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.