Time spent "listening" to the caern. Creating and negating sound. Crafting a new lightsaber.

[nick_garou]

I spent three days at the caern when the moon was slim, "listening" to the ebb and flow of its Prime energies and ensuring I experienced the shifts in power that occur during the transitions from day to night and night to day. It's beautiful, yet I doubt the garou are even fully aware of their own caern's little nuances.

When I needed sleep, I just went to my camp some hundred yards off into the woods. I'm pleased that I've gotten better at hiking and camping, even though it's just a mundane sort of skill and I'm certainly no expert. I used to cheat by using Dream, but there's a tremendous difference having the knowledge of what to do versus having the ability and experience. The latter is far superior. I've slimmed my pack down considerably as a result, and I've moved from tent camping to a hammock with a cover. As the weather gets colder, I'll need to get a better sleeping bag lest people start asking questions as to how I don't freeze to death.

Emma came by one day. We caught up. It was unfortunately short-lived. Salem interrupted via "pack chat" (a kind of telepathy that some garou packs share through their totem spirit) to alert her he was back in town. She left to assist him. I stayed, as a wolf travels through the miles and miles of forest between the caern and civilization much faster than a human. And my studies of the caern... I have but a limited window, which I fear may someday close abruptly. Later, I would learn through Walkernet communications that Salem had de-aged back to a teenager. First Val. Now Salem. Twice. How common is this sort of Time distortion among the shifters?

Sound. I'd asked Kargamis a few weeks earlier to see if he could locate a realm of sound. As the moon grew fatter, he informed me he had. I used my cats-eye marble talisman to cross into the umbra, and then we set off for this pocket realm. As usual, I used a rudimentary Correspondence/Spirit/Entropy effect to find the safest way there. Surprisingly, we encountered a Weaver spirit along the way that was hostile. I tried calming it, to no avail, and Kargamis jumped to defend me. He's not a particularly strong spirit, but he bought me the couple seconds I needed to freeze the Weaver spirit in place. I called Kargamis off, rendered the Weaver spirit invisible (for its own protection), and we left. When we reached the pocket realm's entrance, I released the spirit, now some vast distance away. Hopefully, should we cross paths again, it will be a little more respectful--and perhaps appreciative that I had spared it. One can hope.

The realm Kargamis led me to was instant agony. I raised my shields defensively, but the second of exposure I'd gotten had rattled my teeth, made my ears bleed, and given me a migraine. Imagine 400 bands of various genres. All packed into a single, small, grade-school gymnasium. Where all the walls, floor, and ceiling are speakers and amps. I've been in realms of hellish heat and hellish cold. This was one of hellish noise. Every so often the cacophany would strike a note together, and the resulting energy.... Well, it's a good thing I didn't enter on that note. (Ba-dum-dum.) I got my shields stabilized and settled in to meditate on the syntax of the vibrating energies. Kargamis, already wounded twice that day, stuck to me like glue--despite there being a good bit of shielded area that would allow him more freedom.

Note to self: Do something extra-nice for Kargamis. Perhaps talk to Sagacity about what they do to help appease their Chimera totem (other than bring it riddles or give it offerings infused with raw quintessence. Er. Gnosis.)

Three days later, I was satisfied I could speak the language. We departed, taking a different route home so as to avoid the area where I'd previously detained that Weaver spirit, and double-checking to ensure we were not being tailed back to my domicile. Kargamis seemed greatly relieved to be back, and I was quick to heap praise upon his efforts and value to me. He is a terribly useful umbral guide and I might be lost--literally--without him.

After an extensive nap, I woke and began experimenting with anti-sound. Silence. I went outside and spread silence over acres of the surrounding woodlands. No breeze through the leaves. No creak of swaying trees. No calls of birds. No babbling of the creek. No scuffle of creatures across the ground. No noise pollution from the distant cars on I-80. It was glorious and eerie--a stark and welcomed contrast to the realm I'd recently left. I experimented further, playing the stereo and televisions at top volume--in silence. And then I had a little target practice with my pistol and shotgun. Again in silence.

And then the paradox hit. Because, brilliantly, I'd gotten so wrapped up in the syntax of sonic vibrations and the exploration thereof, that I'd unforgivingly forgotten that the vulgar magick I was performing was fine and dandy in the umbra, but not in the realm. My bones vibrated violently, agonizingly against one another the next time I pulled the trigger on the 12-gauge. I let the effect collapse, and the resulting noise was just as it would normally be--except for me. Every chirp from a bird was deafening. The breeze a scream. My own breathing a loud argument. I rushed inside the cabin, into my sanctum, and erected a bubble of silence limited to that sanctified area--where the effect would not be vulgar. Merciful relief. I fueled the effect with quintessence to keep it running while I sorted myself out and then slept. 

The paradox was not gone when I awoke the next morning, so I've settled in and begun examining and disassembling my lightsaber. I'd made it in 2007, as a foray into trying to better understand Forces, and.... After 8 years, I am a little ashamed at how inelegant it is. (That's not to say it's not dangerous, because it is. I nearly took my own leg off with it. I'm still nervous about using it.) But, as Obi-Wan said, a lightsaber is supposed to be "an elegant weapon for a more civilized age." I can obviously make some VAST improvements to how a lightsaber channels Forces, but I'm curious as to whether my ongoing studies of the caern's energies and The Nothing's non-energies--combined with a closer examination of the two minor talismans I possess--might yield some greater insight into energy management and efficiency. It seems I may have a bit of time to squander on this research, as I do not plan to leave this bubble of silence in my sanctum anytime in the near future.