May: Revel

[kai]

The last round of applause is led by Eulogy in Blood, whooping and clapping and stamping her feet -- or rolling her eyes and wincing visibly as though to apologize for the poor form of the last story, the pitchiness of the last song, what-have-you. It's getting louder in the gathering, and they are now well into the middle of the night.

A small, lithe wolf from the back with black fur with white under-muzzle, neck, and ruff, starts biting those Garou nearest him. Ankles and tails. He snarls and butts his head into another Cliath's hipbone. There's an eruption of growls then as the other wolf turns, snarling and snapping teeth, genuinely anger.

The first wolf, the rabble-rouser, darts ahead, sharply weaving in between the bodies of all the other Garou, older and wiser and larger and stronger. But he is quite strong already. And standing in the center, the lean-muscled Uktena bares his teeth

right at the Grand Elder of the Sept of Forgotten Questions. And passions are high enough, the moon full enough, that the Elder drops into all fours in crinos, roaring in the face of the much smaller Ahroun in lupus.

Everyone loses it then. Tensions between packmates start spiking out of nowhere. Tensions between packs from Cold Crescent and Forgotten Questions flare up. Those two Silver Fangs start arguing again, until their debate devolves into two white-furred wolves rolling and kicking up dust and mud on the ground. All the fighting is, as one might sense, still a bit restrained. They are tapping into their rage. There is blood, though not heart's blood, not life blood. More than a couple of muzzles are wet with the blood of brothers and sisters under Gaia when the Wyrmfoe interrupts them.

It is the loudest wolf howl all night, and a few wiser wolves snap their jaws at the young one in warning, but even they know that restraining him is counter to the whole purpose of this part of the night. That howl is not just a way to gather the attention of all the garou before they use their pent-up rage on each other. It is a way to warn the kinfolk patrolling the furthest edges of the bawn to get out. Go home. Get out of the way.

When Kusagra-Kuruk's howl dissipates, he starts to run. And like any predator with the instinct to hunt, the garou begin to gather up, chasing after him. That howl was not a come and get me, though. They begin to salivate; that howl was the howl of a scout or a warrior,

come see what I found. come kill it with me. we will stretch its entrails out beneath the moon. come, come.

Rage is unleashed like a bomb going off just above ground level, a shockwave going out in all directions. At first the mass of garou is following Kusagra-Kuruk, but after a while, groups begin to split off, searching for some new scent. There is precious little to find in the bawn of this caern that is tainted. They hunt for food and others catch strange scents and go into the umbra. There are no rites done here, no prayers. They are animals now, each garou in lupus. It is the first revel of a late-coming spring that feels like summer.

No one will remember this, come morning. The Earth will take their rage-saturated memories from them, eroded back into its own spirit. The Earth will soak up the blood they spill. The Earth will take their energy, their sweat, their thundering paws, and even their knowledge from them, as cleanly removed as with a frenzy, even when they maintain control.

It is a blessing and a reminder, given by the caern's spirit itself, of what their rage can do to them.

--

[I would love to see your PCs' reactions to this sort of revel, both during and after, even if the last paragraph is true: come sunrise, no one participating in this month's revel has any memory of anything happening since Kusagra-Kuruk's hunting/warning howl. It won't be like this every month! But for the first moot, the revel is just a mad bacchanal of fury and rage-burning. Enjoy!]

[errin]

The Cracking is over, the songs and tales have been sung and told. Nina feels closer to these wolves, wolves of both septs, of different tribes, of different ranks even, than she has to other wolves since who even knows. For as long as she can remember, but that's only a few years.

They don't all get along all the time, that much is obvious. They've kept it together throughout the moot, but now, it seems, as the time of the Revel nears, it's time to let it all back out again.

She doesn't know what to expect with this. Whatever she thought might happen as she stood among these wolves - a rangy, mangy looking grey wolf, her fur patched and ragged with scars - it certainly didn't include a black and white lupus headbutting her hip.

The Rotagar rounds on the other, teeth snapping, lip curled in a snarl. Her Rage rises, boiling the blood in her veins, tinging her vision red. He's off, then, darting through the crowd, with Nina hot on his tail. The Rotagar is swift-footed, agile, weaving through the crowd, bumping against one wolf, diving beneath another, leaving a trail of growls and snarls in her wake.

When she breaks free of the crowd the other wolf is already there, baring his teeth at the Grand Elder themself. The Grand Elder drops to all fours, roars, but it's okay. Underdog's got this. Barreling through the clearing, she rams into the Uktena's shoulder, knocking him over. Then they're rolling together, snapping their teeth, growling, snarling, kicking and pawing at each other like

well, like animals. The red of blood shows in Underdog's fur more clearly than the Uktena's, streaking her grey and brown fur with red and pink. She's not completely lost to her animal instincts, though. A part of her that is still Nina, still a strong if smaller-than-most woman, knows not to rip open this one's underside from nose to hip.

They continue until the howl goes up, warning, gathering. Underdog stops her tussle and abruptly darts to the side, golden eyes burning hotly in the night as she bursts into Crinos. She's off before Kusagra-Kuruk's howl has finished, off like a shot into the night.

She doesn't know what happens next, will never know. Maybe she catches up with the Wyrmfoe and they hunt together. Maybe she joins with the Uktena she fought. Maybe she happens up on Law in War or Still Waters.

When the morning comes, Nina lifts her blood-stained muzzle to the east, where the sky is just beginning to lighten from black to indigo. She is tired, weary in the best of ways. Her muscles tremble with each staggering step, her will spent. Her Rage spent. Her essence emptied so that the Caern may thrive for another moon.

She makes her way through the park, probably with others, to someplace she can get herself cleaned up a little, wash the blood from her face and arms and hair.

If she happens to find that Uktena Ahroun, she greets them with a grin, tosses her arm awkwardly up over their shoulders and those of some other wolf, and says to them, "Christ I'm starving. Let's go get some fucking pancakes."

[Joey]

The tales and songs end. There is no exact border, no lowered curtain or raising of the house lights; it simply feels like they are over. Kusagra-Kuruk must be able to feel it in his bones. He must feel something in his bones, something prodding him on, something waking his own rage and fury.

A building crescendo begins to take shape in the form of teeth snapping on fur and flesh. The sea of monsters, wolf and human and crinos and hispo, begins to swirl in a whirlpool. In Kusagra-Kuruk's wake, the wolves he bit trying to follow and it leaves a foaming-mouthed moshpit of stoked conflict.

Jack is among them, roused to anger when one Garou slams into his side whilst in pursuit of the growing pack now chasing the Wyrm Foe, after his throat in a domino effect. More an explosive chain reaction. All set off by the Garou who has lit this powder keg. The sideswipe of another Garou's flank almost sends him careening, though his paws sprawl and spread out and he keeps his footing. He has no lingering animosity, no grudges held against these new Septmates, but this certainly gives him one. He rebounds, chasing after the other Garou with an angry snap of his own jaws, unknowing in his indignation that this takes him deeper into the ranks of greater Garou.

Where Kusagra-Kuruk is an artful dodger, between the trunks of Crinos legs and the thicket of homid limbs, Rabid Jack Rabbit is a steaming freight train with little hope of stopping once it's started.

He catches up just in time to witness the Grand Elder and his bellowing roar. This again sends him into a sprawl, and though his body is twisted into the exact stance he should have before a Garou of such rank and status...

Tell that to his rage.

Jack flinches, but rises a moment later, instead bounding into the Garou who had smacked into him. Pummeling her with his paws to try and pin the bitch in place, he is greeted with a bite in return that takes a chunk out of his left ear. He trades bite for bite, leaving her with a bloody set of puncture sounds on the back of her throat to match the welling red crown he is wearing.

He is seeing red in so many ways.

And the howl goes up. Feet beneath him again, slight forgotten, he tears off into the wilderness. Lost in the dark and the overload of sensations. The smell of blood and innards on the wind. The sound of bone cracking and mending through form and Gaia's blessing.

He awakes near Willow Creek, but a trickle, though it's enough to roll around in until his fur is soaked. It comes off in a spray of diluted scarlet. He find his boots where they'd been left and again grows feet to pull into them. And someone says something about pancakes. His only question: "With chocolate chips?"

[kai]

Avery wakes up somewhere on the Carpenter Peak trail. She isn't alone; her muzzle is resting over the back of another wolf, another Silver Fang. She can taste blood, but dawn isn't far from the horizon. So she stretches, cracking her neck, butts her head gently against the other wolf to wake them, and then trots off to find her way back to her driver to head home.