Apologies for the hiatus. Had a few things come up at once, including a freelancing deadline and some last minute difficulties, that made it difficult to focus and block out the time to go someplace where I could write these up. I'd put them both in the same post but there's actually a bit of an in-character time jump between sessions so for the sake of comprehension they're being split up.
Here's the first one. Apologies again for the delay.
So where we left off, Jerry was headed back to the Cave of Secrets to try and ask it if there's something that could be done to deal with the Registrar's tendency to summon sleepwalkers to its location. With Deborah's help, they speak to the Cave and it informs them that there is a chamber that could be linked to the lodge's 'umbral pocket' and used as kind of a filter. Deb leads him to a room lined with various crystals (enough crystals to make Dr. Dinosaur blush), like being inside a giant geode. The Cave explains to Jerry that the little pocket realm located in town must be powered by some sort of 'anchor' piece. And if Jerry takes a crystal from the chamber and puts it with the anchor piece, they can link the realm to the cave and disperse some of the energy from the Registrar's powers. The link could also potentially be used as a portal, under the right circumstances.
Once the pack reconnects, Claudiu expresses some concern with potentially creating a back door into the cave. The Registrar informs him that any such link would have to be opened by appropriate entities on both ends to be of any use. So only if the Registrar and the Cave agree, could any portal be opened.
Now the main question was where to find the anchor piece. The pack returned to the physical world and went over the building with a fine-toothed comb, finding a lot of the original structure intact (one of the advantages of using a real world location with buildings that are listed in the NRHP is that there's plenty of documentation about the physical building and its history). At one point they hit on the idea of going to the county courthouse to find if the original blueprints are in a records room somewhere. So they wait until that evening to go after it.
There's actually a bit of disagreement over how to proceed at this point. Jerry just wants to use Wuxing to screw up the power cables to cut the electricity, have Wants-to-Know pick the lock (despite being a lupus, he's the best equipped to manage locked doors) and go in to take pictures of the blueprints with a cell phone. Wants-to-Know would do the whole thing himself but he doesn't know enough about human bureaucracy or blueprints to find what they're looking for. But for the most part they're not too worried about the break-in. It's a Sunday evening, after all, who could be in there? And being in the National Radio Quiet Zone, there are restrictions on what sorts of technology could be used to protect the building. Åke keeps trying to plot out a more complex heist (for some reason, Åke really thinks that it would be best if Wants-to-Know can quickly learn how to use a cell phone to do the whole thing himself), but Claudiu is pretty firmly of the opinion that they could just go kick in the door and beat up anyone in the building as long as they get the situation taken care of.
So they go with the initial plan. Jerry uses the Wuxing gift to turn vital parts of the power lines into wood to temporarily cut the power and make it look like simple mechanical failure when it reverts and the power returns. Wants-to-Know picks the lock and Jerry slips in. There's a janitor in the building but he manages to get down to the appropriate records room, copy the files in question, and get out of there.
The pack regroups to go over the files, finding that the architect for the lodge building is officially unknown (as it is in real life), but in their notes they see that someone listed only as "F. Slavin" insisted they put a railroad spike within the walls of the chimney. Åke feels around in the chimney and finds a loose brick with a gap behind it that does contain a railroad tie. The metal spike has a feeling of power to it (though it's not a fetish of any sort) and it has a glyph etched into it, like the Glass Walker glyph but missing one of the horizontal lines... The glyph of the Iron Riders, back when the Glass Walkers were known as such.
As far as they know, the pack doesn't need to do anything special with the spike and the crystal, so they just tie them together with some string and put them back in the space behind the hole in the chimney. There's a ringing sound and something reverberates through the building.
They step back into the Umbra to find that a door has now appeared in the wall, suggesting at the link between the cave and realm now. It has a peephole but no handle, and as far as the Registrar is concerned everything is fine now.
So now came the time to return to the sept and deal with Wants-to-Know's mistake regarding the guy from the radio telescope he mutilated outside the lodge building. The pack doesn't think any of the standard punishment rites are entirely necessary, and that there's no need to parade his shame in front of everyone outside of a moot. So they get the idea to tattoo him with a mark indicative of what he's done -- specifically, a cartoony picture of a puppy with a bone too big for it in its mouth. They find someone around the sept who can do such a tattoo, using a rite to awaken the spirit of the ink so Wants-to-Know doesn't just regenerate the tattoo out of existence, with the caveat that if he ever does properly make up for his mistake they can get it removed.
Also, before we left off for, Claudiu tracked down Sketches, the Theurge who tipped them off to something going on at the lodge, and lets her know he put in a good word for her with the Registrar to pay her back for the favor she did him some time ago.
And we left off there. The next write-up will come shortly.
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