The problem with being on the right track toward a Garou settlement is that you keep getting onto the wrong track. Werewolves don't build a lot of walls, but they know how to shape paths that veer subtly away from places they want to protect.
You spend hours getting subtly veered. It's infuriating. Worse: you're being followed by something that smells like hot metal and rotting leather. You can smell its reek whenever the wind shifts. You keep checking your maps, but you can't see where you're going wrong. You only make progress when the contour of the woods encourages you to head downslope, and you instead defiantly turn ninety degrees and walk up a hill.
Directly ahead: an abandoned ATV half-buried in a snow drift. A leather glove lies nearby, its back covered in a design you don't recognize: some kind of crowned dragon in…the sun? Almost certainly not Garou. When you turn it over, you realize there's still a hand in it. You hastily back away. Looking around, you find a stick, kick some snow off it, and use that to turn it over and conduct a quick search. Nearby: a .38 revolver, rusted beyond hope of repair, a bronze sword so thick with verdigris that it looks like moss, and a wallet. The wallet has $7, two gas cards, and a card from Banicki Gunworks right here in Northampton, Massachusetts. That might be worth checking out. The wallet also has a Forbes library card with name: Harmonie Palys. If you manage to meet any other Garou here, they might want to know about this. But though you range back and forth for more than an hour, you can't find more signs of fighting or habitation.
You head downslope and find yourself standing over a half-frozen bog: a maze of tiny islands and hillocks, surrounded by gelid black water. A badly defaced standing stone rises crookedly out of the mud. The air is warm with rot. Flies rise up from the muck to seek your eyes and nostrils. That place is important, you're sure of it. But how? Maybe more investigation will offer answers.
You turn away from the marsh and head back into the woods.
The sun has set and it's bitterly cold and windy by the time you reach the Veterans Hospital. You warm up in the garden center before the bus comes.
The temperature plunges, but you've made plans this time. You retrieve some free newspapers, cut through a garden that hasn't been touched in decades, hop a chain-link fence, and approach an abandoned ranch house across from a boarded up daycare. Despite previous signs of occupancy, no one has squatted here for weeks. You dig around under the porch and retrieve some dry wood, then kick out a board, crawl inside, and use the newspapers to start a small fire. The air is smoky and the fire doesn't offer much warmth, but you're able to curl up in your stained fleece and get a few hours of sleep.
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