(PrP) Mark of the Beasts

[Yumyumcrow]

Darkness hangs thickly on the rail yards, a kingdom the shadows are refusing to relinquish easily despite the growing lights that surround them. The city grows once more as construction reaches its peak. New infill brings new populations and new lights cutting away at the dark. Here, however, in the rail yards, the darkness remains and it lords over the quiescent rolling stock and empty tracks. When the wind blows, it sighs through tall grasses that shiver and ripple like the sea. Metal clinks and groans in the emptiness like the bizarre night calls of unnamed urban monsters.

Now that the Uratha have staked their claim even the bands of homeless have moved on, the herd moved by an unknown sense of foreboding and self preservation.

But not this night.

Screams! Screams! Blood curdling screams cut into the night. Animal growls, rolling and coarse, spoil the peace under the pristine half moon that hangs glittering in the sky.

It certainly isn't from one of the pack. It can only come from an intruder!

Kid unlimited sink @Viola Saber Sloth @Tristan Travisc06489

[Tristan Hardt]

Unsettling sounds, hinting at violence, rouse the Elodoth from his thoughts. He stands slowly, the discarded belongings near the tracks he had been studying fall away to the back of his mind. He frowns. Whatever is out here doesn't belong. As much as he'd like to ask questions first, time and survival demand a more direct approach. Seeing no one else nearby, his eyes drift up to the half moon in the sky.

Familiar. Half-hidden, half exposed. The face the moon had showed him the night of his first change. Falling down on all fours, his skin stretches and tears. Bones disjoint and realign. A lupine muzzle juts out from the once human-looking face. The swift grey wolf stands where the man once did. He lets out a long, loud howl, signaling his pack members with a sense of urgency!

  2 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2017-11-11 18:20:04		Tristan Hardt rolls 2 to Pres+Expression(-1untrained) (10 Again)		9, 8		2 successes

Tristan shifts to Urhan form under his Auspice moon.

[Viola Jones]

They'd claimed their territory but she hadn't done anything with the pouch. Which just wasn't fucking right. So. Finding a spot was the plan. So of course that's not what happens.

Getting to the railyard was easy as it ever was, only once she gets there the howl goes up and the bag with the pouch is hidden as well as can within a paltry second or two before she throws herself to all fours. Fur growing, skin shucking off, bones bending, braking, reshaping.

Paws hit the ground as she follows the sound to the source.

  Urshul

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2017-11-12 13:22:18		Viola Jones rolls 6 to Urshul (Stam 2 + Survival 2 + PU 2) (10 Again)		8, 5, 6, 3, 10, 10, 7, 10, 6		4 successes

I loves my wolves to much not to try to plot. But if I'm super slow I'll bow out so you guys can has fun

[Kid]

Kid's been walking the property, as it were. Taking in the sights of the pack's new territory. Just a rangy looking young-man kicking over cans and wandering through the weeds. Back-pack slung over one shoulder.

Then come the screams, followed by a howl. Already he knows it: Tristan. It doesn't escape Kid that tonight is the Elodoth's night. That Luna hangs balanced between light and dark above the skin of the earth. These connections mean something, though he's not sure what just yet.

For now, Kid keeps to his man-flesh. He begins hurrying toward the direction of the howl, letting that innate sense of pack-awareness open up inside him as a further guide. Only stopping when he spots the other members of his pack.

  Pack Awareness, 1 suxx

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2017-11-12 13:53:56		Kid rolls 6 to Wits3 + Empathy2 + Wisdom1 (10 Again)		7, 6, 3, 10, 3, 4, 1		1 success

Equipment: Reinforced Clothing, Cellphone on Silent, Handgun and Bowie Knife (both in backpack)

[Yumyumcrow]

A song of howls and... mewling?

A cacophony of calls cut through the sky. First from Tristan, then from the location of the screams (enhanced, one last time, by a death-scream-whimper). Then confusion as howls become mewls become yowls of panic, scattering.

The pack is closing in from three directions...

There is a lonely siding with a line of rolling stock - wagons and the like. One of the wagons has its double doors fully open and a messy pile before them. The messy pile is waring mismatched clothes.

Blood hangs thickly in the air.

What do you do?

[Tristan Hardt]

Four paws beat a staccato in succession, leading the grey wolf towards the source of the sounds. He can only hope the pack has heard his call. The Tristan-wolf stops short of the wagon's open doors. Here is a scene of carnage.

The mess and the gore call to his attention. But first, is the coast clear? All of his senses - made keen by his transformation - scan for movement. Threats. Though the blood surely dominates the scene, the Elodoth tries to pick up on anything else nearby.

  6 successes

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2017-11-13 17:45:59		Tristan Hardt rolls 11 to Wits+Composure+4(Urhan) (10 Again)		5, 8, 10, 5, 8, 5, 5, 9, 2, 10, 5, 3, 8		6 successes

[Kid]

Kid arrives shortly after Tristan. He gives his pack-mate a glance, eyes conveying his relief to see the Wolf, and surprised dismay at the carnage before them.

He does not speak. Not yet.

Instead, he approaches the open door and looks inside while Tristan checks their perimeter, trying to figure what's happened here.

  1 success

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2017-11-15 08:14:45		Kid rolls 4 to Wits3 + Invest1 (10 Again)		3, 4, 9, 7		1 success

While he investigates, he can feel Viola closing in on them. Somehow knows she will be on the scene soon.

[Viola Jones]

Kid's right, Viola's next on the scene. A coiled mass of muscle and fur.

It probably says a lot that when the howl went out her first instinct was to shed her man shape for Urshul.

Still as Tristan-wolf checks the perimeter, and Kid the open door, soft and two legged. Viola joins the Cahalith lending her snout to the efforts.

  

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2017-11-16 18:08:02		Viola Jones rolls 8 to Perception (Wits 3 + Composure 2 + 3 Urshul) (10 Again)		3, 6, 10, 4, 6, 3, 1, 1, 4		1 success

[Yumyumcrow]

The pack converge on the siding.

Tristan stalks, his snout to the earth, his eyes watchful, and his ears pricked. Viola shadows him, increasing the area in which the pack search for the interloper.

Viola can scent the blood and the urine from the weak two legs - already injured and tired before the end. Stink of fear lies thick on the ground. And a hint of something else, something wrong. But the siding is too chaotic for her to put the pieces together.

Tristan can. An old two human - reek of alcohol, stink of urine (fear!) and the blood! Much blood. Already sick, this two leg fell before the claws of something else. Something Other. Something rotten, mutant! He scent's the Other's scent on the air, warped and diseased, frenzied.

Two.

One is hiding on the roof of the wagon, back arched, silent and still. In the shadows waiting.

One has panicked and has laid a trail heading east toward the city lights.

Kid closes on the wagon. Yes - a man has been killed tonight. A vagrant shredded as he tried to escape a clawed horror. A bag of his possessions lies spilled in the wagon. From its position and the fan of clothes, it was most likely the poor fellow had disturbed something as he clambered aboard in search of shelter for the night.

  

Date		Action		Roll		Result
2017-11-17 03:20:05		Someone rolls 6 to Dexterity + Stealth (10 Again)		5, 6, 4, 7, 3, 8		1 success
2017-11-17 03:19:36		Someone rolls 5 to Dexterity + Athletics (10 Again)		9, 5, 6, 3, 2		1 success

[Travisc06489]

Two. Two? One is surely a threat. The other? Escaping. And it probably would, at least for now. With no warning, the wrong... thing... it could fall on his pack-mates. He can't have that. Looking right at the lurking thing above, he lets out a low warning growl. Like a hunting dog, his posture points in the direction of this hidden thing. Foe? Prey? Perhaps soon to be both.

Short of scrambling up the side of the wagon, there isn't much Tristan can do. But he'd be ready if the thing struck. He'd be ready if it tried to run, as well.