This storyline is a stub - with the intro and the first scene description. If there is enough interest in the complete storyline, it will be finished, otherwise, feel free to use it as you find in the best interest of your group

Hey, wake up

WAKE UP!

You come awake to your Geist's voice, reaching, finding and thumbing the safety off your Ingram 9mm, just like you practiced for hours after that last job took you off guard, your brain hammering dreamscape into landscape with a cold forge, searching the room for whatever it is the Geist is alarmed about.

Nice, but you need to get to the roof. Now. The Culling has started.

You grab your pants, and shoes, holding the Ingram barrel between your teeth as you leg-in and lace-up, "Wasss hhaaa?" you mumble around the cold steel.

Easier to show than tell... Roof. Now. Fuck the socks.

Looking down on the streets below from the roof of your place, you see the Cullers, "Holy Crap! What in Hades are those things?"

Cullers, from the Spirit World

"You mean the Underworld?"

No, I mean the Spirit World, which is why I said the S p i r i t W o r l d

You ignore the angst, it's way too early. "You've never talked about the Spirit World before."

Don't know much about it really, except there are some bad-ass things in there, that we don't want to mess with. From what I've heard, and I'm not sure it is true, the general environment is basically the same as the Underworld though... big fish, little fish, swimming in the stream.

"And Cullers?" you ask, watching them floating through the streets, long tentacles reaching through the walls of buildings, searching; the mouths, ghastly four section beaks with a ring of teeth inside; you think about the images of a Kraken you saw once. They sort-of look like that, only, shorter, and fatter, and uglier, and since they are on your block, more dangerous. Could be a child's idea of a man-eating flower-bud too; kids are creepy like that.

Come around every seven years like locus.

"What for?"

Uh... Culling? Gawd you are worthless before coffee.

You raise and eyebrow, but ... he's right, you really are. "So they can just come through? Nothing to stop them?"

There are guardians on the borders of the Spirit World, just like the Cats on the Underworld -- Werewolves they tell me -- not suppose to let spirits cross the lines. Rumor is though, that they allow the Cullers to cross, because they always come back after a few days, and they clean up a lot of spirits

Clean up?

Cull.

Ah.

Trouble is that these things have the mental capacity of locus as well, they just eat and eat and eat. Won't touch the Living Souls for some reason, but spirits, ghosts, Geists, anything with plasm, they munch on.

"And that would include us."

Think I woke you up to enjoy the afternoon sun? Apparently the Lycans -- if that is what they are -- don't really care about the difference between Ghost and Spirit. They figure that if ghosts are different, they aren't suppose to be here either. The fact that when a ghost is eaten by these things, it is digested into the spirit world, and completely lost, doesn't seem to bother them.

"How high do we have to be?"

Twenty feet is usually safe but I wanted you to be able to see them real good so you'll recognize them if we run into them later. Don't bother trying to fight them by the way, that just attracts others.

The grace of the Cullers floating half in, half out of the world is thralling, nearly hypnotizing. One is bellow, heading for the Catholic church a block and a half to the north, which brings to mind the cemetery, another two blocks in the same direction. "You said, when they eat a ghost it is true death?"

Yes.

"Ghosts will just stay out of sight though, right. None of them would manifest in front of something that ugly."

Probably. But they don't have to manifest. These things will see them anyway, have some type of sense that reaches past ordinary Twilight sight. The Cullers snatch them with those tentacles, and the ghost is forced into corpus, and then they are eaten.

"Son of a bitch." you hiss, "No escape?"

Not once the Culler has them. Not for most of them anyway. Some will be strong enough, maybe, to get out. Never seen it, but it's possible.

You look at the Ingram in your hand, and then you Look at the Ingram in your hand, "Twilight hurt them?"

Not sure. We are high enough I think, give it a shot.

The church is clean, you knew that, and the thing is starting its bobbing float up the street toward the cemetery. You have some good contacts in that cemetery, and while some of them the world could certainly do without, none of them deserve digestion by these things. You take aim at what you think might be a large eye, "Fucking werewolves eh?"

Plasm flows through your arms, down the muscles and tendons, out the palms, charging the shells and powder, and lead. Your mind searches around the spaces-in-between, finding the connection with your Threshold, and then you open a keystone; cold wind circles around you, reaching out, slashing at the open air with knife-like edges; slapping at the real-world-wind.

Easy kid, thought you were just going to cap it one.

"You know these things can't climb?"

Now that you mention it, yeah, they can.

"What about the Avernian Gate, can they get through that?"

No, otherwise they would be down there already, and besides, the Cats would be on them in seconds.

At least you have an escape, and maybe a way to get to the Graveyard as well.

Look kid, you know I love a good fight, and hey, if this is the way you want to play this, I'm down. Hell, if I thought you would react like this, I would have told you about the Culling sooner, we could have made plans, had a regular safari outing, but I want you to be clear on this, really clear. If those things come at you, and you loose, we are dead. Not death. Dead. No more. It is way over. If those tentacles have you, you won't be able to Gate anywhere, and all I'll be able to do, is help you scream.

"Man, those things are massive, but I can barely feel them at all."

S p i r i t W o r l d, they aren't ghosts, they are spirits. We throw the terms around like they mean the same thing, because most of the time it is just semantics, but in this case, it isn't a word game. These things aren't anything like us. They have never been human, and they have never been touched by death, nor will they ever be touched by death. These things are not like anything you have ever seen or heard about before.

"That looks like plasm..."

Living plasm, living ectoplasm, spirit plasm. We could use it, but not the same energy, be like you eating wood or sawdust or something. The body can use some of the stuff in wood, but digesting it is rough, and most of it becomes a real pain in the ass later.

"Well, we have to tell the others."

I'm sure they are already sitting on their roofs drinking coffee and hearing this same story.

"You know that for sure?"

Ah, well, better call them I guess, but eyes open kid, we can't feel these things as good as ghosts, and they might look big and slow, but they ain't.

"Right... by the way, how come they got coffee and I just got bum-rushed with no socks?"

They have nicer Geists

"No shit." The Culler has reached the end of the block, and that's as close as you are going to let it get to your informants. You take the shot...

Unchain me sister, love is with your brother -- Your Geist sings in an eriely excited voice.