Page 222 - Chronicles of Darkness

Escalation and a fifth of the entire population of the EU works there.
Perhaps the Citadel has grown to the size of Germany

If the characters manage to destroy the Citadel, the God- People across the entire world travel to the Citadel to work,
Machine writes this off as a failed experiment and looks for and most young people have spent at least one summer
other subtle ways to conceal its Infrastructure. Maybe it entrusts working there. Maybe everyone on Earth knows about it and
a great measure of its power to an individual (The Key, p. 208), considers it either unimportant, or as something important
or maybe it tries to cloud minds more directly (A Glimpse they should help build and run. With this kind of direct
of Mesmerizing Complexity, p. 216). On the other hand, involvement, you could continue on to This Is Hell (p. 231)
maybe the distraction of having the Citadel destroyed blinds or Urban Wandering (p. 235).
the God-Machine to a more immediate problem, one that
the characters now need to correct (The Hatching, p. 226).

OPERATION: BELL JAR

In the North Sea, an oil-drilling platform has apparently The Truth: Arnold Diefenbach merged with the oil rig.
become the base of operations for a terrorist group. The He was content to continue with the rig’s original function
characters arrive to find it empty, but shortly thereafter they for a time, but then the God-Machine found it had need of
discover that the problem is much larger than they’d feared. the platform. It moved the drill slightly and pushed down
Infrastructure into the sea bed, seeking to uncover something left buried
for millions of years (see Blueprints). When the crew noticed
this, they assumed it was a malfunction and tried to shut it
West Nautical 36 (p. 251) is an oil-drilling platform in down — and Diefenbach killed them all. The oil rig itself is
the North Sea. Up until recently, it was showing promising defense Infrastructure.
signs of being a moderately-productive drilling site. But then
an intense storm hit the area. Most of the crew got off in Interchangeable Parts
time, but one engineer, Arnold Diefenbach, stayed aboard
to try and stabilize the platform. When the rest of the crew The characters are members of the elite team of soldiers
and rescue personnel arrived once the weather had calmed, sent to retake the rig. They might be Navy SEALs, British
they found the platform with minor damage but in perfect Commandos, Swedish Särskilda Operationsgruppen, or
working order. Diefenbach was nowhere to be found, and French Commandos Marine. Someone in the group is prob-
was assumed to have been swept overboard. ably trained in explosive ordinance disposal, and the group
In the weeks that followed, the platform began producing might also include a civilian engineer (in case the rig needs
oil at an incredible rate. The company devoted more resources emergency repair).
to the rig, expanding its production capability and conduct- If your players are up for something a little different,
ing studies into the feasibility of making another well in the though, they might control a communications team from an
area. And then one night, the company, as well as emergency operations center on a ship or on the mainland. These char-
services in England, Belgium, and the Netherlands, received acters might be trained in the investigative Skills to determine
frantic calls for help from the rig. When they tried to return what happened on the ship, while the soldiers act as their eyes
those transmissions, they received no answer. The first group and ears with shoulder- or helmet-mounted cameras. Or, once
of rescue personnel that got near the rig saw the crew hang- the soldiers arrive at the rig and find nothing immediately
ing from cables, each with a sign on their body that read threatening, they might bring an investigative team out, al-
“STAY AWAY.” lowing the players to control a mix of soldiers and detectives.
The company and the countries involved immediately
assumed that some terrorist group or cult had seized the rig, Blueprints
and tried to make contact to ascertain their demands. The
response was always the same: “STAY AWAY.” Finally, the The God-Machine doesn’t necessarily want people dead
various governments involved (the surrounding countries (it doesn’t really care, of course, but dead people tend to
and the U.S.) assembled an elite team to travel to the rig at make other people interested, and that slows things down).
night and retake it, kill or capture the perpetrators, and find Diefenbach, however, is just as obsessed with the rig as he’s
out what damage had been done. That, of course, is where always been, and he views anyone that sets foot on it as an
the characters come in. This mission is called Operation: intruder. The drilling apparatus is automated, and will con-
Bell Jar, because the area in which West Nautical 36 sits is tinue regardless of what the characters do to Diefenbach.
almost impossible to approach without being seen or heard Stopping the drill requires killing Diefenbach and then getting
but, likewise, no one is likely to escape from it unnoticed. the computer systems working again, or cutting the cables
that provide power to the drills.
221
Operation Bell Jar