Silence of Time Update
Following the fight with the Starvedoes, Reese and Edward disappeared. Scylla's Pack Awareness Gift said Reese was "learning." (Reese's player, newbis, was dying of ebola, so he wasn't present last night.)
The rest of the characters were resting and licking their wounds when Gordon arrived. Confused, they asked where he'd come from, and he said he'd gotten things straightened out in Philly and had come to find them (in truth, he felt itchy without his pack). They explained things to him, and tried to figure out their options.
Scylla, not really buying into Reese's logic of "this ain't our problem," decided that they needed to clean the area so that the bear-spirit could get sane again. To that end, she sent Gordon and Zeke to the farmhouse nearby to look for the people who'd poisoned the real bears, and had Fletcher and Phil look around for poison near the den. In the spirit world (remember the den's a locus, and they were in the Shadow last time, which is how they got jumped by Starvedoes), Phil and Fletcher found a poison-spirit, which fucked 'em up pretty good (the poison rules in the nWoD are nasty).
They stepped across and found some poison lingering around, and started removing it. Scylla focused on keeping the bear calm.
Meantime, Zeke and Gordon wound up at the farmhouse. Zeke turned into a shadow using his newfound Shadow Flesh Gift and scouted the area, discovering the poison in the barn. Gordon knocked on the door and pretended to be a game warden; Zeke slipped in behind him, hiding in his shadow. They met Lila...oh, Lila.
Zeke saw Lila and saw her as "Hiaakon-Ur taking human form," the perfect mate. Gordon, it seems, was already smitten (the rest of the pack didn't know it, but he'd been to the farmhouse already and had fallen under her spell). She took them outside to see the shed, but then convinced them to go to the barn. Zeke, rebelling against her entrancement (his heart was spoken for; he was engaged as an Amishman before his Change), switched over to See Heat...and saw that Lila was, quite literally, a cold-hearted snake.
He said "Rabbit" to Gordon, and Gordon just looked dazed. Zeke tried to strike Lila, but Lila turned into a giant serpent and bit him. The poison nearly killed him, and Zeke fled in Death Rage, limping as the venom coursed through him.
Seeing a packmate harmed was all Gordon needed. Hearing the howl of Black Wolf from somewhere deep in his soul, he drew his guns and put bullets in the snake's eyes. She crashed to the ground...just as her family, the farmers, emerged. Gordon got a back full of hot lead for his trouble. Rather than stay and fight, he fled, too, and the pack wound up back at the clearing.
Phil would up carving a chunk of flesh the size of a porterhouse steak from Zeke's shoulder to avoid the venom from necrotizing his flesh too much. Fletcher performed the Rite of Healing (again), and brought Zeke down to a manageable level of aggravated damage. Gordon remembered that he'd been bewitched, but had never tried to betray his pack. He wanted to bring them to Lila so that they could help her. Everything she said seemed reasonable. That's what love is like. (You can meet Lila in Skinchangers, by the way, and thanks to jesshartley for bringing her to us. I killed the bitch once myself. Lila, not Jess.)
Anyway, with the poison out of the area, Scylla sang the bear to sleep. The consensus is now they need to deal with the people who did the poisoning, and make sure that the snake is dead.
The rest of the characters were resting and licking their wounds when Gordon arrived. Confused, they asked where he'd come from, and he said he'd gotten things straightened out in Philly and had come to find them (in truth, he felt itchy without his pack). They explained things to him, and tried to figure out their options.
Scylla, not really buying into Reese's logic of "this ain't our problem," decided that they needed to clean the area so that the bear-spirit could get sane again. To that end, she sent Gordon and Zeke to the farmhouse nearby to look for the people who'd poisoned the real bears, and had Fletcher and Phil look around for poison near the den. In the spirit world (remember the den's a locus, and they were in the Shadow last time, which is how they got jumped by Starvedoes), Phil and Fletcher found a poison-spirit, which fucked 'em up pretty good (the poison rules in the nWoD are nasty).
They stepped across and found some poison lingering around, and started removing it. Scylla focused on keeping the bear calm.
Meantime, Zeke and Gordon wound up at the farmhouse. Zeke turned into a shadow using his newfound Shadow Flesh Gift and scouted the area, discovering the poison in the barn. Gordon knocked on the door and pretended to be a game warden; Zeke slipped in behind him, hiding in his shadow. They met Lila...oh, Lila.
Zeke saw Lila and saw her as "Hiaakon-Ur taking human form," the perfect mate. Gordon, it seems, was already smitten (the rest of the pack didn't know it, but he'd been to the farmhouse already and had fallen under her spell). She took them outside to see the shed, but then convinced them to go to the barn. Zeke, rebelling against her entrancement (his heart was spoken for; he was engaged as an Amishman before his Change), switched over to See Heat...and saw that Lila was, quite literally, a cold-hearted snake.
He said "Rabbit" to Gordon, and Gordon just looked dazed. Zeke tried to strike Lila, but Lila turned into a giant serpent and bit him. The poison nearly killed him, and Zeke fled in Death Rage, limping as the venom coursed through him.
Seeing a packmate harmed was all Gordon needed. Hearing the howl of Black Wolf from somewhere deep in his soul, he drew his guns and put bullets in the snake's eyes. She crashed to the ground...just as her family, the farmers, emerged. Gordon got a back full of hot lead for his trouble. Rather than stay and fight, he fled, too, and the pack wound up back at the clearing.
Phil would up carving a chunk of flesh the size of a porterhouse steak from Zeke's shoulder to avoid the venom from necrotizing his flesh too much. Fletcher performed the Rite of Healing (again), and brought Zeke down to a manageable level of aggravated damage. Gordon remembered that he'd been bewitched, but had never tried to betray his pack. He wanted to bring them to Lila so that they could help her. Everything she said seemed reasonable. That's what love is like. (You can meet Lila in Skinchangers, by the way, and thanks to jesshartley for bringing her to us. I killed the bitch once myself. Lila, not Jess.)
Anyway, with the poison out of the area, Scylla sang the bear to sleep. The consensus is now they need to deal with the people who did the poisoning, and make sure that the snake is dead.