Act Two: Putting Pieces Together Act two involves some investigation and action on the part of the characters. During this time, they can gather clues, follow up on those clues, and encounter antagonists who may slow their progress (and, in some cases, lead to additional clues).
The key scene for act two is at Muller’s apartment. If time is of the essence, or if the players are really focused on taking down Muller as quickly as possible, the scene in Muller’s apartment may end up being the only scene in act two. The characters may miss out on other opportunities, but if that’s the outcome of their choices, it’s okay — you’re telling a story together, not running down a checklist of must-have plot points.
Before the characters can search Muller’s apartment, they may need a scene or two for preparation and further investigation, especially if they decide to confer with various mundane or werewolf points of contact or allies to discuss what they discovered in Development Copse West. Garou mentors might be able to help them understand that what Muller created in the copse may be a talisman, and that he may have a spirit communicating with him. Similarly, other Garou who have been in the territory for some time can warn the characters about the Cult of Fenris and the abandoned caern.
Armed with the identities of the victims, the players are likely to investigate who they were and their connections. Although there’s no evidence in the glade about Muller or Harcorte’s specific identities, they shouldn’t be too hard to connect to the ritual.
Who’s Who Muller’s name is all over the still-active horticulture club’s web page. A web search reveals Muller’s current phone number and also an old address in a different town. His contact information is available in the city’s records (online and in the repository) and is prominently displayed in a search of “Development Copse West,” should the PDF of his approved petition to serve as caretaker come up in a search.
Harcorte’s name is connected to the website, too. She built the page and registered it. A basic domain query reveals Harcorte’s details. Her email address and phone number also appear on the “contact us” subpage.
Packs with less online familiarity should still be able to find these details. As Storyteller, be prepared to have a city periodical or community bulletin board offer information about the horticultural club, and perhaps a few phone numbers and prerecorded responses for plant enthusiasts to join the group, for example. Remember, it’s important for Storytellers to keep the information flowing, and unless there’s a reason to have information locked behind “one true way” of discovery, that information should eventually flow toward the players. In most cases, you’re trying to get them to make decisions, not guess a specific solution, unless there literally is only one way to discover such information.
Sequencing Muller and Harcorte Harcorte proves a bit harder to find, and her identity may come up only after the confrontation with Muller. If that happens, it’s okay. It just shifts the encounter with Harcorte from the second act to the third and may serve as a post-crescendo scene that leads into the next story.
However, if the pack meets with Harcorte before Muller, she shares useful insights on Muller and his motivations, which ideally makes that confrontation easier.
Family and Friends of the Victims The players are likely to want to delve into the histories of each victim. Some of that information follows.
The characters may learn that, especially if they’re moving quickly, the family and friends of the victims might not know what happened to their loved ones. Thus, the packmates may be the bearers of horrifying news; if the characters reveal the deaths of the victims, a family member or friend might not believe them and may well become reluctant to continue with the conversation. Wise packs should have some sort of cover story to justify engaging each victim’s social circle. If they’re not careful, the characters run the risk of being reported to the police and even being suspected of the crime.
Friends and family of the victims generally know about the horticulture club. Their stories bear numerous commonalities: What started out as a productive hobby and social gathering became increasingly demanding. The club required ever more time and increasing financial obligation. Victims missed important appointments, forgot bills, and generally withdrew from their former life. Many of the friends and family characterize the victim’s involvement with the club as “obsessive.” Some openly call it a cult.
All of the interviews direct the characters toward Muller. None of the people who cared for the victims liked Muller or trusted him. Many family members characterize him as a caustic and dangerous influence, and they say things like, “If something were to go wrong, it would be because of him.”
Storytellers, make sure the players are engaged but also gaining meaningful information and not unactionable minutiae of the victims’ lives. Immersive detail is good, but make it clear that the connection is the horticulture club and Rickard Muller.
Turning Point Three: Muller’s House Muller lives in a prefabricated two-bedroom house that was once part of a low-income (or perhaps off-base military, depending on your story location) housing development. One of the bedrooms was once an office, but it quickly became a makeshift occult shrine after Muller was possessed by the Bane.
Turning Point Three Goals • Provide the players with insight into Muller’s depravity
• Point the players toward Muller’s next victim (VanGelder)
• Test the players and spike the tension with a physical combat
Key Antagonist: Bane-possessed dogs (active, individual)
The House A powerful smell of animal musk and feces overwhelms the characters as they open the door to the home. Muller’s body odor permeates the place. Characters who shift into lupus or hispo form can pick up a lot of information from a Wits or Intelligence + Awareness check, depending on whether they seek a quick impression or a longer assessment. A single success reveals fresh scent: Muller was here hours earlier. Two successes tells the character that the odors of multiple canines are present, but also that the scents seem to be decaying somewhat. A third success reveals the smell of old blood and viscera.
Muller was once a pretty clean person, but since he became host to the Bane, he’s lost interest in fastidiousness, and over the last year the house has become increasingly filthy. The art on the walls has all been pulled down and discarded in the trash heaps accumulating on the floor. In the final months before the ritual to awaken the meat-child, he abandoned much of his personal hygiene regimen.
All the junk in the house makes moving room to room difficult, apart from a few paths he created through the accumulation. One such path connects the bedroom to the couch, and another, the couch to the small kitchen. He slept on his couch, because he dedicated his bedroom to preparing for the ritual.
We emphasize smell here, and Storytellers should similarly engage other smells, as well as nonvisual senses, the better to highlight the nature of Garou perception. The Living Room Despite the art having been removed from the walls, a corkboard remains hanging there. A lined sheet of paper, tacked to the corkboard, bears a list of nine names and phone numbers. At the bottom of the list is Hanna Harcorte’s name, written in ink, unlike the other nine names (and missing a phone number). The first two names have been crossed off. Muller murdered both Madelyn Wilson and Aanand Prashash to “satisfy” the meat-child… or the Bane… or the cruel urges rising within him. Ask him at different times (and perhaps the players will), get a different answer.
The first uncrossed name, Birgit VanGelder, is Muller’s current target. Each of the other names is a former member of the horticulture club — those who chose to step away after becoming scared of Muller or disillusioned during his plunge into depravity.
• Madelyn Wilson • Aanand Prashash • Birgit VanGelder
• Sissie Ahiati
• Tansy Albertsson
• Anja Sterlingson
• Isabel Forrest
• Marjory Hardy
• Doria Lasseur
• Hanna Harcorte
The characters should come to understand that this list is of Muller’s past and intended victims. That Birgit VanGelder is Muller’s next target is the most important piece of information to set up act three. Assuming the characters track down VanGelder, they’ll encounter Muller as he prepares to murder her.
Also in the living room is Muller’s aging laptop. It’s plugged in, and if it’s disconnected from power the battery fails, and the computer shuts down (it can be turned on again by reattaching the power cable).
The laptop is protected by a password, but characters can use a relevant Skill pool such as a Difficulty 3 Intelligence + Technology to bypass the password with the help of a known security exploit in the obsolete operating system. They can also find a post-it note with the password (“Mull3r”) on a Difficulty 2 Resolve + Awareness test if they search the house.
The computer has a number of older video games and a series of folders saved on its desktop. The folders include files on Development Copse West and the city’s paperwork giving Muller permission to work on the area, as well as extensive files on each member of the horticulture club in the lead up to the ritual (the nine names on the white board plus the five ritual participants). The files are particularly troubling, given what the pack knows, as they go into minute details about each member, including logs of their daily activities and apparent physical health. Muller was clearly stalking the members.
Most of Muller’s email is unfiltered spam, but if the characters check his Sent folder, it holds multiple emails labeled “Urgent,” first to Madelyn Wilson, then to Aanand Prashash, and finally to Birgit VanGelder, with Muller asking to meet them in private.
The laptop exists in this scene as a helpful container of information to keep the players learning things. And, again, it doesn’t have to be a laptop — for less tech-savvy packs, Storytellers can modify the information to be included on a “murder-board” style arrangement in Muller’s home. Besides what’s noted here, Storytellers can add clues to the files to help the players fill in the blanks. If they missed something earlier, here is a great point to add it to the story. The Kitchen In the small hallway to the kitchen is a stand-alone freezer. Getting past it and into the kitchen is a tight squeeze. Although the freezer is empty now, it’s where Muller stored the dogs’ corpses he eventually burned for the ritual. A successful Wits or Intelligence + Investigation test (Difficulty 2) reveals dog hair stuck to an interior wall of the freezer.
The kitchen is mostly bare of food. Plastic plates and open containers abound, ants and cockroaches enjoying the bounty.
Muller’s Bedroom Muller sleeps in the smaller of the two bedrooms. Like the rest of the house, it’s a mess, with piles of refuse and books making even stepping inside difficult. A broken bed-in-a-box has been pushed to the side to make more room for practicing ritual movements.
Although most of the piles of trash and stuff seem to be untouched, one pile of reading material nearest the bed is clearly still in use. This pile of books, magazines, printouts, and newspapers is half a meter tall. The books on the bottom are mostly generic occult and witchcraft volumes, of a type one could find at any chain bookseller. Closer to the top, the books give way mostly to newspaper pages and printouts of online articles about a number of businesses and corporate entities. The entries at the top are all printouts of conversations from the shittiest corners of the internet, but these exchanges nevertheless convey occult veracity.
The stack of printed material is a timeline of the Bane’s possession of Muller. The bottom-most books are his first real dalliances with the occult — mass-market stuff. Higher up the stack, the Bane’s influence strengthens, pointing Muller to real instances of the spirit world, the occult, and what Garou might recognize as elements associated with the Wyrm all intersecting. A successful Resolve + Occult test at Difficulty 2 reveals that the final stages of Muller’s research routinely converged with incidents potentially associated with the Wyrm: destruction, vengeance, and personal benefit through the ruination of others.
Downtime: Guilt by Association A character who takes some of the articles and does research (at the Storyteller’s discretion, aided by an Intelligence + Finance test at Difficulty 4) eventually reveals that some of the groups, corporations, and facilities highlighted among Muller’s notes all operate as fronts for Pentex Group (possibly leading to other stories).
The top of the pile includes printouts and pictures. The printouts are a collection of social media stories about people attacking and bludgeoning loved ones. Here, Muller made lurid notes in the margins, marking incidents and processes he believed “released energy.” These last entries served as the blueprint for Muller to create the meat-child.
At the top are paperclipped pictures of the ritual participants: Jacqlyn Bates, Mitchell Ericksson, Aisha Crider, Joy Amedu, and Hanna Harcorte. Other pictures of the participants are tacked to the walls of the bedroom, grouped in clusters corresponding to each participant. The pictures were all taken clandestinely by Muller as he followed them through their daily lives and ascertained their “suitability” for the talisman.
A manila folder holds Muller’s handwritten process on the ritual itself. He details, step by step, the tormenting of the dogs, the ashes created from their remains, the poison and the method to administer it, as well as dubious occult incidentals such as “phrases of power” and somatic gestures. Unfortunately for the horticulture club, the Bane’s influence helped Muller enact enough ritual accuracy to result in the talisman.
The Dog Pit (Converted Bedroom) The stench throughout the house comes from Muller’s bedroom.
The office (the converted main bedroom), unlike the rest of the house, is clean and tidy. The juxtaposition is jarring. Along all of the walls are variations of spiral symbols scrawled in different mediums: permanent marker, charcoal, paint, blood, and feces. Each symbol marks the wall above a large dog cage, an attempt by Muller to understand how to channel spiritual anguish into biological vessels — or, more accurately, victims (as he was instructed by the Bane).
The Bane encouraged Muller to mentally and physically break the dogs, so that, subconsciously, they were desperate for any sort of respite. The Bane then coaxed or bullied lesser Banes to visit the miserable creatures in their sleep.
The process worked. In their pain and confusion, the remaining dogs “received” the Banes, which infused the animals with the Wyrm’s power. Muller then killed most of the dogs, took the parts needed for the talisman, and burned the rest of their remains (in the copse) to use in the ceremony.
Unfortunately for the characters, Muller’s incompetence reared its head yet again, and he managed to botch one (or more) of the dog-kills. The still-possessed dog remains behind in Muller’s apartment. It waits amid mounds of refuse to see what the characters might do, but it’s only a matter of time before it makes its desperate gambit. It waits for the group to split up, in hopes of finding a member of the pack left behind in the living room or kitchen for an isolated attack.
BANE-POSSESSED DOG General Difficulty: 4 / 2
Standard Dice Pools: Physical 4, Social 2, Mental 3
Secondary Attributes: Health (Enhanced) 5, Willpower 4
Exceptional Dice Pools: Brawl 8, Stealth 8
Notes / Other Traits: Caustic Bite: +1 Superficial Damage bite. The caustic saliva of the dog does an additional Superficial damage to the victim each turn until washed off thoroughly.
Foul Demise: On death the dog sprays those nearby with a corrosive foulness. This causes 1 Aggravated Health damage to everyone in its immediate vicinity, such as in the same room.
For packs with a more martial bent, the Storyteller may want to increase the number of Bane-possessed dogs present. The combat here isn’t intended to be the focus of the story, so consider a number of dogs equal to the number of pack members present, and even then, only for packs that are notably capable in combat.
The combat itself should be messy and frenetic, with the heaps of refuse and squalor of Muller’s house making for sub-optimal fight space. Use the environment to convey detail but also to make the fight more than just a comparison of rolls and Traits. The dog knocks over piles of this and that, or battered Garou may find themselves hurled through cheap sheetrock walls, for example. The use of firearms or other loud noises will rapidly draw unwanted attention as well, and is a sure way to get the police involved.
Consider following the three-turn maximum for this conflict. After the third turn, the possessed dog flees, either through the door or, if the door is closed or obstructed, by crashing through a window. If the players let it get away, it lays low for a week and then takes to attacking isolated mortals in a setting of your choice during a subsequent session (perhaps an under-regulated water treatment plant run by a Pentex Group front, if the Garou have discovered those connections elsewhere in this act).
Still Missing a Clue? If the characters leave without the list (and particularly Birgit VanGelder’s name and number), they can discover her name and contact details in some other way, such as by point of contact on a horticultural club flyer found amid the detritus.
If the players make it to Hanna Harcorte, she can tell them that Muller was often spiteful and vengeful toward the club members who left — effectively communicating the list to the characters through other means. If the players can track Muller by using Gifts or otherwise heightened Garou senses, they can follow him to VanGelder’s house. This challenge, however, is potentially worthy of a scene by itself.
Remember, part of being the Storyteller is getting players the information they need to make decisions. Be prepared to improvise on their behalf, if necessary, at least in terms of getting them that information.
Conclusions The most important thing for the players is to understand that Muller is on the loose and on a murderous, mutilating rampage. They almost certainly want to stop him, for any number of reasons. Unless the Storyteller deems otherwise, Birgit VanGelder is Muller’s next victim. The characters can track down VanGelder and confront Muller in act three.
Floating Scene: Harcorte’s House This scene can fit wherever in act two the players’ actions prompt it. If they seek Harcorte before following up on Muller’s residence, for example, they can gain information about Muller, or they might learn about her at Muller’s residence and make contact with her afterward. Remain flexible.
Kin Calling Hanna Harcorte was on the path to a life in shambles, but she wasn’t quite there yet. Her house reflects that state of affairs. Hanna’s a capable web designer and graphic artist in her day job. She was successful enough to get a mortgage on a modest three-bedroom home at the city limits. Her house is situated at the corner of a street in the heart of a recent development (wherever suits your setting). The house and yard appear well maintained.
Hanna’s husband, Victor Harcorte, complicates the scene. Hanna returns early from her trip to the woods with the horticulture club and at first refuses to talk with Victor. When he presses the issue she involuntarily shapeshifts, tearing flesh off his hand and subjecting him to Delirium, before retreating to the bedroom. Victor is now frustrated and confused. He remembers little of the attack, having bandaged his hand, but is beset by a (to him) irrational fear of his wife. He certainly isn’t supportive of this pack of potentially dangerous-looking who-are-you-agains? talking to Hanna. If the characters knock or otherwise approach the house normally, they encounter Victor first.
Hanna is in the bedroom. She has locked the door and is terrified of what she might do to Victor, with little knowledge of what happened to her in Development Copse West. All she knows is that she turned into something else in reaction to the poison Muller slipped her. She’s not even sure if her transformation was Muller’s intent, because it looks as if everyone else ended up dead.
To get past Victor, the players need to give him some plausible reason that their characters should enter the house, unless they choose violence, misdirection, or some other approach. He’s extremely suspicious of them but desperate for any sort of help, and in his confused state he’s willing to do anything that at least sounds legitimate. A Difficulty 2 Charisma or Manipulation + Persuasion test prompts Victor to (reluctantly) let the characters in to talk to Hanna while he goes to get a drink. A Difficulty 2 Wits + Awareness test spots the fresh bandages around his hand. If asked, he says he burned it on the stove.
Unless somehow prevented, Victor lingers around the corner, in the hall leading to the bedroom, and listens to whatever the characters are saying. Although Victor isn’t in the same situation as Hanna, he’s dealing with a lot of fear and uncertainty himself.
Victor doesn’t seek to physically hurt Hanna, but he’ll say things he’ll inevitably regret if he’s able to interject. If he’s able to argue with her, the situation escalates, and she may even ask the characters to remove him, at which point Victor obviously resists. He has no idea what they really are, or how he’s gambling with their Rage. If the characters badly hurt Victor, Hanna holds a grudge that can manifest in a future session.
Speaking to Hanna Hanna Harcorte can be a useful vector for you to channel important pieces of information. Inquisitive players who ask insightful and intelligent questions gain key pieces of information on Muller, the club, and what happened in Development Copse West.
Hanna hasn’t been answering her phone and hasn’t engaged with her work colleagues. The arrival of the players’ pack is a weird situation — unless they know her already, they’re strangers arriving at a time of crisis. That said, if they seem earnest in their willingness to help… well, why not? She’s shaken by what she has become and what Muller turned out to be, and any port in a storm, as the saying goes.
She prefers to meet the characters in her bedroom, the only place she has been since coming home, though she can be persuaded to talk with the characters in the living room. Wherever the characters speak with her, she’s confused and scared and working through the trauma of becoming a werewolf while also surviving a poisoning attempt.
Hanna doesn’t know what the Garou are, nor what she truly is, only that she must have been poisoned, felt a pain throughout her body, and passed out. When she woke she had turned into something else. A thing that walked on four legs. She snuck away from the glade in Development Copse West because she didn’t know what else to do. She left Muller and the rest of the horticultural club behind and has no idea what happened afterward.
Hanna’s at a breaking point and desperate for someone to listen to her. If the players are at all sympathetic, she opens up to them. She describes what happened in the glade, and that she has only hazy recollections after taking the poison. She recalls — dreaming? — about being a wolf, but wonders if the poison might have been a hallucinogen.
The characters are likely to realize that Hanna is Garou and underwent her First Change as a result of the ritual. If the characters calmly and sympathetically reveal their existences as Garou, she eventually accepts her new reality. Otherwise, she continues to deny her werewolf nature, which possibly leads to a tragic end for Victor.
If the characters give Hanna the hard sell about her responsibilities to Gaia, the existence of the spirit world, or the state of a world in Apocalypse, it’s all too much, and she probably enters a violent panic. Take it slowly — this is a chance to explore the aftermath of the First Change and what it means for someone’s reality to become something very different from what it was not long ago. Hanna didn’t actually witness the feeding of Muller’s awful talisman, because she fled after her transformation. She divulges that Muller wanted the participants to “feed the forest.” Although she’s justifiably angry at Muller, part of her is still loyal to him, and it should take sympathetic roleplaying or a Manipulation + Persuasion test (Difficulty 2) to convince her to fully open up.
If comforted or coaxed successfully, Hanna tells the characters that Muller was particularly hostile and suspicious in the lead-up to the ritual, and that he sometimes spoke in “weird ways.” If pressed, she says that he was normally quite erudite, but in the weeks before the ritual he would occasionally struggle with even simple sentences (which happened at times the Bane’s influence was particularly strong).
She notes that she was scared around Muller when any of the other “traitorous” members’ names would come up, and that Muller often swore to “make them pay.” If asked, Hanna can provide the same names as could be found on Muller’s corkboard.
Hanna can help the characters piece together information on Muller and where he might be. Under no circumstances does she voluntarily confront Muller.
Other Victims: Madelyn Wilson and Aanand Prashash Exploring the most recent victims’ residences can fit wherever in the sequence of things the players’ actions lead to it. These two investigations should give a hint into Muller’s modus operandi and transformation into something other than mundane.
If the players investigate the homes of Muller’s most recent victims, Madelyn Wilson and Aanand Prashash, they’ll discover gruesome murder scenes. Wilson and Prashash were attacked and killed in their respective apartments. If the players’ characters scrutinize the apartments from the Umbra, minor baleful spirits linger near the places, feeding on the dwindling negative resonances of the murder sites. These spirits may or may not be Banes, at the Storyteller’s discretion, but they’re definitely attuned to the misery and violence of the acts that drew them here.
Act Two Complications If the police have yet to make an appearance, later in act two might be a good time. The introduction of the police serves as a reminder that the characters are operating outside mortal law and are on their own. Like in act one, the police can also serve as a call to action — if the characters don’t act quickly enough, the police outpace them and they’ll lose access to certain locations and information.
The Cult of Fenris can also make an indirect appearance. These Garou aren’t necessarily looking for a fight (yet). Rather, they’re trying to figure out what went on in their former caern and how these interlopers factor into the situation. For the time being, the Fenris werewolves use human hangarounds to investigate the characters.
•
Lisa Wallner and
Leo Pilon Two “citizen activists” acting on behalf of Cult of Fenris Garou to confront the characters about what happened in the copse. Wallner and Pilon are accusatory, unreasonable, and condescending, “just asking questions” about why the characters are present and encouraging them to do what any relevant authorities tell them. Not surprisingly, Wallner and Pilon are themselves uninterested in doing what any authorities tell them, and are willing to get rowdy, draw negative attention, and provoke (but not participate in) latent violence. If the characters make a compelling case that they weren‘t involved in the ritual, Wallner and Pilon make brutish threats to get them to stay away from the copse “at severe cost,” accompanied by menacing gestures. It seems as if the two may have an inkling of what the players’ pack might be, but that they’ve been bullied or goaded into hassling them by Garou they know in the Cult. They are active, individual antagonists working on behalf of passive, individual Cult members.
If needed, use the stats for Criminal on p. 291 to represent Lisa and Leon.