Dekker Street Station

Dekker Street Station is an abandoned subway station under Dekker Street in Lennox Circle. Constructed in the late 19th century, it was an integral part of the first wave of subway construction in the city. The station, however, faced numerous challenges due to budget limitations, which prevented it from receiving necessary upgrades over time. As a result, Dekker Street Station eventually ceased its operations in 1970, during a period of widespread cutbacks that led to the closure of several stations deemed too costly to modernize.

In Modern Nights

Today Dekker Street is one of the "ghost stations" of Blackmouth, abandoned subway stations that have become dangerous magnets for urban explorers and groups that prefer to avoid the exposure of the streets above. While all the ghost stations are considered hazardous and risky to explore, with numerous rumours about explorers trying to access them and never coming back, Dekker Street has a reputation for being particularly dangerous and difficult to access. This is because it has been claimed as territory by the Wardens werewolf pack, who jealously guard it as against any intrusion with layers of traps, alarms and wards to keep out the unwelcome.

If someone was to penetrate those defences, they would find an archaic subway station with a great arched ceiling over a floor of granite slabs worn uneven by nearly a century of foot traffic. Something that resembles a homeless encampment fills the station now. A collection of mismatched and scavenged furniture surrounds a firepit beside an vintage subway car, now more rust and peeling paint than recognisable metal. Rough holes in the walls allow electrical cables to tap into the city's power supply above, providing limited electricity. Similarly, plumbing has been rigged up to provide water, sanitation, and cleansing facilities.

The walls are adorned with with extensive graffiti and street art, depicting stylized neon landscapes and symbolic objects. Interestingly, none of the artwork contains any written words. The graffiti exhibits a proto-vaporwave/witch-house style, with an abundance of stylized imagery featuring wolves, moons, and uratha claw-mark glyphs rendered in vibrant spray paint. The furthest wall from the central living area is dedicated to images of stylised figures, each accompanied by a carved glyph of a deed-name and a handful of small rocks stained with the rusty remnants of old, lond-dried blood. The first depiction portrays a tall male figure dressed in shades of crimson and black, arms raised amidst snapping chains. The second image depicts a female figure with raised arms, illuminated by a lightning bolt in the background. The third illustration showcases a male figure with brilliant eyes and a wicked smile, his hands dripping with black water.

On the far side of the station from these memorials is the ritual centre of the pack's territory. At its heart a mosaic adorns the wall where a grand staircase once descended from the streets above, now long-sealed with concrete and new construction. The mosaic fills the wall with a forest canopy, branches running up the ruined stairs with two great oaks forming an art nouveau frame about the centrepiece of the work, a glade with a dolmen door standing in it, starlight glinting even in the gloom of the subway. Stones and pieces of concrete and brick have been laid in a semi circle about the mosaic. Claw-glyphs have been raked into stone and filled with paint, forming sigils of zodiac signs, of the moon in all her faces and a hundred different forms of wards. This is the Gate of Silence, the place the wardens take their name from, and sometimes things stir from here. Offerings have been left in places on the stones - flowers that remains green and fresh longer than they should, sharp flint and hand-crafted iron arrowheads. This is a place of power, a locus. It resonates with a strange sense of liminality - the place between, the emptiness between one state and another, a hollow and alienating sensation that makes one feel diminished yet also resonate with potential beyond.

Inhabitants

• The werewolf members of the Wardens all spend part of their time in Dekker Street, though only Morrigan and Jack Crow treat it as their primary home.
• Nirithall-igim, the totem spirit of the Wardens has a strong bond to Gate of Silence and spends much of its time there.
• Justice and Joey Nine-Claws, the last survivors of Atlas pack of rat spirits, have laid claim to the Hisil shadows around Dekker Street. They are currently tolerated.