TwilightRules:
1. Have fun.
2. I don't really have many rules.
3. Scene will be combination of cinematic and diced.
4. PM me flaws.
5. Let me know if you have anything you really cannot stand to see in the scene and/or if I accidentally hit any negative buttons for you.
6. Keep track of your own tempers, et cetera.
7. I'll give you one free reroll to use anytime you like in the scene.
Daddy(Merits and Flaws: Undwerworld ties, Notoriety (tends to get kin killed) and that's about it.)
HurricaneMerit: Lack of Scent; Flaw: Mark of the Predator
Mist[Did you get my list of Flaws?]
Mist[This is Sophia! Treads the Ashen Path]
Storm[strict carnivore. if this scene involves speed-eating cakes, erich is fucked :[ ]
Mist(Docile 3 (Means she can never buy her rage above 4), Strict Carnivore (Means she likes her meat!) Also Dissociation with a focus on both Depersonalization AND Derealization depending on the situation... Is her Derangement!)
TwilightWell after dark. The sun is long gone from behind the mountains and the sky out here is vasty-dark, scattered with stars spilled across its depths like glitter spilled from the art table of a pre-school. The Citadel is far enough away from the Denver metro area proper that there is not even the tell-tale glow of the lights of the city sprawl on the eastern horizon to mark place and time.
Ingrid and Tommy know the way well enough by now: the turnoff toward the gravel drive, the wooded property surrounded by its electried cattle fence. That one is no more than four or perhaps five feet high, depending on the lay of the surrounding property. There are no streetlights to mark the entrance, just a reflective sign that warns trespassers away and identifies the facility.
The main compound is not visible from the road, nor indeed from any particular vantage point in the rough square mile that is enclosed by cattle fence. The central core of buildings are mostly shrouded by trees: scrub pines and gambol oak, underbrush allowed to grow a bit wild to shield the buildings themselves from view. They can see the drive through an open field close to the entrance gate, a rutted gravel wallow before it disappears between the trees. A shack close to it, which looks rather like a guard shack but appears dark at least on first glance from a distance.
Having likely circled the property at least once, Ingrid is aware of two other gates in the electric fence, one close to the abandoned house where Dmitri must have been: beaten and tortured and murdered after he tried to escape, and where is body was hidden in plain view: in a grave in the old family cemetery. And one on the other side of the surrounding ring of the property, accessing another trail leading up into the hills that grow rougher and fold into the mountains beyond.
DaddyAgain he was here, kicking mud off his boots and looking as though he might murder someone for it. Though, this time that look seems to be directed. He can sense the compound, maybe its the glow it casts in the otherwise black night. But his eyes seem focused on the thing.
Its not the mud that he minds. That much is apparent since, as soon as Ingrid returns, he drops to one knee in the stuff. The knife is out, the big gleaming thing with serrated back. He draws four 'x's in a row.
"This is us." Says Afro Daddy, who actually wasn't sporting an afro tonight, but tightly braided hair. He flips the knife, catching it gingerly at the blade and points to blunt butt of it to Ingrid.
"Show us where we are."
StormThis is the first time Erich has met either Sophia or Tommy. Truth is when he got the message from Ingrid he sorta assumed it'd be like old times. Just him and Ingrid, going somewhere to kill something, somehow. Can't quite say he was taken aback at the extra help, but -- well. He was a little surprised. And a little quiet, riding over, sending the other two puzzled glances now and then.
Now, as they approach the proverbial hotzone, Erich gets his head into the game. Sitting in the back of the rental car-truck-minivan-whatever it is, he cracks his knuckles. Pops his neck. They come to a stop, and he opens his door and hops out. Fumbles out a ragged little scrap of paper -- all that remains of the neatly drawn map Ingrid provided them with at the start -- and squints at it until Tommy starts to draw in the dirt.
Erich rumples the map up again and slides it into his pocket. He frowns down at the scratched dirt instead.
MistWhen she was told of what had been happening Sophia seemed happy enough to offer her services. The Crescent Moon knew that she couldn't lend them much in the way of physical strength, but there was far more at work here than matters of flesh and blood.
She seemed quiet, for the most part, letting her eyes wander around her surroundings, watchful and mindful of everything around her. To be honest it might appear as if she was meditating while the New Moon took the time to scout the area and bring information back.
Sophia's blood was undeniably strong, but she was no queen... The members of House Wise Heart have long stood in the shadow of their cousins but never has a house dared to doubt the wisdom that comes from this reserved and contemplative house!
Gone was the youthful and whimsical smile that usually stretched across her face. Her mood was somber, sober, and focused. News of what was happening here hit her hard and she's been in a reserved mood ever since.
Eventually she takes the time to settle her knees into the dirt beneath her and she lowers herself to the ground in order to place her ear on the dirt and she takes the time to simply listen. Quiet and attentive.
HurricaneThey've been gathered together by one of Denver's newest and smallest packs. Ingrid in particular called out to and invited along Erich. She gives him the gist when she picks him up from wherever he was: Place outside of town that's meant to be helping troubled youth is so much worse. A boy's body was found, mutilated and tortured and buried on the grounds.
Will you help me tear this place apart? she'd asked through gritted teeth, her dark eyes sparking Rage.
It's Ingrid that provides the quartet of Garou with transportation, a sleek dark sedan she's rented to take them out to the Citadel compound. Other vehicles - vans, mostly, or whatever would make sense - driven by kinfolk because, on the off chance the other children being held here are in a rescuable state, they're not going to want to be crammed in a vehicle with one or more like Ingrid or her companions. These vehicles do not follow them all the way to The Citadel; they park elsewhere, and they await their orders.
Ingrid parks them near to where she and Afro Daddy began their hunt the last time, closer to the rear of the complex, past the seeming abandoned guardhouse and closer to the abandoned house with its broken glass panes and its nearby cemetary. She is dressed for the hunt in soft, dark colored athletic attire, yoga pants and t-shirt and sneakers. A moment later she shifts down to four legs instead of two, dark furred wolf instead of slender Korean woman, that fur bristling. And then she'd gone a-scouting.
She returns to them quickly, and melts back into that human shape. Wordlessly, she takes up that offered knife and kneels, unconcerned by dirt on her knees as she pulls a small LED flashlight - about as big around as her slender index finger. Keeping it low to the ground and covering it with her fingers, she uses the diminished light to illuminate the drawing.
"This," she points with the tip of the blade, "is where we found the body. There's a stream," a wavy line, "part of which goes beneath the fence. I suggest we enter there."
DaddyHe nods, takes the knife once she's done and wipes it off on his denim before place it back in the holder at his hip. There's a moment of contemplation marked by a slow plucking of his beard and his eyes move to Sophia, to Erich.
Erich.
"I don't know you. Don't know your strengths so I won't try and tell you where step. But if you can trust her--" A nod to Ingrid. "The way I trust her, then we shouldn't have any problems."
And to Sophia.
"That goes for you too. But if either of you see something that's important, let us know."
And finally, to Ingrid.
"You've got point."
MistWhen Ingrid returns to them her attention is drawn from the ground towards the New Moon! Her eyes follow the wolf as she slowly returns to her birth form and, soon enough, she is moving closer to see what is being discussed.
Her attention was on the map and she found herself studying it's details. Yet she still wore that empty look upon her face as she studied the features and general locations of things, putting them to memory in the event she found herself separated from the group.
Ingrid's plan seemed the safest path. It would make it easier for them to approach the place, as well as help mask their scent in the event there were dogs, or worse, protecting the grounds. So she quietly nods when Daddy does, and sees no reason to second guess the New Moon's plans!
When Daddy asks if she trusts Ingrid, Sophia simply smiles, and glances once towards Ingrid and then away, it was the first smile she had managed since they left and she didn't feel inclined to say anything further.
"Some nights the quiet comes because they know better, but most nights it comes because they do not." She says to the group as she wiggles her toes in the dirt beneath her feet and she slowly stands and glances off into the distance as she searches the darkness for, well, anything. "Will we be alone?" She asks in regards to the land itself, you never know what you might encounter wandering the grounds.
StormDirectly addressed, Erich looks briefly startled -- wolf in the headlights. And there's a moment, just an errant second as Afro Daddy says if you can trust her the way I trust her, when something hot and glittering flashes into the young Ahroun's eyes. There's no easy explanation for why, and in the end it has perhaps very little to do with Tommy himself. Anyway, a moment later it is gone, and he frowns down at the rough dirt-map instead.
"I'll lay low for now," he says. "But once we hit resistance, I'm best up front and center with my teeth."
HurricaneOnce she's told them their location, the location of best entrance, and her suggestion, Ingrid twists the light off and returns it to her pocket. She looks to Afro Daddy first, and there is respect in the way she watches him, waits for him to assess and in turn issue marching orders. He's a Fostern, yes. He's a Philodox, yeah. But it's something else. She's found the leader she would follow, and it shows.
Erich next, who is not the other Fostern on the scene. Erich who is all wolf-in-headlights. And finally to Sophia. She smiles.
"Are we ever?" she asks, momentarily cryptic. Then, "The way is clear for us, for now. We should go quickly."
And she shifts right there, through the forms to small lithe Lupus. She digs a moment at the scratched marks on the earth, covering those tracks. And this time she doesn't give Tommy a talen to trace her movements. She waits to cloak herself in the night.
Then, on point, she leads the way to the stream and the low gap in the fence.
TwilightIngrid leads through through the rough underbrush of the rolling valley, upslope. That much is clear from the changing relationship of the horizon with the sky; from the steeper grades, the occasional sharp scree slope where the stunted trees cling like twisted little fiends to whatever purchase their gnarled roots can find. The hum of that electric fence is audible to those who take their lupine form; is a buzzing dissonance, not precisely an electric whine in their ear but a hum, alien against the song of the crickets and cicadas, all those night noises.
They lope through the darkness, flush out a 'possum on their circuit and hear other things scrabbling in the underbrush, the whoo, whoo of an owl.
Takes less time on four legs than on two, and soon enough they smell water, which smells sweet and clean. The swiftrunning sound of water-over-stone. The stream has cut its own little gully into the bedrock, shallow but steep-sided and surrounded by a tight march of trees grown taller for the free access to water in all but the dryest of drought years.
Its little gully cuts right beneath the outer electric fence.
The way-in is narrow; they will have to belly crawl and shimmy over the mossy stones, in the cold water, but there is just enough room for a wolf to cross.
Daddy[Lupus Dex +Ath]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
Hurricane[dex+ath+lupus]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9) ( success x 5 )
Hurricane[percept+alert (scents), diff -2 (lupus)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 5 )
Mist[Dex+Athletics for Sophia!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Storm[wiggling under the fence!]
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
Mist[Per+PU!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 3, 10) ( success x 1 )
Storm[percep + PU in lupus!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (2, 3, 3, 5, 10) ( success x 2 )
Daddy[Perc+Alert]
Dice: 5 d10 TN4 (1, 2, 3, 5, 7) ( success x 2 )
TwilightAs he shimmies beneath the fence, Afro-Daddy notices the gleam of what appear to be motion sensor devices at a few points along the fence. The stream's gully seems too low for the devices, but he might expect similar devices - perhaps attached to floodlights - deeper in the compound. He also catches the faint scent of a canine.
TwilightSophia finds the night quieter on the other side of the fence. There are fewer insect sounds.
TwilightErich catches the scents of several canines; most of the spoor is old but the urine markings are moderately fresh. Within the day, at least. The night sounds are definitely decreased on the other side of the fence, and the scents of small game are nearly non-existent.
TwilightIngrid catches the scent of several canines on the other side of the fence, and very few small game animals. Something is off about the canine scents, and she can identify four-or-so separate ones. The closeness of the scent also suggests that they are often confined to a kennel. She is also aware - in a glance back - that there were motion sensor devices on the electric fence. She thinks that they made it through without setting them off because the gully was so low. The noises of night insects are prominent decreased and she can he a low hum somewhere ahead of them.
StormErich is closer to his wolf self than most human-born werewolves, and closer still yet in this form. When that possum spooks he instantly leaps after it, crashes into the brush and wades three strides in before abruptly coming to his sense and returning to the group. Leaves in his fur. Mud on his paws.
He wades through the stream unhesitatingly, pausing to lap water from its edge. On the other side, his legs are wet, as is his underbelly. He shakes his fur out: dappled grey despite his supposed tribe. Almost immediately upon scrambling up on the bank, his nose is to the ground, picking up fresh scents. The odor of other canines -- dogs? wolves? -- immediately assaults him. He chuffs, sneezes once. Wags his tail low and slow and uncertain.
Storm[oh! almost forgot!
-1R to City Running
-1WP to Resist Pain]
MistThe silver furred wolf soon melds into the darkness. She keeps herself close by following the scents and movement of her fellow Garou in the darkness. She wasn't nearly as stealthy or mobile as most of them but she managed to keep up just fine on her own.
When they cross into the darkness her ears perk up and she finds herself attentive to the fact that the entire place seems quieter. "Forest, afraid." she conveys to the others in the lupine tongue, the simplicity of that form makes it difficult to convey certain concepts but that one seemed easy and simple enough.
There was fear looming in the air around them. Fear that either came from the Wyrm's presence or the presence of some predatory animal that roamed the grounds... Both were clear possibilities, and both would remain on the forefront of her mind as long as she could manage.
She keeps herself attentive to the direction others were moving. Though, she didn't doubt she would be doing more soon enough, for the moment the matter of getting to their destination safely was up to those who knew this area better.
HurricaneIngrid wriggles and squirms as though she were born to this form and not the two-legged one she waers so often. Shooting ahead of the others, keeping on point, on the other side of the fence she stops and looks back over her shoulder as the others make their way beneath the hum of the electric wires. Luckily, there is no scent of scorched fur wafting upward in their wake, no tszzzzz-YELP as someone rises too soon or misjudges the size of the gap.
It's as she watches the others come through, ears swiveled to catch sounds behind and around them, that she notices the sensors. No need to alarm the others at this particular moment, they seem high enough up that they would have missed it, but she does make a note to be watchful for more on this side. And to be alert just in case they set them off.
"Four wolf-dog smell," she communicates quietly to the others. "Wrong smell." Swinging her head to face the front, she lifts it, directing them before looking back, and she growls. "Wait. I look."
And, unless someone objects, she finally wraps herself in the darkness, seeming to snatch hold of the shadows with her teeth to draw them around her.
[-1G Shadow Weaving: dex+occult diff 7]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
Hurricane[and Blur for good measure: manip+stealth diff 8-1 (Shadow Weaving)]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 2 )
DaddyThat moment the opossum rushes out, and Erich after it, Tommy freezes, his shaggy fur catching up to the sudden cessation of motion to his body. One paw up in the air he watches them go and, when its all over he continues with the rest.
Except when that Owl made that noise. They really do that then? Not just in children's books but in real life. His head thrusts upward once he hears it, and he turns to track the thing, to actually see one. A moment later he's rushing to catch up. Nature man. Nature is a trip.
And on the other side of the fence, where Erich sniffs, chuffs and sneezes, Tommy lets out a low and uncomfortable growl. It wasn't at the scent per-se. It was almost expected that they would come up against something and with the corpse they'd dug up missing its heart, he had already expected the worst. No, he was growling at something they'd already passed. Something he'd noticed gleaming at the edge of the fence. Those murderous eyes fix on it, the braided fur down the wolfs back tightening.
When Ingrid reports and volunteers, he snaps out of it, stepping forward and resting on his haunches.
"Careful" he communicates to her before she leaves, his ears pressed back against his head. He's never actually said it to her before.
To the others he simply says. "Hidden eyes. Be still."
StormHidden eyes.
Erich's turn to growl, low and choppy and deep in his chest. He turns in place, swiveling on his haunches. God help them all if he actually spies whoever it is spying on them: he never was known for his restraint.
[WAT. WHERE? perc+alert]
Dice: 4 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 5, 7) ( success x 3 )
TwilightErich sees the motion sensors on the fencing surrounding the compound. He is confidence that they did not trip it off, but he wouldn't be surprised to see more further in.
Hurricane[dex+stealth, diff -1 (shadow weaving)]
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 9 ) Re-rolls: 2
Hurricane[and percept+alert, looking for sensors and also dangers]
Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (1, 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
TwilightMotion Sensors - How Well Hidden Are We? Crafts + Wits
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8) ( success x 3 )
TwilightIngrid loops off through the underbrush on her own; leaves behind her pack-for-the-night. Identifies a few very well-hidden motion sensors that she manages to avoid and trusts that she has managed to keep well to the shadows. The humming noise grows as she gets closer to the compound. She essentially disappears into the darkness of the underbrush and the background scent of the canines remains... background, though it grows stronger as she gets closer to the center of the compound.
Abruptly, the woods end. There is a wide open perimeter maintained around the six-foot chainlink fence surrounding the buildings. It is topped with barbed wire. Sticking to the shadows of the woods she is virtually unseen. That hum is mechanical, and driving, and constant, and comes from inside the compound. The fencing is topped by lighting every fifteen yards or so, directed outward. Dark now. There are a few lights on inside but the specifics are difficult to make out from this distance. Other than the hum, the night seems quiet. She can make out the shadow of the dorm against the sky.
Hurricane[more stealth]
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1
MistSophia decides that if they want to be as stealthy as possible they will need to avoid even being detected so her eyes move towards Daddy and she addresses him in the lupine tongue as quietly as possible.
"Spirit world," she suggests to the Half Moon. Knowing that it would probably be best to avoid detection completely if they want to sneak onto the grounds without being seen and the Spirit world at night was every wolf's best friend! With Luna high over head the Wyrm knew to withdraw to the darkest corners of the spirit world.
HurricaneWhere the woods abruptly end, so too does Ingrid stop pressing forward. She watches over the compound for several seconds, eyeing the space between the treeline and the fence, looking for those sensors. Judging their connection to the darkness.
And plotting.
Then she slowly slinks out, each paw placed carefully as she inches closer.
[and some more stealth, +WP because she would put more effort into being stealthy for the further closening/possibly retreat, whichever the second roll is]
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 9 ) [WP]
TwilightSlinking closer, she feels the shadows secure around her. Walks paw-to-paw with the delicate precision of a predator-cat. Circles the compound but judges very well the point at which she would set off the lights. Once or twice one of them goes on somewhere ahead or behind her. Something small, moving in the night, not so carefully as she. The lights ring the fence entirely. She finds the drive; takes note of a handful of lights on the second floor of the main house. The dorm is corrugated metal and has no windows, just doors, but it is the chapel that glows. She finds the kennels on the far side of the barn and has a moment's tense awareness of her presence and the scent of the animals inside. The kennels obviously open both into the inner yard of the compound proper but also through sluice-like gates in the main fence to the outer yard. All release the hounds.
The only area of the fencing not strung with barbed wire is the front gate.
Oh, and she finally identifies that hum. Somewhere inside is a generator. A secondary power source in case the main lines were cut.
Daddy"Banes..." the half moon growls back, eyes still looking for any sign of the returning half moon. A large pink tongue swipes at his maw and for a moment his head turns upward in a very human expression of realization.
"Forest afraid."
TwilightThings in the Kennel.
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (2, 4, 5, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 5 )
HurricaneShe's gone for several minutes, is their scout. The only reason they know not to fear for her safety lies with Tommy. He can feel her along the bond that they share, strong and steady as stone and yet wild and feral. They can't easily communicate from a distance, but he knows that she's there. He knows that she still breathes and is without stress or strain.
Eventually, she returns to them, quiet as a ghost. One moment the space beside Afro Daddy is empty, the next there is a slender Korean woman crouched among the wolves. She'll need her human throat and mouth and tongue to explain everything that she's found and seen and considered.
There are motion sensors scattered about, but she can guide them past them. The trees end and there's a wide open perimeter around a chain link fence, six feet high if it's an inch and topped with barbed wire and motion activated lights. Lights that tend to go off from time to time from the wind, an insect, an owl. There's a generator inside, that's the hum they may have heard. There's a kennel for the dog-things that might not be dogs with exits to this ring of the compound or to the interior, the animals awake but not alert enough to find a scentless wolf like her. She describes to them the chapel that glows with light, the dorm with metal walls and no windows, lights on in the house on the second floor. The only space without the wire is the main gate. So she gives them a few options she's considered.
They can go in through the front, up over the main gate howling for the death the destruction they are hoping to achieve here tonight. Ingrid can use the distraction to slip in from the side or behind, take out the power, find and take out the generator, maybe find and release kids she finds.
Or, she suggests, they cross that open expanse one at a time and at irregular intervals, setting off the lights yes, but perhaps getting them close enough to the fence to cut a different way in. Perhaps they can preserve their element of surprise for a little while longer.
She looks to Tommy when she's finished, expectant. He is Alpha, not just for tonight but for...well...maybe not for always, but until he proves he's no longer worthy of the honor.
Servius Sacrificed-Memory(Open scene?)
Twilight(Er, probably not at this point, sorry! It is a scene I am STing. I'd be happy to include you in scenes like this but I need to be able to communicate with you via AIM and I think you said on Thursday that leaves you out. :( )
Servius Sacrificed-Memory(I got AIM now)
Servius Sacrificed-Memory(anyway, sorry I interrupted ^^'')
Mist(Roll to activate thing!)
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
DaddySoon he's crouching too. This level of planning requires more than just body language and guttural sounds. Sophia suggests an approach of her own and after a while they combine them all together.
"We'll have to hide ourselves especially well. We want 'em nice and spooked once we hit 'em."
MistSophia listens intently to the plan, having returned to her birth form as well, and her excitement grows as her eyes pop open and she procures a tiny little sculpture of the bones of various creatures woven together.
"Sometimes there is no choice but to alert the enemy to our presence, but knowing we are here, and knowing where we are are not the same thing. Dogs care less for sight and more for scent... A strong scent will lead them exactly where we need them to be." She says as she taps what looks like the head of the tiny little creation.
Slowly her eyes close and when they open again the little bone structure comes to life and begins skittering up her arm like a spider climbing a tree.
"Tell me when we are ready, and we will begin." She confirms to the others as she takes the little skittering creature a few steps away into the darkness to do what needs to be done.
HurricaneOne might expect Ingrid to wear a smug expression when Tommy says they'll need to hide themselves well. She has proven herself to be a rather effective sneak, and hunter, and scout. But she's though she is confident in her own abilities, she's not the only one that has to hide out.
She merely nods.
TwilightAfter hours the guard shack is not manned. No one comes and no one goes and the motion sensors scattered throughout the property tell them where and who and when and what sector. The feeds all patch into the controller's desk in the dorm where at least one of the ersatz counselors is assigned to sit up all night, drowsing at the front desk, listening to the dull snoring of his charges, and maybe the last night radio broadcast of Reverend Dick Browning, coming to you over the airways out of Lubbock, Texas, bringing you the latest reports about the war over the soul of the world.
Hint: the good guys are losing.
The signs are accruing.
The end is coming soon.
Tonight our hero is Gerald Hobbs.
--
The first time he was arrested it was for uttering. Forged his grandmother's check when he was nineteen and dopesick and hungry. Kept doing it with other checkbooks until he ran out of relatives from whom to steal and started stealing for real.
Now he's reformed.
Now he's on a church kick.
Has also developed a taste for a particularly illegal sort of pornography that is only available live streaming from outer Mongolia and another show's starting in fifteen minutes or so so he's fucking excited and he knows, he knows, he knows, that the victim is always a sinner who deserves what he or she gets.
--
Meanwhile, out in the thicket of woods, Ingrid returns to her fellows and reports on her findings. They place is ringed by motion detectors and floodlights. There's no cover close to the fencing surrounding the compound, no. All that has been ruthlessly cut away. No sign that they've been detected yet but she has not found any secret hidden side entrances or obvious weaknesses that they can exploit. Ingrid offers: going over the front gate, or trying to sneak in staggered and Sophia, at last, suggests her talen.
Use it to set off the lights and make enough noise that whoever the fuck is inside will release the hounds. Draw the animals off into an ambush and then enter through the kennels while the lights are all still on. Sure, those inside will be on alert, but the secondary thread of having the animals released at their back will be gone and they will be coming in through a side entrance - the now-open kennel-gates - rather than over the main gate.
--
Five minutes. Five minutes to his fucking show and he's already salivating. Can feel the tingle of anticipation in the strangest places and he doesn't question that anymore. Doesn't question it at all. There's Reverend Browning naming down the signs, counting out the seals, fucking Gerald doesn't understand them he just knows it is coming and it is necessary and he does not yet know that everything is already falling apart. Does not understand that Christina Black is not "on a prayer retreat" but is fucking dead. Does not get that the pieces are unraveling all around him.
Does not -
--
The lights go on. There's a little alarm. He checks the cameras and yeah fuck the lights are on, probably the wind.
Then more and now the dogs are barking and wasn't there a warning to be on -
- wasn't there -
- Jesus fuck he's pissed off now. They are gonna make him miss the show. Fucking kids how the fuck they are getting out he doesn't know the whole place is secure maybe they were hiding out after chapel some of still don't seem devout enough, to him. Don't seem like they are ready for the mark.
Don't understand what the fire of god feels like when it is burning up inside you.
There won't be another one for days. It's not every day you find -
--
He hits a button. Two gates rise.
The hounds go baying out after the talen. Snarling.
TwilightThe Things in the Kennel
Dice: 6 d10 TN4 (3, 7, 7, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 5 )
HurricaneSophia lets loose that talen. Ingrid shifts through but this time doesn't go all the way to Lupus. She stops on four legs with a heavy jaw instead of two and a sword, much as she likes it this way might be quicker. Quicker to shift down to slip through that kennel, unless she wants to spend her Rage.
Which she doesn't.
So, hunched in the underbrush as best as she can as a huge, dark-and-grey furred dire wolf. The shadows still cling to her, still drape over her form and make her a little darker. A little more Lord of the Shadows.
[dex+stealth, diff -1 (shadow weaving lasts the whole scene woo!), not moving so no pret. grace spec]
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 9) ( success x 6 )
StormIf we're perfectly honest: Erich was hardly paying attentiong throughout the impromptu planning session. He was trying. He wanted to. But he was in wolf-skin and there were all these smells, and of all of them it was the dogs, the dogs, the dogs that distracted him the most. Something primitive and primeval in him wanted-needed-had to rise up, assert dominance. He wants to fight, he wants to take them down, those other predators who might challenge his superiority, he wants to defend his turf and his place at the top of the food chain.
And even when he could get over that, there were other distractions. There was this random mad-eyed Silver Fang Theurge -- is there a factory that churns them out or something? -- who reminds him a little of Charlotte but not really. And she is purity itself, and she is insanity itself, and Erich finds himself edging away from her just because she's so fucking nuts that it seeps from her pores, it lights up every shining hair on her body.
And that's not even getting to the last thing. The core of the matter, maybe. The one thing that underpins his instability tonight, because the moon is small and he can't blame it on that: no, it's not that at all. It's Ingrid, it's this new guy whose deedname is Afro Daddy, what the fuck kinda deedname is that, fucking Glass Walkers. It's this new guy who popped out of nowhere and now,
now he's Ingrid's Alpha?
What?
--
Erich growls when the bat-talen is suggested. He can't help it; he just doesn't. want. to deal with under-the-table, behind-the-curtain crap tonight. He's sick of that. Can't everything just be in the open for once? Can't it just be plain and simple and bloody?
Still: he's outnumbered, he's out-talked, they keep talking and he alone stays in wolf-skin, his hackles up, his ears flattening the longer it goes on. Which in the grand scheme of things isn't that long at all. Step back, take a neutral look: this is actually going swimmingly. It's not every day that people actually come up with a plan beyond Run In And Bite. It's not every day that garou not of the same pack manage to work together as smoothly and intelligently as this.
Erich's incapable of neutral viewpoints, though. He's agitated, he's growing more and more restless, he's stopping just short of pacing where he is by the time they finished. When that Silver Fang looses that talen, he wants to bolt after it the way he bolted after that possum.
He settles for baring his teeth instead. And waiting.
MistSophia, for her part, hopes that her scent upon her little spy is going to be enough to help mask the presence of the real her. After all, they already smell her, right? So when they smell her again that'll just be the same as already smelling her her... So with that in mind she takes up a position in the distance, away from the site where the ambush will be set, ready to leap into action as soon as the Canines run past.
There was something entirely twisted about allowing a creature like a dog to be inhabited by a bane. No dog wanted to be infected, no dog wanted to be tainted and corrupted like that. Dogs wanted to love their owners, they wanted to share kisses, and they wanted to do whatever their master wanted... But right now those poor creatures were in a living hell as a spirit latches on to their very psyche and torments their spirit.
Sophia did not easily feel anger, what she felt was pain, and sorrow, remorse for the wrong that others have done, and have had done to them. Her rage was still present, however, and she could feel it welling up inside her as the sound of the beasts approached.
She did her best to hide and prepare herself. She didn't want to... She didn't want to hurt them, she didn't want to hear their whimpers of pain, but she knew that what they were going through right now was far worse than anything she could ever put them through. Killing them would be an act of mercy, of kindness, and that, as much as she loathed the thought of doing it, was something Sophia could bring herself to do.
[Stealth! I gotta use a WP too!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 4 ) [WP]
DaddyHe wasn't one of their tribe but the dark, long limbed hispo that now stands where the tall Glasswalker once did could start a storm with the way he was breathing. Ingrid moved to her invisible spot, and Sophia to hers and he stalks carefully to spot in the underbrush as well.
Somehow he manages to control that breathing, despite the ferocity and Rage building up in him. He focuses. He prepares himself.
[1 WP to activate Resist Pain]
[Dex+Stealth+Hispo]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 1 )
Twilight(For Ingrid's stealth successes: she is choosing to get behind the pack and attack them from behind rather than a free attack.)
Hurricane[+10]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
Mist[+7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Storm[+9]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (8) ( success x 1 )
Daddy+7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (1) ( fail )
TwilightWhat comes loping at them chasing down that bat-talen of bird-bones is a ragged pack of things recognizable as canine only by their smell. More wolf than dog, more coyote than wolf, with patchy, failing skin and the odd bit of scaliness to offset the grotesquerie of their patchy, falling-out fur. They come snapping and feral and angry and unrestrained, slaver streaming from their distended jaws, hungry hungry hungry -
+6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
TwilightErich: 17Ingrid: 14Pack: 10Sophia: 9Tommy: 8
TwilightOrder:
Erich: 17
Ingrid: 14
Pack: 10
Sophia: 9
Tommy: 8
Daddy1a Bite Pack
1b Bite at Pack
R: Bite at Pack
Mist[Sophia is hoping they move in to the area past her and she'll try running in behind them! So... 1 Rage!
1. Bite a dog! ]
TwilightThing 1: Bite Erich!
Thing 2: Bite Sophia!
Thing 3: Bite Tommy!
Thing 4: BITE THAT BAT!!!!; Rage 1: Bite Tommy
Thing 5: Bite Erich;
Hurricane1: Jaw lock Thing 1
StormResist Pain previously activated. City Running previously activated. -3 Rage!
1, R1-3: TEAR ALPHA THING TO LITTLE BLOODY GIBLETS.
Mist[Sorry!
1. Get behind a dog
R1. Bite a Dog!]
Storm[1. chomp!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 4, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 7 )
Storm[dam+6]
Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 8 )
TwilightThing 1: soak!
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Hurricane[Here let me help: change to bite, diff +1, -2 for behind attack]
Dice: 7 d10 TN4 (3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
Hurricane[dam: +5+1+1(hispo)]
Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
TwilightThing 1: x.x
TwilightThing 2: Biting Sophia!
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (4, 4, 6, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
TwilightDamage!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 9, 9) ( success x 2 )
Mist[Fuck ow! Soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Storm[slightly belated WP]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 3, 5, 6) ( fail )
TwilightThing 3: Biting Tommy
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (3, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )
TwilightDamage!
Dice: 8 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
DaddySoak!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9) ( success x 3 )
TwilightThing 4: murdering a talen.
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
TwilightThing 5: Biting Erich
Dice: 5 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 4, 5, 10) ( success x 2 )
TwilightDamage!
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
DaddyBite! -2
Dice: 6 d10 TN5 (2, 5, 5, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 5 )
Storm[soak!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
DaddyDamage 4+1+1
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 8, 10) ( success x 2 )
Daddy(The extra damage)
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
TwilightThing 4: incap.
DaddyBite number 2! -3
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (6, 7, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
DaddyDamage: 4+1+1+6
Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 2 )
StormHow many times have they done this before? Erich before, Ingrid behind. It's just how things go. He's the brick wall, she's the blade in the night. He's the vanguard, she's the ambush. It's what they do.
Ingrid can't quite be blamed for thinking this is what they'll do this time, too. She can't quite be blamed for misreading Erich's silence as -- well, as being too Erich to have much to say. Or for reading his agitation as simple recklessness, simple want of violence. Or for misreading his fangs-first lunge at the Alpha-dog as his usual, joyously bloodthirsty approach to battle. But:
she does misread him. And she knows in an instant, when she steals in and takes that Alpha down with Erich,
that he did not see it that way at all.
The Ahroun roars in her face. There are no words. There is only noise, and hot breath, and bristling hackles, and blue irises shrinking to mere rims around boundless black pupils. There is only the vaguest intimation of meaning --
MINE.
-- before he lunges. At Ingrid.
[R1 - changed to biting Ingrid at +1diff.]
Storm[This time with the roll!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 8 ) Re-rolls: 3
Storm[dam +7]
Dice: 16 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 7 )
HurricaneSoak?
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 4, 5) ( fail )
Hurricane[rageback]
Dice: 3 d10 TN8 (5, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
Hurricane[incap, nevermind, FRIENDSHIP OVER STILL C'MON ERICH SHEESH]
Mist[Bite that thing's butt! Dex+Brawl+Hispo = 5 dice, diff -1 and -2 so 3!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN3 (2, 5, 5, 7, 9) ( success x 4 )
Mist[Str+3+2+3 = 10!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 5 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
DaddyRage Bite!
Dice: 8 d10 TN5 (1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
DaddyDamage 2+1+1+6
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 8 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
StormJust like that they're down one.
Erich: looks shellshocked in the aftermath. Leveled by the force and ferocity of his own anger, his own rage, his own viciousness. It only lasts an instant, though. He's an Ahroun. This is war.
He knows what to do.
[Rage 2: attack thing 2!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 5, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 ) Re-rolls: 2
Storm[+2]
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 9) ( success x 4 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Storm[Rage 3: okay seriously, DIE THING 2.]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1
Storm[dam+4]
Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 6, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 7 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
TwilightThing 2: x.x
HurricaneAnd Erich can't be blamed for thinking that Ingrid is still who she was in DC. That she is still a cold, aloof, untouchable pillar who cares only about the mission and barely anything more. They rarely see each other anymore outside of moots. He can't be blamed for not noticing the way this city is changing her.
There is a creature lunging for her friend. Her first friend. The first wolf to look at her and not see a weapon to hone or an animal to be wary of, the first to say, "Hey let's have Thanksgiving dinner." Ingrid held back, she waited for the hounds loosed to pass her so that she could take them out from behind, like she always does, like she always will. But she saw that one going for Erich and she did not think of glory. She did not think of taking out a leader. She thought
friend
and she thought
danger.
Never mind that Erich is an Ahroun, and reckless, with too much Rage and not nearly as much control over it as he would like to think. Ingrid reacts on instinct. She glides in behind it a beat before Erich's tearing at its throat, and she rips into it. It drops, and Erich does not see Ingrid and think friend. He sees Ingrid and thinks posession, finishing move stolen. He sees something else. And he takes her to the ground.
Where she lays, still and unmoving.
TwilightThere are two of the dog-things left. Dog-things, wolf-things, coyote-things. Canine only by inference, by proxy, by some primitive memory of pack and instinct. Four legs and jaws and a tail and mangy hides scaled and covered in patch memories of fur, old scars and wounds.
Ingrid is unconscious and bleeding on the bloodied ground. The dogs are still there, snarling, feral, one injured, one untouched, not enough of a pack that the death of the Alpha breaks them, though when Afro-Daddy puts down the beta-female, the omega turns tail and tries to run.
And is torn down; ripped open, ended. Opened up to the viscera, the hard white lines of the ribs, the sad-sack wheezing of a collapsing lung as slaver as the mad dark little eyes go still and dead.
--
And, and. Here they are.
Twilight??
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (5, 5, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
MistSophia was lost in combat when Ingrid fell, her eyes saw only red and she let her rage get the better of her. Violence is never a solution, violence is never an answer, it is a last resort, it is an act of desperation and need. Sophia knows this down to her very core, she knows that what she was doing here was something she had to convince herself for the best and once more she proves her assumption correct.
The others could have bested these beasts. The others could have torn them to shreds in seconds without the need for her to throw herself into the fray. So when she notices Ingrid has fallen she simply does not care that the beasts are still alive. She does not care that they might turn and rip into her throat. She does not care that in the middle of battle turning and running to the side of the fallen New Moon could actually kill her... Sophia does not fear death, it does not concern her, not her death.
Her reaction was swift and immediate as she shifted to her birth form instantly and walked, barefoot, across the dirt as lumbering beasts snarled and tore the canines apart all around her. She lost all thought of anything but her responsibility, and she immediately knelt beside Ingrid to see to her wounds. She didn't have time for guilt to settle in, her first thought was that Ingrid was dead... To look at the injury, having seen this happen before (over and over and over and over) to have felt death first hand, tasted it, experienced it as she has! She feared for Ingrid, but that did not stop her from doing what she could to help her!
[Mother's Touch! Diff... Can't go below 3 so doesn't matter Ingrid's current rage!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN3 (2, 3, 5, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
DaddyHe tears at the thing that tore at him. Does not wince at its teeth sinking into his flank. Does not utter a sudden yelp of pain. Does not even seem to notice. He keeps going. The things they fight, these poor mockeries of Gaia's creations, find out the hard way that they are simply not worthy.
Something flashes in the corner of his eyes. In the heat of battle here, in the roiling ocean of violence, he sees something that should not be. He sees his new packmate and the one she invited snatching for the same scrap...and then one for the other. Ingrid is down and now he does yelp. Just once.
He keeps going.
He returns with greater ferocity at the Beta now. Putting her down, almost literally, with his massive paws pressing her into the mud and dead leaves as he rips. Eyes turn to the fleeing omega and there's a twitch in his muscles to chase before the ahroun utterly destroys it.
When its over he's standing above the body of his own Beta, nosing and licking lightly at her wounds. She is still with them. For now. He can feel that. Still with them.
Every so often there's a decidedly unfriendly glance sent Erich's way. And something about his body, cast broad in front of Ingrid but not turning his back to the Ahroun...and why hasn't he shifted back to his birth form yet?
She's still with them. For now.
TwilightGerald is having a very hard time resisting the siren call of the show he has been anticipating all day and night. Has had in the back of his mind and the back of his throat like a promise thick as bile. Keeps looking at the fucking kids - some of them have promise, that's what Tracy said in the staff meeting day before last. Some fucking corporate nonsense about nuturing their promise. Some of them are coming along but he cannot fucking see it. Just sees -
- well.
They have a theme song. It is more innocent than you'd expect, nearly cheerful and it always makes him
- well no, it doesn't make him smile. It makes him salivate, moves him in some primitive part of the lizard-brain. Makes him - makes him burn.
But there are procedures. Codes. They have a fucking handbook. There's no reason to alert anyone else, but he gives the monitors and then the browser a longing look, then goes and starts a walkthrough of the dorm.
HurricaneThere is a moment when Ingrid is lying on the ground unconscious that she thinks she dreams. The place she dreams of is not here in the woods outside a compound made to corrupt and murder children. She's way away, in a tiny little apartment that's bathed in the yellow light of an east coast summer, and everything looks so big. There are hands on her face, weathered and worn but warm. For a moment she's home.
And in the next breath she's in pain. She's lying on the ground in the dirt with Tommy and Sophia over her, and it's not her mother's hands that touch her wounds, but the Theurge's. Ingrid blinks up at them, and she moves. She throws her legs and twists and gets herself onto her stomach before she tries to rise to four legs. She is still bleeding. She does not have the gift to dull the pain of her barely-closed wounds.
Yes, she is still with them, for now.
Tilting her head up, she licks at Tommy's muzzle.
StormJust for a moment there, so deep in the thick of battle that no one else saw or noticed, there was shock in Erich's eyes. It made him look very young indeed.
It has since passed. He has hardened over, iced over. As Sophia rushes to heal, and Tommy to guard, Erich feels only a rising bitterness in his throat that only sweet coppery blood could quench. His eyes are colder than Ingrid has ever seen them.
"We need to talk," he says to Ingrid as she rises, "but we'll talk later."
He turns away as the packmates greet each other. Impatient, growling: "Are we going to move?"
Daddy"Yes." Tommy says in the chuffing, tail-wagging way that they have on four legs. He begins to shift, to make himself smaller now, still on four legs but considerably less imposing.
"Going back." he says, and to make his point he takes several lupine steps back the way they came before stopping and turning, with that paw once again suspended mid-step.
"Done here. Weakened them. We send others."
Mist"They called them Varangians, fearless warriors who fought and died in the name of God, in the name of the empire, they called them heroes but in the end they were nothing more than murderers... Hired killers following the scent of gold hidden behind the pretense of glory and honor." She speaks softly and it is unclear who she is talking to, or if she is even addressing anyone at all. She looked as if she was simply talking into the sky, lost in thought... Lost in a dream, as her eyes stared off into the darkness somewhere and she takes the time to draw out a small gourd which she holds over another of Ingrid's wounds, and she takes the time to crush it open and let the contents inside sprinkle over Ingrid's wounds.
[Expending 1 of 2 Gaia's breaths to finish Ingrid's healing! Not spending Gnosis to activate rolling instead!]
When she is done she stands slowly, and she looks towards Thomas. "We should hurry." She says, before her form begins to swell once more and she finds fur erupting from under her flesh. She hunches forward and soon enough the woman disappears to be replaced by a wolf.
Dice: 7 d10 TN5 (1, 1, 1, 3, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 3 )
Mist[Why I am glad the rule of 1 is no more!]
HurricaneShe gets to her feet, and she pauses when Erich speaks. And in that moment Ingrid is full of conflict. They are Cliaths, these two Shadow Lords. They share the same rank. But he defeated her.
Her fur bristles, but she doesn't argue with the Ahroun. Instead she looks at Tommy as Sophia heals her completely. It means she can stand a little taller now, but she doesn't. Two Fosterns and the Cliath who defeated her. Ingrid suddenly finds herself in a position she almost never does: Omega wolf of this semi-pack for the night.
But she is still her Alpha's Beta. And Omega, but Beta, too. Her ears flick back and she tries to keep from growling when she says, "Go? Strong in time. Weak now!" She shifts, as well, down to Lupus, and she takes one step toward the still-open gate. "Open now. Chance now."
StormErich snaps his teeth at Sophia. Whether or not the words were meant for him, they rubbed him wrong. Everything's rubbing him wrong right now, and most especially Afro Daddy
when he says they're going back. The Shadow Lord bristles all over again.
"Do whatever you want," he snarls. And then he, rather notably, continues forward.
DaddyWell that was unexpected. A moment ago she was down. Down down. And he wasn't...he still wasn't sure this was a good idea. Erich snarls and stalks forward, and except for the hint of a curl in his lip, Afro Daddy mostly just watches. His head turns from one shadow lord to the other.
"Can't trust him."
Hurricane"Can't leave," replies Ingrid, not watching Erich. She doesn't argue that maybe he could be trusted, or that they should try to trust him. Whether Tommy does or not is up to him.
"Destroy bad place." She practically prances in place, impatient to move, but unwilling to dishonor her Alpha by leaving him behind. In the end it is his decision, but it's clear which direction she wants to go.
Storm"Then run on back to the city and I'll clean this up myself," Erich snaps -- several yards away now and getting farther away by the second. "Or, here's a thought: maybe I can tell you where my den is. So then you can go steal my other packmates too!"
Ah. And now we get to the heart of the matter.
MistOnce more Sophia returns to her homid form, she had to speak, she had to say something because she knew that they had crossed a line and they could not retreat at this point. So she addresses Thomas fairly clearly, as she could not have done so with her lupine tongue.
"Sometimes an Alpha must be prepared not to ask... But to tell those he loves to die." She speaks in a soft tone as her eyes move towards the Full Moon for a moment and then back to Tommy.
"Now is not the time to flee, this has to end... Now. Tonight." She says to him. "He knows what he did was wrong, he knows, and when the time comes he will be punished, but we can't stop, not now... It's too late for doubts and regrets. We need to finish what we've started." She says before she looks down at the dogs. "This... They'll just do again. And every life lost when they return will be on our heads." She says back to him.
DaddyIn the end he moves. Toward her. Toward their original objective. He's obviously not happy about it. He's about to say something else when Sophia interjects and there's a low growl that seems to start in his stomach.
"Lead as many into death as I have, then come back and tell me how easy it is."
Enough, he seems to decide. He's trotting ahead now. Not trying to catch up, but to keep up.
TwilightGerald?
Dice: 4 d10 TN7 (5, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
HurricaneErich takes them to the heart of the matter, and for a moment Ingrid's ears prick, then they lay flat. In another form she would be merely cold and aloof, yes, that creature up on high that cannot be touched that she always appears to be. In her lupine form, she can't hide the growl. She can't hide her anger. An anger she can't act on, not while they're on this mission.
Angry as she is, though, they came here for a reason. As soon as Tommy starts to move, Ingrid darts ahead, past Erich, taking point again as she leads the others to the kennels.
Mist"Easy is not the same as necessary." She says with a shrug of her shoulders, and soon enough she was returning to her lupus form. The wolf takes a little while, but soon enough she is trotting along with the group and moving to follow!
Storm"And if you don't stop talking about me in stupid stories and third person, it'll be you bleeding on the ground next. I've got ears."
That was for Sophia, obviously. And as Ingrid darts ahead of him he growls at her, upping his pace to run tensely shoulder to shoulder with her for a few strides before falling back.
They're close to the compound now. Erich isn't really making much effort to be quiet.
TwilightSo they move. There's no longer any particular concern for stealth. The southern perimeter of the compound is flooded with light, the remaining two-thirds of the rough ring are dark. There is still light in the chapel, and lights on the second floor of the farmhouse. Though now there is movement at one of the curtains which are the cheap, rough machine lace sheers one finds at dollar general.
The sheer wattage of floods on the southern perimeter is nearly blinding after the dark expanse of the woods, the underbrush. In any of the feral forms it is easy to follow the scent-trail of the Things in the Kennel back to the sluice-gate that opened remotely to release them. Which remains open pending their return.
After he manages his walk-through Gerald's next task is to head to the barn and find the fridge where they keep the kidneys
(don't ask where they get the kidneys)
and cut up the organ meat and set it out for the hounds to lure them back into the compound, and this is what he will do when he finishes his headcount if the music hasn't started if the music doesn't lure him back to -
But now in the darkness he counts the heads of the boys and counts the breathing and counts the counts the counts sometimes he forgets to count. Sometimes he only counts the ones jerking off. The ones smothering the other ones in the -
Sometimes he only counts the ones crying.
Sometimes he only counts the ones praying.
He never counts the ones preying. Them, he pretends not-to-see.
--
The kennel-gate is not large enough to accommodate hispo-formed werewolves. They have to shift down to lupus-form or man-form to crawl through. Find themselves in the stink of a disgusting, half-concrete half-chain-link pen hard up against the side of the barn, which opens into the barn proper. The inner gate is not open, but neither is it locked. Easy to reach through and let themselves into the dark interior of the barn, which stinks of dogshit and blood and organ meat.
Which has a vast high ceiling opening into darkness and doors opening and -
--
The thing is, is Gerald is fucking on the ball tonight, the poor fucking bastard. He remembers the count with his fingers and toes and finds none missing and hits the intercom to report to Tracy in the big house that none are missing, all accounted for, he's calling them in. Shaggy and the Bandits, that is. That's what he calls them.
Affectionately.
Nevermind the slaver and the scales.
--
On the ball Gerald hits the intercom button and makes his report and exits the dormitory by the back door. Heads over to the barn and he's trying not to think about what is happening to - well, he hasn't seen any of it, doesn't know if it is a boy or a girl, a man or a woman, just knows that they are human and sinners and sinning and and and -
He's -
- opening the front door as they are coming through.
He's whistling his favorite song as he does, to take his mind off all that he's missing, or put him maybe in the right frame-of-mind.
Oh when the saints -
HurricaneErich picks up pace to run beside her and Ingrid shifts oh so slightly to the side, creating a space. Her attention is on the path ahead of them, she can't allow herself to be distracted from her position of scout, the ears and eyes of their operation, the one to let them know when something is up ahead of them.
The reek of the barn assaults her senses, battering her sensitive nose, but she focuses past it. And inside the barn when she plucks out the scent of the human just ahead of hearing that whistle, she stops.
She shifts.
She draws a sword from out of her sternum.
Because seriously fuck this place. Fuck that guy. Fuck Erich. Fuck packs. Fuck Champion of Honor and the Beloved Horror and this whole fucking place.
That's their clue that it's about to go down, that suddenly the lupus wolf at the lead is now Crinos sized and wielding that sharp, gleaming blade.
HurricaneDice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Twilight?
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )
DaddyHe trots while they approach.
He runs as they enter.
He bolts through the Kennels
Ingrid shifts up ahead, arms herself, and he's doing that breathing again. Its his own silent war-cry. His own howling assault tucked down past the lungs, deeper than the stomach, bucking at his diaphragm. There was blood to be had up ahead. More blood to match the still warm stuff clumping in the fur of his muzzle.
Another side of him nudged just then. Blood, yes. But a mission as well. An objective. The thing behind the thing with the fur and claws and teeth was reminding him that there was a reason they were there, and also that there was a quite capable ahroun and a fucking sword-wielding ragabash who could more than handle this.
Somewhere here there were children held captive. Somewhere here there was a churning generator that would likely make this more difficult than it ought to be.
TwilightSomeone has to shift to get them out of the kennel gate. That thing requires hands, arms, opposeable thumbs and a bit of wormy maneuvering to get it out from outside. Then, though, the gate swings open and the rest of them follow Ingrid out into the barn which is dark but they are wolves they hardly need their eyes. Can start to pick up the most regular scents here even amidst the stench, can start to follow them out through the equipment and whatnot stuck away in the darkness and it is best,
it is absolutely best,
that they cannot see all of the equipment. Can only catch the scents, the lingering fear, the odd lot of terror, the occasional chuff of excitement squirreled away in the dark corners of this place.
Then the door is opening and this whistling guy - Gerald, our hero, is forty-seven years old and has a heroin addict his ENTIRE LIFE until he found the God he now thinks of as god-below rather than god-above because that is where the feelings come from -
is suddenly confronted by a massage beast with wielding a sword with great ferocity and a snarl of rage and he looks up and he opens his mouth and he
scrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmssssssssssssssssssss
and she lops off his head.
Not all the way. Breaks neatly through the vertebrae with a sick wet craaack but there's something sinewy that just sticks at the end and his head just lolls forward and blood erupts like a geyser for the three-four-seven-seconds while his fucking heart still beats in the dark night air.
MistSophia hears the threat from the Cliath and her attention turns towards him for a moment. "Silence Cliath! Fight enemy." She conveys in the lupine tongue to him, not a threat, not a snarl, just a simple command from a Fostern to a Cliath. This was not something Sophia ever did, but then... He DID just try to murder her friend! There was still enough anger to remind her of the fact that no matter how much stronger he might be than her she still outranked him.
She was, in her own way, looking out for him even if she did not care, in the slightest for what he did, or his behavior and, just like Tommy at this point she did not trust him! However, he had just shown he was the strongest among them, and he put Ingrid down like she was a rag doll. They needed him, and for that reason they HAD to put their distrust aside and expect that he would do what they needed him to when the time was right.
So soon enough she was following along. Already in her lupus form, she found it less troublesome to enter into the kennels and the scents inside caused her to wander a little pondering the misery those poor dogs were living in. She wasn't quite with the others when the door opens. She wasn't quite there... So when Ingrid cuts a man's head off there is some part of her that feels like this might be a dream, everything here seems so... Surreal. She simply stares at the sight, curiosity getting the better of her as she stares, blinking several times as his heart continues pumping just long enough to make a horrible mess on the floor.
Sophia did not like this place!
StormAs soon as Erich sees the
(target. scapegoat. outlet for all his frustration and annoyance and anger and betrayal and shock and shame.)
whistling man, he charges. It doesn't even matter that Ingrid lops this guy's head off. Erich just leaps over the tottering body, snaps his teeth into its shoulder, drags it down with him as he hits the ground in a spray of dirt and mud and blood-mud. The muscles in his neck and back bunch -- he wrenches -- he tears an enormous chunk of meat and bone loose and hurtles it out the barn doors in a snap of his head.
Follows it, like a dog chasing a ball. Charges raging through the barn and out of it, looking for something, anything, to tear into shreds.
HurricaneWell. That was quite satisfying. Although Ingrid can't help but feel a little disappointment that her slice did not cut clear through that weak human neck. There is a part of her, a tiny little niggling part, that wonders if maybe she ought to have waited, checked him out, made sure he wasn't working here under duress. That he was actually one of the bad guys.
It doesn't even last a second. They are all the enemy, the monsters who made this place. They are all an outlet for a frustration that has nothing to do with Erich or this night. It goes all the way back to the beginning of last month. To an unkillable foe that she killed a few times anyway, who just. kept. going.
The satisfaction of this kill comes from the fact that once cut down the man stayed down until Erich started playing with it like a puppy bats around a ball. A very large, very angry, very dangerous puppy.
Ingrid follows him out of the barn a moment later, and though she wants to find more things to whet her bloodthirst, she knows that the darkness is their ally. She looks around in her massive Crinos form, sword of her ancestors held in one huge handpaw, and she seeks out the generator.
Daddy"Lights!" He manages to get the word out in the middle of the bone cracking and the flesh ripping, Shifting up onto two legs, into his Glabro form. "Get that generator!" It's not aimed at anyone, but he knows that Ingrid was likely on it. He does, however, turn to address Sophia directly.
"Lets find those kids."
TwilightOne beast comes barreling out of the barn door. Truth: a war-formed Garou is substantially larger than a worm-sick, wyrm-sick, sick-sick-sick once-human, who is now no more than meat, a rapidly collapsing sack of skin-blood-organs and bones, a huge chunk of which has been thrown out into the dark damp of the compound. Erich Storm's Teeth splinters the rotten wood framing in the door poor dead Gerald used to enter, leaving behind a shouldering, splinted hole in the wood.
That scream. That scream,
That scream was ear-piercing and mind-binding, siren and warning and though the dorm remains dark-dark-dark in the few ferocious seconds of aftermath as the Ahroun goes tearing out into the yard a light flickers on in the second story of the farmhouse.
Then off.
--
The sound somewhere of glass shattering; can you hear it over-under the beat of your heart and the pumping of rage in your arteries, the resounding churn of it in your ears? Before there are any new targets in the yard there is the sound of another window breaking. Why not just open them? They were painted shut fucking years ago and when you need to snipe the compound of your secret Wyrm-Camp, sometimes you need to break some glass.
--
The lights in the chapel are still on. It is a lovely little church, transported here from somewhere else. Inset with stained glass windows that are red-as-blood and show absolutely nothing holy in their illustrations. The dark shadow of movement against the windows, and soon enough the doors open.
Tracy has a migraine, and her back hurts. It always does when she's growing a new one, when she's trying to hold them in. But that scream, oh that scream -
TwilightPower?
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
MistSomeone speaks to her, and she looks at Tommy for several moments with a blank stare before she pulls herself back to reality and when he begins searching she begins searching out the scent of the children.
That is right! Sophia would not have cared much for this idea if it the only reason they were coming here was to kill some guy's dogs and then chop his head off. There needed to be something more substantial pulling her to reality long enough to actually volunteer for this mission. There were children and she needed to find them...
But there was also glass breaking. That seemed counter productive. Why not just open the windows silly people? Then again Humans can be downright strange at times! Humans and Fomori! Which ones were responsible for the shattered glass? Humans or Fomori? Did it matter? She was here for children!
She was soon moving with Tommy, and couldn't wait to get the children out of here and return them to their... Wait... Their parents put them in here in the first place. They thought that brainwashing their children would "Fix" them rather than actually having to deal with the complications that every parent raising a teenager has to deal with. Did their parents really deserve to have them back? Maybe we should kill the parents next too? And what about the children? Were they really salvageable, after all this time with banes whispering into their ear, under the watchful eye of fomori... Who is to say they weren't just as corrupted as the dogs they saw earlier?
What are they going to do with the children once they help them? Just let them loose in the woods? "Go children! Run! Be Free!" They can't keep them. Can they? What would Sophia do with a child? She could teach them to speak Greek! She could... Well, she doesn't even have a house so where would she keep them?
Her mind was alive with questions which she found herself pondering as she put herself on Auto-Pilot and simply did what that toucan from the television always used to say! She followed the the scent of children meat!
StormErich isn't going for the generator. He doesn't see the fucking point: the compound is up in arms; it's not like they can hide anymore. He's not going to save the kids, either. He figures there'll always be time for that later. No, he: is going straight for the chapel, with the lights, with the horrid stained glass.
With the woman limned by the light inside, grimacing not like she's afraid or even really angry, but just: annoyed. And tired. Erich doesn't particularly sympathize. He tears across the open space, his big paws churning up clods of dirt. His eyes are flashing and his teeth are bared and --
-- and he realizes none of the others, not a single one, is actually charging into battle with him.
"ARE YOU [FUCKING] KIDDING ME," is his battle-cry tonight. "WHERE THE [FUCK] ARE YOU PEOPLE GOING?"
And then: chaos. Violent chaos.
TwilightThe first shot
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
TwilightThe second shot
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
HurricaneShe's looking for the generator when she hears her Alpha shout LIGHTS! Ingrid doesn't look back at him. Her ears swivel back to the sounds of glass shatter in the house. Her attention is drawn to the chapel and the creature lumbering out of it.
A creature that Erich is lunging for at full tilt. Ingrid growls, not because she's angry, but because this is deja vu. This is Cold Crescent all over again. When Ingrid ordered a retreat and no one listened. If she goes for the generator she will never make it back in time to help Erich.
She abandons that plan.
She takes off after the Ahroun.
DaddyHe's moving with Sophia toward the Dorm. They weren't sneaking anymore, and as a result he's reaching for the gleaming gun he keeps at his hip opposite his knife. Somewhere there was glass breaking. Somewhere his only packmate was searching out that humming generator. Somewhere there was an Ahroun who just didn't seem to get it the idea of improving their odds.
Somewhere there was glass breaking. Why would there be glass breaking?
Somewhere there was a beast waddling out from a chapel. Somewhere there was a steel-toed, mud-covered boot kicking in the door of a dorm.
Somewhere there was glass breaking.
If it were him on the other side, and there had suddenly been a scream and clearly an incursion, he wouldn't be running onto the field with a hatchet in hand. If it were him he would find himself and nice vantage point and...
Somewhere there's a shot. two. He ducks, and spins with his own gun ready and pointing. He can't see them but he can tell where they might be coming from. From the direction of the broken glass. He fires back, not expecting to hit anything but expecting them to have the same ducking reaction when a few projectiles came flying back.
Somewhere the plan had changed. The generator still hummed. He snarled and, instead, aimed for the nearest tower of lights.
TwilightThe dull, oily muzzles of weapons emerge from the shattered second story windows of the farmhouse. The interior lights are now off. No shadow against the background of the lace curtains, just the strange sweeping movement that looks like the ripple of distant, half-formed clouds on a summer night like a shadow against the moon. Tracking movement across the compound.
Maybe the target of the giant gray-furred hispo is too tempting, maybe the snipers cannot quite look at the beast, maybe he skims beneath their radar because they are intent intent intent on corrugated metal building where Sophia can smell the scent of -
not children. They are not children. They are teenaged boys, fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen -
- can smell the tangle of their scents with the same melange of fear and pain and desire and boredom and jesus-christ-they-are-teenaged-boys leading up to the dorm. See, the snipers peel off shots at the two of them: Afro-Daddy and Treads the Ashen Path. The first shot at Afro-Daddy whizzes overhead and hits the side of the metal dorm with a dull ping. He turns to engage the snipers and Sophia continues on to the dorm, hoping to save the kids. The doors are locked, but they are fucking werewolves. She can wrest it off at the hinges.
The second shot catches Sophia in the shoulder, a burning line of pain punching through muscle and bone.
--
Nearly impossible to tell if he has hit anyone inside the farmhouse but look: that same movement of duck-and-cover, losing the carefully lined up angle on the pair of Garou, disappearing behind the awful, cheap curtains, breathing and looking back out, peering through. Then he aims for the nearest of the lights, the ones now sweeping motion-activated lights mounted to the farm house. There is a crack and a hiss of raining glass. The satisfying flare of the filament too-bright just before it goes dark and while the exterior ring of lights still shines bright, the inner yard is just a bit darker than it was before.
--
And-and-and - Erich Storm's teeth tears across the yard, barrels into the woman emerging on the porch of the chapel looking vaguely annoyed, rubbing her back. She is an ordinary looking woman in her early forties, with dish-blond hair from a bottle and remarkably bad teeth and even worse tattoos scrawled on her hands and her neck and she is wearing an illfitting navy suit and cheap third-hand walmart pumps and frowning and turning when Erich tears into her with such force he pulls her down to the ground in a moving arc that slams them both into the ground.
Then these weaving tentacles just erupt from her spine in a mad, hissing tangle and start raining down on him in a wild mass. Behind her, a short, dumpy man is in his mid-twenties comes out and runs down the steps. Opens his mouth wide and wider and flickers this shockingingly long tongue that zips out of his distended jaw like a serpent slash the Ahroun, when Ingrid charges into him from behind. Shoves her sword through his back and hears the satisfying collapse of a goddamned lung.
So he wheels on her, lashing out with a tail he is just uncurling from his cheap brown suit.
Somewhere in the chapel, one of the prayerful fields heads back toward the altar rather than forward toward the front door.
Hurricane[soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (5, 6, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 4 )
Storm[ow.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
Storm[OW.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Storm[OW!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 4, 4, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
Storm[OWWW.]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )
Storm[chomp!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 7, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Storm[DIE.]
Dice: 11 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Hurricane[dex+melee (sword spec booyah!)]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1
Storm[oh, i forgot to reroll that 10]
Dice: 1 d10 TN5 (1) ( fail )
Storm[fuck that then. CHOMP AGAIN.]
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 9 ) Re-rolls: 2
Storm[that's more like it.]
Dice: 17 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Hurricane[dam][Lethal]
Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 5 )
Mist[Sorry! Soaking 4 lethal!]
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (4, 6, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Hurricane[and another slice]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 7, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 4 ) Re-rolls: 2
Hurricane[dam][lethal again!]
Dice: 12 d10 TN6 (3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
TwilightTracy +7
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
TwilightToad +6
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
TwilightGraveheart +8
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (3) ( fail )
TwilightSnipers +5
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Hurricane[+9]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Hurricane[MULLIGAN please be higher than 2 that'll be embarrassing: +9]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
Mist[+7]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Daddy[5]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (7) ( success x 1 )
TwilightI think Erich is +9
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (4) ( fail )
TwilightSophia: 17Ingrid: 16Erich: 13Afro-Daddy: 12Graveheart: 11Tracy 11Toad 10Snipers: 7
TwilightSophia: 17
Ingrid: 16
Erich: 13
Afro-Daddy: 12
Graveheart: 11
Tracy 11
Toad 10
Snipers: 7
TwilightThe snipers duck up and push the curtains way, looking for an opening to shoot again.
[Effectively: 1a. Dodge; 1b. Shoot]
TwilightToad: 1. Tongue Lash Ingrid. 2. Tail lash Ingrid.
TwilightTracy: 1-3. Tentacle Lash Erich. 4. Sting Erich!
TwilightGraveheart: Finish prayer and wander to the front porch to deal with this shit.
Daddy1. Shoot the scope out (Trick shot, also spending WP)
R1: Shoot out more lights
Storm[-3R again!
1. -1R additional for Spur Claws on Tracy
R1. Bite
R2. Tentacles
R3. Off!]
Hurricane[1/R/R: Slicing up that Toad, moving to Graveheart I guess if Toad goes down]
Daddy[Shoot for scope: Dex+Firearms+Glory]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6) ( success x 1 ) [WP]
DaddyDamage
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
TwilightBehind them, Erich and Ingrid can hear the ping-ping exchange of gunfire. Afro-Daddy sees the satisfying spread of cracks in the glass of the scope at which he was aiming for. The trick show worked: the scope is useless now.
Hurricane[1: dex+melee]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 3, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1
Mist[Charge at door, full speed in Lupus... Leap into air... -1 rage to shift to Crinos mid air!]
Hurricane[dam: +5][L]
Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 8 )
TwilightToad: soak!
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 5, 6, 8, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
Mist[Attack door! Uhm... Str+Crinos+Brawl...]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 10) ( success x 2 )
Storm[-1R on this: clawing!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 7 ) Re-rolls: 1
Storm[dam +6]
Dice: 15 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8) ( success x 9 )
TwilightTracy soak!
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 3, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
Mist[Dmg]
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
TwilightTracy Tentacle Lash Erich +2 difficulty
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (1, 2, 4, 6, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
TwilightDamage!
Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 6, 7) ( success x 2 )
TwilightTentacle Lash 2
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) ( fail )
TwilightTentacle Lash 3
Dice: 6 d10 TN8 (3, 3, 5, 6, 6, 9) ( success x 1 )
TwilightDamage
Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (4, 8, 9) ( success x 2 )
StormDice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 9) ( success x 1 )
StormDice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9) ( success x 2 )
TwilightToad: Tongue Lash Ingrid
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8) ( success x 1 )
TwilightDamage!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 4, 6, 6, 8, 9) ( success x 4 )
Hurricane[soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 4 )
TwilightSniper 1: had scope shot out. uh, does not shoot.
Sniper 2: evens Sophia, Odds Afro-Daddy
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )
TwilightSniper 2: shoot!
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 3 )
TwilightDamage!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
DaddySoak
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 3, 7, 8, 8) ( success x 3 )
TwilightTAIL LASH INGRID. TOADIE.
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 2, 5, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )
TwilightDAMAGE
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 9, 10, 10, 10) ( success x 4 )
Hurricane[soak!]
Dice: 5 d10 TN6 (2, 5, 7, 9, 10) ( success x 3 )
Hurricane[FUCK YOU TOAD I CUT-CHU]
Dice: 9 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 ) Re-rolls: 1
Hurricane[dam: +5][L]
Dice: 14 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 6 )
TwilightSOAK
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 4, 5, 7, 8) ( success x 2 )
TwilightToadie: D: I ded.
Hurricane[Other Rage: Move to put Graveheart in stabbity range, get behind if possible in one Rage action or at least flank]
Daddy[Lets do that thing again!]
Dice: 7 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10) ( success x 3 ) [WP]
DaddyDamage
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 7, 7, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 5 )
Twilight(Second scope is ded.)
StormR1 - put poor tracy out of her misery :[
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (1, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 9, 9) ( success x 8 )
Storm[dam]
Dice: 16 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 8 )
TwilightSOAK
Dice: 6 d10 TN6 (1, 2, 3, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )
TwilightTracy: D: oh noes I is also ded.
TwilightGraveheart: change action. Eyes O' The Wyrm on Erich. +1 dif
Storm[attacking graveheart!]
Dice: 10 d10 TN5 (2, 2, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10) ( success x 10 ) Re-rolls: 2
Storm[dam+9]
Dice: 18 d10 TN6 (1, 1, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 9 )
TwilightGraveheart soak!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10) ( success x 3 )
Storm[shit. WP!]
Dice: 6 d10 TN7 (1, 1, 4, 7, 7, 7) ( success x 3 )
Storm+9
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (2) ( fail )
Hurricane[+9]
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (10) ( success x 1 )
Twilight+9
Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (6) ( success x 1 )
TwilightMini fight: Ingrid 19
Graveheart: 15
Erich: 11
TwilightGraveheart: OH SHIT. GASEOUS FORM.
Storm[WELL I GUESS I'LL BE A TEAM PLAYER.
1. Grapple graveheart for ingrid!
R1. bite!]
Hurricane[1a: Flank
1b: STAB through side, +2 diff (targeted for stabby motions) +WP
1c: Pull sword out as painfully as possible]
Hurricane[1a: shuffleshuffle
1b: dex+melee -1 (flank) +2 (target) +WP]
Dice: 5 d10 TN7 (2, 6, 7, 7, 8, 10) ( success x 5 ) Re-rolls: 1 [WP]
Hurricane[dam: +4][L]
Dice: 13 d10 TN6 (2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 9, 9) ( success x 6 )
Storm[NM I'LL JUST BITE. she has no rage actions that can take advantage of grapple.]
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 9, 10) ( success x 2 )
Hurricane[YANK!, -1 diff]
Dice: 4 d10 TN5 (2, 3, 5, 6) ( success x 2 )
Hurricane[dam: +1][L] COME ON
Dice: 10 d10 TN6 (2, 3, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9) ( success x 7 )
TwilightSoak!
Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (2, 4, 6, 7, 7, 10, 10) ( success x 5 )
TwilightGraveheart: D:
I also ded.
TwilightThis constellation of action. Sophia attacks and opens the door to the dormitory with a wild lunge while Afro-Daddy ducks and aims for the windows not for the windows for the snipers not for the snipers for the scopes and takes them out, takes them out, takes them out,
one and two.
Ahead on the porch of the chapel a bloodied battle with limbs and things that look like limbs but grow from secondary pus-sacs that seem to emerge from the sacrum and a woman who was a woman who is now a dead mess of a think with sucker-covered tentacles already beginning to wither as her oily green blood soaks into the dusty ground and a short little man in a brown ugly suit with the tongue of a snake and the tail of a frog and inside a very quiet, very queer, stringy-haired pale-faced man with scabby hands is walking toward the front door of the church with quiet deliberation when two werewolves charge in and it is a close thing but -
- he falls. Erich's teeth and Ingrid's sword.
There is more to do. The snipers to chase down, when they emerge from the house with a chainsaw and a scythe, wielding both with madcap accuracy that takes more than a pound of flash from one or two of them.
And then in the aftermath, quiet. The kids in the dorm. The vans summoned.
StormIn the aftermath, quiet.
And the harsh breathing of the Erich-wolf, his sides heaving, his fur matted in places with dark still-wet blood.
He looks around at the devastation. It does not escape his notice that it was Ingrid who came with him into this house of the unholy. Ingrid, after he tore her apart earlier for...
for...
Well. For things he doesn't want to think about, and certainly doesn't want to discuss. Not right now, anyway. He knows he has to have that discussion sometime, though. Lance that boil before it festers. Right now it's just painful. He doesn't want it to become a rot in his soul, a resentment. So the hispo-wolf licks his chops, sniffs idly at the grotesque bodies, and then chuffs at his tribesmate:
"We still need to talk. I'll find you, or you come find me. Soon."
DaddyThere was a chance that they would all die here. He knew that. He reminded himself of that with every hesitation in deciding on a course of action. He thought of that when he decided to retreat, and it was on the forefront of his mind for every moment that they didn't. If they were going to die here, so be it. But these kids were gonna get out if it was the last thing he did. Better a half success than an all out failure.
Somewhere his only packmate was once again at the side of the one who had very recently torn into her. She was in a small space with the enemy and an apparently uncontrollable, and to his mind a dangerously unpredictable ally. She was there and he wasn't.
This wasn't the best of starts.
They begin to get the teenagers out, streaming them out towards the barn and the kennel and telling them to get to the graveyard, don't stop for anything. The men inside the house, the ones with the useless scopes on their too-far-to-shoot straight rifles come out with fucking power tools and farming implements, charging across open space like its the fucking Alamo.
Tommy reloads. They might as well be paper targets.
HurricaneIn the aftermath Ingrid is bleeding again, but not so much as before. There's much, much more blood and ichor on her blade, which she takes a few moments to carefully swipe clean in her fur. After the snipers are dealt with. Before the children are let loose. She shifts quickly, no point subjecting a bunch of kids to the Delirium as well as her strange, predatory nature. And besides, she needs to shift to work her phone and let her kinsman associate know it's time to send in the vans.
There are a few, enough to carry away eighteen kids, if that many are left.
Erich looks at her, chuffs at her, and she stares at him steadily but says nothing. Merely nods her head once.
And then she goes to find her Alpha, make sure he's okay. He feels okay, he feels there in her mind, alive and vital and without pain.
If there is snooping to be done still, Ingrid does it. If there is an accident to be made, she'll do that, too. Whatever it takes to cover up their presence here and the presence of the unnatural.
Storm"Hey -- " before she quite walks away, and after he's reverted to Erich, " -- I probably shouldn't have torn you up." He's awkward. "Yeah. I shouldn't have."
She goes to tend to her Alpha. He watches a moment, and then turns and walks away. When the others return to the rented van, they're down one: Erich finds his own way home.
MistOnce inside, and provided she sees no threats, Sophia will take the time to revert to her breed form, children don't usually respond well to Garou or even the Glabro form! She wanted to make herself as presentable as possible.
Rage didn't have nearly as powerful a pull on her as it did many of her kind, and that was a blessing in dealing with young people, in dealing with humans. She had no idea the damage that had been inflicted upon them, but that didn't change her ability to sympathize. This place was a fomori breeding pen, and the honest truth was that some of these children never would recover! Sophia would attempt, to the best of her ability, to figure out who among them would not. Triage, of a sort, the ugly truth behind the reality of what the garou do every night.
However, that would be a ways away, and not right this moment. Right at this moment she was one of the few among them who could likely stand in the presence of a young person and not likely frighten them away in terror, still... Rage was powerful, so she channeled a gift of her breed in order to establish an affinity with these children.
She would use that gift to convince the children they were safe, to convince them they were well. She would use that gift to convince them to come with, to be loaded up into the vans... To be taken by complete strangers to... Whatever future might await them.
As for this place... She would leave it tonight but she would be returning. She will beg if she has to, steal, kill... But when she returns to this place it will not be alone. She will return to this place like a flood to see the wyrm's minions drowned in the cleansing waters of retribution. She will sit in silence as the spirits who tormented these children scream in agony as they are flushed from these lands, never to return again, and she will sit in silent contemplation remembering what was done to these children. That, however, will be another night, and another story. Tonight, her only focus is in getting these children to safety.
HurricaneShe pauses, looks back at the young blond man, waits while he supposes and then confirms that he shouldn't have torn her up. Ingrid quirks a brow at him, but she only says, "Thank you for your help, Erich."
And then she goes off. When he doesn't show up at the car she doesn't go hunting him. He'll turn up again.
