Fork in the Road

## Date(s)

* 20 February 2017
* 21 February 2017
* 22 February 2017

## Rhys's Place

The plan, when they’d argued it through, was just this: go back to Rhys Llewellyn’s house and see if anything there had escaped the police’s search, then prioritise either Glanrhyd Hospital or the spa and hit hard to see what shook itself out.

The house itself looked normal – at first glance, at least. Lucy and Maddie approached in the Umbra (having ran all the way) and saw it glowing, with vaguely human shapes shining on guard at the door. Lucy stayed back, while Maddie tried to get in, only to get blinded and knocked out by the light. Having communicated that to the pack, Rob managed to pull Maddie back out and bring her to.

In the meantime, Josh had made short work of the lock, letting them all in. The house had been searched thoroughly, but with the glasses the pack could see the walls were covered with glowing sigils, magical and very similar to the tattoos scarred on Rhys and Morris. Looking under the wallpaper, the marks were painted onto the walls in what smelled like blood, silver, and some other, odder things.

In a corner of the bedroom, strangely untouched, Rob pulled up a floorboard to find a metal box - which wasn't locked for long once Josh got a hold of it. Inside it, there was a Colt Patterson - an antique revolver, with four bullets in the chambers - and a note, saying "*If you've found this, I'm dead*", with a symbol of a sword with a winged cross guard, hanging like a cross.

Knowing valuable weirdness when they saw it, the pack collected it, before accepting that the rest of the place had been turned over thoroughly. But it being down the road from Glanrhyd did firm up their decision to do what they could about the possible vampire and trapped lost cubs there.

## The Hospital

The plan could have gone worse...

That night, Rob's home made EMP worked well - well enough to cause the lockdown on the 'research floors' to break. Rob had magic-lanyard'ed his way into the security room by the time it kicked off and Eva made them a back door. Between the sudden confusion, Rob's position in the middle of them and Josh advancing on the security room, it didn't take long to clear. Only one security guard was dead by the end and the two Garou picked up tranq guns and a shotgun for the adventures to follow. The two then headed up to meet up with Maddie, Lucy, and Eva (making her way in from the back) who were heading up to where they expected Dr Spencer to be.

Robert approached the doctor with Eva and Joshua looming right behind him, not kicking off until they got close, while Madison tried to waylay Jonathan Cundle, distracting him and trying to convince him (from the deeply persuasive Glabro form she was in) not to resort to violence. In the meantime, Lucy reached for the magical sunshine flashbang they'd got from Dickens, before finding herself suddenly in the Umbra. Stepping back as quickly as she could, she activated the grenade not long after the fight had kicked off. Judging by the screaming and clear damage it did to the dear doctor, the cubs felt relatively confident in their guess that he was, indeed, a vampire.

They continued tearing Spencer to pieces - it took longer than they wanted, as Maddie, failing to persuade Cundle to leave, tried to strongarm him out of the building. This was spectacularly unsuccessful, as he started to do impossible things... She shifted up to Crinos in an attempt to even the odds against him while his burning hands were tearing holes through her chest as she tried to choke him. When the others hurtled out behind the pair of them, Cundle phased through the floor, leaving Maddie charred and whimpering. She stood with a snarl and followed the others to the inmates' floor...

Eva led the charge only to find the door being desperately held shut by security, as a bat-eared and diseased-looking Crinos was being battled by a lone guard on the other side, surrounded by vulnerable-looking inmates screaming or twitching, trying their best to keep as far away as possible in the limited space.

Taking the guards out quickly was a matter for tranqs; then the pack attacked. The guard took the opportunity to back off, but seemed strangely unfazed by both the Spiral he'd been fighting and the five of them.

It took four of them, the shotgun and all of the tranqs to take it down - and even then, only when Maddie and Eva were bleeding out on the floor did Rob manage to rip the creature's throat out. Lucy, using up every last bit of Gnosis she had, managed to stabilise them, but they were both crippled from claws and monstrous strength.

Maddie was about alert enough to sniff through the people present, nodding at one teenage girl and confirming she was a werewolf; and pressing the cold iron hanging round her neck to someone else's hand - he flinched, the metal burning him, proving him one of the fae.

## Recovery

They staggered out, heading slowly back to Wayland's forge - Lucy carrying Maddie through the Umbra, with the others driving through the night, having taken the lost cub and the BSD's body with them.

Lucy spent the night meditating, and next morning burnt through the Gnosis she'd collected putting the girls back together. The pack went through the usual discussion forum (i.e. open argument) and took the girl, Morris, the corpse of the Spiral, and themselves back to Ocean's Lament to update the sept on what they'd found so far.

Rob took the Spiral's head on the spear he'd forged with Wayland, and Echt Jaeger nodded in proud acknowledgement, setting it with the heads of the other foes that his pack had fought, as Rob told the tale. Delwyn was loudly impressed with the telling, and the spirits were pleased enough to grant the cubs a little more renown.

Rob and Eva were nodded over to the Headhunters and the Hot Rods by a welcoming Crookshank - Josh hauled along reluctantly; Lucy vanishing to the heart of the caern, and Maddie vanishing to the woods for a bit, to swing back after Josh had been there a polite, shaken, quarter of an hour and haul him out for an 'urgent chat'.

They all slept badly that night, for one reason or another; but that was nothing to what the morning would bring.

## Just when you thought you were working out what was going on...

The next day, just as the pack was deciding on their next steps to finalise their Rite of Passage, Mau Mau interrupted them with urgent knocking and very stern words directing them to the fireside *immediately*. Fearing the worst, the pack gathered the bundle of evidence and what belongings they hadn't left strewn across Wales, and ran.

They got there to see Bryn and a tall man carrying an axe leaning back to back, battered and torn after long battle - Fergal of Ulster, the most powerful Ahroun in the Nation, nearly broken by whatever battle they'd been fighting, Sof and Mau Mau trying to do the best they could to keep them together. They were gathered with a swathe of the Fenrir and whatever other warriors were available, all injured. The pack were brought to Delwyn, who gave them a message for Keston of the Fox's Rest and for Andraste of Griffin's Glen: that Skadi Longtooth, the Eldest Theurge of the Nation, had fallen in battle that night. He suggested they may wish to speak to Keston first, but underlined that that was not something he was ordering them to do. The moon bridge flashed, and the aquiline profile of Death Comes Quiet was visible briefly as he and his left the caern - adding to Delwyn's urgency.

## A Rock and a Hard Place

The moment they were off the Bawn, Rob called for a helicopter - and in the time it took to get to the pickup point, the pack argued.

The ramifications of who to tell, and in which order, were huge, even to their outsider eyes; and everyone had an opinion. Rob and Josh were all for letting the information fall to Andraste first, knowing that in the time it took to tell her, Keston may well be made unfortunately unable to contest Andraste's potential candidature. Lucy and Eva were equally strongly for telling Keston - as the only other Elder Theurge in the Nation other than Sof (in a pack with two others of the Elder Council, she was unlikely ever to be able to hold the role), it was his right to stand. Maddie waited till they'd argued themselves out before pointing to Cornwall and the Fox's Rest.

They headed South, still bargaining - and running through third options... Then Rob flipped the Umbral phone they'd been given at the start of their Challenge to Josh, and Josh called the Dark Heart... One of the few other Athro Theurges, Snaps the Weaver's Threads, took the knowledge and - for some reason - thereafter the phone wouldn't call out...

It took the rest of the journey before Rob was satisfied that they could haul something out of the potential political grenade sitting in their laps - especially after the Dark Heart called back to say that, if Keston did hear first, he'd better not be in a position to actually take up the role. The pack decided to try to persuade the Elder not to stand; knowing it probably wouldn't work, but not having a lot of other choices (not least because the three of Eva, Lucy and Maddie had a voting majority, and the pack were... not great with Garou authority). (While none of the cubs particularly liked Keston's political leanings, the women objected because of his right to claim the office rather than any fondness for the person in particular. They tried to argue Andraste could always challenge for the role once she completed her rank challenge before Madison told them Andraste would never challenge Keston.)

When they got there, they took the tale to Keston, explaining and discussing and offering what argument they could to try to save his life - it being most likely that he would have an accident, were he to stand. On the other hand, as he pointed out, even if he didn't stand, he couldn't be left alive as a potential threat to whoever would take the position, so he intended to at least force whoever wanted him dead to do what would be done by the light of day, with all the risk and political cost that would be to them.

Then the Fox's Rest sent a message to the Heart of Albion, telling Death Comes Quiet when and where Keston would be as he travelled north to take his position officially.

In acknowledgement of the decision the pack had made - to act in line with the Litany and the true spirit of the Nation, Keston also called on the spirits to recognise their Honour, and gave them five minutes of his time - which they spent laying out the kit that Rhys had left and asking for pointers and guidance. What else do you do with the greatest Theurge in the Nation, when he's a dead man walking?