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.