Werewolf: Appalachian Moonrise, Ch 1

[LadyTevar]

Amongst the bloody grass, tuffs of black and brown horse hair could be found, but one swatch stood out from the rest. As Sophie picked it up from the bloody earth, she realized the reddish color was natural.

[Cynical Cat]

"How such a sloppy idiot can manage to not leave a trail I do not know," said Alex.

[Devonie]

"Feces," Arianne mutters as she finds paw prints. No way those were left by an ordinary wolf.

"I got Crinos prints," she says to the others. "Anyone else got anything?"

[rhoenix]

Letting his senses explore on their own, Sees-Faces-In-Stars almost seemed to sway slightly, his entire body relaxed. After only a moment, his eyes opened, fixated on the part of the land where the fence met the forestline. "Smells of Unmaker," he said in a low, serious voice before walking in that direction. He hoped at least a one spirit around here had seen something, but he'd look at that in a moment.

Following the scent that seemed to slither and befoul the very ground it resided on, Sees-Faces-In-Stars, in the homid form of "Joe-Smith," followed the weaving, meadering trail to a small...homid container with some sort of liquid in it. Every hair on the back of his neck stood on end as he beheld the strange liquid, and the cracked container it was in. He involuntarily took a step backwards, shuddering slightly from the sheer concentrated Defiler he felt screaming painfully from the liquid into his senses.

Shaking his head slightly to clear it, he made himself reason, as a homid would. His sense of the Defiler matched the tracks made by the red-furred tainted one. Speaking of fur, he did see a few wisps of the reddish fur near the tracks.

Turning to look at the others, he waved to get their attention, and even said the one word that was remarkably similar in both English and in the Garou Tongue: "Hey!"

[General Havoc]

Sophie had found a tuft of hair amidst the blood and remains that clearly didn't belong there. Red hair, natural red hair from the looks of it, though she'd need a magnifying glass to make sure and she hadn't thought to bring one of those.

"I think this might be his," she said, picking the tuft up and separating it from the horsehair. "Was this guy we're after a redhead?"

[Cynical Cat]

"That the color of the fur from the good professor's office," said Alex. "And he's a Fianna and red fur is common among them."

[Charon]

Adahy looked back at Sophie. "Well, 'Joe' get over here and check this fur. We'll want to make sure it's got the same scent."

[Cynical Cat]

"Finding anything Sees?" Alexander asked.

[rhoenix]

Seeing the others gathered, and not coming to join him, "Joe-Smith" jogged back to the others, and was silent for a moment, looking up to the clouds above while he collected his thoughts. If he was to understand homids, he would learn how they thought. After a few moments of reverent silence, he faced the others with a calm, though concerned, face. He tried to use Reason, as the homids do.

"I found broken container thing with liquid that smells like Defiler, near patch of red fur from Defiler-tainted Garou of before. Asked for help to feel Defiler-taint here, came from fur and container. Will ask spirits next."

[Cynical Cat]

"So the Fianna is breaking shit, killing things, leaving destruction in his wake, and drinking Wyrm tainted moonshine?" said Alex. "Fuck, he's a walking bad Irish stereotype."

[Charon]

Adahy looked over at Alex. "There's a good Irish stereotype? Learn something new everyday..."

The Metis walked over to the bottle and fur in question. "Good thought 'Joe'. Maybe here we'll actually be able to get an answer from them too."

[Devonie]

Arianne snarls at Charon. "Fuck You, both." She glares at Alex. "Either of you stereotyping anyone is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, so just shut the hell up."

She turns her back on them and speaks to Joe-Smith, "Do you need to go Garou to speak to the spirits, Joe?" She looks around. "If so, let's go on up to the tree-line so we can shift."

[Cynical Cat]

"Damn," said Alexander. "Just mentioning he lives down to the stereotype and she gets all pissy. I'm an eighth Irish, Fianna kinfolk, on my mother's side and damn that part of the family told the most Irish jokes off all. My great uncle Paddy, well, maybe he isn't the best example."

[rhoenix]

Remembering the motion that meant words, "Joe-Smith" shook his head to Arianne's question. "No, they talk to me if I have fur or not. They feel...scared, angry, sad," he said, staring into the distance at the broken container, which still felt...horrible to him.

"Especially over there," he said, pointing to the container, a solemn expression on his face.

[Cynical Cat]

"Well we have two reasons to try and catch him alive," said Alexander. "One, get the fetish back. Two, finding and burying whoever the fuck is making Wyrmshine."

He sung softly as he looked around:

"Now the town of Jersey City is quieting down again
I'm sitting in a gambling club called the Lion's Den
The tv set been blown up, every bit of it is gone
Ever since the nightly news show that the Monkey Man was on

I guess I'll to to Florida and get myself some sun
There ain't no more opportunity here, everything's been done
Sometime I think of Tweeter, sometime I think of Jan
Sometime I don't think about nothing but the Monkey Man

And the walls came down all the way to hell
Never saw them when they're standing
Never saw them when they fell"

[Cynical Cat]

"Any fucking luck with the tracking or have we struck out again against the sloppy, drunk, fucking hooligan?" asked Alex.

[Devonie]

Arianne looks at the container. "I'd pour this out, but I'm afraid it would contaminate the ground here even worse than it already it."

She bends down and gingerly picks up the jar.

"Hello... what's this?"

There's a messed-up label on the side which says "Blac---- Whi---" and has a rough depiction of what might be a chunk of rock burning.

"Guys, check this out."

[Cynical Cat]

"Looks like a chunk of burning coal to me," said Stormwalker.

[Cynical Cat]

"Well," said Alexander, "even I can follow this trail. For now at least," he said following it into the woods. "The last one got harder to follow as it went on so that's no guarantee that we'll be able to follow it later." Once he reached the cover of the woods and protective screen of trees he transformed into lupus and continued following the trail.

[General Havoc]

All this was well outside Sophie's area of expertise. IPs she could track with the best of them. Scents and the like were not her field. And wandering around in pastures looking for signs of whatever the hell Wyrmshine was (she could guess, based on the name), was hardly her forte either.

"Has anybody got an idea what we're supposed to do with this guy if we do catch up to him?" she asked as Alexander slipped into Lupus form. She mirrored this action, switching from English to Garou as she did so.

"I mean, if he's drunk on Wyrmshine and running around mutilating things, he's not gonna come in quietly." No doubt the Ahrouns would smugly assure her that their fighting prowesses were up to the task of subduing any conceivable thing, but that usually only served to prove the limits of their conceptions.

[Cynical Cat]

"We dog pile him and strike to cripple, not to kill," said Alexander. "We don't know how strong he is, but we have to get two crucial pieces of information from him. One, the location of the fetish, and two is this moonshine still. So we absolutely need him alive unless we find him next to the still and the fetish. We don't know how strong or experienced he is and trying to take him alive puts us at a disadvantage. So we do it wolf style. Surround him, harry him, strike at his tendons and bring him down. Pin him with our superior numbers and cripple. He's dangerous and we have to get information from him. We don't fuck around."

[rhoenix]

Following with the others, "Joe-Smith" waited until he made the treeline before changing back into his lupus form. He took a moment, and relished the change - as much as learning about homids was fun, being a wolf was going home.

He began sniffing around for the trail.

[Cynical Cat]

Stormwalker put his nose to the ground and sniffed around for the trail.

[LadyTevar]

The trail leads up into the mountain side, and while old was still strong enough for lupine noses to follow. Adahy offered to get the jeep and catch up to the others as soon as he could. How he would do so, he did not say.

The trail lead along the mountain ridges, thus avoiding any human contact. The trees were thick up here, dropping their brightly-colored leaves to the ground with every passing breeze. The leaves joined those of years past in a musty, woodsy scented mulch upon the ground. Squirrels chattered overhead, watching the predators pass. A whitetail buck, scenting them, startled and fled, the white flag of it's tail bouncing as the deer bounded away over fallen branches and ever-green rhodrendron bushes.

Occasionally the trees would break as a powerline broke through, standing ominously over a clear line of dead stumps where the power company sprayed to prevent greenery from damaging the lines. Yet this scar of the Weaver was not completely dead, as woodland brush normally shaded by the tall trees grew aboundant in low thickets, meadow grass and even flowers sprouting down the dirt-packed rock. A red-tailed hawk swooped down from the treeline, and a rabbit screamed as it played its part in Gaia's cycle.

From the heights, small communities could be seen, tucked away in the bottom of the hollers, curling like a snake around the bases of the mountains that rose all around them. Wood smoke rose over some houses. Others sported unsightly satelitte dishes from their yards or roofs. Cars rolled down the roads, some only one-lane dirt, no larger than Matchbox toys from where the werewolves stood. Trees grew in many yards, junglegyms and trampolines in others. All were squashed into the holler, never going too far up the hillsides, and yet each house had a yard, small or large. It gave the humans space to live without being stacked atop each other, as in a city. Thus, despite the Weaver's obvious influence, there was still a feeling She had not yet won here.

Yet the scent trail continued on, following the ridges as much as possible, in a general path south.

[Cynical Cat]

The great black wolf loped forward, following the trail as it headed south. He jerked his head back to see if the others were keeping back and gave an encouraging bark to the others.