(IC) New Bedford by Night: WtF II

[Haval]

Joanna will do her best to work out if either of the two voices was speaking English. If there are no open windows she'll go as far as to check if the front door was locked. Otherwise she'll hang around outside and wait for the conversation to finish.

[GKnightBC]

Jeremy is still padding along in wolf form, a bit of out of sorts with his dunking, he aids Joanna by watching for others approaching as she spies on the baddies.

[Bennosuke]

As far as Joanna can tell, the voices are likely speaking English, though it's hard to tell, or really make out any of the words. To her chagrin, when she checks, the front door does appear to be locked, though the old house was so rickety it likely would not be too hard to pick the lock, or even just knock the door or a window in, depending on how much danger Joanna wanted to put herself in.

From across the way, Jeremy stands on all fours at attention, the icy rain cutting through his already soaking coat. The streets of New Bedford were literally dead, though he too had the sense that he was somehow being watched. Jeremy watches as Joanna checks the door, then catches sight of headlights trundling down the road coming West to East from the heart of downtown. The car was still far away, and both Uratha were not exactly easy to see in the dark, but if they caught sight of Joanna stalking around the outside of the house it could be trouble.

[Haval]

Joanna will start to shift back to her human form. She had been asleep when this all started but she probably had a hairpin on her somewhere. Unless something prevents her or the people inside the house came downstairs she'll have a go at picking the lock.

Spoiler: ooc

Show

Dex 2 + Larceny 2 (includes Lockpick specialisation)
(4d10)[1][6][6][6](19)
Any 10s
(4d10)[2][4][4][3](13)

[GKnightBC]

Letting out a couple of sharp barks to alert Joanna, Jeremy slinks back between some handy debris, getting out of sight of casual observers, yet still able to watch his packmate's activities.

Spoiler: Hiding

Show

Stealth (Dex+Stealth+Urhan)(8d10)[9][6][4][8][4][5][1][3](40) and tens (8d10)[7][10][3][2][7][9][3][5](46)

[Haval]

Joanna will pause to look around at the noise. Presumably Jeremy had a good reason.

[Bennosuke]

Removing a hairpin, Joanna begins to attempt to pick the lock on the front door. Her fingers are almost numb in the rain and cold, and she fumbles over and over to work the tumblers. Then she hears Jeremy's barks and in turning around, catches sight of the car headlights growing brighter and brighter as it comes closer down the road. The momentary distraction causes Joanna shift her weight against the door with her shoulder. A single second passes over an eternity as the door groans with her weight, and then with a shriek crashes inward as the hinges rip from soggy rotten wood.

Joanna finds herself falling forward, landing on her hands and knees on top of the collapsed door with a bang. From upstairs she hears a man's voice, "What the hell was that???"

(OOC: Joanna takes a dramatic failure, gaining a beat which has been added to her character box)

[Haval]

Since she's now inside the house Joanna will take the opportunity to look around to assess the state of the place and see if there was somewhere where she could find to hide. From the outside she had expected the place to look abandoned.

[Bennosuke]

Spoiler: OOC@Haval

Show

I'll give you the WP for Lone Wolf. I count four successes total beating her opponents' total of 3

Joanna takes a quick second to get her bearings before looking for a place to hide. She is on all fours in human form. The door appears to have gone down inside of a small dark mudroom, with a single step leading up into the house's entrance. The door is propped at an angle on the single step, warped and bowing under Joanna's weight. The entranceway is a small hall, lined with soggy pealing wallpaper, and walks into what appears to be a small living room. Several dust covered cushioned chairs sit over a hole-ridden yellow rug, and before a gutted fireplace. The dying embers provide the only light in the room, though Joanna catches site of an antique looking oil lamp sitting on a small table next to one of the chairs. Despite the dying firelight, the room appears almost never used, with puddles of settled dust having recently been disturbed and creating actual foot prints that lead up the stairs. The smell of mildew and fire-smoke almost mask the fresh scent of briny fishy rot.

Across the living room is a steep stairway, and a hallway to one side clearly leads into a cluttered looking kitchen.

As Joanna gets her bearing, she can hear several pairs of footfalls coming down the stairs on the other side of the living room. Even in the dark, almost any human would have trouble finding adequate coverage. But Joanna was no mortal; she was an Uratha, and an Irraka at that. Joanna slips into the shadows like a wolf into a sheep's clothing, and watches as a young squat man with the New Bedford look waddles down the stairs, followed by a near bald old woman of similar features. The two wander around the room, cursing in the dark. At one point the young man says to his mother, "Do you think someone followed Dad home?"

[Haval]

Dad? The conclusion seemed pretty obvious to her but she would like to be sure. Joanna is underdressed for breaking into a house and she's now a little damp from the rain outside. She's going to shift back down to Urhan and will try to stay out of the way of the two locals. Maybe she could avoid drawing too much attention to her human form. If necessary, she'll slip into the kitchen to stay out of their way while she eavesdrops.

[Bennosuke]

Joanna remains hidden, while the two continue to bicker. "Well it's not like the wind just blew the door down, so keep looking!" the woman shrieks. After a moment she there is a loud thud as she stubs her toe against one of the chairs, and she moans with surprise and pain. She blinks her round fishy eyes in the darkness, and almost falls over as she stumbles back from the chair.

"Serves you right," the son barks, raising a stubby finger in her general direction, adding, "This house is so damn old I wouldn't be surprised if the wind could blow the damn door down!" The two continue to fumble about, and after an excruciating 15 minutes or so finally give up the hunt, but only after the mother makes her son do a quick lap around the house to make sure there's no one around.


(OOC: GK, please give me a Wits/Dex + Stealth roll quickly vs. (3d10)[3][10][6](19))

[Thundercracker]

Blaze

“The kid’s got a point,” Blaze said, “I’d like to get a look at those things too. We’ll stay within sight of the warehouse.”

[Haval]

Joanna would ideally like to get a look upstairs, if only to check that there wasn't an injured one of the creatures trying to recover from the fight. At the moment she's content to stay out of the way and wait to see if either of these two noticed the black wolf that was hiding in their house.

Spoiler

Show

Still eavesdropping

[Bennosuke]

“The kid’s got a point,” Blaze said, “I’d like to get a look at those things too. We’ll stay within sight of the warehouse.”

"Got it," James King says with dead seriousness, subconsciously raising a hand in military salute. There is a satisfied and excited look in the Wolf-Blooded's eyes as he hastens to the door and lets himself out.

Less then ten minutes later, James returns. He is drenched in rain, his dark brown hair flaccid and clumped to the side of his face, clothes dark and heavy and drenched in the smell of wet and ozone. As the door clangs behind him, James calls out to those still assembled in the hall, "Just a bunch of rotten fish guts out there. The rains washed most of it away, and I think most of it is fastly decomposing." He pauses for a moment, trying to push away his nausea, then adds, "Smells ****ing awful."

************************************************** ***********

Spoiler: OOC for Haval and GK

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Still waiting on a roll from GK

************************************************** ***********

Chapter 2 Act 1 Scene ii

"You guys might not know this, but I consider myself a bit of a loner. I tend to think of myself as a one-man wolf pack. But when my sister brought Doug home, I knew he was one of my own. And my wolf pack... it grew by one."

-The Hangover

"My Grandma, what big teeth you have..."

-Little Red Riding Hood

It was the next morning, bright and early, when the pack was awoken by the sound of the front gate opening. The storm having blown over, the sky is blue and the bright yellow sun has begun to dry out the leftover floods and puddles. Only pack members had the key to open the gate, and by the time anyone is able to come outside. The car is not familiar, a beat up Honda, but the Uratha who gets out of the driver side door is. As Solomon steps out, so does a young woman. She smiles at the Uratha as she combs back her straight jet black hair, her blue eyes swallowing up the Irraka. "So this is where you used to stay?" she asks with only slightly anxious curiosity as she studies the factory.

[Thundercracker]

Blaze

“Hey man,” Blaze said, “what’s the good word?”

[Haval]

Joanna is still tired from her hunt last night. She'll watch the new arrivals with interest and try to avoid yawning too much. Blaze obviously knew the man.

[GKnightBC]

Spoiler

Show

dex Stealth (6d10)[4][10][4][4][8][3](33) tens (6d10)[7][4][4][1][1][7](24) plus dice for Urhan?

[Bennosuke]

The Night Before (Joanna and Jeremy)

Jeremy darts into the shadows as the front door opens. The wind howls, a squat man stands in the light of the door. Prematurely bald and with round rheumy eyes, for a moment Jeremy could almost mistake him for one of the intruders. The man-thing moves his head from side to side, eyes darting about the property. Jeremy stays tucked into the shadows, and the man walks down the creaking porch steps, beginning a search around the porch. He roams around in the rain and dark with nothing but a phone flashlight, hunched and lumbering as he searches around the property. Finally giving up, the waterlogged man trundles back into the house, never having caught sight of Jeremy.

Inside, Joanna waits and watches. The old woman mutters to herself in an anxious compulsive nonsense that Joanna can't make out. After a few minutes, the mother decides she can't wait any longer and begins plodding upstairs, leaving Joanna alone on the main floor.

[Haval]

Last Night

After the woman had gone upstairs and while the man was outside, Joanna will take the opportunity to move partially up the staircase after the woman seemed to have stopped moving around. She's alert for any sign that the woman was talking to anyone else or whether she could smell one of the creatures that had attacked them earlier tonight.

Spoiler: ooc

Show

Will make one more attempt to find something

Wits 3 + Composure 3 + Urhan 4
(10d10)[8][6][5][10][4][9][9][8][9][5](73)
Any 10s
(10d10)[2][8][10][5][9][5][1][6][7][2](55)
Any 3 successed is an exceptional success for honed senses

[GKnightBC]

The Night Before (Joanna and Jeremy)

Jeremy darts into the shadows as the front door opens. The wind howls, a squat man stands in the light of the door. Prematurely bald and with round rheumy eyes, for a moment Jeremy could almost mistake him for one of the intruders. The man-thing moves his head from side to side, eyes darting about the property. Jeremy stays tucked into the shadows, and the man walks down the creaking porch steps, beginning a search around the porch. He roams around in the rain and dark with nothing but a phone flashlight, hunched and lumbering as he searches around the property. Finally giving up, the waterlogged man trundles back into the house, never having caught sight of Jeremy.

Inside, Joanna waits and watches. The old woman mutters to herself in an anxious compulsive nonsense that Joanna can't make out. After a few minutes, the mother decides she can't wait any longer and begins plodding upstairs, leaving Joanna alone on the main floor.

Listening hard through the noise of the night with his wolf's sharper ears, Jeremy tries to hear if Joanna was discovered or if she needs help. Worried that the being they followed may already have killed her, he silently moves across towards the side of the building where he last saw her.

Spoiler: Listen and Stealth

Show

Listen = Wits 3+Investigation 2+Urhan 4(9d10)[4][5][6][6][5][3][9][7][6](51)
Move sneakily = Dex 3 + Stealth 3 +Urhan 2 (8d10)[9][3][6][4][7][9][7][4](49)
Any tens (10d10)[5][8][10][5][10][9][9][2][10][10](78)

[Bennosuke]

The Night Before (Joanna and Jeremy)

Inside, Joanna begins to to stalk towards the staircase. The stench of rotten seaweed grows only stronger, and Joanna even catches sight of a dark watery footprints that go up the stairs. Though the prints don't hold any shape, they are two wide, and too long to come from a human foot.

The Irraka manages to make it over halfway up the stairs without forcing a creak from the warped and slippery stairs. From there Joanna can hear the woman talking to someone. The two are speaking English, but the man she is speaking to has a voice like a croaking frog. As if Joanna needed any more proof, this was the same sort of voice that she had heard coming from the barking intruder things, but of course now the voice was trying to mimic human speech. From the way the woman was speaking, it sounded like she was equally scolding and consoling the fish thing. It reminded her of a mother scolding a distraught but naughty child.

Outside, Jeremy crouches low, forepaws spread out in front of his head which is pressed low to the ground. Once the coast is clear, he darts across the road, following his nose and his ears to a nearby window. The wind and rain play terrible tricks on the Uratha's heightened senses, but all he can hear are what sounds like an old married couple bickering with each other.

[Haval]

That was fairly conclusive. How much of New Bedford was like this? Did they all end up looking like those creatures eventually? Joanna is briefly guilty fof having helped to kill a few of them earlier tonight, but it wasn't as if they hadn't had cause. Her own injuries were healing but they were still sore. Having found out what she needed, Joanna will turn and move back down the stairs. Assuming the man was probably coming back inside soon she'll move back into hiding before trying to slip out once he'd stopped paying attention.

[Ladorak]

'This is the place.' He forced a familiar note of false levity into his voice. Absent minded Solo slipped an arm around her waist and drew her close, her hip bumped against his as he stared at the factory, his eyes distant looking into the past. It seemed like a lifetime ago, and in a sense it was. The man who had returned was not the same man that had departed, that Solo was dead, and good riddance.
With a shake of the head he brought himself back to the present, two worlds were about to collide and it was no time for day dreaming 'I know it doesn't look like much, and it isn't. But there was something about the spirit of the place' He said with a smile 'And Kara thought it would make a good album cover.'

Solo hid it well, as he hid everything well, but he was incredibly nervous. His packmates would pick up the fear stink from him soon enough, thankfully Catalina lacked their senses. For her he made himself appear calm with long practiced control of voice and facial features. But his heart raced, he had risked his life more times than even he knew, but this was something entirely new to him, he was bringing a girl home to meet his family, and it was more nerve-wracking than he ever could have imagined.

The first two out of the door are an Uratha he does not recognize and, of course, good old solid dependable Blaze, a wall of iron will masked by a cloud of apathetic smoke. Solo's smile grows wide as he locks eyes on his packmate, love for a brother drowning out any lingering guilt he had about leaving the place he belonged. Solo didn't bother identifying him out as he walked down to them, he had told Catalina dozens of stories about Blaze, and she had seen him on a couple of album covers.

'Hey man, what’s the good word?'

Solo laughed, it was just so Blaze, and just like that his nervousness burst like a bubble 'That's a long story, but it's a damn good word. God it's good to see you again.' Solo was grinning ear to ear, a very unfamiliar expression for him, and one that frankly did not suit his stern features.

'Blaze, this is Catalina.' Her slipped his hand into hers, entwining their fingers 'Catalina, Blaze.' He took a moment to really look at her, knowing things might soon become chaotic. Her long black hair shone even in the poor light of a murky New Bedford morning, her dark eyes always sparkled, but in this unfamiliar place they shone with curiosity. Small, young, seemingly delicate and beautiful. Slightly over a decade separated them, he was too old for her and he knew it, he simply didn't care. How could he not have fallen in love with the women who had put his shattered life back together and given him new life and fresh purpose?

[Thundercracker]

Blaze

“Catalina huh,” Blaze said, “I’m Blaze, nice to meetcha.”

“So what brings you out this way man?” Blaze asked, “you guys want some breakfast?”

[Haval]

Joanna is trying to work out if the other woman was Uratha without being obvious but will smile to see the body language between the two new arrivals. They were obviously together. 'Then you would be Sol, right?' she'll guess. She had heard something of him from the others. 'I'm Joanna. I ran into these guys a few days ago. I'm glad you're back.'

[GKnightBC]

Chapter 2 Act 1 Scene i

Jeremy slinks around the window, trying to listen and scent Joanna in the morass of the storm. *Those fish-faces must need to be kept wet, or they would have attacked a different day.* he ponders as he waits for a clue. *We should buy a Costco sized desiccant, or just lots of salt.* Listening hard at the muted argument his reluctance to rush into the unknown is offset by his concern. If she doesn't make an appearance or signal in a few minutes, his concern will propel him forward into the ramshackle home.

Chapter 2 Act 1 Scene i

Yawning a bit after his nap, he hears the main doors open and joins the welcoming committee, wary of any newcomer after the invasion by the Pure. Watching the friendly and welcoming conversation from Blaze, he loosens up his stance and wonders if every child of Father Wolf is forced to drive beater vehicles.

[Bennosuke]

“Catalina huh,” Blaze said, “I’m Blaze, nice to meetcha.”

Catalina smiles broadly at Blaze. If there was any concern, hesitation, or judgement, she was hiding it well, and she steps forward with arms outstretched to offer Blaze a welcoming hug. "Nice to meet you too... uh, Blaze," she says, only just stumbling over the strangeness of the name. She recovers by adding, "Solo has told me so much about you... all of you actually."

As the others start to approach, she makes the effort to make the same friendly introduction, of course following Solomon's lead with those she has never heard off.

(OOC: I think we can close the Joanna/Jeremy night before scene? Let me know if you feel differently)

[Daishain]

Bear is busy discussing something with the wolfblooded when he notices something happening outside. On seeing Solo, he drops everything else and walks right up to him before enveloping the fellow uratha in a big hug, "Its good to see you brother." He sniffs a little and looks to Catalina, "And you've found a mate too, it seems we have much to talk about."

[Bennosuke]

Catalina's face turns bright read at the mention of Solomon "finding a mate". It takes her a second to find her words, but then with finding her cheer she says, "You must be Bear," coming forward to grab both of the Rahu's hands, "I've heard SO MUCH about you too! It's so nice to meet you." She smiles brightly, and for only a second her eyes dart to Solomon to check in.

[Thundercracker]

Catalina's face turns bright read at the mention of Solomon "finding a mate". It takes her a second to find her words, but then with finding her cheer she says, "You must be Bear," coming forward to grab both of the Rahu's hands, "I've heard SO MUCH about you too! It's so nice to meet you." She smiles brightly, and for only a second her eyes dart to Solomon to check in.

“Alright, I’m gonna make breakfast,” Blaze said with a yawn, “y’all come on in when you’re ready.”

Blaze headed back inside to make good on his promise.