Page 199 - Chronicles of Darkness

live orderly, ordinary lives. The elderly enjoy the ease of their Larceny: Whatever is going on, it’s going on in that boiler
golden years. Even the landlords enjoy a satisfied kind of wealth room. No matter how locked up it is, you’re getting in there.
without extravagance. Of course, the stress sometimes breaks Roll Dexterity + Larceny to unlock the door and see what’s
through, and a sign of the God-Machine’s terrible cost can be waiting inside.
seen. A local might run across her landlord sitting in the park in Socialize: Rumors go with parties like cheap beer and
the middle of the night weeping. And everyone heard about the curious potluck offerings. You’ve arranged to get a bunch
security guard who hung himself in a building basement after a of the people in your building to join you for a social. Roll
disappearance. Some days you can’t leave your apartment with- Presence + Socialize to get everyone having enough of a good
out seeing 50 “missing” flyers plastered all over a telephone pole. time that they don’t notice you’re pumping them for rumors
The shared boiler room, though, is an open wound in about the block.
reality. The God-Machine, a pulsing, living, hissing, steaming Streetwise: As the characters debate what to do, to
thing, exists openly in that blood-stained room. The boiler work with the God-Machine or resist it, you can’t help
room is a Linchpin and the landlords go to great lengths to but think of all the really awful people out there. Crooked
keep everyone out. politicians. Abusers. You bring to mind criminals who
At the chronicle’s climax, with the characters confronting the work the system and never get caught. Roll Intelligence +
landlords in the boiler room, they may also meet the Architect Streetwise to come up with a list of people who may actu-
(traits provided on p. 253). When confronted, it offers the ally “have it coming.”
characters a choice: try and fight the God-Machine, ruin the Holistic Awareness (p. 44): Doctors can be an arrogant
lives of hundreds of people, maybe thousands, or work with lot. If there’s unusual health and wellbeing in the patients
the God-Machine. It’s just one murder every six months. And under their care, they aren’t likely to examine it too closely.
the characters are free to choose the victim. How many violent Why look for problems where there are none? You’re some-
criminals, wife-beaters, rapists, drug addicts, and so on could what outside of that world, however, and the balance of health
they remove from the city? Or, perhaps they have enemies that and illness is a delicate one. You know something isn’t right
they can now dispose of easily and cleanly. The God-Machine here on the block. The balance is off, but you can’t quite put
doesn’t leave evidence behind, after all. your finger on why. Yet.
As a point of interest, if the characters defeat the angel and Safe Place (p.54): It isn’t safe for you most other places,
destroy the boiler room (caving in the street, for instance, or outside the block for sure. You spent a lot of time building
just walling it up from the outside), the God-Machine doesn’t up your Safe Place to assure that those outside threats never
seek reprisals and there are no consequences for the block come in, never get you in your sleep. What will you do to
other than that the crime and unemployment rate normalize. protect that Safe Place when you realize what plays a big part
The God-Machine is just using this area as a supply of surplus in what makes it so safe?
energy, and it would be inefficient to expend the energy to
destroy it (especially if it can leave the Infrastructure intact Escalation
and get the sacrifices going again once the characters have
died or moved on). The climax of the story, naturally, can be when the char-
acters are confronted by the Architect. His offer shouldn’t
Methods be an easy choice, and making that choice should change
the characters forever.
Occult: You’re only now starting to realize the potential If the characters choose to serve the God-Machine, you
occult nature of the filigree and architectural details all over can then follow up. How do the characters cope with their
the block. It’s going to take some serious research to figure out newfound duty? How do they struggle with one another and
what the architect was trying to do. Roll Intelligence + Occult themselves over the dark thing they must do for the greater
to start discovering the chilling truth behind the symbolism. good? Can they cover up the truth well enough? How do
Politics: A city’s zoning regulations and property laws are they choose who lives and who dies? If they remain in the
always confusing and obscure. The cops claim they aren’t city and delve deeper into its occult secrets, they might wind
legally allowed to investigate inside the buildings? Could it up discovering gateways to cities all over the world (Urban
be true? You’ve gotten as far as the public records of city hall, Wandering, p. 235).
roll Intelligence + Politics to see if you can make heads or If the characters opt to leave the city, do they stay together?
tails of the restrictions. Do circumstances bring them back into one another’s com-
Brawl: You don’t know what you said that set the landlord pany for a new crisis of life and death? If one character does
off, but she’s screaming and crying and swinging at you. Roll kill someone to feed to the God-Machine, maybe he gets it
Stamina + Brawl to keep yourself from getting scratched up wrong and activates the events of Wake the Dead (p. 214).
until she calms down.

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Tales of the God machine