, further down into the rock. There is no sign about what killed Ryan, however Kimu believes that this is perhaps a 'normal' thing. It is beginning to look like Ryan is being initiated into a sort shamanistic experience, and a common theme is that the shaman must face their own death. Normally shamans would have a totem, and in this case Curlew would seem to be the most appropriate. The penny drops as the pack work out that they are Curlew's representative in this task as part of their chiminage quest, and thus they should fulfill the tasks that Curlew would do, which according to Kimu's Uktena-gained knowledge, would be to reassemble Ryan. Someone tries to find whole organs in the bloodied mass on the ground and brushes Ryan's eyes -

The pack stand in a suburban house room. A thin, almost skeletal woman lies crying in a bed, surrounded by a haggard looking man, a young woman and a doctor. Ryan, albeit much younger, stands next to the pack. Her legs are tangled in something - rock, or roots or something else, its hard to say. She says that she doesn't want to live through this again, she can't. It was so hard the first time to watch mum die. The pack tell her she can just move away, but she doesn't seem to be able to. Ryan says that there was nothing they could do, and mum just faded away. Brett says (and she seems to understand him) that sometimes people should just be allowed to go. Ryan says that she knows that, this was started her thinking that. They talk a bit more, but the entanglement that holds her seems to stop her from being able to move away. The pack offer a hand and help her step forward, and the entanglement seems to become intangible -

The pack are standing once again in the cavern beneath the world. One of them reaches up and places the eyes back into Ryan's skull - the skin seems to flow and grab them, sucking them back into their sockets. This is a little unnerving, even to people who regularly fight monsters. Ryan stares blindly at them, her chest cavity gaping open, so they look about for heart -

A man lies uncaringly across a couch, dishevled and smelling of alcohol and general disarray. The tv buzzes unnoticed in the corner and Ryan, looking about the same age as before, leans against the door frame. She seems a little more with it this time. The Garou ask her what is happening, and she says that she thinks this is the night dad died, maybe 6 months after mum. He just walked around like a zombie for the whole time and one night he stopped. The pack suggest that this is the flip side of keeping someone alive too long - that sometimes people go before their time, that they just aren't able to let go of the spirit of the person they've lost. Ryan seems to agree and says that she still didn't know what she should have done. The pack point out that freeing those bound to the mortal coil in time limits the suffering of family members -

Ryan's heart is put into her gaping torso and the organs shift like worms to accept it, the ribs close, and the greyish skin closes over the wounds. Ryan is still missing her tongue and her hands, and one of the werewolves grabs her tongue -

The pack are standing in the forth wall. Ryan is talking with her sister, Carol, at what looks like a Christmas party. Ryan is a bit drunk, and trying to explain her philosophy of people sometimes needing release. Carol doesn't take it too well, and in fact gets quite angry - she thinks that if their mum could have lived longer, then Medicine might have fixed her, and that the tragedy is that she died before proper cancer medications were available. Carol uses her daughter as a counterexample, asking if they should have let her die when she had a very bad case of measles. Ryan is seriously on the defensive and the scene seems to cease. Ryan vaguely registers the pack's presence and speaks in a sort of dreamlike voice - she doesn't understand why Carol doesn't see things the same way she did. John flips out his 2nd year psych notes and says that its the nature of living things to cling to life as tightly as they can, and unless they are forced into contact with death, they'll reject it. Priscilla's epiphany about the fact that sometime people are better served by ceasing and dying is a rare thing, and one that she won't be able to share with many people.

The shift to the dark cavern is just as abrupt a before. John puts Ryan's tongue back in and shudders as the sensations. Chasing-the-Night spots her hands and picks them up - its a sunny day on a country road. Ryan's car is parked on the verge, and she is picking nightshade plants, but at the same time she is standing next to the pack. The Garou can see that Ryan has latex gloves on, and is taking some care, but they can also the nightshade spirits within the plants, and aren't happy. They lash out at Ryan, and leaves leave nasty scratches on her legs and arms where the plants thrash. The Garou point this all out to other-Ryan - that all things are alive, not just the people she is concerned with, and that she needs to see that the plants whose properties she wants to tap can't be coerced into this. They give her a brief rundown on the concepts of all things - living or otherwise - having spirits and that respect must be paid appropriately.

The pack reach up and place each of Ryan's hands on the corpse hanging from the ceiling, bone and sinew stretching forward to mesh nicely. John and Mathias notice an odd sound coming from the cracks that lead down deeper into rock and drop down a bit to look. Waters are rising from far below and making a slight hiss as they wet the rock. This is not a reassuring sight. When John scrambles back up, he suggests its indicative that Ryan is dying, and they need to do something. He looks into the pool where the blood has been flowing. He waves his hands through it and bumps into something, then lifts it up - its a brain.

The pack are in the Umbra, at Ryan's house. The banes from Saturday are flying about, and whispering. She clutches her head and asks if they can hear the voices. Telling her that there are so many who have a negative effect on the world, and she can make it all better. Another voice says that she should kill Talbot, the hospital adminstrator so he can't stop her Work. The pack members with cleansing start circling the banes and performing the ritual while the rest help her resist the evil banes and explain what they are - evil thoughts made manifest, and something she must keep an eye out for, because it would be easy to turn from her already difficult path by Pride or other negative things. Ryan seems to shake off the last bit of lethargy and demands to know who the hell these people are. They say that they are friends, here to help her on her spirit journey. She points to Brett and asks if that's her totem or something. The Garou snicker and say no, her totem is a bird. They'll explain more back in the really real world. However, they might not be able meet her straight away due to some, um, difficulties with the police. Ryan strangely accepts this with nothing more than a raised eyebrow. The cleansing ritual finishes -

Ryan's brain is placed back into the back of her skull. The world seems to go out of focus.

   The pack wake up to the sound of ambulance sirens. A quick scan of the surroundings show that all of the pack that were in the Realm when the feather was activated are currently in ambulances - Dom and Kimu are together, John is with Ryan and Thomas appears to be with a young policeman. Brett and Mathias are still in the Umbra where they fell.

Chasing-the-Night attempts to sit up and the ambulance attendant that is riding with them in the back gently pushes him back down and says that he needs to just rest quietly until they get to the hospital. Kimu pretends to not understand. John tries to work out if he still has his phone and all and curses when that's not the case - he passes that on to the others, and they, too, have been relieved of large personal possessions, including John's phone and notepad, and Kimu's knives. Fabulous.

It seems that they are being taken to different hospitals, not all to the same one. A brief mental consultation takes place, and it is decided that being taken to hospital is probably stage one of being arrested and generally not having fun, given their activities of the last few weeks, and so they should probably take steps. Dominique makes judicious use of her Staredown gift and her and Kimu find themselves in posession of an ambulance while the two attendants flee for the hills. John is being more of a laggard, and hears the radio report that there's been a problem with one of the ambulances, and could the attendants in his ambulance swing that way. There is a brief conference, and they decide that yes, they could. However, while their ambulance is heading back to Kimu's the radio pipes up again and the drivers are told in no uncertain terms to take their passengers to the hospital at all speed. John guesses that the police know who they are now.

John escapes, leaving Ryan to go to hospital with a promise that they'll meet again soon. Thomas punches out a policeman and an attendant, and leaps from a moving ambulance, breaking his arm, but managing to get away.

The pack meet up, in the Umbra. They generally feel that it is necessary to retrieve their missing personal objects (especially John's notes and phone), but they're not sure where they might be. Previously they have been able to perform a Questing Stone on fetishes, and so they bend their efforts to finding Kimu's knives. The sense is faint, but detectable. The pack are led to the near centre of the city - apparently their equipment has been taken to an office somewhere near the top of the new Sydney CIB (the previous building was damaged in a riot. Guess when). The realm building is shiny and covered in glass, and probably rife with surveillance gear. The Umbral reflection exists, in a sense, but it is more a huge mass of weaver structure, covered in spiders small and large. Closer examination shows that they are not just building spiders, but the nature of the building (law and order) has called all sorts of guardian spiders, and the newness of all the technology has called thousands of smaller spiders.

Effectively, the umbral building is a solid shell, with a pair of column within (probably the lift shafts). Occasional structural supports crisscross the middle of the structure, but far more common are the hair-like filaments of wiring and other delicate technological reflections. Guardian spiders cross the outside and patrol for intruders. The pack figure that they can probably make it in - Dom says she can force a limited obedience from the guardian spiders and climb the lift shaft. If the toilets lie aside that central structure they could step into the appropriate floor and use Jam Technology to disable much of the defenses.

Hooray! The pack made the news. No, wait. The morning papers do a real number on the pack, linking together a whole load of information that has just been lying aroud. The worst part is the pack suspect that given a couple of days digging, the press and police can probably start to link more stuff together.

And lo, they do. Over the next week, enough information is pooled together, and hinted at to pretty much assure the pack that their mortal lives are over. John's parents are questioned by police, as is Marnie. A number of Thomas's friends are hassled. Anything the press can find is splashed all over the news papers and news. Its been a rather suspicious 3 years, so its not like there's a scarcity of information.

Most of the stories seem to intimate that Mathias was bringing drugs in and his skanky associates were distributing them, although there are some alternative and independant press reports that suggest that Rourke and companions are a modern day Robin Hood and Merry Men - they screw with the rich corporations and do nice things for the down and out.

Cossack turns up and speaks to the pack alone, and basically chews them out - it looks like Dane did call the strike on the cemetary, and he had police sketches made not just of Holistic Approach, but a number of the other legally dubious Sept people. He's not happy that Graeme told them that Dane was poking about the trustees, and showing interest in the caern and they ignored it. While there's no danger to the caern, its extraordinarily annoying for the whole Sept. He tells them to definately stay in Sydney until the Sept is a bit less stressed. He also mentions that Shayne returned and spoke to Ian about the ritual for the Glade - they need to decide what to do about that as well.

The pack is set to making calm talens - no one looks at Bandit too much - for the Sydney sept, but also get to participate in the Bonegnawer life as well. LED is given a bit more instruction in the Rite of the Fetish by Herman, and pronounced competant in the ritual. Mulder helps the Sept make some replacement blades to get his fetish and mentor's knife back and demonstrates the why's of the Ainu technique. Bites-at-Treads spends a lot of time with Scratches-at-Fleas. Moon River goes off on his own for an afternoon and returns fairly somberly.

At some point, Bandit gets the whole story about Ryan from the pack, and relates what happened to him - Owl came and took him away, and basically said "watch out playing with the borders of life and death, you can get haunted easily".

It turns out that the only really suspicious calls to John's phone in the last while seem to have been to and from Byron - the grapevine gets back to This Time for Sure that he just shrugged and threw it away.

Tuesday 21

Figuring that tempers would have cooled down in Melbourne by now, This Time for Sure start working out what they are going to do. The major things are Ryan - probably being watched by police rather tightly, and therefore apparently unapproachable; Curlew - they'll need to go somewhere and summon him again and report their successes and failures, probably during the ragabash moon; and Shayne - who wanted to be doing the antiWyld ritual this Saturday night, also during the ragabash moon.

So, what to do. Ryan is probably a write off for the moment - it will probably be weeks before the police even step down their observation. Summoning Curlew will be easier in the ragabash moon, and also in the north of NSW, and they are most of the way there now. But Shayne needs to be contacted and chatted to and details worked out as to what exactly needs to be done and how. Moon River points out that they could moonbridge back to Sydney and be just as close to Curlew; this is the final decider, and the pack decide to head back home. They find Herman and ask if its ok to head back now - he shrugs and says that they have completed their obligations to this sept, so sure.

The pack organise a Moonbridge and are met by Ends-the-Quiet, Graeme and Cossack. None of them look happy. They ord^H^H^H ask the pack to accompany them to Graeme's house where the other Elders are as well, and then want to know exactly what happened in Syndey. Once the pack explain that, Cossack wants to know why they didn't treat Dane with the seriousness that he required. Graeme points out that he told them that Dane was sniffing about the trustees and he had tried to communicate with them and the pack had ignored him. Graeme is pretty unimpressed, and the rest of the Elders aren't happy either.

The pack's response is that they were trying to establish a common cause with Dane, but that the process was taking longer than he was willing to wait, and then there were a couple of unfortunate public events - obviously Dane decided enough was enough. Graeme wants them to do something about him now, but Mathias points out that if they do anything to him, both the mortal authorities and any particular friends of Dane might be suspicious. Brett says that they're not even sure what Dane can do - he might be more dangerous than they think.

After ascertaining that the caern itself is in no danger, just the Sept is annoyed, the pack want time to react to the situation in their own unique idiom. The Elders grudgingly accede for the moment. Holistic Approach also want to clear the other tasks they have to do from their ongoing obligations first - they need to speak to Shayne and they need to speak to Curlew, then steps will be taken about Dane. Frankly they don't even know where he lives.

Thursday 23

A couple of days go past with nothing more severe happening than dirty looks from their Sept brethren. Police are still keeping an eye on the comings and going from the cemetary grounds, so everyone is hanging about in the Umbra, which is a pain in the arse.

Early on Thursday morning, Shayne shows up and toes awake the members of the pack that stay the caern. She is fairly hyper and easily distracted, but happy to chat to them about thing. They want to know details about the ritual - Shayne says she's not the Ritemaster, but she can give them a brief rundown. Simply put, they disconnect the Wyld "hole" and then stretch it out, and then reconnect it. It sort of takes the pressure off, so there will be weird effects, but over, oh, about a km diameter circle, but not major, and it won't tear its way out.

The pack have a brief mental discussion about why they are trusting Shayne and can't remember why - it has been a busy two weeks since they first met her. They ask Shayne who the Rite master is , and she says Seeks-Shadow, a rank 3 lupus theurge Red Talon. Holistic Approach choke a bit, and Shayne says it wasn't easy persuading him that they should do this. They suggest finding Emma Teesdale and chatting with her about the ritual, given that its so close to the caern. Shayne seems happy with this.

Emma is a bit busy, but indicates she will be with them shortly. They ask Shayne about the other people who will be part of the ritual - Dreams-of-Dancing (Uktena, Theurge, Metis, 2), herself, and two other Black Furies - Kyra (Black Fury, Ahroun, Homid, 2) and Anna (Black Fury, Philodox, Homid, rank 2). This is not exactly heartening. Emma shows up and asks Shayne to tell them what she does know. Shayne says that basically the ritual disconnects the Wyld and widens the area it affects and then reconnects it. She is getting a bit more scattered, and makes an obvious effort to chill. Emma asks for more details and Shayne says that, um, ok, it disconnects the wyld from the surroundings and onto the ritualists. Oh good. And how far does it affect after its reconnected? As far as they run, as part of the rite - they make a circle, do part one, then spread out and do part 2. So they can sort of decide how much area it affects, but there's a limit on how well the ritual goes. They ask if she's done it before and she says yes, twice, both in Red Talon areas. No, she won't say where. Yes, they can meet the others - tonight'd be good, they want to come and see the Glade anyway. The pack ask if she could give them a bit of time to chat. Sure! oo! a squirrel!

Emma, Dom and Kimu touch heads and compare their opinions. It sounds mostly like a legitimate ritual, but they are unsure - on the other hand, almost every tribe has its own take on how rituals are done and so on. Its obvious that the ritual doesn't exactly leave the participants scott-free either. The horrid possibility that Shayne is the most together and appropriate to act as spokesman of the five of them comes to mind. There is some discussion about contacting Hidden Green as well and letting them know the details - its their city too, an attitude that scores the pack points with Emma. They decide to send off a message to Kimu's secret masters (the events surrounding the last time they saw Tjinderi, and conversations pack members have had with her before not withstanding) and ask if they know about Dreams-of-Dancing. Kimu mentions Japan and their ability to deal with Wyld in the city again - Thomas is still keen to go, Emma says that it was probably her best option after this.

In the meantime, they will talk to Hidden Green - Emma will anyway - and tell Shayne that she should bring the others around tonight. They wave her back and communicate these intentions. Brett speculates whether they could leave it for a month. Shayne looks uncertain and says that it was a lot of fast-talking to get Seeks-Shadow to agree in the first place, if they seem to be dithering, he might change his mind - and on that note, er, maybe try not to upset him too much tonight, because he may crack it.

Holistic Approach head back to the caern. On the other side of the cemetary fence, they spot a fight - rapidly approaching, they can see that its Shu Leung and Bandit from Hellhounds punching on. The rest of the pack are sitting about and watching. Mathias tries to ask Amy what is happening, and she says its a pack matter. Kimu and Mathias are concerned, Thomas thinks its "just a Get thing", and watches the combat - although Bandit doesn't let the fact that he is short one limb slow him down, Shu Leung is technically the better fighter. Unlike normal spats in a pack, they are using claws and teeth with no thought for the consequences, which is a little disturbing. Eventually Bandit surrenders before Shu Leung disembowles him. Holistic Approach watch from a slight distance as the Hellhounds cluster together and talk. The strange behaviour of other garou.

The pack are called to a large meeting that evening. Yay for policy! All the Elders of Sleeping Lore are there, as is Stephanie, the Rite Master from Hidden Green and Felix, the Sept Leader of the same Sept. Both Stephanie and Felix are yon traditional Glass Walkers, making John looks like the scabby feral he really is. There is much talking and explaining of the situation.

Stephanie is unsure about the necessity of performing any of this sort of maintenance on the situation, feeling that perhaps the imminence of the danger has been overstated. The pack scratch heads for a bit, then point out that Keziah had mentioned something about these sorts of disturbances leading to caerns being breached. Felix agrees that there is perhaps some immediacy in their concerns, but worries about the inclusion of Black Furies, Red Talons and Uktena (no offence). Kimu subtley mentions the possibility of going to Japan, but no one takes him up on it (other than Thomas).

Much discussion - basically Graeme thinks it needs to be handled sooner rather than later and Emma is unsure, but had no other option - she's not entirely happy with the description of the ritual that Shayne provided, but each tribe does do things differently, and she isn't the rite master. Ian is all for it ; Ends-the-Quiet says that he does not know enough to have an opinion. Nadine is troubled, but unable to put her finger on why exactly. The pack are for it - the alternative of Leah Tears-of-Blood and just leaving it aren't so good, and going to Japan seems to be full of complications. Cossack sighs and says he wants this dealt with, rather than hanging over their heads, and nothing anyone has said is "don't"... So its a go, unless something becomes clear with Shayne's companions.

So, when midnight rolls around, the pack find themselves in a park, waiting for Shayne and all. Well, except for Mathias, who is trying to use Dreamspeak to contact Crookpaw and ask about their Red Talon ally. They spot the other Garou approaching in lupus from the north - Kimu and Brett are already in that form, the others stay in their breed forms. The pack are introduced to Seeks-Shadow, a rather twitchy and nervous lupus; the Uktena Dreams-of-Dancing, whose fur grows all over the place, up, down and out; Anna, a stereotyped butch-looking Black Fury who is mute; and Kyra.. who looks normal, and kind of hot.

They lead the 5 strange Garou to the glade. Nothing immediately untoward happens - the newcomers poke around a lot and have a look at things. Anna is taken upstairs to see the stinking humans by peeking. Its hard to tell exactly what the new Garou are doing, but the pack try to sense them - mostly they sense of wyld. They are all definately Garou, none of them are wyrmy. Brett and John both engage people with Truth of Gaia to make sure that no wool is being placed across a field of vision, but nothing the other Garou say rings falsely.

They decide to work out where they'll move out to in the middle of the ritual now - after all, it'll be easier with a preplanned route. It's decided that Chasing-the-Night will remain in the centre of the ritual and the others will pair up, but for the trial run he will play the part of Mathias and is running with Kyra. Slightly concerning is the way that she avoids reflective surfaces - Kimu glimpses her reflection and it seems to shift between homid and lupus, through all the forms in between. Brett is paired with Seeks-Shadow, who lives up to his name - he's avoiding the light as much as is physically possible as they move through the umbra.

John is paired with Dreams-of-Dancing, who is monosyllabic. Thomas is with Shayne who is her normal babbling self, and finally Dominique is with Anna. They go about 500m from the glade and mentally fix the route in their respective 'minds', then return to the Glade. After some mental discussion between the pack and the possibilty of Kylie giving birth during the ritual (ew, she's not due till April or May) Brett speaks with Shayne and says that he's not happy about leaving the kids there, and she says "ok" - the positive effect they would have would be fairly small, comparitively. Now that all the pleasantries are covered, the others go home.

Friday 24

Mathias keeps trying to contact Crookpaw with Dreamspeak, as the efforts the night before were wasted. Kimu watches the skies. Thomas drinks beer and chafes at the wait. Dom and John make Weaver-talens.

Brett goes off and buys some tickets to the Castlemaine Music Festivel this weekend and then practices his amaaaazing lying sk1llz on Brad, Kylie and Gavin. They are unsure about going to the festivel on short notice. They don't want to go with Melissa, on account of her wanted by police. They can't afford anywhere to stay. Brett defeats their pitiful efforts to avoid moving, and gets them the hell out of Dodge.

Saturday 25

Mathias finally gets through to Crook-paw's dreams. He appears at the edge of a conifer forest. But there's no one else there. His spooky dream senses lead him downwards and onwards, through the forest and across a grassy plain. Mountains loom in the far distance, and ahead of him is a sparkling creek. Mathias starts to get the feeling of being watched and howls out a "hulllllo" kind of greeting. No response. He continues onwards following the dream logic, crossing the stream and clambering up rocks.

At the top, Crookpaw appears out of nowhere, seeming to be drawn from all across the land - the colours and senses of this place are immediately dulled to what Mathias is used to. He has a chat with Crookpaw - Wyld, hole, city, ritual. Crookpaw asks why Mathias thinks that he (Crookpaw) would mind if the city was destroyed - it is, after all, full of stinking monkeys which are doing their best to destroy all that is natural and good. Mathias says that they have an obligation to the people in the city, Crookpaw suggests that Gaia and the garou are the greater obligation. What's more, he suggests that no true Red Talon would help them stop this happening. The conclusion is left for the player to determine. They also discuss what is happening - Crookpaw takes umbrage at the word 'Abcess' being used to describe their situation. That particular phrase was coined to describe a wyld bubble in a caern. What they would appear to be facing is a slightly more common occurence usually termed a Threshold. Such a wyld manifestation usually works through an existing situation - he tells Mathias about the Chorus of Frogs, a Threshold that has appeared several times to the Garou.

Mathias comes back to his body and they discuss the terminology. The possibility that the Wyld Threshold is the Glade Child, or maybe Kylie's baby is discussed. Thomas rolls his eyes. It doesn't seem that their situation matches that described as a Threshold by Crook-paw, and that this is something new. From the Wyld, of all things? The possibilty of negotiation with the wyld infestation is raised, but no one seems to think that it could happen. Brett decides that he can give it a go - telling the Glade child what they are doing seems like a plan anyway. He goes and chats to the garden spirit, but it only grasps that they are taking away its delicious, delicious wyld goo, and refuses to talk to him any more. Oh well, it was a good idea.

Irena and the Alternative show up and go over the plan. Irena suggests that her pack stay in the Glade in the Realm while all this bruhaha is going on - frankly she thinks they'll be more use there, because they can respond to any of the travellers as a pack. They also have weaver talens that might be of help if everything goes pearshaped. After some condescending conversation, Irena hands a cd to Mathias and says that he may as well have it now. Its labelled "Mathias. P.R." Mathias guesses its his police record.

Shortly after dark, the pack are thinking of heading to the Glade when a spirit wafts its way out of the skies and heads for Kimu. It carries replies to his two questions - "Do you know any of these Garou - Dreams-of-Dancing, Seeks-Shadows, Anna, Kyra, Shayne? Do you have any information about the Wyld and rituals to interact with it?". The answers are "No. Yes". Chasing-the-Night spends some time gritting his teeth.

The pack head for the Glade, intending to meet the Alternative there. On the way out, they spot Hellhounds lounging near the south east gate. In response to pack comments about the night, Amy makes narky comments about maybe actually finding the mages that the Get are here for. There is a certain amount of bemusement from Holistic Approach. Anyway, enough with the pesky Get, off to the Glade. John summons Kanau and asks him to hang out in the skies above, which the totem agrees to. Some of them keep an eye out for Shayne & co from the rooftops. These illustrious garou do not materialise out of nowhere, but seem to run in again from the north. There is some brief introductions between the outsider Garou and the Alternative and some awkward politness. Then the fun begins. Holisitic Approach are asked to do a rite of cleansing about the site. This they do with verve and gusto, but the Glade child also sucks up some of the gnosis they expend trying to venerate the area. Pesky spirit seems to be awake and unhappy.

Once preparations are done, Shayne and friends take their places and begin the ritual. There is a distinct effect - wyld energies are building up around them and the area. The ritualists seems to be unaffected directly, but they are stirring up a passle of wyld energies Cameron Stills sticks his head in from the Realm and says that there are strange effects there, but they don't seem to be significant. Oh, and the people that live here need a new TV, cos they had to break the old one a lot. He wishes them well in the Umbra as the walls bend, colours distort and cause and effect start to split like siblings squabbling over a will.

After what seems like ages, the ritualists spiral into the centre of their circle and touch noses. The Wyld sense rises rapidly and seems to settle on them as they seperate for the planned trips out to the outside border. However, the Glade Child has other plans for them all, and starts assaulting the Garou with root and branch. And canes and thorns, and some weird pollen and flowers and slippery ground. The Garou battle their way clear of the plant-spirit while trying to not destroy it, and start heading off to their designated final points.

It seems that leaving the circle is a signal for the quiet eye of the storm to break. The ground rumbles, the sky begins to quake and shift. As the Garou move along to their dedicated places, they have to deal with the constant shifting and changing of their environment, both internal and external. Kanau is having some difficulty, but is managing to remain in the area. The ritualists seem to be unable to go much faster than a slow trot. Things have been going relatively well for the first part of their travel.

All good things must come to an end, however - Mathias is looking southeast above some of the heavily weaver areas that he and Kyra have to pass through to get to their location when he becomes aware of a large (40'!) spider fading into the foreground - what was previously an odd juxtaposition of chimneys, scaffolding and shadow starts to move and head fairly solidly towards him and Kyra. Mathias alerts his packmates, some of whome have already been dodging small pattern spiders. Chasing-the-Night, at the Glade, steps out and tells Irena of the need for backup - she sends Tony, Yvonne and Cameron off to where Mathias is. The Realm is being affected by the Wyld storms, but not in quite the same way - rather than clouds and rain of frogs and marshmellow lightning, there just seems to be an enormous amount of wind blowing things about - trees, shadows, the usual.

Meanwhile, Mathias has pulled out his sword and got ready to attack the shiny, shiny spider. Cue crashing, noisy battle as Mathias is gradually calcified and the spider slowly loses limbs. The chaotic environment is no one's friend as perceptions become less and less trustworthy, and more quixotic. Mathias manages to get a slight advantage, while half expecting to end up frozen and waiting rescue from the Glasswalkers on the way. He manages to chop it down to 4 limbs, all on one side, which causes it to crash to the ground. Mathias toys with chopping the rest of it, but a combination of it still having a spinnaret, and its limbs regenerating suggest that it is time to leave.

Meanwhile, Kimu flips back into the Umbra, only to find that the Glade is surrounded by pattern spiders. Discretion being the better part of valour, he decides to return to the material realms, just in time to here Thomas start yelling about giant scorpians and pattern spiders everywhere and needing backup. Irena and Asimov run off, calling their pack members back from helping Mathias and calling Hellhounds on the way.

While John deals with liquid rubber ground by discharging one of his weaver talens, Brett gets into an interesting conversation with Seeks-Shadow.[redacted]

A minute or two later, Brett's foot sinks into the ground. He sighs and tries to pull it out, but something grabs it and starts to pull him further down. He glances behind and sees Seeks-Shadow, in crinos form, about to body slam him; Brett manages to get his elbow up and Seeks-Shadow crashes to the ground. Brett gets the word out to his pack, but the various replies seem to indicate this is not news. Brett tries to grab his throat, but the ground sinks further beneath his feet and then rises up in a wave to grab him. By the time he has freed himself, Seeks-Shadow is making a run for it.

Meanwhile, Dominique is yelling something about being covered in thousands of biting bugs, and Thomas starts to swear about having lost sight of Shayne in the fighting the giant weaver thing. Mathias is, however, quite aware of Kyra as she makes a fairly significant effort to stick him in the back with claws. Mathias' greater combat skills are somewhat offset by the fact that he is still calcified from fighting the Weaver construct. Chasing-the-Night bolts his way to help out. Kyra knocks Mathias off his feet with pesky Ahroun gifts, but she manages to keep her footing when he uses pesky Shadowlord gifts.

Brett gives chase, following shortly after the Red Talon, and pursued by the now obvious form of an earth elemental. Kimu suggests seeing if Keiteki will come to where Brett is - the light was causing Seeks-Shadow grief before, so, hopefully if will slow him down. Brett thinks this is a great idea. John, in the meantime, has had everything go black in a disturbing shroud, and been slammed to the ground and punched a few times, presumably by Dreams-of-Dancing. He manages to get his self oriented by using his Cybersenses gift and listening in for echolocation. This strange sense gives him a rough idea of terrain, and the fleeing form ahead of him.

Kyra and Mathias slice and slash at each other some more before Kyra manages to smash her claws into Mathias, and uses a gift to leave them inside him, burning like poision. Mathias manages to draw himself together enough and he slices her across the belly with the sword, spraying the area in warm Garou blood. Kyra is obviously having trouble keeping her entrails on the inside, but Mathias is still afflicted by her gift as well.

Brett manages to catch up to Seeks-Shadow and scuttles him about a bit more. The two of them are laying into one another when Keiteki flashes into existence, brimming with wyld vitality and brightness. All sentience vanishes from Seeks-Shadow's eyes and he frenzies, leaping up and swallowing Keiteki in a single bite. He lunges for Brett -

John spots something Kanau-esque drop from the sky, plunging out of site ahead. From far ahead, there is a muffled cry of pain and their pack totem swoops back up into the sky. John starts to sprint towards -

Mathias is getting ready to try and grab Kyra when she disappears. He swears loudly and, peeks and then leaps into the Realm after her, appearing next to her. She seems to have used a fetish to heal the worst of her injuries. He yells "get out of the Realm, you idiot" and steps while holding her, hoping that he can 'sweep' her into the Umbra -

- Brett realises his life is in danger and swings through at Seeks-Shadow's neck, severing his head completely in a fairly definitive fashion.

The world jumps.

All of the pack feel an immense pressure issuing from within the circle, like an explosion - but not everything is affected by the force. Some of the pack suffer strange burns as the energy is blasted out. Meanwhile, Mathias, still in the gauntlet, senses time start to flow. This is not good. He perceives a ringing vibration through the Gauntlet, and then pattern spiders cascade past him. Mathias can sense Kyra start to scream - he perceives her as being stretched by the flow of energy and being calcified.

The pack find that their totem link is somewhat dormant, and that they are all on their own in a world gone mad. Wyld energy flickers and crashes about them, randomly affecting some spirit objects and ignoring others. Both John and Kimu are surrounded by chaos, and try to continue going the way they were travelling - the world is even more confusing than it was previously. Eventually they make it into an area that is just baffling rather than mind destroying. Kimu finds what he presumes is Kyra's corpse - the long, twisted marble-like statue look sufficiently like her to fairly certain. He checks to make sure that Mathias isn't in the gauntlet, then sniffs about to try and find a scent.

Mathias, in the meantime, has arrived in the Umbra with the twisted statue that is all that is left of Kyra. He notices that that the Wyldness is stronger towards the Glade, and heads away from more. Once it thins out to a sufficiently unconfusing amount, he decides to try and edge around to where Thomas was last.

Brett is left holding Seeks-Shadow's dripping head as the Wyld explosion blows past him, living his skin tingling and briefly shiny before it fades away. He tries to get a feeling for how bad things are, and finds that its just too Wyldy to say. He takes the corpse of the red talon and starts dragging it towards the caern.

Thomas, having taken off after Shayne, is caught by surprise when the blast howls through the Exhibition gardens. For a brief moment, the whole world remains still, and he feels his senses spread out of his skull and out - he senses a shuddering deep below him, and then a deafening heartbeat seems to rumble the ground. Irena and the Alternative show up, and break his trance - they say that many of the pattern spiders they were fighting disintergrate, and the Chaos monitor is badly affected, and has waded back into the worst Wyld stuff. Thomas says he was following Shayne, but really doesn't have much of a trail. Irena says that they'll try and trace Shayne as she seems to have been headed for Hidden Green, and then they'll go onto the caern - in the meantime, she suggests that he head back to his own caern, if its still there. Thomas makes a tentative warning about possibly something coming up from underneath them and then runs off before giving details.

John realises he's in a park north of the glade. The trail he was following is cold now, so he looks around to try and figure out what to do. Figuring the caern is a good plan, he heads that way. As he travels, some of the wyld forces seem to fade away, or flow back into the circle they were originally making, perhaps. On his left is a seething chaos, on his right, things seem to be returning to normal.

Kimu and Mathias meet up, and Chasing-the-Night deals with the left over calcification and damage Mathias has taken this evening. They have a chat while watching the wyld energy flow back towards Fitzroy, dodging spiders who are rushing to try and contain the chaos. They decide that Mathias will head to Hidden Green while Kimu continues around to find Thomas and head to the caern. They are just about to split up when an earthquake shakes the area, throwing them around, and damaging more of the already shaky weaver ephemera. Once they have their feet again, a quick peek seems to suggest that while there have been a tremor in the Realm, it wasn't as strong as in the Umbra. Mathias peels off towards the CBD.

Thomas and John reach the caern at more or less the same time. The Get of Pennington are waiting on guard and the edge of the caern is lit by ghostly radiance as the wards are activated. Chris tells Thomas that Dom is also here, in the caern centre with Graeme. Thomas and John head that way and give Graeme a brief rundown - blah blah, betrayl, blah, wyld stuff everywhere. Graeme is a bit pissed. Thomas says that he felt something underneath when the wyld bomb went off, and then there was an earthquake, and remember the thing from Hopping Mouse Hill? Graeme sighs and goes to speak to Chimera as Emma and Cossack join them.

Mathias is near Parliament when he hears a whistle behind him and sees Irena and all coming his way. They give him the run down on what they saw and did, and say that they couldn't find a path for Shayne past the end of the Exhibition gardens. Irena says they sent Thomas back to Sleeping Lore. They're going to try and get up to Hidden Green - as the wyld stuff seems much less here, they figure going throught the realm is a plan. Irena speaks to Mathias privately, and says that they spoke to the Hellhounds about coming to help, and they refused. She doesn't know why or what - at the time, she didn't have the oppurtunity to query it. Mathias looks unhappy, and thanks her for the info, then heads back north.

Chasing-the-Night is walking through the edge of the Gardens when he feels an odd sensation - its nothing firm, but the shadows perhaps seem more substantial and significant than they should. He can't get much of a sense of anything else, so notes it down and heads back to the caern.

Brett is the last one to reach the caern, dragging Seeks-Shadow's corpse (which gets him some odd looks). Everyone compares notes - Brett says that Seeks-Shadow tried to convince him to join them just before attacking. It seems like they acted simultaneously too - Kyra smacked Mathias at the same time, etc. No one is quite sure what happened to Kanau, but it feels like he is dormant rather than gone. Dominique says she was with Anna when Anna pulled out a bag full of biting bugs - she points to the hundreds of bites and hives she's covered with as a demonstration.

Graeme returns and says that Chimera cannot feel anything coming there way, but she is keeping her ears open, so to speak. The general thought is that something that wyrmy should be detectable for miles. They sum up the situation - it looks like Shayne and all planned to betray them from the start. The plan seemed to be to run for the caerns - Anna was less than 200m away when things suddenly went pear-shaped. They now have to work out what's happening with the wyld storm and then stomp the perpetrator's to death. They have two of the five at least, and can maybe take them to the Jindabyne council. Emma organises to try and do Questing Stone's for the missing three. After talking with Cossack, Holistic Approach decide to go into the Realm and try to get to the glade to see what's happening there. They'll also try and find a trail for the missing Garou. Before they go, they try and get a hold of Melissa, and make sure Kylie didn't explode. They also perform a summoning for Kanau, which is successful - their pack gifts return as the spirit flies down to join them. He confirms that something moved between the wyld-tainted garou as they attacked, but wasn't sure what it was. Mathias mentions Irena's comments about the Hellhounds, and Graeme says they're on the far side of the caern, and they can deal with that later.

They run off to the north of the mess, and change to lupus before stepping into the realm. Running south in pairs, they head for the caern - occasionally hearing humans talking about the 'tremor', so that and the random bits of physical evidence seem to say that there was some effect in the realm. The Glade itself seems mostly normal - all the chainlink fence surrounding the school has somehow unwound itself and is just piles of wire, but apart from that. The garden is a bit beaten up, some things knocked over, more growth all around the place. In the Umbra, its almost too confusing to make out - they can sense the Glade child though. It seems... ok. Hard to tell exactly. It hasn't grown to the city-smothering extent they suspected it might do though, which is a good sign.

A look around the neighbourhood suggests where that growth might have gone though - into making new Glade Children. There are four or so new glade children, like the garden child, in the area around the garden - there might be more, but its hard to tell in the shifting environment of the Umbra. John makes the suboptimal choice to look up and see if the column of weirdness has a central point. The sky above is worse than on the ground - it hurts his brain to even look at it. The thought is that the wyld breach is equally everywhere, but up there, there's no weaver ephemera to give it some form, so its closer to raw. Whee.

They try and find what happened to the other three Garou. Feeling that the sense that Chases-the-Night felt is probably related, they skim the still chaotic Umbral storm and head for the gardens. The sense is still there, and the more spiritually minded think that there are Dark Lunes here - Lunes associated with the ragabash moon. Oh good. After consulting with Moonflower, she says that she knows there are Ragabash gifts that let you moonbridge short distances. Which means that she could be anywhere now.

They look at the other two sites as well, as best as they can determine. The sense of the Garou both vanish in the same way. Mathias considers the Kyra and what happened, and puts forth the theory that as participants in the ritual, its likely that the force of the explosion actually picked them up and threw them - but Kyra, caught in the weavery gauntlet was unable to move, and unable to resist, thus got stretched. Which means that they could be anywhere in the Umbra, or smeared all over the place. Sleeping Lore have to believe they weren't intending to end the ritual with one or more of them dying, so its probably they didn't know what would happen either.

They head back to the caern, and decide to speak to the Elders about Hellhounds. Cossack gets Amy and Shu Leung brought to Graeme's house, but leaves the questioning up to Holistic Approach. Amy is confronted with why they didn't come and help. She says that it wasn't any of their concern. Eyes boggle. Amy says that they are here to provide assistence in rooting out the purported mages, which they haven't seen any of in the two months they have been here. Someone says it didn't stop them attacking fomori and so on. Amy says that that was not something they had a problem with. On the other hand, crushing the corrupt Wyrm/Weaver conglomerate with a double serve of Wyld seems rather appropriate. Brett says that they dishonoured their obligations to the garou and specifically to Thomas. Amy doesn't react, but Shu Leung grits his teeth. Amy says they perhaps owe an apology to Thomas, but feel they were justified in every other aspect. They are about to find their Get arses kicked from the area when Amy says "If I tell you what Shayne was calling herself when I saw her last, will this conversation go away?"

There is some "oh, bloody hell" type conversation and they grudginly agree. Amy says that when her grandmother met 'Shayne' 50 or so years ago, she was calling herself 'Elspeth'. She looked exactly the same, and approached a number of the Get of Fenris women with assistence in a delicate matter about fertility. (The pack mentally confer and put "Get of Fenris" together with "World War II" and think "aaaah"). Elspeth was quite helpful, and didn't do anything out of the ordinary. Amy says that she assumes that they no longer need to talk, and Kimu nods. The Get leave. Brett says that when they find the mages, he's all for leaving them at home. They confer about what it might mean - all their gifts say that Shayne was a Garou, but Garou tend to not be immortal. Given the heavy hand in the things that the Wyld has taken, all bets are off though.

Sunday 26

The Garou of both Septs spend the morning patrolling the edges of their wyld storm, and occasionally ducking through the realm to see if its still not leaking into the realm. Much head scratching is done to see what they could do. Some of the Glasswalkers are concerned about the gradually increasing pile of weaver-spiders at the edge of the storm - no one wants to see a big dome of weaver stuff over part of the city.

Random members of Holistic Approach try and get a better sense of what is happening with the new glade children. One of the spirits is bonded with the school's native garden, and they figure they can get some local community minded business to throw some money at that to provide tending over the summer. One of the others seems happily ensconsed within a nearby herb and fruit garden. The others are bonded to a lesser degree and might be removable - the pack suggest that maybe other Septs would like a lovely new Glade Child spirit.

About mid afternoon, Melissa rings the sept and eventually gets a hold of Brett. She says that the kids are packing up and are about to go back to Melbourne - should she let them or not? A brief moment of clarity says that perhaps the reason that everything is normal in the realm, as opposed to the scintillating chaos in the Umbra is because Kylie, and her protobub, which appear to have been a significant source or something of wyld in the Glade, weren't there. Maybe they shouldn't let her go there. Brett tells Mel to ring back in 10 mins and kills the line to the sound of an annoyed squawk.

The pack think what they could do - they really don't want the kids coming back. They could tell them ("a giant hole in space appeared right where your house was. No you can't see it, its a spirit thing. Stop backing away.") but Brett wants to introduce them into the whole kinfolk a little less abruptly than that, thank you very much. The recent earthquake gives them some excuse - they could tell them that Harold (who actually owns the building) has a gas leak and they can't come in. Or there was structural damage. Brett thinks that they will still want to get their stuff and gets a bit obsessive about causing the purported structural/utility issue. Mel rings and they tell her to delay the kids somehow while they think.

Eventually the plan is to tell them there's a gas leak in the building behind their garden and Harold's been told by the police not to let anyone in. In the meantime, they'll contact Scars Atoned and see if they can help with giving the kids an alternative place to stay in the area. This they now do - someone rings Scars Atoned and gets Kim Hoy on the phone. She talks to some people and says she thinks so, but call her back. This they now do also. Kim says that there's a kinfolk of theirs in Creswick, nearby, who runs a campsite. Perfect. John's phone rings - its Brad. Apparently the bus to the station left without them for some reason. The Garou snicker and applaud Melissa. Brett says that he needed to speak to them anyway and explains about the earthquake and the gas and the alternative sleeping arrangements. Brad talks to someone where he is and says they can stay at this cafe till Brett gets there.

John and Brett drive up to Castlemaine in a caern car. They fade slowly from the mental link. Meanwhile, theurges from both septs come and collect Kimu and Dom - they are going to summon a bunch of earth elementals to investigate Thomas's premonition a bit more closely, just to make sure that nothing imminent is going to come and get them. Folks chat with Thomas a bit, then spread out to beginning the summoning.

Later that evening, Thomas, on his way back from checking with some of his friends about the stinking hu-mans they take care of sees a car go past him, then suddenly slew to the right, and up onto the verge of the road. A woman jumps out and heads back his direction - when she gets close enough, he realises that its Priscilla Ryan. She definately recognises Thomas, who mentally suggests his packleader could be here now. Please. He's only about 200m from the caern, so it won't take long.

Ryan says that she's been looking for Thomas. She looks wrecked, and says she drove down here from up north. She met someone last night and he told her she had to come and help them. Thomas says "Someone. Ah. Kinda beaky?" and Ryan blinks lots before agreeing. Apparently they helped... the beaky person and in return she's meant to help them. Ahhhhhh think the pack and start planning a trip to Launceston.

Thomas takes Ryan to a nearby cafe and feeds her. She says that she had a compulsion to travel north west of Sydney last night and couldn't resist. She went there and met their beaky friend, who then told her to come here. She didn't know exactly where she was going (hasn't been to Melbourne before), but she had to go. She's been driving since then - the car is a rental.

Meanwhile, in Castlemaine, Brett and John meet up with Brad, Kylie and Gav. They explain in more detail about the earthquake (which, being at a rave, they kinda missed) and the possible gas leak and the campsite run by *cough* friends. They scan the kids with Sense Unnatural - higher amounts of Wyld, but not dangerous amounts. While they are talking, both Brett and John feel an odd frisson, as if someone walked over their grave. It happens a couple of more times before John thinks to peek, finding Melissa swiping her arm back and forth through them. She manages to convey that she would rather not be stuck in the umbra in Castlemaine all night but would prefer to return to Melbourne. All this with a single jesture.

The kids are conveyed to the campsite in Creswick. John stays with them after they fake a phone call from a friend who was also at the concert and Brett goes to rescue them. While the three teenagers have a much welcomed shower and John speaks to Dave (the caretaker), Brett drives back to Castlemaine, gets Melissa, drives back to Melbourne, gets the low-down on Ryan, drops Melissa off at Sunshine, turns around and drives back to Creswick.

Holistic Approach find somewhere for Ryan to crash, which she does straight away. They chat about what she might be able to do for them. Someone watches over her all night. While Kimu is on guard at the caern, he hears a knock at sees Christine - it looks like the Daughters are back in town. Apparently Keziah had a dream about something to do with the glade that made them think they should come back. He commuicates the whole sordid story to them.

Monday 27

John gets up early and makes a phone call away from the campsite. When Brett gets up, they call the caern and have a chat with their packmates. Functionally, they need to talk to the kids about why they can't go back to Melbourne - the gas leak plan will only last so long. Brett wants to begin the enkinfolking ("woo, I verbed the noun!") anyway, and figures that step one is letting them know that weird shit is up. There is much discussion about how one would begin this - John and Brett decide that they will start with some sort of gift demonstration, but stray away from discussing the Umbra or werewolf stuff.

They decide in the end to take them out to the nearby National Park for a picnic (not suspicious at all). While they are there, Brett raises the topic of suuuupernaaatuuural stuff. The three kids are a bit surprised, but on one level, they knew something was up - the weird folks that hung around the glade, the mysterious sudden purchasing of the place and so on. Of course, having John use his faerie lights Gift in plain sight doesn't hurt either. The two Garou explain that the three of them have managed to make the garden a spiritually significant place, almost holy (playing on the usual teenage "I'm special" urge), but that a combination of events have pushed it to excess this weekend - the earthquake was part of that, and that's the scale of things they are worried about. Brett is adamant about not relating the problem to the kid if they can avoid it - he doesn't want Kylie worried or thinking its a bad thing. All in all, the three teenagers accept things with a certain amount of equanimity - Gavin and Kylie swallow it wholesale, although Brad is a little unsure. The two of them cap the demonstration off by John disappearing off into the brush, ducking into the Umbra and awakening a plant spirit near the picnic ground and getting it to grow perceptively while they watch. All in all, a fairly successful day.

Meanwhile, back in Melbourne, while Kimu and Dom stay at the caern and keep an ear out for their summoned/bound earth elementals, Thomas is picked to do the indoc^H^H^Htroductions with Ryan. They spend the morning chatting in the bedsit she stayed in, trying to find out what she knows. Basically she understands that she is a shaman for Curlew and that he is a spirit that is concerned about making sure people find their way to the Deadlands. This seems a lot to be sure of for someone who was a geriatric nurse a month ago, but given her experiences - not just the death vision the pack were involved in, but dreams and visions since - a certain amount of life-changing acceptance is perhaps not beyond the pale.

So, on Saturday night when she got the call from Curlew to COME, she just went. She drove all the way up to northern NSW, walked out into the bush, sort of met Curlew, and he said that she must rejoin the people who helped her through the epiphany, because they are having difficulty with people who are going back and forth from the lands of the dead to the lands of the living. He said that they were in the city to the south, and she should just go now. So she did.

This takes most of the morning, so they retire to the back room at Carmel's (Thomas being a bit too notorious to be able to wander the streets too much with impunity), grab some food and continue, while Mathias joins them in the Umbra (with a lovely view of the Wyld storm maybe 100m away). Thomas makes subtool enquiries as to what Ryan thinks they are - fundamentally she thinks that they are shamans like her, but she wan't sure whether they are/were working for Curlew like she does - the word totem doesn't get used, but its what she's looking for - or whether they were just helping out spirits in general. Thomas confirms that while that's not entirely the case, its close enough to be a workable explanation for the moment.

Ryan is about to ask which spirit they do follow when the door to the back room opens, and a man wearing sunglasses and a hawaiian shirt sticks his head through, wiggles his eyebrows and beckons to Thomas. The Garou all groan, and Mathias quickly senses unnatural - deadlands, magic. They groan more. Despite ghostly, unhearable demands from Brett to not get involved, Thomas heads out the door, and Mathias runs ahead. The strawman is waiting out the front and beckons again before heading south down Lygon St. Thomas follows slowly while Mathias tries to get an idea of where the figure is going, and Chasing-the-Night heads rapidly to the area through the Umbra, skirting the Wyld storm.

As Thomas dawdles his way along, the strawman takes a seat in the middle of the park on the far side of the road. Mathias rushes to the nearby toilet and leaps through the Gauntlet. He walks briskly up behind the strawman, who is watching Thomas and probably wondering why he's staying 20 metres away. Mathias says "hello" and the mage jumps and turns around. The strawman wants to know what the hell was going on on Saturday - Mathias manages to bluff him and pretend to not know what was going on, leaving the construct a bit unsure of himself. The conversation is fairly brief as a result ("oh, well, if it wasn't you, sorry to have bothered you") and Mathias walks off back to the toilet, followed by the construct, who nods at him and takes the other cubicle. Doesn't look suspicious at all.

Ryan taps Thomas on the shoulder and asks what was going on - Thomas says that was one of the people they are chasing. Ryan asks if Thomas could see the shadow - when he says no, she eludicates and says that there was a weird shadow across the ground from where the guy at the chair was. Its vanished now, shortly after he went into the toilet. Kimu arrives, and senses for magic - just the normal deadlands mage taint. With some work, Ryan says that when he was sitting here (in the chair), the shadow went that way (pointing south east), and it lay on the ground like cloth, going up the front of that pizza place and covering both z's.

The pack spring into action. They mark out that line - it goes from Lygon St out past the Exhibition Gardens, clipping the Wyld storm, and through, ew, the Victorian Parliament buildings. Mathias says glurk and reminds people that early on it looked like the mages were messing with the State government, but the Scryers checked it out after it all went Boom. No one wants to check with them now, given Moonflower is now a member of that pack.

Mathias and Kimu wander through the Umbra, sensing and peeking while Thomas, wearing a hood, and Ryan walk through the Realm, trying to spot anything unusual. They follow the line of shadow as best they can, but nothing leaps out - the giant cascade of barely contained wyld makes sensing anything problematic anyway. Discussion returns to somehow getting the mages to appear like that again, at an angle, so they can triangulate - as it stands, they have no real idea of distance - it could be that the mages are in Tooradin or something.

Tuesday 28

Brett and John ring their pack and organise to meet Dom out at Rippling Waters. Kylie is awake and obviously angling to speak to Brett seperately from everyone else. When she manages that, she says that they talked for a long time last night and, well, Brad is a bit unsure, but she wants to know more - it hit a nerve (in a good way). One of her friends told her about some of this stuff, and she sort of tried some of it but hadn't really gotten into it. Brett says that that's the plan, and bythewaywhoisthisfriend? Kylie says her name was Annette McKenzie, and she was someone Kylie used to hang out with last, no wait, the winter before. Brett notes the name.

Meanwhile, back in Melbourne, things are proceeding a pace. Actually, no they're not, but some stuff is happening. The various Earth Elementals people sent down to the world beneath seem to be returning, and the various theurges reassemble at Sleeping Lore. The elementals pop back up all over the place, some in the caern, some near the Uni and so on. The elemental Dom sent down, and the one that Adam Shergol sent along don't seem to have come back - Adam shrugs and says he suspects that the one he bound wasn't particularly active, but Dom looks puzzled and says she can sense the one she bound, kind of. They seem to all report back about the same sort of thing - there's no sign of anything out of place all the way down there. There's certainly no sign of a rising Wyrmbeast. The spirits are thanked for their help and freed to return to the ground from whence they were called. Dom looks happy and says hers is returning, pointing eastward. There is certainly something coming, but its not what she sent down there. Instead of the dull earthy grey figure, what is lumbering unsteadily towards them is a shiny, colourful humanoid shape. Dom says "uhoh" and indicates that it doesn't seem normal. Various theurges start to scatter, but Kimu leaps forward and starts rebinding the spirit. Entranced by the intricate formality of the ritual, the spirit's advance is slowed and then stopped before Kimu returns it to Slumber. Folks seem to think that the returning elemental came out into the Wyld zone.

Back in Creswick and over breakfast, Brett and John explain that they (the three teenagers) are going to move out to the countryside until the current crisis has passed. A three hour drive follows, and when they arrive in Koroit, Dom is there and speaking to Gillian Battershill and Leaps-in-the-Light. They sit about and have a chat with the the kids and all, and explain that Gillian and friends are going to help give the a bit of training and explanation in what is going on while Brett, Dom and John try and fix their little problem. In the end, Holistic Approach leave Brad the car and keys to it, and head back via Moonbridge.

There is some discussion about what they should be doing. Thomas is all for putting Ryan on a hotair balloon and attracting the mages in some fashion, but no one's quite sure of how that will work out. Mathias is in favour of concentrating on one thing at a time, and feels that the storm is the primary issue right at the moment - they can't predict what it will do.

About midafternoon, Jane Redfeather bamfs in via Moonbridge. She speaks to Chasing-the-Night and his pack, and says that she's concerned that the increased amount of Wyld build up. Duh, say Holistic Approach. However, her concerns are that what will eventually happen is that the Gauntlet will go *pop* and they will have what the Uktena in the US call a Brokenland. Fundamentally its a place when spirit and material stuff are globbed together. The pack seems to have a "and the problem is?" sort of attitude, at least until Jane goes into more details. She points out that this is not a return to the perfect world where the spirits and matter are one, but a horrible mismatch of the two - mindbreaking for all involved and a massive Veil breach. She mutters something about area 51 or something and asks them to take her walking through the area, which they kindly do.

The pack have the same sense of rushing water under thick ice when they extend their senses, but apart from some windows still being repaired, the material realm seems to have shrugged and accepted the quake on Saturday night and moved on. People are shopping and walking and riding and driving with nary a care for the seething chaos just slightly out of sight. The pack do notice that the Gauntlet has in fact increased slightly, about the point where dead weaver spirits are piled up at the end of the storm, making a sort of crater edge. The storm still seems to be roaring all about the Umbra, but again, still is not affecting the landscape, but only the surrounds. This is freaky, but Jane sort of shrugs and says that being the Wyld it can do anything - including stuff like only affect blue things, or stuff that people have turned 23 degrees from true north. Its all possibilities, but not necessarily all of them at once. Crazy, man.

Jane is concerned, but happy to see that there isn't much in the way of breaches between the Umbra and the Realm. They peek for a bit to watch the nightmare, and are somewhat disturbed to note the appearance of a Wyld spirit, which floats about in the storm for a bit, seemingly getting bigger and stronger before disappearing. Despite a certain amount of panic, it doesn't seem to appear back in the Realm, but this does pose the question "where /did/ it go?". Jane heartily recommends regular checks of areas that she pointed out and then waves as she returns to the calm serenity of the Cave Caern.

   The pack consider their options. Mathias wants to deal with the more pressing issue of the Wyld storm, but Thomas is all for wiping the mages off the planet. Considering their discovery of a tool for investigating (b) and the lack of any idea what to do for (a) (other than keep Kylie the hell away), they start to investigate some of the possibilities with Ryan and the mages. If she's going to be able to help them, they need to be able to draw the mages out in some way. They figure that they could use the strawman option, but that's going to be tricky to arrange after the pack fairly categorically told them to get stuffed. There are possibilities though - one of the pack could appear to be working on their own, for instance.

Once they decide how to draw the mages out, they need to decide where this will happen - the strawmen have only ever approached individuals, rather than multiple Garou. They also want to get as much of a perpendicular angle as they can on the original heading from Lygon St, to improve the accurance of the trail. They go over Ryan's explanation - she could see a sort of shadow, laid across the ground like a dark shadow, as long as the strawman was active. So they need to be able to be somewhere they can see it as far as possible. This raises the question of "can Ryan be taken into the Umbra?".

Time for some consulting work. The pack go and find Emma, who is watching idiot box tv at home. They explain what they want to do, and ask if Ryan will be able to come into the Umbra. Emma blinks a bit, and says that she's really not sure - she knows that some shamans probably could enter on their own. If they can get her there, her link to Curlew will probably ensure that she was able to maintain a spiritual integrity, unlike many humans exposed to the spirit worlds. Thomas suddenly remembers that Ryan said she met Curlew on the Saturday night - they don't think the spirit has enough energy to materialise, so its more than likely that Ryan moved into the Umbra, even unknowingly. So that's a good jump on the first hurdle.

Can the pack get her there though? That will be tricky. There are gifts which allow Garou to take kinfolk into the Umbra in times of need, but noone at the caern really knows them - its not safe, there hasn't been much need. Chasing-the-Night asks what spirits teach the gift, and whether they could make a talen or something? Emma hmms and says that she knows that Unicorn has taunt the gift to Garou before, but that doesn't seem very appropriate for a shaman of a psychopompal spirit. On the other hand, Chimera is also able to grant that gift, and being the spirit of the caern, and the caern being a cemetary... it looks promising, apart from that whole not wanting to let Ryan know too much, like this is our holy place. Emma suggests they should speak to Graeme, so off they tromp to the caern.

Graeme joins them in the Umbra for a chat. He's not too thrilled with the idea, frankly, although he admits the need for some sort of solution. No one pointedly asks who's more dangerous, a cabal of mages who have attacked the caern or a death shaman who is happy to help them, but you can see it in his mind. They chat about the possibilities - the spiritually knowledgable pack people suggest that a door or gateway is the best place to make the transition, at least to begin with. The main gates of the cemetary might be a bit tricky, but are the most significant... the north west gate might do too, and its a bit more sheltered from the caern and the human onlookers. They could distract the patrolling police without much hassle, so that's not an issue. Someone cunningly suggests Ryan could be led out of the caern through the gateway, and Chimera might be willing to muddle the area with mists, making it harder for Ryan to know what's happening - after all, she could probably work out that the cemetary was important just from Curlew's instructions, but they don't need to let her know what's going on in perfect detail.

Graeme says that he wants some time to think about it, they're not doing it tonight. That leaves only two more hurdles - will Chimera do it, and when Ryan gets there, will she be able to use her magic powers? Graeme shoes them out so he can think.

As they are leaving, Keziah comes in. However, she ignores them and heads straight for Graeme. The pack shrug and head outside where Keziah is heading for Graeme's house. Over there, Keziah is flopped down watching shadows under a tree. Er. They go back into Graeme's house and find that his expression matches theirs, because Keziah is apparently talking to empty space. She's not making any noise, and is faintly transparent. Sensing just says "wyld" without any of the normal attached flavours for a living being. They check out the other Keziah's and find there are even more throughout the caern. They are doing all sorts of things that Keziah might be doing in the Umbra - talking to people who aren't there, walking along, rolling on her back and scratching in the dirt. John ducks into the Realm and rings Christine. He asks if she knows where Keziah is, and Christine puzzedly says yes, then swears and the line goes dead. Other pack members head out the northwest gate towards the zoo and find that there are increasing numbers of Keziah, overlapping and forming a visual cacophany on the way. They get to the zoo and find that Keziahes is there too. Nadine looks confused. John tries questing stone at the caern, but gets no response.

After a while they all start to fade out. People shrug and head back, and find Christine and Jacynta arguing with Keziah in the south east corner of the caern. Apparently they were at the Glade as part of just patrolling around and Keziah went into the Umbra. While she was in there, Wyldness swept her up, and then the ghosts started appearing - fundamentally they were all the potential things she might have been doing at the time, and the Wyld seemed to partially actuate them. 5 Garou fingers point at Brett and say "NO".

Wednesday 29

Graeme finds them the next morning and says Ok, with the requirements that they'll be subtle about it. John and Kimu find Emma, and ask to speak to Chimera. Emma performs the appropriate ritual, and mists rise, obscuring them from the nearby Umbra, and each other. Weirdly, they can still see Emma, and when she asks them what they want. John explains, and Chimera approves, and says that she will be ready. She tells John to get the shamanwoman to come to the cemetary for a time this afternoon.

Mathias finds himself at the pointy end of a Moonflower, who wants to know who this woman they have allied with is? Her main concern is that Ryan is a mage of a different sort. Mathias assures her that Ryan is a shaman, and her abilities tend towards a completely different spectrum, much more akin to the Garou way than demon worship or whatever. Moonflower wants to meet Ryan, and Mathias manages to put her off for a little, on the grounds that they are still working with Ryan to get her through the culture shock. Moonflower promises to not act around them.

The pack figure that they may as well do this thing tonight, at least to test how Ryan copes. John is nominated to go and speak to her about the situation. He gets some pointers from Emma and Graeme about how to provide the minimal explanation, and trundles off to find Ryan. However, she's not there. He tries a Questing Stone, which indicates that she is off somewhere to the north east. John and Thomas trundle off that way and see if they can find her.

After an hour, it becomes clear that she is currently in the Riverbend Rest Home, a medical facility for the old and broken. The two Garou make lots of "gah" noises - they can't see Ryan's car in the car park, so they stay in the Umbra and try and peek. They find her eventually - she's dressed in a plain uniform-like dress and cardy, and is selling flowers and the like from a basket. The suspicious Garou sense, and feel that there is something going on, but they are not sure what. The sense might be a bit Curlew/dreamtime like, but its not very strong. Ryan certainly isn't putting a double handful of arsenic into the food of the people she is visiting, but she is speaking to the patients.

She eventually leaves, and heads out to the busstop. The Garou figure they can just as easily meet her at home, and trot off. John leaves a note in her bedsit, and shortly after lunch Ryan calls him. John organises to meet her at Carmel's for a chat, and is there waiting for Ryan when she shows up. John gives her the rundown - there is a spirit world, parallel with the material world and it is possible to shift yourself into such a realm from a significant site (intimating that the cemetary, while important, is not uniquely amazingly important). Some quick thinking also stops him saying "but humans - " during the explanation. He says that they suspect that she is able to move into such a realm, and might have done so already. While he is talking to her, Ryan closes her eyes briefly and seems to relax a little. John asks if there is anything wrong, and she says no. The explanation is given - that they will be guiding her feet along the path, and at midnight tonight. He gives her a rundown on the penumbra and notices that she repeats the eyeclosing thing once or twice more. John suggests that she go for a walk around the cemetary and become used to it.

Meanwhile, Kimu speaks to Moonflower and Aquinas, and asks if they will help out by distracting the police who are now always patrolling the cemetary at night. They don't want a serious distraction, just enough to stop the officers paying attention to their little ritual on the north western side of the caern.

While Ryan walks around the cemetary in the later part of the afternoon, the pack prepare themselves for the evening's entertainment. Thomas keeps an eye on Ryan, and notices her do the eye-closing-relaxing thing a couple more times, but can't sense anything out of the ordinary. Chimera appears to have programmed John's brain, because he keeps realising things they need to do. Cleansing themselves and Ryan (seperately) is a plan, and also marking out the pathway to the exit in order to more clearly delineate the doorwayness of it all would be an excellent assistance. The garou prepare themselves and the material supplies that they will require.

  Come midnight and Aquinas and Moonflower are distracting the two constables by at the south end of the caern. Ryan has been led out of her bedsit by John while Thomas waits in the Umbra. Mathias and Kimu are also in the Umbra, but will remain in the cemetary as the ritualists pass out of the caern. Brett will lurk with Dom in the Realm in said cemetary. John has kindly dedicated some clothes for Ryan - not sure how she'll react otherwise.

As the two of them move towards the candle lit gateway, some of the ghost-like spirits that lurk at the caern start to appear near Mathias and Chases-the-Night and fog and mist begin to arise from the ground. By the time Ryan and John pass through the gate, it is impossible to see more than a metre or so. And pass they do, with nary a shimmer they appear in the Umbra. Thomas, who is watching, notices that perhaps the Umbra grows darker and a little more shadowy when Ryan appears, but not to a spooky and/or dangerous level. There is certainly no building sense of Wyrm.

Ryan is given a minimalist run down on the Umbra by John and Thomas. They mentally keep a running commentary going so that other folks can throw in their two cents. Ryan is given a tour of some of the bawn - she gets to see the city from a distance, some weaver cabling around the tram line and the Umbral Royal Park. She asks what the hell the Wyld storm is, which can be seen breaking the sky even from here. She seems to cope exceptionally well, however John is a little concerned that Ryan is not exactly a fully functioning human being - not too surprised given her experiences of the last month.

Brett also spends some time with them and notices Ryan perform the same eyes-closed listening maneuver as she has been all day. However, this time he spots a faint golden thread disappear. Looking closely, there are a small number of similar, very faint, threads leading from Ryan sort of up and away. Similarly, there is a link between John and Ryan, but it is more silvery than golden. Brett mentions this and wanders away to join Mathias, who summons Kanau. They ask some pertinent questions and Kanau agrees to follow the links. Some time passes and he returns, saying they all drift into somewhere odd, but he was able to follow them all to the same physical location, off to the north east.

Come the dawn, and as the moon fades to the south, people consider how to remove Ryan from the Umbra. John and Thomas want to teach her how to get in and out, the others are a bit down on that. The arguments for and against are put forward, but no decision is really made. John does give her a bit of a run down on how to get in and out... and she goes *woosh* and is gone. John leaps after her into the Realm and they head back home.

Thursday 30

Before the pack turn in, they review the experiment. Sucess! Of course, that was part one - can they take Ryan into the Umbra. Now for part 2 - can she use her powers there. No, first, back to part 1. The majority is against teaching her to step on her own, but the possibility of having to make a sudden leap-sideways with Ryan in tow makes Chimera's assistence each time a bit problematic.

John thinks about things and then says with Kimu's permission, he'll challenge for Rank 3 - he has completed the discussed challenge (Rite of the Fetish) and feels that he's made up for the awkwardnesses that made it suboptimal to challenge at the last couple of Moots. If he does that, he could learn the Velvet Curtain gift, and be the bunny to pull Ryan into the Umbra. Chasing-the-Night agrees and he heads off to speak to Ian. Ian says that he'll talk to Emma and see what happens.

After a couple of hours shuteye, the pack wake up and do their thing. Mathias is in Graeme's house when he sees a news bulletin on the TV, wherein 13 of 30 elderly residents in a home in northeastern Melbourne died over night. No one is sure why, but the speculation is that it might be something like legionairres in the airconditioning. All the residents have been moved out of the home and government health officials will be making a statement at noon. Mathias passes this on and there is some speculation about Ryan's grasp of "appropriate".

About noon, Emma, Cossack and Ian show up and punch John into paste. No, not really. But they do quiz him about eerie Theurge information and he makes an ok showing. Emma says that she would accept him as Rank 3, but she would like to see the first fetish he makes be something for the Sept rather than for himself or his pack. John agrees and they perform the levelling-up magic. As Chimera is part of said ritual, John takes the oppurtunity to ask to learn Parting the Velvet Curtain, and Chimera ascedes. John agrees to the chiminage required and so Chimera grants him the gift. Three cheers!

   Part 2 of the plan - can Ryan sense magic/demons from the Umbra. The pack approach Graeme, who is talking with some of the workmen in the cemetary, who walks off a bit to talk to them. They explain that they would like to borrow the gargoyle balls to test whether Ryan is able to sense them at all. Graeme is cautious, but says that as long as the pack isn't going to release the gargoyles it should be ok. Brett notices that a couple of mourners seem to be taking an inordinate amount of attention in the small group of people near Graeme and also notices a certain set of the shoulders and all might suggest to a keen watcher that the man with the mobile and the woman with flowers off in the other direction are probably plainclothes police. The Garou split up and surreptiously lose the police in the cemetary before returning to the safer umbra. One of the pack goes via the Sept stash of weapons and gear and retrieves the globes before smuggling them out a side gate.

Out to past Westmeadows to experiment, near the location where Angus was killed by gargoyles. Ironic really. Some of the pack run, some of them drive. John brings Ryan into the Umbra via his new gift and two apparently significant trees. Meanwhile Brett stands in the Realm where they are in the Umbra and waves the gargoyle ball back and forth around that space. Ryan can't seem to feel anything, even when Brett stuffs it where he thinks her head is. Chasing-the-Night senses the globe from the Umbra - he can feel Demonic, magic and wyrm in that order. There is some speculation that the balls are too self contained for Ryan to feel them. John tries to teach Ryan how to peek, but she doesn't seem able to do that either. This is a bit of a set back.

Back to Melbourne. Mathias, Kimu and Thomas run, John and Brett drive back with Ryan. They are almost back to the caern when John's phone rings - its Moonflower, who sounds excited and pissed at the same time. She says that she was patrolling the Wyld storm area when she had a faint tickle of Magic - she can now see two guys moving from shop to shop in Brunswick St, heading north, and they sense of magic. John passes this on and the pack hit the accelerator, pausing only when they realise that they won't be able to sit in the Umbra because that's smack bang in the middle of the Wyld storm. Time to extemporise. Thomas screams across the Umbra while John pushes Brett out at the Sept and hoons off to park out the back of Brunswick St with Ryan. Brett grabs the fae sword and changes to lupus, and heads down Johnston St, to make sure the mages don't find their way to the glade.

Thomas arrives on Brunswick St in lupus as John and Ryan are subtley making their way down the opposite side to the Mages. Moonflower, still on the phone, says that she's watching from the edge of the housing commission flats and the mages are on the other side of the street. They are apparently going from shop to shop, almost like they are window shopping. They are wearing almost identical clothes - tweed jackets, floppy hats and sunglasses. Thomas trots down the street, and flops down next to a dog that someone else has brought to a cafe. He uses Sense Unnatural and pings the two of them - Magic, Demonic and Wyrm in that sort of order, basically the same as the strawmen usually sense.

Brett takes up sentinel in Johnston St, and says if the mages turn down his way, they're toast. John and Ryan walk past Thomas, who is keeping pace with the mages on the other side of the road. Ryan says she can see the same black shadow, but its jumping all over the place, like light on restless water. Some bright spark says "ah, the Wyld storm". She thinks she can make a rough following of it. Chasing-the-Night thinks briefly and says "Are we sure that the shadow is where they are coming from and its not something that continues past them?". No one is quite sure, but they decide to stick with plan A for the moment. While the strawmen move from shop to shop, John and Ryan cut in through the backstreets, following the velvet shadow. Once they have a rough idea which way they are going, Mathias and Kimu start to cut around the Wyld storm in the Umbra to catch up with them.

Thomas is watching the strawmen as they turn into a sidestreet. By the time he gets level with the street, however, they've gone. Brett comes back and meets up with him. They cross Brunswick St and follow the scent of straw, which leads to a closed office-looking door. There's no signage on the window, but some hint that there used to be. Brett goes around the back of the building, but there's no sign that anyone has come out of there. Ryan reports that the shadow just flashed away and John passes that on to the rest of the pack.

Figuring that the danger is gone, Brett comes back around the front and uses Cracking Stone to open the door. Not that the skanky hippy looks suspicious creeping around offices just after closing time, no, no. Brett slips in with Thomas. They find themselves in an empty office, smelling slightly of dry cleaning. A door leads to the back office, which contains two straw scarecrows, wearing tweed jackets and hats and sunglasses. The two garou ransack through pockets - they find newish wallets with some fresh $20 bills, and a couple of receipts - hard to say where for, they are old cashregister ones. There's no id or anything like that.

The pack consider their options - a quick look at a Melways and marking out where the shadows fall suggests that the initial idea that they came from the Parliament area was a false positive - both shadows point in about the same direction, which means that the mages are doing their thing from the south eastern suburbs at the very least. Or they move around and do it from a different place each time. Either way, it suggests that they really want to get as perpendicular to the two lines as they can to get a third line. In the meantime, Brett's all for dissecting the strawmen, but the others want to wait and see what they do, or play silly buggers with them.