Wyld times at the caern, plans to tackle the Ooze and the Queen's Tower, and I need a vacation.

[nick_garou]

The camping trip at the caern ended up being interesting. Salem was there and we talked briefly about things--and maybe getting him fixed. Told him I'd call him later after I'd had a chance to chat with Pavel. Some other people started showing up. There was some minorish dick-waving. People went their own ways, leaving just me, Silvertip, and Felix (a Gnawer cliath galliard I hadn't met before, but which seems to be in a Coyote pack with Justin and an unidentified coyote-wolf garou whose name I didn't catch. The ground starting shaking hard. Earthquake, it turns out. Big one. Originating from the mountains to the northeast. Crazy lights from the tree in the caern. Vines growing up out of the ground. Trees outside of the caern falling over. Flaming logs from the fire pit rolling around. Silvertip had the right idea, taking to the air and levitating. I'd have done the same, but Felix was there. I managed to ride it out, using some very subtle, coincidental magicks to avoid getting crushed by a tree.

 

Irritating. Subtlety has become irritating. A nuisance.

 

Afterwards, Felix and I put some minor fires out--I doubt they'd have spread--and then Justin returned and he and Felix went to check on Edgewood. I stayed behind, spent some time cleaning up, and harvested some of the vines--very carefully--as they had a similar resonance to the bramblefruit from when the giant wasps had taken over the caern. Felix came back and gave me--the supposedly slow and night-blinded two-legger--an escort out of the woods.

Huh. I hope no one blames me for the caern's wonkiness and the giant earthquake that happened while I was in it. :(

 

 

I wonder if there's a link between the crazy, raw change caused by the forces behind the bramblefruit and the wasps and the Ooze and its rat-porcupine-hyena things? Yin and Yang. I'll poke at that later. Or maybe feed the Ooze sample I have a drop of whatever I extract from juicing these vines. (I already juiced them and made them into popsicles with about one unit of tass per popsicle. Should prove to be a wild ride for anyone who eats one--the equivalent of eating a bramblefruit, which seemed to spawn Life-related effects. Another parallel.)

I crashed after I got home. The next day, before I got to juicing the vines to make popsicles, I discovered the sample Ooze I kept in a jar in the Winnebago had eaten through the glass FAR more rapidly than usual. It'd escaped but not gotten far. Whatever excited the caern last night had also excited the Ooze. I keep containment jars on hand, and I decided to try a minor experiment. I created a small sphere of radioactivity. That got the Ooze-sample's attention. It moved to get it, and I lured it right into the fresh jar--and denied it the energy. That, I believe, was a demonstration of proof of principle for my earlier idea.

 

Took a trip back out to the caern to get more vines and help tidy the caern up a little more. Ran into Salem and I told him my idea about using radiation to lure the Ooze into the Tower, turning one foe against the other, and letting the garou take down the Wyrm-tainted bad guys as they flee the Tower. He liked the idea. But I probably need to tap into the caern to pull that off--for the tass and to make the effect easier, as it will be vulgar and in the realm. Jacinta will quite obviously have to approve it. And if she does? I'm not going to do that ritual in secret, and there's a potential for a strike on the caern while the ritual is ongoing. The cat will have to come out of the bag. Not exactly what I want, but... probably what the sept needs right now if they're to survive.

 

Later, I met up with Briari (she'd texted earlier saying she had news) at the Hub in the city. Turns out that Renegade, the BSDs' leader in the area, appears to have abandoned the Tower and gone back to Seattle. Did all the BSDs and other Wyrmy nasties bail from the Tower out of fear of the Ooze? Or are they still up there? I need to know before I commit myself to that ritual and expose myself to the sept.

 

God, I miss the old days when I just went to the supermarket and used magick to cheat, buy boxes of food where there was a chance to win prizes, and purchased the stuff that'd net me a couple extra hundred or thousand bucks that week. Screwing around with sentient, multi-dimensional goop that's both in and outside of reality is getting damn frustrating.