Page 229 - Chronicles of Darkness

learn that National Park Service personnel discovered serious a day at a time before everything burns and resets. The ability
cracks in the statue on August 6, 1945, the day of the nuclear to work short cons might be useful.
attack on Hiroshima. Close Quarters Combat (see p. 61): A fight scene in the
Science: A successful Intelligence + Science roll while tight stairways of the statue would be dramatic and deadly
inside the statue allows the characters to understand that the — hopefully a character has the expertise for it.
huge egg casing inside the statue is connected to the electrical
sigils by filaments of living tissue and that the egg case draws Escalation
power from these sigils.
Larceny: Characters who wish to break into the statue or The Statue of Liberty hatching might only be the first of
into the portions of the statue that are off limits to the general several these events. Characters who travel widely before the
public must make a successful Dexterity + Larceny roll at -2. blast and are at different places in the world when the blast
Stealth: Characters must make a successful Wits + Stealth occurs could see locations like the Eiffel Tower, the Burj
roll to hide within the statue itself after it is closed to the Khalifa in Dubai (currently the world’s tallest building), and
public at 5:00 P.M. other well-known structures hatch and explode in response
Persuasion: Convincing someone working at the statue to the Statue of Liberty exploding. After the characters finish
that something strange and dangerous is going on and that saving the Statue of Liberty, they will need to save the other
this person should allow the characters to accompany them to structures before they hatch.
investigate this problem requires a Presence + Persuasion roll. To connect this Tale with others, consider the possibil-
Subterfuge: A character can convince someone working ity that the parasites might be nightmare creatures (Urban
at the statue that the character is an FBI agent or some other Wandering, p. 235) that the characters need to trace back
important official by making a successful Manipulation + to their source. Or, perhaps in solving the problem, the char-
Subterfuge roll. acters become unstuck from time and space, finally settling
Fast-Talking (p. 50): The characters have limited time to somewhere with similar amounts of devastation (What Is It
do their research and come up with a plan — they only have Good For, p. 233).

A JOURNEY INTO TIME

The characters see an online video about how the world The video then says that characters should also construct
will soon end. This video is a call for help and allows the an electromagnet around a closed doorway. When the char-
characters to create a mechanism that allows them to travel acters turn on both the light and the magnet, opening the
back to 1901 to destroy the device that will end the world. door reveals a corridor several hundred yards long. The video
Infrastructure states that this corridor allows travel through time and space,
ending somewhere in Paris at 5:11 P.M. on February 16,
1901. The video also provides the addresses of Dr. Girard’s
The aforementioned video is only 10 minutes long. It laboratory and home.
starts with a statement “If anyone is seeing this, I have failed. In The Truth: Like Marco Singe, Dr. Girard’s employers
1901, I invented a device that will soon end the world. The auroras tried to use the God-Machine as a path to godhood. Unlike
are only the first sign. A version of this device can also save the Singe, they managed to succeed, after a fashion. The device
world, by allowing someone to return to the first minutes in which that Girard invented does allow the users to manipulate time
the device was turned on. You must destroy both the original version much like the God-Machine does, but, unfortunately, the
of this device and my laboratory notebook. device also alters the nature of causality. The result is that
If my employers never learn of this device, they cannot use it the God-Machine can’t get a bead on what is happening,
to end the world. They believe the mechanism we used to create it and therefore cannot simply send an angel to fix it. When
will give them the power to control time and space. In reality, it the characters see the video, though, they create a timeline
allows an inhuman force to collapse all of time into a single endless in which they do correct the problem, which gives the God-
instant. I created the central component to this device by accident. Machine a way to send an angel to help them.
If all records of how to create it are destroyed, the machine that now
threatens to end time will never have been built. If time has already Interchangeable Parts
begun to decay, the area illuminated by the lamp will remain safe.”
The video describes how to create a complex gas-discharge Characters can begin in any city that has access to the inter-
lamp like a neon light, containing a precise mixture of seven dif- net, chemistry laboratories, and lab supply companies. The first
ferent gases — oxygen, neon, xenon, argon, nitrogen, carbon diox- evidence the characters have that anything unusual is happening
ide, and helium. Powered by a lithium battery like those used in are the brilliant, royal blue auroras that appear in skies all across
cameras or cell phones, the small light produces a royal blue glow. the world, including above places too close to the equator to
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Tales of the God machine