Page 192 - Chronicles of Darkness

The Invisible Citadel  Proposition 279 players might have ways to affect them. The goal is for every-
thing to work in a nice, tight circle, but that only happens if
This is a hard transition. The best way to make it work
is probably to connect the Citadel to whatever country is you know what is supposed to have happened. A good prac-
tice is to make future predictions as non-specific as possible,
putting forth Prop 279, and to allow the characters to travel because that allows for greater ease of interpretation when
there via the Citadel. If they find information in the Citadel events come to pass (look at Nostradamus’ predictions and
that explains the nature of Prop 279 (even if it takes them how liberally they are interpreted for inspiration).
the whole story to decipher it — meaning that not until the
end of the story do they realize that the whole point is a Sequence
widespread massacre, and that it has nothing to do with the
specific people being killed), then they should be well and Squares of the City (p. 203)  Missing Persons
truly outraged. They can also see the Dalga in the Citadel (p. 210)  Do-Over (p. 199)  The Moon Window
spawn Mr. Nose, and then see him later acting as an adviser.
Strong motivations are essential for the characters; they won’t (p. 212)  A Journey Into Time (p. 228)
just go haring off across the world to fight evil dictatorships
without a strong reason to do so. Progression
Proposition 279  This is Hell This track starts with Squares of the City, which is easily

It is entirely appropriate for Proposition 279 to fail, for the most grounded and understandable of the included Tales.
the God-Machine to suddenly lose a great deal of power, and The characters need to investigate buildings being edited out
the Celebrants to choose that moment to begin their assault. of existence, so right away something is removing people and
Likewise, if the God-Machine does manage to get Prop279 structures from this plane of reality. Squares of the City also
through and the massacre happens, maybe that boost of establishes some out-and-out weird motifs (buildings moving
power enables the God-Machine to begin the push for on hidden tracks like a giant slide puzzle?), which should set
“Heaven.” Either way, the characters can be right there in the the stage for the even weirder stuff later.
middle of it, and given what they have already accomplished, Squares of the City  Missing Persons
they are ideally positioned as humanity’s champions. They Where do the buildings go when they vanish? The charac-
can now fight the God-Machine in a meaningful way — but ters shouldn’t find out during the first story, but when they
given what the God-Machine wants, should they?
start hearing rumors of people vanishing, they might note
Space & Time the similarity. They might also hear of something appearing,
something connected to one of the buildings that they (and
Many of the Tales deal with cosmic issues of time travel no one else) remember vanishing in Squares of the City.
and causality, but this chronicle track makes a point of taking When they investigate these missing persons, they learn that
the characters into strange vistas, showing them bizarre possi- the extradimensional space is dotted with buildings from
bilities, and putting the power of time reversal in their hands. all over the world, some of which they remember seeing.
Time travel is hard to use as a plot device or a narrative Apparently, their city wasn’t the only one with those tracks
tool. It lends itself to over analysis, plot holes, and bad at- beneath the ground.
tempts at understanding quantum theory. The best way to Missing Persons  Do-Over
approach it in a God-Machine chronicle is, perhaps, the “I
told you so” method. Let the players change whatever they This is a difficult transition because getting the characters
want, but find a way to make it all work seamlessly in the to interact with the “magical couch” in the diner requires
end. Have someone opine that time is cyclical, make notice- them taking several logical leaps. But that’s where the magic
able mention that “what has fallen may rise again,” and let of time travel comes in — one of the characters’ “future selves”
the players have fun twisting their brains trying to grasp the can appear to the character and tell her about the diner and
logic of it all. If you have players that hate time travel, use a the couch. Alternatively, the characters might be in the fac-
different track. tory, dealing with the Overseer, and see the diner slide out
on tracks back into their world. In any event, once they realize
Themes they can alter that past, it might be wise to have them keep
track of what events they’ve altered, just so you can have them
In addition to themes of causality, responsibility and pos- cross paths with the repercussions later.
sibility, this track allows players to experiment with motifs
usually left to science fiction. Almost all of the Tales in this Do-Over  The Moon Window
track deal with weird science rather than (or in addition to) Sometime before this point in the chronicle, the charac-
supernatural horror, and that might provide an interesting ters should become aware of Marco Singe and his cult. In fact,
change of pace for seasoned Chronicles of Darkness players. it might be interesting if he were the one to point them at the
Make sure that someone takes good notes for this track. diner, or for them to run across him in the extradimensional
If possible, you want to refer back to past events — because factory. Once they’ve concluded Do-Over, they hear about

191
Chronicle Tracks