[IC] Rage Across the Delaware Valley- Werewolf: the Apocalypse

[Rall Bashir]

Jon quietly folded his trail mix packet and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. His right hand reached in his jeans and pulled out his car keys, "There. More room, now. Who wants shotgun? We're gonna need to follow her. This is usually the part in the movies where the babe in the woods gets brutally murdered."

Jon paused and frowned, "Oh, alright. We'll go on foot." Jon momentarily opened his car, fished through a box of thrift... er, vintage clothes and pulls out a few natty toques. The one he chose was a bright pink Barbie toque complete with deely-bob, "I was saving this for her, but since she's not going to use it now..." He stretched the hat over his head, making the iconic doll's face image grotesquely stretch out.

[Stir of Echoes]

As they bantered, Echo merely stood back and watched, her face blank, with only the rising hackles on the back of her neck indicating her growing agitation. She opened her mouth to speak, but her jaws promptly slammed shut at the woman's laughing fit. She arched a brow, ears flattening. They were all loons. Loons, or incompetents. And she had to keep them alive.

When Hannah walked off, Echo stalked forward, fixing the boys with a glare. "I will not wait. Move quickly, or be left behind."

She bounded ahead, striding over to Hannah's side.

"Before we reach the town," she paused, a shiver running down her spine as she summoned something from within, "we will rest and settle rank. I will not have them voting on what to do when the bane attacks."

Without waiting for a response, Echo bolted off, again, following the first sign. Apparently, her idea of a walk was going to be Red Talon style - AKA, a light run.

Don't mind the mess, most of this is for me to keep track of things.

-1 Gnosis to activate Heightened Sense

tracking (perception[4] + primal urge[3] + 1[HS] + 1[Wolf Sight])
-3 difficulty (Heightened Senses), Uncanny Instincts give 2 successes for every 10 (if it's relevant here)

Link to roll
Depending on the difficulty/if her specialty applies, she rolled anywhere from 3-7 successes.

[Al-Haleem]

Val sighs heavily. "Well bugger me backwards." He winks at Geoff. "No, seriously, give me a good once over."

Is he blushing, or is it just hypothermia?

Pulling his hood low over his face, he shoves his hands under his arms and jogs after Hannah and Echoes, muttering a string of Hindi obscenities.

Told you it was gonna suck!

[MrMarkers]

She nodded at Stir of Echoes, "I like you," she added in rough Garou tongue, a langauge that while intuitive, Hannah hadn't had much time to practice. Her strong paws trotted along keeping easy pace with Stir of Echoes. The young Ahroun had always had a knack for moving, two legs or four didn't make a difference.

She was waiting for the others to change, and run after them, hopefully they would soon or it was clear Echoes would lose sight of them pretty quickly. "If we get too far ahead, we're going to have to double back and check on them. Like it or not, we're all in this together," Hannah called to the Red Talon.

[Evilmarmelade]

Geoff shot a confused look at Val. What the hell... He shrugged and caught up to him, "You know, I really thought she would wait until we leave the sept to be obnoxious. She's impressive, really." He said to Val with a smirk. "Come on, we'll deal with this after the rite of passage. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can go back to our heated homes for New Year's Day."

Still walking, he took his jacket off to avoid shredding it, shuddering for a bit. He closed his eyes, and began to focus on his changing shape. Fur began to creep out of his skin, pouring all over him, as his clothes and even his glasses seemed to disappear under his new body. Muscles popping, he quickly gained mass and his articulations were shifting, resulting in the Philodox soon walking on all four, in Hispo form. He stopped for a bit, looking at his form, and snorted. The huge wolf trotted for a bit, as he seemed to become smaller and slender, quickly resembling a more mundane wolf, wiggling his tail, happy to finally go on an adventure. He bolted, trying to catch up with the two ladies.

[NutiketAiel]

Eve, the difficulty for the Per+Primal Urge roll would be seven normally, reduced to four by Heightened Senses, and the Uncanny Instincts specialty does apply. Wolf Sight does not, though, since the directions were not primarily sight based, so we'll drop off the ninth die. This leaves Stir of Echoes with... six successes by my count. More than enough.

If anyone else wants to attempt to follow the directions independently, or check to make sure Echoes isn't making a mistake, it's a Perception + Primal Urge roll, base difficulty 11 for a homid born character. Reduce the difficulty to 9 if in lupus form due to that form's natural perception bonuses.

Disparities like this will reduce later on in the game as the characters become more accustomed to their alternate forms.

I'll post a description of the first leg of the journey once I'm sure everyone is following.

[DeathmatchFM]

As soon as Hannah takes command and announces that they will walk, Scott is ready to obey. He doesn't offer any vote of his own, and only gives cold stares to Jon and Val as they start to give opinions. When the Ahroun begins to shift, he follows suit. He puts his fists together and bows his head, and hums an "Om" as his clothes sink into his flesh and his body morphs and shifts smoothly, eventually taking on the shape of an unusual wolf with blonde fur. When Hannah and Echoes start running, Scott is close behind.

[NutiketAiel]

The assembled garou watch as the young cubs move off into the forest, not interfering in their choice. As the six move away from the clearing and into the trees, the last thing they hear is the voice of Steve Bolen fading away behind them. "All right, Battleseer, we gonna throw down, or what?"

The Pine Barrens are a sparse woods even at the best of times, with the acidic soil not allowing the thick undergrowth that is characteristic of heavier woods. Traveling through them is not too difficult, though the presence of a snowfall does make the forest a little more treacherous, with roots, rocks and other tripping hazards obscured by the layer of powdery white snow. The two and a half or three inches of snow itself is powdery enough that it doesn't hinder walking, but just wet enough to be packed. Perfect snowball snow; a great many children throughout the Delaware Valley will be waking up on New Years Day with delight, eager to play.

Of course, they won't be spending the moonless night tromping 10+ miles through that snow.

Despite the darkness of nightfall, visibility is not much of a problem for the cubs. Their eyes quickly adjust and, even without moonlight, the canopy of the pine barrens is not thick enough in most places to totally block out the starlight and the omnipresent snow reflects that starlight to good effect. So, the cubs make their way fairly quickly through the caern and the bawn, passing a few other clearings where other garou of the sept are gathered, a few cabins and other such accoutrements.

After a short time, maybe 20 minutes at the pace they are going, the cubs near the edge of the caern proper. The sept's protectorate extends over the entire forest, of course, but this area marks, for lack of a better term, their inner defensive perimeter- the part of the forest where humans are not permitted to penetrate lightly.

The first thing they notice is a small light in the distance- the small red spot of a cigarette as someone draws on it, seeming to make no effort to hide it. The smell of smoke reaches Stir of Echoes a moment later, though still too faint for the others to notice. Stir of Echoes can see a man leaning up against a tree, smoking a cigarette casually. He is looking in the direction that the cubs are coming from, squinting his eyes occasionally, but doesn't seem to register their presence. He wears jeans and a thick flannel jacket, though his clothes seem old and worn, spattered with brownish-red stains. He makes no effort to hide himself, and occasionally looks down at some device on his left wrist. Of course, the others only see the light of the cigarette, occasionally moving as the man moves his hand.

[Stir of Echoes]

If Echo was appreciative of the Ahroun's words, she did not show it. Once the crew was in tow, she carried on without a second look back, until the red light caught her eye.

Immediately the wolf froze, her tail shooting up.

"Stranger ahead," she would murmur as the others (she assumed) approached, her gaze never breaking from the smoking man, "Burning stick. Relaxed, but watching - waiting for us?"

[Evilmarmelade]

"I think so," Geoff murmured back, laying low to avoid being seen. As his fur was neither black or white, it wasn't that easy to hide in this forest. "We go together. Outnumber him. If he's human, he should be scared and leave. If not, we'll see his reaction." He looked at the others, waiting for their input.

[MrMarkers]

Hannah nodded at Geoff, "That sounds pretty reasonable, and any normal person should run from a pack of wolves. We're not that far from the bawn though, most people don't come here without purpose." She stretches her legs, arching her back as she does so. "I'll shift and go talk to him if anyone wants, I don't care either way," she adds seemingly as an afterthought before offering a small yawn.

[DeathmatchFM]

While not as comfortable as if it were his natural state, Scott doesn't seem to be particularly burdened by his four-legged form. He moves quickly and casually with the rest, and when they stop to examine the stranger he merely lays down, though tail still poised and head upwards to take in information. Scott tilts his head at Geoff's less than subtle suggestion, and then towards Hannah when she speaks, seeming to expect something. Whatever she says does not seem to be what he had hoped to hear, however, and he just looks away and waits for the others to decide upon a course of action.

[Rall Bashir]

Jon shrugged helplessly and quickly took off his favorite jacket and nerd cred shirt. He seemed to have flawlessly shifted into Crinos, but it was a bit of a strain to finally adopt the lupus form. He had done it before, but since he hadn't "practiced", he just still getting used to the sensation. And the Barbie toque fell to the ground, only to become more dirty.

Crinos: Stamina (2) + Primal Urge (0);difficulty 6 http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4732329/ 2 successes
Lupus: Stamina (2) + Primal Urge (0); difficulty 6 http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4732409/ 1 success

Jon, now a lupine shadow, charged into the woods, determined to keep up. He tailed Geoff to the best of his ability. Upon arriving and examining the scene, Jon couldn't help but let a little chuff escape his jowls. He sat down on his haunches, content to merely observe the exchange of glances and growls that made up part of the Garou language. Jon kept his mouth shut, save a whispered utterance, "A white wolf, a black wolf, a red wolf walk into a bar, the bartender says 'nice example of genetic diversity among a wolf population...'" Upon seeing the assembled pack, he stopped, too, sat, and wondered what had everyone gathered, "Waiting for me?" he whispered.

[Al-Haleem]

"Oh this is not gonna happen," Val mutters as he skids to a halt and crouches down beside the wolves.

Wrinkling his nose slightly at the collective musk, Val drops his voice to a hiss. "Listen you mongrels, why the hell are we charging in like the Light Brigade? For all you know, that guy could be one of us, or just some very devoted outdoorsman on a midnight stroll."

Val glances at the man and squints. "Okay, the stains are suspicious, but come on! Can't we just talk to him? And not as wolves."

He graces Hannah and Echoes with a frown, and grins manically at Geoff and Scott.

[Stir of Echoes]

A low, guttural growl rumbled from her throat, rising in pitch before suddenly being cut off by a quick inhale of air; teeth could be seen poking out from between her lips. She seemed ready to spring into action, but remained put, peering out into the darkness.

Perception + Alertness to examine the guy/area around him more closely, checking for anything she might have missed.

Die roll for Stir of Echoes

Rolled on: Dec. 5, 2014, 5:25 a.m.

8d10 → [10,6,3,1,8,1,4,7] = (40)