Season Five

Summary of Events. Also Todo List

2021-09-27

(Lydia talks to the lawyer about the death of her birth parents, Ariane confronts her mother about her treatment of Elise. Sunny keeps on learning to cook from Alice. Holly, Carlie, and Jules all chat to Tarquin about mystic rites, arcana and the umbra, navigating the umbra, Holly's Map, religion, and the ritual castle, Carlie and Tarquin take a brief road trip to the Summerland and meet a grass sprite, also everyone gets their post full of plot threads: Islington covid, Stargazer stuff, Lupus stuff, and Lottie stuff)

First a session of wrapping up loose ends. So Penny has departed from the Primrose-Morton Estate, The Major is a happy drunk, Alice is happy for Penn but also sad she's gone, Lottie mostly passes out, feels rough, and departs the following day, seeming more grumpy, putting on less of a front and not posting on social media (The Pack is doing a hecking variable size concern).

Lydia starts by talking to the lawyer from the Matrix Chambers at the party, confirms her name and that she was adopted about age 7, she's trying to confirm the events in Papua New Guinea which caused the Death of Lydia's Birth Parents, they turned out to be working for SIS/MI6 and her Mother was a Garou and member of The Guild, they were on the way to East Timor for some sort of intelligence gathering job. There are photos of them with her at the helicopters, a letter from her birth father wishing her well if something goes wrong, and a £100k financial trust fund. She was rescued from the wrecked by Colonel Redacted and sent back to the UK via the Swiss Embassy. The lawyer says he'll make enquiries about more distant family, he's also not sure how her parents were selected, the forign and commonwealth office made the choice and placed her with them before the Matrix Chambers knew she was in the country, they decided not to disturb her, and no member of the Smith family is a known Garou. She was told if she wasn't a werewolf she wouldn't have gotten to see the secret file, just gotten the letter and her legacy on her 25th birthday. Also her parents won't get any mention of the werewolves or intelligence services in their letters. The lawyer also "accidentally" forgets and drops the Photo of Lydia's Birth Parents.

A few days later Ariane finds Janice Primrose-Morton in a break from her hiest planning and has a whole debate about her treatment of Elise, suggesting she was trying to get her killed, Janice suggests she was just trying to scare her off and away from John, Ariane suggests that she was trying and that the Primrose-Morton's should have worked to help fix her so she could fit in the way she wanted and that she had the potential to be as she used to be a lynch pin of her community. Janice suggested she would have tried and failed forever and she's disappointed that Ariane wants to change people as she wants to inspire them to be better versions of themselves ("We inspire and lead them, we don't make others great") and that The Major will never let her be happy or fit in. Ariane makes the suggestion that they should persuade John to dump her, not the other way around and Janice suggests that he'll never do that because he's not interested in her except as a trophy, he's more interested in promotion, Janice thinks he'll never get to Colonel because he's far too useful where he is and will only get the symbolic promotion on his retirement. Ariane concludes by telling her mother to keep an eye on Lottie, and Janice replies by suggesting she tell Tarquin instead. Eventually Ariane goes to "hunt deer" i.e. got to the woods and smash things up in frustration.

Holly asks around for someone who knows the Rite of Fetish, Tarquin says he can direct her to a spirit to learn it, Jules is looking into the idea of interacting with the Umbra using Arcana magic and look for blood lines in the library, Carlie goes to the woods to poke the edge of the ritual space. Sunny keeps on learning cooking skills with Alice. Penny texts Sunny, Alice, and Carlie to invite them to hang in Durham post pandemic.

So Jules, Carlie, and Holly are approached by Tarquin for discussion of magic - he talks to Jules about the use of Arcana arrays suggesting she use her gifts, but she suggests its useful to enchant whole spaces or buildings at once, Tarquin says that you can use arrays to get to the deeper realms but not The Shadow. Say's he'd like access to Holly's Map and will offer something in trade and wanted to talk to her Alpha first, Jules suggests she can't order Holly and that Tarquin should have chatted to her first. They also talk about Carlie hunting the Unknown Ahroun around the tower.

So a few days later Tarquin talks to Holly about the map, offering an invested item that will help her to hop between realms in exchange for making a copy, she asks for 2 copies so one can be taken with us and says she feels her Uncle would be happier if the knowledge was put to use and preserved. Tarquin says he's headed for The Tower also called The Spire on the map before he becomes too much older and unable to make the trip.

Carlie meanwhile is trying to grok the ritual space and how it works, tries and fails to meditate there and get results, when she checks the umbra the place feels odd, connected to nicer realms, she manages to peer through and get glimpses of the places - The Umbral Church (with a lone woman in the pews), and the Summerland (sunny upland hills, pure nature and bounty). Tarquin approaches her, they chat and he say's he's been too busy to do much travelling recently (the house, his wifes business, raising Ariane), but felt her poking the place (he's connected to the ritual space). Carlie talks about her strange experience fetching Sunny and how she's been trying to get a sense of how Gaia worship works, been shouting about stuff with Lydia but wants to know if the Garou way has anything as it matches experience. Tarquin talks about how Janice once contacted a deep nature realm here, talks about how the Garou have the Gauntlet dividing them from The Shadow, whereas Mythics see this world as just one realm connected to all the others with none of them more "real" or "physical" than the others, but some realms more magically active, so in some the gods and spirits are more directly there. He also reveals other Mythics don't trust him much because they're stuck up and he associates with werewolves. He says he has a philosophy more than a religion: to do the right thing for the world and his family, he knows the gods are out there but their influence is limited these days to the messengers who can hear them, his goal is to respect all things and say yes to what he can. He changes the subject and tells Carlie that on any deep Umbral quest you need someone who can open gateways to shift you between realms - Holly in this case, but you'll need a navigator with a sense of where those realms are and suggests Carlie.

He hands her a Joker playing card as a "get back" magic tool, then the pair of them hop through into the Summerland, a wild nature realm, pollen lifting from the grass, full of life and bouyed up spirits. They meet a Grass Sprite, a winged figure made of pollen, Carlie offers it a little Gnosis and it grows, laughs and is happy and chats - telling them where they are, giving her the gnosis back and telling her that Gaia always welcomes her guardians here, one of her realms that some of them go to when their fighting days are done, she will always welcome her children back here. Carlie communes with the place and gets a feeling of connection to her past, to a tree from far away and one literally grows beside her, she thanks Tarquin (who is apparently seeking to establish a connection her for later return), thanks the spirit, and heads back to the physical world. It is now nighttime and hours have passed in the 30 subjective minutes, Tarquin tells her it'll take a month to recharge the return card.

Things wrap up with The Mail (pay your local red cap):

• Lydia gets stuff from environmental health, no one in Islington is getting covid since the first few weeks of pandemic, PHE are investigating food/water/air and the media haven't picked it up yet
• Jules:
  • Message from Diamond Annie suggesting the heat is dying down and asking if we're coming back, she sends a rough estimate back
  • Message from Sun Wang-Li who's being promoted, may be part of a strange road trip, will be serving drinks at the wolves on the heath for the Stargazer event and owes us champagne
• Sunny:
  • Gets a message from Kyle Waters who got her number from Derek Watford, asks if she wants to hang out with fellow Lupus and she is enthusiastic.
  • Gets a message from Lottie saying she needs to talk and Sunny should get in touch when she's back in London, she confirms she will.

Next weeks plan: 2-3 weeks after Midsummer, a couple of days before the Stargazer Deep Umbra Covid Quest