Page 219 - Chronicles of Darkness

creature unplugs itself and attempts to prevent the intruder Crafts: An Intelligence + Crafts roll allows a character
from interfering with the constructs. If an unplugged gear to disable a gear construct while it has briefly paused so the
worker touches one of the characters, it begins to scream a characters can examine and photograph it. Characters can
single, high, continuous note, never pausing to draw breath. make another Intelligence + Crafts roll to reactivate the gear
This scream draws other gear workers who attempt to capture construct, so that if it is placed next to one of the entrance
the characters and drag them off behind doorways leading points into the maintenance station, it begins to spin and
off to the side of the factory. Behind these doors, the gear create the spherical portal into Twilight.
workers mind probe intruders using a device that bores into Athletics: A successful Dexterity + Athletics roll with a
their brains. After determining what the person knows, the -3 penalty enables a character to climb onto a gear construct
gear workers place the person in a vat that takes three days to as it pauses before dematerializing and flying into the main-
transform a human into a gear worker (use the traits provided tenance station. Characters may also make an unmodified
for clockwork servitors on p. 255 to represent gear workers; Dexterity + Athletics roll to get into the glowing sphere that
they have the Enhanced Speed ability). leads to the factory, before it vanishes.
Leaders of any effort to destroy gear constructs or make Drive: A character that sees a gear construct runs the risk
them public are likely to be involved in some form of seri- of driving off the road. Roll Composure + Drive, applying
ous car accident. If one of the leaders allows her identity to any appropriate penalties. Failure means the car crashes.
become public, or is ever noticed by the gear workers, then Empathy: A successful Presence + Empathy roll can be
any time she crosses or drives along a path traveled by the used to convince people who have been in auto accidents to
gear constructs a construct attempts to strike her or her car, talk about gear constructs they may have seen.
becoming tangible an instant before it hits. The gear work- Streetwise: Characters can make a Manipulation +
ers also immediately attack these leaders if they ever enter a Streetwise roll to discover both others who have seen the gear
maintenance station. constructs and people who might be interested in attempting
Characters could also attempt to make the gear constructs to destroy them.
visible. Telling people exactly what to look for, especially if these Crack Driver (p. 47): Characters who are excellent drivers
people are already inclined to believe in strange phenomena, are better at following gear constructs through traffic to find
allows many of them to see the gear constructs. In addition, out where they vanish.
flying gear constructs show up on ultraviolet-sensitive film, Anonymity (p. 50): Anyone who is good at keeping her
and a captured gear construct shows up on any type of film, identity secret is better at organizing actions to destroy the
including online videos. Sufficient publicity eventually causes gear constructs without being targeted by the gear constructs.
the routes to be changed; the God-Machine finds that sending
the constructs slightly higher and directly over the traffic al- Escalation
lows the same data collection without the same accident risk.
Any online videos of the gear constructs are taken down The gear constructs begin becoming visible and tangible
in fewer than 24 hours, and anyone who openly posts such a all the time. In addition, thousands of maintenance stations
video has their account with the online video-sharing network appear across the world. People who are not sufficiently quick
mysteriously cancelled, and all of their other videos deleted. and careful when investigating these stations are captured
Anyone who makes several blog posts attempting to convince and are later seen on the maintenance lines with a plug in
the public about the existence of the gear constructs is also the back of their now-bald heads. The number of gear con-
at risk for being hit by a flying gear construct. structs begins to increase and the stations expand as bands
of workers begin kidnapping humans and modifying them
Methods into workers to build more factories. At this point, the God-
Machine may decide to kill off anyone it can’t convert (The
Academics: Characters can make an Intelligence + Scarlet Plague, p. 225).
Academics to collate reports of glowing objects flying along Or, if you don’t want to be that blatant, maybe the gear
roads, and to discover that such reports occur in much of constructs have another purpose. They might reanimate the
the world and are almost exclusively found along highways, dead (Wake the Dead, p. 214) or start yanking people to
freeways, and motorways. An exceptional success on this roll processing stations (Missing Persons, p. 210). Continuing the
may turn up anomalies about how the exact paths of various theme of running on a track, maybe the gear constructs be-
highways were chosen. come the “traffic controllers” of Squares of the City (p. 203).

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Tales of the God machine