>>5877517Alright, I'm reasonably certain now that what Scout and Nice ran into was a mine spirit, probably around Rank 3-4, which is pretty difficult to handle even for a pack of werewolves or Thyrsus mages. (Above Rank 5 are spirits that might as well be gods, so they have no stats; they do whatever the Storyteller wants.)
A spirit has an Influence that corresponds to its own nature, allowing it to manipulate or create things of that nature. The mine spirit, thematically, then has the ability to create any kind of metal.
A spirit requires Essence to use their Influences. The Influence we are looking at, in Scout's case, is Mass Create - the highest level of Influence - which costs 5 Essence. The spirit can choose to make the duration last anywhere from one minute per success to being permanent - but this costs 2 additional Essence. Essence is not cheap - even a rank 5 Spirit can only have a maximum of 50 Essence.
The mine is almost definitely a Location-Spirit. Here is an example of a corresponding location-spirit that fits the mold, given in the Book of Spirits:
Steed’s Pond (The Water Horse Pool)
Every third spring equinox since the Steed mansion fire marks the time when the pond grows hungry. That is when the Water Horse Council, a group of town elders who seem totally normal to outsiders, gathers to meet and find a new victim. It grows harder and harder to find someone to drown in the pool, and now the council members are old — there are so few new people who will understand the need. Sometimes the pond grows very hungry and very angry — sometimes it feeds upon the townfolk. Twice in their long history, the Council has drawn lots, sacrificing its own, or its children to pond. They bind them and weight them down with the stones from the pond. Then they push them in and bubbles rise slowly and then in a rush. The next morning nothing is there.
But when the pond is newly fed, the Council can come to it and stare into its depths, and the pond can show them the future. The pond sometimes lies, but frequently it does not. Often what it shows is not pleasant.
Deep within the mine, Scout and Nice passed into the Shadow due to a weak Gauntlet, or the Threshold Numen (basically a spirit's ability), and saw the spirit's true representation. The spirit likely uses a variant of the Drain Numen to gain Essence from its victims while also dealing lethal damage, and then uses part of its bounty to reward the human who brings it food by creating the metal. The reason the metal turned to dust was because, perhaps, that the last sacrifice was unusually weak and the mine didn't get enough Essence from it, so it didn't bother to make the effect lasting. It probably does have ways to ensnare prey which wanders into the mine, but every time it uses Numen, it burns Essence, which is why it would rather make 'deals' with the people who go there. The deals probably have no binding power, but the mine would like people to think that they do. Fortunately, Scout arrived at a time when the spirit was almost out of Essence it was willing to spend, which allowed them to get away.
We still don't know why Scout's parents disappeared, though. Perhaps they based it on superstition; but in truth, assuming if really is a spirit, its threats are empty; location-spirits have a limited zone of influence.
