Civility must be rewarded. If it isn’t rewarded, there’s no use for it.

There’s just no use for it at all.— Dr. Logan, Day of the Dead

An adventure for the World of Darkness using the Storytelling Adventure System

MENTAL OOOOOPHYSICAL OOOOOSOCIAL OOOOO

STORYTELLING ADVENTURE SYSTEMSCENES

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© 2012 CCP hf. All rights reserved. Reproduction without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden, except for the purposes of reviews, and one printed copy which may be reproduced for personal use only. White Wolf, Vampire and World of Darkness are registered trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. Vampire the Requiem, Werewolf the Forsaken, Mage the Awakening, Promethean the Created, Changeling the Lost, Hunter the Vigil, Geist the Sin-Eaters, Storytelling System and Parlor Games are trademarks of CCP hf. All rights reserved. All characters, names, places and text herein are copyrighted by CCP hf. CCP North America Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of CCP hf. The mention of or reference to any company or product in these pages is not a challenge to the trademark or copyright concerned. This book uses the supernatural for settings, characters and themes. All mystical and supernatural elements are fi ction and intended for entertainment purposes only. This book contains mature content. Reader discretion is advised.

Written by Matt McFarland Developed by Chuck Wendig Edited by Michelle Lyons Layout by Mike Chaney Art: Brian Leblanc and Eric Kolbek

Civility must be rewarded. If it isn’t rewarded, there’s no use for it.

There’s just no use for it at all.— Dr. Logan, Day of the Dead

An adventure for the World of Darkness using the Storytelling Adventure System

Sample file

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IntroductionThe World of Darkness is terrifying, broken place. It has all of the problems

and tragedies of our own, familiar world, but monsters also lurk in the shadows. Their presence makes the world more dangerous in a plethora of ways. Some of the supernatural beings prey on people in a literal sense — vampires drink the blood of the unwary, for instance, and crazed beasts hunt down people for their fl esh. But other such beings simply make the world unsafe. They wage their secret wars and claim their territories and they all seek to keep the unknowing masses out.

Knowledge is like water. It seeks to escape. It fi nds its own level. It seeps into everything, and no matter how well-maintained the secret, someone eventually learns it. In the soul of every living being in the world is the potential to know, to become part of this secret. And now, one brilliant woman has decided that the world can no longer afford to be ignorant.

Falling Scales is the fi rst installment in a four-part chronicle. While these stories are meant to build on one another, they are also written so as to be useful and playable on their own. The only book necessary to run Falling Scales is the World of Darkness Rulebook. If your troupe wishes to play through this story using characters from one of the other World of Darkness games (or even a mix of several!), information for doing so is provided.

TreatmentThe characters in Falling Scales become aware of the Unmasked, a cult

whose members believe that secret-keeping is always destructive. The cult investigates paranormal occurrences and catalogues them, searching for as much information as it can. At the lowest levels of membership, though, the cult behaves very much like a predatory self-help group. It engages in love-bombing and low-level brainwashing to get people on board, and then freely uses their time, money and other resources to further its agenda. The leader of the cult is a woman named Anna Christopher. She exemplifi es the idea that the ends justify the means. She knows more about the truth of the supernatural than most people ever could without actually becoming something more than human, and that knowledge has cost her more than just sleep. She feels that the world is in a state of emergency—the truth needs to come out, and if that means she has to bankrupt or burn out a few people, so be it.

The characters become involved with the cult after seeing the supernatural up close. A member of the cult witnesses the same thing they do, but does not become involved in the grisly scene. Instead, he merely takes pictures and fl ees. The next day, a representative of the cult contacts the characters, explaining that because they have already seen the otherworldly at work, they can join the Unmasked and bypass the “self-help” front that the group puts on. During this meeting, though, the cultist (a young man named Nick Holcomb), receives a call from his higher-ups in the cult and abruptly breaks off the conversation. He has, it seems, said too much.

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About the Storytelling Adventure System

If this is your fi rst Storytelling Adventure System (SAS) product, you’ve chosen a fi ne place to start. To keep this story kit lean and focused, though, we haven’t included a lot of the core premises and Storyteller suggestions that are at the heart of the SAS. Whether you’re a new Storyteller or an old hand, be sure to read the free SAS Guide, found at the SAS website:

www.white-wolf.com/sas

Here are some of the features available in Falling Scales:

• Interactive links. Clicking on anything in blue will take you directly to the section referenced, or to an appropriate character sheet or prop. It may also take you to an external website that could be useful.

• Scenes. Clicking on a scene name in the scene fl owchart or the page number in the scene card will take you to the full write-up of the scene.

• Bookmarks. This PDF is fully bookmarked, so you can jump to major sections at any time when the fi le is open.

Shortly thereafter, Maricel Lazaro fi nds the characters and attempts to kill them (she may even bring friends along, if you think the characters would appreciate a tougher fi ght). Once the characters have defeated her—or before the fi ght ends, if they need assistance—several members of the cult arrive. They take the characters to meet Anna Christopher, the cult leader. She informs them in no uncertain terms that they have seen too much of the supernatural not to be members and offers them positions in the cult’s upper echelons (re-served for those with direct experience). Of course, from this perspective, the characters can see the harm that the cult does to its lower-level members and they can (and should) take exception.

From there, the characters can either work with (or within) the Unmasked, searching out the supernatural and cataloging it, or they can refuse and have the cult attempt to bring them down. The Unmasked have immense power

and connections and can arrange for the characters to be harassed, evicted and even arrested. Eventually some kind of confrontation will be necessary, and the characters can dismantle the Unmasked entirely.

Even then, the characters aren’t free. As they work with the Unmasked, they fi nd themselves changing. The cult has infected them with a kind of mental virus, an affl iction that changes their souls. This affl iction has its benefi ts — but as the characters will see in future chapters of this story, it is also progressive.

Themes: Courage and WillThe citizens of the World of Darkness are not unaware of the supernatural,

at least not entirely. On some level, people know that the shadows are dangerous and they avoid them. As in our world, most people have a ghost story to tell. It’s just that in the World of Darkness these stories are true more often than not.

Despite this widespread suspicion that the stories and legends have more than just a kernel of truth, people don’t generally dedicate time and effort to learning that truth. Why? It isn’t just fear and it’s not just self-preservation. Most people simply do not have the will to pursue this dangerous vocation. Those who do usually have lost loved ones or otherwise been directly victim-ized by the supernatural, but people like that form the base of Hunter: The Vigil. Some people don’t have anything personal in the matter. Like any good detective, they simply hate mysteries.

Throughout Falling Scales, try to reward players who take direct, un-prompted and decisive action. Maybe that comes in the form of extra experience points, a small dice pool bonus or just a greater likelihood that their plans will work. The more the characters act without overthinking or having to be led around, the more they are embracing the theme of this story.

Mood: Down the Rabbit HoleOnce learned, the truth can’t be unlearned. Once the characters know, for

a fact, that inhuman beings exist, they can’t go back to ignorance. This kind of irrevocable discovery should permeate Falling Scales. As Storyteller, you should underline it when possible. A good way to do that is to occasionally run scenes with the characters in otherwise mundane situations and mention how their new knowledge makes them fi lter other innocuous information.

For example: A character, after playing through A Glimpse of the Un-known, goes to a bar to get a drink. A woman approaches him fl irtatiously. Under normal circumstances, the character might think himself lucky and be anticipating what the rest of the evening might bring. But after seeing Maricel Lazaro murder a man in that opening scene, can he really afford to be so trusting? For the rest of his life, he will view any such behavior on the part of women as suspect, even if, rationally, he knows that such creatures are extremely rare.

This kind of realization is sobering and terrifying. The Storyteller shouldn’t miss an opportunity to remind the players of it.

Introduction

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Falling Scales Across the World of DarknessThis story is meant for mortal characters, with no (or very little) supernatural

infl uence. However, if you wish to play through Falling Scales with characters that have already received supernatural templates, it’s by no means impossible. It just requires a bit more work on your part. Below are some suggestions and considerations for doing so. Additionally, under each scene in Falling Scales, we’ve included any special considerations or rules that might be required for that scene.

Note, too, that the memetic infection affl icting the characters has different effects on non-mortal characters. These effects are noted under the Memetic Infection heading below.

Vampire: The RequiemGetting a coterie of Kindred into Falling Scales is fairly simple, because

the opening plotline with Maricel should be interesting to vampires. She is, after all, a vampire herself, but not Kindred. If the characters have an ounce of curiosity about their own undead condition among them, that should be an irresistible lead.

The problem comes when the characters become involved with the cult. The Unmasked don’t make value judgments about vampires per se, but they do take special interest in vampires because they are such recognizable super-natural beings. And that means that simply by paying attention to folklore, the Unmasked already know many of the characters’ weaknesses (to wit: sunlight, wooden stakes, a need for blood, distorted refl ections, etc.). The characters im-mediately become science projects because the Unmasked already have enough context to know what questions to ask. That also means that when things turn sour between the characters and the cult, the cult might not be satisfi ed with simply emptying their bank accounts. They might decide to fi nd them at noon and try to take them for a stroll.

Werewolf: The ForsakenThe biggest immediate concern with running Falling Scales with a

pack of werewolves is that they will probably kill Maricel Lazaro during the first scene. If you don’t want to allow that, you can try and set the scene in such a way that she can easily slip away, but beware of forcing this issue. Werewolves are good at hunting and killing, and if you deliberately shut them down in this area the players might justifiably get frustrated. This might mean skipping No Witnesses, but that shouldn’t damage the overall story.

Werewolves aren’t as obvious as vampires, so they probably won’t run into the same issues that Kindred will with regard to the Unmasked. How-ever, werewolves need to be careful to avoid exposure, and the Unmasked might realize that they can provoke werewolves into Changing in public places with the right kinds of stimuli (this puts innocent people at risk, but Anna Christopher has no problem with that).

Mage: The AwakeningRunning this story with mages would be a challenge, no question. Even a

cabal of newly Awakened mages can potentially destroy or easily track Mari-cel Lazaro, read the cult’s intentions and even hunt down and fi nish of Anna Christopher without waiting for any “reveals” from the Storyteller.

The best advice in this situation is simply to run with it. If the characters are being proactive and using their powers creatively, that’s fi ne. It’s even in-theme for Falling Scales. You can have the Unmasked follow the characters, making Paradox worse simply by being present. If the characters resolve the cult’s plotline too quickly, simply introduce the memetic infection earlier and shift that to the main plot thread.

Promethean: The CreatedPrometheans might actually be more susceptible to the cults brainwash-

ing methods than mortals. After all, they have no context for many social manipulation methods used, and they are, as a rule, lonely and cut off from much of society. Of course, the cult isn’t immune to Disquiet and that means that love-bombing can turn into an angry, torch-wielding mob all too quickly. Likewise, the Created don’t have a larger society telling them to stay hidden from people (though they tend to learn that quickly on their own). As such, the Unmasked might well be able to use a throng of Prometheans to expose the supernatural, at least to the immediate area.

As far as using Prometheans as characters in Falling Scales, some of the same considerations arise as with vampires and werewolves. The Created are usually tough enough, physically, that Maricel won’t be much of a threat, and they have a diverse enough range of powers that the cult itself might prove only a minor issue. But the entire experience should make for some interesting milestones, and the memetic infection presents its own unique issues for the Created.

Changeling: The LostChangelings are, in many ways, abuse survivors. That doesn’t make

them weak or pathetic (anyone who would call an abuse survivor “weak” has their own issues anyway), but it does mean that they are somewhat damaged by the experience. And that, unfortunately, makes them prime recruiting fodder for cults. While the Unmasked might not be able to key in on precisely what traumatic experience a changeling is hiding, cult lead-ers are adept at recognizing that such experiences are lurking in a person’s psychological makeup. It might be better, though, just to get details about a character’s Durance and then refer to it during the game (and reward the player for portraying the reaction that this engenders).

Changelings make good characters for Falling Scales. You still have to deal with their fae powers and how those change the considerations of the story, but changelings are diverse enough that it’s hard to know exactly which areas of the story might need tweaking. If the characters are Ogres

Introduction

Sample file