Should be "...lose the investment." Loose could work only if it were voluntary.FrankTrollman wrote:Sample Adventure: An Ash Walker has invested in some land where it was cheap – in Mongolia, and intends to have the natives mine gold for him. Unfortunately, Mongolian Werewolves have other ideas and are taking over for some reason. Anxious to not loose the investment, he's offering a bounty to the player characters to clean up the problem.
Expanding AWOD
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Quantumboost
- Knight-Baron
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Coronis Circle:
Asclepius was a Sidhe whose devotion to healing lead him to share his knowledge with mortals. His wife, Coronis, was a former student who had delved deep into the lore of plants and animals. In time, she became convinced that his school was a wrong--not only did it threaten the masquerade, it raised humans out of their natural place. She confronted him--and was burned as an adulterer for her efforts. What he didn't know was that she had hidden her soul in the body of a crow.
Her students learned bitterness and elitism with every lesson, and to this day, her followers are unified by their desire to tear down the world that humans built ending religion, destroying technology, dissolving government, and even annulling the social contract itself. They call themselves Maenads, and when they are spiking trees or slandering politicians, they run naked through the woods biting goat's necks with their teeth.
Asclepius was a Sidhe whose devotion to healing lead him to share his knowledge with mortals. His wife, Coronis, was a former student who had delved deep into the lore of plants and animals. In time, she became convinced that his school was a wrong--not only did it threaten the masquerade, it raised humans out of their natural place. She confronted him--and was burned as an adulterer for her efforts. What he didn't know was that she had hidden her soul in the body of a crow.
Her students learned bitterness and elitism with every lesson, and to this day, her followers are unified by their desire to tear down the world that humans built ending religion, destroying technology, dissolving government, and even annulling the social contract itself. They call themselves Maenads, and when they are spiking trees or slandering politicians, they run naked through the woods biting goat's necks with their teeth.
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Username17
- Serious Badass
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Monstrous Society
Organization of the Damned
“There's evil stuff going on in here. And I want in.”
Supernatural creatures are in the big scheme of things rather rare. An individual Werewolf may go their entire life without ever encountering another supernatural creature (beyond of course the Werewolf that mauled them into their current state in the first place). So it's not surprising that when they do find each other they tend to make exclusive clubs. These social organizations are in many ways templated on the human social organizations that the creatures that created them lived in when they mingled in human society. And with the sheer age that some creatures possess, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of these organizations are in fact crazy old-fashioned.
Bands
“Go Team Venture!”
Supernatural creatures can easily overpower a single human, and many of them have at least the potential to live forever. But that potential can only be realized if they are not summarily destroyed before forever draws near. The response has been for small groups of supernatural creatures to watch each other's backs and contribute to each others' goals. These small teams are just as needed and just as effective as the hunting parties mankind first organized to fight cave bears. It has been suggested that the practice of supernatural creatures making these bands is perhaps no less old.
I honestly don't care if you call your team a “team” or a “band” or a “pack” or “coven” or “herd” or “Fred”. It's not important. What is important is that the player characters are a Scooby gang that works together and shares screen time. They'll be in the same areas a lot, working towards the same goals, and so on and so forth. These bands of supernaturals are pretty common, largely because of the whole thing that while there are seven billion humans, there are only about six hundred thousand supernaturals. These guys are possibly your only friends, the only people you have shared experience potential with, and so on and so forth. Small, close knit social groups are very much the rule, which is convenient for a cooperative storytelling framework.
Loyalty to these small groups is assumed to be greater than loyalty to any world spanning clubs. The Makhzen does not expect that you will betray your friends for them, because it seriously isn't like you can go out and get new friends. Immortality is a long time, and the number of supernaturals is never that large, so personal loyalties are considered extremely important by just about every one.
Most bands are generally 3-8 supernatural people with possibly some trusted retainers given quasi-membership. This is great for the game, because one of them could very well be “the player characters and maybe an NPC or two”. And indeed, the general assumption is that players will be part of the same band. Doing things this way allows the mission statement of the band to act as velcro to attach plot hooks to every player character, ensuring that the major action doesn't leave anyone behind. A band of Scooby Doo detectives can get all the players into the action right away when any of the characters finds out about a supposedly haunted house, while a band of relic hunters can get the players up to speed with just the subtlest hint about the whereabouts of a famous pistol. Even a band of guys who meet together for pizza and poker night can be righteously mobilized when supernatural goings-on hamper their evening ritual.
Bands are thus structurally a very important part of the story arc for any group playing Dead of Night, because they provide a reason for the players to be telling the same story instead of having their characters drift apart and do their own thing. It is also important to note that many of the famous bands from genre television shows like X Files, American Gothic, and Supernatural only have two characters in them much of the time. Since Dead of Night is a cooperative storytelling game, that is an unreasonable expectation to have. A better template would usually be the bands from more ensemble cast shows like Angel or even Scooby Doo.
Syndicates
“New plan: we don't cut each other's head off in an attempt to gain asymmetric power.”
Whether they like it or not, supernatural characters in Dead of Night are subject to the rules and judgments of one or more of the Syndicates. Acting as defacto nation states, Syndicates provide a Hobbesian mandate of behavior that is difficult to ignore. Characters may indeed be a member of one of them, which provides benefits comparable to those of being the citizen of an archaic empire. However, breaking the edicts of any Syndicate is punishable by that Syndicate if it catches you (subject to possible negotiations if you are a well placed member of another).
The Syndicates do no have directly analogous social hierarchies. Each is kind of like a mafia, with some sort of shady leadership hierarchy and elaborate titles to convey subtle differences in duties and status. But they were generally founded centuries and continents apart from one another, an they are not based on identical or even comparable theories of government. However, while each has very different justifications for its own existence, all the Syndicates exist to fulfill essentially the same functions an is essentially on the same side. So while they spend a fair amount of time insulting one another, it is profoundly unusual for them to actually come to blows. Each Syndicate provides the following:
The Makhzen
“Lack of loyalty is one of the major causes of failure in every walk of life.”
The Makhzen is, according to its own history, an ancient truce declared between various supernatural creatures long ago in Babylon. It was apparently put together in the face of some grave threat which is no longer talked about. Members of the Makhzen are called “Kindred”, and the regional leadership is divided into “cities”, “domains”, and “kingdoms” all of which terms are used interchangeably. Regional leadership is held by a Mehtar Council, which powerful kindred are appointed to for life, and this council is led by a Prince or Aval (both are unisex terms which predate their use in royalty). How much influence the prince actually has varies from region to region. A Mehtar or prince who travels to another domain is automatically a member of the Mehtar council wherever they happen to be.
Laws of the Makhzen are hopelessly baroque, and most of the old ones are shockingly specific and draconian and inscribed into clay tablets. They have by and large been repealed and replaced with ones which are easier for everyone to get along with. Still, there are some hangers on, as it is widely reported that it is still technically a death sentence for the perpetrator and their three closest friends to steal an aurochs from a member of the kindred.
Tonight, the Makhzen remains strong in the Middle East and North Africa. It has spread somewhat into North America in the American South. Once it extended the entire length of the Silk Road and all through Southern Europe, but both of these areas have broken off over the centuries. If you go West or North from Bulgaria you get into Covenant territory. And if you go North or East from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan you get into Communes territory. The Makhzen is bordered on its southern reaches in the old world by World Crime League territory. It is a noticeable source of contention that from the Makhzen's founding lands in Persia you can literally see Afghans who work (albeit unknowingly) for the WCL.
Probably Established: 8th century BCE, Persia
The Cauchemar Communes
“Tradition is but the illusion of permanence. Change is not just inevitable, it is good.”
Supernatural societies have with necessity been extremely conservative over the generations. And such it was that when the age of enlightenment hit the human world, the supernatural world found itself falling behind. The Cauchemar Communes were founded as a reform movement for the supernatural world to take advantage of the new ideas and opportunities found in human science. The term is French for the common people of the nightmares – which was how non-elder supernatural creatures were thought of in 18th century France. Arranged in a “cell structure”, the Communes nominally hold that all of their membership is equal, save for the Revolutionary Committee members themselves who are substantially more equal.
The Cauchemar hold that advancements in human strength and society are, or at least can be, for the good of the supernaturals. Rather than viewing the world as shrinking, leaving them with less and less space in which to hide, the Communes view the world as growing with more and more humans and cities with which to obscure themselves. The Communes' understanding of the Vow of Silence is one based largely upon anonymity rather than invisibility.
The Cauchemar message appeals to the young (which in supernatural terms means those born or made in the last 400 years or so), and campaigns for the removal of traditional privileges for the ancient and established monsters of the world. The Communes favor change and a new way of doing things modeled upon human reforms, but that's about as far as they go in agreeing with one another. It is easy to get the distributed Communes apparatus to help tear down something or turn upon a criminal, but relatively difficult to pass effective resolutions. The ideological divides amongst the Revolutionary Committee are fierce and hard drawn, so the group as a whole acts rarely and with much debate on matters of anything but immediate survival.
As a reformist, “bottom up” movement, the Communes have been able to make great inroads in areas that were previously outside Syndicates, and toppled several minor ones (such as the Puppeteers, the Laibon, and the Kingdom of Yomi). Most impressive of their feats was the dismantling and absorption of the Bumin Horde of Ergenekon. The Cauchemar Communes hold a great deal of power in China and many former Soviet Republics, and also in much of the American Midwest, Canada, and France. The Communes hold territory easily containing more human population than any other Syndicate, a fact that is truly frightening to many other Syndicates considering their newness.
Despite their European origins, or perhaps because of the proximity of their founding to the capital of the Covenant, the Communes have made little progress in Western Europe. In 1798 it seemed that the Communes were on the brink of sacking the Heresiarch Council and ending the Covenant Church altogether. However, in the coming years the Covenant made a number of reforms and concessions to various bishops and interest groups and held onto their European holdings all the way to the Alps. The Cauchemar ended up signing onto peace and expanding instead into the lands of those Syndicates that refused to adapt.
Probably Established: 18th century CE, Pyrenees Mountains.
The Covenant
“A bishop of the Covenant can believe anything, but most of us don't.”
The effect of the Roman Catholic Church on human history is hard to over estimate. As Rome itself was coming crashing down, Europe was largely cut off from the Middle East, Africa, and points further in Asia. Europe became isolated, and the influence of the Makhzen all but vanished. It was at this time that the supernatural creatures of the European region created a new organization modeled on the fledgling Roman Catholic Church.
The Covenant has extremely confused theology and you are specifically not allowed to be excommunicated for heresy. After all, the Covenant's primary role is to facilitate social interaction and conflict resolution between members rather than to advance any specific theological agenda. The Covenant is led by an Anti-Pope who wears a mask and whose identity is nominally secret. The Anti-Pope leads the council of Cardinals, from whom he or she is nominated, and does so for an unspecified amount of time before being replaced – occasionally by themselves in a different mask. Below the cardinals are bishops, below bishops are priests, and everyone else is referred to as “Flock”. Other organizations refer to Covenant members derisively as “Sheep”.
The Covenant maintains a number of parallel hierarchies in addition to the primary one. Rather than being a bishop or priest (which is regional), one could be Apostolic Exarch (which governs a region that is not under Covenant Control), a Military Ordinal (which handles defense of the order regardless of location), or a Palatine (which is organizational and has personnel but no fixed territory). All of these titles carry approximately the same weight as Bishop. The Covenant also recognizes some of its members as “saints”. Once a Covenant member has descended into sainthood they carry a status that cannot be taken away, which essentially allows them to speak and be listened to on any issue by any church conclave at any organizational level. Since the membership of the Covenant are supernatural in nature, the requirements of miraculous activities is entirely a formality and being recognized by the Anti-Pope as a Saint is entirely political. Saints are given spiffy blood red uniforms when they serve in any official capacity and are thence known as Sanguines regardless of their rank or duties.
Law in the Covenant is confusing and pre-baroque, grounded in Roman law and medieval superstition. It is doctrine in the Covenant that canon law is infallible, and thus no law is ever replaced or contradicted. The immense amount of doublethink required to make this function at all is produced by Glossators, who philosophize the inordinately convoluted structures whereby contradictory statements can be rationalized as merely seeming to contradict each other. Canon law itself is crafted by a group of bishops called the Heresiarchs who draft documents for potential Anti-Papal blessing. Who sits on the Heresiarch council at any time is highly variable, as a seat becomes vacant whenever a Heresiarch misses two meetings in a row, and an empty seat is filled as soon as seven bishops not on the council, three bishops on the council, or the Anti-Pope nominate one of the other Bishops into the seat.
World wide there are about a hundred bishops or bishop equivalents, and the substantial majority are in Europe.
Probably Established: 5th century CE, Rome.
World Crime League
“Don't tell me that you're innocent. Because it insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry.”
With the encroachment of the Mongols into South and Southeast Asia, the kingdoms remaining outside the Khan's grasp were cut off from trade with the outside world. The supernatural creatures of the region were forced to make their own way, without influence from the old power structures. A pirate navy formed in Southeast Asia, which preyed upon naval traffic and helped fight the Mongol Empire alongside the mortal forces of Emperor Trần Nhân Tông. Keeping themselves on a military, outlaw footing kept the Mongols out of their lands and waters for as long as the Ming dynasty stood, but by the time they had reestablished connections with other Syndicates, the Viet Shadow Kingdom had power of its own and its membership had no real desire to rejoin the Makhzen. They instead took their criminal activities world wide and became the League of Pirates, and eventually the World Crime League.
Because of their piratical roots, the World Crime League has a vaguely naval structure at the top. There is a council of Captains who discuss world issues and update the guidelines. Locally, WCL members infiltrate whatever criminal groups happen to be active in the region and modify themselves appropriately. WCL members have risen to high ranks in Triads, Vory, Mafia, and Ghost Cartels.
The WCL values money and other trappings of human temporal power as well as mystical power, and one can literally purchase their way up in the ranks of the Syndicate. The group holds that breaking the laws of man and corrupting the values of human society is a goal in and of itself, and undermining the rule of law and morality is seen as a powerful and respectable achievement by the League.
Probably Established: 13th century CE, Dai Viet.
Cults
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, all the crazy pointless crap we do isn't crazy or pointless?”
Many magical creatures attempt to increase their magical power by sharing secrets of magic with other supernatural creatures. These mystical filesharing groups serve as secret clubs, religious heresies, and trade guilds. These organizations are semi-secret. While their membership is largely composed of supernatural creatures (whose very existence is a secret from the mundane humans of the world), the specific activities of these groups are kept under wraps even from other supernaturals.
Each Cult is distinguished largely by 3 things. The first is their Favored Magic. This is the path of Sorcery that a character can reasonably expect to be taught by joining and advancing within the cult. The second is the Favored Resources. These are two resources that a character gets easily whilst a member of the cult in good standing. Further, the character's status within the cult is in some way enhanced by having lots of these backgrounds. And finally there is the Work. This is what the cult does in and around supernatural society. For example, the Giovanni family business is finance and bureaucracy, so other supernaturals frequently hire them to navigate human legalities on their behalf. On the flip side, The Black Hand makes it a point to murder people in cold blood, and supernaturals are rarely above hiring them to hammer down nails judged to be standing up.
A note on how to integrate each Cult's work into your chronicle has been included in each Cult's description. Each group has agendas that are in many ways fairly sketchy – and it is not at all inconceivable that the characters may find themselves working with or against any of them. Indeed, it's highly likely that characters will end up teaming up with and opposing the same group at different times.
The Ash Walkers
“There is nothing that can be seen that cannot be done.”
The Ash Walkers were originally founded in the 16th century by a group of Fallen Transhumans as part of the Great Reformation. They viewed, as Jean Cauvin did, that the Catholic Church was undergoing a change, and they wanted to reflect everything within the Covenant. Like their mortal church counterparts, they failed to take Rome and ultimately fled to Switzerland and even back into the Dark Reflection. In more recent nights and years, the Covenant has sworn off hunting them to the ends of the Earth and beyond, and they in turn have come back from the ashen wastes and entered into supernatural society. But their time as exiles in Limbo has left its mark on the cult history, methodology, and theology.
The Ash Walkers believe in the doctrine of Total Depravity, which holds that man is incapable of choosing righteousness and even philanthropy (being created by a wicked hand) is evil and thus ultimately pointless. The only people who are capable of being saved from the worlds are those who are predestined to be called out of them. And the ones who are predestined for this honor are by definition the ones who have been chosen to gain magical powers and amass great wealth. The cult thus has developed an extremely mercenary attitude towards all things. Personal gain and the amassment of gold and property are the things that justify everything. The things that demonstrably show that one has been destined for riches and ultimately for salvation since before birth.
True to their Calvinist roots, the Ash Walkers believe in “the deal” above any god. Lying, cheating, and stealing are all fine, but actual contracts and ownership are the basis for wealth. And screwing with that would undermine the entire foundation of their ethos.
Missions for the Ash Walkers: The Ash Walkers want only one thing: cold hard cash. However, the things that pass for currency in different places are themselves numerous. The Ash Walkers will cut the team in on pretty much any deal as long as it makes a profit, whether that's a profit in gold or a profit in kittens. Let your imagination run wild, because Ash Walkers see opportunities in places that others see only an endless funnel of madness.
Sample Adventure: An Ash Walker has invested in some land where it was cheap – in Mongolia, and intends to have the natives mine gold for him. Unfortunately, Mongolian Werewolves have other ideas and are taking over for some reason. Anxious to not lose the investment, he's offering a bounty to the player characters to clean up the problem.
The Ash Walkers as Antagonists: Money may not be the root of all evil, and not everything that religion touches turns to ash. But the Ash Walkers do essentially worship money, and they do have a whole thing about turning things to ash. And that pretty much means that any villainy you can imagine someone might perpetuate for personal profit or religious zeal is one that the Ash Walkers are all over. These guys can seriously be the villains from any 80s cartoon show.
“A well placed knife can change the world.”
The most famous thing that the Black Hand ever did was assassinate Archduke Ferdinand. But of course, they have killed a lot of people. The Black Hand kill people. Sometimes it's for money, sometimes it's for political gain, but mostly it's to increase the chaos and strife in the world. At least, officially. The Black Hand preaches that without war and conflict between mortal nations the supernatural creatures cannot survive. Thus they reason that war should be encouraged between humans lest the last hiding place for the supernatural fade from the Earth. Of course, humans don't actually seem to need any encouragement to murder one another, and honestly neither do supernatural creatures. And The Black Hand is more than happy to take a donation in order to end the life of someone powerful.
While the Black Hand has surfaced numerous times, supporting numerous political agendas, and many individual members of the Black Hand are indeed personally committed to one or more of these causes, the organization as a whole supports fanaticism generally. Having or feigning a strong religious or political agenda for which you are ready and eager to kill is a good way to move up in the Black Hand. Indeed, it's basically the only way to get promoted. The heads of the Black Hand are the Seven Master Killers, and supposedly they all got that position by murdering one of the previous heads. Several of the Master Killers are Nosferatu, and it is rumored that the ones they killed were their own sires. They don't seem to much judge the relative worth of ideologies, holding firmly to a relativist stance that certainty is the one measurable virtue.
Missions for the Black Hand: It's not just “assassinate this dude”, sometimes Black Handers are paid to protect someone from potential assassination. If they need to call in to their friends for additional assistance, then so be it.
Sample Adventure: There is tension between ethnically Spanish and Mayan people in Guatemala all the time. But there is also a set of credulous investigators there that are endangering the Vow of Silence. The Black Hand wants you to pick a side, get some shit started, and have the investigators disappear in the ensuing strife.
The Black Hand as Antagonists: Some of our favorite people haven't been killed yet. And if the Black Hand has anything to say about it, that will change soon. The Black Hand's pro-murder agenda can easily pit them against anyone who hasn't been murdered yet or who has friends or loved ones that have yet to be murdered.
“Look like the innocent flower; But be the serpent under it.”
The Church of Set is a den of iniquity attached to a slanderous body of vile drug dealers and whore mongers. And they wouldn't have it any other way. It's a religious organization in a sense, but their core tenet is that the dissolution of the moral compass that drives people is a necessary and positive development. They stand for unabashed hedonism and personal empowerment through the actualization of the rejection of hindering moral frameworks and their replacement with goal oriented perfection.
Corruption is a way of life amongst the Church of Set. Not just for themselves, but for everyone around them that they can convince to partake. The Church of Set has pretty shaky views on what is right and wrong, but they strongly view that getting people to do things that those people believe are wrong is right. It all has something to do with confronting memes and taboos that are holding you back in life. The members of the Church of Set are called Setites, and each Setite is supposed to create for themselves a life path and framework of taboos that advance their own goals. It's all rather similar to Nietzsche and looks more than a bit like Leveyan Satanism. You're supposed to become an Übermensch, and you achieve that by doing things that you and the people around you think are so wrong that you wouldn't do them.
And then of course, there's the obligatory ancient Egyptian motifs that they put all over things. It was the 1800s, and it was the style of the time. Setite lore holds that the church existed thousands of years ago and was only rediscovered in the 1800s, which is pretty much what the Rosicrucians and all the other 19th century occult groups would have you believe. Be that as it may, Setites hold that their first leader was actually Set – the Egyptian god who killed Horus every evening and was in turn slain by Horus every morning. Still, it is perhaps telling that many of their theological points appear to share more with the Setites written about in Robert E. Howard's books of the early 20th century than they do with the Cult of Set of Upper Egypt's Naqadan people.
Missions for the Church of Set: The Setites collect vices like trading cards, and do everything in their power to encourage their spreading and to facilitate their use. Setites run drugs, pimp prostitutes, wear indecent clothing and deface religious texts. And they want your help. They want your help protecting people from reprisals against obscene behavior, they want your help in convincing people to corrupt themselves. And they want your help in doing things that push your own moral limits.
Sample Adventure: Pods have taken over the children of a small farming town out in Kansas. They've taken to using the children to capture people and sacrifice them to grow more pods or towards the creation of a permanent gateway to Maya. The Setites want the team to wipe out the Pods, taking care to leave none of the collaborators living and free. Of course, many of the collaborators are only six...
The Church of Set as Antagonists: Setites do things that they think are wrong and try to get other people to do things that they think are wrong as well. And while it is philosophically interesting to strive for a world of “No Taboos, Only Goals” the fact remains that they are still going out of their way to cross other peoples' limits of acceptance. If there is something that you won't accept, chances are some Setite is out there right now doing it.
“An it harm none, do as you will ”
The Chain of Coronis is an anarchist pagan sect dedicated to the study of cutting the life force out of people and using it to power larger magics to cut the life blood out of more people. They don't like modern religions, modern society, modern government, or modern technology. They espouse an ideology in which life would be better if we all spent more time ripping the necks out of goats with our teeth. Also, they run around naked in the woods and seriously rip the throats out of goats with their teeth.
An inductee into the Chain of Coronis is called a Maenad, and they are encouraged to act like their ancient Greek namesake as often as possible. Running around naked in the dark is demanded during various solar and lunar events, but is encouraged at all times. Of special note is that they at no time speak of modernity as being a “tool of oppression” or anything along those lines. Indeed, you can pretty much ignore any political speeches you have ever heard from any vegan modern-wiccan you have ever met. The Chain objects to modernity on a priori grounds. The state of “Nature” is deemed to be inherently morally superior to a world defined by artifice. They do not recognize the “Social Contract” upon which many modern political philosophies are based, having instead a set of twin ideals of “natural law” and “personal excellence” that would make more sense to Aristotle or Manu than to Hobbes or Rousseau.
The Chain looks at the word as being in its natural state ordered into many different “chains” that correspond to maturity levels. Higher, more mature chains are supposed to be able to push around lesser chains. But they are also supposed to lead by example – showing the younger and more foolish chains their inherent and learned virtues. By this rubric, supernatural creatures (even young ones) are “more mature” than humans (even old humans). Similarly, humans are more mature than goats. And of course, the creatures in the chain founded by Coronis the Maenad are more mature than unaffiliated supernatural creatures.
Missions for the Chain of Coronis: It's not all hippie eco-terrorism and blood sacrifices. It's also listening to Godsmack and having orgies in the woods. And a vast amount of extremely serious politicking. The Chain is not anti-authority, but they are opposed to all the current forms of government (both mortal and supernatural). This does not mean that they sit around in squalid tenements and whine about “The Man” but rather that they play the game as adeptly as anyone – just always for the opposition (for the moment). They spurn mortal currency, but they are well able to trade favors and magic for the gathering of blackmail material, the fomenting of discord, the manufacture of crises, or anything else that may be able to advance their agenda. They think long term. The Industrial Era, after all, is just a phase.
Sample Adventure: A Prince of the Makhzen has died, and foul play is indeed the cause. The new Prince wants it all covered up and forgotten, but the Chain does not. The characters are instructed to dig as deep as they can and make sure that the guilty are justly and officially punished. This sudden interest in enforcement of regulations surprises Makhzen members familiar with Coronist ideology, but given the damage these truths can cause, it really shouldn't.
The Chain as Antagonists: No matter what any old timer or even your own nostalgia tells you, many of the “old ways” were in fact abandoned because they were deemed substantially worse than the ways that came to replace them. Many of the things that the Chain (or at least various members of it) want to roll back are actually pretty cool. Pants for example. But also modern systems of government and diplomatic compromises. There is a lot wrong with them, but they replaced the old ways for a reason. While the Chain members think of themselves as working to reclaim a lost glory, they can often come off as brutal reactionaries.
“The greater the loyalty toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.”
The Order Daziban is a sorcerous cabal of dubious goals and shadowy methods. The Daziban were founded by Baali Witches with a penchant for burning things, so it is ironic that what they currently do is collect books. They collect other things too: rare butterflies, magic artifacts, secret information, and frankly who knows what all else. But they are most known for their collections of books.
The Daziban are secretive and very disciplined. They are the cult most likely to regard loyalty to the cult to be more important than loyalty to the band. They are organized into feudal fiefdoms called “vaults” and the lord and master of each one is given a fancy title that basically means “librarian” (yes, including “codicier” for W40k players). They can be called upon for archival information, and often are, simply because they keep so much of it around.
The Order Daziban puts a great deal of stock in status, and has at least 40 distinct ranks that members can be at. However, from a game mechanical standpoint, the basic numerical status ranks work fine. Technically a Lexicanium is a different rank from Keeper of Scrolls, but practically speaking both are the leaders of their respective vaults and whoever's input is most relevant to a particular course of action will be the one that is listened to.
Missions for the Daziban: The Daziban will frequently send a team out for basic fetch quests such as “retrieve rare book X” or even “destroy rare book X” when the vault already has one of the other copies. Some of their missions are more opaque, and generally involve thwarting the plans of various Ifrit with whom they have some unspoken yet long standing grudge.
Sample Adventure: Eager to appear more powerful and knowledgeable than he perhaps actually is, the vault archivist let on that he knew something about a Sumerian compound used by the Shattered Empire that he in fact has no idea about. With his bluff called by someone wishing to purchase his information, he wants one of the underlings to take his most trusted associates to do some snooping by the Euphrates on the down-low.
The Daziban as Antagonists: The Daziban like to be the only ones who know things. This means that if the player characters gain access to special information, they can easily create enemies for themselves in the Daziban organization. But they also like power and stealing stuff, so it's easy to see the players being political or law enforcement opponents of the local Daziban vault as well.
“The world has become tired.”
The False Face used to be essentially a Syndicate, as it was the supernatural social group north of the Rio Grande. It very much lost an extremely bloody inter-Syndicate war with The Covenant, and now it hangs on as a minor cult that many don't even realize still exists. This event is actually one of the reasons that Syndicates are on such elaborately polite terms with each other tonight. It was indeed quite a shock to the largely isolationist supernatural creatures to see how much damage a group of supernatural creatures backed up by a bunch of human conquistadors could do, and diplomacy has been the name of the game ever since – not that this has done any good for the False Face itself.
The False Face itself is a shamanic lodge based largely on Iroquois social and magical foundations. Their members traditionally wear masks during important procedures, and their leadership are called “The Empty Ones”. At one time they did some of everything in the way Syndicates do now, but these nights they focus on exploring things. Mostly they go on long dream walks in Maya, looking for something that they don't tell anyone about. But they also explore other strange places. Supernatural creatures will often purchase their services in exploring things they want looked into or buy maps and information about secret places from them.
Most of The Empty Ones are Daeva, although it is not at all obvious whether this is a result of the lodge having always been run by Daeva or a simple result of the fact that it is very difficult to kill vampires in any permanent fashion. In any case, while some of them entertain fantasies of retaking North America, most of them are committed to the new path of exploring and ultimately moving to the Dreamlands. What happens afterwards is still being debated in the lodge.
Missions for the False Face: The False Face not only does a lot of their own scouting missions, but also takes mercenary scouting missions for others. Many of these missions are in the Dreamlands, but they can be anywhere. In addition, as the False Face moves more and more into the Dreamlands, they are finding themselves coming to blows with various factions of Evil Plants and the Marduk Society. And of course, there are a number of Giant Animals that need to be hunted before various areas become usable.
Sample Adventure: A family of Deep One kin in Massachusetts has recently uncovered a connection between their family plot and a set of underwater caverns. They'd really like to know what all was going on with their grandparent's diaries and Polynesian statues. The players are brought in to solve these mysteries and make sure that the family does not break the Vow of Silence, either by withholding important information or making sure the family understands the importance of keeping what information they know secret – or some combination. It's really up to them.
The False Face as Antagonists: There are seriously Empty Ones who openly call for the purging of one or more Syndicates (mostly the Covenant, but some of them are not picky). So it's entirely reasonable for the False Face to send one or more of its members to outright murder the player characters or someone they care about “to make a point”. Also, some of the stuff they want for the big migration is stuff that people in the mortal world own or at least would prefer to remain where it is.
“All of heaven awaits.”
Begun in Arabia by a group of Troglodytes as a drug addled death cult, the Hashshashin are... still a drug addled death cult. Their leaders are called Imams, and they have a truly confusing theology involving darkening senses to achieve paradise, but basically they smuggle people and drugs, consume lots of drugs (and not a few people), and generally behave in a manner that almost every religion will tell you is “very very bad”. Not all, or even most, of the members of the cult are supernatural – but the mortals are treated to a virtually continuous orgy of narcotics and debauchery and probably couldn't explain anything about the compounds upon leaving anyway.
Whether shipping kilos of heroin or trucks full of Moldovans, a lot of money passes through their hands – that stuff seriously isn't cheap. But at least seemingly they don't give a crap about the money and do the crime in order for there to be more crime. This is only partially true, because the real reason that they get their members to commit acts generally considered to be reprehensible is to enhance their loyalty and lessen their attachment to their own lives.
Periodically, members of the cult that have grown indolent in their depravity and ceased being coherent or useful are dragged off into the nether reaches of the cult compounds and devoured. This is inflicted primarily upon the human members of the cult. Remember those completely pointless cages full of people who no longer cared where they woke up in the morning from Enter the Dragon? The Hashshashin actually have those. The members who ask about the missing are given extra rations of drugs and told in all seriousness that the victims were “consumed entirely by their vices”.
Missions for the Hashshashin: The Hashshashin sponsor all kinds of actually pretty marginal criminal enterprises in order to “keep their claws in”. Shipping weapons, drugs, and people around Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, and Central Asia isn't glamorous, but it is constant. Unbelievable amounts of feathers on every side get ruffled by this sort of behavior, and the Hashshashin like it that way. And hey, in areas of total corruption and lawlessness, there are some very large paychecks to be had along the way. Hashshashin leadership won't even mind.
Sample Adventure: A mysterious Romanian crime boss wants to take out one of his Bulgarian counterparts, and has hired the Hashshashin to do it. The Hashshashin didn't even bother negotiating the price, because they are doing it in order to collect blackmail materials on the Romanian businessman. The players find themselves being asked to double cross multiple people and bearing the brunt of unfocused wrath from several disappointed business groups.
The Hashhashin as Antagonists: Hashshashin inductions are the result of kidnappings as often as not, so it is extremely possible that one or more people that the player characters care about could be kidnapped by the Hashshashin for the purposes of drugging them up to subsequently train as an assassin, whore them out, or simply eat them. And then of course there's the whole “morality” angle in which player characters may object to slave trading, supporting African warlords, or who knows what all else. Hashshashin compounds can make for very effective dungeon crawls.
“Misery loves company. The company loves misery.”
Formed as a single corporation called “Monolith Corporation” in the latter years of the Victorian Era in England, The Hollow Ones are now a series of corporations so complex in structure and interdependencies that even members of the group are unlikely to be able to follow it all. The original stated goal from the founding Icarid was to use the corporation's inherent structure to limit culpability for his own actions, something that he was apparently quite obsessed with. The current reason for The Hollow Ones is much the same. Their corporate charters allow each choice made to be made collectively and secretly without any specific blame to be placed on the honor of any specific supernatural member.
The Hollow Ones are extremely fond of maintaining the apparent integrity of each member of the cult. They also sponsor vices and depravity sessions for supernatural creatures and wealthy human clients alike. Each member is expected to maintain at least two lives: one for engaging in respectability and one for being a crazy whore-mongering deviant. The Hollow Ones expect themselves to travel about within human society and to play by society's rules, and to totally freak out on a regular basis under controlled and deniable circumstances in order to keep themselves from losing control in front of other people.
Missions for the Hollow Ones: As a major international corporation, The Monolith Corporation has a number of needs that are essentially spy thriller boiler plate. They want prototypes stolen, they want officials intimidated or bribed, they want dossiers recovered or destroyed, and so on and so forth. But they also have their shadow operations, where they want their sex dungeons kept under wraps, they want reporters intimidated or bribed, and so on and so forth.
Sample Adventure: One of the clients has gone on quite a bender, and has left a lot of evidence and destruction in the wake of his rampage. The team gets sent to clean things up, MIB style. Remember that this sort of behavior is regarded ambivalently by the Syndicates. Covering up a Vow of Silence breach is the greatest commitment to the First Code of the World Crime League, but protecting a code breaker is pissing all over the Fourth.
The Hollow Ones as Antagonists: Anyone who has spent any amount of time watching Captain Planet can probably think of like a dozen plots involving evil corporations as the villains. Don't go that far. The Hollow Ones are not the villains from Captain Planet, they are Dr. Jekyll in charge of the corporation from Alien (the Weyland-Yutani corporation, by the way). Still, if the schemes of a deliberately amoral corporation aren't enough to call for an occasional thwarting, they'll just have to buy some new ones that are.
“Everyone produces something. We produce truth.”
The Laughter Factory, sometimes called simply The Factory is an anarchistic organization dedicated to information freedom, compromise, and the propagation of mutual understanding. Also they are a distributed subversive element that appears to be advancing an unknown agenda whose true nature is known only in parts by individual cells. That's not just hyperbole or conspiracy theorizing, The Factory's official stance is that it is working towards something called “The Agenda” and that individual members only know small fragments of it, and some of the things about The Agenda that they know are things they don't know that they know because they are hidden as riddles or parts of other messages. Lots of people think they are crazy. Lots of members of the Laughter Factory are crazy, and this is not considered to be a detriment to one's Cult status.
The Laughter Factory is the closest of any of the major cults to one that is exclusive to a specific group of supernaturals. Almost all leading members of the Network are Mi Go. There are officially speaking only two ranks to be had in the Factory: a Foreman and a Worker. Supernatural creatures rapidly rise to the rank of Foreman. From there on, Foremen are judged by their trustworthiness and mission success rate, but they have no officially sanctioned authority. The organization also has many human members drawn from the muttering dregs of society's castoffs. These humans rarely rise above the rank of Worker and are used much as Makhzen retainers are. What truths these human Workers receive are so shrouded in falsehoods and babble that The Factory has so far been able to claim themselves as being essentially exempt from Vow of Silence investigations on this point.
The Laughter Factory was created in the mid 19th century by Mi Go who wanted to change the relationship between Leviathans and Tiamat in the same way that humans had changed their relationship to capital and trade. In doing so they destroyed the previous Mi Go cult known as “The Solemn Hive”, led by the Gray Queen (who was apparently killed in 1874). The organization is similar, save primarily for an apparent lack of a Queen figure and the purposeful replacement of the rank of “soldier” with the more industrial-age friendly title of “Foreman”.
Missions for the Factory: The Factory actually specializes in the Courier Run, so the mission of “take X to Y” is pretty much assumed. But beyond that, they are often employed to be the bearers of bad news or impartial mediators in tense discussions.
Sample Adventure: Different Communes factions have taken sides in the ongoing Sri Lankan civil war. Now that it is winding down and the Singalese government is putting the Tamil minorities into camps, a set of neutral outsiders is being asked to negotiate the release of the Tamil Bagheera to prevent the incident from spreading to other regions under Communes control. And because of your Factory connections, the neutral outsiders are the player characters.
The Laughter Factory as Antagonists: Information freedom is basically just another word for spying, and promoting understanding is pretty much the same thing as telling secrets to other interested parties. People with things to hide may well find themselves opposed by Factory members. Then again, there are some theories, even within the Factory itself, that The Agenda is a very bad thing, and if even some of those theories are true the player characters may be opposed on those grounds.
“All animals are equal. Some are more equal and others less.”
The Rolnicy were originally a sect of Central Asian warrior shamans, but they have since turned on “superstition” and adapted the trappings of modernity and reason in their fiercely hierarchical and monolithic fashion. Adapting to the times, the Rolnicy gave up their shamanistic beliefs in the 1800s for the teachings of the Eastern Orthodoxy, and in the early 1900s gave those up as well for an uncompromising materialism. With each shift has come murders and purges, but while the doctrines have changed beyond ready recognition, adherence to the doctrine of the hour has always been held of paramount importance.
Today the Rolnicy have greatest affinity with the Cauchemar Communes, and have a similar structure, with their own Revolutionary Council (which used to be called the Ecclesiastical Council before it was liquidated and replaced). It has been suggested, even by the Rolnicy themselves, that they would like to replace the Communes Revolutionary Council with their own. Below that, pretty much everyone is designated a Commissar or a Worker. Commissariats are all nominally in charge of something, which is either Enlightenment, Loyalty, or History. Commissars of Loyalty are like judges who also do investigations – like a Makhzen Sheriff. Commissars of Enlightenment are in charge of research, and Commissars of History are in charge of explaining what has happened and what the Rolnicy doctrines have always been to the Workers (especially when these things change on the orders of the Council). All Commissariats have dispensation from the Cult to kill in order to complete any of their tasks (although this is not recognized by the World Crime League, Makhzen, Communes, or Covenant).
The Rolnicy have codified their ancient shamanistic animal magic practices into a forward looking pseudo-science of animal magic. They also have a complex racial hierarchy system that forms a theoretical basis for why Animalism works on the creatures it does and how. Further, they do a large amount of destructive testing on animals, people, and even supernatural creatures in order to attempt to gain more information to validate their theories. Rolnicy compounds are a lot like farms, in that they grow animals of various sorts in large numbers, and most of them are ultimately going to be eaten.
The Rolnicy want what is “best” although best for whom is a question that is somewhat up in the air. Rolnicy orthodoxy disdains the value of the individual, and is explicitly willing to sacrifice members of its own group to further its aims. The protocols call for modernization, but their own work looks like a biological nightmare from a 1950s science fiction movie. Still, their ruthless methodologies have produced results, and their faction may have the only creatures from Earth to know what the little wibbly things inside the Pods do. They are also always in need of fresh meat for their experiments, meaning that they are a useful method of disposing of bodies – something that all Syndicates have called on them to do.
Missions for the Rolnicy: The Rolnicy are desperately afraid that they will somehow fall behind in their research, and are constantly attempting to spy on other magical researchers. Also, they are attempting to take over the Communes. But beyond all that, they really do need a lot of weird animals and people for their research. And their research really does turn up some fucking scary information about Evil Plants sometimes. This makes a good springboard for basic intrigue, kidnappings, and even the occasional “save the world” quest.
Sample Adventure: After a series of disappearances, the press starts raising a stink. And that generates a stink in the halls of the Makhzen. As blame and aspersions start running wild, a Rolnicy Commissariat suggests that perhaps no members of the Syndicate are responsible, and requests aid in tracking down a Chimera in order to prove it. But is there just one Chimera on the loose? On which word does the emphasis fall in the previous sentence?
The Rolnicy as Antagonists: These guys are basically Bolsheviks who do unethical medical research and commit crimes. You've got Boris and Natasha working for Brick Top and Dr. Moreau. I am confident that you can find something to work in as a possible antagonist.
“Heaven may forgive you, but I will not!”
The Stellar Oracles were begun by a group of reincarnated warriors who have been fighting the King with Three Shadows for many lifetimes with mixed success. They are a warrior order that has been completely wiped out several times in history, and yet been able to bring itself back to existence like a blazing phoenix as new lifetimes of old members come again as the wheel of seasons and years rolls inexorably on. The Stellar Oracles are the holders of a number of prophecies, only a few of which are outsiders allowed to see. They have a rather complicated dogma involving the effects of the planets on the future, but they seriously do have a number of members with Divination and they really do know a fair amount about future events.
Stellar Oracles see themselves not as humanity’s masters, but as their protectors. And they see the greatest threats to humanity as coming from otherworldly sources. Death in the service of the cause is for many considered to be not so much a risk of the job but an inevitability of sacred duty. And indeed, death is something of a revolving door for many members. It's fairly difficult to rise to become royalty amongst the Stellar Oracles without having died for the cause at least once.
Missions for the Stellar Oracles: Stellar Oracle leadership generally wants to do one of three things: destroy “monsters”, protect humans, or collect old members who have returned to life and induct them into the cult once more. As such, there is a fair amount of straight up crime fighting that Stellar Oracles are called upon to do, but there can also be quite complex interactions with Vampires or Reborn.
Sample Adventure: Somewhere in the city an Asura has come through from the Dark Reflection and is repeatedly draining energy out of mortals in order to bring Mirror Goblins across like some grim parody of a work visa program. The Oracle is sent to assemble their band, track down the Asura and kick Limbo ass before the army of Mirror Goblins gets too large to defend the city against while maintaining secrecy.
Stellar Oracles as Antagonists: Unlike most groups of supernaturals, the Stellar Oracles explicitly side with humans over their fellow supernaturals. So while their official doctrine is one of secrecy, it is very easy to imagine a Stellar Oracle zealot deciding to try to skull fuck the Vow of Silence. Of less Earth shattering and more personal opposition, a Stellar Oracle could decide (correctly or not) that one or more of the player characters is responsible for some crime against humanity or another, leading to direct and intimate conflict.
“A small rock holds back a great wave.”
After the fall of Tiamat, the Leviathans of the world found themselves hunted throughout every land on Earth. Some for vengeance, but increasingly for the fact that their flesh could make a man immortal. And it was in this environment that a group of Deep Ones removed themselves from the land altogether. The thought was that they could rule tiny undersea kingdoms in peace and quiet, never to be molested by Marduk's hunters on the land. This experiment was mostly a failure.
As it happens, Leviathans aren't many in number, and they need to crossbreed with normal humans or their blood stagnates and stillbirths become the norm. The colony at the Pacific Pole of Inaccessibility and the colony in the Antarctic waters both died out to a man, leaving nothing but empty creepy architecture beneath the waves. And while the Polynesian, New England, and Mediterranean colonies persisted, they did so only by regularly sending their people above the waves to have families in human settlements. And those children were born without gills, gaining them only later in life. Which meant that they were again vulnerable to predation on the surface.
With the coming of the Age of Reason, the undersea colonies came under an even more direct threat: exposure by the baleful glare of the light of reason. Once the sea floor started being mapped, it became clear to even the most conservative colonists that the age of being able to successfully withdraw from the world was rapidly drawing to an end. And so a council was formed, and it was decided to begin a new age of engagement with humanity. And the ones to do it were named Storm Lords.
The Storm Lords immediately went to work aping the trappings of science. After all, the only way to keep a human from discovering their hideouts was to be the human explorers who came back with enough information from exploring them to quench the curiosity of the land dwellers and send other would-be explorers to other corners of the globe. And it was not long before new generations of Storm Lords actually were scientists. These nights there are Storm Lords working in fields from news to meteorology – each giving out reports that give plausible cover for supernatural goings-on.
At the bottom of it all is the “Special Project”, which is a longterm goal of adding things to scientific fields that make room for supernatural creatures and powers. And hand-in-fin with that is the goal of popularizing ideas that make this future more acceptable to the lay public. Comic books, science detectives, and cartoon shows have all been penned by Storm Lords in a deliberate attempt to make people accept the “far out” direction they intend to guide scientific research in the generations to come. If the Storm Lords have their way, we will soon all be living in the future from Johnny Quest.
Missions for the Storm Lords: Missions from Storm Lords typically involve taking out a Marduk operation, recruiting supernaturals with weather changing skills, or covering up one of the other two. The Marduk Society's future is completely incompatible with the one envisioned by the Storm Lords, a fact that might be related to the fact that they've been at war with the Marduk Society since before they even decided to start making a human future of their own. But there is also a lot of scientific research to destroy and/or fabricate. The future is a big place.
Sample Adventure: The Marduks have set up shop on a tropical island, with the intent of attacking the nearby Storm Lord hideout and capturing everyone there for "research" by the higher ups. The Storm Lords don't want this to happen and are going to have their agent and his team take out the base and then cover up the fact that there was ever a base to take out.
The Storm Lords as Antagonists: The Storm Lords are playing a big game and they are not afraid to lose pieces. Their future plans involve many things that exist today simply not being there any more. Some things because the future system simply has no room for them, and others because sacrifices simply have to be made. But even if the player characters have not been tagged as expendable, there's the simple fact that in the long run the Storm Lords intend to replace the Vow of Silence with a system of supernatural tolerance. That doesn't go over really well with a lot of denizens of the Night who would be forced to abandon the safety of the shadows without even being offered the mantle of kingship.
“Loyalty to the family. To death and beyond.”
Originally a family of Venetians who turned to dark magic, the Ulmi family became a criminal mob amongst the supernaturals, adding to their ranks a great number of unrelated supernaturals who wanted in on their necromantic protection rackets. Never achieving the wealth or strength of the World Crime League in impoverished and superstitious Europe, the Ulmians never achieved Syndicate status. Upon running into the WCL, they found themselves badly outnumbered in the world of supernatural crime and largely caved in to pressure from the East. The Ulmi mostly went legit and now provide gray market financial services and money laundering to supernaturals with little or no presence in the human world.
The Ulmians are still operated like a mafia family, and they still do a lot of criminal activities. It's just that now they make sure to avoid strongarming other supernaturals – at least without WCL permission. While it is now common for an Ulmi Don to be something other than an Italian Khaibit related by blood to the founders, it is still incredibly rare for anyone without necromantic power to rise to any meaningful level in the organization. The organization is called by those inside “The Family” even though it no longer cares about a prospective recruit's skin color or family background.
Missions for the Ulmians: The Ulmians are a full service outfit, and when you mess with a family client you are messing with The Family, capiche? Very frequently, the Ulmians will send teams to clear up some “misunderstanding” involving one or more Ulmi clients. These sorts of missions will often involve bailing clueless supernaturals out of legal problems with the mortal world or covering up potential Vow of Silence breaches before they come to Syndicate attention. The Ulmians are also quite aggressive in business and may send teams to “persuade” potential clients to sign on with the Ulmians before someone gets hurt.
Sample Adventure: An ancient vampire in good standing with the Covenant has awoken and is trying to do things the “old ways”. The Ulmi want the family member to take his friends off to convince this powerful but dangerously naïve monster to allow family specialists to handle his interface with modern society (and pay the going rates for this service, natch).
The Ulmians as Antagonists: As an essentially criminal organization, it is entirely thinkable that the Ulmians would take time out of their day to put “the squeeze” on one of the player characters, or someone that one of the player characters cares about. Furthermore, their zombie raising can get out of hand relatively easily. Necromancers run amok is the cause for at least 20% of all zombie uprisings according to Covenant records.
“The flower is beautiful because it is temporary.”
The White Lotus Benevolence Society is a quasi-Confucianist and ultra marketized extortion racket that has gotten way out of control. Created by some rather inventive Dryads in the 1500s, the original scam was one in which sorcerers would show up to a village and demand Hell Money to keep peoples' ancestors in hell, without which the ancestors would come back to annoy and threaten the living. If people refused to pay, the White Lotus would create or let loose genuine monsters on the populace until payments were made. While quite successful at accumulating lucre, this quickly came to the baleful attention of the World Crime League as a threat to both conventional extortion rackets and (more importantly) the Vow of Silence. Discovering themselves up against a larger and frankly more organized group of supernaturals, the White Lotus' fight was quickly strangled out of them and their remaining members were brought to heel.
But while the White Lotus bent knee to the World Crime League, they never really integrated themselves into the Syndicate structure. They maintained their enforcement arm, who are called the Thorns of the Lotus. And while officially they are not supposed to run around murdering people with overt evil magical power, they still totally do that when they think they aren't going to get caught. But the main branch claimed to pretty much get out of the crime game and pursue their second love: which apparently was feng shui and topiary grooming. This is, of course, a sham. What the White Lotus is actually doing is acquiring portals to Maya by any means necessary.
The leader of the White Lotus is referred to as “The Center of the Lotus” and he is a venerable man whose blood is sap long formed into pitch. All other members are judged in worth purely in terms of how much “Hell Money” they have. Whenever members of the White Lotus do anything for each other, Hell Money changes hands. No longer the “genuine” coins that Lotus extortionists pretended to burn away in front of superstitious lords and bureaucrats, the modern Lotus Hell Money is kept track of by computer and also available in the form of red script. Portals to the Dreamlands are called “dragon circles” by the geomancers of the White Lotus.
The White Lotus has its own guiding principals that would cause Confucius to label them as monsters – which coincidentally they already do for themselves. Of central importance is their concept of Xiào as a fear-based imperative to avoid ancestral judgment and cut one's self off from mortal human family. Below that is Zhōng, which to the Lotus is the concept that one's personal obligation to others begins and ends with the payment of Hell Money. Petals of the Lotus have an obligation to complete contracts, but to do more than that is to shame one's self. Of rough equivalence is Ren, or “upward mobility”. Each member of the White Lotus is expected to chafe at their current station and be constantly striving to displace those above themselves. And finally there is Li, which is simply the imperative to appear to be doing something else than what you are doing and to change your tactics and nightly routines as often as possible.
Missions for the White Lotus: The thing the White Lotus wants more than anything else is land. You can't monopolize the dragon lines that connect the portals to Maya if you don't have a lot of land. And acquiring land requires all kinds of mission types in the Dead of Night. From Wild West style “convince the shepherds to sell” jobs to espionage and even dungeon-crawls to find out key information about potential sites for acquisition.
Sample Adventure: Lotus geomancers found records of what they believe to be a dragon circle in a temple situated in the jungles of Northern Burma. The temple is well into disuse because apparently the forests around it are called “the trees of hungry ghosts” by the local Khmer tribes. There is Hell Money in it for you if you see what that's all about and take over the dragon circle or at least determine that there isn't one there that the White Lotus does not control.
The White Lotus as Antagonists: In addition to having a strong tradition of terrorizing and brutally murdering people, The White Lotus are essentially the villains from like every Scooby Doo episode ever. Only with actual magical powers. You can watch pretty much any Scooby Doo show from any season and port the plot right over with no problem. Old man Winters is going to have to sell the ski resort because people aren't going since the rumors of haunting started up? Sure, why not?
“It is when pirates count their booty that they become mere thieves.”
The Wreckers are an anti-establishment organization that recruits from the dregs and exiles of societies. Lacking a common language, they formed their own system of simple symbols and music to communicate ideas back and forth. This is less of an issue in the modern age when almost everyone can say at least a few words in at least one of the major languages in the world, but in ages past the chances of any two exiles having words in common was pretty small. The symbol for the Wreckers is a black spot, and to this night if someone “gives you The Black Spot” it indicates that the Wreckers have it in for you.
Many feel that the Wreckers are just a bunch of pirates and highwaymen who rob shipments and waylay travelers. And that's kind of true, and was substantially more true in the past. Tonight, the Black Spot members have a set of shared beliefs, but they are pretty confused. The key part of it is to destroy everything that you don't like, as part of the larger plan of sinking everything into entropy and dissolution. They reach out to those who have been wronged and offer vengeance of a sort. Frequent mentions are made of the “Inevitability of the final reckoning.” But at the core, the Black Spot wants to take anarchy to the next level: destroying Truth and connectivity.
But the Wreckers do not just paint themselves with mud and wait for society to fall apart. Instead they plot well in advance and try to seize the reins of civilization and tear them asunder. It is this justification that leads them to attack rails, trucks, and shipping lanes. But they have deeper games they play that involve much more than simple banditry. Infiltration, smear campaigns, impersonation, and so on. Well aware of the power of the monolith that is social cohesion, they work to monkey wrench both institutions and social contracts, and are quite adept at spreading misinformation.
Missions for the Wreckers: The Black Spot hires out a fair number of agents provocateur. Disseminating harmful rumors and starting fights. If there's an organization, you can bet that the Wreckers want you to infiltrate it and sabotage it from within. Terrorism and vandalism are not beneath them, they aspire to these activities.
Sample Adventure: A member of the Fallen Empire has put together the goods to enact a mighty ritual of vast power to try to conquer the world. The Wreckers have no intention of letting anyone unite the world, and have set the player characters up with the means to get into the ziggurat.
The Wreckers as Antagonists: Even if you are with them you're still against them. Pretty much anyone could plausibly be a Black Spot mole playing the long game. And the Wreckers take tremendous pride in this fact, and actively encourage groups to turn on themselves with Inquisitions and McCarthyism. It's difficult to imagine such behavior hurting their cause by removing their agents more than it helps their cause by sowing distrust and conflict on its own.
“Actually, those guys are just bastards. We fight them.”
What makes an antagonist organization different from a “normal” organization in Dead of Night is not that they are “the bad guys” – after all it is abundantly clear that a substantial number of people in all the supernatural societies are bad guys. These organizations are filled with blood drinking monsters. No, the salient thing about the Antagonists in this setting is that they are not willing to live and let live with the members of other Syndicates and cults. So while it is entirely possible to have a story in which one character is from the Makhzen and another is from the Communes, it is basically impossible to have a cogent story in which one character is in the Marduk Society and the other characters are not.
The assumption then is that the antagonist organizations will be NPC only. The player characters will be members of the standard Syndicates or independents and as such the warriors of the Shattered Empire who show up at all it will do so as enemies. It is entirely possible to play a campaign in which every character is a member of the Marduk society, and that's fine. If you weren't OK with playing a game that skated closely to the edge of evil you wouldn't be playing a game about vampires and werewolves.
However, it's equally important to note that just because the King With Three Shadows may be a villain who is basically at war with the World Crime League, that does not mean that anyone is automatically on kill-on-sight terms with anyone else. Even these antagonistic organizations have diplomatic ties of some sort or another with all of the major Syndicates. These ties are strained, and ambassadors are sometimes recalled, but actual shooting wars have causes, beginnings, and negotiated ends.
The Marduk Society
“We've slain the monsters of the world until they skulk in darkness like rats. Did you really think the darkness would protect you?”
In ages past the mighty sky wizard Marduk fought with the great Tiamat and slew her, saving humanity from her dark tyranny. As the savior of humanity, Marduk became a wise and just king who ruled over Sumeria thousands of years ago. He passed his magic down to disciples, and in classic fashion they perverted everything Marduk stood for and are now a terrifying edifice.
The Marduk Society retains the ancient magics of Marduk himself and continue to hunt supernaturals, nominally to save humanity from the oppression of supernatural influences. However, the leadership of the Marduk Society actually are supernatural creatures. After ruthlessly hunting down the spawn of Tiamat for generations they found that they were able to grant themselves immortality by eating the flesh of Leviathans, a practice which in reality transforms their elite membership into Leviathans. The sorceries left behind by Marduk are in truth no different from the sorceries of any Witch, and thus it is that the core membership of the Marduk Society are no different from other supernaturals save for the hat they wear and their intense desire to not get along.
Marduk's magic draws heavily upon human fear and suffering to use as power. However, while the historical Marduk apparently used this as justification to wander the lands righting wrongs and saving the endangered, the modern incarnation conspires to make mortal governments oppressive and ruin the lives of children. Ideally they claim that once their war is won they will make all human society utopic, but there is no particular reason to believe this is true.
“How nice of you to join us. You can share the same fate they are going to suffer.”
Long ago a powerful mortal king married a queen of the fairies. Abandoning his kingdom of men to wither and die, he took a new name and attained everlasting life with a grim bargain with Demons. A bargain that ultimately hurled his kingdom into the deepest pits of the Dark Reflection. The King with Three Shadows has become as the fairy are, and he lives forever without changing. He is now their dark king, and commands the mirror goblins – an army of fairies and demons which do his dark bidding. He is supported in his endeavors by three powerful Fairies – The Three Shadows of the King.
Fairies and Demons have a difficult time getting to the world of man at all, and must pass through a reflective surface to do so. More powerful fairies and demons need more specific mirrors through which to pass, and thus usually require that these doorways be custom built to draw them through. While a minor mirror goblin might be able to come through a pool of water or a pain of glass, powerful demons need a mirrored surface of exacting specifications – for example one might require a mirror at least 2 meters across made of bronze and polished with olive oil, lemon juice, and human blood.
The King with Three Shadows himself requires a titanic and exacting mirror to again trod upon the Earth, and it is thus that he is forced to send minions through the portals to acquire the strange materials and specific events they need to allow him to march across the threshold with his demonic army to conquer the human world.
“They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing.”
According to the Shattered Empire there was once a mighty nation which ruled over all of humanity with magician kings. Where this kingdom actually was, when it existed, who the people were who ran it, and what the cultural traits of it were like are all lost to time. The Shattered Empire calls itself a dozen names: Ur, Atlantis, and Golgatha to name just a few. And while their stories of their glorious days of world ownership are somewhat conflictory, and quite possibly exaggerations or just plain lies, they are nonetheless willing to kill people over their world conquest plans. And that makes them dangerous.
The very top of the Empire is called either the Rain King, the Masked Prophet, or the Once and Future Emperor. Whether these are three different people having a power struggle or one man with a variety of titles is not clear. Cells of the Shattered Empire hide in cave systems, deep in jungles, and on top of forbidding mountains. They collect powerful magics and threaten the world with them.
The primary bones of contention between the Shattered Empire and the other Syndicates have to do with rulership. The Empire holds not only that they should rule all the other supernatural creatures like in the old days, but that they should rule all of the humans like in the old days too. And yes, that really does mean like the old days. Many of the members of the Empire believe that allowing humans to work bronze was a mistake and that such mistakes should be corrected.
“You aren't the boss of me.”
It has often been said that the lower the stakes, the more vicious the fighting. And there is an element of truth to that declaration. And to an extent it should come as no special surprise that despite (or perhaps because of) the very small numbers of supernatural creatures, the amount of effort that is put into jockeying for position in supernatural society is very high. City “governments” usually only command a couple of hundred kindred creatures, but the amount of power wielded by these organizations is often pretty intense. Rising to higher positions in supernatural society will often cause you to automatically own (or at least, be able to give orders to) substantial holdings in the mortal world. Previous holders of the office have frequently bound corporations, city officials, and criminal groups to themselves, and not a small amount of that transfers to the next creature occupying the comfy chair. So to an extent, it's totally understandable. There may only be 2000 supernaturals running the government in Metropolitan Paris, and yes that's a number suspiciously close to the number of kids that attended your highschool, but the Revolutionary Committee of the Communes there is a lot more powerful and a lot more coveted than seats on your highschool's student government. There are certain similarities in campaigning styles (in that you can plausibly take the time to get to know everyone in the peer group), but each of the Revolutionary Committee members get a special cell phone that lets them connect directly to the chief of police of Paris.
In the whole world, there are roughly six hundred thousand of the “playable” supernaturals in it. And that is a bit less than 1 per ten thousand humans, a total that has remained roughly constant throughout history. Humanity has experienced a tremendous population boom even as birth rates have fallen in the last 200 years or so. The industrial age has done wonders for the mortality rate. At the same time, the major Syndicates have achieved an uneasy – but functional peace. And while birth/creation rates of supernaturals have not slowed (quite the opposite), mortality rates have fallen among the kindred to an amazing extent. Not a few supernatural scholars find these trends frightening, and are advocating that supernatural society will have to return to a state of war or move full-scale to colonize the other worlds. Populations are very different in the other worlds, the Dark Reflection seems to hold just two hundred million souls, and most of them are the damned and the Mirror Goblins. Populations in the Dreamlands are even lower, with Maya containing just a few tens of thousands – though no one really knows how many Giant Animals or Evil Plants lurk in that ghastly wilderness. The Gloom is a whole different thing altogether, having a population that is measurable in the tens of billions. Were it not for the fact that the vast majority of those creatures are Wisps mumbling in long forgotten languages who scarcely remember their own name, Mictlan would be an even bigger threat than it already is. Still, perhaps the most disturbing thing about Mictlan is that with the number of people who have died, the population is not several times larger than it is.
Distribution of supernaturals is substantially and predictably different from distribution of mortal humans. There appear to be two major directions of migration for supernaturals: towards the largest and wealthiest of the cities and towards the actual wilderness. Roughly 80% of supernaturals on Earth fall into one category or the other (and are roughly evenly split between those two extremes). Similarly, a fair number of supernaturals are drawn towards the most wealthy nations as well as the nations of low population density. Canada is probably the most overpopulated, and has substantially more supernaturals than you would expect given its meager population of 33 million. Thousands of lycanthropes and leviathans roam the Northern wilderness, far from the eyes of civilization. On the flip side, the most underpopulated nation (in terms of supernaturals relative to humans) is India. Just as brain drain sends doctors and computer programmers out of Chennai and into Western and Middle Eastern countries, fish people and witches who can use their powers to go to the UK (or wherever) frequently do.
What this means is that if you're considering a moderate and normally populated country like Czech Republic with 10 million humans, that it probably has about a thousand supernaturals. And the split of those is that roughly 400 would be in Prague, roughly 400 would be in the actual wilderness and countryside, and only about 200 supernaturals would be in all other cities in the country. So your chance of meeting a vampire in Plzen or Brno is pretty darn low. And as it happens, that is what you get in Czech Republic specifically, with the Bishop of Prague having a flock of 250 (with another 150 foreigners and independents) while Ostrava and Liberec having so few Covenant members in them that the head of the organization in each of those cities is just a Priest.
Acquiring Power Over Humans
“We have a good thing going.”
Even without overt mind control, it is often fairly easy for a supernatural creature to subvert a human agent. They can physically overpower mortal humans, intimidate them, offer glimpses of powerful secrets, provide them with addictive narcotics, bargain with strange magics, and in some cases even directly allow them to gain the use of real magic (most notably from vampires). But there are really a lot of humans. Subverting one human agent is good, potentially even necessary to advance an agenda in human politics, but it's not really, not nearly enough.
Gaining political power in the mortal sphere can actually be pretty difficult for supernatural creatures. There's the crushing reality that supernatural society as a whole quite possibly wouldn't win open confrontation against the human masses, and the result is that other supernaturals will come in and wreck the place if a supernatural creature's foray into human power structures threatens to give the game away in any way. That includes simply living implausibly long while under any kind of significant observation, so becoming a house-hold name is frowned upon unless there is an Elvis-clause in the works (for various reasons, this is the Makhzen's actual name for having an identity die to preserve the Vow of Silence). Most of a supernatural creature's advantages are ones that they can't use to gain any advantage over or persuade large numbers of humans without giving the show away, and that's just not allowed. Furthermore, supernatural creatures may find themselves having to go away for unpredictable amounts of time – not so much walking the Appalachian Trail as being unreachable by phone in the Dreamlands or Limbo, often on short notice.
In order to accomplish things in the realm of mortal it is imperative that a supernatural creature figure out how to set up organizations, corporations, political action committees, or similar persistent social constructs that can operate without the character's direct, continuous, or obvious interference. This can require quite a bit of forward thinking, as legal entities that act without continually getting instructions actually continue to act without instructions. While the invention of the corporate charter was quite a boon to supernaturals wanting to act in human society, the capacity of corporate constructs to grow out of control and exceed the parameters set by their creators is no less true for supernatural shareholders as it is for mortal human ones. Remember that even if a character's goals change, the goals of organizations they start may not.
Status and Office in the Makhzen
No one wants it to be easy to depose a king. Then there would be no luster left in becoming king.
Nominally of course, the Makhzen appoints all possible positions and titles to members from above. Even the Inner Circle members are appointed by the Inner Circle. In practice, it is entirely possible to rise on one's own merits and decisions in a myriad of ways. The most obvious is that if you go set up a Makhzen kingdom somewhere, you are the Prince. And it is pretty difficult to get rid of a sitting Prince. Similarly, a character can appoint themselves for pretty much any need for which there is a void. Like in any system of government, the first rule is that you have to want to do it.
The Inner Circle: The Makhzen is led by a shadowy cabal that meets several times a year. There are supposedly seven members, and their edicts are the Law.
Hakim Each of the Inner Circle members is allowed one Hakim, a roving one-person supreme court who dispenses justice and interprets the laws of the Makhzen. The Hakim serves as long as their nominating Inner Circle member allows.
Manadi: The original purpose of the Manadi was to carry mail, bells (yes, really), edicts, and diplomacy from one city in the Makhzen to another. Tonight, with the advent of airplanes and email, there is a lot less need for these sorts of activities and there are many less Manadi than there once were. But they retain their function as bearers of the will of the Makhzen, and they are now roaming courts – like a Hakim-lite.
Prince: The leader of a Makhzen city is the Prince. All appointments in the city are done by the Prince, though in many cities the Mehtar Council wields such power that their “recommendations” are essentially rubber-stamped by the Prince.
Mehtar: Anyone who achieves sufficient gravitas within the Makhzen is afforded the honorary title of Mehtar, which they hold in perpetuity (although it is left unacknowledged while they have any other title – noone would bother citing the fact that a Hakim is also a Mehtar). Whenever a city's Council meetings are called, any Mehtar who wants to can show up. Even Mehtar who don't live in the city. In some cities the Mehtar council, or even specific Mehtar, have more real authority than the Prince. In others, the Council's statements are just advisory and the Prince's word is final.
Vizier: Some Princes or Councils take a tremendously hands-on approach to government, and others don't. Some cities employ one or more Viziers, whose job it is to do administrative work that the higher ups can't or don't want to do. In Dubai there are many Viziers, and they are often empowered to administer the many mundane business operations that the Makhzen controls. On the flip side, the Prince of Khartoum does not keep any records at all and there are no Viziers.
Sheriff: Most kingdoms employ a Sheriff, who is someone entrusted to keep the Traditions and enforce the Law. In larger, more media-savvy cities like Houston, the Sheriff will have several Viziers assigned to help them. In many ways a Sheriff is like a Hakim that answers to the Princeps rather than a Circle member.
Status and Office in the World Crime League
Honestly, it's more like a set of guidelines...
The World Crime League officially rewards and expects ambition from its members, but it also requires success (or at least the appearance of success) from its leadership. A title is bestowed for a minimum amount of time, after which anyone can challenge them for the post, with most challenges being settled by election (though some being up for other demonstrations of fitness, including trial by combat in some instances). If someone fails to unseat an office holder, they may not challenge for a seat for an amount of time equal to the amount of time the office would have been guaranteed. This system is an amalgamation of the Chinese Imperial Examination system and the pirate government that it grew out of.
Captain: Each territory has two separate leaders. The Captain is in charge of the military of the territory and also justice within its borders. Holding the Captaincy makes one the “stick” in all incentivization. Perversely, this makes the Captain usually rather well-liked, as physical punishment is rarely used and the WCL is not often at war with anything or anyone.
Quartermaster: The Quartermaster rewards members of the organization for their activities and distributes resources. They provide the “carrot” of incentives for the WCL. Quartermasters are almost universally hated and feared, because every member of the WCL gets some portion of the resource distributions and feels that they personally don't get enough.
The Councilors: Each territory can send one member to negotiate on their behalf when councils are called. Traditionally, the Captain would go to a council of war (called a Bình Thân) and the Quartermaster would go to a council of administration (called a Diên Hồng). In more recent nights, with councils becoming almost a continuous affair over one thing or another, it has become standard to have other members take the mantle of Councilor. There is talk of making the Councilor a permanent capacity, and some territories that are very far from Malaysia have already done so. The Councilor of San Francisco basically lives in Singapore and is always on hand to argue San Francisco's position the moment a council is called. The success of this program has prompted immitators.
Ministers: Anyone put in charge of anything is technically a “Minister” of something or other. Broadly speaking, there are five kinds of Ministers, who each get a different insignia. The categories (and their insignia) are Military (Peacock), Law (Elephant), Wealth (Cat), Territory (Water Buffalo), and Sorcery (Swastika). Fitting modern concerns into these five categories is sometimes rather a stretch, and there are instances where essentially identical roles are given different insignia even within a single city's organization.
Military Minister: Originally given to military officers, the peacock is now given to those who help enforce adherence to The Code and those who work on keeping knowledge and weaponry on hand to battle “rogue elements” such as Demons and Pods. So for example, the San Francisco Territory has a Minister of Comparative Biology whose job it is to keep samples and conflict testimonials to aid in investigations of potential invasions from other worlds. And while he does not carry a weapon of any kind, his insignia is a peacock.
Law Minister: The World Crime League has crime in its name, and takes this sort of thing very seriously. Law Ministers in the WCL are mostly concerned with bypassing the laws of human society rather than enforcing the code of the WCL (that's a job for the military). So for example, in the Territory of Kabul they have a several Ministers of various opium schemes, and they all get the elephant because their proximal job is to keep WCL members from getting destroyed or captured by mortal governments or tribes.
Wealth Ministers: The World Crime League has quite substantial taxation, substantially more so than the Covenant's 10% Tithe. The cat emblem goes on any Minister who manages collection or distribution of the WCL's considerable financial resources. Wealth Ministers of one type or another are the ones who actually underwrite new ministries when they are created. The Quartermaster of a Territory directly commands any Wealth Minister that operates in their jurisdiction.
Territory Minister: Originally they were ministers of “agriculture and geography” and their job was to manage the food sources (including the more... special food sources) of members as well as making sure that things weren't falling apart in the villages and keep maps of the world for the Syndicate. Tonight you can get maps on wikipedia and most food shows up in grocery stores without Witches having to do anything. So the Territory Ministers have gradually become news gatherers and event watchers. These nights, the water buffalo is virtually synonymous with “spy” and many Ministers keep their insignia hidden from everyone but the Quartermaster and possibly the Captain.
Sorcery Ministers: Purely magical concerns, such as a portal network or prophecy sets have Sorcery Ministers appointed to govern them. It is important to note that in most places the WCL is strong, the swastika is not considered a problematic symbol, and in any case it's supposed to be hidden from mortals. So really, the WCL hasn't had a problem with it.
Status and Office in the Covenant
You think you're bigger than God? Let me tell you, I am bigger than God.
The Covenant is an Ecclesiastical organization, and despite the fact that a majority of its members (and even leaders) do not believe in the theology on which they were founded, their structure has remained mostly constant. More so than the human church upon which they were originally based. The Covenant hierarchy is pretty rigid even if their apologetics are not. Promotion is always from above with the singular exception that the anti-pope is promoted from within by a democratic quorum of the heresiarchs. The organization's concept of “above” is slightly counterintuitive, as it is divided into orders whose offices are parallel in rank and function.
The Anti-Pope: The head of the Heresiarch's Council, the Anti-Pope is the first sentence and the final answer. Currently the Anti-Pope rules from the shadow city under Rome, but there is strong current of opinion that it should move to Ciudad de Mexico as that city has more than 8 times as many actual Covenant members in it and basically determines the Covenant's overall direction in a very real way.
Bishop: The ruler of each Covenant City is the Bishop. Bishops can run their cities pretty much however they want, and appoint (or approve) all of the Priests in their territory.
Cardinal: Some Covenant cities have a Cardinal instead of a bishop (or in weird cases, mostly in Italy, in addition to the Bishop). The Cardinal is a Bishop (or Bishop equivalent such as Prelate or Palatine) and also has more authority in the running of the Covenant globally. They are the Heresiarchs and when the Anti-Pope dies or resigns they meet to elect a new one. Most anti-papal decrees are actually drafted by the Heresiarchs (either singularly or in groups) and then approved by the Anti-Pope.
Apostolic Exarch: An Apolostolic Exarch is given the same respect due to a Bishop, but they do not control a city. They are given supervision of a region that the Covenant do not control. In ages past, an Apostolic Exarch was appointed “over” a hostile region with the understanding that if they could attract enough Covenant members to crusade against it to conquer it and make it a Covenant territory that they would automatically become the Bishop of that land. Tonight that practice has been officially abandoned by Covenant leadership, and an Apostolic Exarch is essentially an ambassador to another Syndicate. They speak for the interests of Covenant flock persisting or working in territories acknowledged as belonging to another Syndicate.
Military Ordinal: The Crusading Army of the Covenant has at times consisted of most of the Covenant's flock. The Anti-Pope divides the Crusading Army into military orders, and the leader of each order is essentially a Bishop. Anyone can ask for acceptance into any military order at any time, and if accepted they essentially answer to the Military Ordinal of it instead of the Bishop of whatever parish they happen to be in.
Prelate: The Covenant has a number of contemplative orders, each headed by a Prelate. These Prelates are roughly equivalent to a Bishop, save that they are in charge of an order rather than a region. Like with military orders, a member of the Covenant can apply to join a contemplative order, and if accepted, is considered to be “in” the order instead of the city they happen to persist in.
Palatine: A Palatine is an arbiter of Covenant Law. It is their responsibility to make decisions based upon the sum total of Anti-Papal decrees, to resolve differences between flock members and inflict punishments on those who have been accused by Bishops. Palatinate Courts move around a lot. Even the largest Covenant City (Ciudad de Mexico) only has about 5000 in its Flock and there aren't cases demanding their attention all of the time.
Priest: The Covenant requires each member of the Flock to check in with a member of the Church authority at least once a week. This ritual of intrusive government is handled by a Priest. Many Bishops have several Priests working under them. Each Priest will be assigned some members of the Flock to keep an eye on so they can deliver weekly reports on interesting developments to the Bishop. But a Priest isn't just a member of the secret police, they also serve a leadership and administrative function.
Monk: A Monk is roughly equivalent to a Priest in rank, but is a member of a military or contemplative order and is expected to act as a military coordinator for their personal flock (who need not be geographically located), or as a coordinator of whatever the contemplative order does (again, possibly in a non-geographical manner). Some orders bestow the rank of Monk on every member who joins after a period of apprenticeship.
Glossator: A Glossator is similar to a lawyer. They assist Palatines with the making of legal decisions by crafting arguments (called “Glosses”) that indicate how a situation could be reconciled with all previous Anti-Papal edicts such that none of the edicts contradict each other. Some of the logic is quite as tortured as those found guilty of breaking the edicts. Glossators follow adversarial principals in law, and an accused brought before a Palatine is permitted a Glossator to argue on their behalf.
Status and Office in the Cauchemar Communes
None of us is as dangerous as all of us.
The Cauchemar Communes is at its core a concerted attempt to harness the power of the unruly mob to recreate the most powerful of human institutions encountered by supernatural society: the unruly mob. The Communes value collective action, and disdain hierarchy. But for all their talk of egalitarianism, universality, and brotherhood, the Communes do have a structure. The eternal revolution is not televised, but it is planned.
Communes structure is difficult for outsiders to discern precisely because they eschew titles, ornamentation, and rank. Members of the the Revolutionary Committee are simply called “Citizen [Name]” which is technically the title of every member of the Communes. The only difference is that members who have authority have the title “Citizen” appended to their name every time someone wants to address them, while the appellation is generally informally left off when addressing members of lesser standing. You might think that with no officially acknowledged hierarchy that conflicts over position would be few in number. And you'd be wrong. Jealousy, scheming, and plain old confusion run rampant.
Power is addicting in any society, but in The Communes even more so, because power literally has to be used to be retained. As soon as the mob forgets that they are supposed to follow someone, they'll seriously stop doing it.
Revolutionary Committee: This group is analogous to the Makhzen's Inner Circle. The Committee meets in various places in Paris, and the only requirement to joining it is the acknowledgement of the other members that the character belongs. Creatures get invited to be temporary members of the committee all the time when they have something important to talk about, and some of these creatures stay on.
Demagogue: Any member of The Communes that others follow is called a “Demagogue” in recognition of that fact. This unofficial rank carries roughly the weight of a Covenant Priest, but if most of the city follows the lead of a member then it's kind of the same as a Makhzen Princeps. One becomes a Demagogue simply by telling other members that they should do something and having them do it. As such, pretty much anyone can claim the title of Demagogue from another by holding a debate about policy and winning decisively. Refusing to debate another is a dangerous path, since a character only retains their Demagogue status by continuing to get members to do stuff.
Authority: Any member of the Communes who is regarded as knowing something and being valuable to consult with on a topic gradually gets the informal title of Authority with the long form being “Authority on XXX” where XXX is whatever members are advised to go ask the character about. The title of Authority is bestowed through acclimation and is achieved through being publicly correct several times. It can be lost by being apparently wrong on something humiliating or important, and if the Authority doesn't pitch in from time to time, other members will gradually forget that they have it – and then they won't anymore.
Vanguard: Cauchemars who fight bravely and well – or at least apparently impressively successfully – on the behalf of Communes goals are acknowledged as being members of The Vanguard. Rewards for being in the Vanguard are many in that other members will shower them with praise and favors, but Vanguard are also called upon to fight more battles on behalf of the Communes.
The Committee of Public Safety: Many Cauchemar cities have a Committee of Public Safety, which is a group that gets together to deliberate what is to be done about threats to public order and enforcement of the rules of the Syndicate. Since they can (and occasionally do) decide that what needs to be done is to send Vanguards out to murder someone – essentially trying them in absentia for capital crimes, they can be thought of as a court of law combined with a military planning session.
Monstrous Society
Organization of the Damned
“There's evil stuff going on in here. And I want in.”
Supernatural creatures are in the big scheme of things rather rare. An individual Werewolf may go their entire life without ever encountering another supernatural creature (beyond of course the Werewolf that mauled them into their current state in the first place). So it's not surprising that when they do find each other they tend to make exclusive clubs. These social organizations are in many ways templated on the human social organizations that the creatures that created them lived in when they mingled in human society. And with the sheer age that some creatures possess, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of these organizations are in fact crazy old-fashioned.
Bands
“Go Team Venture!”
Supernatural creatures can easily overpower a single human, and many of them have at least the potential to live forever. But that potential can only be realized if they are not summarily destroyed before forever draws near. The response has been for small groups of supernatural creatures to watch each other's backs and contribute to each others' goals. These small teams are just as needed and just as effective as the hunting parties mankind first organized to fight cave bears. It has been suggested that the practice of supernatural creatures making these bands is perhaps no less old.
I honestly don't care if you call your team a “team” or a “band” or a “pack” or “coven” or “herd” or “Fred”. It's not important. What is important is that the player characters are a Scooby gang that works together and shares screen time. They'll be in the same areas a lot, working towards the same goals, and so on and so forth. These bands of supernaturals are pretty common, largely because of the whole thing that while there are seven billion humans, there are only about six hundred thousand supernaturals. These guys are possibly your only friends, the only people you have shared experience potential with, and so on and so forth. Small, close knit social groups are very much the rule, which is convenient for a cooperative storytelling framework.
Loyalty to these small groups is assumed to be greater than loyalty to any world spanning clubs. The Makhzen does not expect that you will betray your friends for them, because it seriously isn't like you can go out and get new friends. Immortality is a long time, and the number of supernaturals is never that large, so personal loyalties are considered extremely important by just about every one.
Most bands are generally 3-8 supernatural people with possibly some trusted retainers given quasi-membership. This is great for the game, because one of them could very well be “the player characters and maybe an NPC or two”. And indeed, the general assumption is that players will be part of the same band. Doing things this way allows the mission statement of the band to act as velcro to attach plot hooks to every player character, ensuring that the major action doesn't leave anyone behind. A band of Scooby Doo detectives can get all the players into the action right away when any of the characters finds out about a supposedly haunted house, while a band of relic hunters can get the players up to speed with just the subtlest hint about the whereabouts of a famous pistol. Even a band of guys who meet together for pizza and poker night can be righteously mobilized when supernatural goings-on hamper their evening ritual.
Bands are thus structurally a very important part of the story arc for any group playing Dead of Night, because they provide a reason for the players to be telling the same story instead of having their characters drift apart and do their own thing. It is also important to note that many of the famous bands from genre television shows like X Files, American Gothic, and Supernatural only have two characters in them much of the time. Since Dead of Night is a cooperative storytelling game, that is an unreasonable expectation to have. A better template would usually be the bands from more ensemble cast shows like Angel or even Scooby Doo.
Syndicates
“New plan: we don't cut each other's head off in an attempt to gain asymmetric power.”
Whether they like it or not, supernatural characters in Dead of Night are subject to the rules and judgments of one or more of the Syndicates. Acting as defacto nation states, Syndicates provide a Hobbesian mandate of behavior that is difficult to ignore. Characters may indeed be a member of one of them, which provides benefits comparable to those of being the citizen of an archaic empire. However, breaking the edicts of any Syndicate is punishable by that Syndicate if it catches you (subject to possible negotiations if you are a well placed member of another).
The Syndicates do no have directly analogous social hierarchies. Each is kind of like a mafia, with some sort of shady leadership hierarchy and elaborate titles to convey subtle differences in duties and status. But they were generally founded centuries and continents apart from one another, an they are not based on identical or even comparable theories of government. However, while each has very different justifications for its own existence, all the Syndicates exist to fulfill essentially the same functions an is essentially on the same side. So while they spend a fair amount of time insulting one another, it is profoundly unusual for them to actually come to blows. Each Syndicate provides the following:
- Preserves the Vow of Silence – each group calls it something different, but everyone is keenly aware that sufficient numbers of peasants with torches have slain supernatural creatures in the past and will do so again if the lid isn't kept on pretty tight. In ages past this was handled with the “Tradition of Misdirection” where humans were fed bullshit about how magic really worked, when that started to break down during the Classical era, it was replaced with a system where supernatural creatures hid their existence from mortal observation entirely.
- Facilitates Social Interaction – for all the Nosferatu babble about how they prefer the life of the hermit, they really don't. Normal humans are incapable of really understanding what it is like to be a supernatural creature and really the only peers a Leviathan has is other Leviathans, or at least other supernatural creatures.
- Acts as a framework to work out differences – supernatural creatures exist outside and in many ways above normal human societies, and live their life very much like a Hobbesian battle of All against All. And while it is true that their power and mystery does make them well qualified to do that, they have no unique advantages over other supernatural creatures. And thus it is in true Hobbes fashion the creatures have put together over organizations to keep each other in check. Arguing things out with a Manadi is slow, but many supernatural creatures have a lot of time.
The Makhzen
“Lack of loyalty is one of the major causes of failure in every walk of life.”
The Makhzen is, according to its own history, an ancient truce declared between various supernatural creatures long ago in Babylon. It was apparently put together in the face of some grave threat which is no longer talked about. Members of the Makhzen are called “Kindred”, and the regional leadership is divided into “cities”, “domains”, and “kingdoms” all of which terms are used interchangeably. Regional leadership is held by a Mehtar Council, which powerful kindred are appointed to for life, and this council is led by a Prince or Aval (both are unisex terms which predate their use in royalty). How much influence the prince actually has varies from region to region. A Mehtar or prince who travels to another domain is automatically a member of the Mehtar council wherever they happen to be.
Laws of the Makhzen are hopelessly baroque, and most of the old ones are shockingly specific and draconian and inscribed into clay tablets. They have by and large been repealed and replaced with ones which are easier for everyone to get along with. Still, there are some hangers on, as it is widely reported that it is still technically a death sentence for the perpetrator and their three closest friends to steal an aurochs from a member of the kindred.
Tonight, the Makhzen remains strong in the Middle East and North Africa. It has spread somewhat into North America in the American South. Once it extended the entire length of the Silk Road and all through Southern Europe, but both of these areas have broken off over the centuries. If you go West or North from Bulgaria you get into Covenant territory. And if you go North or East from Tajikistan and Uzbekistan you get into Communes territory. The Makhzen is bordered on its southern reaches in the old world by World Crime League territory. It is a noticeable source of contention that from the Makhzen's founding lands in Persia you can literally see Afghans who work (albeit unknowingly) for the WCL.
Probably Established: 8th century BCE, Persia
The Cauchemar Communes
“Tradition is but the illusion of permanence. Change is not just inevitable, it is good.”
Supernatural societies have with necessity been extremely conservative over the generations. And such it was that when the age of enlightenment hit the human world, the supernatural world found itself falling behind. The Cauchemar Communes were founded as a reform movement for the supernatural world to take advantage of the new ideas and opportunities found in human science. The term is French for the common people of the nightmares – which was how non-elder supernatural creatures were thought of in 18th century France. Arranged in a “cell structure”, the Communes nominally hold that all of their membership is equal, save for the Revolutionary Committee members themselves who are substantially more equal.
The Cauchemar hold that advancements in human strength and society are, or at least can be, for the good of the supernaturals. Rather than viewing the world as shrinking, leaving them with less and less space in which to hide, the Communes view the world as growing with more and more humans and cities with which to obscure themselves. The Communes' understanding of the Vow of Silence is one based largely upon anonymity rather than invisibility.
The Cauchemar message appeals to the young (which in supernatural terms means those born or made in the last 400 years or so), and campaigns for the removal of traditional privileges for the ancient and established monsters of the world. The Communes favor change and a new way of doing things modeled upon human reforms, but that's about as far as they go in agreeing with one another. It is easy to get the distributed Communes apparatus to help tear down something or turn upon a criminal, but relatively difficult to pass effective resolutions. The ideological divides amongst the Revolutionary Committee are fierce and hard drawn, so the group as a whole acts rarely and with much debate on matters of anything but immediate survival.
As a reformist, “bottom up” movement, the Communes have been able to make great inroads in areas that were previously outside Syndicates, and toppled several minor ones (such as the Puppeteers, the Laibon, and the Kingdom of Yomi). Most impressive of their feats was the dismantling and absorption of the Bumin Horde of Ergenekon. The Cauchemar Communes hold a great deal of power in China and many former Soviet Republics, and also in much of the American Midwest, Canada, and France. The Communes hold territory easily containing more human population than any other Syndicate, a fact that is truly frightening to many other Syndicates considering their newness.
Despite their European origins, or perhaps because of the proximity of their founding to the capital of the Covenant, the Communes have made little progress in Western Europe. In 1798 it seemed that the Communes were on the brink of sacking the Heresiarch Council and ending the Covenant Church altogether. However, in the coming years the Covenant made a number of reforms and concessions to various bishops and interest groups and held onto their European holdings all the way to the Alps. The Cauchemar ended up signing onto peace and expanding instead into the lands of those Syndicates that refused to adapt.
Probably Established: 18th century CE, Pyrenees Mountains.
The Covenant
“A bishop of the Covenant can believe anything, but most of us don't.”
The effect of the Roman Catholic Church on human history is hard to over estimate. As Rome itself was coming crashing down, Europe was largely cut off from the Middle East, Africa, and points further in Asia. Europe became isolated, and the influence of the Makhzen all but vanished. It was at this time that the supernatural creatures of the European region created a new organization modeled on the fledgling Roman Catholic Church.
The Covenant has extremely confused theology and you are specifically not allowed to be excommunicated for heresy. After all, the Covenant's primary role is to facilitate social interaction and conflict resolution between members rather than to advance any specific theological agenda. The Covenant is led by an Anti-Pope who wears a mask and whose identity is nominally secret. The Anti-Pope leads the council of Cardinals, from whom he or she is nominated, and does so for an unspecified amount of time before being replaced – occasionally by themselves in a different mask. Below the cardinals are bishops, below bishops are priests, and everyone else is referred to as “Flock”. Other organizations refer to Covenant members derisively as “Sheep”.
The Covenant maintains a number of parallel hierarchies in addition to the primary one. Rather than being a bishop or priest (which is regional), one could be Apostolic Exarch (which governs a region that is not under Covenant Control), a Military Ordinal (which handles defense of the order regardless of location), or a Palatine (which is organizational and has personnel but no fixed territory). All of these titles carry approximately the same weight as Bishop. The Covenant also recognizes some of its members as “saints”. Once a Covenant member has descended into sainthood they carry a status that cannot be taken away, which essentially allows them to speak and be listened to on any issue by any church conclave at any organizational level. Since the membership of the Covenant are supernatural in nature, the requirements of miraculous activities is entirely a formality and being recognized by the Anti-Pope as a Saint is entirely political. Saints are given spiffy blood red uniforms when they serve in any official capacity and are thence known as Sanguines regardless of their rank or duties.
Law in the Covenant is confusing and pre-baroque, grounded in Roman law and medieval superstition. It is doctrine in the Covenant that canon law is infallible, and thus no law is ever replaced or contradicted. The immense amount of doublethink required to make this function at all is produced by Glossators, who philosophize the inordinately convoluted structures whereby contradictory statements can be rationalized as merely seeming to contradict each other. Canon law itself is crafted by a group of bishops called the Heresiarchs who draft documents for potential Anti-Papal blessing. Who sits on the Heresiarch council at any time is highly variable, as a seat becomes vacant whenever a Heresiarch misses two meetings in a row, and an empty seat is filled as soon as seven bishops not on the council, three bishops on the council, or the Anti-Pope nominate one of the other Bishops into the seat.
World wide there are about a hundred bishops or bishop equivalents, and the substantial majority are in Europe.
Probably Established: 5th century CE, Rome.
World Crime League
“Don't tell me that you're innocent. Because it insults my intelligence and it makes me very angry.”
With the encroachment of the Mongols into South and Southeast Asia, the kingdoms remaining outside the Khan's grasp were cut off from trade with the outside world. The supernatural creatures of the region were forced to make their own way, without influence from the old power structures. A pirate navy formed in Southeast Asia, which preyed upon naval traffic and helped fight the Mongol Empire alongside the mortal forces of Emperor Trần Nhân Tông. Keeping themselves on a military, outlaw footing kept the Mongols out of their lands and waters for as long as the Ming dynasty stood, but by the time they had reestablished connections with other Syndicates, the Viet Shadow Kingdom had power of its own and its membership had no real desire to rejoin the Makhzen. They instead took their criminal activities world wide and became the League of Pirates, and eventually the World Crime League.
Because of their piratical roots, the World Crime League has a vaguely naval structure at the top. There is a council of Captains who discuss world issues and update the guidelines. Locally, WCL members infiltrate whatever criminal groups happen to be active in the region and modify themselves appropriately. WCL members have risen to high ranks in Triads, Vory, Mafia, and Ghost Cartels.
The WCL values money and other trappings of human temporal power as well as mystical power, and one can literally purchase their way up in the ranks of the Syndicate. The group holds that breaking the laws of man and corrupting the values of human society is a goal in and of itself, and undermining the rule of law and morality is seen as a powerful and respectable achievement by the League.
Probably Established: 13th century CE, Dai Viet.
Cults
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, all the crazy pointless crap we do isn't crazy or pointless?”
Many magical creatures attempt to increase their magical power by sharing secrets of magic with other supernatural creatures. These mystical filesharing groups serve as secret clubs, religious heresies, and trade guilds. These organizations are semi-secret. While their membership is largely composed of supernatural creatures (whose very existence is a secret from the mundane humans of the world), the specific activities of these groups are kept under wraps even from other supernaturals.
Each Cult is distinguished largely by 3 things. The first is their Favored Magic. This is the path of Sorcery that a character can reasonably expect to be taught by joining and advancing within the cult. The second is the Favored Resources. These are two resources that a character gets easily whilst a member of the cult in good standing. Further, the character's status within the cult is in some way enhanced by having lots of these backgrounds. And finally there is the Work. This is what the cult does in and around supernatural society. For example, the Giovanni family business is finance and bureaucracy, so other supernaturals frequently hire them to navigate human legalities on their behalf. On the flip side, The Black Hand makes it a point to murder people in cold blood, and supernaturals are rarely above hiring them to hammer down nails judged to be standing up.
A note on how to integrate each Cult's work into your chronicle has been included in each Cult's description. Each group has agendas that are in many ways fairly sketchy – and it is not at all inconceivable that the characters may find themselves working with or against any of them. Indeed, it's highly likely that characters will end up teaming up with and opposing the same group at different times.
The Ash Walkers
“There is nothing that can be seen that cannot be done.”
The Ash Walkers were originally founded in the 16th century by a group of Fallen Transhumans as part of the Great Reformation. They viewed, as Jean Cauvin did, that the Catholic Church was undergoing a change, and they wanted to reflect everything within the Covenant. Like their mortal church counterparts, they failed to take Rome and ultimately fled to Switzerland and even back into the Dark Reflection. In more recent nights and years, the Covenant has sworn off hunting them to the ends of the Earth and beyond, and they in turn have come back from the ashen wastes and entered into supernatural society. But their time as exiles in Limbo has left its mark on the cult history, methodology, and theology.
The Ash Walkers believe in the doctrine of Total Depravity, which holds that man is incapable of choosing righteousness and even philanthropy (being created by a wicked hand) is evil and thus ultimately pointless. The only people who are capable of being saved from the worlds are those who are predestined to be called out of them. And the ones who are predestined for this honor are by definition the ones who have been chosen to gain magical powers and amass great wealth. The cult thus has developed an extremely mercenary attitude towards all things. Personal gain and the amassment of gold and property are the things that justify everything. The things that demonstrably show that one has been destined for riches and ultimately for salvation since before birth.
True to their Calvinist roots, the Ash Walkers believe in “the deal” above any god. Lying, cheating, and stealing are all fine, but actual contracts and ownership are the basis for wealth. And screwing with that would undermine the entire foundation of their ethos.
Missions for the Ash Walkers: The Ash Walkers want only one thing: cold hard cash. However, the things that pass for currency in different places are themselves numerous. The Ash Walkers will cut the team in on pretty much any deal as long as it makes a profit, whether that's a profit in gold or a profit in kittens. Let your imagination run wild, because Ash Walkers see opportunities in places that others see only an endless funnel of madness.
Sample Adventure: An Ash Walker has invested in some land where it was cheap – in Mongolia, and intends to have the natives mine gold for him. Unfortunately, Mongolian Werewolves have other ideas and are taking over for some reason. Anxious to not lose the investment, he's offering a bounty to the player characters to clean up the problem.
The Ash Walkers as Antagonists: Money may not be the root of all evil, and not everything that religion touches turns to ash. But the Ash Walkers do essentially worship money, and they do have a whole thing about turning things to ash. And that pretty much means that any villainy you can imagine someone might perpetuate for personal profit or religious zeal is one that the Ash Walkers are all over. These guys can seriously be the villains from any 80s cartoon show.
- Favored Magic: Progress of Glass
Favored Resources: Finances, Secrets
Work: Start up projects, mad schemes.
“A well placed knife can change the world.”
The most famous thing that the Black Hand ever did was assassinate Archduke Ferdinand. But of course, they have killed a lot of people. The Black Hand kill people. Sometimes it's for money, sometimes it's for political gain, but mostly it's to increase the chaos and strife in the world. At least, officially. The Black Hand preaches that without war and conflict between mortal nations the supernatural creatures cannot survive. Thus they reason that war should be encouraged between humans lest the last hiding place for the supernatural fade from the Earth. Of course, humans don't actually seem to need any encouragement to murder one another, and honestly neither do supernatural creatures. And The Black Hand is more than happy to take a donation in order to end the life of someone powerful.
While the Black Hand has surfaced numerous times, supporting numerous political agendas, and many individual members of the Black Hand are indeed personally committed to one or more of these causes, the organization as a whole supports fanaticism generally. Having or feigning a strong religious or political agenda for which you are ready and eager to kill is a good way to move up in the Black Hand. Indeed, it's basically the only way to get promoted. The heads of the Black Hand are the Seven Master Killers, and supposedly they all got that position by murdering one of the previous heads. Several of the Master Killers are Nosferatu, and it is rumored that the ones they killed were their own sires. They don't seem to much judge the relative worth of ideologies, holding firmly to a relativist stance that certainty is the one measurable virtue.
Missions for the Black Hand: It's not just “assassinate this dude”, sometimes Black Handers are paid to protect someone from potential assassination. If they need to call in to their friends for additional assistance, then so be it.
Sample Adventure: There is tension between ethnically Spanish and Mayan people in Guatemala all the time. But there is also a set of credulous investigators there that are endangering the Vow of Silence. The Black Hand wants you to pick a side, get some shit started, and have the investigators disappear in the ensuing strife.
The Black Hand as Antagonists: Some of our favorite people haven't been killed yet. And if the Black Hand has anything to say about it, that will change soon. The Black Hand's pro-murder agenda can easily pit them against anyone who hasn't been murdered yet or who has friends or loved ones that have yet to be murdered.
- Favored Magic: Lure of Destruction
Favored Resources: Assets, Contacts
Work: Assassination
“Look like the innocent flower; But be the serpent under it.”
The Church of Set is a den of iniquity attached to a slanderous body of vile drug dealers and whore mongers. And they wouldn't have it any other way. It's a religious organization in a sense, but their core tenet is that the dissolution of the moral compass that drives people is a necessary and positive development. They stand for unabashed hedonism and personal empowerment through the actualization of the rejection of hindering moral frameworks and their replacement with goal oriented perfection.
Corruption is a way of life amongst the Church of Set. Not just for themselves, but for everyone around them that they can convince to partake. The Church of Set has pretty shaky views on what is right and wrong, but they strongly view that getting people to do things that those people believe are wrong is right. It all has something to do with confronting memes and taboos that are holding you back in life. The members of the Church of Set are called Setites, and each Setite is supposed to create for themselves a life path and framework of taboos that advance their own goals. It's all rather similar to Nietzsche and looks more than a bit like Leveyan Satanism. You're supposed to become an Übermensch, and you achieve that by doing things that you and the people around you think are so wrong that you wouldn't do them.
And then of course, there's the obligatory ancient Egyptian motifs that they put all over things. It was the 1800s, and it was the style of the time. Setite lore holds that the church existed thousands of years ago and was only rediscovered in the 1800s, which is pretty much what the Rosicrucians and all the other 19th century occult groups would have you believe. Be that as it may, Setites hold that their first leader was actually Set – the Egyptian god who killed Horus every evening and was in turn slain by Horus every morning. Still, it is perhaps telling that many of their theological points appear to share more with the Setites written about in Robert E. Howard's books of the early 20th century than they do with the Cult of Set of Upper Egypt's Naqadan people.
Missions for the Church of Set: The Setites collect vices like trading cards, and do everything in their power to encourage their spreading and to facilitate their use. Setites run drugs, pimp prostitutes, wear indecent clothing and deface religious texts. And they want your help. They want your help protecting people from reprisals against obscene behavior, they want your help in convincing people to corrupt themselves. And they want your help in doing things that push your own moral limits.
Sample Adventure: Pods have taken over the children of a small farming town out in Kansas. They've taken to using the children to capture people and sacrifice them to grow more pods or towards the creation of a permanent gateway to Maya. The Setites want the team to wipe out the Pods, taking care to leave none of the collaborators living and free. Of course, many of the collaborators are only six...
The Church of Set as Antagonists: Setites do things that they think are wrong and try to get other people to do things that they think are wrong as well. And while it is philosophically interesting to strive for a world of “No Taboos, Only Goals” the fact remains that they are still going out of their way to cross other peoples' limits of acceptance. If there is something that you won't accept, chances are some Setite is out there right now doing it.
- Favored Magic: Descent of Entropy
Favored Resources: Contacts, Science
Work: Corruption
“An it harm none, do as you will ”
The Chain of Coronis is an anarchist pagan sect dedicated to the study of cutting the life force out of people and using it to power larger magics to cut the life blood out of more people. They don't like modern religions, modern society, modern government, or modern technology. They espouse an ideology in which life would be better if we all spent more time ripping the necks out of goats with our teeth. Also, they run around naked in the woods and seriously rip the throats out of goats with their teeth.
An inductee into the Chain of Coronis is called a Maenad, and they are encouraged to act like their ancient Greek namesake as often as possible. Running around naked in the dark is demanded during various solar and lunar events, but is encouraged at all times. Of special note is that they at no time speak of modernity as being a “tool of oppression” or anything along those lines. Indeed, you can pretty much ignore any political speeches you have ever heard from any vegan modern-wiccan you have ever met. The Chain objects to modernity on a priori grounds. The state of “Nature” is deemed to be inherently morally superior to a world defined by artifice. They do not recognize the “Social Contract” upon which many modern political philosophies are based, having instead a set of twin ideals of “natural law” and “personal excellence” that would make more sense to Aristotle or Manu than to Hobbes or Rousseau.
The Chain looks at the word as being in its natural state ordered into many different “chains” that correspond to maturity levels. Higher, more mature chains are supposed to be able to push around lesser chains. But they are also supposed to lead by example – showing the younger and more foolish chains their inherent and learned virtues. By this rubric, supernatural creatures (even young ones) are “more mature” than humans (even old humans). Similarly, humans are more mature than goats. And of course, the creatures in the chain founded by Coronis the Maenad are more mature than unaffiliated supernatural creatures.
Missions for the Chain of Coronis: It's not all hippie eco-terrorism and blood sacrifices. It's also listening to Godsmack and having orgies in the woods. And a vast amount of extremely serious politicking. The Chain is not anti-authority, but they are opposed to all the current forms of government (both mortal and supernatural). This does not mean that they sit around in squalid tenements and whine about “The Man” but rather that they play the game as adeptly as anyone – just always for the opposition (for the moment). They spurn mortal currency, but they are well able to trade favors and magic for the gathering of blackmail material, the fomenting of discord, the manufacture of crises, or anything else that may be able to advance their agenda. They think long term. The Industrial Era, after all, is just a phase.
Sample Adventure: A Prince of the Makhzen has died, and foul play is indeed the cause. The new Prince wants it all covered up and forgotten, but the Chain does not. The characters are instructed to dig as deep as they can and make sure that the guilty are justly and officially punished. This sudden interest in enforcement of regulations surprises Makhzen members familiar with Coronist ideology, but given the damage these truths can cause, it really shouldn't.
The Chain as Antagonists: No matter what any old timer or even your own nostalgia tells you, many of the “old ways” were in fact abandoned because they were deemed substantially worse than the ways that came to replace them. Many of the things that the Chain (or at least various members of it) want to roll back are actually pretty cool. Pants for example. But also modern systems of government and diplomatic compromises. There is a lot wrong with them, but they replaced the old ways for a reason. While the Chain members think of themselves as working to reclaim a lost glory, they can often come off as brutal reactionaries.
- Favored Magic: Path of Blood
Favored Resources: Destiny, Contacts
Work: Archiving & Storage
“The greater the loyalty toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.”
The Order Daziban is a sorcerous cabal of dubious goals and shadowy methods. The Daziban were founded by Baali Witches with a penchant for burning things, so it is ironic that what they currently do is collect books. They collect other things too: rare butterflies, magic artifacts, secret information, and frankly who knows what all else. But they are most known for their collections of books.
The Daziban are secretive and very disciplined. They are the cult most likely to regard loyalty to the cult to be more important than loyalty to the band. They are organized into feudal fiefdoms called “vaults” and the lord and master of each one is given a fancy title that basically means “librarian” (yes, including “codicier” for W40k players). They can be called upon for archival information, and often are, simply because they keep so much of it around.
The Order Daziban puts a great deal of stock in status, and has at least 40 distinct ranks that members can be at. However, from a game mechanical standpoint, the basic numerical status ranks work fine. Technically a Lexicanium is a different rank from Keeper of Scrolls, but practically speaking both are the leaders of their respective vaults and whoever's input is most relevant to a particular course of action will be the one that is listened to.
Missions for the Daziban: The Daziban will frequently send a team out for basic fetch quests such as “retrieve rare book X” or even “destroy rare book X” when the vault already has one of the other copies. Some of their missions are more opaque, and generally involve thwarting the plans of various Ifrit with whom they have some unspoken yet long standing grudge.
Sample Adventure: Eager to appear more powerful and knowledgeable than he perhaps actually is, the vault archivist let on that he knew something about a Sumerian compound used by the Shattered Empire that he in fact has no idea about. With his bluff called by someone wishing to purchase his information, he wants one of the underlings to take his most trusted associates to do some snooping by the Euphrates on the down-low.
The Daziban as Antagonists: The Daziban like to be the only ones who know things. This means that if the player characters gain access to special information, they can easily create enemies for themselves in the Daziban organization. But they also like power and stealing stuff, so it's easy to see the players being political or law enforcement opponents of the local Daziban vault as well.
- Favored Magic: Walk of Flame
Favored Resources: Destiny, Secrets
Work: Research and Antiquities
“The world has become tired.”
The False Face used to be essentially a Syndicate, as it was the supernatural social group north of the Rio Grande. It very much lost an extremely bloody inter-Syndicate war with The Covenant, and now it hangs on as a minor cult that many don't even realize still exists. This event is actually one of the reasons that Syndicates are on such elaborately polite terms with each other tonight. It was indeed quite a shock to the largely isolationist supernatural creatures to see how much damage a group of supernatural creatures backed up by a bunch of human conquistadors could do, and diplomacy has been the name of the game ever since – not that this has done any good for the False Face itself.
The False Face itself is a shamanic lodge based largely on Iroquois social and magical foundations. Their members traditionally wear masks during important procedures, and their leadership are called “The Empty Ones”. At one time they did some of everything in the way Syndicates do now, but these nights they focus on exploring things. Mostly they go on long dream walks in Maya, looking for something that they don't tell anyone about. But they also explore other strange places. Supernatural creatures will often purchase their services in exploring things they want looked into or buy maps and information about secret places from them.
Most of The Empty Ones are Daeva, although it is not at all obvious whether this is a result of the lodge having always been run by Daeva or a simple result of the fact that it is very difficult to kill vampires in any permanent fashion. In any case, while some of them entertain fantasies of retaking North America, most of them are committed to the new path of exploring and ultimately moving to the Dreamlands. What happens afterwards is still being debated in the lodge.
Missions for the False Face: The False Face not only does a lot of their own scouting missions, but also takes mercenary scouting missions for others. Many of these missions are in the Dreamlands, but they can be anywhere. In addition, as the False Face moves more and more into the Dreamlands, they are finding themselves coming to blows with various factions of Evil Plants and the Marduk Society. And of course, there are a number of Giant Animals that need to be hunted before various areas become usable.
Sample Adventure: A family of Deep One kin in Massachusetts has recently uncovered a connection between their family plot and a set of underwater caverns. They'd really like to know what all was going on with their grandparent's diaries and Polynesian statues. The players are brought in to solve these mysteries and make sure that the family does not break the Vow of Silence, either by withholding important information or making sure the family understands the importance of keeping what information they know secret – or some combination. It's really up to them.
The False Face as Antagonists: There are seriously Empty Ones who openly call for the purging of one or more Syndicates (mostly the Covenant, but some of them are not picky). So it's entirely reasonable for the False Face to send one or more of its members to outright murder the player characters or someone they care about “to make a point”. Also, some of the stuff they want for the big migration is stuff that people in the mortal world own or at least would prefer to remain where it is.
- Favored Magic: Veil of Morpheus
Favored Resources: Destiny, Finances
Work: Exploration
“All of heaven awaits.”
Begun in Arabia by a group of Troglodytes as a drug addled death cult, the Hashshashin are... still a drug addled death cult. Their leaders are called Imams, and they have a truly confusing theology involving darkening senses to achieve paradise, but basically they smuggle people and drugs, consume lots of drugs (and not a few people), and generally behave in a manner that almost every religion will tell you is “very very bad”. Not all, or even most, of the members of the cult are supernatural – but the mortals are treated to a virtually continuous orgy of narcotics and debauchery and probably couldn't explain anything about the compounds upon leaving anyway.
Whether shipping kilos of heroin or trucks full of Moldovans, a lot of money passes through their hands – that stuff seriously isn't cheap. But at least seemingly they don't give a crap about the money and do the crime in order for there to be more crime. This is only partially true, because the real reason that they get their members to commit acts generally considered to be reprehensible is to enhance their loyalty and lessen their attachment to their own lives.
Periodically, members of the cult that have grown indolent in their depravity and ceased being coherent or useful are dragged off into the nether reaches of the cult compounds and devoured. This is inflicted primarily upon the human members of the cult. Remember those completely pointless cages full of people who no longer cared where they woke up in the morning from Enter the Dragon? The Hashshashin actually have those. The members who ask about the missing are given extra rations of drugs and told in all seriousness that the victims were “consumed entirely by their vices”.
Missions for the Hashshashin: The Hashshashin sponsor all kinds of actually pretty marginal criminal enterprises in order to “keep their claws in”. Shipping weapons, drugs, and people around Eastern Europe, Northern Africa, and Central Asia isn't glamorous, but it is constant. Unbelievable amounts of feathers on every side get ruffled by this sort of behavior, and the Hashshashin like it that way. And hey, in areas of total corruption and lawlessness, there are some very large paychecks to be had along the way. Hashshashin leadership won't even mind.
Sample Adventure: A mysterious Romanian crime boss wants to take out one of his Bulgarian counterparts, and has hired the Hashshashin to do it. The Hashshashin didn't even bother negotiating the price, because they are doing it in order to collect blackmail materials on the Romanian businessman. The players find themselves being asked to double cross multiple people and bearing the brunt of unfocused wrath from several disappointed business groups.
The Hashhashin as Antagonists: Hashshashin inductions are the result of kidnappings as often as not, so it is extremely possible that one or more people that the player characters care about could be kidnapped by the Hashshashin for the purposes of drugging them up to subsequently train as an assassin, whore them out, or simply eat them. And then of course there's the whole “morality” angle in which player characters may object to slave trading, supporting African warlords, or who knows what all else. Hashshashin compounds can make for very effective dungeon crawls.
- Favored Magic: Play of Shadows
Favored Resources: Assets, Finance
Work: Drug Smuggling & Human Trafficking
“Misery loves company. The company loves misery.”
Formed as a single corporation called “Monolith Corporation” in the latter years of the Victorian Era in England, The Hollow Ones are now a series of corporations so complex in structure and interdependencies that even members of the group are unlikely to be able to follow it all. The original stated goal from the founding Icarid was to use the corporation's inherent structure to limit culpability for his own actions, something that he was apparently quite obsessed with. The current reason for The Hollow Ones is much the same. Their corporate charters allow each choice made to be made collectively and secretly without any specific blame to be placed on the honor of any specific supernatural member.
The Hollow Ones are extremely fond of maintaining the apparent integrity of each member of the cult. They also sponsor vices and depravity sessions for supernatural creatures and wealthy human clients alike. Each member is expected to maintain at least two lives: one for engaging in respectability and one for being a crazy whore-mongering deviant. The Hollow Ones expect themselves to travel about within human society and to play by society's rules, and to totally freak out on a regular basis under controlled and deniable circumstances in order to keep themselves from losing control in front of other people.
Missions for the Hollow Ones: As a major international corporation, The Monolith Corporation has a number of needs that are essentially spy thriller boiler plate. They want prototypes stolen, they want officials intimidated or bribed, they want dossiers recovered or destroyed, and so on and so forth. But they also have their shadow operations, where they want their sex dungeons kept under wraps, they want reporters intimidated or bribed, and so on and so forth.
Sample Adventure: One of the clients has gone on quite a bender, and has left a lot of evidence and destruction in the wake of his rampage. The team gets sent to clean things up, MIB style. Remember that this sort of behavior is regarded ambivalently by the Syndicates. Covering up a Vow of Silence breach is the greatest commitment to the First Code of the World Crime League, but protecting a code breaker is pissing all over the Fourth.
The Hollow Ones as Antagonists: Anyone who has spent any amount of time watching Captain Planet can probably think of like a dozen plots involving evil corporations as the villains. Don't go that far. The Hollow Ones are not the villains from Captain Planet, they are Dr. Jekyll in charge of the corporation from Alien (the Weyland-Yutani corporation, by the way). Still, if the schemes of a deliberately amoral corporation aren't enough to call for an occasional thwarting, they'll just have to buy some new ones that are.
- Favored Magic: Trail of Tears
Favored Resources: Contacts, Finances
Work: Coverups, Depravity, Industry
“Everyone produces something. We produce truth.”
The Laughter Factory, sometimes called simply The Factory is an anarchistic organization dedicated to information freedom, compromise, and the propagation of mutual understanding. Also they are a distributed subversive element that appears to be advancing an unknown agenda whose true nature is known only in parts by individual cells. That's not just hyperbole or conspiracy theorizing, The Factory's official stance is that it is working towards something called “The Agenda” and that individual members only know small fragments of it, and some of the things about The Agenda that they know are things they don't know that they know because they are hidden as riddles or parts of other messages. Lots of people think they are crazy. Lots of members of the Laughter Factory are crazy, and this is not considered to be a detriment to one's Cult status.
The Laughter Factory is the closest of any of the major cults to one that is exclusive to a specific group of supernaturals. Almost all leading members of the Network are Mi Go. There are officially speaking only two ranks to be had in the Factory: a Foreman and a Worker. Supernatural creatures rapidly rise to the rank of Foreman. From there on, Foremen are judged by their trustworthiness and mission success rate, but they have no officially sanctioned authority. The organization also has many human members drawn from the muttering dregs of society's castoffs. These humans rarely rise above the rank of Worker and are used much as Makhzen retainers are. What truths these human Workers receive are so shrouded in falsehoods and babble that The Factory has so far been able to claim themselves as being essentially exempt from Vow of Silence investigations on this point.
The Laughter Factory was created in the mid 19th century by Mi Go who wanted to change the relationship between Leviathans and Tiamat in the same way that humans had changed their relationship to capital and trade. In doing so they destroyed the previous Mi Go cult known as “The Solemn Hive”, led by the Gray Queen (who was apparently killed in 1874). The organization is similar, save primarily for an apparent lack of a Queen figure and the purposeful replacement of the rank of “soldier” with the more industrial-age friendly title of “Foreman”.
Missions for the Factory: The Factory actually specializes in the Courier Run, so the mission of “take X to Y” is pretty much assumed. But beyond that, they are often employed to be the bearers of bad news or impartial mediators in tense discussions.
Sample Adventure: Different Communes factions have taken sides in the ongoing Sri Lankan civil war. Now that it is winding down and the Singalese government is putting the Tamil minorities into camps, a set of neutral outsiders is being asked to negotiate the release of the Tamil Bagheera to prevent the incident from spreading to other regions under Communes control. And because of your Factory connections, the neutral outsiders are the player characters.
The Laughter Factory as Antagonists: Information freedom is basically just another word for spying, and promoting understanding is pretty much the same thing as telling secrets to other interested parties. People with things to hide may well find themselves opposed by Factory members. Then again, there are some theories, even within the Factory itself, that The Agenda is a very bad thing, and if even some of those theories are true the player characters may be opposed on those grounds.
- Favored Magic: Swarm Song
Favored Resources: Contacts, Science
Work: Diplomacy and Couriering
“All animals are equal. Some are more equal and others less.”
The Rolnicy were originally a sect of Central Asian warrior shamans, but they have since turned on “superstition” and adapted the trappings of modernity and reason in their fiercely hierarchical and monolithic fashion. Adapting to the times, the Rolnicy gave up their shamanistic beliefs in the 1800s for the teachings of the Eastern Orthodoxy, and in the early 1900s gave those up as well for an uncompromising materialism. With each shift has come murders and purges, but while the doctrines have changed beyond ready recognition, adherence to the doctrine of the hour has always been held of paramount importance.
Today the Rolnicy have greatest affinity with the Cauchemar Communes, and have a similar structure, with their own Revolutionary Council (which used to be called the Ecclesiastical Council before it was liquidated and replaced). It has been suggested, even by the Rolnicy themselves, that they would like to replace the Communes Revolutionary Council with their own. Below that, pretty much everyone is designated a Commissar or a Worker. Commissariats are all nominally in charge of something, which is either Enlightenment, Loyalty, or History. Commissars of Loyalty are like judges who also do investigations – like a Makhzen Sheriff. Commissars of Enlightenment are in charge of research, and Commissars of History are in charge of explaining what has happened and what the Rolnicy doctrines have always been to the Workers (especially when these things change on the orders of the Council). All Commissariats have dispensation from the Cult to kill in order to complete any of their tasks (although this is not recognized by the World Crime League, Makhzen, Communes, or Covenant).
The Rolnicy have codified their ancient shamanistic animal magic practices into a forward looking pseudo-science of animal magic. They also have a complex racial hierarchy system that forms a theoretical basis for why Animalism works on the creatures it does and how. Further, they do a large amount of destructive testing on animals, people, and even supernatural creatures in order to attempt to gain more information to validate their theories. Rolnicy compounds are a lot like farms, in that they grow animals of various sorts in large numbers, and most of them are ultimately going to be eaten.
The Rolnicy want what is “best” although best for whom is a question that is somewhat up in the air. Rolnicy orthodoxy disdains the value of the individual, and is explicitly willing to sacrifice members of its own group to further its aims. The protocols call for modernization, but their own work looks like a biological nightmare from a 1950s science fiction movie. Still, their ruthless methodologies have produced results, and their faction may have the only creatures from Earth to know what the little wibbly things inside the Pods do. They are also always in need of fresh meat for their experiments, meaning that they are a useful method of disposing of bodies – something that all Syndicates have called on them to do.
Missions for the Rolnicy: The Rolnicy are desperately afraid that they will somehow fall behind in their research, and are constantly attempting to spy on other magical researchers. Also, they are attempting to take over the Communes. But beyond all that, they really do need a lot of weird animals and people for their research. And their research really does turn up some fucking scary information about Evil Plants sometimes. This makes a good springboard for basic intrigue, kidnappings, and even the occasional “save the world” quest.
Sample Adventure: After a series of disappearances, the press starts raising a stink. And that generates a stink in the halls of the Makhzen. As blame and aspersions start running wild, a Rolnicy Commissariat suggests that perhaps no members of the Syndicate are responsible, and requests aid in tracking down a Chimera in order to prove it. But is there just one Chimera on the loose? On which word does the emphasis fall in the previous sentence?
The Rolnicy as Antagonists: These guys are basically Bolsheviks who do unethical medical research and commit crimes. You've got Boris and Natasha working for Brick Top and Dr. Moreau. I am confident that you can find something to work in as a possible antagonist.
- Favored Magic: Call of the Wild
Favored Resources: Science, Assets
Work: Agriculture and Research
“Heaven may forgive you, but I will not!”
The Stellar Oracles were begun by a group of reincarnated warriors who have been fighting the King with Three Shadows for many lifetimes with mixed success. They are a warrior order that has been completely wiped out several times in history, and yet been able to bring itself back to existence like a blazing phoenix as new lifetimes of old members come again as the wheel of seasons and years rolls inexorably on. The Stellar Oracles are the holders of a number of prophecies, only a few of which are outsiders allowed to see. They have a rather complicated dogma involving the effects of the planets on the future, but they seriously do have a number of members with Divination and they really do know a fair amount about future events.
Stellar Oracles see themselves not as humanity’s masters, but as their protectors. And they see the greatest threats to humanity as coming from otherworldly sources. Death in the service of the cause is for many considered to be not so much a risk of the job but an inevitability of sacred duty. And indeed, death is something of a revolving door for many members. It's fairly difficult to rise to become royalty amongst the Stellar Oracles without having died for the cause at least once.
Missions for the Stellar Oracles: Stellar Oracle leadership generally wants to do one of three things: destroy “monsters”, protect humans, or collect old members who have returned to life and induct them into the cult once more. As such, there is a fair amount of straight up crime fighting that Stellar Oracles are called upon to do, but there can also be quite complex interactions with Vampires or Reborn.
Sample Adventure: Somewhere in the city an Asura has come through from the Dark Reflection and is repeatedly draining energy out of mortals in order to bring Mirror Goblins across like some grim parody of a work visa program. The Oracle is sent to assemble their band, track down the Asura and kick Limbo ass before the army of Mirror Goblins gets too large to defend the city against while maintaining secrecy.
Stellar Oracles as Antagonists: Unlike most groups of supernaturals, the Stellar Oracles explicitly side with humans over their fellow supernaturals. So while their official doctrine is one of secrecy, it is very easy to imagine a Stellar Oracle zealot deciding to try to skull fuck the Vow of Silence. Of less Earth shattering and more personal opposition, a Stellar Oracle could decide (correctly or not) that one or more of the player characters is responsible for some crime against humanity or another, leading to direct and intimate conflict.
- Favored Magic: Names of the Blasphemies
Favored Resources: Assets, Destiny
Work: Monster Hunting
“A small rock holds back a great wave.”
After the fall of Tiamat, the Leviathans of the world found themselves hunted throughout every land on Earth. Some for vengeance, but increasingly for the fact that their flesh could make a man immortal. And it was in this environment that a group of Deep Ones removed themselves from the land altogether. The thought was that they could rule tiny undersea kingdoms in peace and quiet, never to be molested by Marduk's hunters on the land. This experiment was mostly a failure.
As it happens, Leviathans aren't many in number, and they need to crossbreed with normal humans or their blood stagnates and stillbirths become the norm. The colony at the Pacific Pole of Inaccessibility and the colony in the Antarctic waters both died out to a man, leaving nothing but empty creepy architecture beneath the waves. And while the Polynesian, New England, and Mediterranean colonies persisted, they did so only by regularly sending their people above the waves to have families in human settlements. And those children were born without gills, gaining them only later in life. Which meant that they were again vulnerable to predation on the surface.
With the coming of the Age of Reason, the undersea colonies came under an even more direct threat: exposure by the baleful glare of the light of reason. Once the sea floor started being mapped, it became clear to even the most conservative colonists that the age of being able to successfully withdraw from the world was rapidly drawing to an end. And so a council was formed, and it was decided to begin a new age of engagement with humanity. And the ones to do it were named Storm Lords.
The Storm Lords immediately went to work aping the trappings of science. After all, the only way to keep a human from discovering their hideouts was to be the human explorers who came back with enough information from exploring them to quench the curiosity of the land dwellers and send other would-be explorers to other corners of the globe. And it was not long before new generations of Storm Lords actually were scientists. These nights there are Storm Lords working in fields from news to meteorology – each giving out reports that give plausible cover for supernatural goings-on.
At the bottom of it all is the “Special Project”, which is a longterm goal of adding things to scientific fields that make room for supernatural creatures and powers. And hand-in-fin with that is the goal of popularizing ideas that make this future more acceptable to the lay public. Comic books, science detectives, and cartoon shows have all been penned by Storm Lords in a deliberate attempt to make people accept the “far out” direction they intend to guide scientific research in the generations to come. If the Storm Lords have their way, we will soon all be living in the future from Johnny Quest.
Missions for the Storm Lords: Missions from Storm Lords typically involve taking out a Marduk operation, recruiting supernaturals with weather changing skills, or covering up one of the other two. The Marduk Society's future is completely incompatible with the one envisioned by the Storm Lords, a fact that might be related to the fact that they've been at war with the Marduk Society since before they even decided to start making a human future of their own. But there is also a lot of scientific research to destroy and/or fabricate. The future is a big place.
Sample Adventure: The Marduks have set up shop on a tropical island, with the intent of attacking the nearby Storm Lord hideout and capturing everyone there for "research" by the higher ups. The Storm Lords don't want this to happen and are going to have their agent and his team take out the base and then cover up the fact that there was ever a base to take out.
The Storm Lords as Antagonists: The Storm Lords are playing a big game and they are not afraid to lose pieces. Their future plans involve many things that exist today simply not being there any more. Some things because the future system simply has no room for them, and others because sacrifices simply have to be made. But even if the player characters have not been tagged as expendable, there's the simple fact that in the long run the Storm Lords intend to replace the Vow of Silence with a system of supernatural tolerance. That doesn't go over really well with a lot of denizens of the Night who would be forced to abandon the safety of the shadows without even being offered the mantle of kingship.
- Favored Magic: Chasing the Storm
Favored Resources: Destiny, Science
Work: Weather Manipulation
“Loyalty to the family. To death and beyond.”
Originally a family of Venetians who turned to dark magic, the Ulmi family became a criminal mob amongst the supernaturals, adding to their ranks a great number of unrelated supernaturals who wanted in on their necromantic protection rackets. Never achieving the wealth or strength of the World Crime League in impoverished and superstitious Europe, the Ulmians never achieved Syndicate status. Upon running into the WCL, they found themselves badly outnumbered in the world of supernatural crime and largely caved in to pressure from the East. The Ulmi mostly went legit and now provide gray market financial services and money laundering to supernaturals with little or no presence in the human world.
The Ulmians are still operated like a mafia family, and they still do a lot of criminal activities. It's just that now they make sure to avoid strongarming other supernaturals – at least without WCL permission. While it is now common for an Ulmi Don to be something other than an Italian Khaibit related by blood to the founders, it is still incredibly rare for anyone without necromantic power to rise to any meaningful level in the organization. The organization is called by those inside “The Family” even though it no longer cares about a prospective recruit's skin color or family background.
Missions for the Ulmians: The Ulmians are a full service outfit, and when you mess with a family client you are messing with The Family, capiche? Very frequently, the Ulmians will send teams to clear up some “misunderstanding” involving one or more Ulmi clients. These sorts of missions will often involve bailing clueless supernaturals out of legal problems with the mortal world or covering up potential Vow of Silence breaches before they come to Syndicate attention. The Ulmians are also quite aggressive in business and may send teams to “persuade” potential clients to sign on with the Ulmians before someone gets hurt.
Sample Adventure: An ancient vampire in good standing with the Covenant has awoken and is trying to do things the “old ways”. The Ulmi want the family member to take his friends off to convince this powerful but dangerously naïve monster to allow family specialists to handle his interface with modern society (and pay the going rates for this service, natch).
The Ulmians as Antagonists: As an essentially criminal organization, it is entirely thinkable that the Ulmians would take time out of their day to put “the squeeze” on one of the player characters, or someone that one of the player characters cares about. Furthermore, their zombie raising can get out of hand relatively easily. Necromancers run amok is the cause for at least 20% of all zombie uprisings according to Covenant records.
- Favored Magic: Necromancy
Favored Resources: Science, Secrets
Work: Finance & Bureaucracy
“The flower is beautiful because it is temporary.”
The White Lotus Benevolence Society is a quasi-Confucianist and ultra marketized extortion racket that has gotten way out of control. Created by some rather inventive Dryads in the 1500s, the original scam was one in which sorcerers would show up to a village and demand Hell Money to keep peoples' ancestors in hell, without which the ancestors would come back to annoy and threaten the living. If people refused to pay, the White Lotus would create or let loose genuine monsters on the populace until payments were made. While quite successful at accumulating lucre, this quickly came to the baleful attention of the World Crime League as a threat to both conventional extortion rackets and (more importantly) the Vow of Silence. Discovering themselves up against a larger and frankly more organized group of supernaturals, the White Lotus' fight was quickly strangled out of them and their remaining members were brought to heel.
But while the White Lotus bent knee to the World Crime League, they never really integrated themselves into the Syndicate structure. They maintained their enforcement arm, who are called the Thorns of the Lotus. And while officially they are not supposed to run around murdering people with overt evil magical power, they still totally do that when they think they aren't going to get caught. But the main branch claimed to pretty much get out of the crime game and pursue their second love: which apparently was feng shui and topiary grooming. This is, of course, a sham. What the White Lotus is actually doing is acquiring portals to Maya by any means necessary.
The leader of the White Lotus is referred to as “The Center of the Lotus” and he is a venerable man whose blood is sap long formed into pitch. All other members are judged in worth purely in terms of how much “Hell Money” they have. Whenever members of the White Lotus do anything for each other, Hell Money changes hands. No longer the “genuine” coins that Lotus extortionists pretended to burn away in front of superstitious lords and bureaucrats, the modern Lotus Hell Money is kept track of by computer and also available in the form of red script. Portals to the Dreamlands are called “dragon circles” by the geomancers of the White Lotus.
The White Lotus has its own guiding principals that would cause Confucius to label them as monsters – which coincidentally they already do for themselves. Of central importance is their concept of Xiào as a fear-based imperative to avoid ancestral judgment and cut one's self off from mortal human family. Below that is Zhōng, which to the Lotus is the concept that one's personal obligation to others begins and ends with the payment of Hell Money. Petals of the Lotus have an obligation to complete contracts, but to do more than that is to shame one's self. Of rough equivalence is Ren, or “upward mobility”. Each member of the White Lotus is expected to chafe at their current station and be constantly striving to displace those above themselves. And finally there is Li, which is simply the imperative to appear to be doing something else than what you are doing and to change your tactics and nightly routines as often as possible.
Missions for the White Lotus: The thing the White Lotus wants more than anything else is land. You can't monopolize the dragon lines that connect the portals to Maya if you don't have a lot of land. And acquiring land requires all kinds of mission types in the Dead of Night. From Wild West style “convince the shepherds to sell” jobs to espionage and even dungeon-crawls to find out key information about potential sites for acquisition.
Sample Adventure: Lotus geomancers found records of what they believe to be a dragon circle in a temple situated in the jungles of Northern Burma. The temple is well into disuse because apparently the forests around it are called “the trees of hungry ghosts” by the local Khmer tribes. There is Hell Money in it for you if you see what that's all about and take over the dragon circle or at least determine that there isn't one there that the White Lotus does not control.
The White Lotus as Antagonists: In addition to having a strong tradition of terrorizing and brutally murdering people, The White Lotus are essentially the villains from like every Scooby Doo episode ever. Only with actual magical powers. You can watch pretty much any Scooby Doo show from any season and port the plot right over with no problem. Old man Winters is going to have to sell the ski resort because people aren't going since the rumors of haunting started up? Sure, why not?
- Favored Magic: Coil of Thorns
Favored Resources: Finance, Science
Work: Real Estate, Crime
“It is when pirates count their booty that they become mere thieves.”
The Wreckers are an anti-establishment organization that recruits from the dregs and exiles of societies. Lacking a common language, they formed their own system of simple symbols and music to communicate ideas back and forth. This is less of an issue in the modern age when almost everyone can say at least a few words in at least one of the major languages in the world, but in ages past the chances of any two exiles having words in common was pretty small. The symbol for the Wreckers is a black spot, and to this night if someone “gives you The Black Spot” it indicates that the Wreckers have it in for you.
Many feel that the Wreckers are just a bunch of pirates and highwaymen who rob shipments and waylay travelers. And that's kind of true, and was substantially more true in the past. Tonight, the Black Spot members have a set of shared beliefs, but they are pretty confused. The key part of it is to destroy everything that you don't like, as part of the larger plan of sinking everything into entropy and dissolution. They reach out to those who have been wronged and offer vengeance of a sort. Frequent mentions are made of the “Inevitability of the final reckoning.” But at the core, the Black Spot wants to take anarchy to the next level: destroying Truth and connectivity.
But the Wreckers do not just paint themselves with mud and wait for society to fall apart. Instead they plot well in advance and try to seize the reins of civilization and tear them asunder. It is this justification that leads them to attack rails, trucks, and shipping lanes. But they have deeper games they play that involve much more than simple banditry. Infiltration, smear campaigns, impersonation, and so on. Well aware of the power of the monolith that is social cohesion, they work to monkey wrench both institutions and social contracts, and are quite adept at spreading misinformation.
Missions for the Wreckers: The Black Spot hires out a fair number of agents provocateur. Disseminating harmful rumors and starting fights. If there's an organization, you can bet that the Wreckers want you to infiltrate it and sabotage it from within. Terrorism and vandalism are not beneath them, they aspire to these activities.
Sample Adventure: A member of the Fallen Empire has put together the goods to enact a mighty ritual of vast power to try to conquer the world. The Wreckers have no intention of letting anyone unite the world, and have set the player characters up with the means to get into the ziggurat.
The Wreckers as Antagonists: Even if you are with them you're still against them. Pretty much anyone could plausibly be a Black Spot mole playing the long game. And the Wreckers take tremendous pride in this fact, and actively encourage groups to turn on themselves with Inquisitions and McCarthyism. It's difficult to imagine such behavior hurting their cause by removing their agents more than it helps their cause by sowing distrust and conflict on its own.
- Favored Magic: Symphony of Silence
Favored Resources: Assets, Secrets
Work: Sabotage, Slander
“Actually, those guys are just bastards. We fight them.”
What makes an antagonist organization different from a “normal” organization in Dead of Night is not that they are “the bad guys” – after all it is abundantly clear that a substantial number of people in all the supernatural societies are bad guys. These organizations are filled with blood drinking monsters. No, the salient thing about the Antagonists in this setting is that they are not willing to live and let live with the members of other Syndicates and cults. So while it is entirely possible to have a story in which one character is from the Makhzen and another is from the Communes, it is basically impossible to have a cogent story in which one character is in the Marduk Society and the other characters are not.
The assumption then is that the antagonist organizations will be NPC only. The player characters will be members of the standard Syndicates or independents and as such the warriors of the Shattered Empire who show up at all it will do so as enemies. It is entirely possible to play a campaign in which every character is a member of the Marduk society, and that's fine. If you weren't OK with playing a game that skated closely to the edge of evil you wouldn't be playing a game about vampires and werewolves.
However, it's equally important to note that just because the King With Three Shadows may be a villain who is basically at war with the World Crime League, that does not mean that anyone is automatically on kill-on-sight terms with anyone else. Even these antagonistic organizations have diplomatic ties of some sort or another with all of the major Syndicates. These ties are strained, and ambassadors are sometimes recalled, but actual shooting wars have causes, beginnings, and negotiated ends.
The Marduk Society
“We've slain the monsters of the world until they skulk in darkness like rats. Did you really think the darkness would protect you?”
In ages past the mighty sky wizard Marduk fought with the great Tiamat and slew her, saving humanity from her dark tyranny. As the savior of humanity, Marduk became a wise and just king who ruled over Sumeria thousands of years ago. He passed his magic down to disciples, and in classic fashion they perverted everything Marduk stood for and are now a terrifying edifice.
The Marduk Society retains the ancient magics of Marduk himself and continue to hunt supernaturals, nominally to save humanity from the oppression of supernatural influences. However, the leadership of the Marduk Society actually are supernatural creatures. After ruthlessly hunting down the spawn of Tiamat for generations they found that they were able to grant themselves immortality by eating the flesh of Leviathans, a practice which in reality transforms their elite membership into Leviathans. The sorceries left behind by Marduk are in truth no different from the sorceries of any Witch, and thus it is that the core membership of the Marduk Society are no different from other supernaturals save for the hat they wear and their intense desire to not get along.
Marduk's magic draws heavily upon human fear and suffering to use as power. However, while the historical Marduk apparently used this as justification to wander the lands righting wrongs and saving the endangered, the modern incarnation conspires to make mortal governments oppressive and ruin the lives of children. Ideally they claim that once their war is won they will make all human society utopic, but there is no particular reason to believe this is true.
- Sample Encounter: A black van pulls up and six men in black suits get out. They are reasonably professional, have tranq guns and heavy pistols and strongly suggest that the protagonists get into the van. A couple of them are even mutants, and it's probably best to not think about how they got that way.
“How nice of you to join us. You can share the same fate they are going to suffer.”
Long ago a powerful mortal king married a queen of the fairies. Abandoning his kingdom of men to wither and die, he took a new name and attained everlasting life with a grim bargain with Demons. A bargain that ultimately hurled his kingdom into the deepest pits of the Dark Reflection. The King with Three Shadows has become as the fairy are, and he lives forever without changing. He is now their dark king, and commands the mirror goblins – an army of fairies and demons which do his dark bidding. He is supported in his endeavors by three powerful Fairies – The Three Shadows of the King.
Fairies and Demons have a difficult time getting to the world of man at all, and must pass through a reflective surface to do so. More powerful fairies and demons need more specific mirrors through which to pass, and thus usually require that these doorways be custom built to draw them through. While a minor mirror goblin might be able to come through a pool of water or a pain of glass, powerful demons need a mirrored surface of exacting specifications – for example one might require a mirror at least 2 meters across made of bronze and polished with olive oil, lemon juice, and human blood.
The King with Three Shadows himself requires a titanic and exacting mirror to again trod upon the Earth, and it is thus that he is forced to send minions through the portals to acquire the strange materials and specific events they need to allow him to march across the threshold with his demonic army to conquer the human world.
- Sample Encounter: Four mirror goblins are running down the sidewalk of the broad suburban street with an empty sack. As they pass, the streetlights flicker and dim, keeping them in the shadows. If the protagonists follow them, they see the gibbering villains break into a nondescript house and come out again with a struggling sack about the size of a young child. They then clamber back down the street and meep their way into a different house. If still unmolested, they make their way to the bathroom mirror and make good their escape.
“They have learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing.”
According to the Shattered Empire there was once a mighty nation which ruled over all of humanity with magician kings. Where this kingdom actually was, when it existed, who the people were who ran it, and what the cultural traits of it were like are all lost to time. The Shattered Empire calls itself a dozen names: Ur, Atlantis, and Golgatha to name just a few. And while their stories of their glorious days of world ownership are somewhat conflictory, and quite possibly exaggerations or just plain lies, they are nonetheless willing to kill people over their world conquest plans. And that makes them dangerous.
The very top of the Empire is called either the Rain King, the Masked Prophet, or the Once and Future Emperor. Whether these are three different people having a power struggle or one man with a variety of titles is not clear. Cells of the Shattered Empire hide in cave systems, deep in jungles, and on top of forbidding mountains. They collect powerful magics and threaten the world with them.
The primary bones of contention between the Shattered Empire and the other Syndicates have to do with rulership. The Empire holds not only that they should rule all the other supernatural creatures like in the old days, but that they should rule all of the humans like in the old days too. And yes, that really does mean like the old days. Many of the members of the Empire believe that allowing humans to work bronze was a mistake and that such mistakes should be corrected.
- Sample Encounter: The meeting is going well enough when it is announced that a messenger has arrived. A confident and wild-eyed Troglodyte strides into the room dressed in a coarse toga and trailed by some mad looking ghosts. He points his claws accusingly at the city officials and makes the pronouncement that The Empire has uncovered “the great bell” and you all have a fortnight to surrender the city. Then he and the ghosts fade into The Gloom.
“You aren't the boss of me.”
It has often been said that the lower the stakes, the more vicious the fighting. And there is an element of truth to that declaration. And to an extent it should come as no special surprise that despite (or perhaps because of) the very small numbers of supernatural creatures, the amount of effort that is put into jockeying for position in supernatural society is very high. City “governments” usually only command a couple of hundred kindred creatures, but the amount of power wielded by these organizations is often pretty intense. Rising to higher positions in supernatural society will often cause you to automatically own (or at least, be able to give orders to) substantial holdings in the mortal world. Previous holders of the office have frequently bound corporations, city officials, and criminal groups to themselves, and not a small amount of that transfers to the next creature occupying the comfy chair. So to an extent, it's totally understandable. There may only be 2000 supernaturals running the government in Metropolitan Paris, and yes that's a number suspiciously close to the number of kids that attended your highschool, but the Revolutionary Committee of the Communes there is a lot more powerful and a lot more coveted than seats on your highschool's student government. There are certain similarities in campaigning styles (in that you can plausibly take the time to get to know everyone in the peer group), but each of the Revolutionary Committee members get a special cell phone that lets them connect directly to the chief of police of Paris.
In the whole world, there are roughly six hundred thousand of the “playable” supernaturals in it. And that is a bit less than 1 per ten thousand humans, a total that has remained roughly constant throughout history. Humanity has experienced a tremendous population boom even as birth rates have fallen in the last 200 years or so. The industrial age has done wonders for the mortality rate. At the same time, the major Syndicates have achieved an uneasy – but functional peace. And while birth/creation rates of supernaturals have not slowed (quite the opposite), mortality rates have fallen among the kindred to an amazing extent. Not a few supernatural scholars find these trends frightening, and are advocating that supernatural society will have to return to a state of war or move full-scale to colonize the other worlds. Populations are very different in the other worlds, the Dark Reflection seems to hold just two hundred million souls, and most of them are the damned and the Mirror Goblins. Populations in the Dreamlands are even lower, with Maya containing just a few tens of thousands – though no one really knows how many Giant Animals or Evil Plants lurk in that ghastly wilderness. The Gloom is a whole different thing altogether, having a population that is measurable in the tens of billions. Were it not for the fact that the vast majority of those creatures are Wisps mumbling in long forgotten languages who scarcely remember their own name, Mictlan would be an even bigger threat than it already is. Still, perhaps the most disturbing thing about Mictlan is that with the number of people who have died, the population is not several times larger than it is.
Distribution of supernaturals is substantially and predictably different from distribution of mortal humans. There appear to be two major directions of migration for supernaturals: towards the largest and wealthiest of the cities and towards the actual wilderness. Roughly 80% of supernaturals on Earth fall into one category or the other (and are roughly evenly split between those two extremes). Similarly, a fair number of supernaturals are drawn towards the most wealthy nations as well as the nations of low population density. Canada is probably the most overpopulated, and has substantially more supernaturals than you would expect given its meager population of 33 million. Thousands of lycanthropes and leviathans roam the Northern wilderness, far from the eyes of civilization. On the flip side, the most underpopulated nation (in terms of supernaturals relative to humans) is India. Just as brain drain sends doctors and computer programmers out of Chennai and into Western and Middle Eastern countries, fish people and witches who can use their powers to go to the UK (or wherever) frequently do.
What this means is that if you're considering a moderate and normally populated country like Czech Republic with 10 million humans, that it probably has about a thousand supernaturals. And the split of those is that roughly 400 would be in Prague, roughly 400 would be in the actual wilderness and countryside, and only about 200 supernaturals would be in all other cities in the country. So your chance of meeting a vampire in Plzen or Brno is pretty darn low. And as it happens, that is what you get in Czech Republic specifically, with the Bishop of Prague having a flock of 250 (with another 150 foreigners and independents) while Ostrava and Liberec having so few Covenant members in them that the head of the organization in each of those cities is just a Priest.
Acquiring Power Over Humans
“We have a good thing going.”
Even without overt mind control, it is often fairly easy for a supernatural creature to subvert a human agent. They can physically overpower mortal humans, intimidate them, offer glimpses of powerful secrets, provide them with addictive narcotics, bargain with strange magics, and in some cases even directly allow them to gain the use of real magic (most notably from vampires). But there are really a lot of humans. Subverting one human agent is good, potentially even necessary to advance an agenda in human politics, but it's not really, not nearly enough.
Gaining political power in the mortal sphere can actually be pretty difficult for supernatural creatures. There's the crushing reality that supernatural society as a whole quite possibly wouldn't win open confrontation against the human masses, and the result is that other supernaturals will come in and wreck the place if a supernatural creature's foray into human power structures threatens to give the game away in any way. That includes simply living implausibly long while under any kind of significant observation, so becoming a house-hold name is frowned upon unless there is an Elvis-clause in the works (for various reasons, this is the Makhzen's actual name for having an identity die to preserve the Vow of Silence). Most of a supernatural creature's advantages are ones that they can't use to gain any advantage over or persuade large numbers of humans without giving the show away, and that's just not allowed. Furthermore, supernatural creatures may find themselves having to go away for unpredictable amounts of time – not so much walking the Appalachian Trail as being unreachable by phone in the Dreamlands or Limbo, often on short notice.
In order to accomplish things in the realm of mortal it is imperative that a supernatural creature figure out how to set up organizations, corporations, political action committees, or similar persistent social constructs that can operate without the character's direct, continuous, or obvious interference. This can require quite a bit of forward thinking, as legal entities that act without continually getting instructions actually continue to act without instructions. While the invention of the corporate charter was quite a boon to supernaturals wanting to act in human society, the capacity of corporate constructs to grow out of control and exceed the parameters set by their creators is no less true for supernatural shareholders as it is for mortal human ones. Remember that even if a character's goals change, the goals of organizations they start may not.
Status and Office in the Makhzen
No one wants it to be easy to depose a king. Then there would be no luster left in becoming king.
Nominally of course, the Makhzen appoints all possible positions and titles to members from above. Even the Inner Circle members are appointed by the Inner Circle. In practice, it is entirely possible to rise on one's own merits and decisions in a myriad of ways. The most obvious is that if you go set up a Makhzen kingdom somewhere, you are the Prince. And it is pretty difficult to get rid of a sitting Prince. Similarly, a character can appoint themselves for pretty much any need for which there is a void. Like in any system of government, the first rule is that you have to want to do it.
The Inner Circle: The Makhzen is led by a shadowy cabal that meets several times a year. There are supposedly seven members, and their edicts are the Law.
Hakim Each of the Inner Circle members is allowed one Hakim, a roving one-person supreme court who dispenses justice and interprets the laws of the Makhzen. The Hakim serves as long as their nominating Inner Circle member allows.
Manadi: The original purpose of the Manadi was to carry mail, bells (yes, really), edicts, and diplomacy from one city in the Makhzen to another. Tonight, with the advent of airplanes and email, there is a lot less need for these sorts of activities and there are many less Manadi than there once were. But they retain their function as bearers of the will of the Makhzen, and they are now roaming courts – like a Hakim-lite.
Prince: The leader of a Makhzen city is the Prince. All appointments in the city are done by the Prince, though in many cities the Mehtar Council wields such power that their “recommendations” are essentially rubber-stamped by the Prince.
Mehtar: Anyone who achieves sufficient gravitas within the Makhzen is afforded the honorary title of Mehtar, which they hold in perpetuity (although it is left unacknowledged while they have any other title – noone would bother citing the fact that a Hakim is also a Mehtar). Whenever a city's Council meetings are called, any Mehtar who wants to can show up. Even Mehtar who don't live in the city. In some cities the Mehtar council, or even specific Mehtar, have more real authority than the Prince. In others, the Council's statements are just advisory and the Prince's word is final.
Vizier: Some Princes or Councils take a tremendously hands-on approach to government, and others don't. Some cities employ one or more Viziers, whose job it is to do administrative work that the higher ups can't or don't want to do. In Dubai there are many Viziers, and they are often empowered to administer the many mundane business operations that the Makhzen controls. On the flip side, the Prince of Khartoum does not keep any records at all and there are no Viziers.
Sheriff: Most kingdoms employ a Sheriff, who is someone entrusted to keep the Traditions and enforce the Law. In larger, more media-savvy cities like Houston, the Sheriff will have several Viziers assigned to help them. In many ways a Sheriff is like a Hakim that answers to the Princeps rather than a Circle member.
Status and Office in the World Crime League
Honestly, it's more like a set of guidelines...
The World Crime League officially rewards and expects ambition from its members, but it also requires success (or at least the appearance of success) from its leadership. A title is bestowed for a minimum amount of time, after which anyone can challenge them for the post, with most challenges being settled by election (though some being up for other demonstrations of fitness, including trial by combat in some instances). If someone fails to unseat an office holder, they may not challenge for a seat for an amount of time equal to the amount of time the office would have been guaranteed. This system is an amalgamation of the Chinese Imperial Examination system and the pirate government that it grew out of.
Captain: Each territory has two separate leaders. The Captain is in charge of the military of the territory and also justice within its borders. Holding the Captaincy makes one the “stick” in all incentivization. Perversely, this makes the Captain usually rather well-liked, as physical punishment is rarely used and the WCL is not often at war with anything or anyone.
Quartermaster: The Quartermaster rewards members of the organization for their activities and distributes resources. They provide the “carrot” of incentives for the WCL. Quartermasters are almost universally hated and feared, because every member of the WCL gets some portion of the resource distributions and feels that they personally don't get enough.
The Councilors: Each territory can send one member to negotiate on their behalf when councils are called. Traditionally, the Captain would go to a council of war (called a Bình Thân) and the Quartermaster would go to a council of administration (called a Diên Hồng). In more recent nights, with councils becoming almost a continuous affair over one thing or another, it has become standard to have other members take the mantle of Councilor. There is talk of making the Councilor a permanent capacity, and some territories that are very far from Malaysia have already done so. The Councilor of San Francisco basically lives in Singapore and is always on hand to argue San Francisco's position the moment a council is called. The success of this program has prompted immitators.
Ministers: Anyone put in charge of anything is technically a “Minister” of something or other. Broadly speaking, there are five kinds of Ministers, who each get a different insignia. The categories (and their insignia) are Military (Peacock), Law (Elephant), Wealth (Cat), Territory (Water Buffalo), and Sorcery (Swastika). Fitting modern concerns into these five categories is sometimes rather a stretch, and there are instances where essentially identical roles are given different insignia even within a single city's organization.
Military Minister: Originally given to military officers, the peacock is now given to those who help enforce adherence to The Code and those who work on keeping knowledge and weaponry on hand to battle “rogue elements” such as Demons and Pods. So for example, the San Francisco Territory has a Minister of Comparative Biology whose job it is to keep samples and conflict testimonials to aid in investigations of potential invasions from other worlds. And while he does not carry a weapon of any kind, his insignia is a peacock.
Law Minister: The World Crime League has crime in its name, and takes this sort of thing very seriously. Law Ministers in the WCL are mostly concerned with bypassing the laws of human society rather than enforcing the code of the WCL (that's a job for the military). So for example, in the Territory of Kabul they have a several Ministers of various opium schemes, and they all get the elephant because their proximal job is to keep WCL members from getting destroyed or captured by mortal governments or tribes.
Wealth Ministers: The World Crime League has quite substantial taxation, substantially more so than the Covenant's 10% Tithe. The cat emblem goes on any Minister who manages collection or distribution of the WCL's considerable financial resources. Wealth Ministers of one type or another are the ones who actually underwrite new ministries when they are created. The Quartermaster of a Territory directly commands any Wealth Minister that operates in their jurisdiction.
Territory Minister: Originally they were ministers of “agriculture and geography” and their job was to manage the food sources (including the more... special food sources) of members as well as making sure that things weren't falling apart in the villages and keep maps of the world for the Syndicate. Tonight you can get maps on wikipedia and most food shows up in grocery stores without Witches having to do anything. So the Territory Ministers have gradually become news gatherers and event watchers. These nights, the water buffalo is virtually synonymous with “spy” and many Ministers keep their insignia hidden from everyone but the Quartermaster and possibly the Captain.
Sorcery Ministers: Purely magical concerns, such as a portal network or prophecy sets have Sorcery Ministers appointed to govern them. It is important to note that in most places the WCL is strong, the swastika is not considered a problematic symbol, and in any case it's supposed to be hidden from mortals. So really, the WCL hasn't had a problem with it.
Status and Office in the Covenant
You think you're bigger than God? Let me tell you, I am bigger than God.
The Covenant is an Ecclesiastical organization, and despite the fact that a majority of its members (and even leaders) do not believe in the theology on which they were founded, their structure has remained mostly constant. More so than the human church upon which they were originally based. The Covenant hierarchy is pretty rigid even if their apologetics are not. Promotion is always from above with the singular exception that the anti-pope is promoted from within by a democratic quorum of the heresiarchs. The organization's concept of “above” is slightly counterintuitive, as it is divided into orders whose offices are parallel in rank and function.
The Anti-Pope: The head of the Heresiarch's Council, the Anti-Pope is the first sentence and the final answer. Currently the Anti-Pope rules from the shadow city under Rome, but there is strong current of opinion that it should move to Ciudad de Mexico as that city has more than 8 times as many actual Covenant members in it and basically determines the Covenant's overall direction in a very real way.
Bishop: The ruler of each Covenant City is the Bishop. Bishops can run their cities pretty much however they want, and appoint (or approve) all of the Priests in their territory.
Cardinal: Some Covenant cities have a Cardinal instead of a bishop (or in weird cases, mostly in Italy, in addition to the Bishop). The Cardinal is a Bishop (or Bishop equivalent such as Prelate or Palatine) and also has more authority in the running of the Covenant globally. They are the Heresiarchs and when the Anti-Pope dies or resigns they meet to elect a new one. Most anti-papal decrees are actually drafted by the Heresiarchs (either singularly or in groups) and then approved by the Anti-Pope.
Apostolic Exarch: An Apolostolic Exarch is given the same respect due to a Bishop, but they do not control a city. They are given supervision of a region that the Covenant do not control. In ages past, an Apostolic Exarch was appointed “over” a hostile region with the understanding that if they could attract enough Covenant members to crusade against it to conquer it and make it a Covenant territory that they would automatically become the Bishop of that land. Tonight that practice has been officially abandoned by Covenant leadership, and an Apostolic Exarch is essentially an ambassador to another Syndicate. They speak for the interests of Covenant flock persisting or working in territories acknowledged as belonging to another Syndicate.
Military Ordinal: The Crusading Army of the Covenant has at times consisted of most of the Covenant's flock. The Anti-Pope divides the Crusading Army into military orders, and the leader of each order is essentially a Bishop. Anyone can ask for acceptance into any military order at any time, and if accepted they essentially answer to the Military Ordinal of it instead of the Bishop of whatever parish they happen to be in.
Prelate: The Covenant has a number of contemplative orders, each headed by a Prelate. These Prelates are roughly equivalent to a Bishop, save that they are in charge of an order rather than a region. Like with military orders, a member of the Covenant can apply to join a contemplative order, and if accepted, is considered to be “in” the order instead of the city they happen to persist in.
Palatine: A Palatine is an arbiter of Covenant Law. It is their responsibility to make decisions based upon the sum total of Anti-Papal decrees, to resolve differences between flock members and inflict punishments on those who have been accused by Bishops. Palatinate Courts move around a lot. Even the largest Covenant City (Ciudad de Mexico) only has about 5000 in its Flock and there aren't cases demanding their attention all of the time.
Priest: The Covenant requires each member of the Flock to check in with a member of the Church authority at least once a week. This ritual of intrusive government is handled by a Priest. Many Bishops have several Priests working under them. Each Priest will be assigned some members of the Flock to keep an eye on so they can deliver weekly reports on interesting developments to the Bishop. But a Priest isn't just a member of the secret police, they also serve a leadership and administrative function.
Monk: A Monk is roughly equivalent to a Priest in rank, but is a member of a military or contemplative order and is expected to act as a military coordinator for their personal flock (who need not be geographically located), or as a coordinator of whatever the contemplative order does (again, possibly in a non-geographical manner). Some orders bestow the rank of Monk on every member who joins after a period of apprenticeship.
Glossator: A Glossator is similar to a lawyer. They assist Palatines with the making of legal decisions by crafting arguments (called “Glosses”) that indicate how a situation could be reconciled with all previous Anti-Papal edicts such that none of the edicts contradict each other. Some of the logic is quite as tortured as those found guilty of breaking the edicts. Glossators follow adversarial principals in law, and an accused brought before a Palatine is permitted a Glossator to argue on their behalf.
Status and Office in the Cauchemar Communes
None of us is as dangerous as all of us.
The Cauchemar Communes is at its core a concerted attempt to harness the power of the unruly mob to recreate the most powerful of human institutions encountered by supernatural society: the unruly mob. The Communes value collective action, and disdain hierarchy. But for all their talk of egalitarianism, universality, and brotherhood, the Communes do have a structure. The eternal revolution is not televised, but it is planned.
Communes structure is difficult for outsiders to discern precisely because they eschew titles, ornamentation, and rank. Members of the the Revolutionary Committee are simply called “Citizen [Name]” which is technically the title of every member of the Communes. The only difference is that members who have authority have the title “Citizen” appended to their name every time someone wants to address them, while the appellation is generally informally left off when addressing members of lesser standing. You might think that with no officially acknowledged hierarchy that conflicts over position would be few in number. And you'd be wrong. Jealousy, scheming, and plain old confusion run rampant.
Power is addicting in any society, but in The Communes even more so, because power literally has to be used to be retained. As soon as the mob forgets that they are supposed to follow someone, they'll seriously stop doing it.
Revolutionary Committee: This group is analogous to the Makhzen's Inner Circle. The Committee meets in various places in Paris, and the only requirement to joining it is the acknowledgement of the other members that the character belongs. Creatures get invited to be temporary members of the committee all the time when they have something important to talk about, and some of these creatures stay on.
Demagogue: Any member of The Communes that others follow is called a “Demagogue” in recognition of that fact. This unofficial rank carries roughly the weight of a Covenant Priest, but if most of the city follows the lead of a member then it's kind of the same as a Makhzen Princeps. One becomes a Demagogue simply by telling other members that they should do something and having them do it. As such, pretty much anyone can claim the title of Demagogue from another by holding a debate about policy and winning decisively. Refusing to debate another is a dangerous path, since a character only retains their Demagogue status by continuing to get members to do stuff.
Authority: Any member of the Communes who is regarded as knowing something and being valuable to consult with on a topic gradually gets the informal title of Authority with the long form being “Authority on XXX” where XXX is whatever members are advised to go ask the character about. The title of Authority is bestowed through acclimation and is achieved through being publicly correct several times. It can be lost by being apparently wrong on something humiliating or important, and if the Authority doesn't pitch in from time to time, other members will gradually forget that they have it – and then they won't anymore.
Vanguard: Cauchemars who fight bravely and well – or at least apparently impressively successfully – on the behalf of Communes goals are acknowledged as being members of The Vanguard. Rewards for being in the Vanguard are many in that other members will shower them with praise and favors, but Vanguard are also called upon to fight more battles on behalf of the Communes.
The Committee of Public Safety: Many Cauchemar cities have a Committee of Public Safety, which is a group that gets together to deliberate what is to be done about threats to public order and enforcement of the rules of the Syndicate. Since they can (and occasionally do) decide that what needs to be done is to send Vanguards out to murder someone – essentially trying them in absentia for capital crimes, they can be thought of as a court of law combined with a military planning session.
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Stahlseele
- King
- Posts: 5977
- Joined: Wed Apr 14, 2010 4:51 pm
- Location: Hamburg, Germany
Frank . . how long did you write on that? O.o
Seriously . . if you have access to a Sleep Regulator, share the goods <.<
Seriously . . if you have access to a Sleep Regulator, share the goods <.<
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
Is the Chain of Coronis' work really "archiving & storage?"
Daziban seem to mix metaphors when you say a Vault is like a fiefdom. I know you've already done capitalism like three other times, so you don't want "bank" imagery but how about guild imagery. Steal titles and hierarchies from the Venetian Glassblowers and shit.
Laughter Factory: This is a mess. You don't explain why a group called the Factory would specialize in "courier" runs. The note on mental illness is gone. You don't really talk about what it means to have no central authority, or why they find mentally ill humans valuable. Also: The Factory and the Hollow Ones are now both Victorian-era british corporations. That's redundant unless you play up their rivalry. Also: replace "communes" with "cauchemar"
Rolnicy: replace 'Communes" with "cauchemar."
Wreckers: You appear to refer to the group itself as "black spot" several times.
Daziban seem to mix metaphors when you say a Vault is like a fiefdom. I know you've already done capitalism like three other times, so you don't want "bank" imagery but how about guild imagery. Steal titles and hierarchies from the Venetian Glassblowers and shit.
Laughter Factory: This is a mess. You don't explain why a group called the Factory would specialize in "courier" runs. The note on mental illness is gone. You don't really talk about what it means to have no central authority, or why they find mentally ill humans valuable. Also: The Factory and the Hollow Ones are now both Victorian-era british corporations. That's redundant unless you play up their rivalry. Also: replace "communes" with "cauchemar"
Rolnicy: replace 'Communes" with "cauchemar."
Wreckers: You appear to refer to the group itself as "black spot" several times.
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CatharzGodfoot
- King
- Posts: 5668
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
- Location: North Carolina
"Go team Ventrue" is probably no longer kosher. "the Dead of Night" is used in one of the cult descriptions.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
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Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Yes. Their internal "word" for themselves is literally a black spot. So "The Black Spot" is the alternative name for the Wreckers. In the same way that sometimes the Hollow Ones are called "Monolith Corporation".Orion wrote: Wreckers: You appear to refer to the group itself as "black spot" several times.
No, that wouldn't be kosher. But it says "Go Team Venture!" instead. Which is a reference to this.Catharz wrote:"Go team Ventrue" is probably no longer kosher.
-Username17
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Draco_Argentum
- Duke
- Posts: 2434
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Monstrous Society needs a find replace Dead of Night -> After Sundown
Syndicates second paragraph: "The Syndicates do not have directly analogous social hierarchies." and "Syndicates exist to fulfill essentially the same functions and is ( replace with are) essentially on the same side."
Are you sure you want the Makhzen calling each other Kindred?
Storm Lords as Antagonists: "That doesn't go over really well with a lot of denizens of the Night" night doesn't need the capital anymore.
The King with Three Shadows: "While a minor mirror goblin might be able to come through a pool of water or a pain of glass" pain = pane
Status and Office in the Makhzen: "a Sheriff is like a Hakim that answers to the Princeps rather than a Circle member. " Princeps = Prince
Status and Office in the WCL: "in the Territory of Kabul they have a several Ministers" extraneous a
Status and Office in the Cauchemar Communes: "then it's kind of the same as a Makhzen Princeps" Princeps = Prince
[Edit]Changed a correction to be more understandable. If you've got a format that you like let me know.[/Edit]
Syndicates second paragraph: "The Syndicates do not have directly analogous social hierarchies." and "Syndicates exist to fulfill essentially the same functions and is ( replace with are) essentially on the same side."
Are you sure you want the Makhzen calling each other Kindred?
Storm Lords as Antagonists: "That doesn't go over really well with a lot of denizens of the Night" night doesn't need the capital anymore.
The King with Three Shadows: "While a minor mirror goblin might be able to come through a pool of water or a pain of glass" pain = pane
Status and Office in the Makhzen: "a Sheriff is like a Hakim that answers to the Princeps rather than a Circle member. " Princeps = Prince
Status and Office in the WCL: "in the Territory of Kabul they have a several Ministers" extraneous a
Status and Office in the Cauchemar Communes: "then it's kind of the same as a Makhzen Princeps" Princeps = Prince
[Edit]Changed a correction to be more understandable. If you've got a format that you like let me know.[/Edit]
Last edited by Draco_Argentum on Tue May 03, 2011 12:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Thanks. Actually the format you've been using is great. As long as it includes enough of the quote that I can locate it in the primary doc with the find command, I'm all over it.
-Username17
Actually yes. It's the same term that monsters use for each other in Nightlife, and it's just obviously useful for that purpose. Ditto on using Prince and Princeps interchangeably, since the former is simply a shortened form of the latter.Draco_Argentum wrote: Are you sure you want the Makhzen calling each other Kindred?
-Username17
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Quantumboost
- Knight-Baron
- Posts: 968
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
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Username17
- Serious Badass
- Posts: 29894
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
.
Skills
No one may ever know if what you did was good or bad, but you did it well.
A key portion of the die roll for any test is the skill. It represents specific training that helps a character perform a task. And because of that, it can lead to a far amount of confusion among some people, because linguistically we refer both to people who are very good at something and also people who are good at a wide variety of things as being “skilled”. In After Sundown, skills are basically confined to the former interpretation. Jacks of All Trades are represented game mechanically by people who have relatively high Attributes and low skills. People with high skills are specialists by definition.
Physical Skills
Physical skills involve doing stuff with your body. Since everyone has a body, the defaulting penalty for using physical skills untrained is zero. Without specialized training you can always still make a raw attribute test. A very strong person can grapple fairly effectively on that basis alone, an intuitive person can easily notice things, and so on and so forth. The defaulting penalty for Physical Skills is thus zero.
Athletics
Regular socialization is performed with Backgrounds, rather than social skills. If you want to ingratiate yourself with others, track down the word on the street, or otherwise perform social legwork, you probably want to use a background like High Society or Barrio. Social skills apply a -1 dicepool penalty when defaulting.
Animal Ken
Technical skills apply the -1 penalty for defaulting if a character doesn't have an appropriate specialization. That is, a character may have Artisan (Painting), but they will still have to default when welding. A character who becomes trained in any Technical skill gains a specialization for free.
Artisan
This is what I'm good at. And I'm the best. You might ask: 'what good is that'? And the answer is that being the best at anything makes you the best at something.
A specialization is a subset of a skill that a character is especially proficient in. When they make tests using the skill in a manner that is relevant to their interests, they gain 2 extra dice in their dice pool. Technical skills are an inherently specialized field, so in addition to getting 2 extra dice within a character's specialties, Technical Skill dicepools are penalized by 1 die if they are being used outside a relevant specialization.
The sample specializations are by no means comprehensive, and players should work out with their MC to find or create specializations that are right for them. A character might have their Sabotage specialized in Eco-Terrorism covering both spiking trees (that might more frequently go under “traps”) and breaking a bulldozer (that might more frequently go under “Disabling Stuff”). Another character might have their Animal Ken specialized in Horses, covering the training, breeding, and calming of wild and domestic horses.
The MC should take care to make sure that no specialization is universally useful. Specializing a skill in something that would apply in all cases is basically the same as just getting 2 points in the skill, and that's unfair. MCs must be expected to reject specializing Combat in “fighting” or specializing Bureaucracy in “paperwork.” A character can have more than one specialization in the same skill, and this is often very important for Technical skills. If more than one Specialization would apply, the character still only gets 2 bonus dice.
Background Skills
You need to have knowledge to get knowledge.
A character's background skills can be literally anything. They represent areas of the game that a character can potentially do legwork in. That is to say that during a chronicle a character may find a clue (such as a strange shape on a video feed from outside a crime scene, a discarded heroin needle, or a tuft of fur), and background skills are methods a character could have to research that clue and gain more information. Background skills are ways for the players to transform story seeds into additional exposition.
Characters can personally know any isolated fact or individual person within the context of the story without there needing to be a notation on the character sheet or die roll involved. You don't need to have a background in evolutionary biology to know that humans are closest related to chimps of all the other great apes – you just need to be told that fact directly or indirectly by someone who does have such a background. But to actually evaluate the research, you need to understand the power and limitations of the methods and the kinds of results that have also been achieved.
Backgrounds are divided into how one interacts with them. Academic Backgrounds are ones in which the character can “go look something up.” They often dovetail nicely with the Research, Perception, or Bureaucracy skills. Sciences, ancient languages, classical art, and so forth make good Academic Backgrounds. Social Backgrounds are ones where the character “goes to talk to some people.” They often dovetail nicely with Social skills like Empathy or Persuasion. Any social group can and does represent a potential Social Background. Occult Backgrounds are ones that involve the character “going to do something secret.” What skills are helpful for this kind of legwork are highly variable, because Occult Backgrounds are a very variable category. Many Occult Backgrounds are literally magical in origin (such as Marduk Society Histories or Tarot Readings), while others are simply secret for a variety of other reasons (legality, morality, or whatever). The defining point of Occult Backgrounds is that telling other people that you have them jeopardizes your ability to use them. The first rule about ghost cartels is the same as the first rule about fight club.
It is frequently important for purposes of socialization whether or not characters have “the same” background or not. Characters who have the same Background automatically have shared interests that they can talk about. However, game mechanically, Backgrounds do not have to have exactly the same name to be “the same.” And two Backgrounds that are “the same” in one instance may be “different” in another. A Background is “the same” if in the current instance it covers essentially the same stuff. If one character had Triads and another character had San Francisco Crime as a Background, the two characters would be on wholly common ground when discussing San Francisco's triad operations, and would be speaking Greek or Martian to each other if the conversation changed to Hong Kong triads or San Francisco's IRA network.
It is up to the MC to determine what constitutes an acceptable Background for the campaign. In general however, it is better to err on the side of Backgrounds that are too useful than ones that are too narrow. While it is overpowered for a character to have a Background that applies in virtually (or actually) all circumstances like “Stuff” or “Trivia”, the worst thing that's going to happen under such a circumstance is that the player is going to roleplay a lot and move the plot forward. That's not fair to the other characters (unless they are doing the same), but that's still better than the players feeling powerless and having the story stagnate.
Sample Backgrounds
Trust me, I've seen stuff like this before.
The completely open ended nature of Backgrounds can be paralyzing when it comes to actual character creation. A blank page can be filled up with anything, but frequently it isn't. So to help with that, here are some examples of backgrounds that some of the characters from the Persona Non Grata chapter have and some descriptions of things they use them for in their chronicles.
Social Backgrounds
When you use a skill, describe what it is that you intend to do to the MC, and then between the two of you determine an acceptable Skill and Attribute to use. Remember that the attribute being used in an action determines what kind of people are naturally talented at that kind of action, not on what kind of character is generally good at a skill. For example, in the general running of a power plant one might expect that a “smart” hero would be the man for the job, and thus a good standby check to make for actions from shunting power away from the financial district to increasing power yield might be Logic + Operations. But in the specific case of getting the emergency valves opened during an overheating event you might expect a “strong” hero to be the man for the job, and Strength + Operations might be called for instead (those valves can be hard to turn).
The next thing you do is roll your dice, counting every 5 or 6 as a 'Hit'. The number of hits you get determines how awesome you did, with this representing overall success or not depending on how awesome the specific thing you were attempting to do was. Doing something incredibly awesome when the task at hand is something like “bake a cake” is potentially delicious, but often fairly inconsequential. On the flip side, if the goal is to do something of awesome difficulty such as leap into an open window on a moving train, the results will be unfortunate if the level of success attained is merely normal.
Buying Hits: When a character is not under any particular threat or pressure, they may elect to forgo the process of actually rolling dice and simply get one hit for every 4 full dice in their dice pool. This process of “phoning it in” gets a character less awesomeness than had they legitimately tried, but it has a strong tendency to work if that's all that is required.
It is important to note that normal humans often have dice pools of 4 dice or less on tasks they do frequently. So when a supernatural critter throws down on a task with 12 dice or more that really is an incredible thing to watch. Such characters can literally phone in a TV quality performance and the like. MCs should not become jaded and allow success inflation to cheapen the actions of characters with super human dice pools. Characters who can lift and throw motorcycles genuinely can expect to casually kick in locked doors. The fact that success is practically automatic for these tasks should not be resisted, but rather embraced as a fact that is itself impressive and magical.
Predictable Failure: Sometimes a character will be struggling under enough penalties that they don't have a dice pool at all. In these instances, the character is going to get zero hits, which means that absolutely nothing they do will be awesome. They can still stagger down the corridor or open a door, but as soon as a stunt requires even one hit they are going to fail unless they are a Luminary who can spend Edge on the problem to get some dice and a chance.
Extended Tests: Some actions take an expected amount of time. If a character gets the requisite number of hits, they succeed in the expected amount of time. If they get more than the requisite number of hits, they may complete the task well ahead of schedule. For every hit made in excess of the minimum, move to the next lower amount of time on the time chart. If a character fails to succeed, they may retry, but only after having put in the normal time into the first shot. So for example: Mina is attempting to paint a house (Strength + Artisan, 1, 2 days) and gets 3 hits. Since she got 2 more hits than she needed, she can go to the next lower time period twice, bringing the time frame down to five hours.
Team Work
If you're about to launch a friendship speech, please don't.
When more than one character throws their weight into a project they can achieve results that are more awesome and in less time than what either character could achieve alone. However, the game mechanics completely break down if you just add the dicepool of one character to another. What is done instead is that whichever character has the best dicepool is considered the main acting character, and the other characters are considered the assisting characters. Each assisting character makes their check, and each hit is added as a bonus die on the main character's test. Since characters get about 1 hit per three dice, on average improving the awesomeness of a task is "hard" (threshold 3). In many cases an MC will allow a character to assist with a tangential but vaguely related skill (and in such cases it is entirely possible for one of the assisting characters to roll more dice than the main acting character).
Maximum Characters: Too many cooks spoil the broth. How many characters qualify as "too many" is unfortunately a very fluid concept that depends a lot on what you're doing. Sometimes there are real physical limits to how many people can literally fit around a project, and other times it's procedural. In general, most teamwork projects should be handled with five or less people. A project larger than that should probably be split into multiple tests, although at the MC's discretion there may be exceptions. A good set of management protocols is essential for most group projects to move forward. Most of the time, no more assisting characters can work on a project than the highest Tactics skill of the characters. The character providing the tactics skill allowing multiple characters to work on the project need not be the main acting character and often will not be.
Using Attributes Without Skills
“Granted, but I'm still huge.”
Characters in After Sundown may be called upon to use skills when they don't actually have training in that area. In this case, the character is called upon to default on the skill. This allows the character to roll a dicepool of their appropriate Attribute (plus zero dice for not having the skill). When defaulting on a Social or Technical Skill, the character suffers an additional -1die penalty for being untrained. When using Technical Skills, that same -1 die penalty applies whenever the character doesn't have an appropriate specialization (even if they do have the appropriate skill). But there are a number of times when you will want to do something for which no skill applies. In that case a mere attribute roll may suffice (obviously with no -1 die penalty). But remember that dice pools without skills are substantially smaller than dicepools with skills attached – so in most cases the MC should try to figure out a way to fit a skill in.
Resistance Rolls
“No one could have survived that.”
Characters who are attacked or endangered are often entitled to a Resistance Roll to soak the effects of whatever they are threatened with, whether its the power of a magical assault or a bullet to the stomach. In general, a Physical Resistance roll will usually be just Strength (no skill), a Mental Resistance roll will usually be just Intuition (again, no skill), and a Social Resistance roll will be just Willpower (likewise). Luminaries get a special bonus, where they can add their Edge to Resistance rolls, almost like Edge was the “take less damage from bullets” skill, if that makes things any easier to conceptualize.
Sure Things: Heavy Lifting
“Sure, sometimes you can do all kinds of stuff. But I can always lift a car.”
There are things you don't have to roll because they simply are. A character with a high Charisma is charming, a character with a high Logic is smart. Even if they offend someone or fail to solve a problem, they will do so in a charming or intelligent fashion. But probably the thing you will run into most frequently as far as automatic uses of Attributes is Strength. People who have a high Strength are strong, and they can lift heavy things. So to help out with that, here's a table of how much a character might be able to push themselves to lift up, and how much they might be able to carry home without hurting themselves.
And yes, things that are really strong are really strong. A creature with a strength of 35 can lift a train right off the track. Although they can only do this by lifting one car at a time and can't really walk off with it. Consider the scene in King Kong where the giant ape (who in After Sundown would be a Kaiju) pulls a train off the tracks by lifting a car and dropping the whole thing. That's not an exaggeration, in After Sundown the giant apes can actually do those things.
Skills
No one may ever know if what you did was good or bad, but you did it well.
A key portion of the die roll for any test is the skill. It represents specific training that helps a character perform a task. And because of that, it can lead to a far amount of confusion among some people, because linguistically we refer both to people who are very good at something and also people who are good at a wide variety of things as being “skilled”. In After Sundown, skills are basically confined to the former interpretation. Jacks of All Trades are represented game mechanically by people who have relatively high Attributes and low skills. People with high skills are specialists by definition.
Physical Skills
Physical skills involve doing stuff with your body. Since everyone has a body, the defaulting penalty for using physical skills untrained is zero. Without specialized training you can always still make a raw attribute test. A very strong person can grapple fairly effectively on that basis alone, an intuitive person can easily notice things, and so on and so forth. The defaulting penalty for Physical Skills is thus zero.
Athletics
- Athletics is the skill you use to run, jump, climb, swim, throw things, and generally do everything that you're vaguely expected to do in PE except sneak into the girl's locker room and get shamed by your peers. Most stunts are athletics based, and it can even be useful in attacking enemies in combat by dint of throwing things at specific targets.
Specializations: Climb, Jump, Run, Swim, Throwing
- Combat is the training needed to fight. Usually other people. More than any other skill, people will ask to divide up Combat into smaller fragments. It is not immediately clear why, but we strongly suggest that you do not do this. While there are truly a vast array of differences between stabbing someone with a sword and shooting them with a gun – the simple fact that the combat simulationist player can name them all draws attention to how simply not that different they are. The basic truths of combat skill include making rapid life and death decisions while avoiding threats and putting the pointy end of your weapon into the other man. There's a world of differences from combat situation to combat situation, and that's why the skill goes all the way to six. But please remember that this is a game where flying a plane and managing a nuclear power plant can be the same skill (Operations).
Specializations: By weapon or martial style.
- Drive allows people to drive culturally appropriate vehicles. For people in the west, that's mostly just cars. But for people in river areas or fishing communities, that's often small boats as well. Driving under safe conditions is such a banal and non-awesome thing, that characters do not need to actually make rolls to do it, so players may not even need the skill. But when it comes to dangerous driving conditions, car chases, or even just cutting commute times, rolls are generally required, and having the skill is helpful. This dichotomy is generally why in movies cars wipe out spectacularly the moment someone uses magic to create icy road conditions – a lot of people on the road are legitimately terrible drivers, and the moment things get harsh they become one of the 18,000 car accidents that happen every day in the US.
A character can drive a new non-standard type of vehicle for every rating point and specialization of the skill they have. Common choices are emergency vehicles, motor boats, construction equipment, armored vehicles, light aircraft, and oversized (semis and buses), but really players can pretty much go nuts. Any plane or ship which is piloted with dials and knobs rather than a wheel or stick is the domain of Operations rather than Drive.
Specializations: Bad Weather, Aggressive Driving, Cross Town Traffic, Navigation
- Characters skilled at Larceny are adept at working outside the law. It is a broad skill that covers lots of dubious activities, from identifying and bypassing security systems to picking other peoples' pockets. There is some overlap between Larceny and Rigging when dealing with locks. Locks are both geared puzzles and a basic hindrance to breaking into places. This is a good skill to have for security workers in addition to criminals. You gotta know your enemy if you're gonna win the war.
Specializations: Concealing Goods, Legerdemain, Lockpicking, Security Systems
- Perception is the skill by which a character perceives the world around themselves. It is used to spot clues, notice subtle noises, and smell unfortunate smells. Characters with very low Perceptions are the characters who do not notice monsters sneaking up on them or have to have the meaning or import of subtle clues explained to them by other protagonists.
Specializations: By sense, Investigation, Noticing sneaking
- The Stealth skill is what one uses to avoid being noticed, either by moving quietly, becoming unseen against the background, or simply blending into the crowd. Whenever a character is being searched for, a Stealth check can be used to make that searching more difficult. Stealth involves using what is available, so there is almost no circumstance in which it cannot be used to at least postpone the moment that a character is noticed.
Specializations: Hiding, Innocuity, Shadowing, Sneaking
- 100% of the creatures alive today are the descendants of an unbroken line of ancestors who were all able to survive in their environment long enough to have had children that extends back to when single celled organisms had only two different nucleotides in their DNA. So persisting in the face of adversity is something that creatures have a birthright to. And yet, adversity has also kept up with the times. Survival is the skill of keeping up with the elements.
One can also make Survival checks to scavenge things of a more modern nature. A Survival check could be called for to loot useful things out of a junk yard or to track the layout of a sewer system.
Specializations: Tracking, Gathering, Shelter, by Environment.
Regular socialization is performed with Backgrounds, rather than social skills. If you want to ingratiate yourself with others, track down the word on the street, or otherwise perform social legwork, you probably want to use a background like High Society or Barrio. Social skills apply a -1 dicepool penalty when defaulting.
Animal Ken
- Dealing with inhuman beasts is a skill in and of itself. Neither lions nor sheep really have any backgrounds, and the Animal Ken skill is used in their place. Animal Ken is used to read the emotions of an animal as well as to calm one down or train it to do stuff. Animal Ken is thus your one-stop-shop for all socialization with dogs, which considering how much less a dog knows than any human or supernatural about important plot points, is not nearly as overpowered as you might think
Specializations: Domestic Animals, Training, Wild Animals, Riding.
- Managing logistics and patiently untangling skeins of red tape is the focus of this skill. Characters can understand and manipulate laws, navigate management systems, and correctly formulate formal requests. Bureaucracy is of use whether the character is attempting to perform bureaucratic tasks and of equal utility when confronted by the implacable edifice of a Kafkaesque course. It is not unusual for people to resent bureaucracy, because it is annoying. But as anyone who has done logistics under any circumstances can tell you, not having rules, management, and records in place is even worse.
Specializations: Business, Government, Logistics
- Empathy is our primary means of interpreting the meaning of actions and inactions of other people. It is a trainable sense of how others are feeling given how they look, what they say, and what they do. Empathy is of obvious use to people like lawyers and police, but it is also an important skill for batters in baseball. It is not merely about figuring out whether someone is being truthful when they are talking, but also about determining what someone is about to do in the physical world.
Specializations: Motivation Determination, Detecting Lies, Action Anticipation
- Expression is the art of entertaining and changing peoples' minds through art. Lots of people think that this can only be accomplished by making movies about gay cowboys eating pudding, but the truth is that any art that provokes the audience to even acknowledge it is on some level influencing the audience.
Specializations: Writing, Dance, Music, Oratory
- Intimidation is the art of using fear to get other people to believe or do things desired of them. Intimidation can be explicit (“If you don't do X, I will stab you. In the face.”) or implied (“Did you hear that the feds caught Ted for his tax non-payment? He's going to be doing time.”) and the threats can be to the target's person, finances, or reputation. And some of the best Intimidation is actually phrased in a manner that implies that some third party will do some thing to the target and the Intimidating character is willing to help the target.
Specializations: Interrogation, Fear Mongering, Skulduggery, Blackmail
- Persuasion is the art of manipulating people in such a manner that it isn't immediately obvious that is what you're doing. People who are skilled at Persuasion are essentially good at lying, although many of them get offended if you call it that. They may prefer the term acting or sales.
Specializations: Acting, Insinuation, Fast Talk
- Tactics is the skill that governs leadership in both the military and corporate sense of the term. Characters can inspire others to give 100% or produce a battle plan. The dragon crawls on its belly, and Tactics dovetails closely with Bureaucracy in the plotting of war, whether genuine or metaphorical. The tactical aspect involves actually maneuvering and the orders necessary to get others to do that – in contrast to the simple appeals to rules or potentially complex logistical management of Bureaucracy.
Specializations: Inspiration, Maneuvers, Naval, Siege
Technical skills apply the -1 penalty for defaulting if a character doesn't have an appropriate specialization. That is, a character may have Artisan (Painting), but they will still have to default when welding. A character who becomes trained in any Technical skill gains a specialization for free.
Artisan
- The Artisan skill is used when you want to produce a physical object of some level of workmanship – whether you’re going for aesthetic quality or simple utility.
There are a few more specializations in Artisan than in most Technical skills, in no small part because there are many materials that involve wildly different skills. It is recommended that these specializations are taken as applying to Artisan uses that are “close enough” – so a calligrapher might use the Painting specialization since in both cases they’re applying pigments to surfaces.
Specializations: By Medium (Painting, Sculpture, Metalwork, Carpentry, etc.)
- Electronics is the skill used to make the tools of modernity go. Everything from toasters to computers uses electronics to function. And a character with the electronics skill can figure out how it functions and alter it.
Specializations: Wiring, Software, Repair, Hacking
- Medicine is the art of treating injury and illness to promote good health. Characters use this skill to patch injuries in their pets and team mates. Remember that the realm of horror runs on movie physics, meaning that characters who receive proper medical care are able to make impressive and full recoveries from amazing injuries.
Specializations: Veterinary, First Aid, Long Term Care, Psychiatric
- Operations is the skill of making machines and systems go. One part mechanical engineering and one part heavy machinery operation. This is distinct from making machines (generally artisan), running computer programs that make systems go for you (generally electronics), or driving (generally driving). You make an Operations test when there is not a 1:1 correspondence between your muscle movement and the action of the machine. So it's Operations to pilot a boat and Driving to walk a mech around.
Specializations:Piloting, Industry, Repair
- Knowing things is important, but the fact is that your brain probably can't hold all the information you might possibly want to have available – and doesn't always keep the things you do know readily accessible. When you need information that you don't actually have in your head, you can use the Research skill to go look it up.
Researching things overall is fairly uniform, but there are particular methods of looking things up that might not be obvious to people who don't use that system in particular. Specialization in Archives indicates an ability to look up information in data logs, newspaper histories, and other chronological information stores. The Library specialization involves looking up information in stores classified by content, and Datamining covers sifting through internet searches, wikis, and highly disorganized information for something useful.
Specializations: Archives, Library, Datamining, Interrogation
- Rigging is the skill of MacGyvering and Rube Goldberging things. It is the skill of practical and impromptu engineering. Including lockpicking, plumbing, and clockwork. Rigging is used for most non-electric jury rigging as well as the creation, operation, and repair of most steam punk technologies.
Specializations: Fluids, Gears, Ropes and Pulleys
- Sabotage is the art of breaking stuff in a manner which will be most effective. Sabotage can be used for “rigging things to explode” rather than the actual Rigging skill. Sabotage can be used to break things in such a way as to make them look not broken, to not break things in such a manner as they do look broken, and to make things break in such a manner as to explode. Remember that events in After Sundown have a pyrotechnics budget, so things tend to explode big.
Specializations: Explosives, Disabling Stuff, Structural Weaknesses, Traps
This is what I'm good at. And I'm the best. You might ask: 'what good is that'? And the answer is that being the best at anything makes you the best at something.
A specialization is a subset of a skill that a character is especially proficient in. When they make tests using the skill in a manner that is relevant to their interests, they gain 2 extra dice in their dice pool. Technical skills are an inherently specialized field, so in addition to getting 2 extra dice within a character's specialties, Technical Skill dicepools are penalized by 1 die if they are being used outside a relevant specialization.
The sample specializations are by no means comprehensive, and players should work out with their MC to find or create specializations that are right for them. A character might have their Sabotage specialized in Eco-Terrorism covering both spiking trees (that might more frequently go under “traps”) and breaking a bulldozer (that might more frequently go under “Disabling Stuff”). Another character might have their Animal Ken specialized in Horses, covering the training, breeding, and calming of wild and domestic horses.
The MC should take care to make sure that no specialization is universally useful. Specializing a skill in something that would apply in all cases is basically the same as just getting 2 points in the skill, and that's unfair. MCs must be expected to reject specializing Combat in “fighting” or specializing Bureaucracy in “paperwork.” A character can have more than one specialization in the same skill, and this is often very important for Technical skills. If more than one Specialization would apply, the character still only gets 2 bonus dice.
Background Skills
You need to have knowledge to get knowledge.
A character's background skills can be literally anything. They represent areas of the game that a character can potentially do legwork in. That is to say that during a chronicle a character may find a clue (such as a strange shape on a video feed from outside a crime scene, a discarded heroin needle, or a tuft of fur), and background skills are methods a character could have to research that clue and gain more information. Background skills are ways for the players to transform story seeds into additional exposition.
Characters can personally know any isolated fact or individual person within the context of the story without there needing to be a notation on the character sheet or die roll involved. You don't need to have a background in evolutionary biology to know that humans are closest related to chimps of all the other great apes – you just need to be told that fact directly or indirectly by someone who does have such a background. But to actually evaluate the research, you need to understand the power and limitations of the methods and the kinds of results that have also been achieved.
Backgrounds are divided into how one interacts with them. Academic Backgrounds are ones in which the character can “go look something up.” They often dovetail nicely with the Research, Perception, or Bureaucracy skills. Sciences, ancient languages, classical art, and so forth make good Academic Backgrounds. Social Backgrounds are ones where the character “goes to talk to some people.” They often dovetail nicely with Social skills like Empathy or Persuasion. Any social group can and does represent a potential Social Background. Occult Backgrounds are ones that involve the character “going to do something secret.” What skills are helpful for this kind of legwork are highly variable, because Occult Backgrounds are a very variable category. Many Occult Backgrounds are literally magical in origin (such as Marduk Society Histories or Tarot Readings), while others are simply secret for a variety of other reasons (legality, morality, or whatever). The defining point of Occult Backgrounds is that telling other people that you have them jeopardizes your ability to use them. The first rule about ghost cartels is the same as the first rule about fight club.
It is frequently important for purposes of socialization whether or not characters have “the same” background or not. Characters who have the same Background automatically have shared interests that they can talk about. However, game mechanically, Backgrounds do not have to have exactly the same name to be “the same.” And two Backgrounds that are “the same” in one instance may be “different” in another. A Background is “the same” if in the current instance it covers essentially the same stuff. If one character had Triads and another character had San Francisco Crime as a Background, the two characters would be on wholly common ground when discussing San Francisco's triad operations, and would be speaking Greek or Martian to each other if the conversation changed to Hong Kong triads or San Francisco's IRA network.
It is up to the MC to determine what constitutes an acceptable Background for the campaign. In general however, it is better to err on the side of Backgrounds that are too useful than ones that are too narrow. While it is overpowered for a character to have a Background that applies in virtually (or actually) all circumstances like “Stuff” or “Trivia”, the worst thing that's going to happen under such a circumstance is that the player is going to roleplay a lot and move the plot forward. That's not fair to the other characters (unless they are doing the same), but that's still better than the players feeling powerless and having the story stagnate.
Sample Backgrounds
Trust me, I've seen stuff like this before.
The completely open ended nature of Backgrounds can be paralyzing when it comes to actual character creation. A blank page can be filled up with anything, but frequently it isn't. So to help with that, here are some examples of backgrounds that some of the characters from the Persona Non Grata chapter have and some descriptions of things they use them for in their chronicles.
Social Backgrounds
- Circus Life: Marionette is a former trapeze artist, and this facet of her life with the Circus Life Background. After hearing the kids talking about the mountain lion they saw, Marionette's player points out that she has actually heard a lot of kids describe lions and tigers, and wishes to reconstruct the real appearance from them. After some leading questions (Intuition + Circus Life), she thinks she knows which Bagheera it was. When she goes to the Cannibal Mimes, she falls back on her circus experiences for Friendly Banter ammunition (Charisma + Circus Life).
Truckin: Jack spends a lot of time on the road and on the radio talkin to other truckers, and this is represented by his Truckin Background. This means that he has an encyclopedic knowledge of rest stops all up and down the 101. So when he gets a time frame for when the van presumably lightened its load, he can make a very accurate guess (Logic + Truckin) about where to start looking for the bodies. When he is listening to someone's description of their journey to Walnut Creek, he notices (Intuition + Truckin) a discrepancy in their story.
Bar Scene: Dean goes out drinking frequently to attempt to forget the hole in his soul, and this justifies his Bar Scene Background. The team needs a decoy, so Dean goes off to the SK8R | to go pick up an extra woman for that purpose (Willpower + Bar Scene). Later on, they need to track down a fishy poker game, so he asks around (Charisma + Bar Scene).
- Chemistry: Marionette was an accomplished chemist even before her transformation, and thus it is reasonable for her to have the Chemistry background. Looking at the man who died from a Soulless bite, they need to throw the police off the trail. So Marionette throws out a plausible sounding Chemical explanation for the scene cops to eat up and spread as rumor (Willpower + Chemistry). Then when she's looking up the actual poison to produce an antidote, this is very easy for her, because her Background in Chemistry makes her (Logic + Research) test have a very low Threshold.
Cars and Trucks: Jack knows all about things on the roads. So when it comes time to research up the DMV registration on the kidnappers' van, Jack grabs it and gets an answer for certain, because he knows that he is looking for a 2005 Charcoal Dodge Sprinter. But later on, he reaches for something to talk to the guys at Pizza Hog about, and cars seems like as good a topic as any. And since there are some other gear heads, it works out and he uses it as a Friendly Banter (Charisma + Cars and Trucks) platform.
Ballistics: Dean may not seem that bright, but he does know his way around firearms, and this interest is represented by his Ballistics Background. Not only can he talk for hours to gun enthusiasts about caliber and grains, but he can perform the kind of scientific forensic investigation that a ballistics expert might be called upon for. When he picks up the supposed murder weapon, he immediately notices (Intuition + Ballistics) that something is wrong because the armor piercing bullets in the magazine should have exit wounds on the corpse. Later he measures out the probable point of origin from the bullets and gets a fix on the shooter's location (Logic + Ballistics). And when they have the specs on the enchanted rifle and Dean wants to look up what kind of weapon they are dealing with, he just does it because his Background knowledge pushes the Research threshold down to zero.
- ETA: Marionette spent some time working with the Basque Separatists, as is reflected in her ETA Background. She calls upon a friend of a friend to get some explosives (Charisma + ETA), and when the report of the “terrorist attack” on the clinic comes out, she is able to go through the details and identify it as a feint (Logic + ETA) because she knows how terrorist attacks work.
Chinese Monsters: Jack has put up with a lot of bullshit from the Eastern wing of the Shattered Empire, and he knows his long haired ghosts from his thundering witches. During the investigations, he meets up with The Peach Lady, and needing something to talk about, he reaches for supernatural stuff from her homeland. This is an acceptable form of Friendly Banter (Charisma + Chinese Monsters), and seemingly gets the immortal beauty to open up to him. Later on, he comes face to face with an Asian Leviathan and identifies it as such (Logic + Chinese Monsters).
Hell Mouths: Dean has been in and out of the Dark Reflection many times, and this is reflected in his Hell Mouths Background. As they are searching the house, Dean notices (Intuition + Hell Mouths) that the bathroom mirror has been used as a portal, and fairly recently by the ashen smell. When the team finds itself outside the Iron Tower, Dean falls on his knowledge of hell mouth locations to plan a route back to the mortal world (Logic + Hell Mouths).
When you use a skill, describe what it is that you intend to do to the MC, and then between the two of you determine an acceptable Skill and Attribute to use. Remember that the attribute being used in an action determines what kind of people are naturally talented at that kind of action, not on what kind of character is generally good at a skill. For example, in the general running of a power plant one might expect that a “smart” hero would be the man for the job, and thus a good standby check to make for actions from shunting power away from the financial district to increasing power yield might be Logic + Operations. But in the specific case of getting the emergency valves opened during an overheating event you might expect a “strong” hero to be the man for the job, and Strength + Operations might be called for instead (those valves can be hard to turn).
The next thing you do is roll your dice, counting every 5 or 6 as a 'Hit'. The number of hits you get determines how awesome you did, with this representing overall success or not depending on how awesome the specific thing you were attempting to do was. Doing something incredibly awesome when the task at hand is something like “bake a cake” is potentially delicious, but often fairly inconsequential. On the flip side, if the goal is to do something of awesome difficulty such as leap into an open window on a moving train, the results will be unfortunate if the level of success attained is merely normal.
Buying Hits: When a character is not under any particular threat or pressure, they may elect to forgo the process of actually rolling dice and simply get one hit for every 4 full dice in their dice pool. This process of “phoning it in” gets a character less awesomeness than had they legitimately tried, but it has a strong tendency to work if that's all that is required.
| Hits: | Awesomeness |
| 0: | Not Awesome. Tying shoes, climbing stairs. |
| 1: | Completely Pedestrian. Driving a car, cooking a meal. |
| 2: | Professional. Don't try this at home. |
| 3: | Hard. |
| 4: | Extreme. Don't try this at all. |
| 5: | Crazy Extreme. |
| 6: | Super Human. Does not need disclaimers because it is clearly impossible. |
It is important to note that normal humans often have dice pools of 4 dice or less on tasks they do frequently. So when a supernatural critter throws down on a task with 12 dice or more that really is an incredible thing to watch. Such characters can literally phone in a TV quality performance and the like. MCs should not become jaded and allow success inflation to cheapen the actions of characters with super human dice pools. Characters who can lift and throw motorcycles genuinely can expect to casually kick in locked doors. The fact that success is practically automatic for these tasks should not be resisted, but rather embraced as a fact that is itself impressive and magical.
Predictable Failure: Sometimes a character will be struggling under enough penalties that they don't have a dice pool at all. In these instances, the character is going to get zero hits, which means that absolutely nothing they do will be awesome. They can still stagger down the corridor or open a door, but as soon as a stunt requires even one hit they are going to fail unless they are a Luminary who can spend Edge on the problem to get some dice and a chance.
Extended Tests: Some actions take an expected amount of time. If a character gets the requisite number of hits, they succeed in the expected amount of time. If they get more than the requisite number of hits, they may complete the task well ahead of schedule. For every hit made in excess of the minimum, move to the next lower amount of time on the time chart. If a character fails to succeed, they may retry, but only after having put in the normal time into the first shot. So for example: Mina is attempting to paint a house (Strength + Artisan, 1, 2 days) and gets 3 hits. Since she got 2 more hits than she needed, she can go to the next lower time period twice, bringing the time frame down to five hours.
| Timeframe Chart |
| Century |
| Decade |
| Year |
| Season |
| Month |
| Week |
| 3 Days |
| 1 Day |
| 5 Hours |
| 1 Hour |
| 20 minutes |
| 5 Minutes |
| 1 Minute |
| 1 Round |
| Simple Action |
| Free Action |
Team Work
If you're about to launch a friendship speech, please don't.
When more than one character throws their weight into a project they can achieve results that are more awesome and in less time than what either character could achieve alone. However, the game mechanics completely break down if you just add the dicepool of one character to another. What is done instead is that whichever character has the best dicepool is considered the main acting character, and the other characters are considered the assisting characters. Each assisting character makes their check, and each hit is added as a bonus die on the main character's test. Since characters get about 1 hit per three dice, on average improving the awesomeness of a task is "hard" (threshold 3). In many cases an MC will allow a character to assist with a tangential but vaguely related skill (and in such cases it is entirely possible for one of the assisting characters to roll more dice than the main acting character).
Maximum Characters: Too many cooks spoil the broth. How many characters qualify as "too many" is unfortunately a very fluid concept that depends a lot on what you're doing. Sometimes there are real physical limits to how many people can literally fit around a project, and other times it's procedural. In general, most teamwork projects should be handled with five or less people. A project larger than that should probably be split into multiple tests, although at the MC's discretion there may be exceptions. A good set of management protocols is essential for most group projects to move forward. Most of the time, no more assisting characters can work on a project than the highest Tactics skill of the characters. The character providing the tactics skill allowing multiple characters to work on the project need not be the main acting character and often will not be.
Using Attributes Without Skills
“Granted, but I'm still huge.”
Characters in After Sundown may be called upon to use skills when they don't actually have training in that area. In this case, the character is called upon to default on the skill. This allows the character to roll a dicepool of their appropriate Attribute (plus zero dice for not having the skill). When defaulting on a Social or Technical Skill, the character suffers an additional -1die penalty for being untrained. When using Technical Skills, that same -1 die penalty applies whenever the character doesn't have an appropriate specialization (even if they do have the appropriate skill). But there are a number of times when you will want to do something for which no skill applies. In that case a mere attribute roll may suffice (obviously with no -1 die penalty). But remember that dice pools without skills are substantially smaller than dicepools with skills attached – so in most cases the MC should try to figure out a way to fit a skill in.
Resistance Rolls
“No one could have survived that.”
Characters who are attacked or endangered are often entitled to a Resistance Roll to soak the effects of whatever they are threatened with, whether its the power of a magical assault or a bullet to the stomach. In general, a Physical Resistance roll will usually be just Strength (no skill), a Mental Resistance roll will usually be just Intuition (again, no skill), and a Social Resistance roll will be just Willpower (likewise). Luminaries get a special bonus, where they can add their Edge to Resistance rolls, almost like Edge was the “take less damage from bullets” skill, if that makes things any easier to conceptualize.
Sure Things: Heavy Lifting
“Sure, sometimes you can do all kinds of stuff. But I can always lift a car.”
There are things you don't have to roll because they simply are. A character with a high Charisma is charming, a character with a high Logic is smart. Even if they offend someone or fail to solve a problem, they will do so in a charming or intelligent fashion. But probably the thing you will run into most frequently as far as automatic uses of Attributes is Strength. People who have a high Strength are strong, and they can lift heavy things. So to help out with that, here's a table of how much a character might be able to push themselves to lift up, and how much they might be able to carry home without hurting themselves.
| Strength | Maximum Lift | Carry Home |
| 1 | 30 kilos | 10 kilos |
| 2 | 50 kilos | 20 kilos |
| 3 | 100 kilos | 30 kilos |
| 4 | 150 kilos | 50 kilos |
| 5 | 250 kilos | 70 kilos (average human) |
| 6 | 450 kilos | 100 kilos |
| 7 | 750 kilos | 200 kilos |
| 8 | 1.25 tonnes | 500 kilos |
| 9 | 2.5 tonnes | 1 tonne |
| 10 | 5 tonnes | 2 tonnes |
| 11 | 7 tonnes | 3 tonnes |
| 12 | 10 tonnes | 4.5 tonnes |
| 13 | 14 tonnes | 6 tonnes |
| 14 | 20 tonnes | 8 tonnes |
| 15 | 28 tonnes | 10 tonnes |
| 20 | 60 tonnes | 24 tonnes |
| 25 | 100 tonnes | 40 tonnes |
| 30 | 150 tonnes | 60 tonnes |
| 35 | 200 tonnes | 80 tonnes |
And yes, things that are really strong are really strong. A creature with a strength of 35 can lift a train right off the track. Although they can only do this by lifting one car at a time and can't really walk off with it. Consider the scene in King Kong where the giant ape (who in After Sundown would be a Kaiju) pulls a train off the tracks by lifting a car and dropping the whole thing. That's not an exaggeration, in After Sundown the giant apes can actually do those things.
Last edited by Username17 on Tue May 03, 2011 9:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Quantumboost
- Knight-Baron
- Posts: 968
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Artisan: "so a calligrapher might use the Painting specialization since in both cases they’re applying pigments to surfaces" - should end with a period.
Medicine: "Remember that the Wrealm of horror runs on movie physics" - Wrealm should be realm.
Rigging: "Rigging is the skill of MacGuyvering and Rube Goldberging things." - MacGyver's surname doesn't have a "u" in it.
Background Skills: "While it is overpowered for a character to have a Background that applies in virtually (or actually) all circumstances like “Stuff” or “Trivia” but the worst thing that's going to happen" - "but" shouldn't be there.
Social Backgrounds: "Dean goes out drinking frequently to attempt to forget the hole in his soul., and this justifies his Bar Scene Background." - extra period after "soul".
Medicine: "Remember that the Wrealm of horror runs on movie physics" - Wrealm should be realm.
Rigging: "Rigging is the skill of MacGuyvering and Rube Goldberging things." - MacGyver's surname doesn't have a "u" in it.
Background Skills: "While it is overpowered for a character to have a Background that applies in virtually (or actually) all circumstances like “Stuff” or “Trivia” but the worst thing that's going to happen" - "but" shouldn't be there.
Social Backgrounds: "Dean goes out drinking frequently to attempt to forget the hole in his soul., and this justifies his Bar Scene Background." - extra period after "soul".
Any plane or ship which is piloted with dials and knobs rather than a wheel or stick is the domain of Operations rather than Drive.
So... a helicopter is Drive because it uses a stick? Is a speedboat still drive because it just uses a wheel and throttle, and then a sail boat with rigging and crap is operations?
Will there be stats on mechs in the vehicle section? Will there be stats on vehicles at all?
So... a helicopter is Drive because it uses a stick? Is a speedboat still drive because it just uses a wheel and throttle, and then a sail boat with rigging and crap is operations?
Will there be stats on mechs in the vehicle section? Will there be stats on vehicles at all?
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CatharzGodfoot
- King
- Posts: 5668
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
- Location: North Carolina
My guess is that anything with direct and immediate feedback between the driver's action and the vehicle's response is Drive. So a helicopter, speedboat, or sailboat (tiller) could all be piloted with Drive.Lokathor wrote:So... a helicopter is Drive because it uses a stick? Is a speedboat still drive because it just uses a wheel and throttle, and then a sail boat with rigging and crap is operations?
A container ship would be Operations because there's a significant delay in the controls.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
But this makes piloting a container ship a different skill to piloting a ferry. They're both ships, but one is more responsive.CatharzGodfoot wrote: A container ship would be Operations because there's a significant delay in the controls.
I think that you're better off just to split it up into drive(vehicle class), covering all vehicles of that class. e.g. drive(car), drive(ship), drive(dirigible), etc.
King Francis I's Mother said wrote:The love between the kings was not just of the beard, but of the heart
That's like saying you should roll the same skill to run a slaughterhouse as you should to shoot Tigers. In both cases you're killing mammals, the cows just aren't as aggressive.Blasted wrote:But this makes piloting a container ship a different skill to piloting a ferry. They're both ships, but one is more responsive.
In the case of the two ships, the controls are similar. Similar enough that I would expect a ferry captain, at a pinch, to be able to pilot a container ship. Well enough at least for the purposes of AWOD.Sashi wrote:That's like saying you should roll the same skill to run a slaughterhouse as you should to shoot Tigers. In both cases you're killing mammals, the cows just aren't as aggressive.Blasted wrote:But this makes piloting a container ship a different skill to piloting a ferry. They're both ships, but one is more responsive.
So basing the skill on the responsiveness of the craft fails.
King Francis I's Mother said wrote:The love between the kings was not just of the beard, but of the heart
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CatharzGodfoot
- King
- Posts: 5668
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
- Location: North Carolina
Then you'd be dead fucking wrong. Piloting a large vessel is entirely a matter of planning and careful adjustments. It's nothing like piloting small craft.Blasted wrote: In the case of the two ships, the controls are similar. Similar enough that I would expect a ferry captain, at a pinch, to be able to pilot a container ship.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
Pilotting it well is a matter of planning, and is mainly a matter of experience.CatharzGodfoot wrote:Then you'd be dead fucking wrong. Piloting a large vessel is entirely a matter of planning and careful adjustments. It's nothing like piloting small craft.Blasted wrote: In the case of the two ships, the controls are similar. Similar enough that I would expect a ferry captain, at a pinch, to be able to pilot a container ship.
Pilotting it *at all* is a matter of know-how. Which is why Joe Captain say might have a level 2 skill, but a harbour pilot will have 5. I would expect a ferry captain to be able to turn the ship around at sea, for instance.
They both have the same skill, different level of ability.
[edit - I should add that a harbour pilot is a specialist position, for navigation where it's difficult, whereas most ship crew can pilot at sea. The military example would be the difference between a Quartermaster and a Helmsman.
For reference, I'm not talking pontoon or river ferries, but rather large ferries, such as channel ferries.]
Last edited by Blasted on Wed May 04, 2011 5:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
King Francis I's Mother said wrote:The love between the kings was not just of the beard, but of the heart
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CatharzGodfoot
- King
- Posts: 5668
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
- Location: North Carolina
For a large ferry it would, hypothetically, be Operations.
I just read the source text, however, which says "So it's Operations to pilot a boat...". So there you go.
I just read the source text, however, which says "So it's Operations to pilot a boat...". So there you go.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
-Anatole France
Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.
-Josh Kablack
You are not successfully arguing in favor of navigating a Tanker being the same skill as navigating a Ferry. You are arguing in favor of captaining a ship in calm open waters being a very low difficulty.
Navigating a big ship has more in common with driving a Train than a sportscar. Actual course planning is essentially trivial, the difficulty is stuff like managing fuel and maintaining an average speed over an entire day.
Navigating a big ship has more in common with driving a Train than a sportscar. Actual course planning is essentially trivial, the difficulty is stuff like managing fuel and maintaining an average speed over an entire day.
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Draco_Argentum
- Duke
- Posts: 2434
- Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Physical Skills, You repeat that the defaulting penalty is zero twice in a line and a bit of text.
Sample Backgrounds: "Marionette is a former trapeze artist, and this facet of her life with the Circus Life Background." Got a word missing there, probably represents.
Stylistic note: You probably overdid the use of awesome in describing skills.
Sample Backgrounds: "Marionette is a former trapeze artist, and this facet of her life with the Circus Life Background." Got a word missing there, probably represents.
Stylistic note: You probably overdid the use of awesome in describing skills.
I found this in your Cults write up:
The Laughter Factory is the closest of any of the major cults to one that is exclusive to a specific group of supernaturals. Almost all leading members of the Network are Mi Go.
-Kid Radd
shadzar wrote:those training harder get more, and training less, don't get the more.
Stuff I've MadeLokathor wrote:Anything worth sniffing can't be sniffed
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Midnight_v
- Knight-Baron
- Posts: 629
- Joined: Thu May 15, 2008 10:27 pm
- Location: Texas
What about a skill reduction? If you have Drive, and need to take the controls of a ship that uses Operations, you lose some amount of your skill.lots of boat stuff.
So, for example, you work as a fishing boat captain, spend your off days tooling around in speed boats, and any other water vehicle you can get behind the controls of, but only ever use Drive, because no one's been crazy enough to let you get into the control room of a tanker so you can play around. And then you're with your band, crashing the Leviathan Human Sacrifice Bash and Poker Tournament held aboard a large container ship, and, oh shit, the captain just turned into a giant shark demon and had to be killed, now who the fuck's going to get us back to shore? Well, your background supports the idea that you love piloting boats, and have some amount of experience, which is better than the landlubbers that comprise your band mates, so you run over to the controls. Sure, they're completely different than anything you've really worked with, but you can probably figure them out, maybe with a logic roll with failure meaning you broke something, or dumped the fuel, or whatever. But if you succeed, you can use your Drive skill with a 2 point reduction or whatever, and you're still pretty well off, because you probably bought a Drive of 5.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.