Page 221 - Chronicles of Darkness

about the Citadel, but few people post on them for more openly photograph any of the Citadel’s bizarre oddities,
than a few months, and several of the frequent posters write like the four-armed creatures, someone nearby politely but
like unmedicated schizophrenics. firmly reminds this person that she should not photograph
Linchpins such things. Groups of inhabitants forcibly restrain anyone
who persists.
To end the power of the Golden Citadel, characters must
Near the end of her diary, Ms. Grunewald describes a locate and destroy the sculpture that Maria Grunewald helped
simple construct of wire, capacitors, and resistors capable of to construct. The local populace has continued to add to it. This
blocking the effects of the Citadel’s mind control. However, sculpture is now a bizarre and ugly hodgepodge of materials the
the tone of the papers changes again to a renewed sense size of a one-family house. It is located very near the center of the
of joy at the existence of the Citadel and a growing deter- Golden Citadel. The notes Maria Grunewald made about this
mination to go and help build it. In with these papers is a sculpture mention that it must remain uncovered and in the open.
circuit diagram for a simple network of circuits designed to However, the workers constructed the Golden Citadel so that the
be worn as a skullcap or under a hat, along with a single, sculpture is located amidst a maze of streets, which contain dozens
mostly-complete device that lacks only a pair of resistors and of five- and six-story apartment buildings. Characters who wander
a length of wire to finish it. through the central part of the Citadel eventually discover it, but
If the characters build circuits to protect them from the this effort could take three or four days. However, anyone with
influence of the angels, they’ll all suddenly remember one or binoculars who climbs one of the tall cathedrals or factories can
two young people who mentioned they would be traveling to located the sculpture far more rapidly. If the characters can destroy
the Golden Citadel to pursue their art or “find themselves,” the sculpture, all the inhabitants of the Citadel collapse. The non-
and that all of the characters then forgot about these people. humans soon die, and the humans are dazed and semiconscious
If the characters research the Golden Citadel online while for several hours, and remain confused about where they are or
wearing the circuit, they find a few blog posts about a huge and what they have been doing after they recover.
disturbing city near Bremen that continues to expand. Most
of these blog posts end with the people writing that they have Methods
decided to go and visit or work in the Golden Citadel. Any
character who reads one of these entries when not wearing the Crafts: Characters who want to blow up the sculpture
circuit skullcap instantly forgets what he has read. The diary at the center of the Citadel must make an Intelligence +
also explains that Ms. Grunewald believed that the sculpture Crafts (with a Specialty in Explosives) roll to correctly place
she helped build is the focus of the Golden Citadel’s power, explosives and arrange timers or detonators to destroy it.
and that if it is destroyed the Citadel’s power will vanish. Medicine: Students of psychiatric medicine might dis-
Surrounded by brightly-painted concrete walls 40 feet cover a paper written by a psychologist in the late 1980s. In
high with a single large gateway, the Citadel is currently 16 it, he referred to the Berlin Wall’s collapse as a turning point
miles in diameter. The interior consists of a series of large for Europe, and referred to a psychological construct called
apartment buildings surrounding a collection of taller and a “Golden Citadel.” An Intelligence + Medicine roll while
stranger-looking buildings that resemble somewhat looming, reading his case studies indicates that his subjects thought
menacing, modern cathedrals. of the Citadel as a literal place, and all referred to it as being
In addition to being able to remember and think about near Bremen, not Berlin.
the Golden Citadel, anyone wearing the circuit skullcap Drive: Characters can make a Dexterity + Drive roll to
can also safely enter the Citadel without being controlled either escape pursuit within the Citadel or to blend normally
into working for it. The people working there won’t notice into the constant, but exceedingly orderly, flow of traffic in
anything odd about the characters if they don’t draw atten- and around it.
tion to themselves. Once inside, the characters see that more Stealth: Moving unobserved through the Citadel or dis-
than a tenth of the workers aren’t human. Some are instead creetly planting explosives on the central sculpture requires
dimwitted but exceedingly strong, four armed, and vaguely a successful Dexterity + Stealth roll.
humanoid creatures. These creatures come from one large Streetwise: Anyone who wants to find some of the few
building containing a huge and squirming mass of flesh that other people who know about the Golden Citadel can make
ingests the dozens of corpses brought to it every day and gives a Presence + Streetwise roll at -3 to attempt to do so.
birth to more four-armed workers. The other nonhuman Subterfuge: Observing and being able to mimic the
workers are clockwork servitors (see p. 255) that emerge from reactions and nonverbal cues of the workers in the Citadel
another large building that some people regularly enter and well enough to avoid suspicion requires a Manipulation +
do not leave, where humans drive trucks in, full of machine Subterfuge roll.
parts. Inside is a huge, spiderlike Dalga (see p. 256). Unarmed Defense (p. 65): Weapons are hard to come by
Everyone in the city is eager, friendly, and polite, and in the Golden Citadel, but that doesn’t mean the characters
none of them notices anything odd about working around won’t be threatened.
four-armed creatures, humanoid clockworks, huge, squirm- Fleet of Foot (see p. 47): Being a fast runner can help
ing masses of flesh, or huge spiders. If anyone attempts to characters escape pursuit within the Citadel.

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Tales of the God machine