Page 225 - Chronicles of Darkness

on his way to murdering tens of thousands of people at once. Athletics: The military is raiding the house, and you aren’t
What compounds matters is that those other leaders all over supposed to be here. You need to brace yourself in the rafters
the world, dreaming of blood and glory, might follow in the until they go away, but if you slip you’ll fall right through the
wake of success here with their own versions of Proposition ceiling. Roll Stamina + Athletics to hold that pose.
279. A growing tide of dead “undesirables” will sate the God- Stealth: It has come this far. Night sits heavily over the
Machine’s need for massive sacrifice — or perhaps, with so President’s compound. You have no choice; you must sneak
much death, the God-Machine might become “overclocked,” across the compound. Roll Dexterity + Stealth, because the
and the world might burn. President must die.
If the characters don’t want to find out, they’re going Streetwise: The Catch-22 is, in order to protect the LGBT
to have to stop it here in this little nation. Proposition 279 citizens who haven’t yet been brought in by the military po-
needs to fail, and it needs to fail spectacularly. Whether that lice, you have to find them. Finding them might put them
means killing the President, bringing in help from other na- in more danger, but it’s a risk you may have to take. Roll
tions or the UN, or organizing the people of the country to Manipulation + Streetwise to ask around and find middlemen
stand up and overthrow the government, the characters have who can point you in the right direction safely.
thousands of lives in their hands. Subterfuge: Why break into the prison when you can
Linchpins walk in? Roll Manipulation + Subterfuge to convince the
prison authorities that not only are you UN officials, but
that as UN officials you have the right to see their prisoners.
The papers call him “Mr. Nose” — at least the papers Status (Diplomatic) (p. 54): It’s about accesses. If you
that don’t belong to the State. He’s the paper-white man want to get in where the movers and shakers are in this po-
standing just behind and to the left of the President during litical arena, you need access, and few people have as much
speeches and in photo ops. In fact, he seems to be in pictures access as a well-placed diplomat. Just don’t push too far and
where he wasn’t present in person, and now shows up in find yourself at the epicenter of an international incident.
images recorded before anyone had an account of him at Eidetic Memory (p. 44): Keeping a list of names is
the President’s side. risky, because if you’re caught, they’ll find it. Better to just
Mr. Nose is an angel, but one of fairly limited mobility memorize the names of the people in the area. It’s not like
and power (more details on p. 261). Killing or disposing of the military can read minds, right?
him would be a good start, but it’s not going to eliminate
the problem entirely; the President is still planning on going Escalation
through with Proposition 279, with or without Mr. Nose. Of
course, without Mr. Nose, the President might be susceptible Putting down the President or stopping his plan from
to new advisers, if the characters have the positions and continuing might be enough to encourage the God-Machine
tenacity to take this route. to other goals. But it might not. The “big reveal” of this story
Methods should be that all the buildup, the politics and the hate is
a smoke screen. When humans kill each other en masse, it
is worse than pointless. It’s in service to the God-Machine.
Medicine: The President’s council is largely for show, From the Crusades to Darfur, humanity destroys itself using
but they’ve agreed to a meeting. You have two minutes to any excuse it can come up with, and the God-Machine reaps
explain why homosexuality isn’t a disease, a “lifestyle,” or an the benefits. Straight, gay, Roman, or Turkish, everyone is
abomination, and it had better sound as scientific as possible. equal in the eyes of the God-Machine, and equally worthy of
Roll Manipulation + Medicine to give them a good balance sacrifice. That kind of revelation might be the springboard
of facts, reality, and medical jargon. into a cosmic Tale like What Is It Good For (p. 233) or This is
Politics: Being militant will cost lives. Waiting on diplo- Hell (p. 231). Of course, after this harrowing experience, they
macy might, too. You want to undercut the President’s power might prefer to go home (wherever home is) and deal with
base by using his own propaganda machine against him. Roll something on a smaller scale. The 300 Block (p. 197) deals
Intelligence + Politics to plan out your political assassination with murder as well, but for (on the surface) different reasons.
of the President.

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Tales of the God machine