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; Interlude 2 begins on November 14, 1997.

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

Kevin Ravenswing, Verbena

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

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

Dog, Reuben's familiar

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

Granddad, a wise garou elder

Maufa, a sluagh

The mages and the garou sleep through the next day, and realizing that they look rather scruffy and having less than $30 between them, decide to walk toward the city at night. They hadn't counted on the cold and fatigue, though, and the next night, Kevin persuades a man driving by with a pickup truck to give them a lift to Eno Square Shopping Center in north Durham.

The truck pulls away, and the group realizes now they have to contact someone and figure out where to spend the night. As they discuss this, they are distracted by a raven cawing from a nearby lamppost. Once it is sure it has their attention, the bird flies around the corner of the Food Lion grocery store. They follow, and turning the corner into the shadows, nearly collide with Raoul.

The corax says that he was instructed to meet them there by some old guy who talks funny sort of like, "You are going to Eno Square Shopping Center. You are meeting some people there. This is my gift to them." The strange thing is, the old man told him this six months earlier. After picking up a twelve-pack of Rolling Rock from Food Lion, he directs the group to a van parked nearby. He drives them across town to Cameron Boulevard. As they reach the middle of Duke Forest, he suddenly turns left into a parking area, gets out, and starts into the woods. The mages follow.

Eventually, they come to a campsite deep in the woods. About fifteen garou and kinfolk are there. They look dispirited, and there is little talking. After a bit, Granddad, much bruised and battered, and missing part of his left arm, comes to join them. He tells the tale of how the cairn they worked so hard to build was destroyed.

"When you fell through the Umbra, all hell broke loose. Nicole...changed. She became a creature of Gaia. The first assault by the gorehounds was small and quick. We secured the cairn and stood guard. They brought in some government people - we saw on TV. They said we were terrorists with a nuclear bomb and evacuated half of Raleigh. They had never seen a wild cairn before - there are so few in the world as it is. They sent weird, mutated creatures. They sent a huge, horrible thing, with flesh melting off of it. Raoul went for reinforcements. The Furies came - and died. Nicole stood her ground the whole time, fighting off horror after horror. Then they hit the cairn with some kind of force-bolt. We saw in the Umbra big ships, like blimps, that drained the entire area. Nicole fell, finally. Then Silver fell. Then the building fell, all around us. Raoul came back, with the bears. They guarded our backs as we made our way out.

"There's some kind of company there now. They manufacture things, but we don't know what. Sometimes we see trucks with biohazard signs come from there. We here are all that are left of the Triangle garou. We've been here for a while, resting, recuperating...hiding." With that, he goes to bed. The rest of the mages retire also, with the exception of Reuben and Dog, who spend the night staring at the fire, thinking.

The next morning Walks All Paths tells the story of the mages' journey through the Shadowlands and the Umbra. Afterwards, Granddad says that there are mages in Durham that are twisting people, mutating them. They give them blades for arms, or turn them into dogs. Tonight, they will mount an assault on a corrupted cairn nearby, which seems to be an entrance to a network of tunnels. Apparently, the twisted people go into the caves, but when they come out, always at night, they are fewer in numbers. The mages agree to accompany the garou, and they stake out the entrance to one of the caves.

Kasee, who had been left behind, tries to follow, in spite of her debilitating paradox flaw which has totally skewed her perceptions. Using correspondence, she weaves through the forest, trying to find the other mages. Instead, she encounters a monstrous being with claws and a horribly scarred face. He first attacks her, then cringes and tells her to leave while she can. She heads off into the woods.

As the mages and garou are waiting outside the cave, they see some shadows coalesce into a vine. They are distracted by Walks All Paths, who, in lupus form, tries to step sideways, but returns quickly with a frightened whine. When they look to the cave entrance again, the vine is gone.

Suddenly, Kasee stumbles into the clearing. She is headed directly for the cave mouth, but Renee intercepts her. The two of them return to the rest of the mages and hold a whispered conversation in which Kasee recounts what happened to her. Kasee tries to head into the cave, but Reuben and Renee grab her. They hear a rustling from the cave mouth, as well as much hissing and rolling about, then something falls into the cave. They see nothing through all of this. They continue to wait.

Several hours pass. When Renee's grip loosens, Kasee runs out toward the cave. She trips on the stumbling effect Eric has placed in front of the cave and tumbles headlong into the cave. Renee, Cab, and Kevin follow her in. Reuben waits by the entrance, and helps Kevin make his way out a few moments later. Kevin says that Kasee and Cab have slid into a second chamber underground.

The mages confer with the garou and they decide to go in after Renee, Cab, and Kasee. As they enter the cave, they see some sort of writing on the wall of the first chamber. It is in a strange, flowing script that might be Arabic; none of them can translate it. In the second chamber, they find the rest of their party, as well as a small arsenal, including M-60's, rockets, and a laser cannon that Eric disables.

Kasee is still trying to get away, so Cab tackles her. As they are rolling around on the ground, Reuben makes Kasee woozy enough that Cab can pin her down. Reuben threatens to knock Kasee unconscious and send her back to camp. Kasee is upset enough that she teleports into an adjacent cave mouth, where none of the others can see her. She backs up slowly into the darkness and is seized by some sort of tree-creature, a sluagh.

The remaining mages and garou decide that the smartest course would be to leave the cave and resume their stakeout. As they start to leave, Walks All Paths runs into the same horribly disfigured being that Kasee met earlier (though they don't know this). Walks All Paths decides to talk with, rather than kill on sight, this creature of the Wyrm. The vampire leads them out and away from the cave, blurring their recollections of the cave location as he does so. They arrive at a clearing, and the vampire asks what they wish.

Walks All Paths explains to him that they want to know more about the place they have just left, and why it is corrupted. Kevin offers a vision of a spring day to the vampire in exchange for the information. The vampire agrees, and Kevin sends a mental image. After a few minutes, the vampire smiles sadly and begins to explain about the cave.

Apparently there are several groups fighting for possession of the cave: His own kind, sluagh (tree creatures), some beings he refers to as "spooks", scientists who send mutants down every week, Black Spiral Dancers, and now the garou as well. He says that if they want that place, they will have to find middle ground between the factions. As for himself, he is old and tired, and wishes only for peace. Kevin asks what is special about the place, and the vampire replies only that an Ancient sleeps inside. Since the sunrise is approaching, he bids them goodbye and melts into the rock he is sitting on, after promising Walks All Paths that they will talk again the following night.

Meanwhile, Kasee is led back into another room in the cave by the sluagh. The room is filled with books, and has a few pieces of furniture in it. The sluagh asks her several questions about who she is, and why she came into the cave. When Kasee mentions the vampire she met outside the cave, the sluagh picks up a very old book and shows her a picture in it. It is a woodcut picture of the vampire she met, only his face isn't burned. The caption under the picture reads: "Khalid al-Rashid - The Slaughter." According to the text, he was a well-known Muslim soldier in Palestine who killed thousands of Christians in the fifteenth century. The sluagh gives Kasee some tea, and she falls asleep on a cot.

Back in the clearing, the group realizes they are lost. Walks All Paths pulls out a rock and performs a small ritual, but it only helps a little bit. After wandering for several hours, they finally make it back to the garou camp. The mages agree to help guard the camp that night. Reuben takes the last shift of the evening, and hears some rustling and a bird call. He locates where the rustling came from, but waits until dawn before doing anything.

Kasee awakes to find that she is alone in the room. She wanders back to the room where all of the weapons had been stored, but stops outside the room. She watches as two badly deformed men drag out the two mutants like themselves. The weaponry in the room has been removed, and as they drag out their wounded, another mutant is covering the room with an M-60, carrying it one-handed. He fires into another of the caves leading from the room, and Kasee retreats. After a while, she comes back to find to room empty. She tries to get back to the sluagh's room, but every cave she enters winds around and returns her back to the now-empty weapons room. She finally gives up and leaves the cave, to find that the sun going down. She starts to walk back to the camp, but collapses after just a few steps.

At dawn, Walks All Paths investigates the spot where Reuben heard rustling. He pushes a bush aside to find Kasee asleep there, exhausted and dehydrated. Renee tends to Kasee through the day, while Reuben catches up on his sleep. Walks All Paths briefs Granddad on the events of the night before. Granddad thinks that any kind of alliance with the vampire is unlikely. Kevin tries to learn Arabic through dreaming, but fails. He also looks into Kasee's mind and sees that it has been changed, but he isn't sure if anything was damaged. Cab goes off to perform some ritual she tells no one else about.

The night passes uneventfully. The next day Kevin again attempts to learn Arabic and acquires a rudimentary knowledge, but is still illiterate in the language. The rest of the group putters about the camp until late afternoon, when they set off for the cave. The trip takes much longer than the last time - nearly two hours. It is dark when they get to the cave. The garou and Kasee scout inside quickly, then everyone goes in when they say it's clear. They go down to the room where all the weapons were, and Kasee notes that it's even emptier then when she was last there - someone had picked up the camping equipment that had been left behind.

Eric looks at the passages leading from the room. One of them is quite odd - even the air doesn't go down that passage. Reuben looks at it with prime and sees two powerful prime patterns overlaid, giving the false impression of nothing of importance there. While they are staring at passages, Renee and Kasee slip off in search of the sluagh's library. They find the sluagh, who introduces herself to Renee as Maufa. Maufa asks Kasee why she hasn't cleansed herself of the vampire's taint. Kasee says she doesn't know how, and the sluagh offers to help. She brews up a vile-smelling tea which she gives to Kasee. Looking doubtful, Kasee slams it, then starts to look queasy. Maufa leads her over to a curtained alcove, and there Kasee gets violently ill.

To the backdrop of Kasee's retching, Renee and Maufa talk. Maufa says she is from Arabia, and that her people followed The Slaughter here to kill him. By now, the rest of the group has followed Renee and Kasee trail and find the library. They introduce themselves. Maufa excuses herself and takes a soothing tea to Kasee, who comes to feeling awful, but is startled to find that her sight has returned to normal. When Maufa returns, Kevin asks her what the words on the wall upstairs mean. He writes them for her, and she shakes her head, saying, "Poor Fatah. Foolish child."

Maufa explains that the words are "Ana Fatah, Ana slawah" which means, "I am Fatah, I am sluagh." She says only that her sister Fatah has become too much of the new world and has gone over. Cab asks her about her people and Maufa says that the sluagh were originally a night-terror to threaten children in ancient Russia. When her people came, some joined the sluagh. They were originally called dawar. At this name, Kevin feels uneasy, but isn't sure why. Maufa explains their mission to kill the vampire, and shows the group the same woodcut she showed Kasee earlier.

Kasee and Renee go down to an underground stream to clean Kasee up. Maufa tells the others that her people came to this place because Sh'tah came there. She says the Sh'tah mothered them, until Khalim killed her with malice and cold iron. She also says that her people drove out some garou a long time ago, but they were insane. The mages surmise that these were Black Spiral Dancers.

Maufa serves the mages and garou a bland dinner of bread, cheese, and tea. Kevin asks Maufa about the strange passage they saw earlier. The sluagh says that the only thing significant about that passage is that Sh'tah died there. The thank her for her hospitality and head back up the tunnels. Returning to the room with the odd passage, Kevin tests the passage mouth. As he sticks his head in, a dancing will o' wisp appears in the room. It doesn't move, just blinks and hovers.

Kevin, Kasee, Renee, and Eric walk down the tunnel, as Cab, Reuben, and Walks All Paths check the rest of the cave briefly. After walking a ways down the tunnel, Kasee scouts ahead of the others. She hears voices and, sneaking up on them, she finds that the voices are those of Kevin, Eric, and Renee. Apparently the tunnel has a looping correspondence effect. As they are trying to figure it out, they are suddenly attacked.

Two hellhounds appear, jumping from the Umbra. The garou, Cab, and Reuben hasten down the tunnel on hearing the growling of the hellhounds. They arrive just in time for Reuben to be shot by Renee when her aim is knocked aside. Walks All Paths rips the hind leg off one of the hounds, and Renee dispatches it with a shot to the head at close range. Two more hellhounds jump from the Umbra, one jumping on Kevin, the other on Dog. Kevin reaches out and possesses the hellhound attacking him, but before he can do anything with it, the garou viciously attacks it.

Reuben sees that the hellhound attacking Dog has deeply hurt his familiar. Reaching out, he grabs the prime effect that lines the cave and, using it as two live electrical wires, shocks the hellhound. His attack doesn't kill the hellhound, though, and it rears back and slices through Dog's neck. Dog's body turns into a shimmering pool, and the pool and the hellhound disappear.

Two hounds are left. One of them jumps back into the Umbra, the other is possessed by Kevin. Before anything else can happen, the "wires" that Reuben grabbed begin arcing and sparking. Reuben, stunned by the loss of his familiar, ignores the sparks. Suddenly, the whole effect unravels, and a massive prime blast goes off in the cave with a blast of blue flame expanding outwards. The correspondence effect is destroyed, as is Kasee's cat, Hairball. Kevin, Walks All, Paths, Renee, and Kasee are knocked grievously wounded and unconscious. Eric pins the remaining hound to the ceiling, where Cab and Reuben attack it. They finally kill it, and the last hellhound jumps back from the Umbra. It dodges around Eric and runs down the hall, past where the correspondence effect was.

Reuben heals Renee, Kevin, and Walks All Paths back to consciousness, then falls into a catatonic stupor. The group retreats back to the main chamber, collapsing in a heap. Eric and Renee seek Maufa, but her chamber is empty and a sword is missing from the wall. While Cab, Renee, and Eric keep watch, the rest of the party sleeps. Just before sleeping, Reuben's head shimmers and is replaced by that of a dog. Taking no notice, he nods off.

At dawn, Walks All Paths goes to the garou camp for help. Reuben wakes, and croaks in a harsh voice, "She is awake." Eric senses a quiet, watchful mind all around them, as well as another very, very large mind. Cab senses a large, waking spirit.

Walks All Paths returns with Raymond, and with their help, the party returns to camp, where they quickly fall asleep. Reuben sleeps for a short time, then wakes up, leaves a note, and disappears. A week passes as the mages recuperate from their encounter with the hellhounds. At the end of the week, Reuben returns, in the company of an Irish wolfhound puppy. He quickly goes to sleep, but when he wakes up, tells the group how he found Dog, and why Dog won't be rejoining them. Raymond likes the puppy (who is just what he seems - a puppy), and offers to take care of him. Reuben accepts, but not before he names the dog: "Junior."

The group rests for four more days, and on Monday, December 1, they return to the cave. They go down to Maufa's room, and while they don't find Maufa, Kasee surprises something which is lurking in the shadows. It jumps out, strikes her, and scuttles along the ceiling and out of the room. They investigate the rooms leading from Maufa's library, but find nothing.

Next, they return to the tunnel where the party was attacked by the hellhounds. Continuing down the tunnel, they come to a circular chamber with no other exits. In the center of the room is a circle made up of toothpick-sized splinters of wood, and, to the left of the door, a metal rod driven into the wall about six feet off the ground. Below the rod is a small pile of ash, and there are some red stains where the rod enters the wall.

Reuben notices that the prime patterns, bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye, are moving slowly. As they move, they show letters on the wall just outside of the entrance. While Eric and Kevin examine the letters, Walks All Paths and Renee scout back up the tunnel to see if anyone was follwoing them. After a couple of hours, during which Renee and the garou have returned, Eric decodes the words enough that he can say it was an effect which tied the destiny of whoever leaves the room to the destiny of the caster. During that time, the circle has been investigated and found to be nonmagical.

Renee gasps a little, and suddenly ages ten years. Kasee looks at her aura and it seems to be fading, which reminds her of someone else's aura she'd seen - a vampire's! Eric sees a thread linking Renee's and Walks All Paths' destinies to the pile of ashes under the rod. Reaching for greater knowledge in the sphere of entropy, he reaches out and snaps the thread, relieving them of the curse.

Renee now faces the task of how everyone can leave the room without receiving the same curse. She begins to tunnel around the doorway and eventually breaks through to the outside tunnel. Eric watches her and ascertains that the spell has not been triggered again. As Renee finishes carving out the tunnel, Kasee sees a tall, skeletally thin man wrapped in a long black cloak staring at her. She waves and says, "Hi!"

Kevin greets the man, and the man asks why they are in his home. He invites them back into the room, and all except Reuben and Cab follow him back in. He introduces himself as Trelane, and welcomes the mages as his guests. Since Kevin has been doing all of the talking, he assumes that he is the leader of the group, and that the others are his retainers. Kevin corrects him. Cab and Reuben observe quietly that he has no life pattern, and surmise that he is a vampire. The slip back into the room.

Walks All Paths Explains that they are there to investigate the network of caves, and perhaps reclaim the former cairn for the garou. Trelane snaps his fingers and two men dressed in camouflage drop from the rock ceiling. He speaks to them in a language no one recognizes, though Eric understands the last phrase: "It is finished." With that, the prime/entropy pattern around the door vanishes. At Trelane's request, the two men, who are also vampires, leave the room to find food for the mages.

Trelane and the mages talk for a while. It becomes evident that he has been in these caves for a very long while - thousands of years. The vampire explains that the caves are a matter of contention between the sluagh and the nosferatu. He dismisses that threat of the Technocracy, and discounts the claim of the garou as merely historical. Finally he states that he is very impressed with the mages, and offers them a chance of a lifetime - to become part of his brood, and be immortal. The mages decline, though Kasee seems taken with the idea.

The two men return carrying a deer carcass and firewood. They quickly build a fire (the smoke rising through the rock above them) and cook the deer. All except Reuben sit down from dinner. In further discussions, Trelane says that the Technocracy are sending their mutants down to find him. He acknowledges that there is a very large spirit presence in the caves, but only says enigmatically that that is why he knows that the caves will always be his.

The mages thank him for the meal and leave the caves. They find their way back to the garou camp without a problem. Walks All Paths goes to speak with Granddad. The old garou rambles on, asking to see Nicole, and states that he will die soon. Walks All Paths seeks out Raymond and asks if it is possible to summon the spirit of Nicole. Raymond says that is a very bad idea. They collect Kevin, that he might examine Granddad's mental state, and return to Granddad. Kevin goes in to speak with him, but comes out again immediately. Granddad is dead, having cut his own throat.

The garou hold a moot for the remembrance of the slain bunyip. It becomes clear that the leadership of the pack of garou is now in question, with the choice being between Raymond and Fang. The evening passes without a confrontation, though.

During the moot, Kasee steps away from the camp and opens herself up to clear out the massive amounts of paradox she has accumulated. Suddenly, she isn't there - a cat that looks curiously like Hairball is. The cat wanders around a bit, incurious, then meanders back to camp, where it finds Renee and is immediately adopted. Cab seeks out Bat, but gets little help except that she finds that the gangrel vampires are precious to Bat, and that she is the only one of Bat's adherents that is a mage.

Kevin and Eric discuss what the next course of action should be. Eric wants access to Maufa's library, and Kevin is interested in learning more from Trelane. Neither of them is interested in becoming a vampire, though. Neither Reuben nor Cab nor Renee is interested in having any further contact with the vampire. It is becoming apparent that the goals of the mages are gradually separating.

Walks All Paths tells Raymond of their encounters with Trelane. Raymond says that it couldn't possibly have been Trelane, because Trelane is long dead. He quotes from the Silver Record: " And in those days in the second city, when Gaia's wolves came to fight, the men took up spears and clubs to kill the pups. And in that place lived Trelane of Gangrel blood. And Gaia did speak with Trelane and Trelane did offer aid, for Trelane was powerful within the second city and his brood was strong and violent. And his brood destroyed the army of man, and when the blood stopped flowing that day, Trelane alone stood on the field, and he cried to Gaia, 'Your kind will never come for me.' So let it be."

Raymond says that Trelane is one of the few known as "The Blessed Damned" and is not to be harmed by any garou. He also says that if it is indeed Trelane, he will bear the mark of Gaia: claw marks through his chest.

The next day, everyone assembles for breakfast. It is noted that Kasee is missing, though Renee seems to have picked up a pet cat. The quiet of the camp is broken by Fang shouting that the time has come for action. He says that vampires have been found in the caves, and it is time to defend the desecrated cairn. Walks All Paths attempts to argue with him, but is shouted down. Fang leaves with Blade and two other young garou in tow. The mages set out to follow, though Walks All Paths and Cab step sideways and race to the cave at top speed, Cab astride the garou.

They arrive in time to hear Fang shouting a challenge to someone. They enter Trelane's room and see him sitting in the circle of wood splinters, Fang standing before him, and the other garou off to the side. At the end of the garou's challenge, Trelane says simply, "I am Trelane of the Blessed Damned. I bear the mark." He opens his cloak to reveal a terrible scar, as if claws had actually entered his chest.

Fang attacks immediately. Trelane leans to the side, evading the attack, but a thin line is sliced down the vampire's side. A single drop of blood drips out and strikes the ground. The earth begins to shake, and a crevasse opens in front of Trelane. Fang attacks again, and Trelane extends his hand to reveal twelve-inch-long claws. He easily carries Fang's leap right over his head and directly into the crevasse. Fang screams once, and is not heard again.

Blade attacks Trelane. Walks All Paths tries to stop him, but is easily evaded by the frenzied werewolf. Before Blade can get close to Trelane, he bursts into flames, then explodes. The other two garou have turned tail, though not before they kill the other two vampires of Trelane's brood. Trelane stands up, and walks silently from the room, ignoring Walks All Path's apologies. Walks All Paths and Cab return to the surface in time to meet the other mages. They explain what has occurred, and they return to camp.

After resting, the mages and garou assemble again. Walks All Paths explains to the mages that he has found his place within this garou sept, and will remain to advise them as a philodox should. They are welcome to stay for as long as they wish, but when they leave, he will not join them. He and Renee talk later and decide that Renee will stay with Walks All Paths, that they might rekindle the relationship started earlier.

Eric has Renee make him some quarters and he drives into town and calls his mentor. His mentor offers him a job as a graduate assistant, and Eric accepts. He leaves on a bus the next day, after saying his goodbyes to the mages and garou.

Kevin attempts to work a deal with Trelane in which he might gain knowledge without becoming a vampire. He uses the Heart's Blood rote to give his blood to Trelane, but the vampire finds it thin and lacking. He favors Kevin with one night of stories of the Elder Days, then retires to sleep "for a long time." Kevin returns to the garou camp and says he has been too long away from his travels of the world. He makes his goodbyes and sets off on foot back into Durham.

That night, Kasee returns to the camp abruptly, popping up in Renee's tent. She has no idea how long has passed, or what happened to her in the interim. She's very confused, but fortunately, she's used to that. Cab and Reuben agree that they need to find out what has happened to their mentors, and Kasee, after briefly wondering whether or not a vampire's life would be for her, asks to join them.

© 1998 by Tom Brady