LogMotW:Quoth the Raven-Jason-3

Game log for the 2022/02/13 session of MotW:Quoth the Raven, as taken by Jason

A couple weeks after the skinwalker disaster, Chet's still making a lot of time with Melanie Richards, who's doing sideline reporting for the ETU spring football game, and he's there with her. ETU has a couple of really good players this year, and the game's going well for them. After the game, Chet and Melanie go home, Sougand struggles to keep up at the Pizza Barn, Jacob updates his blog, and generally, it's a nice weekend.

Monday morning, as Chet drives the garbage truck around, the neighbors call and tell him that someone who looks an awful lot like Chad Rathers is banging on his door. He swings by and finds Chad banging on his door with a baseball bat. Young Chad's all out of sorts because Melanie hasn't been home. Chet's confused, since she doesn't live with Chad, but he claims they have "an arrangement." Chet decides that if she's missing, he won't have to ghost her.

Monday night, Damien's at the sports bar. Chet shows up to read Damien the riot act about his werewolf buddies chasing the garbage truck around. Damien suggests he should come over at dusk and see if he can kill some werewolves. Chet counters that he wants the work done at 5:30am, when he's got to get the truck going. As they BS about this, one of the assistant coaches (Tom Foster) from ETU approaches and asks Chet if he's the guy who was dating Melanie. Seems she's still missing, and he'd like Chet to help him get hold of her. He hasn't seen her and can't. He's kind of eager to explain that he's not her keeper. He has no idea where she's gone, but he decides he and Damien should drive around in the El Dorado and see if they can find her.

Step one: her place of residence! Chet pounds on Chad's door with his baseball bat. The log suspects there's a thesis waiting to be written on baseball bat-mediated interaction among the males of BFE Tejas, but does not wish to write it. Anyway, they talk shit at each other, and Chad opines that they got to work together to find her. Chet manages to finagle it so that Chad will ride in back as the three of them search and also Chad will pay for the gas. He solicits Chad's advice on good places to look, and Chad directs him to the ETU Sports Information Office. Chet also thoughtfully volunteers Damien to act as lookout while he and Chad break in to Melanie's office, around about 11pm.

There are a couple lights on at the stadium, which is where SIO is. There are a couple cars in the lot, but no sure sign of people actually hanging around. The doors are locked. Chet checks to see if Chad will let him chicken out, but when the lad pushes, he goes ahead and jimmies the door. As they search the room, Coach Foster pokes his head in and asks if they've found her. He's clearly worried. Also, he makes no effort to chase them out, which is odd. Chet finds that Melanie had the name of one of those star athletes from the game, Phillip McCready, written down in her planner and circled a few times.

Damien's been keeping an eye on things outside, and hears the sound of wolves howling. After the B&E ends, on the way back to town, they get flagged down by an ETU cheerleader and a few athletes, who need help. The girl says something tried to grab her. Chet calls the cops. Then he calls Jacob and asks what he knows about Coach Foster. Jacob does some research and discovers Foster came to campus two years ago out of a failing D3 program. He's gone great work with the linebackers here. Some pf his old players made it to the pros, suggesting he's a genuinely good coach. While Chet talks on the phone, the girl tells Damien that the creature what attacked her was large and had big claws. The cops arrive, take Chet's statement, and go home.

Chet suggests it's time to hunt some werewolves, since it's night, a few days short of the full moon, and everyone's adrenaline is up. Damien calls Sammy and asks him to meet up and bring his hunting gear. Sammy shows up in about 20 seconds with the stuff, which makes no sense but Chet accepts it. Then Chet calls Sougand, who's in once the Barn closes. Sougand will also be needing a lift, and Jacob prefers not to drive, so it's the very wee hours of the morning before the whole Scooby gang is in the El Dorado.

They get to the scene of the attack and start looking into it. Chet accidentally cuts himself on a thorn bush, thus adding his blood to the crime scene. Sammy investigates and sees that something fled north into the woods, and suspects that this beast, whatever it was, wanted to abduct the cheerleader instead of killing her on the spot. Chet's off investigating when something leaps out at him. He ducks, and Sougand, who was just coming to check on him, gets absolutely clobberd. He jinxes it before he even stands up, and shortly after, finds a key chain with a fob and an ETU keychain decoration. The fob isn't for a car, so it must be for some sort of security. Sammy's chasing the monster but it's much faster than he is. Damien grabs his rifle and takes a shot at the beast, but his Sammy by mistake. This seems to be Damien's pattern. Sougand briefly attunes to it, but realizes that it would take prime bait to lure it back, and they don't have a woman for the monster to abduct for breeding purposes. That's right, this thing wants to breed.

Chet thinks that Melanie's disappearance might be a clue, especially when combined with this McCready character. Chet tells everyone who wasn't there about how weird their encounter with the coach in the office, which does seem awful damn weird. The key fob is, indeed, a building access token. The scoobies navigate to Coach Foster's office, and the fob opens the door. This is the only door it opens. Sammy begins searching the office. Sougand casts a spell and sees what Coach Foster was doing earlier. It was an old book and he hid it here somewhere, but Sougand can't find it. A young woman named {npcref|Faye Dunsmore}} asks Jacob (standing lookout outside) to her in, and she does not suspect him. (Unbeknownst to Jacob, this is the same girl who claimed something attacked her earlier.) Chet gets caught snooping around the locker room, but BSes his way out of trouble and then leaves through the stadium.

He gets jumped by four very hairy humans, but manages to evade them. Sougand, who had a bad feeling someone needed help in the stadium, blunders into the area and gets chased by werewolves.

Jacob and Faye chat it up. She's full of enthusiasms! They have practice very late at night, because that's when everyone is free. Her phone rings as they're talking, and then suddenly she tries to bite him. He tries to defend himself with his silver blade, but he's slow and deficient in mojo.

Sougand's legging it. He tries to jinx the wolves, but fails. Luckily, Chet can see this, and distracts the wolves as Sougand runs for it. Sougand scrambles inside and then runs out the hallway, only to end up face to face with Jacob and Faye.

Jacob's attitude toward this nocturnal encounter has changed for the worse, and he tries to scramble away. He manages to escape and has a realization that this is all about college football mystic performance doping.

Sougand discovers himself face to face with a werewolf in a track suit, who takes a chunk out of him as he flees. He's bleeding now, and when she howls, it's answered from inside the building. This gets Damien's blood up! He and Sammy come running. He stabs one of the werewolves, and Sammy also begins trying to brawl with them. The wolf is too quick for him, though, and tears a hole in him.

Sougand stops and manages to make the stadium doors temporarily barred to all werewolves, causing the first one who gets to it to bounce off the door in a most comical fashion. He feels that his grip on the magic isn't solid, though, and calls out a warning that the spell won't hold. Sammy tries to banish the wolf but fails, while Damien keeps trying to fight it. Chet runs for the car and calls Jacob as he comes, hoping to tell Jacob to vacate the driver's seat. Jacob Googles a spell to bar the car to werewolves and tries to cast it, but it doesn't take. Sougand runs over and gets in the car. Chet hops into the driver's seat.

Sammy banishes the werewolf, but it's going to take some time. Damien keeps fighting the wolf, and they see Sougand's spell on the door fail. Damien's needs to get around the wolf to get to the car, so he stabs the wolf again. That buys her time as the werewolf vanishes. Sammy and Damien get to the car before the werewolves catch them, and Chet floors it. Sammy notices that the four werewolves seemed to be wearing letter jackets or other athletic apparel.

Chet runs an anonymizer on his phone and calls 911, SWATting Coach Foster. That should slow him down! Once the sun is up and the werewolf threat is reduced, the Scooby gang returns to the stadium, which is now a crime scene. At Jacob's request, Sougand starts thinking about how to cure lycanthropy, and figures it'd take candles and wolfsbane, and it would have to be done under the light of the moon. Everyone looks at Damien, because Damien would know wolfsbane if anyone does. He does, indeed, grow it.

The cops mill about the stadium for a while, but since there's no body, they put up crime scene tape and clear out. Chet and Sammy try to investigate the mystery of the coach's office, while everyone else waits outside so as to avoid any risk of bleeding in a crime scene. Damien hates being left out, though, so he does self-service surgery on himself.

As Chet and Sammy do their thing, a football player comes in and asks if they've seen Coach. Chet tells him he can't comment on an ongoing criminal investigation while Sammy looks mean. Chet sees "Dean" on the kid's jacket. Dean is one of the oustanding football players. Chet decides he's a werewolf, and tries to confirm by asking if he's tight with Coach. The kid says that the team's a family, so Chet comes up with some coded language to tell Sammy this is a werewolf. Chet starts talking football with the kid, which gets his tongue wagling. That distracts the kid, and Sammy jumps him and tries to get him in a headlock. Dean works his way out of the headlock but finds that Chet has barred the door and he can't get out. Dean does what football players do and charges with his shoulder lowered, knocking the wind out of Chet. Sammy pounds the kid, bare-handed, and Dean falls down dead. They saunter out, trying to look casual.

Sougand sighs and casts a spell to fetch the book, which involves switching it with a porno book that Chet happened to have lying around the car. When they drop Jacob off, there's a fed SUV outside his house again, so he tells Chet to keep driving. They go to Costco to buy first aid supplies in bulk. After they check out, Chet goes over to the woman at the customer service desk, and mentions that he needs these supplies to be extra special effective. She wants something in exchange, though, so he pulls out his pocket knife, cuts off a bit of his beard, and hands it to her. She'll take that trade! She takes them in back, does something with them in the back room for five minutes, and then comes out to assure him that they will do what he needs. The gang goes to Damien's house to clean up. Chet calls in to work and gets read the riot act.

The book turns out to be the Book of Wolves. It's got curses for turning people into wolves, controlling the curse, etc, and stuck in there, he finds a map showing a path up into the forest and a house key. They decide to go through the drive through to shut up Sougands' constant demands for breakfast, then drive up to the house. It's probably 11am when they arrive.

It turns out to be a camp up in the woods. Vehicles have been in and out of there, but the place appears to be deserted at the moment. Melanie's there, still alive! She was being held prisoner in the cabin. A cheerleader with a shotgun yells, "Who the fuck are you," and blasts the shotgun. Sougand jinxes her as Damien lays his rifle over the hood and shoots at her. The cheerleader decides that trading shotgun fire against a rifle at range is a bad idea and runs for it. Sammy gives chase, accompanied by Damien, and Sougand bringing up the rear.

Chet checks Melanie for signs she's been wounded by werewolves and might be cursed. She appears to be OK - she has bruises and abrasions but she hasn't been bitten or clawed. Chet tells her that she was being held prisoner by werewolves and they have to go.

Sougand telepathically tells the fleeing werewolf girl that there's no point running, they know who she is, they've already caught the coach, and there's no point running. She stops running and comes back. Sammy promptly kills her.

Jacob investigates and figures they were probably just waiting for the full moon to eat their prisoner. Outside the back door, he finds the preparations made for that feast. Jacob suggests that with the right spin, this circle could be used to summon the werewolves here. Sougand knows this will involve a lot of being being killed and resists the idea, until Jacob talks him into it by laying out the big picture involved. Sammy helps Sougand cast the spell, and three football players appear there. Three. The coach appears next to Sammy instead, for some reason. Coach angry. Coach has a golf club in his hands and smacks Sammy with it, which leaves a mark. Damien stabs the coach with his silver dagger and that is bad for him. Jacob fires wildly but misses and instead breaks the circle. The college werewolves rush to escape but Sougand mutters some words and a breeze redraws the wounds. We fade to black as Damien and Jacob go cyclic on the werewolves.

Sammy tells everyone else to go. He puts all the bodies in the cabin and then lights it on fire with his flaming sword.

Everyone else takes Melanie to Jacob's, and they lie down and nap until moonrise. Once the moon is up, Sougand lays out the candles and wolfsbane, draws the runes, and ritually makes it so that nobody becomes a werewolf. He even makes Chet prove he's not wounded before letting him skip the ritual.