Those of you who are just coming into the story of Triangle Ascension may be put off by the large amount of information to be found on these web pages. These files are intended to be a short summary of the action up to this point, and will be updated every week or two.

The Setting

Our story takes place in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, USA, including Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill. With few exceptions, all geographic places mentioned actually exist. Our group began gaming in September of 1996; Chapter Two begins on November 6, 1996.

You can read more about the individual characters by clicking on their names. Briefly, we have:

Daedelus, Virtual Adept (MISSING IN ACTION)

Kasee, Orphan

Renee Smith, Verbena

Reuben Cabot, Dreamspeaker

Nathaniel, Son of Ether

John Walker (aka Walks All Paths), Silent Strider Garou

Eric Muller, Order of Hermes

Cab, Dreamspeaker

Kevin Ravenswing, Verbena

Mr. Forteau, enigmatic Master Dreamspeaker. Reuben is his pupil.

Master Porthos, a Master of the Order of Hermes

Betsy, a possible mage with some really odd friends

Ogre, Betsy's brother and no slouch as a mage, either (DECEASED)

Mary, Walks All Path's ward and budding willworker (or Oracle. One of the two.)

Dog, Reuben's familiar

Stephanie, Tiffany, and Nicole (know collectively as STaN), a Verbena trio who may not be as airheaded as they seem

Ray, a sympathetic sleeper, police officer for the City of Raleigh

Raoul, a corax (were-raven) friend of John's

Maxwell Blake, representative of the shadowy "Internal Affairs" (DECEASED)

Inspector Torres, police officer and vampire

Swamp Rats, possibly human, possibly not group of Betsy's friends

That night, Renee, Kasee, Cab, and John go to speak to STaN. They discuss the events of Halloween night. Nicole seems very nervous and distracted, and does not seem to remember the night clearly. Kasee notices a black tendril spiraled around all three of the women's auras. After the group leaves STaN's, the werewolf goes umbral and looks at the house. The house appears to be empty, but he is prevented from investigating further by the attack of a large number of banes.

When they return, Kasee mentions that she saw a black tendril in their auras. The group doesn't know what to make of this, but is sure it's a bad omen. The group then revisits the parts of the chant that they were supposed to use on Halloween, and realizes that it's an anagram. The Chantry goes to bed for the night.

The morning of the seventh, Granddad, a garou shaman, comes to visit. John asks Granddad for help in erasing the stain on his reputation caused by the Get of Fenris after he rescued Mary from them. Granddad asks to see Mary and giver her his staff. Saying only he will talk to them later, he departs.

At 7:20 AM, the power comes back on. The group continues it's now-typical morning routine of a leisurely breakfast and discussion followed by study, interrupted only by a short scream from Kasee's room where she has botched her meditation and instead channeled the node. Cab looks at Mary's new staff and is entranced by the designs, and is thrown back to the time when the glyphs were made. She experiences the impression of the glyphs on the staff, but "dies" - and almost re-experiences the death. She is stricken with hypothermia, and Reuben works for two hours to bring her back to health.

That evening, Nicole knocks on the Chantry door, bringing with her the unsettling realization that far too many people know the location and occupants of the Chantry. Nicole is frantic, and appears to be inflicted with leprosy. She explains that they made contact with something while experimenting with a Ouija board. They swore oaths to the being they contacted and it taught them "things." It instructed them to arrange the ceremony to destroy the Weather Machine. She wrote down the entire chant that was to accompany the destruction of the Weather Machine. It was indeed an anagrammatic spell. Reuben translated the spell, and found that it was a description of something very evil and nasty, though not an explicit summoning.

A little later, there is another knock at the door: Inspector Torres. He goes to speak with Daedelus. While they are speaking, John reveals that Torres is a vampire. Torres leaves without incident, though right after he leaves, Kasee hears a scratching on the front door. She opens the door to find that Torres has inscribed a symbol on the door, which John says is a symbol meaning observation. After some experimenting, Daedelus finds that it is a correspondence effect. He traces it back, and somehow faces down Torres, but collapses from the strain when he returns.

Meanwhile, in the library, John has been trying to help Nicole. Seeing that her soul is trapped in the Dark Umbra, he dives in and retrieves it, losing all of his gnosis in the process. When the process is complete, Nicole's soul is clean, washed of the dark taint, but it is now John's soul that is trapped in the Dark Umbra.

The group panics, and starts calling in all of the assistance they can find. Cab calls her mentor and arranges a meeting. Reuben calls Mr. Forteau. In the course of a strange conversation in which Forteau keeps suggesting they kill the werewolf, he also suggests (in a different tone of voice) that they contact Granddad. Reuben starts to wonder which Forteau won the duel.

Renee calls Raoul, who arrives with Granddad in tow. Granddad meets the whole group, asking them who they are and what they will sacrifice to save John. It is revealed that Nicole was a Barrabi, but is now free of the taint of the Wyrm. She says that she served someone called Grandma. Granddad says that to save John, the group must go to the lair of Grandma. He says that he will send a garou named Silvertooth to train the group in the use of swords and daggers, and leaves.

The next day, Eric wakes up early and removes and replaces the front door. Silvertooth arrives, looks at the door lying in the driveway, and breaks it over his knee. The group trains intensely for three days. After the third day, Granddad returns. He says that the first thing they must do is open a cairn. John mentions the spirit of the chantry, Angela. Granddad demands that she be summoned, and lays her to rest. Then he begins the ceremony, with John in the center, Granddad, Mary, Dog, and Renee participating in the magic, Cab, Kasee, Eric, Daedelus, and Silvertooth defending, and Reuben in the Shadowlands, protecting John's spirit.

Reuben fights off a skrag, cutting it in half (his first kill). Meanwhile, those in the chantry fight off three gorehounds. As Daedelus prepares to channel the fire of a blast furnace at the gorehounds, he slips and botches the effect badly. He is pulled screaming through the floor by fiery hands and disappears. The gorehounds are dispatched messily (with one beheaded by Kasee!). Eric is sorely wounded, again.

A man walks in on Reuben as he continues to drum away spirits in the Shadowlands. Reuben tells him not to interfere, so he shrugs and walks away, accidentally stepping sideways into the chantry. He introduces himself as Kevin Ravenswing. Silvertooth says that he's the one that Granddad spoke to earlier and puts him on guard in Eric's place.

At around 6 AM Silvertooth tells Granddad to hurry, because dawn is near. Granddad looks up at Silvertooth and says, "Find it." Silvertooth searches the chantry and finds Kasee's cat, Hairball. He squishes it and it turns to white goo, evidently a construct of the Technocracy. A nexus crawler appears in the chantry, and as the others prepare to fight it, Renee collapses. Kevin tries to take her place in the circle and is fried by the energies. Eric takes his place successfully. Silvertooth attacks the nexus crawler, with little effect. As colored lights begin blinking throughout the chantry, Mary begins chanting, "Nepo, nepo, nepo..." and the nexus crawler turns into a philodendron. No, it doesn't make sense to us either.

A six-foot tall tornado forms, consumes the philodendron, then covers Cab, then whirls out through the wall of the chantry, leaving no mark in its passing. Everyone except Granddad and Silvertooth sees the world fading around them, and they find that they are in the Shadowlands with Reuben. Cab explains that while she was in the whirlwind, she had another flashback in which she sees the beginning of a prophecy.

Continued in Chapter Two, Part Two: On the Road to Balthazar's

© 1997 by Tom Brady and Beth Miller