Nate looked down at the note in his hands. The 'note', as it were, was nothing more than a single scrap of paper, with a single pictogram upon it. The pictogram itself looked something akin to a stylized hammer, hovering over a broken spiral. It was the symbol of The Inquisition. Nowadays, this fanatical camp of Garou held little power outside its strongholds in eastern Europe, but this power, they clutched with a desperately malignancy. They were a slowly dying breed of traditionalists, and they knew it. It was they who had forever tainted the entire clan of Shadow Lords in Nate's eyes.
How strange, Prints-in-the-Sand was right in the end. The trip to Antigo, undertaken almost a year ago, was what had led Nate to finding resolution to his seemingly endless search. His meeting up with pack Sardukar. His subsequent splitting off and journey to the time-abandoned realm of Khem. His ordeals against the Kindred there. The loss of Prints, his former mentor, to the leaches. His return to the states, his physical maiming almost as horrible has the scars his mind had acquired during the war. The seemingly chance reuniting of him and the Sardukar pack in New York. The trip back to that blissfully ignorant land of Wisconsin. Then, while there, a little rubber ball had led him to the next step in his journey. All the rest of the pack knew was that Nate had disappeared, chasing the suddenly animated ball through the umbral realms. None of them had seen what had transpired to cause his second disappearance.
The ball was a wily quarry, without a doubt. No sooner had Nate thought he had finally got it in his grasp, then it squirmed away and vanished, leaving Nate alone in the umbra. Nate prepared to journey back and rejoin the pack, when something caught his attention. The scent was a familiar one, one he hadn't smelled since his days in Egypt. It was Kathryn. Early in the war against the leaches, she had somehow known exactly how to pierce the emotional wall Nate had so carefully maintained around himself. In the one night he knew her, she showed him that even in times of the greatest despair, comfort can be drawn from the oblivion of heated passion. That night, he had confessed everything to her, his past, the quest to find the one who had murdered his mother, the missing years in his memory. The next morning, she was gone, with only the slight hint of exotic spices remaining in the room giving evidence of her former presence there.
Many frantically asked questions the next day revealed to Nate that no Garou known as 'Kathryn' was known by any of the clans taking part in the war on the leaches. Throughout the entire war, Nate saw no sign of her, and would have doubted her very existence if the events of that one night didn't still burn so hotly within him, filling him with an emotion he had never suspected he was even capable of holding.
Now the dying embers of these emotions were doused in the proverbial gasoline, as Nate caught the scent of an exotic perfume, an archaic spice which he had not smelled since that night in Egypt. Not knowing whether to believe his senses or not, Nate followed the scent. It was her. For a span of minutes, Nate didn't know what to do, fearing that his senses were deluded, and if he were to embrace her, she would vanish. Kathryn smiled knowingly at him. Here, in the umbra, the marks of her true heritage were far more apparent. There was good reason she wasn't numbered among those who took part in the war against the leaches. Now, in crinos form, the brand of the Black Spiral showed clearly above her left breast. "Are you surprised?" she asked.
"To see you? Or to have what I suspected about you, your affiliation with the Wyrm, confirmed?" Nate countered.
Kathryn shrugged, "It doesn't really matter. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
It was Nate's turn to shrug, "If you'll allow me, I'll pretend I never discovered the affiliation. Others might call it heresy, but my views of the Wyrm have never been as...dogmatic...as most."
Kathryn smiled, allowing her eyes to assume a half-closed, sultry gaze which transfixed Nate, "You know, that night in Egypt was...memorable. But, as enjoyable as the physical side of it was, it did not cloud my memory of what you had told me. Your tale is a sad one, but then again, that appears to be a growing norm among Garou. I was intrigued about your childhood in Romania, though, since I had relations with a certain bane from the area."
At this point, a shadowy form began to condense beside Kathryn. No obvious shape was visible in the constantly shifting mists, though the occasional claw or tentacle was seen. Indicating the blasphemous form next to her, Kathryn continued, "Apparently, this bane had not only spent quite a bit of time in Romania, but also had been in the service of a certain pack of Black Spiral Dancers, the Gates of Chaos pack, I believe. Apparently, about a decade and a half in the past, this pack had made a surprise attack on a pack of Shadow Lords wandering through their realm."
Nate's heart skipped a beat. He didn't have to be told the significance of this. This spirit knew something about the events surrounding his mother's death! Without hesitation, Nate stepped forward. Speaking in the tongue of spirits, Nate addressed the bane before him, "Impart to me what you know of this, and I shall forever be in your debt."
The cloud of black mist remained still for a second. Then, a single tentacle shot out, its tip dragging in the umbral sand. For a few seconds the tentacle undulated about, then withdrew again into the mist. In the sand, a crude heiroglyph had been drawn. It was a stylized hammer, poised over a broken spiral. Nate turned to Kathryn, "What do you ask of me in return for this?"
Kathryn stepped forward sultrily. She gently took Nate's chin in her hand, and briefly passed her lips over his, leaving the taste of something exotic and intoxicating behind, "Find the one you've been seeking, I'll be watching. When you do, I'll make my desires known to you."
After that encounter, Nate decided that it would not be a good idea to return to the pack. They had their own problems to deal with, and now that the matter of his past had returned to the forefront of his mind, his single-minded obsession may prove a liability to their efforts. Of all places, he decided to return to New York. There, with the help of certain, knowledgeable Garou, he found out that the pictogram was, in fact, the symbol of a certain camp of Shadow Lords existing in Romania, known as The Inquisition. The camp, it was said, was very fanatical in its following the dictates of The Litany, enforcing death for any violation thereof. A violation, one might conjecture, like producing a metis cub, a violation such as his mother may have committed. For that, she had died at the hands of this camp.
After that, a trip to Romania became an obvious necessity. From here, Nate discovered that the camp was little more than a shadow of its former glory. High levels of tolerance between Garou proved to be an anathema to adherents to the old ways. Nowadays, the camp was so small it could not even claim a single caern as its own, and merely acted as the dominant voice in a few isolated septs. The central sept, where Nate was now camped outside, would not hold its moot for another week. Until then, Nate would have a look through some of the archived knowledge of the camp's members.