Hunting Loci (Attn: ST, Other Blooded if Desired)

[Nickpire]

Stephanie Ward

Health (Uninjured) | Willpower 4 of 4 | Integrity 7 | Defense 4 | Armor 2/4 | Armed (Pistol) | Status (Deputy Sheriff) 1 | Tell: Liar's Skin | Pack: Storm Chasers

Conditions: Resonant (Nimhur-Zela; Persistent) | Tilts: None

Samson had asked her about looking into police reports and other information sources for local legends, specifically hauntings or anything else that seemed supernatural. She wasn't exactly struggling with the idea, given that most people didn't have wolf pelt beneath their skin, but she had been curious to know why. So Samson had told her about loci; places where the barrier between the worlds was naturally weaker. Where things like the cloud-spirit could slide across more easily, and by token, werewolves. Her older brother's life was really a crapshoot these days...

But he'd said it was important and he knew she was a decent investigator so between her access to police reports and the local Havenswood library and papers, Stephanie got to looking and listening for anything that might fit what Samson was looking for so the pack could investigate.

[Jakondite]

(Apologies, it's been busy lately due to work - will get to this when I have the opportunity. If you see me and I haven't responded yet, poke me - will try to remember it tho)

[Jakondite]

Every bit of lore, and every person was useful for this kind of thing - though likely more useful when they worked together as a unit - even if that unit didn't have the same job, the spirit of the pack - the spirit of Nimhur-Zela - bound them all together in a way most of the mortal elements of this pack did not understand. Stephanie could find out information from her job about superstitions and 'danger zones' for instance in the job.

(Give me a Intelligence + Investigation -3 Roll)

[Nickpire]

Stephanie Ward

Health (Uninjured) | Willpower 3 of 4 | Integrity 7 | Defense 4 | Armor 2/4 | Armed (Pistol) | Status (Deputy Sheriff) 1 | Tell: Liar's Skin | Pack: Storm Chasers

Conditions: Resonant (Nimhur-Zela; Persistent) | Tilts: None

Looked like she was running solo for the moment. No matter, she'd find out what she could. The archives at the Sheriff's office weren't the most organized but they were hopefully complete... relatively. Stephanie was hoping any 'odd' reports had just been buried rather than shredded.

"Here goes nothing..."

[Int 3 + Inv 2+ WP 3 -3 Penalty (9-again): 0 successes]

:

Stephanie has rolled an Investigation roll (5 dice), getting 4, 4, 3, 6, 5, with a difficulty of 8 on a 10 sided die. Stephanie has failed the roll. This roll used the 9-again rule.

[Jakondite]

As the new officer on the force, it wasn't strange for her to be asking questions but... it seemed that somewhere down the line, she'd asked a little too many that were not on topic with learning the job. Her coworkers seemed almost to be exhausted with the amount of questions she asked looking into this task, but she got the information that would be natural to her profession - strange areas that the police tended to either avoid or to keep an eye on, which she and Samson could compare to the rests of the territory.

Within the territory, there was a rumor about the old Meyers house up north - the Meyers were one of the sub-families of the Morrisons, and a lot of people suspected them of child abuse and negligence due to the often pallid skin of their children (a feature that was frankly common in most Morrison families, but somehow the name missing meant people were more brazen about their accusations). The thing was, the house they talked about had long been abandoned by the family -condemned for reasons most of the police didn't know. Sometimes, kids would use it for ... activities ... and the police would have to go in and clear them out - but every single officer who ever did said the place was 'creepy' and bizarre.

There was also a story about a particular white fox that was in the woods. There was no law against hunting it, but it was something of a urban legend to the people of Havenswood. They said that if you honored it, you would be blessed with good fortune as animals practically threw themselves into your traps or you found the perfect places to set up a shot for hunting... but if you tried to hunt it, you were cursed with foul luck as nature itself seemed to turn on you. Nevertheless, this hadn't stopped the amount of people trying to catch it, so that they could have a prize trophy to show off among their peers.

Then of course there were the stories of the towns outside of Havenswood. They had a good relationship with River Run, but never be deceived - they are Outsiders, and where there are Outsiders, there are drugs, criminals, satanists, and other strange horrible people. There was talks of towns where they openly practiced satanism and cannibalism, swearing allegiance and damning their souls to hell - particularly in the big cities like New Haven Metropolis - though most of that was just... gibberish. Right?

Outside of the territory - herein defined as 'the area in which the lunar wall bordered' - there were a set of cliffs that the police had someone looking out on almost all the time because it had a history of being used for attempted suicides... which, actually, was the job that eventually poor Stephanie got shifted onto when they got too annoyed with her - leaving her to patrol the area between the pack's territory and the silver's territory, or more specifically those cliffs, just in case someone had bad thoughts.

[Nickpire]

Stephanir Ward

Health (Uninjured) | Willpower 3 of 4 | Integrity 7 | Defense 4 | Armor 2/4 | Armed (Pistol) | Status (Deputy Sheriff) 1 | Tell: Liar's Skin | Pack: Storm Chasers

Conditions: Resonant (Nimhur-Zela; Persistent) | Tilts: None

Questions. Yeah, she had a lot of them. She was new and people were accepting of that but every once and a while, you know, you just push it to the point where they don't want to deal with you anymore. Stephanie discovered where that line was in relatively short order when she was more or less told to shut up, in more polite terms. Her eyes were tired of reading anyway and hanging around the station wasn't really her style. She had a few good leads, which she promptly shot off to her brother in an email from her phone, then hoped the service-gods were favorable today. No promises in Havenswood.

Old houses, white foxes, Outsiders, cliff-dwelling suicide jumpers... it was all very 'Havenswood' but also more or less what he'd asked for. And speaking of those cliffs...

She went outside, bringing her jacket with her to ward off the chill, and got in her car to go make sure no one was going to leap off a mountain into the sea. It was an assignment out in the sticks. More deer than people that way. Blah.

[Jakondite]

The are she was told to keep an eye on is rather large, all things considered. Sure, it's pretty much one road and your looking more for people on the cliffs than you are for people speeding, but it is a patrol - and it does cover some bits of area. Something about this place gives her the Heebie Jeebies - she may not be able to sense spirits, and she may not know much about them - but even someone disconnected from the area could feel the cold stillness of the air - particularly near the center of her patrol area. At some point, when she's not driving and just... keeping an eye out... she gets a view of the sea.

It's vast, unknowable, and inexplicably deep. As the waves crash against the rocks below, she can hear it - even from this high above her. And it makes her think.

About New Haven. About the Beast. About her father, and her brother, and about everything that had happened in her life and how... utterly pointless it inevitably felt. How different she was. From puberty, she knew she wasn't normal - cursed by the devil, as the Father would say if she'd ever confessed it to him. When the first cut happened, and the wolf's fur shown, she knew she wasn't normal... she was a monster.

And now her brother was too. Only for him, it was different. Perhaps he was more, perhaps he was worse off - but he'd embraced what she had. But though he'd told her the truth, though she'd seen the Totem, she knew now that the monsters they feared were all too real. The euphanism about the real monsters being human? That didn't work. Not in New Haven.

More than once, she'd thought about leaving. About getting out. But the Beast stopped all locals from leaving, and the Outsiders were not to be trusted - what had they done, that they could get that passage from that monster? They were different. They all knew it. Alien. Horrible.

Though, truth be told, she didn't have a right to think that. After all - she was monstrous too. The name of the tell she bore was all too fitting: Liar's Skin.

As she found herself lost in the moments, found herself feeling trapped - in this town, in this place - it'd be wrong to claim she'd have an urge to jump. She didn't, not in the least. It was more appropriate to say that there would be a dawning realization that there *was* a way out: That ocean, those cliffs. It was all too easy to understand, to sympathize with the people who just wanted to get away from it all.

It was... envious, to think that in death, they didn't have to deal with this place.

[Nickpire]

Stephanie Ward

Health (Uninjured) | Willpower 3 of 4 | Integrity 7 | Defense 4 | Armor 2/4 | Armed (Pistol) | Status (Deputy Sheriff) 1 | Tell: Liar's Skin | Pack: Storm Chasers

Conditions: Resonant (Nimhur-Zela; Persistent) | Tilts: None

The radio in the car, the one that played music, was in and out tonight and she knew it was probably the fog rising. Or maybe ghosts in the air waves. She'd read a book called that once, as a girl, but now the idea seemed to have a whole lot more merit. Being alone in her squad gave Stephanie a lot of time to think, she had learned quickly once she was out on her own. Her father, Samson, all the weird and crazy shit that had happened to her. All the weird and crazy shit that had happened around her all these years. She wasn't an alcoholic but she suddenly found a touch of empathy for people who were. There was a lot out there to handle before one added the supernatural. Hell... she was supernatural. Sure, she wasn't a werewolf, but normal people also didn't have wolf fur and meat beneath their skin.

"Hell of a night." She said to no one out the half-open squad window next to her face.

She was in the sticks and her headlights didn't seem to penetrate the darkness overly far in Havenswood. Like a cage, penning her in. Like this town penned everyone in. They were all prisoners in the end. Outsiders and the sea on one side and the Beast on the other. She wanted to leave this place; sure, the Outside was different and probably scary, but the whole world couldn't be like this. Samson had told her about the city he'd gone to on his fishing trip and how there was no Beast there that hunted people trying to leave. How people there didn't even know where Havenswood was. How it wasn't on any maps. It was... funky. And she didn't like the implications of following that line of thought too far. Stephanie was a realist but so much of this werewolf-spirit shit defied logic. She'd said that to Samson once and he'd done his usual 'aw shucks' quiet thing before mentioning it was a different kind of logic. She'd really wanted to punch him in his big, bearded mouth.

No wonder some people came to these cliffs and jumped. It was a release. An escape from this place that a person could only take once. To her knowledge, no one had ever survived a fall off these cliffs. Which, speaking of... her legs were getting sore from sitting too long. Stephanie parked the squad and hit the engine cutoff switch, taking the keys out of the ignition but leaving the car running, before grabbing the maglight and shutting then locking the doors. She'd do a brief foot patrol, make sure no one was out here, then keep on keepin' on.