Preview: Plagues, Interstitial and Otherwise
about 5 years ago – Mon, Apr 08, 2019 at 07:33:17 AM

Hello Contagious,

First order of business: HYPE THE Q&A!

That's right - Matthew Dawkins will be answering your questions about the Contagion Chronicle on Onyx Path's youtube channel this afternoon. Scheduled for 9:00 PM BST (note the time zone!! - that's 4:00 PM EDT in the afternoon where I am, so don't miss out!) You'll be able to catch it here:  https://www.youtube.com/TheOnyxPath 

We're getting so close to our next Stretch Goal, unlocking a new supplement for the Contagion Chronicle tentatively titled, "Global Outbreaks." It will feature a new location and new manifestations of the Contagion.  Let's keep at it and automatically add this supplement to the rewards list of all backers receiving the Contagion Chronicle PDF!

Speaking of manifestations of the Contagion, here's our first sneak peek at Chapter 3 of the manuscript, which delves into some of the history of the Contagion.

Plagues, Interstitial and Otherwise

Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.

— Hippocrates

The God-Machine is sick. The God-Machine has always been sick. The God-Machine will, someday, become sick. It’s hard to tell with an entity that so flagrantly violates causality. Ultimately, the Contagion is as universal as the God-Machine that hosts it. There is scarcely a place on Earth the God-Machine hasn’t touched at one time or another, and therefore there’s scarcely a place on Earth that couldn’t host an outbreak of the Contagion. All scholars of the Contagion can really say is that history is replete with breakouts, moments where cultures and even reality itself collapsed around a point, or a person, or a practice. 

Accounts of unexplainable events on such a scale stretch back as far as ancient Mesopotamia, where we first know of writing as a common practice, and therefore where written history begins. Some believe that the flood myth itself, present in so many cultures, reflects a massive, ancient outbreak, one which nearly ended the world, that is only preserved in oral histories. Not every historical record of a cataclysmic event represents the Contagion breaking through into our world through the vector of the God-Machine’s Infrastructure, of course. Earthquakes, volcanoes, meteors, and all manner of perfectly natural disasters are capable of presenting as an out-of-context problem in ancient records or literature. The Sworn, however, are not an entirely modern phenomenon themselves; contemporaries of these events, ancient or otherwise, did what they could to stem the Contagion’s spread — and must have seen some success, or, their modern descendants say, they would not be around to talk about it. 

Five outbreaks in particular, however, are most relevant to the modern day, and specifically to the five factions of the Sworn, some of whom can claim traditions (if not contiguous organization) stretching back more than two thousand years. None of the factions sprang fully-formed into being. Instead, they were the result of like-minded individuals coming together in the wake of apocalyptic events, and together creating an idea that would, despite lurking only in the shadows of the world, endure the test of time. When the Sworn argue amongst themselves, more often than not these five outbreaks are the ones cited as proof that one faction or another has the right of it. 

San Lorenzo Colossal Head 11: 900 BCE

The Head is massive, with details finer than any other colossal head. Even Tu, the last Olmec king seated on a crumbling throne, didn’t know which of his ancestors commissioned it. The Head had always existed, bearing the likeness not of a king, but a god. This divinity was not named, not known like the Dragon or the Feathered Serpent. It was not listed amongst the great Eight, or even any of the lesser Gods his people revered. Yet it sucked up all prayers and all life, leaving the island in the middle of the Coatzacoalcos River barren. Tu could see the future, full of desolation and endings, as clearly as he could see the gleaming metal and polished, ivory human bone behind the head’s stone facade.

The San Lorenzo Colossal Head 11 is a secret of archeology. While San Lorenzo Colossal Heads 1 to 10 are on display for tourists, the eleventh head was sequestered away when testing revealed metal alloys undiscovered by man, and elements not on the periodic table, laced in the stone. All public records of it were suppressed, though rumors and pictures survive on the Deep Web. Attempts to carbon-date it consistently fail. The head’s features are Olmec, with a broad nose and full lips, although it is more androgynous than other Colossal Heads. Large discs stretch the ear lobes, and the mouth gapes open wide as if it hungers. Its headband is incredibly detailed, full of maze-like patterns and tableaus of worship. Efforts to document the scenes portrayed in the headband have likewise failed. The sheer volume of detail, untraceable lines and figures wedged together, wears on the observer’s mind. Since its discovery, archeologists have identified 1) a city of curving spires rising towards each other from the ground, 2) human figures worshiping a towering creature with arms so large they reach the ground, and 3) a head resembling Colossal Head 11, mouth opened wide as lines of humans walk into its maw. A handful of observers have recorded different tableaus, alternating widely between a beautifully ordered utopia and a barren wasteland, but the three above are the only ones seen by more than one person. Mages, believing the Head to represent an Exarch and doing their own investigation, have had more luck.

The Head hails from the first Olmec City circa 1150 BCE. No amount of divination can reveal its creator, and none of the known San Lorenzo kings match its physical features. It’s the tallest of eleven San Lorenzo heads, at twelve feet, and impeccably detailed. The Head spoke when it was finished and unveiled, delivering a message in the first language. Priests flocked to the Head, always rushing back to the safety of their known gods once they gleaned the Head held both the end and salvation of all things. Subsequent kings ordered it buried, placed in a temple overlooking the city, and thrown in the river. None recorded its message, for those who understood could not remember it, and those who remembered could not understand it. It sucked up prayers intended for the true gods, drove kings to madness and greatness, and slowly spelled out demise. This was its Contagion: it trapped the city between the erratic extremes of obsession until it consumed all else. The skills of stonemasonry and agriculture, passed down for five centuries, faded against the presence of the Head. People forgot to eat. Children starved in their baskets as mothers were so close to deciphering the god’s riddle that all else needed to wait. Kings sat on their thrones, so lost in thought that they were unable to govern the city, the answer lying forever just beyond their grasp. The first Olmec went into decline and was abandoned around 900 BCE, dying on the soft whisper of obsession consuming everything else.

The First Language

The first language is the code that governs the God-Machine's programming, the Celestial Ladder, and the essence of Creation. It transcends time and space, and those who first mastered it tore it into a thousand pieces so none could follow them on this path to ascendant power. Azothic Memory retains fragments of it though, allowing Prometheans to master the dominant language of their surrounding as the first language is the root of all languages. This also grants all Prometheans +2 on checks to identify the San Lorenzo strain, and gives the Tammuz a further +1 bonus to resist infection.

Survivors took the Head’s feverous message with them as they left the ruins of the first city. They still did not understand its message, nor could they remember it any more clearly than a dream fading fast against the world’s light. None of them had even been alive when the Head first made its appearance, yet the Head reached for them through the stitches in time, taking them back to that first and only time it spoke. It carried on in their blood and wormed its way into their minds: The message must be understood. Where they went, Contagion followed. Sculptors throughout Olmec civilization worked bloodied fingers to the bone, sacrificing life and sanity, in an effort to re-create the Head of God. Not until the fall of La Venta, the last great Olmec city, did this strain of San Lorenzo 11 stop. 

Unfortunately, the disease lingered and mutated in the earth itself. It re-emerged when the Aztecs built their city of Tenōchtitlan near the site of the lost city. They did not create any Colossal Heads, but instead turned to blood and sacrifice to decipher the message. They came close too, warriors and kings self-mutilating to read the God’s portents in the enlightenment of pain. They thrived as they solved the paradox of the message, which held both Contagion and its cure, and created an empire that spanned the Valley of Mexico. Perhaps in the vast multitudes of time and space, Contagion ended here, five centuries after the first recorded outbreak. Time is also linear though, and whatever progress the Aztecs made was buried alongside them by the cruelty of Hernán Cortés.

The Rosetta Society

The San Lorenzo outbreak spread when the city fell, embedding itself in survivors’ genetic codes and passing through contact in the form of an all-consuming obsession to decipher the message. The Olmecs suffered from it, as did the Aztecs, the Mayans, and Mesoamerican cultures like the Toltecs and the Totonac. So might the Rosetta Society, which claims Mesoamerican origins and certainly exhibits a singular focus on interpreting the meaning behind Contagion, also be infected? The answer is up to the Storyteller. It’s been a thousand years since the Mayans contained the San Lorenzo outbreak, and even Contagion could simply lose its virulence over that time. If it did carry into the Rosetta Society though, the San Lorenzo strain exhibits as the Obsession Condition in addition to the Carrier Condition. Given how insidious the San Lorenzo strain is, exhibiting as mania and eventually leading to a mental breakdown (both common enough in Sworn as it is), neither the Rosetta Society nor the other Sworn have reason to believe they’re infected. 

If the San Lorenzo strain did survive inside the Rosetta Society, it remains hidden from the other Sworn. This could either be due to a mutation of the disease, or because the strain, one of the oldest in the world, has lost some of its virulence and is now easily overlooked. In this case, Sworn might not see it until it's too late and all of the Rosetta Society is infected, or if they have active cause for suspicion and take a very close look. This hidden strain would reduce the Prometheans' bonus to recognize it to +1, though the Tammuz do keep their bonus to resist it.

The Mayans had more luck surviving the ages, though they face marginalization and discrimination in contemporary Mexico. But their luck ran dry in deciphering the message. They searched for its meaning in blood, in ball games, and in the stars. They came close in Uxmal, the thrice-built city, where they grasped the last remnants of the San Lorenzo strain and buried it deep within the Magician’s Pyramid. The project consumed four hundred years, with building starting in 600 CE and ending in 1000 CE, and a single night as a magician erected the pyramid to escape a death sentence. It took three pyramids, layered inside each other like eggs within eggs. But finally, it was done: Contagion distilled through blood, earth, and air, and contained within a great, near-impenetrable pyramid. Containment is not a cure, but it sufficed for the Mayan people and no outbreaks of the San Lorenzo strain have been recorded since. If Mages worry what the Spanish might have taken with them when they looted the Magician’s Pyramid during their conquest of Yucatán, that is certainly no fault of the indigenous people.

#SpreadTheSickness

#CofDContagion

Backers Only - Contagion Setting Preview # 5 - DRC
about 5 years ago – Sun, Apr 07, 2019 at 05:03:53 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Road Trip
about 5 years ago – Sat, Apr 06, 2019 at 04:41:57 AM

Road Trip

We’ve been driving through the Negev most of the night. They told me we need to get to Acre by morning. The Crag is at the wheel and I’m in the back watching Tempest, Leo, and Josie who are all asleep. At least they look as if they are asleep. According to Tempest (who is the only one of these weirdos I really know), they’re exploring people’s dreams. And changing them. So when we get to Acre we are going to be able to do whatever it is we’re going there to do which maybe, sometime, someone will explain to me in terms I can understand. It’s something to do with evolution, shaking things up and changing them. They told me there’s some kind of contagion in Acre, something distorting people’s dreams and messing with magic and maybe ghosts, that might have something to do with the Knights Templar. And we have to rescue a friend of Tempest’s who’s going to be brought to trial. 

Let’s start with Tempest. I’ve known her a couple of years now and I’ve seen her do a whole load of weird shit. Which is how I get to hang out with her because, apparently, this magic tends to affect normal people badly, or normal people affect it badly but that doesn’t apply to me. I’d quite like to “wake up” or whatever it is they call it so I can do weird shit too, but I doubt whether it’s actually going to happen. So, I just get to sit in the back of the RV, watching people while they’re sleeping and taking it in turns with The Crag to do the driving. Okay, by American standards, 500km is not so far, but we’re having to take the long way ‘round because we don’t want to be seen. Which is through the fucking desert.

Leo can do weird shit too but, they tell me, it’s not the same kind of weird shit. He was removed or abducted somewhere or other for years and, when he got back (and he had to escape — he never told us the story though I think it must have been exciting) he could do stuff, including messing with people’s dreams. And Josie — Josie specializes in dreams. When she’s in someone’s dream it’s as some huge scary monster who can tell people to do things, or not to do things, or something. Oh, and the Crag can turn into a wolf-thing. Which is handy if you get into a fight.

Leo wakes up first, he looks rough and freaked out. Then Tempest then Josie. Neither of them looks much better. They start to talk to each other about ghosts and something called the abyss seeping through into the Lie (which is what they call the normal world) and a god machine which is sick or something and…

This is when the weird stuff starts to happen. There’s a flash and a bang and I can’t hear the sound of the motor anymore. Tempest starts waving her hands around and muttering like she does when she’s making magic and I smell a thunderstorm in the distance. Then time does a hiccup and kind of reverses and Leo wakes up again, followed by the other two.

“Tell the Crag to stop,” Tempest says to me. “We’re all going to hell in a handbasket here,”

I look at her. I know I’m the only one here who can’t do any weird stuff, but that doesn’t mean the rest of them can just order me around. I can leave any time I want. Only Tempest looks really worried, so I decide I better do what she said.

So, I crawl into the front of the RV and tell the Crag that Tempest says we have to stop. Sure enough, we’re in the middle of nowhere, but the Crag stops anyway. It’s too hot to get out so we all pile into the back and break out some water. Then there’s a flash and a bang just like the crash and bang which didn’t really happen before (Tempest can do some really freaky stuff with time), and the RV doesn’t stop this time because it’s stopped already.

Time starts to move forward normally again.

“I think that took the electrics out,” the Crag says. “I guess we’re not going anywhere.”

At this point there is what I can only describe as a huge crack in reality and this woman I never saw before in my life walks through it.

“You hellions are headed for Acco,” she starts. And it’s a statement, not a question. “And you’re going to turn right around and go back to Eilat.”

When she says that, all I want to do is get into the driver’s seat and take us back to Eilat. It’s nice there. The diving is good. But I guess she’s working magic and the others are trying really hard to resist. It’s not as if the motor would start anyway, not with the electrics fried.

“Who the fuck are you?” the Crag asks her.

“She’s the boss,” Tempest mutters.

“I am the Hierarch of this Consilium and also involved in the bureau of the Levant. I can assure you all the Contagion is in hand and you can safely go home. We will call upon you if we need you. Tempest, I thought better of you than this.”

“Well, ma’am,” Leo says. “How can we get back to Eilat? The RV is fried.”

“I’m sure Tempest can ‘unfry’ it,” she says, before turning around and walking back towards her crack in reality.

“And what if we won’t?” the Crag asked her. She’s never one to keep her mouth shut even when keeping one’s mouth shut is the most advisable course of action.

This Hierarch woman points to the sky and there, wheeling high above us, is a black helicopter. Then she fucks off back through the crack in reality. No one seems particularly inclined to follow her.

I leave the others arguing about lies and machines and ghosts and laws and diseases and go into the back of the RV to break out the tools…

Backers Only - Contagion Setting Preview # 4 - New Zealand
about 5 years ago – Fri, Apr 05, 2019 at 06:45:30 AM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Preview: New Zealand - Contagion of Stability
about 5 years ago – Thu, Apr 04, 2019 at 07:41:28 AM

Hello Contagious,

Today we travel from America's west coast south to the Land of the Kiwi, previewing how the Contagion has affected New Zealand.

Before we get to today's preview, I wanted to share an interview from The Story Told podcast team. Contagion Chronicle developer, Matthew Dawkins, joined them for an interview about this kickstarter and the project we've funded and hope to continue growing. Check it out:

The Story Told Podcast - Interview with Matthew Dawkins

Patient 0 joins us to spread the plague! In this episode, Matthew Dawkins of the Onyx Path joins us once again, this time to talk about the Contagion Chronicle. The Contagion Chronicle is a crossover book for the Chronicles of Darkness, drawing the supernatural denizens of the world together as they face common troubles in the form of the Contagion.

Give it a listen and maybe get some As to the Qs you've had.

New Zealand: Contagion of Stability

New Zealand lies in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, nine hundred miles east of Australia and six hundred miles south of Fiji. The nation is composed of two main islands (North and South), with around six hundred smaller islands surrounding it. Due to its location, New Zealand’s climates support both rainforests and glaciers, stunning beaches and snow-covered mountains. The city of Christchurch, on its South Island, is one of the gateways to Antarctica.

New Zealand’s remoteness and isolation made it one of the last landmasses on Earth to be inhabited by humans. Polynesian explorers discovered the islands between 1250 and 1300 CE and made them their home. European settlers arrived four centuries later. Because of this late infusion of humanity, New Zealand has a unique bioculture. Humans account for only about five percent of the species on the islands, but their presence has made a devastating impact. Half of the forests disappeared due to deforestation and fires. European logging and farming depleted another quarter of the forest cover. Animals endemic to New Zealand, like the moa bird, went extinct due to humans hunting them and disrupting the ecosystem.

Today, New Zealand is a thriving country with a robust travel and tourism industry. Vacationers come in search of adventure, spelunking through the Waitomo Caves or ziplining over the trees in Queenstown. Movie buffs walk the paths of Middle-earth. Maori continue the tradition of manaakitanga (hospitality), welcoming visitors to tribal meeting grounds called marae to hear ancestral songs and to see how ancient weaving and carving techniques are still used today with new and old materials combined. 

When change comes to New Zealand, it sweeps over the island like a tsunami: the Maori settlers changed the ecosystem with their arrival. European explorers changed Maori culture with theirs. Monsters came to the islands along with the humans, imposing changes of their own. The Uratha prosper here, in a country where a third of the land is a protected national park. Kindred rule the nights in big cities like Wellington and Auckland. Mages come from far and wide, chasing their Mysteries. 

The Lost understand change — it’s right there in their name, after all: changeling. Recently, they’ve begun sensing another shift on its way, like the heaviness in the air before a storm breaks, or that moment of awful, utter silence before the Huntsman’s horn pierces the night. Something is wrong in the Land of the Long White Cloud. The Contagion snakes its way out of the Hedge. Glamour’s potency fluctuates, and goblin fruits taste stranger than they ought. What lingers on the tongue isn’t rot or mold, but difference. 

Theme and Mood

For eighty million years, New Zealand’s native species evolved without human influence. In the last eight hundred years, people have not only radically altered that ecosystem, but have also brought war and illness to other settlers. Today, climate change is an ever-looming threat, with rising sea-levels and intense storms the symptoms of a man-made global disease.

Change is frightening; it erodes and erases. When the things that make you you come under attack, how do you hold on to them? How do you preserve them? How do you let go? For many changelings, the answer is the same one that carried them back out through the Hedge: you grit your teeth and stand your ground. You say no more. You defy.

Carlile House, Auckland: The Carlile House sits gray and foreboding on an otherwise pleasant tree-lined street. Residences and shops surround it, making the gray stone walls and boarded windows all the more ominous. Inside, mold climbs up the wainscoting and old, yellowed wallpaper peels from the walls. Bed frames and mattresses fill the rooms, and broken toys and scattered puzzle pieces litter the floors. Built in the late 1800s, Carlile House has served as a boarding school for underprivileged boys, as an orphanage and most recently as a hostel. It fell into disuse and disrepair forty years ago. Urban legends abound about a deadly fire in 1912 that killed 43 boys, though no such fire is on record. Visitors to the house swear they hear children’s laughter and footsteps, and others swear they’ve seen the ghost of a nun who, in another version of the story, saved those same boys from the fire but perished herself.

Today, Carlile House is a base of operations for The Crucible Initiative. The exterior remains rundown and spooky, but the Burners have fixed up the east wing, preparing beds and clean rooms to hold those Contagion-infected individuals whose care they oversee. The Initiative lets urban explorers think they’re seeing the whole house, when they break in to upload their creepy walkthroughs to social media. In truth, a Mastigos warlock has folded the rooms upon themselves, creating a handy illusion for the explorers and allowing the surgeons to continue their work undisturbed. Some of the noises enterprising ghost hunters hear are not made by long-dead orphans, but instead belong to the very-much-alive patients. Not all (or even most) of whom are at Carlile House willingly.

Westhaven Marina: The Freehold of Gentle Waves currently holds court at the Westhaven Marina. The freehold claims half a dozen berths close by one another, a tiny fraction of the marina’s two thousand-boat capacity. The freehold has moved plenty of times over the centuries since its founding, its monarchs ready to unmoor their vessels and unfurl their sails when the Huntsmen or other outside forces threaten. Westhaven’s been good to them these last few years, with the Glamour from boating enthusiasts keeping the Lost well-fed. Being on the water is its own kind of magic, and when the Spring Queen moved their little armada here, she made a perfect call.

Things have changed in recent months. It started when Carrie Odell couldn’t sense the tides. The Elemental woman spent her entire life on boats, from when she was a deep-sea fisherman’s daughter through her Durance, where she grew fins and a tail and swam and swam and swam alongside ship full of Gentry, singing up at them from the waves. Carrie knows the water. In many ways, she is the water. But the ebb and flow was gone. She stood on the deck of the Syllabub and swore she was standing on dry land. In her despair, Carrie threw herself into the harbor, where her tail returned and her gills came back. She’s been that way ever since. 

The remaining three members of the Syllabub’s crew all suffer from some degree of Contagion, though their miens are easier to hide than Carrie’s. All of them tell stories of sighting the same ghostly ship out on the horizon the night before Carrie lost the tides. They don’t know it, but the ship they spotted was the very vessel that discovered the other reality’s New Zealand. 

As we increase the overall funding and support for the project, we’re able to add additional resources to the project, expand the rewards listed, and add in new offers and opportunities. Each Stretch Goal will have a target that, once reached, will add a project to the reward list. We will continue to build on this list when we achieve these targets during the campaign. Whenever we achieve a stretch goal, the image will be updated to reflect the achievement. 

Our focus for these Stretch Goals will be the creation and expansion of two supplemental PDFs - additional content for the Contagion Chronicle Storytellers and players.

THE CONTAGION CHRONICLE PLAYER'S COMPANION PDF - A supplement containing crunchy rules section(s) on supernatural interactions with examples and guidance (ie, "What happens when a Vampire does "X" to a Mage?" and similar issues). Built via Stretch Goal achievements, final length and scope will be determined by how many sections are added. 

The good news is we've hit our first Stretch Goal, and the Player's Companion has now been added to the development list! While we've got a general concept ("crunchy rules section(s) on supernatural interactions with examples and guidance"), the exact contents have not yet been determined at this time. The book will be outlined and developed once the campaign has ended and Matthew Dawkins and team see what they've got to work with. (Obviously, the scope and contents can't be outlined until they know if they've got a 10-page release or a 48-page book.)  

The fun side of a TBD project means you can share ideas and suggestions in the comments (as many have been doing already!). This doesn't mean that all ideas will be covered (again, we don't yet know the size and scope of the book), but Matthew does pay attention to feedback and fan comments, so some suggestions may provide inspiration or possible directions to explore! Beyond that, it's just *fun* to think about all of the possible interactions that various splats can have with one another and how their individual powers may interact.

Next Stretch Goal target

At $58,000 in funding -  CONTAGION CHRONICLE: GLOBAL OUTBREAKS - Alarming Outings - A travelogue supplement PDF will be created for the Contagion Chronicle, adding new locations and new manifestations of the Contagion. 

If you've enjoyed the setting sections we've previewed so far, it only makes sense to ADD MORE! And we can, via Stretch Goal achievements and the creation of a Global Outbreaks PDF supplement. Similar to the Player's Companion, we'll create and then expand the size of this book as we move through the remainder of the campaign (THREE MORE WEEKS!). Let's see how many new locations and new manifestation outbreaks we can add to this chronicle.

Added to Your Rewards List

One thing to remember - together, we've already funded the main reward and goal for this project - the Contagion Chronicle book will be created and printed! All backers set to receive the PDF version (Infected tier and higher) will AUTOMATICALLY have the Player's Companion PDF added to their rewards list at no additional cost. In addition, should we hit our next Stretch Goal, the Global Outbreaks PDF supplement will ALSO be added to reward lists at no additional cost. More content created thanks to you!

So, keep spreading the Contagion! Share in your social media and in your social circles! Now that we've got our first OUTBREAK, let's hit another Stretch Goal target and spread the sickness!

#CofDContagion

#LetsGoViral

#Outbreak