Season Eleven

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https://wikiawoo.queer.me.uk/index.php?title=Season_Eleven&action=edit Summary of Events. Also Todo List

2023-10-23

Everyone is at the Pack House, Ariane has just called Diamond Annie, gotten mocked, but hired an infiltrator to the New Catholic Church.

Lydia suggests talking to Bell, Jules and Ariane to go along, Holly and Carlie to take it easy. Bell is sat around looking miserable, who says she can't hear from one of her daughters, specifically the one they've taken over, Jules tells her its an Umbral church thats been cooperating with Wyrm creatures (Vampires) and has some kind of bubble, we peer and can see the faint flickering of the forcefield. Bell says she's suddenly just cut off, she hears from most of the bells most Sundays and her quiet daughters less frequently, did say something about people coming around to restore and play her every Sunday. She says its happened several times in the past and normally she can see the fire that occurs and its never good when she loses one to fire. Bell says she's never really heard of the Umbral church, she knows there are those out there that claim to belong to a church but knows very little about them. Jules asks if there's anything else we can do in the meantime and Bell just asks her to find out. She offers to play for us to recharge our essence and we reassure her we just like hearing her - and get a melancholy tune. Lydia asks her what our pack is for and told we're for protecting Southwark as we are the Southwark Belles from The Wyrm and things that would destroy, we should "create and thrive, do art, grow strong!". Lydia asks why art? And is told it provides meaning that sways hearts, and hearts shape the Umbra, and that shapes her, and she shapes the Umbra and hearts back - its the only really meaningful thing. What would happen to you if Southwark wasn't here? I'd die. Apparently it'd be bad for her, her daughters and her sisters.

On the way back Lydia asks Jules what she thinks we should do, is told protect the Umbra from the Wyrm and make things safe. Lydia: Do you think you're doing that? Do you think you could do better? Do you think we could do better? Talk of maybe and depends if people are willing to give up their lives, Lydia says she doesn't have any distractions and thinks other people should give up their lives and that careers, partners, art, etc will all be gone in a few years. Lydia asks "do you think you'll have a career in 10 years when the planets burning." Ariane attempts to explain that being a lawyer will help her shape the collapse of the government and its important for Jules to make art to keep inspiring people because fighting for peoples hopes and dreams keeps them from falling to the Wyrm. Lydia argues for a need for a strategic vision to essentially hunt down the billionaires running the world and deal with them and Ariane suggests it would be "werewolf justice" and Jules says we can't just hunt people down and kill them. Ariane suggests Lydia talk to Steven Thompson who she writes off as a useless compromiser.

Lydia calls out Jules as a weak leader with no plan and vision and lays down a challenge - Jules then goes to punch Lydia (and misses!) who then fails to shift up the first time and manages the second time, Jules snarls "How dare you say I have no vision!" and throws a punch thats evaded. Ariane observes! Lydia hits Jules harder than she expects so Jules switches up to Glabro then punches Lydia. Lydia wrestles Jules to the floor, getting the upper hand! Jules fails to escape and Lydia growls "Yield!" at her which gets the response "Bite me!" then shifts Lupus to evade out of the hold! Lydia says "Jules I'm not trying to kill you!" and goes to kick her, Jules dives in and shifts up to Glabro inside her guard and punches her hard. She gets a good hold on Jules to pin her and Jules tries to break out by sheer force of strength and fails, Lydia growls "Fucking quit already I'm not trying to hurt you!" and goes to choke her out. Ariane spots a huge dog-wolf spirit watching, 6-7 foot tall at the shoulder while sitting, keeps half an eye on it and half on the fight. Jules flips up to crinos form and breaks the hold! Then goes to claw Lydia who dodges, then shifts up to crinos, Jules manages to get a solid hit in (5 points of lethal) and the large wolf spirit howls, Jules roars yield and Lydia rolls over and shows throat.

Ariane attempts to hold up Jules arm as a victor and Lydia tells her that she's been putting her neck out and breaking herself for Lydia and there isn't a grand plan there's just her attempting to make sure everyone gets to live their lives and if its not good enough for her she can fuck off. She goes to leave and the huge wolf comes padding over and tells her "Nice speech" in first tongue. Greets Lydia as "God Botherer" (see Season Seven) and says it was here to witness history which Ariane greets it and greets it as friend wolf, says she was because Jules defended her history. The wolf talks about Jules ancestors, a great line of ahroun behind her applauding her punching a nurse. She has a Tells her her name is "Red Talon" or "Call of Blood" and Jules recognises that this thing is probably the patreon of the Red Talons tribe and clocks that Lydia's talking points line up with their philosophy and it says its been watching Lydia a while because she had interesting ideas last they met and her ideas have bloomed like flowers in the spring. Lydia says there isn't a better tribe for her because she was born human, it says it is willing to bend the rules for her and extract a price and she would be the only one in London, the only one south of Birmingham, she says she may end up in Birmingham after her course and it says there's always some humans who need culling and her beautiful flower will bloom into great fruit at some point. She says there's some humans who are nearly there and it says there's some non-humans who need culling, she clarifies she has tried to explain it to some humans and she says no they're mostly Wyrm tainted not doing it for the Wyld itself, it wants her to kill some things that look like humans to get her hand in. It asks Ariane to pass on her regards to her mother and she assures her she will, it asks Jules to look into her background one day.

Jules stalks away, The Red Talon fades out, Lydia has a few claw marks. Ariane offers her an arm to lean on and asks if shes talked to it much but is told just the one time at the pond at her house and that the Children of Gaia retreat wasn't a place it hung out. Ariane suggests that the Red Talons aren't an effective path as its been tried. Lydia says what we've been doing at the minute isn't enough. Jules goes to blow off steam and Lydia and Ariane get back to the Pack House.

Ariane drops Lydia on the sofa and goes to make her a big cup of tea and fetch her first aid kid. Carlie and Holly look on and she tells them it was Jules and she lost because she wasn't trying to kill her. Ariane says it was an accepted challenge, and Holly shouts about how there's an invasion going on, Ariane fills them in on the fight and how Red Talon was there, both Carlie and Holly have heard of it, Ariane attempts to defend this as something to respect cautiously from a distance, Carlie wants to know why its hanging around and paying attention, Lydia tells her about the first time she met it and Carlie says it clearly saw the anger in her. Carlie goes to leave for a walk and is clearly angry. Holly packs up her journal notes (had been working out the route - they're probably coming via Templar which comes direct to earth) while Ariane fills her in on the meeting with Bell. Talk of how they got back, the object they gave us was destroyed, Ariane asks Sunny to talk to the Stargazers about if they brought things back, Holly moots that the geas was brought back but then diffused. Get Lydia to check in with Celeste who says she was in The Umbral Church last night (so not coming in through there), Ariane talks about ways to Templar and Holly's notes say that it connects to The Temple Church in England and various knights of different religions, faiths, philosophy, and background come to test their mettle against each other, putting their faith, beliefs, and lives on the line, its in central London (guarded by Dragons on the perimeters and the territory of Samantha Wallingford's vampire sect).

2023-10-30

written by Gareth, age 28

  • Holly agrees to accompany Sunny to her sponsorship meeting with Sarah Hawkins of Tate & Lyle at a local "upmarket" cafe
  • Sunny begins to plan making that massive batch of charity cookies for the True Londoner taximen
  • The sponsorship meeting: upon first meeting Hawkins, Sunny definitely (and Holly somewhat) pick up that Hawkins is kinfolk
    • Hawkins is very enthusiastic about cakes and other confectioneries
    • Sunny and Hawkins agree to a branding deal: Hawkins' company will supply Sunny with ingredients for the big bake and some cash for her troubles in exchange for some shots of the products in Sunny's videos and some "suggested lines" and materials to promote
    • Hawkins is also trying to make connections to Sunny directly about casually bringing up her "uncle Laurent" (who tells strange stories about remarkable far off places) disappearing - in a way where she's definitely trying to provoke some kind of reaction out of the two of them
      • Laurent is currently back on another adventure with his very good Stargazer friend into the deep umbra to track down "the source of COVID" (again)
    • Sunny also talks the cafe owner to give her the recipe for the key lime pie that everyone had at the meeting
  • On the way home, Sunny and Holly chat about various things - where all the Stargazers seem to be, the importance of having hobbies (while directly bringing up Lydia), what to do about the Eternal Church in London, that it's probably a bad idea to try to gather all the Garou into one place to talk about said Church, and that they should go to Robert Laffrey's wake at The Guild (which Holly is already working at and Sunny thinks about bringing key lime pie to)
  • Sunny phones Ariane's mother (Janice Primrose-Morton), gets Mr. Robinson the butler - Janice is busy, so Sunny asks him about Stargazers - not much luck, but Alice the maid chats with Sunny about her videos and wants her to make a wedding cake for her (and Penny Primrose??)
  • Jules goes on a trip in the near Umbra to take a look at the bubble
    • Has a stealthy investigation nearby
      • The church itself is exactly the same in both umbra and real
      • Big shimmery bubble, slightly distorting what's inside it; no array; couple of spirit guards (Order of Red?) with swords
      • Jules tries messing around with the bubble as a wolf, which causes some sort of flash inside the church itself for a moment then settles back down
      • Jules spends some amount of time messing around with the barrier trying to find a soft spot to potentially break through one way or another
      • Cannot sense the Wyrm beyond the barrier - the barrier seems to block it
    • Jules then decides to turn to a more direct approach - she approaches the front door as a human where there are a couple of the church's monks with swords standing guard
    • Another guard with a different sword eventually comes through the barrier (parting it with their hands) and has a tense chat with Jules
      • The guard offers the "warhounds" (his way to describe wolves) of London to join The Eternal Church
      • As he disappears back behind the barrier, Jules hears the subtle sound of an arcana array activating - she then parkours her way around to find three glowing lights (like fireflies) nearby, the lights appear to try to gently pull Jules through the Gauntlet - she resists, but looks through herself to see…
      • Some of "London's finest" (21st Tactical Reconnaissance Regiment) in a stakeout overlooking the church trying to put out a fire on an array - Jules beats a retreat
  • Carlie will be focusing on tracking down the vampire that showed up at the church using Sergeant Limehouse's video tape collection
  • Ariane was mostly catching up on homework during this (Tabitha was on holiday)

2023-11-13

Carlie has been going through Robert Laffrey's livejournal looking for hints as to who the missing Vampire may be, finds a possible name of Daniel Webster who's a paralegal to a local east London solicitors (PBK Solicitors), just a small place (injury law, local conveyancing, etc), asks Ariane who knows nothing about them (ooc: an absolute botch so Ariane bluffs that if they were real she'd have heard of them) the pair of them go digging online, Ariane gets suspicious because they don't seem to have filed anything with any magistrates so they could be doing 100% contract law/conveyancing but its unlikely, there's no trace. They talk about doing a gentle survey of the place for how occupied it is but Carlie talks about prepping a break in.

Holly is taking a little time off to recharge in the kitchen, going through The Styles Journal checking into The Temple Church entry is relatively slim, there's a full page pencil drawing of a Greco-Roman building with funky marble columns, he went through on his way to The Eternal Empire and came via here, says it was something else but then it was taken over by The Eternal Church and they turned it into training/barracks for the Order of Red.

  • Sunny is making 3 pies with slight variations to work on recipes.
  • Ariane goes to visit the Southwark Abandoned Tube Station to look for hints into their time in Hong Kong.
  • Lydia visits the local army recruitment office.

Carlie goes to investigate The PBK Solicitors office is between Abdul Kebab and Curry shop (22:00 - 3:00 every night) and Singhs corner store (open all day, possibly 24h). She heads round the back to check out the back yards, nothing interesting, lots of concrete, the 24h corner store has a camera out the back, maybe working. Steps up to a blue door at the back of PBK. She gloves up, activates the invisibility fetish, and hops the fence to pop the lock. Looks at it and suspects its a holding company dead drop, there's nothing here but postal mail boxes for more than 150 businesses and a bored looking clerk in there. She hops back over the fence and heads to the cafe across the road (delicious Arabic style coffee), she settles herself in for a long overnight watch.

Lydia arranges to pop along to the Wednesday evening (tomorrow night) try out session for recruitment, she mentions her parents were involved in 21st Tactical and hence she'd appreciate getting involved.

Ariane's poking around the underground station trying to work out if there links between the Pack who went to Hong Kong with Robert Laffrey and the previous pack. Spends a lot of time trying to determine if there's evidence of the previous-previous pack, finds a notebook (mostly damaged with directions) to a warehouse in Southwark near the Alpha Games warehouse. She heads back to the pack house to recruit people for a look around.

Sunny meanwhile is engaged in delicious cooking on a long endurance based cooking spree, she flags a little over time, but Ariane and Lydia return to cookies and Keylime Pie, we enjoy them and fill out survey forms, afterwards we decant to go look at the warehouse.

It's a warehouse/custom house kind of thing along where the docks used to be, mostly the docks have been turned into housing but theres a few boarded up/metal grids over doors and windows, the padlock looks worn, all the gridwork is rusty. We get Sunny to do a sniff around, gets the aroma of humming warm plasticy electronics, Holly has a peer into the Umbra and the building is an exact replica on the other side, which is odd. She fills us in on how there's been enough omph for the spirit to remember the current, there's talk of Sunny going in for a scout around, we look for observers, there's one guy high on coke. We agree to sent Holly and Sunny through to see if they can break the lock there. Holly shifts to glabro and smashes the door off, in the physical the padlock falls off and door swings open. Ariane thanks invisible Holly and they both head inside. Inside is a large cement floored warehouse, empty, with 3 lights running 2.5 stories up, they come on as we open the door and a knackered old fan starts then "Good evening Mr. Ells" in a computerised voice then a question about "6,047 days since you last returned Mr. Ells is everything ok?" (16.5 years) Ariane claims she was on holiday. Edges closer, there's a 90s beige era computer and CRT which loses its smoke. Lydia keeps looking around the room, sterile empty, no windows, notices the wiring is from the 80s. Ariane tries to ask the computer what we did 6047 days ago, it asks if we want it to play Mr. Ells favourite album, it then plays the X-Files theme tune.

in the Penumbra the lamps come on and the inside is a space shuttle with the flag of the soviet union and cyrellic writing, they peer around and Holly peers into the physical and can see it playing an audio file, has a big button marked "decloak" on it, works out that Ariane and Holly can't see whats going on, they chat about this and Holly pops back into the physical world.

Sunny comes back and tells us about the spaceship/decloak button, we let her hop back before we hit it, it takes a few clicks before the large while space shuttle fades into existence, Ariane explains its must be the craft that can go anywhere and then the Gauntlet breaks down and Holly and and Sunny appear, Holly says its like 2 frames of glass stacked on on top of each other. The Monitor is back working playing the Spice Girls. We talk about finding a manual or something and maybe google-translating them. We have two ways in, cockpit and main cargo area, the doors are around 12 feet up, Lydia shifts to Crinos and lifts Ariane up to get in the doors, she manages to scrabble the latch open and it opens downwards and almost smacks her but she gets in. There is a yellow post it pointing to a button marked "Jimmy this one", she talks about pushing it and peers through a port hole - the cockpit has a lot of space race type tech, bulky chairs, lots of computers, everything labelled in cyrellic and lots of yellow post it notes and stickers with english words on them and post its with "Jimmy 1", "Jimmy 2", "Jimmy 3", then "Jimmy this one but only after 4 goes ping", Ariane finds a rope ladder and tosses it out the door, looks like it was built for it.

Ariane pushes the button and the lights come on to the Airlock, theres some clunks and the inner door becomes loose. We carefully go inside and start taking pictures, all the lights and systems start to come on, decide to not push anything. Find a leather jacket draped over a chair, several 90s era coke cans by a chair, and there's a copy of Anne McCaffrey's Pern, there's also a large wooden case welded in front of one of the other chairs - inside is a gold inlaid basket hild rapier, feels like a glaive, Ariane picks it up and can feel the amount of spirit bound into it, beautifully weighted, can feel its a weapon for killing people with artistry and practically singing. Ariane doesn't want her sword to get jealous so hands it over to Lydia, who's eyes light up. We find a big thick Russian manual with a few extra pages written in English detailing how to control the craft, Ariane spends time hunting for the shutdown procedure - it should automatically shutdown once the button is pushed in the airlock. Meanwhile everyone else: Sunny keeping watching as a wolf in the warehouse, the music is now Take That. Holly asks Sunny if she can see the screen, says there's a "CLOAK" button back on the monitor. Holly then goes into the back cargo section, Scandinavian hotel vibes, wood floor, leather sofas, bar, some small bed/sleeping areas at the back including a dog bed, looks retrofitted. She invites Ariane and Lydia back there to check it out. There's even a TV and video selection. There's food but its ancient snacks mostly and mostly gone off. Talk about cloaking it with a witness to see what happens but Lydia points out it'll be air tight. We leave a receipt from Ariane's pocket and recloak it, and Ariane and Lydia bounce back to the real to see the shuttle shimmering away and the gauntlet reappearing. Holly and Sunny muse about what this means for science and talk about finding Stargazer theorist, Ariane manages to convince the computer to stop playing music and gets on guard while looking up the location of nearby hardware stores, we get some bin bags to wrap the sword up, a new padlock for the door and bolt the place back up.

Later that evening Holly and Ariane notice that some of the symbols from the Styles Map correspond to manual stuff about how to set a location/destination for it. Ariane texts pictures to Carlie with "WE FOUND A GOD DAMN SPACESHIP CARLIE"

Carlie meanwhile has been chilling, drinking coffee, chatting politics with various old men, then spots a guy who she vaguely recognises coming up to the door to pick up his business mail.

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