Hector Interprets Stuff

HECTOR

LOL I DIDN'T MEAN TO LOG IN IN ALL CAPS BUT IT'S JUST GOING TO HAVE TO STAY LIKE THAT

cinder song

Tamsin and Jack came back from their investigation, their umbral scouting, and they both had a story to tell. Naturally, Tamsin told it. Jack probably threw in details, too. Because Jack's the one who brought up caution, said let's go see what Hector thinks. Tamsin told him about their plan: how they came at it from different angles. Tamsin told him about some of the banes and spirits attracted to the place -- about the way it was filling up with fucking shadow; about how solid the church buildings were on the otherside. Tamsin tells him about the woman in the window who she thinks is Opal.

Describes her like she described her to Jack: woman whiter than the white stag like a wailing woman like an omen or a ghost or a vision up there see and she describes that sense of something pulsing under the ground like a fucking heart or a bruise. Describes what they found inside: banes gathered in folding chairs, all around this inverted cross oozing black ichor.

How up the stairwell the pulse recedes, but it's still there. How all the doors were black and sealed exept one that was glowing white just gleaming luminous and shining except where bloodied handprints (small like a woman's) were smeared around and also also how it wasn't solid like the rest. Insubtantial nothing. Says what both she and Jack felt, that white didn't necessarily mean anything good, that they'd wondered what it kept in or what it kept out or if it was both. Throws in some speculation: Opal's spirit powering it somehow? Tying whatever 'it' is to that place? Tells how Jack seemed to figure or maybe Jack says this himself that going through the door might hurt whatever was on the other side and then tells how they went back down and how

How at that inverted, very physical, very present cross, oozing poison or sludge or whatever, just fucking weeping at each point, this murder-spirit bent down and kissed the base and drank the liquid up, and how she thought:

Maybe below, where that beat was coming from, maybe the cross was pointing there, maybe something was whispering up through the liquid, maybe maybe she doesn't know, but there had to be something even darker down there, something maybe tied to an anchor, something in the real world that fixes it all in place, and maybe that has to do with the white spirit on top also because what's below is what's above and she doesn't fucking know

Hector, explain it.

HECTOR

"That's fucked up," Hector says.

[roll 1!

int + occult: the fuck is that woman]

Dice: 4 d10 TN6 (1, 6, 8, 10) ( success x 3 )

HECTOR

[uh i forgot like 3 dice there hang on]

Dice: 3 d10 TN6 (3, 5, 7) ( success x 1 )

HECTOR

[roll 2!

wits + enigmas: the fuck are those banes doing hanging out around that cross thing? will adjust/reroll 10s/whatever when liz comes back.]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 6, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10) ( success x 6 )

HECTOR

[roll 3!

int + occult: the fuck is that cross thing anyway]

Dice: 7 d10 TN6 (3, 4, 4, 6, 9, 9, 10) ( success x 4 )

HECTOR

[10 reroll for roll 2]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (5) ( fail )

HECTOR

[and roll 3]

Dice: 1 d10 TN6 (9) ( success x 1 )

Twilight

Roll 1: Hector imagines that woman is a ghost or a shade or an echo.  He is not confident: the shadows of human souls are not often seen by werewolves beyond those who deal directly with the dark umbra.  The Silent Striders.  The Ivory Priests. 

But if she is a shade or a ghost or something like it, she is not necessarily connected to everything else below.  Ghosts or shades or echoes, they are often tied to something physical, some particular item, or even the memory of violence done to them.  He may wonder: how and where she died. 

And why.  And whether she has reason to linger.

Or even: something to say.

HECTOR

He's gonna hold off on declaring that he's going to go talk to the shade lady until he sorts out what the banes and the cross mean. But table that thought.

Twilight

Roll 2: Somehow the whole thing reminds him of a waiting room, of an NA meeting.  The fucking folding chairs, the kissing the four points of the cross, the lingering in the room, waiting and waiting and waiting, like purgatory, like the waiting room outside heaven.  He thinks absurdly of Beetlejuice if he has seen the movie and he thinks of wheels and movement.  Something is crossing the gauntlet: some sort of strange and terrible transubstantiation, and he thinks - assuredly he thinks that they must be feeding: banes require - emotion, sustenance, violence.   Violent thoughts, violent deeds.   Violent emotions, whipped into a frenzy. 

But then he wonders: and this is something like a revelation, if that passage is both ways. 

How many Wretched, how many Fallen, has he encountered from this place? 

HECTOR

HUGE FUCKING SHIVER from the Uktena.

HECTOR

And maybe some "Fuck fuck fuck fuck"ing.

Twilight

Roll 3:

The cross.  The cross: exists both here and there.  The banes are actively interacting with it.  It oozes something or it draws something across.  The baleful presence and anchored immediacy make him think: oh, a fetish.  A fetish or a focus.  A fetish or a focus or an anchor.  A passageway: a window, a door, a gate to facilitate the transmigration of souls: a dark wyrm fetish to facilitate the creation of Wretched, and to succor and feed those murderspirits waiting for a soul and a skin to ride.

And does not every gate of significance or substance have also: a Gate Keeper.

What else could be down below?

HECTOR

"Please tell me you two chuckleheads didn't go downstairs."

cinder song

"Fucking hell, Hector, part of being a galliard is fucking listening, too. Did I say 'and then we went downstairs and this is what we fucking saw', or did I say nothing of the sort?"

HECTOR

"I got a little distracted by the part with the screaming banshee woman and the Bane waiting room and the fucking upside-down revolving-door cross. You fucking fuck. Am I swearing right?"

cinder song

"No."

HECTOR

"Fuck."

cinder song

"Jackass."

HECTOR

He wraps Tamsin up in a disgusting sloth-octopus hybrid hug and plants a big slobbery one on her cheek.

After she finishes impotently trying to beat his ass he has a brilliant plan. 

cinder song

[AND THEN WE SHOULD LOG OUT and maybe corral Joey for an e-mail scene or something?]