Page 215 - Chronicles of Darkness

Psychometry, (p. 58): What secrets might a magical tests on the other two objects. None of the results should be
sphere taken from the moon hold? Using psychic powers to identical to the effects of this object, but characters can find two
find out might be dangerous to one’s sanity, but too great a other locations in nearby cities where strange phenomena occur.
temptation to ignore. In one, people see ghosts and hear voices far more often than
Escalation normal (Ghost Machine, p. 207). In the other, the overall level
of fear and dread has significantly increased, leading to a local
rise in violent crime and suicide (if this continues, it could lead
The stone sphere is only one of three artifacts astronauts to This Is Hell, p. 231; left in a “milder” state it might lead to
recovered from the moon. Other people are performing different The 300 Block; p. 197).

WAKE THE DEAD

One of you killed a man who wasn’t supposed to die. More importantly, one or more of the characters needs
Maybe he had it coming, maybe he didn’t, but anyhow, he’s to be directly responsible for the death of another person.
gone and that’s when everything started going wrong and the Maybe the players know about it, or maybe it’s a terrible secret
dead started waking up. The cause? You’re going to have to one keeps from the others. The example character, Lucien
find it and stop it, because no one else can. McJack, is presented as a man killed by accident, but feel free
Infrastructure to adapt him to fit any unfortunate victim of the characters.

Most of the action in this story should happen in the small Blueprints
towns and on the back roads of middle America, largely focused The God-Machine had plans that have started to un-
on the region that was once the Dust Bowl. (Northwest Texas, coil thanks to a random act of mortality. When the God-
eastern New Mexico, the Oklahoma panhandle, and much of Machine’s designs were countermanded, some gear or wheel
Kansas and Colorado). The characters’ stories could stretch as started spinning backward. The living continued to die, but
far north as the Dakotas, west as San Diego, and east as Ohio. some of the dead just started living again. It isn’t a thing the
Anywhere you imagine a small population, dirt and dust, and a God-Machine is doing directly, but rather, a side effect of
touch of the nomadic trucker culture, you can drop these stories. messing with its plans.
All over these rural and roadside communities the Because human death is so indiscriminate, these resurrec-
rumors fly. Jacob McKenzie got knifed in a bar fight three tions are similarly chaotic. As the characters run into more
weeks back, but didn’t stay dead for too long. Elsie Wilson’s incidences of people returning from the dead, (though not
son came home to her before Christmas even though he always coming back to life — most often, they come back as
got killed in the war. And the Maple widows aren’t sleep- undead creatures), they might see that even the happiest end-
ing alone anymore since both of their husbands returned. ings have a bitter twinge to them and painful irony hovers over
Here and there, the dead are coming back. Sometimes it’s each person touched by these events. A father might wish,
nothing, life as normal, just full of bittersweet memories and fervently, for his son to come back to life — but when the boy
worry. Sometimes it’s a horror movie, complete with brain does return, is that really what the father wanted? A person
eating and screaming. No two stories play out exactly the killed by her lover in the heat of passion returns to life and
same way, but for some reason all these stories are coming crawls out of the shallow grave she was buried in. Does she
to the characters’ ears. want revenge? Answers? Or maybe she forgives her lover and
The Truth: The Infrastructure at work here is logistical, wants to go back to him?
but it’s all gone wrong. The characters (one of them, at least) Ultimately, the characters unravel the cause of the chaos:
killed a person for whom the God-Machine had further plans, the man one of them killed, who is now a soulless corpse pos-
but instead of the plans shifting, the God-Machine is trying sessed by an evil spirit (see Lucien McJack, p. 244). At this
to correct the death. Unfortunately things got muddled, and point they’ll have to face their own actions, their own mortal-
the God-Machine isn’t sure who it’s supposed to bring back, ity, and agents of the God-Machine as they try to stop this
hence the haphazard nature of this story. senseless nightmare of life and death. They may try to bring
Interchangeable Parts back the man they killed to end the onslaught. They may get
the idea that bringing him back will be worse, and try to stop
the God-Machine. That might involve finding out what was so
The characters might be truckers, runaways, a band, stu- special about the man they killed — a man who, unfortunately,
dents out to “discover themselves,” a group of writers and artists has already returned to “life,” but is in no condition to pick
trying to be Hemingway or Kerouac, ghost or storm chasers, up where he left off.
but whoever they are, they need to be able to live nomadically.

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Tales of the God machine