((Dunno what I'm gonna do with it yet. I'm sure I'll think of something.))

Officially, the crumbling blocks between Broad Street and 6th Avenue are one of the worst slums in Los Angeles. Walking the streets here, a visitor could forget that all this crime, depravity, and misery lies in the heart of the largest city in the United States. It doesn't look like a clean little corner of Hollywood. It looks like a third world country. Trash and sewage line the streets. The area's only police station was closed years ago, due to budget cuts. It's now a makeshift shelter for the addicts and the homeless. Over on 4th Avenue, a fire hydrant spews water into the street. The city has long since warned all its employees to steer clear of the neighborhood.

But, the official story is not always the correct one. Among the Black Spiral Dancers, the place is known as the Sunset Hive, and it's been growing as long as the film industry in the city. The gangs that roam the streets are Black Spirals and their twisted kin. Sure, the drugs they sell are cheap and give a quick high, but the results of those highs are never pretty. The lucky ones accidentally kill themselves. Over on 5th Avenue, where the smell of sewage, trash, and worse things is nearly unbearable, grim residents guard the entrances to a row of dilapidated tenements. Even in the middle of the day, a faint green glow can be seen through the rows of dirty glass windows. Below, in the building's bomb shelter, a tunnel leads down into the heart of the Hive, far below the earth. The entire area reeks of despair and decay, and that's the way the Black Spirals like it.

A Garou unfortunate enough to stumble upon the Sunset Hive in the Penumbra, the Umbral reflection of the physical world, would see a nuclear wasteland crawling with Wyrm creatures, and in the center, in the heart of the corruption, the Hive's totem spirit, a Whippoorwill, keeps watch over the entire area. I've been there plenty of times, and not just for Rites. The corruption is visible in the Umbra. It's tangible. Pools of glowing green sludge attract Banes that wallow in the filth. All that smog that hangs over Los Angeles? I've seen it in the Umbra. I've seen the Wyrm spirits that draw strength from it. And I've helped strengthen them. Year after year, the Hive takes the fight to the spirit world, and slowly, we're gaining strength. In the Umbra, five years ago, a Garou might pass by Broad Street without a word. Now, he'd be lucky to pass by at all. If the Banes didn't get him, the fucking radioactive Hell would.

Home, sweet home, right?