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Wed, August 6
Harvested tass from the two city nodes. Ran into Ghost in Harbor Park. Learned a bit about her history. She was with a camp of Walkers (Cyberwolves?) who explored cybermancy/cybernetics as being the natural course of evolution for the Walkers. The leaders in that camp (and I'm not sure if this is at the local or worldwide level) were busted for conducting experiments on lupus cubs without their consent. Some died and some went insane. (I wonder if Clare is a success story? I should ask her.) In the fallout, Ghost was banished. She still thinks that augmentation is the future. Maybe. To an extent. But I don't think she understands how cybernetics.... They'd become puppets for Iteration X. And, at the risk of sounding like some kind of garou traditionalist, Gaia never intended werewolves to be warezwolves.
Thurs, August 7
Val called and said she'd be coming by this evening to pick up her bike. I said I'd have it restored by then and went back to work on repairing it. Silvertip came to visit just before Val and Slug arrived. We talked. Esther, it turns out, is Silvertip's cousin.
Silvertip and I talked about the possibility of The Nothing being a horror from the recesses of the Deep Umbra, and it occurred to me that The Nothing--or at least the creatures serving it--seem to be acting like thaumavores. Waaay back when Dana was around, we'd had a large thaumavore in the area that was feeding off the nodes in the area, damaging a couple and destroying at least one. Multi-dimensional creature that seemed to slip between this world and the spirit world, co-existing in each at times, and maybe even in other planes of existence. The Nothing might be a derivative of a thaumavore, except instead of feeding on magic it feeds on what we define as reality. It might not be anti-matter: it might be anti-reality.
It hurts even trying to wrap my head around the concept, much less an idea as to how to deal with it. Curiously, Silvertip claims the Rite of Cleansing seems to be one of the only things that works against it. Perhaps I need to watch that ritual be performed on an aspect of The Nothing to see how it works--and then I might be able to replicate the ritual the garou have. Or create a weapon or rote that might work against it.
Val and Slug arrived just as I finished up the Harley. I hope they don't wreck it on their trip to LA, because I was kind of hoping to ride it myself.
There was brief talk about.... Val thinks she can summon The Nothing's agents and she's interested in capturing and/or binding one of them. Silvertip has apparently attempted to command one (I assume with a gift as opposed to harsh language and threats), but she claimed it didn't work because it felt like it had no spiritual aspect to command. (Which is the problem I seem to be faced with as well. How does one affect something that cannot be touched or manipulated. And, if we can't touch or manipulate it, why is it that it can touch and manipulate us? What.... There must be something they are doing to cross that threshold. I need to observe them and figure out what it is so I and the garou can do it back at them. If that's even possible.)
You know what? Until we figure out what that is, I think every garou who can ought to learn that Rite of Cleansing. Maybe, combined, they could do a big ritual that could also function as a massive weapon against The Nothing.
Silvertip and I might need to do some esoteric research and experimentation at some point.
Fri, Aug 8
Friday morning rolled around and I opted to be cougar for a long while. Do some thinking about the vampire I killed, dwelling on morality and consequences and.... just sorting things out and thinking. Mostly. I called up Mr. Lee--thank goodness for touchscreen displays for making calls and Forces magic to emulate speech--to see if he'd be available to serve as an escort to the site where the garou recently battled a pack of Spirals--and the leader blew himself up and a bunch of underground creatures rose up from beneath the ground. We met up, he went fox, and we agreed to be civilized and not sniff one another's butts.
After he led me to the scene of the earlier battle, I spent some time investigating the area. The BSD who blew himself up did so without the use of chemical explosives, so this might be a gift, rite, talen, or power granted via the Green Dragon (or some other) pack totem I'd heard they followed. Soooo we might be seeing more of that in the future. Grand. The subterranean creatures (can we call them grabboids?) appear to have come from deep--and I mean DEEP--in the earth. Further than I was able to follow. Left in that direction, too. Mr. Lee says the Spirals interact with things DEEP within the earth, so.... I should probably mention this to Jacinta and Salem, because these things might make a re-appearance again, and I doubt that the caern has defenses against that sort of attack. (Or maybe they do? I don't know.)
Sat, August 9
A glorious day laying about my cabin and property as a cougar. I broke down and used Forces to pop open a can of that vegetarian cat food. I figure I'm going to have to try it eventually as I'm hoping to get a good solid week in as a cougar--at least until the moon is small enough that I can go see Emma. Vegetarian cat food. My brain said "disgusting" but.... You know, it wasn't entirely horrible either. The taste and smell is different in this form than how I perceived it as a human. I can eat this.
Although, later, I found out it makes me kind of gassy. And I thought LOLcat's farts smelled bad. Whew! Though that could be the cougar-nose. (It's probably not, though. Ugh.)
I spent some time wandering the perimeter of my property, getting more and more familiar with it. After a successful experiment on warding a larger area--the cabin itself--with a Matter and Correspondence effect that kept the rain off of it during a transient sprinkle, I'm curious about warding a much larger area. And the effects I might be able to wrap in to such a ward. Hmmm.
Sun, August 10
Woke up from my cat nap (a literal cat nap as I was still enjoying my time as a cougar taking a nap on the futon downstairs) when the phone rang. I'd routed things through my Kindle Fire so... Cougar paws are too big to do much of anything with an iPhone, and they're not spectacular on the larger Fire's surface either, but it's manageable. Mostly. Anyway. Phone. Spirals. They wanted to talk to some of the garou in charge. They sent a picture of a nasty pipe bomb that they said they'd planted at an address. I stalled for time, trying to think how in the world they'd gotten my number, and the only thing I could come up with was that Mouse gave it to them on purpose, misleading the Spirals as to who they were talking to and giving us an advantage. (There'd been a mouse with a missing ear in the bomb photo and....) While I had the Spirals on hold, I extended my senses to get a look at who was on the other end of the line. The guy who called had a necklace with what looked kind of like a giant mouse ear-type-thing as a pendant. I'm pretty sure they thought I was just Walker kin who'd relay a message for them. I--briefly--debated teleporting the bomb that they'd left in an apartment building (yeah, I found that while I had them on hold, having skimmed the location from the one guy's surface thoughts) into the trunk of their car and then detonating it. I fought that impulse down, though.
God, it has gotten easier to think about killing now that I've done it once already. Please do not let this be a slippery slope.
They gave me the address for the bomb and stressed they wanted to talk. I ended up hanging up on them, not giving the guy the satisfaction of ending that call the way he wanted. I was able to keep my scrying up, so I followed them to their adjacent hotel rooms, listening in on their conversations along the way. There's disagreement about whether or not meeting with the garou is a good idea. There's 4 of them. Smart-dressed guy (cold, rational, Walker?), raggedy guy (Gnawer?), ski-mask guy (big ball of anger who doesn't like talking), and Native woman (who helped keep ski-mask guy under control at one point, so dangerous).
I examined the bomb from afar. It wasn't going to go off when they said it was. A problem with the detonator setup wire. Like maybe they intended it to not work, but wanted to send the message that they very well could have if they wanted? I suspect it ties in.... If Mouse is alive, they have a bomb planted next to her, likely with a dead man's switch somewhere, so if the garou don't play nice with the Spirals, the local garou will effectively be killing Mouse by proxy. They left a note and a cell phone on the bomb saying that they'll call later with a meeting location.
So much for getting to spend a week or so as a cougar. I cancelled the effect and revert back to plain old me.
I called up Salem and arranged a meet-up with him out on the Walker territory. I told him everything. Offered to do overwatch from afar if they decided to meet up or raid. Salem's assembling the team, which sounds like it might be him, Riley (his suggestion), and Slug (my suggestion). Salem told me that if it was him or someone else, I was to save them and not him. He made it sound like he was ordering me. I don't follow orders very well, but I didn't exactly tell him 'no' to his face, either. Instead, I told him I might "go loud" for this, which I suppose was my way of saying "I'm going to try and protect everyone, old man" without actually saying it. Told Salem to caution Slug that Weird Shit(tm) might happen and that he should just focus on the spirals, not the Weird Shit(tm). And told Salem that if a fight happened, to spare the guy with the cell phone and I would motherfucking RIP from his mind where the hell Mouse is at.
Fuck it. It's Mouse. I'd do that for her. I already did it once for Val.
Harvested tass from the two city nodes. Ran into Ghost in Harbor Park. Learned a bit about her history. She was with a camp of Walkers (Cyberwolves?) who explored cybermancy/cybernetics as being the natural course of evolution for the Walkers. The leaders in that camp (and I'm not sure if this is at the local or worldwide level) were busted for conducting experiments on lupus cubs without their consent. Some died and some went insane. (I wonder if Clare is a success story? I should ask her.) In the fallout, Ghost was banished. She still thinks that augmentation is the future. Maybe. To an extent. But I don't think she understands how cybernetics.... They'd become puppets for Iteration X. And, at the risk of sounding like some kind of garou traditionalist, Gaia never intended werewolves to be warezwolves.
Thurs, August 7
Val called and said she'd be coming by this evening to pick up her bike. I said I'd have it restored by then and went back to work on repairing it. Silvertip came to visit just before Val and Slug arrived. We talked. Esther, it turns out, is Silvertip's cousin.
Silvertip and I talked about the possibility of The Nothing being a horror from the recesses of the Deep Umbra, and it occurred to me that The Nothing--or at least the creatures serving it--seem to be acting like thaumavores. Waaay back when Dana was around, we'd had a large thaumavore in the area that was feeding off the nodes in the area, damaging a couple and destroying at least one. Multi-dimensional creature that seemed to slip between this world and the spirit world, co-existing in each at times, and maybe even in other planes of existence. The Nothing might be a derivative of a thaumavore, except instead of feeding on magic it feeds on what we define as reality. It might not be anti-matter: it might be anti-reality.
It hurts even trying to wrap my head around the concept, much less an idea as to how to deal with it. Curiously, Silvertip claims the Rite of Cleansing seems to be one of the only things that works against it. Perhaps I need to watch that ritual be performed on an aspect of The Nothing to see how it works--and then I might be able to replicate the ritual the garou have. Or create a weapon or rote that might work against it.
Val and Slug arrived just as I finished up the Harley. I hope they don't wreck it on their trip to LA, because I was kind of hoping to ride it myself.
There was brief talk about.... Val thinks she can summon The Nothing's agents and she's interested in capturing and/or binding one of them. Silvertip has apparently attempted to command one (I assume with a gift as opposed to harsh language and threats), but she claimed it didn't work because it felt like it had no spiritual aspect to command. (Which is the problem I seem to be faced with as well. How does one affect something that cannot be touched or manipulated. And, if we can't touch or manipulate it, why is it that it can touch and manipulate us? What.... There must be something they are doing to cross that threshold. I need to observe them and figure out what it is so I and the garou can do it back at them. If that's even possible.)
You know what? Until we figure out what that is, I think every garou who can ought to learn that Rite of Cleansing. Maybe, combined, they could do a big ritual that could also function as a massive weapon against The Nothing.
Silvertip and I might need to do some esoteric research and experimentation at some point.
Fri, Aug 8
Friday morning rolled around and I opted to be cougar for a long while. Do some thinking about the vampire I killed, dwelling on morality and consequences and.... just sorting things out and thinking. Mostly. I called up Mr. Lee--thank goodness for touchscreen displays for making calls and Forces magic to emulate speech--to see if he'd be available to serve as an escort to the site where the garou recently battled a pack of Spirals--and the leader blew himself up and a bunch of underground creatures rose up from beneath the ground. We met up, he went fox, and we agreed to be civilized and not sniff one another's butts.
After he led me to the scene of the earlier battle, I spent some time investigating the area. The BSD who blew himself up did so without the use of chemical explosives, so this might be a gift, rite, talen, or power granted via the Green Dragon (or some other) pack totem I'd heard they followed. Soooo we might be seeing more of that in the future. Grand. The subterranean creatures (can we call them grabboids?) appear to have come from deep--and I mean DEEP--in the earth. Further than I was able to follow. Left in that direction, too. Mr. Lee says the Spirals interact with things DEEP within the earth, so.... I should probably mention this to Jacinta and Salem, because these things might make a re-appearance again, and I doubt that the caern has defenses against that sort of attack. (Or maybe they do? I don't know.)
Sat, August 9
A glorious day laying about my cabin and property as a cougar. I broke down and used Forces to pop open a can of that vegetarian cat food. I figure I'm going to have to try it eventually as I'm hoping to get a good solid week in as a cougar--at least until the moon is small enough that I can go see Emma. Vegetarian cat food. My brain said "disgusting" but.... You know, it wasn't entirely horrible either. The taste and smell is different in this form than how I perceived it as a human. I can eat this.
Although, later, I found out it makes me kind of gassy. And I thought LOLcat's farts smelled bad. Whew! Though that could be the cougar-nose. (It's probably not, though. Ugh.)
I spent some time wandering the perimeter of my property, getting more and more familiar with it. After a successful experiment on warding a larger area--the cabin itself--with a Matter and Correspondence effect that kept the rain off of it during a transient sprinkle, I'm curious about warding a much larger area. And the effects I might be able to wrap in to such a ward. Hmmm.
Sun, August 10
Woke up from my cat nap (a literal cat nap as I was still enjoying my time as a cougar taking a nap on the futon downstairs) when the phone rang. I'd routed things through my Kindle Fire so... Cougar paws are too big to do much of anything with an iPhone, and they're not spectacular on the larger Fire's surface either, but it's manageable. Mostly. Anyway. Phone. Spirals. They wanted to talk to some of the garou in charge. They sent a picture of a nasty pipe bomb that they said they'd planted at an address. I stalled for time, trying to think how in the world they'd gotten my number, and the only thing I could come up with was that Mouse gave it to them on purpose, misleading the Spirals as to who they were talking to and giving us an advantage. (There'd been a mouse with a missing ear in the bomb photo and....) While I had the Spirals on hold, I extended my senses to get a look at who was on the other end of the line. The guy who called had a necklace with what looked kind of like a giant mouse ear-type-thing as a pendant. I'm pretty sure they thought I was just Walker kin who'd relay a message for them. I--briefly--debated teleporting the bomb that they'd left in an apartment building (yeah, I found that while I had them on hold, having skimmed the location from the one guy's surface thoughts) into the trunk of their car and then detonating it. I fought that impulse down, though.
God, it has gotten easier to think about killing now that I've done it once already. Please do not let this be a slippery slope.
They gave me the address for the bomb and stressed they wanted to talk. I ended up hanging up on them, not giving the guy the satisfaction of ending that call the way he wanted. I was able to keep my scrying up, so I followed them to their adjacent hotel rooms, listening in on their conversations along the way. There's disagreement about whether or not meeting with the garou is a good idea. There's 4 of them. Smart-dressed guy (cold, rational, Walker?), raggedy guy (Gnawer?), ski-mask guy (big ball of anger who doesn't like talking), and Native woman (who helped keep ski-mask guy under control at one point, so dangerous).
I examined the bomb from afar. It wasn't going to go off when they said it was. A problem with the detonator setup wire. Like maybe they intended it to not work, but wanted to send the message that they very well could have if they wanted? I suspect it ties in.... If Mouse is alive, they have a bomb planted next to her, likely with a dead man's switch somewhere, so if the garou don't play nice with the Spirals, the local garou will effectively be killing Mouse by proxy. They left a note and a cell phone on the bomb saying that they'll call later with a meeting location.
So much for getting to spend a week or so as a cougar. I cancelled the effect and revert back to plain old me.
I called up Salem and arranged a meet-up with him out on the Walker territory. I told him everything. Offered to do overwatch from afar if they decided to meet up or raid. Salem's assembling the team, which sounds like it might be him, Riley (his suggestion), and Slug (my suggestion). Salem told me that if it was him or someone else, I was to save them and not him. He made it sound like he was ordering me. I don't follow orders very well, but I didn't exactly tell him 'no' to his face, either. Instead, I told him I might "go loud" for this, which I suppose was my way of saying "I'm going to try and protect everyone, old man" without actually saying it. Told Salem to caution Slug that Weird Shit(tm) might happen and that he should just focus on the spirals, not the Weird Shit(tm). And told Salem that if a fight happened, to spare the guy with the cell phone and I would motherfucking RIP from his mind where the hell Mouse is at.
Fuck it. It's Mouse. I'd do that for her. I already did it once for Val.
