Kasee: 1/6/97 - 3/9/97
Writing. Seems I never have enough time to write these days, getting chased by vampires and strange creepy crawlys from the Umbra. Anyway, I left off on November 2, 1996, and a lot has happened since then. I woke up, and realized that the Tass stuff I had read about while looking up auras could be useful, and that there should be some here somewhere, so I looked. Had no luck, so I figured expanded awareness would help, but it only succeeded in getting me more paradox. I swear, I'm a living paradox magnet. So I searched mundanely again and eventually I stepped outside and realized the mailbox was loose and behind it were 4 letters, dated 1944. I open the first one, dated January 3, 1944 to John DePue. It is a draft notice. I get quint as I open the letter, then shortly it fades and the letter ages and crumbles. Oops. Other 3 letters are to Angela DePue, and are official Army documents. Needless to say, I was horribly curious about what the other letters said, but I didn't dare open them and waste the Tass, so I found Reuben in the library and tell him and tell the others and we decide to read the letters and use the Tass to heal Eric. August 10, 1944- John got a purple heart due to injuries and is being treated in a French hospital. September 4, 1944- John will be released to go home due to injuries and will be outprocessed in a few weeks. December 22,1944- Hospital was destroyed and John was among the casualties. Erk. Glad the bad news was used for good though. We then ate lunch, and after lunch, I got to have fun. This is where the vampire comes in, though not quite yet, and this part is better told in the present tense anyway.
Wolfie tells us Mary is safe and we discuss how we can eavesdrop on the conversation from the basement. We go back upstairs and discover Betsy has left. I expand my awareness and notice someone running down the street. I also notice signs of a scuffle nearby and some blood under a shelter. I go running off after Betsy. I catch up to her and she tells me to go home and play with my dolls and she leaves and this really pisses me off so of course I follow her and now we are getting to the vampire part, but not quite yet I have to finish chasing Betsy. So I follow her and end up in the steam tunnels and track her and find a dam cause there is water in the tunnels and then Betsy attacks me with a branch, well, actually she kinda jumps at me from around the corner and yells and then doesn't pummel me. We are near the bedroom I had found earlier, and there is a weird feeling person in it so I ask Betsy who lives here. She tells me someone named Yarkas (or some such name like that- it was weird) and he's a defector and he helps her and Ogre (though a defector from what, I have no idea. Maybe he's Russian and he defected to the US?). She tells me to stay behind and she goes to the room. I can sense her clearly, then I realize there are more people in the room because 2 more show up suddenly, then 2 more leave and then the room is empty. Huh? Or something like that happens. So of course I get closer to the room and there are 3 people in the room- I know this, can't see 'em, but I know it- so I get closer and peer into the room and see Ogre on a table and a guy with pointy ears leaning over him who looks like the other vampire only smaller and Betsy is sitting in a chair and Ogre is dead (he should be after all, not many people can survive burning with a stake through their chest.) The guy sits down and reads a book so I look at Betsy and she is alive and seems to be catching a cold and then I look at the guy- this is where I get chased by the vampire- and he is dead and looks up at me and gets up and comes after me so I run away. I got away too. So I went to the library and called the Chantry and Renee comes and picks me up and we get back around 3.
We spend the rest of the day waiting for the guy to show up. At 8:15 someone knocks on the door and Reuben and Eric and I go downstairs and Wolfie answers the door. Wolfie comes and gets Eric and Reuben and I stay downstairs. I can't hear anything so I expand my awareness and hear this loud shrieking in my bones and my ears bleed and I scream and then pass out. Reuben revives me and I heal myself. We find out Inspector Torres is there about the dead bodies in the park (we didn't do it I swear! It was the wraiths! Really!) The lights go out, the roof is leaking and it is now really bright in here! Renee lights some candles so it is brighter for everyone else and darker for me. Ah paradox. That was a fun flaw, to an extent. I spent some time meditating, and Eric fixed the roof with a force shield after Reuben's failed attempt to get the water elementals to stop raining on the roof. I tell Renee to get me if anything interesting happens and I go to meditate with the node to get rid of some paradox. Stupid idea. I got rid of some of it and took damage in the process, which I then had to heal which then gave me more paradox which I then had to burn and so I had cats ears for awhile and my shadow went the wrong way and my hair turned blue and I rather effectively wasted a day and a half. I found out they found Blake spiderwebbed to our front door and he was very dead so Renee dehydrated him in the tub and washed him down the drain, quite an effective way to dispose of a body. I found out about Blake on 11/4 after noon. Reuben and Daedalus were in the library so they told me then I told them about Betsy and Ogre and getting chased by a vampire and Yarkas. There is water coming in the front door now. Everything is flooded and this rain needs to stop soon or we'll all need webbed feet.
And then it does stop raining. Well, with some help from Mary. Daedalus says it isn't raining in Saratoga, NY so we decide to get Mary and cab back here so Daedalus gated them back and when Daedalus asks Mary about the rain, she says, "It's raining? I hate the rain. I HATE THE RAIN!" And it stops raining and a breeze picks up. I look outside and notice the water level is above the bottom of the door by almost a foot so we just kinda hang out inside for awhile. There are no clouds in the sky. None anywhere. Reuben, Renee, Daedalus, and I gate to Forteau's house at about 8:30pm. There are electric lights here so it isn't too bright for me. Reuben rings the doorbell and no one answers so we go in. We find Forteau on the floor face down and he is still alive so we get him on the couch. I look sideways and see a forest with sprites and critters bounding about and it looks normal, so Reuben says. Forteau's aura is pale and sparkly and glows with quint. The golem is not moving but it is no longer decomposing either. They heal him and he wakes up and he asks about the Weather Machine and Renee tells him it doesn't exist anymore and he gets very upset and tells us he told us to be careful with it and so they tell him Master Porthos deconstructed it and he looks upset so I tell him I didn't flip any switches which gets me a funny look so Renee tells him I blew it up which I deny because it wasn't my fault because I didn't flip any switches and I was just looking at it because there was a tree on it. Renee and I tell him about Halloween. Lots of things were talked about, I can't really remember them all, something about Internal Affairs and Swamp Rats- Radical Environmentalist Verbena Shapeshifters (Oh my!) and Chantry spirits. We go back to the Chantry around 11pm and go to bed at midnight.
The next day I look for ghosts and have no luck and Reuben tells me he met the Chantry spirit, he name is Angela (gee, what a surprise) and that she misses her letters and we shouldn't bother her she is upset so we discuss how we can use the Tass and she can read her letters. Daedalus's room caught on fire, his only explanation was, "Napalm's gone." So he was kinda crispy and Reuben and Renee healed him and he went to sleep. I make sure I check the mail every day so I know when the Tass shows up.
11/6/96. Been kinda boring lately. Reuben and I go to the NCSU library but it's closed and we run into Cab so we go downtown to the Registrar of Deeds and look up records on the Chantry. The place is listed as being currently owned by F. Lawrence, since 1962. Found Angela's death certificate dated March 3, 1945. John Michael DePue- born Dec 11, 1920, died Dec 10, 1944. That sucks. We also found a birth record for Michael Lawrence DePue on Jan 2, 1945. But we realize John left for the war before Angela could have gotten pregnant by him. Oops. I find no death record for my Aunt. We got back to the Chantry around 6:30, and Renee tells us she is going to go see STaN so Wolfie, Renee, Cab, and I go. Roads are in horrible shape but we finally make it 2 hours later. We go in and talk. I look at their auras and notice a very distinct black band that wraps around them and I also notice Nicole looks worried the whole time we're there. We leave and send Wolfie back to check on things and he reappears later I front of the car covered in rats and he shifts shape and blood flies and there is lots of noise and neighbors start to appear and the rats evaporate and Wolfie jumps in the van and we leave. We return to the Chantry around 10pm and I tell them about the auras and Wolfie tells us the Black Spiral is a form of the Wyrm and maybe they are being controlled by someone or something. We look at the slips of paper from the party and realize they are anagrams.
The next day (11/7/97) Mary gets a staff from Granddad and Cab collapses from hypothermia and we have to revive her in the tub and she talks to Mary and Eric tells me he will teach me about forces so mostly we sit around and read. Nicole shows up around 5:30 looking scared and has large sores on her face and looks like she has leprosy and she is convinced something is after her and something about a specter at night tugging at her soul. Her aura looks the same. Wolfie says her soul is in the Dark Umbra and she tells us how her and Stephanie and Tiffany played with a Ouija Board and something answered and gave them the spell to destroy the Weather Machine and they ran off on Halloween night because the Weather Machine was going to blow up (see!!!! I didn't do it! I told you!) and that Stephanie and Tiffany ran away today and she got scared and came here. We ask her how she knew we where we were because it seems everyone knows where we are and she said everyone knows we are here in the old haunted place. I look at the tendril and notice it looks like a tether and it can be followed but Wolfie tells me it goes to the Dark Umbra, Land of the Dead, and that I wouldn't come back. Oh. Someone else knocks on the door, this time Inspector Torres and he talks to Daedalus. I look at his aura and it is pale and faded and washed out. Renee says he is not alive. Ack. Dead things with auras! Daedalus sits with him and they talk, I try to listen at the door but Torres opens the doors and tells me to go away. I go find Reuben and tell him Torres is a vampire and then Torres leaves and we go tell Daedalus and I hear a scratching at the door so I look out the peephole and see Torres with his arm outstretched. I open the door, he makes a final scratch, then vanishes. There is a Masonic symbol on the door that Wolfie says is watching us. I memorize its exact details so I can recreate it again if necessary.
We hear a scream from the library about 7:30. Wolfie is slimed and glowing in spirit. He howls and goes Krinos. He pulls off the ectoplasm and grabs Nicole and lifts her up and shakes her then they both scream and collapse and Wolfie converts to lupus form. I saw a soul get sucked into Nicole's body so I look at her aura and it is now pure white. I remember that a new born has a pure white aura so I grab Renee and describe what I saw and then add, "Wow. She'll be pissed. She was just born again!" Wolfie's aura is now a pale and dim version of what it used to look like. I step sideways to look for Wolfie. I don't see him, so I expand my awareness and see Wolfie's soul in the thick stuff I've seen around graveyards where ghosts are. I also see a tendril snapped off and going out elsewhere grab hold of Wolfie and start to grow fairly quickly, about 1 inch per minute. I step back and yell for Reuben and tell him what I saw. He calls Forteau and he tells him we should kill the werewolf and call Grandfather. Daedalus says he followed the eye on the door to Torres a few blocks away then the tunnel collapsed and Torres left and Daedalus went to sleep. Huh? Anyway, around 9pm, Raul shows up on his Harley.
Ok, things get interesting from here. But I gotta go so I don't have time to explain it all right now but we make the Chantry a cairn or something and end up in the Umbra on the search for Wolfie's soul so we can get it back (a soul is a terrible thing to loose) and Daedalus disappears rather dramatically and a Nexxus Crawler turns into a philodendron. Bye!
© 1998 by Julie Hough
Tom Brady<tabrady@mindspring.com>
Last modified: Thurs Jan 15 16:26:00 1998 by tabrady