[aeiou] last time, on Chicago Dusk: Doom? ...
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
This time, Kora's ability to harry the Devil into heaven isn't quite up to snuff. The regulars regard Kora flatly, suspiciously; and oh yes, there's still fear. The neon light is still on. Takes a moment to notice it, but Kora will, and so will Lila: that, although all the lights except the emergency lights have gone off, the neon sign still gleams, tosses its woozy luminescence across the sawdust-covered floorboards, sends the queasy pink skimming across one man's hairy knuckles, gleams on his glass. The fear they've got is reflected, but manageable, under control: they don't let her run them off.
Except for the man who'd stood, who'd questioned. Maybe he was the smart one. He looks at Kora, and she looks at him, and he's the one who would remember the most, if he were to see the kind've monsters which the blonde creatures could transform into -- and he swallows, hard. Kora says, storm's coming, best get going, and he swallows again, speaks around a clicking noise in his throat, " - maam, I don't know who you think you are - " it's respectful. "Sure ain't the little girl you look to be. But it's best to just stay put -- to just stay here and wait it out, see?"
He'd like to go. He wants to. He just can't.
Lila glanced over her shoulder when the man addressed her and Kora, but Kora: she was moving for the regulars. And she, Lila: she was going for the boy who wasn't afraid, who seemed to have a reason for not being afraid, who thought himself stained, besmirched by -- but, ultimately, safe. The lights go out, and it doesn't deter her. There is this, about Lila: she isn't human. There are moments when this isn't obvious. There are moments when it is: when she is a creature of grace, of stillness, a creature of spirit wedded to flesh, of blood and foam, who can melt from one world to the next, who can dissolve, who could tear out a throat just as easily as she could kiss a mouth -- this is one've those moments. She doesn't exude the sort of danger that Kora is exuding, but she's difficult to look away from, and she is studying the boy even as she puts a hand on the bartop, glances at the bartender, who is reaching under the bar, staring at Kora. Lila keeps watching the bartender, and says,
"Why aren't you afraid like the rest of them?" - confidental. Confide in me. Trust.
"What do you mean?" the boy says, staring at Lila's collarbone. He looks sick.
"Just what I asked," she says, gentle, and he,
"Your friend - " begins to say something else.
The door opens. Not all the way, just a little. The door peels out of its frame: the backdoor, the stockroom door -- the door near the wood table and wood chairs that are blooming with rot; there is nothing behind it but a wall of black, dense darkness. And, although the window is shuttered, although the blinds are pulled, it isn't enough to keep out the glow, which washes in patches, in stripes, through each chink [ - some kind've godamned alien abduction, an episode of X-files, the hell - ] and burns white.
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Lila: WP.]
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10 (Failure at target 6)
Kora: WP
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[Weaker Regulars: WP]
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Strong Regular]
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Bartender!]
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 4)
[Boy]
[wolfsong]
The windows are shuttered; there's light. There's light within back behind them; the window is covered and locked tight, the blinds pulled sharply closed. No one looks there; none of them, except when the light comes and they cannot help but look there, direct-like, sudden, their faces flared in a sharp wash of coruscating light where it pushes through the chinks in the wood, through the faults in the wall, through the pieces of things that should be but are not there.
Kora - Kora is staring. Kora is staring, feels herself rooted in place, as if her feet were fixed to the floor and the floor were fixed to her feet; as if her joints were fused to the long bones between them, her whole body straight and rigid, her whole body wanting, immediacy, immediately - oh gods.
With a deep, abiding sense of place - with the sense memory written into her skull by ancestors long-passed-on, Kora finds her will and strength of purpose, pushes through the paralysis, the longing, the want. There's a moment, then, when she finds herself seeking out the stranger again, the strongest of them. Leave now. He had said. Go on. "Tell us what's coming. We can keep you safe if your keep your heads."
[aeiou] They've names, the regulars. They've names, and the shortest of them has a family, a daughter who just got engaged. They don't look as if they remember that they have names now. They can't keep looking away from the light and, as if they truly were one creature, puppeted by one string, they turn their heads toward the window, toward the white radiance that burns through the carefully closed blinds, that leaks inside, as if the building were a dam that was breaking, and you know what happens when a dam breaks, don't you? The water surges, there's a flood. They look toward the light, and they're clearly stricken into stone, into a terror so complete, so deep-rooted that one of them forgets to breathe, and another gulps air, and another pisses himself, just a little, so that the stink of his fear is sharp, sour-sweet, and the other just clenches her hands on the table so hard that the table starts to bite into her hands, her hands start to bleed. They couldn't move if they wanted to. They don't even look like they remember their names. And this, this is the more horrible thing: the blind yearning of their mouths, open just a little, the aching want in their terror-stricken eyes, how they all have leaned just a little toward the window, even though they can't move, and if they could, well, maybe they'd run away, flee. There's nowhere to go, but panic doesn't know that. Panic believes that there's always a way out.
Kora shucks this paralysis off only with great effort, and once she does, she turns to the stranger, the strongest. He has a name, and he looks as if he remembers it well. He looks -- not unaffected, because he's an intelligent man, and he knows that something's wrong, he's felt it himself, he's seen his friends' features twist into something obscene before when that light comes, when what comes after that light comes, he's felt it -- so, rather, he looks steady, strong, flint-unhappy, a rock. "All I know, lady, is it comes, and the government ain't gonna do jackshit. I looked online and I think it's aliens, but it feels like something else, and, Christ, it made Bob want to slit his wife's throat, and I heard he was arrested. Some sort've domestic violence thing."
The strangeness seems to have loosened his tongue. Maybe he assumes Kora's his ally, or maybe he'll just take what he can get. "What are you going to do?" he asks Kora. "Can you do anything?"
The light isn't going away. Instead, the light's burning brighter.
[aeiou] [Doom: To Regulars. How Out Of It Are You?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[wolfsong] [ -1 WP: Resist Pain!]
"You know," says Kora, quiet now to the guy whose tongue is loosened, who is telling her the story about the government and bob who wanted to slit his wife's throat; as he is watching his friends staring at the light that is too-bright and wrong-made, and pouring into the building. There's a tension underneath, lining her low, rich voice. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small disc, smaller than her palm, gets Lila's attention with a subtle tch of her tongue against the roof of her mouth and tosses the disc toward the other Galliard, flicks the disc like a frisbee across the room. Then back to the man, standing before her. " - you know how your body has an immune system, and you have red blood cells for oxygen and white blood cells to go around killing the bad stuff that gets loose in your body and tries to infect you, or make you a host for something that doesn't belong underneath your skin, or make you sick?"
She glances back at the door, at the walls, at the glow that made her feel, deep underneath, a sick, sixth sense, that reliable foreboding.
"Well," her voice is low, it is quiet, it is sharp. " - that girl and me, we're basically the earth's white blood cells. So if you hold on to your sanity, and help your friends hold on to theirs, and remember when things happen that I am what I am, and I'm going to stop that thing, and stay the hell out of my way, I'll save as many of you as I can. And clean you up, too. After."
There is a brief flare of a smile, then. It is subtle, it edges the corners of her mouth. "Your souls, I mean. I'll clean up your souls."
And if they're too far gone, I'll do you the mercy of killing you.
She doesn't say that, Sorrow. But it's there in her dark, direct eyes.
---
"Keep them out of my way."
Then, in the pin-pointed darkness, Sorrow steps away from the gentleman, looks back toward Lila and the boy who isn't scared; who is merely - something else. Wrong about this.
[aeiou] [And! Uh! L: Char+Leadership!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6) [WP] Re-rolls: 2
[aeiou] The bartender shudders when the white light nearly - but not quite - touches her. The bartender shudders herself out've terror, finally takes her gaze away from Kora's lean form, finally pulls out her shotgun and rests it on the bar's countertop. Does this carefully, careful, like a little girl with a flashlight afraid somebody's going to take the flashlight away, and, well, the flashlight's the only thing that's keeping the monsters in the fucking closet. Her gaze has narrowed in on Kora, again.
"Don't," Lila says, low, to the bar-tender: "You'll regret it." This isn't a threat. This is an order, followed by advice, and Lila could be Alexander re-incarnated, could be Hektor of Troy, Julius Caesar, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth the First: they must, each of them, have had this same presence -- don't look away; just follow it. Bow, to that confidence, bow, to that surety, follow it, moths: follow, because it burns bright. "But keep your weapon at hand."
Lila half-glances toward Kora, who has clicked her tongue, and she lifts a hand, catches what Kora threw, glances at it and half-nods, her gaze bright and then once again on the boy. "Finish your sentence," she tells him, and how can he help it? He can't. "And tell me what you've done."
He does. "I wanted to be a hero," he says, lowly. "But it's no good. They don't believe. It's no good, going outside. Your friend is chasing people off, but it's inside. Look, I didn't mean to. I just -- " and he babbles, babbles something incoherent, but Lila takes from it what she needs.
Kora steps away from Kevin. Kora, who has just told him what to do. Kora, who is she who offers sorrow, and Kevin looks at her like he's seeing her, like he'll dream about her, and the dreams won't be wholly pleasant, but he nods. Yes: he nods. And Lila, just a moment after, steps away from the bar, pushing back. "Stay inside," Lila says, "Get them behind the counter, if you can."
Then she tilts her head toward the door, meets Kora's eyes. When she is at Kora's side, she says, low-voiced and smoky: "Boy says this started because he made a promise to a monster. Says the monster brings the light because he can't get under some stone. Says the stone's outside, but you can't see it until you're right on top of it, can't see it unless you know where to look, unless you walk through the trees. Says other monsters come to the light. I think - "
A pause; a half-smile, but grave. " - we owe ourselves some really awesome ale after this."
And Lila intends that they should go outside. There's no other door, just the front-door, just the stock-room door with its density of darkness. The regulars are still as statues, except for Kevin, whose body language says: I'm alert and this will be done.
[wolfsong] Kora, who has another name, who has many names, steps away from the man who is looking at her, listening intently to Lila as she offers the explanation, the beginning of the background of the story. Whatever brings the light is outside, the stone and the well and the attraction, like for like, darkness to darkness, light to light. Her brow knits neatly together and then -
"Yeah. I'm buying the first round, too."
There's a promise in that. So, it is that Kora cuts through the tables, between the regulars, until she is flanking Lila and then outpacing her, until she is at the front door; opening the front door, out into the parking lot, out into the dark night and the piney woods. Out - into the light.
Her hand is in her pocket along the way, she is quiet, readying herself. There is a subtle flare of gnosis in the air around her, some faint scent, impossible to name. She turns, in a slow arc, taking in their surroundings, surveying the immediate area. And shifts; from two-legs to four-legs, from humanskin to direwolf - if witnesses there are none.
[aeiou] There is noone outside. There are the same number of cars there were when the galliards found the bar, however it is they found it; the campers must've walked back to the reststop, or they didn't make it. There's no sign of them. What is outside: the road, the peeling-sign, and along the side of the bar, whorling through the pine-trees, white radiance spinning, cycling, circling in the same pulse [thrum] rhythm as the little bugs Kora'd noticed in the bar were circling, cycling, and it's moving, receding slowly but not slowly-enough. And there's a sound -- sound a million, a billion bugs, all skittering at once. The outside is loud with it. Where, and what, is there to attack?
A second after Kora steps outside, so, too, does Lila, shutting the door behind her. And a second after Kora takes the war-wolf shape, so, too, does Waking Dream, and then there are two more monsters drawn to the bar with some man's last name.
[-1G for Luna's Armor, yo. stam 3 + hispo 3 + survival 2]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Perception + Primal-Urge
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 4, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak talen!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] They are beasts in the darkness, huge, the size of small cars, the size of small ponies - beasts out of nightmares, etched back into the darkness by the nightmare of memory, the time past when the world was still and humans needed fire to keep the night away. Now they have so many more lights, but still the night comes, creeps in at the edges of things, turns the world inside out.
Sorrow she is now; Kora is left far behind, subsumed in the animal-mind, the predator-certainty of the form she wears. Sorrow swings her head toward the light, huffs. Under the light, something comes, wrong. and then swings her head again, the bugs running, the skittering sound wearing on her skin, crawling underneath her pelt. Pack there; animals or spirits, warped by what comes. We go. Small things first; then the darkness.
Then, she lopes off through the darkness, intending to cut off the approaching pack.
[wolfsong] Dex + Stealth +1 dif b/c no stealth!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7, 7 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[aeiou] [L: dex+stealth]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[aeiou] - and Waking Dream chuffs her agreement. Kora lopes through the darkness, intending to cut off the approaching pack. The Fenrir-skald is quiet, hushed: a whisper, merely, across spring grass, across spring-dirt. Lila lopes through the darkness, intending to come at them from the opposite angle. The war-wolf stays low, fog-low, quieter-than-fog. Her heavy paws do not make a sound. They're invisible.
They circle. They see. The pack -- the small pack, a loose collection of creatures thick with shadow -- is six-strong. There is something that looks almost as large as they, and hound-like, but black as pitch, shaped out've somebody's bad dream. There is something that looks like distant kin to a skunk, and its eyes are bright as the moon, and malicious. It is over-large, but there's something about the way it moves, the way it circles the rest've its pack, restlessly, restless, the way its tail almost twitches out of shape that makes it seem more've a threat than the hound-thing. There's something that distantly resembles a raccoon and something else that even more distantly resembles a wolf or a coyote. The wolf-thing has no eyes at all, look close: just sockets where the eyes should be, and where they gleam, white, it's only because of the way the light touches on a maggot, writhing there.
The sixth-thing: humanoid. Ah, yes. Humanoid, but dextrous the way water is: could move through any-thing. They're all dark with fury. The human-thing has blood in its open mouth, and is in the center. Protected. The wolf-thing leads when the hound-thing doesn't; they snap at each other, when they aren't moving precisely together. The raccoon-thing is slowest, takes up the rear.
[wolfsong] Here they are in the piney woods - scrub thing, this, hardly native - just trash trees sown quickly by some landscaping company. Maybe once upon a time someone had a christmas tree farm grown out of all proporation, the trees grown together, wild, thinned out into something like a forest. It is spring and the ground is warm. There is rain in the air somewhere, pine needles, last year's crop, beneath their paws, the sharp scent cutting through the certainty of that which is wrong.
Sorrow, low, circles; Waking-Dream, cuts a wide circuit. The pack-not-pack of wrong things snaps and surges forward, looking for blood and prey, and the two silent direwolves crouch low in the darkness. Then, the iron-furred direwolf, with the patterned black guardhairs down her back, tipping her ears, leaps in a great, diving arc, jaws open, snapping, snarling toward the skunk-thing.
[1a. BITE; 1b. BITE. Skunk-y!]
[aeiou] -- and she who offers sorrow dives at the skunk-thing, unsuspecting. Her jaws are wide and her teeth are sharp and she comes out of the dark to bring death. Meanwhile, on the otherside of the pack of wrong things (you shall not rally, you cannot flee this way), Waking Dream waits a moment, ears lifted, alert, and then she - too - sleeks toward the pack, her eyes sorrowful, sorry for these things, but her teeth and her tongue killing things, aiming for the wolf-thing. Take out the leader, one of them. Take it out and end it. But that's not all: even as she tries to sink her teeth into its flesh and rend, next second, next breath: she calms its brother, hound-thing, tries to.
[1a. BITE wolf-thing. 1b. CALM (-1 gnosis) hound-thing.]
[wolfsong] Ancestors to Brawl!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 8) [WP]
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE: Dex + Hispo + Brawl + Ancestors -2
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Skunk-Thing Soak! - omfg, what the hell!?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [PEPE LE PEU: you poisoned?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak it!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1b: I CLAW YOU! +1 dif due to changing actions!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 7)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Skunk-Thing Soak! - omfg, I hate you!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] more dice!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila: 1a. BITE wolf-thing: Dex + Hispo + Brawl -2. Diff: -1 ambush.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[aeiou] [Damage, Damage! st+hispo+suxx-1!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-thing: WTF? Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila: 1b. Calm Down, Yo, Hound-Thing -3 +specialty.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 81
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[wolfsong] (er. that is +8. not +81)
[aeiou] Lila: +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[aeiou] Skunk Thing: ded.
[aeiou] Hound-Thing: +4.
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[aeiou] Raccoon-Thing: +3
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[aeiou] Human-Thing: +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[aeiou] Wolf-Thing: +7
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[aeiou] Invisible / Shadow-Cat Thing!!!!!!! +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[aeiou] [Skunk-Thing: stinks. That'll be important, later.
Raccoon-Thing: 1. CLAW KORA. R1. CLAW KORA.
Wolf-Thing: 1a. BITE LILA. 1b. BITE HOUND. R1. BITE LILA.
Invisible-Thing: 1. prepare for next round.
Lila: 1a. No! I bite! 1b. NO! I bite! WP! R1: Bite wolf again. Ain't clever, we know. R2: Bite hound-thing.
Hound-Thing: 1. Bite Wolf-thing, if still alive. WTF, you biting me for! R1. Knock Lila over. R2. Knock Kora over.
[wolfsong] [1a. BITE HOUND. 1b. BITE HOUND; Rage 1: BITE HOUND; RAGE 2: BITE HOUND. **move to Raccooon if he goes down.]
[aeiou] [Human-thing.
1a. Bite Kora.
1b. Stab Kora With Fingernails of Evil.
1c. Claw Lila With Fingernails of Evil. No closing-of-distance necessary.]
[aeiou] [Human-Thing 1a. Bite Kora! -2.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG. 4+3-1]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Human-Thing 1b. Stab! -3]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak! Ack!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Human-Thing: stab Lila! -4]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Er, claw! claw/stab. same pool! DMG]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila: soak! Dex+Hispo+3 suxx LA]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE! -2
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound: Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1b. BITE!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Damage'
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound-Thing: 1. Yelp! Yelp! Bite wolf-thing. You were gonna bite me!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound-Thing: DMG.]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-Thing: Soak! Hey man! Didn't mean nothing!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila: 1a. dex+hispo+brawl -2. Wolf!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[aeiou] [Dmg!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [...takes the no-pwnk damage roll, too!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf: Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila: 1b. RARBITE. -3 +wp STOP HEALING.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-Thing. 1a. Biting Lila! -2]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [...eek. Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1b. Biting Hound! -3
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound: Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3 (Botch x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound takes 3 extra levels of damage. Note: only NPCs can actually botch soaks in this scene. Carry on.]
[aeiou] [Raccoon: wp-to-still-claw-Kora.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Raccoon: claw Kora!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 3, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Rage 1: BITE!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound: ack don't kill me! -1 'coz of INJURY.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] BITE Wolf: -1 for flank attack!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 4)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-thing: WTF, YOU TOO? SOAK.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila R1: Bite Wolf-thing!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-thing: ack ?! I HALLPED YOU GUYS. -1]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-thing: DED. R2: Bite Human-thing!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[aeiou] [Wait wait. Take 3 suxx off that last attack on Wolf-thing. He's still dead! but it isn't quite that much overkill. Jess's dyslexia flipped 6 and 9 around when she added up damage total. Human-thing Damage]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Human-Thing: soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 5, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Raccoon R1, claw Kora!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 4 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] - and she who offers sorrow is death. The skunk-thing falls, tries to poison: fails. Lila isn't half-so-lucky with her teeth, with the wolf-thing, although hound-thing feels its Rage leeched away, just a little, less angry. Then: it doesn't actually take a long time, but the wounds are many, and savage, and the wolf-thing is nigh unstoppable. she who offers sorrow stops the hound-thing, and it lies on the ground, alive, but unmoving, unable to even lift its head, its eyes glassy and blank, whining deep in its throat, jaw severed, throat torn out, bleeding, bleeding. and then the garou are a blur of motion: she who offers sorrow bites the wolf-thing, though the human-creature tore into her with its mouth, then withdrew, slashed into her side with its fingernails, a wound that still bleeds ragged. Waking Dream takes the wolf-thing down in another snap of her jaw, bone-cracks, wolf-thing, maggot-eyed moves no more, and she turns on the human-thing, moves over unmoving hound-thing to get there, wounds it a little while the raccoon-thing -- preternaturally quick, savage, furious -- hisses and tries to swipe at Kora. Misses, utterly.
[Hound-thing: incapped
Wolf-thing: dead
Skunk-thing: dead
Invisible Thing: w/ evil
Raccoon Thing: pretty okay.
Human Thing: a teensy bit hurt
Kora & Lila: a lot more hurt.]
[wolfsong] +8!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[aeiou] Human-Thing: +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[aeiou] Raccoon-thing +3
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[aeiou] Invisible Thing: +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[aeiou] Lila: +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[aeiou] Human Thing: 1a: WP not to run away. 1b, if has not run away: bite Lila!
Raccoon Thing: 1. CLAW KORA AGAIN, man! It'll work!
Lila: 1a. Ack, bite Human Thing. 1b. Bite Raccoon if Raccoon manages to claw Kora -- otherwise, bite Human Thing again. R1: claw human-thing.
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE. 1b. BITE. Rage 1: BITE; Rage 2: BITE. Start with raccoon, move to human.
[aeiou] [Invisible Thing: 1. WP not to flee. If WP successful, roll You Guys Love Us And Want To Join Us Trance-Song-Thang of Your Dreams'll Be Very Bad Magick OooOOOOoo.]
[aeiou] Invisible Thing. WP!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 5, 5 (Botch x 2 at target 7)
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 4, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Raccoon: ACK nooo want live!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] [Raccoon: X.X]
[wolfsong] 1b. BITE human.
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 8 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Human-thing: Soak Soak Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila 1a. Bite human, man! BITE!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [human-thing: nooo!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Mother's Touch Kora! -1g]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 8 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[aeiou] The pair of garou can hear something crashing away through the pine-forest: something that is fleeing, terrified, from the light; something that is louder than the sound of bugs, hurrying away, away from this scene (it's getting quiet [it's almost silent]) and she who offers sorrow neatly, precisely, takes the raccoon between her jaws and breaks it against the ground, savages the creature in twain, and it does not move again. she who offers sorrow is on the human-thing, the human-thing that moves too quickly to be human, the human-thing whose mouth is dripping, now, with Kora's blood, whose fingernails are caked in garou-blood, and far too long, and she tears it. Doesn't matter, though: thing still comes. Then Lila's on it: bites out its heart. Doesn't move, again.
With no immediate foes, the Child of Gaia circles, paces, prowls and rubs, sinuous, her flank across Kora's wounds, which close, knit, heal (be comforted [devotion] this is what we're for, too: this -- this shining thing; this mending). Her jaw is open, tongue-lolls out. The light is still spinning, looping through the pine trees, although it's also receding -- they're behind it, now, watching it wend its way, watching the darkness underneath, foul and slick, follow, follow, though it grows paler.
[wolfsong] Waking Dream circles Sorrow; Sorrow circles waking dream. There is a moment that shimmers; and then the wolf has a small gourd in her mouth. That scent in the air; sharper, cleaning that the foulness around them, than the blood and surely of it. Then, the gourd still head absurdly delicately in her jaws, Sorrow breaks it over Waking Dream's wounded flank.
[-1g gaia's breath!]
[wolfsong] Be healed!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6) [WP]
[wolfsong] [AGAIN! -1g]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 5, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] And Waking Dream's flank re-knits, flesh re-kindles into something whole; blood is still in fur, in fur-coat, but whatever wound spilled that blood -- it's gone. As if it had never happened, and Waking Dream gives Kora a brief but hard, appreciative, nuzzle, and low-to-the-ground, slinks a couple of paces after the light, one ear cocked toward the sound of the escaping thing. What she says, then, is in a language no animal would understand: garou-speech, guttural, but not even quite High Tongue -- something easier for hispo, blend of high tongue and wolf-speak, You remember, she says. What do you think is a greater threat? That creature we hear, running? Or that dark you felt -- that wrong?
[wolfsong] The dark. says Sorrow who is not Sorrow, who is greater than Sorrow has ever been; than she ever will be. Who is the sum of history in the harsh north, who has a thousand names pressing in on her now, a thousand memories she can never fulfill, never sort through, never know except in flashes; a thousand lives she's never lived. Her voice has resonance, deeper, male. We go after the dark.
And then the beast whose heart and mind are an open door to the past, who has a thousand names, leaps in pursuit of the darkness underneath the light.
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[aeiou] The Dark: +6
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[aeiou] Lila
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[aeiou] The Dark!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[aeiou] Lila!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[aeiou] The Dark! Totally going, Ha, Ha.
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[aeiou] Lila: grr!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[wolfsong] RRRR.
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[aeiou] The Dark!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[aeiou] Lila.
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[aeiou] Dark
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[aeiou] Lila
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[wolfsong] STAMINA!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] Stam-In-A! (Lila)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] DARKNESS. wp-instead.
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 9, 10
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 9
[aeiou] [And THE DARK]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[aeiou] They run. The Fenrir and the Child of Gaia. They run swiftly, low-to-the-ground, silent: they're hunters, predators, lethal-things, weapons, and it's their moon in the sky, their moon tugging them on, rising in their marrow, burning in the blood, urging them onward for glory -- oh, glory's sake -- for Gaia's sake, for this, because it is sweet, is it not, to fulfill one's purpose -- they hunt the dark-thing, the darkness, and the too many lives ride she who offers sorrow's back and Waking Dream starts slow, but soon, oh, soon -- half an hour's worth of running, pausing, running again, swifting onward, river-steady -- power brings her loping at Kora's side, and they pace it, pace it, pace it until they've caught up, over-shot it, where the light tangles in a circle, weaves a crown of light between a copse of trees, and the Dark:
well, it seeks to get there. The dark seeks to feed. The smell of rot is overwhelming, and there are mushrooms in the dirt, rising, malodorous -- they weren't there before the dark.
[wolfsong] The beasts pace and outpace the darkness, now. The invisible thing is long since flown, crashing through the trees, finding or making some different destruction elsewhere. Here and now, now and here the pair of direwolves churn through the soft loam of the forest floor, leap over deadfalls, surge over broken branches, lightening forked trees, following the Light and the Dark.
Sorrow-and all of her other selves skin to a half, turning, circling, snarling a warning, a challenge, a feral demand a the darkness. Stop and face me. That sort of challenge. Turn and see me. Fight me. In the midst of hte taunts, the beast huffs out a low warning to Waking Dream. The mushrooms, she says, are poison.
[wolfsong] Avoiding mushrooms! 1a. BITE DARK. 1b. BITE DARK. Rage 1: BITE DARK. Rage 2: BITE DARK.
[wolfsong] Avoiding shrooms!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[aeiou] Lila: Avoiding mushrooms! 1a. BITE DARK. 1b. BITE DARK. Rage 1: BITE DARK. Rage 2: BITE DARK. We are clever beasts, we are.
[aeiou] [Avoiding shrooms too, right?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 7)
[wolfsong] We are clever, clever beasts. I BITE YOU! -2 dif partially inanimate.
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 9 at target 3)
[wolfsong] I HURT YOU!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] pwnk rule!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: SOAK.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1b!!!!!!! I BITE YOU!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 8 at target 3)
[wolfsong] I HURT YOU
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila! 1a.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1b. BITEBITEBITEBITEBITEMURDERIZEBITE>
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Rage 1: RAWR. CHOMP. CHOMP.
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 12 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 19 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Rage 2: CHOMP.
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 10 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak 1!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak 2!]
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [shame-facedly adds the roll]
[aeiou] Lila: R1. BITE.
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 3)
[aeiou] [hurts, don't it? DON'T IT?]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [pwnk rule!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] R2. Bite!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[aeiou] DMG!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] Darkness: WAH. STOP HURTING ME. 1a: Kora, you love me. LOVE me. You want to make sweet babies with me. 1b.: Lila. You want to GIVE YOURSELF to me. Plunge yourself RIGHT DOWN MY THROAT. 1c: CALL FORTH MORE MUSHROOMS.
[wolfsong] [Kora: will spend WP to resist call of the Dark if necessary! Avoiding shrooms! 1a. BITE; 1b. BITE; 1c. BITE Rage 1: BITE
[aeiou] Lila: the same! Avoid shrooms! 1a BITE. 2a BITE. R1: you know what? claw.
[aeiou] Dark. 1a. Come to me, Kora. Burn your starry crown.
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Current WP
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] Dark. 1b. My dark angel, Lila!, I've tried I can't get over.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila: Ha, ha!
[aeiou] Dark: RISE, MUSHROOM MINIONS.
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Dex + Ath! Avoiding mushrooms!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 8)
[aeiou] [Avoiding Mushrooms!, yeah? right?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[wolfsong] 1a. Kora struggles with WP to avoid the song of the Dark!
1b. Kora again struggles with WP to avoid the song of the Dark!
- she is becoming enraged by her weakness!
[aeiou] Lila. 1a.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 7 at target 3)
[aeiou] [you are hurt!]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6)
[aeiou] [aaa soak.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 6, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1b.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 4 at target 3)
[aeiou] [dmg!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] RAGE! RAWR!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 10 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] pwnk rule!
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak! RAR!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila R1: CLAW.
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [erk, wait. forgot! to -2 from diff. re-rolling!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: SOAK.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 6, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] Dark: 1a. rise up! get high! wave-crest tsunami of dark! 1b. CRASH onto garou/swallow 'em. 1c. keep.
[wolfsong] [ Avoid mushrooms! 1a. BITE; 1b. BITE; 1c. BITE; Rage 1: BITE]
[aeiou] [Lila. Avoid mushrooms! 1a. BITE. 1b. BITE w/ WP. Rage 1. Bite-bitebitebitebitebitebitebitetenthousandtimesbite. Or once.]
[aeiou] [Dark: How Tall Do I Get? Scale 1 - 10?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[aeiou] [SOOOOAK. I ANGRY.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1a. Bite!!!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 3)
[aeiou] [dmg!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: How Fast Do I Fall? on a scale of 1 - 10. 10 being REALLY FAST. 1 being - slow, slow inexorable descent. ]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[aeiou] [Dark: SMOOSH.]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Str + WP
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Str+WP
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1b. --------- BITE -4 for split, -3 for SMOOSH.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1b. -2 for the smoosh!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[aeiou] [DMG]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1c: I keep you! Guys, stop fighting me.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1c. -5 split! -3 SMOOSH.
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[wolfsong] DAMANANANANANGE!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] DAmMANANANANGE'
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] RAGE -3 for SMOOSH.
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 9 at target 3)
[wolfsong] chomp chomp I HURT YOU!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [noooooo! i soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] Rage -2 for smoosh!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[aeiou] [dmg!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [monster -1...soak?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] Dark 1. FLEE.
[wolfsong] 1a. CHASE if necessary. OTHERWISE BITE. 1b. BITE. 1c. BITE. Rage 1: BITE
[aeiou] Lila: same as Kora, man! Galliards are smart! And avoid mushrooms.
[aeiou] Dark: How Fast Do I Flee?
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[wolfsong] BITE!!!!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 9 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Death Song]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] WP!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] WP
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] They kill.
The galliards kill. There is no blood for them to taste. There is nothing hot, nothing sweet -- Kora's shame, perhaps, when she finds herself stricken still; immobilized by the need to fight with her desire, while, beside her, the Child of Gaia is unmoved, untouched -- that floods their throats and paints their tongues. What they do taste is rank, wet -- yet tenuous, cold smoke, fog, it fills their jaws, gives their teeth purchase each time they tear at the Dark That Grows, the Dark That Stains, the Dark That Taints and Calls to What Is Tainted, sings so sweetly corrupt, wishes - oh, so! - to feed on the [fading (dying)] light. More rot flowers out've the ground, difficult to avoid, and yet they manage -- yet, they are agile, these killing creatures -- and there is poetry in that. This is a formidable foe, and though they strike again and again -- strike true, strike strong -- it is unmoved.
Until. And then. Then the dark rises: lifts itself, bulks itself up; rises and rises, until it encompasses the tops of the trees, blots out the stars, the galliard's moon which gleams somewhere behind the clouds, a dull filtering of ashy luminescence -- swallows all that, and they can feel the weight of it as it falls, before it falls, as it crushes them toward the ground, snaps at their spines, presses their heaving chests into the dirt. Then, oh, then: they push back, strength and will and no you will not, stand as tall as they might, savage it again although they're within the dark, now, swallowed whole by it, within its belly, in danger of being forced to wander the four chambers of its lightless heart --
and then they bite. Again, again. Kora savages it so that a rent is made visible: the sweet air, the light-touched air -- Lila's teeth find purchase, slide away, and the dark -- the dark lifts, lifts itself up, smoke, slow, ponderous, and it means to flee,
but Kora bites it down, and thus
it dissipates, un-tangles and fades as it goes. The woods -- they're in the woods, now -- are silent. Quiet. No sound, but their own breathing. No sound at all.
[wolfsong] They are left alone in the darkness that is not Darkness, looking at the ring of light; which is a door or a pathway; which is a slipknot. Which is something they should not touch, says Sorrow-who-is-more, quiet in that speech that is neither wholly Garou nor fully lupine, to her fellow Galliard.
There is much to be done. They have rites to do, and Sorrow lives within the minds of her ancestors, brings them with her as they harry through the forest looking for a branch of willow, looking for clean, cool water. Looking for the ritual implements necessary for these things to be made whole, to be purified; looking to excise the foreign body, the cancer cells bubbling up from the ground, all poison, the wrongness in the dark.
The regulars, Kevin, the people huddle up in the bar hear, distant, the howling of wolves, again and again and again, baying against the darkness to frighten away the Wyrm. They cleanse the light and the poisoned ground, the corpses of the savaged animals, made wrong by the darkness. They cleanse the earth beneath their feet; and each other, most like, with Darkness in their mouths, that ashy splendour, that livid need for it, coiled up inside them perhaps, dark and seeded. And so: they circle widdershins, reinact the ritual again and again until the woods have been cleansed and the darkness expunged -
- and then they go back to the bar, humanskinned, relying on the darkness to disguise the spatter of blood on their clothes. The regulars are huddled, the fear and longing sharp in the air, the scent nearly palpable, so strong has it become. Kora finds Kevin and Lila finds the kid and they tell them: they tell them that the monster is gone, the aliens banished, or at least the dark part of it, written out of existance, into memory. They tell Kevin and the boy, the boy and Kevin separately, and then they have a beer, on the house - "no one leaves," pause, "until we finish theses" and then, and then they tell everyone to lock the doors and shutter the windows and don't look out.
There is one more cleansing to be done. This time the howling of wolves so close is unmistakeable, but for some of the regulars with a hard kernals of darkness in their souls, something eases, something curls back, something sets them free.
---
Later.
"Maybe we should've had two beers. That howling's thirsty business."
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
This time, Kora's ability to harry the Devil into heaven isn't quite up to snuff. The regulars regard Kora flatly, suspiciously; and oh yes, there's still fear. The neon light is still on. Takes a moment to notice it, but Kora will, and so will Lila: that, although all the lights except the emergency lights have gone off, the neon sign still gleams, tosses its woozy luminescence across the sawdust-covered floorboards, sends the queasy pink skimming across one man's hairy knuckles, gleams on his glass. The fear they've got is reflected, but manageable, under control: they don't let her run them off.
Except for the man who'd stood, who'd questioned. Maybe he was the smart one. He looks at Kora, and she looks at him, and he's the one who would remember the most, if he were to see the kind've monsters which the blonde creatures could transform into -- and he swallows, hard. Kora says, storm's coming, best get going, and he swallows again, speaks around a clicking noise in his throat, " - maam, I don't know who you think you are - " it's respectful. "Sure ain't the little girl you look to be. But it's best to just stay put -- to just stay here and wait it out, see?"
He'd like to go. He wants to. He just can't.
Lila glanced over her shoulder when the man addressed her and Kora, but Kora: she was moving for the regulars. And she, Lila: she was going for the boy who wasn't afraid, who seemed to have a reason for not being afraid, who thought himself stained, besmirched by -- but, ultimately, safe. The lights go out, and it doesn't deter her. There is this, about Lila: she isn't human. There are moments when this isn't obvious. There are moments when it is: when she is a creature of grace, of stillness, a creature of spirit wedded to flesh, of blood and foam, who can melt from one world to the next, who can dissolve, who could tear out a throat just as easily as she could kiss a mouth -- this is one've those moments. She doesn't exude the sort of danger that Kora is exuding, but she's difficult to look away from, and she is studying the boy even as she puts a hand on the bartop, glances at the bartender, who is reaching under the bar, staring at Kora. Lila keeps watching the bartender, and says,
"Why aren't you afraid like the rest of them?" - confidental. Confide in me. Trust.
"What do you mean?" the boy says, staring at Lila's collarbone. He looks sick.
"Just what I asked," she says, gentle, and he,
"Your friend - " begins to say something else.
The door opens. Not all the way, just a little. The door peels out of its frame: the backdoor, the stockroom door -- the door near the wood table and wood chairs that are blooming with rot; there is nothing behind it but a wall of black, dense darkness. And, although the window is shuttered, although the blinds are pulled, it isn't enough to keep out the glow, which washes in patches, in stripes, through each chink [ - some kind've godamned alien abduction, an episode of X-files, the hell - ] and burns white.
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[Lila: WP.]
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 4, 5, 6, 10 (Failure at target 6)
Kora: WP
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 4, 6, 6 (Failure at target 6)
[Weaker Regulars: WP]
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[Strong Regular]
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 5, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[Bartender!]
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 4)
[Boy]
[wolfsong]
The windows are shuttered; there's light. There's light within back behind them; the window is covered and locked tight, the blinds pulled sharply closed. No one looks there; none of them, except when the light comes and they cannot help but look there, direct-like, sudden, their faces flared in a sharp wash of coruscating light where it pushes through the chinks in the wood, through the faults in the wall, through the pieces of things that should be but are not there.
Kora - Kora is staring. Kora is staring, feels herself rooted in place, as if her feet were fixed to the floor and the floor were fixed to her feet; as if her joints were fused to the long bones between them, her whole body straight and rigid, her whole body wanting, immediacy, immediately - oh gods.
With a deep, abiding sense of place - with the sense memory written into her skull by ancestors long-passed-on, Kora finds her will and strength of purpose, pushes through the paralysis, the longing, the want. There's a moment, then, when she finds herself seeking out the stranger again, the strongest of them. Leave now. He had said. Go on. "Tell us what's coming. We can keep you safe if your keep your heads."
[aeiou] They've names, the regulars. They've names, and the shortest of them has a family, a daughter who just got engaged. They don't look as if they remember that they have names now. They can't keep looking away from the light and, as if they truly were one creature, puppeted by one string, they turn their heads toward the window, toward the white radiance that burns through the carefully closed blinds, that leaks inside, as if the building were a dam that was breaking, and you know what happens when a dam breaks, don't you? The water surges, there's a flood. They look toward the light, and they're clearly stricken into stone, into a terror so complete, so deep-rooted that one of them forgets to breathe, and another gulps air, and another pisses himself, just a little, so that the stink of his fear is sharp, sour-sweet, and the other just clenches her hands on the table so hard that the table starts to bite into her hands, her hands start to bleed. They couldn't move if they wanted to. They don't even look like they remember their names. And this, this is the more horrible thing: the blind yearning of their mouths, open just a little, the aching want in their terror-stricken eyes, how they all have leaned just a little toward the window, even though they can't move, and if they could, well, maybe they'd run away, flee. There's nowhere to go, but panic doesn't know that. Panic believes that there's always a way out.
Kora shucks this paralysis off only with great effort, and once she does, she turns to the stranger, the strongest. He has a name, and he looks as if he remembers it well. He looks -- not unaffected, because he's an intelligent man, and he knows that something's wrong, he's felt it himself, he's seen his friends' features twist into something obscene before when that light comes, when what comes after that light comes, he's felt it -- so, rather, he looks steady, strong, flint-unhappy, a rock. "All I know, lady, is it comes, and the government ain't gonna do jackshit. I looked online and I think it's aliens, but it feels like something else, and, Christ, it made Bob want to slit his wife's throat, and I heard he was arrested. Some sort've domestic violence thing."
The strangeness seems to have loosened his tongue. Maybe he assumes Kora's his ally, or maybe he'll just take what he can get. "What are you going to do?" he asks Kora. "Can you do anything?"
The light isn't going away. Instead, the light's burning brighter.
[aeiou] [Doom: To Regulars. How Out Of It Are You?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[wolfsong] [ -1 WP: Resist Pain!]
"You know," says Kora, quiet now to the guy whose tongue is loosened, who is telling her the story about the government and bob who wanted to slit his wife's throat; as he is watching his friends staring at the light that is too-bright and wrong-made, and pouring into the building. There's a tension underneath, lining her low, rich voice. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a small disc, smaller than her palm, gets Lila's attention with a subtle tch of her tongue against the roof of her mouth and tosses the disc toward the other Galliard, flicks the disc like a frisbee across the room. Then back to the man, standing before her. " - you know how your body has an immune system, and you have red blood cells for oxygen and white blood cells to go around killing the bad stuff that gets loose in your body and tries to infect you, or make you a host for something that doesn't belong underneath your skin, or make you sick?"
She glances back at the door, at the walls, at the glow that made her feel, deep underneath, a sick, sixth sense, that reliable foreboding.
"Well," her voice is low, it is quiet, it is sharp. " - that girl and me, we're basically the earth's white blood cells. So if you hold on to your sanity, and help your friends hold on to theirs, and remember when things happen that I am what I am, and I'm going to stop that thing, and stay the hell out of my way, I'll save as many of you as I can. And clean you up, too. After."
There is a brief flare of a smile, then. It is subtle, it edges the corners of her mouth. "Your souls, I mean. I'll clean up your souls."
And if they're too far gone, I'll do you the mercy of killing you.
She doesn't say that, Sorrow. But it's there in her dark, direct eyes.
---
"Keep them out of my way."
Then, in the pin-pointed darkness, Sorrow steps away from the gentleman, looks back toward Lila and the boy who isn't scared; who is merely - something else. Wrong about this.
[aeiou] [And! Uh! L: Char+Leadership!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 6, 6, 7, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6) [WP] Re-rolls: 2
[aeiou] The bartender shudders when the white light nearly - but not quite - touches her. The bartender shudders herself out've terror, finally takes her gaze away from Kora's lean form, finally pulls out her shotgun and rests it on the bar's countertop. Does this carefully, careful, like a little girl with a flashlight afraid somebody's going to take the flashlight away, and, well, the flashlight's the only thing that's keeping the monsters in the fucking closet. Her gaze has narrowed in on Kora, again.
"Don't," Lila says, low, to the bar-tender: "You'll regret it." This isn't a threat. This is an order, followed by advice, and Lila could be Alexander re-incarnated, could be Hektor of Troy, Julius Caesar, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth the First: they must, each of them, have had this same presence -- don't look away; just follow it. Bow, to that confidence, bow, to that surety, follow it, moths: follow, because it burns bright. "But keep your weapon at hand."
Lila half-glances toward Kora, who has clicked her tongue, and she lifts a hand, catches what Kora threw, glances at it and half-nods, her gaze bright and then once again on the boy. "Finish your sentence," she tells him, and how can he help it? He can't. "And tell me what you've done."
He does. "I wanted to be a hero," he says, lowly. "But it's no good. They don't believe. It's no good, going outside. Your friend is chasing people off, but it's inside. Look, I didn't mean to. I just -- " and he babbles, babbles something incoherent, but Lila takes from it what she needs.
Kora steps away from Kevin. Kora, who has just told him what to do. Kora, who is she who offers sorrow, and Kevin looks at her like he's seeing her, like he'll dream about her, and the dreams won't be wholly pleasant, but he nods. Yes: he nods. And Lila, just a moment after, steps away from the bar, pushing back. "Stay inside," Lila says, "Get them behind the counter, if you can."
Then she tilts her head toward the door, meets Kora's eyes. When she is at Kora's side, she says, low-voiced and smoky: "Boy says this started because he made a promise to a monster. Says the monster brings the light because he can't get under some stone. Says the stone's outside, but you can't see it until you're right on top of it, can't see it unless you know where to look, unless you walk through the trees. Says other monsters come to the light. I think - "
A pause; a half-smile, but grave. " - we owe ourselves some really awesome ale after this."
And Lila intends that they should go outside. There's no other door, just the front-door, just the stock-room door with its density of darkness. The regulars are still as statues, except for Kevin, whose body language says: I'm alert and this will be done.
[wolfsong] Kora, who has another name, who has many names, steps away from the man who is looking at her, listening intently to Lila as she offers the explanation, the beginning of the background of the story. Whatever brings the light is outside, the stone and the well and the attraction, like for like, darkness to darkness, light to light. Her brow knits neatly together and then -
"Yeah. I'm buying the first round, too."
There's a promise in that. So, it is that Kora cuts through the tables, between the regulars, until she is flanking Lila and then outpacing her, until she is at the front door; opening the front door, out into the parking lot, out into the dark night and the piney woods. Out - into the light.
Her hand is in her pocket along the way, she is quiet, readying herself. There is a subtle flare of gnosis in the air around her, some faint scent, impossible to name. She turns, in a slow arc, taking in their surroundings, surveying the immediate area. And shifts; from two-legs to four-legs, from humanskin to direwolf - if witnesses there are none.
[aeiou] There is noone outside. There are the same number of cars there were when the galliards found the bar, however it is they found it; the campers must've walked back to the reststop, or they didn't make it. There's no sign of them. What is outside: the road, the peeling-sign, and along the side of the bar, whorling through the pine-trees, white radiance spinning, cycling, circling in the same pulse [thrum] rhythm as the little bugs Kora'd noticed in the bar were circling, cycling, and it's moving, receding slowly but not slowly-enough. And there's a sound -- sound a million, a billion bugs, all skittering at once. The outside is loud with it. Where, and what, is there to attack?
A second after Kora steps outside, so, too, does Lila, shutting the door behind her. And a second after Kora takes the war-wolf shape, so, too, does Waking Dream, and then there are two more monsters drawn to the bar with some man's last name.
[-1G for Luna's Armor, yo. stam 3 + hispo 3 + survival 2]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Perception + Primal-Urge
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 4, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak talen!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] They are beasts in the darkness, huge, the size of small cars, the size of small ponies - beasts out of nightmares, etched back into the darkness by the nightmare of memory, the time past when the world was still and humans needed fire to keep the night away. Now they have so many more lights, but still the night comes, creeps in at the edges of things, turns the world inside out.
Sorrow she is now; Kora is left far behind, subsumed in the animal-mind, the predator-certainty of the form she wears. Sorrow swings her head toward the light, huffs. Under the light, something comes, wrong. and then swings her head again, the bugs running, the skittering sound wearing on her skin, crawling underneath her pelt. Pack there; animals or spirits, warped by what comes. We go. Small things first; then the darkness.
Then, she lopes off through the darkness, intending to cut off the approaching pack.
[wolfsong] Dex + Stealth +1 dif b/c no stealth!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 7, 7 (Success x 2 at target 7)
[aeiou] [L: dex+stealth]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[aeiou] - and Waking Dream chuffs her agreement. Kora lopes through the darkness, intending to cut off the approaching pack. The Fenrir-skald is quiet, hushed: a whisper, merely, across spring grass, across spring-dirt. Lila lopes through the darkness, intending to come at them from the opposite angle. The war-wolf stays low, fog-low, quieter-than-fog. Her heavy paws do not make a sound. They're invisible.
They circle. They see. The pack -- the small pack, a loose collection of creatures thick with shadow -- is six-strong. There is something that looks almost as large as they, and hound-like, but black as pitch, shaped out've somebody's bad dream. There is something that looks like distant kin to a skunk, and its eyes are bright as the moon, and malicious. It is over-large, but there's something about the way it moves, the way it circles the rest've its pack, restlessly, restless, the way its tail almost twitches out of shape that makes it seem more've a threat than the hound-thing. There's something that distantly resembles a raccoon and something else that even more distantly resembles a wolf or a coyote. The wolf-thing has no eyes at all, look close: just sockets where the eyes should be, and where they gleam, white, it's only because of the way the light touches on a maggot, writhing there.
The sixth-thing: humanoid. Ah, yes. Humanoid, but dextrous the way water is: could move through any-thing. They're all dark with fury. The human-thing has blood in its open mouth, and is in the center. Protected. The wolf-thing leads when the hound-thing doesn't; they snap at each other, when they aren't moving precisely together. The raccoon-thing is slowest, takes up the rear.
[wolfsong] Here they are in the piney woods - scrub thing, this, hardly native - just trash trees sown quickly by some landscaping company. Maybe once upon a time someone had a christmas tree farm grown out of all proporation, the trees grown together, wild, thinned out into something like a forest. It is spring and the ground is warm. There is rain in the air somewhere, pine needles, last year's crop, beneath their paws, the sharp scent cutting through the certainty of that which is wrong.
Sorrow, low, circles; Waking-Dream, cuts a wide circuit. The pack-not-pack of wrong things snaps and surges forward, looking for blood and prey, and the two silent direwolves crouch low in the darkness. Then, the iron-furred direwolf, with the patterned black guardhairs down her back, tipping her ears, leaps in a great, diving arc, jaws open, snapping, snarling toward the skunk-thing.
[1a. BITE; 1b. BITE. Skunk-y!]
[aeiou] -- and she who offers sorrow dives at the skunk-thing, unsuspecting. Her jaws are wide and her teeth are sharp and she comes out of the dark to bring death. Meanwhile, on the otherside of the pack of wrong things (you shall not rally, you cannot flee this way), Waking Dream waits a moment, ears lifted, alert, and then she - too - sleeks toward the pack, her eyes sorrowful, sorry for these things, but her teeth and her tongue killing things, aiming for the wolf-thing. Take out the leader, one of them. Take it out and end it. But that's not all: even as she tries to sink her teeth into its flesh and rend, next second, next breath: she calms its brother, hound-thing, tries to.
[1a. BITE wolf-thing. 1b. CALM (-1 gnosis) hound-thing.]
[wolfsong] Ancestors to Brawl!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 8) [WP]
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE: Dex + Hispo + Brawl + Ancestors -2
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Skunk-Thing Soak! - omfg, what the hell!?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 7, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [PEPE LE PEU: you poisoned?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak it!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1b: I CLAW YOU! +1 dif due to changing actions!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 7)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Skunk-Thing Soak! - omfg, I hate you!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 6, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] more dice!
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila: 1a. BITE wolf-thing: Dex + Hispo + Brawl -2. Diff: -1 ambush.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 4)
[aeiou] [Damage, Damage! st+hispo+suxx-1!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-thing: WTF? Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila: 1b. Calm Down, Yo, Hound-Thing -3 +specialty.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 7, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 81
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[wolfsong] (er. that is +8. not +81)
[aeiou] Lila: +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[aeiou] Skunk Thing: ded.
[aeiou] Hound-Thing: +4.
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[aeiou] Raccoon-Thing: +3
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[aeiou] Human-Thing: +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[aeiou] Wolf-Thing: +7
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[aeiou] Invisible / Shadow-Cat Thing!!!!!!! +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[aeiou] [Skunk-Thing: stinks. That'll be important, later.
Raccoon-Thing: 1. CLAW KORA. R1. CLAW KORA.
Wolf-Thing: 1a. BITE LILA. 1b. BITE HOUND. R1. BITE LILA.
Invisible-Thing: 1. prepare for next round.
Lila: 1a. No! I bite! 1b. NO! I bite! WP! R1: Bite wolf again. Ain't clever, we know. R2: Bite hound-thing.
Hound-Thing: 1. Bite Wolf-thing, if still alive. WTF, you biting me for! R1. Knock Lila over. R2. Knock Kora over.
[wolfsong] [1a. BITE HOUND. 1b. BITE HOUND; Rage 1: BITE HOUND; RAGE 2: BITE HOUND. **move to Raccooon if he goes down.]
[aeiou] [Human-thing.
1a. Bite Kora.
1b. Stab Kora With Fingernails of Evil.
1c. Claw Lila With Fingernails of Evil. No closing-of-distance necessary.]
[aeiou] [Human-Thing 1a. Bite Kora! -2.]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG. 4+3-1]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Human-Thing 1b. Stab! -3]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak! Ack!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Human-Thing: stab Lila! -4]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 4, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Er, claw! claw/stab. same pool! DMG]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 3, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila: soak! Dex+Hispo+3 suxx LA]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE! -2
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound: Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1b. BITE!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Damage'
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound-Thing: 1. Yelp! Yelp! Bite wolf-thing. You were gonna bite me!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound-Thing: DMG.]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-Thing: Soak! Hey man! Didn't mean nothing!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 4, 4, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila: 1a. dex+hispo+brawl -2. Wolf!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 4, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 5)
[aeiou] [Dmg!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [...takes the no-pwnk damage roll, too!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf: Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila: 1b. RARBITE. -3 +wp STOP HEALING.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6) [WP]
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-Thing. 1a. Biting Lila! -2]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 6, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [...eek. Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 8, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1b. Biting Hound! -3
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 8 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound: Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3 (Botch x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound takes 3 extra levels of damage. Note: only NPCs can actually botch soaks in this scene. Carry on.]
[aeiou] [Raccoon: wp-to-still-claw-Kora.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 6, 7 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Raccoon: claw Kora!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 7, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 3, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Rage 1: BITE!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 1 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Hound: ack don't kill me! -1 'coz of INJURY.]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 4, 8, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] BITE Wolf: -1 for flank attack!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 4)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-thing: WTF, YOU TOO? SOAK.]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 5, 6, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila R1: Bite Wolf-thing!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 14 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-thing: ack ?! I HALLPED YOU GUYS. -1]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Wolf-thing: DED. R2: Bite Human-thing!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[aeiou] [Wait wait. Take 3 suxx off that last attack on Wolf-thing. He's still dead! but it isn't quite that much overkill. Jess's dyslexia flipped 6 and 9 around when she added up damage total. Human-thing Damage]
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Human-Thing: soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 5, 7 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Raccoon R1, claw Kora!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 2, 4 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] - and she who offers sorrow is death. The skunk-thing falls, tries to poison: fails. Lila isn't half-so-lucky with her teeth, with the wolf-thing, although hound-thing feels its Rage leeched away, just a little, less angry. Then: it doesn't actually take a long time, but the wounds are many, and savage, and the wolf-thing is nigh unstoppable. she who offers sorrow stops the hound-thing, and it lies on the ground, alive, but unmoving, unable to even lift its head, its eyes glassy and blank, whining deep in its throat, jaw severed, throat torn out, bleeding, bleeding. and then the garou are a blur of motion: she who offers sorrow bites the wolf-thing, though the human-creature tore into her with its mouth, then withdrew, slashed into her side with its fingernails, a wound that still bleeds ragged. Waking Dream takes the wolf-thing down in another snap of her jaw, bone-cracks, wolf-thing, maggot-eyed moves no more, and she turns on the human-thing, moves over unmoving hound-thing to get there, wounds it a little while the raccoon-thing -- preternaturally quick, savage, furious -- hisses and tries to swipe at Kora. Misses, utterly.
[Hound-thing: incapped
Wolf-thing: dead
Skunk-thing: dead
Invisible Thing: w/ evil
Raccoon Thing: pretty okay.
Human Thing: a teensy bit hurt
Kora & Lila: a lot more hurt.]
[wolfsong] +8!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[aeiou] Human-Thing: +8
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[aeiou] Raccoon-thing +3
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[aeiou] Invisible Thing: +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[aeiou] Lila: +9
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[aeiou] Human Thing: 1a: WP not to run away. 1b, if has not run away: bite Lila!
Raccoon Thing: 1. CLAW KORA AGAIN, man! It'll work!
Lila: 1a. Ack, bite Human Thing. 1b. Bite Raccoon if Raccoon manages to claw Kora -- otherwise, bite Human Thing again. R1: claw human-thing.
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE. 1b. BITE. Rage 1: BITE; Rage 2: BITE. Start with raccoon, move to human.
[aeiou] [Invisible Thing: 1. WP not to flee. If WP successful, roll You Guys Love Us And Want To Join Us Trance-Song-Thang of Your Dreams'll Be Very Bad Magick OooOOOOoo.]
[aeiou] Invisible Thing. WP!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 5, 5 (Botch x 2 at target 7)
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 4, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Raccoon: ACK nooo want live!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] [Raccoon: X.X]
[wolfsong] 1b. BITE human.
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 8 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Human-thing: Soak Soak Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 3, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Lila 1a. Bite human, man! BITE!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 5)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [human-thing: nooo!]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 2, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Mother's Touch Kora! -1g]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 8 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[aeiou] The pair of garou can hear something crashing away through the pine-forest: something that is fleeing, terrified, from the light; something that is louder than the sound of bugs, hurrying away, away from this scene (it's getting quiet [it's almost silent]) and she who offers sorrow neatly, precisely, takes the raccoon between her jaws and breaks it against the ground, savages the creature in twain, and it does not move again. she who offers sorrow is on the human-thing, the human-thing that moves too quickly to be human, the human-thing whose mouth is dripping, now, with Kora's blood, whose fingernails are caked in garou-blood, and far too long, and she tears it. Doesn't matter, though: thing still comes. Then Lila's on it: bites out its heart. Doesn't move, again.
With no immediate foes, the Child of Gaia circles, paces, prowls and rubs, sinuous, her flank across Kora's wounds, which close, knit, heal (be comforted [devotion] this is what we're for, too: this -- this shining thing; this mending). Her jaw is open, tongue-lolls out. The light is still spinning, looping through the pine trees, although it's also receding -- they're behind it, now, watching it wend its way, watching the darkness underneath, foul and slick, follow, follow, though it grows paler.
[wolfsong] Waking Dream circles Sorrow; Sorrow circles waking dream. There is a moment that shimmers; and then the wolf has a small gourd in her mouth. That scent in the air; sharper, cleaning that the foulness around them, than the blood and surely of it. Then, the gourd still head absurdly delicately in her jaws, Sorrow breaks it over Waking Dream's wounded flank.
[-1g gaia's breath!]
[wolfsong] Be healed!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 7 (Failure at target 6) [WP]
[wolfsong] [AGAIN! -1g]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 4, 5, 5, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] And Waking Dream's flank re-knits, flesh re-kindles into something whole; blood is still in fur, in fur-coat, but whatever wound spilled that blood -- it's gone. As if it had never happened, and Waking Dream gives Kora a brief but hard, appreciative, nuzzle, and low-to-the-ground, slinks a couple of paces after the light, one ear cocked toward the sound of the escaping thing. What she says, then, is in a language no animal would understand: garou-speech, guttural, but not even quite High Tongue -- something easier for hispo, blend of high tongue and wolf-speak, You remember, she says. What do you think is a greater threat? That creature we hear, running? Or that dark you felt -- that wrong?
[wolfsong] The dark. says Sorrow who is not Sorrow, who is greater than Sorrow has ever been; than she ever will be. Who is the sum of history in the harsh north, who has a thousand names pressing in on her now, a thousand memories she can never fulfill, never sort through, never know except in flashes; a thousand lives she's never lived. Her voice has resonance, deeper, male. We go after the dark.
And then the beast whose heart and mind are an open door to the past, who has a thousand names, leaps in pursuit of the darkness underneath the light.
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[aeiou] The Dark: +6
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[aeiou] Lila
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 9
[aeiou] The Dark!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[aeiou] Lila!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[aeiou] The Dark! Totally going, Ha, Ha.
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[aeiou] Lila: grr!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 7
[wolfsong] RRRR.
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[aeiou] The Dark!
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[aeiou] Lila.
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 5
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[aeiou] Dark
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 4
[aeiou] Lila
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 3
[wolfsong] STAMINA!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] Stam-In-A! (Lila)
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] DARKNESS. wp-instead.
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 9 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[wolfsong]
Dice Rolled:[ 2 d10 ] 9, 10
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 9
[aeiou] [And THE DARK]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 2
[aeiou] They run. The Fenrir and the Child of Gaia. They run swiftly, low-to-the-ground, silent: they're hunters, predators, lethal-things, weapons, and it's their moon in the sky, their moon tugging them on, rising in their marrow, burning in the blood, urging them onward for glory -- oh, glory's sake -- for Gaia's sake, for this, because it is sweet, is it not, to fulfill one's purpose -- they hunt the dark-thing, the darkness, and the too many lives ride she who offers sorrow's back and Waking Dream starts slow, but soon, oh, soon -- half an hour's worth of running, pausing, running again, swifting onward, river-steady -- power brings her loping at Kora's side, and they pace it, pace it, pace it until they've caught up, over-shot it, where the light tangles in a circle, weaves a crown of light between a copse of trees, and the Dark:
well, it seeks to get there. The dark seeks to feed. The smell of rot is overwhelming, and there are mushrooms in the dirt, rising, malodorous -- they weren't there before the dark.
[wolfsong] The beasts pace and outpace the darkness, now. The invisible thing is long since flown, crashing through the trees, finding or making some different destruction elsewhere. Here and now, now and here the pair of direwolves churn through the soft loam of the forest floor, leap over deadfalls, surge over broken branches, lightening forked trees, following the Light and the Dark.
Sorrow-and all of her other selves skin to a half, turning, circling, snarling a warning, a challenge, a feral demand a the darkness. Stop and face me. That sort of challenge. Turn and see me. Fight me. In the midst of hte taunts, the beast huffs out a low warning to Waking Dream. The mushrooms, she says, are poison.
[wolfsong] Avoiding mushrooms! 1a. BITE DARK. 1b. BITE DARK. Rage 1: BITE DARK. Rage 2: BITE DARK.
[wolfsong] Avoiding shrooms!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 5, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 7)
[aeiou] Lila: Avoiding mushrooms! 1a. BITE DARK. 1b. BITE DARK. Rage 1: BITE DARK. Rage 2: BITE DARK. We are clever beasts, we are.
[aeiou] [Avoiding shrooms too, right?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 7)
[wolfsong] We are clever, clever beasts. I BITE YOU! -2 dif partially inanimate.
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 9 at target 3)
[wolfsong] I HURT YOU!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] pwnk rule!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: SOAK.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1b!!!!!!! I BITE YOU!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8 (Success x 8 at target 3)
[wolfsong] I HURT YOU
Dice Rolled:[ 15 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila! 1a.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 8, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 3)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 6, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1b. BITEBITEBITEBITEBITEMURDERIZEBITE>
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 2, 7, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Rage 1: RAWR. CHOMP. CHOMP.
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 12 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 19 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Rage 2: CHOMP.
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 10 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak 1!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak 2!]
[aeiou]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [shame-facedly adds the roll]
[aeiou] Lila: R1. BITE.
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 3)
[aeiou] [hurts, don't it? DON'T IT?]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [pwnk rule!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 6, 7 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] R2. Bite!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 9 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[aeiou] DMG!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 4, 5, 5, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 5, 5, 6 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] Darkness: WAH. STOP HURTING ME. 1a: Kora, you love me. LOVE me. You want to make sweet babies with me. 1b.: Lila. You want to GIVE YOURSELF to me. Plunge yourself RIGHT DOWN MY THROAT. 1c: CALL FORTH MORE MUSHROOMS.
[wolfsong] [Kora: will spend WP to resist call of the Dark if necessary! Avoiding shrooms! 1a. BITE; 1b. BITE; 1c. BITE Rage 1: BITE
[aeiou] Lila: the same! Avoid shrooms! 1a BITE. 2a BITE. R1: you know what? claw.
[aeiou] Dark. 1a. Come to me, Kora. Burn your starry crown.
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Current WP
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 5 (Botch x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] Dark. 1b. My dark angel, Lila!, I've tried I can't get over.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 10 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila: Ha, ha!
[aeiou] Dark: RISE, MUSHROOM MINIONS.
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Dex + Ath! Avoiding mushrooms!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 8)
[aeiou] [Avoiding Mushrooms!, yeah? right?]
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 1 at target 8)
[wolfsong] 1a. Kora struggles with WP to avoid the song of the Dark!
1b. Kora again struggles with WP to avoid the song of the Dark!
- she is becoming enraged by her weakness!
[aeiou] Lila. 1a.
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 7 at target 3)
[aeiou] [you are hurt!]
Dice Rolled:[ 11 d10 ] 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 9 at target 6)
[aeiou] [aaa soak.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 6, 6, 9, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1b.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 6, 7, 9 (Success x 4 at target 3)
[aeiou] [dmg!]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 8, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] RAGE! RAWR!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 10 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] pwnk rule!
Dice Rolled:[ 17 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak! RAR!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 4, 6, 7, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] Lila R1: CLAW.
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [erk, wait. forgot! to -2 from diff. re-rolling!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 4)
[aeiou] [DMG!]
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 1, 1, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: SOAK.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 1, 4, 6, 7 (Failure at target 6)
[aeiou] Dark: 1a. rise up! get high! wave-crest tsunami of dark! 1b. CRASH onto garou/swallow 'em. 1c. keep.
[wolfsong] [ Avoid mushrooms! 1a. BITE; 1b. BITE; 1c. BITE; Rage 1: BITE]
[aeiou] [Lila. Avoid mushrooms! 1a. BITE. 1b. BITE w/ WP. Rage 1. Bite-bitebitebitebitebitebitebitetenthousandtimesbite. Or once.]
[aeiou] [Dark: How Tall Do I Get? Scale 1 - 10?]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 8
[wolfsong] 1a. BITE!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 6 at target 6)
[aeiou] [SOOOOAK. I ANGRY.]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1a. Bite!!!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 2, 5, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 6 at target 3)
[aeiou] [dmg!]
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 2, 2, 4, 4, 4, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 3, 6, 6, 8 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Dark: How Fast Do I Fall? on a scale of 1 - 10. 10 being REALLY FAST. 1 being - slow, slow inexorable descent. ]
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 6
[aeiou] [Dark: SMOOSH.]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 6 at target 5)
[wolfsong] Str + WP
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 9, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] Str+WP
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1b. --------- BITE -4 for split, -3 for SMOOSH.
Dice Rolled:[ 6 d10 ] 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 6 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 13 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1b. -2 for the smoosh!
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[aeiou] [DMG]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 2, 7, 7, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[aeiou] 1c: I keep you! Guys, stop fighting me.
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 9, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[wolfsong] 1c. -5 split! -3 SMOOSH.
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 7, 8, 10 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[wolfsong] DAMANANANANANGE!
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] DAmMANANANANGE'
Dice Rolled:[ 12 d10 ] 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10 (Success x 7 at target 6)
[aeiou] [soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 7, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] RAGE -3 for SMOOSH.
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 9 at target 3)
[wolfsong] chomp chomp I HURT YOU!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 8, 10, 10 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] [noooooo! i soak!]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 2, 3, 4, 10 (Success x 1 at target 6)
[aeiou] Rage -2 for smoosh!
Dice Rolled:[ 7 d10 ] 1, 3, 3, 4, 9, 9, 10 (Success x 5 at target 3)
[aeiou] [dmg!]
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 1, 1, 3, 5, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] [monster -1...soak?]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 3, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] Dark 1. FLEE.
[wolfsong] 1a. CHASE if necessary. OTHERWISE BITE. 1b. BITE. 1c. BITE. Rage 1: BITE
[aeiou] Lila: same as Kora, man! Galliards are smart! And avoid mushrooms.
[aeiou] Dark: How Fast Do I Flee?
Dice Rolled:[ 1 d10 ] 1
[wolfsong] BITE!!!!
Dice Rolled:[ 10 d10 ] 2, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9 (Success x 9 at target 3)
[wolfsong] Damage!
Dice Rolled:[ 16 d10 ] 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 9, 10, 10 (Success x 8 at target 6)
[aeiou] [Death Song]
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[wolfsong] WP!
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 6, 8, 10 (Success x 3 at target 6)
[aeiou] WP
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 5, 7, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)
[wolfsong] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 8 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8 (Success x 5 at target 6)
[aeiou] Soak!
Dice Rolled:[ 9 d10 ] 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 7, 8, 8, 10 (Success x 4 at target 6)
[aeiou] They kill.
The galliards kill. There is no blood for them to taste. There is nothing hot, nothing sweet -- Kora's shame, perhaps, when she finds herself stricken still; immobilized by the need to fight with her desire, while, beside her, the Child of Gaia is unmoved, untouched -- that floods their throats and paints their tongues. What they do taste is rank, wet -- yet tenuous, cold smoke, fog, it fills their jaws, gives their teeth purchase each time they tear at the Dark That Grows, the Dark That Stains, the Dark That Taints and Calls to What Is Tainted, sings so sweetly corrupt, wishes - oh, so! - to feed on the [fading (dying)] light. More rot flowers out've the ground, difficult to avoid, and yet they manage -- yet, they are agile, these killing creatures -- and there is poetry in that. This is a formidable foe, and though they strike again and again -- strike true, strike strong -- it is unmoved.
Until. And then. Then the dark rises: lifts itself, bulks itself up; rises and rises, until it encompasses the tops of the trees, blots out the stars, the galliard's moon which gleams somewhere behind the clouds, a dull filtering of ashy luminescence -- swallows all that, and they can feel the weight of it as it falls, before it falls, as it crushes them toward the ground, snaps at their spines, presses their heaving chests into the dirt. Then, oh, then: they push back, strength and will and no you will not, stand as tall as they might, savage it again although they're within the dark, now, swallowed whole by it, within its belly, in danger of being forced to wander the four chambers of its lightless heart --
and then they bite. Again, again. Kora savages it so that a rent is made visible: the sweet air, the light-touched air -- Lila's teeth find purchase, slide away, and the dark -- the dark lifts, lifts itself up, smoke, slow, ponderous, and it means to flee,
but Kora bites it down, and thus
it dissipates, un-tangles and fades as it goes. The woods -- they're in the woods, now -- are silent. Quiet. No sound, but their own breathing. No sound at all.
[wolfsong] They are left alone in the darkness that is not Darkness, looking at the ring of light; which is a door or a pathway; which is a slipknot. Which is something they should not touch, says Sorrow-who-is-more, quiet in that speech that is neither wholly Garou nor fully lupine, to her fellow Galliard.
There is much to be done. They have rites to do, and Sorrow lives within the minds of her ancestors, brings them with her as they harry through the forest looking for a branch of willow, looking for clean, cool water. Looking for the ritual implements necessary for these things to be made whole, to be purified; looking to excise the foreign body, the cancer cells bubbling up from the ground, all poison, the wrongness in the dark.
The regulars, Kevin, the people huddle up in the bar hear, distant, the howling of wolves, again and again and again, baying against the darkness to frighten away the Wyrm. They cleanse the light and the poisoned ground, the corpses of the savaged animals, made wrong by the darkness. They cleanse the earth beneath their feet; and each other, most like, with Darkness in their mouths, that ashy splendour, that livid need for it, coiled up inside them perhaps, dark and seeded. And so: they circle widdershins, reinact the ritual again and again until the woods have been cleansed and the darkness expunged -
- and then they go back to the bar, humanskinned, relying on the darkness to disguise the spatter of blood on their clothes. The regulars are huddled, the fear and longing sharp in the air, the scent nearly palpable, so strong has it become. Kora finds Kevin and Lila finds the kid and they tell them: they tell them that the monster is gone, the aliens banished, or at least the dark part of it, written out of existance, into memory. They tell Kevin and the boy, the boy and Kevin separately, and then they have a beer, on the house - "no one leaves," pause, "until we finish theses" and then, and then they tell everyone to lock the doors and shutter the windows and don't look out.
There is one more cleansing to be done. This time the howling of wolves so close is unmistakeable, but for some of the regulars with a hard kernals of darkness in their souls, something eases, something curls back, something sets them free.
---
Later.
"Maybe we should've had two beers. That howling's thirsty business."
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