Nick "Nicodemus" Dalton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nick_garou) wrote2016-05-07 07:04 am
nick_garou) wrote2016-05-07 07:04 am
And back again. So. What's been happeni... oh. Lots.
When I got back to Saint Claire, the first thing I did was run the Audi through the carwash twice. Wash off all that salt and mud and road grime. Then I bought some groceries for myself and some stuff on sale (frozen pizzas and ramen) to drop off at the farmhouse and catch up on the news.
Thane, Felix, Briari, and a new Walker called Trace were at Edgewood bringing Trace up to speed. (Trace seems okay. More relaxed than most ahrouns, which, yes, isn't saying much, but he looked like he was making an effort. And big into guns.) I pretended to have been on a business trip out of town when the fight to kill the mage happened, so I pretended like the talk of what happened was news to me. It was interesting to hear Felix's perspective of what happened with the mage. I don't think he realized Brings-the-Pack was working from afar to keep the Queen's mage from escaping, as Felix seemed to be taking the credit for "I put a bullet in the mage and ended him." They value their renown as a cultural thing, and I don't, so.... Whatever. Still? Morbidly amusing.
What was news to me was that later, during the full moon, the Queen sent Spirals and wraiths (that's what the garou are calling those weird, white, life-sucking things) to the caern to.... Honestly, I have no idea what their purpose was. They were slaughtered. No casualties from the sept's side. And Val apparently to a giant bird shit on the lead Spiral's head. "Birdy blessings" I think I've heard her call that sort of thing. I can imagine how disruptive that must have been when trying to terrorize and strike fear into the sept. No clue WTF the Queen was thinking as that whole thing seemed tactically idiotic. I made a note to get out to the caern and check things out ASAP.
After killing the mage, the Queen ran a hit on the garage the Shadow Lords have had for some time, capturing Thane briefly. But he got away. So that place is off limits. Thane is damn lucky to have gotten out of that before they did something terrible to him.
The next day, I hiked out to the caern to do some scanning. The place felt clean and unmolested, nothing askew, which was a relief. That is one hell of a node and I'd hate to see anything happen to it. Post-scanning, I transitioned into meditation. Feeling and sensing the caern's tremendous energies. I imagine it's the equivalence of, from a mundane perspective, coming upon Niagra Falls from the base. The cascading, massive volumes of water. The kinetic, dynamic forces at play. It's stunning to look at. And thus so is this caern stunning to look at from a magickal perspective. It's hard to not behold it with a sense of staggering wonder and awe.
...and that's when Felix, Justin, and later Trace showed up and disrupted my reverent meditations.
Conversations ranged from putting a band together to the merits of girly drinks to Justin needing a fake ID (a wraith had aged him during that earlier fight, but I'd quietly helped Slug dislodge the wraith that'd latched onto Justin before Justin lost 40 years of his life instead of just 5) to the merits of getting out of the city and into the woods to blowing up the top floors of the Tower to get at the Queen now that her umbral shield was down.
A couple days later, I turned up in the caern as Brings-the-Pack. Felix, Justin, and Thane were present. They were talking about the Tower again, so I think they may have the momentum and drive to take definitive action against it sooner rather than later. There seems to be a schism between Renegade (the really powerful Spiral out of Seattle) and the Queen--possibly a wedge that was driven between the two groups when the Spirals assisted the garou in handing over the Queen's mage. (Thane said the only information the Queen's forces got out of him when he was captured was that Blue--one of theirs--had tipped the Garou off about the Queen's mage leaving the Tower. That seems to have made my suggestion that the garou tell the Queen's forces about how their Spiral allies are undermining them--in the hopes of creating a disruption of power/morale--a moot point.) The theurges have the bodies of the wraiths (from the botched assault on the caern during the moot) and are looking into making some kind of disruptive talens from them. I'd like to study them. What's left of them, at least. My suspicion is that they may be a wholly new "race" of supernatural creatures. Possibly from another dimension.
Curiously, Felix mentioned that the wraiths used some sort of telepathy to communicate with one another, and he was wondering if that might make them open to a viral thought of some kind. Plant an idea in one and it spreads and takes out the network. (I later learned the idea came from a discussion with Slug, which, frankly, sounds like something Slug would have come up with.) Felix seemed to think that telepathy was spectacularly unique and a potential vulnerability, but I pointed out that the garou who are packed together often share some kind of telepathic connection through their totem spirit. And if this mind-virus worked on the wraiths and Queen, it'd technically work on the garou, too. (This might have given him a little perspective about his own kind and telepathic abilities not being so terribly outlandish among the supernatural.) I mentioned that I might be able to disrupt the wraiths' telepathic connection, but I needed to see their corpses to study them. He seemed excited about that prospect. (I might be able to disrupt the telepathic connection or even send down painful, distracting noise through it. But who's to say they can't turn it off? Still. If they rely on that for rapid communication and coordination of attacks, and they've grown dependent upon it in battles, switching it off ought to be very disruptive.) I also pointed out to Felix that by tapping into someone else's telepathic network, if it wasn't done discreetly, might open up someone to being psychically attacked by the entire network.
Thane, Felix, Briari, and a new Walker called Trace were at Edgewood bringing Trace up to speed. (Trace seems okay. More relaxed than most ahrouns, which, yes, isn't saying much, but he looked like he was making an effort. And big into guns.) I pretended to have been on a business trip out of town when the fight to kill the mage happened, so I pretended like the talk of what happened was news to me. It was interesting to hear Felix's perspective of what happened with the mage. I don't think he realized Brings-the-Pack was working from afar to keep the Queen's mage from escaping, as Felix seemed to be taking the credit for "I put a bullet in the mage and ended him." They value their renown as a cultural thing, and I don't, so.... Whatever. Still? Morbidly amusing.
What was news to me was that later, during the full moon, the Queen sent Spirals and wraiths (that's what the garou are calling those weird, white, life-sucking things) to the caern to.... Honestly, I have no idea what their purpose was. They were slaughtered. No casualties from the sept's side. And Val apparently to a giant bird shit on the lead Spiral's head. "Birdy blessings" I think I've heard her call that sort of thing. I can imagine how disruptive that must have been when trying to terrorize and strike fear into the sept. No clue WTF the Queen was thinking as that whole thing seemed tactically idiotic. I made a note to get out to the caern and check things out ASAP.
After killing the mage, the Queen ran a hit on the garage the Shadow Lords have had for some time, capturing Thane briefly. But he got away. So that place is off limits. Thane is damn lucky to have gotten out of that before they did something terrible to him.
The next day, I hiked out to the caern to do some scanning. The place felt clean and unmolested, nothing askew, which was a relief. That is one hell of a node and I'd hate to see anything happen to it. Post-scanning, I transitioned into meditation. Feeling and sensing the caern's tremendous energies. I imagine it's the equivalence of, from a mundane perspective, coming upon Niagra Falls from the base. The cascading, massive volumes of water. The kinetic, dynamic forces at play. It's stunning to look at. And thus so is this caern stunning to look at from a magickal perspective. It's hard to not behold it with a sense of staggering wonder and awe.
...and that's when Felix, Justin, and later Trace showed up and disrupted my reverent meditations.
Conversations ranged from putting a band together to the merits of girly drinks to Justin needing a fake ID (a wraith had aged him during that earlier fight, but I'd quietly helped Slug dislodge the wraith that'd latched onto Justin before Justin lost 40 years of his life instead of just 5) to the merits of getting out of the city and into the woods to blowing up the top floors of the Tower to get at the Queen now that her umbral shield was down.
A couple days later, I turned up in the caern as Brings-the-Pack. Felix, Justin, and Thane were present. They were talking about the Tower again, so I think they may have the momentum and drive to take definitive action against it sooner rather than later. There seems to be a schism between Renegade (the really powerful Spiral out of Seattle) and the Queen--possibly a wedge that was driven between the two groups when the Spirals assisted the garou in handing over the Queen's mage. (Thane said the only information the Queen's forces got out of him when he was captured was that Blue--one of theirs--had tipped the Garou off about the Queen's mage leaving the Tower. That seems to have made my suggestion that the garou tell the Queen's forces about how their Spiral allies are undermining them--in the hopes of creating a disruption of power/morale--a moot point.) The theurges have the bodies of the wraiths (from the botched assault on the caern during the moot) and are looking into making some kind of disruptive talens from them. I'd like to study them. What's left of them, at least. My suspicion is that they may be a wholly new "race" of supernatural creatures. Possibly from another dimension.
Curiously, Felix mentioned that the wraiths used some sort of telepathy to communicate with one another, and he was wondering if that might make them open to a viral thought of some kind. Plant an idea in one and it spreads and takes out the network. (I later learned the idea came from a discussion with Slug, which, frankly, sounds like something Slug would have come up with.) Felix seemed to think that telepathy was spectacularly unique and a potential vulnerability, but I pointed out that the garou who are packed together often share some kind of telepathic connection through their totem spirit. And if this mind-virus worked on the wraiths and Queen, it'd technically work on the garou, too. (This might have given him a little perspective about his own kind and telepathic abilities not being so terribly outlandish among the supernatural.) I mentioned that I might be able to disrupt the wraiths' telepathic connection, but I needed to see their corpses to study them. He seemed excited about that prospect. (I might be able to disrupt the telepathic connection or even send down painful, distracting noise through it. But who's to say they can't turn it off? Still. If they rely on that for rapid communication and coordination of attacks, and they've grown dependent upon it in battles, switching it off ought to be very disruptive.) I also pointed out to Felix that by tapping into someone else's telepathic network, if it wasn't done discreetly, might open up someone to being psychically attacked by the entire network.
I asked about where the Spirals and wraiths had appeared in the caern and at what time. Given an answer, I went to the top of the escarpment to look back in time to see if they'd done something to the caern that I'd missed earlier. No, they hadn't done anything to the caern. And the wraiths are able to go invisible and cross over through the gauntlet, but it does not look like they can jump between dimensions of fold space. I shared this with the garou.
Then I asked to speak privately with Thane so I could as a favor of him--intentionally making it look like the conversation was about me rather than Thane, who's cell phone had a curious Correspondence-based effect about it. I let him know quietly, so as to not embarrass him in front of other garou, that he might be inadvertently relaying information or GPS coordinates to the Queen. He said he would destroy the phone, but I suggested he keep it, be careful where he went with it, and use it to help set up a trap designed to draw out some of the Spirals and/or wraiths. He seemed to think this a good idea. We ended our private chat.
A new garou, Linnaea, arrived. Thane made his introductions and then left. I did the same as I could feel my grasp over the cougar illusion beginning to slip.