MotW - Bolero Valley

Your phone's screen lets you know that it's exactly 8:47 PM when you get the call. You answer, and the voice on the other end of the line is Nestor.

To most of the people who live here, Nestor is the head librarian at the local public library. For as long as anyone can remember, he's been as much of a fixture there as the shelves.

To you–and to the rest of Bolero Valley's supernatural community–he's Uncle Nessie. To the degree that the witches, spooks, and creeps that live here recognize someone as the center of their insular, secretive world, Nessie is it.

So when he asks you to come meet him at the library right away, you do it–even though he refuses to answer any of your questions over the phone.

It doesn't take you long to get to the library, and once you do it doesn't take you much longer to figure out what the secrecy is about.

Nessie locks the front doors and ushers you into one of the small meeting rooms. Sitting in a chair in the back corner–wrapped in a blanket and staring into the steaming cup of herbal tea Nessie has brewed for him–is a young boy, barely 13. There's a small cut above one eyebrow, but more than any physical damage he looks rattled and scared.

"I found him in the alley when I went to take out the trash," Nessie whispers to you. "Normally, I would have called the cops, but he asked me not to." A pause. "And I have reason to think this might not be a matter for the mundanes."

The party arrived at the library after Nessie's call. He brought them into the room to meet Dante, who gave them what limited information he had–he remembered being in the alley, then waking up against one wall with no memory of the intervening time.

When the party went to leave, they encountered Joseph Bustillo, an agent with the Masonic Obscure Rite–basically a self-appointed magical cop. They scuffled briefly, but Sloane defused the situation and offered to keep him in the loop on anything the party finds if he does the same.

That done, all three ventured out into the alley to check the scene. Despite a remarkable amount of property damage, there was almost no blood on the scene. They didn't manage to gather much more–there were claw marks on the oil drum and whatever did this must have been very strong–but while they investigated, they heard a howling noise from nearby.

When they went to investigate, they found that a store window had been smashed in, and a decorative pillar splintered. Astrid stayed behind to investigate, and determined that they damage done here wouldn't have taken anything like the strength needed to do what was done in the alley. Sloane and Blake chased after the creature; something blasted Blake into the wall, and Sloane managed to chase the creature out of town but wasn't able to catch up to it.