August: Cracking the Bone

[kai]

[You're up, Avery!
Wait.
Shit, that's my character. I WILL POST TOMORROW.

But I'd better keep an eye out, for Ingrid the Fool may hijack the Cracking to ask...THE QUESTION. *spooky tunes*]

[kai]

When the last of the howls have grown dim, and when the spirits have blessed the meeting with their presence, their aura, or merely their cries from unseen shadows, the gathered septs grow serious. Their own souls are ignited, joined, unified despite the horrors they've witnessed. Many are refusing to whisper about the missing elders from Cold Crescent, particularly because none of the elders of Forgotten Questions are whispering about it. They aren't even giving each other Meaningful Glances about it.

Regardless: the moot grows quiet, and a few people shift in place but settle. It is time for business.

Avery walks forward in hispo. She holds a long, curving bone in her jaws, the edges already jagged from being broken off. If the throat-scarred Rotagar were here, she would recognized its source. Rabid Jack and Still Waters likely recognize it, too, after a moment. A few garou who have walked through the penumbra of City Park may be able to guess where it came from.

It is the rib-bone of a giant worm...thing. That Avery unzipped with those same jaws, shredding its gullet. That Avery fought with Jack, Keisha, Nina. Perhaps it is hubris, an expression of pride, to bring this bone, reminding everyone of one of many killing blows she has dealt to minions of the wyrm since coming to the city. And of course that could be what it is, for she is a Silver Fang, and what else are they, if not filled with arrogance and self-adoration?

The truth is simpler, as it often is: this is a bone she knew she had a right to. This is a trophy she knows she has a right to take, snap open, and offer back to the sept.

With a hard crunch, Avery cracks through that bone. The sound of it riots through the quieted air, and she drops it to the dirt. A moment later she rises from all fours, wearing the same dedicated black yoga pants, white tank top, and black workout jacket that she has to every moot thus far. The jacket is half-zipped, her hair tied back in a ponytail. Diamonds glint in her earlobes. Because of course she dedicated her diamond earrings.

"Speak,"

she says, and her voice rings clearly, bright and open to the farthest ears that can hear her. It has a surprising softness to it, for being so impossible to ignore; it is inviting.

"From the highest rank to the lowest, speak. Do not be hindered or silenced by doubt."

Avery turns a slow circle, her eyes meeting many pairs out there. Garou she knows. Garou she doesn't.

"Those above, elder and athro: instruct us in the truth. Speak to us in authority; do not doubt our unity tonight, or our submission to your station. Trust that we will hold to the law.

"Those who lead and learn, adren and fostern: challenge those who it is in your right to challenge. Guide those it is your duty to guide. But speak," she implores, and her eyes do fall on one of those she is speaking to directly, for a moment as that word falls just a bit quieter from her mouth. "Do not doubt your own wisdom, or doubt the necessity of your words."

Avery pauses there, her feet resting close to the bone that she has left in the dirt for now. She finds a few eyes she knows from fighting together, speaking together, from a makeshift maybe-sort-of warmoot in a hotel room not so long ago. "Those of my rank," she says, her voice rising, infused with something more powerful, though no more or less earnest than she has been thus far,

"speak up. We will all honor the law of respect; we must not doubt that those above us will dishonor the law of mutual respect. We are many tribes, but we are one people, and we share one law. We will not doubt ourselves. We will not doubt each other."

Reverence of Dawn turns, and looks to the Grand Elder of Forgotten Questions, an aged, battle-scarred Theurge whose connection to Earth is so deep that at times he seems made of stone, as slow to speak and as long of memory as the formations that surround them, solid as iron in the penumbra for their age, their meaning, their power. She is not faint of heart, but even she quails a bit to face him, speak directly to him, with anything like authority or direction in her voice. That voice does falter; it sounds more like an imploring, which is in fact more appropriate:

"We are one people. We live for the same purpose. We fight the same war. We die for the same cause."

Avery swallows. She turns again, facing the rest of the septs, lifting her voice once more. "Speak the truth, according to the law we share," she says, her voice solidified, urging, vibrating with energy. "Listen to your people, according to the law we share."

With that, she turns to the first circle, the highest ranked. She crouches, lifts the bone that stands almost as tall as she does, holding it like a curving staff. It begins to move between garou, giving weight to their voices.



--

[Truth of Gaia is active. The difficulty of the below roll is your character's Manipulation + Subterfuge. If your character speaks a falsehood, FPM me and let me know. If your character is not sure of whether what they're saying is true or not, FPM me and let me know!]

Avery @ 10:45PM
[Truth of Gaia: Intelligence + Empathy]
Roll: 5 d10 TN? (2, 6, 8, 8, 8) ( success x ? ) VALID

niko @ 10:45PM
Witness!

[errin]

[Well I guess no one else has shit to say, so let's go, Ingrid! *psychs self up*]

The Silver Fang Philodox opens the Cracking, and Ingrid waits. She waits for the Elders to speak, for the Athros, and so on until...

Someone, some Garou of whatever Auspice and whichever rank, takes the bone and touches on the attack on Cold Crescent. The Shadow Lord Ragabash, waiting in lupus, rises to four paws before flowing up into her homid form. Then she wends her way through the gathered. She passes wolves she's met and those she hasn't. She makes her way to the front, spine straight and movements graceful, unconcerned by the eyes that track her progress. It isn't arrogance (okay so it might be a little arrogance), it's confidence. She is bolstered by the presence of her wouldbe packmate, her friend, even Earth itself who knows her secrets. She is not nervous. She is the Fool, and she has come to hijack this ceremony.

When she reaches the front she holds out her hand for the bone, smiling in a way that is sly, lowering her head respectfully to the one that holds it presently. When it falls into her grasp Ingrid studies it before turning. She holds it in both hands as she addresses her peers...her septmates. Wolves of Forgotten Questions and in particular, wolves of Cold Crescent.

"What," she asks, pitching her voice to carry as far as it may, "is so special about the Sept of the Cold Crescent," the crowd, already quiet, stills. What's this? Is she questioning the validity of the city Sept? Without break or pause, Ingrid finishes, "that it draws the Beloved Horror like a beacon in the night?"

[Damon]

After a few beats of silence, Erich:

"Is that like a rhetorical question?"

[errin]

A voice calls out a question in answer to a question and Ingrid, a way up at the front, straightens, scans the crowd of gathered wolves in search of the voice. There are so many of them.

"Is it?" she calls back. "Does that mean you have the answer? You know why these Spirals in particular have chosen that place in particular, not somewhere north or west or east or south. There," she says, sweeping her gaze north and a little east, in the direction of the city and their sept there.

[Samael]

The Theurge is quiet for several moments from her spot next to her packsisters as she looks at Ingrid, the Question having been asked. It's something they've all been asking themselves at some point: Why? And it's a question that's troubled Keisha deeply. She's done some asking around about certain things and she has...

She doesn't know what she has. Theories. Hypotheticals. Guesses based on circumstantial evidence. None of it is solid, or even much to go on. But no information is bad information at this point, and after Erich and Ingrid have had their exchange, she speaks up.

"Cold Crescent isn't the first place that the Beloved Horror have attacked. The pack attacked Forgotten Question years ago, before the city Sept was founded. At the time, it was still twelve people, and the attacks were...just attacks."

Her nose wrinkles. The word 'just' seems to imply something that's no big deal, which it clearly is. Any battle with a Spiral pack is. But she moves on.

"Murders. The usual you might see from a Spiral pack. There were no rituals, and they certainly weren't as powerful as they are now. They were repelled, half their number killed. And then they vanished, only to come back a year ago when they began attacking Cold Crescent."

She pauses there. Considers her words...chooses them carefully. "There has to be a correlation. There's a reason they switched from Forgotten Questions to Cold Crescent, and a reason they waited so long before returning. A Spiral pack...there are so many targets out there in the world. Weaker places. Vanishing for so long and then coming back...this location means something to them. Something that...I think it has to be personal. Maybe someone who is now at Cold Crescent who was at Forgotten Questions when the original attacks happened. Maybe vengeance for their losses...I don't know for sure. But it's got to be more than just a...a change in strategy."

She falls silent then, before her eyes widen and she speaks up once more. "Oh. And the ritual, I think, might be giving them their additional power."

[errin]

Ingrid's Question was put to the gathered Garou of both septs. Though only a few replied, the point she had been hoping to get across has been gotten across. At least in this way, perhaps, the Garou of the city won't be caught unawares when a handful of Cliaths and maybe a few Fosterns come 'round asking questions, looking for a Who and not a What.

The Ragabash inclines her head to the gathered, but before she relinquishes the sacred bone, she says, "That was my Question. I have something else to say.

"As many of you know, it was Still Waters-yuf, Thunder's Cry-yuf, and I who found and returned Champion of Honor-yuf to the city. It was we that brought what may have been a Trojan Horse into the heart of Cold Crescent." There, just there, the voice of a Garou already known to be calm, composed, untouchable, it falters at the memory of the desecration, the corruption, the bloody horrors witnessed that night. Her two-handed grip on the bone tightens and her eyes close a moment. When they open again, Ingrid has straightened her shoulders. She has stiffened her spine.

"I will understand if there are those among you who feel that we," always we, she and Thomas may have been late additions, but it was their choice to follow Still Waters to what could very well have been their doom, "bear some blame in the calamity that befell the city. I often wonder the same." A brief pause as her eyes scan the crowd, looking for Keisha (Do you?) and Thomas (Do you?) if she finds him. "I ask that you find it in your hearts to forgive us. And I vow that I will do all that I can to make amends."

Edited to add: "Cold Crescent needs Guardians, or perhaps just guardians. Wolves dedicated to the task of holding the line, or perhaps packs of wolves united in a single purpose. Together, but divided, so that such a thing as happened at the New Moon, Gaia permitting, doesn't happen again. I offer my services to any such endeavor, and hope that in this way, and through my dedication to Earth and to this city, I may make my amends."

She doesn't know the Rite of Contrition (surprisingly, what the eff, Niko). If she did, she might fall on it now. Instead, she returns the bone to Reverence of Dawn before turning to the Garou of Forgotten Questions and those that represent Cold Crescent tonight. She drops down to her knees and bows her head to them, a human gesture of submission and supplication from a creature who feels more animal than most. After a moment she rises again, and makes her way quietly back through the crowd.

=========

Phoebe, sitting with her sisters of Desert Oracle, grips Keisha's shoulder a briefly after she spoke up in answer to the Question. Then she rises to carefully pick a path to the Truthcatcher.

"Hi," she says with a bright smile. Even if she weren't holding the cracked bone attention would be drawn to her, captivated by her voice and by her appearance and her stature. "On behalf of my packsisters and myself, I'd like to make it known that we'll do all that we can to investigate the power surge of the Beloved Horror. I've heard that they enjoy...particular acts of desecration. In particular, the eating of their victims' hearts. There are a few cultures around the world that believe the consumption of the flesh of an enemy will imbue the, ah, consumer...with certain strengths. It might be a stretch, but maybe these Dancers have found some way of making that actually happen.

"I would like it very much if my sisters and I could speak with a Theurge of the Wendigo or Uktena tribes, maybe bounce some ideas back and forth."

The bone is returned, and so the Black Fury, too, returns to her seat.

[Samael]

Keisha was also planning on offering a public plea for forgiveness in the wake of the Cold Crescent incident. She hasn't talked about it and has spent so much time alongside the other Theurges cleansing that many may not have noticed, but it would not be difficult for her packsisters to pick up on the crushing amount of guilt she bears over the death of the Guardians of Cold Crescent. For someone who is so dedicated to the importance of life to cause (even inadvertantly) so much death is the thing of nightmares. It was also not lost on her that all three of them, those who had brought Champion of Honor home, were present to see the horrors unfold.

Some might call that chance. Keisha knows fate when she sees it. It was either karma showing them the follow of their actions, or it was the Wyrm making sure they knew what they had wrought.

Her eyes squeeze shut when Ingrid speaks her first sentence. Before the Shadow Lord has finished with the second, Still Waters has stepped out of the crowd, away from her fellow Desert Oracles, and come to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ingrid. The Theurge is notable for having a tendency to trip over her words when she's uncomfortable or nervous; many have seen it before. So instead of turning the act into some kind of comedy of errors, she stays silent and lets Ingrid speak for them both. Two things are clear by her posture, the downward cast of her eyes and the nods she gives a couple times. First is that she shares almost every sentiment that Ingrid speaks. The second is that the only one she doesn't share is the fact that she doesn't wonder. She knows.

Keisha, also, does not know the Rite of Contrition. So she follows Ingrid's lead, slipping to her knees, head lowered. She is perhaps a little slower to rise, if only because she is tired, and then she makes her way back to her packsisters.

Once there, she sits back down and nods a little as Phoebe speaks, her Alpha's words bringing her out of her own thoughts a bit. She smiles then, if very faintly, and leans slightly against the Fury for just a moment when she sits back down with them. A new place to start. That's good.

[-ix-]

When Keisha moves to join Ingrid, Thomas moves to do so as well, brushing against Keisha with one shoulder but moving to stand at Ingrid's other side. As with Keisha, he lets Ingrid speak for him. In another moment, he will speak for both of them, but not this one.

Of course Thomas doesn't know the Rite of Contrition, he hasn't had anything like this to apologize for. Not until now, when he lets his body and his tail sink lower toward the ground and lets Ingrid apologize for him. For them.

[errin]

[sorry, had to edit my post! edited part is in italics which is to denote the change, not any kind of emphasis or whatnot.]