nick_garou | Tribal Talk with Mouse and Riley

I was over at the Tenement Saturday night and ran into Mouse and Riley up on the 5th floor. They were talking about the dragon thing that changed Riley from a guy to a gal, and Mouse advanced a theory that if asking spirits to undo the change was met uniformly with "she is the way she is supposed to be," then perhaps what needs to be done is find a spirit that is capable of just changing her from the female she's "supposed to be" into a male. Riley seemed a little reluctant about that, as no telling what a spirit might end up doing there. Honestly? Can't blame her. She'll probably never know that I'd even taken a look to see if it was something that could be undone with magic, but her Life pattern--as a girl--seems totally normal. Of course, if I knew a shitload more about Life magic I could turn her back, but.... I don't.

Mouse brought up that the local Shadow Lords are probably due to be fucked with: electricity cutting out, water stopping, city bothering about unpaid bills, etc. Why? The Shadow Lords--intentionally (in a desire to cover their own asses) or through negligence/incompetence--said nothing about their own building having been compromised by vampires earlier until Kavi pressed one of them about it--and then the guy apparently tried to shift all the blame onto Flint, the one non-Slord in their pack. And rumor has it that the mole that was feeding information to the vampires is one of their kin. (And here I'd thought it was Danny.) The Slords had apparently suspected their kin was the mole but did nothing about it. As Riley put it, "There's being proud, and there's being retarded." I suggested leaving Val out of the loop on that one, even though I'm sure she loves pranks: she's awefully chummy with the stormcrow spirit she's been hanging out with.

After Riley left, Mouse and I played some original Left 4 Dead on the xbox. (Really enjoy that game.) I mentioned that I was itching to get into Harbor Park so I could work some magic, eyeball some of the urban/weaver spirits, and see if it might be feasible to pass myself off as one of them. Mouse seemed to think that it might be a bad idea and recommended holding off until she learned a gift that would allow her to bring others into the umbra. That way, if someone did show up, I'd just be a kinfolk who was getting a tour. She did mention something that I'd observed, though. With Nieve no longer guarding the Lambent Witness (that bastet fetish), the park's umbra is essentially deserted during the new moon in the daytime. I could easily scout the park out, peek into the umbra to make sure the coast was clear, pop over, work some mojo, call it off in, say, 5 or 10 minutes, then skip back over with no one being the wiser--exept for the spirits. Mouse thinks they'd be curious as opposed to hostile. Chloe and Dana never seemed to have a problem with the more garou-friendly spirits taking offense to them.

I really want to examine the node from the spirit world's side.

I also mentioned how I was super busy between the Terminus job, the PI business, general kinfolkness, and my research/practice of magic. I asked if she knew any kin who'd be interested in running the business aspect of my PI firm: Doing the books for me and acting as support for Val. She mentioned talking to an Edward Maxwell, who's CJ's father, Walker kin, and owns the Maxwell Resort Hotel downtown. (Long story made short, I ran into CJ out by my cabin about 5 years ago. She'd firsted, ended up naked out in the woods, and came across my cabin. After I figured out it was not some assasination attempt, I called Salem to collect her. Things didn't go well for her with the Glass Walker tribe at the time (Mouse wasn't elder then), and her dad relocated her to another sept to get her out of that hostile, dysfunctional environment.) Got his number. I'll post a flyer at Edgewood and the Tenement, then go talk to him if no one responds in a couple days. Just tell him Mouse sent me: apparently they get along fairly well.

We played Left 4 Dead way too late. I could feel myself crashing, so I bunked in my 3rd floor apt. Weird, weird shit happened. My phone speaker? I could hear it making a faint noise, just on the threshhold of hearing, even though no program was running. Turned the phone off and it was still making a noise--definitely coming from the phone, too. Took the battery out: noise still happening. Could not see any magical effect, so.... I have no idea what was up with it. I pulled the SIM card and then threw the phone out the window. It shattered to bits when it hit the building across the alleyway, then broke up even more when it hit the cement in the alley. That solved that problem!