Okay, so more than a little behind, but it’s been a busy and distracting couple of weeks. And then after I put together this write-up I forgot to post it. Last time we kind of left off mid-scene*, so it might not be a terrible idea to refresh your memory at the last post.
So we left off with the group still talking to Deborah and going through Andy’s notes. There’s not a whole lot more help Deb’s got to offer the group overall, though, especially as the concern is more about finding a building that doesn’t exist any more. It’s become clear that one of the sites where Florence left those railroad spikes is the old tannery, which burned down decades ago and there aren’t a lot of contemporary records or easily-found maps that lay out an address.** They consider going back into town and stepping sideways to see if the place still has an Umbral reflection, but it’s been long enough that it’s a little shaky and it’s not exactly a great time to do that at the moment anyhow. Also, as Jerry points out, Andy certainly would have tried that himself at some point.
But they look through Andy Stump’s notes, finding some modern maps and a bunch of historic photos that look like they were printed off at a library. He also had printouts from the National Register of Historic Places with details about some of the buildings in town. But between the maps and the photos, they manage to deduce the location of the old tannery thanks to the positioning of various hills and the Greenbrier River. Ironically, the location of the place was in a field right next to where Andy Stump lived. And as much as the pack wants to go check out the site, it’s also late and they’ve had an extremely busy day so they decide to lie low for a couple of days.
A couple of days later, when it’s rainy and cold and miserable, they roll back into town to find more cops out and about. There are feds in the area investigating the slaughter of the Stumps the other day (led by an FBI agent with Special Affairs Division named Barbara Martin). The Kinfolk that the pack had dragged outside the town to interrogate and later killed has been found by the authorities, who are trying to see if there’s any link. Rumors are floating around about the Romany family (Claudiu’s Kin) that took off about the same time and so the cops are trying to track them down for questioning.
Also, the police are investigating a break-in at the Oddfellows Lodge building where the pack had been dealing with the Registrar. Jerry peeks across the Gauntlet and sees that the place looks like it’s been boarded up. They find spot to step sideways and check it out themselves and see a number of Weaver-spirits patrolling the streets, likely the result of the recent police and FBI activity. They get into the Lodge but the building seems mostly empty except for the Registrar who oversees it. He explains that someone -- likely Kinfolk -- broke in and started tearing up the place. And were it not for the increased law enforcement presence from the fight the other day, they might have found what they were looking for (assumed to be Florence Slavin’s railroad spike).
The pack is torn on what to do about that. They consider borrowing the spike to keep it safe, but they’re worried about whether that will sever the little pocket-realm’s connection to the Cave of Secrets and what issues that might cause with the side-effects of the Registrar’s occasional meddling with human dreams. The Registrar tries to assure them that the odds of an incident in however much time it takes to resolve this are really slim, but Jerry’s still concerned.
He considers going back to the sept to see if there’s anyone who can rent out the building for a few days so the pack can justify staying there to keep it secure and watch the spike. But we wind up having to leave off as the group is arguing the logistics of such a thing.
*-- My players’ schedules have been pretty rough on us lately, leading to shorter sessions than we’re used to, in case that hasn’t been made clear until now.
**-- As someone who actually spent hours researching the real Marlinton with materials available online, I can vouch for this. Now, that said, I’d be more than open to handling it if people wanted to try searching through library records and such in town, they’d get more that way, but my point is that researching from afar is difficult.
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