Under A Killing Moon is an ongoing chronicle set in Blackmouth in the late 2000s. It follows the story of four people drawn together by forces they do not understand.
The First Dream
Night time on the streets, snow and ash are falling, pooling about your feet as you walk. Its cold, bitterly so, the chill like a knife in your chest with every breath. All around you the buildings rise tall and thin like crooked grey teeth, lightless and dead. The only light from motes and sparks from a distant fire, hidden beyond the twisted shadow buildings. And the moon. The moon looms huge and brilliant, close enough to see a twisted whorl has been hacked into its surface, lambent quicksilver blood seeping up from the wound and dripping down onto the world. And then you wake up…
The Second Dream
Nighttime. The streets are cracked and grey and crumbling, snow and asha nd black sand cling like tar to your bare feet. Each icy breath fills your nose with the tang of fresh blood and the sour-sweet stink of spoiled meat. Something his hiding behind the soot black sky, beyond the twisted tendrils that once were buildings. So large and so distant that the fire motes suggest only a presence. A shapeless immensity, nothing more. And above it all, the moom hangs huge, rivers of quicksilver blood spilling from raw wounds unsettling similar to the shape of Jacob’s body, falling onto the world like rain…
A couple of days had passed since the violence at the Ladybird Room and the pack were at work trying to rebuild the gym and repair the damage wrought by the brawl with the Jacks and the kuruth that followed. Franco found his injuries from the silver blades were finally starting to heal, painfully slowly and with the first hints of wicked scars but at least he could pull his weight to fix his own gym. Jayden, Carter and Terry helped whenever they could, though Terry kept a wary distance from both Jayden and Franco, the events of the brawl still fresh in his mind.
About an hour after sunset, as the gibbous moon was just starting to rise above the tenements, someone came knocking on the door of the closed gym. A wiry man in a long trenchcoat, close-cropped beard giving his face a skeletal cast in the twilight. He introduced himself as “Rojas. Detective Rojas” and had some questions about the burned pickup in Montgomery and the bodies left in it. Franco and Jayden could smell the wolf in him as he spoke, leading to Franco making a selection of bad dog puns before dropping all pretence.
Rojas was happy to be straight with the two urdur. He had caught their scents at the wreck in Montgomery and wanted to size them up and hear what happened that lead. So they told him, about Megan Blaine and the Jacks, about the Ladybird Room and Mr G, and about how it all ended. Rojas was sceptical until Franco showed him the truth in his Renown brands, the lunes had believed them even if he did not. That impressed Rojas, and he seemed satisfied with how they had handled themselves. He left the pack with a number to contact him on if needed, and a warning not to cause any problems south of Rosewater street.
Help Wanted
A few days later, Jayden received a call from potential client. They met in the Pequods on Lincoln Square to discuss things. Her name was Laura Griffin and she spent much of the interview clutching at the coffee mug like a lifeline as she told her story. It had started with odd noises, tapping in the pipes and scratching at doors. She had told herself it was just the sounds of an old house or local animals, but there were also the dreams. She was in bed, unable to move as an emaciated black-eyed figure leaned over her, reaching closer and closer until she woke in cold sweats and dread. Sleeping pills kept the dreams away but left her unrested and exhausted. She didn’t know what else to do, was getting desperate for this to end so when she found Jayden’s business card she had to try.
Jayden listened as Ms Griffin told her tale and, deciding to ease her into things, explained the possibility of sleep paralysis and asked her to record herself sleeping that night. They would review the footage the next day and then know if it was something uncommon but mundane, or of his more esoteric skills would be required. Ms Griffin seemed a little unsure, but she agreed to the request and departed. Jayden and Franco waited until she was gone before letting the thin veneer of professionalism slip and planning an evening of karaoke at Ollie T’s to relax.
While waiting to hear from Ms. Griffin the next day, Franco suggested declaring a Sacred Hunt against whatever was behind the haunting. He had been itching to try out the Rite that Brihaz had taught him. Jayden agreed and the two mock-brawled and psyched themselves up in preparation for the Hunt. They met Griffin again at Pequods the next evening, unsettlingly intense and wired with the adrenaline of the Hunt.
On the Hunt
The timelapse video of Ms. Griffin’s attempts to sleep showed her thrashing and turning in her bed, barely keeping still throughout the night. No signs of sleep paralysis. Jayden apologised for the intrusion but he would need to investigate her house, Griffin agreed, finished her coffee and lead them there. The house was an old townhouse of the sort found throughout north Blackmouth, built well over a century ago in the rebirth of Blackmouth after the fire of 1814, and recently renovated and repaired as the slow creep of gentrification swept into the west side of Merritt.
Griffin left Franco and Jayden on the doorstep for a minute before letting them in, the sounds of an excitable dog carrying from the closed kitchen door. She apologised that he didn’t get on with strangers, and lead the way into the house. Everything seemed normal, at last until they got to the bedroom and caught a scent. Like the faint remnants of fresh blood. Griffin seemed unaware of it but it clung in the nostrils of both Franco and Jayden, stirring up old memories of the Hunt and the Kill. It was unavoidable once noticed, it was seeping into the rest of the house but permeated the bedroom and was strongest by the great bay windows that dominated the room, yet did not seem to be coming from there.
On a hunch, Jayden cast his senses across the Gauntlet into the Hisil and saw nightmares. The shadow reflection of the room was warped to grotesque proportions, the ceiling looming cavernously tall while the angles and corners twisted and misaligned. Blood and oily black liquid seeped and trickled from long cobweb cracks and jagged rents in the corners of windows and mirrors. Griffin’s bed was a torturer’s plaything of spikes and blades, rusted with old blood and dried tears and seething with host of motes of inky darkness and shattered bone that supped on the blood and tears coating the torture bed. The smell of blood filled the Shadow, sweet and rich as a fresh kill and wafting from the yawning portal the bay windows had become, beyond which lay a twisted vista of towering crags and twisted trees. Jayden took time to study the room and cast his ithaeur’s eyes over the spirits. The inky motes were some kind of hursihim, barely sapient little fear spirits feeding on the detritus of Griffin’s nightmares, but there was something else. A drifting translucent shape like a sheet of ill-shaped fabric hanging on the end of the torturer’s bed. Jayden had taken it for a hursih or an unformed mote until it moved, and the shadow of eyes swept the bed with a cold, hungry intelligence. An ensih, perhaps. Something sapient enough to lead this motley choir or to talk to, but he could not do so across the Gauntlet. They would need to Step Sideways and visit the Shadow in person to face this thing.
Meanwhile, Franco was trying to stop Jayden from walking into anything in his otherworld trance. He had tried to convince Ms Griffin to give them a little space to work but she was understandably hesitant to leave two strangers alone in her bedroom. He was in the middle of a third explanation that this was just how Jayden worked and he would have some answers soon when Jayden brought himself out of his trance to deliver a verdict to Ms Griffin. The good news was that the problem seemed to be connected to the house rather than Griffin herself, so he advised her to sleep elsewhere for a couple of days. The bad news was that he did not know yet know how to deal with this night mare but he should have a solution with a day or two’s research and investigation. He had always been good at this part of the work back before the Change, and Griffin bought his earnest charm. She would do that and look forward to hearing from Jayden soon once he had a proper solution.
The Other Side
It was Franco that noticed the car as they were walking back. It had been there when they arrived, but the guy in the driver’s seat half-watching Griffin’s house hadn’t been. They passed it by and slipped into an alleyway to get the measure of the man. A jowly older man with a heavy moustache, sitting calmly in a dark-bodied sedan, reading a book and glancing now and again toward Griffin’s home. Jayden peeked across the Gauntlet but saw nothing unusual there, so Franco took a note of the plates. Perhaps it was time to give Det. Rojas a call.
Rojas picked up after the third ring and took very little convincing to assist by looking up the licence plate. He was happy to build rapport with Dukuz-Mah Ur by helping their hunt. In the meantime, Jayden decided to seek some advice from his ersatz mentor so the two headed for Ashton Park, the heart of the territory claimed by the Blackwood pack. There they met Elias, a member of the Blackwoods and an acquaintance of Jayden, who apologised that Valentina was out of the city “on one of her wanders”. He offered some advice in her stead when Jayden explained the situation, suggesting that a it was unlikely that the spirits he had seen were powerful enough to wreak such changes in the Shadow in such a short time. Either they had been there longer than it seemed, or something more potent was influencing things.
They heard back from Rojas as they headed back to their own territory. The car they had spotted was registered to Jon Miller, a private investigator based in Providence, Rhode Island. Rojas said he would keep digging just in case he found something interesting but Miller appeared at first glance to be very ordinary.
Heading to the Forgotten Room, Kayden and Franco used the resonance of the locus to cross into the Hisil and made their way to the shadow reflection of Ms. Griffin’s house. As soon as they entered the twisted bedroom, the translucent form of the nightmare spirit stirred. It draped itself about Jayden’s cloak and asked why wolves were here, insisting it was breaking none of their laws and merely feeding on the bounty provided to it. Jayden called it a minnow, a scavenger feeding on the leavings of actual predators but it shrugged and drifted away.
Franco, meanwhile, was studying the yawning vista spread out beyond the windows, and only these windows. The other rooms of the house showed the bustling, frenetic shadow of the street beyond, only those in the bedroom showed this view. Out of curiosity he opened the windows. The scent of fresh blood that pervaded the room grew sharper and sweeter still and Franco could feel something pulling at him, drawing him out, toward the expansive otherworld beyond. Jayden joined him and the two let themselves be pulled out, wrenched bodily across the gulf beyond and down into somewhere else.
They were in a great empty room of stained tiles. A single hospital gurney lay in the centre of the expanse, surrounded by legions of machines that traced the rhythms of life in light and sound. Lying on the bed was the half-seen shadow of a figure, utterly dwarfed by its surroundings. In the centre of the figure’s chest was a black tear and into it flowed faint crimson trails of blood-scent from the bedroom. Jayden cast his gaze across the Gauntlet and saw a hospital ward with a single inhabitant, a young woman wrapped in bandages and casts and surrounded by ventilators and other devices keeping her alive. Her chart listed her name as Jaime Scott, her injuries matched a hit and run, and the date of admission as a week prior. Around the time Griffin’s dreams began.
After making their way back to the Forgotten Room and crossing back to the physical world, the pair started searching for news articles about hit and runs in the past week. It did not take long to find something but it was not quite what they expected. The story described a young woman hit by a vehicle in Fallon Heights, no names listed but the date fitted, and there was a video showing dashcam footage from another car in the area. It showed a dark-haired young woman, features blurred for anonymity, running out of an alleyway into traffic, eyes fixed on something behind her. She clips a protruding parking sign, careers with the impact into the traffic and is struck by a black sedan, rolling over the bonnet and landing head-first on the asphalt. Traffic screeches to a halt around her and in the last frames of the video the driver of the sedan steps out to check on her, and it is not Griffin.
Using the video and Franco’s native knowledge of the streets of the city, they work their way to the site of the accident, unsure exactly what they will find after a week. No unusual scents or markings, and nothing untoward lurking in Twilight or on the other side of the Gauntlet. No witnesses, except one. Jayden studied the parking sign and whispered a word of wakefulness to the mote that sumbered with in. It stirred into brief awareness, enough to tell them what the girl had run from. A man, bristled with facial hair. The PI?
In summary…
People Appearing
Franco Larsen – Glad to assist Jayden’s investigations, he got a hat just for it.
As Diana and Jane headed for home after speaking with Suleiman, Morris instead decided to keep an eye on the Tree as it was cut out of the shell of Willowgate. Morris found himself at home in the dark, easily lurking out of sight of Hank and his crew as they continued their work. It took until after 2am for the Tree to be removed and placed carefully under the tarpaulin of a flatbed truck, and once there swiftly driven away. Hank and his crew headed for some much-needed sleep and Morris gave chase, like it was the old days driving with Big Jimmy.
The truck lead him east into the grim underbelly of Morganville, nearly losing him twice as it caught the last moments of a green light and almost leading to him getting T-boned when he ran a red to keep up, but he successfully tailed it to a warehouse near the old harbour overlooking Sauton Point. It was a dingy looking half-forgotten place that looked like it should have been knocked down decades before, watched from all sides by modern security cameras. Morris parked his car a block away, close enough to the nearest cluster of vagrants to maybe tempt one to try something just so he could hurt them for it, and stalked closer through the gloom. Around him the glaur and decay of the swamp reached out and ruined the cameras one by one, and he slipped inside under the cover of comfortable darkness.
Voices carried down from a gantry-mounted office above, two men talking about a football game and complaining about referees, while the truck sat beside ancient-looking crates and pallets that had been dragged out of the way for it. Morris paid the old crates little heed, heading straight for the truck and slipped under the tarpaulin to check on the tree. Overhead the men’s conversation wound down and once started making his way down to check on his load. Seizing the opportunity handed to him, Morris waited for the driver to reach the tarp before grabbing choking him into unconsciousness, the better to question later.
It was when he started looking for the other man that Morris be realised there was something else in the still, silent warehouse beyond the tarpaulin. A rumbling, rasping sound echoed through the darkness, and something moved out of sight accompanied by the sharp sounds of claws on concrete. Whisps of dust outlined a suggestion of an emaciated, predatory frame, sharp edges glinted in the air and the rasping rumbling sound cohered into a voice that rumbled a command to flee into the back of Morris’ skull.
Morris responded with violence, raining blows that would have felled men or cracked concrete into the thing and it responded in kind, his blood revealing razor fangs and rending claws as it torn into his flesh. The creature shrugged of blow after blow, only being stunned for a moment when Morris started shattering crates and barrels against the thing, but it was too much for him. Bleeding from multiple wounds and barely keeping the thing from his throat, he felt something. A surge of warmth welling up around him, a protective, all-encompassing, hungry love that whispered in the back of his mind that not every fight need be won. With the last dregs of his strength, Morris reached out to the tangled maze of the Basement, dragged himself and the driver across the threshold between worlds and fell into unconsciousness.
Consequences
The next thing Morris knew was hunger. Raw aching Hunger, like a pit had opened in his heart and everything with any measure of value had fallen into it. He was face-down in the boxing ring in his gym, it was night but he could not tell any more than that. His phone was dead, stinking of swamp mud and salt water, and his car was back in Morganville. So he started walking, anything to distract himself from the Hunger. After a few blocks he spotted the swastikas and the Hunger rose in pitch.
Neonazi punks, wannabe badasses, it would feel so good to break them down and remind them how weak they were. So he did just that. Walked into Jack’s and found every excuse he could to start beating on the punks. The Hunger still gnawed and roared and the punks soon went for weapons when they couldn’t stop him with fists, so he pitched a scrawny one into the cluster trying to surround him and stalked out. Then for good measure, as they tried to pile out after him, he scooped up one of the cars parked outside and threw it into the bar.
Still hungry. Still so damned Hungry. Over the next few hours Morris carved a path of violence across the city toward Morganville, breaking every petty little shithead or wannabe tough he crossed paths with, along with any poor bastards who happened to cross his path at the wrong moment. It was not enough. It felt like it would never be enough. Then he found where his car had been, where it wasn’t any more, and he became actually angry. He unleashed his wrath on the nearby vagrants until one them coughed up a name, and he finally had a target to vent his rage upon.
Following Threads
(Set after Down Among the Worms)
Diana spent the evening after she and Jane visited to Presidents Row digging into research. Nothing she could find about the Row suggested it was anything important, just another faded little neighbourhood ripe for redevelopment into something actually useful. She found herself going over what Suleiman had said about having a hand in the Alabaster Building. Some cursory research revealed the building had been built by Coulter & Matheison, a prestigious firm responsible for a number of Blackmouth’s more distinctive buildings, but no-one resembling Suleiman appeared anywhere connected to the firm. The old school they had met in was easy enough to mind once she put her mind to it, retracing the trip there and the view over the city identified it as Gilchrist College, an old private school on the hills overlooking the city, though it appeared far less dilapidated and ill-used in photographs than in person. And again, no traces to Suleiman, nor to Coulter & Matheison.
That would have to do for now. It was time to start driving down property prices in President’s Row, and she knew just the person to do what was necessary. She braced herself and dialed the number. Carter picked up after the third ring, his oily charm seeping through the phone as he greeted Diana by name. By a diminutive of her old name, just like he used to. Of course, he would love to meet up with her. It was late but he was always happy to make time for an old friend. They met in the shadows of Lockham, in the alleyway they used to smoke in, out of sight of anyone who cared, and Diana laid out her plan. Carter was to go to the Row and do what he did best, with an aim to make people want to leave and be more willing to sell up. He was hesitant, he didn’t really want to cross the Patriots but money and a little white lie about getting back together, just like old times, sealed the deal. And maybe some sort of terrible accident would happen to Carter later, if the Patriots didn’t.
She was on the subway back to her apartment when she overheard a pair gawking at footage of an incident in Ormwood. The angle was poor and the footage worse but it almost looked like a car thrown into the front of a building. The gawkers were deep in discussion about whether it was viral marketting for a film or an ARG, but Diana recognised that hideous strength. Morris. She stepped out of the subway at the next station, barely feeling the world shift around her as she walked through the empty station. The twisting pipes of the Basement rose and fell and she found herself on the remnants of harbour where Morganville met the Atlantic, and saw Morris dunking a mass of chains wrapped about a squirming, pleading figure. She demanded he let the man go, and Morris did just that, throwing poor Jimmy Fingers into the icy waters of the Atlantic.
This had to stop. First Jane and her indiscretion at the Ormwood Development soiree, and now cars being thrown into bars and this. Morris shrugged at Diana and didn’t deny it. Jimmy’s fate had been enough to finally fill the hole in his soul and he could think about more than Hunger. In his eyes they were neo-nazis and deserved worse, but maybe things could be less open. He made no promises except to try to keep her name out of it, because that was what she was really concerned about.
People Appearing
Morris Mayfair – bit off more than he could chew and carved a swath of revenge to make up for it.
A truck driver, beaten unconscious by Morris then lost in his Lair
Several members of the Aryan Legion, assaulted by Morris.
Diana Graves – sought information and leverage to aid her climb to the top.
Suleiman (Mentioned) – information and leverage over him proved hard to find.
Carter(First Appearance) – Old “friend” of Diana’s. Enlisted to instigate trouble in Presidents Row.
The Patriots (Mentioned) – gang operating in Presidents Row.
Jimmy Fingers (First Appearance) – Morganville vagrant, stole Morris’ car for meth. Drowned in chains.
Locations
Jack’s – bar on the edge of Ormwood and Manton, frequented by local Aryan Legion types. Where Morris started his night’s rampage.
After clearing up the gym as best they could, Franco and Jayden took the remains of their victims and of Megan Blaine to the pickup under the cover of night. They drove the lot to a forgettable alley in the Montgomery Projects where Jayden could get a good look at the bodies and see what answers he could uncover from Ms. Blaine. Her body was fresh, no more than a day dead, the soft tissues were entirely missing without any disturbance of the skin save for two large wounds that resembled deep knife wounds and smelled most strongly of the acrid scent Franco had noticed. The three suits had nothing in their pockets save rolls of small-denomination bills and a single playing card – a Jack of the same style as the one in Ms Blaine’s purse. No leads, but at least it went a little way toward funds for repairing the gym. They set the pickup and bodies alight and walked into the night to seek further leads.
Without any other ideas, they tried the number on the card again. A landline. Who used a landline these days? But that meant they could look him up in phone records, so they did and found a Gregor Rosetti and the number listed with an address for a small apartment in the backstreets of Fallon Heights. The scoped out the area and Jayden headed to the front door while Franco scaled the fire escape and lurked near the windows in Urhan form to better sniff out what was going on.
Jayden was able to talk his way in by claiming Megan was a client of his and he was concerned because he had not heard from her in several days. Rosetti, a wiry nervous wreck of a young man, was happy to be able to speak up, concerned as he was about her. With only a little prompting from Jayden, he talked about the Ladybird Room, his own experience of losing money and having to work as a dealer to make it back, with a side hustle of giving people cards to get them in. He was sure something unpleasant was going on, organised crime or something similar, but “Mr G” had made it clear he had not had a choice.
All was going so well until he caught sight of the huge wolf watching from the fire escape, one paw scrabbling at the window to open enough of a gap to catch the scents of the room. Rosetti stammered, stumbled and collapsed as fear-fuelled adrenaline accelerated the effects of the venom that Franco smelled in his veins. The same smell that had been in Blaine’s body and on the fangs of the suits. Only Jayden’s quick thinking and an unconventional application of Essence manipulation saved Rosetti’s life and the two slipped away while he was still unconscious, taking with them several Ladybird Room playing cards from the set on Rosetti’s kitchen counter.
At the Ladybird Room
The Ladybird Room turned out to be a nondescript door in a forgettable alley on the northern edge of Fallon Heights. The goon on the door had long hair but otherwise dressed identically to the three suits who had attacked the guys in the gym earlier that evening, but a flash of one of the cards from Rosetti’s deck opened the door without him taking a second look at the wolves in human clothing.
Inside the door was a study in old money written in shades of red and black. Two dozen people were gathered about antique tables, crimson-backed cards and crumpled dollar bills splayed out on worn black leather and of age-stained mahogany. Several more of the suited men stood at the fringes of the room, one serving drinks from behind a long hardwood bar while his comrades leaned by doors or against the curtains of burgundy velvet that lined the walls. Soft classical music wafts through air thick with tobacco smoke, old beer and the stink of desperation. A few heads turned as the door opened but most were too invested in their games to pay it any heed.
Jayden and Franco split up, found seats at games and started to play to lose, hoping to attract Mr G’s attention and be offered the same deal as Rosetti. An hour of ‘terrible luck’ later and one of the suits rested a meaty hand on Jayden’s shoulder, inviting him into the back room to speak to the boss. Mr G. turned out to be a beetle-eyed old man so corpulent that he barely fitted behind the heavy desk that dominated the back room, and he offered Jayden a chance to work off the extensive debt he owed the house, starting in two weeks time when the Ladybird Room would next open.
They discussed the plan over a drink afterward and decided that twoweeks was too long to leave things, so instead would come back the next morning and get the drop on whoever might be there, when there were less of the Herd present to see things they should not.
The next morning, it took several minutes of knocking to get attention of one of the suits inside. In a moment of low cunning, he invited Franco in to look for the mobile phone he said he had misplaced the night before, inviting him to join them for ‘breakfast’. Any intention of taking advantage of this poor lost intruder quickly disappeared as Franco unleashed the wolf and tore the door open for Jayden to join him inside. And all was chaos and destruction. The suits dogpiling Jayden only succeeded in provoking him into rage and the end of those who attacked him, while the others assaulted Franco with silver blades and cut burning wounds into his flesh, only for him to dive headlong into kuruth.
Even armed with silver, the suits were naught to the power of two enraged uratha and the room was soon quiet save for Mr G in the next room, watching and fuming. He cursed them in English and the First Tongue before exploding out of his skin into an immense nightmare of chitin, claws and hissing chelicerae. Blood, pain and vengeance filled the air. The thing that had been Mr G crushed Jayden in an immense claw, shearing bone and flesh like paper before tossing him the length of the room, before gutting Franco with a misshapen collection of secondary limbs. In fury, Franco tore the offending claws from G’s thorax, but before they hit the ground they had been caught by Jayden and driven deep into the spider-thing’s body, smashing his chitinous carapace apart and shattering into a thousand fragmentary spider things. The rage destroyed it all, room and spiders and all.
In summary…
People Appearing
Franco Larsen – solved problems in the most direct way possible.
Jayden Clearwater – talked his way to the Ladybird Room, and to talk to its boss.
Gregor Rosetti (First Identifed) – terrified that poor Megan had got into trouble, afraid for his own skin, dying.
After some final discussion with Suleiman, the three left the unsettling silence of the abandoned school. The lights and life of the city bloomed about them as they drove through the gates, leaving a very ordinary looking building behind, nothing like the abandoned relic they had met Suleiman in.
The next morning, Jane had her first day of work at Condor Acquistions and was privy to Diana’s grand plan to find whoever owned what throughout the city so that she could leverage and buy them out, climbing to the top rather than “scurrying in the dirt and ruins” as she saw ‘fools’ like Suleiman doing. To that end, Jane was set to work finding suitable property to acquire in Harton, Lockham and Manton and she gladly interpretted that as an excuse to get out of te office.
It was in the breezy, boho streets of Harton that she smelled it. The sharp-sweet tang of suffering hung in the long shadows cast by the great sycamore in the heart of Moth Park and as Jane drew closer a half-seen mirage found her – two figures, low and loping between two and four limbs, chased a third, a woman, through foliage and hedgerow until they set savagely upon her. Unsettled by the experience, Jane caught the eye of a concerned passerby, a congenial older man who introduced himself as Peter Grey, who had seen nothing of Jane’s vision but listend to her words without judgement. He grew quiet when she asked about strange thing happening in the park, before telling her about a girl who had been found dead in the culvert a couple of years previously. Such a tragedy, dying so young.
After the conversation died and they parted ways, Jane continued into Harton, noting buildings and wondering how exactly she was supposed to find places for Condor to buy when she caught sight of a bookshop. Something about it caught her eye and called to her, and she stepped inside. Within was an eclectic mix of academia, literature and esoterica, a scattering of browsing customers, and a tall woman who Jane knew was like her. After letting Jane call in Diana, the woman – who introduced herself as Nicole Morgan, owner of the White Raven – spun a tale about being “monsters, beasts of nightmares and legends wrapped in human flesh”, of Hungers and the need to control them lest be rules by them, and of a Dark Mother who they were all Children of. Jane was interested but Diana was nonplussed, having no time to waste on superstitions when she was running late for a meeting.
Welcome to the Row
That meeting was with Megan Roth of Ormwood Development to discuss a contract for Condor involving properties in Presidents Row. Ormwood Development had interest in the area as part of a later phase of the Ormwood Development Project. Officially, the project was for management of several properties in the Row, but if people in the area were to happen to sell their properties to Condor then Ormwood Development would be happy to buy them in turn for a suitable markup. After Diana’s expertise in handling things in Willowgate, it was felt that such talent for closing would be well suited to this contract.
Sensing a chance to twist things to her own advantage, Diana took advantage of her new gifts to squeeze further details and a far better deal out of Megan. If she could acquire the commercial properties in the block within a month, Ormwood Development would buy them back at 45% above market value. Diana dismissed Megan once the deal was agreed and luxuriated in the sense of power she had exerted. Feeding on the weak felt good.
That afternoon, Jane and Diana took their first excursion to the Row to get a feel for the area Condor would have to acquire. It was a worn down stretch of Ormwood on the far side of the Interstate from Willowgate, full of cheap retail and cheaper housing decorated with Stars and Stripes gang signs. The block ODP wanted was one of a dozen that formed an impromptu retail strip, backed by unimportant tenements and duplexes and dotted with empty lots.
They started with the dingy bar on the corner and immediately felt the air sour when they appeared. Out of place with too much money for somewhere like this. The barkeep tried to talk to them but was crushed into silenced by an empowered glare from Diana. Attempts to find weak points to attack only soured things and earned glares from a stern-faced old man proudly wearing a MAGA hat. They moved on, trying the pawn shop instead and found Diana’s planned patter getting called bullshit by the brutish man behind the counter.
The barber was the only one to listen to Diana’s proposal. A young man with a perfectly trimmed beard who was interested in the idea of selling so that he could set up shop somewhere with more money than the Row. That would have been enough to count as a good start if Diana’s inhuman senses had not seen something other to the man, a hint of sanguine chains about his neck and the copper tang of blood on his breath. What was happening in the Row?
People Appearing
Jane Barrows – Encountered strange experiences and people in Harton.
Diana Graves – Explored new opportunities in Presidents Row for Ormwood Development.
Peter Grey(First appearance) – Genial older man met in Moth Park. Concerned by Jane’s reaction to something he could not see.
Nicole Morgan(First Appearance) – Eerie bookstore owner. Encountered by Jane by chance when she stumbled into the White Raven, told Jane and Diana something of themselves.
Megan Roth – Formalised the Presidents Row contract with Condor and was squashed under Diana’s Hunger.
Joe Halligan(First appearance) – Owner of Halligans bar in Presidents Row, shocked into silence by Diana in an effort to force a sale later.
Jayden Green(First appearance) – Employee of 5 Circle Couriers, resisted having a wedge driven between himself and his boss by Diana and Jane.
Tom Paulsen(First appearance) – Pawnbroker in Presidents Row. Talked big, made implied threats and called Diana a bullshit artist.
Emanuel Farelli (First appearance) – Barber in Presidents Row. Pleasant fellow, ameanable to selling to expand business.
Locations
Moth Park – worn-down inner city park dominated by an immense sycamore, where Jane saw afterimages of a woman hunted and met Peter Gray.
White Raven – independent book shop in Harton, large selection of classics, academia and “esoterica”.
It started mid evening. Franco was closing up the gym after the last of the attendees had finished for the day, helped out by Terry, off-duty and looking for something to do. They had just started to lock up when Franco noticed it. The high pitched whine of an alarm insistently telling a driver who wasn’t there that they’d left their keys in the ignition. There was a pickup sitting down the road, just short of the junction, too clean and new to be local. Franco decided to take a look, catching the scent of something sharp under the lingering diesel fumes coming from a crumpled garbage bag in the truck’s bed. The bag was too small to be a body so he split it open to get a better look and was greeted with crumpled remains, emaciated skin and bone still wearing a nice cocktail dress, blonde hair framing an eyeless face, all fuming with that acrid acid stink.
While Terry finished losing his lunch, Franco turned to the rest of the truck. It was as empty as a rental, except for a woman’s purse stuffed under the driver’s seat. Inside was an ID for a Megan Blaine, with a face that shared the same bone structure and hair as the remains in the bag, as well as a single playing card with a name ‘Gregor R.’ and a phone number. Terry called a friend in BPD dispatch to run the plates on the truck while Franco tried the number on the card. The pickup’s plates came back clean and listed as owned by a Jack Weatherall of 823 Rosewater Street, while Franco got a jittery man on the other end who denied knowing anything and hung up quickly.
Attention
Without any more leads, the two went to get Jayden to get an expert’s opinion. This was the sort of thing he was supposed to know about. Franco rebagged the remains of Ms Blaine and placed her in the footwell of the truck, locked it and took the keys to secure the evidence. Wisely done, for as he, Terry and Jayden returned to the gym they saw people lurking by the pickup. A trio of big guys in dark suits and shades stood around the abandoned vehicle, paying no heed to passers by as they watched the surrounding buildings. After a several minutes they turned as one and headed for the gym, where one of their number demanded the keys to the truck with thick, slurring speech. Franco played innocent but the men were insistent and soon became violent.
A brawl erupted as the men pushed into the gym to reclaim the keys. The pack limited themselves to fists and improvised weapons, giving as good as they got until a lucky blow from Franco shattered one of the suits’ glasses to reveal eyeless sockets beneath, a hundred pinpricks of crimson glittering deep in the recesses of the skull. With his disguise shattered, the leader growled a gutteral order to kill and the suits shifted tactics, grappling and biting with long arthropoid fangs from mouths split open too wide for mere human, each bite pumping burning venom into their foes.
Rage stirred in Jayden at this monstrous inhumanity and the wolf came out, sending the suits skittering back in knowing fear. Franco followed suit and the two tore the three things that pretended to be men apart, one claw shearing a skull open to reveal a bloated spider-thing squatting in the partially hollowed cranium. A second blow eviscerated the thing before it could escape.
Even as their foes lay in ruin at his feet, Jayden could not pull himself from kuruth and descended into the hard rage. Franco tried to fight back or to escape and found himself falling into the rage as well.
The two awoke in the mangled ruin of the gym. Wood splintered, metal shattered and the hot wet taste of fresh meat in their mouths. Jayden retched and felt two human fingers fall into his hand, one still bearing Franco’s wedding ring.
In Summary…
People Appearing
Franco Larsen (First Appearance) – Trying not to get involved until someone dumped a body on his turf.
Terry Burton (First Appearance) – Unready for the horror and destruction that comes with facing prey.
Shadows and Loss was a short chronicle set in Blackmouth that ended due to the Covid Pandemic of 2020-. It follows the story of a small pack as they carve their place in the concrete jungle of the City of Arches, wrestling with urges and mysteries beyond the understanding of the mortal herd.
The Pack
Jayden Clearwater: Haunted former fraudulent occultist now facing the reality of the Hisil and the complexities of being an Ithaeur of the Hirfathra Hissu.
Franco Larsen: Ex-prize fighter turned gym-owner, newly changed Uratha not yet sure of his place in the Hunt.
Terry Burton: Lantern-jawed fire fighter, unlucky in love and trying to find a place with people who understand him.
Carter Johnson: Monumentally angry young man trying to cope with the complications and aftermath of his rage.
Chapters
One Quiet Evening – A quiet evening is disrupted by a grisly discovery.
Parlor Games – In which leads are followed and wolves are invited into the spider’s den.
Threads and Chains – In which a simple haunting proves to be anything but.
Once, Ormwood was a sister town to Blackmouth with its own rich history stretching back to its colonial founding. It was a place of rich estates and elegant townhouses, public gardens and wide tree-lined avenues, somewhere beyond the grime of Blackmouth for well-heeled types to live. As the city rushed outward in the early years of the twentieth century it was absorbed by the urban sprawl and has gone downhill ever since. Townhouses became tenements, architecture was blackened by smoke and graffiti and the trees and parks choked in neglect. The coming of the Interstate ended any dreams of Ormwood ever returning to past glories, crushing century-old architecture under hot asphalt and splitting the corpse into two.
Farthest west, the wide streets of Westwood curve around the contours of the hills, lined with the best-kept remnants of Ormwood’s lost finery. Stout Georgian townhouses look down toward the ocean and crumbling statues of past luminaries cast long shadows over the gardens that lie about them. Below Westwood, trapped against the concrete spine of I-95, lie the avenues of Willowgate, once a place of gentlemanly shopping and leisure now slowly rotting as the world has moved on. Its avenues are lined with smoke-choked trees, shops struggling on as their neighbours fail and aging billboards proclaiming visions of redevelopment that no-one believes will happen. Only the churches seem to have resisted the decline and even then only barely as faith can only do so much against time.
The decline only deepens east of I-95. The interstate is the only true boundary Ormwood has left, as the slums of Yardley and tenements of Manton gnaw at the fringes. Things are worst in the streets of Kingston where gangland struggles decorate the avenues with tags, bullet holes and blood. In contrast, Presidents Row almost thrives as an impromptu retail strip fed by the Interstate and suburbanites slumming it for low prices. In between lie Five Circles, favoured by day by commuters as an alternate route into the city and by night by those seeking cheap beer or numbing music.
Locations
Willowgate Arcade – the centrepiece of Willowgate, now scheduled for demolition.
Sebastian Park – faded park on the edge of Willowgate.
Jacks – bar on the north edge of Willowgate, formerly frequented by members of the Aryan Legion, burned in a tragic accident.
Four weeks have passed since the incident with the tree and Willowgate Arcade is experiencing a final hurrah before closing. Most of the stores within running closing down sales to allow them to make as much as they can before they have to leave businesses that have been their only livelihoods. A notable exception is Mayfair Tobacco, which closed several weeks ago when Morris Mayfair had a sudden change of heart about selling up, took Diana’s offer and thus forced the rest of the Arcade to sell for a pittance or risk losing everything. His name is mud, but a quarter million dollars in the bank assuaged the guilt. Among the bargain hunters, gawkers and occasional tourists are people who came back to see the Arcade for one last time before it is demolished. They spend much of the day sitting about the atrium under the stone tree, chatting among themselves, trading stories of the old days and sipping expensive Pequods coffees.
That evening the 18th floor penthouse of the Alabaster Building plays host to another party celebrating the arcade – a celebration by Ormwood Development upper management of the largest hurdle to completion of Phase One removed, on time and under budget. Diana is the toast of the occasion for her excellent work, praised before the assembled VPs by the president of Ormwood Development himself. Her new perceptions easily sense the greed and lust that drive him, enabling her to charm him with ease. More worryingly she also senses a faint ethereal thread descending from the sky, Coleman dancing like a puppet to its every movement.
As the evening draws on, Diana is finally able to make time for Melanie Roth, who congratulates her and makes an offer of further work for Condor both through gritted teeth. A minor matter, site management for a location in east Ormwood intended for Phase 2, and if others in the location were to decide to sell up then there would be bonuses. They arrange to do lunch to discuss things before escaping each others’ company. Diana is partway through a bland conversation with an equally bland VP when things begin to go wrong.
Unexpected Visitors
It begins with the hedgerows in the roof garden, neatly groomed and equisitely kept borders begin to grow wild and tangled as roses grow toothsome and wail. Confusion spreads through the party, followed by unease and then fear as a gaunt and alien figure steps from behind one of the hedges with a razor-edged sickle in one hand. Coleman’s security hurry him out and the room follows suit as they realise something very wrong is happening. Jane has arrived, unannounced and unintentionally, and the party is very much over.
Elsewhere, that evening, Morris is directing some of his new employees to put the finishing touches to his gym. It was Big Jimmy’s idea, really more of a suggestion between friends, that he should use the money from selling up to open a gym. Hire someone else to manage day to day and Morris doesn’t have to do anything except get in the ring when he wants to. A lot of Jimmy’s guys are planning to sign up, many of them more than once and even those not planning to use the facilities. Jimmy takes a cut off the top, Morris keeps the rest and both turn a tidy profit. It’s nearly the end of the day when there’s a knock at the door, a wiry looking student asks if he does lessons. Morris takes a look at her, something in him stirs – she smells of adrenaline and moonlit nights, of family – and he figures she can get a free lesson today and maybe more. She says her name’s Krystal and doesn’t need to say more. The way she carries herself, the need to fight to defend herself and the bandages under long sleeves all say enough. “They had a dog” is about all she says, and knows he knows the rest.
Questions and Answers
Later on, as he’s mulling things over, Diana calls after the unscheduled end of the party. The three of them need to meet to discuss things, set some ground rules and not cause any more problems. To the Arcade, the basement calls to them all and demolition doesn’t start until tomorrow. Except when they get there, the place is lit up with halogens, a flatbed sits outside waiting for something big and the sound of cutting stone is audible from the street. They spot Hank among the work crew and ask what’s going on. There’s a work order to remove the tree tonight and ship it to a warehouse in the east of the city, all signed off and correct with an offer of triple time overtime.
Diana tells Morris about Jane’s stunt once they are somewhere secluded, an alleyway has to do when the basement is gone. He is less concerned with her worries about what happened, says wierd stuff happens all the times and it will be written off as a conspiracy or fake news or a movie and that’s exactly what the comments on the video say. That doesn’t placate Diana but before she can properly answer her phone rings. It’s Mel, finally replying to four weeks of missed calls and texts. They meet her in Sebastian Park and find her quiet, subdued and smoking, all of which are new. She apologies for being incommunicado, there were apparently things that had to be done after the incident with the tree, and now her master wants to meet the three of them.
Mel drives the three outside the city, up onto the hills to an abandoned school or college where they meet Suleiman for the first time. A quietly intense man, he wishes to know what the three saw when they encountered the Tree and offers to trade information for information. In exchange for their descriptions of the dreams and the beach, he gives them several warnings – that the world is home to many strange beings, most of whom try to keep their existences secret for various reasons and may be upset if approached the wrong way, and that they should beware vampires for they are real, territorial and the city is rife with them. He also expressed an interest in Ormwood Development and Willowgate, suggesting he would be willing to trade knowledge for knowledge if the three happened to come across such things.
People Encountered
Alan Coleman (First Appearance) – President of Ormwood Development. Present at Ormwood Development cocktail party to celebrate completion of Willowgate Arcade purchasing.
Megan Roth – Ormwood Development VP, Present at Ormwood Development cocktail party to celebrate completion of Willowgate Arcade purchasing.
Krystal Garner (First Appearance) – Sought boxing lessons for self-defence at Morris’ gym.
Hank Torres – leading the work crew removing the tree from Willowgate.
Mel– finally answered Diana’s calls, brought the three to meet Suleiman.
Suleiman(First Appearance) – Mage, Mel’s teacher. Wished to know more about the three, warned them about some dangers of the world, talked about souls.
Knowest thou how to cut? Knowest thou how to rule? Knowest thou how to win? Knowest thou how to tempt? Knowest thou how to ask? Knowest thou how to bleed? Knowest thou how to kill? Knowest thou how to sacrifice?
The words of the tree
The Dead Man and the Tree
It began with the dead man found by the great stone tree that forms the centerpiece of Willowgate Arcade. Shocking to encounter and sad to consider that someone was forced to break into the Arcade to find some shelter from the autumn cold, but a sad fact of life in a city such as Blackmouth. No-one even knew his name. Some put flowers at the base of the tree in memoriam but life moved on, but not for all. Three of those who found the body – Morris Mayfair, brusque tobacconist and man’s man, Jane Barrows, hurrying to open her parents’ convenience store before class, and Diana Graves, present in the Arcade see it torn it down – remember something differently: that the man was found hung from the branches of the stone tree by chains of wrought iron, that it had taken three people and a pair of bolt cutters to bring him down, and that his lips had moved soundlessly when they found him, spelling out alien words without the breath to voice them.
Things began to fall apart then. First came the dreams. All three had often suffered through troubled nights, dreaming of old fears and sins buried but not forgotten, but now they came with renewed intensity and interspersed with images of the hanged man and the tree. Diana suffered the worst of it, unable to sleep because of the stink of rot that permeated the home she had made of her office in the Arcade. She turned to nocturnal exploration of the Arcade to find and stop the stench, found the building had more structure than the plans she had and irritations grew into obsessions.
Then the visits began. First were the Save Old Ormwood protestors who assiduously avoided doing anything that could have allowed Diana to have them removed, their leader Layla Spenser chatting pleasantly with the Blackmouth PD patrol officers who came by when Diana tried to have them ejected. Then came the nocturnal visitor, a young woman who was fascinated by the tree and equally so by Diana. She introduced herself as Mel and offered help investigating and resolving the strange happenings, yet avoided giving any details.
Beneath the Roots
Problems began to spin out of control. Voiceless whispers echoed in the central atrium of the arcade in the quiet hours. Diana felt herself being watched even when alone. Layla Spenser returned, this time with cryptic warnings and a plea for Diana not to go ahead with plans to demolish the Arcade. Research uncovered a dark history to Ormwood and the Willoughby family, and investigations revealed the presence of a basement not on the current plans, sealed up 30 years prior, and Diana became obsessed with unsealing it. All while trying to charm, cajole or strongarm the remaining businesses into selling up, and being defeated at every turn by Morris.
The basement was opened with a yawning silence and Diana quickly descended into it, volunteering Hank to come with a light to cut through the gloom. Beneath the arcade lay a tangled maze of access corridors and the remnants of heating ducts, many of their pipes torn out and repurposed into an attempt at a circle that filled the room that lay beneath the atrium. Rusting remnants to one side showed it had been a boiler room but now it was dominated by a complex branching network of stone roots, as if the carved tree above had grown down into the void below. The broken pipes had been formed into circle of copper and lead about the outer edge of where the roots grew, while the air was thick with darkness and a susurrus of voices whispering unknown words. Jane quickly began recording them, having followed Diana into the darkness with Morris, before things went wrong. Unnoticed by anyone, Hank had begun mouthing the words, eyes staring at the tree as he began trying to carve open his wrists with the edge of a chisel. Morris’s quick actions stopped him from doing so and retreat from the darkness was decided to be wise.
Truths and more mysteries were revealed in quick succession. Mel returned, bringing a friend and was horrified at what had happened and what lay beneath the Arcade. She spoke of abysses and verges, of ley lines and of the complex but amateurish binding that was woven around the tree, and of magic. Her friend Carmine called the three sleepwalkers because he could not find a better term for them. The tree was unknown but obviously dangerous, and it was calling to the three of them, Diana in particular. The words the whispers had spoken were Old Norse and had been the same ones the hanged man had tried to speak with his last, breathless moments.
Into Nightmares
Mel and Carmine advised caution with the unknown, that they would seek further information before any rash actions were taken, but a moment of madness threw such caution to the wind. Diana knew the tree was offering something and almost paid its price for it before hestating at the last moment, at which point Morris saw a chance to be rid of the meddlesome realtor and offered her to the tree. Jane found herself pointing a gun at a man who was almost family and as ambition, betrayal and disgust filled the air the world fell away into frozen moment, then darkness and nothing more.
Each of the three found themselves lost deep in their nightmares – Diana in the burning tenement, Morris drowing in the mire and Jane lost in the screaming, thorn-filled garden. Unlike before, these nightmares did not end and instead repeated in lucid eternities of torment, while they could feel others caught in that eternal moment and suffering with them. After a timeless age, each turned from their personal pain to the others lost with them and in doing so they faced their nightmares. They saw that they were mirrors without a reflection, as hollow and incomplete as they were, wishing to be whole. In that moment of completeness and of reaching out to others, the three awoke but not to the world they knew.
The three awoke on a broad beach of black sand beneath alien stars, while far out to sea something resembled the tree was slowly sinking into the still, black sea. It must have been immense for it seemed to be descending achingly slowly, almost as if the sea is savouring the consumption of the fallen thing. The beach itself was calmingly still, blown only by a gentle sea breeze that carried scents of forgotten days until the wind shifted and a familiar scent of stone and smoke, the smell of city, blew over the three from a yawning cave mouth set back from the sea. Confused and disorientated, they walked to the cave and stepped through as they felt something call to them.
Awareness of the world returned and they found themselves back in the basement of the Arcade, confused and yet at peace. The thing in the tree was gone, the basement was silent and nothing would be the same.
People Encountered
Hank Torres(First appearance) – head of Ormwood Development work crew.
Fred Spears (First appearance) – Custodian of Willowgate Arcade, has no fucks left to give.
Layla Spenser (First appearance) – leading Save Old Ormwood protest, knew things about the Tree.
Daniel Matthews(First appearance) – PI hired by Morris to investigate Diana.
Mel(First appearance) – Encountered by Diana when poking around the Tree.
Carmine(First appearance) – Contact of Mel’s, asked by her to help.
Locations
Willowgate Arcade (First appearance) – 19th century shopping arcade targetted for demolition, noted for the unusual stone tree decorating its central concourse.
