The Midnight Circus

After all the doings in St. Clair, Ray and his carnival land themselves in Chicago, just in time to be bought out by Anastagio's Olde Time Lunar Carnival and Midnight Circus. Devyn Cavendish, the ringmaster and proprietor, hopes that Ray will stay on, offering him an excellent retainer for continuing as stunt driver for the new management.

When it opens in Chicago, the pack heads into the Circus because they hear rumors about a girl who turns into a werewolf...and it sounds alarmingly realistic. Ambrose heads in because he has heard stories about how the place fends off the Technocracy, and because of sheer curiosity. He's expecting changelings. The Garou are expecting nothing in particular. They're all severely disappointed.

At first, it all seems rather staid. Oh, sure, circuses have their little eccentricities, but...was that a vampire? Was that a mage? Is that a whole Renaissance Faire full of fae? Maybe this isn't quite so normal after all...

The werewolves start following the stench of Wyrm taint...which leads them to mysterious ninja assassins. Apparently, some mysterious woman--who's a vampire, except unlike any vampire the Garou have ever known--hired a man to take out the circus's medium.

In the end, Sonya talks to a spirit she saw the vampire conversing with to discover that she's some kind of Asian vampire called a kuei-jin, and for some reason she really, really wanted that medium--an 'akuma,' according to Cavendish's overheard words--dead. Which is all well and good, and something they can safely ignore (all the better if the creeps pick themselves off!) but that young 'werewolf' they came to investigate is indeed the real thing, and she's in desperate need of rescue and doesn't even know it.

While the Garou do their hero thing, Ambrose innocently attempts to uncover the secrets of the Circus. He keeps bumping into the Ringmaster, who seems like a charming enough fellow, if a little smarmy, and then has a couple of weird chats with the magician-in-residence, who's a vampire who can apparently work fae magic. Following the ringmaster's advice, Ambrose goes to meet the eccentric Dr. Owl, an inventor who runs the Museum of Oddities. They share their curiosity for strange critters, and the good Doctor spills his guts about the circus, letting on (among other things) that the Ringmaster is a Nephandus and the place is contracted with infernal powers. It (the conversation) seems to be going fairly well, in fact, till Dr. Owl shows Ambrose his latest project--an attempt to summon a demon into a sacrificial body!

Dr. Quintrell cements the fact that this place is bad news when he catches Cavendish having a conversation with a little girl in Dragon's Tongue. Then, roped into a second "consultation" with Dr. Owl, Ambrose tries to talk his way out of it as pleasantly as possible (Ambrose has exactly zero subtlety, but lucky for him Dr. Owl's equally oblivious), trying to retreat only to nearly run into Devyn on his way in!

Fortunately, Dr. Owl has enough rationality to realize this isn't necessarily the best situation, so he lets Ambrose out the back way, into the mirror maze. Figuring sight will only disorient him here, he closes his eyes and navigates by touch. This works till he feels his hand go into something soft and yielding...which turns out to be a reflection of him, come to life!

The reflection decides that it wants to replace him and take his life over. It nearly kills him before the werewolves come to the rescue in the nick of time. Finally, Cavendish realizes that the little game is up, and--being a betting man--he decides on a little wager: if they can find the way out of the circus by morning, then they're free to go. But that's easier said than done. The whole place is a tangle of realities and paths looping back upon themselves. They nearly manage to establish a path out by contacting Mark and establishing a link with him, but that falls through when Ambrose's doppelganger resurfaces and tries to kill him again.

Finally, when Dr. Owl comes out to chat one more time, Ambrose spots something: reality wobbles and fades in the old man's wake. A terrible suspicion creeps up on him...but feeling desperate, he decides to take the chance. He cons Dr. Owl into walking outside the borders of the Circus, motioning to the Garou to follow in his Marauderly wake.

Sure enough, it works. They escape the circus, much to Cavendish's ire (he calls Ambrose on his cell phone to accuse him of cheating). But that's just bitter dregs, right? They're home free...but they book it for safety, just in case.

And they gain a new friend! Ray the Chameleon Pooka has a sense for what's likely to get him killed or worse, and he books it along with them when they leave.

Rock-Paper-Scissors

Rose rearranged my desk again. I'm sure that once I find everything that it will make perfect sense to have it arranged that way. In the meantime, I can't find anything. Of course, it might be the Dreaming's way of telling me to stop working. Or Rose's...

She left her son's chemistry homework for me to proof. The boy is HOPELESS. And he makes the curse go haywire. At least his sisters know how to clean up the DDR pad before they leave. If I trip over another of his notebook's, I'm packing his ass up and sending him to Sylvan. I'll even pay for it myself to get him out of my hair.

I need a hair cut.

The trip to Appalachia was interesting. The Nanehi entertained RF and I with stories while we worked to cure the Bane Wind sickness. It was nice to be on the receiving end of thanks from the Nunehi rather than their ire. I get it, but you'd think they be more pissed off at the 'european' werewolves.

Speaking of which, I got to see a few Get of Fenris in their biggest form when that strange pack opened the story caern. Yeah, I can see how they would make awesome steeds.

Deirde decided that I have to plan one ceremony and she gets to plan the other. After losing rock-paper-scissors, I'm stuck with planning the Bonding. Note to self: Never play rock-paper-scissors against a seer. You will always lose. So I went to visit D's mother, the fay one. Thank the Dreaming, she remembered that D was her daughter and is happy to help with the arrangements. Hopefully, this means that she'll remember she's helping us when she can't remember anything else.

Guy has agreed to be my best man in both ceremonies. He's also been of more help to D than me. Typical. I've got a couple acquaintances in House Dougal working on a dress for D, a new set of armor for me, and jewelry. Yes. I know that giving her jewelry for the exchange is cliche, but I'm old fashioned and have no problem layering her in gold and jewels.

D wants a destination wedding. She's looking at Hawaii. Apparently, her mother, the other one, knows somebody and can get us a sweet deal on a group getaway. When D decides that we're doing this, I'm making her go to Hawaii to buy her dress. I'm NOT going to deal with the headache caused by a dress lost in luggage.

We haven't told her old man yet about the big news and her mom's been very good about keeping it under wraps. I'm taking him out fishing next week and I'll ask him if I can marry his daughter then.

Eleven months and counting.

I think I'm starting to grow wings again. I've got that weird itch in my back. It was seriously annoying the last time I had them. I can't actually fly and the damn things just got in the way. That's the most annoying part of the dream that makes me. Whatever goth culture thinks is cool at that moment drives certain elements of my appearance. I have a permanent set of fangs (thank you, Anne Rice) and my eyes glow now. As if I didn't look unsettling enough as it is. I'm so close to Winter that half of the youngin's mistake me for it when they run into me in the Dreaming. They better thank their lucky stars it's me and not a real Winter. They'd regret those filthy mouths real fast.

Of course, pissed off me isn't much better.

The local liege lord sent me to middle of nowhere Pennsylvania to patch up a bunch of morons who wanted to rush a Pentex facility. I get there and find out that 1) they're IOH, and 2) that strange pack was there to help. So we got to the facility and found it ransacked by members of the Inquisition.

*sigh*

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

They turned out to be all right, and managed to be something of a help when the shit hit the fan. Poor Knocker, he got a smack from the nun's ruler. Like the kid could help that he curses like a sailor.

Third and fourth session

The mages are summoned to a tribunal at Horizon re: the Verbena Nephandus. They ask the Garou along as witnesses. Unsurprisingly, she's sentenced to Gilgul and death. The Garou dislike this artificial shaping of the Umbra that the mages walk them through, and spend most of their time on Horizon in the Dreamspeakers' section.

Two Kinfolk who've infiltrated Project Twilight (a secret government organization that investigates the paranormal) turn up with information about something weird happening in the town of St. Claire, PA. St. Claire is a dirty little mining town in southeastern Pennsylvania where Siren Cosmetics has a factory. Kids have been going missing there without being reported. The Garou snag disguises and head down, pretending to be a family new to the area. Sonya and RF are parents, Olesya's aunt, other two are kids.

Dr. Quintrell gets a Hermetic in his living room again, which produces the following conversation:
Ambrose: "Are you trying to blow yourself up?"
The Hermetic: "Well, you believe I can do it, don't you? There's no problem here." A: "This isn't my sanctum."
H: "Oh shit! Why wouldn't you be working in your sanctum?"
A: "My sanctum got burned down by the Technocracy, thanks for bringing up painful memories."

After Ambrose makes him some tea, the Hermetic passes on the message that some Cultists have had prescient dreams about him and Mark working as teachers in a school in St. Claire. Not much to say to that, really, other than "Grumblemutter *$%*&@% prophecy..." He hands over fake IDs and leaves Ambrose to get Mark. They head in.

The principal of the school is a Black Spiral Dancer. Some kids are burgeoning fomori, thanks to using copious free samples of Siren products. They're the ones who seem to be going missing, which means it's probably related to Siren.

Aila and Jonas, posing as the family's kids, find out about mages when they sit down in their classes. Mark's teaching history and Ambrose teaches science. At lunch, the Garou meet a foul-mouthed little kid at school who turns out to be a Nocker and points them toward the freehold bar in town. The bartender has "some lads" in place as security and is planning to raid Siren that night, but the werewolves kind of take over and turn it into something more useful--an info-gathering trip. The mages come along after everyone tells each other their stories.

They get in and get their info easily enough, but some priests and nuns and a guy whose sword catches fire trash their way in and scrag the guy in charge of the plant. The Garou keep out of their way. Mark recognizes the old insignia of the Inquisition, and some research informs him that it's now known as the Order of St. Michael.

The next day, Ambrose gets a visit from the Technocracy during school via two HITMarks posing as students who give him a cell phone and tell them they're going to nuke the East Coast on Saturday if he and his friends can't fix what's going to happen by then (IX statisticians say it'll be an ELE--Extinction Level Event--and the Union will do whatever it takes to stop it).

The Garou learn about an old shaft and some sleeping monstrosity beneath the town that legend says was guarded by two fae. They also hear a story about a lost caern and some Wendigo who killed off a bunch of people in town after their Theurge got burned.

As the writer of this blog has lost her notes, the quick rundown of the fallout is that a small traveling carnival comes into town for the Homecoming parade, and they meet Ray the Chameleon Pooka, who is a stunt driver and candy addict. The Homecoming parade is when everything goes down: the Black Spiral Dancers have learned of the awful thing living under the town, and plan to sacrifice the fomori children at the Homecoming parade on the football field, which just happens to be where that cursed Wendigo caern is. They hope to use all that negative energy to open a gateway and call the thing up.

The Garou do a patchy job of rescuing the children, crash the Homecoming parade just as the Technocracy is getting antsy (they keep stepping up the time table for that nuclear holocaust they mentioned), and in the end everything nearly goes to hell when that portal does indeed open on the football field because while they protect the children, the Garou can't really help killing everything evil in sight so it gets its blood sacrifice anyway. The Inquisitors, who've been lurking around the whole time and alternately getting in the way and solving problems before the Garou need to, show up for a bit and then run for the hills.

Ambrose, working up in the press box of the bleachers, saves the day with some quick thinking and jet boots when he works out that they need to disrupt the portal to close it. A lot of countermagic and two Primium-plated HITMarks pitched into the hole seals that bugger up good and tight, but not before something gets out: two True Fae, who have just enough time to blitz the incoming nuclear warheads into nonexistence before their exposure to the banality of modern day makes them go 'pop.'

Between the explosion of glamour and the Technocracy wiping everybody's minds (including, once again, the Garou, leaving Mark and Ambrose once more looking like hallucinatory idiots), nobody really remembers anything odd happening at all.

Nighty Knifey

Aila's story knife gave Ambrose weird dreams and kept carving maps of North Carolina into things when she slept, so, being responsible spirit-hearkening types, the Garou decided to follow it. Studying the knife, Sonya recognized it as a Croatan fetish. Oddly, it seemed to be coming out of hibernation: odd because it had a turtle spirit in and they've been laying low ever since Turtle disappeared after the Croatan died.

The knife gave them a song about a ghost story--a woman named Maria and a thing called the Mammoth Bone. They figured that tracking down that song might clue them in, hoping the writer might know him.

In North Carolina, the knife gave them better maps, increasingly detailed as they approached wherever it seemed inclined to go. Jonas took them to meet an old Elder Fianna Galliard, who told them how to find the guy who wrote the song. Sadly, the fellow turned up dead, but investigation pointed them to another guy by the same first name. Rinse and repeat this process a couple of times, and they finally found themselves at a downhome music festival, where the guy they thought they wanted was performing.

Meanwhile, Quintrell had another dream--something about a funeral home in North Carolina run by a Nephandus Verbena. He hunted up Mark and they headed to the music festival while Ambrose called the werewolves to check this out.

There, they meet a werebear named Caleb, who comes along. The song writer turns out to be an Eshu, who tells them a bit more about the story. It all comes together into a story about a family of fomori who killed a family of Kinfolk and ran off with the Mammoth Bone to Kentucky. The Mammoth Bone will soothe the ghost of the Kinfolk mother and lay her to rest, because her husband gave it into her keeping to protect it. The fomori are a nasty family of customers, with a fomori-making pond on their property.

Faris zips them off to Kentucky, where they sneak in, fight off three boar fomori, avoid a Dominated pack of kinfolk, Sonya stakes a Nosferatu on a tree, and they tear apart a few more fomori and follow the rest up to an evil pond where they're in the process of observing a ritual: namely, they're lighting a kid on fire before they throw him into the pond. They take out these fomori too (Caleb the werebear does a vicious number on one, horrifying Ambrose into losing his turn), and fix the kid before the bane can fully take root in him. After that, they find the Mammoth Bone in the house, purify the entire area by holding it in the pond for a while, then head back.

Then they follow the knife-map to a Changeling/Nunnehi freehold while the mages head off to follow up on that Verbena--who does indeed own a funeral parlor, and neither Ambrose nor Mark want to think too hard about that. They decide to plant a teeny microphone in a corpse to listen in on her, then when she leaves, they sneak in. Yes indeed, she's a necrophile. They collect a bunch of evidence then bail out when they hear someone returning, heading out a back door that transports them up to the mountain.

Meanwhile, Garou find that the nunnehi are sick, and meet Jarrod, who was sent to help the sick people. They do some recon and learn from spirits that the "sickness" is a bane-wind. Sonya learns a Gift to track it and they follow it up the mountain and fight it in the Umbra. Jarrod and Faris contain the bane-wind's virulence as it dies.

The somewhat disoriented mages hear an explosion. They follow the sound to find the werewolves emerging from the Umbra into a clearing. They all wonder what everyone's there for, then get attacked by blood tentacles and an undead tree. Aila locates the camouflaged Verbena and rushes her with Speed of Thought, knocking her out. A Hermetic shows up and carts the Verbena away.

Everyone goes down into the sleeping caern behind the freehold, which the nunnehi say is blocked off--except it isn't when they get there. Cue encounter with a Witch Serpent. A Witch-Serpent is a Wyrm-tainted spirit, a water serpent with antlers.

They get to the place they're looking for--a cavern complex in the Smoky Mountains--and there's an underground river. The Gurahl notices there's something kind of odd about the river, but the shifters can't pinpoint anything wrong. So I tell the ST my mage is going to poke it, and I mime "leaning over to have a good look." (The ST at first thought I meant he was going to put his head in the water, but Ambrose isn’t quite that crazy.) Something strikes out at him from beneath the water, and he just barely clears out of the way in time.

Whatever it was, it was so fast that no one got a good look at it. Obviously Wyrm-tainted, however; the Garou can smell it. So they have another good look. Nuthin'. They start brainstorming how to get this thing out of the water so they can deal with it--stomping around in the water, perhaps, or finding something to draw it out, baiting it with someone... The Shadow Lord thinks they should use Ambrose, since he seems eager to get his head bitten off.

I think, "Hey, Ambrose has two dots in Spirit. That's enough to call spirits." So I tell the ST, "He's going to lure the spirit out with his sonic disrupter."

The ST finds this hilarious. Apparently witch-serpents just kind of ignore or avoid Garou, but they're highly offended by humans. His description: "So this thing isn’t happy that humans are here in the first place, it’s already pissed that he tried to poke it once. Now this guy's zapping the water and making buzzing sounds to get this thing's attention. It is PISSED."

So, naturally, it attacks. 15 feet of angry giant antlered serpent come roaring out of the water. The Garou, not really expecting such a sight...break down laughing. A snake with antlers is pretty damn funny.

It's even more offended by people laughing at it, so it loses the surprise initiative (which it had because Ambrose forgot to actually warn people what he was doing). But before the Garou can move to engage the thing...the Gurahl shifts. 15 feet of howling angry Yeti hurls itself at the snake, catching it in a bear-hug.

Now, nobody in this group has ever actually seen a Gurahl in war-form before, let alone one taking on a giant evil serpent single-handed, so they all hesitate (Ambrose and the Uktena take pictures).

The serpent thrashes, the Gurahl roars and squeezes...and with 14 damn successes on his damage roll (because Gurahl can spend Rage to add to their Strength), we end up with one highly dead sea serpent. In the ST's words: "I think its head popped off."

Beyond that cavern is the place Ambrose dreamed about: a huge stalagmite carved with Garou glyphs, telling the stories of the caern. The knife comes alive and carves this newest story on there. After that, the Garou call in local werewolves to come take care of the caern.

The Garou come, all different tribes, and proceed to argue. What they can agree to do is to wake the caern up--it's a memory caern--and wait for the caern totem to show. Then they go back to arguing. After a while, the pack spots a lot of turtle spirits starting to gather, which shuts everyone up when they point it out. It's Turtle's caern! Considering that, the consensus is to give the caern to the Uktena and Wendigo.

And now it's time for the pack to choose a totem. They've done a lot of good work lately, so several spirits offer, including Mammoth (for saving the fetish), and Turtle, for awakening his caern. It's quite a decision...but in the end, Turtle has just returned, and as far as the Garou are concerned, that's something that needs to be accounted for. They take Turtle as their pack totem, and are henceforth known as the Turtle's Song pack.

The first mission

The new pack, as yet unnamed, is invited to a meeting at Dreamsoft by the man who gave Aila his card: Faris al-Moussami. Upon actually looking at it, Aila notices with a jolt of joy that the man works in research and development for the video game company. She's a video game junkie, after all.

Dreamsoft, in fact, has set up a conference, informing them that a few others will be present as well. Thus it is that the Garou meet Mark Krysillious and get (re)acquainted with Dr. Quintrell, who looks far less maniacal and much better-groomed in a suit and tie.

The gist of the meeting is that something is happening in Egypt that seems to be tied in with the strangeness of the previous day. Since a member of the pack and Dr. Quintrell were involved in it, the changelings (who have sensibilities about this sort of thing) would like them to travel to Cairo and investigate, if their respective superiors don't mind. The superiors, apparently happy to have the changelings owe them a favor or possibly simply being hopeless idealists, decide it's a perfectly splendid idea. The group is briefed on some individuals involved--a Black Spiral Dancer by the name of Hamilton "Hacks Your Soul" Prince, a vampire known as Undrech Rastov, and an infernalist called Jason Ensburg, whom the mages talk up as a "Nephandus," though no one else really sees what that matters.

After the meeting, the group is offered a tour of the facility, in which Aila and Ambrose learn that the fae are in charge of Dreamsoft, developing their game projects in a sort of pocket virtual reality (aka the Dreaming).

Rastov's name rings a bell with Sonya, who puts in some calls to contacts in the old country. They inform her that he is after an object said to "turn desires into obsessions."

Off to Cairo. They get hotel rooms, then someone snipes at Sonya. In no particular order, they scope out the city (Quintrell notices he's followed by a lot of cats, which he feeds and pets), they find out about a meeting between a Lasombra and some Setites, Ambrose gets hijacked by an Iterator while they prepare to crash the meeting, and they get another sniper attack, which leads to them locating and nailing the Nephandus. As per the terms laid out by the Iterator, the group corners Ensburg, who chooses to escape via the Web...where several digital HITMarks are waiting for him. He gets dragged off to MECHA by the Technos, which almost has the mages feeling sorry for him. But not quite.

The group catches up to Prince, pump him for information, and kill him. Dr. Quintrell pokes about on Prince's computer, through which the Nephandus crawls back out of MECHA, half-borged, and nearly savages Dr. Quintrell. This time, Ensburg gets away. Still, the group gets all sorts of useful information. They find out an attack is planned on the Children of Karnak. Rastov is after something called the Hunger Stone, which the Children guard, and an army of banes is massed to attack the Childrens' caves.

The army won't attack till Prince gives them the order, but Prince is dealt with. They send the Children info on the attack and the Hunger Stone via spirit courier, then track down Prince's pack...at a house in the city.

The BSDs don't seem to be home, so the packs slips in and find a suspicious room. But when they try to go in, the Balor Sidhe shows up and zaps them all away...

They end up on a Black Path of Balor (Faris says) and come out to find they're in some nebulous between-realm between the Umbra, the Dreaming, and the real world. After wandering around in there for a while, they go back to the spooky house's reflection in this 'world,' which looks significantly more horrid, and they melt the sucker down. Inside the protected room, Quintrell discovers a weird gizmo. He realizes that it was built by a SoE Nephandus to spiritually toxify an area. It's hooked up to some ghost-fetter, a yo-yo, from and old and powerful ghost. He hits a switch to reverse the effect and spiff up the place again, then Technos show up so the Garou grab the yo-yo and run.

In the house's back yard, a gateway opens. Sonya notes it's some kind of trickster shifter magic. She suspects Nuwisha. They go through and emerge, her cell phone GPS tells her, a couple of miles outside Luxor. Job done, they head home from there.

The pack forms

Dear Mother,

I know Father won't be pleased if he finds out I'm writing to you, so I've sent this in a Chase Manhattan envelope. You've always been too thorough about opening all your mail, but I suppose it works in our favor this time.

I know it has been a long time since we last spoke, but I also know you still worry. So I'm writing to tell you that I'm not alone any longer. I have joined a pack. It's a mixed group, not like Europe where everyone keeps to themselves. They are...interesting. It is a blessed pack, for one; that's a good omen. However, they are certainly an idiosyncratic lot. The Ahroun is barely more than a child. She looks as though she's straight out of her First Change, and we keep having to pull her away from her video games. Our Ragabash is a lupus Fianna, but that can't communicate just how rustic he is. He's from Georgia, so perhaps that explains it.

That's the state, Mother, not the country.

Our Philodox is also a lupus, as well as a medical doctor. I've never heard of such a thing. He must be the most over-achieving lupus in the Nation. Finally, there's our, ah, Silver Fang Galliard. She hails from Russia. Given that fact, I expected to have trouble with her, or just perhaps to find a kindred spirit...but she has strung barely two sentences together since I met her. Not only is she the most silent Galliard I've ever met, she seems about as inclined to leadership as a rock. The Ragabash seems intent on doing her job for her. He certainly talks enough for both of them.

What do they think of me, I wonder? I imagine their impressions must be unique. This is hardly the sort of group I envisioned finding myself with, but they do their jobs well, no matter how oddly they behave.

We've not yet discussed a totem. Perhaps one will make itself known to us. A pack name has likewise not been decided upon. No point in rushing these things.

Ah, but the evening of the rite was marked by great events! Are you familiar with the Talons of Horus? There was enough Silver Fang lore lurking about the old country that you may have heard of them. They have returned. The Ahroun, a Silent Strider, tells us that Horus returned with him. She happened to meet him outside an arcade, and he passed her a scroll for the Elders. My head hurts from the coincidence. No one is certain what these signs portend, but the consensus is that our pack is destined for great things. The precise nature of those 'things' is, naturally, debatable. At great length. Over a great deal of alcohol.

I'm doing good things, Mother, for humans and for Gaia both. No matter what Father thinks, I have not shamed this family. You can be proud of me, I promise you.

I've enclosed a new address you can send my mail to if you ever want to write, or if it's important, you can always speak to Maxim. He knows how to reach me.

Sincerely,
Sonya

So it begins.

From Dr. Ambrose Quintrell's logfiles (notes for planned article...perhaps to be submitted to Paradigma?) dated March 2007:

A young Garou whiles away her time in an arcade, when suddenly a terrified falcon spirit darts up to her. "Hide me, hide me!" Whisking the poor frightened creature into her coat, she looks around quickly to find the threat.

In careens a man wearing an outfit that looks like a cross between Indiana Jones and a virtual reality immersion suit. Baffled, she watches him skulk through the crowd toward her (for a given value of "skulk" that involves botching on your single die)...when suddenly, he panics. After a glance up toward the catwalk, the evidently crazy fellow dives for the shadows, immersing himself within so thoroughly that our young protagonist loses track of him.

But what could send a relentless scientist scurrying away from his prey? Why, the Technocracy, of course! Unbeknownst to the innocent young Garou, two Men in Black stood upon that metal grating, observing the mage...er, Scientist's every move. What could he do but head for cover?

But a true Scientist does not give up the chase so easily! I had spent two months tracking down traces of etherial phenomena in Chicago, and finally I had a solid trail. That bird...er, thing, I was determined, would not get away. But I admit that I hadn't factored in the possibility that it might have allies. This unassuming girl, according to my readings, was nothing less than a human/etherial hybrid! Fantastic! Nothing in my two years of research had prepared me for such a thing. Obviously, I had to know more. But it must be done carefully. I wouldn't want bystanders to believe that I was attempting to molest a 16 year old girl. For that matter, I didn't want to scare her off. I hoped for an interview.

Once the enemy had vacated the scene, I caught up to my target. Showing no fear of me when she noticed I was back on her trail, the intrepid young lady stopped and waited for me!

It was at this moment that I realized I had no strategy for first contact. Following the...etherial falcon manifestation, I had simply planned to capture it long enough to perform a few simple tests before releasing it back into the wild. But an actual living(?) person...

Well, as they say, there's no time like the present! At first, the wily young woman attempted to deny that she knew anything, but I could see that she was aware of the etherial creature riding in her pocket.

Note to self: this bit needs a serious rewrite. Think of a way to present a flock of "spirit-falcons" in a way that doesn't sound quite so... ridiculous. Also: good lord, Ambrose, grammar!

It was during this period of give-and-take that we both became aware of the cloud of falcons--a flock of them, numbering so many that they began to darken the sky as they passed overhead (note to editors: enclosed pictures of flock go here). At first, this shocked me mainly because falcons do not flock, but then I came to realize that the Sleepers passing by all around us did not notice a thing. It was another etherial manifestation! The girl's falcon spoke(!): "Well, I suppose I'd better join them," and so saying, it did so.

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

Observing her observing the etherial flock passing, I noticed an odd coin thrown at her feet... Ah. I suppose I ought to include the fact that I kept spotting those...I suppose they were stealth-cloaked tattooed dwarves riding motorized unicyles circling the block. I can only assume that another Etherite was active in the vicinity. Though, when she picked up the coin, she seemed to spot them too. Actually, after that she really acted quite odd all the way around. She insisted she saw an Arab on a horse riding down the street. I did note some odd traces of something lupine about her Kirlian aura at this time. Hah! Little did I know then what that would presage. Oh, but I already gave that away earlier in the article, didn't I?

Well, at any rate, after the flock passed, that black van with the Pentex logo went crashing by. I have always suspected them to be in cahoots with the Technocracy. They've got the Syndicate's green fingerprints all over them. So, what was there to do but chase the van down?

My, but that girl is fast. I'm taller and older than she is, but she outran me nonetheless. Anyway, it was simple enough to hail a taxi (actually, it was shockingly simple; I've never caught one so fast in my life). She climbed in with me, obviously as interested in chasing down that van as I was, and then she acted like the vehicle had rockets strapped to it or something! I still can't figure why she was throwing herself around the cab like that... He truly was an absolutely brilliant driver, though. I was going to climb out and jump onto the van, but he just rammed the thing off the road.

Well, of course then I had to get out and make sure no one was hurt. Allies to the Technocracy they might be, but Pentex van drivers are still human! Well. So I thought.

Instead of finding injured people to pull from the wreckage, I got jumped by two...two things. Awful black, locust-spitting monstrosities. Then as if that weren't enough, that girl turned into a nine-foot-tall monstrosity herself! Imagine, this slip of a thing I'd been trying to pump for information turned out to be a werewolf! Of course, I nearly got my head bit off trying to pay attention to everything at once (how was I to know whose side she was on?), and then that Arab fellow threw some sort of Verbena-type mystic thing from right behind me.

He couldn't really have been riding a horse, could he?
Note to self from the future: yes, he probably was.

At any rate, I managed to retrieve some very fine samples from those...the werewolf girl called them "fomori." And then the nice Arab gentlemen (he had very odd eyes; all black, not really human) left his business card with her and told me, almost threateningly I thought, "I'll be seeing you again." Quite polite except for that, though.

Well, the girl..ah, creature was more willing to talk after that. She told me a little about werewolves, how there are different kinds, and how they protect the earth. Imagine. Here we've been demonizing them in legend and literature for centuries, and...okay, so nine-foot-tall killing machines aren't necessarily nice, precisely, but they're less scary than the Verbena, and they do the same thing.

Jumped by 'spirit-monkey' near arcade, photoging woman with odd kirlian aura. Monkey stole camera. No one else saw monkey (asked hot dog vendor). Garou called it a "spirit." To receive something from it, I must offer it something. It stole my camera, and I pay it to get it back. Woman (who was a 'mummy'--bizarre) said spirit-monkeys don't like bananas. Promised not to photog her, it gave camera back. Why is everyone so keen about monkeys?

Ah. Should I mention that the girl kept peering into reflective surfaces like she saw something there? I think she said it was the man with the eyepatch we met later. But first we headed back toward the arcade--I wonder if she left something there--which was just swarming with Technocracy. Here I'd thought those MiBs were there keeping an eye on me, but that was far too much activity for someone of my modest operations. I think it must have been the man with the eyepatch, who after all tore apart a HITMark with his bare hands, smashed through the NWO and took out one of their helicopters.

He was nice enough too, in an intimidating sort of way. We caught up to him in the alley, where he gave the girl a scroll for her "elders" and told me to tell the Council the Ahl-i-Batin had returned. Could he really have been Horus? That seems implausible...but stranger things have happened. Just because people called him a god doesn't make him one. And there was all that babble at the chantry when I got back about the Web of Faith lighting up like a fireworks display. Who knows?

A HITMark. His bare hands! And she didn't see a thing, because the NWO had their damnable "police tape" up. Well, at least I know that werewolves aren't immune to mental manipulation.

Oh. I could do a whole cultural study on etherial manifestations! They have cultures. Phenomenal!