Sonya gets a vision. She doesn't recognize it, but it's the Gernsback Continuum, where she watches mages experiment with a Native American spear that has an evil spirit trapped inside it. The vision shifts to Victoria Station, and then to Darkside Moonbase. She tells the pack, and realizing this is mage stuff, they get Ambrose to explain the dream.
Elsewhere, Ambrose, stopping at a coffee shop to pick up lunch, finds a napkin with a note: "Head to Jellystone."
Meanwhile, the Gurahl Caleb is working at Yellowstone as a park ranger. He's been having trouble with a new Pentex subsidiary called Native Heritage Inc., which supposedly is a charitable organization for preservation of native and culturally important places and artifacts. Needless to say, their idea of preservation is somewhat unorthodox.
Currently, however, he's tracing the theft of a spear from the museum there, which was removed along with a Uktena banetender's staff. They were taken by a Raven Mocker, a corrupt crow spirit, who then lost it to some laser-wielding mages during its escape into the park. Caleb meets a Nuwisha who calls himself Tim Runningaway, and two federal agents who are investigating the case (the Project Twilight partners the group met before, in Pennsylvania). They're heading down to Arizona, where the spear was originally found.
Hearing of the theft and betting it's connected, the pack takes Ambrose out to Yellowstone with them to investigate this dream of Sonya's, and they encounter Caleb there. While they fill each other in, Ambrose pokes around with his gadgets and ends up following around a fomori who's wandering around the museum. He catches the fomori's attention, in fact, and stumblingly tries not to incriminate himself when the guy asks him what he's doing. Jonas drags him back out to the others as they prepare to leave.
Ambrose suggests they check out the Etherite science stations at Yellowstone before they go, and indeed the assistants there give them the names of the Etherites involved and explain what happened. They found the Raven Mocker trying to make off with the spear, shot it down, and then took the spear to the Gernsback to test it once they realized it was odd. They also are able to put clues together to figure out that a Lasombra stole the staff separately.
In Arizona, they learn that the cave complex--old copper mines, dug into an older cave complex--where the spear was found has been bought by the Venetian Equity Mining Corp. Sonya is suspicious, and rightfully so: digging through records turns up that one Antonio Giovanni is in charge of the company, along with stories that the mines are haunted. Sonya makes note of the court records, which point toward some judicial corruption (she stores that information for later use in legally getting the mines back into the proper hands).
RF finds them a Uktena caern not too far away. The Uktena there say that the spear contained an ancient mage spirit-talker named Desire on the Wind. He was an ancient Navajo badass, extremely evil, and knew where even worse objects were: a talisman called the "Wolf's Paw," which granted the fighting abilities of a werewolf, a book called the "Book of Rashalka" which was a legendary BSD artifact that was said to drive you mad if you read it, but also impart great abilities such as the power to wield plagues. It sounds almost like someone managed to set the Black Spiral to paper. The Uktena say that the spirit of the Banetender is said to still be locked in the spearhead with the mage.
Ambrose hacks into the Giovanni records, but gets himself possessed by a ghostly guardian. It takes off with his body, but before the Garou can catch up to him, he manages to force it out of him, then sucks it into a containment jar. Aila makes him release it, and once the ghost discovers he's in safe hands, he's willing to turn over all kinds of information on the Giovanni: the three Giovanni in town, where they're staying, what they want (the book and staff and spear; they think the spear holds a powerful ghost and that the staff can control it). One house is cordoned off. It looks like someone broke in, killed five people--one of whom was incinerated--in a huge struggle. The pack wonders if it was the Inquisition again. It also looks like the Giovanni sent ghouls into the mine.
Ambrose makes a note to self: learn to ward against umbral entities.
Heading into the mines (Ambrose makes a spirit-viewing flashlight), they find Navajo glyphs on the walls across the Gauntlet. The story is that the Uktena banetender hunted the mage and called on Coyote's help to stop him. Coyote gave the spear to the Uktena to guard.
They find a perimeter alert gizmo. Ambrose recognizes the construction as being distinctive to an Etherite by the name of Dr. Gavin Tillingtast. The man is British beyond British, vanished about 30 years ago, studied in similar fields to Ambrose. He was known as a Victorian throwback even among the Etherites. He believed spirits were evil, just about worshipped the fae, made alarming compacts with what he considered "pure" British spirits, and was into crazy revisionist British history.
Making their way onward, the group gets attacked by shadow tendrils. One grabs Ambrose, whisking him off to a dark room where a Lasombra who was apparently hired on wants to know what they're doing there. The Lasombra's just interested in money and entertainment. He has three ugly Nosferatu or something with him. He calls Ambrose a warlock (which Ambrose vocally disapproves of), a Hermetic and a Tremere, refuses any gift or trade when Ambrose tries to talk his way free, and finally deciding not to get involved, lets the Etherite go and vanishes into the murk.
The others arrive just afterward, and united again, they all head down to a ritual room where they're attacked by bane-possessed bats. Aila beats up a spectre (noting that there are many in the area), then steps sideways into the Shadowlands, where she spots a Giovanni, three spectres, and two guys in Pentex lab coats hauling up something from a chasm.
Ambrose rigs up a half-built prototype of a gizmo that thins the barrier between worlds enough to basically just dump them all into the Shadowlands, and they all fight. Sonya knocks the Pentex guys into the chasm while the others tear the spectres apart. A Sluagh turns up to snag a book out of the chasm with his prehensile tongue. Ambrose disrupts the Sluagh's pattern (Rubs the Bones) with a sonic attack, Sonya spin-kicks him into the chasm, and Aila catches the book, which tries to possess her. She calls it a "pervert." RF claws apart the Giovanni, but after it gives him puppy-dog eyes, Ambrose refuses to finish the job on the vampire because he feels too bad about killing someone who's helpless. The Giovanni takes advantage and mind-whammies him so Ambrose will defend him, and then an armband he's wearing starts beeping. Ambrose, who isn't thinking straight, bends down to have a look and gets teleported away along with the vampire.
They get whisked to Dr. Tillingtast's manor in England, where Tillingtast offers him tea and a thirty-minute movie about the glory of the British. Ambrose gets kidnapped by Tillingtast's hunchback (actually the Nuwisha), who stamps him on the forehead with something and tosses him into the English countryside.
A helicopter shows up as he climbs to his feet. "Oh, COME ON!" Ambrose shouts, then waves his hands in futility and turns to walk away. The MiB--seemingly the same one as usual--is incredulous: "Are you walking away?", and shoots him in the knee with a novocaine dart. Ambrose can't get very far when he can't feel his leg.
They argue about who's bad for reality (MiB: "Reality is a 98-year-0ld man on life support." Ambrose; "Well, he wouldn't be so stodgy if you lot hadn't stiffened up his joints!"). The Technocrat is mad about all the dimension-hopping Ambrose has been doing. Ambrose defends that it wasn't his idea! He was kidnapped by a hunchback! This understandably produces a weird look from the MiB, who asks, "Do you expect me to believe that?" Ambrose, ignoring him, announces he'll take a plane back. The MiB thinks he's being naive.
MiB: "When's the last time you had a reasonable conversation with someone who wasn't a Technocrat, Dr. Quintrell?"
Ambrose: "You have no room to talk!"
MiB: "Deep down, you know we're right."
Ambrose: "I think a passenger plane is a perfectly reasonable method of crossing the Atlantic!"
Then there's another metaphor about stealing reality's liver, which eventually they give up on. "We're stretching that metaphor an awful lot," the MiB concedes. After which he offers him a ride back in the black helicopter, which Ambrose passionately refuses.
Ambrose then calls Mark, intending only to let him know where Ambrose has gotten to, but Mark just teleports him back. Ambrose grumbles about the MiB being right, and his fit of pique isn't helped when a letter arrives saying, "Told you so."
The Garou drop the book off with the Uktena, but not before it produces some weird dreams in its attempts to tantalize someone into picking it up and reading it. Then they head back to Chicago. Upon arrival, a letter comes from Dr. Tillingtast, inviting Ambrose back to show him proper hospitality and apologizing for "those random hunchbacks we've been having. This is the third one in two weeks. Have to put up strips or spray or something..."
"I'll never go back to England!" Ambrose swears.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
Through the gates of the silver key
A free-for-all of key-grabbing ensues. Two Setites come burrowing through the sand, but before they can engage, an enormous spaceship crests the rise. Ambrose calls it a Vader, says it's a Technocracy ship, and suggests they all run for their lives. They flee out of the Umbra to the west, coming out in the desert, and follows a road they encounter toward Cairo. Something's off, but at first the Garou just put it down to the strangeness of the western desert. They do note they have trouble getting their technological gear to work when Sonya tries to check her cell phone's GPS.
Eventually, a sign informs them that they are in fact somehow in the year 1468, on a road protected by the Order of Reason. After dodging Order members and mage-related chaos three times, they find some Striders to talk to in Cairo, and Mark and Ambrose realize that they've been avoiding the First Cabal.
The Striders suggest they go to Karnak, where they talk to more Striders and some Bubasti, with whom they trade information. The Bubasti show them prophecies from a book, which Ambrose sneaks a photo of while they're not paying attention to him. While studying the photo, images of the depicted prophecies erupt from the picture, showing the Dark Man trapped in a crystal deep in the Umbra, from which he escapes.
They work out that they're probably being held in place by the effects of the key, so they want to find Aila's past life, which they locate as being out in the desert. Heading that way, some of the group fall into quicksand, which drops them into a stone hallway covered in twisted heiroglyphs.
While they try to find their way out, the others above get into a fight with Ajaba. RF owns their mamas. Into the fray comes a flying BSD with a child riding it. Jonas blows away the BSD, while Aila messes up the Setite child riding it, and RF finishes the thing right after it completes a stylish jump-off-and-land maneuver.
The people underground follow the hallway to a large hall where they find the Nephandus Batini
sitting on a throne, waiting for him. He opens some kind of unpleasant chasm in front of them, and they decide not to stick around to see what comes out. They head off running the other direction, meet up with the rest of the group, and flee to the safety of the caern they were heading for.
There, they manage to find Aila's past life, who is the priest in the vision she had. A Mokole who's staying at the caern heads out and tears apart the things the Nephandus had called up to chase them (Ambrose spends some time being flabberghasted at the militant dinosaur, then asks if there are any more alarming shapeshifters he ought to know about), then agrees to help them deal with the key. They install the key within the priest (it's really just a manifested bit of spirit energy), thus rendering the key permanently inaccessible through a temporal loop and breaking them out of the time period they'd been held in. Back in the modern day, they make their way back to Cairo, stopping in an oasis town for the night.
There, all the inn's guests get turned into zombies, whom the Garou have little trouble shredding. A couple of vampires turn up, and they get deaded quite quickly too. The Nephandus comes in, and Aila and Sonya jump him. He narrowly escapes death, leaving them irritable and unsatisfied.
A werespider turns up in the hallway with Ambrose, who shouts, "You said there weren't any more I should know about!" At a loss for what to do, he sprays the thing with bug spray. It--he--is completely offended by this, takes the can away and sprays him with it in retaliation. Ambrose: "Hey, that stuff's toxic!" Aila tries to make Ambrose apologize, but he won't, and the Ananasi sprays him again--at which point he becomes quite adamant about refusing.
The Garou are suspicious of the werespider's presence, and the werespider himself, but choose to accept his explanation that he was in the area and came over to see what was happening. With all that out of their hair (for the moment), they finally make it back to Cairo and then catch a flight back to the US.
Eventually, a sign informs them that they are in fact somehow in the year 1468, on a road protected by the Order of Reason. After dodging Order members and mage-related chaos three times, they find some Striders to talk to in Cairo, and Mark and Ambrose realize that they've been avoiding the First Cabal.
The Striders suggest they go to Karnak, where they talk to more Striders and some Bubasti, with whom they trade information. The Bubasti show them prophecies from a book, which Ambrose sneaks a photo of while they're not paying attention to him. While studying the photo, images of the depicted prophecies erupt from the picture, showing the Dark Man trapped in a crystal deep in the Umbra, from which he escapes.
They work out that they're probably being held in place by the effects of the key, so they want to find Aila's past life, which they locate as being out in the desert. Heading that way, some of the group fall into quicksand, which drops them into a stone hallway covered in twisted heiroglyphs.
While they try to find their way out, the others above get into a fight with Ajaba. RF owns their mamas. Into the fray comes a flying BSD with a child riding it. Jonas blows away the BSD, while Aila messes up the Setite child riding it, and RF finishes the thing right after it completes a stylish jump-off-and-land maneuver.
The people underground follow the hallway to a large hall where they find the Nephandus Batini
sitting on a throne, waiting for him. He opens some kind of unpleasant chasm in front of them, and they decide not to stick around to see what comes out. They head off running the other direction, meet up with the rest of the group, and flee to the safety of the caern they were heading for.
There, they manage to find Aila's past life, who is the priest in the vision she had. A Mokole who's staying at the caern heads out and tears apart the things the Nephandus had called up to chase them (Ambrose spends some time being flabberghasted at the militant dinosaur, then asks if there are any more alarming shapeshifters he ought to know about), then agrees to help them deal with the key. They install the key within the priest (it's really just a manifested bit of spirit energy), thus rendering the key permanently inaccessible through a temporal loop and breaking them out of the time period they'd been held in. Back in the modern day, they make their way back to Cairo, stopping in an oasis town for the night.
There, all the inn's guests get turned into zombies, whom the Garou have little trouble shredding. A couple of vampires turn up, and they get deaded quite quickly too. The Nephandus comes in, and Aila and Sonya jump him. He narrowly escapes death, leaving them irritable and unsatisfied.
A werespider turns up in the hallway with Ambrose, who shouts, "You said there weren't any more I should know about!" At a loss for what to do, he sprays the thing with bug spray. It--he--is completely offended by this, takes the can away and sprays him with it in retaliation. Ambrose: "Hey, that stuff's toxic!" Aila tries to make Ambrose apologize, but he won't, and the Ananasi sprays him again--at which point he becomes quite adamant about refusing.
The Garou are suspicious of the werespider's presence, and the werespider himself, but choose to accept his explanation that he was in the area and came over to see what was happening. With all that out of their hair (for the moment), they finally make it back to Cairo and then catch a flight back to the US.
Friday, June 22, 2007
The Silver Key
Following their harrowing visit to the Midnight Circus (relevant post forthcoming), the pack hie themselves back to the caern to crash and lick their wounds. It sure did suck, but they rescued a young werewolf, and that makes it worth it.
Aila has a dream: she sees a pipeline slinking along the course of the Nile, built by Pentex. A priest in a temple watches her during a burial procession. She sees a heartstone placed into the sarcophagus, and then a vampire and a man with serpent eyes break in to steal it.
She wakes out of the dream and talks to a Theurge about it, who thinks it's a warning vision sent by a spirit. He recognizes the Great Western Desert, which is where that tomb must've been, but says no sane Garou passes through there. Perhaps, he thinks, the tomb was a mage's. They're crazy enough to bury themselves in the Umbra. That a heartstone was buried with the body seems to indicate an expectation of resurrection... Aila tells her pack about the dream, and they agree. "I wonder who the priest was who saw you," muses Sonya. "I suppose we'll never know," Aila responds. "Oh, I don't know about that," Sonya replies.
In the morning, Sonya leaves to take care of paperwork and do some research on this "Apophis pipeline," which is the name Aila saw for it in the dream. Sure enough, it's a pipeline in the early stages of construction, still tied up in red tape and politics. Following her curiosity, she looks into this so-called "Technocracy" of the mages that the pack now remembers--mainly by dint of reading between the lines, now that she has an idea what to look for--and sure enough, if you listen to what people aren't saying, there are certain hints. Notably, things in the vicinity of Egypt sound a bit too normal.
Aila goes to talk to Faris, hoping the Eshu can tell them something about these visions. RF hunts up and recruits Mark for their little venture, and Mark leaves a phone message for Ambrose, mentioning he should keep a bag packed, just in case. RF then visits Dr. Clark, the mummy women they met before, and she offers to open her personal library to their research.
Ray the Pooka, meanwhile, gets handed the keys to a Nocker car: the Carmeleon X1, a car that can change into six different shapes, go submersible, and has a mysterious red button. The Nocker notes that it cannot fly. Ray will be the "special driver" for Dreamsoft, as well as their resident pilot.
Dr. Clark and RF catch up to Aila at the arcade, where she headed since she got done with her task early. Aila is having problems with her quarters--they all keep turning into ancient Egyptian coins ("I have magic pockets!"). Luckily, the machine seems to take them, so she ends up playing a game that seems to be another vision. She watches the vampire and the snake-eyed man sacrifice their guide over the heartstone, which apparently does nothing, and then get attacked by bedouins. One of the bedouins grabs the stone and runs away with it. Aila's game involves playing the bedouin (who's a werewolf) as he escapes from the teleporting, lightning-throwing serpent-eyed man. Eventually, the werewolf reaches an Umbra-storm, into which he throws the stone, then turns at bay to confront the man and the vampire.
Once they catch up to each other, the pack and Mark go to Dr. Clark's house to do more research. Aila has another vision while reading, of the stone being picked up in the Umbra by a man whose face is wrapped in scarves. She thinks there's something familiar about him. The man puts the stone in a box, locks it, and takes it to a bar on the outskirts of Cairo, sometime in the 1920s. On hearing this, Sonya snags a couple of maps and compares locations, narrowing it down to two bars--one called the Scorpion's Pit and another once named Maat's Hand, now known as Tommy's. They discuss the "familiarity" of the shrouded man. On thinking about it, Aila says he moves like Faris does--as if he's absolutely sure of where he's going. Perhaps he's an Eshu?
Ambrose, meanwhile, smells ozone. "Use the door!" he calls out, and hears someone knock somewhat sheepishly shortly after. It's the lightning-bolting Hermetic again. Taking a cup of coffee, the Hermetic declaims, "It has been forseen..." "Egypt, right?" interrupts Ambrose. "It has-- What?" "Something about a pipeline?" continues the Etherite. "Um, no," says the Hermetic, whom Ambrose then motions to encouragingly. The Hermetic raises his arms grandly, then stops when he sees the packed bag. "What's that? Well, what the heck am I here for, if you're already planning to leave?" Ambrose tries to soothe the messenger's ruffled feathers by assuring him that he believes in the importance of the visions. The messenger snarkily asks, "Well how do you know? I suppose it's some of your Science? Some--" "Answering machine," answers Ambrose, who punches the button to replay Mark's message. The Hermetic smashes the machine with his staff, which Ambrose protests, then mutters, "I will rebuild it. Better--" "Faster, yes. I get it." "Seriously. I'm going to give it legs," Ambrose snipes. After a few more moments of encouraging the guy to give him the rest of the message, he finally learns that the heartstone houses an Avatar, which the mage had put there so it wouldn't reincarnate without him. Werewolves are destined to find it, but they'll need the help of mages... "Well, sure, to deal with an Avatar," comments Ambrose. "Yeah, sure, that's it," says the mage, who then disappears in a thunderclap. Ambrose is taken aback for a second before realizing that was only an illusion. The guy made for the door. Ambrose catches up to him to ask what he meant by that last crack, and the guy reluctantly scribbles it on a paper, seals it, and hands it to him. "You'll just yell at me if I tell you. Open it when I leave." Ambrose does so, and finds out that there's a snake-eyed Ahl-i-Batin Nephandus who's after this Avatar.
He calls Mark to fill him in, and Mark spreads the word to the Garou. They end up flying out to Egypt the next day. Aila has yet another vision on the way, while watching the Mummy, about Pentex buying out the bar in question (which makes it Tommy's). In Cairo, they discover that Faris booked them an entire floor of a hotel. The showoff. There, when Mark turns on the TV, Aila gets yet another vision, of the Nephandus and three vampires raiding the bar, only to find the box's hiding place empty. When she mutters something, the Nephandus turns to look at her.
She thinks that was very recent, so it's off to the bar to check it out while Aila and some of the others stay at the hotel in case the Nephandus is watching her (the mages explain about Correspondence and scrying). Aila settles down to watch TV, only to find herself having another vision about the shrouded man...except it's not a vision, it's the movie, Lawrence of Arabia. It was T. E. Lawrence?
The bar is somewhat trashed. Ray, the Pooka pilot, goes with them, and discovers that the place used to be a freehold but has since passed on. But he can follow the balefire to another freehold, where the residents tell them that the previous owners of the bar temporarily moved to a nearby museum. They get the address and head over to talk to them. Meanwhile, Ambrose, Sonya, and Faris scope out the Dreaming side of Tommy's. They find nothing, but on their way out, Ambrose finds himself hijacked, yet again, by a MiB...who wants to know what's with the pattern of showing up at the site of Nephandic trouble. Ambrose protests his innocence, sniping, "If you find out why this keeps happening, I would love to know," to which the MiB cheerfully agrees to have the Statisticians look into it all for him. Alarmed, Ambrose insists that's not what he meant, prompting the MiB to respond, "Dr. Quintrell, I doubt you ever expected to hear this from a Man in Black, but no backsies!"
The three of them return to the hotel, where Aila tells them about the new visions. Quintrell gleefully sits down to watch the movie, glancing at Aila sharply when she tells them about T. E. Lawrence. Aila's next vision involves seeing the barkeeper pass the box to a vampire who's out during the daytime...which Dr. Clark believes might be a Child of Osiris, a group of vampires so rare that even she believed them to be myth. The Daughters of Isis would know, she thinks.
At about this point, the Garou at the hotel realize they're being spied upon. Two ravens that aren't mere ravens (they're kind of icky and tainted) are sitting outside the window, and they take off when they realize they've been sighted. After Aila points them out, Ambrose gets a bead on them, and the group takes off in pursuit. Olesya drives while Ambrose hangs out the window trying to track the birds. "I can only see one of them; the other might be behind us!" he warns, right as the second raven takes war-form and makes a divebomb for the windshield.
One of the Garou uses Summon Earth Spirit to throw a rock wall up in front of it, then they spill out of the car. While they gang up on the first Corax, Ambrose nails the other, still in raven form, with a disorienting flash grenade. Aila and Jonas, now in Crinos (figuring, what the hell? Everybody on the street's already losing their minds) wrestle the first Corax to the ground. "We need something gold!" calls out the Galliard.
Frantically hunting around for something appropriate, Ambrose narrowly dodges three Razor Feathers the previously disoriented Corax zips at him. "Perfect!" he declares, as they embed themselves in the car near him. He pulls them out, turning them to gold, then turns around right into the path of the squawking, flapping assault-bird heading his way. Olesya grabs a feather, shifts into Crinos, and jumps on the thing in one smooth move, stabbing it in the head with the golden shaft.
The other Corax shifts to raven form, trying to escape, but Aila catches it easily in her enormous paws. Curious about these weird things, Ambrose moves in to look at the dead Corax while Olesya backs up...only to turn and grab the Volvo, pummeling the bird-thing into the pavement with it. Then she tears out the glove box, shoving their captive fowl into it.
The group heads on toward the museum in a stolen car, figuring to catch up with the others. Ambrose thinks he notices something strange about their surroundings, as if they're illusionary...but after a botch on a closer inspection, he decides not. Till a line of MiBs show up barricading the street. Olesya floors the gas, crashing through them.
Some of the MiBs chase them in decidedly inhuman ways. Not HITMarks, but Ambrose guesses Progenitor-created simulacrums. Drawing his gun, he picks a couple off the buildings to discourage pursuit. The Garou in the car warn their compatriots at the museum that there could be a trap.
In the museum, everything's eerily quiet, in fact. The night staff seem to be rather absent...but nothing threatening is going on. Olesya runs the car right up the steps of the museum, past two upset security guards. Waving his hand in their faces, Ambrose intones, "These aren't the droids you're looking for." Though he has no Mind magic, this confuses them enough that the group waltzes right past before they can even react.
Now together, the characters all notice that...nothing's really happening. Ambrose and Mark think they can feel a spatial twitch of some sort, though. Ambrose wonders aloud if they just accidentally wrecked a Technocratic trap for a certain Nephandus...and then the Garou start smelling something foul. Ambrose begins spinning an effort to manipulate the building's stone walls, if necessary, and the Garou clue in that they're surrounded by currently invisible zombies. The Etherite calls for everyone to gather around him, and then he drops the ceiling on the oozing bodies.
Well, they turn out to be simple corpses, not zombies, but the effort was a brave one, nonetheless. Just as they realize they're not in Cairo anymore (they've been relocated to the Western Desert...the damn Nephandus teleported them all!), the villain in question spins up out of a pile of sand with a suave greeting.
"Pretty stupid to bring us here," says Aila. "We don't have what you're after. You should've waited." "Ah," says the Nephandus, reaching toward her, "but you do." And he pulls a key seemingly out of her body...
Aila has a dream: she sees a pipeline slinking along the course of the Nile, built by Pentex. A priest in a temple watches her during a burial procession. She sees a heartstone placed into the sarcophagus, and then a vampire and a man with serpent eyes break in to steal it.
She wakes out of the dream and talks to a Theurge about it, who thinks it's a warning vision sent by a spirit. He recognizes the Great Western Desert, which is where that tomb must've been, but says no sane Garou passes through there. Perhaps, he thinks, the tomb was a mage's. They're crazy enough to bury themselves in the Umbra. That a heartstone was buried with the body seems to indicate an expectation of resurrection... Aila tells her pack about the dream, and they agree. "I wonder who the priest was who saw you," muses Sonya. "I suppose we'll never know," Aila responds. "Oh, I don't know about that," Sonya replies.
In the morning, Sonya leaves to take care of paperwork and do some research on this "Apophis pipeline," which is the name Aila saw for it in the dream. Sure enough, it's a pipeline in the early stages of construction, still tied up in red tape and politics. Following her curiosity, she looks into this so-called "Technocracy" of the mages that the pack now remembers--mainly by dint of reading between the lines, now that she has an idea what to look for--and sure enough, if you listen to what people aren't saying, there are certain hints. Notably, things in the vicinity of Egypt sound a bit too normal.
Aila goes to talk to Faris, hoping the Eshu can tell them something about these visions. RF hunts up and recruits Mark for their little venture, and Mark leaves a phone message for Ambrose, mentioning he should keep a bag packed, just in case. RF then visits Dr. Clark, the mummy women they met before, and she offers to open her personal library to their research.
Ray the Pooka, meanwhile, gets handed the keys to a Nocker car: the Carmeleon X1, a car that can change into six different shapes, go submersible, and has a mysterious red button. The Nocker notes that it cannot fly. Ray will be the "special driver" for Dreamsoft, as well as their resident pilot.
Dr. Clark and RF catch up to Aila at the arcade, where she headed since she got done with her task early. Aila is having problems with her quarters--they all keep turning into ancient Egyptian coins ("I have magic pockets!"). Luckily, the machine seems to take them, so she ends up playing a game that seems to be another vision. She watches the vampire and the snake-eyed man sacrifice their guide over the heartstone, which apparently does nothing, and then get attacked by bedouins. One of the bedouins grabs the stone and runs away with it. Aila's game involves playing the bedouin (who's a werewolf) as he escapes from the teleporting, lightning-throwing serpent-eyed man. Eventually, the werewolf reaches an Umbra-storm, into which he throws the stone, then turns at bay to confront the man and the vampire.
Once they catch up to each other, the pack and Mark go to Dr. Clark's house to do more research. Aila has another vision while reading, of the stone being picked up in the Umbra by a man whose face is wrapped in scarves. She thinks there's something familiar about him. The man puts the stone in a box, locks it, and takes it to a bar on the outskirts of Cairo, sometime in the 1920s. On hearing this, Sonya snags a couple of maps and compares locations, narrowing it down to two bars--one called the Scorpion's Pit and another once named Maat's Hand, now known as Tommy's. They discuss the "familiarity" of the shrouded man. On thinking about it, Aila says he moves like Faris does--as if he's absolutely sure of where he's going. Perhaps he's an Eshu?
Ambrose, meanwhile, smells ozone. "Use the door!" he calls out, and hears someone knock somewhat sheepishly shortly after. It's the lightning-bolting Hermetic again. Taking a cup of coffee, the Hermetic declaims, "It has been forseen..." "Egypt, right?" interrupts Ambrose. "It has-- What?" "Something about a pipeline?" continues the Etherite. "Um, no," says the Hermetic, whom Ambrose then motions to encouragingly. The Hermetic raises his arms grandly, then stops when he sees the packed bag. "What's that? Well, what the heck am I here for, if you're already planning to leave?" Ambrose tries to soothe the messenger's ruffled feathers by assuring him that he believes in the importance of the visions. The messenger snarkily asks, "Well how do you know? I suppose it's some of your Science? Some--" "Answering machine," answers Ambrose, who punches the button to replay Mark's message. The Hermetic smashes the machine with his staff, which Ambrose protests, then mutters, "I will rebuild it. Better--" "Faster, yes. I get it." "Seriously. I'm going to give it legs," Ambrose snipes. After a few more moments of encouraging the guy to give him the rest of the message, he finally learns that the heartstone houses an Avatar, which the mage had put there so it wouldn't reincarnate without him. Werewolves are destined to find it, but they'll need the help of mages... "Well, sure, to deal with an Avatar," comments Ambrose. "Yeah, sure, that's it," says the mage, who then disappears in a thunderclap. Ambrose is taken aback for a second before realizing that was only an illusion. The guy made for the door. Ambrose catches up to him to ask what he meant by that last crack, and the guy reluctantly scribbles it on a paper, seals it, and hands it to him. "You'll just yell at me if I tell you. Open it when I leave." Ambrose does so, and finds out that there's a snake-eyed Ahl-i-Batin Nephandus who's after this Avatar.
He calls Mark to fill him in, and Mark spreads the word to the Garou. They end up flying out to Egypt the next day. Aila has yet another vision on the way, while watching the Mummy, about Pentex buying out the bar in question (which makes it Tommy's). In Cairo, they discover that Faris booked them an entire floor of a hotel. The showoff. There, when Mark turns on the TV, Aila gets yet another vision, of the Nephandus and three vampires raiding the bar, only to find the box's hiding place empty. When she mutters something, the Nephandus turns to look at her.
She thinks that was very recent, so it's off to the bar to check it out while Aila and some of the others stay at the hotel in case the Nephandus is watching her (the mages explain about Correspondence and scrying). Aila settles down to watch TV, only to find herself having another vision about the shrouded man...except it's not a vision, it's the movie, Lawrence of Arabia. It was T. E. Lawrence?
The bar is somewhat trashed. Ray, the Pooka pilot, goes with them, and discovers that the place used to be a freehold but has since passed on. But he can follow the balefire to another freehold, where the residents tell them that the previous owners of the bar temporarily moved to a nearby museum. They get the address and head over to talk to them. Meanwhile, Ambrose, Sonya, and Faris scope out the Dreaming side of Tommy's. They find nothing, but on their way out, Ambrose finds himself hijacked, yet again, by a MiB...who wants to know what's with the pattern of showing up at the site of Nephandic trouble. Ambrose protests his innocence, sniping, "If you find out why this keeps happening, I would love to know," to which the MiB cheerfully agrees to have the Statisticians look into it all for him. Alarmed, Ambrose insists that's not what he meant, prompting the MiB to respond, "Dr. Quintrell, I doubt you ever expected to hear this from a Man in Black, but no backsies!"
The three of them return to the hotel, where Aila tells them about the new visions. Quintrell gleefully sits down to watch the movie, glancing at Aila sharply when she tells them about T. E. Lawrence. Aila's next vision involves seeing the barkeeper pass the box to a vampire who's out during the daytime...which Dr. Clark believes might be a Child of Osiris, a group of vampires so rare that even she believed them to be myth. The Daughters of Isis would know, she thinks.
At about this point, the Garou at the hotel realize they're being spied upon. Two ravens that aren't mere ravens (they're kind of icky and tainted) are sitting outside the window, and they take off when they realize they've been sighted. After Aila points them out, Ambrose gets a bead on them, and the group takes off in pursuit. Olesya drives while Ambrose hangs out the window trying to track the birds. "I can only see one of them; the other might be behind us!" he warns, right as the second raven takes war-form and makes a divebomb for the windshield.
One of the Garou uses Summon Earth Spirit to throw a rock wall up in front of it, then they spill out of the car. While they gang up on the first Corax, Ambrose nails the other, still in raven form, with a disorienting flash grenade. Aila and Jonas, now in Crinos (figuring, what the hell? Everybody on the street's already losing their minds) wrestle the first Corax to the ground. "We need something gold!" calls out the Galliard.
Frantically hunting around for something appropriate, Ambrose narrowly dodges three Razor Feathers the previously disoriented Corax zips at him. "Perfect!" he declares, as they embed themselves in the car near him. He pulls them out, turning them to gold, then turns around right into the path of the squawking, flapping assault-bird heading his way. Olesya grabs a feather, shifts into Crinos, and jumps on the thing in one smooth move, stabbing it in the head with the golden shaft.
The other Corax shifts to raven form, trying to escape, but Aila catches it easily in her enormous paws. Curious about these weird things, Ambrose moves in to look at the dead Corax while Olesya backs up...only to turn and grab the Volvo, pummeling the bird-thing into the pavement with it. Then she tears out the glove box, shoving their captive fowl into it.
The group heads on toward the museum in a stolen car, figuring to catch up with the others. Ambrose thinks he notices something strange about their surroundings, as if they're illusionary...but after a botch on a closer inspection, he decides not. Till a line of MiBs show up barricading the street. Olesya floors the gas, crashing through them.
Some of the MiBs chase them in decidedly inhuman ways. Not HITMarks, but Ambrose guesses Progenitor-created simulacrums. Drawing his gun, he picks a couple off the buildings to discourage pursuit. The Garou in the car warn their compatriots at the museum that there could be a trap.
In the museum, everything's eerily quiet, in fact. The night staff seem to be rather absent...but nothing threatening is going on. Olesya runs the car right up the steps of the museum, past two upset security guards. Waving his hand in their faces, Ambrose intones, "These aren't the droids you're looking for." Though he has no Mind magic, this confuses them enough that the group waltzes right past before they can even react.
Now together, the characters all notice that...nothing's really happening. Ambrose and Mark think they can feel a spatial twitch of some sort, though. Ambrose wonders aloud if they just accidentally wrecked a Technocratic trap for a certain Nephandus...and then the Garou start smelling something foul. Ambrose begins spinning an effort to manipulate the building's stone walls, if necessary, and the Garou clue in that they're surrounded by currently invisible zombies. The Etherite calls for everyone to gather around him, and then he drops the ceiling on the oozing bodies.
Well, they turn out to be simple corpses, not zombies, but the effort was a brave one, nonetheless. Just as they realize they're not in Cairo anymore (they've been relocated to the Western Desert...the damn Nephandus teleported them all!), the villain in question spins up out of a pile of sand with a suave greeting.
"Pretty stupid to bring us here," says Aila. "We don't have what you're after. You should've waited." "Ah," says the Nephandus, reaching toward her, "but you do." And he pulls a key seemingly out of her body...
Friday, June 1, 2007
Dear Diary
Went to the circus - it was evil. Saved some poor Windego girl who was brainwashed into thinking she was a Croatan. Fought Black Spirals and saw a ninja. Well, didn't really see a ninja, but the crazy ringmaster's pocket watch showed him kill an asian vampire. Go, Ninja! Apparently asian "vampires" aren't like normal ones. Can travel the umbra. Bad news. Mirror-mirror version of goofy scientist guy is a jerk. Crazy mages are called marauders and are creepy. Or maybe it was just the one guy. Don't care. Don't want to see any more of them.
Aila
Aila
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
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.
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.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
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.
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.
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