Ornature

[1. There is no post order, but please post only once for each post I make unless I indicate otherwise.

2. Post in 15 minutes or less, and declare/roll in 2 minutes or less. "In 15 minutes" means 15 minutes from my post, not the last player to post before you. If you miss your roll it will be skipped. In character this means it automatically fails. And that kinda sucks. :[

3. You are free to multi-task, so long as you can abide by the above strictures. If you repeatedly miss 'deadlines' or are unresponsive in the scene chat, I will ask you to excuse yourself from this scene (or the other) out of respect for my time and the time of our fellow players.

4. This is a very low-risk scene both psychologically and physically.

5. Please PM me now with personal phobias, triggers, or off-limits themes (if none, no need to tell me 'none'). If you're uncomfortable with anything in the scene, IM me once (outside of the chat). If you become uncomfortable/distressed due to content in the scene and need to immediately leave, please IM or email me as soon as you are able to let me know. I don't actually enjoy upsetting my players. Just their characters.

6. Please PM me now with any relevant merits/flaws/traits I should be aware of. If none, no need to tell me 'none'.

7. Keep track of your own health and tempers. Ain't nobody got time for that. Except you. What I mean is: I do not have time for that.

8. Ask questions in the AIM chat. If I don't answer after 2-3 minutes, ping me once in PMs here. In review: AIM chat for chatter and questions, IMs for personal distress, Jove PMs for questions I have not answered within a few minutes.

9. Don't be a dick.

10. Don't forget to be awesome.]

When the sun set today, it blazed through the freshly renewed boughs of the trees, a baleful red circle both drawing and repelling the eye. Everything in sight was cast in a heavy crimson glow, the edges gilded with flaming orange. There seemed to be no break between the edge of the sun and the lines where branches and leaves should be; the world went silent for this sunset, though it flinched with dread.

When the heat grows too searing to bear, you go north. When the itch of summer's heat makes the skin crawl, you go north. You begin heading that way without quite understanding why or how; you find yourself knowing deep into the journey that you will never make it far enough to escape the heat. It seems that a great deal of time has passed, leaving you in autumn now. The leaves here are enormous: veiny orange and brown things the size of the trees they should have come from, standing tall and straight from yellowed grass, fluttering in wind that should be cold but is only hot, dry, and unforgiving.

You have been walking for -- you do not know how long. From where, you do not know, or why. There are people alongside you: three others. You do not know them, or their names. You realize: you do not know your own name. You think, looking upon the forest ahead, that there was a wall before, a low one, maybe around a portico or veranda. You're not sure. It was stone, you think. You're not sure. The sunset was red and unmerciful; you came north, and now the grass is yellow underfoot, there are leaves the size of trees, and you are with strangers and you do not know how long you have been walking with them, or they with you.

You know this: go north. You know this: you are with strangers. You know this: you are a werewolf, and your skin and bones will change shape around you, but you do not know for what purpose. You know this the way that perhaps an ant knows it is an ant, a dog knows it is a dog, a bird knows it is a bird. There is no need to question it, no need for cumbersome mythology. You are a mammal, and this is the type of mammal you are. You know that leaves are not usually that large, even if you do not know if every sunset is always so red, so disquieting, or just the one you remember.

You know that it is night now, the sky darkened, the stars and moon above. You like the moon. You do not know why, but even as thin as it is, the sight of it fills you at once with hopeful joy and maddening anger that itches at the back of your mind. You like the moon very much.

You think: the moon likes me, too.

When the sun set today this one thought he had plenty of reason to stay where he was. Now the heat sinks into his fur and it can't roll off his tongue fast enough to cool the rest of him but he does not stop. If he had stopped he would not be here.

He accepts the strangers as he accepts the heat and the leaves and the yellow grass. This is nothing more than what it is. He knows that dark speckled through with light means the moon is here.

Part of this one wants to run to catch up with the beckoning north. He has been walking with the others this long. He does not hasten to leave them yet.

He sniffs the grass and when he's done he lifts his muzzle to the night air. Maybe it will tell him something.

Oh, she's a rare thing. A rare rare thing, fine and pale as that slivered moon she loves so well, nothing like that the baleful light of that setting sun, those too-large leaves. The wall and the sun and the wall and the trees had an ancient sort of familiarity, see. She can taste them, somehow, on or beneath her tongue. Belongs in places like this, even if she does not know what this place is or where it might be, or that there are other places like this: any of it. Walls though, walls and grounds that are groomed, with sweeping views, well ordered though not - never - tamed.

Listen: a pale girl, slender and finely made given weight by the many imperatives and attachments of her blood is among the quartet.

She is wearing her girl-skin and this she does not mind. She can feel her wolf-skin beneath her girl-skin and this she does not mind either.

Somehow she is both aware of this mindlessness and aware of it as a relief right? A letting-go. She remembers so little she has forgotten even her madness,

and glances at the stranges who are human-strangers and wolf-strangers and says,

"Hello." Smiles, see? How strange it is to speak.

She likes it, though not so well as the moon. "I want to follow her," the moon, the girl means, with a lilting glance upwards through the too-large leaves to the slivered moon in the darkling sky. " - I wonder where she sleeps."

She is walking along in two legs, because that is how Keisha normally walks. Her staff at her side, her sandals on her feet and a simple green sarong dress covering her. She doesn't know why she's walking this way or who she's walking with, and perhaps that sudden realization when it hits (whyever it hits) troubles her, because she stops and frowns. Her attention turns to the moon, who she likes and who likes her, and then around to the other strangers. Her hands grip the wood of her staff and then she realizes that she has a staff. She looks at it, examines the carvings that she began on it upon making her new one (which she doesn't remember she had an old one).

She looks to the wolf, the woman and the other, and takes a breath. She nods, smiles a little. "Hello. Do any of us know who we are?"

Because it's a valid question. And as she asks, she's walking again, heading northward where they want to go.

Amongst their number is a boy who walks beside the girl. He is very different from her, broad where she is slender, strong where she is fine, golden and ruddy where she is silver and white. Something about them is nonetheless similar, as though they were two shoots off the same root; hybrid stalks grafted to the same stem.

It does not bother him very much that he does not know who he is or where he is or why he is. He is, and this is enough for him. As they walk the heat of the day begins to fall away, layer by layer. He looks at the moon and smiles, because he likes the moon very much, because the moon likes him too.

The silver girl speaks: he turns to look at her, his smile widening. "Me too," he agrees, and then:

the other girl speaks, the one who is not silver and white but amber and brown. There is one other in their quartet, another boy, another who is dusky and dark. The boy looks around at the four of them and he sees that he is the largest, and he thinks this must mean he is strongest, and he thinks this must mean he is to protect the others. Of course. That makes sense.

He turns to the dark girl; he seems puzzled and a little amused.

"What a strange question. We are us and we follow the moon."

They know things about themselves. Or feel them, like a pulse that one doesn't notice until you touch your wrist, your throat: the willingness to go into the unknown, and permit the unknown, and keep the unknown's secrets with it if necessary. The call of kingship, how easy it is to be the first to say this is what I want to do. The urge to protect. They feel themselves, their own humor and their own passion, but they are like half-buried boxes, and you are not sure what is inside.

A small dark spot from the sky grows larger, growing closer, and then grows wings, and alights on Erich's shoulder. It is a bird. You know it is a bird, and even: a pigeon. You are a werewolf and that is a pigeon. It has eyes as bright as gemstones, as smooth as riverstones. It hops a bit, and coos, and flutters its wings, then pushes off and circles, flying to Charlotte, working its beak in her hair. And this pigeon is known to the two of them, and is as much a friend as the moon is, but it has no name. Perhaps it never has.

Perhaps they never have.

Up ahead, dark-furred creature, there is a gate. Only a gate, standing between two stone posts. The gate is wrought, and rusted. The stone posts are covered in signs. You can read them: KEEP OUT. NO TRESSPASSING. and so on. You know what those words mean. And you know how strange they are, because to either side of the stone posts there is no fence, no wall. The gate is chained shut. You know this, now:

THIS IS THE ONLY WAY FORWARD. BUT THE GATE DOESN'T WANT YOU TO GO THROUGH.

She frowns at Hector; no, not even frowns. She scowls a little bit. It's a rebuke, even if light-hearted, and this is not the Keisha who is calm and gentle. That Keisha was gained through certain experiences, and she doesn't have those. She has no knowledge that she's "supposed" (in her own estimation) to act older than she is, and so she gives him a harsh look.

"There's no such thing as a strange question, or a normal one. There are only questions. The answers are what are strange or not."

She watches the pigeon as it circles around Charlotte and Erich, and not her or the other. She wonders about it, but only for a second because there's a gate up ahead. And for this Keisha, "Keep Out" and "No Trepassing" may as well be a big neon sign reading COME THIS WAY.

So that's what she does; she cocks her head to the side and starts walking to the gate itself, intending to try to scale it.

"Hello," says the silver girl quietly to the pigeon and her hello sounds a bit like hello and a bit like a responsive cooing. It is smooth in her throat but there is an edge to it that you cannot quiet comprehend unless you know something of the alient beasts from which such animals descended. She does not know such things and yet:

she does. The sharp and alien eye. The darting directness. The delicate savagery.

No quarter here.

--

That is how she looks at the gate. The gate the gate the gate that bars the way and keeps her from the place where she must go.

The girl does not like the chains and does not like the signs and she walks beside the boy with an unconscious certainty and she smiles at the beast and there is something benevolent about this but also assured and she smiles at the girl and agrees with the golden boy.

Here is a secret: already she knows that she does not miss her name. Feels that secret like something organic in her chest.

She glances at the golden boy, alert see.

She knows he will back her up,

when something comes,

and something always comes,

and the signs do not belong there, and how dare they bar her way.

So, she begins tearing them down. Bare hands.

And the male wolf the only one who left his home on four legs can feel in his bones that he could stand on two if he wanted but why would he want to when the ears he has now catches flapping wings before that dark spot takes on a form. He doesn't. His ears and his eyes and his nose and the moon are all good as they are.

They come to a pause and he stands alongside the other male without knowing why. Scents the airs and sees the gate and chuffs out a low firm noise: there. Not harrying or herding the others.

If he is fast he does not move so fast as to leave them behind. No question in his mind and he voices no question and what voice he has he keeps to himself.

He goes around the gate.

A pigeon comes. And the boy knows the pigeon, even as he knows his own self, his bones, his strength. He is happy to see the pigeon, and the pigeon is happy to see him. It alights on his shoulder. He kisses it on its small, sleek-feathered head. It is a meek, pretty bird, neither ferocious nor even particularly intelligent, but it is adoring and loyal and terribly good with directions.

It goes to play with the silver girl. The boy smiles again to see it go.

He doesn't smile to see the gate, though. It bars their way, even if there is no fence, no wall. The wolf moves to go around it, but the boy hangs back: an eye on the silver girl, ready to defend. An eye on the gate, with its air of forbidding and foreboding both.

"Be careful," he calls to the wolf.

One will climb the gate that says you must stay out, and one will tear down the signs that say you must stay out, and one will go around the gate that you must not go around, and one will hang back, perhaps obeying the gate that says you must obey it.

The pigeon lifts from the pink-haired female's shoulder, rising upward, landing to perch on the stone post.

This is what they get, for their troubles:

The gate should not be hard to climb, and it is not. The gate might be painful to climb, and it is. Her feet get stuck. Her hands sting and cut as she grabs hold of rusted metal. Her feet slip, too. She bangs her chin on the iron. The gate rattles under her weight as though it would collapse, but it does not. It just shakes her loose, shakes her down a few inches.

The paper tears easily, as paper does. The metal signs bend and with enough prying will come loose, but they take chunks of stone with the screws and nails that hold them in place. They do come off. The posts start to stop saying KEEP OUT STAY OUT quite so vehemently, as those messages tatter to the stomped-upon grass.

Around the stone post he finds himself looking from a new direction at the one female climbing, the other female tearing, the other male standing watch. Round and round and round and round, a door that is the same on both sides.

The pigeon looks at the boy hanging back. Cocks its head and flies back, but it does not fly over the gate. It cannot. There are laws here, you see, as efficacious as gravity.

She makes a hissing sound (as you do) as her hands are cut and she slips down off the wall with a frown. Looks at the gate, and the chains that bind it shut to them. She examines the lock, looks at the gate itself, furrows her brow.

"We need to find a key." She looks around at the others, up to the moon. Her friends (because she assumes they are friends, even if she doesn't know them). "Some way to get the lock open and get through, or we won't be able to pass."

When the signs are pulled away, what are left are the chains. The chains that bar it and the doors that they secure that bar the way, properly.

And the pink-haired girl tears away the signs that say GET OUT STAY OUT because how dare they bar her and then she grabs the chains and she looks at the golden boy and she is a BEAST she knows this in her bones and she tells him,

tells them, really:

(and when she tells them she is no longer a pink-haired girl. She is large, larger, she remembers not why or what she is, but that there is a strength in her body that remains untapped.)

tells - perhaps - Keisha most of all:

"You're stronger than you look. Help me tear it down."

The boy is, indeed, hanging back. There is that about him: a sense of shyness, nevermind that he is large and well-muscled and has fists that look as though they might easily bash walls to rubble. He watches the others tackle the gate: climbing it and getting hurt for the trouble (though perhaps the sting to the pride is worse than the sting to the body); ripping the signs down; walking around it

and instantly rounding the other post, as though there is no world to either side of the gate.

The pigeon comes back to him. The boy reaches an absent hand up and scritches it under its small beak. Then he walks up to the gate, behind the silver girl and to one side of her, looking at her handiwork.

"Maybe she's right," he says to the silver girl, meaning the earthen girl. "Maybe we need to find a key. I can try, though,"

and so speaking, the golden boy abruptly bursts fur from skin, grows to an enormous and shaggy thing. He grips the gate in both handpaws and pulls as hard as he can; leans backward to leverage his weight, muscles knotted like ropes under that thick fur.

Only once does the wolf circle the gate before he sniffs the air and goes around the gate again and keeps moving north. He takes with him a warning from the upright male and he gives back a whuff of agreement.

Maybe she's right. Maybe they need to find a key.

As the others work to overcome the gate the wolf trots on ahead. He does not think the gate does or does not mean anything. It is a gate and it wore a sign and it has done nothing yet to keep him from moving around it so he keeps moving past it.

There are many signs. The one with pink hair pauses in the tearing, has to pause, to tell the others what she does. When she changes, grows, becomes the strength and awe-inspiring beauty that is in all of her kind, even the ones who have forgotten it.

you are stronger than you look

They begin to use their bodies, power surging up from the earth through them as they change and tear and pull. The pigeon flies away, and into the sky, and vanishes again for a while, forgetting itself. There is no getting around the gate, for one circles. Going past it, one finds oneself passing another stone post on the other side, coming to discover the three others still standing there.

They look, perhaps, in the grass or the stone, pulling at bricks or looking in the lock itself, but there is no key to be found. The gate cannot be broken, which is a sting to the ego: it is so fragile, so rusted, so old, so brittle. They are so strong.

[wits + engimas time]

[[Wits+Enigmas]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

[hokay, so....]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )

[derp]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )

Wits + enigmas

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 3 )

The gate is infuriating. The gate stands between her and where she was meant to go. She wants to be on the other side of it. She wants to cross. She wants to tear it down. She wants to tear it open; it looks like it should be easily ripped asunder,

and still it remains standing.

So they hunt; for a key instead of prey. Beneath her skin and in the back of her beast-mind she knows that one is not the other but the instinct remains the same: to hunt, to seek, to range. This is right and proper and the itch of it is a fine thing beneath her skin until again,

there is no key.

They cannot climb it and they cannot tear it down and they cannot circle it and still the gate blocks the way and this is the way they were meant to go and she opens her mouth and she snarls her frustration and her tongue lolls in her muzzle as she looks at the moon in the dark-velvet sky and she lowers her great head and she sinks from her beast-form to her girl form and she considers the gate again, and all the others.

And then the gate, and oh,

well.

The pink-haired girl, she knocks.

Knock-knock-knock, see? Let me in.

Well, it's almost as though they've switched it right around, isn't it? Now the silver girl is knocking meekly and the golden boy is:

well, he is not a golden boy, for one. He is a shaggy wolf-monster, and he is enormous and his paws are enormous and there's all that fur and the heat that radiates off him feels like a sun in miniature. And for another: he is not meekly watching anymore but tearing at the signs himself, as though falling back on this option now that the others have been exhausted.

Or his arms. At least his arms are exhausted. From pulling.

Your blood sings in your own ears. You are pure. You are bright and strong. Things call to you, yestheydoHAHAHAHA and they are cold and angry and bitter and painful things, scary things, but right here there are others, whose blood is not so bright whose voices are not so pure, but they are with her. The large one sometimes listens.

There is no key on the ground or in the lock. She tore down the signs though. The voice yelling KEEP OUT in those bright glaring letters has quieted. She can make it quieter.

She frowns and walks away from the gate, not having shifted form and instead having just pulled with her own strength. Why? Because that's who Keisha is.

Instead, she looks down at the posters and signs and starts shifting through them. No Trespassing. Keep Out. There's a furrowing of her brow as she starts to look for something between the overt messages.

Something Deeper.

"Let me pass."

Not merely the knock, then.

The knock is an imperial knock, a knock of courtesy. The greeting of one shining thing to whatever abides beyond the gate. The knock is the knock is the knock is what it is.

She knocks. She says, again, "Let me pass."

--

And, then, like the boy, she resumes tearing down the signs.

Let them all fall down.

When the male wolf comes back around the gate the final time he does as his bones bid him do and slips out of a skin made for long distances. Running and howling. The grass is different beneath his feet and the clothes he wears and the metal around his fingers hung around his neck punched through his ear don't mean anything to him.

The wolf was lithe and sharp and tan of fur with brown and red and gray run along its spine but the boy who joins the others is near as tall as the other. Thinner and darker. His hair falls down past his shoulders and he wears all black clothing. A hunting knife on one side of his belt and a medicine bag on the other.

He looks like a shaman maybe but he isn't.

He helps the silver girl and the golden boy take down the last of the signs and when the last of the signs is on the ground he glances to the others. At the girl with the staff in particular.

It is not a large gate. He is not the one to test its compliance. He's watching.

One pulls at the signs. Stupid little signs! They aren't iron or stone. Just aluminum, just paper, just cardboard. Plastic! One tears at them, til his arms are worn out from it. They are stacked and staggered.

One peers at the signs. Stupid little signs! They are thin and their words are shallow. KEEP OUT. STAY OUT. NO TRESPASSING. Variations on a theme. Some in different languages. They, unlike the gate that is meant to be walked through but is locked, do not obfuscate their intentions.

One tears at the signs. Stupid little signs! Don't they know who she is? Nevermind that she doesn't know who she is. She knows what she is. They all know what they are. She rips. The gate, being a gate, does not answer her any other way.

One takes down the signs. Stupid little signs. Stupid signs, man-made, man-lettered. Gates are symbols like walls are symbols, like giant leaves are symbols. Those might be as native as the leaves, the trees. The signs came from something else, had to have, because they have words. You never read in dreams, they say, that's not the part of your brain that works. Maybe that's a lie, to comfort you, a totem like in that movie, right? Something you can count on to assure you that you are only dreaming. Well nevermind: he knows these things, and he knows that gates are made for walking through, and signs are just spells you attempt to cast on the people who read them. He knows: spells only work on you if you believe in their magic.

--

The stone posts have holes in them, screws and nails. Bits of tape. There is a veritable cloud of signage at their feet by the end. And the gate is not rusted, they must have imagined that, and there is no chain and no lock, because the gate just stands there, the wrought iron clean and dark. It looks like it is made of soot; if you breathed on it, the particles would scatter. But touching it, it feels cold.

Iron often does. Even in summer, late summer, after a baleful sunset.

In the distance, wind moves through the trees, the giant leaves. It sounds like a sigh. A waking sigh, or a relieved sigh. The woods shudder.

The first to put their hand on the gate finds it swinging easily inward, as though it was always meant to swing inward, welcoming and unafraid. It doesn't even creak, and the landscape beyond does not change. The world is no different. Only their perception of the barriers within it.

The signs go away. The rust and tarnish goes away. All that's left in the end is a gate, powder-black and perfect, and looking at the gate the boy suddenly understands that gates are meant to be barriers, yes, but they are meant also to be portals. You can go through such things.

And this gate: it opens, as it is meant to do. Now the way is open. There is a forest; there are giant, giant, giant leaves. Maybe they are small. Maybe they have been made small by the innocence of their own minds. Their names, their lives; wiped clean. What remains is who they are, who they really are outside of those artificial and self-imposed walls, strictures, boundaries.

The boy is still a boy. He is still brave and a little shy, bright-souled, ill-considered, sometimes blundering. He looks at the open way and then he glances at the others, three of them. Then he walks through, the first step cautious, the next easier. Presently, he reduces from his monstrous form: becomes a hulking near-boy, then a boy.

"Oh." The pink-haired girl says, after.

"Oh," listen to the note of surprise in her voice. Listen to the way it enfolds itself into something deeper and more feral, girl-surprise giving way to wolf-noise because the gait is open,

the way is open.

There are dark things everywhere.

It is dark.

There are strange dark things inside her but she is around them too, bright as the moon will be when it is full; bright as that sliver that tastes like a sickle and curves like coy lover's smile.

She is a girl and then she is a wolf because she is girl-and-wolf, she is werewolf and she folds down to four legs and she lolls her tongue and looks at the others and barks.

It sounds like an invitation.

The gate is open. Time to run.

The gate swings open. Gates are meant to keep out so much as they are meant to permit entry and maybe it's starting to come back to him. This reflection of lies in the shadows of a life he didn't take in with him. If it does he stands silent anyway. Accepts it same as he accepted the drawing north and the too-large leaves and the red that was so red it bled into everything else.

Now the silver girl goes to her wolf skin and he does not smile. He does not join her. Long distance covered on four legs already and now he is stood back and watching.

"Alright," he says to the wolf-girl. The first word he's spoken since they regained cognizance.

He steps through the gate.

She looks from the signs up to the gate as the last of them are torn down and the gate is swung open. Well. She seems kind of silly now.

She frowns and stands, and follows them through.

The field is not vast. The golden grass is not endless. They are within a few moments, even less, of the trees, which

get smaller as they get closer, running or walking. The leaves are the right size. The trees are not. Things are coming back to them, like a voice that is and is not familiar:

"-- been gone a long time now.""How long is a long time?"

The golden, blue-eyed one hears himself ask. They all hear him ask it, if they remember.

"Almost two years."

There are other voices, their own voices -- protests, questions. Two years! How!

"It was before River died."

Oh, they remember a little there, at that name which is a thing found in nature and so it can be permitted. They remember someone dying. Death is a bad, sad, maddening thing. Death hurts very much. Some of them were not here when it happened. They know there was death. That's what is behind them, very very very very very very far behind them. Other things, too, but lots of death. And River, whoever River was, River died and maybe, maybe everything bad happened after that. Maybe whatever was lost was forgotten, at least temporarily.

"Keep these talismans,"

says someone else entirely, not the deep timbre of the first voice, not one of their own. They don't know what the talismans are. Or what they're for. They don't know what they have on them is familiar and what isn't. Is the staff a talisman? Is the bead, the metal piercing, the pigeon? But someone told them to keep them. Whatever they were.

--

The trees are very small, and the leaves are the right size.

They come upon a clearing, which to them is the size of a boot-heel. Something is in the middle. Something small and shining and curled up and sleeping and thumping its tail in its sleep and with red-gold fur and twitching ears. Very very small, and smelling of autumn, smelling of barley in the wind and smelling -- for here such things have a scent -- of music. Something dreaming.

A little wolf. Tiny enough to fit in the palm of even the pink-haired one's hand.

The moon likes him, too.

Does she have pink-hair here, too? In this form. She runs and they run through the gate and things change and the horizon comes closer and recedes. The trees are too large and then very small and the leaves are the right size and that is enough. There are scents in the air and they are vibrant as a anything, they are a chord that strikes some note of familiarity in the fibers of the muscle of her heart.

The trees open up and here is a clearing and there is a very, very, very,

very,

small wolf.

It could fit in her hand but she does not have hands.

She has paws.

She lopes closer, closer.

The moon likes him. Her nose is warm. She wuffs and nuzzles the dreaming little wolf. Smells his music.

They all hear and they all remember and they all know death to be a thing that doesn't go away. It's there waiting for all of them just as wakefulness waits at the end of a dream but all dreams end eventually.

This one's hands are heavy with all the jewelry he wears. He walks light on his feet. Even as the echoes come back at him and them he walks through the field and he listens to the voices. Glances over at the other male once. Says nothing.

Talismans?

And here the clearing. Here something small enough to trot upon if attention doesn't come before the step. He sees and he scents the air though he stands on two legs and he stands idle frowning but not confused.

He crouches at the edge of the clearing and does not mean to disturb the sleeping wolf but how is he to know his presence won't be a disturbance.

She doesn't understand what's going on. Memories, some that she may recall, are coming back to her and she is confused. So she goes with the others and she looks at the small wolf. She drops into a crouch, reaches out gently to touch her lightly.

With a wet nose coming close, the tiny wolf's ears flicker. She is enormous, compared to him; her tiny nuzzle rocks his entire body. It makes him open one eye, peering at her drowsily, but without fear. A shadow swoops overhead; the pigeon is the size of an eagle. Maybe they are small. Maybe the light plays tricks, maybe the bird is closer than it seems.

No matter. They remember:

shadows tearing at them in some other wood, a darker wood far from here, more to the south. God, how far have they come? Ripping at their clothes, raking claws into their skins, wounding their souls more than their bodies. How did they survive such an attack? Flashes of light, bursts of water over their flesh from shattered something-somethings. They tore -- they tore something away from all of them, and they wandered on, less hurt and less bloodied but

something was happening to them, as they walked. So gradually they didn't even notice.

It's easy to forget the most important things. You just have to keep going.

--

The wolf thumps his tail as he is woken. He snorts and stretches and rolls up onto his feet, spry. He wags his tail to see them, barks. And they understand:

"HELLO. WE WILL BE A PACK."

The silver girl becomes a silver wolf, and the silver wolf runs ahead. See her go, like a bolt of silk let loose. That swift, that smooth. The boy follows, at first walking, then breaking into a trot, then running outright himself. On two legs instead of four he is not as fast as a wolf, but he is fast: fast and strong and athletic, blessed in raw and physical ways by the moon who likes him.

The trees grow small and small and smaller still. This does not quite seem to make sense to the boy, but then: nothing really makes sense. Things are beginning to come back to him, an existence before this one nudging at the corners of his consciousness. In a way it lifts the simple contentment of ignorance; it makes him, for the first time, begin to wonder

who am i?

where am i?

why am i?

But then they are at the clearing, which is tiny as a palmprint. They gather around and look down and there is a wolf there, a tiny wolf, curled up and dreaming. The silver wolf nuzzles the little wolf; the dark girl touches it. The dark boy does not touch it, and neither does the golden boy.

--

The little wolf wakes. Another piece of the past comes back to them. The boy blinks suddenly, and his brow creases with a frown that looks and feels odd, new, out of place. He rubs his face for a moment. He looks down and the little wolf is wagging his tail up at them now, telling them all that

THEY WILL BE A PACK

and the boy understands this to be a good thing, a happy thing, though he does not quite understand. "Okay?" he says, uncertainty making the word a question. He thinks for a moment. "You're very small. Do you want to ride on my shoulder like my pigeon?"

Speaking of which: where is his pigeon?

Charlotte (she does not know that she is Charlotte, but somehow she knows that she has a name now, a name that belongs to her the way the name River belongs to -

belongs to -

names below to things. So, Charlotte thinks that the small wolf does not want to ride the small wolf wants to run wolves were meant to run not ride.

HELLO. WE WILL BE A PACK.

the small wolf barks and she barks back, and there is a spiraling sort of brightness to her tone that begins to shade itself into a howl, a paean, a ululating song.

It is worldless. It does not have a name.

After all that darkness, some part of her knows, or believes, that this is a better way to be.

Here. Now.

The memories, they flash and they hurt. They pain her, emotionally and spiritually and she flinches as they come to her. But they are just memories. "Just." Right.

More importantly, the wolf awakes, and it is happy to see them. It says they will be a pack. Does it feel like it shouldn't be? Like she has something that fills that? She isn't sure. Maybe. But for now, because it makes the little wolf so happy, she smiles.

She does not say yes though. Just smiles.

They came here for a reason. They came her to find something lost, lost for almost two years. They came with talismans to protect them against something, but those talismans were torn from their very bodies. They are themselves, and they have purpose, and they are in... the spirit world. They are in a place with its own standards that defy both natural law and the inexorable rules of logic. They find a gate made to open and trying to keep them out, and they think

someone made those signs.

They find something that must be lost, look how small he is, look how delighted he is for the company. Look at him wagging his tail, growing foot-sized from palm-sized, now he is up to their knees. He is very excited, his eyes bright gold, the autumnal light gilding the edges of his fur. What a pretty thing he is, and the tall golden one says okay to the pack idea, and tells him he is small.

"I AM GROWING!" he barks back, not in anger but excitement. "SO WE CAN BE PACK."

They all have names. Not easy to find, it's right on the tip of your tongue, but you can remember ... the W... the War... the Warder. The Warder in a cold place, not summery at all, telling them to go north. No, he said to cross over, to find what was lost. They know this. They all have names, and cannot recall their own, but the name of this lost little one is coming back to them, slowly, slowly.

Maybe it starts with a B. There's an N in there somewhere.

He wags. Cocks his head to the side. "WE ARE A PACK. THIS IS OUR DEN. HELLO."

He is waist-high now.

He is growing. He is growing so-fast and he is growing SO WE CAN BE PACK and she barks-back and remembers the W- W- Warder, the places-that-were and the darkness. Here are names too.

She is beginning to remember names too.

She remembers, you see, that she has a name.

That she does not want a name.

--

Nuzzle, nuzzle, nip. This is the rhythm when she returns to the small-wolf. Nuzzle, nuzzle, nip. Familiarity, comfort, challenge. Comfort, affection, challenge.

She barks again. He is growing!

And for now they are a pack.

BARK.

But this is not their den.

When he is done growing, she knows, they have to go.

Wefindyou. she tells him. Comefollowus.

She tells him.

Home.

Though she hardly remembers what that means.

He's right, the little wolf. He is growing. Or maybe they are shrinking. The boy is a little worried about this latter possibility, and he looks often at his hands, his palms, to try and determine if there's any subtle shrinkage going on. Probably not. He looks at the wolf again; now he is knee-high. Now he is waist-high. Is he still getting bigger? Wolves aren't supposed to be much bigger; the boy is quite sure of that.

"We can be a pack," he says slowly, "but ... I don't think this is our den. No. Our den is back that way. Where we came from. And ... and across. I mean, across. Across the curtain."

He looks to the silver girl for help. She has a name. The idea is a thunderclap in the boy's mind. Names: what a novel concept. Her name is ... is ... it starts with a soft sibilant sound, sh he thinks. The entirety escapes him, but that is okay: she seems to share his mind.

He is a werewolf and they are in the spirit world and a body that stays in this world too long will shrug off its body and stay here forever. Not as a punishment but because everything here is a reflection. Reflections have no use for substance. They're born of and beyond real things.

This he knows. Not his name and not his home and not what brought them here. Only echoes these but he knows now this is not a dream.

At least he thinks he knows.

As the little wolf grows he rocks back on his heels to give it space. The wolf-girl tells him. Found and follow. He stays crouching until the little wolf who is no longer so little who smells like someone he can and cannot remember has come up past his waist and then he stands.

They have to go across the curtain. He knows this would be an easy journey for him. Like stepping through an unlocked gate. This side calls to him more than the realm does but he knows.

He takes a step back but he doesn't leave without them.

Brandon. Possibly Brian. But he is accommodating to Charlotte's nuzzling and nipping and he is playful, wagging happily at the attention. He bumps his head on hers. He wants a pack so badly. He needs a pack he has been so long without a pack, his pack, he could use a pack.

BARK.

His eyes fly wide as Charlotte barks that they found him, and so now he should follow. He looks around, and his crest falls, his tail drooping. "not here?" he whines at her, and at Erich, who is also telling him that not-here is their den, he and his new 'pack'. He goes over to the other one, long-haired male one, and bumps up against him. "tell them here, here is good."

It is unlikely that Hector will tell him any such thing. The wolf droops, saddened.

No, Brian is his name-name, only one of his names. There's another N, another R, a gleaming red glow from the horizon, but it is the wrong direction, it is a name that means the very bright and the very cold.

--

A thunderclap: that is what it is in their minds. His name is Northern Sun. He has a name and it is Northern Sun. His name is also Brian, and he has been lost in the spirit world for almost two years. They came to find him, the four of them, to bring him back to his pack, to help him find his way. Theurges go missing often enough; maybe they each, for one reason or another, felt a measure of pity for his packmates left behind

HIS PACKMATES WHO ARE ALIVE AND WAITING FOR HIM, OH GOD.

They have packmates. They all have packmates behind them, waiting for them. Oh. God. And Northern Sun has been without his for almost two years, they without him, barely feeling him alive, not knowing why he had not returned from beyond the veil.

Because he forgot.

Because he didn't have a talisman.

Or because his was torn from him, too.

--

One of them feels his name returning like a whisper, a breath before a poem: Hhh, hhh.

Another feels it encroaching, coming closer, unwanted, fearful.

Their names are returning to them. The world will return to them. Like all gates, this gate is meant to be opened, meant to be walked through. If you can just remember that it is there. If you can just remember that the barriers between are nothing more than an illusion held in place by spells that you only choose to believe in.

Names are spells. Those spells, if believed in, call them back to their lives. And their truths. And their packmates.

Northern Sun.

That is his name. This tiny-wolf, this small-wolf, this medium-wolf, this full-size-wolf who is now their packmate. Only not. He is not their packmate but he is a packmate, his pack is out there, they are waiting for him,

his name is Northern Sun.

The boy looks thunderstruck. He is wide-eyed and stunned and sucking a breath to give the news, which he thinks is good news, it must be good news, but then: what comes out is --

"Charlotte!"

And he rounds on her, his silver sister. He laughs aloud.

"Charlotte. You're Charlotte!"

He gives her a name. He pins her in place. She is whining. It is an animal whine. It is in the back of her throat, this whine, not precisely of protest but of something else that remains nameless as she is for another three -

- two

- none seconds.

--

And she remembers two. Her name and his name and their names and Northern Sun. Erich says,

You're Charlotte, and the wolf becomes a girl again and she is a different sort of girl now that she is laden with a name. She knows the things behind him; the dark things she can fee scritch-scritch-scratching against the recurve of her mouth.

She swallows them.

She is a girl named Charlotte and she is not laughing but she looks at Erich with a familiar affection,

and names him.

"And you're Erich."

With an odd little smile.

Then looks to Northern Sun. And says,

" - and you're Northern Sun. Come back with us. Your pack is waiting."

Before he remembers his own name he knows he has a pack on the other side unassured of his presence. That he has a mate far from here and they will have a baby any day now and if he never came home his mother is there with her. Not their names but their faces and the tethers they offer him. He knows.

And he knows these two before him. Knows they fight together though they are not pack. Stands while they remember and he waits and then he reaches out to shuck aside the velvet curtain. Maybe they can pass through with him. If not they're strong enough to do it on their own.

He does not will not promise not to leave before Northern Sun does but he stands while the wandering wolf decides whether or not to follow.

No one names Hector, but no one needs to. Hector knows things they are not meant to know. Hector knows his name. He knows the name of his mate and the considered names of his child. He knows he has a child coming. He knows the names of his packmates, current and former. He knows Erich and Charlotte, and knows Keisha. It comes back. It starts to come back.

They came to get Northern Sun because no one should be lost for so long. They came, instead of his pack, because of what this place is: memory-stealer, name-stealer. They would remain here, a whole pack of Garou, and stay with their packmate.

That is why they wanted wolves from disparate packs, with at least one of their number staying behind. It's the only way they could make sure they'd hold it together and get home again.

Home again, home again,

something-ity something.

--

Northern Sun wags slowly. They are not his pack. But his pack -- he remembers. He wuffs at them, and looks at Hector, who is drawing apart the laces of the veil to move through it. They cannot be carried on his strength of spirit. They will have to use their own. They will have to use their own, and hope that the prodigal will go with them.

He sniffs, and chuffs, and his tail does not wag. He shakes his furry head.

"My pack."

The veil is parting. On the other side is Northern Colorado, the outskirts of Fort Collins. It'll be a long run back. But their packmates will be waiting for them.

All of them.

Keisha can be found on a college campus as a rule. She can even be found on this particular campus; she was here earlier today, hitting up the library for one of her classes. But she's not here for study tonight. Tonight she has a mission, and she's here with two members of the Baklava Republic as well one of Celduin's Galliards. She's dressed more for function than anything else, in little more than a T-Shirt and jeans with a jacket to handle any cold issues (snow be damned). Her backpack is slung over a shoulder with her ritual tools, dreads pulled back and bound together as she walks into the building alongside the others.

Her eyes look around the inside of the place, frowning lightly. As if it's standard operating procedure, she looks to the others.

"Gonna look across." She slips a pocket mirror out of her jacket pocket to do just that.

[[Look across Gauntlet! Using mirror, spending WP 'cause that's one I hate botching..]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

Someone who is not Charlotte drives or maybe there are two someones or three. However they get there includes: Charlotte with Erich, quiet is his shadow. With their shocks of blond hair and pale blue eyes, their long limbs and open, attractive features, and perhaps even just the way they move, together, as if they know how to move, together, through some sixth sense (which they do), strangers often assume that the pair are siblings. So,

like siblings, rolling out of the cab of the truck, weaving through the campus to meet the others at Tivoli, then ducking inside to the auditorium.

The air smells like snow. Doesn't it? Feels like snow; tastes like that - bright and cold and metallic, the sensation of it in the back of the throat. Charlotte has a small messenger bag slung across her body. With her pink hair, it makes her look more like a student who actually belongs here, rather than the interloper she is. Charlotte is shivering in little more than a heavy hoodie, a t-shirt and jeans, but her winter coat would probably get destroyed so.

Here she is, watching the shadow of the building against the sky until it swallows them, then allowing her attention to drift over the interior lines with a kind of thoughtlessness that nevertheless feels rather present as they arrive and look around.

Sense Wyrm

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 3, 3) ( fail )

"So." Her hands are in her pockets. They're on their way or they're there and Tamsin's got her eyes open looking around yes looking around but also thinking this looks like a good place to do that green club thing maybe and what is weird anyway. Maybe they all rode together in somebody's car or maybe they carpooled but there they are.

Tamsin: she likes to have a plan, of some sort. A plan, when it comes to poking her nose into things. Of course, Tamsin also likes poking her nose into things. Of course she would, Fog's Fianna galliard-darling, moon on the wane, falling towards and through justice and spiritual mysteries and secrets but too simmering for any of those wasn't there yet. She has positioned herself, or tried to position herself, so that the theurge girls are somewhat perteckted by Erich and herself, even though they're just a sneaky standing around bunch of loiterers right now, one loiterer checking her makeup in a compact, the other one looking around and shivering.

The 'So,' it turns out, is directed toward Erich, though her gaze skims over Charlotte and Keisha. He's Fostern; she defers to him automatically. It is in the somewhat graceful dip of her posture, the cant of her head. She's got on some kind of silly warm hippy hat. Gonna look across, Keisha says,

"So... Weird. Anybody, um, feel the Wyrmd? Uh, weird." Tamsin says, followed by, "How're you thinking we do this, Erich? Maybe, um, two of us should go otherside and two of us should stay thisside? Split up you guys, uh, Baklava, since I guess you can talk across, well you know. What'cha thinking?"

The two of them are certainly of the right age to be students here. Perhaps Erich's the older brother, a fifth-year senior cruising his way to graduation on the tail end of an athletic scholarship. Perhaps Charlotte is the quirky, eccentric younger sister, surely an artist or a poet or something of the sort with that quiet, quirky demeanor and that pink-streaked hair.

Erich is talking as he strolls up with Charlotte. The conversation is entirely unimportant. It has something to do with meatburgers, which are of course burgers composed entirely of meat, and the subtle distinctions, benefits and drawbacks to meatburgers with meat-buns vs meatburgers that are just meat-patties. When Tamsin Cinder-Song so's him, Erich looks -- startled, if anything. He's so new to this Fostern business. It feels weird, like wearing a coat still a little too big for him.

"Uhh...."

He thinks for a minute, brow beetling the way it does. Then he glances at Charlotte; a little uneasy at, or at least just unused to, the idea of separating from her. Still; it's a sound strategy.

"What do you think, Charlotte? You and Tamsin on one side, me and Keisha on the other?"

Back at Cold Crescent, Shieldwind's pack is recruiting. They are the new Guardians. It's not an easy task; everyone knows what happened to the last pack of Guardians. Everyone saw what was stripped of their Alpha at the punishment rites. Cold Crescent still relies heavily, and may always rely heavily, on every Garou in the sept doing regular patrols, serving regular duty. At many septs in many places, that's the norm; coming from before, where Forgotten Questions is so self-sustaining that it hardly needs help outside of the official Guardian packs, it takes some wolves some getting used to.

No matter: Shieldwind pulled from multiple corners tonight. A Fostern Ahroun, a couple of Theurges, throw in a Galliard, and no matter if they're from three different packs. If they have the skills he needs and they're on duty, they're who he sends.

Something weird is going on at Tivoli. A recent rash of attacks. Fights and sneak assaults, mostly; campus police on high alert. But last night someone actually went missing. And now campus police is on high alert and everyone else is trying to keep it quiet and the Warder is interested.

--

Charlotte smells the cold. Keisha flips out a mirror. Tamsin asks Erich dubya-tee-eff we gonna do. And yes: they all are taken for students by the campus police car that drives slowly by. Four kids together, one of them a big guy. They all look like they go together, weirdly: hoodie dude, braids, pink hair, hippy hat. Oh yeah. They're just like every other student at the three schools that use this campus, where plenty of the matriculating students are coming back to school or dropped out once or are just taking a few classes while they work.

While Charlotte's nose takes in nothing, Keisha feels the cold air become as thick and soft as cobwebs that she can brush away with her hand, like walking through a haunted house. It's dark on the other side, dark from winter and cold and a new moon. It takes a while for the lights on buildings and corners to flicker into view in the penumbra for her, crawling with spiders who, themelves, seem to throb gently in time with the buzzing of the lights. They are quiet. On the other side, it is already snowing softly, silently, though the flakes never seem to touch the ground.

There is darkness in that building. Where the other buildings seem to hum with a golden inner warmth, a curiosity and energy that mingles with sleepiness and boredom and is broken here and there by spikes of anxiety, Tivoli is black inside. Particularly in one arm of it, where they hold lectures and even wedding receptions.

She hasn't shivered despite the chill in the air; she's used to chilly weather and she's adapted to the chillier weather here. But once she looks across, the frigid feel there and the feeiling that something is just wrong sends that tremor up her spine, back to reverberate throughout her body.

"Yeah, there's something wrong here." She says it perhaps a little too loud, the problem that comes inherent with peeking across and losing access to all your senses on this side of the Gauntlet. She shakes her head, reorienting her attention to this side, and points off toward the arm where the darkness is. "Along with the usual pattern spiders and such, it's exceedingly dark. Particularly over there."

She looks around to each of them, tightening her grip on her staff. "Seems like a good place to start, if you ask me."

Charlotte gives a sharp-shouldered little shrug. It is elegant and a bit spare, the gesture. She has one hand tucked into the front pocket of her jacket; the other wrapped around the shoulder-strap of her bag. As they walk, she considers Erich's speculation, her mouth drawn to one side. She's inhaling too, but she doesn't smell anything out of the ordinary and she gives Erich a silent look and a little shake of her head to communicate that she hasn't detected anything.

Still; Tamsin asks if they should split up, and Erich considers it, and Charlotte glances at Tamsin and then Keisha, then the building proper.

Then shakes her pink head: a silent no.

"The Gauntlet's thick, here. Maybe you could get over quckly if we needed you, or vice-versa. Maybe not. I don't think we should split up. Let's we check out inside, then go over to the otherside together."

"'kay, you have a point. Especially since last time we split up it was kind of a shitstorm. Let's go inside," he nods toward the rather grand-looking hall, "and have a quick peek around. Then we'll duck into a bathroom and cross over together."

The campus police car drives by: slow-ly, and Keisha's voice is as loud (to Tamsin [near]) as the plink of a stone on a frost-rimned lake: plink, crack. Tamsin pulls the brim of her floppy hippy hat down over her ears, earringless because it's too much of a pain to find earrings again after a shift and dedicating them seems wasteful (and too hard, anyway). They still get lost.

"So it's just like, dark on the other side if you look? Thick dark that's beating all sinister-as-fuck heartbeat-style dark, or just sketchy suspect dark?"

Charlotte: shakes her pink head; Tamsin looks alert, and slopes a glance toward Erich, but doesn't argue, though she shifts restively. The Gauntlet is thick. So at his word --

-- a grin. "Let's just hope it's unlocked, man."

[Tamsin: just in case talking people into ignoring us sneaking into dark building is necessary, Persuasion On?]

Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (2, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

[Per + Alert or PU, same!]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )

[[Per+Alert, Spec: Uncanny Instincts]]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 10) ( success x 1 ) Re-rolls: 1

"Oh!" Erich thinks of something else. "I actually have a new Gift now. I can talk to Earth for a while and see what's going on. It takes me like... ten minutes though. So when we get in I can maybe do that while you guys look around? Just stay close enough that if you yell I can get to you pronto."

Per + Primal Urge

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )

[percep+pu!]

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

[That building is creepy and dark. Charlotte has the feeling they're being watched, and then she begins to smell something like blood and decay. Some cold, and it's a dim scent.]

Tamsin asks Keisha if the darkness is sketchy-suspect dark or a more sinister one. She shakes her head, her attention shifting as the hair on the back of her neck stands up. "Not just sketchy-suspect. Like, full-on blackness. Garden-variety dark doesn't get a 'something's wrong' assessment.

Erich suggests that they go inside first and he talk to the earth, and she shakes her head. "Do you think that's wise if it turns into a fight? We're talking about something that plays and hides in the darkness. I don't figure if one of us gets attacked, it's going to give us enough time to yell to you, Erich."

A pause. "Also, splitting up in the darkness, when I'm getting a feeling like we're being watched? That's that what white girl victim number two in a horror film does."

Erich looks a bit impatient now. "Okay, good points. But we're getting to the point where we need to quit talking and start doing.

"So, here are the options as I see them. A: we sit out here being watched while I talk to Earth and see if I can figure out what's going on in there in detail. Then we can hopefully go in and take care of shit. In the meantime, we run the risk that whatever's in there -- and I think it's a goddamn vampire, and not the sparkly kind -- is preparing to mow us down with a silver gatling gun.

"B: we just charge the fuck in as a group and kill whatever we find, and fuck finesse and planning-ahead and all that. We'll do a sweep of realmside and then check umbral to make sure we don't miss anything. We run the risk of barreling headfirst into a boobytrap, of course, but honestly that's kinda always been my MO so I'm cool with it.

"Any thoughts before I pick one?"

Charlotte inhales and she does this the way a cat does it, mouth-open, pale eyes flicking over the facade of Tivoli building; the dark windows of one particular wing. Her expression is twisted, after. Pulled to the side, her mouth a moue of distaste. The faintest of shudders rattles gently down her spine, but only her packmate is likely to sense it.

A glance at Erich, the sweep of her gaze quiet and gleaming.

"If you want to talk to the Earth, do it here. We can wait now. Maybe earth'll have some idea where to slip in or what to expect. Except it'll think like earth, see. Slow and solidly, and it might not know what is inside because inside the earth is all smothered with the stuff that makes up the building, and suffocated and it can't breath so it might be a little bit mad too.

"But out here it might know what comes and goes and where it goes and what stays and when it stays.

"So I guess I say you talk to the earth, then we go in."

Tamsin, Fianna-woman, waning-moon, looks at the darkness. Looks at it good. Or maybe it just begins to act on her -- to tickle her senses: to sharp them up, hone them, whettstone, knifeknifeknife oh and Tamsin's eyes narrow and her muscles tense-tense like they're remembering how easy it is to switch-blade out a war-monster because that blooddeadsmell that no it's in the back of her throat and she says:

"Do you guys fe - it's because we are; gotta be a leech; it's all grave-clot yuck; it's all like, scabby shadow lightlessness; it's - " - she spits on the ground.

Looks at the building. Looks at Erich. Ready to rar. "Let's just go the fu -- hmm, uh, a silver gatling gun you say?" A beat, because she is deeply suspicious of Erich's just-run-right-in plans, specifically. "Yeah okay. Talk to Earth and maybe we can get a bead on its location because it never hurts to try to get more info. Well, actually, I dunno Theurges, don't suppose while Erich's talking to earth, one of you can talk to Fire or something Sunlight-y or Garlic-y?"

The Garlic-y is a joke. Tamsin is restless, sort of bouncing in place.

"I have some fire tooth talens," says Charlotte. "I can start waking them up."

Tamsin: >:]

Another one of those beetle-browed moments. Arms folded, lips pressed flat together and all. Then a nod.

"Okay. Lemme talk to Earth then. Meanwhile, Charlotte can wake up her talens and Keisha can maybe prepare too. And Tamsin -- keep your elf eyes sharp. Or something. You know what I mean."

And on that note: Erich sits on the ground, crosslegged, and. Uh. Communes. It's his first time doing this. He isn't actually sure what he's doing.

[oh god i have 2 dice. +WP! 100yd-radius of info per succ.]

Dice: 2 d10 TN7 (6, 7) ( success x 2 ) [WP]

Aw. Elf! Tamsin half-smiles, but all she does is - oh, fiddle with a phone, something, so they don't look too strange, all in a clump snow in the air night falling and something bad going on, should somebody else come. Maybe she hums, or sings something, unless that'd break any concentration.

Tamsin, she's ready for the signal, for ending something old and dead and a long time ago ended anyway, time goes on.

So, Erichs sits and Charlotte flicks her gaze up at Keisha and then Tamsin and then back to beetle-browed Erich, considering all options for approach. Back to the building, a frown deepening, pulling the corners of her mouth down into a quietly solemn expression. Charlotte hunkers down to her haunches and rummages through her messenger bag, sorting through the contents until she finds: her slingshot and a small leather pouch. She takes out the slingshot and tucks it into the back waistband of her jeans, then pulls out the leather pouch, opens it, and starts working to activate a small handful of... well, teeth. Human teeth. Girl-teeth, roots and all, quietly ivory in her hands.

Fire tooth talen the first!

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 3, 3, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )

Fire tooth talen the second!

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (4, 4, 5, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )

So...

Erich doesn't move for about ten minutes. Or well. He moves. Obviously: he breathes so they know he's not dead. Or petrified. He breathes slowly and deeply and regularly, almost like he's asleep, and in a way he is. His body relaxes. His shoulders slump. After a while his head falls forward, and at this point, honestly, if Charlotte doesn't kinda re-right him, he just kinda topples over and sprawls for a while.

Not too long though. After five, ten minutes, Erich's blueblueblue eyes pop open. He takes a quick inhale, like someone waking from an unexpected nap, and sits up.

"I think it's just the one vampire," he says. "A... former college kid, I think? And now it's nomming on its classmates." He frowns. "It's kinda sad actually. I wonder who turned it in the first place. Maybe we can ask it. I mean I think we still have to kill it, but... maybe if we ask it and at least tell it that it'll be avenged, in a way?

"Unless of course it wanted to be a vampire. Then, I have no sympathy. Anyway." He climbs to his feet. "Let's go kick some ass."

Fire tooth talen the third.

Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 1 )

Dice: 7 d10 TN8 (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )

She narrows her eyes when she hears "vampire," and a sound not unlike a growl comes from the Child of Gaia. In Homid form. (Yes, the one who is all peace and love and doesn't ever kill.) Because that...well, that's something different. One or two have seen how she reacts to the undead before. And, it may be noted, she takes her backpack off, and sets her staff aside.

"Say the word."

[His name is actually Mike but he introduces himself as Jedediah, smirking when he says that you can call him 'Jed' for short.]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )

[[Init +6]]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )

+6

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )

[forgot: that's Jed + 7]

+8

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )

[for Erich: +17]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )

[Erich

Jed

Keisha

Charlotte

Tamsin.

Declare in reverse!]

[Uh. Go... inside building.]

[Note: this actually should have come before inits.]

While they're talking, suddenly there's a howling sound. A shriek, almost, and then the sound of footfalls racing across concrete. Thin-soled shoes, very stylish, skinny black jeans, skinny black t-shirt, big black spacers in his earlobes and sharp, yellowing teeth. He's running at them, wild-eyed,

blood already dripping out of his mouth.

[1a. BITE the monster!!! while staying between it and the theurges.

1b. Bite it again!

-1 Rage: Snap-shift to Hispo.]

[1a/b slingshot previously activated talens at the monster hopefully while he's far enough away that she won't kill her friends.]

[[Snap-Shift: Hispo.

1a: Bite

1b: Bite

R1: Bite.

R2: Bite]]

[Strike R2 for Keisha.]

[PREPARATION? WHAT PREPARATION? FUCK IT WE'LL DO IT LIVE.

-1WP Resist Pain, -1R snapshift hispo as well SINCE MY CLAWS ARE DULL AS FUCK RIGHT NOW.

1. Spur Claws -1R!

R1-3. Bitings! Unless Liz deems other actions more appropriate!]

[1: zip behind Erich! effectively: dodge

2: grab Charlotte!

3: BITE CHARLOTTE AND DRINK HER SHINY BEAUTIFUL BLOOD

4: still drinking]

[Spur Claws. DODGE THIS, MOTHERFUCKER. >:|]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 7 )

[dodge!]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5) ( fail )

[dam +6]

Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

[[Dex Brawl for Bite 1, -2 dice for split.]]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

[[Damage Str + 4 (Crinos) + 1 (Bite) + 1 (Succ)]]

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 5, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 2 )

[note to self: move those rolls down a bit, it's Jed's action(s)]

[2: grabbing charlotte! st + brawl]

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (5, 7, 8, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )

Strength + brawl

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2) ( fail )

[3: delicious.

difficulty lowered due to hold.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 4, 6, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )

The vampire moves fast. Wickedly fast, rushing at them, zipping behind Erich as Erich lunges at him; Erich catches flesh, cold and clammy, in his teeth. But he doesn't hurt it enough to keep it from latching hold of the still-homid Charlotte, arm around her upper body and hand grabbing her hair, yanking her head to the side before he sinks oversized, yellowing fangs deep into her jugular.

The thing makes a noise like a groan, eyes rolling back as it starts suck, sucking deep and hungrily at that glorious, shining, silver-pure blood. He's moaning, shaking from it.

[[Dex+Brawl #2. -3 for split, WP spent.]]

Dice: 2 d10 TN6 (9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]

[[Damage]]

Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )

(Changing Charlotte's action. Snapshift to Crinos. 1. Boom.. Dropping talen.)

Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )

[Jed: Willpower]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )

[1a. bite of oh fuck no you do NOT bite cotton candy hair girl. :< Dex + Brawl -2 for split.]

Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (2, 4, 5, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

Charlotte soak!

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )

[damage! 5+1 bite+1hispobite+3suxx? i think?]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

[1b. bite again, no! bad! wp 'coz NYET. -3.]

Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 5, 6, 6) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

[damageagain!]

Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 6, 6, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )

Erich's frenzy roll

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

[diff 7 (8 for New Moon -1 for IC reasons) = 2 suxx]

[?]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4) ( fail )

[Per/Alert - for Erich]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )

Per+Alert

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 10) ( success x 1 )

Per + Alert (Charlotte)

Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )

Seeing that thing, that dead gray douchebaggy thing, sinking its teeth into his sister and drinking deep, Erich feels the edges of his vision go white. It's not like when he chooses it, when he pulls the blankets of his rage up over his head and snaps his own mind in two. It's more animal than that. And everyone around him should be glad, in that moment, that the moon overhead is dark. There is not enough of the vampire left to slake the enraged bloodlust of a frenzied Ahroun,

only allies.

Allies who are, like Erich, turning towards Charlotte in the grasp of that hungry, deliriously happy leech to rip it the fuck off of her. And rip and tear they do, biting and snarling, leaving giant bloodless tears in his body and clothing. Hell: Tamsin the Faerie-Lights-slinging crooner rips off his arm before opening a hole in his belly that lets his leathery but blood-engorged intestine start to slip out.

Which she then has to drop very quickly, because it is on fire.

--

You see, Erich knows better than anyone what Charlotte really is. She may seem a sparrow, but sometimes she remembers she was a velociraptor. She remembers she has fangs and claws and violence. They all see that she remembers, even as Erich's vision is clearing, because she shrugs the vampire off as her body bursts into a gleaming white crinos, blood drenching the ruff of fur around her throat, dropping a fire-tooth to the ground.

The vision then is horrifying and glorious: Charlotte, so white that even without the moonlight she is nearly translucent, blood on her throat, teeth bared, fire at her feet reaching upwards, trying to eat her flesh, barely licking the ends of her fur. The thing that dared to make her its prey is engulfed, fire consuming those slipping intestines, that stump of an arm, saturating the air with the smell of burning skin, sizzling blood. Charlotte's blood, and the blood of whatever it ate last.

The vampire is still standing, barely. His eyes are sparkling with hunger, with awe, with feverish glee that borders on frenzy. Even the fire could not keep him from trying to get back to Charlotte's blood. But, frankly: Keisha, Tamsin, and Erich can. There isn't much left of him. There is even less, after they pile on. After Charlotte leaves the fire she created and helps. After his head comes off. After he is soaked clothing, well-shredded pulp on the ground.

Or rather: there is the same amount of him. It's just more spread out.

--

When the fire is out, stamped into the cold ground, and for reasons he won't be able to explain to himself later the campus policeman gave only a cursory glance toward the Tivoli building before driving quickly onward,

that is when they hear the crying. The soft help. help me. please, someone...

Tamsin doesn't hear it. Tamsin may or may not be harvesting that left arm, complete with shitty mustache finger-tattoo, as a trophy. Maybe. Who knows what Tamsin is doing, when the rest of them feel their ears flick towards the tears coming from just inside the doors to Tivoli.

Tamsin is: gleefully ruminating on whether or not 'fire' and 'vampire' is too obvious a rhyme, while frisking about the gore.

She shifts down to Homid the second she hears the crying, thoughts of sending the twisted mockery of life to the rest it deserves gone. And she's moving with purpose and speed toward the building, snatching up her staff on the way.

Keisha Ballard: vicious when confronted with the undead, but if gentle in all other situations.

Not-Charlotte - oh some of them know her Garou-name but she does not speak it unless it is asked of her so - not-Charlotte remains gloriously Crinos. None of them want their faces associated by anyone within their viewshed with the crime scene before them. So: not-Charlotte flicks an ear at Tamsin as Erich lopes off to shadow Keisha. Some mental communication assuring him that Charlotte is fine, fine, fine. Will be fine, too.

To Tamsin, a rumble to draw her attention. Then a flicker: which sayshear that? and come on - while she herself gives the air another sniff.

STOP.

They are somewhat bloody. Just from the digestive tract of the vampire, still full from feeding, but it is less gore than they usually get covered in when battling the Wyrm. Keisha is up and moving as soon as she hears the crying, leaving the others behind for a moment while Charlotte reassures Erich and tells Tamsin that something is up, even if that's a flick of ears, a signal of body language.

Erich makes some low sounds, growls and whuffs, effectively telling Keisha to hold up: that he totally doesn't really think it is, but it could be a trap so they should go together. Like what he said before about how splitting up equals shitstorm equals ugh.

At which point he nods Tamsin on ahead: Tamsin the arm-ripper-offer, to go alongside Keisha to the doors, Erich and Charlotte close behind them. Partly because, when all is said and done, he's still going to lean over and lick at the already-healed spot on Charlotte's neck where the bad thing bit her, leaning into her side protectively in hispo.

The frisking ceases, Tamsin-monster's bright-bright eyes flicking soulful-ly thought-ful-ly toward everywhere everywhere because she doesn't know until after Charlotte there is Erich or no maybe there is Keisha's purposeful stride because she is a Child of Gaia and somebody is crying for surcease and and and the point is my friends

that the frisking ceases

and her ears prick upupupupup like I was always alert wary hearing things and and then though she prowls forward

to go alongside Keisha, staff-warrioress,

and see what there is to see

(and maybe scare what there is to scare)

wary wary

Charlotte leans into Erich as he comes alongside her, makes some noise in the back of her throat; a wuff, or a low-growl, or something that has weight and presence and purpose because Charlotte has weight and presence and purpose beyond her rank and beyond her years and beyond most anything because she is a goddamned silver fang, and likely mad as a hatter.

Alert; wary. Tail low and sweeping, shadowing Tamsin and Keisha to the door.

She's singed and hacking a little bit from the fire that scorched her and Charlotte along with the leech, but she is paying it absolutely no mind. If not for Erich, she would have charged headlong into that building by herself...and she gives a sound of frustration when she's told to hold up. There's someone in there in need, and as much as Keisha acts like she's wise and reasonable most of the time--and really, she is reasonable (wise, we'll leave up to debate)--she's still a nineteen (no, twenty this week) year-old girl who acts more like a human than a Garou. And twenty year-old humans are the impulsive types.

So she frowns, and she makes her sound, but she waits for Tamsin. "It might be a human in trouble, guys." She looks at the others as she rests her hand on the door handle. "Maybe Homid would be best. We can always shift back otherwise"

That's as far as she'll push it--the suggestion--and she'll give them enough time if they so desire before moving to open the door and head inside.

Keisha is frustrated, but Keisha stops, and the others catch up. No one has indicated that they aren't going to check it out. Her hand is on the door handle, though, and Erich tells her again to just wait a second while he turns to Charlotte, asking her if she can sense if something on the other side is Wyrm-tainted.

None of them, just yet, smell another vampire.

Erich asks and Charlotte stops and Charlotte studies the door and Charlotte settles herself and pulls on sometime deep inside of herself and just - inhales. Quiet.

Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 5, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]

[nope!]

The communications are gruff and quiet. Charlotte and Erich can manage this without speaking, so even Melantha hears the echo of it over their totemic connection. Now, however, here and now the beast wuffs her impression aloud.

No wyrm.

Swinging back around, checking their sight lines to assure herself that everyone who might observe them has been chased away by the Delirium.

Tamsin, restless, restless, still simmering from the recent joy of killing something that is blasphemy to Gaia, does pause; waits for No wyrm, also looks around, edgily, and then - unless Erich indicates otherwise (see how deliberately she keeps his signals in mind? Looks to him? Welcome to being a Fostern) - if no one seems to be around (although with Tamsin, who's to say she'd notice?) - she shifts to homid, too. Girl-Tamsin, who whispers, "Does it still look fucked up across the Gauntlet?"

Charlotte says there's no Wyrm, and Keisha relaxes a bit and moves to go inside, when Tamsin asks if it still looks, as she herself had previously said, wrong across the Gauntlet. And the Gaian's urge to move in, to help, makes her tense again. She's not used to letting go like she just did against the undead thing. It's a very different kind of fighting than you usually see from her. But there was a time that she was once that wild and unrestrained. Pushed down for so long, having let it rise to the surface means that it's difficult to push back down.

"I don't know, but it could take time to look across, and someone could be bleeding to death from a leech bit in there for all we know. If there's no Wyrm, I'm going in."

Which is what she's moving to do now, unless she's stopped. The sanctity of whoever's life is in there is paramount to her right now.

Erich remains in hispo, perhaps a bit stubbornly; it is dark. The door will shield him from view, a bit. And if anything jumps out or runs out at them if anything tries to BITE CHARLOTTE or attack Keisha or Tamsin he's half a foot away and can tear it to tiny tiny pieces and this is how he deals with the fact that really, if you get down to it, he's not okay at all with allowing Keisha and Tamsin to take point at all, it seems like a really bad idea even if Charlotte says there's no Wyrm.

But here you have it: there's no Wyrm. Someone is crying in there, gasping, begging quietly for help, asking is someone there? and sobbing, begging please, please,

and the last person or thing she wants to see right now is Erich, no matter what form he's in. Keisha isn't even reiterating, again, what she thinks they need to do before he's giving a nod at the door. After all: no one, at any point, has been about stopping Keisha. Just getting her to wait. To not rush in blindly, or on her own, no matter what her heart is telling her. She's wiser than that.

--

The door opens outward, unlocked right now. It's dark inside, but for some emergency lights and an EXIT sign they can see on the other side of the building that matches the EXIT sign above the door they're opening. It's hard to see the woman at first, young woman, student-aged, because she is slumped over on her side, panting softly, her begging getting weaker, and though her hand is clutched over the wound on her neck, there is still a pool of blood under her, blood soaking her clothing.

She's not crying anymore. She's passing out.

--

When she comes to, it's because someone has healed her, and because her body is starting to do the rest. That someone isn't there anymore. She's woozy as hell. Vague memories of someone jumping her from behind, stabbing her with something, like maybe a pen. Hearing some 'screaming' and something like growling or something outside, then normal human voices but she didn't see who it was. It won't make a lot of sense to them, with the charred ground outside that is already being dusted with snow. A lot of what she says will be chalked up to blood loss, delirious hallucinations, and she'll buy that, too. She'll talk, months and years from now, about how she lost so much blood she though she heard and saw dogs or something in Tivoli while she was trying to regain consciousness.

Her name is Holly. She'll have a scar. She'll have PTSD and won't walk anywhere alone, even in daylight, for a long time. She will also write about the experience, the random attack the likes of which they say don't happen that often and how much time she spent torturing herself trying to understand the 'why' of it all, and that essay is going to help her get into grad school for social work and repeat that lesson for many, many other people: stop asking yourself why you. Stop trying to figure out what you did or what you could have done.

The truth is, Holly won't even know that she was on the verge of death when the werewolves found her. She will never know how much blood she really lost, because most of it was torn up and burnt up with the vampire. She will not know that she was saved.

--

Just one vampire lurking around Auraria, they'll tell the new Warder of Cold Crescent. There was an unconscious victim, they healed her and let security find her. He'll nod, and for a while, he'll increase patrols to the area to make sure there's not a nest or a sire vampire nearby.

It seems like it should be a bigger deal. Holly should know the magnitude of what happened to her,

but she can't. She would go mad.

The Garou should be able to sit back and relish the magnitude of what they did, measure it against the endless-seeming war and all the bigger battles against greater foes with more extreme outcomes, feel the true weight of a single life's course being altered so dramatically, rest on that for the rest of their lives because how many people can say they saved someone's life,

but they can't.

They move on to the next area on their patrol. It's not that they have to do it all again tomorrow.

It's that they aren't even done tonight.

Erich

After the dust settles,

-- does the dust ever settle after something like this? after a handful of Cliaths, safe and secure under the protection of one of the most well-organized, resourceful, intelligent Septs around, suddenly stand horrified w to the guardians of that Sept turning on each other in ways that will scar their nightmares for years to come -- does the dust settle? do the scars heal? or do they simply harden and knot over with time?

it's a lie, by the way, that scars are stronger than unscathed flesh. they're not. but: for the sake of argument, or perhaps sanity, we'll pretend they are. we'll pretend flesh heals, and scars fade, and dust settles --

after the survivors have healed each other and comforted each other the best they can, after that horrid night has passed into day: the Sept evacuates. They take out rooms at a nearby hotel. They seal off 1999 Broadway. And of course there's some room or some suite somewhere, someplace where the wartorn survivors can gather and regroup. Because -- true; it's dangerous to congregate right now. It might make them a target. It might be safer to go to ground, to scatter, to fight a guerilla war. But that was never the way of the Garou. Their instincts run toward packs and hordes. Toward coming together, standing strong in numbers, and toward fighting back.

That's what brings Erich here. He comes fairly charging into the room, or the suite, or wherever it is the survivors have congregated. He's not alone. Unless one or two or all have strenuously objected, he's got Charlotte, Ingrid, and even Melantha with him. He's put out word to others, too. That other Ahroun from the moot-before-last, that friend he made fighting for Wyrmfoe. That other Shadow Lord. And that Uktena. And that Bone Gnawer! And really: anyone and everyone he knows, anyone and everyone they know, and so on and so forth, until the growing gathering kinda-sorta starts to resemble

a warmoot.

--

"So... we all know what happened, right?" That's how he starts, perched on a stool from the suite's breakfast bar like some flesh and bone gargoyle. "Some of us were there when it happened, but most of us heard from someone else, at least? Has anyone been able to get ahold of the Warder? Or, y'know... anyone important from the Sept?

" 'Cause if not, I think maybe we need to start figuring out what to do ourselves."

Melantha

Melantha is, in fact, there. She's uncomfortable there, pulled back from the tiny house outside the city and hugging her arms around her chest, but she's there, looking uneasy. Younger garou sniff at her sometimes, or stare at her, even with her hair in a ponytail and her body hidden in a hoodie and not a drop of makeup on her face, because she sort of smells like the best thing they have ever smelled ever omg, but she tries not to notice and she certainly tries not to bare her teeth at anyone for it.

She heard about what happened. She just looks horrified by it, and... well. Helpless.

--

Most of the garou in the room are young, in fact. Cliaths and Fosterns, a few cubs sneaking away from their mentors. These are the garou who are new to the sept or who just haven't risen very high in its ranks. There are a few from Forgotten Questions, too. They are all here for the same reason:

like Erich, they've begun to suspect -- to believe -- that actually, no,

the elders do not have all of this under control.

There's some noises among them when Erich asks if anyone has been able to get a hold of the Warder or Sept Alpha or Master of Challenges or anybody, really, who runs Cold Crescent. They're all still at the sept proper, cleaning up and only really allowing Theurges and a few others to come in and help clean up.

Ingrid

Sam is not there. The kinswoman of Cockroach has recently been indoctrinated into the world of, "Guys you have to give me some notice so I can find a babysitter." She doesn't have a regular one yet, and she's not going to trust any old neighbor child to look after her particular child.

Phoebe is not there. She's at 1999 Broadway, draining herself dry summoning the good spirits to help drive out the bad. She is draining her essence and her will to the last drop, or resting, so that she can get up and do it again. And again. And again.

Ingrid is there, though, making people uncomfortable with her very presence. She is slender and graceful and elegant and poised and there is something not quite right about her. Something that makes her Other, that puts people - particularly kinfolk, particularly the mortals that wander the corridors looking for their rooms - on edge, makes them think she's going to rip out their jugular because she's hungry.

She's not hungry, though. She looks more herself than the last time Erich saw her, her color has returned, her dark eyes are cool and distant. There are faint circles under her eyes, though. Her mask of impassivity - less a mask than most people realize - has been cracked.

"They are there," she says quietly, standing somewhere against a wall, arms folded around her rib cage. "They shoo us away like children. But they are there."

Charlotte

Here is Charlotte: at Erich's side. She is a slight creature and a fae thing, perhaps 5'5" now, but still - those who have known her for some time think that she might still be growing. Might grow, somehow, into the strange and gangly promise of her long-limbs, might lengthen if not fill-out. She is more skin and bone than muscle and sinew but muscle and sinew are visible in her skinny arms only because she has to little body fat to conceal them. Arms like sticks and a gawky, boyish frame made more boyish by her clothes and the blunt cut of her platinum hair, which is dyed pink at the ends and freshly so.

With Kool-Aid, not crushed beets or beatles or the dried blood of her enemies. Erich at least knows that secret now.

She is wearing a raglan t-shirt in heathered green with darker green bands at the collar and cuffs. It says SPRITE on it. There is a dark smear of something at the hem in mostly the shape of a hand but this is not blood. Jeans, old and fitted, and a woven friendship bracelet around her bony left wrist and a pukka shell necklace around her throat and a longer platinum chain that disappears beneath the collar of her t-shirt she looks like an awkward, ordinary nineteen-year-old bird-boned and hollow-faced and wide-eyed enough that with another four or five inches of height she could be a model and with another four or five years of good solid growth in her: of healthy food and exercise and growing up and breaking hearts and being heart broken and laughing at the moon and crying sometimes in her pillow and getting drunk and making missteps and recovering from her goddamned missteps, she could be a lovely young woman.

But she is not a young woman.

She is a wolf, and she is -

achingly

pure-blooded.

Haloed in silver, outlined in a corona of gold. Garou see her: awkward and too-human girl. And they see her promise and her madness and her doom, the fragile and glorious shadow of oh her many ancestors, distilled just so, into a fragile vessel of skin and bone, moon-mad eyes, pink-dyed hair.

They do not see but likely Erich and Melantha, at least, can sense the presence of another consciousness, in and around and under her skin. For Charlotte it is like being half-swallowed by a ghost, this deep breath and then: double vision, old hands, old memories, an old spine. Makes her stand up rather more straight, lends her a steadiness she would never otherwise exhibit.

As now, when she glances sideways at Ingrid as the no-moon remarks that the Warder and elders send them scurrying like children. Then, back to the Ahroun, the others in the room, whoever has come.

"We should try to figure out how they were possessed. And how to protect ourselves from such possession.

"Maybe we start at the place where Champion of Honor was recovered. See what's gathered in the umbra. See what the walls remember. Find a thread and find a thread and find a thread and follow it."

Avery

Not merely cliaths and fosterns and the exiled and the lost but: some few kin. The word drifts, filters. Moves, mouth to ear and ear to mouth and back again. The building is closed. It matters little, Baranski & Greer maintains a satellite office, and the satellite is very specific to the very specific subset of Éva's criminal defense practice, and the more circuitous shadow practice that has her traveling some months twenty days out of thirty, to inauspicious locales in half-remembered places, where the law and the Law intersect with the unfortunate realities of Life as They Know It and her own first law is not to vigorously defend her client, but to protect the Veil.

But see,

here. A hotel suite, a conference room. It hardly matters.

There is another there, sitting in an armchair as though this is her room and not the room of some sept-dweller or four being put up for the time being by that same sept. She sits in surprisingly casual clothes, white shorts and flat-soled white ankle boots made of leather so supple and fine it must be from some poor creature that only exists to provide clothing for the wealthy. Her top is cut to gracefully, demurely draw the eye directly to her cleavage, forcing one to constantly remind oneself of the rules of gentlemanly behavior, good god sir her eyes are up here. It is mostly made of silk overlaid with lace. The room is cool with conditioned air, but her hair is pulled up in a ballerina-esque bun in deference to the heat outside. The diamond set in her pendant only looks tiny if one is comparing it to something above 2 karats.

Her legs are crossed. Her arms are draped over the armrests of the chair. She is holding an iced green tea that has two leaves of muddled mint inside to complement the honey. It is not a Starbucks cup but a glass one made to seem like a portable to-go cup from a similar establishment. That glass cup is etched on the front with her monogram, though it looks almost like a business logo, with A S M stacked to the left of a very large, elegant C.

Avery sips her tea while a few others talk, listening. After Charlotte offers a suggestion, an idea, a firm we should, Avery glances around, looking to see what other ideas there might be.

Eva

Éva arrives late; later. Slips in through the door and circles the edgy crowd of young Garou. She is more than twice the age of the youngest cliaths, who are all more adult in the eyes of the Nation than she. By now, any sting that that awareness breeds in her is well-hidden behind her dark eyes. Actually, any sting is gone. What she feels, when she feels anything for them, strangers all, is a vague sense of compassion.

They are all so monstrously young.

--

She is: composed, dressed in a dark and formal business suit that is well-suited to the air conditioning and to hotel conference rooms and to marble-floored courtrooms and cheaply-paneled hearing rooms and also: to the sleek modern formality of contemporary jails but not at all to the heat outside.

There is a hint of perspiration at her temples. It is warm outside. She has not been sheltering in this motel. She made a choice, and chose to come here.

Someone else had to sort out her schedule.

--

Éva does not sit. She stands comfortable on the outskirts of whatever circle has formed in expensive leather heels that are more than two but not so much as three inches. More leather over her shoulder: a purse and a briefcase. This is like to be a long meeting, so she does lower the latter to the floor and rest it against the wall.

There is a hint of breeding to her. Just enough to confirm their first impression - that dark eyes and clear features and dark hair and that sort of remove and composure means: Shadow Lord. Perhaps some of the Fosterns know her as Andraj's mate. He's been dead for more than a year, and most of those in the room know him not-at-all.

--

"Have you perhaps considered," when she does speak, she does so evenly and well. Her voice is modulated, quiet enough that one has to pay attention to hear, precise enough that it cuts through the white noise of the room. " - asking, not where they are, but what they want. With an office building, at 1999 Broadway, in Denver, Colorado, which is something, but is not-a-Caern.

"They do not attack Forgotten Questions. They were chased away and have an entire continent on which to practice their depravities, but they came back here, and fixate, once more, on Cold Crescent.

"Which was not always," the most minute lilt of her dark brows, "ours. The Nation purchased the building in 2005. What was it - whatever it is, that singularity you have found - before that? Have they focused themselves with such exacting fury merely because it is a home for us in this city, or because they want it, want to take it back, because they dream of it, need it, wish to use it as some magnified focus and terrible focus to - "

There is something fierce there, and driving, and steady, and ferocious and then she pulls it back. Cuts it off.

A beat.

The smallest, sparest smile. Apology as much as anything else.

"I don't know. I don't see the world the way you do. But perhaps you should start looking for answers not out here," a lift of her chin, northeast, in the direction of 1999 Broadway. Specific enough to suggest that she is aware of her exact orientation in the nameless and faceless suite-or-conference room. "but in there.

"Perhaps it is wrong to try to puzzle out the motives of an unreasonable and and monstrous enemy. Perhaps the motives matter not a whit. Perhaps they are motive-less. I don't pretend to have anything to offer you except questions."

With that, she steps back. Cedes the floor, to whomever else might speak.

Erich

Erich has a seat sort of close to the door, where he can see who comes in. Where he can, if need be, hold the line and keep out the forces of darkness if they come for them here.

Or well. Try, at least. But a nice side effect of sitting there is that he gets to see all the forces of light that come filing in, too. So he sees when Ingrid enters, and that's when his face brightens noticeably! -- but only momentarily. He nods her over beside him, though if she goes find herself a different dark corner to skulk in he doesn't complain. He sees when Avery enters, too. She gets a fistbump. Understated and a little surreptitious, but it's there. Offered, anyway. The rest of them: he doesn't really recognize anyone. Maybe that other-Ahroun, his rival-friend, who gets a quick hike of his chin. He looks at everyone though, trying to remember their face, their smell, some detail about them that will separate them from others.

Some of the Cliaths sniff at Melantha. She doesn't bare her teeth at them, but Erich does, and vociferously, growling in his chest every time a stray eye, ear or nose wanders her way.

--

Charlotte isn't just-Charlotte today. She is Charlotte-plus-one, and that makes Erich a little nervous. He remembers what happened when that other plus-one of Charlotte's showed up, and what a catastrophe that almost became.

This plus-one isn't a screeching disaster, though. This plus-one actually speaks sense. And Erich listens, and looks around to see how everyone else takes it. Then he raises a hand. "If you're going back, I can provide some cover. Just in case the place is crawling with Them."

--

Later, a latecomer: Eva, dark of eye and hair, smelling very faintly but unmistakably of Thunder. And Erich, completely forgetting that he was growling at Cliaths and cubs to stop sniffing Melantha, sort of stretches out his neck and sniffs at her as she walks in.

She passes him. Finds a place by the wall. Sets down her stuff and Says Stuff. Pretty sensible Stuff. It sparks a memory in Erich, who raises his hand again like a schoolboy or something.

"You know," he says, "I should've mentioned this earlier, but a couple of us ran into a couple of Them a week or two ago. At a bar? That was when we picked up that lady with the broken hip and her baby. They were with one of Them. And he actually... talked to us? I mean, he kinda almost had a conversation with us. He talked about how he was just trying to make the world good for his kids, or something. Or well no, he talked about how he was going to burn the world down so his kids could have a brand new start. Pretty crazy shit, but." Erich shrugs. "Anyway.

"Point is, then we attacked him. Well, I attacked him. Which I probably shouldn't have, because then he almost killed us all. But that was the weird thing. He could have, I think. It took pretty much everything I had just to make him bleed, and, look, maybe I'm not some Elder Ahroun? But I'm not a wuss. He was just like a TANK. This is really scattered. What I'm trying to say is: he was way stronger than anyone had any right to be. But he didn't kill us. He just... literally burned the bar down around us and left us alone.

"So... this is kinda going off what she said," he nods at Eva. "Maybe what's in there is just the old world they're trying so hard to burn down. Maybe they're trying to take apart all the structure and familiarity we have, leave us leaderless and lost. And then we'd be easy pickings. Not to kill, but to corrupt. 'Cause that's kinda what they've been doing with all the people we've been picking up from them, right? Corrupting the lost and aimless."

Lola

Lola Hawkes has her way of hearing about things like this. The Sept of Forgotten Questions was abuzz with the news, so of course the Kinfolk Guardian knew. Eddie told her about this moot, told her where it was and when to be there. She was appreciative enough to offer him a ride along with her, but the Skald had declined as now more than ever he needed to stay and make sure the Bawn was secure.

So Lola had driven into town with Hector-- he'd tried to tell her that the warmoot was happening but Lola was a few steps ahead of him and had already gotten a cousin to look up directions for her so she could write them down and know exactly where to park the truck and which doors to go in. They arrived about ten or so minutes before this meeting was set to begin, sat together wherever there was space left for two people to sit, and listened to what was being said.

--------

When Lola felt it was time for her to share her words, she lifted one hand with the palm out toward the room, almost as though she were flagging them down for their attention (not so much raising her hand, nothing about her came across quite so juvenile as that). She didn't stand, though. Her voice carried well enough that she didn't need to be a head above the other sitting bodies in order to be sure that she could at least grasp a flicker of their attention.

"Hector here told me about that incident," she said with a nod toward Erich. "I also heard about the attack on that caravan taking the Cub from Cold Crescent to Forgotten Questions. Heard about the one still in his human body stopping the van full-force with just his hand."

She sniffed some, but didn't seem uncomfortable speaking to a room full of Garou. Her tone and body language could almost fool those who have never seen her before into believing that she was one of them-- it could work were it not for the lack of Rage or Spiritual Forces within her flesh and blood body, were it not for the humming promise of strong hawk-eyed children in her blood.

"What if this isn't just some very clever, very strong pack of Black Spirals? Maybe they've made pacts beyond the Green Dragon, ones that we don't really have much knowledge of yet? I'm worried they're not just Black Spirals anymore-- that maybe they've merged with something worse on the Otherside and brought it here. Or maybe they've mutated into something beyond that...."

Her words petered out, and she rolled her shoulders in a shrug and leaned back a little more in her chair. "Just a thought," she concluded.

Javed

Keisha does not attend the gathering, as much as she might like to in order to provide her insight. Like her packsisters, she is too busy with the act of dealing with the spiritual backlash of what went down at Cold Crescent. And when she doesn't have that on her plate she's been learning the Moot Rite and preparing so she can lead the opening howl for this month's gathering.

===================

Alexis, for his part, is spending his time supporting the pack which holds his (reluctant) protector. While the Desert Oracles expend every ounce of their energy and mind into helping the Cold Crescent do clean-up and more, Alexis makes sure that the Desert Oracles don't falter. He goes on food runs for them, offers them his home to set up in if they need somewhere closer than their own homes but choose not to stay at the hotel for whatever reason. Sees to anything that they might need beyond that. And he has a job to hold down as well, so he is not present at the meeting either.

===================

Javed is there. The Iranian metis arrives and sits near the door to, like Erich, provide a potential first line of defense should anything take this moment to strike. The Strider doesn't draw Erich's ire by sniffing in Melantha's direction. He doesn't know most of these people and those he does…well, he probably doesn't recognize. All metis have their curses, including him. But he recognizes Ingrid's voice, and he listens to the voices of those he doesn't.

And when he listens, he absorbs everything that they have to say. He takes in the fact that the Elders are still there, just not answering questions. He listens to Charlotte suggest that they start where the now-dead Guardian was recovered from and follow from there. He hears Eva ask a different tack of questions; she doesn't ask how but why. And Erich speaks up again, suggesting a possible reason.

When he takes that moment to speak, it's in a baritone with enough rasp to avoid it being crystal clear. His diction is excellent and he speaks in the precise English but heavy accent of someone who has extensively learned the language as a foreigner.

"With due respect," he says to Erich, nodding his head to the other Ahroun. "That seems very much a possibility. The Wyrm scorches the Earth with its foulness, leaving no ground left to go to. No rescue, no safe haven. But there is a safe haven, even if the city sept falls. And, as I understand it, one they have failed in the past to capture. I would think they would choose, if they were strong enough, assault the Forgotten Questions and send people to the Cold Crescent where there is no Caern and into the city, where their people are stronger. And they certainly seem strong, if these tales are any indication. The Wyrm is madness and its servants are mad, but that seems—if you will excuse my saying—a bit more than madness. It's poor tactics."

He takes a breath, then speaks again. "There were those, I understand, that found Champion of Honor with only a single guard easily taken down within the city. And then Champion of Honor was brought back, soon after which his packmates destroyed themselves. One has to be purposeful of the other; they must have expected that we would try and perform a rescue, and they planted what was essentially a bomb. This is an enemy that fights with cunning and intelligence, not poor tactics.."

He turns his single-eyed gaze back at Erich. The Strider's mind is trying to work tactically, puzzle these seemingly random things out. "He attacked you, and though he was incredibly strong he did not kill you. I think it is important to ask why. A happenstance encounter, or did he intend to have something happen? And if so, the question is what?"

He looks to Lola when she speaks up, listens to her describe another incredibly powerful member of this group. He frowns, considers. There's a conceding nod there…it is entirely possible, as far as he knows. But he has nothing of experience in the way of Spirals who have become something more, and Javed only speaks when he has something to add.

Hector

With Phoebe absent only one alpha sits in the room and he has been silent this whole time. Not as if he doesn't want to be here but as if he isn't used to being in group situations with Cliaths from other tribes and the entire thing is beyond his comprehension so instead of participating he's just observing. He's slouched down in a chair beside his kinswoman and has his arms crossed low on his body and when he speaks up it's after clearing his throat as a warning.

"I think he was just minding his own business," Hector says to Javed, "and then we pissed him off, and then something made him stop before he could finish us off."

He's wearing that Off In Lala Land look writers and other creative types get when they're in the midst of a first draft. It won't go away until he tells The Tale of Sam Evans, Baby Stealing Badass at the next moot.

Ingrid

It is the job of the Ragabash to question. Question motives, question tactics, question question question. There aren't many young Ragabash as active as Dances With the Hurricane, not many as quiet as her, either. Like Javed, rather than running off at the mouth, questioning just to question, she speaks only when she has something to add. Her expression is for the most part impassive. Except: When Erich mentions attacking one of them, him, almost getting himself and a few others killed. Something of her expression tightens oh so slightly. It passes.

When not!Charlotte speaks, when Éva and Erich, the Uktena kinswoman, all of them speak up, she listens, and she considers.

"I have heard," she says finally, when all have had their say for now, "that Cold Crescent is an offshoot of Forgotten Questions." This of course is hardly secret knowledge. "Tactically, it is a better launching point for a defense of the city than the Caern. Perhaps the question of 'why' is not that there is anything particularly special about Cold Crescent, but a matter of logistics. Take out the tower. Burn the city to the ground. Then launch an assault on the older, more settled sept from a position of greater power."

It is just one option to be considered.

"Or. Perhaps the key lies in the Warder who will not allow himself to be questioned by Cliaths. Has anyone thought to question his brother?" Because she didn't, not until that very moment when she remembered the presence of that brother at the last moot.

Erich

Erich nods in enthusiastic agreement with Lola. "I wouldn't be surprised if they were more than just Dancers. I mean forgive me if I'm wrong but even Elders fucking bleed. This guy, I had to chew him like a squeak toy before I tasted a single drop of blood. And yeah, he wasn't there waiting for us, as far as I know. I mean I was just there for two-for-one steak night. I dunno why everyone else showed up. I think it was just ... our paths crossed and he started ranting and I was like OH HELL NO.

"As for why not attack FQ if they're so strong -- well, maybe the fact that Cold Crescent's less defensible is precisely why they're targeting us. And maybe they want us to all concentrate here, so then they can go strike at a less well-defended Caern."

Lola

"That would make sense," Lola adds. The Galliard she sat next to seemed to exist in other places in his own mind, and as far as his Kinfolk by tribe and by pack was concerned that was just fine. He was a Galliard, and even though he Alpha of his pack she knew they weren't necessarily a war-driven pack of Garou.

Lola, though? She was an Ahroun at heart. She ate this shit up.

"That right there--" to what Erich had just mentioned, "--is exactly what I'm worried about. They're drawing our attention in on the city, but why would they want Cold Crescent? No offense, but it isn't even a fully-fledged Caern. It has nothing at its heart to be taken over or corrupted or killed... whatever it is they want to do with it. It's just a place where the city-wolves band together."

The Kinfolk's dark eyebrows furrowed together and she shook her head. Concern and worry wrote novels across her face and caused typically smooth skin to wrinkle and crease when giving way to this frown.

"I know it's important to keep the Spire to ourselves.... But isn't the Caern-- the proper one with Gaia's spirit within it... Isn't that the more important thing to keep safe? Especially now, with all this mayhem?"

Thomas

And once again they say it, only this time there's a deep scoff and a grunt from one corner of the room. He hadn't been hiding there. Its almost impossible for someone as disproportionately tall and long of limb as him to hide anywhere. But he had been silent for the most part, perhaps still dumbfounded at the turn of events. And from the uncharacteristically uncombed state of his hair, this meeting caught him by surprise.

"No, cold crescent serves no purpose. Except as a garrison. When the city packs that patrol the city have to run to ground, they run there because Forgotten Questions is too far away. No caern maybe, but its a building fulla pains in the ass. We may not be a danger to them but to their children..." He echoes the quoted Spiral now, reminding them that they may have been given the answer. "...We are death. They can't have cubs and cliaths with Cold Crescent around. We do have something to corrupt, and they've corrupted it. Hit us where it hurts.

"That doesn't mean that Forgotten Questions isn't the target. If there's an attack on the caern, the preparation for it would likely come from the city. A rally point in the woods would be too noticeable to be of any use. Then again, if they've become something more, that probably wouldn't stop them. So...we can't figure it out. So what? Why not figure for both? If Cold Crescent is just a building with an address, then there's nothing they can take. There's other spots in the city. As long as we're still here, stickin it to 'em. But on the chance that its not, we look into it. Dig deeper and find out what they're after.

"And while we're doing that, put Forgotten Questions on alert. Matter of fact, reinforce it."

Javed

The Strider listens to everyone as they speak. He nods at Hector and Erich's assertions that the attack was happenstance, conceding the point. They were there and he was not; they would certainly know better. The is a warrior who thinks of each strike with purpose and that's the direction his mind turns to when analyzing his enemy's--their enemy's--moves. But not every assault and every action is the result of carefully planned missions. Sometimes war spills out into the domain of circumstance. He asked, it was answered and he leaves it there.

Ingrid, whose voice he recognizes from his first encounter on the streets with Denver's Garou, speaks up and discusses the purpose of Cold Crescent; the tactical reasons the Beloved Horror may have for taking it down. She also asks (like a Questioner of the Ways should) about the Warder and a brother whose attitude and sudden presence, respectively, she finds curious. His brow furrows, considering, though that is set aside for the moment as the suggestion is put that Cold Crescent is a distraction to drew resources from Forgotten Questions, making it vulnerable to attack. It is even suggested that the city Sept is just a gathering point, a garrison.

He doesn't bristle at that, but he does frown a little. "There are many septs around the world," he says, addressing none of them in specific but rather the group, "as Caerns fade away or run dry from repeated efforts against them, where there is no Caern. They would disagree quite strenuously that they serve no purpose but a gathering point from which to launch attacks from a better location, even with another Sept nearby. All Septs are communities...safe haven, home, and yes, gathering point and garrison. And they are all essential. It is my understanding that the Cold Crescent was not chosen at random; there were specific reasons that brought us there."

He gives at assenting nod in the Glass Walker's direction at his suggestion. "I would agree. The matter warrants further investigation. And at the same time, the Forgotten Questions should be fully apprised, if somehow they are not, and bulwarked."

A pause there, before continuing. "Where, then, does the investigation begin?"

Erich

"I'm down with checking out the place where we found Champion of Honor," Erich says. "It seems like the only lead we have right now that's a place we can comb over."

Thomas

"You got people to go with you? he asks, but obviously feels uncomfortable asking it. he was new, or at least relatively so, and couldn't tell the different packs on sight just yet. He bristled, trying to hide that..what was that? Shame?

"Personally, I'd like to look more into cold Crescent's past. Anybody who wants to team up with me on that is more than welcome. We also need folks to go up to Forgotten Questions and work with their warders. That's teams one two and three. I know we're all hurting right now but its not time to stand still. Its time to pick our teams."

Eva

After speaking up the first time, Charlotte and whoever she carries with her are both quiet. Charlotte listens, looking a little bit eldrich and a little bit odd and does not speak up to defend Cold Crescent as a Place or a Thing of importance because in truth it feels wrong to her; and alien and strange and she belongs to the sleeping earth and the dreaming sky rather than the gleaming things that interrupt the sky but:

Erich is down with checking out the place where they found Champion of Honor.

The Glass Walker asks if Erich has people to go with him, and Charlotte, who remains close to Erich but closer to Melantha in this gathering, gives him a sideglance. A curl of a shoulder. A look or a Look that curls like a leaf into this slip of a shy (yes shy) glance. "You should come with us. If you want."

--

And, Éva has remained for much of the meeting as well. Standing against the wall, in her dark suit, her leather handbag still over one shoulder. Other than the questions she asked early in the meeting, she does not interrupt. And does not contribute. Does not participate in the discussion, though she follows it, oh she follows it with a subtle flicker of her dark eyes.

Near the end, she has dipped to retrieve the briefcase. Checked the watch that drifts around her left wrist, all gold links and gleaming dial. Fixes Thomas with a steady look that does not quite (never quite) meets his eyes. It is a constant calibration, to slip between the worlds of men and wolves, but see how finely she shifts gears.

He would like to look more into Cold Crescent's past.

"I've started making inquiries," once more, her voice is pitched to carry through the room, but low enough to require a certain degree of engagement, of concentration, "in the human world."

This subtle twist of her mouth, which looks wry but is nothing like it. Part of a mask drawn over - grief, yes grief, and an anger that feels depthless and unbounded when she is alone, and unobserved, and it is dark, and the house is still, and her children are sleeping in their beds, and there is moonlight through the windows and that well manicured xeroscaped lawn around the well manicured, bound and gated home and beyond that the high plains, full of a vast and shifting darkness and she allows her chest to open up around it and tries not to picture the -

the -

oh, Jane.

- but here, call it measured. Call it, steady. Call it, unbending.

"Research into the property records, titles, deeds. The construction, the church. The history of the land. Et cetera. It will take some time, but I'll share what I learn."

There are, after all, histories and histories. Éva is marooned on this side of the gauntlet. Half the simmering world closed to her, deaf and dumb and blind to all but the immediate, the physical, the almost-human. information.

"If you are willing to do likewise," So she offers him a business card, with her contact information. And turns to take her leave.

Javed

The Strider speaks up again crosses his arms over his chest, listening to Erich, Tommy and Eva commit themselves to tasks. When the kinfolk is finished, he speaks up again. "I am happy to aid in tracking from the point where Champion of Honor was recovered, if you will have me Hunting suits my talents better than investigation. Otherwise, I will be happy to work with the warders at the Forgotten Questions, or helping with the investigation"

He pauses. "Perhaps an additional team, or an additional task for the team working with the Warders, is needed. Or even an extra responsibility for anyone who can. While Cold Crescent recovers, the city is missing its patrols. Perhaps packs or associations of unpacked Garou can take on some of those duties in the interim, for the safety of all."

ST

[Officially calling this thread to a close from On High! Feel free to wrap the discussion however feels right to you! Or if it's easier, some Adren comes in and shoos everyone to scatter. Uppity youngsters! *shakes fist*

Points Raised/Questions Asked:
- How did Champion of Honor get possessed?
- How do we stop ourselves from getting possessed/corrupted like that?
- What does the Beloved Horror WANT? What's their target, and what's their end objective? Do they have one?
- Why are they attacking Cold Crescent? Is it related to aims at Forgotten Questions? Is it about logistics/weakening a stronghold or is there something special about Cold Crescent?
- How are they so powerful? / Are they not 'just' Black Spirals anymore?
- Why won't the elders or Warder of Cold Crescent even answer questions?
- What was that about their 'children'?
- What about past interactions with this pack with either sept?

To-Do List: - Investigate the apartment where Champion of Honor was found.
- Further investigation into 'Why Cold Crescent?'.
- Further investigation into 'How are they so powerful?'.
- Further investigation into lack of response from Cold Crescent's elders.
- Guard duties for Cold Crescent. (This is going to be 'assumed'; the Warder may not be taking questions but regular patrols have been reinstated... just by volunteers :[ -- a great way to throw random open scenes together, however.)
- Bulwarking Forgotten Questions. (They don't really... need the help, but will welcome additional guard patrols. Can also be assumed/background.)

Let me know if I missed anything!]